Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is nature and why?“

Nature is a single, whole and perfect system. It contains four levels—inanimate, vegetative, animate and human—and it operates everything but the human.

We humans are outside nature’s integral functioning, and this is the reason for all forms of suffering in our world. Our lack of alignment with nature’s singularity, wholeness and perfection causes imbalance in the system, and that imbalance negatively boomerangs back to us.

Nature has a unifying and adhesive tendency. It holds everything together, and it develops everything to greater and greater states of connection. Our detachment, estrangement and even hatred of each other thus harms the system we all share, and hits us as many different kinds of problems and crises. Moreover, the longer it takes us to wake up to the need to positively connect in order to align ourselves with nature, then the more blows we will endure.

Why?

It is because we were supposed to have already reached a certain level of positive connection above the divisions we bear witness to today. However, we continue following our divisive drives instead, and the ever-growing gap between our separation and nature’s wholeness surfaces as more and more troubles. The remoteness between the need for human connection and nature’s wholeness will continue until we realize that everything we have made in this world fails to bring us lasting happiness and satisfaction. At that point, when we reach a state of desperation and a true need for help, we might just then start aligning our connections harmoniously with nature.

However, we need not reach a state of total desperation. By creating an environment of connection-enriching education and influences, will be able to guide our way to greater states of human connection. And when we positively connect, we will reach balance with nature, draw the positive forces dwelling in nature that we currently have no sense of, and when we do, we will experience a whole new level of harmony, peace, unity, love, happiness, confidence, health and safety in our lives.

It is my hope that we reach such sublime states sooner—through education, mutual support and encouragement—rather than later, through suffering.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is your opinion about the 2020 USA election?“

Today, we bear witness to increasing social division and polarization all around the world, in all of the developed nations of the so-called free world, and the more developed the nation, the greater the polarization.

Why are we becoming increasingly polarized the more that we develop?

It is because behind our evolution are growing human desires. Human development began with us fulfilling our base individual desires for food, sex, family and shelter, and over time, new desires appeared in us—social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge—and we lived and worked in order to fulfill them.

Our current era is characterized by the emergence of a new desire that we have yet to fully grasp, one urging our increasing interdependence and interconnectedness, and it requires us to realize our growing connection harmoniously. However, in this transitional process, we feel increasing connection and our constantly-inflating desires as burdens that pit us up against each other more and more.

We have never experienced such a strong opposition in opinions and relations, where one opinion is convinced that things should go one way, and the other opinion is convinced that things should go the other way.

The more we have developed our intellects and gained experience from our time on this planet, then you would think that by now we should know how to bridge our divides. Instead, however, we see that the more sophisticated we become, the more divided we also become.

How, then, can it ever be possible to get along?

Today’s intensely polarizing society will not be able to be connected at the same level of understanding and emotion that currently resides in people. On the contrary, the more we develop, the more division, hatred, rejection, and lack of readiness to reach any kind of common understanding will ensue.

Nature awakens this division among us precisely in order for us to reach a state of helplessness, where we all raise our hands with a sincere desire for help, because otherwise we will see that we are all doomed.

However, nature has no intention to divide us. Rather, it is urging us to realize balance and a perfect connection with each other. Also, it does so in a way where we could realize that connection on our own, as adults, and not that we would unconsciously and involuntarily “click” into place without any awareness on our behalf.

What is happening right now with the US elections is a clear example of how nature is encouraging us to wake up to the helplessness of our current situation, as well as to the need for help from a higher force—that it reveal itself and organize our connections positively—otherwise we remain stuck.

In America, we see an example of how a roughly equal amount of people are split between two opposite sides. How can a successful leadership emerge in such a situation, where two halves of the population are respectively for and against an elected leader? Simply put, there can be no successful leadership in such a situation, and everybody will increasingly feel dissatisfied with whatever leader arises.

