Question: Today we are faced with life in large cities—megacities. Is there any way to help city residents improve their happiness index?

Answer: First of all, it still depends on the attitude between one person toward another. But it is much easier to implement this when you create natural conditions for people.

I often visited my friends and students in small towns in America where it takes half an hour to get from one house to another by car because these houses are surrounded by a lot of land. But since everyone has a car, it is not difficult to socialize.

And although it is a long way to go to work, it is still much more comfortable to live like this. People get used to it.

I think that cities, the way they are today—multi-story reinforced concrete or brick boxes—are absolutely not ecological and unproductive.

They may be beneficial to those who build them because you can easily bring all communications into one place and populate one building with several thousand people. But I would not go to a house like this. Although, on the other hand, I have lived in such houses all my life.

I am confident that the future lies in a more evenly populated land.
[283744]
From KabTV’s “Conversations” 6/9/21

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Question: An indicator called the “happiness index” is made up of people’s subjective satisfaction with life and life expectancy. This is the so-called ecological footprint: how much physical space do we need in order to consume resources, use space for waste, etc.

If we compare this indicator with the GDP (gross domestic product) by country, then where the GDP is high, the level of people’s happiness is lowest. Why do you think it happens this way?

Answer: People are driven into a framework in which they do not feel free and happy. They are forced to do what is needed like slaves. Accordingly, the index of happiness is not very high either.

People lie to themselves and consider themselves happy. They do not understand what happiness is.

Happiness is not working 20 hours a day, like in Japan, and not hanging out in the middle of a stone jungle, like in New York. Happiness is an inner state of a person. But it is nevertheless inseparable from the connection with nature, with society.

Everything should be harmoniously interconnected. Today I do not see this in any corner of the world, except, perhaps, in very small countries.

I am flying to Switzerland soon. I know this country well, as well as central Europe in general. I don’t think the people there are that happy. But at least there is a very high balance between silence, clean air, the ability to work and feel good.

At the same time, I have lived in New York and its suburbs for quite a long time, and I do not think that this is the limit of comfort: both internal and external.
[283603]
From KabTV’s “Conversations” 6/9/21

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Question: Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in cities. This number keeps growing. Why do you think people are driven to be in urban settings? This has been the trend throughout history.

Answer: On one hand, the drive to move to cities is linked to the service industry. On the other hand, people are attracted by convenience, everything that is offered as utilities and everything else.

But we observe the opposite trend now too: people are leaving the city, getting their own land, private property, tending to gardens, working with the land, and growing plants.

We may be at the peak of urban migration, but I think this is a temporary trend that will not prevail for long. If we can offer a person all kinds of services at a distance from the city, he will gladly agree to it because of the clean air, tranquility, and other advantages.

The trend of leaving the cities has already begun. After the first wave of the pandemic, many people do not want to return to work, they want to work from home. Children don’t really want to go to school.

There are many advantages to living a little in isolation from others but at the same time being provided with everything a big city can offer. It depends on transportation, communications, and road infrastructure.

Question: Do you think that the pandemic has brought about this attitude toward big cities?

Answer: People simply realized that they can receive services without being trapped in the “cage” of a high-rise building. They can safely live “on the ground” at even a small distance of ten meters from others. I think that Earth will be populated in breadth, not height.
[283575]
From KabTV’s “Conversations” 6/9/21

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Comment: Scandal continues in France. Twenty generals have written a letter to Macron saying that France is nearing civil war, that there are enclaves in the country that cannot be entered, that they have laws of their own, that extreme Islam is appearing more and more, and in principle, two states exist in France. The feeling is that a civil war approaching.

My Response: The approach of civil war is felt all over the world, in all countries. There are huge oppositions, and all countries are split in two or three fractions.

Question: Can governments impose drastic measures today? For example, there are indeed enclaves in France that cannot be entered and have their own law. The same situation exists in Belgium and Denmark.

Answer: No, they cannot. Because there is no king, there is no single authority. There is no person who would say: “The state is me.” Now you can see how necessary this is. And no one can say anything against it!

