Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                

Kab U

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 82

What Is Kabbalah?......................................................................................................................................................

5
What Books Can I Read to Understand Kabbalah? ....................................................................................... 8
Would Kabbalah Be a Form of Esotericism or Mysticism? Why? .......................................................... 10
What Are the Core Teachings of Kabbalah? ................................................................................................. 11
What Is Kabbalah Numerology? ........................................................................................................................ 13
What Is the Significance of Kabbalah, and Especially the Kabbalah Tree of Life? .......................... 14

What Is the Difference Between the Physical World and the Spiritual World?................................ 15
What Does Spirituality Mean to You?.............................................................................................................. 17
How Do You Know When You Have Awakened Spiritually? ................................................................... 18
How Long Does a Spiritual Awakening Take? .............................................................................................. 19
What Does Consciousness Mean in a Spiritual Context? ......................................................................... 20

What Does the Average Person Not Understand about the Coronavirus Pandemic? .................. 21
How Will the Coronavirus Affect the World Economy? ............................................................................ 22
When Will the Coronavirus End? ....................................................................................................................... 25
Can Wearing Masks Stop the Spread of the Coronavirus?...................................................................... 27
What Will Happen if the Coronavirus Comes Back in a Second Wave? ............................................. 28
Is the U.S. Making a Mistake by Reopening the Economy So Soon? .................................................. 31

What Is True Love Spiritually?............................................................................................................................. 33


How Would You Define Love? ............................................................................................................................ 34
What Is Love? ............................................................................................................................................................ 34
Is it Important to Have Love in Life? ................................................................................................................ 35
What Does it Mean to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself?......................................................................... 36

2
What Is the Reason for Depression? ................................................................................................................ 38
What Are the Solutions for Eliminating the Constant Feeling of Loneliness? .................................. 39
What Should I Do to Feel Less Stressed? ....................................................................................................... 40
Why Do Bad Things Happen in My Life? ........................................................................................................ 42
Why Do Bad Things Always Happen to Me? It Is as Through Every Time I Finally Get Over
Something, Another Bad Thing Happens to Me. ........................................................................................ 43

What Are Some Ways of Changing Society? ................................................................................................ 46


What Is Wrong With Our Society Today?....................................................................................................... 47
What Actions Can Be Taken to End Gender-Based Violence?................................................................ 49
What Is the Reason for So Much Violent Crime in the USA?.................................................................. 51
Why Do People Hate Each Other? .................................................................................................................... 53

Why Is Unity Important to Us? ........................................................................................................................... 56


What Are the Things That Do Not Matter in Life? ...................................................................................... 57
What Is Human Development? .......................................................................................................................... 58
If You Imagine the Psychological State of All Humanity as an Individual, How Would You
Diagnose Humanity at the Moment? Is it Becoming More or Less Sane or Is it Remaining Fairly
Stable? ......................................................................................................................................................................... 60
Should Marijuana be Made Legal All Over the World? Why or Why Not? ....................................... 61

What Are the Ways to Prevent Natural Disasters?...................................................................................... 64


What Is an Example That Nature Can be So Cruel?.................................................................................... 65
What Is the Best Renewable Energy Source?................................................................................................ 66
Why Do Animals Eat Each Other? ..................................................................................................................... 66
What Are the Key Lessons from This Pandemic? ........................................................................................ 68

How Can I Learn to Remain Calm in Any Situation? .................................................................................. 70

3
What Is the Best Way to Improve Life? ........................................................................................................... 71
What Makes You Optimistic About the Future? .......................................................................................... 72
How Do I Win the Hearts of People? ............................................................................................................... 73
What Are Some of the Best Skills for the Future? ....................................................................................... 73

What Does "I Think, Therefore I Am" Mean? ................................................................................................ 75


Does Satan Exist? ..................................................................................................................................................... 76
Does Anyone Believe in Reincarnation? ......................................................................................................... 78
What Is the Best Way to Protect Oneself from the Evil Eye? .................................................................. 79
What Is Forbidden by the Third Commandment? ...................................................................................... 79
About the Author: Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman ...................................................................................... 80
About This Book....................................................................................................................................................... 81

4
The wisdom of Kabbalah has been cloaked in mystery for millennia, since its
inception around 5,000 years ago.

Many concepts have been taken from the wisdom of Kabbalah and filtered
through various sciences, mysticism, religions and other teachings, but
authentic Kabbalah has been studied and developed by a relatively small
amount of individuals and groups throughout history, mostly in hiding from
society at large.

Therefore, after thousands of years of Kabbalah’s authentic practice taking


place in secret, and many non-Kabbalists in history blending whatever they
understood from Kabbalistic texts into their respective teachings, it has
become strewn in myth and misconception.

The wisdom of Kabbalah thus needs clarification.


5
Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), the most renowned Kabbalist of
the 20th century, and the only Kabbalist who wrote commentaries to both
The Book of Zohar and the writings of Kabbalist Isaac Luria (the Ari), defines
Kabbalah as:
No more and no less than a sequence of roots, which hang down by way of
cause and effect, in fixed, determined rules, weaving into a single, exalted
goal described as “the revelation of His Godliness to His creatures in this
world.”

According to this definition, there is a superior power in reality. Kabbalah


has given various names to this superior force, such as “His Godliness,” as in
this definition, as well as “the Creator,” “Nature,” “upper force,” “upper
light” and “Ein Sof (Infinity)” to name a few.

From this superior power extends a cause-and-effect chain of forces that


cascade into our world.

6
In our world, we perceive a very small fragment of the complete reality
surrounding us, as the superior power and the forces stemming from it are
concealed from our perception.

While alive in our world, the wisdom of Kabbalah enables us to discover


these higher forces all the way to the original superior power that created
and includes all forces in reality (“the revelation of His Godliness to His
creatures in this world”).

Engaging in Kabbalah grants us access to perceive and sense beyond a


certain barrier that is positioned between our inborn corporeal perception,
and the perception of the higher forces.

On our way to the revelation of the superior power in reality, we discover


many other phenomena that are concealed from our current perception,
such as

 five upper worlds (Ein Sof, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira and Assiya),

7
 ten Sefirot (Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet,
Netzah, Hod, Yesod and Malchut), and
 125 Partzufim.

These phenomena make up what Kabbalah describes as a tree of life


between our world and the superior power, and which we can reveal from
our world all the way to its original causal force.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is thus the research of everything existing beyond


our corporeal perception, and it depicts a greater reality of fixed, absolute
and omnipresent laws, which are directed so that every person who so
wishes can discover the causal forces behind everything happening in their
lives and in nature, while alive in our world.

The science of Kabbalah is unique in the way it talks about you and me,
about all of us. It doesn’t deal with anything abstract, only with the way we
are created and how we function at higher levels of existence.

One of its sections talks about the descent of the higher forces from the
world of Ein Sof (Infinity). The world of Ein Sof is our initial state, and there
we exist as a single, unified system of souls, completely interconnected.
Then, from the world of Ein Sof, we study the sequence of worlds, Sefirot
and Partzufim as they descend to the world we live in.

Many Kabbalistic books have been written about it, starting with Abraham
the Patriarch around 4,000 years ago, who wrote a book called Sefer Yetzira
(The Book of Creation).

The next important work is The Book of Zohar, written in the second
century CE. The Zohar is followed by the works of the Ari, a renowned 16th
century Kabbalist. And the 20th century saw the appearance of the works of
Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam).

Baal HaSulam’s texts are best suited for our generation.

They, as well as other kabbalistic sources, describe the structure of the


upper worlds, how they descend and successively bring lower worlds into

8
existence, and how our world came into being, the universe, our globe, and
how life evolved. Studying how that system was created and how it
descends to our world allows us to master the method of entering this
system and governing it.

We, for the most part, study the six volume textbook Talmud Eser Sefirot
(The Study of the Ten Sefirot), written by Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag. It is
designed as a study aid with questions, answers, materials for repetition
and memorization, explanations, graphics and drawings. This is, if you will,
the physics of the upper world, describing the laws and forces governing
the universe.

This material gradually transforms the students, because when searching


how to enter and begin to live in the spiritual world, one gradually adapts
oneself to the material.

The science of Kabbalah does not deal with life in this world. Instead, by
studying this system we re-attain our level before we descended, the same
level where we will be at the end of our ascent from this world. During this
ascent, the study of Kabbalah builds within the student a system equal to
the higher system.

This system begins to organize and manifest itself in the person who wants
to achieve it, and who studies it for this purpose. Just like a drop of semen
can potentially evolve into a human being, and subsequently grows into a
mature grown-up, the science of Kabbalah develops our desire to attain a
higher level of existence.

At first this is a tiny desire, called a “point in the heart.” This point is like the
embryo of our future states. By studying the structure of the upper world,
we develop the “genetic” information within it, and as it grows, the
structure resembling the higher levels forms within us.

This is why studying is so rewarding. Even if we do not understand a single


thing about what we are reading, simply trying to understand the
Kabbalistic texts nurtures the point in the heart, the desire for the higher
force, and the point begins to grow. The more it grows, the more we feel
the appearance of a new creation, a new and different feeling of a world
within ourselves.

9
In so doing, the science of Kabbalah gives us the opportunity to feel the
upper worlds, to understand everything that happens to us, and most of all,
to control this process for ourselves.

No, Kabbalah is neither a form of esotericism nor of mysticism. People want


to label Kabbalah as mysticism, esotericism, blessings, curses, charms and
apply many other labels to it. These labels became linked with Kabbalah
because there was a prohibition on the study of Kabbalah in the masses for
thousands of years since humanity’s spiritual desire still had not ripened. In
the 16th Century, when the Ari (Kabbalist Isaac Luria) lifted the prohibition
on the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, claiming that the time had come
for Kabbalah to be revealed to humanity, he also mentioned the prohibition
on the use of charms and blessings, since they have nothing to do with
Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is a science that teaches the law of reality, of which we are a part.
Through this science, we discover those rules and the spiritual world, which
is the reason for everything that happens here with us. They are collective
rules, which encompass the laws of all the sciences in our world.

Kabbalah is not another belief or an imaginary view of life. Instead, it offers


precise and clear laws that depict the structure of the upper worlds.

It is when we study Kabbalah that we first acquire knowledge of the world


outside our own. We discover the higher spiritual world, and then we
gradually attain the ability to affect it. Through tests and experiments, we
learn how to do it, and then we enter the comprehensive reality.

At this point, we begin to work not from within our own bodies, but from
our souls, which are our true essence. The human being is not the physical
body that is replaced at the beginning of each new life. The human being is
the soul that we currently do not sense.

The purpose of creation is that we will act from within our souls, from the
upper world, and live at the highest degree possible, rather than in the

10
lowest (our world), which is at an animal level. By discovering our souls, we
attain contact with the upper world, and thus achieve a whole, complete,
eternal and blissful life.

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes how nature works on all of its levels: still,
vegetative, animate and human. It engages in how we are made and
operate at deeper levels of reality, and not in any abstractions.

One of Kabbalah’s areas of study is in how forces cascade from our original
state, which it calls “the world of Ein Sof (Infinity),” where our souls exist as
a unified system, through a series of worlds, Sefirot and Partzufim to our
world.

Kabbalists are people who ascended in their perception and sensation of


reality from our world into the spiritual worlds, many of whom wrote texts
based on their attainment.

Key Kabbalistic texts throughout history include:

 Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation), written about 4,000 years


ago by Abraham the Patriarch.
 The Zohar, written about 2,000 years ago by Rabbi Shimon
Bar-Yochai.
 Various texts by the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) in the 16th century.
 Various texts by Baal HaSulam (Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag) in
the 20th century.

Baal HaSulam’s texts are optimal for our current era. They describe the
structure of the worlds, their descent and succession through many lower
worlds, all the way to the creation and evolution of our world, our universe
and everything in it.

By learning the system of the worlds, how they emerged and descended
into our world, we can then rise through that system back to the root where
we were originally created.

