Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will there be a civil war in the US after the elections in November?“

Even though hatred, polarization and unrest accumulates from one day to the next in American society, and even though riots could emerge in relation to a range of issues, I doubt that there will be civil war in response to the elections.

American society has a deep-rooted consensus on its democratic values, and it has made breakthroughs in providing its large and diverse population with equal rights. These same values that most Americans hold will be why I think that they will hold together after the elections in November.

However, the fact that there are questions about whether there will be civil war in America after the elections shows that division in American society is definitely a major problem that needs to be treated. It seems like an impossibility to bring together people with opposing views, and it is true: we cannot solve such a problem on the same level as the problem.

The solution to the increasing division in American society lies not in bringing the opposing factions closer together, nor in tilting people on one side to another. Rather, it is in uniting above the division. In other words, every person has a right to their opinion and can fiercely reject the opinion of others, but above these opposing opinions should begin to emerge a common understanding of the need to unite above the conflicting opinions, that society’s survival and well-being depends on it.

Although it might seem far-fetched that an umbrella of unity will miraculously appear and hover over an increasingly polarizing society, there are two factors that make it possible: one is the growing awareness of how nothing positive emerges from a increasingly divided society; and the other is the need for a nationwide educational campaign, which will raise the idea of how and why uniting above the divisions is more important—for people’s survival, health, happiness and well-being—than giving into divisive drives. Moreover, since America stands on the world’s stage, when its hundreds of millions of citizens start connecting above their growing differences, they will positively influence people worldwide with a similar unifying tendency.

Therefore, after the elections, I would advise the President or President-Elect to gather America’s leaders from every vocation in order to first reach a unified decision on how to make America coronavirus-free. Afterward, I would advise the leaders to select a few cities in different parts of the country as test cases to implement programs aimed at unifying people above division. As test cases, their progress would need regular monitoring and examination in order to see what is needed, through all kinds of situations that could surface, in order to create, sustain and grow a positive unifying atmosphere. There is absolutely no harm in implementing such an experiment. Rather, it holds the potential to create a new model for far-reaching improvements in social health and happiness.

As deepening polarization gives rise to more and more outbursts and anxiety in America, then precisely this bleak landscape can act as the background needed in order to realize a new positive shift. I indeed see a lot of potential in American society, with its pioneering and innovative spirit, its values of equality and freedom of expression, and its vast influence throughout the world, to face the challenge of its social division and realize that in unity everything will become much better.

Image: Earth From Space – USA to Venezuela seen from the ISS (Great views of Florida and Cuba). Space Videos.

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Question: During the first quarantine, there was a surge in domestic violence. Now the second quarantine is on its way. It has already been introduced in Israel. Public organizations are sounding the alarm.

What should spouses do during home isolation?

Answer: I would advise them to keep their distance to the extent that they can be on good terms. Regulate physical closeness with each other depending on the spiritual disposition toward each other.

You cannot do anything here; we are people. It is very difficult for us to control our egoism, our nerves, and our habits. We need to understand each other, talk about this topic within the family, and try to manage it.

Remark: It is interesting that the principle “the closer—the worse, the further—the better” works here.

My Comment: This is because we are egoistic. We are used to running into each other for half an hour in the morning before work, a half an hour or an hour in the evening, perhaps when we have dinner together, and somewhat when we go to bed, although this is more likely communication not between people but between the sexes.

Based on this, our life, of course, is rather poor.

Question: So, the main thing is to talk to each other more often, to communicate more?

Answer: Of course. But this does not mean that we should impose something on each other. We need to discuss everything as frankly as possible, not hide anything, so that the other understands what I think, what I want, etc. I, in turn, should try to express my personal opinion and not the one that I caught from some television series or from somewhere else.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/27/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are coronavirus masks REALLY effective?“

Masks are a very interesting phenomenon in this pandemic. Common health guidelines consistent worldwide include keeping our distance from each other, maintaining personal hygiene and wearing masks, and masks in particular serve mostly in order to stop our spreading the virus to others.

Why are masks so interesting?

It is because many people wear masks as a protective measure to not catch the virus from others, but masks work mostly in the opposite direction: they prevent the virus’ spread from the person wearing the mask to others.

