Comment: Irina writes: “Hello Dr. Laitman! It so happened that my husband and I moved into the basement. Our house was destroyed and no longer exists. We are both studying the science of Kabbalah and have heard from you repeatedly that the Creator is good and does good. It was only after this real devastation that we felt a state of liberation. Caring for others has supplanted all thoughts of self. And we realized that this is the only way to feel the Creator’s care for us. I myself cannot understand how it happened. Could you explain this condition?”

I honestly expected her to say: “And then we started hating the Creator.” But suddenly she writes: “Unexpectedly, we felt liberation.”

My Response: They have already skipped the state of hatred and have come to a state of liberation and caring for others.

Question: How does this happen?

Answer: This is an inner quality of a person when he tries to escape from suffering, fear, hatred, and all negative qualities based on his desire to feel good.

And as a result, he suddenly gets into such a state where he cares about others. He sees that by becoming more connected with others, he feels good. And the Creator directs him in this way— directs and directs. And he is already thanking the Creator for all the evil that He has caused him. How can this be?

He no longer feels that it is evil. He feels that it is the loving Creator who has directed him to the real good in this way. Only this feeling covers everything.

Question: So this is actually the future of all states of hatred, fear, and pain?

Answer: Yes, when you get rid of the material and feel only this state of spiritual fulfillment, by helping others, you fill yourself and you don’t need anything else in life. This is a spiritual state. Suffering can lead to this.

Question: Precisely suffering?

Answer: If the Creator directs you correctly, then you can reach this.

Comment: If such states are the future of all suffering, all hatred, and so on, then you’re able to justify everything and say it led me to this.

My Response: Yes. People go through very special states. Especially today.

Today, even people who do not study and are not with us go through many states that are close to the spiritual and they prepare themselves for spiritual integration into a common system, into a common Kli, to transition to a different mindset.

Question: When I have concern for others, will I be filled with this?

Answer: At first you will be filled with it, then you will run away from the problems of coming to connection with others. And then you will just do it because the Creator provides you with such a state and you see in it that your mission is to tell the world through your actions how good the Creator is in everything He does to us amid all these horrors.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/17/22

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Medium published my new article “Despite Militant Tone, Nuclear War Not Likely”

On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held a press conference in Poland following a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was the first time the US admitted that its real goal is not so much to save Ukraine as it is to weaken Russia. Austin said, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” He also added that Russia “has already lost a lot of military capability. … And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

The following day, Austin hosted a forum in Germany with representatives from nearly forty nations. At the forum, “the German government … agreed to provide 50 Cheetah anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine. The British government also agreed to provide Ukraine with anti-aircraft capabilities, …along with Canada’s offer of eight armored vehicles.”

Moreover, according to the announcement by the Department of Defense, “a decision was made to extend the forum so more work could be done. Going forward, Austin said, there will be a monthly ‘contact group’ to further discuss how best to assist Ukraine. ‘The contact group will be a vehicle for nations of goodwill to intensify our efforts, coordinate our assistance, and focus on winning today’s fight and the struggles to come,’” Austin concluded.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in response to the American moves, Russia’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said “the West was engaged in a proxy war with his country that could escalate into a global conflict with nuclear weapons. ‘The risk is serious, real. It should not be underestimated,’ …Lavrov said in a Russian state-television interview.”

Despite the militant tone and growing tensions, I do not believe an all-out world war is imminent, or in the viability of a nuclear confrontation. At the end of the day, the Russians, too, understand that using nuclear weapons leads to a no-way-back situation. Such a scenario could devastate them so tragically that they will not be able to recover.

Also, considering the fact that Russia consists of countless different nations living under Moscow’s rule, if it were to collapse, it would disintegrate and not much would be left of it. I do not believe that Russia can venture down that road.

Moreover, even if Russia were to use, or attempt to use nuclear arms, it would find that it promises more than it can deliver. It can devastate entire cities, or even an entire country, but it is an irrepressible and unmanageable weapon. Therefore, I do not think that this is what will help Russia stand up to NATO.

What may happen is that Russia will position its forces on the borders of Ukraine and maintain the tension between the two countries. In this way, there will not be an active war, but rather a constant tension between the two countries, from which the US and Europe will benefit.

As a result of the conflict, I think there will be more balance in the region. It may be a terrible price to pay, but for the world, a tense balance between Russia and Ukraine is the best solution at the moment. It will weaken both countries and lead to greater balance in the world once the active hostilities subside. In the end, I hope, the parties will grow too tired to keep fighting, and exhaustion will impel them to find a path for peace.‎
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Comment: Lyudmila asks about how to cope with the shock of so much hatred that has been revealed? She wonders if we are strong enough to cover this mass of disclosed evil?”

