New Life 1264 – Coping With The Socio-Economic Crisis
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

The coronavirus pandemic has turned from a health crisis, which united people against it, into an economic crisis in which everyone is afraid for the survival of their own families and sees everyone else as enemies. The virus wants all of humanity to unite against it. It wants Israel to fulfill its destiny, explain the meaning of life to humanity, and lead them into higher connection above the human ego. People need to be taken through the process of development from their current egoistic state into altruistic relations. They will learn to mind the benefit of others rather than minding their own benefit. In this new era, everyone will have their basic needs provided for by the government and, simultaneously, people will participate in integral education that teaches mutual bestowal, love, and connection. Everyone will be happy with what they receive and will receive their hearts’ desire.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1264 – Coping With The Socio-Economic Crisis” 7/13/20

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Comment: The pandemic has shown that no one needs jewelry. Their market is falling rapidly. Suddenly a person realized that he needed to dress a little, eat, and the diamonds that he wore to show others were not needed. They say that the jewelry market has fallen 10 times and is falling further.

What is in them? Why were they bought for such crazy money? And humanity appreciated them and killed each other because of them. So much blood has been spilled.

My Response: Because it is rare. Diamonds are mined in the ground with great difficulty. Then they are polished and cut. In the end, it costs money.

Question: What is it about them in your understanding?

Answer: Kabbalistically? Absolutely nothing. People just give it a price. For example, he took some piece of paper and gave it a price. And now it’s all worthless.

Comment: In such difficult times, between bread and diamonds, a person chooses bread.

My Response: Of course. He will give everything for bread.

Comment: That is, there is value in bread, but not in diamonds.

My Response: Because the most important thing is life.

Question: Why is this done from above, by a higher power?

Answer: So that people will stop defining values in this world that seem to them to be values.

Question: So we pray to this god? And this is not God at all?

Answer: Of course! Well, what’s in this pebble?

Question: Why are we being directed toward it? So much blood has been shed! Wars started because of it.

Answer: Humanity needs something valuable, precious, so that it can fight for it, speculate, sell, buy, exchange, store, and inherit it. How else? There must be some value in life. I don’t exist, I am dying. What’s next? Where do I contain my value? I have to put it in something.

Question: This is scary, what you say. That is, I put it in this rock?

Answer: And I pass it on to my grandson.

Comment: I give him this value and say: “Live like this. Live like this.”

My Response: And it helps him in everything, because I give him something that is appreciated by all people.

Question: By this I give him strength?

Answer: Of course. And today all this is beginning to undergo a reassessment of values.

Question: And what are we approaching?

Answer: To the fact that there is nothing of value.

Question: Is there nothing valuable in this life?

Answer: Generally! Except for thought! We come back to what we were talking about: except for the thought that you can pass on to your grandson, there is nothing valuable in the world.

Using your thought, he really acquires wealth. What is thought in general? Is it empty? But he really gets something that exists eternally, perfectly, and no one can steal and do anything about it.

This is the most important wealth, the attitude toward life, the attitude toward people. Thought is your inner wealth. This is more precious than any diamond.

In our time, we are coming to a state of radical reassessment of values. That is, what was valuable to me, for which I fought, lived, died, tried to accumulate, pass on to the next generations—all this is losing its value today, is worth nothing.

Question: After all, where are we going now? What will life really cost, money?

Answer: Just a thought.

Question: But doesn’t that seem abstract to you for a person?

Answer: And what does a person have that is not abstract at all, if he lives and dies? This means that the most valuable thing is that he can take from one state, when he lives, to that state when he dies, beyond the brink of death.

Question: Can he take a thought there?

Answer: Of course. This is what remains with him.

Question: What thought needs to be worked out now so that it is valuable and necessary?

Answer: A positive attitude toward the world and toward others. It doesn’t go anywhere. This stays with you constantly because it is not in your egoism, which dies with the body and decays, but is in altruism, in the good qualities that you acquire during your earthly life. And then you fly away with them, enter another space, the space of positive properties and forces.

We exist in order to accumulate such positive emotions, thoughts, desires, motives, and impulses and leave with them. I leave this world, passing, as far as I could, a positive attitude toward the world, toward people, and toward life to my children and grandchildren, and in general to everyone.

