From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 10/31/20

Ire and frustration have erupted into the streets of Europe. Anti-lockdown protests and raging clashes between demonstrators and the police erupted in multiple cities across Europe, including Germany and Spain, and were particularly violent and widespread in Italy. Further restrictions for businesses and gatherings have been imposed in a new effort to contain the irrepressible pandemic, and people are reacting with a sense of desperate suffocation. The world is entering new challenges that will not be solved with financial or prophylactic measures, but will require adjustments within the realm of human relations.

Germany and France, two of the main European economies, announced new lockdowns for at least four weeks in response to the staggering, record high numbers of new coronavirus cases. As the virus spreads uncontrollably and the authorities fail to effectively deal with the crisis, where does it lead us? Since people see no solution on the horizon, we can expect the rioting to rapidly mushroom everywhere in the world, in every city, country, and continent. People will organize in every society according to their particular experience of the distress to express their anger, even in cultures which traditionally show more restraint such as the Scandinavian countries.

It is easy to understand what is spinning around in people’s minds. A person by nature is always looking ahead to anticipate his position in the future, what will happen to him and where life will lead. But within the predicament of this persistent and volatile plague, no one knows what to expect day to day. The present is full of uncertainty and suffering so the person is left with bitter apprehension about the future. By flocking to the streets it is possible to at least release tension and experience the comfort of a sense of solidarity with others, even though people may understand that it will not matter how loud they shout in the city squares or streets because no one is really listening.

In other words, deep inside, even if they are unaware of it, the main underlying theme of protestors is a hunger for togetherness. Demonstrators are ready to sit in jail for breaking the law, feeling that the sharing and common action are worth the consequences and pay off in the end. Common involvement adds a sense of significance and meaning to life. One can conclude from this that all the troubles, the diseases, are intertwined with a feeling of loneliness and a craving to rise above the distortions brought about by a culture of hundreds of years of ruthless competition, of thoughtless economic growth and development at the expense of warm connection between people.

The coronavirus is a force, albeit biological, which has caused great changes in us. The virus is helping us to understand that we live in an integral society and are longing for good connection with each other. The separation that was opening up between us—and also between us and the natural system—hit us hard. The coronavirus is certainly a direct product of our separation. Anger in the streets is just a symptom of our deep need for rapport. The remedy for all the suffering and pain of mankind is only connection.

The flip-flops about prospects for a long awaited vaccine do not help to calm humanity’s nerves. But even if one is discovered, the social problems will persist and prevail. Any financial bailout will always be felt as insufficient. Therefore, the only real solution is to cure our ailing human relationships which are the root cause of the world’s problems. Nature will keep influencing us in such a way that will oblige us to realize these truths and organize good connections between us, the only force that can neutralize any and every menace we may face.

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If we treat each other well, and especially if we love each other, then there can be no needy, poor, or sick people among us.

This means that the problem is only in the fact that there is no love between us. We shift the care for people in need to the government. We are ready to donate some money, but we do not put our heart into this, we cannot worry about people who are strangers to us.

This is why we will never be able to get rid of poverty and diseases! Even if we spend billions of dollars all over the world and organize all kinds of organizations and ministries that will take care of the needy, provide them with money and everything they need, there will still be poor, sick, and unfortunate people.

It is because we want to be free from caring for them. We ask: how much do I have to pay to avoid being asked to love? I am willing to pay a hundred dollars a month to be left alone. However, this is not what the Torah requires of us, it requires a heartfelt attitude.

Therefore, even in the richest countries poverty, crime, and human suffering will remain. Look what is happening to our world with all its progress and abundance. If we treated each other with love, we would live in paradise. Yet, we are not ready to be integrated with the others with our feelings, but only to pay money in order to be left alone. This does not solve the problem because the Torah requires a human heart.

Nature requires us to love each other. This is not someone’s idea and invention, after all, we are inside nature and its laws. These laws act on us more and more harshly, are driving us into a corner and demanding more and more stringently that this condition be fulfilled: complete connection between us, all the way up to love.

We will have to fulfill this condition anyway, if not now, then later. We will die and be born again until we fulfill the requirements of nature while living here in this world.

In fact, the goal is to achieve adhesion with the Creator and become like Him. Yet, it can only be realized through practical actions that are available to us, which are expressed in love for one’s neighbor as for oneself.

