Why Should We Unite?

Question: “Nature” and “Creator” in Gematria have the same numeric meaning. You can call it a “nature,” you can call it “Creator,” you can call it “laws of nature” or “laws or commandments of the Creator.” All of these are the same. What is the purpose of nature?

Answer: Nature has a single purpose: to bring creations, which it specially created as if having been repulsed from it, not in the same coordination, and integral system with nature, so that in this way they can gradually determine through their development that their union with each other and with nature is in the best state.

Question: It turns out, there are kind of two tendencies or two forces that develop us. The first force emanates and integrates, the second one receives and absorbs. And so forth on all levels.

On the inanimate level, atoms unite into molecules, and these molecules combine into more complex organisms. The same integration takes place on the human level where people from small tribal formations integrate into megacities.

On the other hand, we see that there is a constant growth of egoism. That is, matter constantly becomes increasingly complex, diverse, divided, and improved. Why is it important to understand these two trends? Why should we unite?

Answer: We should unite because we must become like the general nature. It is integral and global in all of its manifestations. We see that although galaxies fly apart, stars explode, planets form, all this happens in a general tendency.

First, it is all interconnected. Therefore, if somewhere in the universe something happens even with the smallest particle, then almost the entire universe feels it. After all, everything comes from one root and under the influence of one force called the “Big Bang.”

No matter what happens, everything has its root emanating from the Big Bang. Everything scatters from the Big Bang outwardly. Thus, all parts of matter that are known and unknown to us, at all levels, all events, all laws, are interconnected.

In cosmology, this process that occurred after the Big Bang is called the process of large unification when all the elements began to connect, integrate, and form all kinds of matter.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel,” 3/24/19

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The Times of Israel published my new article “A Cure to the Economic Anxiety of the Coronavirus Pandemic”

As the coronavirus pandemic advances globally, it is fair to think that no one in the world will be exempt from its economic impact.

Just as the development of the global capability to contain the coronavirus pandemic is uncertain, so is the economic forecast, but it is estimated that COVID-19’s effect on the world’s economy will surpass a $1 trillion loss in 2020.

Suddenly, the fear of appalling economic damage becomes stronger than the anxiety over harm to health. Job losses are paralyzing many people, and the threat takes new forms on a daily basis.

Undoubtedly, common citizens who depend on an average monthly income, who need to put food on the table for a number of family members, and whose partners are also obliged to stay home to care for children, are faced with a frightening new reality. The long lines to purchase such items as toilet paper under directives that caution them to stay away from crowds causes them to fear for their lives, ponder their destiny and the paralyzing uncertainty of the unknown.

Business owners, large and small, are in grave danger. Suddenly, their accounts plummet toward deficits and their routines are shattered. Customers, suppliers and orders have come to a halt, and nobody knows if, when and to what extent they will return. No one owes these business owners anything. Who will take care of them? Who can ensure that the virus will be stricken from the earth tomorrow and that life will return to normalcy?

Human society is disintegrating and falling from our sanitized hands. For years we have made a living off of one another and suddenly in one swish everything has become frozen and neutralized. The threat brought about by the coronavirus covers all economic spheres, but the strongest hit was to the tourism sector. There are no flights, no hotels, no open restaurants—a tourism industry death sentence.

Therefore, the cries of misfortune and despair surfacing with each new limitation and subsequent new level of severity stemming from the pandemic are understandable. However, we can also find solace in the fact that humanity is looking at itself in the mirror, discovering that it created a dysfunctional society awash with exaggerated self-importance. Now, with a paralyzed economy, we have the sharp taste of the spoiled fruits of our long-standing egotistic behavior, and we must decide on how we view our situation.

Thus, this is a blessed moment for national and global soul searching. It is a time to ask about what nature wants of us. Why were we given life? Was it merely to somehow find a way to survive on this planet? What have we achieved? In the first thirty years of our lives, we went through our primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. We traveled the world and spent another decade building a family, took on the Sisyphean toil of purchasing a home, a car and raising children.

What is next? We were thrown into a whirlpool from which it is difficult to extricate ourselves. We are in a modern form of slavery, locked in golden cages, and enclosed in social networks. Now, suddenly, isolated from everything by the coronavirus, we have an opportunity to make a change. We just need to figure out how we fell into this global inconvenience in order to know how to make the best of it.

This is the positive aspect of the coronavirus. It helps to elucidate the comprehensive system in which we live, the system of nature, which is all about interdependence, where every part supports another. The exception is the human being, who we know is ready to destroy everything to overrun and conquer just as long as he feels good. He does not want to integrate with the interconnected and interdependent laws of nature.

