Question: How is poor education related to a lack of connection between people? I don’t see the connection here.

Answer: What we call “education” provides education, but does not educate or develop. School does not build a human out of a child, but only gives him knowledge: in physics, chemistry, and so on.

We call the educational system a system of upbringing, but it does not provide upbringing at all. This is evident from the results as well as from the subjects that are taught there.

How many lessons and discussions in school are aimed at nurturing a person? Does anyone even care about that?

The schedule includes only physics, chemistry, reading, and writing, and then we wonder why we have such difficulties with children. School produces robots who have been taught to work at enterprises. This is the task of the school: to prepare a worker (an engineer, etc.) who will work on the “conveyor belt.”

And what kind of person he will become and how he will live, no one in the education system cares. Because it is not, in principle, a system of upbringing!

This system of education has never set the goal of upbringing a person. It arose during the Industrial Revolution, when it was necessary to turn peasants into workers.

That is when the modern school was invented to teach a little reading, writing, and so on, so that someone who had worked with cows and on the land all his life could work with machines, understand the simplest physical and chemical laws and could follow instructions.

This is what school was built on and it continues to exist in this form to this very day. But today we must move on to a truly “educational” system of upbringing, and that is something entirely different.

It is defined not by how much you know in physics or mathematics, but by how much of a human you are! A human being is someone who is connected with others! Only this connection allows you to be called a human, not the amount of scientific knowledge.

If you succeed only in science, it will help you only to create a more terrible weapon. After all, you will add the knowledge you acquired in school to your uncorrected ego and with its help you will go and use everyone else. And this will determine your success in life.

This is how people are raised today; the first questions: what major did you choose, and how much can you can earn it? And this is called education?!

If people see that a system has appeared that truly allows giving children an education, they will immediately respond. After all, this problem is clear to everyone.

Today, people don’t even want to have children, they have nothing to give children. They don’t want to bring them into this world to condemn them to meaningless suffering.

Therefore, it is necessary to convey to people that all the problems in society and in our private life stem only from the lack of connection between us. And this connection can be achieved only by the path of light.
[16201]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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What is love? It is when I feel myself physically connected with another, dependent on him and he on me so much so that I cannot exist without him, and he cannot exist without me. Such a state obliges us to care for one another.

Question: So I have a desire for him to feel good all the time? For him to be happy?

Answer: I think about him because by doing so, I also ensure my own well-being.

Comment: You are not destroying this egoistic foundation. You are not destroying it; it always remains.

My Response: And it is necessary. You cannot get rid of it. It is like in a couple who love each other; it is egoistic love. They understand that without each other, they will feel worse. And they care for one another because in doing so each one is really caring for oneself.

Question: Then when does war, hatred occur? At what moment?

Answer: When those bonds are broken. When I stop caring about the other, I begin to fight with him. There can be no peace. Peace can exist only when we are dependent on each other, when this dependence is mutual, and when we absolutely must be together.

Question: So your main advice is to build such connections that can never be broken?

Answer: Yes.

Question: In everything, be dependent in everything?

Answer: In everything. That is how it is in nature. That is how it is in the global nature, in the  cosmos, everywhere is the same.

Question: If we speak of governments, should their main concern be to ensure that one cannot exist without another? That I cannot exist without the other?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What happened to the world then? Why is it like this?

Answer: People became independent. They think they can exist without one another, can conquer one another, and so on. But in fact, that is not the true principle.

Question: Yet we have always said that today’s world is interconnected, completely interconnected. Why don’t we see it?

Answer: We do see it. That is why the world still exists and remains interdependent. But you see how people use this mutual dependence in a way that leads to poverty, to death, and so on.

Question: So still, this principle “that I should feel good and not that he should feel good,” this principle rules—“that I should feel good”?

Answer: Unfortunately, a person does not understand the universal law that it can be good only if it is good for everyone. Otherwise, everything constantly boils in a cauldron of hatred. That is our egoism, created by the Creator so that we would see that we can never get along with each other except if we accept the rule of the Creator, the rule of love, and cover everything with this feeling, with this attitude.

Question: So this egoism, I must cover it with love?

Answer: Yes, and this must be practiced every day, remind ourselves, speak about it every day, and so on.

Comment: A person always feels that the work should end someday. But you say it will never end.

My Response: Never. Every day you must think about how you love the other and hear the same from him.

Comment: That requires not just inner strength but higher forces!

My Response: When you understand that it is inevitable, it no longer feels difficult.

