Comment: The world is now shuddering from a new variant of the coronavirus. The world knows almost nothing about the new variant of the coronavirus and it is already causing irreparable damage to the well-being of people around the world.

It has deprived them of the confidence that the worst was over, and this has slowed down the exit from the economic crisis after two years of the pandemic. It has robbed the world of certainty. Even if the fear of a new variant of the coronavirus turns out to be exaggerated, the deed is done, the belief that the pandemic is over has been shaken.

In principle, everyone thought: “Okay, let’s suffer a little, and then we will start economic growth.”

My Response: No! There will be no growth! We will quietly slide down, just slip down, because the world psychologically does not need any progress. It no longer needs any economic growth. No! It’s best to have nothing at all.

Question: And what will happen then? How will the world live in this case?

Answer: It will live quietly, quietly, and even more quietly. What we have is good for us.

Question: So you think this virus shows correctly, the opposite, that there is no need for any economic progress?

Answer: Yes. It will teach us everything: how to relate to each other, to nature, to society, to everything. Otherwise, everything will decline.
[292326]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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How can we recover from the coronavirus and generally cure our whole life? We wonder where we get this virus from. Yes, the time just comes, a state is reached, such relationships between people that all these microbes come out.

These viruses do not act against us. All of them come from one higher power with the aim of straightening us, connecting us with each other, involving us in a common action. It seems to us that the virus separates us, but in fact, there is nothing to separate because we have never been connected. And now, when everyone is suffering, this collective suffering somehow brings us closer to each other.

Therefore, it is possible to cope with the virus only on one condition: that we fix the relationship between us. Otherwise, the disease will flare up anywhere, just out of thin air at the North Pole or on an isolated ship where not a single sick person seems to have boarded. It does not depend on where people are, but only on their relationship to each other.

The more selfish our relationship is, the worse the viruses will be. Therefore, let’s fix them now, do not wait for the next viruses. The “epoch of viruses” has come; more cunning blows from nature, which, in accordance with our development, strike more sophisticatedly and accurately. Humanity, with our machinery and technology are developing, and viruses and diseases are developing along with us.

In the old days people were simpler, and therefore did not suffer from modern diseases like migraines and depression. And in our time, even animals have begun to suffer from human ailments. We are moving forward in development. Therefore, we must correct ourselves, otherwise new, even more terrible viruses will be revealed. And we will have to invent new drugs all the time, but I do not think that we will be able to win this race. After all, viruses will become more and more cunning and specialized.

A person develops, but at the same time he cannot grow wiser and begin to correct himself. After all, the egoism of a person grows all the time and covers his eyes. He cannot admit that he himself is to blame for everything and that he is looking for a way to get rid of the blow instead of correcting it in the bud.

Nature tells us that we need to correct ourselves. Instead of the government, instead of the state education program, a tiny virus comes that you can’t even see and it educates us all in a wonderful way. We have not bowed to people, to society, but we have bowed to a microscopic virus and are ready to obey it. The virus decides how we live and work.

Let’s hope that gradually we will gain reason and feelings in order to understand who we are and in what baseness we live that is unworthy of people. Maybe it will lead us to repentance.
[292380]
From KabTV’s “A Conversation with Journalists” 1/6/22

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In the News (Pew Research Center, “What Makes Life Meaningful? Views From 17 Advanced Economies”): 

Family and children—38%
Occupation and career—25%
Material well-being—19%
Friends and community—18%
Physical and mental health—17%
Society and institutions—14%
Freedom and independence—12%
Hobbies and recreation—10%
Education and learning—5%
Nature and the outdoors—5%
Romantic partner—4%
Service and engagement—3%
Travel and new experiences—3%
Retirement—2%
Spirituality, faith, and religion—2%
Pets—1%
…
Outside of the U.S., religion is never one of the top 10 sources of meaning cited – and no more than 5% of any non-American public mention it. In the U.S., however, 15% mention religion or God as a source of meaning, making it the fifth most mentioned topic. 