So along comes the coronavirus and breaks down the anti-integrative edifice we have created in human society. It will force a fresh examination of the order of life and the understanding that if we continue to act savagely, as narrow-minded egoists, and not behave according to our bodies’ needs—just like any other animal or plant in nature—we will only harm ourselves and our environment. This human “exception” is the one that we need to balance today, in order to connect with the integrative system of nature so that we can be happy and satisfied with our lives.

Nature programmed bringing us to this critical adjustment. Let us then anticipate an antidote to the virus, open our ears to the messages of the Kabbalists and what is written in the books of Kabbalah: that we live in a world that is all good, and that it is us, human beings, in our egoistic, selfish relations that knock it off balance.

By treating the other well, in mutual responsibility and consideration, we begin to uncover the complete and eternal nature in which we live; a fearless life, free of pressure, a long, healthy and beautiful life on earth.
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KabNet published my new article: “Coronavirus: Nature’s Vaccine To Cure Egoism”

With all the home quarantines and health department orders to stay at home except for essential needs amounting around the world at this time, while these moves are meant to protect our physical health, they can also serve as a new environment for us to heal ourselves as individuals and as a society.

The fact that many of us have been confined to our homes should serve to reveal our true state: that we are internally remote from each other. Such a revelation can thus serve to show us how physical remoteness and corporeal isolation requires inner closeness and spiritual connection.

Physical Remoteness and Corporeal Isolation Requires Inner Closeness and Spiritual Connection

Thanks to the coronavirus closing us into our homes around the world, we gain access to a new space where we can all participate in the same thought. In this space, we have an opportunity to seek more internal contact with each other and with the force of connection, which was previously hidden from us. Due to our busy competitive and materialistic lifestyles coming to a sudden halt, we have been slotted into a new environment around the world where we have the chance to become closer to nature.

“The ego virus did not give us fevers and dry coughs; it attacked our thoughts and desires. It made us think about ourselves all the time, making us act solely for personal benefit, using anything and anyone around us in order to satisfy itself.”

What is nature? Nature is fundamentally a thought that has a quality of connection, love and bestowal. The more our attitudes to each other resemble nature’s quality, the more we discover a new field seemingly rising between us, a space existing in our connections that is alive, breathing and pulsating.

In this field that starts forming between us, we start living on a new level of connection. This new level of connection necessitates us developing a sense of mutual dependence and responsibility, with ties of support, encouragement and friendship between us. Everything else we created then turns out to appear all the more artificial and transient.

How Nature Teaches Us to Grow Up and Become Considerate of Each Other

The integral force of nature that becomes revealed in our connections both brings us internally closer together, and it also pushes us away from each other, in intervals. It can be likened to parents teaching their babies to walk by holding both the babies’ hands and guiding them through a few steps, and then letting the babies’ hands go, allowing the babies to fall, all under careful guidance, in order to let the babies learn how to start walking by themselves.

Likewise, there are times when we feel more together, and times when we become more remote, and this alternation is in order for us to seek how we can connect positively above the increased distance between us, to build more mature relationships to each other. “Mature” means that we feel a sense of rejection separating us, and above that negative sensation, build positive connections of mutual consideration and assistance.

Nature Injected Us with the Coronavirus as a Vaccine to Cure a More Severe Virus

Before the coronavirus struck us, we were hit with another virus: our egoistic human nature. The ego virus did not give us fevers and dry coughs; it attacked our thoughts and desires. It made us think about ourselves all the time, making us act solely for personal benefit, using anything and anyone around us in order to satisfy itself.

The problem was that the ego could never become genuinely satisfied. In an endless race to fulfill itself, it increasingly mutated, wanting more and more, making us forget about the need to be considerate to others, and urging us to seek more wealth, social status and power using anyone and anything it could make us get its hands on.

Nature then injected us with the coronavirus—nature’s vaccine for the ego virus that had recently mutated to extremes. Since we let the ego exploit the physical closeness that we used to have, nature physically distanced us from each other in order to give us time to heal internally, to realize that our egoistic quality was increasingly knocking us out of balance with each other and with nature, and to think about how we could fix this flaw—to develop a common sense of support, encouragement and responsibility for each other upon the ego.

Of utmost importance right now is to be in this together, to help each other relate constructively to this period of physical isolation that nature has forced us into—that we need nothing other than to develop feelings of consideration, concern and responsibility for each other in order to make a historical shift from the old competitive-egoistic world and into a new world of harmonious global connection.
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“Disperse the wicked; better for them and better for the world.”

