New Life 1238 – Quality Of Life In The Coronavirus Era
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The most essential thing that influences our quality of life is a feeling of happiness, and this doesn’t depend on anything. The aspiration for a high standard of living is derived from the human ego since people want to have what everyone else has. The coronavirus will correct us by cleansing everything that is superfluous and making time for higher meaning, purpose, and the essence of life. We will run less and think more. We must advance to a spiritual, eternal state, above the limitations of time, movement, and space.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1238 – Quality Of Life In The Coronavirus Era,” 5/14/20

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Question: Do we bring correction to the world through our study and connection?

Answer: Yes. We bring a positive component to the world because we talk about its unification, about the fact that people should be connected through good connections.

Of course, this gives the world a certain positive direction, some kind of correction, but this is not enough. For the egoistic world, our relatively altruistic component is undoubtedly too small to correct the direction of the world’s movement.

Frankly speaking, I hope that now, when we are returning to our previous conditions and forms of governance, restore enterprises, and so on, we will still come across how limited we are and how we should behave differently.

Question: After coming out of self-isolation, will people understand that the world is different and accept it through their changes?

Answer: I think we will come to a certain inner state in which we will evaluate each state: pre- and post-coronavirus. We will compare them and think about how we could do things differently. Even if people have nothing to do with us but hear our calls, they will still perceive reality in this way.

Question: Where is this turning point of people? Do they need to accumulate suffering so that at some point there will be an inversion and the explosive growth of those who are ready to support us will begin?

Answer: Yes, on one hand, it will happen from the accumulation of suffering and dissatisfaction.

However, on the other hand, also from the fact that we will begin to understand that we need to go a different way to see a better state ahead than the previous one.

Therefore, there may be a relative absence of all kinds of blows, but instead there will be a clear vision of a good future. I think that now when we are returning to the past, we nevertheless will want to correct it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/3/20

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Is it possible to arrive at correction while avoiding the ten Egyptian plagues? After all, nature has already engaged us by sending us the coronavirus, and naturally, we’re in for many more challenges.

The coronavirus has already made us give up all contrived engagements. Now that the quarantine is lifted, we will see that most businesses that were not essential will not be reinstated.

The whole industry will shrink because there will no longer be the former demand for fuel and electricity. The first priority will be to provide everyone with the necessities of life, that is, food and shelter. Everything will be more modest, there will be no need to carry exotic fruits from other parts of the world since you can grow everything you need locally, in greenhouses. The world will take a new form.

Most of the people will be engaged in study and will work on connection. Working on connection will become our main focus, and everything else will be directed solely into providing all the necessities for those building that connection: food, clothing, education, channels of communication. Everything will revolve around connection.

We can already see how much a single virus has reshaped our lives. The coronavirus carries with it a tremendous amount of information about how we should organize our lives.

This will take another year or two, as in all transitional processes when at first there are sharp shifts in their amplitude, and then the fluctuations gradually diminish as the process stabilizes.

Therefore, I hope that there are no wars or big problems awaiting us. People will begin to change internally even without it. Tiny viruses that can’t even be seen have already made a major impact on us. Every day there are positive changes that occur inside a person.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah lesson 6/14/20, “The Obligation to Disseminate the Wisdom of Kabbalah to Many”

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Nature’s Experiment

Question: We see how nature forcibly pushes us to integrate. At first it was tribal, communal integration, when people united in order to survive, then came forced imperial integration, colonization, and then cultural, religious, national, and class integration. Today there is economic and informational integration.

All this developed under the influence of nature without our participation; no one specifically wanted it. And suddenly there is a virus that divides us, makes us stop all connections.

What is this leading to? Doesn’t this seem like it is against nature?

Answer: In principle, we are advancing toward gradually distancing from each other. Once we lived in communities, villages, and farms, but now everyone has their own apartment.

Today, newlyweds do not live with their parents, and once it was natural. Currently, every small child should have his own room, his own personal space. His egoism becomes so great that even though he is only 5 – 10 years old, he still requires a separate space for himself: “This is mine and don’t enter!” In other words, we see a person’s egoism growing.

