From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 4/30/20

Now that we’re no longer sheltering in place, the focus shifts from health to provision. Many businesses will not survive the coronavirus crisis since there will be no demand for them. Humanity is changing; many things we regarded as staples, we will now regard as superfluous luxuries.

Yet, those business owners need an income or they will not survive and social mayhem will ensue. The state has no obligation to fund businesses that have no demand, but it does have to provide people with basic means of sustenance. Therefore, providing some basic income for every person is a must.

Yet, this income is not to be given as freebies. COVID-19 has shown that we are all interdependent. Yet, we have no idea how to function in a society where everyone’s life is dependent on everyone else. People who have lost their previous careers to the virus will therefore learn about living in an interdependent society in order to become instructors of living in such a society. They will be trailblazers of a new social paradigm of mutual responsibility and solidarity. They will build a basis for a society that all of humanity will later join, since a few pandemics from today, all of us will be in the shoes of those who have lost their jobs today. Few will provide for everyone, and everyone will engage in connection. This is the synopsis of correction.

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We are now quarantined in our homes, where should we go after exiting this Egypt? First, we need to understand exactly why we are doing this and where we are going. The way out of Egypt is the way out of egoism into love between us. We are in Egypt under the rule of Pharaoh, our common egoism, which keeps us all in slavery and sets us up against each other. We want to come out of this unfounded hatred and turn face to face to one another with open hearts.

This should be revealed as mutual love, which is called the exodus from Egypt to the land of Israel, to the desire directed straight to the Creator, to the higher power of love.

Passover is a holiday of liberation from the angel of death, from our egoism. We imagine liberation as going back to the former pre-coronavirus life so that we can finally leave the house, go to a restaurant, and take a walk along the seashore or in the park. This is how we see freedom and free people.

The virus is showing us how we are not free and that we are immersed in our egoism. The coronavirus says: “Do not leave home! If you are locked within your egoism, you will be locked in your material life in the same way.” The virus shows us the true picture, our slavish dependence on the desire to fill ourselves, on Pharaoh. We meekly obey all the demands of our egoism and do not even realize it. Egoism dominates our thoughts and desires; this is called slavery.

“We were slaves in Egypt”—slaves of our selfishness, our desire to fill ourselves without thinking of others. But we are in the same integral system with all the people of this world, with all the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, and people. And if my actions concern only my own personal desires, this means I work for Pharaoh. And to think about everyone else means to work correctly with respect to nature, the Creator. And then nothing, no viruses, can harm us.

During the Passover meal, it is a tradition to set a glass of wine for the guest of honor, the prophet Elijah. There was a joke this Passover that this time we did not invite the prophet Elijah so as not to infect him with the virus because he is in the at-risk group due to his age. So should we expect the prophet Elijah or not? Elijah comes to announce that the Messiah is coming. The Mashiach (Messiah in Hebrew) is the force that draws us out of our egoism, that is, from all misfortunes, and brings us to the state of universal bestowal and love, which is the Creator, and to the desire where we are all connected with one another and with the higher force of nature. It is a message that the prophet Elijah brings to us.

That is, we are not waiting for a person, but a special force that will lead us to love. Love means that I treat others as myself and even better. We have been waiting for the prophet Elijah for so many years, and he still has not come. But we have never waited for the true Elijah. Did we ever want to love someone? We expected that Elijah would bring us money, a new car, a new house, a private plane; everyone had their own interpretation. We were waiting for the wrong Elijah!

Elijah is the highest force that will bring us to such a strong unification, right up to love, that we will feel not only as one nation, but as one body and one desire and will feel the Creator within us, as it is said: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.”

The Creator is the power of bestowal and love, not some kind of material image. This power of love must dwell within us, between us. This is what we call the revelation of the prophet Elijah, liberation, exit from Egypt, and the true end of correction. Then we will feel the whole nation as one big family. To do this, you do not need to leave your house. The force of Elijah, the power of unity, acts above of all walls and borders. We will suddenly feel this whole world as transparent, without any partitions between rooms, houses, and parts of the universe. Everything will be felt as one whole where everyone is in connection with others and each person includes everyone within oneself. After all, every person is a small world. This is how we will feel the whole reality and within it the Creator.