One of Baal HaSulam’s key texts that we study is his six-volume work,
Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot). It is a modern textbook
11
in Kabbalah study, including Q&A, diagrams, as well as material for
repetition and memorization, which explains the succession of worlds,
Sefirot and Partzufim.

Photo: The six-volume set of


Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot)
in its original Hebrew.

Kabbalistic texts change those who study them. How? It is because they
contain special forces that their authors inserted into them. When students
seek their way into the deeper layers of reality through the texts, they adapt
themselves to the worlds that they study.

The wisdom of Kabbalah engages solely in the spiritual worlds, and not in
this world. Via the study of Kabbalah, we attain the place we had in those
worlds before our descent to this world. While we rise to that place, called

12
“the root of our soul,” we develop spiritual qualities that we lack in our
world.

The spiritual system starts establishing itself in the person who desires its
attainment, and who studies it with that objective. While we are alive in this
world, we feel the beginnings of the spiritual desire as a very small point,
called in Kabbalah the “point in the heart.”

The point in the heart can be likened to a drop of semen, which contains all
the future states of the human being, and which only requires the proper
environment and conditions in order to realize its full potential.

Regular Kabbalah study aims to provide the environment and conditions


for the spiritual desire’s optimal growth, so that we can each attain the root
of our soul.

That is the benefit of Kabbalah study. Even if we understand nothing at all


in what we read, our desire and effort to understand awakens spiritual
forces to operate on our spiritual desire, developing it.

Then, the more our spiritual desire develops, the more we feel a new world
opening up inside us.

As such, the wisdom of Kabbalah provides us with the means to sense the
spiritual worlds, to understand both our own nature and the nature of
everything around us, and also, to take charge of such a process.

Gematria in Kabbalah is one way a Kabbalist can convey his situation to his
student. The kabbalist teacher can take the “case” of his own situation, then
copy and express it in a form of an accurate mathematical formula, i.e.
Gematria, conveying it to the student. The student then takes that formula,
finds it within himself and implements it through his own spiritual powers.
This way he goes through the same situation as his teacher. Gematria is a
mathematical formula that expresses the sum total of our spiritual
experiences.

13
Kabbalah’s significance is purely practical. When humanity reaches
helplessness, not knowing how to progress, what it exists for, and what is
urging it to continue surviving, it develops a need for Kabbalah.

Beforehand, it neither needed Kabbalah nor did Kabbalah offer itself to


humanity.

Kabbalah hid inside humanity in latency, as kabbalists developed and


prepared it for application and dissemination on a global scale.

Today, as humanity finds itself facing an increasing entanglement of


problems that it has no lasting solution for, the need for Kabbalah—the
need for a solution to all the problems in the world—appears.

Kabbalah offers a solution by first correctly diagnosing the root of all


problems we experience: that the human ego—the desire to enjoy at the
expense of others—has overblown to an enormous size. We can no longer
fulfill our inflated desires, and this increasing dissatisfaction is becoming
expressed as a need for a new approach to life.

In other words, if we knew how to correctly relate to our growing ego, we


could then navigate it to a positive direction. Moreover, the more this
positive shift in consciousness would spread among humanity, the more we
would experience our lives harmoniously.

Kabbalah offers such an approach. It states that in order to solve our


problems, we need to correct the human ego at its source: to learn how to
redirect it so that we enjoy not by self-directing our pleasure, but by aiming
at giving and connecting to others.

Kabbalah provides a method by which we can undergo this transformation


quickly, and by gaining awareness and additional senses on the way there.

14
The difference between the physical (or, corporeal) world and the spiritual
world is the difference between receiving and giving.

The spiritual world is a world of bestowal, giving and altruism, and its
opposite is the corporeal world with its qualities of reception, taking and
egoism.

To put it bluntly, our world does not exist in spirituality. It is a “reality” we


imagine. Through the application of the method of Kabbalah, we can attain
the first, lowest level of the spiritual world, and from there, gain the ability
to rise up the spiritual world, like by a thin ray of light, toward our spiritual
root.

15
We see ourselves as living in a massive physical world and universe.
However, it is all a tiny point, like an imprint or a shadow, of the lowest
spiritual world. Similar to a shadow or an imprint, it has no life in and of
itself.

Yet we “live” inside this shadow, like in a dream. We remain in this state
until we replace the shadow with the first spiritual level called “this world,”
the beginning of the spiritual ladder. The most difficult part of the process
is ascending to this first level, since it is completely opposite to us, and
therefore concealed.

If someone told you that you would receive the opportunity to give others
everything you have, including your life, would you consider it as
something appealing worth aspiring toward?

Certainly not.

That is why the “impure forces” hide spirituality from you. They deceive you
according to the principle that “the peel/shell (Klipa) protects the fruit.”

A person who begins the spiritual path first encounters the Klipa (impure
force) that provides the feeling that it is worthwhile to discover spirituality
in order to feel good. Such a discernment is sufficient for the person to
start the spiritual path, i.e. to start coming closer to the spiritual world, the
person’s original root.

Continuing to tread the spiritual path, the person wavers to and fro:
sometimes passionately striving for spirituality, and sometimes doubting
whether there is anything worthwhile in spirituality at all. However,
throughout all these scrutinies, the person makes spiritual progress.

Of utmost importance throughout this process is to continue studying and


letting the light that illuminates during the study from the spiritual world
do its work, as if taking a medicine that the doctor prescribed on a daily
basis. Sustaining oneself in such a mode eventually accumulates to a
miraculous moment where the person becomes born in the spiritual world.

The wisdom of Kabbalah provides the necessary tools to undergo this


process of attaining the spiritual world.

16
Spirituality is above our corporeal reality. It is a completely opposite
perception and sensation to our inborn bodily one.

We are born into an egoistic human nature, prioritizing self-benefit over


benefiting others.

However, spirituality operates in an opposite, altruistic way to our egoistic


nature—as an attitude of absolute love for the other.

What does it mean that we are born into an egoistic human nature? It
means that everything we do is ultimately aimed at personal benefit.

The egoistic motor constantly running behind our every thought, desire
and action is wrenched into our worldview more than we are aware of,
blocking our ability to see us all connected, like members of a single family,
since it filters out the absolute love that exists in our connections at the
roots of our soul.

Therefore, every corporeal act we perform is based on this egoistic


“perceptual blockage” that we all share, which constantly gravitates our
attention onto ourselves.

However, a spiritual action is outside of and detached from its performer.

Instead of identifying with our “I’s,” we identify with the causal force behind
its corporeal manifestations. That is made possible by attaining an identical
intention toward others as the Creator: an intention of absolute love and
bestowal.

Therefore, spirituality is the reality of connection with the Creator, the


sensation of fulfillment by the quality of love and bestowal.

Spirituality is outside time, space, motion and the animate body. It is felt
solely in a new sense—a sincere intention to benefit the other—which is
regularly exercised and developed on the spiritual path.

17
You shift to a more unified reality from the current divisive one.

It feels as if you wake up from a dream: You see an evil and unjust world all
around you, and then you close your eyes again, and reawaken into a
perfectly harmonious world.

The awful world that you first saw was all in a dream, and you did not want
to be there anymore.

When you awaken the second time, you see a balanced world and not the
one that you saw in your dream. Kabbalists wrote about such a spiritual
revelation, “They were as dreamers.”

The question is: How can we wake up from our worsening nightmare into a
peaceful, balanced and harmonious world? The answer is by changing our
perception of reality.

We currently live in a perfect world, nothing less than Heaven, where there
is total goodness and not a shred of evil. The sole obstacle we have in
sensing reality as such is our perception. Therefore, by changing our
perception, we change the world we live in.

Our current perception of reality is the lowest of them all, where all
goodness inverts to its opposite form. Outside this perception is the
tranquil and sublime world of Ein Sof (Infinity), but we perceive this eternal
goodness through senses that greatly limit it to a tiny, transient and
negative picture.

By learning how to rise above our current perception of reality, we will see
ourselves blanketed in a warmth of love that we have no awareness of in
our current level.

The process of rising above our current perception of reality to one that is
perfectly connected, harmonious and eternal is called a process of
“correction” in the wisdom of Kabbalah. The changes we undergo in our
perception and sensation of reality are considered corrections, and the
more corrected we become, the more positive and harmonious the world
will appear.

18
Essentially, correcting ourselves and transforming our perception is a
process of rising above our divisive drives, and by doing so, we see how
others’ attitudes also change toward us.

In short, there is no need to change anyone or to correct the world. We


need only correct ourselves, and then we will discover that we live in a
perfect reality.

The length of time for each person’s spiritual awakening depends on the
state of the collective system we are all parts of, which develops to an
increasingly unified state, and how we are needed in that system.

A person is a small part of the collective system, which is called “the soul of
Adam HaRishon” in the wisdom of Kabbalah. This system determines each
person’s appearance in this world and development toward our final unified
state.

Our initial spiritual awakening takes place involuntarily. We are given a


desire for spirituality, called a “point in the heart,” which is expressed as
questions about life’s meaning and purpose. Such questions lead us
through different environments until we find one that provides us with a
path to their fulfillment.

When on this path, we then need only do whatever is in our hands to do,
and then the time it takes to receive further spiritual awakening no longer
depends on us.

The spiritual path divides into stages of knowledge, understanding, and


finally, attainment.

Attainment of spirituality in our senses takes the longest amount of time.

Spiritual attainment means not only understanding the system’s


intelligence, but also completely internalizing all of its connections, working
with it as a partner.

19
Reaching such a state means harmonizing with the collective system we are
parts of, benefiting the system by contributing to its harmony, and
discovering the root of our soul.

Spiritual consciousness is one of absolute love and bestowal. It is above our


world, i.e. above the self-aimed desire to enjoy “for me”: a desire to love
and bestow, “for the Creator.” We enter spiritual consciousness when the
outcome of the act is completely unrelated to the one who performs it,
even indirectly.

In spiritual consciousness, the soul is linked with the Creator, which is the
force of love and bestowal existing in the corrected connection between us.
This soul senses and is filled by the force of love and bestowal, even at least
to a small degree. It is anything that is out of and above time, space and
motion, that is not in any way linked with the sensation of the animate
body but is felt in some inner space in a person’s senses—an intention to
love and bestow. It is also revealed only when the person is in control of the
“spiritual” bearer.

20
Whether or not the average person understands what I will write below,
here’s what I think every person needs to take away from this coronavirus
pandemic:

 The pandemic will not be over with anytime soon, despite the
easing of stay-at-home orders starting to take effect.
 Curing the coronavirus requires a step toward more mutual
consideration and responsibility among us all, from the
average person to world leaders.
 The coronavirus struck a blow to the egoistic-competitive rat
race we were running, and over time we have calmed down
our consumerist lifestyles, where it was a norm to exploit
others for personal profit purposes.

21
I think that we can look forward to a positive future, which will be calmer
than how we used to live, with more balance among each other and with
nature.

Weeks and months of isolation will play their role in transforming us.

Do we really think that the moment all the restrictions are lifted, we will be
running back to malls, filling our bags with piles of extra clothes and plastic
goods, and flying to tourist destinations left, right and center again?

I think not.

One of the major takeaways from this pandemic is that we have cooled off
our approaches to each other where we each aimed to self-benefit at the
expense of others, and that we see a clear example of nature treating all
people equally—which we would be wise to apply to each other.

Nature is working with us, trying to wake us up to the fact that we are all in
the same boat, and I expect that we will come out of this pandemic with
more awareness of our common status in the wider perspective of nature
as a whole.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on April 25, 2020,
during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

To start with, after this prolonged period of the conditions that the
coronavirus has placed us into, our attitude to the world will become
different and there will be major changes.

We will change psychologically, and accordingly, our systems, connections


and perceptions will change such that there will be no return to the pre-
coronavirus world.

The post-coronavirus world will be new. Our behaviors and connections will
be different to what they were before the coronavirus.

I think that we will have a better feel of what is and is not essential in life,
and that we will value a more internal definition of connection and
22
closeness to each other. The extent of our psychological change will
determine the extent of change in our systems, the economy included.

