Question: What is the correct education of boys?

Answer: The correct education is the realization of a man in his corporeal and spiritual manner so as to become an absolutely perfect element and fully realize what is inherent in him by nature, that is, to ascend and become similar to the Creator.

To become a common integral element of nature is what is inherent in us. Does anyone know that? No. This is what we need to study and reveal.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Generation of “Lady Gaga”” 3/10/10

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Comment: Why do altruists very often cause not gratitude, but resentment? Experts say, it is because we doubt their selflessness and see the calculation behind everything. Thus, the good deeds turn into a fat minus. Psychologists call this mass phenomenon “the syndrome of do-gooder derogation.”

It is believed that the most reliable way to avoid belittling good deeds is to do them in secret. If others accidentally find out about them, and this will eventually have a positive impact on your reputation, just consider it a bonus. Oscar Wilde said very beautifully: “The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously and have somebody find out.”

My Response: Yes. Others “accidentally” find out, in quotation marks.

Question: Does it mean that our world is built in such a way that we cannot do any altruistic action?

Answer: We can’t in any way. This is our nature. We can only make a mess everywhere, we use, break, and violate. We cannot act in any other way. Therefore we must think about the way to limit ourselves reasonably to such an extent that we violate everything around us as little as possible.

This is possible only through educating a person.

Question: Does a good deed at the level of our world exist?

Answer: A good deed at the level of our world is when we treat our world as our home, common to all of us, and we are like one family, and we take care of everyone.

If a person has such an attitude, then of course we will put this world in order. We have passed some peak of excessive consumerism, destruction, and distortion of everything possible, and now we have to put it all in order a little, i.e., limit ourselves in everything that is not necessary.

Question: Can a person come to this?

Answer: Nature will force him. There is such a thing as necessary and sufficient. Mutual restriction by all of us, which is voluntary and accepted by each of us in order to make our planet comfortable for ourselves and future generations, is necessary.

Comment: But people say: “This is what we want.” There are many such movements.

My Response: They do not really do anything. We cannot do it by force and we cannot do it by shouting in the squares either.

Question: How can we do it?

Answer: By educating people! All these environmentalists and Greenpeace only create a lot of noise and cause hatred and distrust.

Question: What should be the basis of this education?

Answer: To turn all of humanity into a family and the entire Earth into one comfortable apartment for everyone, into our home.

Nature will force us to do this. We are in such a state. Perhaps we will go through something else. For example, there could be a world war and half of humanity or most of it will be destroyed. It will come to this anyway. Nature brings everything to balance.

Question: Do you realize that this is a very long educational process considering who a person is?

Answer: This is a long process, but it depends on the understanding of the need for it.

Question: Who can be a teacher in such schools, such universities of life?

Answer: One who has risen a little above his egoistic natural level can be a teacher.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the main aim of education?“

The main aim of education should correspond to the main aim of our lives.

Why do we exist? We exist in order to achieve a certain goal. As individuals, we each picture a smorgasbord of goals to ourselves, but outside our individual worldviews, there is a much larger universal goal that involves us exiting our individual worldviews and entering into connection with the entirety of nature. Likewise, unlike the transient sensations we could feel whenever we might achieve various individual goals we picture to ourselves, when we achieve the universal goal of connecting with nature in its wholeness, we attain the complete sensation of eternity and perfection. We can and must achieve this goal while we are here in our world.

Therefore, education should provide every person with the method, means and guidance necessary in order to achieve this goal, to ultimately guide us to become happy, fulfilled and complete beings living in a perfectly-connected society.

Unfortunately, our current forms of education have no such aim. We teach people similarly to how animals teach their offspring: to survive, to raise a family, and to produce more offspring. We thus fail to progress beyond the animate level of existence.

While it might appear that we make sophisticated progress in areas such as science and technology, since we make no progress on a deeper level, to discover the eternal and perfect reality, then we remain at the animate level of existence. Our progress is thus no more than efforts to make our animal existence more optimal and comfortable.

Rising above the animate level of existence and becoming human in the fullest sense of the term means rising above our narrow egoistic desires and attaining the same overriding altruistic intention that exists boundlessly in nature.

Therefore, education should aim at elevating us to a new level of existence by showing a different perspective of life than what we are used to: that there is an exalted purpose to our being here—to become balanced with nature—and it is worthwhile aiming ourselves at that purpose.

While we raise ourselves to become more sophisticated individualists, nature gradually reveals to us that it has different plans: it brings us to tighter and tighter interconnectedness and interdependence. The more we progress without developing altruistic ties in our growing globally interdependent world, the more we will find ourselves suffering and intolerant of our lives.

Therefore, nature gradually brings us to the realization that we need to revise our educational aim, and together with it, the method and the means to implement it, because we increasingly see how our past approaches to education no longer help us navigate in a world requiring us to realize our mutual dependence in a positive and balanced fashion.

Based on KabTV’s “Close-Up” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on August 24, 2009. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: You received a letter from a young man.

Hello, Dear Michael!

