Comment: Today, people do not want any obligations to each other and therefore do not marry.

My Response: A person is an egoist. If he understood that marriage would really fill him and was created so that he could give and receive in marriage, he would see that there is nothing better.

But for this, a form of communication needs to be created so that a man is fulfilled from his wife, children, and family so that he has exactly such needs, qualities, desires that are not artificially changed s o that he is forced to run away in the evenings somewhere to clubs, bars.

It’s the same with a woman. She must be determined to create for her family, her husband, and her children the conditions from which she herself would enjoy. Therefore, appropriate education is needed here. It doesn’t matter that we’ve become more egoistic. Bigger egoism, in fact, should take us to the next level.

We must educate boys and girls properly, teach them how to interact with each other, and not give them only lessons about sex in schools. It turns out that we are just teaching animals the correct sexual relationships, but we do not teach people how to be properly connected with each other, to understand and complement each other.

If we don’t give them that education, the next generation will be miserable. They will come to some mechanical interaction, to something incomprehensible.

Kabbalah says that everything in nature is built on replenishment, on harmony. This replenishment depends on understanding each other’s nature.

I remember when I was in the first year of the institute, we had a professor Svyadoshch Avraam Moiseevich. He took us to different hospitals for surgeries to show us the extreme conditions that people are in immediately after an accident, during a difficult birth, or after a heart transplant.

And we, eighteen or nineteen-year-old boys, were very shaken up by it. When we first came out of the maternity hospital, it was a shock: How difficult it is to give birth, how much blood, how much pain. We almost cried, looking at the women in labor. Our attitude to many things changed. We began to treat even the girls in our group differently.

Based on what I have experienced, I would take all school children to hospitals, maternity hospitals, and morgues to explain and show children what life means, when you go through all the states from birth through various problems, injuries, death, up to the cemetery,  all this is necessary. And I would do this with a very serious preliminary preparation, so that the children would not have psychological trauma. This is how an understanding and adult attitude to life is built.
[280042]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Common Law Marriage” 8/11/09

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Comment: Veterinarians say that animals today have a large number of diseases due to depression. There used to be a tiny textbook of 50 pages about pet diseases and now they fill 500 pages.

I read in a Russian veterinary textbook: “Animals that have a sufficiently high intellect (dogs, cats) are moping.” As if they are talking about a person: “If it is gloomy and cold outside the window and the house is the same, they are moping. If the owner is in a hurry to walk them, and it is a compulsory program for him, and there is no joy in it, the animals are moping. When the owner himself is in a bad mood, irritable, the animal feels lonely.”

It seems that they are not talking about animals but about a person.

My Response: Of course, they have a soul.

Question: They say that we are giving them everything. That is, they are victims of all our experiences, hatred, and what is happening in the world.

Answer: Animals feel a lot. A lot! Much more than a human being. Man can forget, he can be distracted, he has such systems. But animals do not. They directly feel what the owner has. And so it lies down next to you, puts its muzzle on your leg, and looks into your eyes, and that is it, there is nothing else for him. You are its god. This is creepy! We do not understand it, we do not sympathize, and we neglect it.

Question: Because we do not really feel like we have a master?

Answer: Yes. We do not have such an example.

Question: What can this teach us? Can we feel responsible?

Answer: In the end, we all influence each other. Still, vegetative, animate, and human nature are related. So even their suffering is connected to ours, and we still feel it at our level. So there are many diseases and many problems that we could treat if we paid attention to animals. That is, through animals to heal people, at this level, we could not allow these depressions and all these problems to spread further. But we cannot appreciate it and accept it. In our hearts, we do not understand cats or dogs.

Question: Can we say that animals actually appeared to cure us of all these conditions?

Answer: We must accept the animals that live next to us as a part of ourselves and begin to realize that we can heal and correct ourselves through them.

Question: So you generally humanize them?

Answer: No, I just understand the interaction of animals with humans, how much an animal empathizes and how much it complements man and passes human experiences and corrections through itself.

Question: What do you mean by corrections?

Answer: I mean that if a person pays more attention to the animal that is next to him, he will correct himself through the animal. Why not? At the same time, you give him your part: a little from your heart, a little from your soul.

