My article in Newsmax: “Not End of World; Pointing to Human Advancement”

The global outbreak of one of the worst epidemics in history — the coronavirus, extreme weather phenomena, earthquakes in different parts of the world, are all events that have triggered doomsday predictions and alarm.

Convinced that we live in apocalyptic times, some are taking measures to cleanse their conscience or even get ready for a cataclysm. Fearing the end of days, an Israeli citizen recently returned to the authorities a 2,000-year-old stone he stole 15 years ago. Others in America are preparing themselves to live in Stone Age conditions fearing the world will completely run out of resources. The ultra-rich are also acquiring bunkers or purchasing remote properties fully equipped as hideaways to escape the ravages of prophetic times.

Are the current afflictions a sign of greater suffering that can be anticipated to the point of total annihilation? The answer is no. There is no end of the world. Matter does not become destroyed, it only becomes transformed to a better and more advanced state.

Corrective Measures From Nature

What we see as threats from nature are, in fact, serious actions to advance humanity, not to wipe it out. The coronavirus, which expands around the world and frightens humanity, is a signal from nature to stop our frenzied life for a period of time and to rethink our route. We have been abusing and damaging nature on the still, vegetative, animal and human levels, squeezing and draining the planet. By routinely wreaking havoc, the coronavirus shows us that 90% of everything we do is unnecessary and harmful to the world.

Like a father toward his children when they misbehave, who yells and puts pressure on them until their conduct is corrected, nature is telling us that we need to review our egoistic and destructive attitudes to each other and to the environment, attitudes that lead to the exploitation and manipulation of our surroundings and other people for personal gain.

The human ego develops like an illness that incubates silently until it explodes and weakens the entire body. In order to recover balance, the body needs to halt its daily routine, stay in bed, rest and recuperate and rethink its future steps in order to heal. In the same way, the planet, which acts as a single body, has activated its self-preservation system through COVID-19 in a purifying and healing process from the sickness of overblown human egoism.

The Message That the Virus Sends Us

The virus is sending us a clear message: We, as a human society, are sick as a result of selfish consumerism and harmful relations, overpowering and trying to control others in opposition to nature’s synchronized functioning where precise and harmonious coordination between all of its elements prevail. If we can learn this lesson and start correcting ourselves, we will activate nature’s positive force that restores balance.

Individually and collectively, we must scrutinize whether our thoughts are for the benefit of others and behave accordingly, and by this, we will reverse the current crisis through a change in our mindset and relations toward others.

Rich or poor, smart or simple, strong or weak, blue-blooded or a common citizen, the pandemic makes no differentiation between us. The purpose is to make us feel that we are all equal in the integral and circular system we live in. Acknowledging our equality is a major step toward organizing human society in a way that is more harmonious and balanced with nature.

If we refuse to make moves toward building positive human connections and instead return to the previous egoistic state that led to our current crisis, we could expect to head toward a significant man-made catastrophe such as a third world war, one that would bring about a whole new level of unfortunate suffering.

However, further suffering can be avoided if we see all unfolding events as an opportunity to connect in better ways with each other and start behaving accordingly.

Our destiny will be determined by either our negligence or our responsibility and positive actions. Therefore, at the present and vital stage of our battle against the coronavirus, we should clearly understand the reason for the situation. The crucial discovery and knowledge of the true illness — our destructive egoistic nature — will direct us toward the medicine: strengthening the sensation of social cohesion. Such awareness will lead to the end of the disruptive and unbalanced world we know, and will signal the beginning of a new harmonious world filled with a plethora of goodness.
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My article in Newsmax: “COVID-19 Buried Capitalism”

On March 20, historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote in the Financial Times that the nature of emergencies is to fast-forward historical processes. True, everything that we have known, our entire civilization, is rapidly falling apart. Most people still hope that once the virus is gone their lives will pick up where they left off. They will not. Coronavirus will have changed everything.

It is not merely a transformation of attitude, but a change of our entire paradigm of life. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown touched on it when he wrote that to fight the coronavirus, “instead of dog-eat-dog bidding wars that encourage profiteering, the G20 should back the World Health Organization and the Global Fund’s efforts to coordinate and increase production and procurement of medical supplies.”

Shedding the dog-eat-dog paradigm is imperative, but the virus isn’t likely to disappear in the near future. There are already no less than 40 known strains of the virus. Second, even if we do manage to miraculously abolish all aggressive variants, by the time we can resume normalcy, we will discover that we ourselves have changed dramatically, and the frantic consumerism will no longer seem appealing.

It has stopped tourism, transportation, sports, entertainment, COVID-19 isn’t only changing our economy or even our way of life; it is changing our very thinking about life.culture, industry, education, socializing and even our ability to congregate for prayer. When we restart civilization, we will be different. Or, rather, we had better be different if we don’t want a sequel for the Novel Coronavirus episode.

A Novel Economy

When a superbug imposes a quarantine on the entire world, its ramifications are unfathomable. Sooner rather than later, countries will have to see to their citizens most basic needs. Food, housing, healthcare and education will all have to be administered by governments since the majority of people will simply not have any income to purchase any of the above, not to mention luxuries or gadgets.

