Comment: Our time is differentiated from its predecessors in that people are more and more distant from each other.

There are many options today because television, telephones, all kinds of games, and all of the correspondence through the Internet helps us to move away from each other.

Also, today it is possible to order food and everything else that a person needs from home, so he has no need for anything else. Only if there is a problem that requires medical help, will a person turn to a doctor.

The situation is similar even at work. Every person has his own cubicle with a computer. Everything is arranged to allow us to communicate as little as possible with each other because contact is becoming more and more difficult and burdensome day after day.

And this is natural because our ego is constantly growing. We see that connections between nations, countries, people, in particular between individuals and especially between children and parents are becoming unbearable. This is so much so that a person will immediately “explode.”

A new culture of communication is appearing in which people are used to saying vulgarities. They believe that this is the norm, and incidentally, they are not offended. This is something that amazes me a lot. It is particularly noticeable in parliaments….

Answer: In parliaments, this is natural. There are special rules there. They can insult, humiliate, and sling mud on each other. Yet, they are not quick to turn to lawyers and file lawsuits because this is their job.

But the family, children, school, work, the streets, driving cars, and everything else have become very sharp and hard.

What is interesting is that people are getting used to dialogue like this. The pain threshold of the individual is becoming more and more coarse. If in the past they would say something sharp to me, I would react to it negatively. I would not tolerate talk like this. Today someone talks to me and I accept the same talk as a norm of communications between us and we are not insulted by it. Nobody thinks this is unethical and coarse.

In accordance with this, the trend is changing and art, television channels, theaters, and movies are showing old classics, or low-grade series.

We are moving toward a situation in which our world is becoming more and more coarse, opaque, and ultimately the emotional nerve cells of feelings die.
[192645]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/1/16

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Comment: The Paralympics, the Olympics for the disabled, began right after the Olympics in Brazil. For the first time in the 56 years since these games began only 12% of the tickets were sold (BBC). The Paralympics were moved from the sports halls to open fields so that people wouldn’t have to pay. Many disabled sportsmen from different countries could not come to the games because their travel expenses were not paid.

Answer: Unfortunately, the Olympics have exhausted themselves. The sportsmen gather in order to beat each other. These aren’t Olympic games anymore; it isn’t a sports festival nor a celebration of man’s physical achievements. Politics, chemistry, and drugs have deeply penetrated the sports because the goal is now victory at any cost and not the actual cooperation and sportsmanship itself. Instead of being a festival of friendship, the Olympics have turned into a war! This is the reason that many don’t want to be involved in it anymore.

Comment: Even if we take the Paralympics as an example, the attitude toward these games has always been of compassion and mercy and people used to come to watch the games.

Answer: Today, there is no compassion or mercy. Once drugs and other additives have entered sports, they are no longer a sport but rather a competition between chemists, and this brought the end of it all.

Question: What kind of sport do you support?

Answer: I am totally for clean sports, when the sportsmen are not bought and are not paid. Sports should be for amateurs. It shouldn’t be a political event.

But humanity will not return to this sort of event in any form because it advances according to its growing egoism, and so the Olympics have exhausted themselves. The human ego will not let us hold such an event as a festival or a celebration. Fights and rough and tough competitions will not impress the audience.  Eventually every branch of sports will come to an end, even soccer, because it is impossible to win a victory in sports with money.

Comment: Your predictions are not very optimistic.

Answer: These were my predictions even 15-20 years ago and they are even more relevant today. Some are actually beginning to come true today.
[192605]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 8/24/16

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In the News (Forbes): “Naked restaurants, or ‘foodies for nudies’ as many call them, are becoming a trend, and a number have been opening with great success in, among other cities, London, Milan, Tokyo, Melbourne and, soon, Paris.

“Dining ‘au naturel’ reached a whole new level this summer when, for the opening in June of London’s first ‘food-in-the-nude’ restaurant, The Bunyadi, more than 46,000 aspiring patrons rushed their names on to the waiting list, according to its website. …

“’It’s going to be the same in Paris as it has been in London, back to the start, no mobile phones, all natural, candles, and raw, organic food,’ the restaurant’s events planner told The Local. ‘We think the French would pretty much love this; there are a lot of naturists there.'”

Answer: The question is what is the reason for this phenomenon? I am not being self-righteous. I know human nature, but on the other hand, when we undress we put on a new form. Everywhere in the world clothes are not just pieces of cloth but a symbol for a person’s intention, for his inclination and the respect he feels toward others, for primitive and for modern people alike.

