In the News (“Grandchild or $650,000: Indian parents take son to court“): “An Indian couple is taking their son to court, demanding that he and his wife either produce a grandchild within a year or cough up almost $650,000. …

“they exhausted their savings by raising and educating their pilot son and paying for a lavish wedding.

“Now they want payback.

“‘My son has been married for six years but they are still not planning a baby. At least if we have a grandchild to spend time with, our pain will become bearable,’ the couple said in their petition filed with a court in the north Indian town of Haridwar last week.

Question: Do you think this request of the parents is legitimate?

Answer: This is a problem. On the one hand they are selfish. No one can oblige a couple to have children. I understand them. But in principle, there is no such law that a couple is obliged to give birth to children, and as if, by their parents’ request.

Comment: “Then return the money that was invested in you,” the parents say.

My Response: “Did you want me to get married in order to make you grandchildren?” It turns out that it is so. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

I’m just putting myself in the position of a victim. “I didn’t sign up for this.” But, on the other hand, the parents can also be understood.

I think there is a need for a society that should affect young people—to influence them in a way, so that they eventually have children for themselves. For themselves and for their parents. Especially in India.

Comment: You’ve been to India; you’ve seen it. There are a huge number of children and people, and still they give birth. One and a half billion!

My Response: It depends on the kind of society. If they are rich people with a good marital status, they give birth to two or three children, no more.

Question: So do you think that the parents’ request is egoistic, and their children are egoistic too?

Answer: The parents are not egoists. They really want grandchildren and they can be understood. But the children, of course, are egoists. They don’t want to do anything nice to their parents, they don’t want to burden themselves, and I also understand them in this, to burden themselves with raising children. But it is necessary to somehow come to an agreement after all. The case went to court. So it’s not easy. They need to come up with something.

Question: This is what is happening in the world right now. Many people don’t particularly want to give birth.

Answer: At least one or two children. Without this, a person is not considered a person. If he has no children, and he does not care about procreation, then this is an inferior person. It is considered so.

Question: But this does not apply if health does not allow and so on, right?

Answer: This is understandable.

Question: So a husband and wife who do not have children are not a family?

Answer: Firstly, such a family is not a family. There should definitely be both a boy and a girl in the family. Preferably both. But there are cases when having both doesn’t work out.

It is necessary to help raise the status of having children. We also have a problem with this, both in the state and in people; today people do not want to have children.

The Torah says, “Be fruitful and multiply.” But in fact, why breed, much less multiply?

Question: Why is all this happening right now? Why is there such a sudden desire not to give birth?

Answer: People want to take care of themselves. That’s all. On the other hand, children are also very egoistic. You invest in them for 20 or 30 years, and then they leave. Well, why then did I invest my capital, my labor, my funds, my nerves, and my strength? And where did it all go? It is an unprofitable business.

Question: And what to do in such cases?

Answer: Do nothing. Learn from mistakes. It all depends on the upbringing.

And the upbringing should be like this: “You must!”
[300027]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/26/22

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Question: Some psychologists list basic conditions needed for the happiness and health of a child. The first condition is that the parent should be a source of information for the child, and not a tablet or a laptop.

I cannot imagine how it is possible today for a parent to become a source of information. Do you think this is possible today, in our era?!

Answer: Today I am 75 years old. If I do remember something, it is not from school, but from what I heard from my parents. Some pieces, fragments of words, sentences, some of their comments. For some reason, this pops up in my mind.

Moreover, I already was not a little kid. Starting somewhere from the age of six or seven and up to 16-17 years old.

Question: Do you think that even today, the information that comes from parents is much higher than any computer information?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: The next condition: Teach the child to express emotions. Does he not know how to express emotions? What does it mean to teach him?

My Response: It is necessary to show him how he can unite with other people, connect with them, influence them, and perceive them, and so on.

Question: With other children?

Answer: Yes. But I am not thinking about children, but rather about teenagers.

Comment: Next, Do not buy off the child with new sneakers, tablets, and toys. How should you buy a child?

