Question: I remember myself in early childhood in the 80s. We swam in rivers and drank water from them; flowers and berries in the forest smelled so strongly that their aroma was simply intoxicating.

And today I see how everything has changed. Now these rivers are unsuitable even for watering cattle. Consequently, I have a certain feeling that we, our egoism, gobbled up this planet. What can we do to cure egoism? How can we correct it?

Answer: In principle, this is not so difficult. We just need to want this together and support one another so that many thousands of people would gather together and try to act not selfishly, but above their egoism, using it as little as possible.

And we do not need to do anything special, but first of all, just spare nature, stop robbing our Earth. And secondly, to spare people, i.e., treat one another with maximum understanding and friendliness.

If we act in this way with regard to nature and man, we will call upon ourselves the positive forces of nature, upper light, as we call it, and it will correct us. We will become more friendly, open, trusting.

We will be able to see through nature how good and evil forces interact with each other. And we balance them like plus and minus in electrical circuits. After all, it is impossible without the minus.

We need to learn how to do this. My whole life has been dedicated to teaching people how to properly use both forces inherent in nature: positive and negative.

The negative power is our egoism. It manifests itself everywhere and just burns us. But there is a positive force that we are not revealing. It can emerge only as we are awakened to it. If it (awakening) is not there, it (positive force) does not appear, and we remain under the control of only one negative force. As a result of this, we come to a state where everything becomes solely negative: inanimate, vegetative, animate nature, and man.
[264190]
From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah: Victoria Bonya,” 3/29/20

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Question: Scientists say that the melting of glaciers can be deadly for us.
Scientists from the United States and China went to Tibet where the oldest ice is. Studying it, they found twenty-eight different types of frozen viruses. And if the ice begins to melt, they will come to life.

Now, against the background of the coronavirus, there is a terrible panic. Viruses are ancient and have been frozen for about 15,000 years. What will they bring to humanity?! They say that it can be even worse than the coronavirus!

Answer: It is quite possible. This is a terrible discovery. Maybe it will somehow cool down hotheads and, first of all, politicians. After all, everything depends on them.

Question: How are politicians connected to the coronavirus?

Answer: They are connected by the fact that they help the acclimatization of the Earth [AG1] to global warming and everything else—let them throw billions at this. But, perhaps, they will still hear me and then there will be no need to throw billions “on the Earth” but they will instead educate the population and push it toward unity.

Question: How is education connected to viruses?

Answer: According to the plan of nature, we should already be getting closer to each other. If we do not begin to seriously get closer to each other, into one unified humanity, then, of course, we will face great problems!

And it is not just the melting of the glaciers. We are violating the integral ecology of the Earth and of all the surrounding space. We are violating the ecology of the solar system! We do not understand this, but these are all closed systems that affect each other, first of all, us, the Sun, and the Moon. These are all interconnected systems that are so close (although it seems to us that they are far away) that there may be unpredictable consequences and very rapid ones at that. We have to think all of this over.

However, to do this, we need different politicians, different leaders, and different ways of controlling the Earth. Consider what they are thinking about—only about how to remove each other from their places and how to reign for a year or two; for this they are ready to sacrifice the well-being of Earth dwellers. I do not know how to describe this so that it would touch people’s hearts. Humanity could bring order if they wanted to do so.

Question: Why don’t they want to?

Answer: They do not want to recognize what is happening. They close their eyes. But perhaps they will now, with these kinds of blows, which will increase all the time. This is mandatory.
And if they find an antidote to this virus, there will be even worse ones. And another antidote will make it even worse and so on.

Question: But you are not against the fact that they are looking for an antidote?

Answer: No, I am not against it; I think it is stupid because you cannot do anything with it. You just go down the same path of mistakes and falls, mistakes and falls, all the time. That is not what we should be doing. We need to understand the source of our wrong attitude toward ourselves, toward nature, and toward people, and then everything will work out.

Remark: Humanity is looking for a means to stop the glaciers from melting and so on.

My Comment: What for?! These are not the right tools; they are mechanical ones! Nothing is solved at its own level! We must always rise to a higher level. As Einstein said, “Do you want to fix something? You have to jump above the table if you want to land on the table.”

Question: Yes, but how can they understand this?

Answer: They should listen to Kabbalists. We speak in an absolutely reasonable, sensible, and empirical way and we try to explain everything.