Question: Is there a moment when it becomes an easy path?

Answer: Yes, it becomes second nature.

Question: And for close ones to live in peace and love, what is needed for that?

Answer: They must need each other, need and not suppress and get rid of each other to be free, but understand that their life, their freedom, their very existence depends on the other.
[349392]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 10/23/25

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Comment: We must bring Kabbalah to people without frightening them.

My Response: I’m not frightening them. I’m offering medicine for their fears, only I’m offering it not so that they would stay in this life and sweeten it a little, but to rise to a level where they would be eternal, perfect, infinite. Of course, it sounds cool and unclear, but deep down every person basically wants only this.

Comment: It’s clear that the one who is meant to come to Kabbalah will come, his inner part will open. And the one who isn’t meant to…

My Response: Even the one who isn’t meant will still want to come, because this life is becoming very frightening. Frightening! Just wait a little. Here there will be an oil spill, there will be a volcano, another tsunami, a couple more fires. Let’s live until winter and you’ll see what kind of winter it will be, maybe minus fifty degrees. That is worse than plus forty in summer.

So everything is still ahead. I’m not threatening, on the contrary I want us to go on a fast, good path, because for your child you always want him to grow wiser, not make foolish mistakes and to have things go well, not so you have to punish him.

Question: But in fact, a blow comes, a person feels depressed, unwell. Do you really think some part in him will open, or that some process will happen in him?

Answer: If you get hit a couple of times, you will agree to anything! You don’t have your own “I.” Our “I” is not ours. We are all little animals. The “I” can be suppressed any way, and you will agree to anything.

Even now you subconsciously act according to your animal state. You have no personal philosophy, no ideology, you don’t stand on anything. There is no such notion in our world. We all proceed from our egoism; it dictates to us what to hold onto, what to value. That is all.

Who is a person in this world anyway? A small programmed egoistic creature with nothing of his own. A puppet on strings pulled from above, with no freewill. So why even reason about it?

Question: And the process? What happens to the person after the blow? What is transformed?

Answer: This puppet starts to twitch a little. Then he gets the chance to hear how to get rid of suffering.

Question: And how will he hear among the general mass of information around him?

Answer: Maybe he will have to go to India for twenty years and come back empty. And the next generation won’t go at all. For now, nothing can be done.

Question: So it’s not a stage of one single blow?

Answer: No, humanity must come to awareness on its own, otherwise you will lead it by force. This unprocessed stage must work itself through. It is like a rocket: the first stage burns out, the second ignites, then the third, and so on.

People must see the emptiness in philosophies, in sciences, in religions, and in everything else. They must uncover this emptiness, see in all of it only earthly culture, and to that extent use it reasonably. But it will give them only registration in the train in which they are riding. And where is the train going? That is for them to find out.
[348106]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Where Is the Train Going?” 8/26/10

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Comment: Winston Churchill, the greatest statesman, Prime Minister of Great Britain, military leader, and Nobel Prize laureate in literature, formulated the laws of leadership that allowed him to become a great strategist, tactician, politician, and orator. First law: “Enjoy the moment.”

My Response: That is true. Because without satisfaction in the very moment in which you exist, you cannot produce anything.

Comment: “Be a realist.”

My Response: Yes, one must necessarily weigh the dark and the light sides, the possibilities, and choose the middle line realistically.

Comment: “Define your destiny.”

My Response: Choose what you exist for, and gradually, constantly, and precisely realize it.

Comment: “Learn from mistakes.”

My Response: As much as possible.

Question: You mean to say, it is impossible?

Answer: It is possible, but only within certain limits. Because mistakes, in principle, are needed in order to learn from them. Not to regret past mistakes, but precisely to learn from them.

Question: And does a person really learn from mistakes?

Answer: He does not learn, he remakes himself. Mistakes are necessary in order to constantly rise higher.

Question: So he leans on them all the time?

Answer: Yes they are needed. In no case should one regret past mistakes. On the contrary, you should rejoice that you went through it and moved forward.

Comment: A person keeps thinking: “What a mistake I made! What have I done!”

My Response: Self-torment is the worst thing that can be!

Comment: It is unclear how. I catch myself so many times on this thought.

My Response: Then be ready for the fact that you are making a mistake even now, and everything will be fine. And then you already have a good mood, and you catch the right moment, according to the first point: “Enjoy the moment,” and everything goes well.

Comment: “Just do your job.”