Comment: The measures taken by many governments against coronavirus have literally paralyzed people’s lives.

My Response: Governments are very afraid for their fellow citizens. We must understand that they are responsible for the health of the population and for the economy. And the economy is completely dependent on our relations and international trade. This is a huge headache for governments. If they already decided to cut all ties, it means that they have no other choice.

For example, just the other day, US President Trump announced that he is canceling all flights from the United States to Europe. Do you understand what this means for the US aviation industry? Certainly, he takes this into account, especially since he has an election coming up.

He probably has data that confirms that I am not exaggerating. He would have liked to make a more lenient decision, but obviously he has such information that he has to stop flights.

Comment: The same is happening in the country where I live. Israel is completely isolated. You cannot leave the country. I have heard that this fact alone causes a loss of four billion shekels, not to mention all the rest.

My Response: Some people think this is an exaggeration. I think that it is underestimated.

Question: It turns out that the only way to fight the virus is by isolation. However, this is against the tendency of the laws of nature, which constantly pushes us to unite, to integrate. How can you explain this?

Answer: Very simply. It is written in an ancient Kabbalistic source, “Disperse the wicked; better for them and better for the world.” And vice versa, “Assemble the righteous; better for them and better for the world.”

Question: What is our sin?

Answer: It is in the fact that we do not connect correctly. In our connection, we do not wish each other well; therefore, this cannot be called unity. This can only be called a desire to profit at the expense of others.

Therefore, in our development, nature cannot accept such attempts to unite, to trade, and so on as positive, correct, and leading to a more unified state that it set for us. It believes that such a connection is harmful to us and to the entire universe. Therefore, it gives us a hard time in the form of viruses and all sorts of unpleasant excesses. These blows will continue until we change our attitude to each other.
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus Is Changing Reality, Part 2,” 3/12/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How does coronavirus compare to past pandemics?“

Today, humanity is much more interdependent than it ever has been before, and thus the global socio-economic impact of the coronavirus differs significantly from past pandemics.

If past pandemics in Europe and other parts of the world had no influence over other continents and nations, the case with the coronavirus is completely different.

Today, we are culturally, economically and commercially tied together around the world.

Therefore, the coronavirus affects us all.

It spread from one part of the planet to another relatively quickly, and we have no escape from it since we cannot detach the connections that we have established.

We thus see that the coronavirus pandemic receives completely different attention to past pandemics, since we were never as connected as we are today.

Moreover, while so many of us around the world have become quarantined and instructed to stay inside our homes, we see how we cannot detach from each other. It has become impossible to imagine what it would be like to separate from our global connection.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/23/20

Before discussing what will defeat the coronavirus, we need to understand that beyond all the causes mentioned about the coronavirus, there is a deeper cause: that the coronavirus pandemic is nature’s response to humanity’s negative connections based on self-interested calculations.

Such negative connections spanning our competitive, materialistic and individualistic lifestyles were creating increasing tensions on personal, social and international scales.

We thus needed a certain kind of blow from nature to stop us from heading toward a bigger blow that we would have induced, the likes of which could have been as destructive as a world war.

The coronavirus will not stop until we become ready to positively connect, replacing our egoistic, exploitative and manipulative attitudes to each other with altruistic, supportive, and encouraging ones.

Positive human connection will then create a balance of forces with nature. Then, the coronavirus, which emerged in order to highlight the extent of our negative connection to each other, will disappear.

Adjusting our attitudes to each other, correcting our connections from negative to positive, is ultimately what we need in order to defeat the coronavirus.

We thus need to see that the coronavirus has revealed our negative egoistic attitudes to each other, and if we can overcome the inner remoteness that has grown between us, we will then stop the virus, as well as myriad other negative phenomena and problems in our lives.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is nature an intelligence, a form of mind?“

Nature is a thought.

It has a plan for the development of the inanimate, vegetative, animate and human natures, with a beginning and an end, and it implements this plan in a determinant manner.

As the plan becomes realized, all sorts of problems arise, since the inanimate, vegetative, animate and human natures all participate in this plan.

Human nature, which is the highest and most qualitative of all the levels in nature, is subject to all kinds of fluctuations and changes in both directions.

While nature runs a completely determined plan, we humans have free will within the plan.

We can change ourselves to either resemble or contrast nature. Accordingly, we can alter the path of our development: by resembling nature we feel it as amiable and agreeable, and by contrasting nature, we feel it as nasty and disagreeable.