Remark: What will make humanity closer to each other will not enter their minds.

My Comment: This is the greatest force of nature. It is because we express ourselves in this way, on the human level, and we try to make nature as integral as possible. And then nature begins to balance itself on all the other levels.

After all, what is the reason for the entire problem? It is due to the fact that everything is out of balance. If people, at their own level, begin to create this balance (we have been out of balance for a long time, which is clear from our relationships), then all the other parts of nature will automatically begin to come into balance.

Question: What will we have then? Will the viruses that came for death come for life instead?

Answer: Of course! Everything will be balanced. They will work normally, as they should. There is nothing bad in nature. It is we, at our level, who violate the harmony of interactions between the forces of nature, and therefore nature manifests itself at lower levels in such a way.

Volcanoes, hurricanes, and viruses are all natural phenomena. but they are already beginning to manifest themselves at the level of biological phenomena. And then they will also exist at the human level. That is, humanity will suddenly stop understanding what it is doing and where it exists, as if it were under the influence of some kind of drug. And there will be nothing you can do with people.

They will be walking around like they are switched off and doing some weird, terrible things. Someone will think of pressing some button in a nuclear power plant.

Question: Does this mean that the problems have risen to the human level?

Answer: Of course. They gradually rise from below, just as water rises and floods all levels of a human building.

Question: You are a person of exact science, but it is very difficult to hear you. The politicians will not hear you. Then, who do you address?

Answer: The people. I do not address politicians at all. There is nothing one can do except through the awareness of people. Not politicians; they are programmed by nature. What people want to happen, politicians implement.

We need to wish that people will want the right goals, and then politicians will act. Politicians do not hear anything! The main thing for them is to be in power. If they hear that the people want it, they will say and do what the people want. The main thing for them is to be in charge.

Question: What should people want now in order to suddenly change the politicians?

Answer: The people must want to be connected among themselves in a good connection.

We need to think about what to do. Because if this develops naturally and egotistically, then, of course, it will be bad. We need to urgently correct the tendency of nature, to turn it in the direction of agreement and mutual connection. Then, everything will be balanced.

We have no way to escape from viruses and other organisms of some kind. These are all biological organisms. We need to develop all of this for the better. If we turn toward the better, they will not do us any harm. On the contrary, they will participate with us in a different type of development—a civilized one.

Remark: To life.

My Comment: Of course. Therefore, it all depends on man.
[263914]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/3/20

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Question: What exactly does nature want from us? What should each of us change for a better future?

Answer: We are in an integral, global nature, as if inside a ball. The whole system of nature is interdependent and is in a certain internal balance. And we humans are specially created as egoists; we constantly disturb this balance in ourselves and in the field surrounding us: the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human.

The problem is that despite the constant development and work of our egoism, we must reach a state where we fully balance the ego, make a restriction on it, the so-called Tzimtzum, and then use it the other way around: for bestowal, for proper communication with each other, when everyone consumes only what is necessary for himself.

Today, any regular person in a society makes money, has a family, children, home, work, and lives normally. One does not need too much. By his actions, he should not harm the environment but plan them in a way that they are in balance with the outside world—not in a constant, petrified state, but in dynamic equilibrium.

If a person behaves this way, then it is good for him and good for the world. He begins to feel and get acquainted with the system of nature through this world: what formula it works by, what kind of force is inside nature that controls everything. This upper force is called the Creator.

In principle, nature deliberately created us so opposite to our equilibrium so that we would begin to feel in our development how much we do not correspond to it, i.e., to the Creator, how much we can change, and how to be closer to nature, to the Creator. At one point, we begin to comprehend this force that controls us and wants to be in balance and communication with us all the time.

Here lies the purpose of man’s existence: to reach the level of connection with the general force of nature called the Creator. When we reach it, we will feel that we are in the state of the highest comfort, knowledge, eternity, and perfection. We must come to this state.

Therefore, the virus that we are now awakening and which in turn is awakening us, exists precisely so that we can find the right interaction with nature, come to equilibrium with it, to the revelation of the Creator, to communication with Him.

Question: How can you feel and realize balance with nature? After all, everyone has their own vision of this.