My Response: By showing him that you are his friend and that you are supposedly on his level. How much you have to remake yourself for this, and to change yourself…

Question: Yes. It is me who has to change. What do you mean by the word “friend”?

Answer: You understand him, you are ready to help him, to approve of him. The main thing is to understand.

Comment: Another is not to overdo with the developmental courses, sections, and groups. Let the child live his childhood organically.

What does it mean to live childhood organically?

My Response: Basically, yes. The child should do what he wants.

Question: To that extent?

Answer: After all, he receives a desire, an opinion from his friends. So, it is not his personal opinion. But we still need to encourage him.

Comment: But you said that you were surrounded by composers, music.

My Response: It did not give me anything special.

Question: It gave you an ear for music. You have a musical ear, of course. So, do you think a child should be given freedom of choice?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: Next is to keep your word. Say it the first time, do it the second time. Maybe it is better not to promise anything to the child at all so as not to deceive him?

My Response: No. But if you want to demonstrate education, then you must both promise and fulfill.

Comment: Another principle is to allow the child to make mistakes. Some scientists go as far as to say that a mistake is wonderful. And if a child makes a mistake we can even say to him: “Well done. You made a mistake.” Is it even possible to use such a move?

My Response: Not to say, “Well done,” but, “Find this mistake and correct it. You have a mistake here.” But this is not a claim and not an accusation of him.

Comment: The next condition is to not be afraid to love your child too much.

My Response: There is a problem here. In general, all these questions are very difficult.

Question: What does it mean to love too much?

Answer: Not to show excessive love, especially where it can cause harm.

Question: Can it cause harm?

Answer: Of course, everything should be dosed and in balance.
[300366]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/9/22

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While the embryo is in the mother’s womb, it is completely dependent on her and receives nutrition from her. But after birth, the umbilical cord connecting him with his mother is cut off, and he is forced to become independent. This is a sign that the child is moving to a new state, to a new degree, and can communicate not only with the mother, but also with forces alien to him.

Our whole world is based on interdependence, and the baby will still have to learn that he depends on someone. First, from his mother, then from his father, other relatives, a teacher at school, etc. , we become more and more aware of how dependent we are on the people around us.

When we become adults, we go into the army, work, meaning, we go out into life and begin to explore the world. And then we find out that there are strangers who can harm us, and we learn how to behave.

The correct upbringing consists of making sure that in any place, wherever I find myself, I feel as comfortable and safe as in my mother’s womb, so that there is always an environment around me that takes care of me, and I try to take care of everyone in the same way. I have to learn how to build a proper, kind connection with the environment.

Nature always teaches us how to be an independent individual, but at the same time actively work to unite the whole society.

During its thousand-year history, man has already developed to a state where it is necessary to begin to unite into one community, so that everyone feels that he belongs to all of humanity, and a good future is impossible without a proper connection with everyone else. Any person in the world is obliged to realize this and thus connect with others.

This is not easy to do in the modern world that seems very hostile and frightening to us, that threatens us with a nuclear world war. We need to understand that the state of the world is critical and can suddenly explode so that not even a memory of us will remain on this planet.

And at the same time, as we reveal the vital need to live in peace, we are seized with mortal fear of what may happen as a result of our antagonism. The situation is very dangerous, but at the same time significant because it clarifies to us where we have come to and that there is no other way out but to ensure global security for everyone around the globe. Otherwise, we will simply wipe ourselves off the face of the earth.

We live in a special time when everyone is obliged to understand this and start talking openly in order to find out what needs to be done to achieve common security and mutual guarantee around the globe.
[300314]
From KabTV’s “World” 7/12/22

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Question: There was another tragic school shooting in America; an 18-year-old resident of Texas opened fire at an elementary school, killed 19 students, two teachers, and seriously wounded his grandmother before that.

“President Biden on Tuesday evening urged Congress to end the ‘carnage’ of gun violence after more than a dozen elementary schoolchildren were killed by an 18-year-old in Texas.