Question: When will the lofty meaning of life rise to at least the fourth, third, or second place?

Answer: If something changes, it will change only under the influence of very acute events.

Question: In your clips when you talk about an upper force, about the Creator, about goodness, about nature, about connecting people with each other, and about good relations, what do you expect?

Answer: I am counting on suffering, when we—by our actions, by our way of life—will cause such suffering that we will not be able to turn away from it just like that, and that it will make us think about the meaning of suffering or, in other words, about the meaning of life because life will be filled with suffering.

Then we will begin to think whether we should live at all, whether we should suffer, whether it all makes sense, and what we should do with ourselves. And then we will start asking serious questions and trying to answer them.

We will come to the conclusion that our life is wrong and we must find the right style of life so that everyone feels good and so that life itself does not end but rather comes to its top result. That’s another story. But people will start listening.

Comment: Meaning you do not fade at the end of life, but on the contrary…

My Response: No, of course not! During this life you go to the next degree of development; that is, you rise from the animal level to the level of Man, Adam.

Question: Why does it not fascinate a person?

Answer: It is at a completely different level of attainment. This requires completely different feelings and intelligence. And neither our brains nor our hearts work for this.

Comment: But even for our inner peace, it’s good that you don’t fade, but rather blossom.

My Response: It sounds nice, but nothing more. It’s been replaced with religion, maybe a little philosophy. But in our time, when everything is packed with television, travel, and other things, which a person does not have today, he does not need that.

Question: But if, one way or another, people must come through the suffering to whatever you say, then why was this whole program launched on humanity, this whole program of entertainment?

Answer: It is in order to realize the evil of our nature and what it leads to so we can go against our nature.
[292908]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is global interdependence? What are some examples?“

We were created as interdependent beings. The more we evolve as a humanity, the more we find ourselves becoming increasingly dependent on each other. We find ourselves depending on each other more and more in several fields of human activity, whether it be in trade, commerce, industry, communications, technologies, culture, science, and the list goes on and on.

Take a look, for instance, at how popular tourism has become in our times. Where does the interest in travel come from? We had no such interest on a mass scale even a hundred years ago, but such desires gradually develop in us.

Why are we made to be dependent on each other, starting from our closest circles such as to our homes and our families, and then expanding out to our towns, cities, states, countries, and the more we develop, the more we feel our dependence become global. Today, we can see several examples of how we have become dependent on the whole world.

Whether it be oil and gas supplies, various harvests and crops from different countries and regions, through to all kinds of cultural products that span different countries and cultures, the more globally dependent we become, the more we develop a need to realize our global dependence positively.

We cannot get rid of our interdependence, but we will become forced to change our attitudes to each other from negative to positive. That is, instead of infusing our network of connections with egoistic motives, where we each seek maximum benefit for minimal effort, we would instead seek to relate altruistically to each other, aiming to benefit others over our natural drive for self-benefit. We will then perceive our growing global interdependence as a great phenomenon, one that lets us exercise the “muscle” of benefiting others over self-benefit. The more we do so, the more we will start feeling a new harmonious and peaceful reality open up to us.

As a result, we will reach a point where we will feel a sincere need for the billions of people in the world, that each person is a precious part of a perfect system, and we will feel a need to fuel our globally-dependent relations with positive, altruistic, supportive, encouraging and mutually considerate relations. We would then also start feeling the positive forces dwelling in nature; it would vitalize our entire world with abundance and perfection.

Based on a Kabbalah lesson, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends,” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman from the World Kabbalah Convention, “Rising Above Ourselves,” on August 1, 2022. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: Back in school when we studied food chains we learned that when a seed falls into the soil, the soil sustains the growing grass, a hare eats the grass, a wolf eats the hare… If there is no grass, there is no hare, and so on and so forth. If all sparrows were exterminated,  crops would be eaten by parasites and millions of people would die of hunger.

Today almost the entire system of chains has been broken. For example, new computers are assembled in China, but chips come from Taiwan and Malaysia, displays arrive from South Korea, and some parts are sourced from Europe. If you need 20 parts, but have only 19, there will be nothing.