If a person wants to stand out among others, he wears different jewels. Or does one want to show to what degree he respects the common meal, the common time together? And it can raise the spirits and bring about a feeling of great pleasure. A meal doesn’t have to be in a tense atmosphere, like breakfasts for diplomats who don’t eat anything but carry on long diplomatic talks.

It still has to be pleasant. And there must be a dress code because it emphasizes the respect one feels for his peers. The 46,000 reservations for the nudists’ restaurant is a sign of a serious regression of mankind.

From a Kabbalistic perspective, this is a delightful event, of course, because it shows that we are getting closer to major changes in humanity when we become aware where we are in our arbitrary developmental process and that we cannot go on this way. We have to start managing our development and become humans instead of remaining like animals.

Basically, what makes us different from animals? Animals barely develop and do so very slowly. Humanity is evolving, but arbitrarily, under the influence of upper force, without any intervention on its part. What are our thoughts, feelings, intentions, we are, as they say, “blowing with the wind.” We ourselves are not involved in this, and in this sense we are worse than animals.

We shouldn’t look at our technological progress but at ourselves, at our culture, at people, at our society, at those who develop into toxic matter of which there is nothing to be proud. Humanity must acknowledge the fact that it must wisely participate in its development. We have to discover nature’s intentions and aspire for the upper ideal by ourselves and not put ourselves into an opposite state in order to understand at a certain point that this inclination is wrong and then correct it by having to actually climb out of the sewage.
[192339]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/11/16

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Comment: According to the book Introduction to Psychology, altruism and mutual help are not only human traits, but they exist among animals too.

Adam Smith (1759) in The Theory of Moral Sentiments wrote: “How selfish soever many may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interests him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

There is also evidence that animals care about each other including developing cooperation between them, displaying loyalty to the group, and their inclination to help each other. Calling this kind of behavior egoistic is like describing every life form on earth as the energy of the sun’s whose structure has been transformed

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah our whole world is egoistic, as the Creator said: “I have created the evil inclination” and only that! The good in our world, however, can emerge only as a result of the Kabbalists’ actions who by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah learn to draw the good inclination (the Upper Light, the Surrounding Light) through them into our world.
[192624]

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Question: What should a person do if he feels that a huge egoistic potential is hanging on him and doesn’t allow him to function normally? What measures should he take in order to get rid of this burden?

Answer: Only the Upper Light can correct any kind of egoism, the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) that is external to us.

Question: A person has to turn into a human being, Adam, in order to defeat his egoism and get closer to the Creator. But what happens if Satan (a man’s ego) wins? You often speak about what we should do in order to win, but what if we lose?

Answer: There is no Satan, but only our egoism, and the Creator manages everything according to a person’s efforts. Everything depends on the quality and the quantity of our efforts.
[192236]

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Why is everything so bad?

The study of nature shows us that every part in nature is managed in a purposeful deterministic manner, just like fruit growing on a tree is managed to reach the ultimate sublime goal, to ripen. But the earlier maturation states are opposite from the mature form. What is more, the sweeter the fruit when it is ripe, the more bitter and ugly it is in the intermediate phases.

A beast develops quickly while a baby is born weak and dependent and takes many years to develop. A person who doesn’t know the final outcome of their development may say that the beast is better than man in every way.

Thus, we learn that nature manages the development in a purposeful and deterministic way disregarding the intermediate forms and taking into account only the ultimate outcome. Nature’s positive attitude toward the created being is not felt until the final phase of its development.

Conclusion: The management of every part of nature is purposeful and good, but this fact is revealed only at the end of the development process and only to those who attain the final phase of their development, the Kabbalists, can see the world in its final good form.

There are two ways to develop: by suffering or by efforts.

Nature’s plan is to make us resemble the attribute of the absolute goodness and two ways have been prepared for us to develop in order to attain it.

1. The way of suffering: it is a slow and unconscious process of development under the influence of sufferings until recognizing that the goodness is necessary.
2. The good way: it is a quick, conscious, and pleasant development until resembling nature.

The ultimate goal is essential and predetermined. There is no way we can avoid it. Nature manages us rigidly along the way of suffering or along the good way. Nature reveals the egoism in us, the evil force, which we have to discover. We have to discover the good force and learn how to generate with our desires and actions from nature.

The purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is to develop us by the positive force.