My Response: No, you do not have to do it. You do not have to cover anything, you do not have to deal with anything. We should just try to love. Otherwise, it is impossible to get out of this state.

Now a lot of evil has been revealed, and we have the opportunity to reveal goodness.

Question: And if we did not have such an opportunity to reveal goodness, to reveal love, would evil be revealed?

Answer: From where? We must approach a feeling of goodness and love in advance, gradually, slowly, in order to begin to feel that in fact, there is evil and hatred between us, and then consciously extract the property of love and connection.

Question: If this evil had not been revealed, would we not have been able to obtain this love today?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: So it turns out that we are already able to extract it?

Answer: We are capable of it. We have to. Otherwise, it would not open. We must be prepared for this.

Question: Is there any law in this?

Answer: The law is absolutely clear, there is such a sinusoidal, periodic component here.

Love and hate, love and hate, this is how it should periodically manifest itself, overlapping each other, and grow, grow, and grow.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/14/22

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Question: These days, everything can easily be painted gold. Although it looks cheap, people still have a desire for something shiny, made to look like gold. Why doesn’t the passion for this disappear?

Answer: We cannot be indifferent to the color of gold because for thousands of years it has been the most valuable color. If we give a child different colors to play with, he will also reach for the warm light. Not for silver, but for gold, because it is a warm light, a warm color.

But personally, I do not look at it that way. I have not felt any value in it for a long time.

Comment: It’s just that the entire world is constantly revolving around shiny trinkets.

My Response: The entire world must come to the recognition of the evil of its egoism, to the fact that we work for it for free, that this egoism is inside everyone like a cancerous tumor eating us up.

A person must understand this, and begin to fight against egoism, to feel it in himself as the most evil, most cunning, insidious enemy, and also understand that there is nothing outside, and everything is only inside.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Dollars, Gold or Diamonds?” 4/21/14

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People will someday become brothers, and they will start again with Cain and Abel (Stanisław Jerzy Lec).

I do not think that this is going to happen. According to calculations of Kabbalists, we are already living in the last generation. In fact, we will not have to go down that road again.

It will all be taken into account and will be in our genes so much that we will not have to go through it. It will all be inside of us, and we will already be clever.

Comment: But you said that history does not teach us much.

My Response: By itself, it does not teach us, but it will already be in our genes, Reshimo.

Question: Does it mean that we will not come back to this first fratricide?

Answer: No. We will not be going through this entire story again at all.

We still have a lot of work ahead of us. We need to enter a world in which we must correctly use the quality of bestowal, the quality of reception, and begin to work with them correctly. There are still a lot of wars and contradictions, decisions, challenges, searches, and so on. We need all of it.

Question: Will these be internal wars?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Will the external wars turn into internal ones?

Answer: Of course. This is something that even today people in the world have to figure out and start implementing! We have already been through all these barbarities.

Question: So, will all these external wars end by the fact that they move inside?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Do you see that this is how the next generation will be?

Answer: I see it, it is already starting to come through.

I think that people will learn from this example given to us now with the Russian-Ukrainian war. They will learn. They will see all this senselessness and that in such circumstances it is impossible to do anything else. Two such close, fraternal nations, and look what is happening. This should teach everyone.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/10/22

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In the News (The Telegraph, “In these Covid times, it’s Dostoevsky that is resonating with readers”): “Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote of ‘the pleasure of despair’, and book sales reveal British readers are buying into his brand of agreeable anguish.

“The Russian writer’s existentialist oeuvre is the fastest growing market for Penguin Classics, ahead of more genteel favourites like Austen and Dickens. …

“While the sudden clamour for the 19th-century author’s ‘gloom and nihilism’ remains ‘mysterious’ to publishers, experts have suggested that pessimistic modern readers have found a ‘prophet in Dostoevsky’.

“Kevin Birmingham, the author of literary biography The Sinner and The Saint, said: “I think the appeal is that Dostoevsky’s view of human nature seems more apparent now: we’re irrational, egoistic, and self-destructive.

“We spite ourselves, we crave freedom even if it leads to our detriment, and our perverse impulses are at the heart of civilisation.

“Readers of Dostoevsky’s novels wouldn’t be surprised by global affairs of the last several years. These are all Dostoevskian.

“He is currently fitting very well with the mood of readers, according to the Penguin Classics team, amid an increasing audience for angst that has seen UK sales for the author’s works increasing 177 per cent since 2016. …

“There is an abiding fear that there are no foundations, no ultimate sense of truth or justice, and this is something we’re grappling with these days.”

Question: What can we do about the fact that we live like this?

My Response: I think maybe this is why we will come to a brighter life, through such things like looking at the world through “dark glasses.”