I know that you will help me. I subscribe to all your programs. May you be healthy! That is the main thing.

I have been bedridden since childhood. I have a rare disease, which is progressing. My beloved parents and I have been fighting it since childhood. But it has gotten worse lately. It is painful to move. And recently, just six months ago, a new method of treatment appeared that has already helped many recover. But it requires an organ transplant from a close relative.

My dad immediately decided to become my donor. He was tested, and everything checked out. But I found out that it is very dangerous for my father. He is not all that healthy and nobody knows how the surgery will affect him. When I found out about it, I told my father that I do not agree, that I do not want the transplant, but he insisted. He does not want to hear anything. What should I do? How to convince him? I do not want it! I am afraid. Naturally, I want to get well, but I am afraid for my father! My mother is not saying anything and neither is my sister.

I am writing to you. Help me! I am exhausted thinking about it! In the meantime, I am getting worse.

My Response: You must give your father the opportunity to give you life again. I feel for you and for your father. This is something you must go through together.

Question: But what will he feel if he accepts it?

Answer: They are going through this together, through this surgery, together!

Question: Meaning, as if the father is giving him life again?

Answer: Yes! And the boy already understands, you can tell by his letter, that otherwise he will have a tragic end. How will his father be able to live on if the boy dies?

Question: So he is actually saving his father, among other things?

Answer: Of course. He should give his father the opportunity to help him.

Comment: No wonder he wrote both my mother and sister are quiet.

My Response: Because this is his personal decision.

Comment: He will instantly mature, he will become an adult as soon as he makes this decision.

My Response: True.

Comment: Such mature questions for these children!

My Response: Life is full of challenging decisions.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/1/21

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Kabbalah considers man and his upbringing only relative to the purpose of creation.

We exist in order to achieve a certain goal, and it is not within our life but in what we reveal in all nature, which is called the Creator. In Kabbalah, the concept of nature is equivalent to the concept of the Creator.

Upon reaching connection with all of nature, not only with what we now see and observe in our small world but with its wholeness, we begin to feel that we exist eternally and in perfection. It is this level that a person must reach during this life. This is the only purpose of our existence.

And this is not what our education gives a person. We teach him just like an animal teaches its young to survive, to create a family correctly, and to produce offspring. So, from generation to generation, we take care of our life at the animate level.

It doesn’t matter that our technologies develop because as long as our animate organism, our body, exists, we want to create seemingly the most comfortable environment for it. Therefore, this level is animate and a person does not differ from an animal.

In fact, it is the category of human that we can develop in us so that we feel an eternal, perfect state, when each of us rises above our petty egoism and reaches the general sensation of whole  nature. Nobody teaches us this.

If you want to uplift a person, you must show him a different perspective, what it is that is worth living for, what it is that is worth directing your efforts to. And if all this life is only inside the animate body, then I do not care about anything: I can jump from the roof, I can do whatever I want with myself. Nobody cares about me and I do not care about anyone because everyone feels like a little individualist.

All our relations in society are built on this: “I do not touch you, you do not touch me.” And this is completely wrong. From day to day we reveal how universal nature is, how interconnected we are in a small village, how the butterfly effect, mutual responsibility, and mutual influence on each other works.

From the side of nature, we reveal that everything is interconnected and is in such close dependence that there is no escape from it.

Question: Perhaps we are not yet aware that laws of interdependence apply directly to our lives?

Answer: Even if we are aware of them, we still cannot take over. Moreover, we do not yet have the opportunity to approach their realization.

The science of Kabbalah is being revealed in our time, it deals with this, and it can give us such an opportunity. But we are only at the beginning of the path and humanity does not yet understand what it is.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Generation” 8/24/09

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the biggest problem of our current school system?“

The current school system has no objective to develop people into human beings, in the complete sense of the term.

In Hebrew, the word for “human” (“Adam”) comes from the word for “similar” (“Domeh”), and a human is considered one who becomes “similar to the most high” (“Domeh le Elyon”). In other words, becoming a human means attaining a state of similarity to the altruistic force of nature, which is higher and opposite to our egoistic inborn nature.

By learning how to become human in the fullest sense of the term, we then learn how to navigate ourselves in order to first not harm others, and then reach exalted states of positive connection above our divisive drives.

Then, instead of following the dictates of our inborn egoistic nature, which leads to a smorgasbord of negative phenomena throughout society—from increasing depression, anxiety, loneliness and stress through to rises in violence, racism, divorce and suicide, to name a few—we learn how to rise above our egoistic drives, which wish to self-benefit at the expense of others and nature, and discover how to become truly happy. We become truly happy when we know how to positively connect to each other in society, when we live in a thriving atmosphere of increasing consideration, responsibility and solidarity, and when values of giving to others, supporting, encouraging and generally connecting positively to each other fills our lives.

Therefore, the biggest problem of the current school system is that it has no objective to raise children to the fullest realization of their inner potential, which would result in a society that blossoms with happiness, confidence, support and encouragement.