And now its next level is being revealed, which nature itself shows us. If you are close to each other, then your relationships leads you to disease and death. So, you should be at a distance of two to 10 meters from each other. Who knows where this will lead?

In principle, this is quite natural. In this way we can do less harm to each other.

Question: As if nature forbids us to be in connection with each other because it was egoistic?

Answer: Here we learn something else. On the one hand, we willy-nilly stopped working and for some time found ourselves in the family circle. Therefore, there are certain problems surfacing, as man is not used to this way of life.

On the other hand, problems are manifested not only between spouses, but also between parents and children, between children themselves, etc. They are social in nature, and this is bound to have very large consequences.

Nature is putting us through a certain experiment; that is how I see it. I look at nature as a supreme intelligence that brings us to a certain state so that we understand how we should behave.

The supreme intelligence knows how we actually act, how we determine and become aware of our states, how we can find a way out of them by comparing the pleasant with the unpleasant, with development, with various movements. It sees how our habits, customs, and social problems and their solutions change.

Now all countries are simultaneously undergoing such restructuring, to different degrees, in different cultures, but it is still happening.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/23/20

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New Life 1234 – An Era Of Instability
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

Humanity is on the verge of a new era called, “The Last Generation.” The great changes we are facing during this period of intensive, spiritual development will be sharp and sudden. Man’s nature is basically evil and we have to change so that we will be able to connect in a loving way with each other. The coronavirus epidemic and all the changes that nature is undergoing in the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels have come in order to bring humankind into perfect, integral connection with one another. We need to choose to ascend and think about others instead of thinking about ourselves. This era of instability will not end unless we reach a state in which humanity will connect and ascend to the upper level of nature, to the level that is whole and eternal.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1234 – An Era Of Instability,” 5/8/20

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Medium published my new article “The Evolution of Employment”

Worldwide employment is in free fall. Layoffs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have wreaked havoc on an already vulnerable workforce in areas that, sooner rather than later, would be replaced by AI and on businesses and industries no longer relevant. Even though US unemployment’s rate dropped to 13.3% in May, it is still the highest since the Great Depression. However, this crisis could become a positive turning point if people leverage the opportunities it offers to change our perspective on society.

The areas that will be in the largest demand are in the field of ​​human relations. Experts in how to create connections between people, in building beneficial and deep mutual relationships, will be in highest demand in the labor market.

As a consequence of the coronavirus, 1.6 billion workers — nearly half of the world’s workforce — could suffer “massive damage” to their livelihoods, according to the UN’s International Labor Organization. The work landscape is constantly evolving, and not all of today’s occupations will be here tomorrow. Will we have our jobs a year from now? What profession could guarantee your future?

Even before the pandemic outbreak, the University of Oxford estimated that approximately half of US jobs would be at risk in the near future due to the adoption of new technologies. The pace of economic change will now accelerate faster than expected because the pandemic will devastate in ongoing waves, experts warn. Non-essential businesses will quickly disappear from the landscape, and with them, many professions.

The areas that will be in the largest demand are in the field of ​​human relations. Experts in how to create connections between people, in building beneficial and deep mutual relationships, will be in highest demand in the labor market.

Future Job Openings

Connection building — this is the profession of the future. We have never handled human connection properly and we see the results in our frayed and torn social fabric at all levels of human interaction. The relations we have been familiar with are built on natural, biological interlinkage: between man and woman, between mother and child, and so on — connection based on human instinctual impulses. The call of the future is to engage in higher-level relationships that are beyond our innate biological nature — not relationships that depend on reflexive desire, but those that make us feel the simple truth that we are all one.

Why will this be in such high demand? It is so because the trend of evolution in nature is to integrate the human race into one interconnected system. The coronavirus calls for us to cooperate together to survive and progress, to be considerate of one another, to make sure that our actions do not hurt others.