Answer: You treat everyone as yourself. This is the best. If we relate to each other like that, then at all levels: inanimate, vegetative, and animate, everything will be in order. We will be in dynamic equilibrium with the world around us and begin to feel through it the higher management system—the program called the Creator.
[264416]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/5/20

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/27/20

I can sympathize with the desire to reopen the economy and return to “normalcy.” The emotional strain of being locked down, the uncertainty and anxiety over the future, the loneliness of millions who live alone in their homes, all those contribute to the longing to resume social and commercial life.

Regrettably, if we reopen too soon and without required preparations, we will suffer terribly. The virus will return with a vengeance, fatality rates will dwarf those of today, risk groups will cover all age groups, and the social distancing will be far more severe and prolonged.

The coronavirus has shown us how alienated we are from each other. Were we not so alienated, we would not feel so lonely, uncertain, and anxious. We would be so much more resilient that we would be able to withstand a lockdown even for the entire duration of the plague. The stress so many of us feel now is not because of the virus; it is because of the emotional remoteness that plagued us long before the virus came. COVID only uncovered it and placed it right before us. If we want to heal ourselves from the virus, we first have to heal ourselves from alienation. Instead of focusing on business, we should focus on strengthening our communities.

When people do not feel alone, it is much easier for them to deal with stress and discomfort. We can and should cater to the vulnerable in our communities, see that they get what they need, and that they do not feel alone. We must remember that keeping COVID away from them means keeping it away from us, as well. If we practice mutual responsibility, we just might have a chance at fighting the most rapid pandemic to ever spread across the globe.

[Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash]

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Question: You say that the situation with the coronavirus will take six months to a year. When will this all end?

Answer: Don’t wait! Nature must tame us, guide us along a completely new path, the supra-egoistic path. We cannot continue to mutilate it, we are obliged to live differently.

You can’t spend 80% of your strength, energy, and mind on breaking nature and leave 20% or even less on your own existence. We cannot act this way anymore because when we do this, we violate the laws and conditions of nature’s equilibrium. Nature can’t stand it.

In just the two months that we stopped interfering with nature, it began to recover. Nature cannot tolerate any longer! The system cannot remain oppressed!
[264754]
From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah: Victoria Bonya,” 3/29/20

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Baal HaSulam writes that if humanity does not want to unite and treat each other kindly, then we will face world wars and natural disasters after which a handful of people will remain on earth who will have to include all the souls and come to love their neighbor anyway.

Why don’t we do it right now without waiting for the blows? Let’s ask ourselves.

All humanity must unite as one ten and include the Creator within itself. A ten can consist of ten billion people; the main thing is that they connect as one group, one ten.

The number of people is not important; the connection is important. But keep in mind that the fewer people remain on earth, the greater egoism each person would have. That is, they would have to go through greater suffering and misery in order to receive greater force from above to correct their egoistic desire. The world population growth is caused by the growing desire to enjoy being revealed that requires correction.

The greater the number of people who want to overcome their egoism, the easier it is for them to correct themselves. If we do not want to improve, then nature puts pressure on us, destroys and kills us, but in every survivor there remains much more suffering, problems, and willingness to give up their egoism. It all depends not on the number of people but on their willingness to unite as one ten.

When I talk about what the world will look like in the post-coronavirus era, I am accused of supposedly being a socialist. But this state has already been described by Baal HaSulam and the prophets a long time ago.

We need to rise above our corporeal view and see ourselves existing in one heart. And this does not depend on the condition in which the physical bodies are or on their number: whether it will be ten billion people on earth or twenty billion.

We must reach a state where it becomes unimportant for us in what material form we live and, most importantly, that we exist and can be united by our souls, thereby providing a place for the Creator to be revealed. It doesn’t matter how my animal body lives; the main thing is that I feel as one heart with all the inhabitants of this world.
[263363]
From the  Kabbalah lesson 4/18/20, Baal HaSulam, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings” 

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: … we find the opportunity to examine the conditions of life in the last generation—the time of world peace, when the whole of humanity achieves the level of the first side and will use their singularity only in the form of bestowal upon others, and not at all in the form of reception for self. And it is good to copy here the above-mentioned form of life so it will serve to us as a lesson and as a role model to settle our minds under the flood of the waves of our lives. Perhaps it is worthwhile and possible in our generation, too, to experiment in resembling this above form of life.”

Question: What exactly can we do in our life practically in order to switch to bestowal, which we imagine very vaguely?

