Entries in the 'Health' Category

Man Is An Integral Part Of Nature

Laitman_703.04Question: We find ourselves today in a reality where the universal interconnection, which we feel very strongly today, and our egoistic rejection naturally blend together.

The only way out of this conflict is to change the system of relationships between people and the system of values in society, or, to wait until nature corrects us with its blows, as the coronavirus in this case, or we ourselves must find some solution.

We are angry with nature and ask: “What happened? Why do we need such punishment?”

Do you think nature has a mind? Are we being punished for something or are these just evolutionary processes?

Answer: Man is a single entity with nature. We are in a completely closed system, and therefore, we cannot separate ourselves from nature or nature from ourselves. Therefore, if something happens, it happens in all nature, in the global integrated system.

Therefore, there should be no separate inquiries regarding man and regarding nature. We are part of it. The fact that, in spite of this, we still have the opportunity to somewhat control ourselves, evaluate, differ from nature, to study our dependence on it or its dependence on us, these are just our possibilities.

But they must be very clearly divided: first into what we can study and understand, and second, what we can change in it and in ourselves. Indeed, basically, our whole problem with nature is that we violate its harmony, our natural connection with it.

When humans were still at the animate level, and we all developed from this state, there were no problems. Man acted on the basis of his understanding, awareness, and sensation, like any elementary part of nature.

And then, when the mind developed in him, when he began to acquire selfish properties about six thousand years ago, he began to separate from nature, to move away from it, to oppose it. Relations different from natural ones began to develop between people: selfish, opposing nature. And at this point, the problem arose: the confrontation between nature and man, nature and human society.

Question: Where can one see in nature at least some hints of feelings or reason?

Answer: We can not see anything in nature because we pass everything through ourselves. And it turns out that in nature, in general, there is nothing, and everything goes only through us.

Question: Does nature have a purpose?

Answer: The purpose of nature is to bring all of us to integral equilibrium.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/16/20

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Coronavirus Will Make Us…

laitman_961.2Question: In the era of the coronavirus, there are people who are not afraid of anything. I saw videos of Italian mayors going out into the city and scolding people to return home. And they just walked around. Even in Italy! But there are people who, naturally, are law-abiding, sit at home and listen to everyone.

What should a person really be afraid of: that he will infect himself or infect others?

Answer: I am very glad that such a question is being raised. I have to think about others. And despite the fact that I don’t believe doctors and I don’t believe that I will become infected and could be a carrier of this infection, I still have to do what the doctors say so that people see that I care about them. Not about yourself, but about them.

Question: You mean a person should wear a mask to show that he does not want to infect others? Does this apply to mutual guarantee?

Answer: Of course! Primarily. How can I do things that can threaten the life of another? Life! Today it is a matter of life!

The virus is a program for taking care of each other. You do not want to take care of each other in your ordinary, egoistic desire? You do not want to think that you are one single, integrated system, a terrestrial civilization? Then the virus will teach you.

It completes what we could not complete by ourselves consciously and willingly. It forces us to do this.

Question: Will it be able to do something with us or not?

Answer: Nature can do anything with us. And in the nearest future!

Question: Is it possible to invert a person? I was thinking only about myself all the time. I was living in this way, this is our life.

Answer: Suffering will do it all.

Comment: It is a big problem to advance all the time only through suffering.

My Response: Not only through suffering! After all, we do not want to do it willingly! We do not want to do it within reason! It is impossible to do anything with us. Therefore, we call upon ourselves such actions of nature, such blows.

Question: Does it mean that the virus is something very intelligent?

Answer: The whole of nature is intelligent. It is run according to a specific program. If you do not fulfill this program, then other programs are turned on, and then the next ones, and so on. There are many of these so-called viruses in nature.

We call it a “virus,” but it is a program that is included in the general egoistic program and it slowly begins to turn. It is not breaking it yet! It just turns us a little.

Now this virus is revealed in animals, then it will be in birds, then, somewhere in the air, we do not know where, in all sorts of midges, mosquitoes. You cannot imagine what could happen! We will find ourselves in a hostile world where everything is against us because we are opposite to it, because we hate this world though our behavior! Look at what we did to it!

Thus, it will be breaking us. And we will have to treat this world differently. First, we will have to isolate ourselves from any egoistic, malicious, excessive use. We will not need millions of stores and all the other things that we piled up in our world during a single century. And we will slowly, slowly deflate.

Question: When will the virus understand that it has done its work?