During the coronavirus period, while we are in prolonged social distancing


and stay-at-home conditions, I think that the economy should operate in
an emergency-like manner: that the government provides life’s essentials to
every person—food, housing, water, electricity and various municipal
services per capita. I also think that our increased focus on life’s essentials
will see the fall of a lot of businesses that we have no real need for.

The more that we endure this period, the more our awareness of what is
most important in life will increase. In turn, this will calm us down from our
egoistic-competitive rat race that we used to run.

In terms of how the world economy will actually look at the end of the
coronavirus period, I don’t think we can depict the changes in the
meantime, because time has to play its role. We have been in these
conditions for a little over a month. Let’s say we will be in these conditions
for another six months. We cannot yet imagine the changes we would have
gone through at the end of such a period.

Ideally, we would operate in more balance with nature, i.e. with more
mutual consideration and responsibility. It means acting like one big family
that looks at the means it has at its disposal, and how it can best allocate
what it has to every member in a mutually-beneficial way.

Accordingly, situations we currently see, where for instance one family


member cannot afford to pay rent and another receives millions to support
a personal stash of mansions and yachts would no longer make sense to us,
and we would thus find ways to iron out these situations for everyone’s
common benefit.

Such logic is neither socialist, capitalist, nor communist. It is based on an


understanding of nature’s laws and what nature requires of us in order for
us to balance with it.

However, in order to reach that kind of economy, we would need to


undergo a major change in our attitudes to each other—a shift in our
priorities from self-benefit to benefiting others.

23
Likewise, if we make no strides in this attitude shift, we can expect no such
motions to make our economy more balanced with nature.

That is why I think it is still too early to say how the economy and world will
look at the end of the coronavirus period. It is like we are in a train that left
its previous stop, and we are headed to the next stop, which we have never
visited before.

Reaching such changes requires connection-enriching learning.

Connection-enriching learning aims to improve our understanding of the


interdependent world we find ourselves in today, and how today’s
interdependence requires mutual consideration, responsibility, support and
encouragement among all of us in order to secure our survival and live
satisfying lives.

Moreover, the more unemployment increases due to several unessential


businesses falling, on one hand, and also due to technological means
replacing human resources, on the other hand, the more we will become
ready for a different economic solution to the ones we have today.

I have written extensively about my support for universal basic income as


such a solution, but only on condition that a basic income is given in
exchange for participating in connection-enriching learning, so that social
connections become more positive, and people learn how to accept,
understand, and get along with everyone, as well as engage in the creation
of a new atmosphere of mutual consideration, support, awareness and
sensitivity. If basic income is not supplied together with such learning, then
society would stagnate.

Therefore, I think that the coronavirus’ conditions will bring us closer to


such an economy, even if only by better preparing us psychologically for it.

The sooner we will reach mutually considerate attitudes to each other and
an economy that reflects that attitude shift, the sooner we will see less
violence, crime and abuse of all kinds in society, together with increased
personal and social happiness.

Ultimately, it is a question of what we value.

24
In Hebrew, the word for “money” (“Kesef”) has the same linguistic root as
the word for “covering” (“Kisui”). Therefore, if we change the covering over
our society from a consumerist value of one’s self-worth that accords to the
amount of wealth, status and power one has, to one where we value not
individual wealth, status and power, but people’s contribution to a
positively connected society, then we would be on our way to a world that
is more balanced with nature, and we would thus experience more
harmonious lives.

Despite the high anticipation for COVID-19’s demise, it is here to stay for a
while.

The coronavirus emerged in order to change the way we think, and it will
remain with us until we complete this transformation.

Since humanity is a massive diverse aggregate of different people, it will


take some time for us to adapt to a much more interdependent world than
what we were accustomed to in pre-coronavirus times.

Similar to how people get used to living with chronic diseases, so too we as
humanity will get used to the coronavirus. It will simply become an integral
part of our lives.

As any onset of a disease is felt severely as a shock to the body’s systems,


likewise we are currently undergoing the initial pangs of the coronavirus’
“injection” into humanity. However, this transition phase will settle and
human society will assume a new, more independent form.

Even much of the engagement that the coronavirus has brought upon us
has acted to exemplify our dependence on each other, i.e. how we depend
on each other to wear masks, keep a certain standard of personal hygiene,
maintain our distance from each other and quarantine ourselves if we
knowingly contact people with the virus.

We thus see how a small virus has helped us start seeing a more connected
world, which operates on everyone and where everyone holds mutual

25
influence, and it will continue to “teach” us such wisdom the more it stays
with us.

We would thus be wise to internalize how we are all parts of a single system
that is developing toward a new state of balance with nature. That is, as
nature is interdependent and interconnected, so we also discover more and
more of nature’s and our own interconnectedness the more we develop.

Also, the more this process of increasing interdependence reveals itself to


us, the more we will find ourselves at new sets of crossroads, stage after
stage: We either agree to our increasing interdependence and accept more
responsibility and consideration for each other, or we oppose it and thus
feel our tightening connection as an increasingly ugly and painful situation.

However, either way, nature presses us to connect more and more, like a
steamroller of evolution that flattens our egoistic and harmful attitudes to
each other. It squashes our egos like a lemon squeezer against a lemon and
will continue doing so until all of our egoistic juices become extracted. At
that stage, we will find a new kind of fulfillment in such qualities that
currently seem less important or even ugly to us, like kindness, altruism,
giving and consideration of others.

If only we could see that there is a very clear line from our current reality to
a new, unified and perfect one—that nature has a state of perfection in
store for us and carefully guides us there—then we would encounter
everything in our lives more confidently, with a sense of purpose.

Now, we are divided in our attitudes to each other, and more than anything
else, this division causes all of our pains. Our division is expressed as each
of us being primarily concerned with self-benefit over benefiting others,
which is opposite to nature’s holistic characteristic. Suffering is the
differential we feel between our state and nature’s state, and it operates on
us to make us connect.

The more we make strides to connect with each other, the more balanced
we will become with nature, and we will thus experience an inversion of our
pains and sorrows to pleasures and joy. We need only agree to connect
above our divisive drives that constantly pull in the other direction, and
when we reach such an agreement, we will likewise experience its benefits.

26
Thus, viewing humanity as a single organism and nature as its superior, we
can see how nature vaccinated humanity with the coronavirus in order to
heal us from our divisive attitudes to each other.

We can thus expect to exit the coronavirus pandemic as a stronger


humanity, with healthier attitudes dwelling within, among peoples and
nations. Therefore, while we are forced to keep our distance from each
other, while doing so, we would be wise to think how we can become more
internally connected.

What, then, would it take for the coronavirus to end?

By understanding that it is much more than a mere physical disease, but


that it has come to bring upon a change to our thinking—from divided to
connected, egoistic to altruistic, and individualistic to interdependent—then
by adjusting our attitudes accordingly, we would truly put a stop to the
pandemic, since nature would no longer need to use it to teach us a lesson.

Therefore, we should look out for each other, consider how we can prevent
viruses of any kind to pass to others, from physical diseases to any kinds of
harmful thoughts, and by exercising this mutual responsibility and
consideration, the coronavirus will disappear from our lives.

The coronavirus pays no attention to the fact that we are reopening our
economies and trying to return to our pre-coronavirus lives.

It will continue infecting more and more people until we undergo a serious
attitude adjustment.

What is that adjustment?

It is a shift of our center of concern: from self-concern to concern about


others. In other words, we naturally think about what we need to do in
order to protect ourselves and our families. The coronavirus, however, has
emerged to show us that we need to redirect our concern toward others:
that we think about what we need to do in order to protect other people,
providing them with the conditions to stay healthy and virus-free.
27
We all depend on each other maintaining certain conditions in order to
stop the virus’ spread, including the maintenance of thorough personal
hygiene, wearing masks and holding our physical distance from each other.
Therefore, if we uphold such conditions, not with our own protection but
with the protection of others primarily in mind, then we will be able to stop
the spread of the coronavirus.

By exercising an intention for others’ benefit to the actions we conduct in


order to stop the virus’ spread, then in addition to overcoming the
coronavirus, we will also reach the understanding that we can truly be
protected from disease and other harmful phenomena when we consider
others.

If we concentrate on the protection and benefit of others, of our


community and society, then instead of a virus spreading illness and death,
we will generate a positive virus that spreads health, well-being, peace and
happiness.

Therefore, we would be wise to relate to the coronavirus not just as a


disease or pandemic, but as a lesson in our interdependence: that others’
health and well-being depends on us caring about them, and likewise, our
own health and well-being depends on others caring about us.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on June 13, 2020, with
new sudden spreads of the coronavirus the reopening of the economy in various
countries.

If we thought that the pandemic was under control, the time has come to
think again.

The second wave of the coronavirus is already being widely discussed, even
though the first wave never really stopped. The economy’s reopening has
helped bolster an influx of COVID-19 outbreaks worldwide, and we once
again face an uncertain future regarding the pandemic.

28
I am certain, however, that our world has undergone an irreversible change,
and that we would be wise to realize how nature tightens our dependence
on each other. As much as we want it to become a thing of the past, the
coronavirus is here to stay for a while. We need to come to terms with it
being with us for a long time, and we should revise our socio-economic
approach accordingly.

The World Bank has stated that the pandemic will be responsible for the
biggest recession since the Second World War. We can still expect the
closure of many businesses, a dramatic rise in unemployment, and as more
and more people dig into the depths of their savings accounts, more and
more people will face unpayable loans, rents and mortgages.

Such immense changes demand that we make some changes on our own
behalf.

What should those changes be?

To start with, people’s essential needs have to be met.

Authorities should make sure that their populations receive essential goods
and services, adjusting their budgets accordingly.

We will also need to get used to luxury goods losing their allure. There will
be no need to invest in saving or reviving luxury goods businesses due to
their diminished demand. Also, the increased awareness about the
ecological harm that many such businesses contribute to further illustrates
their non-necessity.

Our lives are on track to become calmer and more essentials-focused than
we have been used to, and which our prior economy failed to prepare us
for.

Any desires for surplus, any drives to progress and make breakthroughs in
society, should likewise also be refocused. There is endless room for
developing positive connections in society, and we would be wise to focus
our growth on improving human connections.

By doing so, we would be on track to a whole new reality than the one we
currently know, one where we experience our tightening interdependence
not as a growing burden, but as an opportunity to exercise positive

29
relations and share in a newfound harmony, happiness and confidence
throughout society.

Likewise, after taking care of people’s essential needs, authorities would do


well to implement a system of payment-based connection-enriching
education, which will secure people’s needs via their participation in
learning about today’s new interdependent conditions, as well as support
active endeavors to develop a more positive social atmosphere.

Ultimately, the coronavirus is leading us to a much more natural form of


existence. By highlighting our interdependence, it forces us to consider how
we relate to each other, and we can already conclude that if we try to
increase our care for each other, then we will live healthier, safer and
happier lives.

Social distancing conditions have given us space for introspection, to see


that genuine connection lies in our refined attitudes to each other.

As our pre-coronavirus socio-economic foundations become increasingly


rickety the more we head deeper into coronavirus times, the uncertainty
and anxiety about the future can quickly become filled with a renewed
confidence in a society of people who have their needs secured, and who
grow increasingly positive connections to each other on a daily basis.

We can think of the coronavirus like a treadmill that humanity has started
walking on, and when we get off this treadmill, we will have lost a lot of the
materialistic-competitive fat that was weighing us down before the
pandemic.

Now, more than ever before, we need to stay focused on our new stage of
growth, that what nourished us in our previous stage no longer works, and
to meet our new conditions, we need to develop positive connections to
each other.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on June 23, 2020, with
new sudden spreads of the coronavirus the reopening of the economy in various
countries.

30
If anyone thinks that reopening the economy will start bringing back the
same world we lived in before the coronavirus, then think again.

Letting many more businesses run will not mean that people will
immediately go back to spending on all kinds of nonessential items again.

