Question: Let us say I am the minister of health and you are the minister of finance. We need to make a decision in an hour whether to close the country for quarantine or not. It is clear that we will have different opinions. So, should you annul your opinion and I mine?

Answer: No. Neither of us can annul his opinion. It will not do any good. Here we need to create a completely different system of decision-making but definitely not from the cabinets of ministers.

We need to assemble a group that wants to rise above their egoistic opinions. Not to take the side of one or another egoist but to rise above themselves. This is possible only when each of us annuls himself before the others.

The ten (Minyan) is enough for this. If everyone in the ten starts annulling themselves to the others, then we can feel the community, feel what it means that we have annulled ourselves.

This point of annulment will be the starting point of our spiritual development, which is the foundation of the degree of Bina—the degree of new knowledge. We should start with this.

Question: Does it mean that even if we concede to each other and find something in the middle, we will not get anywhere either? Does the solution lie at a different level?

Answer: Yes. Unfortunately, this level is still unclear because it is really special and unique.

Comment: You are talking about feelings that are impossible to grasp.

My Response: In this case, humanity will have to suffer a little more before they close their eyes and accept this from people who already have this feeling.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/25/20

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New Life 1287 – The Challenge Of Distance Learning
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Distance learning puts teachers under a lot of pressure to cover the material while it is hard for students due to the many distractions. Teachers and administrators need to ask themselves how to make studies seem more important in the eyes of children. Parents need to see their children’s studies as very important and also take part in them by, for example, depicting the teachers as kings and queens. Cell phone companies should disconnect phones during school hours.

We need to arrange the education system differently so that teachers and students will work together, integrating and sharing in mutuality and connection. The study has to be done in a group and should include many exercises and activities so that the students will remain focused. Competitions can be held in which the kids are divided into two groups in order to encourage and motivate them.

We need to take problems from daily life, from the family, and from what happens in the country, things that the kids are familiar with, and work on them as part of the study material. The social aspect is important to students as well so we need to establish the right communication between them during the lesson. We have an opportunity today to really change the outdated education system and to participate in the building of man.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1287 – The Challenge Of Distance Learning,” 11/6/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can I not be afraid about coronavirus?“

I think that the coronavirus will keep spreading and that it will lead us to a situation where we will be simultaneously afraid of it, and accustomed to its place in our daily lives. Moreover, our fear of the virus will have no impeding effect on our day-to-day functioning.

We can add the coronavirus to a long list of risks that we have learned to live with. Yet, we would be wise to learn how to observe a few rules that the coronavirus sends our way. Moreover, we can expect other crises to surface, and at each juncture we will have to adjust ourselves.

In the future, we will also look back at the coronavirus pandemic in a positive light, in that it served to align humanity’s relations more closely with nature’s interdependence and interconnectedness.

Firstly, it compelled us to consider how we were living our lives, and think of how we could renew and improve our relations.

Secondly, it slowed down the consumerist train we were riding, giving us room to differentiate between our life’s essentials and what we could do without.

Thirdly, it showed us clear examples of how nature restores itself when we calmed ourselves down for a few moments.

We are still in the midst of a major lesson in interdependence that this virus brings us, from the need to exercise mutual dependence in our respective localities—maintaining personal hygiene, wearing masks and upholding social distancing conditions—to witnessing our tight global interdependence in how the virus surfaced as an outbreak in one part of the world, and quickly spread to become a global pandemic.

I have spoken and written at length about crises being opportunities for us to seek better connection with each other, and that they serve to progress us to a state of balance with nature.

Fighting the coronavirus head on is futile. We will increasingly discover how viruses are impossible to fight. They are inside us. Our bodies have billions of viruses, and so there is no point in fighting our own bodies. We would thus be much wiser if we learned how to align ourselves—our thoughts and desires—to positively connect with other people and nature. Our bodies will then healthily support our aspirations to realize the fullest meaning of living as human beings, i.e., adjusting our attitudes to each other in order to match the tightening interdependent and interconnected conditions that nature sets for us. We will then experience life much more happily and healthily.

Photo by Yohann LIBOT on Unsplash.

