Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What differs freedom from anarchy?“

When we gain a clear understanding and perception of nature’s laws, then we see that everything in nature is predetermined, and that there is no anarchy in nature and in human behavior.

Reaching this understanding requires aiming ourselves at becoming like nature: As human nature is completely self-serving and receives constantly into itself, nature in and of itself is an opposite altruistic and all-giving quality.

By aiming ourselves to become giving like nature, we attract nature’s positive influence, and undergo various changes under its influence. When we discover and feel nature’s force of bestowal within ourselves, we then become able to act by our own free choice and decide for ourselves what forces to activate—bestowal or reception. There is no anarchy in such a process.

Nature functions according to absolute and rigid laws, and it does not accept anarchy.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is unity important to us?“

Unity is important because nature wants us to unite.

By uniting, we enter into balance with nature and awaken a positive force dwelling in nature to surface among us. We then feel positive phenomena fill our lives: happiness, confidence, peace and harmony.

On the contrary, by making no motion toward unity, our egos grow unabated, and we let division and hatred separate us more and more. Accordingly, we experience increasing negative phenomena in our lives, i.e., suffering on personal, social, ecological and global scales.

Moreover, it is important that our unity is above all divisions, and not merely the unity of one group against another. The latter is simply a group-inflated ego that serves to increase division and hatred in society, and which also leads to no ultimately positive outcome.

Therefore, the importance of unity is the importance of our very survival, and whether we live our lives harmoniously or painfully.

Establishing the importance of unity in society requires regular education and examples of unity above division. There thus needs to be a shift in the kinds of messaging and examples that we receive through mass media, the television, radio and the Internet. If we receive inputs from all these information sources that exemplify the importance and benefits of unity, collaboration and cooperation—people working together to unite above their divisive drives—then we will all start feeling that unity is important, and our attitudes to each other will become calibrated in that direction. Currently, however, such information sources are abundant with divisive messaging, and we thus see myriad negative outcomes in society.

The process of prioritizing unity in society has yet to start. Nevertheless, those who wake up to the importance of unity sooner than others would be wise to invest themselves in sending out a red alert to society. Similar to how anti-smoking campaigns grew public awareness of the negative effects of smoking on people’s health, likewise “unity above division” campaigns would aim at raising public awareness of the importance of unity, and the myriad detrimental effects of remaining divided.

The key to the transformation from division to unity is to start a process of unity-enriching learning. People will need to reach the realization that nature wants us to unite. We do not demand the impossible from people, nor force anyone to do anything that they do not want to do. We simply organize our socio-cultural influences to bring the need for unity to the center of public discourse, and we will then think about it more and more, and start wanting it to happen.

Eventually, unity above division would become as commonplace as smoking-free zones in various public places: people would simply feel that this calibration to act positively to others above their divisive drives is the correct and socially acceptable thing to do. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that at the foundation of this change is nature: that we understand how nature is guiding us to unite, and by doing so, we do not simply wish for a slightly better life through our unity, but we literally save and upgrade everyone’s lives on the planet by doing so.

Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What happens to the soul after death?“

We have the ability to attain our eternal soul while we are alive in our current bodies, and those who do so, continue living in the soul, as it is detached from the body’s death.

For those who have not attained their souls in this life, they have what Kabbalah terms a “Reshimo” (a “record” or “reminiscence”), which is like a code that contains all of a person’s qualities. After our body’s death, the Reshimo needs to attach to a new body in this world and restart a process of coming closer to its ultimate destination—the root of the soul—while it is in that particular body. Moreover, we all have a Reshimo, as it is an informational gene from which we sooner or later develop a soul.

In other words, while we develop through trying to fulfill corporeal desires of food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, we also have a small Reshimo, a so-called “point in the heart,” which makes us ask questions about the meaning of our lives, why we are here, where we are from, where we are headed, i.e., existential questions. This Reshimo is a desire to attain our soul, and to work out exactly what is going on behind the scenes of our lives.

