My new article on Linkedin “What Really Makes Life Precious”

Recently, many analyses have surfaced showing the excess mortality that Covid-19 has wrought. Even with the existence of vaccines, the virus is still spreading and in many countries, claims hundreds, and even thousands of lives each day. This grim reality has prompted some students to ask me about the meaning of life and death.

If we want to give our lives meaning, we should spend it connecting to other people—not in order to use them, but in order to care about them. This is what makes life precious.

Indeed, we treat life as something very important, and for a good reason, but on condition that we act on this reason. If we go through our lives just passing the time, then all we get out of it is the few ounces of pain we have collected. However, if we use it to make the most of the opportunity we have received to approach, or even achieve the spiritual realm of life, namely to connect with other people to the point where we feel them in our hearts, then life is precious.

Inherently, we feel that we do not owe anything to anyone and should only please ourselves. However, we do not realize that this is just our starting point in life. If we end life at the same point where we started, then we have wasted our chance to make progress. From thinking of nothing but ourselves, we should spend our lives trying to extend ourselves and connect to others, to develop care for others. By doing so, we become similar to the connectivity that permeates all of nature and our consciousness expands proportionally.

A newborn baby doesn’t know anything of its environment except for the existence of its own mother, and even that awareness only pertains to the sides of her that relate to the baby. As the baby grows, it begins to realize that there are other things and people around, and begins to communicate with them.

The same process should happen internally. We should evolve from knowing and feeling only ourselves to knowing and feeling our whole environment—people, animals, and objects. This can happen only if we care about them. If we only seek to use them to please ourselves, we will know about them as much as the newly born knows about its mother. What a shame it is to die without having learned more about the reality we live in.

If we want to give our lives meaning, we should spend it connecting to other people—not in order to use them, but in order to care about them. This is what makes life precious.

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My new article on Linkedin “What It Takes to Make a Passover for All of Humanity”

This coming weekend, Passover begins. This holiday, which seems to be such a Jewish occasion, actually holds within it a message and a prediction for all of humanity. It is no coincidence that the story of Moses, Pharaoh, and the exodus from Egypt has inspired several epic films; the universal message of liberation from enslavement touches a soft spot in every person: the aspiration for freedom.

To make the most of the story, we need to understand what or who enslaves us, and how we can be freed. The name of the holiday, “Passover,” is no coincidence. It represents passing over from enslavement to freedom. And Pharaoh, the great oppressor, is none other than our ego.

Moses, whose name comes from the Hebrew word “moshech” [pulling], is the force that pulls us out of Pharaoh’s grip and delivers us, making us masters of our own fates. The story of Egypt is truly universal because the liberation from the ego pertains to each and every person. At some point, each of us will feel that the ego has become a ruthless master and will want to run away from it. This is when one exits Egypt by following Moses, and becomes a free person—liberated from one’s own tormenting Pharaoh—the ego.

These days, the days of Covid-19, are tough times for everyone. Although Covid has not made us feel enslaved, it certainly made us feel restrained. The mounting pressure on people’s psyche, the economic toll of lockdowns, the growing pain and grief are spoiling the party that we’d had until the arrival of the virus. Until its arrival, we were in love with Pharaoh. He, namely our ego, has given us civilization, progress, prosperity, and everything that we have achieved.

But Pharaoh does not remain the same. Like everything else in life, he changes over time. Our ego is growing and evolving, and in the process it becomes increasingly demanding. What was great yesterday becomes completely insufficient today. Gradually, we begin to feel increasingly dissatisfied. Shouldn’t it have been the opposite, that the more we have, the happier we are? Not if we consider who demands that we satisfy his wishes: our ego.

Our ego is insatiable; the more you feed it, the hungrier it grows. And the hungrier it grows, the more demanding it becomes. In the end, you find yourself locked in pursuit of satisfactions that seem rewarding only until you have them. Once you have what you want, your boss whispers “Bring me more‼! Bring me better‼!” Then, when you say “Enough!” you realize that you cannot get away; you are enslaved to your ego and the more you resist, the more it afflicts you. This is when you realize that Pharaoh was exploiting you, that he was good to you only as long as you served him. But the minute you want to quit, you uncover his true face. This is when the enslavement in Egypt begins.