This division is happening because a higher force of connection needs to become revealed throughout humanity. This force—call it nature, the laws of nature, God or the Creator—holds the key to organize our connections harmoniously, and any positive progress from this point onward requires this force to surface among us. The positive aspect of our current polarization is that it becomes clear that we cannot solve our division on our own accord, and that if we fail to realize the need to invite a higher force to organize us, then we will end up battling each other uncompromisingly, and can find ourselves in states of great conflict and suffering, which have already started unraveling.

I discussed this topic and answered questions about it yesterday in a meeting with a team of writers. Watch the video here: Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on the US Elections. [1:09:40]

Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What’s the essence of human relationships and communications?“

The essence of human relationships and communications is in the manifestation of a mutual state of harmonious connection.

Prior to connecting harmoniously, we each experience numerous positive and negative sensations that arise in our contact with each other. Eventually, this exchange leads to the formation of a new and harmonious kind of connection.

How can we, however, assure ourselves that our relationships and communications will lead us to a harmonious connection?

It depends on our preparation, i.e., the education, socio-cultural influences and upbringing that we receive.

We need not be concerned about our relationships and communications in and of themselves. Instead, we should concern ourselves with how to optimally prepare ourselves, i.e., what educational, social and cultural influences we surround ourselves with, in order to harmoniously connect. It is similar to a mother who advises her children on how to behave with others before sending them out to school or another gathering.

By preparing ourselves to harmoniously connect, i.e., surrounding ourselves with an environment that teaches and exemplifies positive human relationships and communications, then we can draw ourselves to the revelation of a whole new sensation: that of feeling other people’s thoughts, desires and needs as our own. Such a shared perception and sensation is the essence of human relationships and communications.

I discussed this topic and answered questions about it in a talk with Michael Sanilevich. Watch the video here: Communication skills. The essence of human relationships

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do people lose motivation?“

We are driven by our desires, and in our time, our desires are ending their individualistic linear development and entering into a new phase of collective and integral development.

In other words, our desires have increased over the generations from individual desires for food, sex, family and shelter, through social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge, and in our era, a new desire has appeared that cannot be fulfilled directly like our past desires.

The new desire can only be fulfilled through a harmonious connection with other people. It is a fundamentally new and different kind of development to how we have been developing for thousands of years, and we have yet to grasp how to navigate our lives after the appearance of this new desire.

Phenomena such as globally interconnected technologies and economies that have emerged in our era are a superficial expression of this new desire. In other words, we have created systems that increasingly connect us, however we have not yet positively connected our attitudes to each other. Connecting superficially through technological and economic means fails to ultimately fulfill us because we need to connect positively on a mental and emotional level. Doing so would reveal a whole new kind of fulfillment in our lives.

The more we externally connect while remaining internally detached, and the more we continue trying to fulfill ourselves according to our past methods, then the more difficult we find it to stay motivated running after the pleasures laid out on our corporeal smorgasbord: food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge. In the same token, however, we have not yet come to terms with the new desire emerging in us, what it ultimately wants, and how to fulfill it.

In order to refresh our motivation and zest for life on a whole new level, we need a new method, new education and influences that guide us to become acquainted with this newly emergent desire, how we live in a significant transitional era from an individualistic-linear paradigm to an integral-analog one, and how we can realize our newfound interdependence and interconnectedness harmoniously.

Many people lose motivation today because they no longer feel that they can fulfill themselves by individualistic self-serving means. We thus need to change the way we fulfill ourselves: that we build a sincere intention to fulfill others, and when we aim at fulfilling each other, we will discover nothing less than a perfect life.

Moreover, the laws of nature, which are laws of interdependence and interconnectedness, stand behind this development. They guide our way to more and more connection with each other. So the more we take active steps to realize our increasing connection positively, the more we align with nature’s laws, and accordingly, awaken positive forces dwelling in nature to enter into our newly-established connections. When that happens, we will get a taste of unbounded life, outside everything we currently know and feel, and we will feel a whole new surge of motivation stemming from an atmosphere that encourages us to exit our egoistic selves and connect harmoniously with others.

Image: Global Interconnectedness by Wannapik Studio.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can we read someone’s mind?“

It is possible if we work on ourselves in such a way where we become different people. In other words, if we pass ourselves over to the states of others, as if copying their states onto ourselves, then we can read their thoughts and desires.