The quarantine, or “stay at home” policy, is not just an emergency measure; it is the end of capitalism. We may not realize it but along with the coffins of our loved ones, we buried the way of life and way of thinking about life we all grew up on. Capitalism is dead.

The new economy that will emerge from the ashes will have to be based on different values. Since jobs will be virtually obsolete, wealth and power will become irrelevant gauges of success. But since human nature always strives for prominence, new standards will take over where the old ones left a void.

Instead of power by control, leadership by example will take the fore. Those who contribute the most to lifting the spirit of society, guaranteeing people’s well-being, and increasing social solidarity will become the prominent people in society.

Until now, we competed like children playing King of the Hill. Gradually, the virus will teach us to value and pay tribute to those who exert to push everyone uphill, to lift society rather than themselves.

The new economy that will emerge from the ruins of the old one will not be a new form of socialism. It will be an economy of mutual responsibility. Mutual responsibility is not an economic paradigm, but a social one, entailing both economic and educational aspects. It does not require material equality, but mutual concern that guarantees that people a) have what they need, and b) want everyone else to have what they need.

In an economy based on mutual responsibility, personal attributes are cherished and nurtured as long as one uses one’s skills to improve everyone’s lives. This approach allows for endless ways for people to express themselves, and society will reward them for doing so. Respect, admiration, and love for the people who contribute will more than compensate for the pursuit of wealth and possessions.

For this reason, introduction of mutual responsibility should occur on the physical level as well as on the intellectual level. On the former, as said above, governments will have to tend to people’s basic needs. On the latter level, we must establish an online education system where scientists and other pundits introduce the notion of mutual responsibility and explain why today’s reality requires it.

The idea behind these educational programs is not merely to help humanity overcome the virus. The goal is to change the paradigm that governs our lives from focusing on the “me” to focusing on the “we,” thereby creating a flourishing and sustainable society. The dog-eat-dog paradigm that Brown talked about is why the coronavirus has arrested our civilization. If we want to win, we should now build one that relies on mutual responsibility, and any moment’s delay is one moment too late.
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Medium published my new article “The Secret to Overcome the Coronavirus Lockdown”

If you are like one out of three people in the world currently under stay-at-home orders, the question of how to make this situation meaningful becomes relevant.

The surge of the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing humanity to realize how much we depend on each other. It sent us home not only to stop the further spreading of the virus, but to also stop us further infecting the world with our troublesome and exploitative interactions, where we each sought to build ourselves on the ruin of others. Our imbalanced relations negatively impact the other levels of nature — still, vegetative and animal — and nature reacts to our harmful influence by striking us with certain blows in order to try and spur us into balance with it.

How to Find Inner Strength

Home, then, becomes the laboratory for fixing our imbalance with nature by first practicing harmonious relations with others. It is the place where we can start thinking about how to become more considerate to each other. But as time passes, we can easily become impatient. Maintaining a positive attitude becomes more complicated as the ego — the will to receive for self-benefit alone — increases, until we cannot get along with each other anymore. The broken ties between us create rifts and quarrels, arguments and confrontation.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, known also as the wisdom of connection, explains that such states are opportunities to rise above those conflicts and bring about cohesion and mutual understanding. As it is written, “Each one helps the other, and says to his brother, ‘Be strong!’” (Isaiah, 41:6.) In other words, by constructing appropriate relations among us, by helping, supporting and encouraging the other, we will acquire the required inner strength to do good in the world, beginning with those closest to us.

And the Kabbalists advise: Show affection and care. Do it with your utmost effort. Do it openly and even artificially until the habit becomes your second nature. How can we even hear such advice, never mind implement it, if it counters how the heart feels? We will become ready to submit when we realize that there is no other way and the alternative is to live our lives like prisoners in our own homes. Conversely, we can accept this lockdown as an opportunity to examine what we should correct in our attitudes to each other in order to live more fulfilling lives.

Kids Will Be Kids, Adults Should Not

We might wonder where children will find the strength to overcome their burning desire to act contrary to their natural desire. How, for example, can children become ready to make concessions in order to find common ground and understanding? It can be achieved when we raise them with our example. If adults demonstrate altruistic behavior, not acting like stubborn children themselves, but showing examples of love, care and giving to each other, then children will imitate such examples and grow up to behave similarly.

It is quite complicated but parents should ideally urge children to make such concessions. It is because, if they manage to do so, they will enter into a much calmer and happier state. We should thus explain to them (and also to ourselves): “Do you think that you will gain more if you are stubborn?” “Will it benefit anyone if you refuse to give in?” “Will you gain any lasting advantage if you try and force the other to yield?”

They will likely nod their heads in agreement after a second. The principle is relatively easy to comprehend, but difficult to execute. Human nature, the will to receive, resists it. What, then, can be done to help overcome our nature? The answer: Organize a supportive environment, create an atmosphere that will help the children (and ourselves) to overcome and exit the ego, and give in for a common benefit.