We are not there yet, but we are nearing it. We are already feeling bad, but we have yet to realize that Pharaoh, our ego, is the cause of our bad feeling, and not a virus or any other disaster. When we grasp this, it will mark the beginning of our exodus from Egypt, from enslavement to the ego.

For now, it is enough to examine everything that we don’t like about our lives and ask ourselves who is really suffering from them. If we start creating some space between ourselves and our egos, we might be able to see who is demanding the work, who is reaping the reward, and who is paying the price.
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Question: A student wrote: “I saw the video on YouTube ‘How to overcome shame?’ Tell me, please, what should I do? Due to the coronavirus, I lost my business and have huge debts to banks; I have a rented apartment and a young child. How can I not to lose the human in myself? With stress, depression, panic attacks, and insomnia, how does one deal with a temporary difficult life situation? You have accurately described my state of mind.”

Answer: I advise you to turn off your brain and nerves, to act absolutely mechanically, rationally. What life requires of me today, I must do, without paying attention to what will happen the day after tomorrow and even, maybe, tomorrow. The main thing is today! Understand me correctly, and then you will understand how our world should be realized.

We should not think about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, we should not make any plans for huge changes. We should just think about how at every moment we can be useful to ourselves and to our loved ones, and if we have the correct understanding of the future world, maybe somehow share this with others.

Without overly reasonable and philosophical fabrications, keep it as simple as possible.

And you will see such a new path, along which you can safely walk, like in a park, and no one will bother you. And if, as it seems to you, they bother you, delve deeper into this path. You will see how everything will resolve and make room for your simple life. And so you will get out of all these problems.

The main thing is to live uncomplicated in our time, in this pandemic. And this attitude will lead you to the wisest thoughts and actions.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/1/21

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In the news: In Japan in 2020 the number of #suicides was higher than the number of #coronavirus deaths.
This sounds like an invitation to increase the dissemination of Kabbalah in #Japan…!
From Twitter, 3/25/21

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My new article on Linkedin “When It Comes to Vaccines – There Is No Union in the European Union”

It’s hard to describe the European Union Covid-19 vaccines fiasco better than James McAuley did it in his most recent column on The Washington Post: “Imagine being in the middle of the greatest public health crisis in a century,” he writes, “and finally, thanks to the ingenuity of science, you get the tools to end that crisis — but, out of nowhere, you decide you won’t use them. Welcome to the European Union, where political leaders dwell in mansions of bureaucratic incompetence and political arrogance as a third wave of covid-19 cases threatens the continent and new variants emerge.” Later in the column, McAuley asks what it will take “before the E.U. vaccinates its citizens as if their lives were on the line?”

Covid-19 is just the first and mildest blow; many more are en route. The first blow has claimed millions of lives. The looming blows will claim many more. As long as we make egoism our king, life will punish us, and the ego will not let us recover. Blow after blow, humanity will collapse under the pain until we all realize that our real enemy is not nature, which inflicts such blows as Covid, but our own egos, which do not let us overcome them easily and quickly.

McAuley offers many reasons that could result in such a fiasco, but I think the truth is plain and simple: It is a struggle led by nothing more than big egos that care for nothing but their own prestige. When has there been union in the European Union? Never! From its very beginning, there have been nothing but power struggles, exploitation, and abandonment of member states in need. (Remember Greece in the 2008 Financial Crisis or Italy in the first wave of the pandemic?) When these come alongside lofty statements that “Building a fair and well-functioning society is a political priority for the European Union,” to quote the EU Science Hub, or a page that the EU titled “European solidarity in action,” to document (the few) examples of solidarity in Europe in facing the Covid-19 crisis, one can’t help but feel deep mistrust in the sincerity of the leaders of the EU.

I’ve said it so many times before: An organization that is founded on egoism cannot last, and the longer it does last, the more the people under its influence suffer until they break it up. All that the EU bureaucrats manage to do, and in this they excel, is make the rich and powerful people on top, even richer and more powerful.

“They shall sow the wind, and they shall harvest a storm,” said Prophet Hosea (8:7). Indeed, the spirit of alienation and exploitation that has pervaded the EU from its onset killed every chance of solidarity and is now costing the lives of thousands of Europeans every day while all of the developed countries are already emerging from the pandemic. When you do not nurture solidarity, you cannot expect to have it at a time of need.