“’As a nation we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?’ Biden said in an address to the nation. ‘ … How many scores of little children, who witnessed what happened, see their friends die as if they’re in a battlefield, for God’s sake?’” (Washington Post)

If you were given all the powers, that is, if they told you: “Dear Michael Laitman, here is the money, here is the power, here is the law, here is the police, here is the army, whatever you want, just change this situation,” what would you do?

Answer: I think it is unrealistic to confiscate weapons from hundreds of millions of people. (And each gun has a couple of barrels.) I remember, I went into a basement in New York—there is a gun! And everything else as well—please, in bulk, take it away.

“A gun? Please, take it.”

And what can you do? It cannot be changed in a split second. For this it is necessary to educate people; it is not easy.

Comment: That is, for example, if you were given all the authority to forcibly take the weapons, pull it out…

My Response: It would not help. They can buy them in any alley.

Comment: Close all stores, close the alleys.

My Response: There is no way to do that. Anyone who wants—specifically wants to buy a weapon in order to kill someone—can do so anywhere in the world.

Question: This problem of America is well-known. What is the solution?

Answer: There is no solution except for gradual education of society.

Question: What should society come to?

Answer: Society must come to the conclusion that it is not good to kill another.

Question: This is the basis of all religions, all spiritual practices. What you said is repeated: killing is not good, only peace. But humanity is not improving in any way, and it is getting worse and worse. You see what is going on, right?

Answer: Naturally. Egoism is growing, people around me are getting worse, so I take a gun and start “correcting” society.

Comment: The “correctors” of society are a terrible thing.

My Response: Nothing can be done. I do not see anything else except what Kabbalah says: education, serious education, universal, from a young age and throughout life.

Question: What should it lead to?

Answer: To the fact that there is no place for violence. He who raises his hand against another must receive punishment.

A person must understand that he has no right to rule over the life of another. Only good, kind things can he do to another. Just set a good example. And he has no right to show violence; this is not his authority. To act against the wishes of another is not in his authority.

Question: Why have all the practitioners that talk about the same thing not succeeded and Kabbalah will succeed if you conduct education according to Kabbalah?

Answer: It is true that no practices have succeeded in this, and many are talking about it. But they talk, and they do it differently.

And Kabbalah will succeed because it uses the upper force. It causes the influence of the upper positive force on a person, and then a person changes.

I do not see any other way out. It says what needs to be done. It is necessary to be accustomed to “love your neighbor as yourself” from a young age. Literally each and everyone. If it happens on a daily basis and on the scale of, say, a country, then it will have an impact. This together with the media and everything else.

Question: So you say the whole task is to summon this positive force upon yourself. To do this, I have to understand that there is nothing positive in me or around me? Is that what I need to understand as a student?

Answer: Of course. This requires very serious explanatory work. Very serious! Who we are, what we are, and what is happening around us, with us, and where we are going. Everyone suffers from this.

Question: How can we invoke this positive force? What should I say, think, do?

Answer: It is invoked by constant patient explanation. Movies, clips, anything else, television, the Internet, all this should be filled only by what educates a person for good. Otherwise, we are going nowhere. It is nature. Go against it?

It is necessary to direct a person’s thinking only to the positive, and people will gradually get used to how to speak, how to address, how to think. At least, such excesses will not occur, and people will not be able to realize them because they will not exist.

They will not want and will not be able to do it because there will be nowhere to get firearms and so on.

Comment: You are talking now as if you are taking the supreme law and connecting it with the practice of this world. A simple law that you cannot get weapons and so on.

Answer: One by one. It is necessary to limit people from this. According to their own desires.
[299942]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/26/22

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In the News (BBC): “Some have called it ‘gender madness’, but the Egalia pre-school in Stockholm says its goal is to free children from social expectations based on their sex.

Question: Why does it come to such an absurdity?!

Answer: Because people have lost their bearings, they do not know where to go. It seems to them that equality should be where nature specifically made a distinction between the sexes and put us in an unequal state.