We will soon realize that society’s awareness of what is essential and


nonessential in life has slightly risen, and thus many businesses dealing in
nonessential goods and services will find themselves continuing to suffer
even after being allowed to reopen.

We can expect a struggle, as the government will continue encouraging


consumerism in order to oil the economy more and more against a
generally growing distaste for it among society.

What I propose is that instead of fighting this losing battle of reigniting the
consumerism we used to live in, that governments instead provide
everyone involved in unsustainable businesses a new kind of work, one
where they learn about human society’s growing interdependence, and
how to realize this interdependence that drops down on us in a positive
manner.

By doing so, they will receive an income that would cover their needs, and
gradually grow into educators of how to enrich positive connection
throughout society.

In other words, governments would do well to shift their focus away from
reviving a consumerist economy, where wealth equates to success, to
creating sustainable societies where people’s essential needs are covered in
exchange for participating in the creation of a new society led by values of
mutual consideration, responsibility and solidarity.

Success in the latter vision of society would be personal and social


happiness, kindled through developing increasingly positive connections.

31
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on April 27, 2020, with
new sudden spreads of the coronavirus the reopening of the economy in various
countries.

32
A true act of love is when I do something good for someone I love only
because I want to delight that person, even without their knowing that I’m
the one who did this good thing, and even if I do not derive any direct
pleasure from it. Love would be my only motivation to act.

The Torah explains that a true act of altruism (love of others) is when one
party does not know about the other party, whether or not the party is
giving. Otherwise, there is pleasure derived from it.

If the Creator knows about a person’s act, this is already a reward. But for
true giving, there need not be any kind of reward. We always speak from
the perspective of the person with real feelings and not of abstract
creatures. One must come to that sensation of genuine giving step by step,
meaning one must attain the spiritual level of giving while in the meantime
performing it only mechanically.

33
However, all the while, we should be aware that such existence is only
mechanical, in the degree of this world, our temporary place.

Love is a quality, a force and a longing to fulfill the desires of others, which
is directed from the person outward.

How is it possible to fulfill another person’s desires?

It is possible if we understand their desires.

If we have shared habits, thoughts and opinions with others, then we know
how to fulfill them and express our love.

If we lack understanding of their desires, then we should aspire to have


desires that are similar to those whom we love, i.e. to build an inner model
that matches their desires.

Building an inner model through which we can understand the desires of


others grants us the ability to give them fulfillment.

We can then understand our own feelings when we receive the same kind
of fulfillment, so we know how to fulfill them.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, such a state is called “equivalence of form.”


That is, by equalizing qualities with others, we achieve a state of unification,
and love is the sensation of that unification.

Love is our most exalted connection with everything outside of us, which
harmonizes us with nature and its laws.
Love is a means to become like nature, which is a quality of love, bestowal
and connection. It exists outside of us. There is no love in individual beings.

34
Love is the exclusive quality of nature that is given to us, and with the help
of such a quality, we can elevate ourselves from the animate degree of
existence to the human degree. In Hebrew, the word for “human” (“Adam”)
comes from the word for “similar” (“Domeh”), and a human is considered
one who becomes “similar to the most high” (“Domeh le Elyon”). In other
words, becoming a human means becoming like nature’s quality of love,
bestowal and connection, which is outside and opposite to our inborn
animate qualities.

The principle of love, or more specifically, loving others as oneself, is known


to all, yet there is a lot of confusion surrounding it.

There is a general agreement among most people that there needs to be


love among people, yet we see that some people are willing to eliminate
large portions of humanity in the name of love. It is even more surprising
how vaguely this principle is reflected in different religions.

As a result, we are not very concerned about loving each other in actual
fact. We are raised through a multitude of influences that completely
neglect the question of how we can reach true love among people.

Therefore, the question here is correct, and we should definitely stop and
pay attention to it: Is it important to have love in life? Is love really that
important?

Perhaps it is enough to teach children morals and have a general


atmosphere of respect among adults? Or should love of others nevertheless
be life’s goal, which we strive to reach at every moment, and which we are
concerned about reaching every person and everyone together equally?
Maybe if we set love of other people, all people equally, as our goal, and
tried to reach that goal in the fastest possible way, then we could spare a
lot of suffering in humanity, and moreover, experience lives of much
greater fulfillment and happiness?

Therefore, this is an extremely important question. If we discuss the


meaning of life, the purpose for which we entered our world, then why do
we neglect this principle so much?
35
In essence, we are extremely far from understanding the fact that this
principle is the universal law of the universe and of nature. All other laws
that we know, and especially ones we do not know, rotate around such an
axis.

If we wish to understand ourselves and the world we live in, then we have
to attain the laws of nature, which are fundamentally laws of love and
connection. Without attaining love for others, or as it was written, “Love
your neighbor as yourself,” we will be unable to discover who or where we
are.

Love is the key that lets us see the entire picture of reality accurately, to
understand, feel and become included in it, and to use it for self-realization.

By acquiring love for others in practice, we attain the Creator’s quality.


Other laws are just facets and partial expressions of this fundamental law of
reality. It is similar to how the law of gravity can be expressed in different
ways, but as a whole, it always determines how one object is attracted to
another.

There is a general phenomenon and there are particular cases of it. There is
a law of universal bestowal, and for us it is first and foremost expressed as
the social principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” By realizing this
principle in society, we carry out the universal law. It controls us, and if we
want to arrange our lives well, we have to aspire to its realization.

As much as we depict the extent of our love for ourselves, we need to love
others to that same extent.

The more we develop, the more we perceive “love your neighbor as


yourself” differently.

As the human ego, the attribute of self-love, constantly grows in each and
every person, then the more we develop, the more we love ourselves.

Our self-love should then serve as an example for how we should love
others.

36
The path to reaching “love your neighbor as yourself” is thus a path that
has a necessary first stage, which is defined as “don’t do to others what you
hate.” By exercising not doing to others what we hate, we gradually learn
how to rise above the ego that separates us from each other and develop
the quality of bestowal above our innate quality of reception. By doing so,
we develop our readiness to reach the sublime state of “love your neighbor
as yourself.”

In other words, “love your neighbor as yourself” is not merely a pleasant


slogan, but a state of absolute positive connection above the ego, where
we perceive and sense a completely different reality to the one we feel in
our inborn ego.

Reaching such a state requires a surrounding society of people willing to


support each other in order to achieve that goal. Otherwise, if there is a lack
of agreement among anyone in such a society, where even one remains in
the natural egoistic drive for self-love, it then harms everyone’s ability to
achieve a common state of love.

37
We are currently in a major transitional era between an individualistic,
egoistic paradigm and an opposite collective, altruistic one.

During this process, we feel that the individualistic way of fulfilling


ourselves that we have been raised with fails to fulfill us. Instead, we feel
increasing emptiness, loneliness, depression, anxiety and stress.

We feel more and more negative sensations such as depression, emptiness


and loneliness today because we feel that everything we as humanity have
accomplished until today is purposeless, meaningless and empty. It is as if
life itself is death, not that life leads to death, but life is death itself.

When we reach such a feeling—that we are dying in our current


individualistic and materialistic mode, not in the coming years or decades,

38
but right now—we will then become ready to accept a method that unites
us above our differences and divisions.

We would then become enabled to rise above our individualism, which


brings about our emptiness and loneliness while we fail to adapt to nature’s
integral form that gradually closes in on us. We would also become more
open to new values permeating our education and media, values of mutual
consideration, cooperation and unification, and we would gain the required
knowledge and strength in order to work on ourselves so that we can start
connecting positively with others. It is a complicated process, but we are in
a transitional era on our way there.

Loneliness is a major problem in today’s world. Several countries have


appointed ministers to handle it. There are several reasons for it, and it is
mostly the lonely who commit suicide.

However, no ministers or government decisions will help this problem.


More and more people find meaninglessness in marriage, work, friendship
and life in general, that there is no stimulus for moving, thinking, talking or
doing anything at all. There is a certain stillness setting in the world more
and more today.

The reason for growing feelings of loneliness and meaninglessness in


today’s world is so that they will prod us to seek the meaning of life.
However, rising above loneliness and meaninglessness with a quest to
discover life’s meaning is only possible if we succeed in awakening people
to it. Otherwise, we can expect more and more people taking pills that will
put them to sleep throughout their entire lives until they die.

Logically, if we feel bad, then we would start seeking remedies for our
negative feelings. But what can we do if we see no solutions? What do we
live for? In the end, the only solution left will be to discover the meaning of
life, since knowingly or unknowingly, it is ultimately what we all want.

39
Eventually, loneliness will break through into a new phase of complete
apathy toward everything, and it will be part of a natural process that leads
us to the discovery of a whole new life. In some ways, it is a kind of death.
By crossing this barrier, we discover that there is another much better life,
and start living it.

A person must suffer a kind of death—to realize, agree with, and want to
give up the constant egoistic pursuit that ultimately bears no fruits—in
order to start truly living. Once we agree with this transition, we then
become ready for the next life.

My advice to the lonely, all who feel alienated from the world, is to go and
read the material that was made for answering the question about the
meaning of life. There is nothing else that I can recommend. From the
bottom of my heart, there is nothing else I see that I could offer.

Human nature is a desire to enjoy, and we are at rest when we enjoy


ourselves.

The problem today, which is also why stress is on the rise, is that our desire
to enjoy grows from one generation to the next, and we thus need more
and different kinds of enjoyment to fulfill ourselves.

Likewise, since we all wish to enjoy ourselves more and more, we find
ourselves in a situation where we need to share with others, and it becomes
increasingly difficult to enjoy our lives.

As such, we become increasingly stressed.

Moreover, increasing stress coincides with more heart attacks, depression


and drug abuse. In other words, more stress equates to a higher probability
of disease.

It might appear as if stress indirectly influences disease, but stress is in fact


the main cause of disease. Every disease in the body, especially of the
internal organs like heart and lung disease, can be traced back to stress.

40
Stress follows us our entire lives, from the moment we leave our mother’s
arms until the moment we die.

As small children, we experience stress at kindergarten because we are


placed somewhere we do not want to be. Before the days of the schooling
system, children were raised by their mothers and grandmothers, and later
followed in the footsteps of their fathers’ occupations, keeping within the
family circle.

Today, we need to meet society’s higher standards. That is, we are raised
with examples of fierce competition in order to reach lavish wealth and
success, and are under constant pressure to keep up with today’s social
standards.

Situations where both parents work all day, neglecting their children, have
become commonplace. Such children are left in the hands of kindergartens
and schools from early morning until afternoon on a daily basis, an
environment which is itself very stressful for them.

By nature, children need to be raised within the family, or in a wider circle


that the children feel as their own family. The moment children are
extracted from a family environment and placed into kindergartens and
schools, they experience stress due to feeling insecure in their new
environment.

In order to find calm, safety and confidence, the children try to be like their
peers, seeking to “hide” among them.

After the initial stage of fitting in, when they feel accepted by their peers,
the desire to enjoy then continues pressuring them from within, making
them want to stand out.

They sway back and forth between their comfortable state where they fit in,
and an ambitiousness to express their pride and power. The bigger the ego,
the more they become willing to step outside of their comfort zone and put
themselves at risk.

These two poles of remaining in our comfort zones versus the desire to be
a prominent figure in society stay with us our entire lives, placing us under
constant stress.

41
In addition, the social and media influences that continuously bombard us
with competitive, materialistic, and individualistic images of success, i.e.
where being more successful is perceived as being stronger, richer, faster or
more unique than others in a variety of ways, add immensely to the stress
we feel, as it becomes increasingly harder to stand out in such a society.
Thus, rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, drug abuse and suicide all
increase together with rising stress rates.

Therefore, by understanding the nature of stress and how it is an integral


aspect of the society we are raised in, we can conclude that in order to feel
less stressed in the long term, there is a need for a solution not only at the
individual level, where we ask “What should ‘I’ do to feel less stressed?”

A comprehensive and lasting solution to reducing stress requires enhancing


our feeling of connection in society, so that we feel society like one big
family.