Covid-19 is just the first and mildest blow; many more are en route. The first blow has claimed millions of lives. The looming blows will claim many more. As long as we make egoism our king, life will punish us, and the ego will not let us recover. Blow after blow, humanity will collapse under the pain until we all realize that our real enemy is not nature, which inflicts such blows as Covid, but our own egos, which do not let us overcome them easily and quickly.

In fact, if for each blow we would bolster our unity, we would achieve such union in human society that we would secure a good life for every person on the planet. We are already capable of it, but we have no desire for it since no one gets the credit, and without a trophy for the ego, there is no motivation to exert for it. At the same time, there is strong motivation to prevent anyone else from helping humanity so that no one else will get the credit.

Until we learn to forge true solidarity, we will not have a good life on this planet. Be it a fourth wave of Covid, extreme weather of unprecedented intensity, or some other ploy that nature might pull, we will be forced into greater and greater discomfort and pain until we surrender and dethrone our egos.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why did the Coronavirus come to all the world? Why is this virus active?“

As much as we have been affected by the pandemic, we are still unaware of its true effect on us.

The pandemic has affected us very deeply. It emerged in order to create a new humanity, to upgrade our attitudes so that we would relate more positively, considerately, compassionately and constructively to each other and to nature.

If we look at ourselves a year ago, and if we would be able to see ourselves a year from now, we would see completely different people. We cannot return to the kinds of people we were before the pandemic. On one hand, the pandemic has isolated, detached, and estranged us from each other more and more, but by doing so, it has given us space to think about who we are, where we are, why we are here, and also, what kind of attitudes we have to each other and to the world in general.

Nature has placed us onto a new level of development from which we will be able to very quickly transition to a whole new kind of positively-connected human society.

It seems as if we have been struck with a very contagious viral disease, but when we understand nature’s purpose and plan, then we see how this state came about precisely as a means to upgrade our attitudes to each other: to become detached from our egoistic-consumeristic values that had been running rampant leading up to the pandemic, and to let us further develop in a more refined manner toward the purpose of creation, to the discovery of who and what we truly are, and why we are alive here in this world.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash .

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My new article on Linkedin “People Aren’t Unemployed, They Simply Do Not Need to Work”

Although Israel is recovering from the Covid pandemic, it seems as though the job market is still in the midst of a lockdown. It is not that there are no jobs to occupy; it’s just that people aren’t keen to occupy them. In fact, so many Israelis prefer to remain jobless that the government has initiated a campaign to encourage people to return from furlough or from unemployment. So far, however, the campaign has had only marginal success.

Truthfully, I understand these people. I think that before we rush back to our pre-Covid life, which apparently wasn’t something we so terribly miss, we must reflect on what we want. People now realize that they can have a good life even if they earn less. They have more free time to spend with family and friends, and once you are among people you like, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to enjoy yourself. A day at the beach with the family hardly costs a thing, but is very enjoyable and emotionally rewarding. When you think about it, how much more do we need?

We do not need to love, or even like each other, not yet anyway. All we need is to realize that those I hate are precisely the ones on whom my life depends. If we do that, we will have a society where people truly do not need to work, where they can spend their days in peace, since we’ll be watching out for one another.

Besides, the job market needs fewer and fewer workers. We’ve gone from measuring things in kilometers and meters to measuring things in nanometers. Everything has shrunk, and everything requires fewer working hands. Even computer related jobs require fewer workers than before; the whole society is shifting toward a state where less working hours are required. It is no wonder that some countries are seriously mulling universal basic income programs instead of sending people back to work, or a shorter workweek. The days of hard work are nearing their end, and we need to figure out how we want to spend the additional time on our hands.

Food supply and other necessities will not be a problem; we are already producing more than we’re consuming and we throw away the excess products just to keep the prices up. If we improve distribution, there will be no shortage of necessities anywhere in the world.