Question: So you think there should be such a monarch, with such upbringing?

Answer: Yes, with such upbringing, but they have all disappeared.

Question: So we need such a monarch who would say: “This is mine, this is my house, these are my people, my citizens”?

Answer: Yes. That is: “This is me!” This is a marvelous effect of the single upper force in our world. But such a person cannot appear. He must be accepted by everyone unconditionally. He must have “lesse passé“—a certification that he is God’s viceroy. This is how it used to be!

Comment: That is wonderful. I feel that then everything would be settled. But that was before and today it is unrealistic.

My Response: It is all about the world coming to this state on its own. Not from above, but on its own.

Comment: I feel that this word “democracy” has destroyed some cornerstones and foundations.

My Response: Democracy cannot exist by nature because people are all different, different from each other. Therefore, there can be no equality. It has to grow precisely from inequality when people understand that they are not equal and compensate for this inequality together. And in this way, democracy will grow. This is the democratic future. A real one, not the one we have today.

No person is equal to another one; everyone is different in some way. This is the first thing.

Second, no man feels that he should be equal to anyone. Everyone feels greater, higher, more valuable than others. Therefore, here we need a special methodology by which we consciously identify ourselves with each other. I do not want to be higher than others, and I do not want to be lower than others; we have to bring ourselves to equality. But this must be done consciously, so much so that this is exactly what I want. Nothing else! Only then can there be peace and happiness on Earth.

Question: When will I reach such consciousness? It is a very high insight.

Answer: Yes, but nobody cultivates it, nobody disseminates it, nobody teaches it. Huge educational work is needed here.

Comment: That is, we raise children: “Be stronger! Be higher, be better than others!”

My Response: What for? To be stronger, higher, and better, why? So that you can show everyone how to be equal. Because it does not destroy your individuality.

Question: What does it mean to show others how to be equal? What do I have to say, to show?

Answer: That you really want to see everyone as equal. In everything.

Question: And this is what I am given talents for?

Answer: Everything you do is just to create equality among all. Of course, this is all beautiful, and communists and socialists have already tried it.

Question: Was the foundation wrong?

Answer: Of course! You cannot do that without correcting your egoism. You need to raise a person who would understand: do not beat others, but educate yourself and others. It is not easy at all.

Question: It is not easy. That is, a person, one way or another, has to realize that he is an egoist?

Answer: Through the realization of evil. But there is hope, because the world is moving toward the realization of evil. Will it not come after a serious world war, a catastrophe?

Let us wait and see.
[283062]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/10/21

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Question: Why should I, as a man, correct my nature?

Answer: You cannot get away from it. We are not given a choice in this matter. As it is said: “Against your will you are born; against your will you live, and against your will you die.”

We simply have to fulfill our destiny in life, and not just one life but a series of reincarnations, gradual returns to this life. And it does not depend on us; one way or another, we have to complete it.

In the course of history up to the present day, we have been led along an unconscious path. We developed egoistically; we were pushed ahead; we invented all possible variations of social systems, family structure, upbringing of children; we developed technologies and whatnot until we came to realize that all this development leads us to emptiness, depression, drugs, and self-destruction. As a result, we find ourselves today in a global crisis.

The fact is that this is a crisis of the entire humanity, of its hopelessness. But we were not consulted about it. Egoism kept developing and driving us and we seem to be rolling by inertia. And now it has shown us that all this purely automatic egoistic development is pointless, and that its only purpose is for us to realize that it is a dead-end.

And now what? Now the question arises about the next level of existence: “What is this all about?” Nonetheless, people try to run away from the answer, drown in thoughts of fashion, vacations, parties, or anything else. But gradually, all these entertainments start to wear them out. And people are left alone with the question: “What is the meaning of my existence? Life has no meaning. Thus, it is not worth living.”

Man cannot escape it. This is a natural path of development, and we are in it. More and more people in the world are asking this question, they cannot hide from it, bury their heads in the sand, and continue living as before. This is how our nature works.

