Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think of Spain implementing a permanent universal basic income?“

We are quickly transitioning into an era where many of the jobs we once held will become obsolete due to our needs changing, and also due to technology increasingly replacing human resources.

In such a situation, basic income becomes a necessity.

I support basic income provided that it is given in exchange for learning and certain kinds of contribution to society.

Basic income alone, without any requirements on behalf of the receivers, would stagnate society. It would create a society of disinterested and indifferent people who would lack motivation to strive forward in life. The sluggishness and dullness that would envelop society would end up erupting in our faces.

Therefore, in Spain’s case, I would recommend that the government provide courses that receivers of basic income need to complete.

The courses can be used to funnel people into certain jobs or areas of social contribution that would improve Spanish society, and they can also be used to teach people about the history and culture of the country and its people, in order to strengthen its citizens’ identification with the country, and in addition, the courses can be used to teach people about the new globally interdependent conditions we find ourselves in today: how we live in a new era where mutual responsibility and consideration are becoming increasingly essential in order for us all to live safe, calm, happy and healthy lives.

While the courses would ideally seek to develop people into certain areas where they could contribute—from finding new careers better suited to our times, to becoming instructors and aides within this new educational system—the educational process would be beneficial in and of itself.

The leading idea of the educational process is that people will improve their social connections, feel more connected to their country, and build the beginnings of a social network fueled by mutual consideration and responsibility.

The more such a network thrives and grows, the stronger a foundation people will have by which to navigate through any future crises, and also, to inhibit future social dissent and conflict.

About photo by Tom Morel on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is the love of truth the ultimate spirituality?“

What is spirituality? Spirituality is an opposite altruistic quality to our egoistic human nature.

The human ego—the desire to enjoy—is behind every thought and desire we have, and behind every action that we do.

Therefore, we perceive what we want to see according to the ego, i.e., whether we can enjoy something, or whether something comes to threaten our enjoyment.

This is why if we want to discover spirituality, i.e., to find out what surrounds us that is imperceptible to our egoistic perception, we thus need to recreate ourselves, and in the process of recreating ourselves, our environment holds primary importance.

In other words, since altruism is imperceptible and opposite to egoism, we thus need help from our surroundings to inspire, prod and motivate us to want to reach an opposite quality to our egoism.

When we make the shift from egoism to altruism, corporeality to spirituality, we will sense a new world that has always surrounded us, but which we could not perceive.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, that new world is called “the spiritual world” or “the upper world.”

Our current worldviews are perceptions that have formulated upon our egos in order to comfort and shield ourselves in various ways.

“Truth” then becomes what coincides with our ego-based opinions.

We seek support for our opinions and repel what counters them. As such, we ultimately do not want to change ourselves.

How, then, do we reach a desire to change ourselves and discover spirituality?

If we fail to do so of our own accord, through positive means, i.e., by surrounding ourselves with an environment that supports the shift from egoism to altruism, then suffering will enter our lives more and more in order to show us that the purely egoistic direction we head in is problematic and that something needs to change.

However, suffering itself won’t lead us to change, but to a desire to change, where we will seek out different environments and influences than our current ones, in order to develop ourselves spiritually.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do I tell fake news from real news?“

The real news is that the media publicizes and broadcasts the news in accordance with its owners’ funding sources’ agendas, i.e., it is all ultimately fake news.

When subscribers were the primary source of news media funding, then the media was indebted to them, i.e., to the people buying, reading and watching the news on offer.

However, when media proprietors became the primary source of news media funding, with the media relying on advertisers for its sustenance, then the media serves owner and advertiser interests, blurring any authenticity that once existed in news coverage.

Today, there is widespread awareness of fake news reporting. More and more people are questioning the genuineness and the interests behind the media they consume, yet out of a lack of options, continue consuming the news from the same sources.

Yet, instead of finger-pointing at media corruption for fake news, we would be wiser if we took a moment to examine ourselves, each and every one of us that makes up society.

The media is no more corrupt than its enveloping society, which we all make up. It is, rather, a product of society’s values, influences and behaviors.