Which leads us to the real issue before us: making sure that we get what we need so we can have a good life without worrying about subsistence. To do that, we must put behind us divisions that currently set us apart, such as racial tensions, political rivalries, power struggles of all kinds, cultural differences, and so forth. It may seem impossible to overcome these age-old differences, until we realize that it is precisely thanks to these disputes that we have developed our society, technology, and all that we have. In other words, in order to keep developing, we must preserve precisely the views that we oppose. Without them, our own views will lose their relevance.

Think of love without the existence of hate, and the word becomes meaningless. Think of freedom without captivity, and the whole concept becomes void. We wouldn’t be able to value, or evaluate anything were it not for the existence of its antonym.

Today, people are realizing that there really is no need to work so much, but unless we develop the social values to support this view, society will disintegrate and mayhem will ensue. For centuries, we have cultivated self-absorption to the point that today the vast majority of us are narcissists, plain and simple. A society of narcissists cannot build a distribution system that will see to the well-being of every person since such a system requires regard for the needs of other people, and too many of us simply don’t have it.

Therefore, the first thing to do in order to sail through the transition period toward a new society is to realize that we are dependent on each other, and especially on those who are opposite from us. We needn’t like people who think, speak, or act opposite from us, but we do need to recognize their value for us. We need to realize that they are the ones who render our own tenets valid. If we achieve this, we will realize that we can’t succeed without each other, or even be who we are. This is how interdependent we are.

We do not need to love, or even like each other, not yet anyway. All we need is to realize that those I hate are precisely the ones on whom my life depends. If we do that, we will have a society where people truly do not need to work, where they can spend their days in peace, since we’ll be watching out for one another.
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Question: Airbnb, a company that books accommodations around the world, has published a report with forecasts for the travel market for 2021. They believe that business travel will not return. Also people will often travel by car and not far from home. Fifty-two percent would prefer to leave their phones at home. Tourists do not want to spend time on photos and posting them on social networks, they are not interested in it and, also, so that no-one would connect with them.

At the same time, the majority of tourists are ready for new trips again, and 54% have either already booked tickets or are planning a tour today.

The first question is this: how can the desire to travel even if you are threatened with infection be explained? Haven’t we learned the lessons of the coronavirus?

Answer: The fact is that we do not live simply because we exist like cats that lie in the sun and bask. We still live by fulfillment.

And then I buy a ticket to somewhere, maybe not far away, but abroad, where something is new, different, and I have a different feeling, and I’m traveling.

Question: And no coronavirus can stop it? Does it live in a person?

Answer: It lives in the person. I think people will start traveling after all. It will be possible to travel to certain countries, and maybe to all of them. And they will come out of this state.

Without travel, there is no way to get any renewal. When you get into an unfamiliar environment, you become a child. And this state of carelessness, surprise, and discovery is very important for a person. Moreover, if he is already in old age (old like a young child), then it is very important for him, it’s renewing.

Question: Are you like a child when you travel?

Answer: Sure. Today we will go there, then we will go here and do something else! This childishness that wakes up in us, some kind of carefree feeling, is precisely what attracts us.

Question: But if we can travel to our inner world, will we see a bright world there?

Answer: In this we will see everything! We will see the most important thing: The cause and effect of everything that happens. I am a great optimist. It will happen and it will happen very quickly, and I will see it together with all of humanity.

We will come to discover the full depth of nature in its true form. We will see all the causes and effects, everything that happens, everything that we produce in nature, what reactions we awaken and why. In general, we will see everything in front of us, all the worlds—huge, huge, and all this will be in our attainment.

This is precisely the inner fulfillment of a person, above this there is nothing, there is nothing more complete than this, and this captures a person so much that he no longer needs anything. This is not a restriction or a stop on the way, it it is really for all that a person is created.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/8/21

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My new article on Linkedin “Erasing the (Inner) Distance”

As Jews around the world are preparing for Passover, which celebrates the exodus of the ancient Israelites from enslavement in Egypt, it seems as though the entire world is experiencing somewhat of a “global Egypt.” While Covid didn’t exactly enslave us, it certainly did restrain us. But more importantly, the way to escape Covid is the same way by which the Hebrews escaped Egypt.

Today, humanity is in a similar situation. The story of Egypt should serve as an allegory for us. If humanity chooses the same instrument that the ancient Hebrews did, namely unity, we, too, will be redeemed from the shackles of Covid, and indeed from all the adversities that have landed on us in the past century or so, and that are destined to land on us if we do not choose unity.

