Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the key lessons from this pandemic?“

One key lesson is that the pandemic is only an initial blow from nature, and we can expect many more blows in more severe forms because the time has come for us to undergo a major transformation: a shift in our entire approach to life, from a competitive self-centered approach to one where we share mutual responsibility and consideration for each other and nature.

The pandemic-charged changes we already see in society, from social distancing conditions through to increased unemployment and falling businesses, hint at how this change of our approach to life will have to transpire.

Especially in the realm of work, we have built a society filled with businesses and professions that we have no real need for.

Through the pandemic, nature started filtering out the nonessential from the essential. Businesses that served our basic needs continued serving us, while those we had no real need for became sidelined.

If we look at the animal sphere, we see how a certain amount of animals die off, and others develop in their place, according to various changes that appear in nature.

It is similar with us.

We are parts of nature, and nature operates on us by placing us in new conditions. Accordingly, nature adjusts the human population and the emphasis of its activity.

Under the coronavirus’ influence, many people have become unemployed, and it is because there is a prominent declining need for much of the professions we once held.

We can expect businesses and professions that we have a real need for to continue, which is only about five percent of the service sector that has developed over the last 70 years or so.

Likewise, we will see that around 95 percent of what we engaged in will gradually disappear. People will feel that the materialistic values we held, which drove us to strive for expensive clothing, prestigious cars, and traveling incessantly around the world, will decline, and we will feel needs for more basic and simple fulfillments, together with more meaningful social connections.

Therefore, society and authorities alike will need to think hard about what to do with the growing unemployed mass around the world.

It is on this point that I have proposed a setup where people will have their basic needs provided by authorities in exchange for participating in learning and activities that aim to increase the sensation of meaningful connection in society.

On one hand, we won’t be able to revive our pre-coronavirus economy and lifestyle, and on the other hand, if we simply fulfill people’s basic needs without offering social accolades and goals worth striving for, then society will stagnate.

Therefore, by supplying life’s essentials in exchange for participation in learning and activities that aim to improve social connections, we will see a major shift in values—from egoistic to altruistic, individualistic to mutually dependent, and materialistic to people-focused—which will make this transition appear advantageous to everyone.

Moreover, by prioritizing positive social connections above all other engagements, we will also come closer into balance with nature’s interdependent and interconnected form, and will thus experience positive feedback from nature: elated harmonious sensations the likes of which we have yet to experience.

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Change Your Attitude Toward Life

Question: Modern medicine does not cure, but prolongs the ability to lead a wrong lifestyle. Classically, people believe the state should take care of them. A person pays taxes, so he wants to receive reciprocal care from medicine. Is this approach correct from your point of view?

Answer: No, this is wrong. Our life, medicine, and the state are built on a very false basis of ignorance of who we are and in what volume of nature we are. Therefore, our attitude to nature, society, and man is wrong. Not to mention medicine, science, and everything else that we do. This must be radically changed.

We need to change the basis of our attitude to life. After all, it is selfish, distorted, and we do nothing about it. And a person needs to be corrected. Then his attitude toward himself, toward the world, toward life will become different. He will make society and himself different.

A person will work where needed and how much is needed, nothing more. He will relate to nature only to the extent that he can take what he needs for existence, without robbing and destroying the environment. Thus, he will live in a huge, good, kind volume of nature, and will not pour oil into the ocean and burn forests. All of this must change quickly. Otherwise, we will not have this earth.

Question: Is your approach complex and not point-by-point?

Answer: An integrated approach boils down to human education.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/14/20

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Question: Can we say that love is a feeling that is a consequence of the right relationships between people?

Answer: I would describe it differently. To love means to feel other people and try to do everything to fulfill their desires.

Question: Do you think that this is the basic law of human society and that we must reveal it in the same way we revealed all physical laws?

Answer: We must not only reveal it, but also constantly implement it. This law should become our credo in life.

Question: And then all the other laws of ethics and countries will also exist, but will take different forms?

Answer: Naturally. They will all proceed from this law: the constant rapprochement of all parts of creation with each other, the constant rise above egoism, and the approach to an absolute, perfect state.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 5/7/20

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What does human health depend on?

