Entries in the 'Children' Category

Hallucinations: Caused By Drugs Or The Attainment Of A New Reality

laitman_571_06Question: A new movie came out not too long ago in which the main character, a woman who uses drugs, seems to feel all of creation and melts into it.

Answer: I don’t even want to talk about that because it is a completely unrealistic world that was created in man’s dark and foggy consciousness under the influence of chemical substances that can lead to different illusions and fantasies. Why should we talk about such states if they are artificial? What problem can we solve with that? What do we achieve that way? It is needless to imagine that by using drugs we enter some different reality. It is an absolute fallacy.

Publicizing drugs in movies or books is very helpful to those who spread them. This is the reason they make such movies and laws that make drugs legal.

We must reach the truth in our real life. After all, nature has its own goal and its own way of attaining it. But if we pass this way consciously or under the influence of blows, whether we see this goal from a distance or go into gridlock, receiving blows and then going to the main road to reach the goal—only this is the problem of our development.

Question: Does this mean that a person worries about nothing but pleasures and sufferings? Can’t he think about anything else?

Answer: Of course. We are absolute animals because the ego manages us. Our nature is a desire to enjoy, and if we believe that we are controlled by positive impulses, we are terribly wrong because these impulses are also part of the desire to receive and enjoy.

Question: What can we do in order to be free of that?

Answer: We must simply learn to manage it correctly, and then all of our problems will disappear.

We will look at the world, at ourselves, and at life rationally. We will understand our nature and how, by using it and controlling our ego correctly, we can bring ourselves to the feeling of an eternal, whole, and unlimited state. We can receive such information about our feelings and about harmony that no drug addict can ever dream of. It is possible.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 8/10/14

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Can We Learn How To See The Future?

laitman_928Question: I really can relate to your explanation about man’s place in nature, that as a result of his egoistic evolution, he becomes lower and more miserable than all the other creatures. Sometimes I look at my dog and envy his life. He isn’t troubled by any questions and has no problems. His only problem is what to eat right now.

In the past, when humanity was struggling to survive, it didn’t ask about the meaning of life. Now, when we have reached relative affluence and don’t have to struggle for our daily bread, the question of “Why do we need this whole game called life?” suddenly comes up.

It turns out that all of our wisdom, our evolution, and our brain are worthless because they don’t provide us with the answer to this basic question: what should the next phase of our evolution be? Can we see our future?

Answer: If there is a question, an unfulfilled desire, a deficiency, for seeing the future, then we probably can find an answer. There were people in our history who could foresee the future. Interestingly, the future exists! The question is whether we can connect to it.

If we evolve according to nature’s plan, then apparently we can discover, read, understand, and feel it. After all, it already exists in nature in the form of balanced forces. Astrophysicists who study life in space also say that the entire universe is one thought. Scientists who explore nature are quite materialistic, and, at the same time, they claim that we exist in a field of thought.

The software of evolution that operates us is embedded in nature. We are the product of this software, and we evolve according to this scenario. This software manages the balance between the forces of nature. As a result of this balance, elementary particles have connected into objects and bodies, and this is how our entire universe has evolved since the Big Bang until today.

How can we discover this hidden layer of nature? We know that the main law, and, in fact, the only law of nature that determines all our feelings, our understanding and our perceptions, is the law of equivalence of form. According to this law, if I feel something, it happens only because this attribute exists in me in some form.

If I see a yellow or a white color, if I hear sounds and feel flavors, it means that I discern something in my senses, which means that these forces, these attributes, just like the phenomenon that I perceive, exist inside me. This is actually the reason that I can feel that phenomenon. One thing determines the other; my internal model matches the external picture.

We can see that in children who don’t notice many phenomena around them until we explain these phenomena to them, give them suitable games, and help them see, feel and taste things. This means that a person can develop the feeling of the unknown future internally.

