Comment: Millennials are those who were born from 1982 to 2004. These are strong guys who are now under 40. They have already experienced the crisis of 2008, they are now experiencing a pandemic, and it is not yet known what they will experience next.

Demographers compare them to the Great Generation. The great generation is the generation that lived in the 20s and 30s, survived the great depression and, most importantly, survived the Spanish flu. And this generation managed to build America, restore Europe.

Now they say that the millennial generation can be similar to the previous one and that it will be able to build a new economy and turn the world around in a new way.

What do you think of this generation, these strong forty-year-olds?

My Response: I don’t see that they are in a quest, in struggle, in eagerness. They have a very pragmatic view. They don’t look like revolutionaries to me. And why should they rush, do something, make some kind of revolution? What’s the matter?

Comment: They survived the 2008 crisis…

My Response: They lived through it while sitting at their computers. Nothing else.

Question: And a pandemic that stopped entire industries, destroyed entire industries?

Answer: I don’t think it’s that important or alarming for them.

Question: So what will turn the situation around? It can’t go on like that, can it?

Answer: No. There must be an awareness much deeper than a crisis —a dead end.

What did that generation do? It has practically revived industry, trade, and so on. It won’t do any good now. It won’t do anything. There is a huge trade turnover, industry, whatever you want.

Question: What does nature want from us?

Answer: Nature wants us to radically change, reflect on our life, on its meaning.

Question: So there should be a deeper understanding for this generation?

Answer: Yes. Why are we here, what are we doing? What will this pandemic bring us? Why does it come from the depths of nature? What pluses and minuses should it point out to us? None of it is there. I don’t see this anywhere: not among philosophers, psychologists, or politicians, no one has serious research or just thoughts on this topic.

A person should say: “It is wonderful that such an opportunity has arisen to change myself, the system, humanity, the direction of industry, trade, education, and upbringing! We will reconsider everything that is in the world today!” In general, the questions: “What do we live for? Where are we going?” We need to understand what we are today and what we should be tomorrow.

Why should we cry today?! What have we freed ourselves from? We just need to take advantage of this moment and do something about ourselves—all people! Because we are all in a crisis; it is universal. The crisis is global. This crisis is a crisis of human development, of egoistic human development.

Question: Can a person understand this? Turn the thinking around just like that, can he?

Answer: Explain to him what is happening globally with humanity, and I think that everyone will agree with this except for those who do not benefit from it.

Question: Why is there no understanding of it yet?

Answer: Humanity has no way of seeing ahead. Because what is available today, always suits it.

Question: You contradict yourself. Then who will push this situation forward? Who will say first: “Look,” and have people look? Everything has its own “father.” In Singapore, there was a “father” who turned everything around. In America, they began to turn around during the Depression. And so on.

Everywhere there are their own presidents, their own revolutionaries. Who’s going to say the whole thing now? To whom is your appeal? Who are you talking to?

Answer: I do not know to whom to appeal. We don’t have anyone like Einstein or Marx. I personally say what I can. He who hears, hears.

Question: If someone hears, you are ready to sit down and for days, as long as necessary, to talk to him, to explain?

Answer: I am ready not only to talk to such a person, but to work with him in general.

Question: And work as much as necessary, explaining to him the whole system, the whole nature, and where it leads us?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/29/21

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Comment: A New York school teaches children a new language that does not have the words “mom,” “dad,” “boy,” or “girl.” All these words are considered offensive by the school administration. Instead of “mom” and “dad,” you should say “adults,” “relatives,” and “family”; instead of the words “father” and “mother” gender-neutral terms should be used: “parent” or “guardian,” and instead of “husband” and “wife” – “partner.”

A new language is slowly entering the world. Will it enter or not?

My Response: It will not. What is given by nature is given by nature! That’s it!

You can’t go anywhere! “Dad,” “mom,” to replace?!

Question: In principle, these words—”dad,” “mom,” and in Hebrew: “Ima,” “Aba“—are they taken from a natural state? So the baby’s lips begin to say: “dad,” “mom,” “Ima,” “Aba“?

Answer: Of course.

Question: And there is no way of getting away from it?

Answer: No.

Comment: Even if people want to change this language?