When both you and your children are tired of hearing about such compromises, then we should once again explain to ourselves: “When we combat our ego instead of someone else’s, the triumph will be sweeter and more pleasant.”

However, we cannot just hand them hollow instructions. We need to dig deeper by ordering our own selfish nature to renounce itself in exchange for mutual gain. By doing so, we develop a fresh approach to making compromises, building within ourselves this characteristic for a higher purpose. We become ready to concede to the whole world. Why? It is in order to calm it down and bring it the same power of compromise, the power to balance our struggles. Thus, as we teach our children, we also educate ourselves, and rise to a higher level of mutual consideration and responsibility by doing so.

Gradually, we will start seeing that all of our family members succeed in canceling their will vis-à-vis the other, giving in for the benefit of the whole family with a smile, calmly and pleasantly. When we acquire this power to make concessions, we will be able to spread this ability from a smaller unit through to society at large. Then, everyone will start thinking and acting for everyone’s benefit instead of trying to pull others to benefit each one individually. And by doing so, everyone will receive what is required for their life, just like in a family.
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The world seems to be on a narrow bridge, and the main thing now is not to be afraid of parting with the past. We have another concern: how to meet the future not by colliding with its back, but to competently face the inevitable tomorrow.

“If only everything does not collapse, then it will be restored,” they tell us. And they add, “Someday.” I say “It will not recover.” But collapse is not necessary at all. Each of us has the task of surviving the current period with minimal losses. To do this, we need to save nerves and resources, support others, be able to relax, but not “disconnect.” And most importantly, we need to understand what is happening so that the consequences of the crisis will not take us too much by surprise.

To start, let’s sit down and take a breath. The human being was not created to fuss. He was created in order to think and act. So let’s think: What have we actually lost? What motivated us in that life? What did we live for? What sensible and useful things have we done? What have we prepared for the future of our children?

Quite frankly, we just served each other for money. With zeal or without it, we fulfilled the principle, clearly formulated by our sages thousands of years ago: “Go and profit from each other.” It seemed to us that we were serving ourselves. But what kind of a disservice we rendered to ourselves by exhausting ourselves in a hamster wheel of consumerism, not thinking about anything else?

Imagine for a second if we flew from another developed planet and looked down on ourselves a few months ago, it would not have been a very pretty sight. No, not in the technological sense, but in the very essence of our commotion and bustle. The “benefit” from it, like smog above the Earth, is already starting to disperse. And so, the virus came. “Stop, people,” it tells us. “Look at what you did to the planet and to yourselves. Look beyond the brink of tomorrow.”

If we really look into it without brushing it off, we will see that we were moving not only toward ecological collapse, but before that we would have come to war. In fact, we drove ourselves into the arms of war, into a state of hopeless globalization, into a dead end of contradictions. This is human nature: When a slaughter is brewing, we force it out of our consciousness and at the same time put up with it, even invoke it.

We have not yet reached such an advanced stage, but an avalanche of unbridled consumerism has drawn humanity into the abyss. And, paradoxically, the virus is saving us from it. We are being saved from egoism in need of “absolution,” in resetting consumption markets.

So is it worth going back? What did we forget there? Is there life after the virus?

Now we are getting to know our family, our world, and ourselves again.

Previously, many of us just slept at home, now we live there. We used to browse the Internet for fun, now we connect with each other.

There are several ways. Of course, we want to go back to that hamster wheel with its array of constantly new and different pleasures to look forward to, and are even willing to endure its pains that prod us from behind. But one cannot help but remember the threat of a collapse with rampant crime, the suppression of unrest, interruptions in supply, and the search for the guilty. And finally, we can use this period for reflection.

Of course, not everything is smooth, not everyone can “sustain the blow,”  but the experience itself, the very change of pace, foreshortening, does not bring only a respite? In the cleared weekdays, in an unusual afternoon lull, we hear an echo of something new. We are seated at home, like children at their desks in order to learn something so that this “breaking” would not pass in vain.

In any case, we will be unable to exit the crisis as quickly as we entered it. And what is happening now is not a pause, not a vacation, not a lockdown, it is an awakening. The virus did not knock us out, but shook us well, returned us to reality, gives us an opportunity to carefully take the helm.

Today we are confronted with the need to redefine our values in the dawn of a new era, which requires a different attitude to each other and finding a meaning that we avoided. The wind of change swept away the illusions and is showing us the true picture. So are we really going to let the mind again be clouded by its mirages? Will we reconcile ourselves with the past, with eternal vanity, with external abundance, and with internal devastation?

The world seems to be on a narrow bridge, and the main thing now is not to be afraid of parting with the past. We have another concern: how to meet the future not by colliding with its back, but competently face the inevitable tomorrow.

We, ourselves, have created a rat race, and now we can get out of it without excessive external shocks. After all, the main thing is what is inside: our connections, our relations, our participation, reciprocity. It is enough to realize this, and all mechanisms—social, financial, commercial—will start to restructure according to the new paradigm.

Let’s think about it: Why are we living? How can we build our lives differently, on different principles? The way out of boundless egoism was opened, let’s use it while our egoism is shocked and muted.

