Question: Can we say that today the desire for self-realization prevails over other desires?

Answer: In our generation, we are already turning the pyramid of desires into a circle. Since all nature is integral and is a huge ball in which all levels are connected and support each other, all the aspirations that manifest in humanity take place, whatever they may be. Not only to wealth, entertainment, knowledge, and discovery, but to absolutely everything.

We cannot say that the modern stage is characterized by something special in comparison with other periods. The only thing is that now a person begins to develop an attraction to reveal the Creator.

In the current generation, the desire for self-realization is more and more evident in the understanding of the main law of the universe.

Question: Psychologist Abraham Maslow believed that no more than 4% of the human population could reach the highest level of the hierarchy of needs (the desire for self-realization). Moreover, a person feels happy even if the thirst for self-realization is satisfied by only 40%.

Do you think that the realization of your potential is the highest point in the pyramid of desires?

Answer: Naturally, if the realization actually occurs. And if the desire is there, but it is not realized?

For example, in our time, many seek not even to know, but to reveal the Creator. Knowledge is open to all, and can be the lot of everyone. But if we are talking about the revelation of the Creator, it is not given to everyone, and therefore, it can no longer be said that a person reaches this state and is happy.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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Question: Can a person consciously move from a lower level of needs to a higher one?

Answer: This depends on the people around him and the environment in which he prefers to be.

In principle, starting from the moment when a person begins to stand out from the horde of animals, he can choose his environment. Gradually, by changing his environment, he can move up the degrees of the pyramid of desires, regardless of how the normal, natural ascent on it takes place.

Question: Do you think that personal growth can only happen consciously, or do we simply reveal our inherent potential?

Answer: Naturally, this is all determined by the fate of a person. However, at the same time, a person is given the opportunity to accelerate their development.

On the one hand, personal growth is determined in advance. On the other hand, it depends on the individual. In other words, the speed of the potential unfolding depends on the environment in which he exists.

Baal HaSulam, in the article “The Freedom,” explains how this can be changed and how to use this.

Question: What is more important for personal growth: potential, genes, or environment?

Answer: The fundamental thing is genes. They, in the end, push the person to realize himself. Then comes the influence of the environment.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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Comment: American psychologist Abraham Maslow, author of the well-known hierarchy of human needs, asserted that a teacher or culture does not create a person or instill the ability to love or be loved, to philosophize, create symbols, or create. But they do provide an opportunity, and helps, what exists in the embryo to become real and actual.

Answer: Indeed, the acceleration of personality development depends on the environment.

The importance of the environment is very great because if we choose the right environment and connect with it, this will radically change our destiny. Through communication with the environment, we determine the methods and speed of passage of various states.

Question: Signs of personal growth, as psychologists write, are an increase in the ability to analyze, see the connections of events and phenomena, and understand other people. This is inner freedom and independence, a manifestation of responsibility.

How else can you identify these signs?

Answer: Signs of personal growth are manifested in a person as he or she realizes the importance of the environment. This is most important. In addition to what we have and develop in a natural way, the only parameter that we can change by ourselves is the environment.

Question: Consciousness of responsibility for one’s life is one of the main signs of personal growth. When should a person say that only he or she is responsible for what is happening to him or her and when to transfer his or her responsibility to nature, to higher forces?

Answer: Being completely within a certain environment and giving yourself to it, we begin to feel through this connection what we receive through our efforts with respect to the environment, and what the environment gives us without our efforts. This is how we begin to share the impact on ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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Remark: The fetus in the mother’s womb, as a rule, is under her care, love, and constantly in this environment. However, genetic scientists have found that it not only grows in love, but it itself also loves.

Scientists say, “If the mother suddenly gets sick and something happens to her, some kind of hormone is developed in the fetus, which it sends to cure the mother.” There is such a process of love.

My Comment: If they care, if they depend on each other, then naturally there is feedback.

The fetus is always trying to do everything in its power to annul itself before the mother, and by this it helps her to control it. On the other hand, the mother and the fetus send signals to each other every minute about how much they are in mutual love, consent, support, and how much they need each other. All the time! This circulation of feelings between them gives strength to the development of the fetus.

