Comment: On March 20^th the world celebrated the International Day of Happiness. The UN adopted a resolution proclaiming the International Day of Happiness, an initiative of the Kingdom of Bhutan.

Answer: Of course, I would like there to be happiness 365 days a year.

There are many days marked on the calendar like women’s day, etc. It is desirable that on these days the whole of humanity plays a special game in happiness: to make everyone happy – for one day. That would be great!

Maybe then we would realize that it is possible. If you just think of how to make everyone happy and everyone else thinks the same about others, happiness suddenly appears. Happiness doesn’t exist in the world but it suddenly begins to appear from somewhere, and the whole world becomes imbued with this cloud of happiness.

If that happened, we would all create a cloud of happiness together, which would engulf us, envelop us, and we would float on it and feel that we are in paradise.

The chain of happiness that would return to a person would reveal to him the positive force that is concealed in our world, which we cannot feel because we don’t resemble it. But if we behaved as described above, we would generate happiness from our world and begin to use it and live in happiness.

Then a person would consume only 20 calories a day in order to live and even less because the force of happiness would permeate him and fill him. This would be the strongest source of energy.

Gradually immersing ourselves in this state, playing with happiness, we would attain eternity and most importantly become immortal. After all, what actually kills us is the state of unhappiness that our egoism brings us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah offers us to be happy and shows us how to do it. So I am for true happiness 365 days a year.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/20/16

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New Life #365 – A Dialogue
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Something special happens when two people speak with each other. What is the meaning of conversation in our lives? How does one conduct a conversation correctly, what is a successful conversation, what is the potential that exists in this encounter between two?

Summary

The art of conversation that we conduct daily is very important to us in the success of our business, in the success of the family, etc.

• Today we are very used to using text messages and e-mails, and each one remains more in his corner. So specifically today it is very important for us to regain this skill.
• In our lives there is a place for conversation if there is something that I want to get from someone else or if I have something to give, to contribute to him.
• There should be a subject and two people who can be interested in the same subject that is something in common between them so that they can exchange information, exchange all kinds of impressions.

Going over a text, I try to flow in the same wave with him, creating a common desire between us and shared thoughts, mine, his, and something in common.

• During the conversation we basically don’t appreciate the conversation.
• This is like an atomic reactor into which I throw my fuel with thoughts and emotions, and he throws his fuel with thoughts and emotions.
• So what generally follows from this is something more interesting, something higher, a special brilliance.
• Each one enjoys inclusion with the other, the opinions of the other, this communication.
• We leave the conversation when each one is essentially at least doubled, each one acquires emotion and wisdom from the other.

A person must prepare himself for an important conversation at work, with a partner or with someone with whom it is important to him to reach agreement.

• Prepare a plan: The purpose of the conversation, what the subject is, what must be said, about what do you want to get an opinion, or what conclusion do you want to reach.
• Clarify how much a person will soon enter into a connection with you, how much he is for or against everything that you will say, what is his approach toward you, and his attitude toward the entire subject.
• Today we are found in a flood of all kinds of opinions and conversations, new and old, we have nothing of our own; as for me, I have nothing of my own.
• If the connection with the person himself is important to me, then the subject is secondary or could even be peripheral because he is more interesting to me than I am to myself.
• Or the subject is important to me and this person is also important, because as far as it seems he has an important opinion on this subject. But that is how it is, and I need to know that each and every connection into which I enter influences me so much for the rest of my life.

A successful outcome from a conversation is that I need to become clothed within the person, and know how to be with him more openly on a human level, and how much it is already possible to combine this on the plane of interests. There are two planes among us; one is between people and the other is channels of information.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #365 – A Dialogue,” 5/1/14

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New Life #348 – Peace In Israel And In The World
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Why can’t we have peace? How is this related to the fact that the world is always against us and what is the role of Israel in the world?

Summary

Peace in Israel refers to inner wholeness. Abraham, the nation’s patriarch, taught mercy and love.

