Question: Now the quarantine has been relaxed, people have taken to the streets: restaurants, hairdressers, and shops in continuous consumption. Everything is the same as before, nothing has changed. So, why was the virus needed?

Answer: I think we cannot change in the first time around. But nevertheless, we started to doubt whether we might have been living incorrectly. Everything is revealed by comparison.

But the first time around, it is unlikely that we will be able to draw conclusions. Moreover, we have not yet returned to the past and analyzed what happened. We take our sitting at home as an incarceration, imprisonment.

And now, we will go back to work and gradually see that going back to the practices of consumption will manifest in us as negative. Then we will know what to do.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/3/20

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Medium published my new article “Surfing the Pandemic Waves”

Public discourse now speaks of a second wave of COVID-19 when the first one is far from over. Just when we thought the epidemic was under control, the opening of the economy has brought new contagion outbreaks around the world. What does this portend for the future? We may try to avoid flip-flopping policies on how to tackle the pandemic and its consequences, but the truth is that now we only see the tip of the iceberg of what lies in store. What we do know for certain is that our way of life will change forever. The most important thing for us to understand is that nature is driving us to new forms of connection among us since we all influence and depend on one another, just as the waves of coronavirus infection illustrate.

“The more we unite through the heart and soul, and the more we understand nature’s guidance today, our anxiety about the future will decrease. Our consciousness will be enlarged and we will begin to discover a higher dimension which nurtures us so wisely, the force of nature. This is a force whose signature characteristic is love and pure giving.”

The coronavirus will not quickly disappear from among us. It may remain for years though it may change its form. This is why it is imperative that we shape society and the economy in accord with the emerging reality. Experts warn that within a few months we will be in the deepest recession since WWII. Businesses will collapse, people’s savings will run dry and they will be unable to return loans, pay off mortgages, or pay rent. The unequivocal signs are already here. Therefore, we need to revolutionize our priorities.

Countries must invest their resources in the vital industries that can ensure that every person’s basic needs are met at a reasonable level. Public budgets should secure funds for this first and foremost on the list of priorities and not squander resources in other areas because of pressure from once powerful stakeholders. Luxury industries will certainly suffer a severe blow due to the economic crisis. It would be pointless to attempt to recuperate them because their products will have very little demand.

Thought must precede action: Tomorrow’s humanity will need a much calmer lifestyle, free from senseless running back and forth, one centered around the essentials instead of the superfluous. People will need to invest primarily in building deep ties among them to discover in them the taste of life. Our good future lies in research and development of connections and love among all people, and this enterprise will be our exit to a new world.

Until we reach these desired human connection, we must cleanse ourselves of non-vital businesses which only increase the destructive competition among people, suck out precious resources from nature, and pollute the air, earth, and sea.

The era of coronavirus is peeling away the non-vital husks of an outdated way of life in an intelligent manner. Gradually, it will slim the economy to healthy and sustainable dimensions and the non-essential fat will fall away.

Governments will have to think outside the box in order to provide employment and livelihood to the millions who will be ejected from the labor market. The best solution will be to provide the citizens with universal income conditional upon active participation in social education and community building.

This escape route through education will offer a gateway to a new understanding in humanity about the changes taking place in this special era and what they mean in the development of man, society, and the world, as well as the kind of new relationships that must be established among people. Those who study will also work a few hours in areas which build community and society.

The happiest and healthiest possible life evolves out of caring for others, just like a mother who is always concerned about her children and finds an incomparable sense of satisfaction and vitality in providing this care. Although seemingly contradictory to the notions of social distancing, the era of corona is actually here to teach us how to correctly approach each other, — the true form of connection at the internal level from heart to heart, and how to avoid hurting each other.

The more we unite through the heart and soul, and the more we understand nature’s guidance today, our anxiety about the future will decrease. Our consciousness will be enlarged and we will begin to discover a higher dimension which nurtures us so wisely, the force of nature. This is a force whose signature characteristic is love and pure giving.

Therefore, the coronavirus is not just an epidemic meant to frustrate and destroy, but an evolutionary riddle for us to solve together. Our success will depend on our unity, not only to ride the wave of the pandemic, but to reach the crest of the wave for a healthy and secure future.
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My new article on Linkedin “Fight the Right War”

We like to think that we are masters of our own lives, but are we really? If we had our way, would we have asked for the coronavirus to derail our lives from their carefully planned routes? Would we have wanted the mayhem that has engulfed cities across the country following the death of George Floyd? If we had any control over our lives, would we have chosen to live in a country where law and order have become a mockery while anarchists on either side of the map do as they please, while the regular Janes and Joes are fearful stepping out and speaking out their sane truth?