Question: And after that, if I live like this, I begin slowly to treat others like that?

Answer: Of course. And not necessarily others. Through it, through this dog or cat, or whatever you have. You give out your good attitude to the world by doing this! This is already your correction. Look how they expect this from you, demand it. They have no ulterior thoughts; they are still at the animal level.

I think that animals, if we treat them correctly, can help us become human.
[279636]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/2/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the most important example that parents should give their children?“

The most important example that parents should give their children is the correct attitude toward society, i.e., one of relating positively to others, considering others’ needs, thinking how to benefit people, and in general, participating in the creation of a well-connected society.

To that end, parents need to critically examine everything that influences their children. Notably, this means rigorously reviewing the material that the children encounter on the Internet, TV, books and media of all kinds.

We have no desire to restrict children from watching and learning from various media, but in order to ensure that we encourage the creation of a society of happy, confident, successful, safe and supportive people, we need to examine their influences from an educational perspective:

To what extent does the material they encounter guide them to positively connect to one another?
How much does it include the wisdom of connection and pave a path to a better and more harmonious future for human society?
It is necessary to remove all violence, horror and torture out of the material that children consume. Children learn from imitation and examples, and such material gives them very bad examples and inserts all kinds of distortions into the children that can have long-lasting negative effects on their mental and emotional development, and also in their relationships with other people.

The main goal of raising children and education in general should be to create human beings in the fullest sense of the term: a society that aims to positively connect above all forms of division, and which relates to other people and to nature constructively.

Therefore, our sole concern should be to create a new kind of education system that raises children to become happy, confident, successful and safe human beings by guiding them to build a positively-connected, supportive and peaceful society.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash.

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Comment: Many young people feel confused in their minds. They are told that they are depressed, and they believe that they simply cannot deal with the world and they cannot figure out what to do with themselves next.

My Response: It depends on what to take for depression. Maybe it is the search for something special, higher, and the person is in some kind of expectation, perhaps in anticipation, in inner contemplation.

They say to him from the outside: “Why are you looking inside yourself? Get out. Look how interesting and good the world is.” But what he sees here is just noise and stench.

I think one should not be particularly impressed with the world by the way it reacts to us. Let the world be on its own and let the person be on his own. He just has to think seriously about his future, because today, now, in these years, he is deciding his future.

First of all, he must think concretely, pragmatically, soberly about what he will live on. It should be higher than a hobby, than perhaps some altruistic impulses, and all kinds of tendencies.

The main thing is to give young people a direction so that they have a specialty, thanks to which they will be able to earn money tomorrow. Moreover, a clear, demanded specialty.
[279090]
From KabTV’s “Integral World” 17/13/18

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the one thing that should be taught in school that isn’t already?“

There should be more of an emphasis on friendship, to build friendly connections among all the students.

We should focus mostly on how to positively connect the students in order to build a supportive society of happy and confident individuals. Ultimately, people should leave school with the feeling that their happiness and success in life depends on the extent to which they positively connect to one another.

The goal of schools toward the students should not be profession-oriented, but to build happy, confident and successful human beings out of the students.

If the students have to constantly sustain an array of egoistic relationships, where they each seek to maximize personal benefit at the expense of others, then they will never be truly happy, confident or successful in life.

Also, we need to understand that today’s generation is unlike any other, where as we head into more globally interconnected and interdependent times than ever before, likewise we should learn how to realize such interconnectedness and interdependence positively in order to secure our happiness, success and confidence in a way that suits our current times. The professions we currently treat with primacy need to be re-prioritized into second place, with the first place being given to positive human connections.

When students go to school, they should feel comfortable and even willing to connect with the other students, and there should be no fear or criticism circulating between the students. In order to establish such a positive and supportive atmosphere for the students to develop their connections, the teachers first and foremost need to undergo a connection-enriching process where they learn how to relate positively to each other and to the students in order that the students feel a life of happiness, confidence, safety, balance and prosperity through participation in the creation of a society led by values of unity and mutual consideration.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: Young people leave school, enter a new world, and what they are given, they do not want, and they are not offered anything else.

My Response: Our world is the world of egoism. People have selfish power over each other, and such power prefers to operate with force. You can’t do anything here. Power does not ask whether it is good or bad, it is possible or not. If it can win, then it immediately realizes itself.

