Educating A Person

laitman_946Question: For several thousand years, humans have domesticated many kinds of animals. But some cruel and dangerous ones, we have never even tried to domesticate.

Among them is vicious biped that misappropriated himself the nickname “homo-sapiens”; it exterminates its own kind on such a scale that is not seen by other carnivorous and herbivorous inhabitants of our planet.

To domesticate a human requires only one thing: not to kill each other. This quality can be very easily attained through proper education. So why from the day that we are born, are we taught to kill our own species in large quantities through movies, computer games, songs, and stories?

It is because we are being prepared for life in a competitive environment that at any time could turn into war. Such is our present culture that is called Capitalism. And every one who protects capitalism becomes an accomplice to murder.

Answer: The problem is not in capitalism, socialism, or communism, not any of these “isms,” and in general not in any society. Rather, the root of the problem is in human nature that is constantly changing for the worse.

From the time we left the caves, we scattered over the face of the earth and consolidated into peoples, groups, and clans, forming states and kingdoms. This process happened under the direct influence of our egoism that demanded greater grouping, greater subordination, and greater return. And it’s not because we wanted this, but because that is the way our nature develops—from within.

Nature teaches us how to act.  Philosophy and everything else develops after we become different and begin to study ourselves: what happened to us.

Nature creates within us the feeling of competition, the need to rise above each other and defeat others. And we can do nothing about this.

We can see competitiveness among little children, how they fight with each other and don’t want to share anything with others. And we see it in all relations between adults in culture, in science, and everywhere else. It is expressed prominently in beauty contests, sport competitions, and in the Olympics. It blossoms at work, in services, in international trade, and in businesses.

It is so everywhere—competition and struggle. And struggle is considered a norm of our lives. The relationship of a person with the bank, with his boss, with life, and with a vast health care system, education system, etc.—all of this is a constant struggle.

That is, we don’t try to understand the process from the good point of view of how to balance our lives, how to build it correctly; rather, we act as a result of our relationships that someone might snatch a bigger piece.

It’s a terrible life! If we look at it soberly, then, of course, it is a constant war, but at least one that we are used to and not a physical war in order to kill.  

The correct assessment of events is that everything comes from a nature we cannot change. We can just somehow interact with each other better. Nature will continue to push humanity forward in its egoistic development, only through egoism.

Therefore, an anti-egoistic education, which psychologists speak about, will not help humanity. Only the study of proper interaction between them will. We begin at a tender age, sitting a child in a circle and gradually developing skills in him that it is not “I” but “we.”

This training is very serious. I haven’t seen it in a pure form in psychology. And Kabbalah explains this method clearly, and we have used it in practice for long time.

The essence of the method is that a child begins to interact correctly with his team and understands that in this case, the team is his personal “self.” At the same time, he becomes an inseparable part of his, team, his society, it loves him and he considers it to be his home. He begins to feel all of the participants in his society as himself. And this is its mission: to create relationships between people where they feel themselves as one person. 

Later, if the person moves to another society, he transfers these habits there. Of course, such a transition is not easy; it is necessary to learn how to in advance.

Thus, if he reaches the right interactions with others, a feeling of an external person, a friend, appears in him—a feeling of people according to their thoughts, intentions, and the degree of closeness between them. He begins to feel others as himself. With every person he has a momentary contact with, either positive or negative, he at least understands them.

Thus, competion is replaced by cooperation, by common activities, by partnership with friends.

Question: Does he develop a desire for others to succeed?

Answer: This is a necessary feeling because that creates the same great platform for total union where he begins to feel that this is the only truth.

Question: But you said that in principle this is against human nature. How does this work?

Answer: It is against human nature, but is in accord with the education he receives. And specifically with actions contrary to nature, he begins to rise above it. He understands that now there is a greater power in his hands than the rejecting egoistic force. This is an altruistic, attracting, unifying force. When, thanks to his efforts, this force begins to dominate, he sees that the two forces, both the altruistic and the egoistic, produce each other, are designed to go together, like plus and minus in an electrical current or in the poles of a magnet, like an electron and positron in matter. The two forces cannot exist one without the other and a person begins to work with them correctly.

This is the beginning of a higher psychology. Psychologists simply cannot insert the positive force into our world. Yet this is our main task because our world is entirely built on the negative force, as it is written, “I created the evil inclination” (Tractate Kiddushin 30b). This is the only force that acts in our world. And even its positive manifestation that we see is also derived from competition, from the need to acquire, to attract to oneself.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to insert the  hidden positive force into our world; we can reveal it and bring it into our daily lives. Then we will act with the two forces, the positive and the negative, and will be able to work on ourselves.

Question: Does it mean that the guides must be Kabbalists?

Answer: They must be Kabbalists in partnership with psychologists. Psychologists must understand that alone they don’t have the tools for correcting people. Therefore, psychology is also in crisis today.
[194530]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/14/16

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