The more that this Reshimo disrupts us from simply getting along in our corporeal desires, the more we find ourselves questioning the source of our lives, and seeking answers through various teachings. At a certain stage, we encounter the wisdom of Kabbalah, which provides a practical method for the soul’s attainment.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can we bridge the political divide in America?“

Bridging the divide in America requires everyone feeling considered and represented, and not like it is in the current state, where roughly half of the country celebrates victory, and the other half feels deceived and embittered.

People of all political orientations need to sit and discuss their issues. However, to successfully unite above divisions, the conversation needs to adhere to a few guidelines, like making sure all participants

• feel equally important in the discussion;
• focus on certain issues at hand and not sway from them;
• express their opinion on the issues;
• do not argue, criticize or make judgmental statements;
• and listen genuinely to everyone’s input.

By doing so, participants would aim to reach decisions after taking everyone’s points into consideration.

It is important in such a conversation that everyone states their position, and it is not expected that anyone make any concessions in doing so. Also, the “round” setup of this conversation would certify that no single viewpoint dominates the others, as doing so would shatter the desired unification into pieces, rendering zero progress. Rather, through each participant having the time to express their full viewpoint and each holding to the aforementioned rules, which include listening to all of the viewpoints, then the participants will reach a certain kind of balance.

How does it work that a conversation that is made to accord to the aforementioned guidelines will reach a certain kind of balance, and is capable of bridging divisions?

It is because those guidelines stem from nature’s unified form, and if we hold ourselves to them, we will gain support from nature, because nature ultimately functions in order to draw us to greater unification. If we fail to uphold those guidelines in our discussions, and aim to impose our own viewpoint over those of others, then we gain no support from nature’s unified form, and remain in our inborn natures that naturally sway one way or another.

We have been “implanted” with various divisive stances from nature precisely in order that we connect upon them and discover a harmonious reality by doing so. We thus need to have unification, the bridging of our divides, as a goal and high in importance when approaching such a conversation, otherwise we will fall “victim” to our divisive drives that perceive and sense a narrower picture than the much greater one that exists when we unify above them.

What would make us want to rise above our divisive stances in the first place? Why can we not continue trying to overpower the other side and implement how we think things should be run?

It is because, ultimately, the underlying division does not let anyone become satisfied, and the longer we develop while remaining divided, then the more negative and bitter we become. In extreme cases, each pushing his or her divisive position onto others can lead us to total disorder and turmoil, to unfortunate levels of suffering that would force us to revise how we conduct ourselves.

We would thus be wise to raise the importance of uniting above our divisions so that it becomes our primary concern, and realize that what stands between a life of suffering or harmony for everyone is whether we can carefully organize ourselves in order to bridge those divisions. The laws of nature are on our side and will support us if we do.

I discussed this topic and answered questions about it in my Q&A with writers on November 15, 2020. Watch the video here [1:31:48]

Image: “One Goal” by Zenita Komad.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can helping others help you find the meaning in life?“

We need to be well connected in order to find the meaning of life, because life’s meaning can truly be found above our current life.

Therefore, we can attain the meaning of life by exiting ourselves, which is possible by connecting to others—wishing for their benefit above our own personal benefit.

Our self-serving desires block the sensation of life’s meaning. They seek self-fulfillment at the expense of others and nature, and such fulfillment dissolves upon our reception of it.

By exiting ourselves and connecting to others in a way where we end up feeling others’ desires as our own, we then start seeing a much greater life open up. It is a life outside the limits of our personal narrow desires, and inside the desires of others: desires ready to be fulfilled at every moment. In other words, we find the meaning of life by being inside others.

We need a special kind of positive connection in order to attain the meaning of life, to become awakened above our individual narrow perceptions. In other words, we discover life’s meaning in the same direction by which life comes and enters us.

Photo by Jed Villejo on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What’s the meaning of life? Is happiness the only purpose of our lives?“

Happiness is not the purpose of our lives, because any happiness we feel dies together with us. What do we ultimately gain from being happy if we eventually die and it disappears?