Of course, I understand the many-sided directions of young people in their desire to see the world for others. But they must realize that, first of all, it depends on how much they can prepare themselves for this.

Indeed, in order, for example, to change life in Iran, or write a good book for the Chinese, or do something else in any country in the world, they must understand what the basic law of nature is and where nature leads us since we cannot act against it.

We see how, for thousands and thousands of years, mankind has tried to follow the path that it invented for itself, believing that this is supposedly a good, right path. In fact, it was constantly wrong. Choosing a new path goes wrong, another new path, wrong again. Like a group of small people in a huge forest. We are in such conditions to this day.

But now the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed to us, which explains the laws of the development of the world, its program and the goal of development. Therefore, we must first study all this, and then, in order to understand more of this program and adapt ourselves to it, not it to us, but me to it! Because this is the program of nature, we cannot break nature. It breaks us down if need be.

After we master this program and understand it, we need to somehow adapt to it so that we can live in it, develop in relation to it. Then we will get closer to nature and really see and feel what course of life we are placed in and how it wants to change us.

To act in the same direction as nature affects us—this will be our most comfortable, correct state. This should be taught.
[278995]
From KabTV’s “Integral World” 7/13/18

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Question: Researchers argue that such a concept as “materialism,” which is characteristic of both the rich and the poor, means people’s addiction to things.

The social image and value system created by this addiction is destructive for both society and the individual. Whoever succumbs to this loses the joy of life, peace of mind, brings anxiety, depression, and the collapse of relationships.

Nevertheless, in the past year of the “crown,” coronavirus, people began to demonstrate less materialism. But, on the other hand, now it is already clear that this is the reverse side of the same coin. Why do people love things so much?

Answer: Man is an egoist. He loves to acquire and feel that it is his: “Mine, mine, mine!” We see this in the example of small children, when they grab a toy and do not give it to anyone else. Even if you convince him that this is not appropriate, the child does not understand. He always wants it to be in his hands. That is how he is born.

Therefore, we cannot condemn people for the fact that they have such a craving for acquiring everything they like: “I want this to be mine.” Or even something that he doesn’t like, but the other likes it, obviously, this is good, he also wants to have it.

Moreover, he wants to have this thing himself, while the other child should not have it, and if this is not possible, then no one should have it. That is, this is absolute selfishness, childish and petty that accompanies us all years of our life. You can’t get away from it.

How can you balance it? Only with the right upbringing. But for this it is necessary to build a system that will work on people and educate them in such a way that they are satisfied with what they have, even in comparison with others. In general, this must be a special education system, otherwise, we will never get rid of materialism.

Question: In essence, materialism is the decoration of oneself. A person decorates himself with something extra. What should replace materialism or will it go away over time?

Answer: I think it will. Instead, a more internal decoration will prevail: the attitude of a person toward others, the attitude of others toward him, but not the replacement of some things with other things.

As a result, a person must come to the understanding that his greatest acquisition is his love for his neighbor as for himself, and even, perhaps, more than himself. This is a completely different ascent of man over his little egoistic nature.

I hope that under the influence of correct upbringing, one will gradually cancel the other.
[278702]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 2/16/21

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Comment: One of your videos was about children turning into stars and becoming leaders. How they’re raised on stage and become the best at singing or dancing. In this clip you spoke about love, about coming closer together, and what competition should really be.

Then we received this letter to you: “Healthy competition leads to success, leadership, and good outcomes. Being a laggard is never a good thing. Love, closeness, and empathy are false ideals. I want to be better, so I shall be; I want to be more successful, so I will. Winning gives confidence in oneself, in life, and leads to further success.

I doubt that Mr. Laitman would have turned out the way he did if he had no leadership skills or inclination to be a winner. Stop pretending! Only a weed grows by itself. We have to grow a harvest and overpower the weed. Only through leadership, only by winning do we succeed: it’s survival of the fittest.”

My Response: What he says is true! But this is all good among the weeds. While a man in the end has to come out a winner over himself, not over others. He has to see his inner self, and the way he should act in contrast to it on the outside. This is what I mean when I say this, I’m not referring to people as weeds.