Question: Do you think that this is your mission and all of ours?

Answer: Of course. But that’s my opinion.

Question: But is this the opinion of Kabbalists of all generations?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: And what I now see, as everyone writes in the comments: evil, horror, hatred, breakage.

My Response: This pushes us to assess what we really need to identify from our life, collect and transmit, and teach the next generation.

Question: That is, how to push off from this darkness and move toward a good thought?

Answer: Yes. Everything will be fine.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/15/20

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In the News (Teen Vogue): “In a now viral post, a BTS [K-Pop boyband] fan on Twitter used the seven member group to explain the components of an animal cell. …’I’m a biology major and I love the sciences so I thought it would be cool to incorporate my studies into it. … I thought about their respective personalities and roles in the group and tried my best to connect that to the roles of various organelles within the cell.'”

Question: Can we compare the way the cell functions as a model for building a group or a society?

Answer: Basically, yes. We know that every organism is made of contrasting parts, but they have to connect in a certain way for the sake of sustaining and creating a new complex integral organism.

The basis of this connection is that each of them bends itself in the direction of the common view, common role, and common goal. This means that to a certain extent each one subdues and lowers itself,  even destroys something about itself, and definitely limits itself in order to create one vital, multi-purpose, coordinated organism. It should be such an organism that can play with its different parts in any situation, and thus add totally different features from its internal attributes. What is more, these features should already be complex and of high standard.

For example, when different musical instruments connect into one gigantic musical instrument, an orchestra, their emotions, expressions, and sensations all connect, and thus produce a unique combination of sounds.

Question: When a nuclear cell is first created from non-nuclear cells, it is created as a result of an aggressive environment. How can a human organism be created without the impact of an aggressive environment but as a result of a positive impact?

Answer: It is impossible without an aggressive impact. There must be a common enemy of all the parts so they will begin to connect thanks to it. There cannot be a positive impact that will lead to connection because we are made solely of egoistic matter.

So there needs to be great external scares and threats in order to overcome our egoism. Perhaps then I will be able to subordinate myself to the rest, let’s say before a certain group, and enter it so they will feel that they benefit from me because I am ready to annul myself before them and enter them as an absolute integral part.

Question: Does this mean that now unity in society is simply impossible?

Answer: It is not possible in any way. Society needs to feel the threat of annihilation, and only then will it be able to think about uniting integrally, because the whole unity is based on my obedience to others.

Remark: In human society, in a collective, in a regiment, it is possible for a person who fulfills a certain function to say at a certain point: “That’s it, enough, I am tired, I cannot carry on any longer.”

My Comment: No. When people begin to connect to each other, they work in such a way that their unity positively affects them. They see progress and a positive outcome.

If at first we have to escape death, when we begin to connect, a new life spreads before us, a new level. This is a different matter. Here different positive components begin to emerge that draw us forward. Of course the initial state is merely the fear of death, which means escape from death.

Question: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, what is the name of the state that we acquire as we cooperate in the group?

Answer: Unity—when each one begins to see a part of himself in others and understands that without connecting to others he will not be able to feel the new life. The new life is felt on a new level. You cannot convey this to people who do not feel it because you have to actually annul yourself and enter others, connect to them, and in the mutual connection between you, you feel the totally new state, a new life.

Life is where you feel others instead of yourself. This is an incredible feeling, and it is beyond the framework of our life. Your personal, individual life, is the feeling of yourself, while here, we begin to feel others and actually accept them as our life. This means that everything that exists outside of me is called spiritual life, and everything that exists inside of me is called corporeal life.

Yet I cannot enter this state and annul myself, even if I can expect good things and unearthly feelings. I cannot overcome my ego, which is an obstacle on my way to connecting with others. There must be a real breakthrough here, and only a terribly great fear can provide that.

There is a way to overcome fear easily: if a person enters such a group in advance, wants to connect to others, joins them, cooperates with them, and so on. In any case, a real entrance to a group is accompanied by fear of being thrown out, which means actual spiritual death for a person. The motivation is great, because by doing so I begin to feel life outside myself.

When I feel myself, I feel my corporeal life has come to an end, if not today, then tomorrow, but when I exit myself, I begin to feel life outside myself, which is eternal and whole.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/18

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Question: We are always trying to change everything around us, for example, the leader of the governing party, our spouse, place of residence, everything except for one thing—ourselves. Why doesn’t a person realize that the only thing they can change is their attitude to the world?