You do not need to be more educated, less educated, a psychologist, a scientist, or an intellectual to perceive it. I have met such people in South America, in Africa, everywhere. I have students all over the world. It is just that the time has come. The Book of Zohar says that it is our generation that will begin to seriously ask this question, and that is why Kabbalah must be revealed.
[281979]
From KabTV’s “Close Up”

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Comment: A sixth continent the size of the United States has been discovered in the Pacific Ocean, an island of waste made mainly of plastic.

This is a great problem because it takes a thousand years for plastic to disintegrate.

My Response: I don’t think that we will live for another thousand years on this planet. We are bringing it to its end very quickly and denying it the right to exist. The earth will become a lifeless planet. There is nowhere we can escape to. None of the planets have the conditions that we need in order to live. So there is no point dreaming about Mars or other planets. What for? After all, we will pollute everything there too.

Unless humanity corrects itself, there is no need to move. We just need to think about the correction of our nature and turn it from an egoistic nature to an altruistic nature so that people will think about each other, so that they will understand that only good connections between them will open up the future for humanity. Otherwise, each day we are burying ourselves alive in this garbage dump. Our poor kids!

Question: Suppose we begin to connect and ascend above our egoism, what will happen with all the waste? After all, it will not disappear.

Answer: It will disappear. Generally speaking, the whole corporeal world is totally dependent on our internal attributes, and it will disappear.

Question: Will it be because I will not see it?

Answer: No. We will simply be positively connected to each other to such an extent that there will be no room left for the evil force, and the waste will gradually decrease.

Where will it go? Just like in nature. Where did our egoistic world emerge from? The universe appeared and it suddenly began to expand, etc., which means that everything exists according to a concealed internal plan.

There is so much that we don’t see and don’t feel, and there are other connections in nature. The great forces of nature are secret, they are concealed. Let’s begin to activate them.

The main concealed force in nature is the human mind, its power, our mind power, the power of our desire. If we begin to activate it, we will begin to activate totally new attributes between the different parts of nature on a new level.

There will be no plastic. Everything will become transparent, natural, and pure and you will have to get used to such purity. You will not be able to breathe the pure clean air. You will not be poisoned by the pure spring water that you will drink.

If we aim our thoughts together toward each other and toward attaining the attribute of bestowal, love, mutuality, and connection, evil will disappear from the world on every level because unfortunately we are on the highest level, and fortunately that’s the way it will be if we begin to truly engage in ourselves.

Question: But will we have enough time to do that?

Answer: We will surely have enough time, but we will have to undergo some sufferings. The question is how many people will attain this state.
[248616]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/19/19

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Question: Recently professional top managers, cool directors, if they want to leave the company and are looking for a job, prefer not to work somewhere in Google, in Silicon Valley, in Gazprom, they do not need large salaries. They want a quiet job. The leading request for the past six months is “traveling director” of an American brewery.

7,530 responses! He is given a van and travels around the country, tastes the beer of his company in different cities, and talks with residents: “How do you like our beer?” In Alaska, Hawaii. A huge number of requests! And precisely from such directors!

Answer: I want it too. What could be better? 🙂

Comment: In second place (7,408 applications) is the manager of the royal family’s palace in the Emirates. vice-presidents of banks, directors of successful start-ups apply here. They want to leave and take care of this family.

In third place is the “pizza-eater watching Netflix” position. He watches a movie and eats pizza.

For comparison, only 200, 300, or 400 requests come for the vacancy of a director in a good company, with a high salary, but here 7,000. That is, people are not looking for a job, but a dream. And although they have everything, they want to hug seals, taste wine, be professional sleepers, explore mattresses, and so on.

Please tell me what happened to humanity? Once we wanted to study, get degrees, become directors, make money!

My Response: Why?! The awareness of the uselessness of all these stresses.

People still go in for sports after all. They climb mountains, arrange some kinds of competition and so on. This will all pass too.

The most important question: Why?! It will kill everything. And humanity will calm down. What will happen? Nothing. Let’s just treat each other. Simple, that is, so as not to cause any negative feelings in anyone.