In relation to finding purpose in our lives through happiness or other lofty sensations in our world, such as freedom, love and success, the wisdom of Kabbalah describes the concept of Pharaoh—an egoistic and materialistic ruler who considered happiness and other worldly pleasures as life’s purpose, and thought that they would follow him to his grave. However, no happiness we achieve in this life continues afterward, and we would thus be wise to set our sights on a purpose that is everlasting and eternal.

What is an everlasting and eternal purpose to life?

It is only existent in our spirit, above our body, beyond everything we currently know and feel through our five senses. If we attain contact with such a higher sphere, we then attain the purpose of our lives. Moreover, we can do so while being alive in our current body.

The attainment of the perception and sensation of this higher sphere—”higher” meaning above what our corporeal mind and feelings can grasp—that governs us gives us a complete perception and understanding of where we come from, where we are headed, what and who we are, what created us, as well as how we were created and why.

Moreover, by attaining this higher sphere, we also discover true and everlasting happiness. However, such happiness is not life’s purpose in and of itself, but rather comes as a byproduct of attaining the purpose of our lives, which is the attainment of the eternal reality.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will humanity ever be united?“

Humanity will unite in the distant future, but at the moment unity is far from being any kind of priority. In other words, a common desire for humanity’s unity to surface in the global public is still unripe, even though we are developing in that direction.

In order to unite, we need to want unity above and beyond the many egoistic, divisive and materialistic forms that we naturally desire, and we still lack such a desire. We might get hints of it at times, and we can indeed involve ourselves in educational and support systems to more optimally develop a desire to unite, but nonetheless, we still have to undergo various stages of growth until our desire ripens to want unity above all else.

Humanity’s final state is a single unified organism. In that final state, humanity consists of different people, groups and interests, as each has his or her own unique root and development from that root. However, we all share a common understanding of a common unifying goal, and we construct ourselves such that we reach spiritual and worldly balance.

In other words, we will reach a state where we—all of humanity—consciously share the same goal, and create a tremendous atmosphere of support and encouragement to achieve that goal. Mutual support is of utmost importance in this new unified humanity that needs to arise after these tough times we are currently enduring.

We are thus headed toward the creation of a single system of humanity where people will uphold the idea that uniting is more important than giving into naturally-conflicting views and drives, and we will seek to mutually support one another in order to build this unification. When people with opposing viewpoints connect to reach a common goal outside of themselves, they will exist in total harmony and balance.

We are still unripe for the unity of humanity though. We require further development until we develop a sincere desire for humanity’s unity, as well as the realization that it is impossible to achieve that goal on our own. When we reach that stage, though, we will start bearing witness to immensely positive changes in our lives: We will gain the support of a positive unifying tendency dwelling in nature, and experience a newfound balance among each other and with nature beginning to take flight.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think of the news about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine being over 90% effective?“

Pfizer’s announcement that its vaccine against the coronavirus is effective in 90 percent of cases has given hope to many people, but other than a shot of optimism, I see no long-lasting cure to the virus emerging from this vaccine.

My impression from various experts is that an effective cure to the coronavirus will take another four to five years. Moreover, according to my understanding of nature’s purpose and plan, which comes from over 40 years of studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, the world’s readiness for a cure depends on our readiness to positively connect.

Nature evolves to greater and greater states of connection, and when we realize the connection that we are being guided to positively, then we will experience life as perfect and harmonious.

If we align our drives to connect harmoniously with the interconnected and interdependent laws of nature, then we will experience health in the fullest sense of the term, i.e., balance on individual, social, global and ecological scales. However, if we fail to take our positive connection into account and let divisive drives separate us from each other, thinking badly of each other, then viruses will continue infecting us.