Answer: The fact is that in a truly correct, closed ecological environment nothing is used without a purpose but only for the sake of what is necessary for existence. And everything else is passed on for the benefit of the system.

This is a dynamic equilibrium in which if one excludes man, the inanimate, vegetative, and animal levels of nature automatically exist. As soon as we humans cease to come into contact with them, a balance immediately sets in between all parts of nature. The wolves are full and the sheep are whole. Everything calms down.

There is a place for everything in nature. The problem is only in man, or rather, in his egoism, when in addition to the desire necessary for existence, he begins to use nature and supposedly rule over it: break, bend, and crush all for himself.

We must understand the principle of the integrality of nature, its harmony, its interconnection. And if we do not advance toward this in a good way, nature begins to slowly resist us. And then when we are already violating certain states of nature, it makes a sharp move because it can not allow us to do so.

Its reaction manifests itself in the form of various problems such as explosions, hurricanes, tsunamis, technical disasters, and the coronavirus. In addition, nature has an infinite number of different negative reactions to man, precisely because he creates them himself, he evokes them.

I hope that the coronavirus will seriously straighten us out. We will begin to understand how we should act and what we should do with nature.
[264327]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/5/20

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Question: How do we counteract the rumors that everything that is happening is just a rehearsal of the world behind the scenes before the global cleanup of the Earth’s population, before global vaccination, “chipization” of the population?

Answer: In extreme situations, as a rule, such rumors always emerge. People try to explain what has happened with the fact that it was graft, or vaccine, or something similar affecting people in such a manner. I do not relate to such things and do not speak for or against them.

What nature does happens anyway, and people can not prevent it. Therefore, relate to such rumors calmly, let people talk. Even before people start talking, the virus will change our entire worldview. That is why it does not matter. Nature moves its own way nonetheless.

People are prone to speculation that someone is starting up some mechanisms behind our back, playing political, economic, or other games. It is typical for us to make problems look like something we supposedly understand, that somewhere on Earth someone is sitting and twisting everything. But this all is very shallow.

Now changes are happening on a global scale, affecting absolutely everyone: rich and poor, sick and healthy, old and young, men and women. It is just a virus, and that is all. It is being researched in all countries and no one knows what to do with it. Who can manage it? Do not pay attention to these tales.

Of course, there are many small, egoistic possibilities to say something about someone: “My mother-in-law made it up in her kitchen and she is now sending it to me.”

Some time ago, I had an internship in Leningrad, present-day St. Petersburg, in a hospital for the mentally ill. There were a lot of such people with seemingly truthful stories. Intelligent people, with a broad outlook, with such depth. They were sitting in front of you in hospital pajamas and saying such things—you could write a novel.

So do not listen to gossip. Before we write a novel, its time has already passed, people will get wiser because they will already be in the second, third, or fourth acts of this drama. Not even drama, but a grandiose production of the Creator that must be watched and admired.

Why admired? We, of course, pay for this with our lives and suffering, but in the end, we will be transformed.

We may personally pay a great price, but humanity will move forward: to the truth, to the essence, toward the revelation of the inner meaning, the inner program of nature. They will start to understand how nature works. This is the most important human pleasure for those who are alive and those who have already risen to the other level of existence.

The most important human pleasure is the attainment of the inner program of nature, its huge inner computer called Shechina. He sees how it works on all levels, at all times, through all worlds. And this understanding, the feeling of what is happening, gives eternal, infinite pleasure. This is the attainment of the Creator.
[264757]
Form KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/5/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What has the Coronavirus taught you in your life?“

The coronavirus is teaching us all to recognize our global interdependence.

Before the coronavirus, we were in a world of vicious egoistic competition, where the more we could exploit others, the more we could profit.

Today, however, we all depend on each other, as any breach of the social distancing conditions set before us could mean another coronavirus victim.

We have been given a mutual adversary in the coronavirus, and we need to exercise our mutual consideration and responsibility in order to beat it.

However, our true rival is much deeper than the coronavirus.

As much as the coronavirus is a nearly-invisible particle that has brought about much death, sickness and has overturned our socio-economic infrastructures, there is a much more cunning and complex enemy that has no physical form at all—our egoistic human nature.

The human ego, which is the desire for self-benefit at the expense of others, innately pits us up against each other, making each person constantly toil for his or her superiority over others.