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Comment: Scientists have identified at least five of the most common fears: fear of epidemics, fear of social isolation, fear of complete virtualization of life, fear of having children, and fear of interference with the human genome.

My Response: All these types of fears occur today. Moreover, thanks to the pandemic, they have opened up even more. I think that this moves us forward.

Question: How can I overcome fear or ease this transition?

Answer: Only by our connection above all problems—not physical connection, but in mutual assistance, benevolence, and understanding each other. Then we will be able to create such channels of balance, connection, and communication between us, which will make our life good.

And the fact that we still have to distance ourselves from each other is also for our benefit because with our current relationships, we can only harm each other.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 11/6/20

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Question: It is not a secret that people are tired. There is a new discovery almost every day: the virus lives up to 28 days on smartphones, credit cards, visas, and money; people can be re-infected by the coronavirus and that the re-infection is much stronger than the original one.

The virus has been discovered in water. Animals also can be infected. You can get infected even without having contact with the sick. Another virus is emerging, which is more “evil.”

I have listed only 1% of what is spread by the media, by anyone at all. In this situation, where can man go? What is he being driven to? Is this how one should live—within one square meter and not move?

Answer: There is nothing one can do.

Remark: In this case, the reaction of an ordinary person is the opposite. He says: “Since that is the case, I am leaving the house. Well, can’t I continue living?” And he goes out. We ourselves drive him to this decision.

My Comment: No. I think this is still wrong. We must understand that a person should not act in accordance with his nerves or beliefs. He must act in the way he has to act.

Question: What do you mean “must”? What is it?

Answer: We must, because this virus has come to educate us. Educate! And we kind of ignore it and say: “We will be doing this anyway!” Like a small child stomping his foot.

Remark: But man does not think about education. He thinks: “I have to clean my credit card all the time, I have to wipe the space around me all the time, and not let anyone near me. He does not think that the virus has come to educate us.

My Comment: And we have to explain this to him. This is our problem. It is our problem—the problem of those of us who understand where the virus came from and why.

Oddly enough, it came to bring us closer. But to bring us closer internally, not externally. So that we do not wipe off the space after each other but “wipe off” ourselves so that we do not infect each other, so that we worry: “Will I infect the other”—and not that I will get infected from the other. When we think of others instead of ourselves, everything will go away and the virus will disappear, melt away like smoke.

Question: Is the entire problem that I am as if locked in on myself, on the fact of what I should do, where I should go?

Answer: No, I must do both. But I have to do it not to protect myself from others, but as if I am the only sick person in the world, and I want to protect others from myself.

Question: So, not “what will happen to me” but “what will happen to others?”

Answer: “What will happen to all of us.” The virus brings us, at last, the recognition of our mutual connection, which is bad, egoistic, and harmful. This virus and the other viruses that are coming after it will bring us to a state where we will think about others and not about ourselves because that is the only way we can keep everyone safe.

We have entered a state where we have no other choice. In the end, we must understand that the world must come to its corrected state, and we must follow not the path of our egoism, but in spite of it, the path toward our connection.

Question: Based on your words, medical science will not be able to create a vaccine, or it will, but another virus will come?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: Is it better not to work in this direction?

Answer: No. We have entered the twenty-first century. This is a new age, this is a new state of humanity. These are new viruses, spiritual, or one might say psychological, viruses that indicate to us that our connection is a crucial factor. If it is good, it is good for all of us. If it is bad, it will be bad for all of us.

Question: What should the healing thoughts of a person be?

Answer: It is when I think about others: how not to infect them, how to make sure that they are alive and well. It is simple. That’s it. I think not about myself, but about others. And this is how I save myself and decontaminate myself. I do not push others away from me in order not to get infected, I push them away from me so that I do not infect them.

Remark: But I am not sick…

My Comment: We are all sick. We all have viruses in us. Egoistic, wild viruses, when we think only about ourselves and not about others. Nature now, in the twenty-first century, will be changing us. And this is very, very unpleasant, incomprehensible, and somewhat unexpected.

Question: Is there such an awareness of my being an evil virus?

Answer: Yes. It is the only one in the entire world looking for someone to hurt—and it is me.

Question: I am the virus that can infect others, and I do not want to do that. I need to be isolated from people. Should I be stopped from approaching them and so on?