Essentially, the competitive, egoistic, materialistic and individualistic


paradigm we are in, which values the “stronger, bigger, faster and richer
individual,” needs to be inverted, so that we value contribution to society
more than individual success.

We would then be on course to creating more balanced lives for everyone,


reducing stress, and its related problems.

Bad things do not actually happen to us, but a certain kind of revelation
takes place that we have to correct.

When that revelation happens, it is always felt in a bad or negative way. We


then have to push through that negative state with our actions toward a
good and positive form, i.e. toward positive connection with others and
nature.

In other words, we perceive bad and negative events unfolding in our lives
in order to perform a correction. “Correction” means that we should aim to
build positive connections with others, reaching mutual understanding,
decisions, consideration and activity.
42
More broadly, human nature is a desire to enjoy, and this desire undergoes
a process of development from its initial broken state, which gives us the
perception of separation from others and nature, to a state where our
desire acquires a corrected form, where it enjoys from loving, giving to, and
being positively connected with others and nature.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains the initial shattering of this desire in the
story about the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, also known as the shattering
of the soul of Adam HaRishon. Our entire development leads us to a point
where we will need to correct this egoistic desire, and to acquire a form
that is similar to nature—altruistic.

When we understand what is behind our process of development and


where we are headed, we can then apply ourselves to move toward our
final state in a much more enjoyable, conscious and painless manner. In
short, we are headed toward a state of total interconnectedness and
interdependence, which the Kabbalistic texts describe as a state of “love
your neighbor as yourself.”

The sooner we can agree to such a goal and organize ourselves in society
to realize positive connections, then the sooner we will shift from a
development where we see increasing amounts of “bad things” surfacing in
our lives, to one where we become balanced with nature.

Then, when we balance with the altruistic and integral form that nature is
urging us to reach, we will experience a whole new level of harmony,
happiness, confidence and safety, together with full understanding and
sensation of who and what we are, and why we were put here in this reality.

Indeed, we often find ourselves asking why bad things keep happening to
us, especially when it does not stand to reason that we deserve all kinds of
negative outcomes from our seemingly positive or even just neutral
behavior.

43
What is the connection between our behavior and the outcomes we
experience in life?

To add salt to the wounds, we can find people such as criminals living
seemingly good lives, while people who worked hard to enter professions
that serve society could be suffering their entire lives, and we are then left
to ponder why life could be so unfair.

Our inability to make sense of this dilemma stems from our inability to
understand the complexity of our interconnectedness and
interdependence. We cannot grasp the rippling domino effect of our
behavior in the world, and have no clear or direct perception of the
responses to our actions.

Yet, every single one of our thoughts and actions influences the system in
which we exist, and they each enable a response. We simply cannot piece
together why things take place the way that they do.

We commonly try to find solutions to this dilemma by looking at our past


behavior, i.e. that it led to bad things happening later in our lives. However,
trying to piece together this dilemma in such a way is over-simplistic; it fails
to take several variables into account.

We thus need to understand the function of negative experiences in our


lives. Negative experiences serve to surface questions about their reason
and cause, so that we would wish to break out of our small individualistic
cells of perception and expand our perception to encompass a much
greater and fuller perception of reality. The more negative experiences we
encounter, the more prepared we become to balance ourselves with the
interdependent and interconnected system of nature that we live in. When
we start exiting our individualistic worldviews and entering more complete
and integral perceptions of the system in which we exist, then we start
understanding the extent of influence we have on our lives and our world,
and what behavior can be considered positive or negative.

We currently evaluate our lives according to extremely limited parameters,


and we will keep accumulating suffering until it will prod us to seek beyond
our current limitations. We can be compared to unsupervised children who
eat only sweets, without understanding the harm that we cause our body,
which will catch up to us later in life.

44
We should thus refrain from pointing our finger at some person, some
group or something else that we think causes bad things in our lives. We
should also refrain from digging into our past for actions that might have
brought about our current negative experiences.

What, then, should we do with bad things that happen to us?

We should accept their inevitability and use them to spark questions about
their cause and purpose: that they come in order for us to exit our
individualistic worldviews and enter a much greater and complete integral
one. We do so by better and more actively connecting with our
surrounding society. We should thus seek a society that encourages and
supports us to rise above the current level of our lives, where we have no
access to perceiving the complexity of the system we exist in, and enter into
a much greater perception and sensation of reality. We do so by positively
connecting to others, where we each develop attitudes of mutual giving
and concern toward one another, and by doing so, we gradually acquire a
new sense through which we feel life.

Through enhancing and enriching our connections to each other, we will


find that our lives become increasingly balanced and harmonious. Such is
the way to become truly happy, confident, safe and comfortable. In other
words, the cause of our life’s troubles is our incomplete perception that fails
to account for our interdependence, and the solution is in realizing our
interdependence with positive and altruistic connections.

By attaining newfound balance and harmony with the interdependent


system we are all parts of, we then reach the perception of every single
event happening in life as perfect, since we acquire a new spin on
everything that happens in life: that it is a means to rise above our current
narrow perception and enter into a much fuller and greater one. And a
much greater and fuller perception is one where qualities of love and giving
dwell in our attitudes to each other.

45
Before discussing ways of changing society, we should question what
changes society should acquire.

In our era, the needed change in society is a change of values, that instead
of valuing egoistic pursuits—to be more individually successful, wealthy,
famous and/or powerful—if we want a society that is full of healthy, happy
and confident individuals, then we need values of mutual responsibility,
consideration, cooperation and positive connection permeating society.

In order to reach such a change of values, we cannot implement this


change by ourselves. Rather, we need an outside influence to enable it.
However, we can persevere to reach such a change, and we need to
understand nature’s general tendency to increasingly connect us for that to
happen.

46
Outside of our perception and sensation, there is a single force of nature
that acts out of absolute love, and which takes every single detail of reality
into careful consideration.

It created and evolved many layers of the reality we experience, from


inanimate matter, through plant and animal life, and finally, us humans.

Therefore, in order to enable a change in society, we need to invite the


force of nature that creates and sustains all life, so that it operates on us
and guides our change to a new set of values that bring us closer to
balance with nature.

We simply need to gain more awareness about how nature works, how
human nature is an egoistic and self-centered form that opposes nature’s
general attribute of love, bestowal and connection, and how from the
negative pole of creation, we can invite the positive force into our lives, to
let it connect us, change our values, and likewise, our perception and
sensation of the integral reality we ultimately share.

If we viewed human society a single live organism, then what would we


see?

We would see that, in its current state of development, its immune system
is barely working, and its cells and organs, which should be sustaining the
body’s health, are deteriorating.

Personal, social, economic and ecological problems are all on the rise,
including depression, stress, loneliness, emptiness, anxiety, xenophobia,
drug abuse, suicide, income equality, poverty and climate change, and
although many people are trying to patch and treat these problems, the
efforts fail to solve the problem at its overarching cause.

What is the cause of all problems in human society?

It is the human ego, i.e. the innate calculative mechanism in human nature
that prioritizes self-benefit over benefiting others, which makes society’s

47
individual “cells” each pull to themselves more than giving to others,
bringing on the downfall of the entire organism of human society.

As cancer happens when cells take more than they need at the expense of
the body, so our society is currently made up of egoists each guided by an
enveloping egoistic paradigm that supports the idea of success as
becoming individually wealthy, famous and powerful.

That we are egoists is a nature-given situation, but the social influence and
public opinion that supports egoistic goals and values is what is wrong with
society.

Nature functions oppositely to the human ego; altruistically and according


to laws of interconnection and interdependence. It thus rejects our growing
ego, and the more we develop in our times, the more we feel pressured
between our growing ego that wants to detach from others, and nature’s
tendency to connect us all into a single whole.

Therefore, the more we develop today, the more we enter into an


increasing entanglement of complications, and it is all in order to bring us
to the realization that our egoistic nature stands behind all of our problems,
that it is an inherently evil quality, that we helplessly follow its demands to
try and fill it with self-aimed pleasure at the expense of others time and
again, and that any move to improve society requires first diagnosing the
ego as the cause of all our problems.

Then, when we reach a widespread realization of this common cause to all


our problems, we can start fixing it.

When we reach such an awakening, we will realize that there is no person,


group of people, or political or religious orientation to blame for our
problems. There is only our very egoistic nature, dwelling in each and every
one of us.

How can we then correct human nature, if it is the cause of all our
problems?

It is possible if we create an environment that supports the ego’s correction,


so that instead of receiving for self-benefit alone at the expense of others,
we would want to positively contribute and connect to others in order to
benefit them, without any “What will I get out of it?” intent.

48
It is against human nature to give and contribute to others, but if we
changed public opinion, our social and media influences, and also our
education, in order that we learn the nature of humanity’s increasing
interdependence today, how the human ego opposes our growing
interdependence and also why this is the cause of all our problems, and
that the way to resolve our myriad problems today is by correcting our
connections to each other—creating an environment that supports giving
and contributing to society, prioritizing values of mutual consideration and
responsibility over competitive and individualistic ideas of success—then
we would be on course to a monumental positive social transformation.

An effective solution to gender-based violence requires defining and


treating the problem at its deepest root: the inflating human ego that is
blowing out of proportion.

We need to start learning about the phenomenon of gender-based


violence at its deepest foundation and start seeing what we’d need to do
about it from there.

The Deepest Root of Gender-Based Violence: The Inflating Human Ego

Behind every violent act, behind every rape, behind every abuse lurks a
growing desire constantly demanding its satisfaction: the human ego, i.e.
the desire to enjoy at the expense of others.

The more this ego grows—and today it is reaching overblown


proportions—the less empathetic and considerate we become, and the
more we want to calm this potentially raging bull within us at any cost. The
problem is that it is not only in our hands to calm it down. Today, this ego
exists in a modern society of stress, anxieties and burdens that can prod it
into a frenzy at any moment.

Some people are naturally more phlegmatic. Others have weak nerves and
can snap at any moment. But aside from people’s characteristics, when we
are raised in a society that consistently projects examples of violence,
extremity, polarization and incitement to us from a young age, then the
moment that ego within us is provoked, it has all the ingredients to erupt
49
and let madness overpower any control threshold we thought we could
hold.

It was not always like this. In the past, the ego was smaller. When I think
back to my childhood, I remember that placid family atmosphere that was
so characteristic of the traditional family structure: my father would go to
work during the day and return in the early evening, my mother would run
the home, and the home was at the center of the family’s life. This is how it
was for most people.

Today, however, this is no longer the case. There has been a great decline
in the amount of traditional family structures. But beyond that, even where
the traditional family is in place, the home is no longer the center of family
life. It is now on the streets, the TV, the movies, the media, video games, in
the smartphone, on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other social media.
Our examples of traditional family relationships have been replaced by
examples pinned up by companies and media creators interested in
increasing their ratings, clicks and profits as opposed to providing good
examples for people to replicate in their lives. This is why we have lost
direction.

If it were possible, by disconnecting ourselves from the examples of


violence and other unnatural forms of human relationships in the media we
consume, we would already make a major improvement. In other words,
even by removing violence from our viewing habits, we would quickly see
violence, rape and abuse immensely decrease. However, the tendency is
pivoting in the opposite direction, toward an ultra-liberal approach where
we each become seemingly free to do whatever we want. We opened
Pandora’s Box a long time ago with this approach, and it is becoming more
excessive each day.

The Preparation and Learning Required to Solve Gender Violence

We can achieve the freedom for which we aspire, but freedom requires
preparation so that we can relate ethically to the amount of freedom we
get. Otherwise, freedom can easily lead to negative phenomena like gender
violence, rape and abuse. When we are allowed to do whatever we want,
yet regularly consume examples of violence, vulgarity and insensitivity, then
we increase the likelihood of imitating these examples. In other words,
instead of letting that potentially raging bull—egoistic human nature—
control us, we should learn how to tame that bull from the start.
50
The process of taming this bull, i.e. taking control of the human ego, which
should ideally start from our infancy, needs to consist of practical examples
of how people mutually and positively connect: parents, friends, boys and
girls, men and women, and all different parts of society. We need to grow
up learning how to relate to everyone, understanding what they do, how to
accept all kinds of people, and how to actively construct our attitude
toward people and phenomena in our lives.