Right now in America, 130 people die of prescription drug abuse each day, 50 million don’t get enough food, and tens of millions have no jobs, no income, and no future. Any person who were asked whether he or she wanted to live in such a country would respond with a resounding “No!”

Sure, many people have it going for them in America. Some are actually living the American dream. But many are not, and many more are joining them daily.

But if we stop for a moment and think, we will see that there is one clear message, if you can call it that, in all this pain: This society is really dying because of loneliness. Its disease is not COVID-19, it is alienation, division, suspicion, and separation, or in a word: hatred. Cure hatred, and you have cured the country.

If people stopped fighting against each other and started fighting for love, that love would bridge the gaps, there would not be divisions. It is so easy to see the good in different people when you love them. Different people are what makes our society diverse, vital, rich with culture, colors, and brilliant innovations. But if there is hate then the more different another person is from me, the more I hate that person, and the more blind I become to his or her merits.

Think about it: If we fight against injustice, we are increasing hate. But if we fight for love, we are increasing justice. Let’s join a common battle against the right enemy; let’s fight together against the hatred within us toward our fellow human beings whoever they are.

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My article in Newsmax: “Masks and Freedom”

America, like the rest of the world, faces an ongoing war against an invisible enemy, COVID-19. Prevention of its spread, though, is highly visible in the use of face masks. This prophylactic measure has split the public between those who refuse to wear masks based on their right of free choice, and those who regard face covering as an act of solidarity with others to limit the pandemic’s transmission. Thus, the virus has provided us with an exemplary exercise in mutual responsibility since we will all need to realize that, because we are in the same boat, consideration of collective wellness must supersede individual calculations.

“Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice — but if more wear them, we’ll have more freedom to go out,” said US Surgeon General Jerome Adams. Studies show that face coverings are critical to helping limit the spread of the coronavirus, and yet, many people still defy requirements to wear masks in public settings. Others follow the advice of medical doctors to the letter, while most are found somewhere in between.

Because COVID-19 is a new and previously unstudied disease, it has evoked in us fear of the unknown. It is not clear what would happen if, God forbid, we were infected. Therefore, uncertainty is causing a general feeling of hysteria.

The coronavirus disease is discussed on the media from morning to night, and every political and professional personality tries to take advantage of the situation to demonstrate how clever or important they are and that they know the best way for the country to go forward. If they happen to be correct, it is to their credit, but if not, it is somebody else’s fault. As always, success has many parents and failure is an orphan.

If there had been separate locations for the cautious and the careless, things might have worked out. However, we are inseparably interconnected in this situation, so what do we do? The solution lies in the way we calculate the risks. Whether I am extremely worried about the disease, unconcerned or somewhere in the middle, perhaps there is a need to change the focus of my attention. In other words, instead of measuring what I feel and think about the risk of contracting the virus, I should measure how my behavior might impact others.

That is, I have to tell myself that I may be a carrier, and whether or not others are infected depends on me. Consequently, I should consider my behavior every moment and in every place to ensure that I do not transmit the virus to others, and thus I guard their health.

Unfortunately, the public is not yet very mindful of personal responsibility because, day in and day out, we are bombarded with conflicting opinions of doctors and others. This leaves us confused. While consideration of a variety of opinions is a positive thing, the public needs a clear and informed direction in the end.

If we continue down the road we are traveling now, we will come to a situation where each person follows his own advice and no precautions for the general welfare are possible. This would drive people even further away from the security of living in an orderly society. The circumstance in which each follows his or her natural tendency to consider only themselves to be the world authority will only create mayhem and drive us to anarchy.

A public agreement to wear face masks for the sake of others can help prevent such a slide toward social disorder. Wherever there is a dispute between the collective and the individual, we are obliged to rule according to the will of the collective. Why? Because by doing so, we align with the general connecting force of nature that is able to positively permeate society, as opposed to the negative egoistic force of the individual that disintegrates order. As it is written, “In the multitude of people is the king’s honor.” (Proverbs 14:28) And this is also the bottom line.

Though some of us are wary and some are careless according to our innate characteristics, a healthy society must be linked to a new consideration — the benefit of others. If every person tries to always act in favor of others, there will be no need for either excessive fear or disregard. We would all be in tune with the integral system of nature where balance prevails, and we will discover that ultimate freedom is found when one upholds the interest of the collective which is, after all, the sum of every single one of us.
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Question: If all unnecessary jobs disappear, 90% of the population will remain unemployed. What will these people do and how will the economy support itself without these jobs?

