Question: Why do you think that a billion people sitting in Facebook aren’t a manifestation of clarification of the correlation and relations between themselves and nature?

Answer: We’re very similar to wild animals, which are constantly fighting among themselves. But those people have at least some sort of clarification of the relationship, and this result isn’t observed on Facebook. Everything operates on the principle “you are a fool yourself.”

I don’t see people becoming wiser and better from such communication. Unfortunately, social networks are still in a dormant state.

Question: What do you mean when you say the development of relations between people? Is it another court, other laws, or other values?

Answer: All these and even more: the right relationship between people, when a person pursues one single goal in his intentions, so the other person would feel good.

Our closed, integral system of human society is tuned to this. If everyone interacts with others like that, then everything will be fine with us.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/12/20

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Why Produce Offspring?

Question: Very often, children ask their mother: “Why did you give birth to me? I didn’t ask for it.” How can we answer this question?

Answer: If a child asked me: “Why did you give birth to me?” I would say: “Because it is the law of nature.”

I must produce an offspring just as they gave birth to me so that together, consistently, over generations, we correct the general egoism that exists in each of us in a small volume.

I correct the ego a little, you correct it a little, and so does each of us. In this way, all of humanity is moving toward the general correction. Therefore, we must give birth to children.

The Torah says that a family should have two children: a boy and a girl. But if in one family there are not two children, then some other family makes up for it.

Question: What should be the correct intention of a woman engaged in Kabbalah toward giving birth to a baby so that this is not a corporeal desire but a spiritual one?

Answer: The intention should be only for bestowal. Therefore, both in conceiving and the upbringing of children, it is desirable to be in the intention to give. And talk to them about it all the time. Gradually, they will get used to these words and become interested in their inner meaning.
[263341]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/8/20

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New Life 1226 – The Teacher As A Beloved Educator
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

An educator should give a good attitude to a child and then gradually connect this with investment in studies. A teacher who wants to be loved by his students must be honest with them. He must be smart, great, and protective, in the same way that a mother relates to her children. Grades should be eliminated. It would be worthwhile to build a feeling in children that they are a team using games that require collaboration. The child should feel that his or her success depends on connection with others and mutual complementation rather than on egoism. In an integral game of soccer, for example, the team would score a point due to their cooperation and harmony rather than kicking a ball through goal posts. An educator must lead students to feel that real life is found in the connection between them.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1226 – The Teacher As A Beloved Educator,” 4/21/20

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New Life 1225 – The Education Of Tomorrow
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The move toward virtual learning will cause major changes in the educational system. Learning must build an integral society such that the threads of connection pass between all the students. In a soccer game, for example, each one is taught to give credit to the others, wanting everyone to enjoy the game. Everyone is given an equal opportunity and an equal sense of relationship beyond all differences, just like a mother who loves each of her children. The goal of education is to build the feeling that everyone is connected with a single heart so that love can be born among us.
[263747]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1225 – The Education Of Tomorrow,” 4/21/20

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Question: In a school in Israel, a 4th grade student hits teachers. In fact, the behavior of children in schools has become, if not aggressive, then uncontrollable. That is, the child, according to the remarks of the teacher, can hit him and push him, not to mention that he can simply contradict him.

Where is the line between permitted and prohibited when a person grows, understanding his capabilities and, yet, not crossing the boundaries of uncontrollability?

Answer: It depends on education. In accordance with what you give to a person, you can allow him to be within certain boundaries.

Question: Can children be punished?

Answer: It depends on the punishment and how it is perceived.
Punishment should be seen as a correction. When I take a child and ask him,
“Did you do the right thing?”
– No.
“Why did you do that?”
– I wanted to. It seemed to me.
“Do you understand that there is a little devil in you who is pushing you to do this?”
– Yes.
“How do we get this little devil out of you? Try yourself to weigh your act and punishment. The punishment will no longer be a punishment but a correction so that the next time you will not hear this evil devil, so that he will not allow you to do stupid things!”

We discuss this with him. And then he himself will weigh the situation and say what he thinks about it.

Question: So it turns out to be like a game?

Answer: This is not a game; this is working on errors. It is correcting the mistakes of nature.

Question: You said that a judge is one who can judge himself over his own egoism. How can a person move to such a position so that he can see himself in the present, see himself in the future, and still judge the situation correctly, if it is, for example, a child?

Answer: There is a lot to learn. It is necessary to compare all the facts, study the nature of humankind and the world around us, somehow explain the science of Kabbalah, and reveal it to everyone, including children. We need to be open with them, talk about our problems and about our nature as that which exists in us and does not depend on us, and discuss how we can fight this and how we can balance it. All of this must be the subject of judgement.