• When there is no love between us but unfounded hatred, we are not a nation.
• As long as there is no peace between us, there will not be peace on the outside.
• We need to live in peace between us and to learn how to connect before there can be any reconciliation with the Arabs or with the world.

If we live a life of love and connection in Israel, everything around us will quiet down and everyone will want to learn from us.

• Today we are like a pain in the neck for the world, and the other nations don’t know how to get rid of us,
• We have to search internally and begin to build the nation of Israel.
• There is no one to be afraid of but ourselves. Today we are destroying ourselves, Being a “Light unto the nations” means building a social model of life that is based on connection and love in Israel.
• We should start a general educational process in order to unite the nation, connect above all the differences, like in a family. Let’s start with that and the neighboring nations will become our best friends; we will also connect with them. The more the socio-educational process will penetrate them, the more will be as one with them.

The whole world subconsciously feels that the key for a good life is in the hands of the Jews.

• The right approach for peace that Israel should adopt is first of all educating ourselves to live in peace among us.
• It is from here that love will spread all over the world until all of mankind will be as one family.
• No one other than us can bring world peace, but we are asleep and therefore others hate us.

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From KabTV’s “New Life #348 – Peace In Israel And In The World,” 4/10/14

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New Life #364 – Achieving Your Goals In A Connected World
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

It seems that people have lost the urge to set goals and to aspire to achieve them, why is that so? Which goals will awaken us to act in the future and what will we profit from them?

Summary

Many young people don’t find a purpose in life. In the future everything will be collaborative, connected, in one network.

We will feel our goals in the new connected world by a new sense, the group sense, that is born out of our connection. The goal of a violinist, in the future society, for example, will be implement “love thy friend as thyself.” The aspiration to play the violin better will be in order to serve others better and to do them good.

Instead of constantly thinking only about our own good, we will begin to think about everyone’s wellbeing. People who feel powerless today and have no goal to focus on will be greatly encouraged by society in the future and receive a lot of strength from society. By studying and developing our awareness, we will realize that investing in society yields a far greater return.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #364 – Achieving Your Goals In A Connected World,” 4/29/14

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Question: Research in the US and Europe shows that one out of five women in big cities does not want to have children. Forty years ago, on the other hand, one out of ten women did not want to have children. What is the reason that the number of women who don’t want to have children has doubled?

Answer: Women have lost the motherly instinct and don’t want to have children. Even if they do, it is only later when they are nearing forty, so that they can enjoy life some more with children.

They take into account the fact that once they have a child they become trapped in obligations for life! It isn’t only financial obligations, but also their commitment to their child. This is simply unacceptable for the growing ego. Today everyone wants to be by himself, totally free, without even having to work. A person is connected to the Internet, he has a smart phone, and people don’t want to be close to anyone. Having a child is an instinctive connection to someone who depends on me and I depend on him.

The moment a woman becomes pregnant, she immediately begins to think only about the life that is being formed inside her and about the fact that she has to totally dedicate herself to it. Her world narrows and all her attention is focused on the embryo that is developing inside her. What’s next? She looks ahead and thinks about spending the rest of her life giving birth, raising, and bring up this creature. Will he live in 100-200 years? No he won’t. He will probably have his own offspring. So why take part in that and dedicate her whole life to that?!

Question: Does she think that a child will deprive her of pleasures in this world?

Answer: Of course, what is more, she feels that a child puts her in prison, that he makes her committed as if he ties her arms and legs and doesn’t allow her to think about anything else but him. The child will be stuck to her and pull all her attention. This is indeed how nature works.

Nature gradually increases a man’s and woman’s ego and allows them not to act automatically as earlier generations did. In the past a woman had to get married very early in life and have children, raise them, build a home, help them with their education, do whatever possible for them, and die. They will cry for her when she is dead, but is this what her life would come down to?!

This is a healthy scrutiny that the ego invokes in her, and she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t care where she will be buried, how, and by whom. She already pays taxes and has different obligations. All she wants is to live and not to owe anything to anyone, and especially not to bury herself while still young.

It is only if a person cares about the goal of creation enough that it obliges him to have a family, to have children, to raise them, and to take care of everything else; he will do it, but only when it is profitable.  .