Until now, we have made our living from professions and businesses focused on providing various goods and services to one another. From now on, we will move a step forward, from purely materialistic occupations to occupations that relate more to the heart, to human connection. Building relationships between all human beings, with those who are very different from us, and especially with those we initially hate, is not an easy task. It requires training to understand human nature, as well as exercises in proper communication with others. In such training, a person will be invited to join a group of people he or she does not know and perhaps even differs from. Through workshops and discussion circles, the individual will learn how to integrate with other people, work smoothly together, and treat them with care and understanding. Each one will learn how to build a relationship above the natural gap with others until the person feels everyone as close.

It is written, “love covers all crimes.” Covering our differences with love is the foundation of a new attitude toward society and the world. This principle stems from the knowledge that there is only one force in nature –as integral and inclusive as it is- and we must emulate its actions to achieve balance and harmony in our lives.

Work That Is Good For All

The more successful we are in building connections, the more comfortable and thriving our lives will be because in our world, nothing is missing other than good relationships between people.

It will be our work to develop a sort of new internal software that works according to one overall formula: In every form of communication between people or business, we should aim to achieve the optimal result of maximum benefit for all. For this to happen, everyone must learn how to direct themselves to fulfill the desire of others, rather than their natural desire.

In order to grasp the potential of this new practice, we will need to change our mindset in order to create improved habits that will become second nature. By doing exercises that demonstrate how, in an integral society, the good of others is my good also, we will gradually develop new skills and qualities.

Quality connections such as these will fill us with sublime satisfaction. Through the development of love for others, we will begin to feel the force that unites all parts of nature into one complete system. Sensing this is the highest state of development one can achieve.

Therefore, the next step in the evolution of employment is to first provide everyone with all their basic material needs, and beyond that, to build internal connections among people in order to reveal the sublime reality that expands beyond boundaries.

For this purpose, humanity will need to study the art of connection, and experts in this field will be in high demand to lead the process. In the post-coronavirus world, investment in connection will ensure a good future for you, your loved ones, and the world, opening our limited vision to a boundless perspective of a bright new reality.
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New Life 1231 – Self-Determination In The Coronavirus Era
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

It is very important for a person to seek out self-determination since by that he acquires his whole, eternal existence. I actually don’t know who I am or how to define myself. What is important is what I leave behind me. Our role is to be a healthy part in the integral human system and to build a connection of love. It is not our attributes or work that define who we are. All of a person’s engagements can disappear just as the coronavirus has taught us. A person’s identity is his connection to the root of his soul. The root of the soul is the point in which you are connected to everyone and through them to the upper force. It is actually in your integral connection with everyone that you will find your identity. The Creator has given each person a nature and a special role in human society, to organize humanity as one family.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1231 – Self-Determination In The Coronavirus Era,” 4/30/20

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Medium published my new article “COVID Engendered Humanity 2.0”

Ask any baby boomer where they were when they first heard that JFK was shot, and they will tell you. They will never forget that tragic moment in American history. In many ways, so was September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center towers came down after being hit by hijacked passenger jets. There are moments in people’s lives that alter them forever. The onset of COVID-19 was not as sudden as either event, nor as dramatic, but its impact will dwarf that of any event in the history of humankind.

The rules of the new world are simple: The single most important goal is solidarity.

We may not be aware of it just yet, but the coronavirus has engendered a new humanity, humanity 2.0, if you will. Like all deliveries, it is painful, and the newborn is forced out from its warm and protective womb. Like all pregnancies, we have been feeling the mounting pressures to emerge to a new world, and new way of life. We did not know it was a new humanity because we were in the dark, but the pressures inside the old humanity were growing unbearable, and earth, our womb, could barely keep us in it.

Now that we have come out, it is time to open our eyes and look at the reality around us. The world where we have entered is very different from the one we’d known. It operates on opposite principles from the ones we’d worked by. In the new world, everything is connected. The virus taught that. It taught us that you must wear a mask not because you’re sick, but because you don’t want to make your loved ones sick. It taught us that only if we all think of each other’s health we will be healthy, and if we don’t all do it, we will never be healed from the virus.

The virus showed us painful pictures of farmers spilling milk and breaking eggs on the floor to keep their price tag profitable, while millions of Americans often go hungry. We knew that this was capitalism and we all agreed to it, but in the world of humanity 2.0, there can be no such thing.