Therefore, in this Passover, our main effort is to concentrate on the power of love from the prophet Elijah so that it would clothe and connect us with the whole world in one mutual embrace, which will lead us to the real exodus from Egypt.
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From KabTV’s “New Life – 1220” 4/2/20

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Torah, Exodus 15:26: … all the sicknesses that I have visited upon Egypt I will not visit upon you, for I, the Lord, heal you.

Sanhedrin 101a: Our sages ask, “If I do not place the illness, what is the need for a healer?”

Rabash, Article 133, “It Is All Corrections”: We should interpret that since I am the healer, why should I place on you an illness if I must heal the illness? What do I gain by placing an illness? It must be as a punishment, and if I must heal the illness, what kind of punishment is it? It is as though I work for nothing.

For this reason, I will not place illness upon you, and what you think is illness, you are wrong about it. Rather, all the states you feel, if you attribute them to Me, are all corrections by which you will approach Me in Dvekut [adhesion].

Everything that happens in the world, even this virus is necessary for us in order to get to know this system. But we cannot work in it efficiently if we do not see its opposite and common actions.

Therefore, what seems to us to be diseases, all kinds of injuries, malfunctioning states, are only necessary in order to teach us to correctly understand the Creator. After all, everything should be built based on the knowledge of good and evil, plus and minus, or we will not understand what is happening to us and to the whole common system.

Today we are at the beginning of a very strong influence from above, the manifestation of our imbalance. There is huge nature and humanity as its highest degree. However, humanity with its unreasonable behavior takes this system out of balance and what is called coronavirus or something especially harmful appears, and we do not know how to deal with it.

In the modern world, we have never been so defeated from our pedestal of perfection, knowledge, strength, power, and influence, when in our arrogance, we considered ourselves the supreme force of nature. What can we do today? Hide in our corners like scared rabbits? What is happening to us?

Do not come close, do not sit together, meet at a distance of two meters, wash your hands thoroughly, do not blow your nose, and so on.

Can you see what nature is showing us? That you are insects! Try to throw off this pride, this arrogance, see what system you are in and what needs to be done to bring it back to normal. Stop breaking it! Why do you always hog the covers? What are you trying to achieve by that?

Nothing will happen to nature itself, but you will begin to feel that you are in a terrible, damaged system. You spoil it. In principle, nature recovers very quickly. But you will reach a state where it will spew you out.

Look what happened around Chernobyl after people delivered a terrible blow to nature there! And today, everything blooms there, animals appear that have not been around for hundreds of years. Why? Because the most harmful animal, man, disappeared and everything blossoms and smells. Therefore, we must stop harming nature.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/15/20

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 4/28/20

As if someone switched off the lights, country by country shut off its gates. Incoming flights were revoked, ships were denied docking, and tourists were told to leave. Everyone went home and was told to shelter in place.

Then the animals appeared. Fish appeared in the canals of Venice, Italy; wallabies hopped in Adelaide, Australia; alligators strolled in South Carolina, USA; elephants marched in Chachoengsao, Thailand; sea lions barked at dogs in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, and sheep ran on the carousel in Raglan, UK. The list of animal sightings in places normally reserved to humans is endless but the trend is clear. Nature whipped us into our homes using the novel coronavirus, then conquered civilization and told us who’s boss.

But we don’t listen. All we want is to go back to our same ole same ole, the very same ole that got us locked down in the first place. Since we aren’t getting the message, we’re coming out of the COVID-19 crisis with the same spirit we had when we went into it—the spirit of unabashed entitlement and alienation from each other. So the next time nature strikes, it will have to lock us down more decisively and painfully until we say, “Enough! We’re willing to change.”