We can discover the future if we first explore nature that is above us. If the entire universe is a great software, like in a computer, and what affects us is this one thought, one idea, then we should learn how to become more familiar with it and learn its plans regarding us. How can we connect to it? Which senses, flavors, sensors or thinking do we need? How should we prepare our hearts and minds, which means our desires and thoughts, in order to feel the future?

Here, we encounter a very serious problem. After all, nature, being the upper thought that sustains us and controls us, is absolutely integral, round, and mutually connected. It doesn’t break up into separate components, still, vegetative, and animate nature, and man, or into separate colors and sounds. In nature, everything is connected into one whole that is tied internally.

As a result of the evolution of humanity on this planet, it gradually discovers the connection between people, which is growing stronger. This is despite the fact that we don’t want to connect, and each of us would rather sit alone and have no one disturb him. But it doesn’t work, and each day we discover our increasingly greater interdependence.

Even different scientific fields are becoming integrated today. The same laws, the same relationships, operate everywhere, but in a slightly different manner, and as a result, we divide them into laws that operate on solid bodies, on liquids, gases, and plasma. In fact, there are no differences in nature. We are the ones who divide it into different areas—biology, zoology, mechanics, electricity—and study each area separately. We simply cannot perceive everything as a whole, as one integral form.

We divide nature into different areas so that we will be able to understand it a little. However, there are already many trends that connect several areas, like my first profession, bio-cybernetics. We create more and more interdisciplinary sciences since we realize that, in reality, everything is unified.

In ancient times when science wasn’t so developed, scientists had universal knowledge in all areas, like Leonardo Da Vinci, for example. Each of these great men was a genius in philosophy because philosophy included all the knowledge about nature. However, later, we developed our knowledge of nature to such an extent that one person cannot perceive it all. This is the reason that we had to divide our knowledge into different areas, but it is actually the same system.

Therefore, we should learn, feel, understand, and know the upper plan that operates us at the moment that will operate us tomorrow and in the many years to come. When we get to know it, we even will know what will happen to us after we die. After all, our consciousness, our feelings, and our knowledge, will not die together with our protein body when it ceases to exist. It is an absolutely different matter. These are forces that don’t disappear. We will learn about life outside the body if we become integral like all of nature and become familiar with its plan.

In order to do that, we must develop an integral sense so that all of the people all over the world and all of nature, will connect into one unified system so that there will be no differences between them. If I build my perception this way, I will feel that I and all of the other people connect into one. I suddenly will feel that I live on a higher dimension than the one I live on today. I will begin to feel the plan of creation and the forces by which it operates all of us as one.

You may be afraid to lose yourself as a result and afraid to tie yourself to others, but you should know that it is actually thanks to that that you will begin to get to know yourself.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 2/23/14

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A Love That Never Dies

laitman_527_03Question: Are you saying that love between a married couple is not enough and that they need to reach love between the Creator and the creature?

Answer: We don’t find any love in married couples nowadays. Our family relationships are in a state of the mournful day of the ninth of Av.

The destruction is felt in our entire lives, the relationships between parents and children, the boss and the workers, and between cabinet members as well. There is no understanding anywhere.

Question: There are many types of love, love for children, parents, close relatives, and so forth, but why is there a special romance in the love between a man and a woman?

Answer: Love is when I fulfill the desire of another person before my own desire. I need to know and feel what the other wants so that his desire becomes more important than my own.

This is the most general definition of love, but it fits all cases. The bond of marriage is just more encompassing than others since this connection includes mutual obligations, the experience of living together, knowing the partner, children in common, a common home and money, and a feeling of security and a guarantee of support in difficult times. A marriage is unification in this world with all the consequences that follow.

However, in the spiritual world, you are able to know your partner in a new way every moment. It is written that Malchut becomes a virgin again every day, and hence, a new relationship begins as if you weren’t familiar with her.

It seems that we lack this aspect in our regular life and family. If a married couple were on the spiritual level, they could renew their corporeal relationship every day.

