Question: According to a sociologist of fashion, fashion is coming to an end. Now the top fashion houses like Versace, Armani, Lagerfeld, Dolce & Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel whom the world followed, will have to reconsider everything they were based on.

What do you think they should come to? In your opinion, what is your ideology of future fashion?

Answer: The ideology will be built through the blows to our egoism. It will teach us to do what is comfortable for us and for others. And this will appear beautiful to us.

Beauty is in simplicity, and in something that is easy to communicate, and you feel free with, and not that it strikes and crushes, like in royal palaces.

Remark: But still, it captured the imagination.

Answer: That time is over.

Question: What is the root of this phenomenon. Why was it like that?

Answer: To impress gentlemen! Gentlemen were raised to be impressed by such ladies.

Question: How do we connect fashion to egoism’s development?

Answer: Egoism develops along with the mind too. This involves the mind, not just naked egoism. Therefore, I believe fashion will change toward optimality. We even see from our regular suits that they are becoming more practical.

I hope that the world is turning, and very successfully, toward optimization.

I think humanity will grow wiser faster, i.e., it will not let itself be dragged back into that swamp, which inventors of fashion, cars, clothes, and anything else want to drag us.

Question: What would you recommend to famous trendsetters?

Answer: To clarify that their time has passed. Let them switch to another style that is comfortable.

Everything must be done very practically, so that a person is comfortable and simple. That is most important. And praise this image. And whoever makes it the most practical, in the material, the cut, and convenience, so that it can stretch and not constrict a person. People should look and say “this person is practical, this person understands a lot about life.”

Remark: But you know that my questions and your appeal are addressed mainly to women. It is women, one way or another, who will regulate fashion and demand. They will be ignited and demand something and the race will begin again.

My Comment: I don’t think that everything will return to the same. Humanity has matured a little, slowed down. It is like the difference in the worldview of a girl and a woman with a child.

And now, as if everything is ready. We sat with families and children, and survived this virus. And now we must continue to live somehow differently, to adapt to the next virus. And scientists are already talking about this, both doctors and virologists.

So, I think that we will take a different direction.

Question: I really liked the comparison that there was a girl who liked everything beautiful, with sparkles, because she had a goal—to like.

And now she has already become a woman, she has children, a family. She does not need to like, but only to make it comfortable for the family. Even figuratively speaking, she matured. Now, after a virus outbreak, does she begin to understand more?

Answer: Of course. She gained a sober outlook toward life and the world. The demands are totally different.

Question: So the demand for fashion will be comfort?

Answer: Yes, the most important thing for her is practicality.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 4/13/20

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Question: What is it worth focusing on in a world of uncertainty, even in terms of work and family?

Answer: First of all, you need to learn how to make money from things you and other people need. It may not be such a high-profile job, but people need you. They need the results of your work.

Secondly, we need a family, a home, a job to provide for our family. However, in addition to the absolutely necessary things, we must think only about spiritual development, about how to begin feeling the world the way it really is and not distorted as it is in our egoistic qualities. And then it will become a completely different world.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/17/20

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Question: In the last 20 years, the family unit began to disintegrate. Today, especially in developed European countries, a huge number of people live alone.

And now nature has put us in quarantine through the coronavirus where we are confined in the family circle, if we have one. Does this mean that nature is trying to bring us back to a natural cell?

Answer: Nature is forcing us to unite. We must come to it in the right, positive way, voluntarily realizing this necessity and also that the whole of human society, all 8 billion people, are one common organism called Adam.

Either we will consciously unite to complement each other into the system of Adam or we will be forced to do this under the pressure applied by nature, like the coronavirus.

Question: Can a family naturally learn the right attitude toward each other and then treat others the same way?

Answer: Yes. But family is a purely natural interaction. It exists in animals to a certain extent. But in human society, this unit is very special, interesting, enduring , and rich in nuances. This is the unit from which society should develop.

But since society is currently not developing in the right direction to reach the level of the Creator toward the next stage of human existence, the human level is getting destroyed. And so, the family unit is disintegrating.

Remark: Looking at the statistical data, I noticed an overwhelming amount of conflict in families. Therefore, it is unlikely that a person can learn anything by looking at the relationships that exist in the family.

My Comment: Indeed, this is so. But only because there is no goal to unite the family.

It turns out that the family exists for the husband and wife to work somewhere from morning till night. In the evening, they come home, devote a few minutes to the children, have dinner, most often with prepared foods, and go to bed. This does not unite the family, does not form a unit. Children are a burden to them. They send them to kindergarten, then to school, and rarely see them.

