Comment: Michael writes: “Now more than ever, there is a huge hatred that rules everything. I am sure it will divide us, those who were once brothers and sisters, for thousands of years. We will never be the same again, we will not sing naive songs about friendship and love: ‘Children of different nations, we live dreaming of peace… . Youth sing the song of friendship… . You cannot stifle this song, you cannot kill it… .’ Did we really sing that? Today we all burn with hatred. What can we do about it?”

Answer: We were just like children in kindergarten who were taught to sing. They did not know; they opened their mouths and sang without understanding the meaning of these words.

Today, we gradually begin to understand the meaning of these words, and we do not want to sing these songs. Tomorrow, we will begin to realize how really great these words were, but no one has ever been able to implement them.

And then we will strive to think and dream about how we can get closer to this realization because it is impossible to exist without it. We will find a way to achieve a world in which children of different nations, all of humanity will feel like one unified whole.

Question: “We live dreaming of peace” was the anthem of the democratic youth, as far as I remember. So you are saying that we sang these songs kind of mindlessly?

Answer: We perceived it like children. Both adults and children perceived it this way. And now we are given suffering and reason in order for us to understand what we lack in these words, in our awareness of them. And we will come to the point that we will begin to implement the lyrics of this song at their true level. I see it coming. You’ll see!

Comment: I take this external song, put it in my heart, and sing it.

My Response: Yes, and all this is happening. It depends on us to shorten the time. Acceleration depends on us. We must try.

Question: And this transition, which you say should happen through the mind, through the heart, how does it happen?

Answer: Through gradual awareness. It is not just some kind of leap or hocus-pocus. This is what people want to happen, really want to attract themselves to this state or this state to themselves, performing all kinds of actions between them in our world—rapprochement and so on.

That is, it is a lot of work both physical, moral, and pedagogical. In general, we still have a lot of work ahead of us here.

Question: So the events that are happening should have happened?

Answer: We are yet to see that everything negative that happened at all times among all nations was all only suffering from the fact that we were moving away from each other and did not understand how much we should, on the contrary, get closer.

And now all these sufferings will manifest themselves in us and push us toward closeness. And then we will be grateful for them and realize how much there is only happiness in the world and movement toward the light.

Everything that happens is a movement toward happiness and light.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/3/22

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My new article on Linkedin “A War over Worldviews”

The war in Ukraine seems to be at a stalemate; Russia had underestimated the determination of the Ukrainian people and the military power of its army, and Ukraine is not strong enough to drive the Russian forces out of the country altogether. As a result, a war that many expected to last no more than two weeks before Ukraine capitulates has become a war of attrition that is decimating Ukraine’s cities, displacing a quarter of its people, so far, and killing thousands of civilians. On the other end, the war is exhausting Russia’s military might, depleting its resources, and frustrating its leadership.

Yet, a more clandestine, yet very significant process is taking place in Ukraine: a farewell to imposing ideologies and the onset of a more rational approach to governance. Winston Churchill, England’s prime minister during World War II, knew a thing or two about fighting against tyrants. In 1947, he said, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I tend to agree with this statement, although clearly, we have witnessed the faults of Western regimes since 1947 more than once. Yet, it is not because we need to change the Western approach to governance, but because we need to add a missing element that will solidify it and guarantee its success: sincere concern for others.

If Western governments are plagued by the same hunger for power that soils every other regime, they will inevitably become despotic, too, albeit perhaps with titles that sound more appealing, and therefore more misleading.

In order to succeed, the goal of Western civilization must be to establish societies that are not only free from tyranny, but free from hatred of others, as hatred is the cause of tyranny and oppression.