To the extent we hate each other, we are distancing from the Creator and do not feel Him. As soon as we begin to come closer and connect with each other, we will feel each other and feel the Creator between us. After all, this is all one single nature and everything depends only on our distancing or rapprochement.

The Creator wants us to know Him, and therefore we must go through all the states from complete separation to connection, in all possible forms. This is how we learn our own entire nature. Our egoism is so multifaceted that it generates an infinite number of different types of hatred. Yet, as we begin to get closer to the Creator, we begin to feel and understand Him and connect with Him.

Attainment always consists of two parts: mutual hatred and mutual love. According to the difference between love and hate, we begin to feel the Creator. One cannot be attained without the other because we are created beings and we attain everything only in the contrast of opposites.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/20

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Question: Now the next wave of coronavirus is beginning all over the world. Many countries are getting ready for the second lockdown and for Israel it is already a fact. Economies are collapsing, the world is renewing itself. How can people survive in the new world?

Answer: First, we have to understand that we really are living in a new world, which in the end will be drastically different from the previous one. After all, we are transferring from the physical world to the virtual world. There are technical, moral, ethical, and other prerequisites for this.

In the future, everything will depend on the moral efforts of people, how much they will understand and realize their good attitude toward each other. It may seem impossible, but this is exactly the world we must come to.

We are talking about the correction of our egoism, about an aspiration of a person to be closer to others and act for the benefit of all. From the former divided world, humanity is moving toward becoming an integral, unified whole. Nature makes us that way. We must understand this tendency and correspond to it to some extent.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/27/20

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The world is entering a new stage of the coronavirus epidemic. People are gradually beginning to realize that the virus and all the associated restrictions will remain with us for a long time, and gradually are changing us. We are starting to get tired and to despair because there is nowhere to strive to, nowhere to run to. There is no opportunity to earn and compete like before.

All of life seems to have fallen asleep, which has led to a feeling of general fatigue and discontent. In some strata of society, this manifests itself in an explosion of indignation, in others in a silent depression. Some destroy and plunder, some go to demonstrations, and the unrest threatens to escalate into civil wars, as it has happened in history.

If people do not have a clear perspective for the future and a goal for which it is worth living, they begin to degrade, not knowing what to do with themselves. The absence of a future takes away all strength from a person because he has nowhere to strive to, nothing to do. Therefore, in all countries, people will begin to feel themselves without strength, without purpose, without any interest in life, in a state of apathy, from which it is impossible to get out.

But maybe there is a way that the Creator wants to show people? Life has not been too purposeful before. We just made up goals for ourselves, like in a child’s game—if only there were something to play.

But now, when the Creator has taken this game from us and does not allow us to continue like we did before, can we understand where we actually ended up? What kind of life was it? A useless race from morning to night to earn and spend everything, and earn and spend again. We were spinning like a hamster on a wheel.

Perhaps, from hopelessness, a person will agree to change the principle, and if there is no strength to take care of himself, he will begin to care for others? Then others will take care of him, and we will receive the right fulfillment from life. The main thing is that I have strength, a reason to move and do something. We will begin to live for a common goal, support each other, and then the future will shine upon us and give everyone strength.

There will be something to live for! Moreover, we will gain an eternal goal, not such a fleeting one as we have today. We will reveal the perfect form of nature, a higher power and will be able to control our lives; this will be real life, and not a game as it was before.

We are facing a difficult winter and very serious states that can explain a lot to us if we are sensitive and try to understand the Creator’s intentions, what He wants.

Try to feel where the Creator leads all of humanity, how we can understand His play with us with the desire to enjoy that was created by Him. According to what the Creator awakens in people, it will become easier for us to assimilate new concepts in our life, in nature, and to come closer and closer to the Creator.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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The main reason for the unrest is not that people are left without jobs and without means for living, but that they lost their future. This despair is spreading like an epidemic from family to family, from city to city, from country to country.

A sense of hopelessness, apathy, and loss of perspective for the future has already engulfed the entire globe, covering it from all sides. It is as if an engine has stopped because there is no need to spin, businesses are closing.

No one except us understands what is happening and how to deal with it. People should understand that it is impossible to work for their own fulfillment anymore; it is a deception because it does not provide fulfillment. Fulfillment disappears and I become disappointed in this work.