However, it is no simple task. Doing so requires prioritizing the thoughts and desires of others ahead of our own, devoting and even annulling ourselves to them. We then make our mind as their mind, and can feel their desires and thoughts.

Such is the outcome of a process of increasing the greatness of others, up to a point where we feel them as being of utmost importance. When we start relating with primacy to the thoughts and desires of others, we then start feeling a whole new and enormous world open up: Instead of perceiving within our own narrow individual perspectives, we add a perception through the thoughts and desires of others. It can be likened to how cells feel their host organism as much greater than their own individual status, which causes them to act maximally for their host organism’s benefit, and receive from the host organism only what they need in order to act for the host’s benefit.

When we discover that kind of connection to each other—where we each think of the other as greater and more important than we are to ourselves, and create an atmosphere of support and encouragement in providing each other with everything necessary in order to nurture that connection—then we will experience a newfound harmony stemming from our unified inclinations to come out toward one another.

The laws of nature, which are laws of love, altruism and connection, set the scenario that reading someone’s mind is possible on condition that we approach them with a genuine intention for their benefit. If any shred of egoistic and exploitative intention is laced within, then we will remain mentally and emotionally detached.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “As a new Quoran, how should I deal with hate comments on Quora?“

You should be thankful for their responses, that what you write touches them. It means that you share a certain level of connection, even though it is negative for the time being.

However, you should try to understand why they think the way that they do, and also not focus on who is right or wrong, but on what is ultimately the truth.

The truth is a complex concept because a person can hold an opinion believing that it is the truth, but an examination into that opinion’s sources could very well reveal that it is in fact not the truth.

Therefore, we should support each other in emphasizing a sincere search for the truth. Our opinions would then hold less importance than questions about where we actually exist, and what might happen to us while we are here.

It is because today we find ourselves standing on rickety foundations, discovering from one day to the next just how fragile we are. Whether it is the coronavirus or myriad other problems in health, money, relationships or some unforeseen disaster that could affect us at any given moment, today’s problems can hit any person in any location, and of any race, age, gender and class.

Our current era is characterized by increasing global interconnection and interdependence. We would thus be wise to examine the extent to which we are connected, and how we could realize our connections positively. Also, we would be wise to prioritize such a scrutiny above the battle for who is right or wrong based on our current level of understanding of ourselves and the world.

We would also be wise to seek how to put aside our anger and accusations, and let simple common sense guide us to a more neutral zone where our personalities and emotions are secondary to a search for facts on what is happening in our lives, the world and nature. It would be similar to how scientists conduct research, with an attempt at freeing the investigation from emotional baggage.

If we could support each other to centralize our focus on that kind of neutral direction, freeing ourselves from tendencies to sway one way or another, then we would set foot on a path more optimally directed at the truth.

I thus wish us all strength to rise above our divisions and differences, and to observe our circumstances from aside, as much as it is possible. If we develop mutual support in order to view our lives from a neutral viewpoint above our emotions, we will then be able to energize our lives with a renewed sense of hope. A new and more unified perspective would open up to us, and we would see our common goal of greater unification above hatred and division as worthwhile for us all to reach.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is today’s society being consumed by hatred more than love?“

The fact that there are masses of needy, sick and poor people is a sign that love is indeed lacking in today’s society.

It is normal to think that governments and various organizations should take care of people in need. The problem is that we might be ready to contribute some money and time to help out, but we fall short of giving all of our heart in such contributions.

Our heart, which is made up of self-serving desires, prioritizes our own needs over the needs of others, and no matter how much we invest into providing for others, by nature we lack a sincere and complete concern for them.

Our world is thus full of poverty and disease. As long as our heart prefers self-benefit over benefiting others, then no matter how much we contribute to the well-being of others, there will always be masses of people with unmet needs.

Therefore, instead of acting out of genuine love and care for others, any contribution we make seemingly toward society’s betterment is in order to free ourselves from the burden of loving and caring about them. We might be willing to donate a sum of money each month to a certain seemingly philanthropic organization or cause, but the intention behind this contribution focuses on freeing us from the weight of feeling responsible and truly caring about all people.