Question: Does it mean that the mother is constantly being renewed and the fetus is growing? The renewal of a woman during pregnancy—is this mutual love, the energy that enters?

Answer: Yes. The fact is that the fetus gives her so much upper, spiritual forces that almost everything is renewed because of the spiritual structure in which she exists like the Creator in regards to the creation.

Question: Is the play of the fetus in the mother and the mother like the Creator and creation?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Can we reach such a state when we are inside the Creator?

Answer: We have to do this!

Question: What is it to be inside the Creator?

Answer: To be inside the Creator means to feel not yourself, but Him. That is, I annul myself completely. In the fact that I annul myself, in every parameter of my annulment, I feel His attitude to me.

Question: When you say, “I annul myself,” does this mean that my thoughts, my actions, and my behavior are in Him? He leads and I kind of give myself to Him, “Lead me.”

Answer: Yes. Absolutely. I do not even check anything in any way, I completely annul myself in advance.

Question: Can a person reach such a state?

Answer: Everyone must do it. The coronavirus will help us in this.

Question: What does it lead us to now from this point of view?

Answer: To annulling ourselves. Only if I annul myself before society, and so each of us, then society can recover and not infect each other. Through this we will come.

Question: So, do I not dispute anything? I am told to stay at home—I stay at home, to wear masks—I wear a mask, and so on.

Answer: Moreover, I think that by doing this, I do not infect others. I follow all the instructions to avoid infecting others. I think about them.

Imagine doing that. See how much the world will change. This is a different intention.

Question: Does it mean that the main idea is that I do not infect others? Does this mean that you already are quietly within the Creator?

Answer: You are not yet part of Him, but you are no longer opposite to Him. It is like Hillel said, “Do not do unto others what is hateful to you.” Then “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is already the next stage.

Question: What in this case will be “Love your neighbor as yourself”?

Answer: Make sure that he is healthy. Imagine that you are healthy and he is sick, and you give him blood, everything he needs.

Question: Do you give him everything you have? Is this “love thy neighbor as yourself”? At this moment, do you not think about yourself at all?

Answer: In no way. Then you are cured and he is cured.

Question: Don’t I even ask for his smile or some kind of “thank you”?

Answer: What are you talking about?! This is already a reward!

Question: No reward at all?

Answer: No. Nothing.

Question: Can a person reach this point?

Answer: A person can reach this and be grateful that he has this opportunity.

Question: Not to ask anything for myself and just to give everything?

Answer: Yes. It is not that far away; we can understand that.

Question: We can understand. But can we do this or not?

Answer: Slowly. Gradually, with the support of society.

Question: Do you think that is what the virus came for, to move us closer to this?

Answer: Precisely for this. Look what it is doing. This is the first blow to all of humanity in our time.

Remark: Is this the way to “Do not do unto others what is hateful to you,” then to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and then one single whole?

Answer: Yes. One humanity with one Creator. It all will be fast.

Question: Will you and I see this?

Answer: I think so, yes. I even have confidence.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/6/20

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Question: The family is a natural system that also exists in the animal world.

Some animals have male and female parts for reproduction in the same body.

But the more developed animals are, the more there is a division of the male and female parts, which are naturally opposite and exist in separate individuals. This is where an interesting principle appears: in order to give birth to a new body, it is necessary to combine two opposites.

What is the purpose of this principle? Today, this issue is particularly relevant because in some countries and societies there are artificial attempts to level these opposites, in particular gender.

Answer: It is impossible. The more developed nature is, the more it includes all sorts of opposites, which drift apart from each other in infinite variations.

We see that primitive organisms exist practically in the same body. There are those who become the female part and there are those who become the male part. Their gender identity changes. They can be completely free to combine, interbreed, and separate by gender with a minimum separation of one individual from another.

Over the course of evolution, individuals became more and more distant from each other on psychological, physiological, and sexual principles. Therefore, they need a very serious combination with each other, and this is not easy.

In animals, this is extremely rare, but in humans, the correct combination of the male and female parts is necessary in order to raise offspring, ensure their normal existence, and guarantee serious development up to 15 to 20 years of life, which is necessary for a person to get on his feet and start providing for oneself, reproduce one’s own offspring, and take care of them.