And then a person will begin to relate objectively to himself and to others. He will understand, “Yes, this is my weakness, but this is his. How can we balance the negative and positive forces?” Only in this way can I come to the right society.

The world, from day to day, shows that we cannot educate a person about anything except for the right attitude to the world, to ourselves, and to people. And that’s it.

Question: What should this correct attitude be based upon?

Answer: The right relationship should be based on the realization of evil and good, which we are composed of, and how we can balance them in ourselves, in parents, in children, and between everyone. Relations are objective, relations are absolutely open! Do not hide anything.

What should I hide? I am created this way and I have to fix myself. How can society fix me, myself, my parents, and everything? Everyone should be this way. So all of us are engaged in open self-correction. This should be the schooling.

Question: What can children be allowed and what should they not be allowed to do?

Answer: I gave money to my son at the age of 16 to travel around the whole world. He was in Europe, India, and various other countries. After that, he returned and said, “Never again.” This is what I want. I wanted him to see all of this so that he would understand that it was not his .
Why am I saying this? It must be allowed.

Question: And what can be allowed for children in primary school or preschool-aged children so that they understand we must be guided by certain values, that these are our foundation, and that others are anti-values that we cannot afford to acquire?

Answer: I am not a psychologist, especially not a child psychologist. I just know that we need to raise a child in accordance with his inclinations and all the time I must show him an example. Example! Children are brought up by examples.

Today we have a lot of examples from all over the world that our children see, and, therefore, this is a big problem. I believe that it is necessary to organize the right, serious environment around a person because only this can educate him.

The most important thing is providing an example. And if a person has bad examples including all kinds of films about robbers, thieves, rapists, etc., then, naturally, he will grow up like that. He will willfully become so, involuntarily, because he absorbs these examples and writes them into himself as if copying and eventually repeating them.

It is you who paint the future world into small people today. They will grow and begin to implement it. You must take it all together and do it all in the name of the next generation. It should be integral to state and world politics.

The main problem facing mankind is education; it is needed in order to make the next generation right, happy, wise, and kind.

Remark: There is a very deep foundation in the fact that in Jewish families, and in Israel in particular, children are allowed everything. They can do everything. This instills in them a certain courage and craving for risk. They are not afraid of anything since fear is not brought up in them.

My Comment: They do not put pressure on them because, under pressure, the feeling of a person’s confidence in the world disappears. And so, they are born confident, self-confident, arrogant, and so on. But still, such an attitude toward the world that “the world is beneath me,” is the right property. A person should feel this way.

But, treating the world like this, do I look at it with love? Am I looking at it in the right way? Or in a purely consumeristic, selfish way? This is already a problem. And today, it is not really being solved.

Question: How can we instill love within impudence and self-confidence so that it becomes confidence, respect; something that connects a person with another and does not repel people from one another?

Answer: We cannot do this if we do not direct humankind to the higher power within nature. All of nature is governed by an upper force. All of nature is arranged, wound up, and imprisoned only to bring a person to his best, highest state.

If a person receives this direction, then he correctly interprets everything that happens to him in life with people and within nature, and he knows how to correctly use all of these data.
[259182]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 12/3/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What has the Coronavirus taught you in your life?“

The coronavirus is teaching us all to recognize our global interdependence.

Before the coronavirus, we were in a world of vicious egoistic competition, where the more we could exploit others, the more we could profit.

Today, however, we all depend on each other, as any breach of the social distancing conditions set before us could mean another coronavirus victim.

We have been given a mutual adversary in the coronavirus, and we need to exercise our mutual consideration and responsibility in order to beat it.

However, our true rival is much deeper than the coronavirus.

As much as the coronavirus is a nearly-invisible particle that has brought about much death, sickness and has overturned our socio-economic infrastructures, there is a much more cunning and complex enemy that has no physical form at all—our egoistic human nature.

The human ego, which is the desire for self-benefit at the expense of others, innately pits us up against each other, making each person constantly toil for his or her superiority over others.

Any success we have in such a constant struggle is short-lived, as if we are all in a game of tug-and-war and one of us momentarily manages to pull stronger than the others, before losing that grip and once again becoming pulled along by everyone else. Ultimately, such a struggle leads to us all falling down, as the coronavirus swiftly showed us.

How, then, is it possible to defeat an attitude that is embedded in our very nature since birth?

It is possible firstly by paying more attention to how it acts to our detriment even though it seemingly serves to benefit us; and secondly, it is possible to overcome our egoistic nature by re-prioritizing our values.

Instead of appreciating successful, wealthy and powerful individuals as we did at least until the onset of the coronavirus, if we instead appreciate positive human connection, and acts that serve to increase love, care and unity in society, then such a surrounding positive social influence would give us the necessary tools to shift our mindset: from egoistic use of others for self-benefit, to altruistic use of oneself in order to benefit others.

