After the coronavirus epidemic, the world will become different and new. The virus came in order to clean out all the garbage from us. There is nothing harmful in nature. The virus makes room for goodness to appear.

All the garbage that fills the human society we have built will be washed away and will open the opportunity to fill our relationships with kindness and love, building a beautiful bright world for our children and grandchildren.

Let us hope that we can do this, that we will not drag all the hatred and competition into the new world, i.e., the behavior by which we destroy the globe and doom ourselves to death from climate disasters and wars. We are capable of building a new world right now.

Governments are now investing billions of dollars hoping to return to the past. But God forbid we return to our former state. I do not think this would be good for any country. After all, even before the virus, we were already in crisis facing the threat of war, financial and industrial collapse. The confrontation between America, Russia, China, and Europe grew.

We should not return to the old world; there was nothing good in it for citizens, countries, the army, finance, industry, or trade. We devastated the globe pumping out all the resources from it. We must not allow even thinking about returning to the world of yesterday; only a madman can think of that.

No one enjoyed such a life; we deceived ourselves as if we were doing well. But what was good about it? What have we seen in life? Now is the time to cleanse human society from all the garbage it was clogged with. As we filled the oceans with plastic and radioactive waste, so did we litter human society.

We need to build a new world, a good one. Let this virus help us think and realize where we ended up. Compared to the problems that threatened us before, today’s epidemic is simply nothing. It is a great mercy of the Creator that He corrects us in such a gentle manner.

Never return to the old world—only strive forward, toward a new world in which there will be no work for ten hours a day, many hours of idle time in traffic jams, abandoned children, and life in perpetual debt. Let us all together take one step forward and not return to the old world. Let us consider how we can move only forward, and above all, think about new relationships.

We are now home in quarantine and we must come out as new people in order to start connecting with each other in a new way. What is the new way? While we are forced to stay at home, we will get a good piece of a new upbringing for living in a new world, in a new society. Everyone understands that this is necessary, so let’s do it. Otherwise, what kind of world will we leave our children and grandchildren?
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/19/20, Selected Highlights

Stages of Development of Humanity: Helplessness and Fear

Question: What stages in our sensory development must we go through? For example, first indifference, then fear, then helplessness, and so on.

Answer: Helplessness works very well. After all, when you are helpless and suddenly begin to feel that you have only one way out, meaning to support each other, then nothing else is necessary.

We are completely dependent on nature which surrounds us. It can do anything with us, except one thing: If we get closer to each other, we will come into good contact with it, and then we will act on each other mutually, nature on us and we on nature. That is when we will be integrally connected by positive connections among each other and with nature.

Comment: I communicate with many people and see that the stage of indifference is already over. When coronavirus first appeared in China, there was complete indifference abroad. Now there is a stage of fear because this is already in many countries.

My Response: I do not think this is already the stage of fear. First of all, people still have food.

Fear is when I see that I will soon run out of food, fear because medical services can no longer cope with so many patients, fear because I just do not know what will happen to me, to my neighbors, let alone to my job and everything else.

In addition, we will run out of the funds to pay people and no one will accept this money in stores because there will be nothing to sell, meaning nothing for which to charge.

When a person can see such states with eyes full of fear, then generally the person is ready to say, “Yes, Yes, I agree to positive interaction with others!”
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus Is Changing Reality, Part 4,” 3/12/20

Question: It is written in the Torah that when the Jews descended to Egypt, they passed seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Is it possible to compare the seven years of famine with the descent; and seven years of plenty with an ascent?

Answer: In a manner of speaking, yes, although it is more intense and more mixed up these days.

Comment: It turns out that when a person studies Kabbalah and everything seems fine, then one is in ascent with almost no feeling of descent; these are the seven years of plenty. This person then begins feeling a certain dryness without any desire for the spiritual. In general, what will this state give me in this world?

Some other methods at least help somewhat such as a person gets more money, health improves, etc.

My Response: Other methods do not oblige you to destroy egoism. They do not humiliate you. On the contrary, you rise and grow up. And here you reach a state where you are just a zero. Who am I? What am I? For what reason? This is a problem.

This is why you need a group. You have to do it all the time, make an ironclad schedule for yourself, grab onto your friends, and they grab onto you, and so mutually pull each other out, climb and not just go along a bumpy road, but climb a mountain together. This is possible in a group. You will then quickly reach the goal.
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From a KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/27/19

The Times of Israel published my new article “When Will the Coronavirus Pandemic End?”