One way or another, we will all reach the same ultimate final state, however the way in which we get there can either be through the implementation of our free will, or by letting nature’s plan unfold toward us without our participation in the process.

In other words, while our final destination as well as our way there is predetermined, we, as humans in this process, have the free choice to segment the process, where in each segment, we can feel nature’s development as either kinder and more enjoyable, or harsher and undesirable.

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Medium published my new article “The Coronavirus Era — Time to Calm Down and Rethink Our Lives”

Before the coronavirus became a worldwide phenomenon, we were in a very dangerous global state.

I had felt alarm bells going off as global tension and anxiety were reaching an all-time high. Whether it was fiercely growing world debt, tense international relations, as well as enormous amounts of pollution, among many other problems on personal, social, global and ecological scales, I felt like we were headed rampantly toward another world war.

In one way or another, all of our incorrect competitive-egoistic relations that we had established around the planet needed to calm down.

Then, all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, came the coronavirus. It surfaced precisely at a very threatening time when all the global tensions were about to snap.

Therefore, I am happy that things turned out the way they have for the time being, and that they didn’t turn out much worse.

In addition, above all the theories scattering around on the causes of the coronavirus, the supreme force of nature guides everyone and everything in a very precise and caring manner. In other words, nature organized our exit in a very exact way from the terrible state we were facing.

We, humanity, pushed ourselves to a dead end. Then, with relative smoothness, without any choice on our behalf, nature organized a new state and a way out of our entanglement.

And so it is today that many of us sit at home with nothing to do. The artificial and unessential things we were keeping ourselves busy with will quickly fade away due to us increasingly feeling no need to use them anymore.

As for our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren, it would be wise to create new departments and teams, both at government and societal levels, which will be concerned with bringing an atmosphere of mutual support to society. By doing so, we will all survive through this unique new stage of our development until we will get used to a new way of life.

I hope that after this crisis, all the superpower countries that were flexing their muscles and spreading their tentacles around the world — one financially, another militarily, and another industrially, and so on and so forth — countries like China, the European Union, the United States, Russia, Iran and others, will regain their composure and normalize themselves. Also, I hope to see people calm down from all the travel frenzy around the world.

I am certain that we will see such phenomena as we transition out of this coronavirus era.
I’m envisioning a new world, one where we will free up more and more room in our minds and hearts to consider why we’re alive, what is the meaning of life, and to put an end to all the hustle and bustle.
Until the coronavirus hit us, we were like little children running around from one corner of the room to the other.

From now on, it is all going to change.

We became more mature, and nature, like a disciplining parent, is pointing its finger at us and telling us “That’s enough! Sit down and think about what you’re doing!”

We have entered a new historical era where we need to stop and contemplate on how and why we’re living our lives, that we need to cool off, and after becoming more patient, head forward with more introspection, experience and knowledge about how to live our lives in a more balanced way among each other and with nature.
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The Purpose of Nature and the Global Epidemic

Question: Does nature have intelligence from the point of view of Kabbalah? Everything that is happening to us, all these blows, is it all planned? Is there an upper mind or is this blind nature?

Answer: Nature absolutely is intelligent. It has a beginning and an end of development, i.e., a plan for the development of inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human nature, and it is strictly implemented.

However, during its implementation, all sorts of problems arise since inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human nature are participating in this plan. Human nature, as the highest one, is subject to all sorts of fluctuations, changes in both directions.

A person has freewill, he can change himself, be similar or not quite similar to nature. Accordingly, he changes the path of his movement. Yet, all the same, his movement is directed to the same point, to the same purpose.

Question: Aren’t the laws of nature determined at the level of man and society?

Answer: A person has a freewill, which means that he is still given an opportunity to come from point A to point B in different ways.

Question: So, the final goal is still determined?

Answer: Not only the final goal, but our entire path. It can be divided into small segments and in each of them we can move in either a more kind or more undesirable way.

Question: At the current stage of the path, a global epidemic—the coronavirus has appeared. We all understand that there were many such viruses and they were much more dangerous.

How does this situation differ from others in our history? Is it because today we are more interdependent, integral, and this naturally places its imprint?

Answer: Yes. If earlier epidemics in Europe and in other parts of the world did not affect other continents and nations, now this is not the case. Today, we are so interconnected by culture, economy, world trade, and everything else that we cannot avoid being the united humanity.

Therefore, viruses affect all of us, gradually spreading from one end of the Earth to the other. And we cannot escape, we cannot break the ties between us.