The coronavirus has taught us that humanity can quickly reach a common ground when conditions call for it.

Using this example, we can take further steps to more and more unification out of our own free choice. In other words, instead of waiting for nature to inflict us with more suffering in order to unite us once again, we can take our unity into our own hands, and actively seek how we can place the benefit of others over self-benefit in our day-to-day and moment-to-moment interactions.

Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “If everything is here for a reason, what does Coronavirus teach us about?“

The coronavirus came to teach us about how much we depend on each other, and thus, how we need to take more responsibility in our attitudes to each other.

If we look at major events in world history, including the world wars and past pandemics, even they did not involve the entirety of humanity to the extent that the coronavirus has.

We would thus be wise to learn a lesson in global interdependence from the coronavirus, and step up our game to think and act more responsibly and considerately of each other, treating each other as members of a single human family, with each person holding equal importance.

While we normally consider only our own health, the coronavirus forced us to pay attention to the health of others around us by directly connecting our health to theirs.

We were cornered into upholding a list of conditions in order to not infect others—maintaining personal hygiene, washing hands regularly, staying at home during the lockdown, wearing masks and sustaining a distance of two meters when in public—and as the economy reopens, the period of distancing continues making us think about the health of others, since other people’s good health ensures our good health, and vice versa.

This is one clear way how the coronavirus has taught us a lesson in interdependence.

The question then becomes: How much do we apply this lesson to our lives?

From herein, will we conduct ourselves in such a way where society’s benefit leads our thought processes, or will we resort to prioritizing self-benefit without considering the effect on others, as per our pre-coronavirus habits?

Considering others before we consider ourselves runs against our egoistic human nature, which constantly places ourselves before others.

Yet, as hard as it is for us to think about benefiting others, the coronavirus has shown us how nature can compel us to do so whether we like it or not.

Nature, however, has no intention of making us suffer.

On the contrary, there is immense fulfillment and enjoyment dwelling in nature, which it wants us to discover.

It wants us to develop into all-seeing, all-knowing and all-feeling creatures, and it can do so by elevating us above our self-aimed thoughts and desires.

How? It is by giving us situations where we are forced to better connect in order to survive.

Such pressures are akin to birth contractions. As a baby gets pressured to exit its comfortable-but-narrow world in the womb and enter a new world outside, we too get pressured by events such as the coronavirus to exit our comfortable-but-narrow egoistic perceptions of the world, and enter a new perception of our interdependence.

Moreover, as the baby did not know that its life in the womb was tiny, dark and constrained, we too fail to see how living solely according to the ego’s demands—self-benefit at the expense of others—is a tiny, dark and constrained world in comparison to the world we can discover when we shift our main focus onto benefiting others.

As much as we appreciate and want to have love, peace, truth, happiness, confidence, support, encouragement and care in our lives, we fail to see how such qualities are achievable at a much greater scale when mutual responsibility and consideration becomes a leading value throughout society.

When everyone aims at benefiting everyone, and when we encourage contributing to society as a principle marker of success, instead of increasing our wealth at any cost, then we will experience a harmonious life, balanced with nature, and will feel a new sense of calm spread throughout society, fulfilling us all.

I thus hope that we do take away the lesson of needing to be more responsible and considerate of others, which the coronavirus came to teach us.

We all have a special role in contributing to a society that can make our lives great, and until we take some strides in that direction of our own accord, nature will send us reminders through the likes of many such problems, pandemics among them.

Above photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How will the coronavirus affect modern culture?“

The coronavirus has reeled in a new time with many changes, and those changes will require a new form of culture as well.

As the coronavirus period with its social distancing and stay-at-home orders made us reexamine what is essential and nonessential in life, emphasizing how we can secure what is essential and have to put aside the nonessential aspects of life, likewise our culture will undergo a major rearrangement.

I expect a future for culture where, for instance, stars who rose to social media fame through portrayals of good looks and lavishness will lose their fame as people in general will seek more meaningful interactions.

I also see a future where leading cultural figures will be prime examples of people who contribute immensely to society and who uphold values of unity above division.

Artists, musicians, writers and media creators across the board will create items that primarily aim to enliven and inspire unity among human society.

Monetary incentives to create art, film and music will lessen, but social incentives will increase, and cultural figures will enjoy much more fruitful and happier social lives than they currently do.

In short, a new culture would ultimately fit into a new paradigm shift where we re-prioritize benefiting others over benefiting ourselves. Instead of a culture of creators who seek to primarily fulfill their personal interests, we would see a new culture blossom, which would soak everyone into a positive unifying atmosphere.