Airplanes are on the ground, ships are in ports, we should be at school desks. There is nothing derogatory in this. On the contrary, we have the opportunity to really do something for ourselves.

All our life we were only engaged in running away from the question about it. Worried before death, justifying ourselves to the best of our ability. The virus, however, hints at something else. We cannot run away from death this way. To overcome its line, it is necessary to rise above the egoism that kills us. Our ego limits, gives a flawed and wretched sensation of the world through the demands of our body. Let us feel the world through our internal common structure, through the soul. Then we will see it completely differently, endless, eternal, and perfect.

This has nothing to do with religions. The science of Kabbalah does not advocate any beliefs. It simply develops the soul of a person, and that makes us happy. Now, when we all feel in a common boat, we must put our oars together and head for a world without borders between hearts. Then the remaining barriers that divide people will disappear. Tomorrow’s world is forming now.
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This article is written by my student Oleg Itzeksen

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What Will The World Be Like After The Epidemic?
The Global Pandemic
Coronavirus—A Consequence Of The Imbalance Of Nature

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It is as if we have become participants in a Hollywood storyline and are following the development of events from the inside. Will we be able to understand the essence of what is happening and anticipate the upshot?

It’s already clear, the coronavirus has become one of those rare, unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences that Nassim Taleb dubbed “black swans.” Later, in hindsight, everything will become clear and logical, but something is already happening now. We all have a few weeks or months of reflections ahead of us and it would be unwise to miss this opportunity. After all, there are no accidents in nature and since the necessary conditions have already developed, we must use them purposefully and not just wait for the end to come.

In front of us, apparently, are several months of a very unusual lifestyle. Even after it is over, we will not return to the previous routine. Our everyday life will be different. How, precisely? It depends upon whether we want to answer the cardinal questions that are being posed to us by the virus today.

“When it’s all over, we’ll wonder why we should go to work in the office, go to school to study or train, or go shopping at the store,” writes Dr. Einat Wilf. Perhaps, this will be the moment when we will leave the structures of the industrial revolution behind.

Analysts, scientists, and heads of companies are already discussing the new digital paradigm, changing the approach to production and its efficiency, and decision-making and safety. The pandemic has highlighted the fact that our inert thinking is not keeping pace with modern technology.

This, however, is only part of the picture. After all, it is not so much about technology. The point is the very concept of success. If we do not miss this opportunity, humanity will cast away a lot of what is superfluous and live simpler and more practical lives externally, and also live internally fuller and more multifaceted lives. Not just our way of life will change, but the way we think and feel.

At this point, we want only one thing: for it all to end but let’s pull ourselves together and look the facts in the eye. What is the current situation telling us? What other diseases of the world is the coronavirus revealing?

The Ministry of Health is not going to tell us about them. Its directives only disconnect and tear us away from the life imposed on us by society with its current values, leisure, and pastimes. Suddenly, mutual responsibility has ceased to be an empty phrase. Priorities are changing dramatically. Entertainment is shifting into virtual space.

It is a rather gloomy prelude but not tragic. We are trying to acclimatize and build a new framework. We are even helping others, strangers, which yesterday was nonsense for many. On one hand, we are limited. On the other hand, we are discovering new and unusual things. It is similar to a growing child being directed by caregivers, isn’t it?

Following the routes of the sick, we see cafés, restaurants, shops, shopping centers, supermarkets, and banquet rooms. Actually, this dotted line from one institution to another makes up almost our entire lives. We travel abroad and it is the same everywhere: endless repetition. Although no, it is a finite one.

Now, looking at it from aside, we are becoming a little more mature and a little wiser. Imperceptibly and implicitly, a new feeling is arising in us. We have a new attitude toward leisure and entertainment, as well as others and our own lives. The old ways have faded a little as if the blinders are falling from our eyes and are exposing new bright colors.

What seems like a prison today is, in fact, providing us with an opportunity to start treating ourselves and the world in a deeper and more serious way. We are asking ourselves questions that, until now, were diligently obscured by the previous paradigm.

In fact, we have an unprecedented chance to reflect. The virus is leading us toward purification and a kind of disinfection of the mind and feelings. It is raising us to a new level of thinking, understanding, desiring, and connecting. Without even knowing, we are already in touch with a need for a sense that we were previously deprived of.

Let’s fast forward; the virus will not only be a threat, it will also become a breakthrough. It undermines not only the body, but also outdated concepts and dogmas, opening the door to a new state of humanity.

Our first impulse is to close this door, to calm the draft, and to eliminate the obstacle in the usual way. But wait, do not close the doors of consciousness. In nature—in this single, integral system—there is nothing bad, nothing wrong. All of nature’s responses are true and useful even if they are destructive in some way.

You can’t just fight the virus by discounting the system in which we live. The system will not go anywhere and will continue to defend its balance. From whom, you may ask? From us. It is we who shake the general balance by rocking the boat. We are consumer-oriented toward the world and toward each other for the sake of silly bragging, out of the desire to place ourselves in a higher and better position in comparison to others. Our entire lives are subjugated to this task, hidden behind many solid-looking but flat decorations.