Once, three and a half thousand years ago, the nation of Israel lived this way. Let’s hope that soon we will return to that and learn to reveal new qualities in each other every day. Then, it will be a correct, true love, which is renewed at every moment.

Meanwhile, today, in order to enliven our relationship even slightly and feel a connection, we are forced to fight. Upon making up after a fight, the flavor of love, which was dulled, is renewed.

However, it is impossible to get used to spiritual love. It changes all the time. New conditions are revealed constantly, and thus the love is rejuvenated all the time.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/30/15

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How Can We Bridge The Generation Gap?

laitman_592_04Question: Why is there a period called youth in our development?

Answer: It is in order to enter life. If the youth knew and understood how to do it correctly, they would learn first and foremost from the sages and try to explore all the impulses that youth have with the help of the adults.

Question: What should be the relationships between the youth and their parents since, on the whole, they never listen to the parents?

Answer: The problem of fathers and sons is an eternal problem that repeats every generation since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. There is nothing new here.

Today, the problem relates not only to fathers and sons, but also to mothers and daughters. In the past, men worked, went on journeys, explored new places, and invented different things while women were excluded totally from these areas and were expected to sit quietly at home and engage in housekeeping.

Therefore, in the past, this was considered a fathers and children problem, but it referred to the sons, and today it is a much greater problem and exists also between mothers and daughters.

Basically, I don’t see the relationships between parents and children as a problem since everything stems from our evolution. We are the only part in nature that evolves in such a turbulent manner from one generation to the next.

The next generation doesn’t feel that it belongs to the older generation anymore. They believe that the older generation is hopelessly old fashioned because there is such a quick change of desires, intentions, and goals.

I see it in my children and especially in my grandchildren. I don’t understand them, but I do understand and perceive the fact that I don’t understand them. They have a different attitude toward life.

So, what can we do? Both the older and the younger generations must undergo mutual education so that they could establish accurate communication between them; otherwise, they will be disconnected totally.

The younger generation demands to be given food, shelter, and clothing, and whatever they do is their own business and not their parents’. This is certainly not a solution to the situation. At the same time, the older generation cannot dictate to the younger generation what to do, and that isn’t the right solution.

There must be a continuous common aspiration for connection and mutual understanding, but mainly an aspiration for determining the right goal, the attainment of the attribute of absolute love by all of humanity, absolute mutual connection, absolute bestowal unto one another.

If the goal is right, it connects all the generations, but first we must reveal it. We first must teach the older generation so that they will understand the goal of the evolution of humanity, how it is advancing toward this goal, and how it perceives it.

If it is perceived correctly by both the older and the younger generations, all the opposition and conflict between them will disappear. The older generation will see this goal, what it can offer, and how to fulfill it in its paradigm, and the younger generation will perceive it in its paradigm. Then, these two generations will integrate into one another and mutually help one another attain it.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 10/8/14

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Illusory Values, Mass Media, And The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

laitman_547_06Question: The media is very successfully in using a person’s appearance in their advertisements to lure in customers with beauty. Why does such distinction exist between a beautiful and an ugly appearance?

Answer: It is a completely wrong approach, a very big misconception. Unfortunately, we are specially brought up to look at a person’s exterior and not at their inner world.

If we were pursuing a correct upbringing of a person, then by the time of puberty he or she would find a partner not based on their external characteristics, but on a sense of how much a particular person is close to him for proper procreation and the right coexistence.

And since we are constantly chasing illusory and false paradigms, it results in hook-ups and break-ups, without ever finding anything. Everything depends only on the upbringing.

This is yet another proof of how destructive our mass media are!

Question: Why don’t people feel that it is destroying them?

Answer: They feel it, but cannot do anything. They have not yet reached the point of recognition of evil in all the systems that they themselves created under the governance of the power-holders.

The masses are followers, like a docile flock, and they do everything in order to give profit to those who lead them. Though the leaders generally do not have anything either, they are simply chasing such illusory achievements as wealth, power, and fame.