By studying the wisdom of Kabbalah a person discovers that it is actually his natural egoism that stands in his way of developing peacefully to the happy state he was meant to reach by nature. The root of all evil is self-love called egoism. This attribute is opposite from the general force of nature, from goodness. Thus the reason for all the sufferings is the gap between all the negative attributes of egoism and the positive attributes of nature.

When a Kabbalist corrects the evil in him, the egoism, so that it will resemble the goodness in nature, in the transition from self love to love of others, he discovers the highest pleasure and a feeling of eternity. Our correction is fulfilled in unity, and so uniting until we reach the love of others is actually a commandment that we have to fulfill as the general law of nature. In the unity we discover the positive force of nature, the Creator.

The difference between the wisdom of Kabbalah and other methods is the goal. Our whole nature is evil and we have to correct it to goodness. Otherwise evil will destroy us. The wisdom of Kabbalah ensures success and happiness to those who use it because a person who attains the love of others is close to the upper force of nature, to the force of goodness, and thus becomes free of the feeling of our world of suffering and feels the wide eternal world of bestowal and the upper force. Thus we see that the wisdom of Kabbalah serves the person who uses it in the best possible way, but doesn’t affect those who don’t use it at all.
[191920]
Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah and Its Purpose.”

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In the News (Pacific Standard): “The Peter Pan Syndrome was one of the best-selling books of the early 1980s. In it, psychologist Dan Kiley argued that teenage boys were increasingly reluctant to grow up and accept adult responsibilities.

“Any hope that this might be a short-lived phenomenon is refuted by new research. It finds that, compared to previous generations, today’s university students — both male and female — consider maturity a minefield they are in no hurry to start navigating.

“‘Today’s emerging adults seem reluctant to take on life’s next chapter,’ concludes a research team led by Miami University psychologist April Smith. ‘Undergraduates today experience more fear related to facing the demands of adult life than undergraduates in the past.'”

Answer: When I was young, it was the opposite. We wanted to be grownups so much, to start working, to do something, to aspire for something, to discover something. Schools seemed like a prison to us, while today it is the other way around; the young want to remain the way they are because they have everything.

They are locked inside their cell phone screens or computers and are in fact trapped in a cage that provides a filling they cannot give up. Of course they don’t want to break away from the screen because if they can spend all their free time in front of the small screen like small kids, they have no need for anything else.

The average amount of time in which a person can work, discover, and “conquer” the world is between 20 to 60 years, but there is nothing that attracts the youth these days.

In the past when we were that age, we dreamed about being pilots or astronauts. And then all of a sudden everyone began to regard pilots as taxi drivers who merely transport passengers back and forth.  And astronauts? They merely fly, orbit in space, land, and that’s it. People lost the yearning for romanticism, for a special filling, and nothing in this world attracts them anymore.

We are developing very quickly and we understand that there is nothing in our world that can fill us. Although we don’t fully understand it yet, we do feel it.

Humanity is moving in two directions: one is determined by the elite who see what is going on and try to organize and manage everything, but don’t know how to cope with the economic crisis and aspire to reduce the number of people on this planet in non-military ways. This is what humanity can do, and there are no other solutions since people don’t understand what is going on.

The other direction is determined by the wisdom of Kabbalah, according to which humanity is in the midst of a very meaningful evolutionary phase, in the transition and an ascent to the next level. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our consciousness has to change; we can and we should change our attitude to the world and to each other.

When my generation looks at young people today, it is hard to understand what they engage in, and  they don’t understand us. We seem to be living on two differ planes. They have their own interests and we have ours.

We can see this as an ordinary generation gap between fathers and sons, but according to the wisdom of Kabbalah this is not really a gap, but the ascent of the new generation to the next dimension. The young people of the new generation will attain it; their consciousness will change completely; they will not regard corporeal problems and there will actually be none.

Modern robotics and scientific discoveries will ensure that we will not have to think about anything but how to build the correct society, since otherwise we will be destroyed.

We have to find out precisely what options we have: either to build one unique network between us, or this is where we will all be buried.

Question: Do people understand that they are in prison?

Answer: It isn’t a prison but a very simple action of the universe, which we have to respond to in order to survive. If a global flood threatened our lives, we would have to take some measures otherwise we would drown.

Similarly, a new system is approaching us, a totally new paradigm, a new level of existence, and we have to adapt to it. Those who will not adapt to it will not survive. It may well be that only a couple of thousand people from all of humanity will survive, and they will attain the new level of existence. Just like after the global flood, they will reach a new land and humanity will be regenerated.