Liberation from hatred is humanity’s next step. It is imperative to maintain democracy while we are evolving, but we must not think that democracy is the end of the road. All the while, we should be teaching ourselves how to care for others, starting with our own countries, and ending with caring for other nations just as we care for our own. Only in this way will humanity have a future that is not strewn with bloodshed.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Globalization 2.0”

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, overseeing $10 trillion. Last Thursday, its founder and CEO Larry Fink, sent a letter to shareholders stating that “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades.” Fink is not alone. Wall Street investor Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital echoed similar concerns in his own letter to shareholders on Wednesday. He wrote that negative aspects of globalization have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and have “caused the pendulum to swing back to local sourcing.” I do not foresee countries disconnecting from each other, but there is definitely a shift. We are heading toward a world where economies share with one another, and people feel more like a global society than an assortment of nations. We are headed toward the next phase of globalization: globalization 2.0, if you will.

Previously, production required working hands. When the cost of labor became prohibitive in the West, companies sought cheaper labor elsewhere and began to move production lines overseas. At the same time, communication improved, transportation became more affordable, and products that were once distributed locally began to find global markets.

Today, however, there is less need for working hands, since much more is done by robots and automated machines. Products have also become increasingly compact, and these days even services such as call centers are outsourced to other countries. Locality, it seems, has lost much of its significance; it has become less important where something is produced, and less of a factor in its pricing. Clearly, many products are still dependent on location, such as ores or fuels, but the trend is crystal clear.

While locality has lost much of its significance, connections between countries have become imperative for their survival. The economic asphyxiation imposed on Russia through sanctions due to its invasion into Ukraine will hurt it very badly. Just as globalization sustains some countries, especially those heavily dependent on export or import, denying it can destroy a country by cutting off provisions and disconnecting it from the global financial system.

The only time when disconnecting a country is helpful is when it is for the purpose of forming a better, more correct connection. Just as parents sometimes send their children to their separate rooms when they cannot stop fighting until they cool down, sometimes countries need to do the same.

The situation between Russia and Ukraine is an example of such a situation. The two nations share the same culture, their languages are very similar, they intermarry freely, and even the borders between them fluctuate (and are therefore disputed). However, when they cannot get along and begin to fight, they must be separated until the tension subsides and they can communicate constructively.

Currently, it does not seem possible, but through their conflict, humanity will learn how to do it. It is, however, a terrible shame that people, and indeed entire nations, must pay so heavily to learn how to communicate, something that should be obvious to all of us.

In correct relationships, the participants regard the common needs before their own. It is as if there is a big bowl in the middle of the world, and all the countries circle it. Each country throws its dish into the bowl, and everyone enjoys the resulting stew.

On the one hand, countries talk about sustainability and restriction of production in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, the same countries produce twice as much as they consume or export. The surplus litters Earth’s soil, air, and water, while people who cannot afford the products starve for lack of the unsold goods. It is unjust, unwise, and unsustainable.

Globalization means we have become one society. It is time we began to act the part. It is time to establish global planning, global production, a global welfare system that really works, a global health system, and global education.

If we felt more like one family, or at least one country, and less like gang members who have been thrown into one prison cell to fight to the death, we would not need armies. The funds we would save would finance much more than the needs described above. There is an abundance of everything on Planet Earth. The only thing amiss is good connections.
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Question: Arkady asks, “It looks like the end of the world is near. And the worst thing is that everyone around is calmly talking about it. Only recently we wanted to live happily, we were making plans for the future, and we suddenly realize that none of this will happen. What do we do now?”

Answer: Who told you that what you wanted was good? Let’s sort it out.

Comment: People just wanted simple human happiness.

My Response: Get a shot and forget everything. Or even better, take a pill, fall asleep, be at peace.

This is not the purpose of our development. So we shouldn’t try to stay in the “sandbox” where we used to live and play that we were building toy houses from sand.

Question: So you think it was all child’s games?

Answer: Yes. A little egoism was developing. Now we must rise above that egoism. We must start looking forward and in a different way.

To play seriously means to play the Creator, to make  sure that the Creator is between us in all our thoughts and actions. This is called to play for real.

Question: Is it possible to say that before I do something I kind of try to turn to the Creator?

Answer: Yes. And do it in a way that you imagine that you are doing it for His sake, instead of Him, for Him.

For Him means for the sake of others. Nothing affects the Creator and He does not need anything. There is only one possibility: to get strength from Him to act for the sake of people.