Answer: Yes. All my thoughts, my plans, my various ideas, they are all egoistic. I have to do something about them. How do I lock them inside myself? How to hide them within me? This is called restriction.

Question: In practice, do I ask: “Restrict me, separate me from people because I kill them, I infect them”?

Answer: Yes. If I do not do this, then an external virus comes along and it restricts me with these side effects. But in fact, the virus is not Covid-19 or other viruses that we are fighting today. No, the virus is precisely our egoistic thoughts about others.

Question: Will a person accept this?

Answer: He will have no choice. Nature will gradually force us. It has created us this way, and it is leading us to change so that we would ask nature itself to change what it has created in us. It will be beautiful. In general, I expect an interesting transformation of humanity in the coming years.

Question: So, are you expecting this request: “Change us”?

Answer: Yes. And we need to write books, make movies, everything we can on this topic about how this can happen, how nature will be changing us.

Question: Nature will force us and we will change anyway, so is it better not to resist?

Answer: Of course. Who are you going to resist? How can you? You yourself are nature. Nature does within you all that needs to be done.

Question: Why did nature then inscribe in us: “the king of nature” with “power over nature”?

Answer: In order for you, at the degree of human, which exists within you, to realize that you can change your animalistic nature. That’s it.

Question: Is this what we call “the king of nature”? The fact that I can ask to change my nature?

Answer: Yes, to rise above your animalistic egoistic nature and climb to the peak of an altruistic nature. We must help each other in this, do everything we can. If not, we will still come to this but, of course, with great suffering, loss, over a long period of time and painfully. I hope that people will hear. And we must talk about this all the time.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/15/20

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Comment: Humanity is divided into those who wear masks and those who do not. We are interested in those who wear masks.

Psychologists say that if a newborn child grows up and sees mother and father in masks all the time (i.e., the lower part of their faces are covered all the time, and the child hears sounds, does not see the lips, and sees only the eyes), then he may develop abilities that are still unknown to humanity.

My Response: Yes. He will have to make up for what he does not see in his mother and father. However, this is not normal because this is not in our nature. Our nature is when mother kisses, mother hugs, mother whispers, and the child grabs mother’s lips and mouth.

Question: Does something change in the mother and father when they cover part of their face and communicate with the child?

Answer: Of course. To be unable to touch the baby with your lips! Lips are everything. Lips are the most important part of the mother. This is the organ of communication where sounds and warmth come from.

Question: Are we now depriving the child of this warmth?

Answer: Of course. What can we do if we are such egoists, if we pass on the egoism gene to each other?

Question: But mother should not take off her mask yet?

Answer: Obviously. After all, a mother is in contact with many other people, and therefore can bring anything to her child.

Comment: Psychologists say that anxiety and fatigue in society is also caused by restriction in communication since masks cover most of the face and we do not see others smiling.

My Response: This is also true. But it serves you right, since you oppose each other so much. It is right that you see half a face that does not express anything.

It was a false smile, and therefore it disappeared. The coronavirus took it away. Now, if you want to see another person’s face, you have to see the correct face that matches their correct intention. If you do this, you will receive faces without masks.

Question: Will the smile come back when we begin smiling to each other internally?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: Psychologists say that we were ready for word-of-mouth communication and not ready for eye-to-eye communication, not ready for this reality.

My Response: That’s right. It is because our mouths speak such nonsense, such lies! Look at all these politicians, at anyone at all. Better to be silent and close their mouths. And the eyes may be harder to hide. Eyes are connected to deeper layers of the soul.

Question: What is “eye-to-eye?” What can one hide here?

Answer: This is a deeper contact.

Question: What qualities will develop in us after wearing masks? What do you think?

Answer: We will become more sensitive to each other. We will start looking at each other more closely. We will start talking less. We will begin to give more importance to words, to actions, to the fact that we are allowed to be in contact with each other.

Question: Will our every word be thought over?

Answer: Yes!
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/2/20

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Medium published my new article “The Tie between Work and Pay Is Crumbling”

Among various economists, there is a growing conviction that we are nearing the end of capitalism. Personally, I think it’s too soon to proclaim the end of capitalism, but what we are seeing is a growing disconnect between work and pay. That raises important questions that we will have to answer in the near future.

