Entries in the 'Children' Category

What Determines The Gender Of A Baby?

laitman_623Question: What determines the gender of a child to be born? How does this relate to spirituality?

Answer: It depends on the properties of the soul that are required for correction.

I don’t recommend intervening and engaging in genetic engineering to determine the gender of future children. We should not be doing that.

Anyway, you can’t fool the Creator. The gender of the child and his characteristics are determined by the general Kli (vessel) of the soul that needs to be connected into one.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

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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.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/14/16

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Books Give Way To The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

laitman_527_05Question: What is the significance of books and libraries in the evolution of humanity?

Answer: I will answer as a scientist who has sought to learn all my life. Since the age of nine I subscribed to the magazines Knowledge is Power, Technology for Teens, Science and Life, and later to the magazine Radio. How can one live without literature or books? Today we can upload all the world’s literature on one computer and give each one access to the treasures of human intelligence.

Question: Why does a person need this knowledge?

Answer: It depends upon what we want to insert into our memory.

Education is built by reading many different sources, which are all forgotten but which build the special connections in our brain, in our memory, and today when we look at different objects, instruments, and phenomena, we can perceive, understand, and relate to them correctly because the right relationship has been created.

By reading a lot, we seemingly create internal software inside us, like Word for example. Once you upload Word on your computer, you can use this software to read texts, to write, etc.

Similarly, education uploads its software in us and we don’t need to remember anything because the major basic intelligence of man is already inside us.

Question: Will it always be this way?

Answer: I believe that it will gradually disappear because everything will be completed by the wisdom of Kabbalah, which provides us with full knowledge of the world we are living in: who we are and how we should correct this world.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/9/16

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New Life 403 – Suicide Prevention

New Life 403 – Suicide Prevention
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

How does social support and conversation help us contend with life and prevent suicidal feelings?

We are social creations. There is always conflict between a person and his environment.

To prevent suicide, it is necessary to build a new educational-social framework for everyone, to hold daily workshops in small groups to explore life, relationships, and emotions. In these discussions, even someone who is introverted will hear the words of others about life. Openness is gradually created.

At first, all of the garbage comes out of a person; everyone unloads his own baggage.

We try to connect in a circle, nobody criticizes others, and we try to reach a single opinion. Gradually, each one begins to feel that connection with a warm society is more important to him than his personal life. Instead of suicide, he begins to find a higher value to life.

Connection workshops make everyone equal, balance the differences, and help everyone acquire a higher meaning.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 403 –Suicide Prevention,” 6/12/14

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New Life #400 – Sports Education And Group Power

New Life #400 – Sports Education And Group Power
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

You can acquire educational values through sports. What characterizes sports that promote connection compared to ordinary competitive sports, and does group cooperation significantly improve achievements?

Sports can develop a person’s confidence, power, stamina, persistence, and ambitiousness. All this is very important, but we have to fill sports with the spirit of connection. We need to develop sports that require a deep sense of mutuality. It is a good idea to develop activities for the public in parks, physical activities that include dancing and a common motion. The role of the coach is to connect the members of the group. The uniqueness of each member in the group stands out on top of the connection.

We should add training exercises that develop connection, understanding, and a feeling of mutuality. The players should become friends, get closer to each other, eat together, and sleep together until they become one body. They should not compete against each other. They should speak about the connection, the ties between them, about love and mutual understanding. They should get to know each other well.

A perfect group is a group in which all its members move as organs of one body on the field, as one player. We should add a connection workshop to today’s training, to share feelings, to find out how the connection can be made stronger. It is possible to play games with the eyes or ears covered and then try to feel the others internally.

We will see how from one year to the next, the winning group is the one that has the power of connection, and not the group that has individual stars. Today sportsmen use drugs in order to enhance their performance. The power of connection will enhance performance many times more.

It is easy to use drugs, while you have to work on the power of connection, but the power of connection is unlimited. You should not go over board with talks to children, but rather show them the connection between togetherness and success though games. If we nullify the self, we will feel that there is one head in the center of the group from which we all receive orders.

We can perceive these operating orders by creating mutual brotherhood among us and being as one. Such a group will demonstrate perfect harmony and the audience will be stunned and will be drawn into unity between them.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #400 –Sports Education And Group Power,” 6/8/14

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New Life #399 – The Culture Of Sports And The World Cup

New Life #399 – The Culture Of Sports And The World Cup
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

What characterizes sports in modern society and how can we have constructive competitions in sports? What can we learn from the World Cup games and why should we live in an undending World Cup?

Sports have developed because they help people feel superior to others, which is important in an egoistic society. Professional sports have become increasingly more popular as capitalism developed. People realized that there is a lot of money involved.

Sports can be a recreational activity for the family, a way of getting to know nature, and a way of spending a pleasant holiday. Competitive sports may lead to hatred. Our goal should be to check that in the end everyone has fun.

Success in sports should be measured according to the level of connection we reach at the end of the game. Thus each participant is required to play with his ego, to step on it a little in order to connect to others. We shouldn’t advertise or encourage people to participate in dangerous extreme sports. Only few need that. The World Cup involves the whole world. Millions of viewers feel that it is important so it is very influential. People watch every game because it has the flavor of connection, as we all feel as one.

We will all feel the same good feeling we have during the World Cup when we learn to connect and “drink” the pleasure from the connection between us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #399 – The Culture Of Sports And The World Cup,” 6/8/14

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New Life #404 – On The Way To A New Morality

New Life #404 – Our Approach To Life: On The Way To A New Morality
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

What is morality and how does it change from one generation to another? How do we determine what is good on the human level and what the new morality is of the new era?