We are not used to the coronavirus. We have no idea how we will come out of it and where we will head from here.

If anyone thinks that it will pass in a few weeks, it won’t. We are in a new state that will endure the summer and head into the winter afterward.

When will this pandemic come to an end?

It will come to an end when we will improve human connections. To understand why this is so, we require deeper awareness of how nature works.

Before the coronavirus closed in on us, we acted out of a steroid-pumped desire to profit from one another in order to each fulfill self-serving interests.

Our concern for other people and our planet was overshadowed by a concern for ourselves. As such, our self-concern made us look at nature and other people solely through a lens of how to use them in order to benefit ourselves maximally.

Nature thus needed to teach us a lesson. And it did, in a very dramatic, cunning, caring and rigorous manner.

We looked like siblings fighting over our toys, and then nature, like a strict parent, ordered us to stop our quarrels, go into our separate rooms, think about how we were misbehaving, and how we should behave toward each other when nature lets us out again.

I thus hope that we will treat the period we are in seriously, that we will use the time we now have to realize our tight interconnectedness and interdependence among each other and with nature.

The coronavirus helps us see just how equal we are. It makes no distinction between rich and poor, boss and worker, famous and unknown — we are all equal in the face of this blow.

I understand the complications we have in seeing all people as equal, because we have been raised to categorize and class people in certain ways, but we have no choice: Nature shows us through this virus that it considers us all as equals, and we would be wise to try and see ourselves the same as how nature does.

Even multi-billionaire elites who escaped to their private islands and underground bunkers are still unsafe from the coronavirus. The virus appeared in many places where we still have no understanding of how it could have possibly done so. Therefore, even in such getaway areas, people are prone to the virus as is everyone, because there is a completely different reason for the virus’ presence than we can currently comprehend.

Therefore, the sooner we relate to everyone as equal — caring about all people in the world as much as we care about ourselves — we will then very quickly rise above this blow nature sent us, and progress to more and more connection among each other in calmer and more peaceful conditions.

Question: Are there any statistics on points in the heart per capita today? For example, in Sochi there are 300,000 people. How many more people do we still have to discover there with a point in the heart?

Answer: You just answered your own question: 300,000. Only this won’t happen immediately but gradually and in layers. First, individuals more sensitive to the sense of the meaning of life or its absence will open up, then less sensitive ones, etc., until the most insensitive will say “What is the meaning of life? We want to reveal it.”

They will say so because they will feel a sense of eternity without fulfillment. Indeed, on one hand, the feeling of eternity, and on the other hand, the lack of fulfillment that causes a terrible longing in a person.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/9/20

We see that the role of women is growing in the modern world: women are becoming stronger and gaining more and more influence. They are more in control of their desires and more goal-oriented.

The weakness of women is in the fact that they need male support to realize their goals. But as soon as women receive such support, they are able to complete an execution that men are incapable of.

I hope that in the future women will have a greater access to world leadership in the correct and natural cooperation with men. The world will then cease to be as primitive and corrupted as it was when led by men while women were staying at home taking care of children and households. We see that what is happening now is the opposite: the further the world moves toward the end of correction, the more power women gain.

Every man is afraid of his wife. It is because a woman takes care of the house, she rules it. It is a characteristic feature of our time. Rabash joked, saying about someone: “This is a righteous man; he is not afraid of anyone except the Creator and his wife.” And there is truth in it indeed.

Now in many cities women have been elected mayor. Why not? If a woman can control a house, then she can well control a city. A man is more distracted and not very suitable for this role. A man is stronger, but a woman is more reasonable and able to support different systems at the same time.

Just as she copes at home with all her responsibilities at the same time: laundry, meals, children, and a thousand different things on top of it; and everything is in order. Try to remove a woman from the house so that a man runs the whole house alone, and within a week the apartment will turn into a garbage dump.

So it is written: “A woman is a house.” But is not a country and the world our home? A woman lacks only male support, and everything will be settled. I am sure that if women were at the head of all governments, they would establish peace in the world. No matter how difficult it would be for women to agree with each other, they would come to an agreement, because a woman is ready to agree and incline herself for the sake of achieving peace.

Men and women should feel like equal partners, each one reasonably perceiving their role and knowing that if, by virtue of the qualities given to us by nature, we replenish each other to one complete perfection, then this will be a correction.