If we view the coronavirus pandemic as nature sending us a lesson in human relations, then the long-term mask wearing conditions worldwide can be seen as a lesson for humanity in mutual responsibility and consideration. It is similar to how we raise children by telling them to behave fairly and kindly because it is ultimately good for them to do so, but in a broader context, they learn how to relate positively to each other.

Humanity has yet to become aware of how nature is operating behind the scenes: that it is raising us to become increasingly connected, and that it ultimately wants us to realize our connection harmoniously. For the time being, we feel this tightening connection as intensifying pressure and stress, and we suffer a lot from it. If we, however, enable a fundamental shift in our attitude to our increasing connection—from intending to benefit ourselves alone to intending to benefit others—then we will literally experience a new world. We will feel how our tightening connection is an opportunity for us to undergo this fateful egoistic-to-altruistic attitude shift, and by doing so, we will feel ourselves exit our narrow self-serving individual corners, and enter into a great new harmonious world of peace, love, unity and perfect connection among us all.

Mask wearing can also illustrate a filtered-down example in our current lives of four stages of attitude shift that the wisdom of Kabbalah describes; stages we traverse in order to discover our perfect connection to each other.

Receiving in order to receive: I wear a mask solely with the thought of protecting my own health. This is the most egoistic of the four stages.

Bestowing in order to receive: I wear a mask with the understanding that I protect others from myself—for instance, if I am an asymptomatic carrier—but by doing so, I also hold the intention that I will ultimately protect myself by doing so. In other words, I care about others because I care about myself. This is still egoistic, but it has an element of altruism laced within.

Bestowing in order to bestow: I wear a mask purely with the thought that I do not want to infect others with the virus. In other words, “bestowing in order to bestow” is an intention to not want to do any kind of harm to others.

Receiving in order to bestow: In addition to wearing a mask in order to not harm others, I think about what I can do in order to bring goodness and benefit to others.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, these four stages describe much higher states of spiritual attainment than the filtered-down examples presented here. However, they offer a small taste of a path toward positive connection that lies ahead of us. We can thus relate to mask wearing as an exercise in our positive attitudes to each other, and by doing so, improve our connections and the world we live in.

Photo by Pille-Riin Priske on Unsplash.

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Question: Now the next wave of coronavirus is beginning all over the world. Many countries are getting ready for the second lockdown and for Israel it is already a fact. Economies are collapsing, the world is renewing itself. How can people survive in the new world?

Answer: First, we have to understand that we really are living in a new world, which in the end will be drastically different from the previous one. After all, we are transferring from the physical world to the virtual world. There are technical, moral, ethical, and other prerequisites for this.

In the future, everything will depend on the moral efforts of people, how much they will understand and realize their good attitude toward each other. It may seem impossible, but this is exactly the world we must come to.

We are talking about the correction of our egoism, about an aspiration of a person to be closer to others and act for the benefit of all. From the former divided world, humanity is moving toward becoming an integral, unified whole. Nature makes us that way. We must understand this tendency and correspond to it to some extent.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/27/20

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Question: It is no secret that 95–99% of the time we spend in internal dialogue with ourselves. Scientists claim that, on the one hand, this is bad because a person spends a huge amount of energy on it. On the other hand, without such reflection, it is impossible to absorb the experience that a person gains throughout his life.

How can one stop this internal dialogue?

Answer: There is no need to stop it. On the contrary, it is this internal dialogue that promotes the growth of a man in a human being. The only thing we need to do is to check from where we get additional fueling, from what sources, books, television, etc.

I am in favor of a person always rechecking what affects him, what sources of scientific, sensory, technical, or other information can ultimately form him and affect him in the correct way.

And the most important thing is the environment: friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. One needs to check out well with whom one communicates so that he can develop under the right influence that shows him the way to good connection with others. Whatever it is, this is what wins.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/27/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why did anti-Semitism ‘switch sides’ politically in the US?“

In the U.S., anti-Semitism was commonly considered as emanating from the far-right, yet today, it is tilted more to the left. However, the phenomenon of anti-Semitism itself is beyond political affiliation, and in the future, I expect both sides to unify around their common hatred of Jews.

Today, American Jews are a lot more aware about the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. However, the thought of an impending Holocaust is still mostly elusive. They still do not see that anti-Semitism could reach such levels where it can all overturn on them very severely. Indeed, leading up to the Holocaust in Europe, most Jews also disagreed that it could happen, denouncing and mocking those who, in advance of the Holocaust, warned of Jewish genocide.