Life is arranged in such a way that only separates us. Thus, the very structure of life, work, and society destroys the family.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/23/20

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The coronavirus turned our whole life upside down, instantly stopping production. As if someone had turned off a switch and stopped a mechanism that worked according to certain laws, according to a certain routine and familiar patterns.

Suddenly, all this stopped and humanity entered a new era, leaving businessmen in complete confusion and uncertainty about what will happen next.

It seems that every day the laws of the new world, which the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us, began to manifest themselves more and more. They should replace the old world we still exist in with our egoistic psychology. It is clear that something completely new is being born that obliges us to change our attitude to life, to work, to family, to ourselves, and to the world.

Further, all depends on whether we will be stubborn like naughty children who do not want to listen to their parents, and therefore will be forced to learn the laws of the new world that nature teaches us by the stick. Let us hope that we will be able to explain to all of humanity that we are witnessing a change in social structure right before our eyes.

Throughout our history, we have gone through many formations: the primitive communal system, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. And now we are entering a new formation, which is completely different from all previous ones because it is based on a fundamentally new relationships between people.

All of us will have to get closer to each other, understand that we live in an integral world, and that we are obliged to bring human society in line with this integral world; that is, we must build an integral society. Only in this form can we survive in modern conditions and move to a new stage quickly, easily, and pleasantly, with understanding and awareness.

Otherwise, nature will have to urge us on with blows, third and fourth world wars, and terrible sufferings, about which the prophets wrote that “merciful mothers will eat their babies.” In other words, a person will completely lose his human appearance when passing from one formation to another.

We are at a transition stage, from the principles that have been nurtured in humanity for many generations to completely new laws that will now have to be implemented in production. But to do this, first people need to change, not just businesses. In order to organize a new production sphere that operates under different laws, it is necessary to change the businessmen themselves so that they know how to do it.

First of all, businesspeople and company owners must agree with the need for change in themselves, recognize that they live in a new time that requires them to make qualitative changes. No matter what kind of change it is, I know that I must accept it, no matter what, because without it there will be no life for me, my family, or the whole world.

And although I do not like or want these changes that break my old habits, I know that this is the call of the time. First of all, there must be an agreement to change, that is where it all starts. This is called the point of recognition of evil. Everything that was before is no longer good, and therefore is called evil.

And it is possible that it was very good for the time being but no longer corresponds to today’s principles, and therefore is considered evil. Whether I want it or not, I must give it up and enter a new life, a new format.

Entrepreneurs will have to realize that the demand for change comes from nature. It is important to understand that this is not the machinations of banks, law enforcement agencies, or scientists-virologists, but comes from nature itself, and therefore, we can only bow our heads and accept it as sent from above. Nature is above us, and we have no choice but to study this phenomenon and accept the changes.

We need to see where nature leads us in our development. Kabbalah explains that nature leads us to integration, to the integral world, because this is the main, fundamental law of nature, which is all one. One force governs the whole of reality. The entire universe is governed by this force, and man must also be included in this force.

If we do not want it but still oblige ourselves to bow before this one force, then we make the best possible change in ourselves.

After all, from this contradiction: “against” and “for,” from our disagreement and readiness to step over it, we begin to understand what nature wants from us, by what principles it exists and realizes the entire reality, and how everyone can join into this reality with all its forces, at will, in order to swim in one common stream, along the flow of the entire universe toward the future.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life,” 6/22/20

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Nature Is a Strict Teacher

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that the blows of nature occur precisely and in accordance with the level of development of society. That is, as society develops, nature corrects us.

How does the current correction differ from those viruses and cataclysms of 100 years ago?

Answer: In accordance with our development, we get more and more blows from nature. It seems to us that nature is punishing us. But this is not true. It teaches us, shows us at what level and to what extent we are mistaken. We deviate from the striving to integrate between each other and uniting with the global picture of nature.

It turns out that we are, in general, unteachable, clueless participants of nature. We don’t understand what we should do. Or we understand, but we don’t want to hear it.

As a result, nature always points a finger at us, pokes our nose at our mistakes, and we don’t seem to see them. It turns out that the most successful among us seem to be those who notice these mistakes less, who do not care about the inconsistencies of a person with the world around them. They do everything in their own way, and at the same time, in the understanding of others, they are considered the most successful.

Comment: But nature still pushes us toward partnership, cooperation, solidarity. We see that when some cataclysms occur, people begin to treat one another more sensitively and gently.

My Response: Not because they realize something, but out of necessity. And as soon as the threatening state passes, they immediately return to the stand against each other.

Question: How can nature lead us to solidarity, to sensitive relationships, if blows don’t help? What’s the point of them?