Nature has created us so that the more developed we are, the greater the separation between us.

Then, when we become social units, there is a huge division between us in the pursuit of science, art, anything. Look at how many specialties there are in the world, how many opportunities each person has to develop. In this, no one is like the other.

It is not just about gender, but the fact that internally we are all very different. Therefore, it is simply impossible to talk about combining all this in one body.

Remark: In principle, the psychological and physiological combination of two opposite objects that makes it possible for a more perfect existence is a principle of nature.

My Comment: Yes. This makes it possible to vary and do anything you want. For example, in our time, there are many new professions that did not exist 100 or 200 years ago.
[269394]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/21/20

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Remark: NASA found that 98% of children are born creative geniuses. However schools makes them dull, average people.

In the course of the research, 1,600 children aged four to five years old were tested for genius. Unexpectedly it turned out that 98% of children could be called a genius.

Five years later, new tests were conducted with the same children, already at the age of ten, and they received the following result: instead of 98%, 30% remained. Five years later, they again conducted tests—only 12% of genius children remained.

Then the researchers abandoned this and conducted a test with adults. It turned out that only 2% of them met the test for genius. Scientists have concluded that the process of studying at school, university, and so on, which supposedly should add IQ, “kills” a child who is born a genius.

My Comment: Of course! I felt how school was breaking me down. Breaking in the full sense of the word! How they forced me to study exactly like this, and explain like this, and think like this. I feel it today. How parents were pressing me, how school was pressing me!

Remark: If I come to think about it, it turns out that we built the entire education system to our own detriment.

My Comment: Of course!

Question: Why?

Answer: Because this system is built to stick a small, fragile egoism in some framework and make out of it what we need.

That is, we break the child, instead of developing him freely. Why do we need to feed the child these patterns of thinking? We teach them to think this way and not the other way. Of course, we cripple them by this.

Question: How should we educate a child?

Answer: We should talk with them calmly, freely, even without any topics. Only in a free style, in conversation. It can even be a group of people of different ages. So that they would talk about different topics and learn from each other, developing new topics and new opportunities from within themselves.

When I listen to others, I begin to think, “What about me? How is this for me?” This is a completely different development. All you need is communication, simple communication between people.

Everything else is created artificially, egotistically, for our egoistic needs, which only raise us, as egoists, above each other.

Question: Do you think that school and university are just egoistic pressure on us?

Answer: In order to make money on each other. Both science and art, and everything there is, exist just to earn from each other: either in the form of some material things, money, or in the form of worship, approval, respect, pride, and so on.

Question: And if, as you say, we could just talk, just sit under a tree, just talk and develop from within, what would we come to?

Answer: Perhaps we would have found some new correct community. I do not think it would have been easy. Yet, if we could correctly analyze our inner egoistic impulses in communication between us, we would be able to somehow hold them and balance them.

Question: In other words, do you think there would have been arguments and hatred anyway?

Answer: Of course! Our egoistic nature does not disappear.

Question: How would we have balanced this?

Answer: Between us. We would explain to each other. If we were not entangled in all these notions, psychological, scientific, etc., then it would be easier for us. The most important thing is direct, open communication.

Question: Will we then require any technical innovations, all this technical progress?

Answer: Why? What does it give us?!

Remark: But even now you and I are talking virtually. I am in one studio, and you are in another.

My Comment: Well, what do we need this for? With this, we just have to make up for our separation somehow. We would be talking, but perhaps in a different way, through different capabilities.

Question: Internally, even without words?

Answer: Yes, different communication, on a different channel. Through the internal connection between us.

Everything comes to the point that we give up our past attitude to life, to the world, to ourselves, to progress.

I hope that the attitude toward oneself and others as egoistic little creatures will become more and more apparent, will be as if before the eyes of the person and he will have to change himself.

Question: Still, in what is the genius of a person?

Answer: In the integration. In absolute, complete internal and external integration.

Question: Do you call a person who can do this a genius by and large?

Answer: Yes. If all education were directed there, the genius of a person would be preserved and increased.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/8/20

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Question: If you had the opportunity to vaccinate people against egoism so that all people would begin to lead a social lifestyle and believe that society is higher than each individual, would you take the opportunity? Or would you still wait for a man to consciously get to this?