Question: Does it turn out that the formula “I want to be happy” changes to “I want people to be happy, I want everyone around me to be happy”?

Answer: But really happy, not the way I want them to be happy, but the way the Creator wants. Because this is the law of the universe. It is absolute and objective.

Question: How does He want people to be happy? What is it for the Creator?

Answer: Move into other people, enter them, and start feeling what is most important to them. Then build it together with them.

Question: What do you think will be the most important thing for people?

Answer: To feel close to each other. In this, a person begins to feel perfection.

Question: Is there peace, happiness, and security there, at this point?

Answer: The end of everything. Not the end in the sense of ending, but simply perfection.

Question: Are all people close to each other, like all people are brothers and sisters?

Answer: Yes, they completely disappear in the form they are in now. They enter the realm of perfection.

Question: So now if I want to use the other for myself, there I want to give myself completely to the other, right?

Answer: Yes. This is the mutual bestowal of ourselves to each other. It is called Hashpaa (bestowal) in Kabbalah. This is the state of perfection, the spiritual state.

Comment: This is a great wisdom we are studying.

My Response: It will be revealed even more! It will be developed even more, and it will expand into feelings.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/28/22

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The more we develop, the more we approach the moment when nature reveals a global connection to us and, in principle, invites us to rise to another level of existence. In a global system we cannot exist other than by caring for each other.

But why do we constantly receive huge blows, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, epidemics? Because nature is trying to bring itself back into balance.

The fact is that if it is necessary to somehow produce some kind of moral, spiritual correction of mankind, then the simplest and most direct action on the part of nature is the impact of suffering.

As soon as you influence a person with suffering, his needs immediately decrease. He is ready to be satisfied with less just not to suffer. Therefore, look at what happens during a war. People are content with little and do not want more, they are ready to unite and help each other.

Suffering immediately makes a person purer, lowers his egoism, makes him content with less, and he connects with others in order to gain confidence and some kind of support.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Partnership Agreement” 4/7/10

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Question: You have said that people do not understand that it is the relationship between them that affects the economy, outbreaks of epidemics, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other disasters, and if this connection becomes clear, they will inevitably give up their egoistic relationships.

Can you explain the connection between global disasters that are taking place and people’s attitude toward each other?

Answer: Until recently, we have not imagined that nature is global. However, many people have thought and talked about it.

For example, in Russia, the academician Vernadsky made a discovery, outstanding for that time, that everything is interconnected, everything is global, and he called this phenomenon the noosphere.

Before and after him there were many such philosophers, but people have never felt in the flesh, in our world, that we are really globally interconnected.

It seems to us that this was facilitated by the development of technology: the Internet, flights, business, all sorts of programs, and so on. It is nothing of the kind! It is nature that reveals to us its real system in which everything is interconnected—inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels, and also the upper layers that we do not feel. And all this is one single whole.

In this single whole there is a single law. Moreover, the system itself is global. It means that every part of it is connected with all the other parts and all of them affect each other and are interconnected with each other, like in a holographic picture. That is, each part includes all the others and what happens in it affects all the others.

In other words, I am a copy of the whole world, and you, and this, and that, that is, everything that can be imagined. Therefore what happens in each of us instantly affects the rest of the world.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Partnership Agreement” 4/7/10

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Medium published my new article “The Hunger Games of War”

After a month of war in Ukraine, an unprecedented world food crisis is anticipated. The wheat exports of Russia and Ukraine combined account for nearly 30 percent of global production, while Russia is the main fertilizer exporter in the world. Therefore, the conflict threatens to rapidly unleash a “perfect storm” in global agriculture, affecting food availability and prices. At its root, we need to realize that the impending hunger is not the result of a lack of food but a consequence of an excess of human egoism.

If we consider that around 45 million people in the world are already on the brink of famine, and nearly 283 million people in 81 countries are at high risk for food insecurity (according to estimates of the World Food Program), the forecast for the future is not promising. An energy crunch and skyrocketing increases in natural gas prices, have dealt a severe blow to food production and transportation costs.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization predicts a spike of at least 20 percent in food prices in the coming months, on top of the disruptions and cost increases due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is expected that the situation will acutely exacerbate global food security and create social unrest and instability.