Nature is an encompassing network of forces that is guided by a single principle: balance. These forces act like a stern teacher: When we are stubborn and insist on pulling the wrong way, it forcibly pulls us back. The more obstinate we are, the more that pull hurts. When it hurts enough, we listen and learn, balance is restored, and joy sets in.

Regrettably, today we have become so self-centered and obstinate that we’ve stopped listening altogether, not only to nature, but to anyone or anything. As a society, we are narcissistic, immersed in self-entitlement to the point where we simply cannot see when we are harming others. In fact, even if we did, we would not care enough to stop.

This approach is so opposite from nature’s principle of balance that it is bound to pull it out of us by force. And the more we resist, the harder it will pull.

To change our attitude to nature, we have to start with one another. If we cannot be compassionate to our own species, we will not be compassionate to any species, plant, or land. We will simply not know what compassion means.

Luckily, we have each other to “practice” on; we can “exercise” compassion in our families, communities, and with our friends. We do not need to look far if we want to make a real change; we only need to look at one another.

There is nothing selfish or ill-meaning in the whole of reality; every animal acts according to its nature. The only exception is mankind. So let’s practice with each other how to become considerate, compassionate, perhaps even caring.

The change will not come from governments. In an egoistic society, policy makers are the top of the heap, the “crème de la crème” of egoism. We will not find refuge from self-centeredness if we wait for them to act. The shift must come from regular people who want to change themselves, who feel that human nature needs to be better, and who say, “The change begins with me!”

Then, when we have changed ourselves, we will change how we relate to everything—to all of nature and to one another. Only then will we be cured.

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Medium published my new article “I Am Genuinely Afraid”

The economy may be reopening but not as it should be. Irresponsible ignition of economic and commercial activities will bear such consequences that will make us regret not waiting a little longer in the first round.

We are living in an integral reality that has a natural balance. When the balance is breached, the system pushes itself back to balance much like a pendulum that returns to the middle with greater force the more you pull it to one side.

Humans have pushed the global ecosystem so far off balance that now it has to strike back a painful blow in order to resume the balance. As long as we refuse to understand this mechanism, we will continue to suffer blows every time nature balances itself. At the moment, we are far from understanding this and far from balance. We were waiting for the moment when we came out of the lockdown so we could keep pushing nature. But the result will be that nature’s next push back will be much stronger and much more painful.

Eventually, we will learn. The only question is how much we will have to suffer until we realize that we will not win by thinking only me-me-me.

The more we developed technology, the more we behaved like senseless children in a toy shop with no one to tell us what we are allowed to buy and what’s too expensive. But you can’t leave the shop without going through the cashier, and the cashier will make us pay for everything we took.

Sure, we have to reignite commerce and provide people with what they need. But we are not thinking only about getting what we need. We want to compete once more in who’s got more, who is richer, and who is more successful. But competition didn’t make us happy the first time, so why go back to it? Worse yet, this is exactly what caused the outburst of the virus — our self-centered behavior — so what sense is there in re-embracing the conduct that inflicted a disaster on us. Can we doubt that another disaster, probably much worse, will follow?

If we reignite only those parts of the economy that sustain us, that guarantee our livelihood, while dedicating the rest of our time, resources, and efforts to establishing better connections among us, we will all be happy. We won’t need any accessories to brag about, and we won’t need to compete with anyone because we will feel worthy just being who we are! We will be appreciated for contributing our skills to the common good, and the gratitude and warmth from people will fill us to the brim with happiness.

Have you ever walked into a room where everyone liked you and thought well of you? Do a little thought exercise and try to imagine this. Now do another exercise and imagine that as soon as you walk out to the street, everyone treats you with that kind of warmth and care.

In such a society, the most required profession will be instructors and teachers to guide people into that type of mindset. With such a mindset, the cohesion and solidarity in society will make welfare services redundant. People will take care of each other, just as it should be!