The past decade served to normalize anti-Semitism in the U.S. as well as in other parts of the world, with regular accounts of anti-Semtitic vandalism, distribution of anti-Semitic flyers and posters, anti-Semitism entering various musicians’ songs and social media posts as well as artists’ artworks, anti-Semitic attractions at carnivals, as well as an increasing amount of people questioning the Holocaust’s occurrence and not knowing about the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. In addition, last year (2019) marked the previous decade’s yearly peak in the amount of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S.

If last decade represented anti-Semitism increasingly seeping into the mainstream, then I expect anti-Semitism to become an all-out trend this decade. At the moment, both political sides still use the mainstream condemnation of anti-Semitism as a tool to blame each other for the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S., but the more their conflict intensifies together with more acceptance of the idea that Jews stand behind their polarization, then they could indeed reach a point of agreement to unite against the Jews.

This is also why American Jews can expect to see dropping support from the government, because if they can be scapegoated as the cause of the country’s problems, then it serves to shift half of the American population’s negative focus away from the government and onto the Jews. In such a state, since the Jews are vastly outnumbered in America, the idea of their ostracization would also become increasingly popular, until one morning it could very well become the reality of the day. History is rich with examples of leaders who capitalized on growing anti-Semitic sentiment in the public at times of various crises to direct the public’s negativity onto the Jews.

Also, while the horrid past experience of the Holocaust spurs many Jews today to combat anti-Semitism in many different ways like no other time in history, we can already clearly see how the increased efforts to counter anti-Semitism fall short of stopping the forceful anti-Semitic tide, which rapidly outpaces the numerous efforts to fight it.

In short, we need to see that a grave disaster lies ahead for American Jews. However, we also need to see that it can be stopped and even inverted into a positive, supportive and even loving attitude toward Jews, on one condition.

What is that condition?

It is that a dramatic shift in attitude toward Jews should be sought in no place other than the unification of the Jewish people. In other words, the disaster is laid out on a path that we walk without making any strides to change to a different and more unifying path. If we unite above our differences and divisions, then we will be a conduit for unity to spread to others. Then, when the public feels the increased happiness and other benefits that stem from Jewish unity, they will herald the Jews as those who initiated the process. If we fail to take any step toward our unification, then hatred will continue rising against us, and we can experience that hatred to erupt in a terrible way.

Photo by Robert Ruggiero on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “For whom are we responsible?“

There is a saying that “the whole world was created for the person” (Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”). It means that we are ultimately responsible for the whole world, i.e., for all humanity.

The question then becomes, why do we lack feeling responsible for the whole world?

It is because our nature acts through a self-serving “maximum fulfillment for minimum effort” filter, which blocks us from feeling such an immense responsibility.

Feeling responsibility for the whole world would add an unbearable weight on our shoulders, so in order to spare ourselves from such a constant burden, our self-serving nature seeks a more comfortable worldview. It eliminates the feeling of responsibility for countless other people, and preoccupies us with our own personal needs, desires and concerns.

We perceive the world as a projection of our inner qualities. Therefore, if we make no motions to rise above our narrow personal interests in order to benefit others, then we perceive the world accordingly: as a world overflowing with individuals who prioritize their own interests, often at the expense of others and nature.

However, the more we can rise above our narrow personal interests and aim to benefit others, then the more we will develop feelings of responsibility and consideration toward them. By applying ourselves to benefit others, we will sense each other as closer and more dear. In other words, the more we develop new altruistic attitudes above our inborn egoistic ones, then the more we will feel responsible for wider and wider circles of human society, until we eventually feel responsible for the entire world.

Moreover, today’s world appears more interlinked and interdependent than ever before. We live in times when our global interconnectedness becomes increasingly obvious through global economies and technologies. The coronavirus is also a key example of our global interdependence, showing how a minuscule particle that emerged in one city became a global pandemic. Therefore, responsibility and concern only for an individual, a select group or a nation will fall short of securing our lasting happiness, peace and safety. Today, we are in a major transitional era where we will need to start taking responsibility for humanity’s well-being, because our benefit or harm depends on the extent of benefit or harm that humanity experiences.