Moreover, this learning should take place in groups.

Groups, we will discover, are the most efficient tool for controlling any
outbursts of the ego. By learning everything in connection with others, we
would feel much closer to each other.

There has indeed been an upsurge of violence recently in America. For


instance, murders in Chicago and New York are currently 50 percent higher
now than what they were at this time last year, and then there are also the
protests-turned-riots in Portland, which show no end in sight.

The deeper reason behind the violence is the alienation and estrangement
at the core of today’s American society—the feeling of not sharing the
same views, nationhood and ideologies with others—clashing with an
increased interdependence and interconnectedness that demands more
unification.

And we can expect the situation to get worse if the country’s divisions are
left untreated.

Instead of rummaging through the reasons for the violence, I’d like to shift
the emphasis to the solution…

The solution is that Americans need to work out how to live together.

On one hand, violence, racism and politically-fueled division extends far


back into America’s history, but on the other hand, it has never been as
extreme and widespread as it is today.

51
It is as if problems that were lurking in the shadows for many years have
exploded into the limelight, with much more resentment and hatred added
in the mix.

Therefore, in addition to inevitably dealing with the problems on a case-by-


case basis, there should be a more enveloping shift to develop mutual
responsibility and consideration in American society above the divisions
and differences.

What this means in practice is that every citizen should be cared for by
having a respectable living standard secured in exchange for their
participation in activities that aim to increase unity above the divisions.

Such a formula would let American society move in a new positive


direction, as it would be aligned with the interdependent nature of our
times.

As the past paradigm of materialistic individualism that America thrived on


transitions to a new era where success depends on more unity and
cooperation, the times are calling on Americans to emphasize what unites
them above their differences. If Americans fail to meet this new challenge,
then we can expect a historic decline of the superpower into a third world
country status.

For the time being, many people are focused on pointing out the perceived
shortcomings of the views that oppose their own, and would seemingly be
happy to destroy those who hold contrary views. But there is no effective
long-term solution in such an approach.

Like any live organism that is composed of many systems that have pluses
and minuses, conductors and resistors, we have to learn how to rise above
the level of our individual “cells” and “organs” that we exist in, and see the
whole organism to which we all belong. We would then see the need for
opposing opinions and their role in balancing society. However, more
importantly, we would see how the focus on unity above division is of
utmost importance in discovering a newfound social harmony.

Therefore, America’s positive thrust forward from its current divisiveness is


in each member of society internalizing the mutual dependence that all
Americans share. The more everyone feels the dependence that they have
on others, and likewise, the importance of their own influence on others,

52
then the more everyone will have to recognize both sides of the coin as
belonging to the same coin.

It is thus my hope that Americans will rise to the current test of the time
and start feeling the need to shift the emphasis to unite above the
divisions. Their positive future depends solely on this.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on August 22, 2020.

Hatred is an attribute unique to humans.

Human nature is a self-serving egoistic desire that considers its own benefit
before the benefit of anyone else.

The more we develop, the more our egoistic quality grows, and likewise,
the more we try to benefit ourselves at the expense of other people and the
ecology.

In other words, the more we develop, the more our hatred toward each
other increases.

While seemingly a negative quality, there is a positive flipside to the hatred


increasingly unfolding in humanity: the growing negative sensation serves
to lead us to a serious self-examination, where we will discover that we
need to change our egoistic human nature in order to survive, prosper and
be happy.

Outside our egoistic nature is nature in its positive, altruistic, loving and
giving form, which thinks and acts oppositely to the way in which we think
and act.

Therefore, if we act on our hatred, it merely shows our unawareness of


nature’s laws, and also our incongruence and imbalance with nature.

Genuine hatred thus reveals itself as we head toward love. That is, if we set
foot on a path to love each other as we love ourselves, as is the ultimate
law of nature, we will then start seeing hatred surfacing in us as a quality
that we need to fix in order to truly love others.
53
And why would we want to love others?

Whether we want to or not, nature is guiding us all to a state of absolute


love—nature’s fundamental quality. By aligning ourselves to love others
through building a supportive environment to love each other above the
rising hatred, we would then spare ourselves much suffering that would
otherwise emerge in the involuntarily-surfacing hatred.

Several events taking place in the world express the immense hatred
dwelling in humanity. We take sides against others in many areas of life,
and bridging our divides seems unthinkable.

Since we fail to implement any kind of education that guides our


understanding of how our egoistic human nature operates on us, dividing
us in order that we develop supportive ties above the divisions, then we fall
to the ego’s demands time and again, and hatred takes over in an unabated
fashion.

We need to learn how to fix our hatred’s source—the human ego—so that
we would know how to cover it with love.

If we take a status check of what is happening in the world right now, we


would see that we are in a very significant transitional era: one where we
increasingly become aware of the ego’s wickedness.

We feel worse and worse, more depressed, stressed, anxious and uncertain
about our future, but still are unaware of our negative sensations’ causes
and effects, and what we can do about it.

However, we will eventually have to reach a realization that our egoistic


human nature is a lever that we can “pull” in order to switch it to love.

Without the increasing hatred and negativity filling our lives, we would also
be unable to sense a much fuller sense of enjoyment in love, as the
increasingly unraveling evil within us adds more appetite and yearning for a
genuine sensation of love to emerge.

Yet, we need not wait for pain and suffering to spur on the recognition of
our egoistic nature as evil in order to want it to change.

There is a method of connection that we can implement in order to build


supportive ties, direct ourselves to love one another, and already start
54
connecting positively and accelerating the revelation of our hatred’s
source—the ego dwelling inside each of us—within a more powerful
envelope of love and positive connection that we construct with the
method’s guidance.

In short, we are sent hatred so that through our active efforts in building a
society that aims itself at loving one another, we could repair the hatred,
cover it with love, and by doing so, experience a new sense of harmony and
bliss spread throughout society.

55
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.

56
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.

We are made of egoistic material, where we primarily consider self-benefit


at the expense of others.

The more we develop, the more our egos grow, and in our era especially,
our egos have developed to such heights that we find it increasingly
difficult to fulfill ourselves.

Beyond our life’s essentials—food, sex, family and shelter—our egos make
us think that wealth, power and fame are important, so much so that many
people are willing to dedicate their entire lives in order to reach one or
more of those goals.

However, if we understood that beyond all of the corporeal goals we can


picture to ourselves, there is a more exalted spiritual goal awaiting us all—
one where we become awarded with an eternal soul, never-ending
fulfillment, a complete perception and sensation of reality, as well as
harmony and balance with nature’s altruistic quality—then we would see
the insignificance of corporeal pleasures, since they are transient and lead
to no lasting fulfillment.

It has been written about the spiritual goal by those who have attained it,
that if a person would experience even the tiniest amount of spiritual

57
pleasure, then he would be willing to give away everything he has in
corporeality for the sake of spiritual growth.

Spiritual pleasure, however, is hidden from us.

This is because, if it were readily available, then we would become attached


to it simply because it would be a much greater pleasure than everything
available in our world, and by doing so, we would exercise no free choice in
our spiritual pursuit.

We come to the spiritual path when we feel a certain kind of emptiness and
lack of fulfillment in our corporeal desires. As much as we fill ourselves with
food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, we keep finding
ourselves lacking, wanting something different, and eventually question
life’s meaning and essence.

Those with existential questions together with bitter experiences in their


corporeal desires are led to a spiritual search, where they check different
materials and groups seeking answers, ultimately, as to why they are alive.

If we reach the realization that we live in order to elevate ourselves to a


higher perception and sensation of reality where we attain our eternal soul,
then when the greatness of that spiritual goal illuminates as being of
utmost importance in life, we lose importance in corporeal goals of wealth,
power and fame.
We then develop a much more natural and balanced approach to
corporeality. We stop trying to extract all kinds of pleasures from
overinflated corporeal desires, and instead, operate above them with an
aim to reach the spiritual goal.

Human development is the development of positive connections upon our


innate differences and divisions.

Prior to the existence of humans, connections formed on inanimate,


vegetative and animate levels that paved the way for humans to develop
and connect.

58
For instance, particles connected into atoms. Amalgamations that could
sustain their connections continued living, while those that failed to do so
broke down and became obsolete.

On inanimate, vegetative and animate levels, nature maintains balance.

However, at the human level, where we hold a certain amount of


responsibility for our development, we see that we have made a lot of
mistakes and brought about a lot of suffering to ourselves, and imbalance
with nature.

Instead of focusing our development on connecting positively to one


another upon our divisive drives, we let such drives define our so-called
“development” until today.

As such, we have developed scientifically, culturally, technologically and


economically, i.e. in numerous superficial fields, but we have failed to
develop the most important aspect of our lives: our attitudes and
relationships to each other.

In the process, we set ourselves up in opposition to nature and experience


its side effects. Instead of becoming happier, healthier and more confident
social beings, we experience rising depression, stress, anxiety and
loneliness.

Nature shows us an example of how cells and organs function for the
benefit of the entire organisms that they inhabit and receive what they
need in order to operate for the whole organism’s benefit. If a cell receives
more than what it needs for the organism’s functioning, it becomes
cancerous and brings disease.

Human society today is like a cluster of cancerous cells, each prioritizing


self-benefit over benefiting others.

A shift to a healthier, happier and more confident human society requires a


shift in our priorities: that we will all prefer benefiting others over benefiting
ourselves.

We can also expect more and more events that will show us the extent of
our interdependence—with each other and with nature.

The coronavirus pandemic was the latest such event.


59
Therefore, as we head into the future, the more we positively connect to
each other, the better we will become equipped to deal with the changes
taking place in the world, as the extent of our connections will be the extent
of our balance with nature.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on May 17, 2020.

Humanity is currently living under the rule of its egoistic nature, i.e. a nature
that makes each person prioritize self-benefit over benefiting other people,
society and the ecology.

Moreover, humans are the only part of nature under egoistic control. The
rest of nature—from still matter through plant and animal life—is bonded
integrally by altruistic ties.

The human ego cuts us off from the sensation of nature’s altruistic quality,
making us disagree with thinking and wanting to benefit the system we
exist in. In other words, contrary to the way cells and organs act to only
receive what they need for their survival and give all surplus for the benefit
of the whole organism that they exist in, we think and want solely with
“What will I get out of it?” at the basis of our every calculation, which leads
us to even act detrimentally toward others in the name of personal gain.

Nature has implanted this egoistic modus operandi into us so that we


would eventually realize how it leads us to an impasse, and desire to
change our egoistic nature.

Therefore, a diagnosis of humanity at its current state of development is


that it is nearing such a revelation. At the moment, our egos make us
increasingly destructive to each other and to our planet, and we also
witness how nature becomes increasingly intolerant of our opposite mode

60
of behavior. In other words, we head deeper and deeper into a crisis, but
we have yet to reach such a depth where we will simply raise our hands and
wish for the right kind of change.

The coronavirus pandemic is a prime example of how nature reacts to our


rampant unabated egoism today. With the coronavirus, nature forced us to
become more cautious with each other, i.e. with the social distancing
conditions implemented globally. If we fail to upgrade our attitudes to each
other according to our own will, then nature sends us situations to do so
against our will.

However, I still see that we fail to draw the correct conclusions from this
situation we are now in. We have reached no understanding of the deeper
causes behind the virus and avoid responsibility on our behalf for its
spread. We merely await its end so that we can let our egos loose on the
world once again and remain blind to how nature will send us much more
difficult states the more we neglect self-transformation.

Until we reach the conclusion that our egoistic nature needs changing, we
will continue trying to exploit nature by all possible means, failing to
foresee the next smack nature will deliver us to once again hint at how the
way we are headed is incorrect.