Comment: The peculiarity of this situation is our current interdependence and, most importantly, the disproportionate restrictions imposed by governments. After all, there were various epidemics, but no one treated them this way.

My Response: That was before when we were not connected to each other to such an extent. Today, this connection has become absolute. It is hard to imagine where it does not exist. It turns out that because of the virus, we must distance ourselves from each other, and each person must isolate himself from others, which is impossible in the current world.
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus Is Changing Reality,” 3/12/20

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The coronavirus epidemic touches every person in the world, no matter where he is from including Italy, Israel, Korea, or Russia. The whole world is worried. The virus spreads without recognizing any borders and there is no end in sight. Experts predict that the epidemic will last for a year until some means of fighting the virus appears.

The coronavirus has significantly changed the relationship between people in human society by posing serious questions for us. What should be done so we can return to normal life? What is nature demanding from us and why does it bring us such surprises? What is the solution to all the problems we face in our lives?

On one hand, these problems show us how connected and dependent upon each other we really are. On the other hand, our connection is not kind and we need to learn how to change it. The coronavirus has just started to reveal the severity of our condition. The situation is not too bad yet.

Let’s see what will happen once North and South America as well as the European countries close their borders. Humanity will revert to border barriers.

The only solution is to thoroughly figure out what the correct connection between us should be and how to build such good relationships so that no virus can break through. The virus is a sign that our connection with each other is incorrect.

The coronavirus is a common problem for everyone and therefore it requires the correct unification and mutual guarantee from all of humankind. Why do we constantly bring forth new misfortunes onto ourselves? Why does nature hit us with a whip all the time, each of us separately, as well as altogether?

Why are these blows getting stronger and stronger from year to year and why are they widening so much that they envelop all of humanity? Nature is trying to lead us toward the awareness of the necessity of mutual guarantee so that we become like one person, one system.

Every person in the world needs to understand that:

• The coronavirus is no coincidence, but a part of the process through which the forces of nature lead human society. It strives to unite us into one system.
• In this single system, there are laws that nature will oblige us to adopt, if not willingly, then “by the stick.” The coronavirus is one of the misfortunes sent to humanity to shake it up and force it toward introspection so that we learn to live correctly.

Ideally, we have to become like one man with one heart in one system. There is no way out. We will have to attain this. The coronavirus epidemic is the first plague in a chain of strikes that will be revealed monthly. After all, if we treat each other badly, we create a place for the virus. It appears where there is a lack of the mutual guarantee that we should have established.

The goal of creation is to bring a person into good connection with others, to love his neighbor as himself. If this does not happen, various problems are uncovered which act as remedies pushing us all toward connection.

We look at each other and do not wish each other well. Unkind looks and judgmental words materialize and pass from person to person in the form of viruses.

Humankind is more and more dependent on each other in industry, trade, and everything else, but, at the same time, we are not improving human relationships. Our relationships are in contradiction with the growing ties between us; I connect with everyone on Earth but with the goal of squeezing all the juice out of them for myself. When these connections become absolutely unbearable, nature strikes and breaks them.

Imagine the world cutting itself off from China, Japan, and South Korea—how it will hit the manufacturing sector. Even if the production of some small electronic element stopped, half of the world would come to a halt. This is all because we do not organize ourselves correctly on the human level. We do not follow the law of mutual guarantee. The last drops are squeezed out from people so that the elite can earn a few more billion dollars.

The virus has already led to mass layoffs. It does not look like this wave will subside. It appears as though it will shake up all of humankind so that we will feel that we have reached the red line and that nature will not let us live like this anymore.

For the first time in humanity’s history, we realize that what is happening is a blow from above, just as the Egyptian sorcerers told Pharaoh that one of the plagues was from the hand of God. Everyone will feel that it is the highest punishment and that we are being stopped from above.

When I look at another person unkindly, I am already transmitting the virus to him. After all, we are all tied into one system and by thinking badly about someone, I bring a negative virus, a negative signal into the entire system, breaking the mutual guarantee. It may be just a thought, but we are all interconnected by thoughts, conversations, and actions.

Whether we want it or not, we are locked within the common sphere. This is why it is not important whether I speak, write, think, or do something with my hands. The effect of thought is even greater, just as it was said that “everything is resolved in thought.” Thought materializes in physical action afterward.

Invisible threats are stretched between us. We are in a field of connections. The highest level of connection is thought, which then descends into simpler levels. We can correct all the viruses in thought. Mutual guarantee is the correct interconnection between us on the level of thought. If we maintain it, there will be no need for anything else, including material medications.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/20

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