Comment: The principle of criminal law provides for the inevitability of punishment. A person should know that if he commits a crime, he will be caught and convicted. And this fear allegedly saves him from misconduct.

My Response: Unfortunately, we always draw the wrong conclusions. Fear does not help and crimes are committed. If the same criminals were to work eight hours every day and after that would spend another six hours a day engaged in spiritual methods, then we would see how it would help.

Not only would it help, it would make them the most useful members of society. By going through their selfish impulses, they would begin to understand what controls them. They would correct themselves, change, and begin to feel why this happened to them. A person in this state is more likely to improve no matter how terrible a criminal he may be.

As soon as such people with great egoism—tough, egotistically directed—begin to encounter a methodology with the revelation of the true higher state, they become the most predisposed to correction. We just treat them the wrong way.

Question: Suppose a person who committed some crime works and studies the Kabbalistic methodology, so he is in the process of being corrected, but is not corrected yet. At this point, should he be isolated or not?

Answer: No. You cannot isolate a person from society. It is created by the social element. It is necessary to put him in the right framework, the right environment, assign him to work and to study so that he is busy there for 15 to 16 hours a day, and leave the rest of the time for sleep and a little for the family. But in no case distort it.

People who have been released from prison, suffer in all their internal systems—biological, physiological, psychological—and are terribly traumatized. Man is not made for this. We see that this does not lead to anything good.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of Innocence” 3/10/10

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In the News (Forbes): Years ago, the anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about clay pots, tools for hunting, grinding-stones, or religious artifacts.

But no. Mead said that the first evidence of civilization was a 15,000 years old fractured femur found in an archaeological site. A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. This particular bone had been broken and had healed. …

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that another person has taken time to stay with the fallen, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended them through recovery. A healed femur indicates that someone has helped a fellow human, rather than abandoning them to save their own life.

My Response: This is mutual assistance.

Question: Mutual assistance, is this how civilization began? If we do not come to the point where civilization began, if we do not develop it today, does it turn out that we are moving backward from civilization?

Answer: Certainly. If we develop something, it is only in order to earn money. Today, if there were no desire, no thirst for money, would medicine and surgery develop? Nothing would have developed. We would live in a primitive society. You broke a leg? Well, so you broke it.

Comment: A small group of caring people managed to break through, to create a new civilization. Someone was nearby and put two sticks on his leg, for example. Is the breakthrough happening in a small group?

My Response: Of course. This is true, and it should be this way.

Question: And even during the Renaissance it was the same?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: And today, how will there be a breakthrough from indifference to connection? Will it be made by a small group of people?

Answer: It goes through the awareness of necessity anyway. If this happens then we will break through.

Question: Is there such a necessity today?

Answer: As far as I see it, the modern world is doing everything to eliminate this need for mutual assistance for survival.

Comment: You have been pessimistic about humanity lately.

My Response: I’m a realist. Egoism is growing exponentially, surprisingly fast, literally vertically upward, and we have nothing to oppose to it.

Question: But still it is flying to some kind of dead end?

Answer: No. It does not feel this impasse, and it is ready to fight with everyone who is against it.

Question: Where will a new, real civilization begin? At what point will it arise?

Answer: If not with an atomic war—general, serious and total—then there may be some huge volcanic eruptions where nature simply closes us together inside some kind of box. Then maybe we will sit in the dark and realize.

Question: So complete darkness is needed for this?

Answer: Yes. We must understand that there is nowhere else to go otherwise in order to create a certain contract between us, that we will relate to each other only for the benefit of the other, without taking ourselves into account. Such a revolution.

Question: This is a complete revolution of thinking. And then the darkness will vanish?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/30/21

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Comment: According to Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Bangladesh are among the most pandemic resilient countries. All of these countries have in common the fact that their prime ministers are female.

Some suggest that female leaders have qualities that give them advantages, especially in crisis situations, such as knowing how to listen, mediation skills, genuine pragmatism, resistance to conflicts, as well as knowing how to be economical. It is also suggested that women leaders work better in crisis situations than their male counterparts, and in this crisis, they prioritized healthcare over economics. Lately you have been talking more and more about the fact that a woman can drive the progress of humanity.

My Response: Yes, she can drive progress.

God is also masculine; He is afraid of women, like all men. 🙂

Question: “It is better not to mess with them.” Is this what He says?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Do women really have such special qualities?

Answer: They are capable. They are in conflict all their lives with people around them, with other women, with children, with husbands. They have to handle everything—the household, work…

A man leaves everything to a woman and goes somewhere into politics, to some job that nobody needs. These jobs are falling into decay and crises. For a woman, however, everything remains the way it was—work, home, children—besides these, she bears children, gives birth, and feeds.

Therefore a woman is really capable of giving birth to a new world. This is not a man’s job.

Question: So can we say the future belongs to women? If we understand this, will we advance?

Answer: Yes. It is written in the Torah that God said to Abraham, “Listen to what Sarah tells you.”