Answer: This happens automatically in nature. When we start to spend less, pollute less, let nature start to clean itself up, when the oceans start to digest our plastic that fills them. We will see this on the land, how it becomes more fertile, birds will sing in the air. Everything will be beautiful and good. Nature will sing from its harmony, which we do not violate! However, this takes time.

We are not doing this yet. This is why we need to restrict ourselves, we need to obey these laws that nature now expresses. I sit in an isolated room and do not go anywhere. What else am I supposed to do? This is a law of nature.

When we all get into relative balance with it, it may begin to affect us in even more sophisticated ways so that we will become even more suitable for it, until we reach a state where our physical actions begin to affect our moral principles, our interactions with each other.

We did not want to go from the inside out, that is, by our awareness, by our feelings. We did not want to change our relationships and our attitude to nature in this way, but now nature will force us to do this in the opposite way; it will push us from the outside in until we change.

Question: Is the fact that I begin to think about how not to infect another a clear step toward nature?

Answer: This is involuntary. This is not yet at the level of consciousness, at the level of consent, of voluntary acceptance, and at the level of desirable action. But this is a start. Thank God, nature has started working on us.

Question: At what point will it if not leave us alone, at least tell us, “Now you can relax a little”?

Answer: When we come to a dynamic balance with it.

Comment: This is a very distant goal.

My Response: We do not want it to leave us alone. God forbid!

The thing is the attitude of a person, about the fact that he does everything not in order to abuse, to satiate himself with all sorts of peculiarities, but in order not to disfigure nature through this, and so on.

The program is inserted into us and we are obliged to obey it and change. There is no getting away from it. Either we speed up our process willingly, which is called Achishena, or it will put pressure on us, and of course, it will take more time and bring more suffering. However, the program is already inserted. That’s it! Now it will start running.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 4/6/20

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The Useless Fight With Windmills

737.01Question: If we cannot interfere with nature, then should we let it do whatever it wants? Should you resign yourself, give up?

Answer: First, there is nothing to oppose to nature. This is completely illogical, unreasonable.

Nature is the entire cosmos. These are such inner levels that I do not know at all. Who am I? Just a product of nature. A little bug against her. I cannot even imagine who I am dealing with. Why argue like a small child trying to fight windmills? What is this quixotism?

We should simply understand that we are in a huge, multi-level system, but we do not know where, in what, and how. Therefore, by the measure of our development, we should try to automatically integrate into it.

If we were an inanimate, vegetative, or animate part of nature, we would automatically abide in it as its integral element. But since we belong to the level of Man, besides the fact that we are in nature, we also have an element of egoism that pushes us out of it: I want to be special!

By that, a person is different from animals. It turns out that with his egoism, he is pushing himself out of nature and is suffering as a result.

But the egoism in us is constantly growing, forcing us to be opposite to each other and to the surrounding inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature. In general, this is our evil, our problem, which is called: the evil beginning of man.

It was created so that we recognize evil and correct it into good. Then we can understand the whole depth of nature, how to become integrally connected with it and participate in all its actions.

Therefore, egoism was not given to us so that we oppose nature and put ourselves against it, but that it is with its help that we get in touch with nature, feel ourselves distant from it, draw into it, and interact correctly with it in mutual influence on each other. Then man will become truly on a level with all nature, which means with the Creator. Because nature is the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/19/19

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New Life 1235 – From Technological Innovation To Social Innovation

New Life 1235 – From Technological Innovation To Social Innovation
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The innovation that the coronavirus era is requiring of humanity is not technological but social; we need to build new, positive, interdependent relations between us. We live in a system of laws that includes the relations between people. Changes in these relations affect the whole system.

First, we need to feel that we are all connected to each other around the globe, that we belong to one integral system like one family.

Second, our bright future depends on our positive attitude toward each other, regardless of any differences in our nationalities or origins.

Third, we need to learn these laws and implement them in the connection between us. Innovation in the field of happiness will occur when a person feels happy because everyone around him is happy.

Innovation in the field of self-fulfillment will happen when each one feels responsible for the whole world from his unique vantage point. If there is mutual guarantee between us, we will discover enough natural resources to sustain everyone and provide for their well-being. No one will fear anything. If we relate to people and to nature correctly, we will solve all of our health problems from the root. Beyond our health, social innovation will also help us to rise above this life and attain the essence of our existence.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1235 – From Technological Innovation To Social Innovation,” 5/8/20

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How Egoism Be Neutralized?

laitman_232.05Question: You always say that we do not need and cannot neutralize our egoism, level it. It is enough just to balance it with some positive force of nature. What is this positive force? Where does it come from?