Answer: But the people who occupied these places did nothing useful. What did they work for? To throw money around?

What are we afraid of giving up? Doing useless work: taking from one place so another can pull it out and throw it to another place? So some people can dig a hole and others fill it up?

Question: Baal HaSulam wrote in the newspaper The Nation: “Clearly, the measure of egoism inherent in every creature is a necessary condition in the actual existence of the creature. Without it, it would not be a separate and distinct being in itself. Yet, this should not at all deny the measure of altruism in a person. The only thing required is to set distinct boundaries between them: The law of egoism must be kept in all its might, to the extent that it concerns the minimum existence. And with any surplus of that measure, permission is granted to waive it for the well-being of one’s fellow person.”

We only need to find out what the benefit of others is. This is not just to redistribute production toward minimal necessities, but to determine what benefits will flow from this to others. How will we experience this, and what is this trend?

Answer: I think we need to create a new group of states that can really solve this. But there must be leaders who understand the integrality of the world and the need of the moment to bring it to an integral form.

Question: Where can we find such leaders and politicians? Look what is happening! Trump is now blaming China, China is responding in the same way, conflicts arise. The same trends as before. The world has not changed.

Answer: We, the Kabbalists, need to move in the direction of our vision. We must explain, in every possible way, advertise and disseminate our knowledge, which is consistent with the laws of nature.

Nature will not allow us to do anything else. As soon as everyone starts going back to the old ways, the mutated virus will hit even harder. Now its consequences are harmless. According to statistics during the worldwide reign of the virus, far fewer people have died than if it had not existed.

But the virus works for the whole system of humankind, and if we do not do what it is pointing us to, i.e., if we do not become integrally interconnected, then nothing good will come out of it. Wait and see. We are still on the way toward it. I see that, unfortunately, all countries want to return to the way things were in the past.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/5/20

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Question: Now in many countries people are starting to slowly take to the streets, fill up coffee houses, and go shopping. Can this going out of the house be called going out of the crisis?

Answer: No. Going out of the crisis means that we really understand what it means to be in the crisis, to get out of it, and to already have exited it. Until how we have not even delved into what happened to us.

We do not know the nature of this virus, how to completely get rid of it, whether it has other forms, whether they are recurring, etc. Therefore, we cannot confidently claim that we know where we are.

Everything is as usual: a person wants to live as conveniently, comfortably, and simply as possible. We can no longer afford to stay at home and, and therefore, they say we are, “exiting the crisis,” running away from where we stayed closed in for a while. But I would not say that by this we are really getting rid of the crisis.

The fact is that the crisis is a consequence of the pressure of nature on us, which wants to see us integrally connected with all its parts. Its inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels work together in unison. And due to the fault of human egoism, nature throws us out of its framework, puts us outside of itself.

By its crises and cataclysms, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes, nature indicates that we arouse very bad, unbalanced forces in it and do not want to be its integral part. In order to do this, we need to become interdependent, interconnected between us. But we do not want that and cannot do it; therefore, humanity has problems.

Now we have reached the point where nature begins to push us to happiness with a stick. So all kinds of viruses are activated, which will inevitably push us toward connection, toward a more correct attitude toward ourselves and nature. In the near future, this will become clearer, until we understand how to behave.

Question: The feeling of the crisis is a feeling that evil rules the world?

Answer: The feeling of the crisis is those compulsive forces of nature that manifest themselves in order to balance the egoistic disturbances that we cause in nature.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/10/20

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Question: We do not understand the relationship between man and nature, let alone the relationship between people. They are totally hidden.

For example, the destruction of sparrows in China in the 60s led to famine in a country of tens of millions of people. The extermination of cats in North Korea caused the emergence of a huge number of rats and snakes, resulting in the need to import cats from neighboring countries.

The destruction of wolves also always leads to an imbalance in the number of deer and wild boars because wolves, in general, only kill sick animals.

There are many such examples. But my question concerns the human level in particular. Do you agree with the statement that in nature the general is more important than the particular?

Answer: But not one at the expense of the other. If we take an integral system, then each part in it is equal in value to the entire system. Otherwise, the system will not be integral, complete, and absolute.

Remark: It is also stated that if a person is needed by the general system, then he exists, and if not, he does not exist.

My Comment: I can say this about inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, but not about man, because he, with his egoism, interferes with nature, dominates it, and can do anything, even against common sense.

Question: Scientists say that all systems go through some kind of evolutionary process, development. In the beginning, there is always a process of rejection and separation in order to move to the next state, to unification, but at a higher level. Now nature has divided us with a coronavirus. We are developing a kind of virtual reality. What is the next stage of the level of connection between us?