Question: There are two types of impact of society on a person.

The first is an indirect, unconscious impact. For example: pollution of the atmosphere, water, genetic experiments that are carried out on animals for food, etc. All of this naturally affects us.

The second is the direct, conscious impact of society: the media, all kinds of economic levers, and social norms.

Do you think human health in most cases depends more on society or does it depend on genetics?

Answer: Health depends on both.

Mostly, no doubt, from genetics. But still, as they say, existence determines consciousness. Therefore, it is imperative to think about what kind of environment we give a person, although in the same environment there are people who tolerate it relatively well and there are those who perish.

Remark: Doctors say that human health depends 10% on health care, 20% on heredity, another 20% on the environment, i.e., from the activities of people. And 50% is determined by a person’s lifestyle. And the way of life is dictated by the media and by the historical period in which a person lives.

That is, in principle, we can say that 80% of health still depends on society.

My Comment: Of course, life expectancy and its quality depend on the relationship between people, on their communication.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/14/20

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Society of Unnecessary Professions

Question: What should a person realize in the era of coronavirus?

Answer: A person must realize that he has survived only the first blow of nature. Many more blows are needed to correct society, and they will follow. As a result, society will not remain the same. This will mainly concern the employment of people.

The fact is that we have created a society of completely unnecessary professions. In our post-industrial world, a huge number of superfluous people have appeared, and therefore, a lot of completely unnecessary occupations, professions, and enterprises arose. We need to understand that we are in the integral sphere of nature, which strives for optimization, and it will put pressure on us so that all unnecessary professions disappear.

Looking, for example, at animal nature, we know that some number of animals must die off, the others must develop, depending on what conditions appear or disappear in nature. The same goes for us. We are part of nature, so it plays with us, sets certain new parameters for us, thereby reducing or increasing the population, occupation, and so on.

Now, under the influence of the coronavirus, there is a great acceleration in the development of human society. A lot of people don’t work and, in principle, they don’t need to return to work.

Those enterprises that are really needed have acted, are operating, and will continue to operate. And only 5% OF the service sector that we have created over the past seventy years is needed.

Therefore, there will be no need for it, and it will no longer return to its previous activity. The bulk of the population employed in the service sector will simply be left without work. And here we need to think about what to do with people with unnecessary professions.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/14/20

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How to Manage Stress?

Question: There are many ways to manage stress, depending on the factor that causes it, such as breathing exercises, meditation, physical activity, cooking, breeding pets, or singing in a choir. All of this somehow distracts people and saves them from stress.

Many advise crying, keeping a diary, or spending time in the company of loved ones.

Yet, we see that even though all these tips help, it is only to a certain extent and only when stressful situations are local in nature. However, when there is a massive pandemic or some other cataclysm, other methods are needed. What can you recommend?

Answer: I do not see eliminating the source of the problem in these methods. All of them only help to somehow calm down a little. It turns out that the cause remains, but the person as if takes a sedative and now does not feel the cause, or feels it in a half or a quarter of its strength.

This is not a solution. Especially if this is a global issue concerning all the inhabitants of the Earth, who after a while will no longer know where to find food or how to exist.

Question: What will help them?

Answer: Only the revelation of the source of this phenomenon: what is the reason for such pressure on all of humanity. After all, nothing happens in nature for nothing, everything has its own reason.

The search for this reason itself is already the beginning of the cure. Just as we investigate a disease and try to find a cure for it, here as well we must find out why this is happening. Only now we are investigating not bacteria, animals, or our incorrect interactions with some parts of nature, but rather the meaning of nature, what it wants to push us to.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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Question: Four months of the virus flew by in an instant and there was practically no particularly positive news. There were snowfalls, storms, fires, earthquakes. Iran is developing a nuclear bomb again. Look what is happening in America: riots and fiery arguments. There was no good news. Man lives in this space.

How can he live among all the terrible news that befell him during these 4 to 5 months?

Answer: Let’s at least make people around the world embrace a week of positive thoughts. Only positive thoughts! Nothing else can be done. Just think positively about others.

Question: Do you think it would work if we could hold on to this for a week?