There is a warning that 2022 will be even worse. They clearly see it coming, but can do nothing about it. They feel an onset of something! Some agricultural leaders predict that they will shut down certain countries and eat only what they have nationally.

My Response: No, it won’t happen. We are so deeply interconnected with each other through fertilizers, pesticides, assembly, and processing everything. It won’t happen.

I think the majority of the world’s countries, especially the developed ones, will be unable to survive on their own. There is no such thing as a “closed cycle” today.

Question: What are we facing now?

Answer: Well, we are being forced. I am ready for anything except to share and cooperate. The worst thing is to depend on others!

Comment: I see. Our intellect is egoistic. But even an egoistic mind seeks safety. Still, we feel the need for communication and cooperation. We know the world is interconnected. I think everyone understands it today. Everyone!

My Response: Who will be cooperating? Who listens to whom? Bring heads of state together? No one will be able to agree with anyone on anything!

Question: Then, draw a picture of the future world for us please. When will we get there?

Answer: At some point we will get to the point where people realize that the Jews are at fault for everything. This is really so. We do not bring the world to the realization of evil and its correction.

I can’t keep silent since this is the most painful and urgent problem. You cannot replace it with anything.

Question: What shall we, the Jews, do for the world?

Answer: Rise above ourselves and show the world an example of unity. “Above ourselves” means above our egoism that is greater than anybody else’s.

Look at how we treat each other! It’s so hard for us to be together even when we are faced with great fear and external pressure. We cannot rise because the external pressure, the external hatred, pressures us.

We don’t stick together. Don’t you see what’s going on here in Israel? Nothing can help us. I can’t blame the government or local upbringing for that.

Comment: By and large, you can blame the Creator for that.

My Response: The Creator does His job. As to us, we must act against Him.

Comment: In other words, the Creator brings us against each other, cultivates our egoism more and more, but we have to act against Him.

My Response: That’s right! But we’re unable to.

Comment: Sooner or later, as you say, the responsibility of our people is to show the world an example of unity.

My Response: If we don’t realize this, there won’t be any “sooner or later.” It will go on and on. There is no set date. It won’t happen. It will only occur when the Jews realize their mission.

Question: What will make them realize it?

Answer: I don’t know. I cannot envision such a state! But it simply can’t be otherwise!

Suffering is constantly growing. Perhaps the realization of some things, but not yet no matter how much we write, no matter how much we talk about it.

Question: So one way or another, will it also come from above, but no one knows when?

Answer: Not from above. Everything, certainly, comes from above, but our reaction has to come from below. Our normal response is still missing.

Comment: So, your formula is simple: “The Jews have to show an example of unity” and then the world will be on the right path. Kabbalists knew it, you realize it, but only a few people in the world understand it.

My Response: Yes.

Question: So, how do you want to be heard? Tell me please how?! How?

Answer: We have to start screaming to the Creator! Crying to the Creator that people do not hear us. And He will help us, when we have a truly serious desire.

Even in Germany 80 years ago they stayed until the last moment and didn’t feel any danger. Nor do they feel it now or realize that so many things depend on it.

I think it will come to a point when the world will start demanding. We have to disseminate more and more the knowledge of Kabbalah, the wisdom of correction of the world, so that nations of the world demand from the Jews and the Jews will address the Creator for the sake of all of humanity.
[291492]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/18/21

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Comment: Three people convicted of the same crime can receive completely different punishments. The first one might be given a suspended sentence; the second, two years in jail; and the third imprisoned for ten years. This is today’s reality.

A study was conducted that found that judges are more likely to give a suspended sentence in the morning or after a lunch break. Hungry judges are more severe. In England, when a local football [soccer in the US] team loses on Sunday, referees give tougher sentences on Monday.

In France, an analysis of six million sentences revealed that defendants were treated more leniently on judges’ birthdays. Even the weather influences a judge’s decision. As a result of a review of two hundred thousand immigration court decisions, it was found that on hot days the likelihood of obtaining political asylum is lower.