Calm! Just get your paycheck and spend the day the way you want. You will have enough time and desire to get used to this world and how to behave in it.

Question: That is, the request will disappear: more money, a bigger house, and a pool in the yard?

Answer: This will not happen. A person will begin to understand that he must live within his sensations, in movement toward a correct relationship with others, an inner movement. And then occupations, salary, nothing is important to him.

If I have such an attitude toward others, I feel that others have the same attitude toward me, this mutual network of forces, kind, between us I feel, I live in it. This is my job, and this is where I and everyone else exist.

We are only developing these mutual sensations of ours. Effortlessly. It should be effortless! This is how I treat others, and others treat me this way, and everything freezes. And only this feeling you perceive.

Question: And when you say: “Defeat our egoism. Rise above egoism“?

Answer: It’s all inside. Calmly only, calmly.

Question: Is this how calm it will be? I have the feeling all the time that a person must make great efforts.

Answer: No, no, nothing! On the contrary, everything. What for?! If we treat this correctly, then the upper light, which is in absolute rest, will do everything. Just don’t worry. Just don’t bother me. “The Creator will finish for me.” It’s that simple.

Question: Will there be no need for Harvard and Princeton Universities? No need to study, higher education, second or third degrees?

Answer: No, nothing is needed at all.

Comment: Humanity has built all this for so long.

My Response: This is in order to precisely identify your mistakes.

Question: Where will humanity end up?

Answer: With a calm inner mutual balance. And the connection between us will be revealed in it, complete, calmness. In the silence of these waters, we will come to see the Creator through them.

I welcome this movement, which is now beginning to emerge. In the Torah it was formulated thousands of years ago: “Sit down and do nothing, preferably.”

Do not do anything! Make it so that from the fact that you do nothing, you have everything. You will see that it is possible.

Question: That is, I will have what to eat, what to feed my family with?

Answer: To the extent that you need it, you will work. But it will not be work. It will be just an occupation.

Question: It is not that I go to work with agony, hate it and go?

Answer: You will not run and languish in traffic jams, nothing like that will happen.

Question: This thought will pass: What is enough for me is enough, but I do not need more.

Answer: It will happen gradually, but it will be fast.
[283145]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/20/21

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Purim comes from the word “Pur” (fate or lot.)

That is, the lot is cast as if determining who will lead humanity to a good, absolute, final, and mandatory state. Or humanity will do it itself consciously, and then its path will be short, comfortable, and suitable for advanced humanity. Or it will be a path of terrible blows inflicted by the force of nature, terrible states and wars.

Either we attract the good force and it develops us or the evil force automatically acts in nature, as it is written: “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice”; it constantly pushes us and still carries us forward.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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In the News (Reuters): “Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup released footage on Friday appearing to show a monkey playing a simple videogame after getting implants of the new technology.

“The 3-minute video by Neuralink shows Pager, a male macaque with chips embedded on each side of its brain, playing ‘Mind Pong’. Although he was trained to move a joystick, it is now unplugged. He controls the paddle simply by thinking about moving his hand up or down.

“‘First @Neuralink product will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs,’ Musk tweeted on Thursday.

“‘Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again. The device is implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look & feel totally normal.'”

People have already learned to perform all kinds of organ transplants. And now, suddenly, we are getting into the thought. Maybe after all, it will be possible to somehow infiltrate, get closer to the “I” of a person in order to stop wars and hatred?

My Response: No. That is not going to happen.

Comment: Well, look at how much suffering there is in the world.

My Response: That is how it should be. Suffering corrects.

Question: So, it will not be possible to go beyond such physical changes?

Answer: No. Only if the person decides that he should correct himself.

Question: Where does this decision come from? Can it be somehow implanted in a person?

Answer: From basic common sense, when one looks at himself and says, “I am made of a desire that is purely a desire to enjoy, and I have to decide whether I can realize it or whether I need some kind of counteraction to it.”

Question: But why?

Answer: He is one person. But there is another person and a third and a fourth, and so on, who do not want things the way this first one does.

