The coronavirus gave us a short breather for a few weeks and then began to spread with renewed vigor. We wonder why this epidemic seemingly will not end? But this is a sign that we have not yet done what we should have done to properly respond to this virus.

As usual, there is no other cure but connection or rapprochement between us and a more human and attentive attitude to each other. This would have greatly weakened the virus.

We expected that after half the country had been ill with omicron, some kind of general immunity would arise, yet for some reason the pandemic is not going away and instead is growing again. The fact is that the previous laws do not apply to this virus. They won’t help anymore.

After all, this is not an ordinary virus, but one that requires us to fix the relationships between people. It would seem, what can the virus know about our relations? However, the virus knows everything because it has all the information inside it. We think it’s just a piece of DNA, but it’s alive!

This is not a dead element or a vegetable, but is in fact on the animal level, the same as ourselves. The coronavirus has a mind and feelings. It perceives the environment and influences it. It is able to connect to others, penetrate into the human body, and integrate into it so much that it begins to control this body.

Do not treat it condescendingly and with neglect. It seems to us, well, how can the virus know if I said hello to my neighbor today? But the virus is smarter than us and it knows everything. The virus controls the world because it is a particle of the Creator.

Coronavirus is an important element of nature, which includes in it a special concentration of all the information about this world in order to influence it. Therefore, it can be destroyed only by improving our human relations.

This may sound a little naive, but let’s try it! We don’t have anything to lose. Let’s start treating each other well and with great attention and care. We will take care of the needy, the elderly, the children, and each other; let us not litter the street or make noise. Let’s try to think about others and try to do everything to make them feel good.

I’m not waiting for someone to tell me what to do, but I’m looking for where I can help others with my kind attitude and show them that I really wish them well. Let’s conduct such an experiment in the country and in a month we will check what the situation is with the coronavirus through the following questions: Is the pandemic continuing or not? How many people have died this month? How many died from road accidents? It’s easy to check, let’s try it.
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From KabTV’s “Insight” 3/21/22

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Question: It is known that stress increases the likelihood of hypertension, heart attack, and stroke, and it shortens life.

But at the same time, other research  concludes that the absence of stress has a bad effect on a person’s tendency to empathize and that their positive emotions are less vivid. And it is very interesting that embryos that have been stressed during fertilization are more successfully attached in the uterus and fathers with high levels of the stress hormone take better care of the child.

Is it necessary to fight stress? What is it and why is it given to us?

Answer: Our life is stressful all the time. And inside it, at all biological levels, there is also constant stress. Life is a clash of opposites and their combinations. It occurs on the border between plus and minus. And therefore it can always be described as stress.

Question: So is the combination of opposites such an explosion? Is stress good or bad?

Answer: It’s all necessary. When it is necessary, we don’t define it as good or bad. Rather, we need to talk about how we can manage these states.

Question: So stress can be managed?

Answer: Absolutely! Otherwise, why are we given brains and our whole environment? In order to adapt ourselves to proper stress management.

Question: How can stress be managed?

Answer: It is by understanding that the combination of plus and minus at all levels, in all circumstances, is necessary and should exist, and we need to learn how to do it.

Question: How do we do it?

Answer: It is very simple. Build love over all manifestations of hatred.

It is the same principle. There must be hatred, rejection, and any negative and above it undoubtedly a positive.

This is what the science of Kabbalah speaks of—how to get a plus from a minus, to leave a minus and leave a plus, and so that they exist in addition to each other. In Kabbalah, this is explained as the correspondence of darkness and light.

Question: But how do I attract love if I hate, and hate intensely?

Answer: This must be achieved through education, when a person realizes that there is no plus without minus and no minus without plus and that the correct combination of the two creates life. When a person comes to this understanding, he becomes calm and reasonable, follows the middle line, and builds himself and the world.

Question: What are my actions if I hate?

Answer: Realize that everything comes from an upper force and is given to us so that we balance all negative qualities, properties, and circumstances with positive ones. And all this can happen only in our awareness. When we realize this, we begin to treat everything with kindness, we do not denying anything, but rather we accept everything as an absolute necessity.

Question: So is this hatred a necessity now?

