Question: Why is it necessary to overcome resistance in order to ascend and rise?

Answer: What would you rise above? What would be the stepping stone of your ascent? It is the ego that exists in you, unlike animals. Above it, you will ascend through spiritual stages, i.e., change the perception of our world to the perception of the highest. This is called “ascending the ladder.”

The fact is that at this stage you think you own the world, control it. And at the next step, which you want to rise to, you must accept that there is only one single force in the universe, call it Creator, nature, whatever you like, and only it controls the world.

And you have absolutely no control over anything, you only want to join, cling to this higher power.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/17/20

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Question: This is the case that took place in Japan: a person who was infected with COVID-19 and clearly knew that he was ill went out on the street, to public places, began to hug people, even came to his family. Then he came home and died some time later. This serves as a moral example. Is there a so-called upper court when a person intentionally goes to do this?

Answer: Undoubtedly, this court exists at the level of the forces of our world, this does not disappear anywhere.

The fact is that we are connected to each other into one common whole, into an integrated system. If a person supports this system and wants to bring it to an integral form, this is his merit.

And vice versa, if he breaks the chains of good connection between everyone, then this is his loss, punishment. So, of course, the person has done himself a lot of harm. He brought evil between us by his actions, spread evil, and then this evil continues to work further.

What are the consequences? The fact that he has delayed the whole system from moving toward integrality, toward connection, toward love—all this is on him.

Question: Is there such a direct connection that you can say that this is all on him?

Answer: Of course. Now his desires became much more egoistic. When he died, he got rid of the body, of the manifestation of this desire on such a low level, but which still was ready for the correction.

Now he cannot correct himself biologically. And how can he correct himself spiritually, if everything in him is so egoistic, and now it is unknown when he will get the opportunity to start his correction and in what form.

Question: Does this apply to all evil in the world? To all bearers of evil?

Answer: Yes.

Question: People immediately remember the terrible executioners, murderers, and so on. Does this apply to them?

Answer: Even worse. A person who does not allow others to live, does not give them the opportunity to correct themselves normally with at least some freewill, creates huge problems for himself.

Question: Why is this given to a person? Why is this implanted into him by the upper force, the Creator? Why set a person up like that?

Answer: All evil must be revealed. It has to be! Therefore, those souls who have done such terrible things in the past receive an extra load in order to bring them down to such a low from which they can begin to rise. Since if they are somewhere between bad and good, they do not feel themselves as bad.

Therefore, they need to be given an additional surplus of evil, then they understand that this is how they really are and that they need to be corrected.

Question: You are saying that absolutely everything is directed to correction, to good, to warmth, to love. And we have to go through these terrible states and see these terrible people, and hate them, and sentence them to execution, to death. Should all this be on the path to love, on the path to good?

Answer: I do not want to say that execution and death should be done at all. It cuts off a person’s ability to correct himself, and everyone should correct themselves. So I am not in favor of the death penalty.

However, it is necessary to put a person in such circumstances where he would definitely want to correct himself, by any means! Literally, let the eagle peck at his liver!

Question: What is correction?

Answer: Correction is the realization of your own meanness, insignificance, harmfulness to others, corruption. It is the desire to become useful and see how harmful you have been.

The realization that you were unfit for human communication, harmful and evil compared to the way you see now, this is the state of hell. This is hell.

The death penalty, however, does not correct anything.

Question: How can you bring a person to such a state?

Answer: To do this, you need to work on him. To do this, there must be educators and those who lead him precisely to an individual definition: Who in fact is he?

Comment: In other words, educators should not hate him, but rather should understand that this is a way of correction.

My Response: Yes. They must show him love. This is worse than death for a person. That is, the educators love him but in such a way that they seek methods to bring him to the recognition of the evil in himself.

I hope we will see more of these things when people start to change like this.

Question: When will people begin to understand who they are, and that they are murderers from this hatred?

Answer: Yes. They will wander the streets like the dead rising from their graves and will search for ways to correct themselves.