Video: The Matter of Our Responsibility for Others | Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What causes coronavirus?“

The cause of the coronavirus is fundamentally the human ego, i.e., the desire to enjoy at the expense of others, and our lack of desire to rise above the ego and positively connect with others.

What are viruses? Viruses are units of information that communicate with each other in the body, and the human body contains a lot of them. Although we name them “viruses,” we need them to survive. Every virus is intricately complex, and we lack a lot of knowledge about how viruses and the human body function.

Our suffering from viruses can ultimately be healed by a force above them—the force of thought. Viruses are carriers that transmit thoughts, data and information throughout the human body. Specifically today, since our thoughts are inflated with an overblown ego, we find ourselves dealing with serious viruses such as COVID-19.

Viruses and other negative phenomena surface primarily due to our ego-based negative thoughts about each other, and we will be unable to solve this problem until we improve our thoughts—from egoistic, divisive and hatreful to altruistic, positively connected and considerate.

Moreover, by letting our negative thoughts surface in words and actions, we commit negative acts—we try to bring down other people, and by doing so, situate ourselves in a reality that is abundant with negative phenomena.

Our failure to elevate positive values of unification and mutual consideration above our abounding egoistic-negative thoughts and actions gives rise to myriad problems in our lives, the coronavirus among them. In other words, at its foundation, the coronavirus is an outcome of our negative ego-based connections to each other.

We can thus expect to suffer from many viruses and other problems as a result of our negative egoistic connections.

I understand that this is an unconventional view since there are no instruments available for measuring a virus’ connection to our egoistic thoughts. When I was a university student, we had classes at the Institute of the Human Brain in St. Petersburg, and the head of the department, who was a renowned scientist, emphasized how scientists had not discovered the location of human thought.

Many scientists try to decipher human thought, but the fact is that thoughts are not in the human brain. Rather, they stream out into a sphere that is imperceptible to our current senses. Our thoughts exist outside of us, and the human brain is a computation device that connects between this thought-filled environment and our sensations. By connecting to it egoistically, trying to enjoy for personal benefit alone, we situate ourselves in opposition to it and experience negative consequences. However, if we rise above our narrow egoistic approach and aim to benefit others, we enter into balance with this field and thus feel its influence as positive.

We have entered a period where we will have to undergo an introspection and discover the way we influence each other at the level of our thoughts. Ultimately, we will need to transform our thoughts about each other from negative to positive, and in our positive attitude toward one another, we will sense an additional force of nature that we currently do not feel.

Transforming our thoughts from negative to positive will save us from the coronavirus as well as from myriad other problems. As the human parts of nature, the negative-to-positive shift at the level of our thoughts will enable our balance with nature, and we will then complement nature by fulfilling the human being’s role in nature at the level of thought.

Therefore, to solve the coronavirus and many other problems in society, we need to revise our social and educational influences, to see the extent by which we are currently influenced to think and act egoistically and divisively, and to impact a shift in these influences so that we instead become motivated to think and act altruistically, responsibly and considerately toward each other. Even a tiny shift in a more unifying direction above our ego will attract a positive force dwelling in nature, which will in turn act to heal us from the coronavirus and many other troubles we face.

Photo by CDC on Unsplash.

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Question: Earlier this year several news sources reported on a Carleton University School of Journalism survey in which almost half of the 2,000 Canadians reported believing in coronavirus conspiracy theories ranging from it being an engineered bioweapon to a 5G cover-up.

Who is behind the pandemic from your point of view?

Answer: It is human egoism that does not want to rise above itself and be in good connection with other people. With everyone! Just to be in a good connection without all kinds of conspiracy theories and without the dominance of someone over someone.

The unwillingness to treat each other well leads to the fact that viruses are awakening between us. We will not get away from this until we correct our attitude.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/27/20

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Question: What remains after death?

Answer: Nothing disappears in the universe. We simply stop feeling ourselves existing in the physical body and begin feeling in a different form.

Question: Is our world an illusion or reality?

Answer: What is the difference? An illusion is something that we thought was real before and then suddenly it turned out to be an illusion, something imaginary. It can be the other way around. There is no difference. We cannot distinguish one from the other; we have nothing to compare it with.

Question: So, there is no objectivity?

Answer: No, of course not. We cannot rise above ourselves and start to feel the universe, not from within ourselves. Therefore, we cannot talk about things that happen outside of the body, outside of life and death.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/1/20

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