Any success we have in such a constant struggle is short-lived, as if we are all in a game of tug-and-war and one of us momentarily manages to pull stronger than the others, before losing that grip and once again becoming pulled along by everyone else. Ultimately, such a struggle leads to us all falling down, as the coronavirus swiftly showed us.

How, then, is it possible to defeat an attitude that is embedded in our very nature since birth?

It is possible firstly by paying more attention to how it acts to our detriment even though it seemingly serves to benefit us; and secondly, it is possible to overcome our egoistic nature by re-prioritizing our values.

Instead of appreciating successful, wealthy and powerful individuals as we did at least until the onset of the coronavirus, if we instead appreciate positive human connection, and acts that serve to increase love, care and unity in society, then such a surrounding positive social influence would give us the necessary tools to shift our mindset: from egoistic use of others for self-benefit, to altruistic use of oneself in order to benefit others.

The coronavirus has taught us that humanity can quickly reach a common ground when conditions call for it.

Using this example, we can take further steps to more and more unification out of our own free choice. In other words, instead of waiting for nature to inflict us with more suffering in order to unite us once again, we can take our unity into our own hands, and actively seek how we can place the benefit of others over self-benefit in our day-to-day and moment-to-moment interactions.

Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “If everything is here for a reason, what does Coronavirus teach us about?“

The coronavirus came to teach us about how much we depend on each other, and thus, how we need to take more responsibility in our attitudes to each other.

If we look at major events in world history, including the world wars and past pandemics, even they did not involve the entirety of humanity to the extent that the coronavirus has.

We would thus be wise to learn a lesson in global interdependence from the coronavirus, and step up our game to think and act more responsibly and considerately of each other, treating each other as members of a single human family, with each person holding equal importance.

While we normally consider only our own health, the coronavirus forced us to pay attention to the health of others around us by directly connecting our health to theirs.

We were cornered into upholding a list of conditions in order to not infect others—maintaining personal hygiene, washing hands regularly, staying at home during the lockdown, wearing masks and sustaining a distance of two meters when in public—and as the economy reopens, the period of distancing continues making us think about the health of others, since other people’s good health ensures our good health, and vice versa.

This is one clear way how the coronavirus has taught us a lesson in interdependence.

The question then becomes: How much do we apply this lesson to our lives?

From herein, will we conduct ourselves in such a way where society’s benefit leads our thought processes, or will we resort to prioritizing self-benefit without considering the effect on others, as per our pre-coronavirus habits?

Considering others before we consider ourselves runs against our egoistic human nature, which constantly places ourselves before others.

Yet, as hard as it is for us to think about benefiting others, the coronavirus has shown us how nature can compel us to do so whether we like it or not.

Nature, however, has no intention of making us suffer.

On the contrary, there is immense fulfillment and enjoyment dwelling in nature, which it wants us to discover.

It wants us to develop into all-seeing, all-knowing and all-feeling creatures, and it can do so by elevating us above our self-aimed thoughts and desires.

How? It is by giving us situations where we are forced to better connect in order to survive.

Such pressures are akin to birth contractions. As a baby gets pressured to exit its comfortable-but-narrow world in the womb and enter a new world outside, we too get pressured by events such as the coronavirus to exit our comfortable-but-narrow egoistic perceptions of the world, and enter a new perception of our interdependence.

Moreover, as the baby did not know that its life in the womb was tiny, dark and constrained, we too fail to see how living solely according to the ego’s demands—self-benefit at the expense of others—is a tiny, dark and constrained world in comparison to the world we can discover when we shift our main focus onto benefiting others.

As much as we appreciate and want to have love, peace, truth, happiness, confidence, support, encouragement and care in our lives, we fail to see how such qualities are achievable at a much greater scale when mutual responsibility and consideration becomes a leading value throughout society.

When everyone aims at benefiting everyone, and when we encourage contributing to society as a principle marker of success, instead of increasing our wealth at any cost, then we will experience a harmonious life, balanced with nature, and will feel a new sense of calm spread throughout society, fulfilling us all.

I thus hope that we do take away the lesson of needing to be more responsible and considerate of others, which the coronavirus came to teach us.

We all have a special role in contributing to a society that can make our lives great, and until we take some strides in that direction of our own accord, nature will send us reminders through the likes of many such problems, pandemics among them.

Above photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.

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