Question: Does this require educators who will show them what true love is? Will they be looking at them, hating them, and changing to fit them?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/11/20

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New Life 1253 – Immigration To Israel In The Coronavirus Era
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

During the coronavirus era, it is natural for Jews to think about immigrating to Israel because they don’t feel safe abroad and businesses are collapsing. Jews are found in the safest position in Israel, even from the aspect of the education of children. The nation is committed to every Jew in the world, like parents are in regard to their children. Everyone’s home is here. They have no other future. In each and every nation in the entire world, Jews will always be strangers. The state must prepare for the correct absorption of the Jews, not as it was done in previous waves of immigration. What we are missing is education in love, education that recognizes that all of us are a single nation in spite of the divisions and differences between us. We must return to the doctrine of love and the principle, “You shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), so that we don’t disparage and criticize one another.

The coronavirus is inviting the opening of a new page in history. It shows that it is up to us to communicate with connections of love. A good absorption of immigrants will be such that everyone will live here peacefully and we will be a global example. A person who will immigrate here from abroad will then feel as if wrapped in the hands of a caring mother.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1253 – Immigration To Israel In The Coronavirus Era,” 6/15/20

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Disagreements Between Two Movements in the Jewish People

Comment: Over the past few centuries, confrontation within the Jewish people has been very strong, in particular between Lithuanian Jews and Hasidim, the Vilna Gaon and The Baal Shem Tov.

The reason for their disagreement was a different point of view on the dissemination of Kabbalah within their own people and all the rest.

My Response: The Vilna Gaon was a great Kabbalist, but he opposed dissemination of Kabbalah among his people.

The Baal Shem Tov, on the contrary, believed that it was necessary to spread Kabbalah, to educate Kabbalist disciples, and to pass information about the spiritual world to everyone. Therefore, Hasidism originated from The Baal Shem Tov, whereby each child was taught about the spiritual worlds, unity, and the purpose of the existence of the people of Israel.

And the disciples of the Vilna Gaon engaged in Kabbalah only as a small group of people. As a result, the emphasis in their activities was placed purely on the formal fulfillment of the commandments.

The confrontation between these two groups continues to this day, although today it is external, informal. But at that time it was a serious war.

Question: Didn’t they understand that their disagreements lead them to disunity and alienate them from the Creator?

Answer: It is difficult for us to say something about these people. These are two different approaches to Kabbalah that manifest within the Kabbalists themselves. But the fact that they could not establish a connection between them led to great persecutions. And all this is felt to this day.

Comment: Our contemporary Baal HaSulam writes that it is only due to the spread of Kabbalah among the masses that we will be liberated, both each one and all of humanity. But if you look into the history of the development of humanity, almost everything repeats itself.

My Response: No. The time is different now. Today humanity is rapidly moving toward revealing itself as falling into egoism, which does allow simply settling down, enjoying life, and correctly using all the achievements of humanity.

Thus, a favorable environment arises for revealing the meaning of life. This question, which urgently requires an answer, appears in every person in our generation. And the answer is generally nowhere to be found except in Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel” 7/29/19

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Lesson Preparation

Writings of Rabash, Article 17, Part 1 “Concerning the Importance of Friends” (1984)

Writings of Baal HaSulam,  “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,”  Item 145

Writings of Baal HaSulam,  Article  “The Freedom” (Subtitle: “The Law of Causality”)

Selected Highlights

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Question: If I need to change myself, then why do I need the whole society? I can lock myself in my apartment and meditate and pray for the whole world. Will this help?

Answer: No. You can change yourself only when you are in society, under its influence, adjusting yourself to it.

Question: If I need a society to change my qualities, then why did the virus quarantine us, separating us from each other? How do I connect with other people from a distance?

Answer: Yes. The virus has isolated us from each other so that we realize how much we are connected, and how this connection must undergo some positive changes.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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Medium published my new article “Millennials at the Forefront of the Economic Pandemic, Why?”