Answer: Nature leads us nevertheless to see how integral it is and to feel, by analogy with itself, how integral we should be.

Question: So, nature still requires us as human beings, as the crown of creation, to recognize this on our own and to want to connect with each other sensitively?

Answer: Yes. In order to unite at the highest level, we create a system in which we feel all the internal, driving force of nature and become the same as it: eternal, perfect, and attain everything.

Question: So there should be some kind of reset of values in society?

Answer: Of course. In each and every one.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/16/20

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New Life 1244 – Social Intelligence
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The coronavirus has been a general blow to all of humanity and has developed, within us, the feeling that we all depend on each other. People with social intelligence pay attention to how they can do good to others in every situation. Social intelligence is the recognition of how much we need an integral environment. The main thing is to help each other to learn how to achieve the right connection between us so that we will be compatible with nature. People with social intelligence know how to tie themselves to society correctly so that both they and others will enjoy it. We need to balance the heart and the mind and to aim both to feel and benefit others. Our success in life depends on our good relations.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1244 – Social Intelligence,” 5/25/20

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Question: How can taking responsibility for our actions help change this world?

Answer: It depends on how much we perceive ourselves and human society as one single organism in order to become similar to the general nature instead of being opposite to it, while constantly receiving blows from it.

We already see how we are destroying our planet and can’t do anything about it. Our egoism is leading us toward destruction.

Still, we have to think about how we can change our behavior. However, this is impossible unless we change our egoistic nature. Therefore, the most important question is: how do we change it? Otherwise, the planet won’t stand us any longer. So think about what to do.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/17/20

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Question: We must constantly satisfy our desires. You said that when the quarantine ends, people will lose the need to satisfy themselves with all sorts of shopping, etc.

But we can see that now when a slight easing has begun, people have started flooding restaurants and shops to fill the accumulated void. I even know for myself that shopping therapy is a pleasant thing that is quite accessible to many. What is wrong with this and why should it end?

Answer: It’s not about whether it’s good or bad. I evaluate everything in relation to the goal that the individual and society as a whole should achieve. Therefore, I cannot say that we are acting correctly, behaving correctly.

Nature will have to correct us and precisely direct us to the final goal of development. And it is not sitting in cafes, restaurants, and bars or running around to sales, but working on ourselves, learning together how to get closer to one another internally, and creating a single system of ourselves, like all of inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and the entire cosmos. We cannot even imagine how much they are connected in all their diversity.

Therefore, we need to understand that we should also be linked to this system and not look at it from the outside as some higher creatures, the masters of life. We need to know what is happening to us, what nature wants from us.

And it wants absolute unity between us so that we are as one person with one heart and, at the same time, connected to its inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, adding to them our level of “man.” Then everything together will be one completely closed integral system.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/23/20

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The Element of Freedom in the Rigid Program of Nature

Question: According to Baal HaSulam, the law of mutual guarantee is the basis for the interaction of all living organisms and is built on the balance between reception and bestowal.

Moreover, the law of reception is that each member of society tries to get everything he needs to live in the way his individual, egoistic system requires. And the law of bestowal is that each person cares about the welfare of the entire society.

If a person does not observe the law of bestowal, then he is hit by disasters and problems sent to him by nature. How can a person observe this law?

Answer: How to observe is one problem. And the fact that a person is obliged to observe this law follows from the image of nature that is revealed to us.

We see in front of us an absolutely integral picture: one single nature in which man is included with all his egoisms, scientific and anti-scientific “isms.” It turns out that we can not dodge and escape from the integral picture of nature. Whether we want it or not, we are inside this system and cannot exist outside of it.

This system is constantly evolving: from the inanimate level for hundreds of thousands of years, to the vegetative level for tens of thousands of years, to the animate level for thousands of years, and at the human level for literally decades. In other words, the higher nature is organized, the faster the stages of development occur in it.

The only question is when do we begin to discover ourselves in this system? We see that we are opposed to it for a very simple reason. We are not instinctively involved in nature because it affects us with the element of freedom.

We can agree or disagree with the way nature works on us, and to this extent, we determine our fate. It turns out that we are unhappy people. Nature is given to us, we can live in it, work, reproduce, create anything imaginable—unlike animals—on the next, conscious level. And we do not know what to do with it.

We create everything based on our natural egoistic nature, acting to the detriment of others and ostensibly for the benefit of ourselves. We do not understand that integral nature forces us to become different. For the benefit of oneself means for the benefit of others.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/16/20

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Each spiritual action begins with a counteraction opposite to it, as “the advantage of light revealed from darkness.” Otherwise we cannot feel anything because everything is perceived only in contrast. Therefore, darkness precedes light, and confusion and misunderstanding occur before clarity and awareness. And this is so in everything.