Answer: Our egoism does not allow us to realize it.

To change myself means that I am not good, I must improve myself. Why should I do this? This is the hardest work that requires a lot of effort, energy, investment, and annulling myself before others. It is against our nature to yield to others. It is not easy.

Only if a person has a very big goal in front of them can they force themselves to do it. For example, if we want to achieve some goal while studying at the university, then it is more important for us than just lying on the couch.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/7/20

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In the World of Disturbances

Comment: Scientists believe that today’s life is full of stressful situations. A person rushes to work and drops off children to daycare on the way. Because of this, they may be late for work, which leads to conflicts, they may be fired, and so on. However, only 100 to 200 years ago, such things did not exist.

My Response: We can define stress that a person experiences as a force of huge external pressure.

We live in a world of disturbances that press on a person every second. Besides, our life is very artificial. Previously, a person understood in a natural way where he was and what was happening around him. He had a home and family, worked in the fields, in the garden, and so on.

Today, however, he is surrounded by such a huge field of completely different sources of pressure that cause him not just a lack of understanding of the situation, but a reaction to it in the form of stress.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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Stress is a Loss of Orientation in the Modern World

Remark: Stress is the mobilization of the body’s resources, a state of increased tension, as a protective reaction to various adverse factors. The physiologist Hans Selye was one of the first to introduce the term “stress” only 70 years ago. It seems that before this, either people did not have stress, or they just did not know what it was.

My Comment: Back then, people were not developed enough to feel stressed.

Question: In psychology, stress includes the concepts of anxiety, conflict, a threat to one’s own “I.” How would you define stress from the point of view of Kabbalah?

Answer: Stress is a feeling of great inner tension due to the loss of clear orientation.

Question: Indeed, loss of orientation is exactly what is happening today. If we turn to history, did people experience stress 1,000 to 5,000 years ago?

Answer: No, people did not feel stressed. They had slightly different preferences in life. They understood what could happen: death, starvation, suffering from cold, or some other factors.

These were very simple, corporeal problems of a completely different level of perception. People did not consider things that seem terrible to us today to be anything out of the ordinary, even when they were led to execution or burned at the stake.

Remark: In my understanding, stress is a state when I really want to receive something for a long time, but I cannot. This already causes discomfort and strong dissonance.

My Comment: Yes, this is also stress but of a different type, not an immediate, but a prolonged one.

Remark: The cause of stress can be any conflicting situation, or dissatisfaction with your appearance, or routine life, or long-term chronic diseases, and so on.

My Comment: The reasons can be very diverse when the desired and the actual do not match.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/14/20

Higher education has never been so low. From the zenith of being the sole possession of reclusive monks who dedicated their lives to delving in secret ancient texts in isolated monasteries, science has become a tool in the hands of the rich and powerful to dominate, exploit, manipulate, and intimidate rivals and the general public. Humanities and social sciences, which once debated ideologies and discussed the merits and demerits of human nature and humankind, are now used as indoctrination tools to plant dogmas in young and malleable minds.

Universities were once a place where you came to grow as a person, broaden your horizons, learn about the world we live in, the ideas that permeate society, and formulate your views about the world. But since universities have become dependent on private funding, their facade as intellectual establishments has been nothing but a front. Today, when you enter college, you can tell from day one what will be your worldview and political affiliation when you graduate.

Even history, a field of research that was supposed to be a straightforward study of the past, is subject to so many interpretations and distortions that no one can agree even on the facts. Ask a thousand historians, and you will hear a thousand views, often completely contradictory, on the same event and based on the same evidence.

To have any merit, humanities and social sciences must be disconnected from hard sciences and acknowledged for what they are: personal interpretations of reality based on personal background and personal knowledge. As things currently stand, universities are both the source of the social fragmentation that is disintegrating society, and a hub where intolerance, division, and destructive views are nurtured in the name of “academic freedom.”

An academic degree still enjoys respect, especially higher degrees. However, if matters continue to develop as they have been for several decades now, universities will lose all merit in the eyes of the public. According to the institution from which one has graduated, you will know what political view to expect, and accordingly, people will decide whether or not to listen to that person.