Answer: This is the spiritual force.

In our world, we are at the level of inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature. Man is like an animal here. If he has any kind of anti-social actions, they can be balanced only if we bring him to the next level, the level of spiritual interaction, “love your neighbor.”

And then we will see the correct integral picture of all of nature and ourselves within it. Humanity will understand that it can exist without any problems, even without death.

Question: How can we evoke the force that neutralizes our egoism and balances it?

Answer: In nature, in addition to egoism, there is also a kind, altruistic force that can give, bestow, and think not about itself, but only about others. We lack this force opposite to our egoistic force, which in no way takes into account the desires of others, and even vice versa: The more it opposes the desires of others, the more it enjoys and is filled. We must balance these two forces.

Question: Do you mean balancing this good force is caused by some good deeds and the fact that we talk about it?

Answer: Yes. It must be developed when you are in the right environment, in the right group. It is caused by both thoughts and actions because actions are followed by thoughts.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/23/20

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The Coronavirus Communist Plot

laitman_527.03Question: What should society be like? Should it be communist?

Answer: Yes, but not the kind of communism that was once in the former Soviet Union or that we read about from Karl Marx. It is a society of equal free people.

Nature demands us to be similar to the Creator. We cannot achieve similarity with the Creator by any other type of connection besides the one we call communism. But we are not talking about the kind of communism that was propagated in the Soviet Union, but of a totally different society of free, correctly interconnected people.

The most important thing is education. A lot was said about it in the Soviet Russia back in the day, but nobody did anything about it, it was all done for show. So, we, the global community, must organize education in a way that is congruent with nature. Not because it is good or bad, but because this is the only way we can protect ourselves from natural disasters and blows caused by our unreasonable behavior.

It is not that we pollute the environment. We see how quickly nature has begun to recover, even in the few weeks that we have shied a little from our reckless production and overproduction.

The most important thing is that nature will still force us to treat each other correctly, i.e., to feel like one common human community, not animal, but human. We cannot escape it.

I am sure that this virus will not just go away, although now they are saying that it is about to disappear. I do not believe so. I am telling you directly It seems to me that it will be months before we can start a normal life and return to normal in all the ways. Therefore, we have to think about how to achieve the right interaction. This is our only problem.

All of nature is an integral, enclosed system. As long as we, the people, do not correlate to it with our qualities or connections, nature will keep bringing us blow after blow, squeezing everything possible out of us. After all, the more advanced we are, the more it mocks us and forces us to react correctly to it and create kind, mutual human relations between us.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/12/20

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“A Civilization In The Remaking” (Medium)


Medium published my new article “A Civilization in the Remaking

We thought we could beat COVID-19 by staying at home for a couple of months and practicing social distancing. We were very, very wrong. As soon as we rolled back the lockdown, the virus returned with a strain “nearly 10 times more infectious,” according to scientists at the Scripps Research in Florida. It will not let up until we understand its message: It’s time to remake human civilization.

To make sure that people get the information required to live in a civilization of connection, authorities will have to stipulate reception of all benefits on participation in learning how to live in this new society.

Here is a partial list of where the number of confirmed cases is on the rise once more: United States, Russia, France, Israel, Argentina, Brazil (which never really went into lockdown), Italy, Germany, and South Korea (previously the gold standard of success). Wherever you look, the tactic of “stay home until it goes away” is failing miserably, and the new strain guarantees that it will continue to fail. This leaves us only one option: restructure our countries so that everyone gets their basic sustenance while learning what in the world is going on. Any country that does not employ this tactic is bound to undergo complete social, political, and economic meltdown.

We will not be able to reopen businesses and shopping centers since they will become contagion hubs. According to Bloomberg, “One third of U.S. job losses [are] at risk of turning permanent.” I think Bloomberg is far too optimistic. Since the virus will not allow the reopening of businesses, they will simply shut down, along with all the businesses dependent on them. In the near future, nearly half of America will remain without income, and without any possibility of finding one. Over time, the percentage of incomeless Americans will only grow, “as companies from manufacturers to retailers adapt to a post-virus world, cutting off even more people from secure work,” according to the Bloomberg Economics research. And considering that the virus isn’t even gone, the impact on the job market will be even more devastating than predicted.

Therefore, every government and municipal authority must take immediate steps to prevent the systems’ collapse that will follow such a massive layoff nightmare. In such a state of uncertainty, people’s most basic fear will be hunger and shelter. The government, for its part, must implement immediate measures to provide water, food, power, and housing to everyone. If people are left hungry or on the street, there will be mayhem that will dwarf what we have seen with the recent George Floyd protests.