As a result, at the environmental level, we consciously destroy the Earth. Greta Thunberg is accurate on this point. Most importantly, we ruin the social ecology and we fail precisely at the task assigned to us by the system.

Our relations and all our “progress” act in opposition to nature. We bring imbalance and disharmony in everything we touch. We try to conquer the system that gave birth to us. We demand that nature obey us for the sake of our infantile and meaningless games.

Of course, nature is against this. It is no coincidence that the virus forces us to build healthier lives and more responsible relationships, to abandon unnecessary production, and to take care of each other.

Perhaps, once a vaccine is created or when the majority of people get over the sickness, we will depart from the isolation, being more mature and living differently and better. Perhaps we will give meaning to this pandemic, which so far seems like a “black swan,” an unfortunate and unforeseen obstacle in our dotted line.

Later, a logical explanation will be found for all the “black swans.” But what explanation will we give? What prevents us from doing this now?

For decades, we have wandered in consumer illusions, destroying the lives of future generations. We have turned ourselves into cogs in a global overproduction and indifference machine that produces garbage and burns human and natural resources for the sake of egoism. Why would we come back to this?

Even if we begin to consume just two or three times less, we, our children, and our grandchildren will have healthier, calmer lives full of much more creative, enduring, and universal joy. A common misfortune can be a springboard to a common success.

The virus, in fact, gives us a chance to survive. Nature, unlike humanity, does not ruin or destroy anything; it only develops, fixes, and corrects. Our perception has not yet reached this picture but we are already able to extrapolate from our knowledge, run a little ahead, and look beyond the horizon depicted.

Then, we will see how hostile we are toward nature. Like a Mongol-Tatar cohort, we trample nature’s fields and arrogantly try to make it submit to our selfish demands.

We will suddenly see that each of us faces nature and behind each of us is all of humanity. Everyone is personally responsible for the balance of the system. The individual and the collective are equal, say the Kabbalists.

The virus is the result of the imbalance caused by humans in the general system. The human is the leading part in that system. All of the system’s impulses are tied up and focused on us. Within it, we learn to answer for one another and also answer for the system itself.

Let’s not forget to observe the prescribed distance, sit in quarantine, take care of our families, and help others as much as possible. To ignore these things would be like burying our heads in the sand and looking back to yesterday when tomorrow is already on the way. Humanity differs from animals in that we are endowed with imagination and we know how to anticipate the future and look ahead. Our “black swan” is much more than it seems to us right now.
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This article is written by my student Oleg Itzeksen

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/30/20

There is ample talk about COVID-19 being a punishment from nature for humanity’s mistreatment of it. I respectfully disagree. As I see it, there are no punishments in nature; there are natural laws. Gravity, for example, is a natural law. If you jump off the roof of a high-rise thinking you can fly, you will die even if halfway down you’ll be enjoying the view and the wind in your face thinking that life is smiling at you. But if you obey the law of gravity and stay on the solid roof, you’ll be safe.

For centuries, humanity has behaved like that fool on the roof, pretending to be what it’s not: the sole ruler of Earth. We jumped too high and now we’re free-falling down. On our way down, we celebrated our achievements and said, “So far so good.” But we have been misled by our self-centered nature that twisted our perception of reality. Now, as the ground beneath us is nearing fast, there is but one parachute that we can open and stop the free-fall: to align human nature with the rest of nature. Nothing else will prevent the collision with the asphalt underneath.

Castles in the Sand

In a matter of weeks, the coronavirus has stopped civilization in its tracks. Tourism, transportation, sports, entertainment, culture, industry, education, socializing, and even our ability to congregate for prayer have all been halted. In short, the virus stopped our lives. Most still have basic sustenance such as food and shelter, but even this is doubtful going forward.

At the same time, in those few weeks, COVID-19 has also managed to restart many aspects of nature that have been suppressed by humans. The air in China is clear for the first time in decades, and you can see the fish swim in the once murky water in the canals of Venice, where swans swim after so many years of absence. Nature is palpably rejuvenating. It is not retaliating against humanity; it has merely separated us from the rest of nature and is restoring harmony and balance.

Coronavirus is sending us a message: Human nature, which engendered the civilization we so value, is at odds with the rest of nature. It is damaging to the rest of the world and injurious also to us humans.

The world we live in is the reflection of the interactions among its parts. While nature develops through harmonious collaboration, we have been driven by the struggle for power and control. Like naughty children building castles in the sand, we have been fighting to build our castles and smash everybody else’s until the tide came and washed them all away, so we could start over properly.

Homeostasis and Mutual Responsibility

When wolves were hunted to extinction in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA, the entire ecosystem suffered. Overpopulating herbivores depleted the flora, streams deviated from their course due to lack of riverbank vegetation, and animals’ health deteriorated as the weak and the sick were not culled by predators. When the wolves were reintroduced into the park, balance and health were restored.