My Response: This goes against the degrees of nature, which thus determined us. And in man these degrees are given to him forever. But animals don’t, they disappear. After two or three years, cubs part with their parents. Or rather, with the mother, because the father does not define anything there at all.

Question: And if the cub meets its mother in three years, it won’t even recognize her?

Answer: It’s not that he doesn’t recognize, they start new offspring among themselves. That is, they are completely disconnected from the past.

The mother is only needed there to feed and train the cub for, say, two or three years, depending on what species, and that’s it. And then there is nothing.

Comment: And for a person remains for life.

My Response: For life, from generation to generation. We still want to know who was in our past generations. We are very interested in this.

Question: What kind of violence is happening now that a husband and wife are a partner, a father and a mother are a parent, a guardian?

Answer: All this mutilated the language, the relationships between people. These are all egoistic deformities that come out all the time that want to show themselves more and more right, acting. All this will pass. You don’t even have to fight with it, it will all die away. Give it a little time, and it’ll all be gone.

Question: And what will happen?

Answer: Nothing will happen, you cannot erase mom and dad.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/5/21

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Question: Is it possible today to introduce a connection similar to a spiritual one in modern cities in order to bring people to good relationships?

Answer: I do not know how we can do that. After all, it is necessary to educate people; it is necessary to show them what they have in modern cities. Everyone enters their own cell, closes the door behind them with a couple of locks, checks whether they are closed, whether their neighbors will disturb them. Unfortunately, this is the only way we can feel somehow safe.

A person, first of all, subconsciously thinks about this. We pay attention to our clothes, our houses and apartments, how we behave, and our personal vehicles, etc. All this comes from our inner need to protect ourselves. Maybe a person does not feel it so much, but it is so! This is the root of the problems of thievery, violence, and anything at all.

However, if we provide a person with security regardless of any external conditions, and he will not have a tendency to isolate himself from others, on the contrary, he will feel that he is always ready for communication, for even greater rapprochement, then we will have a completely different construction, architecture, the science of space distribution. Then everything will be different.

Instead, today we have a tendency to make a minimal environment safe for myself wherever I am: in a taxi, in the subway, it does not matter where, but I still feel that I am among others. This is my place, this is my security, this is my life, my cell.

Therefore, we need to educate people toward more friendly connections, and then, based on this, to the extent that they feel safe, they will expand their boundaries and change the appearance of cities, apartments, and everything else.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations” 6/9/21

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New Life 1309 – Communication With Small Kids In The Family
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

I need to constantly imagine what my child lacks and how I should relate to him with respect to that lack. We should parent using three approaches: as a grownup who dictates, as an equal, and as smaller by learning from the child and modeling that it is okay not to know things.

A successful child is a balanced child who does not burst out for better or for worse, a child who understands where he is and behaves maturely. I should let the child feel that I am always on his side and whatever I do is for his sake; when I have to force him to do something, it distresses me. It is a good idea to share my internal world with a child while not pressuring him and giving him space to grow independently.

To sum up, do everything together with the child so that he will understand that cooperation is the key to success in life.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1309 – Communication With Small Kids In The Family,” 6/13/21

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Question: “The International Day of Friendship was proclaimed in 2011 by the UN General Assembly with the idea that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can inspire peace efforts and build bridges between communities.” (UN.org)

What is International Friendship Day for you?

Answer: For me, everyday is like this. I meet with my students. Our regular congress ended the other day. Four to five thousand people were in a real time connection via the Internet. We saw each other, we listened, we talked, and we felt each other. These are friends.

Friends are people who are close to you in terms of purpose, perception of the world, and life, its inner harmony and external discord.

Question: They don’t need to be reminded of anything?

Answer: No. We all experience this every day. A friend is someone who understands how you feel, and in some ways is in solidarity with you, in other ways, maybe not. But he understands you, you understand him. And together you are constantly looking for some common moments of rapprochement.

Question: Even if these are simple moments of rapprochement, in every day life? Would you call that a friend, too?

Answer: I think so, as well. Because in the end, all of our high matter is also there to make it all a corporeal rapprochement. We don’t need anything else, it should be very simple: rise above our conventionality, above all that man, nations, people, and states live by. Rise above this into mutual bestowal, mutual love, mutual support and you will gain a sense of upper force.

I think that there should still be a mutual sense of inner connection. This is the first thing.