Who judges us?!

My Response: Who are the judges? Are they not humans? Of course they are. If the judge’s wife yelled at him in the morning, or his car was cut off on the highway, or something else happened, then naturally everything works differently inside him because he is human after all.

According to Kabbalah, according to the Torah, a judge is the highest category of human development. Therefore a judge can be a person who has completely risen above all his properties and feeling who can absolutely objectively understand and feel the other and judge him.

To judge means to weigh what in the things that happened to a person came to him from the Creator, and what, perhaps, from the person himself? And in fact, what is there from a person in general, then?

Otherwise how can you judge a person, take his life, throw it on the scales, and say…? You know, it is as if they throw a piece of meat on the scales in a store and say: 10 years, 15 years, and so on.

And the person goes to a place from which there may be no way out. And what happens to him there and what they do with him is totally incomprehensible.

Question: You spoke about a judge’s high standard. Do today’s judges feel responsible to some extent for passing such sentences?

Answer: They will have to face the consequences. There is also a problem in this, to what extent do they understand or not understand what they are doing and so on?

Question: That is, in any case, only the one who has risen above absolutely all calculations can become a judge, and it is impossible today, right?

Answer: Today it is completely impossible! There was a period when we lived as an ancient people in the age of Judges. But those were glorious people!

A person who appeared before the judge did not even have a thought that the judge could pass a sentence on that day that would be different from the previous day, and that I would want to go to this judge, and not that one. How could that be?! Such incomprehensible things happen in our world, and we agree to this.

It is the struggle for power among them, for jobs, and for positions.

Question: What do you think is the solution today? To replace a judge with a machine in which laws are embedded?

Answer: Yes. If we replaced it all with a machine, it would be much more objective.

Question: Will we ever reach the state of real judges?

Answer: I think that we will already get corrected along such a path that we will begin to move away from this meanness in which we exist, and therefore we will no longer need judges. We will be the ones to judge ourselves. Let us help each other. In general, let us rise up from below.
[292592]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/29/21

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It looks like the coronavirus epidemic got completely out of our control thanks to the new strain omicron. The virus walks around the world without any boundaries. The number of infected people is growing exponentially day to day and as a result the testing system is collapsing. This means that now it is even impossible to know how many people are sick.

The virus is spreading like wildfire. It is believed that omicron will end the coronavirus epidemic since everyone will get sick with it.

On the other hand, there is a danger that it will finally undermine the health care system, which because of the excessive workload, will not be able to take care of any patient of any kind.

So, what will the omicron do to us ultimately? I think this calamity came to calm us down, to stop us from being occupied with useless work in which there are no necessities, to get us thinking about how to make our lives more modest, but also more reliable.

It turns out that the pandemic is not a blow, but a cure. It forces us to think about what we live for and how to come to a more peaceful life, how to make a person more balanced, closer to normal life, and down to earth instead of rushing around the world and spending so much time on airplanes. Let’s get some rest.

I think that the coronavirus has taught us such useful lessons that have never been seen before in the entire history of mankind. It can be seen from the news that people are concerned about a serious problem instead of talking about nonsense. People are no longer eager to travel from country to country because they don’t know what to do with themselves.

So far, we still lack the wisdom to properly organize our lives in this difficult time of the pandemic, but let us hope that in the end it will straighten us up and make us realize what we live for, how is it worth living, and for what. We will make a lot of clarifications thanks to this virus.

These will be personal clarifications for everyone and at the level of the family, city, country, between countries, and all over the world. They should concern our relationship to inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and, most importantly, the relationships between us, people. Such viruses, which will come again and again, will do their job and lead us to the truth.

The human organism is full of viruses. I hope that due to all these virus attacks, we will get smarter, grow up, and will be able to organize ourselves properly. The virus will force us to do this.
[292376]
From KabTV’s “A Conversation with Journalists” 1/6/22

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Comment: Why do altruists very often cause not gratitude, but resentment? Experts say, it is because we doubt their selflessness and see the calculation behind everything. Thus, the good deeds turn into a fat minus. Psychologists call this mass phenomenon “the syndrome of do-gooder derogation.”