It is written in the book “Sefat Emet,” in the portion Pinchas “About Adam it is written that two creations were created, that is, it is in man’s power to attract the glow from the future world. Male power draws the soul from the upper world, and female power completes the action of correction in this world.” A woman is a vessel receiving the illumination, and the strength of a man is in order to attract this glow from above for the sake of bestowal, that is, by means of intention.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/20, Lesson on the Topic “International Women’s Day”

The Times of Israel published my new article “What Will Happen to Israel during the Coronavirus Pandemic?”

As the coronavirus spreads around the world, making entire populations feel small in its presence, conditions have been set by which humanity can undergo a major shift from its emphasis on the self-concern of individuals and nations, to an emphasis that is more balanced with nature—where we all consider humanity’s benefit.

And indeed, many nations’ citizens have exemplified tremendous mutual responsibility in aligning with the new conditions. In particular, China’s people have carried out their government’s regulations with great care and strictness, and they already show signs of recovery from the crisis.

Discipline and mutual responsibility of a country’s citizens in response to governmental lockdowns, travel restrictions and social distancing measures is indeed key to recovering from the pandemic. There are such countries that have a characteristic disciplinary quality, China being one of them, also Germany, where I expect those countries to recover sooner than others due to their diligence in maintaining their government’s guidelines.

Where is Israel in this process? Israel is a completely different animal.

Even in the face of a crisis that corners everybody, Israel—both at the governmental level, where its leaders show no motions toward exiting the political deadlock, and also on a societal level, where large segments of the population ignore health department guidelines to avoid large gatherings—demonstrates itself as the last nation in queue to overcome its differences and join its forces in the presence of a greater threat.

Israel’s reluctance to band together even during a global pandemic exemplifies what the Torah has written about the nation, that the people of Israel are a “stiff-necked people”[i] who follow the “stubbornness of their evil hearts.”[ii] In other words, the egoistic human nature residing in every person—which the Torah describes as “evil,” since it leads people to harm others in its emphasis on self-benefit over benefiting others—is distinguishably bigger in the people of Israel.

It is not that Israel is unorganized in its reaction to the pandemic. Due to Israel’s extensive experience and preparedness for war situations, its systems are always on guard to respond quickly to emergency situations. Thus, Israel’s rapid response to the coronavirus has nothing to do with its citizen’s level of mutual responsibility, but is merely due to Israel’s need to coordinate immediate responses to its neighboring countries’ war moves.

Also, in relation to restrictions imposed by the government, we still see certain segments of the population ignoring the guidelines and continuing to gather. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that by the end of April in Israel, the number of people infected by the coronavirus could reach 1 million, which would mean around 10,000 fatalities, if its residents fail to uphold the restrictions.

Therefore, in the near future, we can expect to see the outcome of countries’ populations that successfully apply efforts to protect themselves, and those that fail to do so. For the time being, Israel shows signs of setting itself up for a major spread of the virus. For instance, while Israel’s Ministry of Health sets guidelines, it is a pity that they are not enforced more assertively in order to better restrict the virus’ spread.

In short, we need to isolate ourselves from each other in order to stop the virus’ spread, for a short period of time, because it is indeed expanding in every direction.

I myself nearly never leave my room, and if I do, I make sure to maintain a two meter distance between myself and others, exactly as the Health Ministry guidelines stipulate. I do so because I witnessed first-hand the example of my teacher, Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (the Rabash), seeing how he followed government regulations and recommendations in a very exacting manner. He accepted conditions set by the government as if they were laws of nature, because he had contact with the complete system of reality, and saw how all is controlled from a single force that passes down rules and recommendations for the public to follow through the world’s leaders and experts.

Therefore, for Rabash, it was not merely government officials that he was obeying, but the higher force of reality. Likewise, today, from above there are conditions set for us to socially distance ourselves for our own protection and because we endanger others if we fail to do so. As such, we would be wise to follow such guidelines.

If we manage to sustain the social distancing conditions, then, as I have written and spoken about extensively, we can make optimal use of our time in order to learn about nature’s interconnectedness and interdependence, about how we are inseparable parts of nature, and that in order to experience a harmonious response from nature instead of pandemics and other problems, we need only positively connect above our differences.

In other words, while nature has sent us to our respective rooms, we should ideally think about how we can create a new atmosphere in society, where we think about benefiting others over personal benefit. If we succeed in doing so, then we will experience a whole new kind of harmonious reality the likes of which we have never before seen or felt.