Look at our life: how long will humanity suffer in order to realize the evil of egoism and finally decide that we need to free ourselves from it because it is the source of all our troubles. Although we don’t know how to do this, apparently we will be forced to turn to the Creator by all of mankind.

It is said “the advantage of the earth (desire) is in everything.” First of all, the desire should reveal the darkness, and only out of the darkness will we comprehend the light. This is exactly what is happening in our life.

The whole evolution of mankind was due to the growth of egoism. And today we have come to what is called the “last generation,” the generation of the Messiah (Mashiach), which is obliged to awaken a higher power that will pull us out of our selfish desire.

And we understand that we are not able to do this because egoism is our whole nature, our whole life. We do not know how to think differently and only reveal our evil, but we are not even able to imagine how to get rid of it.

Therefore, today’s condition is unusually important, unique, and has never happened in the entire history of mankind. Gradually it is dawning on us that it is no longer possible to exist as before as it has been for thousands of years. All our development has led only to the realization that we can no longer remain within the selfish nature and it is necessary to rise from it.

But where to rise to and how to do it? Kabbalists say “faith above reason.” However, what is it and how do we achieve such a state where bestowal becomes higher and more important than receiving? Man is not capable of this. And here we are aware of our complete helplessness and we understand that there is no hope except for our Creator.

Humanity begins to reveal that egoism is a force from above, and there is a higher power opposite to egoism, which we need to ask for help to turn the power of evil into the power of good, into anti-egoism. Then we will live well and happily in the new world.

But so far it is extremely difficult for us. It is easier for a person to believe that the world will cease to exist at all than to imagine that he can live according to the laws of an altruistic nature. How could it be that between everyone, in any place and any state, I only reckon with how much I can give to my neighbor, and not what benefit I will get from him?

Altruism is a different nature. If it clothes in us, then we will behave differently, and if not, then we won’t be able to. Therefore, the only way out is to realize that it is impossible to continue existing in a selfish nature and we must move on to a new, inverse approach to life. Everything that happens brings us to this. Let’s try to quickly understand that there is no other choice and that it all depends on our prayer.

Indeed, it is easier for a person to imagine the destruction and collapse of the world than one’s life according to the laws of bestowal. Our whole world is built on the power of egoism and its destruction will occur by the same egoistic force. There will be nothing new. We have already experienced terrible wars, disasters, and troubles in this world.

Somewhere in the world, some kind of misfortune is constantly happening, and everyone understands that the world could collapse. But at the same time, the same force of egoism will remain that is has led the world to death.

It is much more difficult to change the program the world works according to, the nature of the relationship between inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and people, so that all of this works in reverse, in bestowing to one’s neighbor. Everyone should begin to reckon with others and take care of their welfare. This just does not fit in our head, it is impossible to imagine.

Indeed, for this I need to feel the desire of others and try to fill them. And this is the way everyone should act all the time. To do this, another program must be loaded into this huge computer, in the inanimate, vegetative, and animate world and people.

We cannot imagine that. No attempts by socialists and utopians to create such a world have been successful. Such a revolution can be accomplished only by the Creator, who will give us a different nature. This is what we should try to ask for, and as quickly as possible.

And if not, then the suffering that is now beginning to unfold, more and more decisively pushing us to rectify the world, will oblige us. But this is a very difficult, long and painful journey, full of suffering. In fact, it is called the “path of suffering”.

Let’s go the better way of the light. To do this, we need to draw the upper force from above to clothe in us. We need to demand, to ask, the Creator to give us the power of bestowal. Otherwise, we will not succeed. We will try to come to correction ourselves until we give up on this work. Then our cry will reach the Creator, and He will give us His altruistic force. This is called the exodus from Egypt, from our egoism.

But if we do not ask and do not oblige the Creator to help us, we will not be able to change anything and will suffer from our egoism more and more every day.

It is not necessary to hope that the coronavirus will disappear soon. It will not leave us, and in addition even more serious problems will come. Money, resources, and groceries will soon end—humanity will suffer terribly. And besides, hurricanes, clouds of locusts, floods, and drought are coming.

All of this is so we understand that only when we appeal to the Creator do we have hope to be saved from all problems and troubles. And then when we begin to turn to Him, we will understand that the main thing here is not getting rid of problems and misfortunes. Indeed they came for this to convince us to turn to the Creator. Therefore, it is a pity to ask Him for material benefits, it is better to ask Him to bring us closer to Him, because all happiness is there.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/1/20, Baal HaSulam, Shamati 34, “The Advantage of a Land”

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