Question: If I am wearing dark glasses, then what are my actions?

Answer: At least you have a realistic view of the world. It does not blind you.

Question: What does this reality give me?

Answer: You will want to brighten this world.

Question: Is it not that I will get depressed or something like that?

Answer: No, this is not depression. This is just a need for correction.

Question: Do you mean that because of such a view of Dostoevsky, I will want to come out into the light?

Answer: I think so, yes.

Question: Is this what you are talking about all the time: recognition of my evil, which is within me?

Answer: Precisely!
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/10/22

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Question: Peter asks: “How can we ask the Creator to be merciful? There is enough blood already, what does He want from us?”

Answer: He wants you to be like Him, that is, to first realize that He is the only one who commands everything and that everything depends only on Him, so that people turn only to Him, to the Creator.

And if you want to turn to Him, you must be together. Together! Together even with the most hated opponents, whatever they may be. If you cannot approach a stranger, some person you hate, and hug him and turn to the Creator, you must start from afar, but gradually, with the intention of approaching, embracing, and turning to the Creator. Without this, the Creator will not hear you.

The Creator stands behind your hater, the enemy, behind him. If you want to turn to the Creator, you must somehow pierce the heart of your enemy with your attitude.

Question: Does he have to pierce his heart first to get close to the enemy?

Answer: Of course.

Comment: But this is an unbearable condition.

My Response: If this is an unbearable condition, it means we will die. From century to century.

Question: Do you think this is the main condition?

Answer: Yes! It should become such that I am obliged to see my beloved people in everyone, moreover, parts of the Creator, His messengers and representatives. If I treat everything around me in this way, then I will suddenly see that the Creator is clothed in them. He is in them, fills them, and in general, it is all Him. Everything!

Question: An ordinary person hears you, and everything turns upside down inside him. He says: “It is not just impossible, it is completely crazy.” What should he do, a person like that?

Answer: Turn over!

Question: And here I should also ask the Creator: “Give me the opportunity to roll over”?

Answer: Of course! Who am I? Some small selfish part that is not capable of anything.

Question: That is, I am able to do that only if I turn to the Creator with my wish to roll over and approach my enemy, embrace him, and raise a prayer together with him?

Answer: I ask the Creator to allow me to do this, to show me, teach me, and push me, and that my opponent would also want the same and would agree with me.

Because I see both myself and the enemy as an action of the Creator. That the Creator guides us against each other like this, pushes us against each other, incites us. And so I ask the Creator to bring us closer, to open my enemy’s arms instead of his fists so that we gradually show our love for each other. Up to real love.

Comment: If the world would hear you…

My Response: If people want it; that is the problem. And the Creator, He is ready for it if people want it. Whether they want to or not depends on the suffering they feel.

Comment: The cup overflows, of course.

My Response: We have no idea how overflowing the egoistic cup is. How much grief you can pour into it! A sea can enter there, and you as if notice, something may have appeared at the bottom there.

Question: If so, what is the solution?

Answer: Continue! Yes, selfishness is infinite, just like altruism. And we must connect them correctly. We do not destroy one at the expense of the other; we only have to connect them correctly.

Question: Hatred with love, egoism with altruism?

Answer: Yes, just raise one above the other. Not hate over love, but love over hate. This is called “love will cover all crimes.” And without hatred and suffering, love will not be felt.

So, we must cherish and store hatred. Add a little more here and a little more there. This is the kind of hatred we lack here. Oh, it feels so good! Now I understand how much I can love because some other hatred has manifested itself.

Question: And I have the opportunity to love more?

Answer: Yes. It is a game.

Comment: But in fact, this is a life and death game.

My Response: Actually, nothing can be said about it until we start to implement it seriously. But when we finish, we will understand that it was right, and the Creator was right, that this is how He created the world. Justification is complete only at the end.

Then we will be absolutely righteous. Because we justify. Righteous comes from the word “justifying all the actions of the Creator.”
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/3/22

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What If Iran Has a Bomb”

On April 11, the Institute for Science and International Security released what might well be considered an alarming report: “As soon as mid-to-late April,” namely these very days, “Iran is expected to reach a new dangerous, destabilizing threshold, having enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to fashion a nuclear explosive, about 40-42 kilograms (kg) of 60 percent enriched uranium… With this quantity, an enrichment level of 60 percent suffices to create a relatively compact nuclear explosive; further enrichment to 80 or 90 percent is not needed.” As a result, the report continues, “the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive cannot be excluded.”

“A common fallacy is Iran would require 90 percent HEU … to build nuclear explosives,” the report continues. “Although Iran’s nuclear weapons designs have focused on 90 percent HEU and likely prefer that enrichment, modifying them for 60 percent HEU would be straightforward and well within Iran’s capabilities.” In other words, according to the report, we are already dealing with a nuclear Iran.