Our meaning in life will not be found in work, but in meaningful and enriching connections with others. Only when we grow through our interactions with others, and when we help others grow through their interactions with us, do we feel satisfied that we have contributed something meaningful and lasting.

First, people have to eat whether or not they work. They have to live somewhere, too, buy clothes, and in a modern country, they have to get medical insurance and education. While it’s true that even today not everyone has these basic needs, it is also true that this state doesn’t reflect a healthy society, hence the growing prevalence of depression and the soaring numbers of premature deaths due to substance abuse, homicide, and suicide. So the first question is how to make sure that everyone gets the basic things that every person needs.

Second, if people don’t work, what will they do all day? If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that sitting idle at home is a bad idea. Over time, it makes people agitated, aggressive, depressed (if they weren’t already), and, worst of all, hopeless, since they don’t see an end in sight. In other words, people need a sense of purpose, a reason to get out of bed. If it isn’t work and the need to earn a living, what can it be?

First, people must be informed. They have to know that although they have money in the bank, if they do, it doesn’t mean that they are independent from others. The production and supply chains that provide us with the products we buy at supermarkets and gadget stores entail millions of people. If you break just one link, the whole chain might stop working. This chain affects not only what we can buy, but also our jobs, our possibility to provide for ourselves and our families, national and international politics, and in the end, it can even determine life or death for many people. This is the true meaning of globalization: We have come to depend on each other even for our very lives.

Once people comprehend our interdependence, it is easier to explain that if this is the case, it makes sense that better connections enable better lives. It also makes sense that the current system, which endorses individualism and self-absorption, is the opposite of what we need today, and is in fact the main reason that our society is in such a sorry state.

At the moment, we are indoctrinated to value ourselves by two things: what we do (our job, title at work, etc.) and how much money we make. In the absence of connection between work and income, these gauges for self-esteem will become irrelevant and we will have to find new ways to appreciate ourselves, or we will all feel worthless. In fact, this is already happening to millions of people who are unable to find meaningful engagements.

The new criteria that will determine our self-esteem will be social criteria, since, as we just said, the quality of the connections between us determines the quality of our lives. Therefore, gradually, we will come to appreciate such values as solidarity, mutual responsibility, and contribution to the community.

As we grow into the new paradigm, we will discover that contrary to what we have been taught, man was not created to toil so many hours each day until he or she cannot but want to escape from life. No, we were made to enjoy one another, socialize, challenge one another, and support one another. We were made to help each other be the best individuals we can be and realize our full personal potential, not to be individualistic, isolated, and suspicious of each other.

The physical part of our lives is only here to support the spiritual part of our existence. It’s the spiritual part that makes us human, but we are so exhausted tending to the physical that we have no energy left in us to nurture our spiritual selves. Is it any wonder that we feel frustrated?

Our meaning in life will not be found in work, but in meaningful and enriching connections with others. Only when we grow through our interactions with others, and when we help others grow through their interactions with us, do we feel satisfied that we have contributed something meaningful and lasting.

As the tie between work and pay crumbles, we must hurry and introduce these new values. It will spare us much unnecessary agony and lead us quickly and easily into the new era, where satisfactions are spiritual and lasting rather than material and fleeting.
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We all have to assess what is happening as a result of our state in relation to correction. The #coronavirus is a result of our uncorrected state in relation to nature’s demands.

There are two conditions: each one bestows everything he has, using all his abilities for the common unity. We complete one another, like ants in an ant-hill. Revelation of truth turns the universe into a sphere: everyone becomes included in each other—and the force of bestowal, perfection is revealed inside them.

We must reach unity between us and the Creator, reveal the force of unity, so each one will be ready to bestow with all of one’s heart and soul. That is how we will attain the degree of truth. We won’t count who did more and who did less—each one will bestow 100% and then truth will reign.

It’s as if we want to make up for what the Creator has done incorrectly. The Creator seems to have set up injustice in the world—we see that the world was corrupted from the beginning. We are trying to perform correction from outside, outside of man, instead of correcting him on the inside. This is the whole problem.
From Twitter, 11/12/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think of the news about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine being over 90% effective?“

Pfizer’s announcement that its vaccine against the coronavirus is effective in 90 percent of cases has given hope to many people, but other than a shot of optimism, I see no long-lasting cure to the virus emerging from this vaccine.