My Response: Right, every day systematically do what you are obliged to do, and add one day to another, another day to another, so that they all add up to the realization of your idea, of the goal you set for yourself.

Comment: “Verify through your own experience.”

My Response: One must sometimes draw a line and make sure that, after all, you did do something, you did bring something into the world, you did actualize yourself in some way.

Question: So this check mark is needed?

Answer: That check is needed in order to move forward. Maybe make some correction, but in general it won’t change much, you will remain who you are. But it is necessary.

Comment: “Be fair.”

My Response: Be fair, first of all, to yourself. Try to put yourself in another’s place, and others in your place, and from this draw the conclusion: How much you are not better than others, and how much you, in principle, are fulfilling your function. At the very least, do not expect from others more than from yourself.

Comment: “Draw the line.”

My Response: Below which you cannot sink, and above which you would like always to be. That is, of course, a dream!

Question: And what is your line?

Answer: That is a cherished dream. One does not speak of such things. I would like to see my students as the great leaders of this world. That, yes.

Question: Do you want to dissolve in your students, or that they be your continuation?

Answer: Well, my continuation… Who am I? I want them to rise to such a level that they would be worthy of leading the world to its spiritual goal.

Comment: “Always remain yourself.”

My Response: That is, do not deceive yourself. Do not think of yourself higher than you are; get used to, agree with the fact that you, perhaps (perhaps!), are worse than everyone. And act so that you could always say: “I tried to do better than everyone and I am always at peace with how it turned out.”

Comment: But that you are worse than everyone, that won’t really please a normal person. If he feels that way, he will always be depressed.

My Response: But you are asking me, not some ordinary person. I exist in two lines: in the real one and in the desired one, and I try all the time to be between them.

Comment: “Speak the truth straight to the face.”

My Response: Well, I try. Although every day I feel from my students that perhaps it shouldn’t have been said at all.

Question: That is, too much truth straight to the face. You tell it to your students. But to another person, not your student, can one tell the truth straight to the face?

Answer: No, one must not. By no means! As it is said: “Do not put a stumbling block before the blind.”

Comment: “Follow your own compass.”

My Response: That, yes. That is, if you have an orientation in life, you will have to say many unpleasant things and, naturally, hear many unpleasant things. But you must go that way, because otherwise you are nobody.

There can be no compromise here. Otherwise, it will not be you, then go wash dishes. And that’s all.

Comment: You once said that your teacher Rabash prepared you so that after him you would not buy into something, into all those “offers” that exist.

My Response: Yes, because there were very many opportunities. There were very many enemies who said: “Come to us, and everything will be good. Here, we must create such a group, such a society. Otherwise…”

Comment: “No one will come to you.”

My Response: Not just “no one will come,” but “we will eat you!” Well! In the end they didn’t eat me. They nibble a bit at each other, and we exist.

Comment: “Accept the unknown.”

My Response: Yes, it is very good when you live in the unknown. That is, for you every next moment is something new, arising, that you did not expect, and it doesn’t matter to you how it will be. Because it is determined somewhere and descends upon you, and you are ready to accept it.

Question: But isn’t it important to you whether you will reach the goal or not? Or is it unimportant?

Answer: No! I strive toward it, but nothing matters to me. Nothing! No-no, these are different things. These are two lines.

Question: That is, the result, whether you reach it, does not matter to you?

Answer: Of course not.

Question: And what matters here: to go, go, go?

Answer: As long as I can, I go. And each next minute, whatever falls on me, I must meet it with blessing. And that’s all. It is as simple as that!

Otherwise, one cannot live. Could I have carried it for so many years otherwise? No.

Comment: To go out again to the lesson, and again to the lesson, again, to stir everyone, again to stir.

My Response: Yes. And it is not hard for me. People think it is such an effort, and again, and again, and each time, and so many times repeated. But I do not repeat myself, no minute is similar to another for me! None!

Comment: I am always amazed that for all these years with you, the same questions are asked! And so, you begin again, begin again…

My Response: For me these are not the same questions.

Question: Because you feel that the student is new, or that you are new?

Answer: Neither he nor I, we together reveal now some new quality in the world, something that did not exist before. Because minutes are all different.

And therefore, it is not hard. Not hard! But the world does not understand this. Kabbalah gives such an approach that all life is truly an adventure.

