Question: How will consumer demand change now during the pandemic? What should entrepreneurs and business start-ups focus on?

Answer: We have come to a state when humanity must grow out of its egoism. Therefore, all clearly egoistic enterprises will gradually fade away. This is a matter of the next few years.

The point is that in the next generation we must reach similarity to nature—integrality and dependence of everyone on everyone. Although it seems to us that the egoistic society is developing, in general it already is in internal stagnation.

I believe that the blows of the coronavirus are the beginning of stagnation. Nature will no longer allow us to do anything we want with it. We cannot open any businesses with impunity, absolutely recklessly, and spoil the environment just to make money and not know what to do with it.

We have a big task ahead of us, to understand how to balance ourselves. I think that with the release from self-isolation, we will begin to feel for the first time that we cannot get back to the usual egoistic, capitalist world, up to the point that we will see how people have changed. We will see that they are disgusted with everything that is associated with the desire just to earn, to suppress others, to be proud of how much money you have in the bank compared to others.

Exit from the crisis will not be easy. People will not really want to go back to their previous lives. They will suddenly feel that it is not easy, that they have some other attitude compared to the pre-coronavirus period. At least we will not be opening barbershops for dogs and things like that on every corner. There will be no unnecessary business. People will be confined to more normal universal values.

Nature itself will no longer allow us to do this, along with the sociological situation. There will be up to 70% unemployment in the world and we will not be able to create completely unnecessary positions for them.

It may not be the future of tomorrow, but Kabbalah suggests that this 70% should be moved to universal education and paid a stipend the size of their salary. The remaining 20 to 30% of the population will be engaged in necessary, vital work for humanity, not in order to sell, buy, and then sell for even more.

This is how I see the immediate future. I very much hope that it will be so because if not now, then after a while we will still come to this.

We are also part of nature, and it will not allow us to further pollute the environment, waste natural resources, and so on because we have already reached a reasonable limit. This is why all kinds of viruses are emerging. We still have many similar surprises from nature ahead of us. I believe that the coronavirus is the first stage of purification for us.

If someone wants to open something or create some business, they should act normally, sensibly, with a strong probability that they are doing something that people need and that they really cannot manage without.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/24/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What startup idea should I build?“

What does it take to build a successful startup in these uncertain times?

At the outset, we need to grasp the extent to which the world has shifted to a new program over the past few months.

Today, we live in a completely different world. It is as if aliens visited us and implanted a new chip into our reality, changing our surrounding conditions, our behaviors and our ways of thinking.

Still, we are in a transition phase, and likewise, many people continue trying to operate according to the outdated program of our pre-coronavirus world, a program that prioritizes values of self-benefit over benefiting others.

If we understood nature’s evolutionary tendency to guide all of its parts to perfect connection and interdependence, then we would see how today’s changes are for our ultimate benefit: they come to bring us closer to each other, not necessarily physically, but to a more heartfelt closeness.

And when we feel closer to each other, we feel happier, more confident, safer and healthier.

Therefore, what we need more than anything else today is an environment that can support, encourage and guide our connection, so that we can balance our relationships with our new program of development—conditions that demand increased cooperation and care for each other.

If we fail to upgrade our attitudes to each other in order to match the mutual dependence and responsibility required by today’s new program, then we will feel an increasingly heavier weight on our shoulders the more we plod on from one day to the next.

Nature, by means of the coronavirus, has placed us into new conditions precisely in order to transform us.

Today’s startups thus need to take that into consideration.

If our past startups ended up in a marketplace that pitted them up against each other, now everything needs to change. We will still need to compete, but our competition needs to shift from egoistic, where we try to reap as much of the market for our business as we can, to a competition where we each aim to contribute as much as value as possible to humanity.

And what does “value” mean today? It means caring that everyone’s needs are met, as well as helping everyone genuinely become happy, safe and healthy via upgrading the quality of human relations.

Therefore, anyone bold enough to initiate a startup in this period should first be equipped with sufficient knowledge and an environment to understand the transition the world is in, and then create tools that help people feel closer to each other.

For instance, there is plenty of room for technology to develop means by which we can feel ourselves together in one room, and even more so, as parts of a single whole where our every breath and contact is sensed by everyone.

In other words, as we head toward the discovery of our tight interdependence, we can develop technologies that help us sense what it means to feel as one with others, and which will thus help guide our fateful transition much more positively and harmoniously.

We thus need startups that authentically fill the human need for connection, which will serve to smoothen our transition from our current degree to greater mutual support and consideration.

Above photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

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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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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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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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Question: How can we learn to justify the Creator in everything?

Answer: The Creator has a very simple program. He created egoism in relation to Himself, opposite to Himself, and gradually reveals Himself to us. Therefore, with each generation, we feel worse and worse in relation to the Creator.

Today we have come to a state when we must change ourselves, i.e., to correct ourselves involuntarily, in a hard way. Such a state should force us to reconsider our attitude to life, to the family, to society, and to the world.

Therefore, the Creator can be justified only when we see the beginning and the end of creation and understand what He is leading us to. But for this, it is necessary to study Kabbalah and to begin to feel the upper world a little, the state of equilibrium between us.

Of course, life in all countries goes on, but it flows in the same vein.