Answer: Let’s try. What can we lose? It is from this, I think, that we do not lose anything.

It doesn’t cost anything. No one should postpone anything. We must not stop anything; we must continue living just like we do now. It is just that throughout this week, we will talk only about good relations. And how much, perhaps, we will gain from this. Let’s take a look. We have all these statistics. And suddenly, we will see what we are doing only if we say kind things. Try.

Question: How is all this arranged? From above?

Answer: Of course, from above: the United States, UN, World Health Organization, UNESCO.

Question: That is, to stop political games and say: “Let’s try to live like this for a week”?

Answer: Yes, of course. But the fact is that they will not want it because it will immediately be discovered that we do not need anything other than this.

Remark: You always have a turning point at the end when you say: “But this is impossible.” You suggest: “Let’s do it!” And you immediately say: “But this is impossible.”

Answer: It is possible, but impossible.

Question: That is, no one will agree to this?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So what is our practical advice then?

Answer: But there is no practical advice here. Our egoism will not allow us to do this.

Question: So, you think that only this will help, but our egoism will not allow us to do it?

Answer: Yes.

Remark: There is a dead end here. We are in it again. Please take us out of this impasse.

My Reply: We must nullify all egoistic relationships. We will see how much we stand face to face in front of huge egoism, and we have nowhere to go. What are we going to do without it, my dear?

Remark: That is, we want this week of good thoughts to come, we cannot; we stand against the egoism and it tells us: “You will never do this! Because then you will nullify me”?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is this a good state? Is it important for such a standing to appear?

Answer: Of course, good. Then we would at least move a little forward.

Question: Would we understand what hinders us in this life?

Answer: Yes. But we cannot, we cannot. As the famous Russian stand-up comic Raikin said about the deficit: “Well, you should at least leave something.” 🙂

We must still try to explain it. So that when even worse times come—the virus for the second time, for the third time—it will finish us off, weaken us, and we will agree. At least for such half measures.

Question: That is, to talk about what is now impossible. Is it necessary to talk about good relationships between person to person, a week of good thoughts, and so on?

Answer: Anyway, everything will finally get to this.

Question: Will egoism eventually give up?

Answer: No! There will be a huge war, an internal war, a spiritual war of forces! A war of dark and light forces. This is a biblical war, which is described in the sources. The children of light and the children of darkness.

Question: Is this a war between good deeds and egoism?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, what is next? What does it say at the end?

Answer: In the end, the good forces will win. But only after a huge internal struggle, which they must accomplish internally.

Question: Each person out of eight billion must go through all this?

Answer: Absolutely everyone!

Remark: In fact, you say that the script has already been written.

Answer: We will finish off this scenario.

Question: But has it been written already?

Answer: No. Not the final one. There are such scenes there!

Question: There is a role for my freewill too?

Answer: Absolutely!

Question: So, I have to choose something?

Answer: Yes. What I command. Moreover, it will happen during the most critical scenes. Not in general but on the whole, everything is directed toward the victory of the good forces over the dark forces, but we command all turns and special states, we determine them.

Every second we will have to give our solution through our freewill and pressure to make it come true. Everything will depend on us! Although, everything is predetermined.

Question: But this is so incomprehensible to a person! That is, he will walk with the feeling that it is good for the light to win, constantly face the darkness, understand that he will not overcome the darkness; this is impossible, and we will still somehow continue?

Answer: Of course, yes. And we will grow, like sprouts from the earth, in a new form, in an altruistic society. This is no longer an earthly society. This is a completely different view.

This is a completely different birth. And we will exist in it in a different way—in the form of forces, in the form of a plan, in the form of thoughts.

Question: You always give an example that a child is born upside down. I understand that I will never get through this, and suddenly an overturning, and I find myself there?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is someone pushing us out or are we born ourselves?

Answer: No, of course, all this is done by nature, by a higher nature. It pushes us and gives birth.

Question: Only efforts are needed from us?

Answer: We must conform to this, accompany it. This will all happen very quickly, unnoticed. And all these viruses will accompany us until our new birth.

Question: So, it turns out that viruses are actually a thrusting force?

Answer: Yes. They shape us. They do everything.