The rules of the new world are simple: The single most important goal is solidarity. People work in mutual responsibility because they want to build concern for one another. Instead of self-absorption, friendship and affection reign high, and people derive pleasure from their union.

Since union is the utmost pleasure, anything that does not promote it is undesirable. Essential jobs are those that allow people to socialize without interruption. Other trades and businesses will vanish for lack of demand.

There is no need to forcefully foreclose any business, but there is also no need to support businesses that cannot get through the transition period. If people do not need it, there is no point keeping it alive. Once the “cleanup” process is complete, our world will be full of people who work happily at jobs that everyone appreciates and values, while other people spend their time socializing and enhancing solidarity and union in society.

In the world of humanity 2.0, the most diverse societies will be the most thriving and thrilling to live in. Their unions will be the most enriching precisely because of the diversity among their members. People will flock to such societies and will appreciate the diversity and uniqueness of each individual since what one can contribute to society, no other person can.

There will be no racism, no crime, no loneliness, and no violence in humanity 2.0. There will be no need to curb them since people will feel that any act against another person contradicts the goal of unity and ousts the perpetrator from society, and no one wants to be ejected from society.

Granted, we are not there yet. But we are getting there fast. We can resist it if we want, but it will only make the birth more painful. Naturally, we are afraid, but look at the world around us; it is quickly becoming a place where we will not want to live. If we join forces and usher in the new humanity, the transition will be smooth and easy.

And if my prediction seems unrealistic, think if less than six months ago you would believe that the whole world can go on lockdown for weeks on end, that anarchists can take over entire sections of a major city in America, or that a big city in America with a high crime rate would disband its police force. Changes happen, but we can choose how they will happen.
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My new article on Linkedin “Need a Job? Consider Being a Connection Coach”

There used to be liftmen who would press the right button for you. And before there were refrigerators, there were icemen who would cut large blocks of ice and deliver them to customers. The world of work is in constant evolution, and these days faster than ever. Now, thanks to the coronavirus, it has accelerated from very fast, and accelerating, to virtually immediate.

Humanity has reached a phase of transformation from a self-centered mindset to a collaborative mindset, and those who will help others into it will be the happiest and busiest people in the world.

Everything that is not essential business is struggling or already in various stages of elimination. COVID-19 has shocked people to the point where they either lost the drive to shop or are forced to save what they can because they’ve lost their jobs.

Yet, a bit like the end of the dinosaur era, the demise of antiquated “species” gives rise to new ones. It may be hard to conceive, but this process is already happening. A slew of new professions is in the making, and most of them will all belong to one area: human connections.

We’ve dealt before with mental illnesses, ADHD, and various forms of behavioral anomalies. We’ve hopelessly dealt with mending broken relationships and futilely fought against bullying. But these are not the trades that will emerge tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s experts in human connections will be people who are savvy in the rules of the emerging civilization: a humanity whose people are all connected and dependent on each other. We’ve never felt accountable for all of humanity, but today we can settle for nothing less, and learning how to do this successfully requires knowledge and skills.

Coachers in human connection will be people who know how to take a group of ten or so complete strangers, who feel no affinity toward each other, and sometimes the opposite, and turn them into best friends within an hour. These coachers, who will practice Integral Education (IE), will know how to help people feel comfortable, accepted, and able to fully express themselves without jeopardizing everybody else’s ability or desire to do the same.

People who will participate in these trainings will find that if you want to realize your full potential, you will be able to do it only if you operate alongside other people, each of whom contributes their utmost to the success of a common goal: the unity of the group.

Sports teams know that if you want to be a champion, you have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the team. IE is different. You don’t sacrifice anything, and you always receive ten times more than what you gave. And the best part about it is that there are no losers in IE; everybody wins since unity is achieved only when everyone wants everyone else to succeed.

We’ve never tried this approach among us, but now we have no choice. Humanity has reached a phase of transformation from a self-centered mindset to a collaborative mindset, and those who will help others into it will be the happiest and busiest people in the world.

