In the News (PSYCHOLOGIES.RU): “Happiness and positive emotions appear to us an absolute boon. But the paradox of the human person – that being happy, we are better prepared to offend others. …

“Scientists came to the conclusion that the nature of positive emotions is not as straightforward as it might seem at first glance. This power has its dark side, one of which is selfishness. …

“Why can private happiness blunt the capacity for empathy? It is usually a positive attitude is good for socializing. Scientists came to the conclusion that a lot depends on how our emotions coincide with the experiences of our opponents. When we are in a good mood, we are much closer and understandable to people in a similar position. At the same time, positive person has much more difficulty understanding suffering, taking the place of one experiencing negative emotions. The concept of happiness for Western civilization is closely linked to personal well-being. Therefore, social networks can suffer in achieving higher levels of happiness and positive emotions.”

My Comment: Kabbalah, realizing that our nature is egoistic, explains that only by developing an aspiration for the goal will we be able to attain happiness; this is without attaining the goal, but actually in yearning for it. After all, the moment a person attains something and fills himself, this state immediately loses its value. Therefore the attainment of absolute happiness is in yearning for it and not in attaining it.
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Comment: Scientists claim that the greatest egoists are altruists, and it has been proven on a neurological level and on the economic level. There is even a term “altruistic punishment,” which is when we punish those who harm society, those who don’t make people happy, those who harm our freedom, and we enjoy doing that and as a result our ego grows even more.

Answer: Of course we can buy a person if we give him presents, serve him and show him love. He will thus receive continuous pleasure from us, will enjoy, will get used to the pleasures, and we will bring him closer to us. On the whole, this is a female’s work: when a woman supports and cares for her man, he feels that she is the motherly figure and needs her.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. That’s the way we egoists communicate. If I didn’t need someone, I wouldn’t even notice that he is standing by me. I always notice only what I need and what I can benefit from or the other way around, what disturbs or threatens me. This means that we notice everything that affects our desire whether negatively or positively.

The biggest ego is indeed the altruistic ego. It is a very sophisticated and developed ego. When I realize that behind every simple good action, like helping a small animal or taking care of a baby, I gradually tame it or I deceive it by filling its desire so that it will not be able to go on without my filling. I thus invoke a certain reaction in it and it feels that it owes me.

Question: If we only see the ego behind every action from now on, where will it lead us?

Answer: Nowhere. It is an advanced phase of the ego by which we understand how to work with other people who are also egoists and that if you treat them altruistically, you will buy them and will not have to manage them by force, but simply treat them nicely.

It is the same egoistic benefit but on a higher level, and as scientists realize today, this is how all the people will feel: that it is merely the same egoism. It is similar to the relationship between a mother and a child: The mother loves her children in a normal human way and gives them everything, and as a result, she needs them and they need her.

Comment: But people are sure that motherly love is true altruistic love.

Answer: We have to look at life a bit more seriously. I greet, respect and also love my mother who is still alive.

I know how I treat her, how I should treat her, and how she treats me, but we should understand that it is nature that invokes this feeling in us and not the person who educates himself to be like that. This is the difference.

We must understand that man operates according to the law of nature that spurs him this way, and this is the reason that he chases food, sex, a family, and love of parents.

It is different if he does that against his ego, if he educates himself to establish totally new relations with everything that is external to him, around him, the still nature, the plants, the animals, and human beings. Then every change he undergoes of his own will, as a result of education against his initial instinctive egoistic nature, a change that is the result of force and effort will be considered an achievement and therefore something of which he can be proud.

Egoistic Reshimot develop inside us, which are data records that are dictated to us, and we have to ascend above ourselves in order to attain a higher egoistic state. How else can I understand the next state if it isn’t depicted in me egoistically? This is how I feel it, “I want!” I want not only this world; I also want the upper world, the future that is above death and above everything. I want to see everything, to control everything, to understand and to feel everything.

Then I am ready to hear what the wisdom of Kabbalah says and how it helps me from now on. This help is given to me so that I will be able to act against my nature and then I invert myself internally and begin to think differently, not with the intention of in order to receive, but with the intention to bestow, not caring about myself, but by caring about others.

In this state I feel peace, a filling, and I don’t yearn for it anymore. It is totally different from the love of a mother to her child. She feels an instinctive love by which she fills herself, but here I fill others and not my own child to whom I feel a common personal human feeling, but total strangers who may be opposite from me and by whom I am repulsed. This is how we will reach the fulfillment of Kabbalistic consciousness. Although it is a great effort, we will succeed.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/4/16

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Question: Research in the US and Europe shows that one out of five women in big cities does not want to have children. Forty years ago, on the other hand, one out of ten women did not want to have children. What is the reason that the number of women who don’t want to have children has doubled?