If there were no male and female parts in nature, how could we give birth and procreate?! Destroy the difference between the sexes, destroy the influence, the attraction between them, and we will not have the next generation, we will end life on Earth. This is such a distortion of nature, above which there is nothing!

It will lead to the degradation of society. They will not give birth at all! Under the influence of such public opinion, people will lose interest in each other, there will be no family, no next generation.

Why today is there such an internal imbalance between the inner “I” of a person and his external manifestation? This was not the case before. Before, a woman was a woman and a man was a man. And now various egoistic mutations are taking place, that is, in the end, the most incredible, unreal, unreasonable egoistic forms manifest themselves in the world.

They must show their complete failure. Egoism must reveal itself as the only evil: We are such unreasonable creatures that we go against nature in its most basic part. This is the agony of egoism, it buries itself.
[299682]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. The Future of Humanity” 7/17/11

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Question: Why are parents attached to autistic children? Can we say that this is a kind of permanent attachment at the level of souls?

Answer: Parents are very attached to such children because they begin to feel echoes of the inner world in him.

The fact is that there is a difference between the external behavior of an autistic person and his inner essence. He may be outwardly distorted, may not react outwardly, his movements and reactions, if any, are very limited. But those who communicate with him, those who are next to him, begin to understand and feel him.

They discover in these, from our point of view, unhappy people a huge inner world. When starting to communicate with autistic people, others feel how much gratitude and understanding come from them. This very much connects parents, brothers, sisters, and caregivers with such children.

Basically, we all are animals. The soul appears in us only if we develop it. Therefore, we feel each other well at the animalistic level. The only difference is that we feel this world better than autistic people. And they feel the world of inner sensations better.
[299763]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Special Territory” 5/17/11

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Question: Who is the driving force behind the changes in the society of the future: leaders, youth, scientists, or people?

Answer: Education that permeates all layers of society. It should be built in such a way that everyone cares about the balance between reception and bestowal.

All people are created as different, and therefore, everyone is given the opportunity to realize themselves as much as possible for the benefit of others.

Question: Does a person feel these differences? If I am 100% in the desire to bestow, then in theory I should not even feel them.

Answer: Everyone feels equal to others although they can work much less than others. After all, everyone is required to participate in the common work within his capacities.

A person does not feel himself as bigger or smaller relative to others and does not feel discomfort in the difference.
[299851]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 6/24/22

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Question: A doctor writes to you. “Recently I have been observing that young people are under extreme stress. The demand for antidepressants is growing rapidly. The familiar world is collapsing for them. They lose their jobs, a quiet, stable life, it is unclear what will happen tomorrow.

I’m a doctor, and I see that we can’t offer them anything other than medication. All different training sessions are ceasing to work. My question to you, dear Michael Laitman: Where can they get a point of support? Where should they advance next?”

Answer: About 100 to 200 years ago people were not so disconnected from the earth: this is my house, these are my parents, and this is my village, town, or whatever. There is a friend of mine here whom I will marry, and my children will grow up here, and so on. In general, everything was obvious, clear, and simple.

Basically, animal life. But it did not give a person such uncertainty, huge uncertainty in everything.

Today, a person is inflated from the inside with questions about the universe, about life, about his own psychology and behavior. It’s on a mental level.

On a psychological level, he feels that the whole world is in some kind of incomprehensible state. The confusion is so internal for everyone: “Where to?! What?! Why?! For what?!” Nothing is known! This is a time that forces us to understand the overall picture of the world, the system of the world. It didn’t exist before. And today it does.

What will we do? Until we know the whole picture of the world and figure it out in such a way as to connect with it, understand it, perhaps even manage it at least to some extent, nothing will happen. It’s easy to forget and fall asleep. That’s why many people run away to drugs and other things.

Comment: That is, suppression by antidepressants.

My Response: Even the suppression by work. I don’t want to know anything. I have a house, a store, and a job. I go to the store from work, go home from the store, eat, go back to the computer, do something there, and go on vacation.