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The Times of Israel published my new article “The COVID-19 Symptom Reserved for Jews”

As early as March 14, Eric Cortellessa wrote on The Times of Israel that as the coronavirus spreads across the globe, “a new conspiracy theory has been brewing on the fringes of society: The Jews are behind it.” By March 31, it was no longer on the fringes: “An internal Foreign Ministry report warns of a sharp rise in anti-Semitic posts around the world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” stated Itamar Eichner on Ynet News.

Since then, matters have gone from bad to worse as Jews have been increasingly targeted in relation to COVID-19. On April 20, Reuters quoted a Tel-Aviv University report which found that the coronavirus crisis was stoking anti-Semitism worldwide, and on May 13, the independent media organization NPR stated that “American Jews are finding themselves in a historically familiar position: Scapegoated for a plague.” Finally, on June 23, another report by Tel-Aviv University has found that the pandemic “unleashed a unique worldwide wave of anti-Semitism,” and that “The new wave of anti-Semitism includes a range of libels that have one common element: The Jews, the Zionists and/or the state of Israel are to blame for the pandemic and/or stand to gain from it.”

I do not doubt the accuracy of the reports, but I certainly don’t think that this “worldwide wave of anti-Semitism” is in any way unique. Nor is it unexpected. It is a pattern that repeats itself with every single plight and crisis that the world encounters, just as we are seeing that the people are already blaming Israel for teaching the US police the knee chokehold that killed George Floyd.

The Jews have been, are, and will be blamed for all the troubles in the world. And as time passes, more and more people will do so openly. At some point soon, the number of accusers will reach a critical mass, or the socio-political circumstances will be just right, or both, and the landslide will begin: The world will determine that to save itself, it must get rid of the Jews. I have been warning about it for nearly two decades; I have written two books about it (see links below); and now it is coming to pass.

Yet, as long as the landslide has not begun, we can still reverse the trend. We must remember that the darker the world becomes, the more it turns its anger at the Jews. It is doing so precisely because it expects Jews to dispel the darkness.

Today, the dark shade encroaching on the world is hatred. Jews are being blamed for spreading hatred, racism, diseases, and every conceivable (and inconceivable) evil. The Jews will not be able to refute these accusations, however irrational, precisely because irrational feelings don’t need rationality.

To refute the accusations, we must make the nations feel that we are not spreading hate, but love. And to do that, we must create love among us and project it to the world. As we can see, the world does not want the love of the Jews; it does not want our genius, our moralism, our values, or anything to do with us. It feels that we are spreading hatred, and no one wants to be around people who spread hatred. So if we can’t show love to the world, we can and must show love to one another.

Our nation is an ancient one. It was forged thousands of years ago by a man who dedicated his life to spreading kindness and love. His name was Abraham. His descendants continued his legacy and centuries of famine and slavery had brought them to the realization that they must love one another as themselves, “as one man with one heart.” Only when they achieved that profound level of unity were they declared a nation, and immediately thereafter, they were tasked with sharing that unity with the entire world, with being “a light unto nations.”

For centuries, their progeny had fought against internal elements within the nation that sought to spread hatred and alienation, so they could carry on Abraham’s legacy and spread the light of love. For centuries, they won, until they lost two thousand years ago and the nation was exiled from Jerusalem because of baseless, unfounded hatred.

Since then, we have been vilified, demonized, ridiculed, despised, and loathed throughout the centuries and the world over. Even when the nations welcomed us, it was in order to exploit us. And as soon as they had no use for us, they got rid of us.

Indeed, what good are we if we are not spreading love, if we are not a light unto nations? We complain that judging us by a different standard than the rest of the world is anti-Semitism. But the truth is that we have never been judged by the same standard as the rest of the world because we are not expected to do what the rest of the world does. The world does not expect love to come from anyone but the Jews, and unless we forge it among ourselves and spread it, humanity will see no reason to keep us on this planet.

We are running out of time. The chasm among us is vast, and growing. But we have no choice. If we want to save ourselves, we must unite above our disunity, above our hatred for each other. We must do it not because we are stronger together, but because when we are together, the world feels that we are spreading unity, and this is all it expects us to do.

And if my words sound irrational, remember that so is anti-Semitism, so give my message a chance in your heart, for our sake.
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