The natural law that guides this balance is known as “homeostasis,” which is defined as a tendency toward a state of equilibrium between different but interdependent elements or groups of elements of an organism, population, or group.

We, humans, are devoid of the instincts that maintain homeostasis in the rest of nature. Instead, we must develop it consciously and willingly. The human homeostasis will not be a natural law that guides us, but a social guideline that will form the basis of our society. That guideline will be “mutual responsibility.” Like homeostasis, mutual responsibility implies a tendency toward equilibrium between different yet interdependent elements. But in humans, it is a conscious tendency rather than inherent.

If we introduce mutual responsibility into our societies, we will be able to continue to grow and thrive as a human society. If we avoid it, nature will force us to behave in a more balanced way, as the coronavirus is doing today. And the more adamantly we refuse, the more aggressively nature will force us to comply.

In practice, introduction of mutual responsibility should occur on the physical level and on the intellectual level. On the former, governments will have to tend to people’s basic needs for food, healthcare, and housing. On the latter level, we must establish an online education system where scientists and other pundits introduce the notion of mutual responsibility and explain why today’s reality requires it.

The idea behind these educational programs is not merely to help humanity overcome the virus. Rather, the idea is to change the paradigm that governs our lives, from focusing on the “me” to focusing on the “we.” The old paradigm is why the coronavirus has arrested our civilization, so we could build one that is based on mutual responsibility, and any moment’s delay is one moment too late.

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KabNet published my new article: “We Entered the 2nd Stage of the Coronavirus Pandemic. What’s Next?”

We have passed the initial shock of the coronavirus pandemic, and now have entered what could be considered its second stage.

We now understand that it is here to stay for a while, that it spans the entire globe, and many of us have become used to sitting at home and not working.

There are still many unanswered questions in relation to the pandemic, for instance, how long it will last and how our lives will look afterward, but the fact is that we have detached from our previous lives and we are getting ready for a new life.

The coronavirus came like a tsunami that cleansed our lives from surplus and excess in order to let us focus on what is truly necessary and important in life.

“Other than supplying for our needs, we would do wisely in this period to equip ourselves with the wisdom of connection.”

Also, I am happy to hear that many people around the world already see the great need for human civilization to be cleaned from the dirt that it was accumulating.

I am also certain that our lives will be different to what they were before the coronavirus impacted us. We will simply be unable to reestablish them the way they were before.

We are still unaware of the extent to which this virus is changing us. In addition to washing away our life’s redundancies—everything that our egoistic human nature forced us to create in order to benefit ourselves at the expense of humanity and nature—it also “washes” us internally, i.e., our attitudes to each other and to nature, and we will come out of this period as different people.

Also, after this initial tsunami wave of the pandemic washing away the excesses that our overblown ego urged us to create, we are developing greater awareness of the need to exit our ego’s enslavement, i.e., to stop being under the demands of our desires to exploit others for the sake of self-benefit, and start building our lives anew, where all surplus would be contributed to the construction of a positively-connected society.

Many people sitting at home during this period are waking up to the meaninglessness of running after self-serving, consumeristic and materialistic goals.

Thus, there is greater awareness today of how much simpler and clearer life can be when we consider the need to provide for our basic needs, and in addition, consider what is most important in life. That is, when we stop saturating our lives with garbage that we are advertised to overload ourselves with, we can start thinking about how to fill our lives with what is truly important.

What, then, is truly important in life?

If we start connecting to each other in a more supportive, encouraging and considerate way around the world, seeing ourselves as equal in the face of nature, then we would start preparing ourselves with new “tools” that we could use in order to rise above the level of our egoistic and exploitative relationships, and enter into a different life.

What is this different life? How would it appear?

If we implement our connections properly, we would realize achievements the likes that we have never experienced before, nothing less than eternal life, a life that is followed not by death, but which is whole and perfect.

We once thought of our universe as infinite, but we eventually reached the understanding that, albeit existing for billions of years, it has its own limit. Yet, by realizing our connections in a positive way—through rising above our egoistic attitudes to each other—we can discover a limitless world, the eternal spiritual world, one that is independent of physical time, space and motion, and which exists solely in our change of attitudes to each other: from egoistic to altruistic, exploitative to supportive, manipulative to encouraging, self-serving to mutually considerate, and individualistic to mutually responsible for one another.

Therefore, other than supplying for our needs, we would do wisely in this period to equip ourselves with the wisdom of connection—the wisdom of Kabbalah—that provides us with a time-tested method in order to help us develop this change of attitude to each other.

In addition to providing the method for realizing positive connections among each other in order to discover a whole new eternal reality, the wisdom of Kabbalah also explains the deeper causes behind all problems and phenomena unfolding in our lives.

This is why our organization applies great efforts during this pandemic to explain how and why the virus appeared, and where it leads us, all in the broader context of human development within nature’s plan.

We thus hope that, especially during this unique period, humanity’s awareness of how nature acts toward us all as equals will rise, and that if we related to each other the way nature relates to us, we would unlock a completely new, harmonious and perfect reality.
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Thrive Global published my new article: “The Post-Coronavirus World”

We will definitely be living in a new and different world after the coronavirus pandemic.