REUTERS/Nora Savosnick

While the elderly are much more vulnerable to the coronavirus disease, the brunt of the economic pandemic certainly has a young face. Millennials in America and around the globe face a particular economic upheaval due to massive job losses in the service-related industries that provided their main source of income. This is no coincidence; the hardship comes as a call to action for the new generation to lead the world to a more promising future by rebuilding the old, failed economic and social systems.

The crisis demands a new education for a new lifestyle based on the same laws of mutual support and reciprocity that exist in nature.

For millennials — those born between 1981–1996 who are now 24–39 years old — the coronavirus epidemic has been especially harsh. They had not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis before being hit hard by this new crisis caused by COVID-19. Their limited savings affect their capacity to weather the crisis. A recent study revealed that 76% of surveyed millennials said their household income has been negatively affected by the pandemic, making them the hardest hit demographic and one struggling to cover their most basic needs.

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed how our current economic system founded on destructive competition at the expense of others leaves large swaths of society vulnerable and in danger of crumbling into dust in the blink of an eye. It shows how our current structures do not offer young people what they need to prosper. Feeling discouraged and frustrated, they see no future within such systems.

The millennials will be the pioneers, and they need to realize that all this upheaval is happening to them specifically to push them to take their future in their own hands and start creating a new and better world for everyone.

Although we may not yet grasp it, a huge change in reality is now underway. The pandemic has placed on the shoulders of a new generation of young people, one now suffering greatly, a special role and responsibility to build a new social structure that fosters stable connections above all the differences and disparities in society for the benefit of all.

Millennials beg to be heard, but we do not know how to listen since our generation still operates according to old paradigms. Until now, the careless patterns of human interactions that permeated our economic and social systems have created a vast chasm between the generations. To make matters worse, we have failed to build an educational system that is suitable for them. We have built a narrow and conflicted worldview around us that divides the world and forces everyone to fend for himself and compete with others at all cost.

The crisis demands a new education for a new lifestyle based on the same laws of mutual support and reciprocity that exist in nature.

A new wind is blowing in the world, changing orientation and old ways. Young people are sucked into a whirlpool of despair, the depths of which will push them to anchor on new safe shores. The safeguard and life-buoy in this scenario must be the tenet “love thy neighbor as thyself,” the most important principle for reaching endless fulfillment — the kind of perfection every human being aims at, and which is achievable only when all the contradictions within man connect in the mind and in the heart.

Meanwhile, the young generation fights a war for survival. We have yet to realize that something in reality is resetting, the old world is dying and a new one is being born. The change is rapidly evolving, so we have to hurry to keep up by quickly opening many courses and education centers to help young people transition smoothly between the two worlds. The millennials will be the pioneers, and they need to realize that all this upheaval is happening to them specifically to push them to take their future in their own hands and start creating a new and better world for everyone.

It would be wise on the part of countries and nations to provide young people with alternative shelters
in hotels and sponsor studies in how to survive in a new world that is founded on improved social relations and more balanced systems. Teach the young pioneers how to be citizens, not in the sense of habitants of a specific country but as builders of a new human society, founded on good connections that encircle everyone in brotherhood. From these young citizens tomorrow’s leaders will emerge. They will understand what forms the new state should take, what connections should prevail among people, and how to educate new generations. They will create a good and beautiful atmosphere that the entire society will enjoy.

This is the time for millennials to exert leadership by uniting all factions of society and merging them into one system with a common vision — a vision that America and the world needs for this generation and for those to come.
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Goal of a Group Working on Uniting

Question: A team is a group of people united by a single goal and mission.

People create sports teams to win games, business teams to make money, and spiritual teams to strengthen in faith. And for teams working on uniting, the goal and the means are the same. How can it be?

Answer: If we create a team whose goal is to unite, the question arises: Is unification a goal or only a means to achieve the goal?

Many relate to unification not as a goal in and of itself. For instance, when creating teams, unity is necessary to successfully perform certain tasks. Therefore, in our case, we also need to determine what the goal is.

We want to achieve unity in which feel the next level of human existence, where a special principle of similarity to an integral and unified nature is inherent in the unification.