We are thus faced with the fact that we need to restructure our education and upbringing, which includes the schooling system as well as everything that influences us with certain values, behaviors and examples in society. If we succeed in changing the education and upbringing of even one generation to guide people in reaching their fullest potential, then we would bear witness to a monumental transition to a new harmonious and peaceful world.

Based on KabTV’s “Close-Up. Generation” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on August 24, 2009. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash.

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Comment: My purpose as a person is to reveal a completely different level of existence, not what I see today. I must exist in my animal body and serve it, but do it in order to achieve something higher.

Such education, in principle, changes one’s whole approach to life. That is, my life becomes only a means to achieve a higher goal.

My Response: This approach changes the entire scale of values. If I have a higher goal and I can achieve it today, now, immediately, then of course my attitude to life changes, I look at everything as a means to achieve this goal.

Now I measure what exists around me only according to it: should I deal with it or not, do I need it or not? If we treated our life this way, we would only take the minimum from it.

I take the most necessary things for myself and direct all my other resources, my strength, and aspirations only to achieve the goal because I can achieve eternity and perfection today.

At the same time, I do not have to die physically. I just need to develop an additional sensory organ in myself to bring myself into the revelation of the upper world, which Kabbalah gives.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Generation” 8/24/09

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Question: Is it necessary to bring up boys and girls separately?

Answer: The separation of boys and girls will not achieve anything. It will not lead to the correct result unless it is carried out in the system suggested by Kabbalah.

Artificial separation is like two camps, male and female, against each other. It will cause even greater misperceptions of reality and needs and not realizing them in both girls and boys. Perhaps what we have today is still better than such forcible separation.

Question: Recent studies have shown that co-education of boys and girls leads not only to changes in their behavior whereby a boy becomes sort of effeminate, and the woman takes the leading position, but also to a change on the chromosome level.

There is a complete leveling usually of male chromosomes. Scientists explain this by some external factors, but, nevertheless, they already understand that this factor exists. Training should still be separate. But you say that it just won’t help. Why doesn’t that solve the problem?

Answer: And what do you give them by doing that? You are simply moving them apart. That is, you do not allow the male part to mutually influence the female part, and the female part do the same to the male part. Boys no longer get an example in the form of a woman teacher, in the form of a nanny.

As a result, they get male examples. Of course, in the future this, perhaps, will make them more correctly realize themselves. But what are the examples? In what way should he be like a man and who is this man? The man is this collective image. What is it?

And the girls get the example of a woman, they rotate among their girlfriends, play their games together, and so on, that’s right. But who is this woman they are following? What is this image? What does she teach them by her example?

Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to find such teachers who, in separate education, would give children the correct upbringing.
[291918]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Lady Gaga Generation” 3/10/10

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Question: Please tell us how Kabbalah relates to adoption?

Answer: Adoption is a good thing, of course, because we are talking about orphans, about people who have no relatives. And when you make them feel that there is someone nearby who cares for them, who loves them, etc., then adoption turns into an action similar to the action of the Creator.

The same way as we would like to find something higher, stronger, and superior, something that would help, endorse, and support us adults. And for a child, there is such emptiness, hopelessness, there is such desperation when he has no one to turn to, no one around! We cannot even imagine it.

Therefore, adoption—if it is really good adoption–is the most giving action in our world. And above it, there are spiritual attainments, human sensations.

Question: Can an adopted child grow to be at the same level as the biological child?

Answer: Even higher.

Question: When can that happen?

Answer: When a person really wants to get close to him and adopt him. Because those qualities that are the opposite of kindness—the Creator, connection, unification, which we reveal in ourselves as negative, as falls, and so on—they are given to us so that we overcome them and on their basis build connection and love, which are impossible without prior hatred.

Love will cover all sufferings. Therefore, a person who adopts actually has a much greater opportunity to show his love for another than an ordinary biological relative.

Question: Because of it he can rise higher?

Answer: This is higher. We see how this is revealed to us in Kabbalah and in humanity today, to what extent we are opposite, distant, in some kind of hatred for each other, and so on. This is only to reveal the opposite of love.

Question: So this is where love is revealed, when you take a child? And do you adopt him out of pity for him or out of self-pity because you are alone, because you have no children of your own?

Answer: It is natural. Man acts from the state in which he is.

Question: Which intention is correct and works?

Answer: Giving happiness to another.

Comment: It is a winning answer really!

My Response: Yes. But do people understand it? At least, in any case, this is a very noble, special act. And all efforts of someone who performs such an act are really great.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/25/21

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Question: According to the Kabbalistic methodology, the new generation is being brought up with respect to a higher goal?

Answer: Yes, this is what we are doing. And we need all the other sciences in order to exist in this world.

We don’t have to live in caves and dig in the ground. We can make our life more comfortable. Why not if it is in a harmonious connection and helps to achieve the main goal?

We are on a train going somewhere. The main thing for me is where it goes. What I do inside the train car is all temporary. But there must be a comfortable environment that is convenient and good for a person in order to continue his generation and pass on the same methodology, the same goal, to children. But all these are just auxiliary tools for achieving the goal.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Generation” 8/24/09

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