Fake news awareness is thus insufficient to reach a stage where we will have real news.

Reaching real news depends on undergoing serious introspection and realizing first that the media is no better or worse than the society it resides within—a society driven by individuals each prioritizing personal well-being over the well-being of society.

Fake news and corrupt media then become viewed as reflections of who we really are—self-centered beings who each try to benefit ourselves in life as best as we can—and such self-analysis should lead us to a pressing question:

Is this the society we really want to live in?

If it is, then fake news and media corruption should not concern us.

However, if we aspire to a society that blossoms with happiness, kindness, support, encouragement and a generally positive atmosphere, then we would need to reset our social values—to prioritize benefiting others in society over benefiting ourselves.

Such a change is easier said than done, but it is indeed doable.

It requires regularly learning about our interdependence, how we are all interconnected and dependent on each other.

We would do well to understand our interdependence from many different angles, until it starts becoming a tangible sensation, where we feel that any move we make has an impact on others’ lives.

The coronavirus exemplified our interdependence in terms of our health, how one person’s health depends on the other person following health department orders, such as the maintenance of personal hygiene, keeping a certain distance from others and wearing masks in public.

According to our interdependence, one person’s indifference, lack of concern, divisive attitudes and antipathy spreads negatively to others, sparking a harmful chain reaction that negatively affects society.

However, if we each feel our interdependence, as if we are all parts of a greater whole, then our care for our common possession would let us refrain from harming it, and instead, we would each seek how to make it prosper and grow as much as possible.

Understanding that fake news and media corruption stem from the way we each prioritize self-benefit over benefiting others in society, we can then see that nothing effective comes from blaming the news and those directly behind it for being fake.

On the contrary, if we want to change the media, we need to change ourselves and make ourselves first want to benefit society over our personal benefit.

If we continue letting ourselves be held back from improving our relations, then we can expect more fake news and media corruption emerging together with myriad other problems filling our society.

Moreover, we would see no solution in sight.

Real news would thus come as a result of self-examination and improvement of human relations.

Negative exploitative attitudes are like viruses that we infect each other with on a daily basis.

Positive change thus requires a common effort to build a positively-connected society by developing mutually considerate and responsible relations.

If we make that slight calibration in our thinking, then we will experience a completely new and upgraded world.
Above Photo: “Xenophobia” by Gideon at Flickr.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do heaven and hell really exist?“

Heaven, which in Hebrew is called “Gan Eden” (lit. “the Garden of Eden”), is the light of Hochma.

The “garden” is Malchut, which is the last Sefira in the process of creation, made to receive the entire bounty of fulfillment that was created.

Malchut filled with the light of Hochma is called “heaven” (“the Garden of Eden”).

In such a state, Malchut is the Malchut of the world of Atzilut for the souls.

In other words, heaven refers to a state where the souls are filled abundantly with the light of Hochma.

The upper part of heaven is Bina of the world of Beria, and the lower part of heaven is Yesod de Malchut of the world of Assiya.

I purposely wrote the spiritual placements of heaven to counter people’s regular ideas about heaven and its contents, because in spirituality, there are no corporeal forms, space, time, images or sounds.

What exists in spirituality? Only forces that have not been dressed in matter.

The spiritual soul is a desire.

The soul becomes filled with the elated sensation of bestowal and love when it equalizes itself to the force of love and bestowal (the Creator).

That sensation is called “heaven.” There is no other kind of heaven.

What, then, is hell?

Hell is a state we experience on our way to heaven.

It is a state where we burn with shame when we discover that our egoistic nature is completely opposite to the Creator’s altruistic nature.

It is a necessary state to feel, because through the sensation of shame, we can reach a decision to restrict our ego, and enter into equivalence of form with the Creator’s quality of love and bestowal.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, we study about the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) occurring due to the Kli (vessel/desire) discovering its opposite nature of receiving to the Creator’s giving nature, and the shame it felt made it perform a restriction upon itself in order to come closer to the Creator.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is Shavuot?“

Shavuot is the celebration of the giving of the Torah.