Worse yet, higher education institutions are failing to provide students with required knowledge for today’s job market. Already, professional trainings are far more effective for employers than a university or a college degree. Since the knowledge, training, and professional experience of applicants who have been given professional training are far more relevant for what employers need, they will often prefer them over applicants who have expansive general background but little professional required knowledge, and who require more training to become productive workers.

There are, of course, benefits to academic learning. Being able to formulate one’s thoughts in a consistent, clear manner is very important for any person. Also, the rules of academic writing allow us to go over vast amounts of material very quickly without losing essential information. Learning how to meet deadlines, handle pressure, and collaborate with peers to produce a better outcome are all desirable results of academic learning. Yet, the price tag of warping young minds in order to acquire these skills does not seem to justify it, especially since there are other ways to get them.

And perhaps the biggest loss of all is the leakage of permission to interpret into hard sciences. You cannot call something “hard science” or “exact science” if it is based on interpretation rather than on measurements and results. If you can play with numbers the way you play with words, then the numbers are meaningless as is the science you profess to present. For this reason, hard sciences must be cut off from institutions that teach humanities and social sciences, and the two latter ones should not be regarded as sciences whatsoever, since they are not.

To merit its name, higher education needs to focus first and foremost on acquiring social skills, communication skills, ability to articulate feelings, embrace conflicting views, and making room for diverse perspectives in a vibrant society. Put differently, higher education should be about elevating the level of humanness in humans. Education must be pristine in terms of political bias (as hard as it truly is to do), and focus on creative and inclusive thinking to create broadminded individuals rather than the current opposite. Unless the academia reverses course soon, it will be too late to save it.

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Medium published my new article “Mask Wearing, Freedom vs. Love of Others?”

Life saver to some and symbol of tyranny to others — the requirement to wear a mask in public to prevent further contagion of COVID-19 has split societies around the globe. In America, the rebellious and visceral reactions of significant numbers of customers in shops and offices, where wearing a mask is mandatory, have even surprised mental health experts. People’s outrage has been expressed in the streets of the US and also in big cities such as Berlin and London where thousands protested the measure. But are we clear on what true freedom means? Clarity can only be grasped when we are considerate of one another.

Nature is like a loving parent giving his tender child a bitter medicine, while we behave like the child who is kicking and crying and refusing to swallow. Nature has a clear purpose: to bring all of humanity to unity. Thus, we will not be able to escape the plague until we realize that we are in one boat, all of humanity.

Despite vast scientific support for the efficacy of mask-wearing to prevent a wider spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the debate about their effectiveness refuses to die among those who defy face coverings and social distancing as preventative measures. But there is a deeper reason for their refusal: human nature. People are willing to risk the lives of others and their own to preserve what they consider their personal liberties. They ask themselves, “Why should an order from the government be imposed to restrict me? What is it that puts a bridle on my mouth like a horse? I am a free person!

Why the Anti-Mask Sentiment?

As someone who has studied human nature for more than forty years, I can understand them. They feel masks and the limitations that they symbolize are oppressive and demeaning. Some virus comes and suddenly they are obliged to wear masks, while governments look helpless to handle the situation. Of course they will shout in the streets. Countries that thought they had handled the Covid-19 crisis successfully find themselves falling again. The virus never ends; it simply does not go away and nothing seems to help.

People’s defiance against the mask requirement is evidence of our inability, failure, and even indifference to educating our societies correctly. People have not been educated about how to take care of themselves and be considerate of one another. There isn’t a government in the world that can set an example to anyone in this, and also not among those in charge of the health system — all follow their own specific and particular interests. We are witnessing a total collapse of the human system. There is basically nothing from among the existing societal structures that we can present to people as an example to be respected and listened to — everything is corrupt.

It is the virus itself which has taken our education into hand. Nature is law-bound to behave in every way to bring man into alignment with its system, to the knowledge of his “evil inclination.” Until man attains a higher consciousness, nature must show him that the destruction in his life stems from the destruction in his relationship with others.

Nature is like a loving parent giving his tender child a bitter medicine, while we behave like the child who is kicking and crying and refusing to swallow. Nature has a clear purpose: to bring all of humanity to unity. Thus, we will not be able to escape the plague until we realize that we are in one boat, all of humanity.