And second, we must understand how we need to help each other and participate together in creating a common spiritual space, a spiritual grid on which we exist. It can be based simultaneously on the desire to help physically and materially, but, in general, it is a spiritual network.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/7/21

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Comment: Pablo Picasso said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

This is very much in tune with what you said about questions about existence, questions about life “Why was I born?” are already inherent in the little person and then we somehow lose it.

My response: I totally agree. We do not lose it, it rather disappears from us. We do not want to focus on the question of the meaning of life: What do I need life for? What do I exist for? What was I born for?

For a small child, by the way, this is a very urgent inner question. He cannot ask it, he may not be able to answer it, but he lives with it. He has a very serious demand from both his parents and people around him. If you pay attention, there is an urgent demand in his every action. The small child sitting in your arms demands to reveal the question of the meaning of life.

Question: Why does it all disappear all of a sudden? After all, he demands it!

Answer: The force called the evil inclination appears. And it starts to confuse him.

Question: Do you mean that it is impossible to walk this path smoothly?

Answer: He must contain this evil force in himself, he must fight it, he must find himself at war against it, and only from this fight can he come out as an adult. Otherwise, he will remain Van Gogh. He will be painting for the rest of his life and nothing more.

Question: Will he no longer ask the question “What do I live for?” Getting a lot of money…

Answer: This is not the meaning of life.
[283000]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/22/21

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Comment: Seven recommendations have been given for a person to make their life easier. One is: “The ability to wait is the best thing that you can teach a person.”

My Response: If it is not spiritual work, then yes; but if it is spiritual work, then no. We must advance non-stop along the spiritual path.

Comment: “The first step is only the beginning,” which means that having made this step, you are already halfway to victory.

My Response: The first step is not halfway to victory, but it is still a start. If it is the beginning of a victory, it will be possible to see it later on.

Question: Is it a sign that you are advancing if it is difficult?

Answer: I don’t think that difficulty is a sign of advancing correctly. No.

The sign of correct advancement is that we know how to connect all problems, information, data, and the contrasts to one unique whole to our root toward which we are moving, and where we all complement each other and connect perfectly into one unique whole picture.

Comment: “Break off the chains that bind your thoughts and then break off the chains that bind your body.” Sometimes we are stuck in the same place because our thoughts don’t allow us to advance and we need to get rid of negative thoughts that stop us and invoke fear.

My Response: We move by both negative and positive thoughts. It is like a wheel, part of which moves forward while the other part moves backward.

Comment: “Tranquility is the key to success.” When we are calm, we can do much more than when we are upset.

My Response: No. All of the wisdom of Kabbalah is built on contradictions, on a combination of contradictions. We need to be calm in full infinite motion and not any other way. We cannot be calm and succumb to fate and the flow of life wherever it carries us.

Those are methods of the East and they do not include the left line. So, I cannot compare them to the wisdom of Kabbalah and interpret them in any way.

Comment: “Condemnation is darkness for a person.” We should never humiliate or insult one’s personality. The only thing we can do is to condemn someone for his actions but not the person himself.

My Response: We should not condemn anyone, no one at all. You should correct yourself, and by correcting yourself, you correct the world in a way that there will no longer be anyone who will condemn you.

Comment: “Believing that you are right is a limitation.”

My Response: You can believe that you are right only when what you do is strengthened by the upper reason, by the masses, and not by you. When you follow the masses and reveal the Creator in the connection between you, you find the truth. But the truth cannot be according to the way of an individual.

In order to find your way in life you must have nine other friends so that in a ten you will be able to create a mini system, a mini-society in which, like in a lab, you will be able to plan in absolute accuracy all of nature, all of humanity, all the worlds between you.

You will create a kind of a magic ball of your ten desires and intentions, and in it you will be able to see all the universes, all the worlds, everything there is in them, and the Creator, and then by working on this model you will clearly understand who you are, where and how you are advancing.
[248407]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/24/19

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Question: The International Day for Protection of Children has been held since 1925 “in order to draw the attention of adults to the observance of children’s rights, education, protection from violence, and the right for life.”

What does it mean to you to protect children?

Answer: First of all, from parents. So that parents understand how to raise them. I also knew very little about it, although they tried to instill it all in me. I can feel how insufficient it is. How can you make a young couple who knows nothing and does not understand anything into people who know and understand everything when they have a child?