If we reach a state of unification to strive for a single goal, ready to sacrifice our private egoistic goals, then we will rise above ourselves, above our egoism, and begin to feel the next level of nature—integral, global, and unified.

In principle, this is the purpose of our development. We create a group in order to learn how to unite, to reach a state where all members will feel as a single whole.

Question: Can one say that the goal is a good, harmonious life in family, in society? After all, it’s hard for a person to understand what this new level is.

Answer: Of course, because that is more understandable and closer to everyone. That is, the goal is communication skills. If we learn how to interact correctly with others, we will have good lives.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/18/20

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Medium published my new article “COVID-19: Painful Symptoms of Recovery”

Everyone is waiting for the coronavirus pandemic to finally end. But COVID isn’t going anywhere. It has come to change our thinking and will not leave before it’s done. And it will take some time. Humanity is a huge mass of very different people. We need time to adjust, to feel the new reality, understand where it comes from, and why.

If we could think about others rather than ourselves, the virus would not pose any danger. We would be able to go anywhere because if we care about others, we will not harm them.

We will get used to COVID. By autumn, we should already feel more familiar with it. After all, people can get used to anything; they even get used to chronic diseases and learn to live with them, so the same will happen here.

At the moment, the system is still unstable; it is still jerking and jolting from the impact of the virus. But the transition phase will subside and the system will take on a new appearance: a perception of humanity as one whole. Humanity is suffering from all sorts of problems: hunger, fires, droughts, hurricanes, the list is endless. But even now we are beginning to perceive these problems integrally, together, as one whole.

The next blow after the coronavirus is going to be a shortage of the most basic necessities: food, water, medicines, and electricity. This will lower people’s demands and will force them to become more modest. People will have no drive to travel around the world.

As it continues, the coronavirus will teach us the wisdom of life. We only need to know that we are in an integral system that is moving toward a new state of balance, preordained in nature. As this process unfolds, it takes us through different states. If we support the process, we will experience the states as good. If we resist it, we will feel it as painful and oppressive. But it’s all in order to lead us toward complete recovery from egoism.

Nothing happens by accident, but only for the purpose of correction. If we examine what is happening today with the final goal of unity in mind, we will find that there is a clear line leading from the current position to the end point. If we can see that, we will see that everything is done with purpose.

The essence of the process is an ever-increasing connection. Currently, we feel divided, strangers. We suffer because of our oppositeness from the rest of nature, but that suffering will impel us to connect. As we connect, we will become increasingly similar to the rest of nature and as a result, the pain will invert to pleasure. The sooner we transition to the state of connection, the sooner we will invert any suffering to pleasure.

Although we naturally oppose connection, since our nature is inherently individualistic, nature guides one state at a time until we agree to connect. When we agree, we will discover its myriad benefits. Just as brothers quarrel and fight when they are young but become close when they grow up and grow wiser, so we will come to see the benefits of connection after we grow out of our sense of entitlement.

We were given COVID-19 to cure us. At the end of it, we will be much healthier and our relationships will be much kinder — both between people and between countries. Now the borders are closed due to the pandemic. But in time we will realize their futility because connection is the only solution that allows us to overcome the problems that the virus has imposed on us.

It turns out that COVID is not a disease; it is a symptom of recovery. This is what happens with every disease: We do not feel the disease itself, but the body’s reaction to it as it tries to recover. Painful symptoms are signs of recovery. The coronavirus pandemic is showing us the way to recovery from self-centeredness. It is propelling us forward and we should respond accordingly.

We shouldn’t simply hide from it. Although at first we must distance ourselves from each other, subsequently, we should examine how we can grow closer. If we could think about others rather than ourselves, the virus would not pose any danger. We would be able to go anywhere because if we care about others, we will not harm them.

I know that most people still do not see it this way, but in a few months it will be clear that the coronavirus is building the correct connections between us so that everyone thinks about others rather than about oneself. When we achieve this, we will all be healthy.
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