Dave Heinzel installs one of his handmade signs with the saying “Everything Will Be Ok” along with a 3D red heart that he he handmade in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in front of a home on West Lawrence Avenue, Wednesday, March 25, 2020, in Springfield, Ill. Heinzel started taking requests for the signs on social media and the demand soared to over 200 requests. “I really think everything will be okay,” said Heinzel. “It’s going to get worse and it’s not going to be fun and we’re going to lose people we know, but it will be okay.”Usp News Coronavirus A Usa Il

Before discussing the post-coronavirus world, it helps to understand that the deeper cause of the virus was that it was a nature-sent reaction to the egoistic, competitive and exploitative way we were living our lives.

Nature sent us this virus in order to clean away the excess waste we had been accumulating in our paradigm of each one trying to maximally profit off of others in a race to individual success.

Our overinflated egoistic approach to life would have eventually led to major suffering, such as a world war. However, the coronavirus came along instead. It somewhat purifies us in a much calmer way than if we had let our tensing relations reach an explosive peak.

There Is Nothing Detrimental in Nature

Many perceive the coronavirus as a major catastrophe, but when we gain an understanding of nature’s laws and modus operandi, we see that there is nothing detrimental in nature.

We were causing harm to each other in our mutually inconsiderate and divisive attitudes, and then the coronavirus came along in order to distance us from each other, giving us a chance to review how and why we live our lives the way we do.

Now that nature has caringly and ingeniously discarded of the garbage that we had been gathering, we have an opportunity to fill our relations with love and kindness—to reestablish human society in a much brighter and more positive way for our children and grandchildren.

I thus hope that we will successfully utilize this coronavirus period to impact a positive shift in our attitudes to each other, and in the social constructions that we build herein.

I also hope that we will leave behind all the social division, hatred, xenophobia, exploitation, manipulation, abuse, depression, stress and anxiety of the old egoistic world, and make a significant leap into a new and opposite world of positive connection, love, equality, support, encouragement, happiness, confidence, altruism, care and mutual responsibility.

Reject the Old Egoistic World. Seek a New Mutually-Considerate One

Billions of dollars are currently being invested by governments in the hope that we will revive the rat race we were running before the coronavirus struck us. It would be very unfortunate if we do. I greatly doubt that doing so would be positive for anybody.

While we are now in a widely acknowledged state of crisis, we hear very little about how before the coronavirus, we were in another crisis. Our intensifying divisive relations in societies and between countries—especially between America, Russia, China and Europe—as well as various other factions, were leading us to war, and to financial and industrial collapse.

When we understand the extent of the crisis we were headed toward, we then view the coronavirus pandemic as a life buoy that nature threw out to us.

Therefore, we would be wise to realize that there was nothing positive in our old world, and thus nothing worth returning to. It was a world being devastated by our extraction of every resource we could get our hands on.

Also, the irony of our old world is that it was based on us all trying to enjoy ourselves, yet finding that it became harder and harder to enjoy ourselves. In the end, if we made a precise calculation of how much we enjoyed compared to how much we were dissatisfied and suffering in one way or another, we would find the scales tilted heavily to “dissatisfied and suffering.”

We deceived ourselves that we were doing well. What was so positive about our old world? Did anything we do leave us with a sense of lasting happiness and joy? Also, whether we were ordinary people just trying to get by and serve our families, or people who strove for more wealth, respect, power and knowledge—we would all merely ever experience momentary fulfillment, only to be left empty again needing to once again seek more fulfillment.

Ultimately, we were all equal in the way we lived our lives: We were in a perpetual chase after enjoyment that always slipped through our fingers the moment we started contacting it.

The Coronavirus Washes Away Egoistic Waste and Gives Us Room to Create a Better World

Therefore, now we have entered a cleansing period that is washing away the egoistic, competitive and socially divisive waste that was accruing. As we were filling our oceans with plastic and radioactive waste, so we were making a mess of human society.

At this juncture, our best move would be to build a new and much more positive world.

The coronavirus and all its consequent social distancing conditions around the world has given us time and room to contemplate on how we were driving our past egoistic society to ruin. Moreover, if we would compare the current coronavirus to past pandemics, then we would see that the amount of deaths is relatively small. That is, nature has brought about this opportunity for a positive transformation with relative mercy and gentleness.

Therefore, we would be unwise if we returned to our old world of 10-to-12 hour work days, with big chunks of those days spent in traffic jams, multiple crises on personal, social and ecological scales, as well as perpetually-increasing debt.

Our optimal use of this transitional era is to help each other take a step forward into a new world: to think about how we can repair our relationships, rise above any differences we had, and implement new relations of mutual consideration and responsibility among human society.

I thus hope that when the social distancing conditions are lifted and the coronavirus era comes to an end, then we will also continue along a line that we now start: one where we value positive human connections that benefit the whole of humanity over any self-serving goals. Doing so would ensure our balance with nature, reveal a new world of happiness and confidence for everyone, and protect us from any further harm that we would bring upon ourselves.
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Published on March 29, 2020

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The Times of Israel published my new article “The Passover Seder in the Coronavirus Era: A Means for Spiritual Connection”

How are we going to spend our first Passover under the social distancing conditions brought about by the coronavirus?