Every generation, every culture, every individual define what is moral and what is not differently.

  • Animals examine what is good or bad only physically; human beings also examine things on the human level.
  • A human being also has a self, the ego. The two dimensions, the physical and the human, confuse us.
  • Morality has been part of our lives since ancient times sometimes through the power of religion.
  • The crisis is meant to lead us to the examination of what is really good and what is bad, to the end of our egoistic evolution.

A new morality: no one cares only about his own well being, everyone cares about the wellbeing of others; it is a new life.
From KabTV’s “New Life #404 – Our Approach to Life: On The Way To A New Morality,” 6/15/14

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Parents And Children: Mutual Concern

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How does the wisdom of Kabbalah relate to the role of the mother and her influence on the adult life of a person?

Answer: In the Torah it is said that a child must leave his parents and adhere to his wife, establish a family with her, and have his own children.

The parents must not cause trouble for their children or intervene in their lives. There is no other way. Rabash used to say: the best thing in relationships with children is to open the pocket and not say a word.

It is up to us to help them as much as possible and to let them take care of themselves without hindering their freedom of choice.

According to the Torah, the role of the child regarding his parents is to care for them to the end of their days. He must do this to the degree that it is possible because his mother granted him life and he will never be able to pay back his debt to her.

There is no doubt that caring for parents is an obligation of adult children because this is part of their correction.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

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The Obese Children Of Israel

laitman_565_01In the News (Ynet): “An upcoming report from the World Obesity Federation (WOF) has shown that over half a million Israeli children are overweight. Compared to European countries, the group in which the Jewish state is categorized, Israel is in first place for overweight persons and in second place compared with Europe and third place globally when children are included. …

“The report maps the state of children’s health in different countries and states that 28.8 percent of Israeli children under the age of 18 are overweight. The forecast for the future is worrying: The report states that within eight years, that datum is likely to jump 50 percent, and the number of obese and overweight children in the country is expected to reach 740,000, an unprecedented number by any measure. …

“Israel is in first place in the European group for obesity, with 12.6 percent of its children being considered obesity by this index. Globally, Israeli children are only behind their US counterparts, 12.9 percent of whom are obese. The European average is 7.4 percent for children. If children with BMIs of 25–30 are included, that figure increases to 23 percent of European children. …

“‘The parents need to teach their children how to behave correctly and to choose the right food amidst the jungle of advertisements for harmful food,’ concluded Dubnov-Raz. ‘Like a parent teaches their child how to act safely on a bicycle in the urban jungle—that’s how it needs to be with food. Otherwise, we’ll wake up in a few years, and we won’t understand how we got ourselves in this situation.'”

My Comment: The food products in Israel are of relatively high quality and we usually don’t indulge in high-calorie foods, but we still consume large amounts of foods.

The main reason is that we are a high-tech nation in which very few people have manual jobs where they engage in hard physical work. In fact, we are a high-tech nation in agriculture, computers, and military technologies, so it is only natural that people, including young people, sit for many hours and move very little.

How should we handle this process? We need to produce low-calorie food, and of course launch a campaign promoting participation in sports.

I believe that sports should become an integral part of our social frameworks since otherwise we will end up with a huge “army” of people who are sick and weak and have to be taken care of. It is of course better to invest a little in sports, in promoting participation in physical activities, than to invest in healing sick people. A person has to live a healthy life and die healthy.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/2/16

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New Life #586 – Between Culture And Spirit

New Life #586 – Between Culture And Spirit
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

There are many conflicting opinions regarding culture. Many works of art were based on hatred. Of course, those who rule want to influence education and culture, and this is true all over the world.

An artist or a composer is blessed with talent, but this doesn’t mean that they are mentally more developed than others. There are endless examples of books and plays that were written by people who hated mankind and were not intellectuals.

A person who is with a developed mind is a person who loves others, and he can be a very simple person. Education and broad cultural knowledge do not mean that a person is necessarily good or bad to others. This is measured by a person’s heart, his attitude to others, not by how much he has learned.

Studying the wisdom of Kabbalah changes a person for the better and corrects his egoistic nature. An intellectual is a spiritual person who values the good relations between people above anything else. An intellectual is a person who is above matter, above the egoistic relations between people. An intellectual doesn’t criticize others since he understands people and that a man’s heart is evil from his youth. He knows that it is only human to take advantage of everything for one’s own good, to suppress others, and he aspires to help people ascend their nature.

Even if you are educated, a composer, or a philosopher, it doesn’t mean that you are an intellectual, that you are above the ego. A cultural person is a person that everyone feels comfortable being by his side. He is not proud and doesn’t think lightly of others. Culture means knowing human nature and thus relating to everyone with love and understanding.

The original Israeli culture is a culture based entirely on “love thy friend as thyself,” and it is on this basis that the nation of Israel was founded. An educational process that will turn a person into a cultured person who can change his evil nature as required in order to reach this level.

But engaging in composition and art makes people even more egoistic than others. It is not their fault. The great egoism that is built in them doesn’t enable them to sit quietly, and they have to express themselves. It is only natural for such a person to belittle others, not to regard them as equals, and not to want them near him.

An educational process that changes a person’s nature for the good makes good use of art and composition. Theater, for example, can illustrate our current situation, how low we have plunged, and what the correction we need is.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #586 – Between Culture And Spirit,” 3/31/14

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