Answer: Women have lost the motherly instinct and don’t want to have children. Even if they do, it is only later when they are nearing forty, so that they can enjoy life some more with children.

They take into account the fact that once they have a child they become trapped in obligations for life! It isn’t only financial obligations, but also their commitment to their child. This is simply unacceptable for the growing ego. Today everyone wants to be by himself, totally free, without even having to work. A person is connected to the Internet, he has a smart phone, and people don’t want to be close to anyone. Having a child is an instinctive connection to someone who depends on me and I depend on him.

The moment a woman becomes pregnant, she immediately begins to think only about the life that is being formed inside her and about the fact that she has to totally dedicate herself to it. Her world narrows and all her attention is focused on the embryo that is developing inside her. What’s next? She looks ahead and thinks about spending the rest of her life giving birth, raising, and bring up this creature. Will he live in 100-200 years? No he won’t. He will probably have his own offspring. So why take part in that and dedicate her whole life to that?!

Question: Does she think that a child will deprive her of pleasures in this world?

Answer: Of course, what is more, she feels that a child puts her in prison, that he makes her committed as if he ties her arms and legs and doesn’t allow her to think about anything else but him. The child will be stuck to her and pull all her attention. This is indeed how nature works.

Nature gradually increases a man’s and woman’s ego and allows them not to act automatically as earlier generations did. In the past a woman had to get married very early in life and have children, raise them, build a home, help them with their education, do whatever possible for them, and die. They will cry for her when she is dead, but is this what her life would come down to?!

This is a healthy scrutiny that the ego invokes in her, and she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t care where she will be buried, how, and by whom. She already pays taxes and has different obligations. All she wants is to live and not to owe anything to anyone, and especially not to bury herself while still young.

It is only if a person cares about the goal of creation enough that it obliges him to have a family, to have children, to raise them, and to take care of everything else; he will do it, but only when it is profitable.  .

And it will only be advantageous when he knows that he has to act the way that most people in this world do, which means to have children, to raise them, to care for them, to support them, and to help them stand on their own two feet, in order to attain the goal of creation. At the same time he has to correct himself and thus correct the world too!

When a woman has a child and raises him, she actually makes him perform his correction! This is going to be the only incentive to have children in the future. Otherwise, if at the moment one out of five women doesn’t want to have kids, in a couple of years one out of two women will not want to have children and the world population will diminish to half a billion people.

Question: What can a woman think about the goal of creation in order to have a child in the ideal state?

Answer: Our sufferings force us to find a clear answer to the question about the meaning of life. This is the only goal that a woman should have in order to attain the upper management and to see where nature or the Creator is leading us.

When we discover that, we will reveal how we should behave in every aspect of life in order to attain the eternal upper goal, which is considered upper in relation to our temporary life. Then we will feel the benefit in our ego and will have children, bring them up, and dedicate ourselves to the family.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/2/16

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Question: American scientists have discovered that in extreme situations people rely more on robots than on their common sense or manuals.

Researchers at the Georgia Technological Institution asked 30 volunteer students to perform a certain task in a medium size hall. Suddenly, the fire alarm went off and the hall was filled with smoke. The students had a choice of either leaving the hall by using the door through which they came in or to leave the hall through a small side door, toward which a robot pointed at, intentionally erroneously. It turned out that most of the volunteers, 26 out of 30 obeyed the robot and went toward the dead end.

On the one hand, this is progress since we are creating these advanced machines ourselves, but on the other hand, we obey our robots and become as foolish as they are. Could you explain this paradox?

Answer: I don’t understand the actual experiment. How can you not believe a sensor that shows you exactly where you should run to in time of an emergency? What can a person obey? His own instinct? Even if a person knew where the exit door was because he came in through it, perhaps there was a fire there and the robot indicated another exit and determined the safest way out. So why shouldn’t a person trust it? I would also obey the robot’s orders.

Comment: It seems that there were also other people who showed the students which way to go and yet they trusted the robot. Many times, when we use a navigation system, for example, we feel that it is the wrong way but still follow its instructions blindly.

Answer: This is natural, because we begin to respect these instruments in which our confused logic and doubts don’t exist. So I would also trust such instruments more. We launch satellites that orbit the earth, fly, and dive into deep waters, all thanks to such instruments. The human factor can play a very negative role here. This is the reason that I believe that we should trust instruments more than people.

Comment: We don’t totally trust people even in everyday life.

Answer: Why should we trust them? It is actually because of the human factor that there are explosions in nuclear power stations.

Comment: Many say that robots will become stronger than us.

Answer: Nonsense.  Only primitive people who don’t understand how mechanical systems work can say that. A mechanical system can never be smarter or stronger than the person who created it, but in critical situations it is safer since it has no self-doubts.

Question: Will personal relations between people be able to exist in the presence of such technology?