Next, the government and local authorities will need to inform everyone that the situation has changed and their lives will not return to what they were before March 2020. People will have to be briefed on what it means to live in a world where very few people work, and those who do, provide for everyone else’s sustenance. The rest of the people will be doing what we should have started doing long ago: communicating with one another.

Once people’s provision is guaranteed by the new structure that the authorities will establish, the rest of the people will spend their abundance of free time simply socializing. After all, this is what being human is about. There will be no reason to compete over jobs, no cause for business rivalries, and all that people will need to do is talk to one another and discover how great it is to simply be together — all races, all colors, all people. Instead of fighting, people will find their new meaning in life in connecting to other people rather than in racing against everyone to get to the top, exhausted, scarred, and alone.

To make sure that people get the information required to live in a civilization of connection, authorities will have to stipulate reception of all benefits on participation in learning how to live in this new society. In this way, people will get their physical, intellectual, and emotional needs satisfied through the system. Faster than we think, a new society will emerge, where bigotry and hatred have no place, and people’s primary occupation is making friends.

And if these words sound like fantasy, consider what you thought about life in February, and what you think about it now…
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Mutual Guarantee—Now And Forever

laitman_275The life we see outside the window is a reflection of our inner connection with one another. Violent demonstrations in American cities protesting against racism and a new wave of coronavirus around the world, is all due to our inaction and our unwillingness to correct our attitudes toward each other.

The coronavirus burst into our lives and declares, “You are all in an integral connection. You are standing together in front of Mount Sinai. If you do not unite with each other and do not ask the higher power to correct you, then this will be the place of your burial.”

The coronavirus is designed to show us how much we depend on one another. This dependence is called “mutual guarantee” which means that I should not think about how to protect myself from the coronavirus, but how to protect others from illness due to my kind and correct attitude toward them.

And what is happening now? Now, as a genuine egoist, I say that am tired of sitting at home in quarantine, I want to go outside and have fun, go to a restaurant, cafe, park, and the seashore. I want this! And I do not think about others; there is absolutely no mutual guarantee between us. Others are not considered by me at all; I do what is best for me.

If I was sure that everyone else were healthy and that I was the only sick one, I would carelessly walk around everyone with my infection. I would know that no one would infect me and I would let others become infected; what do I care about them? And this is exactly what is happening in human society in America, in Israel, in Europe, and everywhere. Everyone thinks only of himself; there is no sense of responsibility for one another.

We will begin to take the right path only when we sit at home without sticking our noses out because we are afraid of infecting others and are not thinking about ourselves. The coronavirus will lead us to such change and will not disappear until the change happens. The virus will make us think about how not to harm our neighbor. I will be afraid to harm others and therefore will prefer to stay at home.

The coronavirus should give us the feeling that we are living in an integral world where you can be healthy only under the condition of mutual guarantee. This is not everything, but it is the very first and necessary thing to start the correction.

And then I will no longer need any restrictions like closed borders between countries, a mandatory distance of two meters, or a mask; no one will have to be obligated to do anything. After all, everyone will take care of others and try to do everything so that others would remain healthy.

We need to look deeper into the essence of this virus because it reveals to us, not the biological disease in us, but our spiritual condition: the relationships between us and the lack of guarantee for one another. And in order to maintain such a guarantee and mutual care, we need the upper light.

Therefore, the coronavirus has come to us from above and has awakened us so that we will turn our attention upward and ask for the upper light that will correct us and give us a sense of responsibility for one another, which we do not have. Then I will worry about others so as not to harm them, but rather to be useful to them.

Mutual guarantee is the most difficult of all efforts because it is our main correction. I have to think about others, get involved in their lives, take care of them, feel their desires, and understand how to help them get closer to adhering to the Creator, how to merge with the upper force.

These are very high concepts related to the correction of the broken soul of Adam HaRishon. But we are approaching them day by day in understanding and in feeling.

The health of people depends on their unity and mutual guarantee. Everyone is the guarantor of their neighbor’s health and ensures that everyone is healthy. In this way, we will get rid of the coronavirus because, by doing this, we will act toward unification, mutual guarantee, and the construction of a common integral vessel.

We will take such a step when everyone will worry, not about getting infected with the virus themselves, but about not transmitting the virus to others. That is, the direction of thought should be the other way around and the reasoning should be opposite as well.