But here we find a new method of fulfilling ourselves from fulfilling others, and we get a second wind. We simply all together reconfigure ourselves and receive real infinite and limitless pleasure from being able to take care of each other. The purpose of creation is to give us pleasure, a true one, not temporary and disappearing.

We are now at this transition. It is difficult to say how long it will last, but apparently, it will last for an extended period of time, which humanity needs to understand this change and to implement it.

Today we live for the sake of fulfilling ourselves, and tomorrow we will live for the sake of fulfilling our friends and the ten. I will be devoted to the ten because only through it can I fulfill the Creator and humanity. Such internal transformation takes time.

Yet, it all depends on us. Maybe we can change that quickly. Look at the huge changes in human nature and its thoughts that the pandemic has made in a matter of months. I did not think it could happen so quickly.

Day by day there are changes in different places of the world as if waves are rolling across the ocean rising in one place, then in another. The upper light affects the entire depth of the desire of creation and changes it from the highest layers to the lowest ones, including the Klipot and desires that are not yet ripe for clarification and correction.

The process is very complex. However, the common despair and apathy and the unbearable feeling of emptiness that leads to an explosion show that the Creator is leading us to very serious steps.

The feeling of emptiness is the worst. A person is ready to do anything, even die, just not to feel empty. This is the structure of desire, Kli.

The Creator cannot do anything if we do not ask. The upper light is constantly approaching us like a meteorite approaching the Earth from the depths of the universe. It may take years for it to reach us and enter the layers of the atmosphere; however, already today scientists can say that in twenty years it will fall to Earth. For twenty years it will be approaching us, but what can we do?

This is how we need to understand that the Creator, the upper light, is approaching and wants to be revealed. He will be revealed either in the opposite form since He is opposite to the will to receive, and therefore will be accompanied by problems and troubles. Or He can be revealed according to the similarity of qualities, and then we will meet Him “face to face” and adhere to Him according to the good will of the receiver and the giver.

It all depends on us whether we can establish the correct connection between the vast desire of humanity and the Creator each time. We are responsible for this contact, and I hope we will be ready to do our work correctly. Otherwise, the contradiction between the Creator and the will to receive will become so great that it will lead to very serious consequences.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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New Life 1283 – The Tenant Landlord Dilemma
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Tenants are finding it hard to pay rent during the coronavirus crisis and are asking for a significant discount. Landlords should agree to lower the rent temporarily since humanity is facing an economic blow as a single family. This means that the landlord will profit a bit less, but if such a move leads to expenses, he should relate to it differently. From the perspective of the state, it must ensure everyone’s basic necessities. Everyone should ask himself in what way he is contributing since we all have a responsibility.

We are actually at war. Nature is forcing us to connect to each other differently in an integral way since otherwise, the situation in our country will be very bad. We are all in the same boat and we depend on each other. Having no choice, everyone will warm his heart and relate to others as to his own family and relatives. In this war, whoever is ready to sacrifice himself will gain more and will open up a new reality for himself.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1283 – The Tenant Landlord Dilemma,” 10/9/20

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The coronavirus pandemic is causing a common complication for all of humanity: fatigue from losing purpose, hope, and reward for effort. A person subconsciously feels that there is nothing to live for and sinks into apathy, depression, and despondency. The whole world seems to be falling asleep.

Previously, all of us were playing in competition, building and destroying, bustling constantly like children. Today it is already impossible to continue these games, and people do not understand what to do and for what. There are so many restrictions. Therefore, everyone is seized by apathy and hopelessness; there is no strength to move, no energy, no goal.

Can it be that the Creator wants to show that there is no point in living for ourselves as we tried before? In fact, that was self-deception because no one really lived for himself, it just seemed that way to him. If we start thinking about each other now out of hopelessness, we will support each other in this, and the Creator will also support us.

In this way we will see that there is life after the death of our egoism! Another, eternal and perfect, beautiful life that can give us fulfillment, motivation to live and great energy.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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My new article on Linkedin “Humanity Teetering between Heaven and Hell”

We’re in a new stage in our “relationship” with the pandemic. We recognize that it’ll stay with us for a long time, perhaps forever, and we’re frustrated. Everyone’s exhausted by the virus; nerves are stretched thin and can snap at any moment. This tension manifests differently in different people, but virtually always negatively—increased violence, depression, intolerance, political and religious extremism, and violent protests.