It is because He created everything in this way. Listen to the corrected egoism.

Comment: This already is a Kabbalistic concept.

My Response: This is very serious. Listen not to yourself, but to corrected egoism. In principle, at our everyday level a woman is much more practical, much more sober, and much more balanced than men.
[293391]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/20/21

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Comment: If we consider the system of punishment that exists today, it has, as it were, two principles. One principle is more humane where the attempt is to instill some moral norms through forced physical labor.

The other principle only involves punishment for all misdeeds. This system has no so-called middle line or correction.

My Response: But it cannot be here because it is not demanded by society itself. If you ask ordinary people or even the same lawyers, they have a lot of theories and philosophies, but in principle they don’t even know what they want to build in general.

What society would they like to see? What kind of person should be in it?

They do everything not from practice or from a plan that is aimed at educating a person, at changing society, and at a vision of the future, but only from what interests them at the moment. What should we do to earn money for ourselves, to become famous, and to rise above others and show off how we work?

Everything is aimed at justifying their appointment as their source of sustenance and success. As long as the system is selfish, it will continue to exist.
[294027]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of Innocence” 3/10/10

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Question: Due to the spread of the virus, people have been closed in at home, they are not able to participate in society. There have been a lot of divorces and domestic violence. Children do not want to study and go back to school. People do not want to go back to work.

In America, the government decided to help the people socially by printing money and distributing it to people. Now there is a lot of unemployment and no one wants to work, everyone sits and waits for government money. It seems that here in America they want to build a particular socialism. Or is capitalism slowly coming to an end?

Answer: Indeed, capitalism is coming to an end because this is not the final phase of human development, and it will not end there. But the question is: What can the state do with the limited opportunities it has?

Comment: Not to encourage people to stay home and live for free. They print money, but there is no gold reserve, and money is only a piece of paper. It somehow starts to resemble the Soviet Union.

My Response: What can you do? It doesn’t matter if it is America or the Soviet Union. The laws of economics, the laws of shifting between classes, between society and people are the same everywhere—human! Not socialist, not communist, not capitalist, these are general laws of nature. But no one wants to know and observe them. That is what is happening.
[294384]
From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 1/5/22

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There is only one way to win the internal war: it is to cover all crimes with love and to rise above arguing who is right and who is wrong. Then the corporeal war, which was a consequence of the internal one, will also end.

If the war does not end with victory, first of all in the spiritual sense, then corporeal victory will not help. The battle may subside for a while, but it will certainly resume.

Therefore, we must fight in order to cover all crimes with love, not try to figure out on whose side the truth is in this conflict and confrontation, but to rise above both poles. This is possible only if we understand that all the forces of confrontation come from the Creator and that only by rising up to Him can we reconcile them by ascending to their source.

The conflict is arranged by the Creator, there is none else besides Him. Only by combining two opposing forces can we win, not by choosing which of the two lines is right, but by walking in the middle line. The Creator started the war and is waging it, and therefore, only by appealing to Him with a demand to reconcile this dispute can it be ended. As it is written: “He Who makes peace in His heavens, may He make peace for us.”

We did not make timely corrections, and therefore the corruptions accumulated and have exploded as an exacerbation of a neglected disease. And that is what is happening now. For tens and even hundreds of years these problems have been hiding in humanity, breaking out here and there as symptoms of an internal disease.

We must understand that if a problem has been revealed, then it has already existed before. Now, when it has manifested, we have the opportunity to correct it and reach the end of correction.

The Creator arranged the shattering for us. It is not our fault that we received a shattered world in which the egoistic force rules. We only need to reveal this and ask the Creator to make a correction because through it we adhere to the Creator.

He does everything—not us. We just need to turn to Him above all the revealed problems. We understand that all this was arranged by Him and done on purpose so that we would ask Him for corrections. This is called: “My sons defeated Me.”
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/22, “Winning the War (Against the Evil Inclination)”

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Question: Not long ago there was an earthquake in Haiti. More than 2,000 people died, 40,000 houses were damaged and destroyed. Another 15-20,000 people were injured.

This news disappeared after a day. It was immediately replaced by news about fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes.

Is it possible to develop empathy toward another person?

Answer: It depends on education. Education should be such that we all have to get closer if we want a better future for ourselves. Egoistically. If you want there to be no earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and deaths, then you have to get closer to others.

Because nature is one and we humans, are at the top of its chain, if we create correct relationships between us, help, care, and so on, then all nature under us will calm down.

Question: Does Kabbalah talk about this?

Answer: Yes. We can certainly influence nature in this way.

Question: And then the word “empathy” will not sound strange?

Answer: It is a normal human condition when we understand that we depend on others and others depend on us. I am talking about the egoistic attitude toward each other. When we are like one family, there is no other way. Nature forces us to understand in the end that we depend on each other. And it will lead us to it, but gradually with such blows that it will not seem enough.