It is believed that the most reliable way to avoid belittling good deeds is to do them in secret. If others accidentally find out about them, and this will eventually have a positive impact on your reputation, just consider it a bonus. Oscar Wilde said very beautifully: “The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously and have somebody find out.”

My Response: Yes. Others “accidentally” find out, in quotation marks.

Question: Does it mean that our world is built in such a way that we cannot do any altruistic action?

Answer: We can’t in any way. This is our nature. We can only make a mess everywhere, we use, break, and violate. We cannot act in any other way. Therefore we must think about the way to limit ourselves reasonably to such an extent that we violate everything around us as little as possible.

This is possible only through educating a person.

Question: Does a good deed at the level of our world exist?

Answer: A good deed at the level of our world is when we treat our world as our home, common to all of us, and we are like one family, and we take care of everyone.

If a person has such an attitude, then of course we will put this world in order. We have passed some peak of excessive consumerism, destruction, and distortion of everything possible, and now we have to put it all in order a little, i.e., limit ourselves in everything that is not necessary.

Question: Can a person come to this?

Answer: Nature will force him. There is such a thing as necessary and sufficient. Mutual restriction by all of us, which is voluntary and accepted by each of us in order to make our planet comfortable for ourselves and future generations, is necessary.

Comment: But people say: “This is what we want.” There are many such movements.

My Response: They do not really do anything. We cannot do it by force and we cannot do it by shouting in the squares either.

Question: How can we do it?

Answer: By educating people! All these environmentalists and Greenpeace only create a lot of noise and cause hatred and distrust.

Question: What should be the basis of this education?

Answer: To turn all of humanity into a family and the entire Earth into one comfortable apartment for everyone, into our home.

Nature will force us to do this. We are in such a state. Perhaps we will go through something else. For example, there could be a world war and half of humanity or most of it will be destroyed. It will come to this anyway. Nature brings everything to balance.

Question: Do you realize that this is a very long educational process considering who a person is?

Answer: This is a long process, but it depends on the understanding of the need for it.

Question: Who can be a teacher in such schools, such universities of life?

Answer: One who has risen a little above his egoistic natural level can be a teacher.
[292646]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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Question: What factors can harm us in advancing in the ten?

Answer: Absolutely everything. The only factor that can benefit you is rising above everything harmful to the connection between you. That is all.

Everything that appears in you is against connection, against the ten, against the Creator. And all this is in order for you to rise above in mutual connection with each other.
[292684]
From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends” Lesson 4

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Why has Russia failed to build a society based on love for others? Could have they done something in a different way for this experiment to be successful?

It is impossible to change history. History is given to us not to learn from and correct ourselves, but so that we understand that it was impossible to do what they tried to do.

They wanted to build egoistic communism. Instead of being directed to benefit the Creator, it was directed only to benefit people.

It is not enough to think only about bestowing to people. Rather, we need true, spiritual bestowal. It means that we must rise to faith above reason and acquire the property of bestowal, which will operate in us instead of the property of reception. However, this can be done only if we implement the method of Kabbalah.

Similarly, kibbutzim were created with the intention of doing better for themselves. The fact is that there is an egoistic intention behind everything. But we are talking about bestowing outside of ourselves. This is what humanity must come to—adhesion with the Creator. Therefore, it is impossible to do this without the wisdom of Kabbalah and all its conditions intended to attract the upper light and for it to influence us.

That is, it is absolutely necessary to study and implement the method of Kabbalah that can attract the upper light, which will change our nature. The light should change our perception of reality so that we would see before us the world we want to bestow to and we would live outside of ourselves.

All forms of communist societies were built on the opposite principle: the desire to isolate themselves, to group together in one camp against all the rest, and become stronger than everyone. This approach is the exact opposite of true bestowal.
[292524]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/22, Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”

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