Mutual guarantee means that I cannot think about myself because everyone else thinks about me. And I would have to think about them, about the ten. And so we will all be in mutual guarantee, gradually expanding it to the whole world, and the Creator will be between us and correct us.

The guarantee is accepted together, now and forever. A guarantee, by its nature, cannot exist if there are restrictions because it is based on love. And love is not compatible with limitations.

Our well-being depends on mutual guarantee because this is the basic law of the corrected system. In order to be healthy, a person needs to be in a body whose parts are correctly connected to one another. And the correct connection between all parts of human society is mutual guarantee in which everyone thinks about everyone and does good to everyone. And so we need to collect all of our broken parts and connect them into one healthy body.

And when a kind connection and guarantee between all the organs arises in this perfect body, we will feel life in this body, not today’s sick existence where the whole body is cut and fragmented, but real life where the upper light circulates throughout our body and fills every part of us. This means we must attain correction as well as eternal and perfect life.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/30/20

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What Nature Wants From Man

Laitman_715Question: Is unification the balance between giving and receiving in society? Is the unification process  a balance between how much I get from society and how much I give to society?

Answer: Yes. This is a process of unification. But the fact is that it is not clear to anyone. There are many economic, political, social, and all other theories, but still no one knows what to do with them. There are as many opinions as there are people. Because all this relates to man, and man for us is terra incognita (unknown territory.)

Question: How do I know how much I can receive and how much I can give?

Answer: You can’t know that because your egoism knocks you out of the system. While animals have an understanding of hierarchy, the need to unite, and a clear idea of what the right pack is, the human pack does not have such a law. It turns out that, unfortunately, we are worse than animals. We don’t have any restraining principles.

Question: So what does nature want from the human level? If everything works automatically and instinctively at all levels, what is required of the “human” level?

Answer: Nature requires a person to realize that he is above its inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, that he does not belong to animate nature, and that he cannot automatically create such a structure in his society as animals.

Therefore, he must study who he is and how he can come to a beautiful, correct, dynamic balance, following his continuous development. Nature demands all this from man.

He must understand the general law of nature and then apply it to human society. He must create such an association between people that would reflect, on the one hand, the fact that they are not animals, but egotistically developing people who want to subjugate everything and everyone all the time.

On the other hand, he still has to bring himself to the right balance and create such a system of interaction between people and the other levels of nature, so that this system would work in absolute harmony, in integration with itself.

This condition is not understood by the person. He can’t even create his own little society. I’m not even talking about how he treats inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and only destroys everything. This is his only problem, in principle, this is his egoism.

We need to find out how we can ride this egoism, begin to manage it, limit it intelligently, and understand how, after all, we should behave toward ourselves and among ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/16/20

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Slaves Of The 21st Century

laitman_538Question: Without the scientific and technical revolution, people in the 19th century worked for 16 – 18 hours daily, just in order to feed themselves. If there were no technical revolution, where would the opportunity to work for 2 – 3 hours and have everything you need come from now?

Answer: I am not saying that I am against the development of technology and all the sciences. I am saying that what a person creates becomes what controls him. From an owner he becomes a slave.

Look at what have become of our banks and financial institutions. They have enslaved a person. One doesn’t have to work that much.

You bring me the nineteenth century as an example, and I will bring you the twenty-first century as an example. What has happened to a person today? Does one work fewer hours? No. Feel freer? No.

And what has happened to his performance? It is specially used to enslave man more and more, and to throw the products of his labor into the sea. Otherwise, if he wouldn’t work, what would he do?

He will have a lot of free time! It is dangerous. Freethinking will begin, all sorts of meetings that would be inappropriate or objectionable for the authorities would start, new trends will appear, and so on. We don’t need this!

Let people work 15 to 20 hours a day, or at least 10. But if a person works 10 hours, we will give them another two hours to get to work and two hours from work on top, and it will work out fine. He would come home, have dinner, watch half an hour of TV, and plop into bed. And this would happen all the time.

We’ll book him a holiday somewhere far away. So he will spin, and we will inundate him with advertising: You haven’t seen this yet, you haven’t bought that yet, etc. So he will work like this for the rest of his life. Man was a slave in the nineteenth century, and will be a slave in the twenty-first century.

But there is a problem here: This is what our owners would like, but nature does not agree with this. And so there are all sorts of coronaviruses and other things.

We have entered a state called the “last generation” when we must achieve an integral, correct, friendly dependence and mutual understanding among ourselves. If this does not happen, we will be punished not only with viruses, but with whatever else.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/12/20

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