Think of army elite units. They know that in battle, their lives depend on their unity. We are in a battle now. We have already realized that we are all dependent on each other’s responsibility. If we forego the mutual responsibility we have acquired in this battle and return to our dog-eat-dog mindset, we stand no chance against the next virus, or whatever blow nature will send us next. I am genuinely afraid for humanity. The virus was a mild lesson; the next one could be devastating.
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My article in Newsmax: “The Teachings of a Global Epidemic”

The world is eagerly trying to get back to its feet. It is clear that people need to secure their livelihoods, put food on their tables, and get back to business, but I wonder, have we learned the lessons the coronavirus crisis tried to teach us? What if the pandemic has yet to fulfill its goal of spurring us toward the creation of a more balanced society?

Gradually, some stores and services are reopening in the United States and around the world. An apparent normalcy is being restored, and everyone seems to be content with our renewed desire to return to our usual egoistic approach toward self-benefit and exploitation of the ecosystem that brought us to this peril to begin with. Or maybe not? It will be interesting to see if we emerge from this forced pause any wiser, more conscious of the system in which we live and willing to do something to restore the lost balance in our relations toward others and our surrounding environment.

If we return to the business-as-usual mode without any commitment for a substantial change in our behavior, no one will be able to guarantee that a bigger disaster will not hit us. It is imperative that we internalize the fact that we live in an integral environment. All of nature is one closed system — alive, breathing, but wounded because of our human ego — the sole factor which disrupts the overall functioning of the integral system of nature, bringing forth such plagues as the coronavirus.

I wonder, where are the international organizations such as the United Nations and outspoken environmental champions raising their voices and demanding a more conscious humanity before the world eases restrictions of movement and reopens the economy? We must hold ourselves accountable for our abuse of the world’s resources and our reckless attitude toward each other. But most importantly, we must realize that returning to the pre-COVID-19 world unchanged would be a recipe for disaster.

Back to Basics, Not Back to Crisis

We cannot realistically expect to return to our ongoing exploitation of the planet which pollutes, depletes and will eventually bring about the total destruction to the ecosystem. Likewise, we cannot revert to the same old dysfunctional patterns of society and harmful human relations among couples, families, children and co-workers. The old paradigm of greed, perversion, corruption and lack of empathy cannot define our reality any longer.

Clearly, no one wants to live in lockdown forever, but I hope that we have taken full advantage of the global halt to realize that life as it was had become unsustainable and to gain awareness of the conclusions we must draw about which endeavors are truly indispensable for society and which are superfluous.

Nature demonstrates the correct way. It functions integrally, as a unified whole, where all its parts take only what is essential in order to maintain the correct performance of the entire system.

The global epidemic froze the world, not to put an end to our development, but to lead us in the right direction and to broaden our view. A more friendly and harmonious attitude toward others and toward nature will shift our previous reality of total loss and transform it into total gain, taking us to a balanced world. What would be the point of ever looking back, when we can decide to build a promising future together?
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 4/27/20

The derailment of businesses and the collapse of oil prices indicate that we are moving into a different kind of economy where money has no value. It is not that we must replace dollars with gold, but something far more fundamental. In order to live in a sustainable world that doesn’t produce coronaviruses left and right, we must rethink our attitude toward nature and toward each other. And the worst part of our attitude is reflected in the current economy, which is based on exploitation of people, animals, plants, minerals, and even the air.

Instead of the current paradigm, we should appreciate people to the extent that they produce required products and social solidarity. Other than production of staples, we should engage in strengthening the social ties among us, the social solidarity and cohesion. These are the only “products” that will guarantee the survival of our species on the planet. Pride and prejudice will only lead to more natural and manmade disasters. It is time to start learning how to be human beings—connected and caring—rather than how to imitate celebrities who promote nothing but self-entitlement.

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The coronavirus spread us apart in different directions and made us feel how far we are from each other. It revealed to us the truth about how we try to separate from each other and at the same time completely depend on each other.

In other words, the virus gives us the opportunity to think about what our correct connection should be. If we unite people, awaken a good and strong desire in them for the right goal, then we change our history, our state.