Comment: That is, you are like a child, constantly discovering a new world, with wide-open eyes…

My Response: Yes, and therefore, you have energy and ignition. Of course. It is simply God’s gift!
[256324]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 10/29/25

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Comment: Elon Musk once said: “I want to be part of what changes the world. Making mistakes is not scary. The main thing is to make new mistakes each time.” I would like you to comment on this.

My Response: That is correct.

Question: So we make mistakes all the time?

Answer: Without that, it is impossible.

Question: It has always been said: “We learn from mistakes.” Do we really learn from them?

Answer: Not everyone does, but mistakes come precisely so that we may learn from them.
[302847]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 6/30/22

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Comment: Social networks love touching stories. Recently, there was a buzz with the story of a female soldier whose mother could not pay her electricity bills.

While traveling on a train the girl was explaining over the phone to the electric company employees that her mother is disabled, receives a small pension, and cannot pay for electricity until her pension money is deposited into her bank account. Crying, she asked that electricity not be cut off for her mother.

Suddenly, a man approached her, found out what was going on, called the electricity company, gave his credit card number so that 2,000 shekels could be withdrawn from his account to pay off the soldier’s mother’s debt, and then he disappeared. But someone managed to snap a photo of him. It turned out that he was a former military man.

My Response: Such extraordinary actions are very touching. We need more such insightful examples to encourage everyone toward kind interactions.

On the other hand, the electricity company’s policy is business, and there is nothing you can do about it. At the same time, it is necessary to consider that there are special consumers, such as pensioners, who should be treated differently, possibly through redistributing the burden among others.

Question: Do you like such stories?

Answer: No, I do not want these stories to be tearful exceptions to the rule. I want them to be consistently carried out in real life by a correct society that deliberately and systematically cares for all its citizens so that there would be no such cases that are good for a movie, but not for life.

There are still many such cases, but we do not hear about them.
[177958]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/21/16

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Comment: Extremely high percentages of employees have encountered symptoms of professional burnout, feeling exhausted and irritable, indifferent toward their work, and lack confidence in their professional abilities and some have complained of frequent headaches and insomnia caused by work-related stress.

There is a belief that if these problems were openly discussed and addressed that many of these types of difficulties could be avoided.

People who clearly suffer from burnout syndrome tend to be unmotivated and passive. They lack orientation toward results and are difficult to work with since they are not geared toward constructive problem-solving and problems only worsen when they are involved.

My Response: An unfulfilled ego can only be temporarily pacified through rewards, vacations, talking about problems, etc. because there is no real solution to this issue on the level of our world. The ego has reached its natural limit of growth, and nothing can satisfy it anymore. When we try to further stimulate it, it just spins its wheels.

In the end, there will be only one way out: to change its job from filling itself to fulfilling others.

Changing ourselves on our own is impossible, but the force that created us can change what it has made. And it is ready to do so, but only at our request so that we may thereby establish contact with it.
[81311]
From KabTV’s “Work and Health” 6/25/12

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It is known from the science of Kabbalah that as a result of all our development in this world within the framework of beliefs and religions, in the field of technology, public and social life, in the field of government and international relations, we must come to complete disappointment in this development, stop and admit: “We do not know what to do next.” We tried to achieve something, to fulfill our desires, and we did not achieve anything. This endless race has led to nothing.

Of course, when a person sums up such a result for himself, he is not happy about it. But it is precisely this anxious state that makes him stop and think about what to do next.

But it is precisely this anxious state that makes him stop and think about what to do next. Then, in hopelessness and impotence, he begins to discover that there is another form of development. But it cannot be revealed until a person has reached complete disillusionment with the present and hopelessness in the future in this whole life, given to us supposedly by chance on this globe where we live like animals, without understanding why and what for. And indeed, if you look at us from the outside, from anywhere in the universe, our whole life on this planet will seem very strange, because we consistently destroy ourselves. For what?

When pondering, “Why do I need this whole life,” a person begins to realize that he needs a guide who could guide him and direct him along the way. And then he comes to the true books, whose authors have already comprehended a new form of life, not on the thin, fragile layer of the Earth’s crust covering this planet where we exist in complete dependence on it in everything, but life in a completely different dimension. After all, besides our Earth, our universe, and other galaxies, there is a breakthrough into another, higher dimension.

Of course, this requires a guide who will guide us along the way. But it is as if all of humanity is in Noah’s Ark, which must now break away from this world and break into the next dimension.

This guide is a special force from above, which The Zohar calls the “donkey driver.” Donkeys, Hamorim, (this is us), from the word “Homer” (material, the desire to enjoy), which needs to be developed, that is, to lead forward, showing him how to achieve a different form of existence.