I thus hope that we will wake up to this change sooner rather than later, out
of our own awareness, through learning how nature works, how we
function within nature, and by exercising how we can accelerate this fateful
change with our own efforts to invert our egoistic nature to an altruistic
nature in balance with nature.
When we eventually make that change, we will experience a completely
new world of harmony, happiness, peace and tranquility, and will look back
at our current state as a depraved one: the last throes of death of an
egoistic paradigm before our greatest ever transformation.

Rapid developments in marijuana legalization and standardization are


underway. Marijuana will be permitted in every form and dose, however
61
and wherever people please. You will be able to buy it in any store, as much
as you want. And it will come in any form you like: pills, coffee with
cannabis, cola with cannabis, and so on. Everyone will consume it.
Recreational use of the drug has already been legalized in many countries
and US states and is headed in that direction in many more.

The question is what will happen to society after marijuana legalization and
standardization?

Ultimately, nature wants to raise humanity to a higher state of


consciousness, one where we acknowledge our interconnectedness and
interdependence, and make practical moves to positively connect.
Therefore, nature will not let us stay calm, no matter how much we try to
legalize and standardize marijuana.

It seems as if legalizing marijuana will help make society calmer. Yet, it will
fail to relax us because we will proceed to a new form of suffering
afterward, which will be much more powerful than our previous forms; so
powerful that drugs will fail to provide any escape from them.

Psychoactive drugs have always been available to humanity but were not
used on a mainstream level. The reason is embedded in nature itself: it does
not want us to put ourselves to sleep. Nature guides us to higher and
higher levels of connection, and in our present world, we can see how we
have been pushed to live in a global world, with global technologies and
economies connecting us worldwide, yet our inner psychology has yet to
match the global level of connectedness that nature had led us too.
Therefore, due to increasing stress and other problems emerging from
humanity’s failure to match nature’s connectedness, we think of ways to
calm ourselves down, to escape from the world, and bring about drug
legalization as a way to calm the masses.

The tendency of drug legalization and standardization will continue until we


realize the reason for our need for escape from reality: that reality is
pushing us to connect, and since we have yet to upgrade our consciousness
to meet reality’s new demands upon us, we experience our tightening
connection as suffering. After realizing the reason for our state, we can then
proceed to work on our connection and correction of our attitudes to each
other. Meanwhile, drugs such as marijuana will help us reach this realization
by showing us that they provide nothing more than a temporary escape
from reality and solve nothing in the end.
62
Since nature controls us, it will not let us tune out or be semi-conscious. On
the contrary, it will shake up our minds and feelings in order for us to better
assess our situation. That is, these drugs will work against themselves: they
will not put us to sleep but will relax us in order to relax our egoism, and
then we will be able to soberly, objectively, above our egoism, assess where
we exist, what for, and how. By working on our connection, we will calm our
egos down and discover a much greater and more genuine form of
pleasure and happiness in our increasing positive connections to each
other.

63
In order to stop natural disasters, we first need to understand what causes
them, and then see whether and how we can stop them from their cause.

To understand what causes natural disasters, we need to understand that a


person’s thoughts and desires are at the highest level of all the universe’s
forces. Nature divides into inanimate, vegetative, animate and human
levels, where each successive level is qualitatively higher than the former.
Therefore, human thoughts, desires and intentions, when acting in
imbalance with nature, inflict the most harm on nature.

We humans are bearers of nature’s negative force since we are guided only
by the force of reception—egoism. Therefore, in order to experience a
positive response from nature, we need to balance our quality—egoism,
reception—with nature’s quality—altruism, giving. Our inclination to want
to receive everything for ourselves needs to shift to one of giving and
consideration of others. Our establishing of balance at the human social

64
level will have positive rippling effects throughout nature, and we will then
experience a positive response from nature, which would mean a stop to
natural disasters among them.

There are no such examples, because although I understand how people


can perceive nature as being cruel, nature is not cruel at all.

Nature is a quality of absolute bestowal and love, without a shred of self-


interest. When we feel nature in our opposite quality of egoistic self-
interest, then we experience the opposite end of nature.

When I was a child, my mother scorched me about getting low grades at


school. It made her anxious and distressed, but even though I experienced
her as cruel in those moments, she was in fact acting lovingly and caringly
toward me, wishing for me to develop as optimally as possible.

Nature is total altruism, and our quality is egoism. We feel opposite to


nature’s kindness and love to the extent that we think and act contrarily to
nature. This is the source for all of our negative feelings and suffering, and
it is why we perceive ourselves as living in a bad world.

Yet, nature does nothing bad. It holds a constant benevolent attitude, and
due to human nature’s opposition to nature in and of itself, we feel myriad
phenomena in life as bad and evil. We need not blame ourselves or nature
for this clash of opposites; it is simply a given situation that we were born
into.

However, we have been granted an egoistic quality in order to be able to


correct it and make ourselves as altruistic and complete as nature.
Moreover, the more we evolve, the more our ego grows, and the more we
feel our opposition to nature as one that causes greater and greater
suffering in our lives. This development is in order to lead us to a point
where we develop a sincere desire for self-transformation: to change our
egocentric self-aimed modus operandi into one that is balanced with
nature—altruistic, caring and loving. The process of changing ourselves to
become more like nature is called “the process of correction,” and we have
been given a method by which we can undergo this correction with more
awareness and understanding than if we were left to our own devices.
65
For the time being, however, we have no such awareness, and we are like
the child who does not understand why our parents are yelling at us.

We use all kinds of energy that we receive from nature at about 1% to 5%


of its potential productivity. This is because we relate to nature and use it
egoistically.

If we, however, treated nature altruistically, i.e. if we could work with nature
according to the same principle by which nature relates to us, in balance
with nature, then we could receive 100 percent of the desired energy from
nature in exchange for relating to nature completely with the same attitude.

Nature treats us altruistically. If we also related to the whole world, to all of


humanity, reciprocally, out of love, according to the principle “love your
neighbor as yourself,” then we could extract much more energy from
nature. As such, we would enter into balance with nature, and would
subsequently lack nothing.

By entering into a harmonious, integral relationship with nature, it would


react to us positively, and we would have no negative reactions from nature
as we do today. Presently, nature is seemingly reluctant to share with us, as
if it is obliged to release a small part of its energy resources to us. Yet, once
we reach equilibrium with nature, we will be able to receive inexhaustible
energy that is implanted in every atom. Thus, we should focus on how to
develop our attitudes to each other so that they become balanced with
nature’s attitude toward us, and as a result, experience nature’s most
powerful energy source: its very attitude of love and bestowal, without any
filters standing in the way.

Animals eat other because they instinctively follow nature's law of constant
renewal of life, where each following generation is born on the basis of the

66
previous one. It is a process similar to the substitution of used-up cells by
new ones in our body.

The law of any organism’s functionality, of its existence and development, is


based on an absolute integral interaction of its parts. Accordingly, every cell
takes care of the whole body's vital functions and health, sustaining the
body’s vitality.

In other words, each cell and organ automatically gives the body whatever
it needs. It even obeys orders to self-destruct due to its fulfillment of a
certain function and using up its resource. Its program switches off, and the
cell destroys itself. The general law of existence of a system, organism or
organ, controls all of its elements.

The same occurs to life cycles: unless we had to die in the previous life, we
would not be born in the next. There would be no development that drives
us toward something we do not yet know. It seems that there is nothing
good in this form of development. However, it does in fact lead to a bright
future.

Therefore, by eating a hare or a calf, the wolf fulfills nature's law. There is
no hatred between them. There is no love either. It is simply a realization of
the law of nature that sustains correct interactions between species.

The involvement of the “self” is out of the question. Vegetative and animate
elements of nature have no “self,” no sensation of “I.” It is remarkable how,
without the appearance of the self, there is a harmonious and wholesome
existence of vegetative and animate organisms or cells in the body.

However, the human being should introduce his desire and approval of this
law of nature, and his intention, into this harmonious system. If we attain
this understanding and willingly strive to participate in the integral
development and interaction, then we begin to understand nature. We
discover those parts and voids of nature that we do not currently perceive:
new dimensions and worlds where we exist totally differently, before birth
and after death, as parts of nature in our eternal state.

Kabbalah is called a secret science because it reveals these secret areas of


the universe where we exist but fail to currently perceive due to our
opposition to them. Our ego does not let us perceive images that
accompany us in a different dimension, yet they are real.

67
Everything depends only on the transition from our universal hatred (our
egoism) to love. Making this transition is, in fact, our only real problem.
Everything else that we experience as problems or crises in our lives is
rooted in our opposition to, or imbalance with, the system of nature we
exist in. By undergoing such a transition, our lives and our human relations
would then become simple and harmonious.

Love is a very complicated quality that needs to be taught. It is the


overriding engagement in the wisdom of Kabbalah. The main rule is "love
your neighbor as yourself" because by attaining such a quality, we attain
integral inclusion in the whole of reality.

One key lesson is that the pandemic is only an initial blow from nature, and
we can expect many more blows in more severe forms because the time
has come for us to undergo a major transformation: a shift in our entire
approach to life, from a competitive self-centered approach to one where
we share mutual responsibility and consideration for each other and nature.

The pandemic-charged changes we already see in society, from social


distancing conditions through to increased unemployment and falling
businesses, hint at how this change of our approach to life will have to
transpire.

Especially in the realm of work, we have built a society filled with businesses
and professions that we have no real need for.

Through the pandemic, nature started filtering out the nonessential from
the essential. Businesses that served our basic needs continued serving us,
while those we had no real need for became sidelined.

If we look at the animal sphere, we see how a certain amount of animals die
off, and others develop in their place, according to various changes that
appear in nature.

It is similar with us. We are parts of nature, and nature operates on us by


placing us in new conditions. Accordingly, nature adjusts the human
population and the emphasis of its activity.
68
Under the coronavirus’ influence, many people have become unemployed,
and it is because there is a prominent declining need for much of the
professions we once held. We can expect businesses and professions that
we have a real need for to continue, which is only about five percent of the
service sector that has developed over the last 70 years or so.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on August 20, 2020.

69
It is impossible to remain calm in any situation. Also, we do not have to
always be calm.

Nature develops us by constantly growing our ego. If we look at eons of


human development, we can see development from basic survival desires
for food, sex, family and shelter—desires we had as cave dwellers—through
the egoistic desires that appear when we develop as civilizations: money,
honor, control and knowledge.

The more the ego grows, the less calm we become.

Aggravation, agitation and stress are states that nature urges us to feel in
order to reach the recognition of our human ego as the cause of the
turbulence, and by doing so, develop a sincere new desire to rise above the
ego.

70
At this juncture, we need a supportive environment where we feel
encouragement and confidence in order to rise above the ego.

One aspect of such an environment is regular learning and activity aimed at


elevating us above the human ego, which shields us against any
aggravations that come to unbalance us.

In other words, by regularly calibrating ourselves in order to recognize the


ego as the source of our imbalance with our surroundings, and to rise
above the ego, we would need to strengthen our supportive environment,
which would in turn help us through any states we experience faster than if
we were left to our own devices.

We consider life as good according to what makes us feel good.

In our era, however, the overblown human ego—the desire to enjoy at the
expense of others—does not let us feel good. It causes rifts throughout
society. We see that the world is falling apart because nature’s integral form
increasingly wants to enter our world, and we in turn feel our opposition to
nature’s integral form. For example, the more we become connected
technologically and economically around the world, the more we also
experience growing depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and other
problems.

If we want to feel the goodness and pleasantness in our tightening


interconnectedness, we then need to change ourselves in order to become
more like the quality of nature itself: connected, giving and loving.
Otherwise, we will experience more and more problems stemming from our
egoistic form growing increasingly opposite to nature’s integral form.

We have entered a period of escalating pressure. It is also why the wisdom


of Kabbalah has become revealed in our time. Kabbalah explains how
nature works as a complex network of connections, and how we can
balance ourselves with nature by learning how to connect above our
egoistic drives, and by so doing, experience a better life.

71
We can be optimistic about the future if we observe how nature works on
us.

Nature is a live system that has created us, and which includes us within
itself.