This phase is starting now and I hope it will end in a couple of decades. Then humanity will understand what it is facing, the wisdom of Kabbalah offers a method by which we can quickly undergo this phase, with little suffering, easily, by understanding what is going on and, at the same time, in a qualitative way.

It doesn’t provide us with a tranquilizer in order to mitigate the unavoidable transition to the next phase of united humanity, but it offers us a way to understand the process and to do it by ourselves. This is how we will attain the new quality independently, and it will not only be a totally different feeling, but will lead to a totally different outcome.
[190196]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/15/16

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Research (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science): Psychologists from Yale and Harvard University conducted a series of studies.

“Human prosociality presents an evolutionary puzzle, and reciprocity has emerged as a dominant explanation: cooperating today can bring benefits tomorrow. Reciprocity theories clearly predict that people should only cooperate when the benefits outweigh the costs, and thus that the decision to cooperate should always depend on a cost–benefit analysis. Reciprocity theories clearly predict that people should only cooperate when the benefits outweigh the costs, and thus that the decision to cooperate should always depend on a cost–benefit analysis. Yet human cooperation can be very uncalculating: good friends grant favors without asking questions, romantic love ‘blinds’ us to the costs of devotion, and ethical principles make universal moral prescriptions. Here, we provide the first evidence, to our knowledge, that reputation effects drive uncalculating cooperation. We demonstrate, using economic game experiments, that people engage in uncalculating cooperation to signal that they can be relied upon to cooperate in the future.

“Humans frequently cooperate without carefully weighing the costs and benefits. As a result, people may wind up cooperating when it is not worthwhile to do so. Why risk making costly mistakes? Here, we present experimental evidence that reputation concerns provide an answer: people cooperate in an uncalculating way to signal their trustworthiness to observers.

“People who help others non egoistically and for no self benefit are perceived as more reliable and therefore help others,” which means that they want to seem more reliable and can be counted on and accepted to work and so subconsciously they do things that are considered desirable by others. …

“…we find that participants are more likely to engage in uncalculating cooperation when their decision-making process is observable to others. Furthermore, we confirm that people who engage in uncalculating cooperation are perceived as, and actually are, more trustworthy than people who cooperate in a calculating way. Taken together, these data provide the first empirical evidence, to our knowledge, that uncalculating cooperation is used to signal trustworthiness, and is not merely an efficient decision-making strategy that reduces cognitive costs.”

Answer: Of course this is how such people want to be accepted.  So they promote themselves to acquire some “profit”:  gain social status, are promoted at work, etc.

Question: Would they behave differently if there weren’t this self-benefit?

Answer: Of course! Egoism is our nature, it requires calories, energy, an investment. Where does this energy come from? We have to see what we can get it from in the future; how we can fill ourselves. It is just lifke a gas tank in a car which you fill at a gas station.

People are ready to give a lot for the future reward that illuminates for them: for being spoken of favorably, for being promoted at work, so that their children will be proud of them, neighbors will respect them, etc. It is worth a lot!

Otherwise why do we buy a certain apartment or a certain car and spend a lot of money on it, when we could live in perfect peace and quite well without them.

Our actions cannot be free of greediness because our nature doesn’t allow us to do so! We have to spend calories on everything, joules (energy measuring units), no matter how we measure it. Therefore we have to receive this energy, which means that there has to be something that provides us with this energy for which we work, and if we don’t receive it, we cannot work because we are all mechanisms! We can only operate only if we have available energy or if it illuminates for us in the future.

Comment: But the researchers at Yale and Harvard don’t even mention egoism.

Answer: Of course not because they don’t understand it. They believe it is natural for a person who gives to do so and that there is no egoism in him and even quite the opposite.

Comment: But they did conclude that such actions are rewarding.

Answer: This is not considered egoism. Egoism is the clear fulfillment of our desire in order to harm others. If I bargain with someone in order to buy something for a cheaper price and he wants to sell it for a higher price, it is normal. It is human nature, but it may be the opposite case.

The painter Modigliani, for example, painted with “blood” because he was so hungry he couldn’t hold a paintbrush and fell exhausted at his easel. This is considered a noble soul, self-sacrifice, not selfishness. But in fact, this is overt blatant egoism.

A person lacks the clear accurate understanding of his nature; he loves to distort everything. Humanity is still immersed in its games, in confusion.

We must understand that nature operates according to a very simple principle: If there is energy, I turn around; if there is no energy I stand still and that’s all. Therefore, if we do something, it means that there is a hidden benefit in it, and if we wish to work without it, we have to know how to connect to an upper source of energy by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah and become a perpetual motion machine.