What will the Passover Seder look like?

As a first, many families will be using the Zoom video conference tool to connect virtually over the Seder. Yet, while the coronavirus detaches us physically from each other, we have a unique opportunity to not only connect virtually, but to exercise what it means to be in more spiritual connection.

What Is Spiritual Connection?

Spiritual connection is when we want to feel each other in our hearts. It is when I accept the desire of the other person as my being my own, wishing to fulfill it as if it were my own desire, and the other person does the same to me.

Therefore, while feeling physically distant from each other, internally, in our common attitude to each other, we can feel ourselves as one.

If we had a broader view on why certain events befall our world, we would then see that the coronavirus pandemic—in how it has brought the world to a halt and physically isolated us all from each other—has come precisely so that we revise our attitudes to each other, and ultimately realize more positive and spiritual connections.

If we fail to actualize more spiritual connections to each other during this crisis, then we can expect worse problems to transpire, whether more elaborate mutations of the coronavirus or others.

Why? It is because our positive connections bring us into balance with nature’s interconnected and interdependent form, and the more we develop, the more there is an expectation on us from nature to make conscious steps toward our positive connection.

Our incongruence with nature, on the other hand, brings about the many forms of inconvenience and suffering that we experience, in order that we eventually positively and spiritually connect.

A New Dimension of Perception and Sensation Where We All Exist as One

We would do wisely to welcome the conditions that the coronavirus brings us, and actualize the spiritual closeness that nature wants us to wake up to, feeling each other in a new dimension of perception and sensation where we all exist as one.

By doing so, we would then feel no craving for the usual Passover Seder that we became used to, where we see each other sitting close by around the same table. In our spiritual closeness, we would feel a whole new kind of energy as if illuminating and filling the space between us—a new sensation of joy revealing itself in our common effort to overcome physical distances with attitudes of mutual consideration, love, support and encouragement.

Moreover, if we connect spiritually, we will also feel no need for virtual connection through our computer screens or mobile devices. We would have a much deeper and more genuine sensation of each other. It is as my teacher, Rabash, writes in his 8th letter:

“Once I have acquired this above-mentioned clothing, sparks of love promptly begin to shine within me. The heart begins to long to unite with my friends, and it seems to me that my eyes see my friends, my ears hear their voices, my mouth speaks to them, the hands embrace, the feet dance in a circle, in love and joy together with them, and I transcend my corporeal boundaries. I forget the vast distance between my friends and me, and the outstretched land for many miles will not stand between us. It is as though my friends are standing right within my heart.”

I thus hope that we make optimal use of the special conditions we find ourselves in, that we will realize our connection as a single system, “as one man with one heart,” above the social distancing.

We would then see the coronavirus not as a crisis, but as an opportunity and a loving gift from nature in order to let us realize a whole new, more positive and spiritual connection to each other.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “When Will the Coronavirus Pandemic End?”

We are not used to the coronavirus. We have no idea how we will come out of it and where we will head from here.

If anyone thinks that it will pass in a few weeks, it won’t. We are in a new state that will endure the summer and head into the winter afterward.

When will this pandemic come to an end?

It will come to an end when we will improve human connections. To understand why this is so, we require deeper awareness of how nature works.

Before the coronavirus closed in on us, we acted out of a steroid-pumped desire to profit from one another in order to each fulfill self-serving interests.

Our concern for other people and our planet was overshadowed by a concern for ourselves. As such, our self-concern made us look at nature and other people solely through a lens of how to use them in order to benefit ourselves maximally.

Nature thus needed to teach us a lesson. And it did, in a very dramatic, cunning, caring and rigorous manner.

We looked like siblings fighting over our toys, and then nature, like a strict parent, ordered us to stop our quarrels, go into our separate rooms, think about how we were misbehaving, and how we should behave toward each other when nature lets us out again.

I thus hope that we will treat the period we are in seriously, that we will use the time we now have to realize our tight interconnectedness and interdependence among each other and with nature.

The coronavirus helps us see just how equal we are. It makes no distinction between rich and poor, boss and worker, famous and unknown — we are all equal in the face of this blow.

I understand the complications we have in seeing all people as equal, because we have been raised to categorize and class people in certain ways, but we have no choice: Nature shows us through this virus that it considers us all as equals, and we would be wise to try and see ourselves the same as how nature does.

Even multi-billionaire elites who escaped to their private islands and underground bunkers are still unsafe from the coronavirus. The virus appeared in many places where we still have no understanding of how it could have possibly done so. Therefore, even in such getaway areas, people are prone to the virus as is everyone, because there is a completely different reason for the virus’ presence than we can currently comprehend.

Therefore, the sooner we relate to everyone as equal — caring about all people in the world as much as we care about ourselves — we will then very quickly rise above this blow nature sent us, and progress to more and more connection among each other in calmer and more peaceful conditions.
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