That is when mutual support will become a natural concept. We have nowhere to go. We do the same in the family whether we love each other or not it does not matter. We understand that we are interdependent.

Just as we go to fight for our country because we depend on others, they depend on us, and we cannot escape anywhere. Same here. If humanity does not unite in order to act not against nature but like nature as a united front, then nature will teach us.

Question: Finally teach us?

Answer: It will teach us! That is certain. But the whole earth will be like Haiti after the earthquake.

Comment: It is better to do it ourselves.

My Response: I think so. Because nature is preparing very unpleasant surprises for us.

Question: So you still believe, as the great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam said, that the whole world, one way or another, will be one family, it will not escape from this?

Answer: We will have to come to this either as a result of a world nuclear war or by good means and understanding.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/28/21

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Question: In ancient times in Israel, people who inadvertently harmed someone were placed in cities of refuge until the special jubilee year (Shmita Yovel). What happened if a person did not correct himself by that year? Was he still forgiven?

Answer: No. In the society where he lived, they would work on him. Punishment, of course, existed, but not in the form of imprisonment.

A person must be in an environment that not directly, but indirectly explains to him how to be a different element of society. And so, after some time, he receives a certain influence.

Give that criminal an opportunity to work and study philosophy, psychology, and other sciences; place him in a different environment so that he is in close contact with the others. This is the only way to influence a person.

And we, on the contrary, throw him into an environment of even greater criminals for whom perpetrating a crime is a brave deed. As a result, he comes out ready for new criminal actions.

Is this called punishment? This is called isolating him from society! You prepare him for more crimes. This is what we see.

We ourselves created such a society and systems of punishment. And according to Kabbalah, there should be a system not of punishment, but of correction.
[293975]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of innocence” 3/10/10

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The situation in the world is becoming more explosive every day. The entire world is rigorously following the rapid development of events in Ukraine. Kabbalists, however, do not deal with politics and geographical boundaries.

Kabbalists want only one thing: to add love or at least to decrease hatred wherever possible and reduce the confrontation between people, and we must help to do that.

Therefore, the main tool is prayer. If with its help we manage to cause greater connection among people, it will be for the benefit of humanity and to delight the Creator. The Creator had to create creatures to be opposite to Him, broken, so that humanity would ask for connection above hatred and rejection. Then we will understand, feel, and discover what unity means.

The main thing is to reveal the force of connection. There cannot be one without the other. Therefore, the Creator suffers more than everyone, but He has no choice, He had to create nature in this form. Our task is to try with our prayer, desire, and plea to force Him to correct everything. He is waiting for our request for correction and He will do everything right away. He needs nothing but our desire.

The only thing that is initially missing in creation is our desire to be equivalent to the good force of the Creator. The Creator needs the desire of the created beings, so He created the entire creation in deficiency. And we need to reveal this deficiency.

Therefore, until we ask for peace, fulfillment, perfection, love, and connection, it will not happen. We need to want connection at all levels to the full measure. By this, all of nature, all the worlds, will return to the completely corrected state where we are all connected and all of us will reveal the force of connection, which is eternal and complete.

The Messiah is not a person, but a force, a spirit that appears and disappears according to our desire. When we want to come closer to each other, it comes, and when we do not want to, it leaves. Messiah is a force that pulls (Moshech) us from our egoism to bestowal, love, and connection.

Therefore, if we understand that we need this force that will pull us from the bad into a good state, from separation to connection, from hatred to love, then we are calling on the Messiah. Let’s do it together.

The main problem is the indifference inherent in our nature. Sometimes a specific incident or a wounded animal touches our heart more than a war between countries. In the meantime, we exist in egoistic qualities that are not corrected.

This is why we care about things that are close to our hearts. A small breakdown in your own home worries everyone more than world events, supernova star explosions, or a hurricane on the other side of Earth. This is how our egoism depicts reality to us.

However, if we together with all our might ask the Creator to let us feel in the tens what it means to exit ourselves and feel the force that operates between us, then we will begin to reveal the upper force that resides among us. Then we will begin to notice things in the world that are more important to the Creator and not to our individual egoism.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/22/22, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: I have a feeling that the world is heading toward Armageddon. In a bit of time, just another year or two, something will happen that will make the virus that has spread all over the planet seem to us as just a toy. What is happening in the world? What does Kabbalah say about this?

Answer: I speak only from the perspective of Kabbalah as I have been studying it for almost 50 years.

The world is moving toward its correction. It has a certain developmental program, and the program is carried out whether it is wanted or not, either with a little bloodshed or with a lot, but it is still being carried out.

Now we face a big task: to make everyone understand that in the modern world we can exist only if we have goodwill in bringing people closer together. Unfortunately, this is not happening yet. Therefore, we see opposite results.

But I know that the program will still lead us forward, either by blows or carrots, to the understanding that we can exist only with the mutual support of all people around the world. We will have to come to that.
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From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 1/5/22

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