The Jewish holidays, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, mark significant stages in our spiritual path, i.e., in our transformation from our inborn egoistic selves to our spiritual, altruistic selves, above the human ego.

Specifically on Shavuot, we receive the name “Israel.”

The word “Israel” stems from two words, “Yashar Kel” (“straight to God”). It refers to a state when we are granted the method to attain the Creator, the quality of love and bestowal, through our free will.

If we do not use this method, then we will instead develop involuntarily to that goal through many indirect paths, much suffering and pressuring forces.

Becoming the people of Israel means that we ourselves decide that we truly want to attain the Creator, i.e., to attain relations of love and bestowal among each other, and act as if we ourselves implement such connections, without waiting for the Creator to give us such an ability.

Our efforts to achieve positive relations draw a positive response, which eventually grants us the ability to understand, feel and attain the Creator.

The Creator operates on us whether we attain Him or not. However, when we attain Him, we understand how He works, want Him to act through us, and precede His actions on us with our longing for Him.

In addition, when we discuss “the giving of the Torah” and our “reception of the Torah,” we need to understand that our engagement in the Torah has nothing to do with delving into the words of a written text.

Engaging in the Torah means increasing our unity, prioritizing unity above every divisive drive we feel, as King Solomon put it (Proverbs, 10:12): “Hate stirs strife, and love covers all crimes.”

It is written about engaging in the Torah meaning increasing unity in more places…

“Obtainment of the Torah is primarily through unity, as in the verse, ‘And Israel encamped there before the mount,’ ‘as one man with one heart,’ and there their filth (evil inclination) ceased.” In Parashat Emor, the book continues, “During the days of the [omer] count, a person should correct the quality of unity, and by this one is rewarded with obtainment of the Torah on the festival of Shavuot, as it is written, ‘And they journeyed from Refidim and came to the Sinai desert, and Israel encamped there before the mount.’ RASHI interpreted that they were all in one heart as one man and this is why they were rewarded with the Torah.” – Maor Vashemesh (Parashat Yitro).

“The root of mutual responsibility extends primarily from the reception of the Torah, when all of Israel were responsible for one another. This is so because at the root, the souls of Israel are regarded as one, for they derive from the origin of the unity. For this reason, all of Israel were responsible for one another upon the reception of the Torah.” –Likutey Halachot (Assorted Rules), chapter “Hilchot Arev” (“Rules of Guarantee”).

“It is impossible to observe Torah and Mitzvot (commandments),” meaning receive the light that transforms egoism into love of others, “unless through mutual responsibility, when each one is responsible for his friend. For this reason, each one should include himself with the whole of Israel in great unity. Hence, at the time of the reception of the Torah, they immediately became responsible for one another, for as soon as they want to receive the Torah they must merge as one in order to be included in the desire. …Thus, specifically by each being responsible for his friend, they can observe the Torah. Without this, it would have been impossible to receive the Torah whatsoever.” – Likutey Halachot (Assorted Rules), chapter “Hoshen Mishpat,” (“The Book Writes [Rule No. 3]”).

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do many Jews eat dairy products during the Shavuot holiday?“

Consuming dairy products during Shavuot is a symbol of love.

White symbolizes light, which is the pure force of love and giving.

Put simply, if we relate to each other out of love, we attract a positive response into our lives and progress to the discovery of a perfect world.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is part of the time between Passover and Shavuot thought to be?“

“And by the exodus from Egypt they received the level of faith…and after Passover, the purifying work begins in preparation for the receiving of the Torah. And when the Torah is dressed in a person’s soul, this is the time of Shavuot, the time of the giving of our Torah.” (Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag [Rabash], “Letter 52”)

Passover marks the end of the time of slavery in Egypt.

Our slavery in Egypt means that we feel problems stemming from the ego to make us want to disconnect from it and elevate ourselves upon it, and identify with the quality of love and giving.

In the process, we renew our efforts to rise above the ego time after time with the help of a supportive environment, i.e., others who share a similar desire to be above the ego and who support each other to do so.