Happy is the person who finds some hobby, builds something in the computer or physically. That’s it. I don’t want to know anything else! There is nothing else left. It will really be an escape from the prison of our world.

This is such a natural antidepressant that many people use. Or they get into all sorts of beautiful or ugly hobbies. Nothing else can be offered to a person.

And all this is escape, absolutely everything! Up to the point that one goes for theft, for murder, goes for anything, sports, all this is just an escape. You name it. Great compositions, anything else, just an escape from the same question: “Why?” When there is no answer, then any other answer, if I consider it important, saves me.

Question: You said, “Why?” Why do I live? Why all this? It is not worth asking this question. It will drive you completely insane.

Answer: Of course. It chases us, hits us from behind every time until we come to our senses. This is what Baal HaSulam writes in the “Preface to The Book of Zohar.”

Question: Should we stop and take this question on ourselves?

Answer: We have to figure it out because it is not for nothing that it arises in every person and does not allow us to do anything else. Either we forget ourselves or do something, compile some herbarium, or we have to raise this issue and solve it.

Question: Will we ever dare to do this? It’s already a little scary to ask the question: “Why? What for? Why?” about everything.

Answer: It is very good. Then every minute of a person’s life will be filled with a higher meaning. Let’s try.
[299600]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/28/22

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Comment: Parents send you their children’s questions. The questions are actually deep.

Eight year old Marina asks: “When my parents were fighting a lot, I would come to school very sad. Because of this, children did not want to be friends with me. It is a war now and my mother went to my grandmother’s. And now everyone is sad. And I am glad. Because now they understand what it was like for me. Is it bad that I am happy?”

My Response: But the parents are sad. So what are you happy about?

Question: She is glad that they now understand what it was like for her when they were fighting and she was sad. And how is eight years old Marina supposed to get out of this? Or how should she behave? I see my parents sad, for example, or everyone around me sad.

Answer: Set a goal to make them joyful.

Question: That is, by the fact that she is glad, she gradually understands her nature? This is an eight-year-old child! Suddenly she feels that she rejoices when others feel bad. What does this say about our time?

Answer: That we can already approach a state that we are able to understand.

Question: If children understand this, then can we even more so? Can we already start teaching children this?

Answer: You can teach children everything. They are ready for absolutely anything! We have already entered what is called the period of the last generation. As for adults, those children’s parents, it is not known whether they are ready for this or not.

Question: Because they have one foot in the past?

Answer: Yes. It is quite possible that these are dinosaurs that should give way and be reborn again. And to come into this world as a child again—so naive, so open.

We have grown-up children, just like adults!
[299288]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/14/22

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Question: The German philosopher, Johann Gottfried von Herder wrote that the moral upbringing of people in a spirit of justice, humanism, and aversion to war is necessary to achieve eternal peace.

Overall, throughout the ages, it has been recognized that it is necessary to re-educate people in a way so it would be possible to establish peace. Why have they still not become re-educated?

Answer: Because it is impossible. Don’t history and experience speak of it? Egoism, contradictions between people, mutual hatred, rejection, and thirst for power all is incurable, and we are unable to do anything about it! We must accept it and look for another way for how we can work with this correctly and how we can transform despicable and abhorrent qualities into beneficial ones.

Here one needs to add the outer force that can correct egoism into altruism. Then we will receive the altruistic force that does not exist in our world. We only suspect that it might, but it does not. However, egoism does exist.

The only thing that exists in our world is the egoistic force and there is no opposite to it. We kind of wish it existed, but in truth, we don’t desire it. We simply think that yes, it would be good. However, we see that it cannot happen.

What can we do to find the kind and unifying force, which is opposite to egoism, in our world? There is nothing else we need besides this force.

Until that happens, do not force people, do not try to do something kind and good with them. Nothing will work! In the end, every time they will bump into their egoism, which develops more and more, and it will be destroying everything that they will try to do.
[295380]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 3/4/22

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