Currently, for instance, most people wear masks with self-serving motives, i.e., that they protect their own health by doing so. However, masks during this pandemic are an exercise from nature in disguise. They, in fact, protect other people in the mask wearers’ vicinity a lot more than the mask wearers themselves. We would thus be wise to treat mask wearing as an exercise in mutual consideration: to wear masks in order to protect and care about other people. However, even without any consideration of others, the more we endure the pandemic and wear masks whenever we encounter society physically, the more nature habituates us to at least unconsciously add a layer of sensitivity toward others upon ourselves.

In general, however, I trust that the Pfizer vaccine is positive in its brief surge of hope and the sigh of relief it brings to many people. Yet, in the same token, we do not need health experts to tell us that improving our attitudes to each other will improve our lives.

The coronavirus pandemic is nature’s way of communicating with us. If we shut ourselves off in our individual corners and make no moves to rise above our divisive drives and harmoniously connect to each other, then we can expect nature to respond accordingly.

We would thus be wise to think about what nature ultimately wants from us, and how we can improve our attitudes to each other. By infusing human society with a positive spirit of unity above the division and polarization that itches away at us from within, we will see an end to the pandemic, and a new beginning in which we will discover how to truly live healthily, happily, confidently, safely and harmoniously, in balance with nature.

I discussed this topic and answered questions about it in my Q&A with writers. Watch the video here.

Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How could the US 2020 election be so close in numbers?“

We have entered a new era where unity above differences and divisions is showing itself to be a growing need, and the closeness of the current US election results is a duly sign of this.

Over the course of history, while we were still developing, we experienced periods of governance under one kind of rule or another, but today we can expect to see ourselves increasingly as two equal halves.

Moreover, our current democratic systems ascertain that in such a situation, one vote extra for a certain side will shift the governance of an entire country over to that side. However, the longer we find ourselves at such a juncture, the more we will see that leadership over a polarized population, where roughly half object to that leadership, makes no sense as it will ultimately fail to satisfy everyone.

Our tendency to agree with one or another side stems from our very nature. Also, we possess these inclinations in order to lead us into a stalemate, where we realize that only by uniting above our natures can we all experience harmonious, happy, healthy and safe lives.

It is like we have reached a dead end in our natural development, and the time has come to rise above ourselves, to unite above our differences, and discover our common source.

We will find that we have no choice but to positively connect for our very survival, health and happiness, i.e., to find our common and equal place in this nature that we all share, united as parts of a single body of humanity.

In order to unite above our divisive drives, we still lack education, mentally and emotionally, in order to navigate our way to that goal. Instead of education and examples in our surroundings that provoke our natural urges to divide us, we need to aspire for rising above our mind and heart to a state that is neither “us” or “them” but what connects between us.

Such unification is the solution to all of our problems.

While we have reached a stage in our development where we see ourselves split between fundamentally different views, like two sides of a coin, and it will likely take more time—more elections, disagreements, arguments and even wars—for us to become truly desperate and realize that we have no choice but to unite above our natural urges that pull one way or another.

However, in the end, we will reach a state of absolute unification because such a state is rooted in nature. We all emanate from a single, unique and unified force, and we are all destined to ultimately re-discover our connection to that force.

In a broader view of human development, we are now reaching a new stage of maturation, in which we will increasingly see that there is no benefit in trying to convince the other side of one point of view. Rather, what remains for us is to search together for a common point that connects between us. Above all opposites that we perceive in our world, there is a common source from which we all emerge, and our experience of life in this world as harmonious or painful moving forward, will depend on the extent by which we search for our common source.

I discussed this topic and answered questions about it in my news commentary show, “An Inside Look,” with Oren Levi. Watch the video here: An Inside Look

Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash.

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

Motivation is a desire that elicits an act.

It disallows indifference and urges the realization of an outcome that is defined in the motivation.

As human beings, possessing a motivation that defines what we should realize in our lives provides our lives with meaning, and we should thus each have a certain key motivation in our lives.

Motivation is not only the energy to pursue a certain goal. It also requires a direction to an established and well-understood objective. Clearly setting our sights on a goal thus gives our lives meaning, and adds a goal-oriented motivation to our actions and behaviors.

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