Initially, I believed that Israel must do whatever it can to prevent Iran from getting a bomb. However, if Iran already has a bomb, I do not think that it is the end of the world, although now the rules of the game will clearly be very different.

First, they will be different for Iran. Aspiring for an A-bomb and actually having one are two very different things. Once you have got such a powerful weapon, you realize that playing time is over. You imagine the possibilities that being a nuclear power will give you, but the truth is that the constraints are countless. You are no longer treated like a reckless child but like a nuclear power, and the demands from you increase accordingly. Any step you take toward using nuclear arms might be reciprocated with equal strength, if not more, so it is not as though you can do whatever you want. Instead, you have far less room for error.

Second, despite the toxic rhetoric, I do not believe that Iran has made the destruction of the State of Israel one of its goals. Clearly, it is vociferous and strident in expressing its hatred for the Jewish state, but I think it is more a matter of politics than of real commitment to Israel’s destruction. After all, despite using Hamas and Hezbollah as Iranian proxies that bully Israel, neither poses an existential danger to the Jewish state, and its own army has never participated in any of the full-blown wars against Israel. As I see it, Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric is more a political tactic than an actual ideology.

Therefore, if Iran indeed has a bomb, we must make the necessary preparations for ourselves, but nothing more than that. After all, we, too, have our missiles and planes, as well as submarines, and all of them can carry nuclear bombs if needed.

Besides, Israel is not Iran’s only avowed enemy. As a Shiite state, it has been in conflict with Sunni states for centuries, and Sunnis are the majority in the Muslim world. Therefore, Iran’s struggle for hegemony in the Muslim world is just as bitter, and perhaps more important to it than its ambition to annihilate the Jewish state.

Also, there is a deeper layer to the conflict between Iran and Israel, which pertains directly to the role of Israel with regard to humanity. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent, humanity has no choice but to learn to work together. The semiconductor crisis, shipment delays, the pandemic, the rising inflation and food shortage are all happening on a global scale. No country can survive on its own today.

Israel’s past contains a formula of unity that has never been tried by anyone except Israel, and that, too, only in antiquity. According to this formula, one does not try to oppress the other or change the other person’s, or nation’s way of life. Rather, belligerent parties leave their adversaries as they are and try to bond with them above the differences. For this to happen, the value of unity itself must be superior to all other values.

Think of a woman and her child. She loves her child whether he is a saint or a Satan.

We must achieve something of that relation throughout all of humanity. Since it is completely unnatural, we must elevate the value of unity above all other values, so that it covers all the faults we see in others.

If we value unity above all else, we will use our traits for the common good rather than for our own good. The surprising result will be that we will realize that in reality, there are no negative qualities when we use them only where and how they contribute to society.

The conflicts we see today, whether between Israel and Iran or between Russia and Ukraine, are all for the same purpose: to make us realize that in the end, we will not agree but we will have to unite nonetheless.

The world hates Israel precisely because it had set a precedent in antiquity, and now it must revive it and become an example from which the world can learn. The enemies of Israel force it to unite, and thereby do what Israel must do for the world: become an example of unity. If Israel insists on refraining from carrying out its mission, it will stop existing with or without an A-bomb.
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Comment: In modern trading, we observe a peculiar chain when someone profits from someone and the other from him, then from someone else, and so on. And in the end, everyone loses, no one gains anything.

My Response: This is how the world operates, so that everything that people do goes away like water into sand. Nothing remains of this, except terrible efforts and crippled lives.

But now we are at a stage when we begin to be aware of our pettiness, the corruptness of our egoism, and we understand that we are unable to do anything.

And so we come to the realization that we need to do something with ourselves, with our nature. This is already a serious affirmation that people will see that in Kabbalah there is the power to get rid of human suffering, the power to transform all of humanity into something great. Not just to arrange life on earth somewhat, but to pull us out of this state to the next level, to the higher universe, to unlimited existence.

I see how many are approaching this. They may not even understand yet or be fully aware of what they are saying. But the process has begun.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Global Financial Fraud” 5/4/10

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Question: Why is gold so valuable?

Answer: Gold is the universal equivalent. Give another equivalent, and there will be another instead. Gold was detached from the monetary system and look at what happened: They began to speculate and print money.

You cannot print gold, but you can print paper. By doing this, we laid a land mine under ourselves that could explode. Today it is delivering the results.

It is inevitable! Since the ego is impossible to tame, you can only rise above it. And when you exist in it, it still develops to a state where you just kill yourself, and still do it with pleasure.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Dollars, Gold or Diamonds?” 4/21/14

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