The effort to rise above the ego is the work in Egypt. After we realize the full extent of that work, we receive a positive response to the effort: a force that emerges and corrects us.

That state is called Passover.

It is a significant correction on our spiritual path.

Passover, however, is only one stage toward our full correction. It marks the elevation above our ego.

Afterward, the time between Passover and Shavuot, designated by a count of 49 days, marks a time of disconnecting ourselves from our ego and rising to a level called “Bina,” a state of absolute giving, where there is no egoistic involvement whatsoever.

Shavuot marks the next correction, the full extent of the force we receive from Bina that lets us connect our ego with the force of correction, the force of the Torah. That is, at Shavuot, we don’t merely rise above the ego, as we do in Passover. At Shavuot, we gain the ability to connect our ego with the force of the Torah, which lets us use our ego in a corrected way.

Of course, such an explanation of the time between Passover and Shavuot relates only to the spiritual meaning of the holidays, as described by the wisdom of Kabbalah, which explains that the holidays are states on our spiritual path that we can feel at any moment we apply the necessary efforts to enter such states. See the links in my Quora bio for more info about how to get started with Kabbalah study.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What has the Coronavirus taught you in your life?“

The coronavirus is teaching us all to recognize our global interdependence.

Before the coronavirus, we were in a world of vicious egoistic competition, where the more we could exploit others, the more we could profit.

Today, however, we all depend on each other, as any breach of the social distancing conditions set before us could mean another coronavirus victim.

We have been given a mutual adversary in the coronavirus, and we need to exercise our mutual consideration and responsibility in order to beat it.

However, our true rival is much deeper than the coronavirus.

As much as the coronavirus is a nearly-invisible particle that has brought about much death, sickness and has overturned our socio-economic infrastructures, there is a much more cunning and complex enemy that has no physical form at all—our egoistic human nature.

The human ego, which is the desire for self-benefit at the expense of others, innately pits us up against each other, making each person constantly toil for his or her superiority over others.

Any success we have in such a constant struggle is short-lived, as if we are all in a game of tug-and-war and one of us momentarily manages to pull stronger than the others, before losing that grip and once again becoming pulled along by everyone else. Ultimately, such a struggle leads to us all falling down, as the coronavirus swiftly showed us.

How, then, is it possible to defeat an attitude that is embedded in our very nature since birth?

It is possible firstly by paying more attention to how it acts to our detriment even though it seemingly serves to benefit us; and secondly, it is possible to overcome our egoistic nature by re-prioritizing our values.

Instead of appreciating successful, wealthy and powerful individuals as we did at least until the onset of the coronavirus, if we instead appreciate positive human connection, and acts that serve to increase love, care and unity in society, then such a surrounding positive social influence would give us the necessary tools to shift our mindset: from egoistic use of others for self-benefit, to altruistic use of oneself in order to benefit others.

The coronavirus has taught us that humanity can quickly reach a common ground when conditions call for it.

Using this example, we can take further steps to more and more unification out of our own free choice. In other words, instead of waiting for nature to inflict us with more suffering in order to unite us once again, we can take our unity into our own hands, and actively seek how we can place the benefit of others over self-benefit in our day-to-day and moment-to-moment interactions.

Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “If everything is here for a reason, what does Coronavirus teach us about?“

The coronavirus came to teach us about how much we depend on each other, and thus, how we need to take more responsibility in our attitudes to each other.

If we look at major events in world history, including the world wars and past pandemics, even they did not involve the entirety of humanity to the extent that the coronavirus has.

We would thus be wise to learn a lesson in global interdependence from the coronavirus, and step up our game to think and act more responsibly and considerately of each other, treating each other as members of a single human family, with each person holding equal importance.

While we normally consider only our own health, the coronavirus forced us to pay attention to the health of others around us by directly connecting our health to theirs.