After Joseph, who was both the leader of the Hebrews and Pharaoh’s viceroy, died in Egypt, the state of the Jews continually deteriorated. They became dispersed and disintegrated, and wanted to mingle among the Egyptians. “Let us be as the Egyptians,” they said (Midrash Rabbah, Shemot). The Egyptians, in turn, who until then were very fond of the Hebrews, became increasingly hostile toward them. The Midrash continues to tell us about it: “Because of [their dispersion], the Lord turned the love that the Egyptians loved them into hatred.”

In the end, the Israelites found themselves separated, hated, and abused by their previously friendly hosts. They remained that way until Moses, who was both a Hebrew and the prince of Egypt, and grew up as Pharaoh’s adopted grandson, returned to his Hebrew roots and began to fight for his people. His struggle was tough. He had to fight not only against Pharaoh, but also against his own people, who did not want to unite under his leadership.

But once they agreed to start working on their unity, they were liberated from Egypt, fled to the desert, and eventually solidified their bond to such an extent that they achieved an unprecedented level of unity, which made them “as one man with one heart,” as the great 11th century commentary RASHI put it.

Today, humanity is in a similar situation. The story of Egypt should serve as an allegory for us. If humanity chooses the same instrument that the ancient Hebrews did, namely unity, we, too, will be redeemed from the shackles of Covid, and indeed from all the adversities that have landed on us in the past century or so, and that are destined to land on us if we do not choose unity.

While our world has become increasingly interconnected, our hearts have become increasingly disconnected from each other. Alienation and narcissism are pushing us apart and pollute our relationships much more than fossil fuels are polluting the planet. Our self-absorption has become so noxious and so antisocial that it became necessary to separate us from one another altogether. This is when Covid entered our world, forcing a global closure on all of humanity, but mainly on the developed, most self-centered parts of the world, namely the US, Western Europe, and China.

We should have used the timeout from excessive consumerism, exploitation, and mutual abuse to bring our hearts closer, similar to what the Israelites did in Egypt, once they were afflicted as a result of their own social disintegration. We didn’t do it. Instead, we waited for vaccines to be developed and yearned for the moment when we could resume our toxic living. Now we have vaccines, but we will not be able to resume our pre-Covid days. Since we did not work on bringing our hearts closer, our hearts only grew further apart. When we try to resume our former way of life, we will discover that we simply do not enjoy it anymore.

In the absence of pleasures in life, people’s depression will intensify and extremism will flourish in myriad ways. Humanity is going to reveal the worst of human nature, until it says “Enough!” and resolves to erase the inner distance among everyone, and build a united humanity.

Just as the consent of the ancient Israelites to work on their unity was enough to deliver them from Egypt, humanity’s consent to work on unity among all people is enough to deliver us from Covid, and from any adversity that is currently afflicting us. As long as we remain on the path of unity and keep improving it, we will go from strength to strength. If we revert to alienation, the plagues will return.

For the first time in history, we have a clear work plan, a path out of misery for all of humanity: Try to connect and you will succeed. Abandon connection, and you will suffer. This is what we will discover if we only begin to work on erasing the distance in our hearts.

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Humanity has gained new experience: what it’s like to live without the “toys” it is used to. Restricted conditions, detachment from work and entertainment, has woken us up to think more seriously about life and to have a different attitude to what is happening. More and more often, we will ask the question: how and what for do we live?

We have to become more serious in our decisions and actions. Like children after being punished, we have to understand that we have to improve and follow the laws of nature, become more united, not inflict harm on one another—since there is no choice: we live on one planet.

There is no #punishment from the Creator’s side. The #lockdown for a year is not a punishment, but correction. Nature wants to teach us to enjoy bestowal and love for the neighbor. For now we lack the understanding and taste for this. Soon we will see that there is no going back to the past. Great changes are coming.
#coronavirus #future

“The suffering of many is half of the consolation.” After a lengthy #lockdown, people’s #joy enhances the excitement of returning to the prior lifestyle. But the Creator will “ruin” this excitement. He will show the path of development to humanity in new forms. #Nature will defeat us— we will follow its laws.
#COVID19

From Twitter, 3/11/21

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