And it will only be advantageous when he knows that he has to act the way that most people in this world do, which means to have children, to raise them, to care for them, to support them, and to help them stand on their own two feet, in order to attain the goal of creation. At the same time he has to correct himself and thus correct the world too!

When a woman has a child and raises him, she actually makes him perform his correction! This is going to be the only incentive to have children in the future. Otherwise, if at the moment one out of five women doesn’t want to have kids, in a couple of years one out of two women will not want to have children and the world population will diminish to half a billion people.

Question: What can a woman think about the goal of creation in order to have a child in the ideal state?

Answer: Our sufferings force us to find a clear answer to the question about the meaning of life. This is the only goal that a woman should have in order to attain the upper management and to see where nature or the Creator is leading us.

When we discover that, we will reveal how we should behave in every aspect of life in order to attain the eternal upper goal, which is considered upper in relation to our temporary life. Then we will feel the benefit in our ego and will have children, bring them up, and dedicate ourselves to the family.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/2/16

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Comment: In the framework of studies that were conducted for two years by the Adler Institute on the subject of education, a poll was conducted in which it was clarified that around 48% of Israeli parents don’t talk to their children. In an additional poll that was conducted among 300 Israeli teenagers aged 13-18, around 40% of them confirmed that they are not in communication with their parents and are not familiar with their history and roots.

Answer: This is understandable because today we are rising above the level of corporeal development where everything was built upon a traditional household in which parents and children were strongly connected to each other. For the most part, the son was heir to his father’s profession, built a house next to his father’s house, and so on.

But for some time now we have not been in this situation. With the development of industry, everyone was drawn to the cities, and through the development of a variety of professions, the connection between “fathers and sons” was broken.

When the generation develops with such turbulence and rapidity, when the perspective on the world is changed entirely in a few years, then not only the children, but also the parents don’t recognize themselves compared to what they were five years before. While in the past children would leave the home of their parents at the age of 18-20, now, already at the age of 11-12, the child doesn’t want to feel that he owes something to someone, his parents are the ones who owe him something while he doesn’t owe them anything.

We have reached a situation in which it is up to us to begin to rise above the corporeal level, where people are connected with each other only from a physical aspect, according to the household in a traditional manner. As of today, what else can parents give to their children?! They can no longer convey their education to a child because it differs from what the present generation requires.

Not even the present education corresponds to the needs of a young person so that he can develop in his life. Everything is changing rapidly and children don’t feel the need to communicate with their parents. The parents also don’t feel any attraction to their children because they are no longer realizing themselves through them.

We are found in a very interesting situation. So that the need for a link between the generations will appear, which is generally what happens in the transition from one generation to another; there must be a common aspiration, a common flow of life, in which gradually the purpose of life now becomes clear.

The wisdom of Kabbalah gives that to us. The attainment of the purpose of life and the purpose of all of creation is the same purpose. Then the children will be able to be “nourished” by their parents. In this situation, the parents can give their children home schooling beginning from a tender age, instilling in them the right foundation for all of life. Both of them will be found within the same internal and external orientation, current, and movement.

They will have something to talk about with each other, something to convey to each other. In this way, the link between the generations will appear, no longer on the corporeal level as it was throughout the history of humanity, but on the spiritual level, on the level of the connection of the soul.

Then they will begin to discover the deep and spiritual connection between them; they will discover why specifically these are their parents and these are their children, why specifically contacts like these are happening between them, including physical contacts on the corporeal level, and then a transition to the level of souls will happen.

Question: What kind of goal will be determined?

Answer: The goal of humanity is to reach an inclusive mutual connection. The connection will also be directed toward familial connections that will become strengthened thanks to the spiritual connection. The physical connections will remain on the same level, and there will even be more independence.

This will be a completely new system of mutual connections, supported by the entire society. And so new mutual relationships between parents and children will prevail; the connection will be new.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/29/16

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Question: Why is a person’s birth always in great pain?

Answer: It is written in the Torah, “…in pain you shall bear children.” Spiritual birth cannot take place without pain, so giving birth in our world is painful; this is the root and branch.