Answer: It is necessary for us to rise above it and exist above it and in it. And then we will balance these two forces of creation: plus and minus.

Question: That’s the whole difficulty: above it, is it possible somehow?

Answer: No, it will only be possible egoistically. In order to exist with it, it is necessary to rise above it and balance all negative properties by adhering to the Creator.

Question: It’s not easy. Can you give some simple formula for rising above hatred?

Answer: The formula is such, that minus equals plus. That is it. Where there is a minus, you should see a plus.

Question: What I hate now is a minus?

Answer: This is a minus until you realize that it is also a plus at the same time.

Question: So it’s good that I hate now?

Answer: Yes. But why is it given to you? So that you can turn it into a plus.

It means to understand that your attitude to the world depends on your attitude to the world. You have to change your attitude to the world. And how? It’s very simple. Replace egoism with altruism and hatred with love. And everything will be fine.

Question: So I hate this person, but I say to myself: “This is given to me so that I love him”?

Answer: You are given just the opposite properties. Replace them with the reverse ones and you will receive a wonderful world.

Question: Is it within my power?

Answer: It is not within your power to transform or to accomplish it, but it is in your power to ask the Creator to make it so you reach a state where you really crave it.

Question: Is this what hatred comes for? So that I beg that I want passionately to replace it with love?

Answer: Yes. And then you will realize that all this was not for that, but in order for you to have contact with the Creator. And that’s it.

Question: Is He calling us to turn to Him?

Answer: Otherwise we would not have turned in His direction.
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From the TV program “News with Michael Laitman” 12/23/21

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Medium published my new article “Depression Comes Earlier”

The Oxford based research center Our World in Data recently published a report showing that in many countries, “People are being diagnosed with depression at an earlier age than in the past.” The report showed that in Denmark, for example, in 1996, the highest share of people diagnosed with depression were around the age of fifty. Twenty years later, in 2016, the highest share of people diagnosed with depression were twenty-four-year-olds. While the research center attributed the earlier diagnosis to growing willingness to “seek treatment for mental health conditions,” other researchers have found different reasons for the earlier age of diagnosis.

Indeed, we are living in special times. In previous times, people were more connected to the land, to the soil. Today, everything is artificial. We are born and live within the walls of the hospital, then the walls of a house, then the walls of a school, then the walls of a business. As a result, we are different from previous generations, and our approach to life is also different.

To prevent depression, we need to make constant investments with the right approach, since people are no longer adapted to natural living. The investment is not a financial one. Rather, we need to build an envelope that will serve as a mediator between the new generation and the reality they live in. This envelope should prepare them for life on every level — personal, social, and environmental. They need to learn how to communicate and connect with one another and with nature. Otherwise, they will be lost, as is already happening.

Previously, people were more outside than they are today. They communicated with other people, and much of their lives involved interaction with others. Today, they do everything online and indoors, and the outdoors and other people are unfamiliar to them. We must familiarize them with the outside world, make them spend less time on their own and on their phones or laptops, and communicate instead with other members of the family, friends, real friends, flesh and blood ones, and with animals.

The technological advancements of the past several decades have enveloped us in gadgets, and disconnected us from people. Even our food is not real food, and we don’t make it; we only heat it in a digital microwave.

We needn’t shun technology; we only need to help people balance their lives. And the key factor in reestablishing balance is constructive, positive, and supportive human connections. If people find that connections with other people satisfy them in ways that technology cannot, they will nurture them.

Today, people mostly feel that their connections with others are competitive, where each one tries to outsmart, outperform, and generally outdo others. This is very tiring, so people naturally turn to a less competitive and abusive environment: the digital one. If people had positive experiences from their relations with others, if they felt that other people approve of them, appreciate, and welcome their company, they would have no reason to retreat into a virtual environment.

Moreover, connections with other people can give them what no technology can: meaning in life. Life becomes meaningful and purposeful only in connection with other people. The reciprocal giving and receiving gives meaning and purpose to everything we do. When we do something for another person, it stays. The act takes on a life of its own, a new meaning, and it affects our lives and the lives of the other people involved in ways we cannot predict. When we do something online, with ourselves, our act is lost in the digital cloud and leaves us feeling empty and meaningless.

