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.
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
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”
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
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
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.
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.
Question: What will the new society be like in this era of change? What should we do?
Answer:Study Kabbalah and explore what the initial stages of the new society are. Accept them, adapt to them, reveal them in our world, and explain them to others.
Question: Did you expect that this would happen so quickly and that we would be placed face to face with nature?
Answer: Not so suddenly.
Remark: Nature suddenly wants us to make a choice now.
My Response: It is just that nature is revealed in such a manner. There is no malicious intent.
Question: Does Kabbalah know how to find a cure for the coronavirus?
Answer: The only problem of nature is disconnection, division, opposition. Therefore, the only cure for this is the unification of all its parts. This is the cure for the coronavirus.
Thus, no matter where you turn, you will find an answer to the question and its verification. Whatever you are being offered, check if your decision leads people to summarize everything, connect, then it is a cure. If not, then it is evil and damage. [265042] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/12/20
Answer: It is precisely after death that there is life. And until we free ourselves from our egoism, there is no life. We feel our existence inside the ego, and it is petty, very mean, and very limited.
As soon as we get rid of egoism, even with the help of the death of our physical body, despite the fact that this is a very small redemption and a very small level of ascent, it still brings us liberation from the first egoistic level. We are beginning to understand that, in fact, nature and the world exist in a different dimension, above egoism.
Question: People living in their circle do not have time to think about anything more than that because they need to feed themselves and their families. Therefore, probably, egoism eats up humanity nowadays. How can we get out of this little circle?
Answer: This must be explained, this must be taught. It is for this purpose that I created a Kabbalah academy that operates in practically all languages of the world, on all continents, and includes several million students. We conduct lessons and lectures, meet each other, and organize international conferences and other events.
But the current virus, this last system of perception of nature, which is now gradually entering our consciousness, pushes a person to realize where he lives, why he exists. And here he has no way out.
In either the good or the evil way, we will have to understand the full picture of integral nature and how to exist in it. We must get to the right integral interaction with it. We ourselves must become integral. [264409] From KabTv’s “Meetings with Kabbalah: Victoria Bonya,” 3/29/20
Before the coronavirus, it was usual to travel and go to restaurants and shopping centers. It gave satisfaction, filled our lives with meaning. But the coronavirus changed all this. What will a person receive fulfillment from in the new world that we are entering ?
We are like children who suddenly grew up. While children are small, they are led to walk, play in the playgrounds, and ride on carousels. But then children grow up and must begin to learn. And when they become adults, they must get a profession and work, and take on different responsibilities.
Life is not a kindergarten. And although we were fine in childhood and would like to return there, this is no longer suitable for us. Would you agree to go back to kindergarten and play there like a child?
Humanity is now undergoing a special stage of growing up, which affects men, women, and children, and this is not easy for us. We will have to realize that we need to relate to life differently.
I remember how difficult it was for me when carefree childhood ended and my parents, who had spoiled me before, suddenly began to demand from me, force me to study and take care of myself. I could not understand why such a change suddenly occurred.
It was difficult for me to survive this until I realized that life is divided into halves. In the first half, you are a child, and father and mother take care of everything. And in the second half of your life, you become an adult and you must take care of yourself and your father and mother can no longer do everything for you.
And this is what is happening with humanity that was previously spoiled by nature. But now we have to become adults. And this maturity is not about opening more businesses, traveling the world, sitting in restaurants and bars, like it was before the virus, that is, about enjoying life. We have already finished this period and from now on, nature will demand from us as adults.
And as adults, we must know why we live, what is the purpose of life, and where it leads us. We can no longer be carefree children. We must open our eyes and see that we have a serious life ahead of us that requires we undertake a serious attitude.
We must make ourselves new people living in a new world. And this world is already appearing before us, only we do not want to notice it, but still we play as if in a kindergarten.
In the new world, we will receive fulfillment only from understanding the meaning of life. In the meantime, we were just amusing ourselves like little children with toys and balls, building castles in the sandbox and destroying them, playing war with each other. And suddenly a new stage has come where we need a serious attitude to life.
Until now, we haven’t lived, we have only played in life. We built ourselves an artificial world and played inside the sphere we created. If someone looked at the Earth from space, they would not understand what people were doing, why they were fussing so much, what is the use of it?
You need to learn how to live in a new way. I also once wanted to continue to live like a child and for my parents to take care of me. But they did not agree and could not do this, they realized I had already grown up. Therefore, they gradually moved away from me, reducing their attention and care. They could help in some way from afar, but each time less and less, and therefore, I was forced to grow up.
So we now need to understand how to improve our lives and in what form we need to live, what goals to achieve, in order to stop playing in various far-fetched affairs and to begin building a life that makes sense from the point of view of nature.
To do this, you need to discover nature and understand what is happening to us and what needs to be done to be adults according to the program laid down in nature, which we have not yet touched.
To live means to understand, feel, and comprehend its essence and purpose, and while still in this world, to taste the higher, cosmic meaning of life, encompassing the entire universe, the entirety of nature. We see that in nature everything has a meaning, a goal, and only our own life seemingly passes aimlessly. This is our work: to reveal the meaning of life, its essence and purpose, and begin to realize it. This is the task that nature poses before us. [264812] From KabTV’s “The World,” 3/12/20
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