[i] “’I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.’” (Exodus 32:9-10)

[ii] The Lord said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: ‘Listen to the terms of this covenant and follow them. From the time I brought your ancestors up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, “Obey me.” But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts. So I brought on them all the curses of the covenant I had commanded them to follow but that they did not keep.’” (Jeremiah 11:6-7)

Question: One of the problems of modern times is that children hate their parents. There are many such cases. Children leave their parents, neglect them. These poor parents die alone despite the fact that they have many children. This is happening all over the world. Why did this happen?

Answer: We are rising from the level of beastly egoism to the level of spiritual or human egoism. But being human already means a spiritual level that does not exist in our world.

Therefore, we are losing the beastly connection that we had between us when parents lived together with their children, they would bring a bride, bring a groom or go to the groom, etc. And everything was one household.

Question: Could they live in the same house?

Answer: Yes. Even in the same room. Everything was so simple. Now all of this is changing because egoism is changing in our world.

Question: In other words, egoism enabled us to do this?

Answer: Yes. This is beastly egoism. And now, it begins to grow. It begins to push us to the next level of development. And therefore, we no longer understand the beastly kind of existence. Our children certainly do not understand it.

They are in such a state that they do not understand why they need to be attached to their parents. Or, I think that parents should spend their whole life with me. Why did they give birth to me? As long as they live, they must think of me. Or, if they are not concerned about me, so be it. I just leave them.

Question: How can a child feel this way toward his parents?

Answer: But he does not feel.

Question: He does not feel any pain, anything at all?

Answer: He does not. Because he has outgrown his beastly egoism and does not feel any connection with his parents, does not feel that he must help them, support them, think about them, and so on. Do not imagine something that does not exist. You cannot bring this back.

Lately, this is all dying out and it does not exist any more. That is, if you help your children, then they need you. You can be close to them. If you stop helping them, they do not need you. This is how it happens.

Comment: The only thing that bothers me is that you are generalizing. There are also normal relationships.

My Response: I am talking about the tendency of nature. This is why I am generalizing.

Question: So, what is next?

Answer: In our generation, parents are still able to give something, to direct, to leave children their possessions, and so on. In the next generation, however, there will be a breaking.

There will be such a relationship between parents and children that if they have the same spiritual goals, they will be somehow connected through them. If not, people will forget about their parents altogether. And frankly, parents will also not think about their children.

Question: What will parents think about?

Answer: How to spend time quietly with their elderly friends.

Question: With dogs and cats?

Answer: Yes. All kinds of game clubs will open; say, clubs for playing dominos or something else.

Question: What is good about this?

Answer: Nothing. A person must simply understand how he should be connected with others today. This is a completely different system, not a system of beastly corporeal connections.

Question: Is this not a parent-child system?

Answer: This is a system when parents and children, each individually, reveal the common goal. Then this goal connects them together.

Question: What is this goal?

Answer: This goal is to attain the meaning of life. For parents, children, and grandchildren. It is always one. If they reveal it and attach themselves to it, then they feel the need to be connected with each other and to help each other in this.

Question: What common purpose of life are you talking about? If parents have one goal with the children?

Answer: Parents will then be able to push their children toward the correct goal. Then the connection between them will be both corporeal and spiritual—for the revelation of the Creator between them.

Question: What is the revelation of the Creator?

Answer: The revelation of the Creator is the revelation of mutual connection and love.

Question: Only between them?

Answer: To begin with.

Question: You mean in this cell: children and parents?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Don’t they want to reveal this now?

Answer: They do not want to. Has anyone told them about this? Has anyone directed them toward this?

Question: Doesn’t their natural relationship suggest that someone has told them?

Answer: Of course not.

Comment: You are tough today.

My Response: I am not harsh. This is what is unfolding in the world. Am I harsh? You made the world this way.

Comment: But this truth you are now saying, I can imagine how many comments there will be.

My Response: I am for not hiding this truth. On the contrary, I suggest revealing it so that people can see what a low state they are in and what it leads to.

Question: What conclusion should a person draw after your harsh words: that there will be a breaking between parents and grandchildren and children, and that this is natural?

Answer: If they do not find a common goal, there will be nothing that connects them. Nothing at all.

Question: Are you calling on them to seek this common goal?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman,” 1/6/2020

Question: To what extent can a rhythmic “tango” with the friends and with the Creator help us achieve the internal unity and the feeling of the Creator?