This is a big problem. This is where we really have to do something with ourselves. Otherwise, our society, our humanity, will remain as miserable as it looks now.

Parents need to know how to make a person out of this baby. First, you need to understand from the very first day what you want to give him, what he needs, and what he wants from you. This is a nonverbal connection—mental, spiritual, neural. The one that should be between the couple and the newborn.

And then you need to give parents the necessary education, the nurturing they need to bring them up correctly. Everything that is necessary for two people who have a baby in their arms.

Question: So it is actually a whole science to be a parent?

Answer: Of course! And we do not prepare people for this. Therefore, we cannot say that we see among our babies, children, teenagers, girls, and boys as they grow, the people we could potentially see.

It is all our fault. And then we start blaming them, scolding them, demanding from them, pushing them. This is not the way to do it. Then it is too late.

We also need to make relations in the family, at school, on the street, everywhere a little closer. A child should not feel that these are completely opposite different societies. It should all be homogeneous. Here it is necessary to change society as well.

Comment: This is already the “Day of a Unified Society” and not the “Day for Protection of Children.”

My Response: This is the protection of children. From society.

This is actually our job, because otherwise our education will lead us to disaster. Everything you see in adults is everything done at an age when they were maybe a few months old or a few years old at most.

International Day for Protection of Children is a good day if we agree to create an atmosphere for them, an environment, that supports them and correctly formats them, turns them into a person, a good person, a kind, caring, and helpful person, a person who wants to help and accepts help from others.

There should just be an even kind attitude toward everyone.

Question: And this is the merit of parents and society only?

Answer: Yes. And then we will be able to see how everything really changes.
[283108]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/27/21

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Comment: Vincent van Gogh said, “If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

My Response: I would not follow Van Gogh’s advice. A person should feel what his soul is pulling him to and choose his path in accordance with this. And to choose this path soberly, that is, to check whether he has all possible prerequisites for this. And if not, there is no need to hit one’s head against the wall.

Question: What about our wisdom Kabbalah, where in principle, the inner voice often says: “What is wrong with you, look at these heights! How can you?! Is it really possible to reach them?!”

Answer: What does it matter? It does not matter here, everyone has to learn this wisdom, and through it, everyone has to correct their soul. Thus, there are no people here who can say: “I am free.”

I must correct myself, fulfill my destiny. Therefore, everyone has his place in it. Everyone is obliged. The correction of the soul is the purpose of our entire existence, of everyone, of absolutely everyone! So, no one can get away from it.
[282903]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/22/21

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We need a serious reform of our attitude toward children—not just a reform of the educational system of teaching itself or of upbringing, but in general, of our whole life in which children learn from us, take all kinds of examples from us with which they cannot agree and cannot implement on themselves.

Once upon a time, a boy would look at his father, a girl at her mother. If the father was a shoemaker or a tailor, no matter what, a child knew: “I will grow up and also be a shoemaker or a tailor.” Back then, children did not have internal demands.

Crafts have been passed down from generation to generation. Children lived with their parents. They did not yearn to be different. In those days, the whole way of life, all the examples that parents gave them: how to live, how to communicate, all this was normal, all this suited the children.

Today—no! Today, children look at us and feel in an empty world. They have nowhere to get examples from. They have to invent their own world. And we, fools, don’t understand why they are engaged in all sorts of fanaticism, use drugs, and everything else. It all happens because we are not ready to give them examples of living correctly.

We do not agree that they are different. This is our most basic point. We need to take into account that they are different, that they have different souls. And we must live for them, not for ourselves. By living for them, we will correct ourselves as well. So it is said: “Lo, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord, that he may turn the heart of the fathers back through the children, and the heart of the children back through their fathers-lest I come and smite the earth with utter destruction.” Meaning, children should teach us.

When a woman becomes a mother, the child as if requires her to grow up so that a completely different attitude to life would appear in her. It is the same here. We must understand that by having children, we have to be more responsible. And they should dictate to us what we should be like.

First of all, we must study the next stage in which our children should live. They ask for it, but we do not understand it. We are in such a generation, in such “scissors,” in such a transitional process, that we stand as if between two epochs.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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