The ways it operates is above our perception. That is, as we perceive only
the most self-serving information through limiting senses, nature, on the
other hand, has no self-interest, but takes care of every detail in reality with
utmost precision. Thus, our entire experience of life is embedded in nature.

We would thus be wise to examine how nature functions, and what


precisely it demands of us.

We do a great disservice to ourselves by viewing nature as mere matter and


interactions on inanimate, vegetative and animate levels, because nature
contains immense wisdom beyond our mind’s grasp. It acts with great
reason and consciousness, specifying what happens with every atom,
molecule, rock, plant, animal and human being.

Nature develops everything and everyone toward greater states of


connection. Accordingly, our penultimate destination is a state of absolute
unification in thought and desire among each other and with nature.

That is what should make us optimistic: that nature is guiding us to


perfection, and we need only participate in the process to actively connect
above our divisive drives. We would then experience the process we are in
positively and harmoniously.

If we assume that what we now see around us in the world is all there is, we
fail to account for much greater, more expansive and fulfilling states that
nature has in store for us.

Therefore, by learning how nature works, how it guides everything and


everyone toward an absolute state of connection, and by adjusting our
attitudes and relationships to enter into balance with nature’s tendency
toward greater states of connection, we can rise above myriad forms of
suffering that emerge from our imbalance with nature and start making
decisions and motions that lead us to a harmonious state.
72
With this optimism in mind, I give everything I can to disseminate this
message and a method to attain it to humanity, and hope that by doing so,
humanity will enter into a balanced connection with nature sooner rather
than later, thus sparing us all from much suffering in the process.

You can win the hearts and love of other people by loving them, which
means feeling their desires and doing everything possible in order to fulfill
them. You will then act toward them in a way that they like and enjoy.

As our society becomes increasingly interconnected and interdependent,


our good future depends on our development and sustenance of
considerate relationships.

Also, since our egoistic human natures continually grow, making it harder
for us to be considerate toward each other, then caring attitudes will
indeed become necessary skills that we will need to learn in order to survive
and prosper healthily as we head into the future.

Further supporting the idea of the need to develop considerate attitudes to


each other is that technology will become increasingly sophisticated, taking
over more and more of the jobs that people are required to do today. We
will thus have the ability to supply for our life’s essentials with much less
time and effort than we currently do.

So as more labor will shift from humans to machines, and more time will
free up, we will need to learn how to get a grip on our growing egos—to
learn how to manage them so that they will not lash out and harm others,
and also to learn how we can develop mutually considerate and positive
relations above our egos.

By exercising positive relations as a new skill that we regularly develop and


sustain, we will discover a whole new kind of harmonious social life that we

73
cannot currently envision. It will emerge not only from our motions to
connect above the ego that moves in an opposite divisive direction, but our
revamped social connections will surface the force of connection that
dwells in nature, since we would then be more balanced with nature.

We would then experience much more satisfaction, happiness, confidence


and good health in our lives.

74
Our universe is a thought. Our world is a thought. We live in thought.

Our perception constantly develops, and the more it transforms, the more
changes we observe in the world.

It is very significant to note that we can control our thinking. Why is that so
significant? It is because by controlling our thoughts, we can create a
certain kind of world to live in.

On the surface, our thoughts seem involuntary. However, if we pay closer


attention, we will see how they appear as a result of our environmental
influences.

We imagine to ourselves all kinds of visions, sounds, smells, tastes and


feelings; thinking thoughts and ideas inputted from our environment.

What the environment projects, we think about in one way or another.


75
Therefore, we would be wise to take caution with what and whom we
surround ourselves, since our positive or negative thoughts—and thus,
world—will be influenced by the kinds of inputs we receive from our
environment.

Positive influences would portray examples of unifying communication and


values of mutual responsibility and consideration:

 People discussing problems and reaching resolutions that


unity is more important than their conflicting opinions, even
though they each feel adhered to their differing opinions.
 Art, entertainment, media and events that promote values of
mutual responsibility and consideration.

Today’s divisive messaging filling mass media spreads swathes of divisive


thoughts in society, and these negative influences and thoughts give us a
picture of our world where we see hatred abounding more in more in
society. Also, those delivering divisive messages throughout the media
believe that it serves them to do so, but on the contrary, it acts to both
theirs and society’s detriment.

We have reached a major transitional point in history where we experience


crisis on one hand—polarizing attitudes tearing society apart—while on the
other hand, we increasingly feel the negative effects of living divided.

In addition, today we have the means to unite above division: to implement


a method of connection that has the capability to secure our livelihood for
generations, as well as raise us to a completely new kind of perception and
sensation of our world. In other words, in order to feel that we live in a
perfect world, we need only figure out how to unite above our divisive
drives, and there is a method available that can unlock this revolution in
human attitude and perception.

A central aspect of this method is environmental influence. By taking


charge of our environment—choosing the kinds of social, media and
educational influences that we absorb—we can guide our thoughts to think
about creating a perfectly unified society, which “clicks” into balance with
nature’s interconnectedness, and by doing so, experience total harmony.

76
Satan is the human egoistic force, i.e. the desire to enjoy at the expense of
others, which comprises the nature of each and every person.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says a lot about this force in books such as the
Torah and The Zohar. For instance, the word “Satan” connects to the same
root as the Hebrew word “Soteh,” which means “deviation,” and “Masit,”
which means “incitement.” It is a force that diverts a person from the
correct path—one of positively connecting to others in mutual love and
bestowal.

This force called “Satan” is rooted in every single person and it is impossible
to rid ourselves of it. The human ego has many different manifestations, but
specifically the one that diverts us from positive connection among each
other is called “Satan.”

In order to become freed from its control over us, we need to actively
engage in our society by building positive connections upon it.

This force will always exist and will constantly generate discord between us.
Yet, when we achieve a positively-unified state, then all the satanic forms
that held us back will be added to our efforts to positively connect and will
then serve to increase the positive force of connection between us.

Precisely due to the human ego’s constantly-running motor that tries to


manipulate us at every moment—making us want to detach from each
other instead of connecting, and sinking us deeper and deeper into
ourselves instead of applying efforts to exit ourselves and connect with
others—then thanks to this ego, we will eventually get sick of it, a state
called “the recognition of evil,” and will then readily drive ourselves to come
closer to each other.
At that time, Satan will become a positive force. It is ultimately what will
help us reach an understanding of our need to connect and the correct
form that our connection needs to acquire.

77
When discussing reincarnation, we need to understand that our bodies are
animalistic organisms that live and die as animals. They get born, endure
periods of growth, maturation, death, decay, and then once again retire to
their basic elements.

Throughout this animalistic life-and-death process, our internal qualities


remain untouched. These internal qualities are the soul.

The soul can be thought of as a field where we are all connected in a single
thought and intention. The soul’s qualities are omnipresent outside the
sights, sounds, smells, touches and tastes that make up our current
perception.

Reincarnation is the process of the soul’s appearance in new bodies time


and again. It is a process that kabbalists have observed and tested for over
5,000 years.

Kabbalists outline the process of reincarnations in their texts that describe


the structure and processes of reality. What Kabbalah adds, however, is not
only descriptions about reincarnations and how they function within nature,
but more significantly, Kabbalah provides a method by which any person
can rise above the corporeal perception of the world—what we perceive
and process through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, touch and
taste—and enter into the perception and sensation of the eternal soul.

And the most significant aspect about this method is that it is done while
the person is alive in their current body. In other words, Kabbalah explains
how reincarnation works not from a theoretical perspective, but from the
practice of anybody who wishes to implement its methodology.

While alive in our current bodies, we can learn how to rise above them—in
our perception and sensation—in order to discover the soul. Kabbalah is a
practical method that lets any of its students discover such a reality. Those
who progress in their soul’s attainment using the method of Kabbalah
attain knowledge about their reincarnations, not merely theoretically, but as
practical experience of an inner journey to an increasingly expansive reality.

78
First, what is the evil eye? In principle, the evil eye is the negative effect of
negative thoughts from other people. Our thoughts indeed play a major
role in our lives, and we are influenced by negative thoughts that others
have about us.

The question then becomes how can we protect ourselves from such
negative thoughts about us, the evil eye?

On this point, several people believe that they can protect themselves by
wearing or using various amulets. But no objects protect us. They can
provide psychological comfort, but they do not change reality. They fail to
stop people’s negative projections onto us.

The way to truly protect ourselves from the evil eye—negative thoughts
from others—is by projecting positive thoughts onto them. By thinking
favorably about others and doing good to them, we project positive forces
toward them, and our projection of positive energy protects us.

We can thus rid ourselves of negative influences and find better luck,
blessing and success in our lives by thinking favorably about others. Doing
so enables us to rise above negative influences, including the evil eye.

In short, think positively about others and you will find a very powerful,
exalted and trustworthy form of spiritual protection.

The third commandment, “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your
God, in vain,” means that we can act with the force of the Creator, i.e. the
force of love and bestowal, only as much as we resemble that force. In
other words, to the extent that we become as loving, caring and giving as
the force of the Creator, which has no intention for self-benefit whatsoever,

79
and to the extent that we unite with that force, then only on that condition
can we use it.

The prohibition to use the force of the Creator for self-aimed purposes
equates to the impossibility to do so. That is, it is impossible to draw the
Creator’s influence in order to make ourselves rich, famous and/or powerful
at the expense of others.

The Creator guides our development in order for us to reach a proper


request or prayer, which means that instead of asking the Creator to
change something in Himself or in the world to benefit us, we instead ask
to change our egoistic nature in order to become as altruistic, loving and
caring as the Creator. We can and do ask for all kinds of self-aimed
purposes on the way to the correct request, and it is also desirable that we
do so, but it is the request to become as loving and giving as the Creator
that we are being developed toward—the true prayer that the Creator will
ultimately grant.

Dr. Michael Laitman is a global thinker, kabbalist and scientist who has
dedicated his life to the goal of facilitating a global transition toward a
peaceful and harmonious world. In his relentless pursuit of this objective,
Dr. Laitman has become the world’s most prolific teacher and creator of
media on self, social and spiritual transformation. To date, he has authored
more than 70 books, translated into more than 40 languages. Dr. Laitman
teaches live daily lessons translated into over 30 languages; he has
recorded thousands of shows for the TV and Internet, and has written
thousands of articles and social media posts that have been published daily
in over 40 languages.

The combination of his academic background in hard sciences and


humanities, his research in the field of education, and his visionary
perspective for society make him a sought-after speaker, lecturing in a vast
number of conferences on global issues, Kabbalah and science around the
world.

80
He has appeared and been published in several media and academic
outlets, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg TV,
The Larry King Show, Fox News Radio, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, The
Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, Algemeiner, World Futures (Taylor and Francis),
and many others. He is also a regular opinion columnist at Newsmax and
Israel Hayom, and a blogger at The Times of Israel.

Dr. Laitman is the founder of the ARI Institute and the Bnei Baruch
Kabbalah Education & Research Institute, KabU’s parent organization, and
holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Kabbalah, and an MSc in Biocybernetics. He
was also a student and personal assistant of the late Kabbalist Baruch
Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (Rabash) for 12 years.

The 50 Big Q&As: Kabbalah, Spirituality, Life Advice, and More is a


collection of 50 of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman's answers to questions
that were asked on the website Quora between 2019 and 2022.

The topics range widely from direct questions about the wisdom of
Kabbalah, to broader questions about spirituality in general, through to
requests for advice and solutions to issues on personal, social, ecological
and global scales. Moreover, a section dedicated to the coronavirus is
included due to the pandemic’s prominence during most of the time when
Dr. Laitman provided these answers.

Reading this book should provide the reader with a broad perspective of
how the wisdom of Kabbalah holds an all-encompassing solution to the
problems humanity experiences—by diagnosing them at their root, and by
providing wisdom and a method for attracting a new positive force into our
lives that can bring about harmony, peace, balance and happiness to
anybody and everybody.

81
82

You might also like