Question: But I still cannot find that point in which all of this can be connected together. Or is it that 90% of humanity don’t even need to understand that we have to come to love and bestowal?

Answer: You are not able find to it yet, you have to be taught this. This is why I am saying that the youth need to be connected with the older generations, i.e., with the learned Kabbalists who understand the meaning of life, who attained it, and are connected to it and can bring the growing generation to the right goal.

Today young people are being driven forward like a herd so they would appease those who are driving them. They need to realize this and not go along with the media that are brainwashing them.

Question: How can we help one another?

Answer: Only by studying Kabbalah, which gives us an understanding of what our nature is, what the means are for achieving the purpose for which we need to live, and so on.

By engaging in Kabbalah we begin to understand the structure of the world, paying no attention to whatever is happening around us. We need to study the system of creation, its operation and functioning, and then we will gradually understand how to move from the present reality to the reality that should be.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 10/8/14

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What Is The Connection Between Vegetarianism And A Volcanic Eruption

Laitman_728_01Question: How does Kabbalah relate to the ideology of vegetarianism, which is based on the desire not to cause harm or suffering to living beings?

Answer: People who make this claim do not understand the purpose of creation and the fact that each species in nature acts and exists for the sake of another higher form of being.

Inanimate nature exists in order for plants to grow; plants exist in order to raise animals, and animals in order to raise humans, while people exist in order to raise the Creator.

Each level of nature is required to maintain a higher level. Just like the task of the earth is to support the plants and lend itself for their use, so the task of an animal is to be used by man. The question is only in exactly how to use the animals, in what form.

This is why we are given laws that define how to rear animals, how to kill them, how to prepare the meat, and how to eat it. All of this is described in great detail in the laws of Kashrut.

If we perform these actions correctly, then through them we sanctify both plants and animals, raising them to the degree of man, and together with man, onto the next degree. After all, a person lives in order to bring himself up to be Adam (man), “similar” (Domeh) to the higher force.

This is how I see it through my knowledge of the wisdom of Kabbalah and understanding of the entire system. I am not forcing vegetarians to eat meat. For example, my wife eats it very rarely, but not for ideological reasons but simply because her blood type is A, and people of that blood type do not like meat.  So this occurs in a natural way.

But the problem is that vegetarians are usually fighting for their idea. I have not yet met a single calm vegetarian. One would think that on the contrary, those who eat meat should be bloodthirsty and aggressive. But they appear to be calmer, perhaps because they are well fed, while vegetarians, possibly from lack of satiation, are often very irritable and demanding.

I do not understand why they are taking such a strong stand. Let everyone eat all the foods that nature has provided for us. We do not realize that we exist in a closed system of nature, and if we somehow alter our habits, then through that we change the laws of nature even on its still, vegetative, and animal levels.

Suppose the majority of humanity would now decide to become vegetarians, meaning, they would change their attitude toward the still, vegetative, and animal nature. Thus, we introduce into the overall system, which integrally ties all of us together, a new attitude that is opposite to the one originally imparted to us by nature.

Nature intended for every level to nurture and raise the one above it: the still would do that for plants, the plants for animals, and the animals for people.

We are made in such a way that we need to use all types of food specifically in this form: salt and water from the still level, permitted vegetables from the vegetative level, and permitted meat from the animate level, carrying out all the laws of their preparation.

We are talking about natural laws. I am not simply eating, but through this I am figuring out my attitude toward general nature. After all, I have to observe all the rules that determine what can be eaten and what cannot, and if it is allowed, then in what form. And if something cannot be eaten, maybe it could be used not as food, but in some other way, for example, for making leather.

Everything is structured so that a person would utilize all of nature correctly. If he does not do so, then through one’s incorrect relationship to nature he introduces a distortion into the overall system and alters physical, chemical, and other natural laws.