If the world had approached the problem of food security correctly, it might not have reached such a crisis as to endanger provisions that could put millions in danger of starvation. We could have approached the situation in a healthy way and assessed what we have, how much is needed, who is lacking, and how to best distribute our resources, as in a family.

The problem is that while the world is increasingly interdependent, at the same time it has become increasingly disconnected. No one really thinks about the welfare of others. In some places, the basic grains for consumption will be even burned in order to keep the prices high, causing people in other places to literally starve to death. So the food crisis we face is not a matter of limited provisions but the lack of mutual concern and responsibility between us.

This is not the first food crisis the world has faced and will not be the last one. The billions of dollars received by international organizations to tackle hunger could have fed the entire world several times over, but the problem is not solved because there is no real interest in finding a solution. Hunger is a profitable business and a way of dominance. Those who make a cash cow out of it will be happy to perpetuate starvation. Others, in a cold-headed analysis, even look at the global population of 8 billion and think that it would be easier and more advantageous overall to deal with half that number of people, as was the case one hundred years ago when fewer natural resources were demanded.

In my view, until we deal with the heart of the problem, which is the egoism in human nature and the war between self-benefit and the common interest, we will find no remedy for our woes. We have run out of options. Only rising above selfish interests for common benefit can spare humanity many more years of needless torment.

The food crisis we face should force us to reassess our priorities about how to deal with global problems. Only when people grasp that everyone in society is dependent on everyone else and that the world is like one body in which a severe illness in any of its organs affects the whole system to the point of collapse, will we begin to change. At that time we will begin to see acts of mutual concern, and support systems that are established by the community, authorities, and everyone responsible for the emergence of a new society of mutual responsibility. Humanity simply has no other choice, no other way to survive.
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Comment: Nowadays, more and more, scientists, public figures, and national leaders agree on the need to create some kind of unified global idea that contributes to the survival of mankind.

And although the reverse process is still going on, meaning, there are attempts to defend specific traditional values, in general the following trend is manifested, the creation of a single global vision for all, which would speed up the process of cognition of the programmer who created the universe.

My Response: We cannot get away from this, we have to do it. Nature pushes us to understand it and come to some kind of reasonable human community. It is impossible to continue like this, because every moment we will be more and more afraid for ourselves, for humanity, for the world, and for our Earth to continue to exist.

We need to move into a new reality. Now it seems like it is virtual to us, even fantastic. But it works exactly according to the mirror principle: turn your evil into good and you will see how the world will become completely different, and you will be different, and so will everyone else.

We have no other way out. We have to come to this.
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From KabTV’s “Virtual World” 2/9/22

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Question: We influence each other on the level of desires and thoughts. And the fact that laws are being passed today that were unthinkable ten years ago is this because we are connected to each other at the level of thoughts and desires?

Answer: The fact is that we agree with the corruption, with the descents that occur in society. And if this is, let us say, the opinion of the majority, then it inevitably becomes law. Therefore, we have no choice but to go with the flow along with society that is gradually falling, falling, falling.

The science of Kabbalah reveals to a person his place, his purpose, the meaning of his life, and answers the questions that he needs to know in order to exist. It gives him both strength and knowledge of how to change his life.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Partnership Agreement” 4/7/10

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Question: All Kabbalistic primary sources speak of internal wars, but we see the manifestation of wars in our material world. Is this process inevitable?

Answer: This process is inevitable and it is constantly moving forward. Its formula is very simple: the opening of the right line, the opening of the left line, the appearance of the middle line between them, and its disappearance. Then again one line rises above the other, plus over minus, minus over plus. This is how development goes on all the time.

Question: If everything in nature is determined, then does it mean that the course of its events cannot be changed and all wars must manifest themselves, including the third and fourth world wars that the prophets wrote about?

Answer: Yes, unless we apply forces to constantly bring these two opposing forces into balance with each other.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/1/22

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