Answer: In no case would I do this because to kill egoism means to kill our nature. To make a man good without having to fight his egoism means to make him a kind, naive idiot.

A person must educate himself and rise above his egoism. This is immense work that does not end within one earthly life, but continues during many life cycles.

Therefore, we must not interfere with nature because we will simply remove the most precious thing from a man—his egoism and the opportunity to independently decide what freedom of will is and how he should try it on himself.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/7/20

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Question: Can we say that love is a feeling that is a consequence of the right relationships between people?

Answer: I would describe it differently. To love means to feel other people and try to do everything to fulfill their desires.

Question: Do you think that this is the basic law of human society and that we must reveal it in the same way we revealed all physical laws?

Answer: We must not only reveal it, but also constantly implement it. This law should become our credo in life.

Question: And then all the other laws of ethics and countries will also exist, but will take different forms?

Answer: Naturally. They will all proceed from this law: the constant rapprochement of all parts of creation with each other, the constant rise above egoism, and the approach to an absolute, perfect state.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 5/7/20

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Question: Personal growth is a process of human development, which includes self-realization and growth practically in all spheres of human activity. Psychologist Abraham Maslow built all human needs in the form of a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are physiological needs: warmth, hunger, thirst-quenching. Then came the need for security. Further, social needs, which he also divides into belongingness, affection, caring for the family, esteem, self-respect, and respect for others. The highest are spiritual needs: self-actualization and self-realization.

What is behind the desire of a person for self-realization?

Answer: Self-realization is the most powerful desire of a person to reach the embodiment of his “I.” Practically, it is the desire to be God, depending on how one imagines it.

But if one does not realize himself in this way, it means that the spark of being human is lacking in him. After all, Adam is from the word Edome, Domeh—similar to God. Therefore, when a person wants to realize himself, he feels that he is creating a Creator from himself. It turns out that self-realization is the desire to know the Creator. Since the Creator and nature are identical concepts, this is the desire to know the entire creation.

Question: How does it differ from common knowledge? After all, there is a desire for knowledge in Maslow’s pyramid.

Answer: No, we are not talking about just knowledge, as for example in physics. It is the desire to dominate over nature, over everyone. At least in something I have to be special, something that others do not have and is only in me.

Today, practically everyone wants to be a master of nature. We see how we try to tame nature, to be above it.

Question: Can self-realization be at every stage of the pyramid? Let’s say I want to realize myself in business. Not even for money’s sake. I simply have a desire to manage, build a business.

Answer: Yes, on every stage. Therefore, a person must be taught how to correctly understand this realization, how to develop oneself, how to compare oneself with others. He must be in a certain struggle, in competition with others. Otherwise, there will be no progress.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills,” 6/25/20

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Medium published my new article “Covid-19 Has Quenched the Flickering Candle of Higher Education”

Covid-19 has crippled every conceivable aspect of civilization. Yet, some aspects suffered such a blow that in all likelihood, we are witnessing their premortem spasms. One such aspect is higher education. After decades of accelerated ethical and political decadence, and voluntary discarding of academic integrity in pursuit of wealthy donors, all that remains of the Ivory Tower is an empty shell. Now, thankfully, social distancing has puffed away that, too, exposing what was once the zenith of human engagements as the nadir of human indulgence.

Today’s employers attribute much greater weight to candidates’ professional experience and independent learning skills than to their academic background. In that regard, a study that surveyed over 3,000 U.S. teens and adults found that half of young Americans think that their degree is irrelevant to their work.

When Plato founded the Academy, he encouraged diversity of perspectives and discussion of alternative views. Being a participant in the Academy did not require adherence to Platonic orthodoxy. What a stark contradiction this is from today’s blatant political agenda that every academic institution advocates. If you can tell what political views students of a certain academic institution will have at graduation, this takes away even the pretense of academic or intellectual integrity.

Worse, when every student is indoctrinated according to the institution where he or she studies, the more institutions you can buy into promoting your ideas, the more you will control the leadership of the country in a few years when the graduates take their places in the country’s corporate world and political leadership.