A society is much stronger than an individual. It can provide us with everything we need and much more: security, sustenance, education, entertainment, leisure, fun and games, support when we are weak, and peace of mind about the future. What should we do in return for these benefits? We should do for others what they do for us. Reciprocity is the key to any successful relationship, and the same goes for our relationship with society.

If matters continue to evolve in this direction, they can easily lead to civil unrest or even civil war. In a state where people see no future, when they are hopeless, they are capable of anything, including the most extreme violence just to break out of the dreary apathy that’s pulling them down. If we let ourselves go down that path, life will be hell on earth.

But there is another way. In such a dire state, under a clear threat to everyone’s lives, perhaps we will realize that our worst and only enemy is our own egoism. Not mine, or his, or hers alone, but of all of us as a collective. We, as a society, are very selfish and idolize selfish individuals who present themselves as happy thanks to their selfishness. When we admire selfish individuals, we are admiring selfishness and, even worse, make everyone else admire it.

By definition, a society is the opposite of selfishness. If we want to be individualistic, we should retire to some secluded place, live by ourselves, and whoever survives, survives. But if we want to live as a society, we have to behave as parts of it, namely not individualistically but socially. If we want to live in a society yet behave as though we’re by ourselves and only we matter, society will explode. This is what we’re doing to ourselves right now. If we agree that humans are social beings, we have to act the part. It is common sense.

A society is much stronger than an individual. It can provide us with everything we need and much more: security, sustenance, education, entertainment, leisure, fun and games, support when we are weak, and peace of mind about the future. What should we do in return for these benefits? We should do for others what they do for us. Reciprocity is the key to any successful relationship, and the same goes for our relationship with society.

If we realize that our egos have blinded us to this obvious truth, we will make our lives heaven on earth. This is where we can go, if we choose to do it together. The simple truth is that there is nothing more senseless and weakening than thinking of ourselves, and nothing smarter and more emboldening than thinking of each other.

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Comment: Some journalists have noted that because of the coronavirus, the office culture that obliged us to look good, to drive certain cars to work to be liked, is not operating now. Instead there is a shift in focus from verbal to written communication. Some conclude these shifts pressure us to see who we really are.

My Response: Of course. There will be one simple communication: yes, no, and so on. Moreover, this will be very clearly accepted by everyone. And in no case will it hurt anyone.

There should be a definite clear greeting, but nothing more. Bows, praises, and so on—it will not work.

Question: And what do think about this will pressure people to see who they really are?

Answer: A clearer truth about a person is revealed.

Remark: Can you imagine how much a person thought about what kind of gift to bring to their boss?

My Comment: Yes, now it is over. The era has passed! Even if it partially returns, it will not be like that, of course.

Question: What does a person see when he begins to look at himself from the inside?

Answer: He begins to see who he is. And of course, he sees something terrible.

Question: Should he see this terrible thing?

Answer: Gradually, not immediately. From zero to 100% until he sees the realization of evil up to complete correction.

Question: Man cannot skip this stage?

Answer: No. What will he base his correction, his spiritual elevation, on?

Question: Is the realization of evil joyful or scary for a person?

Answer: I think it is joyful. One can gloat: “How much dirt, rubbish I have dug up in myself today!” As if you dig the earth with a shovel like this: dig, dig, turn yourself over, break into lumps in order to plant new young shoots.

This is not the self-scrutiny accepted by us previously: “How bad I am.” This is a kind of introspection where you change the principle of receiving to the principle of bestowal and want everyone to benefit from it. You turn the layers of dirt inside yourself from those below to those above. And then you can plant new life.

The fact that we have left offices, of course, will bring huge changes in everything.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/27/20

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Question: Earlier this year several news sources reported on a Carleton University School of Journalism survey in which almost half of the 2,000 Canadians reported believing in coronavirus conspiracy theories ranging from it being an engineered bioweapon to a 5G cover-up.

Who is behind the pandemic from your point of view?

Answer: It is human egoism that does not want to rise above itself and be in good connection with other people. With everyone! Just to be in a good connection without all kinds of conspiracy theories and without the dominance of someone over someone.

The unwillingness to treat each other well leads to the fact that viruses are awakening between us. We will not get away from this until we correct our attitude.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/27/20

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