My impression from various experts is that an effective cure to the coronavirus will take another four to five years. Moreover, according to my understanding of nature’s purpose and plan, which comes from over 40 years of studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, the world’s readiness for a cure depends on our readiness to positively connect.

Nature evolves to greater and greater states of connection, and when we realize the connection that we are being guided to positively, then we will experience life as perfect and harmonious.

If we align our drives to connect harmoniously with the interconnected and interdependent laws of nature, then we will experience health in the fullest sense of the term, i.e., balance on individual, social, global and ecological scales. However, if we fail to take our positive connection into account and let divisive drives separate us from each other, thinking badly of each other, then viruses will continue infecting us.

Currently, for instance, most people wear masks with self-serving motives, i.e., that they protect their own health by doing so. However, masks during this pandemic are an exercise from nature in disguise. They, in fact, protect other people in the mask wearers’ vicinity a lot more than the mask wearers themselves. We would thus be wise to treat mask wearing as an exercise in mutual consideration: to wear masks in order to protect and care about other people. However, even without any consideration of others, the more we endure the pandemic and wear masks whenever we encounter society physically, the more nature habituates us to at least unconsciously add a layer of sensitivity toward others upon ourselves.

In general, however, I trust that the Pfizer vaccine is positive in its brief surge of hope and the sigh of relief it brings to many people. Yet, in the same token, we do not need health experts to tell us that improving our attitudes to each other will improve our lives.

The coronavirus pandemic is nature’s way of communicating with us. If we shut ourselves off in our individual corners and make no moves to rise above our divisive drives and harmoniously connect to each other, then we can expect nature to respond accordingly.

We would thus be wise to think about what nature ultimately wants from us, and how we can improve our attitudes to each other. By infusing human society with a positive spirit of unity above the division and polarization that itches away at us from within, we will see an end to the pandemic, and a new beginning in which we will discover how to truly live healthily, happily, confidently, safely and harmoniously, in balance with nature.

I discussed this topic and answered questions about it in my Q&A with writers. Watch the video here.

Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash.

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My new article on Linkedin “On Beautiful Women and the November Shopping Fest”

November has become the month of online shopping. This year, for example, you have the Singles’ Day, Veterans Day (targeting Americans), and Remembrance Day (targeting Canadians, Australians, and British), all on November 11. Three days later, on November 14, you have Diwali, the Festival of Lights, which targets Hindus, Thanksgiving, on November 26, Black Friday, immediately after, though Black Friday sales now begin a few days before Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday, which comes immediately after Black Friday, and this year on the last day of November.

One of the main trends that’s been developing since Covid started was the increase in sales of home decoration products and decrease in sales of cosmetics. It makes sense. After all, what’s the point of spending so much money and taking so much time making myself pretty if in the end I cover it all with a mask? And since I’m forced to spend so much time at home, I might as well take better care of it and make my stay in it more pleasant.

Especially since the onset of Covid-19, online shopping has exploded and become many people’s primary mode of shopping. Also, following the tense presidential elections, it’s likely that many people will want to treat themselves to something nice, either as a consolation or as a celebration.

But then, if women can’t look pretty, does it mean that they can’t be pretty? I think it’s to the contrary: The external limitations shift the focus to internal qualities, and this is where real beauty lies.

A beautiful woman is not one who wears lipstick and covers her face with makeup, and she certainly does not need to expose her body in order to look beautiful. These are only costumes. A woman’s real beauty is something far deeper. When a woman is beautiful within, her man will follow her like a child follows his mother. It’s not about looks, but about internal wisdom and soundness that only women can offer.

Women can, and should, employ that same wisdom with which they raise their children to “raise” their partners. After all, a man is really not much more than a grownup baby; give him confidence and support, tell him right from wrong, and do so lovingly, and he’ll be yours forever.

I think that today, inner beauty is what all people need the most. It may not be a vendible product that you can sell for profit, but it’ll certainly be in high demand the more our world loses its way.

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