We influence and depend on one another. Therefore, each must act accordingly by developing the conviction and intention to avoid transmitting the virus and harming others. When we view our situation from this perspective, we will not view the mandatory measures like mask wearing as coercion but as a gesture of love and care for others, implemented with a blessing.

The world is circular and functions in that same fashion, as a unit. In the current state, that circle is being hit by crises from every direction. So, what to do? We must first realize that we are immersed in an interrelated system of connections. This means that every single action will affect the whole. Therefore, the only way to overcome the state of crisis is to think and behave as one, in mutual responsibility. That is our true freedom of choice.
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Question: You said that in the future 20 to 30% of the world population will work and 70% will study. What will they study?

Answer: If you calculate what percentage of the people we need in the workforce, including scientists, programmers, and all other specialists only to provide people with everything necessary for existence and not to produce unnecessary surpluses for anyone, then I think it will be 20%.

And everyone else will study and get a scholarship for it, not unemployment benefits like now when people sit at home and do nothing.

They will learn about the integrality of the world and the correct interaction with each other in order to be at the human level, not at the level of inanimate, vegetative, or animate nature, but at the level of human nature.

Being properly interconnected, they will provide the world with mutual integral dependence. In this sphere, everyone will feel themselves above the egoism of our world, eternal and perfect.

In order to achieve this state, we need to educate all of humanity. And to feed ourselves at a normal, comfortable but necessary level, we need no more than 20%. And it will not be some class of slaves because they will give only 20% of their time to get and produce that they need.

Nature will lead us to this no matter how much we resist. We can no longer resist, we can no longer develop egoistically and put only the money at the forefront. It will not do any good anyway.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/24/20

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Medium published my new article “A Generational Catastrophe in Education”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that we’re experiencing a “generational catastrophe” in education because of school closures during the coronavirus pandemic. On the one hand, I understand why this is sad. On the other hand, if we look at how people turn out after spending their entire childhood and adolescence in the educational system, I’m not so sure we should regret its closure. In my opinion, it is actually the disconnection from the old system that will allow us to examine it from aside, criticize it, and build a new and better one.

The correct education system should put the emphasis on human connection, not on inculcation of information. It should teach children that people with different views are not enemies.

The violence on the streets and within homes, the crime rate, substance abuse, prostitution, depression rates, suicides, all those are results of the education we give to our children. So one can lament the closure of the education system, but judging by the results, it hasn’t been a success story.

The deterioration hasn’t started with the emergence of Covid-19. It has been going on for decades.
The educational system was built during the Industrial Revolution, and its purpose was to give farmers who had migrated into cities the required knowledge to become machine operators. Over time, we added more and more fields of knowledge to the schooling system but we didn’t change the basic principle: Memorize the material your teachers tell you and that’s all you need in order to do a good job.

Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that schooling gives children knowledge but does not improve them as human beings. That part, the one that teaches them how to communicate with other people, how to care for one another, how to be a positive element in society, has been forgotten altogether. Parents no longer teach it since the children aren’t at home, and schools don’t teach it since they weren’t made for it in the first place, so the result is that eighteen years after they are born, the sweet children on whom we pinned our hopes have become fully grown, incorrigible savages. This is why it is just as well that the schools have closed; it is yet another benefit of Covid-19 to society.

The correct education system should put the emphasis on human connection, not on inculcation of information. It should teach children that people with different views are not enemies. On the contrary, they show us perspectives that we might have otherwise missed. Even if we disagree with other people, we would not know why we think what we think were it not for the need to articulate our views.

Moreover, in a world so full of opposites, it is easy to see that just as nothing in nature is complete without its opposite, so it is with people. When we hold different views, it may feel like we are arguing over whose opinion is correct, but in truth, we are advancing the whole world to a higher level of existence.

Similarly, when we look at our feet as we walk, it seems as though they are competing. But we, who see them from above, know that the apparent competition is really an advancement of the whole body toward the next place we want to go. Were it not for the apparent competition, we wouldn’t advance at all, we would be standing still.

But children do not learn all that at school; they only memorize. This is why I am so happy that we’ve finally come to a point where we can truly educate ourselves, become human beings, not human computers. Now, perhaps, there is hope for our species.
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