Question: What about the competitiveness between children about who has the best voice or who is the best dancer?

Answer: In the end, there’s nothing good about it. Nothing! You’re training a child to be better, higher, and stronger, to win and rejoice in the victory. However, in the end you realize that this is not what makes one a winner in life.

Question: So they don’t grow up to be leaders?

Answer: No. Only an individual victory over oneself, this is where one should be a winner.

Question: In other words, the modern world is built on these concepts, do you reject it?

Answer: That’s for sure. I think that everyone who hears me, who reads what I write, understands that I accept the modern world the way it is in order to change it.
[278999]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/21/21

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Question: There is something that unites all nations—fairy tales. It is part of everyone’s life. We enter life listening to fairy tales. Some kind of morality is meant to pass on to us through them, so that it is understandable to children. Then we grow up and continue to tell fairy tales, but we call them stories, fables, and so on. Sages also write allegorically and convey a lot through a fairy tale.

What is in the fairy tale?

Answer: Everything! Absolutely everything. There is a woodcutter, a princess, a king, a puss in boots, a pumpkin on wheels, whatever you want. Horses moving their hooves nervously, and all that sort of thing. An unhappy prince who is looking for his princess. Either he is like a frog or she is trapped somewhere in a high tower. Whatever you want, everything is possible. A fairy tale can do anything! And moreover, it manifests itself in a very open, as if naked form.

That is, they love, they want to be together. Someone does not help, someone is against it. Everything is open. That’s what is good about the fairy tale. In our world, a lot of adults enjoy watching real fairy tales. Although they know that these are fairy tales.

Question: Why? Is it an escape from reality?

Answer: This is more real than our life actually.

Question: What is the reality of the fairy tale?

Answer: Justice is rewarded, loyalty is rewarded. But all this has to go through a lot of twists and turns, all sorts of nooks and crannies, mazes of our egoism.

Question: So the fairy tale actually tells about what will really happen? That good will triumph over evil?

Answer: Absolutely. Otherwise, nothing would have started. All fairy tales must have a good ending, because it is already set initially.

Question: And fairy tales with a bad ending, what about them?

Answer: There is no such thing. It means they are not finished.

A fairy tale is written from the end. But the good ending should be in that there is a beginning, a denouement, a climax. In general, absolutely everything and always a good ending. It was designed from the very beginning.

My conclusion is this: a fairy tale should start from the beginning. Then there should be some kind of demonstration process; educational, accusatory, and so on. The heroes have to diverge and be unhappy with what is happening, this one wants to kill and it does not work, this one wants to escape but can’t, they want to get married, it’s not working, and so on.

That is, in all this they cannot find ties between them, and who writes that fairy tale? The Creator! That’s when they gradually despair of solutions, each in their own way: ”What to do?” Then they begin to understand that they are under an upper will, and then everything begins to work out for them, to come together. And it turns out that this upper will, the upper force, leads them to the right decision, to a good end. And good triumphs.

Question: Were you really talking about our time just now?

Answer: It is precisely in our time that this upper force begins to manifest itself in various states, when humanity has no other answer to the questions than to say that it is the upper force

Comment: And this unkind fairy tale, as it seems to humanity, begins to move.

My Response: And then it will be kind! Because it points you to the ultimate solution—the one who conceived it, started developing it and doing it, and now has to finish it.

Question: And we are led to love, to happiness?

Answer: Yes!
[278873]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/21/21

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Question: There is this concept called a “Challenge”—a special type of video, where its creator demonstrates something and gives the task to others to repeat. For example, he douses himself with ice-cold water and says, “Repeat after me.” It can be smart, stupid, complex, and simple things.

This happens every day, and hundreds of millions of people around the world repeat it. Why do people like to follow after others?

Answer: I do not know if they like to follow after others, but it is our nature. We learn from others. This is our monkey nature—the primates we evolved from. In general, it is natural for a person to repeat after others since he is a social animal. There is nothing new in this.

In the end, this integrates us, brings us closer. In some ways, we begin to understand each other better. That is not bad. It depends on what we imitate.

Comment: There is a trend: do a good deed and put it on the Internet, show how you did it. Help someone.

My Response: That is a different story. Then I am all for it.
[278989]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 2/16/21

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