Due to the coronavirus, the world has become more integral. Its integrality has been felt, in different countries in a little different way, but still, it has been one and the same anyway.

The virus has done its great work and will continue to do it. Due to it, we are moving toward a certain common future now, toward a more conscious state. I am very glad that we have passed this stage and are now starting to get out of it slowly.

It is desirable to get out of the state of the coronavirus in such a way that we do not need to repeat these blows. Let us try to be more connected. The main thing is to disseminate as far as possible the idea of mutuality, rapprochement, the integrality of nature, the need to not be opposite to nature—we have no gain from this, only loss.

We cannot be above nature; we are inside it. Therefore, the more we are integrally interconnected, the better.

If we try to exist this way, we will see how the integrality, the need for balance is revealed gradually in the world instead of the uncontrolled pursuit of profit that no one benefits from besides our inflated egoism.

Let us think about how to make us a steady, normal, balanced human society. It is in our power.

In fact, there are many of us. Today, several million people in the world can change the direction of thinking, perception, and desires of society. I hope we can do it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/3/20

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New Life 1252 – Differences Of Opinion About The Coronavirus
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The problem with the coronavirus epidemic is that each expert is presenting his own opinion and the public is confused, hysterical, or indifferent. The unknown is scary. We are familiar with influenza and have experienced it personally. We are still unfamiliar with the coronavirus and therefore the disease stresses us greatly. The right thing to do is according to what most doctors say and not according to people’s inclinations or the media. It is up to me to accept whatever most people decide because I want to be with everyone. This will bring me happiness. We must behave in such a way that we are acting for the good of others and protecting their health even if we ourselves are indifferent. A person who doesn’t put on a mask is inconsiderate of others. Whoever acts for the benefit of others has no room for hysteria or indifference.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1252 – Differences Of Opinion About The Coronavirus,” 6/15/20

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Remark: Many people fear losing the world these days.

My Comment: Indeed, I see it. But I personally have no fear. On the contrary, I am like that bird singing a new world so that I can already stand up and open to all. I think the sooner this happens—of course, with a soft landing—the better for humanity.

So far, everything is going according to plan. Humankind will gradually be freed from piling up all kinds of egoistic enterprises and ties. Involuntarily, people will become simpler in their ordinary lives; they will value relations between themselves more, either through suffering, or through awareness, but still it will come to them.

The change of worlds is an era.
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From KabTV’s “Today’s International Situation” 6/18/20

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Everyone is waiting for the coronavirus pandemic to finally end. But this is only the beginning. After all, it must change the thinking of all mankind, a huge mass of completely different people. They need time to digest this state, to feel it, to understand where it comes from and why.

It takes time, at least a few more months. By autumn, this condition should already have become familiar. One can even get used to blows, like a chronic disease that a person has already learned to live with. He knows how to deal with it, how to treat it.

The same thing will happen with the coronavirus. The system has not yet stabilized and is reacting to the impact with sharp jumps. But gradually this transition process will subside, and the system will take on a new state. We are talking about a mass of billions of people and all sorts of problems: some suffer from hunger, others from fires, and others from droughts, hurricanes. But we will already perceive these problems integrally, together.

Then there will be a period when there will be a shortage of the most necessary products, food, water, medicine, and electricity. All this will lower the demands of humanity; it will force them to become more modest. No one will be eager to fly around the world in search of entertainment. 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, originally planned in nature. Now this process is developing, bringing us different states. If we support the development process, then the states will be good, and if we don’t support it, then the states will be bad in order to correct us.

Nothing happens by accident, but only for the purpose of correction. If we check what is happening today relative to the final goal, we will find that there is a constant relationship between the current state and the end point. Therefore, it will be easy for us to see that everything is being done purposefully.

The main thing in this process is an ever-increasing connection. Now we are divided, opposite to each other, and therefore we suffer so that suffering will push us to connect. But as we connect, we will come closer to correction. And the final correction is one man with one heart and love of your neighbor as yourself.

We do not want this connection and do not agree with it, but nature guides us from state to state until we agree and are convinced about how good it is. Just as children first quarrel and fight until they grow up and become wiser.

The coronavirus pandemic is given for our cure. At the end of this period, we will be much healthier and our relations will become much kinder both between people and between countries. Now the borders are being closed due to the pandemic. But we will come to the conclusion that all countries will be recommended to destroy all weapons because connection is the only salvation that allows us to get out of the problems imposed on us by the coronavirus.

It turns out that the virus is not a disease, but symptoms of recovery. This is how it happens with every disease, we do not feel the disease itself, but the reaction of the body, which is trying to recover. Painful symptoms are signs of recovery. With the help of the coronavirus pandemic, the Creator shows us the way.

The coronavirus propels us forward. It is only necessary not to evaluate it sensually and hide, but do the right homework with its help. That is, first distance ourselves from each other, as it demands, and then check in what form we can get closer.

If I could consider others and think only about them and not about myself, there would be no problem with the virus. I could easily go outside and go anywhere, because if I care about my neighbor, I will not harm him or transmit the virus. And so it is all around.

People still do not understand it right now, but in a few months it will be clear that the coronavirus wants to organize the right connections between us so that everyone thinks about the others. And then we will all be healthy immediately.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/9/20

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