The most important thing is not what they do in our world biologically, but that they give rise to an attitude in us toward a new perception. It is most important.

In general, everything will be fine.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/15/20

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Comment: People are a virus. This is the opinion of one of a few movements for saving nature, for saving the environment, which is called “Eco-fascism.”

“Global warming threatens humanity. The industrial economy is destroying species diversity. Corporations have too much power. White people should prepare for a racial war,” the movement adheres to this slogan.

They believe that it is necessary to isolate people from nature, and it is desirable that viruses such as the coronavirus and other epidemics, destroy some of the people. And there will remain the part of humanity that can actively develop, support nature, ecology, and reasonable consumption.

My Response: I do not think these movements are worthy of attention.

Are humans a virus? Yes, people in today’s state are a negative, selfish force of nature. They always had it, but today it has developed to such a state where they themselves cannot bear it. Therefore, this state is already becoming relatively positive, the so-called awareness of the evil of its nature. Therefore, within human society, all kinds of movements opposite to their nature arise.

I respect humanity for the fact that it is looking for the answer to: what should we do with ourselves? We are so harmful, bad, we are so terrible, but where can we turn, what can we do with ourselves?

We must come to a serious and real conclusion that out of all those existing on planet earth, we are the only harmful one. Not because we eat inanimate, vegetative, animate nature, but because of what we do to ourselves.

First, by destroying inanimate, vegetative, and animal nature, we bring enormous harm to the environment. But at the same time, we do great harm to ourselves because we eat ourselves, figuratively speaking, from the inside.

Man is the only creature that possesses negative energy, a negative property called “egoism,” which is ready to kill everything and everyone. Not for your own benefit, but only so that nothing else exists nearby. He wants to see himself as the only one in the center of the world and not to have others in this world at all.

Question: You spoke about the search that a person leads, the search for a way out, the search for a solution to the current situation and, in general, the change in the paradigm of the entire life of all mankind. How can he find this root point of evil in order to eradicate it and start a new movement?

Answer: He cannot find it. Even if he sees how something can be changed, he does not have the strength to do it. He needs a clear implementation of the program of nature—how a person can change himself. This is inherent in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

It indicates how people should unite with each other in order to extract from nature the positive force that unites them, and with the help of such unification, to channel this force through themselves to the whole environment.

We must inversely change our nature and become altruists instead of egoists.

The correct change of human nature to absolute goodness, to love for one’s neighbor, should be at the heart of human ethics and triumph.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/1/20

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Remark: Billions of people who were staying at home during quarantine are now slowly coming out of it. At the same time, a lot of problems arise with a person’s psychology, with finding where to work and what to do. Psychologists say that the main thing is that reducing the pace of life will make us think about how and why we live.

In fact, they say the main problem is when a person begins to think about the meaning of life, what he is living for.

My Comment: This is natural. When he sees his life both in quarantine and without quarantine, before the coronavirus and after the coronavirus, and with new viruses, he will still start to feel, “What is happening to me? Why is nature playing with me?” This is where we need to start organizing a person.

Question: What will you tell him so he would hear, would suddenly feel the light at the end of the tunnel?

Answer: Nature is offering us an ultimate solution: You, all of you together, will have to correct yourself to the likeness to nature, that is, to create a good human community on this Earth. Through the correction of relationships between people, you will begin to feel our world as infinite, eternal perfection.

Question: Should education be directed toward this?

Answer: Nurture the relationship between people so that you create harmonious common humanity.

Remark: I was running around all the time, looking for work, filling myself with work. And now you are telling me, “You came to a halt. Stop. None of this will exist. Start thinking about how to build good connections between people.”

My Comment: Yes. This is the work. This is precisely the work of a person!

Question: Are you referring this to each person?

Answer: Absolutely everyone.

Question: Not only to those who manage people?

Answer: No. To all people. There is no management here. There is more mutual help than management here.

Question: Does it mean that the simplest, most inconspicuous person begins to think, how do I build good relationships with other people—with the inner circle, the far circle, and so on?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Do you call this work?

Answer: Of course.

Question: Should he receive some kind of compensation for this? After all, he must have something to live on.