Answer: When we try to unite between us in the center of the circle, phenomena of closeness and distancing, closeness and distancing, naturally appear in different attributes, qualities, and quantities.

The most important thing for us is to try to yearn and aspire for this. Actual attainment is less important. The yearning is more important. The Creator responds to our desire and what is important are our efforts and not the fact that we seemingly attain something.

When we make efforts, we must also ask Him, which means include Him in our actions, as a partner. By yearning for the center of the circle and at the same time also asking the Creator to be with me, to help me, to sharpen my senses, to push me toward the friends and the friends toward me, I constantly want to find the center of the circle together with the friends and with the Creator, and the Creator constantly evades us, and we constantly try to find Him.

This is what the search for the spiritual attribute that is not in us comes down to. But it is actually this way when ten egoists try to connect in one point that we reveal it. The spiritual attribute is created in this point between us and we reveal the Creator in it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 1/12/20

Thrive Global published my new article: “The Birth of a New World”

The new positive reality we can expect after the coronavirus crisis

FILE PHOTO: A trader wears a mask as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as the building prepares to close indefinitely due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in New York, U.S., March 20, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

Uncertainty, fear and anxiety are the agents of massive contagion when people face a sudden and drastic shift like the one we now experience with the coronavirus pandemic, but the outbreak is actually a prelude to a profound positive change. The word mashber (crisis) in Hebrew means “the place of birth.” This breakdown actually signals the beginning of something new.

Similarly, in the works of Hippocrates, the term “crisis” was applied to the end of an illness. Although in order to experience a new beginning, we need to overcome a transition period that might be painful and dramatic, as with labor pains. The world is coping with strong contractions set off by COVID-19 in every possible area of human society, as the planet can no longer put up with the person’s attitude toward nature.

“The crisis is helping us attain that level of awareness—where we start feeling as parts of a single system, one mechanism. Within the circular structure in which we exist, only together can we give birth to a new reality, to a higher, positive degree of humanity.”

Michael Laitman

The Purpose of Creation

Creation’s plan is to elevate humanity to a new level of existence. Thus, the blows currently affecting humanity are in fact tremendous forces from nature to protect and heal itself, showing us what we do wrong: caring only about ourselves to the detriment of others—a misdirected human ego. We will understand its message by trying to become an integral part of the ecosystem—to which we all belong—instead of misusing and sabotaging it.

What we now perceive as an unbearable situation is, in fact, an accumulation and intensification of numerous crises on multiple levels we have been amassing for a long time, not only ecologically, but also financially; between couples, families and people; in every aspect of our lives. The epidemic did not arrive by chance, it serves a purpose: to cure our disconnection and imbalanced relations that harm nature.

Rethinking Our Priorities

We have built our world in such a way that we have become modern-day slaves, working 12-hour days, commuting back and forth. Children hardly spend time with their parents. The governments have printed money and created debt, and society has created piles of unnecessary products. The virus’ appearance has forced us to scrutinize what we have in this world and ponder the question: what do we live for? Is it to make money? Or is it to have children and die? We have to go through a process of appraisal in order to find answers.

It would be naïve to think that the transition to a new reality would be light and easy, but the passage must take place. Thousands of lives are being lost while the global economy might be doomed to collapse. Thus, it is hard in these circumstances to foresee light on the horizon. Already thousands of years ago, the wisdom of Kabbalah referred to this time as a special one, a period when important changes would be revealed after we exceeded our egoistic development, a time finally leading us to a remarkable renewal. As Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) wrote: “The mind sees what it has been through, and corrects its future conducts.” (The Writings of the Last Generation)

What will be the outcome of the current crisis? It is my hope that we will grow wiser as we will see what really matters in life more clearly. Also, I hope that we will arrange a new and more balanced world in which we will feel no fulfillment in taking advantage of others for personal gain and harming the environment, because of the realization that, at the end of the day, it will have negative consequences for all. This positive transformation will require a gradual process of adaptation to this new reality, and it will demand from each of us that we actively engage in the building of a society that is entirely connected. How? By studying and replicating the attributes of nature, where everything is interdependent, existing in homeostasis and reciprocal relations, where all the parts exchange the nutrients and information needed for the well-being of the entire system.

The crisis is helping us attain that level of awareness—where we start feeling as parts of a single system, one mechanism. Within the circular structure in which we exist, only together can we give birth to a new reality, to a higher, positive degree of humanity.

— Published on March 23, 2020