When universities began to develop in Europe in the early Middle Ages, they started as monastic (or cathedral) schools that focused on religious studies, as well as liberal arts (grammar, logic, and rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy). As in ancient Greece, their focus was on development of thought, but also on provision of knowledge. In the middle, and especially the late Middle Ages, universities began to emerge as independent institutions in Italy, England, France, and elsewhere in Europe. By the time of the Renaissance, they were fully developed academic institutions, and many of them were funded by the Monarch rather than by the Church.

Yet, in doing so, they also lost their academic independence. To maintain the favor of the benefactor, academic institutions had to “bend” science to meet the views of their sponsors, and objectivity flew out the window.

While it is possible to accept partiality when it comes to humanities, it is far less acceptable when concerning hard sciences, and it is downright detrimental when it comes to medical studies and other fields of research that concern human lives and people’s health and well-being. Over the past few decades, there have been numerous cases where medical research was distorted, and medical evidence concealed in order to meet the interest of the funder, often causing horrific consequences to numerous people. The thalidomide distribution scandal of the late 1950s and early 1960s, for example, left a lasting effect on the world. Released as a sedative drug in the late 1950s, thalidomide was also found to ease the effects of morning sickness in pregnant women. The drug was sold over the counter for five years before it was discovered that it could interfere with developing fetuses and cause death and horrible birth defects. During those five years more than 10,000 children were affected, some 40% of whom died and the rest were born with abnormalities to the arms and legs, as well as other parts of the body. And worst of all, at least in Britain, the company that distributed and sold thalidomide knew almost six months before it was pulled from the market that there were credible claims it caused terrible deformities and the deaths of infants.

Since the 1960s, the situation has only gotten worse. When even medicine is for sale, anything is for sale. Today’s universities are mostly funded privately, or rely heavily on private donors to secure their budgets. These sums are not pro bono. They carry a very clear and high price tag, which the university agrees to pay when it decides to accept money from individuals, corporations, or foreign governments. These donors often get to determine much of the curriculum, the lecturers, and even some of the public statements that the university makes on issues of interest to the donors. In fact, these are not donations; it is quid pro quo.

But fortunately, times are changing thanks to the coronavirus. Covid-19 has uncovered the worst of the medical community, exposing nearly every official medical personality as a promoter of the financial or political interest that he or she supports. The views among so called “experts” concerning the nature of the virus and the ways to deal with it are so conflicting that it has become clear that none of them can be trusted to speak with the public interest in mind. In that state, the public cannot know the truth about the virus because either no one knows it but will not admit it, or no one tells the truth because it does not promote his or her vested interest.

Even more importantly, the transformation that the job market has been going through since the turn of the century has made universities almost superfluous. Today, when you study computer science, for example, by the time you graduate, at least half of what you learned in the first year has been changed and your knowledge has become irrelevant. Today’s employers attribute much greater weight to candidates’ professional experience and independent learning skills than to their academic background. In that regard, a study that surveyed over 3,000 U.S. teens and adults found that half of young Americans think that their degree is irrelevant to their work.

It is not that young adults do not need to learn. They need to learn and they learn a lot, but not in universities. They find that dedicated, professional trainings in their field are far more relevant, affordable, and effective. They get what they need from these short, usually online courses, which make them more professional in their fields and do not leave them in debt for decades to come, and with heaps of irrelevant knowledge.

When Covid-19 forced social distancing on the whole country, it shut down the universities. Thankfully, this coming fall, hundreds of them will not reopen but will continue teaching online. In doing so, it takes away the little appeal that universities had — the campus atmosphere.

I think it is time to move to the next phase in learning. There is no point funding behemoth institutions that do not benefit the public. Medical research institutions should be funded solely by the government so as to maintain objectivity and their ability to focus on the public benefit and not on catering to various vested interests.

Social sciences and humanities should not be regarded as sciences, since they are not. Those who want to study them should be able to do so, but institutions should openly profess what ideology they are endorsing so that when people study there, they will know what will be their views when they come out. Additionally, people who listen to a graduate from this or that institution will know what to expect and will not be misled into thinking that that person presents objectively researched information.

It is a long overdue cleanup of the Academia, and the coronavirus expedited it. In the near future, I believe that higher education will take on a completely new and much healthier form.

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