Question: So in order to enjoy something, he must subjugate them?

Answer: Of course.

Question: And they do not want to be subjugated! How can he enjoy then?

Answer: He cannot. It means he has to destroy them.

Question: You outlined this sequence just now. Then the person comes to realize that others do not want to go along with what he wants, so now he needs to use weapons, machine guns, right?

Answer: Whatever he has at his disposal.

Comment: Exactly. Just what people are hoarding more and more nowadays.

My Response: Yes.

Question: At what point will he hit a dead end and say: “I cannot go on like this!”?

Answer: When suffering teaches him that the suffering is greater than the pleasure.

Question: At what point does this happen?

Answer: Let’s say his children come to him and say: “We want you to do things differently, otherwise we want nothing to do with you.”

This poses a problem. We need to transition this to another plane where he realizes that he cannot continue to live in his intentions, actions, in enjoying only for his own sake, that he is really losing in this.

Question: So, you are saying that it is when those who are closest to him, his children, will tell him: “This makes us feel very bad,” right?

Answer: When he will feel that he is really losing, and more than from any egoistic gain.

Question: That is, he gains something egoistically, and at that very moment he loses much more than he gains, right? His children, loved ones, relatives, and so on. Everyone turns away from him.

Answer: Yes.

Question: This is a good example. But how can a person feel in this way? He hurts mostly strangers.

Answer: If his children tell him: “If you hurt someone, then know that in this measure we will reject you, turn away from you. You will be left all alone, and no one will want anything to do with you.”

Comment: So at some point, a person who lives egoistically suddenly realizes that every egoistic action he makes yields an even greater loss. Something very close and dear to him will be lost to him more and more and more. Life passes by.

My Response: Yes. We need to get to something that is very dear to him in life.

Comment: That every drop of his egoistic pleasure for himself kills someone very dear to him.

My response: Yes.

Question: What conclusion can we draw from this?

Answer: The conclusion is very simple. We need to educate the younger generation and they will force their fathers and parents to change. There is no other way.

Comment: So, these young people, children and grandchildren, will come to their parents and say: “The way you live, you are killing us. We will not be there for you.”

My Response: Yes. If you want to create a world for us to live in, then we feel that you are destroying this world.
[282943]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/22/21

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If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

My Response: Yes. This is what we are creating. We are building a group that must cross this distance—a practically endless sea—although it is called Yam Suf, that is, final sea between us and the Creator. It is finite because it is beyond egoism.

The group itself is a ship. No ship is needed except for the group. The group is this ship on which its travelers sail to the cherished goal. The ship is simply their joint efforts to stay together, join hands, and make themselves a vessel or a ship in which they can together cross the egoistic sea.

Question: And there will be no leaking? There will be no holes in the ship?

Answer: They will have to patch them all up along the way.

Question: That is, they will appear one way or another?

Answer: Of course, necessarily so. This is the essence of crossing this final sea. That is, as more egoism becomes manifest between them, the greater the connection they must build between themselves.

Question: This is so In Kabbalah. But why doesn’t it happen in the world? Charismatic leaders come with exciting ideas, start gathering people around them as if building a vessel, and still everything goes down the drain.

Answer: Because in the end everything is about money.

Comment: You didn’t even say: everything is about the ego.

My Response: No, it is even worse. Much lower. Only money.

Question: You think that all these leaders who ignite sparks, all they see is money?

Answer: Of course! They cannot think any other way.

Comment: There is a well-known fact in history: revolutionaries come, there is a romantic period when people gather around them, the struggle for ideals begins, and then it all turns to bloodshed and death.

My Response: And then all this is quietly taken over by serious people, not romantics, to make good money and gain power from it.

Question: But how do romantics sell themselves? What is happening in them?

Answer: They have no brains. They run purely on passion.

Question: And is there such a spirit to make humanity happy? Do you understand such a spirit— bringing people happiness?

Answer: These are romantics. You will not bring people any happiness. Because people do not need your romantic happiness. The masses will happily follow not the romantic but the pragmatist.
[282210]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/8/21

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