Answer: We are advancing toward such technologies not in order to communicate with each other. Who needs mutual communication these days? Even when we hear one another on the computer, we don’t actually communicate with one another; we read or see something on the screen and that’s it.

Our developing ego pushes a person to be an individualist who is isolated from everyone. If we provide a person with the basic necessities and lock him in a room with a computer, he will not need anything else, absolutely nothing. Even if he is in jail in conditions that are comfortable for living alone, he will not need anyone else.

This trend will continue until people feel that despite this convenience it is as if they are dead. On the one hand, it is very comfortable for our ego, but on the other hand, it is death. We are such a state when we are separated from one another, we are comfortable. On the other hand, we draw away from one another and disconnect the ties between us and then we feel that we cannot live without one another. This is the paradox, like between two lovers who love and hate each other.

This paradox will continue in human society as long as people draw away from one another. This will lead us to a contradiction and oppositeness that we will not be able to solve in any way but only according to the Biblical rule “love will cover every transgression.”

In other words, when there are huge egoistic distances between us, we will be able to build a bridge of mutual love, mutual cooperation and connection, above them. Egoism and altruism will not operate on one level but on two levels. It is actually the combination between these two levels of love and hate that couples lack. We have to make sure that permanent love will overcome hatred.

The greater the distance between these two parallel levels, the greater the love will be than the hate and the stronger the connection. Love is actually built on mutuality when there is an opposition below and connection above.

Question: Will technology help us here?

Answer: Nothing will help us except the wisdom of Kabbalah. This is the only thing that will enable us to establish such a connection; this is the technology.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/1/16

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In the news (openquaternary.com) : “The explanations for a rapid dispersal of modern humans after 100,000 BP remain enigmatic. Populations of modern humans took new routes – crossing significant topographic and environmental barriers, including making major sea crossings, and moving into and through risky and difficult environments. Neither population increase nor ecological changes provide an adequate explanation for a pattern of rapid movement, including leaping into new regions (saltation events). Here it is argued that the structural dynamics of emotionally complex collaboration and in depth moral commitments generates regular expulsion events of founding populations. These expulsion events provide an explanation for the as yet elusive element to dispersal. Alongside cognitive and cultural complexity we should recognise the influence of emerging emotional complexity on significant behavioural changes in the Palaeolithic.”

My Comment: Undoubtedly egoism grew in each and every generation, arousing more and more problems between fathers and sons and between a person and society. This required correction, meaning connection and unity in opposition to the egoism.

But since the wisdom of Kabbalah, the method for uniting above the ego, had not yet been revealed in those generations because of its smallness and the specific lack of the ability to determine individual egoism as evil, people preferred to stay away from each other to mitigate the hostility.

And only in ancient Babylon did egoism show itself as the only problem in humanity. But even then, only a small group of people accepted the method of unity above and against the ego and began to call themselves a people, not on the basis of their local origin, but freely chosen by them ideologically.

And in our time we must finally choose unity as the principle for a new society, specifically in contrast to the global egoism and the involuntary global connection between us. Balancing opposing tendencies is possible only when we elevate global connection above global hatred.
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New Life 691 – Intention And Fulfillment Of A Mitzvah (Commandment)
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

A person is a desire for enjoyment for his own benefit; this is called “ego.” When we act for our own benefit, we only feel this world, but if we change direction, from drawing into ourselves to going outside toward others, we perceive a new reality called the “upper world.”

The transition from the intention for one’s own benefit to the intention for the benefit of others reveals the soul of man; it is written that, “A Mitzvah without intention is like a body without a soul” (Don Isaac Abravanel, Nahalat Avot, commentary on Masechet Avot 2:13).

The Mitzvot were given for the correction of the heart, and the correction is actually carried out in a group. The correction is to connect as one person with one heart, and the entire world should proceed forward toward this. The intention that should attach to any deed is love, and the “Light that Reforms” is the force that connects between ten people who want to connect as one.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 691 – Intention And Fulfillment Of A Mitzvah (Commandment),” 2/11/16

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Research (from UBC): “A new study by Sauder School of Business Professor Izak Benbasat and his collaborators shows that envy is a key motivator behind Facebook posts and that contributes to a decrease in mental well-being among users.

“Creating a vicious cycle of jealousy and self-importance, the researchers say Facebook leads users to feel their lives are unfulfilling by comparison, and react by creating posts that portray their best selves. …

“Benbasat says the functionality of social networks encourages envy-inducing behaviour, and that’s unlikely to change.”

My Comment: At the heart of human nature is a desire to enjoy fulfillment through: food, sex, family, wealth, honor, and knowledge. Nature (the Creator) wanting to develop creations, awakens selfish internal development (natural) and external, a feeling of envy in them.