There is no other way to improve the situation, not demonstrations, nor protests, nor demands will help. After all, the government does not have the means to give the people what they want. You can print more money, but there will be nothing to buy with it. Therefore, the main thing is to organize human society correctly, and first of all to provide everyone with food, medicine, clothing, and housing.

And so gradually a person is provided with everything necessary to be able to exist with their family and children. There will be other attacks and viruses that will force us to defend ourselves and to build life correctly. If all this comes from above, it will certainly lead to good changes.

Any system, whether socialism or capitalism, wraps itself in the egoism of man and becomes destructive. The Soviet people suffered much more from socialism than other people did from capitalism. The proof is that in the end they left their socialism and themselves moved to capitalism, which is not good in itself, but still better than what it was.

Socialism, which Baal HaSulam writes about, implies something quite different: a society, a social system, which primarily cares about the people. It did not work and it will never work if it is wrapped in the egoism of a person. Only if you purify a person from his egoistic nature and form a concern for others, for the people, in him, then it will work.

But it is impossible to remove egoism from a person because the Creator placed this force in him. It is possible only with the help of integral education and the upper light to organize this egoism so that it works correctly. This requires the support of the entire society and the upper light.

We live in the last generation before the correction, but it may last for many more years. We will have to learn how to implement the method of correction in humanity, which is egoistic from birth, and therefore, any form of society that is beautiful in theory—socialism, capitalism, communism—in practice turns into egoism, and therefore, will not succeed.

It is only through the reforming light that our nature can be corrected and society properly organized. We will not do anything ourselves, our job is only to attract the reforming light that will do it for us.

If we connect egoistic humanity with the upper force that will correct egoism, we will get a correct, good result, above egoism. And to do this, we need to organize a large group of pioneers who will show everyone else how to advance.

This is the only way to succeed, according to a program that exists in nature, and not invented at a meeting of some committee. There is already such a precedent in history because in the time of the Sanhedrin, between the First and Second Temples, there were times when society lived according to the correct laws.
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus Changes Reality,” 4/20/20

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Question: The head of the Israeli government announced that love is alienation and separation, meaning that by observing all the rules of the Ministry of Health, we show solidarity and concern for someone else.

According to Kabbalah, is this similar to the love of one’s neighbor, which is manifested not in the rapprochement between people, but first in alienation, then in restriction and the acquisition of the screen?

That is, first connection between people is reduced, second, the acquisition of a screen, the development of an anti-egoistic property and third is the right connection between people?

Answer: In principle, egoistic love lies in the fact that we use one another in order to make ourselves happy, as it usually happens between parents and children. After all, we give birth to children for our own sake, without asking the future children if they want to be born. It is the same thing here. Therefore, no one thinks of love for another, they think only of love for themselves. So we are programmed and automatically act.

But if we thought about others, then we would act differently. And the coronavirus that engulfs the world helps us in this, saying: “First of all, move away from each other. After you are independent from each other, think about why you need to get closer. If you come closer not for your own sake, but for the sake of others, then no virus will harm you, there will be no problems! Make it good for you because you are doing good to others, and all the viruses will disappear.”

Maybe I’m talking about too high a relationship, but in principle, this is the true deliverance from the coronavirus. Nature must lead us to ensure that we do not use others, but function as in an integrated system where each organ works for the whole system.
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus Changes Reality,” 3/19/20

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Question: What should the world become after the coronavirus?

Answer: Very simple—a world where people love one another. And that’s it!

In truth, we do not know what love is. We love what gives us pleasure. This is what we call love. In other words, love is self-love for us. But we need to begin making sure that people are mutually involved in the correct integral relationships.

We are one system and we have to think about how to keep it in balance so that it does not lose its equilibrium, so that we all feel good and do not pay attention to appearances, “I don’t like people like you and you don’t like people like me.”

We need to rise above all the problems in the feeling of mutual integral dependence. Just like a mother does not see flaws in her child, be it his small eyes or a big nose, she just loves him the way he is. We need to achieve this state of love.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/15/20

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