And then we are surprised when suddenly, some volcano erupted, or a tsunami appeared, or that there is an extraordinary heatwave up to 50° C in London. We do not understand why such disasters occur “all of a sudden,” and yet it is we ourselves who have disrupted the balance in the system.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/2/15

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We Will Not Need Any More Drugs

Laitman_715Question: What will happen when we succeed in publicizing the Integral Education method in the world? Will there be abundance in the world, will everyone have food, a comfortable life, and no need to work more than two hours per day?

Answer: We will get more than this: we will correct and refine ourselves in such a way that we won’t need to work at all. It’s not that machines will work for us, but in general, this physical world will evaporate, we will move on to a world of forces instead of a world of imaginary objects.

We will begin to use all of our knowledge, all of science and strength for the benefit of humanity, according to a mutual agreement that is accepted in society. A transition like this will happen gradually to the degree of the readiness of society.

Question: Which is to say, even the crisis in medicine and the incorrect usage of medicines will also be corrected and transformed into a good use?

Answer: There will be a good use of drugs, until their use disappears entirely. We won’t need the drugs themselves. But in the intermediate stages we certainly use only beneficial drugs. You will not be able to give harmful drugs and poison people whom you feel are like relatives.

Question: I don’t understand, how could the climate crisis disappear, the threatening and frightening phenomena that are liable to happen? Is nature also connected to our success in disseminating Integral Education?

Answer: If you establish balance on the “speaking” level, it will influence the level of forces on all levels under it. The whole problem is that we don’t feel these forces. If 150 years ago I had shown you an electric battery, you would not believe or understand that some kind of power can be found in it. In those times you would have understood the power of fire, a rod, dynamic energy, potential energy, but not electrical energy.

Today, you understand that electricity is powerful and you believe that a battery can operate a large machine. But if I had shown you a small box then and and told you that this is an atomic bomb that contains the power to incinerate all of Manhattan, you would not believe me. You would certainly laugh, because you know the size of Manhattan.

But today you already believe if some regular car arrives on Fifth Avenue containing a small box that explodes, all of Manhattan could turn back into a Native American village. A hundred years ago this would seem impossible, but today we have gotten smarter and a situation like this seems absolutely realistic.

Also, the same thing is relevant regarding more hidden forces; these are spiritual forces that also operate in the world. They are much more hidden and billions of times stronger than atomic energy. These forces don’t just “operate” on this world, they run it!

Question: Can they stop the glaciers from melting?

Answer: If we bring ourselves back into balance with nature, then all the levels found below us will also be in balance.

Question: And everyone will be able to see these forces?

Answer: Those who attain, those who are prepared for this internally, will see these forces. For this it is necessary to construct an internal device inside of you.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/9/14, Writing of Baal HaSulam

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Love For Animals Or Love For People

Laitman_049_01Question: A human being is a part of the animal world, albeit a most developed one. Animals can be herbivores or predators who consume each other. Throughout the entire history of humanity, people ate animals, so we can be placed into the category of predators.

Why, then, did vegetarianism became so popular lately? Could it be a result of people’s development to such a degree where they are uncomfortable with killing animals for their own pleasure?

Answer: I do not think that humanity has developed that greatly because development should be internal, not simply the growth of intellect. We know that high intelligence does not make a person kind to others. That does not depend on the level of education, on what university a person graduated from, or how many Nobel prizes he or she has.

In general, I do not see that man is evolving in the human sense. It is impossible to find an example where a nation reached high inner development by virtue of its technical progress and technological accomplishments, or even by achievements in literature, music, and medicine.

Germany was the most developed country before the second World War, and look at what kind of suffering the Germans brought to the entire world.

Question: But I am speaking about just one specific aspect: a person’s treatment of animals!

Answer: And I am not talking about animals but about a person’s treatment of people! We know that the most developed nation at the time made lampshades from human skin. This is why I do not see any signs of advancement in the fact that a person refuses to consume animals as food.

We are talking about the development of human qualities in a person. If vegetarianism would be a consequence of such development, then it will be a different story. However, for now, we are not talking about that. Vegetarianism has no connection to the good treatment of people.