Therefore, if we want to cure depression, we must find ways to encourage people to go out, communicate, and connect with other people. It will give them joy, satisfaction, and meaning, and a meaning in life prevents depression.
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Medium published my new article “World Health Day’s Assessment: The Planet Is Sick”

There is not much to celebrate on World Health Day designated as April 7th by the United Nations. Old diseases once thought eradicated like polio are making a comeback in different continents, and after two years since the Covid-19 outbreak, we are still in the throes of the pandemic.

This year “Our Planet, Our Health” is the UN’s event theme. It focuses on the interdependence between all levels of nature and our health. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 13 million deaths worldwide each year are caused by environmental issues. In fact, climate change is linked to diseases such as cancer, asthma, heart problems, plagues, and others.

We can continue counting the deaths and complaining about the state of the world, but nothing will change until we admit that the health systems globally have failed. Our main concern should be questioning how humanity has reached such a low point despite all the scientific advances that were supposed to ensure a good life for everyone.

Humanity gave birth to health systems based on its own egoistic and ill-intentioned characteristics. So we cannot expect good to come out of evil. The evil referred to here is the selfish, egoistic attributes entrenched in humankind. The health systems, like all of society’s systems depend on how money is handled and on people’s willingness to make them function properly.

Many international organizations that are supposed to guarantee a better state of the environment and global health, instead of promoting those goals, are only concerned with amassing financial support and jet setting from conference to conference with no real results and actions to improve the situation.

So no wonder we are not only unable to tackle pandemics effectively, but even old diseases thought to have been virtually eradicated are re-emerging. There may be a period of incubation of hundreds of years in which a disease returns and we are just not aware of this process, but we will never be able to exterminate them for good if we continue creating the conditions for them to proliferate.

All diseases, particularly those discovered in the last few decades, are the result of a mental, physiological and biological imbalance between a person and the environment and between human beings. Until we fix it we will not be able to eliminate the cause of the illnesses.

As humans we need to comprehend that the state of nature depends on the relationships between us. We see visible evidence of our negative impact on nature, but the interconnection runs deeper. We need to face this, change our attitudes, and be willing to adapt to the integrality of nature. This means that we need to take only what is necessary for survival and care for the good functioning of the entire system, instead of considering only selfish calculations and grasping all that we can without any regard for the consequences.

One may ask how human relationships and what happens in nature are related. There are four levels in nature: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. All but man exists in accordance with nature’s laws of reciprocity and balance. The other levels have no free choice in anything; they act instinctively taking only what is needed for their survival. Conversely, the human level is the only one that commits atrocities on Earth and against others intentionally, consciously, for the sake of causing harm. All the negative reactions we receive from nature are just a consequence of our actions. Simply put, we bring these blows upon ourselves.

If we try to build a harmonious system of human relations, all of nature will be balanced, including humanity. When we feel how dependent we are on everyone and each acts with concern for the others individually and collectively, like with a common mind and as one body, the ancient proverb “Healthy mind in a healthy body” will become a reality.
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Medium published my new article “Here Comes Another Wave”

While the media is busy covering the war in Ukraine, Covid has returned to haunt humanity. In China, more than fifty million people are on tight lockdown; in Hong Kong, the number of dead is rising; in Israel, the reproduction number (R) is climbing fast and is now well beyond the spreading mark of 1. If we thought Omicron was contagious, the new strain, BA.2, is 30 percent more so, and hybrid variants like the Deltacron are emerging, too. New strains and new waves will keep appearing until we learn all that we need to learn from the virus.

The virus is not here to teach us about itself; it is here to teach us about us. We think of these waves as waves of Covid-19, but they are not. The original strain is virtually gone; we are dealing with a different virus because we ourselves are different. This is why the vaccines that defeated the original strain are no longer effective.

As I said from the first appearance of the virus in early 2020, this virus, or its “relatives,” is here to stay. It needs to teach us how to live more peacefully and harmoniously with each other and with nature, and it will not leave until we learn.

We may not have noticed it, but the virus has already done a great deal of teaching. Our career aspirations have changed dramatically. Suddenly, everyone is talking about The Great Resignation and the fact that so many people now prefer to work from home.