Then we will receive energy from an external source as if we are connected to an invisible pipe of energy for the sake of others. If we receive it, we will be able to work, but not in any other way.
[191202]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/24/16

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Question: During the UEFA Cup in Marseilles, a bloody brawl broke out. What is happening to humanity? What have we come to?

Answer: People must release inner tension, let off steam.

Question: They didn’t need that in the past?

Answer: In the past, egoism, which is the heart of our nature, was not so great, terrible, and wicked. In the present state nothing can be done, people need to relax themselves somehow, to get rid of the accumulation of strong tension.

Unfortunately, training in sports clubs doesn’t help. Instead people are just puffing themselves up for such violent acts like these. Even passive types of recreation like fishing and hunting don’t help, besides these are not mass events. In contrast, soccer is already another matter.

In ancient Greece, during sports competitions wars were suspended! Sport was somewhat similar to religion. It was impossible to bribe athletes, they had no substance abuse problems, and they were not tested because they didn’t have a desire to deceive anyone. They were respected because of their talents and achievements. Sports were noble. Today, sports are dirty. Each nation endeavors to win by any means; the main thing is to hoist its flag.

I believe that national affiliation should be removed from sports and the buying and selling of players to the highest bidder prohibited. What kind of a custom is this?! If I had a billion dollars, I could assemble a team that would become the world champions in soccer. Is this sport?! This is a struggle between nations for their name and prestige!

What kind of prestige is this if players from Africa represent Norway for instance?! The problem is that sports have become a political struggle. I don’t see anything in this except the growth of egoism, and one that you cannot be particularly proud of; it is unreasonable, not acceptable to humanity, not placed in the right framework, not giving any pleasure, nor producing a good result.

I would simply transform this into an amusing game, putting a thousand people on one side and a thousand people on the other side, a wall facing a wall, to come out into an open field without any clubs, to measure their strength under the supervision of the police, with cameras all around for a live broadcast, and let the whole world would see how people hit each other.

Question: So is it useless to be engaged in their re-education?

Answer: That would be their re-education. They would be letting off steam and that is all. After that everyone would be given a awarded a liter of beer and everyone would feel calm and relaxed. They would sit satisfied, each one with a black eye and a beer!

It also puts them on TV for the whole world to see, and everyone is happy to see—to what we have come to in the 21^st century!
[188725]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/19/16

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Comment: Citizens of Iraq are selling their kidneys in return for thousands of dollars because they are so impoverished. The country is gradually becoming the biggest center in the Middle East for the illegal trafficking of organs. The world is losing its humanity.

Answer: Is the world able to maintain humanity in the face of developing egoism? The world is losing more and more of it to the same extent that egoism is growing in us.

Question: How is it possible to escape from this?

Answer: There is no way. On the contrary, you are sinking deeper and deeper within the ego, but since you don’t want to suffer, you try to pay less attention to what is happening. People will produce different pills, films, drugs, and will establish sports competitions, etc., just to relax and not feel the problems. It is a natural human form that runs in its natural nature called egoism.

Sooner or later man will come to the point when he will discover that it’s no longer possible to continue in this way since the next object that they can break into parts and sell will be himself and his family, although towards his family he would already be indifferent. We already see some distance that exists between parents and children, and about the distance between couples there is nothing new to say. Thus, all of this is natural, when the main thing is the worry for my beloved self. We are in a certain plan of nature, in a matrix, that works on us and consistently leads us to the need to recognize the evilness of our nature, which claims that the most important thing is myself and no one else, and wants to get rid of the others. .

When I feel that I am completely dependent on those surrounding me, then I will begin to erase the difference between us. If they begin to relate to me in a good way, then it will be good for me and for them, and if they relate to me badly, then I will feel badly.

Only through feeling badly will I reach that state and begin to think of how, in any case, to correct the world that I am dependent on each moment of my existence. In this way I reach the need to worry about others. Thus, the negative relations between people are unavoidable. Through them we will feel the need for mutual connection and then we will begin to correct the world according, if necessary, like after a war when people are all engaged in building something together that is shared and essential for existence.

When we recognize this out of necessity, we will gradually feel that in the connection between us there lies hidden a great state of unity that reveals a completely new world and new sensations to us.

This is the way to happiness, although it is a long way. By studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, you begin to understand that everything should be quick, nice, and good. There is no need to wait for terrible crashes and ugly situations. We need to be do this now and start to implement it.
[182454]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/21/16

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