We were cornered into upholding a list of conditions in order to not infect others—maintaining personal hygiene, washing hands regularly, staying at home during the lockdown, wearing masks and sustaining a distance of two meters when in public—and as the economy reopens, the period of distancing continues making us think about the health of others, since other people’s good health ensures our good health, and vice versa.

This is one clear way how the coronavirus has taught us a lesson in interdependence.

The question then becomes: How much do we apply this lesson to our lives?

From herein, will we conduct ourselves in such a way where society’s benefit leads our thought processes, or will we resort to prioritizing self-benefit without considering the effect on others, as per our pre-coronavirus habits?

Considering others before we consider ourselves runs against our egoistic human nature, which constantly places ourselves before others.

Yet, as hard as it is for us to think about benefiting others, the coronavirus has shown us how nature can compel us to do so whether we like it or not.

Nature, however, has no intention of making us suffer.

On the contrary, there is immense fulfillment and enjoyment dwelling in nature, which it wants us to discover.

It wants us to develop into all-seeing, all-knowing and all-feeling creatures, and it can do so by elevating us above our self-aimed thoughts and desires.

How? It is by giving us situations where we are forced to better connect in order to survive.

Such pressures are akin to birth contractions. As a baby gets pressured to exit its comfortable-but-narrow world in the womb and enter a new world outside, we too get pressured by events such as the coronavirus to exit our comfortable-but-narrow egoistic perceptions of the world, and enter a new perception of our interdependence.

Moreover, as the baby did not know that its life in the womb was tiny, dark and constrained, we too fail to see how living solely according to the ego’s demands—self-benefit at the expense of others—is a tiny, dark and constrained world in comparison to the world we can discover when we shift our main focus onto benefiting others.

As much as we appreciate and want to have love, peace, truth, happiness, confidence, support, encouragement and care in our lives, we fail to see how such qualities are achievable at a much greater scale when mutual responsibility and consideration becomes a leading value throughout society.

When everyone aims at benefiting everyone, and when we encourage contributing to society as a principle marker of success, instead of increasing our wealth at any cost, then we will experience a harmonious life, balanced with nature, and will feel a new sense of calm spread throughout society, fulfilling us all.

I thus hope that we do take away the lesson of needing to be more responsible and considerate of others, which the coronavirus came to teach us.

We all have a special role in contributing to a society that can make our lives great, and until we take some strides in that direction of our own accord, nature will send us reminders through the likes of many such problems, pandemics among them.

Above photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some cool examples of two kinds of people?“

There are fundamentally two kinds of people in our world: egoists and altruists.

Egoists do everything out of a calculation for personal benefit, and need to see justifiable compensation, like more money or an improved social status, for any act they do to benefit others.

Altruists willingly concede of themselves and of personal compensation in order to benefit others.

Egoism is human nature. It exists in every single person. Altruism, on the other hand, runs against human nature.

However, there are a minority in the world—altruists—who are an exception to society’s majority of egoists. Altruists constitute up to ten percent of human society.

Ultimately, however, we are developing to a state where we are realizing that an altruistic modus operandi in society as a whole will be able to alleviate the increasing problems we see in our egoistic-consumerist society.

The problem with making altruism a social norm is that the majority of egoists would feel a lack of compensation to be altruistic. It would be like a turning on a machine without any fuel.

Our current fuel to work in our egoistic-consumerist society is reward and punishment. In an ideal egoistic-consumerist setup, working more means reaping more rewards, which means more wealth, respect, power and knowledge, and working less means receiving the “punishment” of being unable to fulfill those desires.

However, the more we develop in an egoistic-consumerist society, the harder we find it becomes to fulfill ourselves. Various crises will eventually bring us to a sensation of helplessness, that we can no longer find fulfillment by prioritizing self-benefit over benefiting others.

We will then become readier to change our way of life and become more altruistic.

However, we will still require fuel for our altruistic society to function.

And what is altruistic fuel?

It is when giving, improving others’ lives and positive contributions to others become society’s leading values.

Developing an altruistic society starts by rewarding and appreciating acts of positive social contribution, and gradually, after a period of doing so, we would start appreciating altruistic values in and of themselves.

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