Many people have also become content with less money in return for more peace of mind. The movement toward a four-day workweek is also gaining momentum around the world. Even in Asia, known for its workaholism, big corporations such as Panasonic and others have switched, or are in the process of switching to a four-day workweek.

Traditional education is also falling from grace. “Until 2019, the number of homeschooled students had been growing by between 2% to 8% each year. From 2019 to the fall of 2020, the percentage of homeschooled students changed from 3.4% to 9%.” According to the National Home Education Research Institute, “there were about 3.7 million homeschool students in 2020–2021 in grades K-12 in the United States (roughly 6% to 7% of school-age children).”

These are not minor changes. Fewer working people means more modest consumption, less congestion on the roads, especially if people are working from home, and more family time. Likewise, homeschooled children require a parent to stay home and tend to the education and occupation of the children. This, again, affects many other aspects of society.

This is why I think that Covid is not a punishment but a correction. The only reason that we feel this correction as painful is that we resent the change, so nature imposes it on us.

At our current level of narcissism, without restraint from the outside, we might destroy ourselves and the world with us. The war in Ukraine is only an example of what pride and power-hunger can inflict. Therefore, I think we should be grateful to Covid’s restraints. We are counting its victims, but we have no idea what catastrophes its appearance has prevented.

That said, I do not think we should continue to suffer its restraints. Since nature imposes corrections on us, and we have no choice but to obey, as is clearly the case, we can impose these corrections on ourselves instead of inviting nasty bugs to do it for us.

All we need to correct is our egoistic behavior. To do that, we need to be aware that in a world that has become totally interconnected, thinking that we can take all that we want regardless of others and enjoy other people’s pain is not only reckless, but destructive to everyone, including to ourselves.

We need to understand that if we want to subjugate other people, even in thought, much less in action, we are harming ourselves and our environment. No other being but humans have such evil, narcissistic thoughts. If we annihilate them from within us, we will put an end to war, hunger, exploitation, abuse, tyranny, and everything else that plagues our world. If we are reluctant to learn, the viruses will clear out these plagues from humanity.
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Question: In Vladimir Zhikarencev’s book The Path to Freedom, he writes that all diseases are the result of reflections on the question: “What is all this for?” and that you should drive such thoughts away from yourself. Is it really necessary to drive them away?

Answer: The problem is that humanity is constantly trying to get rid of these thoughts, but by very bad means and by this it is increasingly sinking. After all, in principle these thoughts come to us in order for us to rise above them, and they could become a lever for us with which we would achieve greater development.

Today, many in the world say: “Why do we need industry and technological development? Look what we have come to, we litter and kill the environment and we are destroying ourselves. What is this for?”

But we cannot stop nature and we cannot stop man. We just have to know how to use everything correctly.

Therefore if new voids open up in us, some new desires, and we don’t see how to fill them, what is here is not enough for us; we want something more, but we ourselves don’t know what, and when it will be, “more” doesn’t shine for us and we don’t see it in front of us, then we enter into depression, into some kind of problems. There is an absence of life guidelines.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Summing Up” 4/7/10

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Question: It has been said that the development of mankind can be traced through plastic surgery. At the heart of the profession of plastic surgery was helping those who were disfigured as a result of disasters and so on. Later they began to help older people look better. Then the youth came and began to correct their noses, ears, eyebrows, brow ridges, and lips.

But surgeons say that in recent years we have faced crazy desires. A woman wants her face to look like it was edited with an Instagram filter. More and more, a man does not want to be himself. Where does this lead?

Answer: It’s right that he doesn’t want to be himself. He is ugly both internally and externally.

Comment: But he does not want his inner ugliness to be somehow changed, he wants his outer ugliness to be changed so that he becomes more beautiful externally.

My Response: One cannot work without the other. In principle, we see a person from the inside. And no matter how beautiful he may be, if he is in himself internally terrible, then no beautiful appearance will correct his general ugliness, but will show all the more prominently that he is terrible.

With women it’s a different matter. There, men look at appearances. According to the nature of men, they do not look at the inner content of women. And outside, if everything is in place, then he is attracted by her appearance. But this, as we understand it, is only temporary, and passes very quickly.

Question: That is, the coincidence must be based on internal features?