Answer: We still need to realize that our connection should, first of all, be integral and lead us to unity. We are not animals that unite instinctively. We are people, but we are against this connection. Egoism plays tough on us. So, we will have to recognize its corruption and rise above it.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/16/20

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My new article on BIZCATALYST “The COVID-19 New World of Work”

We’re reopening the economy while COVID-19 is still here, well into 2020. From the looks of it, there will be COVID-21, too. And if this prediction comes true, will the economy survive it? What business can endure alternating for so long between opening and closing?

Some industries are essential. There is no question that food, housing, gas, electric power, and education are required. As for the rest, only a fraction of the pre-coronavirus transactions were truly necessary. In the new reality, what is not essential dies.

But governments will need money. Essential sectors such as food production and various services will provide work to some of the people, but the majority will be out of work for good. We have entered a world where joblessness is the norm, and occupation the exception. How will people live? If countries spend their currency reserves on futureless sectors, they will not have the resources to support people through the process of adapting their lives to the coronavirus era.

To adapt the society to the new era, all those who are out of work today, and will probably remain so, should be admitted into a program that will inform them about the new reality and teach them how to live in it. During the course, they will receive a full scholarship that will sustain them and their families.

The courses will not only provide information about the new world; they will also help the participants develop the right attitude to living in a world where people have abundant free time.

Just as people learn about the mindset required to succeed in the business world, or the attitude required to succeed in the high-tech industry, people will need to get acquainted with the frame of mind of the COVID era.

Accordingly, the program will include exercises in social communication that builds connections suitable for a world where everyone is dependent on everyone else, regular jobs are scarce, and people must rely on each other for their survival. Gradually, people will come to find value in bonding and socializing more than in their previous values such as obtaining wealth and power.

As the courses focus on fostering bonds among people, mutual responsibility, awareness of others’ needs, and concern for society, people will begin to think of these positive social values as the product of their learning. Just as it is possible to accumulate wealth, it is possible to accumulate happiness.

The more people become socially integrated, the happier and safer they will feel. People’s values and aspirations from life will change to ones that give them true and lasting satisfaction.

In this way, the coronavirus will usher us into a new reality, where some of the people tend to everyone’s sustenance, and the rest of the people tend to everyone’s happiness.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can wearing masks stop the spread of the coronavirus?“

“At least 14 states have seen an increase in coronavirus hospitalizations since Memorial Day weekend. Arizona is now seeing more than 1,000 new daily cases and the state’s former health director is sounding the alarm,” reported CBS This Morning (June 12, 2020).

The coronavirus pays no attention to the fact that we are reopening our economies and trying to return to our pre-coronavirus lives.

It will continue infecting more and more people until we undergo a serious attitude adjustment.

What is that adjustment?

It is a shift of our center of concern: from self-concern to concern about others.

In other words, we naturally think about what we need to do in order to protect ourselves and our families.

The coronavirus, however, has emerged to show us that we need to redirect our concern toward others: that we think about what we need to do in order to protect other people, providing them with the conditions to stay healthy and virus-free.

We all depend on each other maintaining certain conditions in order to stop the virus’ spread, including the maintenance of thorough personal hygiene, wearing masks and holding our physical distance from each other.

Therefore, if we uphold such conditions not with our own protection, but with the protection of others, primarily in mind, then we will be able to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

By exercising an intention for others’ benefit to the actions we conduct in order to stop the virus’ spread, then in addition to overcoming the coronavirus, we will also reach the understanding that we can truly be protected from disease and other harmful phenomena when we consider others.

If we concentrate on the protection and benefit of others, our community and society, then instead of a virus spreading illness and death, we would generate a positive virus that spreads health, well-being, peace and happiness.

Therefore, we would be wise to relate to the coronavirus not just as a disease or pandemic, but as a lesson in our interdependence: that others’ health and well-being depends on us caring about them, and likewise, our own health and well-being depends on others caring about us.

Above photo by Pavel Anoshin on Unsplash.

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New Life 1237 – From New Thinking To New Relations
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

We need to understand what nature demands from us and that all of the blows we encounter result from imbalance in relations between people. Our egos are between us and through concessions we can ascend above the human ego and build a balanced connection between us on a higher level. We can get rid of the hatred and conflicts between us by giving up control. We need to hold on to one thought: to act for everyone’s sake. This can only be done when there is mutual support. We need to act kindly toward everyone and make sure everyone feels good, including our partners. If we know how to connect to the internal mechanism of nature, we will balance humanity and build heaven on earth.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1237 – From New Thinking To New Relations,” 5/12/20

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