Even elementary particles that connect feel pain in the creation of a new connection. Each particle must diminish its influence and obey the opposite particle and thus create a kind of conglomerate, a connection of opposite attributes.

If a new life is created—which means that the transformation becomes you are for me and I am for you, alternately—it turns out that everything is based on painful concessions.

When it comes to the birth of the next spiritual level, it is always painful since you must ascend above yourself, above your ego.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/3/16

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New Life #614 – A School For Life
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel.

Summary

The educational, military, and medical systems are conservative, they don’t like change; what was, will be.

The school is an institution that began around 150-200 years ago laborers and industrial workers needed to be trained.

I suffered a lot in school during my childhood; eventually I went to study at a night school; I also studied at a university. In the last forty years I have been involved in the investigation of Kabbalah and ontology because it interests me. And I see how our egoism has evolved and we can not sit and study only because we must; it must really interest us.

It is necessary to take children to see a variety of workplaces, creating a real “university of life.” Children should be allowed flexibility and diversity so that they can study what interests them. Studies show that teaching boys and girls together disturbs the children a lot and arouses a great deal of pressure and tension in a class.

Today a school doesn’t build a person and hardly imparts any knowledge. Children are dissatisfied, parents are dissatisfied, teachers are dissatisfied; the system has stagnated. Today the educational system doesn’t educate, it doesn’t build a person, and it doesn’t teach correct relationships between people.

To better prepare our children for life, we must first imagine an optimal life. To do this requires interesting and relevant teachers of life.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #614 – A School For Life,” 8/25/15

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New Life 615 – Learning To Be Human
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

We don’t build schools that are suitable for children; we treat them like bottles on an assembly line. So the school is not a good place, a place full of anxiety, pain, arguments, aggression, and competition.

We don’t build human beings; we don’t teach them how to relate to one another or how to choose a profession that is right for them. We don’t create a sense of togetherness and connecting to each other at the time of study, and thus we see the outcome in our society.

The value we should educate children according to today is to be a human being. We have to teach them about relationships between people and social psychology.

We need to start by training parents so that our children can receive a new education. Through discussion circles, joint discussions, and games children should learn proper social interactions. The school of the future will look very different from today’s schools. One third of the time will be devoted to discussion circles. Another third of the time will be devoted to visiting different places, while the last third will be devoted to classic studies of elementary subjects like mathematics, etc. When children visit different places outside the school, they will learn different things that they will perceive differently.

The most important thing a child should learn is how to become a human being who is part of society, a human being that can communicate with everyone. A good student will be one who learns how to get along with others everywhere and who has the right social relations. A person who knows how to properly connect to others will succeed in life in everything he does everywhere. In the future the most highly demanded profession will be a social guide, an expert who can teach people how to get along with each other.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 615 – Learning To Be Human,” 8/25/15

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New Life 623 – The Software Of Life
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

If we knew from the previous New Year that this would be our year, would we have accepted it?

But it doesn’t depend on us, for “Against your will you live” (Pirkei Avot 4:22). In addition, we don’t know what will happen in another moment. Toward what are we developing? We are living within a general program that acts on us at each and every moment. The wisdom of Kabbalah investigates this program, the forces above our universe.

Throughout our lives we develop unconsciously. Negative forces push us forward. The goal that nature has prepared for us is our unlimited development, and this requires a transformation of characteristics.

Our general characteristic is a desire to receive for ourselves; we run after all kinds of things and exhaust ourselves. In fact we are now living in hell, and paradise, another world, is really close to here. To enter into the second world, it is up to us to learn to open our heart to others and connect with them.

The final objective of development that nature has defined for humanity is the acquisition of a new characteristic, a desire to bestow. Nothing will be changed for the future human except relationships with others. He will feel that what is outside of him is as he is. The future human will develop through internal technology. He will learn how to accept the higher state. There is a psychological hurdle that one must go through to feel the new world. Israel is the place where the future human will begin to develop.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 623 – The Software Of Life,” 9/8/15

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