Yet, nature is developing us toward genuine relations of love and care, a state where we shift our focus on self-concern to concern for others, thereby giving all of our heart to benefiting others.

In the meantime, we see no shortage of poverty, crime and a range of other problems in the world’s wealthiest countries. On one hand, the egoistic engine running in us, which powered humanity’s progress, has given rise to intricate scientific and technological sophistication; yet on the other hand, we bear witness to a world of perpetual crisis.

The missing element is the sincere motion to love others as we love ourselves. Most of us grew up hearing about and agreeing with “Love your neighbor as yourself,” but we did not learn how to implement those words. Instead, we became increasingly refined egoists who favored self-benefit, and at most, routinely donated some of our money and/or time seemingly for prosocial causes, instead of integrating with each other’s desires, needs and feelings, and developing genuine love and care throughout society.

If we achieved the full meaning of “Love your neighbor as yourself,” then we would literally experience heaven on earth.

Nature, which fundamentally functions according to laws of love and connection, is evolving us all toward a state of total interconnection and interdependence. Today’s world has already become more connected and interdependent superficially, such as through globally-intertwined economies and technologies, yet we experience this connection negatively, as evident in growing cases of depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress, mental health problems, and in all the hatred, division and polarization abounding in society.

Nevertheless, we will need to realize our increasing connection positively at one time or another, as it is an inescapable law of nature. Until we do, we will continue entangling ourselves in an increasingly complex web of troubles.

The more we let our inborn egoistic nature navigate our thoughts and actions in life, then the more we let hatred and division proliferate throughout society. And the more we let hatred and division proliferate throughout society, then the more remote we become from the fundamental unifying law of nature, which leads to everyone suffering more.

On the contrary, the moment we make moves to positively connect, developing a loving and caring atmosphere throughout society, we will then feel each other more and more. Also, our renewed focus on positively connecting to each other will awaken the force of love dwelling in nature. We will then experience a new atmosphere of calm, support, encouragement, positivity, happiness and confidence sweep throughout society, as if inverting the current negative waves of hatred and polarization to their positive form.

In a nutshell, we live in a single system of nature, and our experience of this system as harmonious or painful depends on whether or not we positively connect.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the harsh truth of life?“

Truth constantly slips through our fingers the moment we get a grasp of what we think is true.

We can exert a lot to reach what we consider to be the truth, and as soon as we make a move in its direction, we discover added depth based on discrepancies in the truth we previously sensed. As such, we continue seeking the truth over and over again.

Human development continuously heads toward our ultimate attainment of what we call “truth.”

What is that truth?

Generally speaking, truth is the initial point of creation, a state where we are all adhered completely to nature in its entirety without any partitions between us. Moreover, only by attaining contact with that point do we reach the truth.

There are many stages on the way to attaining that ultimate point of truth, but they are all partial and incomplete. Therefore, even though we can attain the absolute truth, it is still very distant from us.

Nature, in this case, means nature’s altruistic quality of love and bestowal, with no consideration of self-benefit. We are born into an opposite egoistic quality of reception, what we call “human nature,” where we primarily consider self-benefit. Therefore, the stages on the way to attaining the ultimate point of truth are those of rising above our egoistic quality time and again to a more caring, giving and loving one, only to discover that what we attain each time ends up becoming lost in our egoism, as if sucked into a black hole, again and again.

Also, if we continue strengthening our environment, i.e., everything that influences us, to impart us with positive examples of rising above our egoism and becoming better connected, more considerate and altruistic as is nature’s quality, then we continue applying our own yearning to “pull” ourselves to that ultimate harmonious point of truth much faster, more enjoyably, and with a lot less suffering than if we would not implement such a motion. Alternatively, if we fail to strengthen our environment so that it positively influences us, then we let the harsh steamroller of evolution run us over with its myriad crises, which serve only to goad us in order to wake up to the need for changing our lives’ direction, as well as the environment that we create in order to navigate our way there.

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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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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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