As we develop, the importance of external influence increases. So we quickly come to a feeling of emptiness —the lack of fulfillment from our world as a whole and a need to search for content outside of it. Therefore, the social networks are booming.
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New Life 679 – Transforming Into People Of Light
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

To understand what Torah and Mitzvot (commandments) are from a spiritual aspect, we must disengage the subject from our previous knowledge. Kabbalah explains that the entire substance of creation is egoistic, the desire to receive, exist, and enjoy. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us a unique method for developing the “speaking” level, the level of Adam (from Domeh – similar), that is similar to the upper force through using the positive force to correct the negative in us, and this is called “studying Torah.”

The desire to receive is comprised of 613 desires—248 are more refined and 365 are denser—and with correction of the desires, a person becomes a person of Light, a person of bestowal and love. Our development brings us to the understanding that the ego is destroying us, the recognition of evil, which leads to correction.

Since the intention to act for the good of others is concealed, it is impossible to know with what intent a person is acting. When we work in a group according to the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the 613 desires that we must correct are gradually revealed in us, and to identify these 613 desires within us and correct them, we must attract 613 Lights on us. In the beginning we identify only one egoistic desire, and after that we clarify the rest of the details.

Like a drop of semen that enters the uterus and develops into a fetus, the person also enters a special group and grows in it, and through communication with a group according to the special method, a sense develops in him that identifies the desire to bestow. The 613 Mitzvot are the 613 desires, each one of which, we must work with for the sake of others, with the intention of bestowal.
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From KabTV’s “ New Life 679 – Transforming Into People Of Light,” 1/19/16

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New Life 670 – The Social Mind
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe 

A man’s way of thinking is very personal and individualistic so a person acts in his own interest at the expense of others.

This is very clear when we look at babies. A baby doesn’t think about anything but himself, and until the age of three cannot feel the other, and if he grows in a family that is too indulgent, he continues to relate to the world this way even when he grows up.

A person is not born with a built-in inclination for empathy but actually the opposite. He is a total egoist who learns to calculate things, but there are mirror neurons in our body just like animals have.

We are all part of one system and are tightly connected by infinite lines of internal communication: thoughts, desires, and impressions. It is all one general network, like a bag of croutons in a bowl of soup. We have an innate ability to feel the other, but it is egoistic so that we can be careful of what can harm us. It is only through the special method of integral education, based on the wisdom of Kabbalah, that we can learn to use the connection between us in a non-egoistic manner.

The goal of our development is to build the right mutual connections between us until we feel as “one man in one heart” and are in perfect reciprocity, in mutual complementation. And then no one will need to care for himself because everyone will care for him and he will care for them.

When a person becomes free of self-concern, he feels like a baby in his mother’s arms and is free to care for others. On the way to this wholeness, he undergoes a state called the recognition of evil in which he feels that it is impossible to continue the bad relationships between people today.

At the peak of our evolution, in the corrected state, we will be able to feel everyone simultaneously. Our neurons will connect and become one brain. This will happen only if we use the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah that teaches us to properly connect to and love others.

Then we will be like school of fish or a flock of birds moving as one body and will feel the upper force in our common brain that navigates us to increasingly greater connection.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 670 – The Social Mind,” 12/31/15

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Comment: In 2015, the number of traffic accidents increased significantly in Israel; 357 people were killed, which was a 12% increase in the number of fatalities compared to last year.

In 2012 there was a slight decrease in the number of traffic accidents, and then a sharp rise that continues to today despite all the measures that were taken to reduce accidents.

Answer: We are in a process of growth of egoism. People are becoming more rude, impatient, and intolerant. They cannot behave otherwise.

In other words, if there is something that goes against our ego, we are ready to kill, eliminate, or remove the other so that he will disappear. The pressure of egoism within us is the strongest influence. Moreover, when it grabs us, we no longer remember or understand anything, but simply act.

We have reached a situation in which there is no balance between the ego and the intellect, the intellect is subordinated under the growing egoism, and the ego drives the person in all his activities.

You can see how people overtake and cut off each other on the highways, and indeed many of them are not rushing get anywhere. That is how the ego operates in a person and that’s it, it just moves him. Therefore, it makes no difference whether they are going out with a knife or running people over on the highways; the ego is oriented in only one direction, remove someone who is in the way.

Question: So what is there to do?

Answer: If we don’t correct egoism, there is nothing to do. People will be killed on the roads. I think that if we count all the deaths in the wars in Israel, we will see that on the highways many more people have been killed.

There is nothing to be done in connection to this other than transcending the ego. Otherwise it will kill us, not only on the roads but everywhere. If we were to see what the ego does every day, we would be astounded.

It is necessary to recognize the evil in it, and then it becomes possible to begin working with it. Otherwise nothing will help. Everything will go on the same way until everyone receives the right education and rids themselves of egoism.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/12/16

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