Therefore, “The Donkey Driver” is a special article in The Book of Zohar. As we read this article, we should try to connect with this force, our driver, who leads us forward, provided that we can grab onto him and want to follow him.

The Zohar allegorically tells of this force, the donkey driver, as a man who goes ahead of those people whose donkeys he leads, pricking them with a sharp stick to keep them moving forward. After all, the donkey understands only one thing: it hurts, it goes forward; it does not hurt, it stops. This is how our material behaves.

And that is why we need this external force that will “tingle” us, and then we will need to move forward; otherwise, we will stay in place. After all, we are created out of a desire to enjoy and are not able to “stab” ourselves or summon this force from the outside. How can I willingly bring suffering upon myself?

Therefore, according to The Zohar, this external force is sent to people who are already able to ascend to a higher dimension, and in addition to life in this world that they feel in their body, in their “donkey,” to acquire an additional life, in the spiritual dimension.

This is quite possible, but you need to listen to that donkey driver who is sent from above to every person. This driver awakens within us and moves us. We just need to be sensitive to his actions.
So let’s find it in ourselves and wish to rise up!
[38415]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/11, Introduction of The Book of Zohar “The Donkey Driver”

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Comment: The economic downturn is hitting not only people’s pockets but also their mental well-being. Workers are plagued with depression and severe stress. Absences due to illness is pretty high as well. Stress is a normal phenomenon of the body that is necessary for its development and protection. However, if stress becomes chronic, we have no time to recover, and exhaustion sets in. The immune system is the first to suffer from stress.

My Response: But it is stress and depression that will trigger the need for true healing and the search for a good, comfortable feeling as more important rather than profit or power. The desire for simple peace of mind will lead people to understand true values. They can be achieved only by universal rapprochement, by creating a positive overall environment.

The fatigue of competition and the senselessness of profits will manifest itself in everyone and define a new kind of existence for the sake of attaining the root of life, rising to a new level of sensation of nature, its eternity and harmony. This is how nature leads us to our goal through suffering.
[71297]

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Comment: Judging by the number of natural disasters lately, we see that humans bring disorder into nature. But it is commonly accepted to treat nature like an inanimate system, and think that we only cause it “mechanical” damage.

Yet you say the root is on a higher level, in the incorrect relationships between people.

My Response: The main problem is learning to see ourselves inside nature, not outside of it as we usually think. We are responsible for nature, for the house that we live in. We have been placed in a house full of buttons, but we do not know what they do. We press one button and a hurricane hits us; we press another and there is a tsunami or a fire. Press a third one and everything is wonderful.

So what are we to do? Humanity is like a helpless child who sits in a small house in the middle of the forest, and does not know how to behave. This means that we must grow correctly in order to become truly free.

When a person leaves their home to go into the forest or mountains, they think they are “going into nature,” but that is a false perspective. It is as if they are stepping out of their house into the house of animals. But nature is also their house! We must stop viewing nature’s integral system as something external to us.

We need to feel that we are inside nature, that we influence it and it influences us, and that this mutual connection is currently incorrect. Therefore it is the person who must change.

The still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature are in instinctive harmony with the system of nature. A human being must also be in full harmony with it, despite having a nature that is completely opposite.

If we want to rise above the animate level, we must consciously develop a correct attitude toward nature to feel that we are within an integral system and to learn how to be integrally connected to the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels of nature.

We are obligated to build the human system based on the same principles by which the rest of nature operates. That means that we must learn from nature how to structure the human system since we have completed our development at the animate level, and are now beginning to evolve further. And here, on an inner human level, we are now required to complete ourselves.

A person’s task is to learn from nature how to be connected with it. Nature shows us that all its elements are in mutual connection. This interconnectedness is evident on all levels.

So the question arises about how a person can become integrated in this system in a way that allows them to feel their environment correctly and engage in mutual exchange, to receive and to give in balance with nature, just as all other parts of nature behave? The still, vegetative, and animate levels instinctively maintain mutual balance.

To us it may seem that they destroy and kill one another, but this is only how it appears from our egoistic viewpoint. In reality, they instinctively preserve the correct balance that the general law of nature obligates them to keep.

But that law does not compel a human being because we must observe it consciously.

Animals are guided by instinct, but humans must apply their own effort to reach balance with nature.
[213433]
From the Conversation 9/6/17, “Climate Cataclysms”

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