Above photo by William White on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is that one thing humanity can learn from the coronavirus (COVID-19)?“

The coronavirus has revealed humanity’s interconnectedness and interdependence. Accordingly, we would be wise to adjust to this revelation of our connectedness.

As experts alert us to future pandemics and problems at global scales, we should hear this message of our global connection that nature communicates to us, and likewise prepare a new global basis for dealing with all such problems.

Humanity can thus learn from the coronavirus that dealing with global-scale problems with local responses is like applying band-aids to the skin when there is a disease affecting the whole body.

In other words, it is insufficient.

As we head into a recovery mode from the pandemic, we would be wise to revise society’s leading values in order to make recovery truly possible and sustainable.

What values are optimal for humanity’s state today? They are none other than the need for more mutual responsibility and consideration to flow among all people, societies and nations.

We are one interconnected and interdependent system, and as the coronavirus did not distinguish between the socio-economic status of who it infected, or whether it infected someone who was good or bad to the ecology, but treated all people as equal, we too would be wise to learn this lesson about our equality from the coronavirus.

In learning this lesson from the coronavirus, we can see ourselves as little children who were fighting and arguing with each other, and then our strict mother caught us. No matter how much we try to point out that the other children started it and are to blame, our mother doesn’t care about all of our finger-pointing, and simply punishes us all equally, forcing us to stop playing, think about what we were doing, and how to improve our behavior.

Therefore, the main take away from this pandemic is that we should relate to each other equally, that all people, societies and nations share a common role in a globally interdependent world, and that in such a situation, we depend on everyone taking responsibility, and thinking and acting considerately toward each other.

If we fail to upgrade our relationships to become more responsible and considerate toward each other, then we can expect more and even harsher blows from nature to come and alert us of our interdependence and our need to upgrade our relations accordingly.

In order to undergo an upgrade in our relations, we need a revised educational system, which will use all communications means possible in order to raise a new global society of positively connected individuals, societies and nations.

The more we are influenced by and reminded about the idea that humanity is a single family, and as it works in a family, every member should care, support and encourage the other members equally, according to each one’s unique place in the family, then we will experience a much higher quality of life, more happiness, confidence and prosperity throughout society.

Nature has its own means to bring us to this conclusion—the coronavirus being one of them—but the sooner we raise our own awareness of our global interdependence and improve our relationships, then the less negative phenomena we will experience from nature, and the more we will feel at peace and balance with each other and nature.

Above photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash.

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Question: As far as I understand, the positive side of nature that we need to attract is to begin respecting nature. When people go to the country, they leave a lot of garbage behind, and few people think about the fact that they need to clean up after them.

What is the use of positive energy? How can we say that from now on I will take responsibility, I will be a conscious person who understands the forces of nature and lives on a higher frequency?

Answer: Thank you for your question, but we are talking about a completely different level of influencing nature. After all, our human nature is absolute egoism. Even all our seemingly positive, good, kind actions, love for children, for the world, and so on, come only from egoism. Our world is controlled by only one force. The second force is concealed and we must reveal it. Therefore, people do not understand what they should do.

It is not enough for us to treat each other nicely, this will not change anything. There were many such attempts in history. We must learn how to attract the positive force of nature, the plus that would begin to act alongside the minus, and we will exist between these two poles.

Then, certainly, we will find out what a perfect, eternal world and eternal existence are. We will understand that a person exists not only in the earthly form (physical body), but there is something eternal in a person, called the soul, and it must be revealed while living in this world now, today, here.

We need to reveal our future states, that is, the eternal perfect world that exists around us, but we do not see because we perceive only through our egoistic qualities. This is all we need to learn and gradually explain to people.

And they must understand that a person living in this world must rise to the next, new degree and begin to feel the true world.

This is possible. I have students who have attained this. And the system we study and implement is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. It allows you to do this.

Question: Are you talking about universal love that we can call absolute love?

Answer: No, you cannot call this absolute love because I cannot love evil. I just want people to treat each other with this goodness that is inherent in nature.

Then, through the correct system of good and evil, we will be able to distinguish, as black and white, the true picture of the world. The veil that hangs over us will disappear and we will see with our inner and outer vision that we neither exist on a small planet nor in some closed volume of the cosmos but in completely different, upper dimensions. This we must reveal now, today, in this life.

What else do we exist for? Is it in order to fulfill ourselves with small pleasures and die peacefully?

Question: You are saying that we should not love evil. However, there are a lot of aggressive people in the world and a lot of evil comes from them. What creates this aggression? How can it be cured?

It seems to me that true absolute love helps illuminate the dark side of a person’s soul. Is there a cure for this aggression and evil?

Answer: Patience and example.

Patience against a person’s evil and a good example that he could understand. Nothing else.
[264366]
From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah: Victoria Bonya,” 3/29/20

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