Answer: He will receive compensation. Human society will be arranged in such a way that it will be paying for this, giving everyone a kind of stipend.

Question: That is, a person is paid for building good connections with others? This is something new, this is a revolution for humanity.

Answer: Why? This is work! Perhaps you will be able to measure it.

Question: Will humanity agree to this? After all, someone has to pay for this.

Answer: It will have to agree.

Question: Firstly, where can we get money to pay people for such work, which, in principle, was not considered work before?

Answer: Money is printed; there are no problems with this. We can print notes or maybe tokens.

People will work at necessary-for-society enterprises, which will be constantly reorganized so that they are as environmentally friendly as possible. That’s it!

Let’s say that 20% of people, constantly replacing one another, will have to work at these enterprises that produce what people need. Only for people and only what people need. They will spend all the rest of the time and effort on creating a correct connection between themselves.

Question: To do this, a person will have to study. As you already said, 20% of the people will be working, replacing each other. And 80% will be sitting at desks, from young to old. Will they be paid for learning how to build good connections with each other?

Answer: Yes. There will be a necessary living standard and that is it. And there will be a very kind, good atmosphere.

Question: There will be no depression?

Answer: No. First of all, envy will disappear. Envy will remain only in the form of, “Can I do as much for society as others, and not less?” Meaning, positive envy.

Question: In what will a person feel the meaning of life then?

Answer: He will attain the Creator in a correct connection between him and the others. This is the reward that is more elevated and perfect than any other. He will feel his life as eternal, perfect, and complete.

Question: Why will the Creator come to a person the moment he builds good connections with others? Why will the Creator be revealed to him?

Answer: According to the law of equivalence of form between the Creator and a person who builds himself in good relationships with others.

Question: Let’s say that the Creator is revealed to me, to the ordinary person. What does it mean for me? What is it?

Answer: The feeling that you exist in an eternal, perfect space. The entire cosmos, everything around you, feels like your home, your eternal, perfect state. You perceive this not through your body, not through your animalistic state, but rather through another, more elevated state, which is called “soul.” This is natural and accessible to everyone.

I am sure that this will become a very urgent need in the coming years.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/25/20

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Targeted Pressure

Question: There are different types of stress. For example, professional stress is associated with conflicts at work. Marital stress arises around problems in the family. Emotional stress can be caused by some kind of intense experience. Physiological stress arises from trauma or illness, and psychological stress from dissatisfaction with oneself or relationships with other people. Information stress is caused by information overload and environmental stress from unfavorable living conditions.

Can a condition cause stress when a person is looking for the meaning of life and does not find it?

Answer: Of course. After all, stress is a feeling of indecision, the inability to connect the desired with the attainable. Any little thing can be stressful. If for example, I open a drawer and don’t find my glasses there, then this already causes me some stress.

Stress is the mismatch between what is desired and what is being realized. Naturally, today’s life consists of only stress.

Question: It turns out that nature has placed us in a reality where there is always pressure on desire. If you imagine yourself as a kind of desire to receive, to be filled, to enjoy, then satisfaction is achieved extremely rarely because desires are constantly growing and it becomes more and more difficult to fill them. Where is this all going?

Answer: To the realization of how we get out of this state, what it depends on, what it leads to.

Question: Can I be in such a state where nothing presses on me or I do not feel this pressure?

Answer: No, such a state gradually passes and is replaced by the feeling that something presses on you in a certain direction, and this pressure has a beginning and an end, it has a meaning, and you must comprehend, reveal this meaning. Only then can you get rid of the pressure.

And then you begin to feel that if this pressure should lead you to a higher state, then you do not need to get rid of it. You just need to understand to where you have to come. And then for you it will already be felt not as pressure, but as an accompaniment in your development.

Question: It turns out that a person begins to feel physiological and psychological pressures as targeted? Moreover, they are not only personal, but global, for example, a financial crisis or a pandemic. Many people do not understand that there is some kind of design in this.

Answer: We are moving toward a state where everyone will find themselves in a huge general crisis, not understanding how we can exist. Moreover, it will be felt not by one person, or one family, or some small society, but the whole world. The coronavirus should lead us to this.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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