Answer: According to internal signs, it is very difficult; it is not for a young age. You need special education, training, and time. And then people will begin to feel what is worth paying attention to, how to appreciate the other, and so on.

Question: Is it worth paying attention only to the internal, do you think?

Answer: But in the end, when do we come to this conclusion?

Comment: Yes. When we are gray and old.

My Response: If youth knew, if old age could.

Question: Yes, how much wisdom in all this! Do you think that when one person looks at another, considers that he or she is beautiful, and says: “This is a beautiful person,” does this reflect the inside of that person?

Answer: Of course. It should be like this. But if we are brought up in Hollywood, then of course it is hard for us because we are shown such images in advance and they want to make a standard of them: this is evil, this is kind, this is naive, this is smart, and so on. In fact, beauty is when I feel good with a person. That’s all.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/28/21

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Question: Many people believe that the coronavirus is a man-made thing that was spread by man himself because we have become careless and arrogant, we have created so many laboratories and now we cannot control them. Or did the Creator send the virus to purge us a little?

Answer: It does not matter where it came from, whether people made it or the virus was sent from above. All the same, it is done by one single force, called the Creator, within which we exist.

Question: You once said that you welcome the spread of the virus on Earth. I still do not understand, what is the reason?

Answer: First, it sobers us a little, makes us be more restrained, and makes it clear that we cannot always control everything in our lives; there is something outside of us, above us, in spite of us. The virus, as it were, disciplines humanity a little.
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From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 1/5/22

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Question: How long will coronavirus last?

Answer: I hope that it will not end, but will deepen and expand more and more, that it will put such barriers between us that will show us how much we hate each other and how distanced we are from each other.

Question: With what probability do you claim that it will not end?

Answer: I say what I see. I cannot measure how it will be.

Question: But this is not a 100% prediction, is it?

Answer: No, but it will probably happen in this way. If not, then it will be replaced by something more serious.

The coronavirus replaces a lot of bad events like wars for us. It distances people from each other and limits them. Therefore it is very good that it exists in this form.

I am all for the coronavirus being increased even more because it shows people at what distance they should be from each other, so their internal feelings correspond to the external ones. As long as you do not think good about a person, you will not be able to come close to him.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/21/21

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Comment: We live in fear all the time, in fear about what others say, that we will be fired, that we will be put in jail, that the bank will close, that we will get sick, that we will be deceived, that we will be underpaid, that we will overpay, that I will offend someone, that I will be offended, and there are fears for the future and fear in the present. This is our life. Why is it arranged this way?

My Response: To stir you up a little. You are all egoists. Just give you some slack and that’s it, you’re already lying and sunbathing, or on the couch, or on the river, or on the sea.

Question: So fear is the most effective thing to stir up a person?

Answer: There is no other way.

Question: What is afraid in me?

Answer: That I will not receive enough of something. From the smallest to some of the largest fillings.

Question: How can one overcome this fear?

Answer: Relax. Let the river of life flow freely through you.

The upper force governs everything. So the more you give yourself to it and get closer to it, the more you want to feel its governance, its flow, its plan, and its goal, you will completely get rid of your vain problems.

The closer you are to it, the more you relax because you give yourself to its flow. But it is necessary to make efforts to somehow connect with this flow.

Meaning that there is such a scenario and such a program to explain why we are moved by fear. And you have to gradually make it so that all these fears somehow decrease and disappear. Transfer all these fears to their source: the Creator. It is all from Him. He does this on purpose so that you turn to Him so that all fears would turn into the opposite, into pleasure and agreement.

Question: What should my appeal to Him be?

Answer: “Make it so that I perceive everything as coming from You and therefore as kind, good, and eternal.” That is all.

Question: And that’s it? And there are no fears?

Answer: There is nothing.

Question: Is there fear in spirituality?

Answer: The fear in spirituality is different. It comes from the fact that you are not doing what you can. In fact, you can rise above all obstacles, take them all to their source, the Creator, and thus get rid of all thoughts and desires that hinder you, and dissolve in Him.

Question: Is this fear in spirituality?

Answer: Yes. That is, do not rush and do not jerk. Simply dissolve as much as possible in the upper force through the method of equivalence. Here is where the work begins, hard work on yourself. But in general, there are no fears.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/28/21

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