Question: Is it not kindness if a person refuses to kill an animal for his own satiation?

Answer: It is a completely wrong approach because, even given that, we kill and torture animals daily through our egoistic relationships with people, and killing and eating a chicken is not egoism because a chicken exists in order to lift a person. The inner premise of a chicken is to help a person live and to raise him to a higher level.

Moreover, our bodies have such needs that are impossible to satisfy by consuming only a vegetarian diet. A person needs meat. We do not understand this yet and have not researched it enough. I am sure that such research exists, but it is being hidden and not allowed to be published.

A person cannot live without eating meat. Our body and its digestive system, the entire system of food intake, is arranged in such a way that we are required to eat meat, except for those who do not like it by nature. There is a special type of people who do not like meat.

The conclusion is very simple. We cannot spread vegetarianism as an ideology through persistent means of pressure. We need to stop advertising it across all channels. Ardent vegetarians themselves look like predators who are ready to tear other people apart for eating a piece of chicken.

Let vegetarians show others how much kinder vegetarianism has made them, how much their attitude toward people, and not just toward animals, has changed for the better. Let them first correct their relationship to people and only after that toward animals and show an example to everyone! Only then will I understand that it is a revolution in humanity and not just a vegetarian revolution.

A vegetarian diet is being referred to as natural, as closer to nature. However, is it natural? If a person wants to follow his nature, then he needs to eat meat.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/30/15

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For The Fairy Tale To Come True…

laitman_944Question: You use such beautiful high words like “unity” and “love of others,” but they are so far from our lives that they seem like a fairy tale. How can it become a reality?

Answer: Suppose the Knesset, the government, or the president issue a compulsory education law called “a united nation is a duty” instead of just using nice words. They would not be able to enforce it properly, of course, without the help of Kabbalists, and we would be happy to cooperate and bring it to the people so that they would accept it.

Then courses will be opened everywhere, on the radio, TV, the media, kindergartens, schools, etc. It is only a question of making a decision, but an ultimate decision that nothing is more important for the nation of Israel than being the nation of Israel, which means becoming a united nation. We have no future here unless we unite.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/2/15

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A Good Example Of Education For Everyone

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is so special about the education method that you suggest? After all they also speak about love of others in schools and about the need to treat friends nicely, but we see that it isn’t working.

Answer: Talking about how to behave has nothing to do with education, since education is based on learning from examples. Only examples operate on and influence a child. If we want an adult to be well educated, he too needs to have the right examples, just like a child. We have no choice. We need to establish systems that will set an example of the right relations between people. But from where can we take such examples if everyone mutually hates one another? Who will set the example for us?

Therefore it is necessary to organize special workshops in small groups called tens for all sectors and social classes within the population. We hold such circles all over the country in Israel: in Eilat, in the Tel Aviv harbor, in Tiberias, and in other cities. Many people already know us. If a person participates in such a circle, this circle becomes an example for him and he begins to feel that something special is going on within it.

Strangers who find themselves sitting next to one another by chance begin to communicate in the circle according to certain rules and about a certain topic and begin to discover feelings of connection, unity, warmth, and understanding. Their eyes shine and they look at one another in a totally different way than they did when the workshop began. People totally change during this 15-20 minutes. All this disappears, of course when they go home afterward. A person has to repeat this process every day and then after a week or a month he will change.

What I say is based on the great experience I have had. I have many students in Israel and all over the world who thus are changing and so are the new people who know what the success of the world depends on and how we can rise from the general global crisis that is founded on mutual hatred between all the countries, peoples, and individuals.

We can overcome it instead of advancing towards terrible destruction. The Torah says that we will reach a state in which “a person’s enemies are in his home,” which means that a person will see that everyone rejects him, is distant from him, and refuses to understand him, within his own home.

Is it possible to live this way?! After all, we know that our body lives and operates in harmony between all its parts while a dead body is destroyed. So let’s choose the right way!
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/2/15

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