Question: Why is it most important for a person to feel that he is loved?

Answer: This is because a person is a social being and we all come from one system called Adam HaRishon in which we existed as one man with one heart, all together in one desire. We were connected to one another and even after we became distanced from each other through the process of evolution, we are still bound together by an inner force.

Where does such a strong influence of the environment on a person come from? It is because in our root, in the very depth of our nature, we are most tightly connected together in one source, in one state, in one desire, although physically distant.

That is how I am made by nature, and therefore it greatly matters to me what others think and say about me. This is true even for small children.

Question: The desire to feel that I am loved is the most important thing for a person in life. Why?

Answer: It is because the influence of the environment on a person is very powerful.

By nature, as an animal, I do not need much, a bit of food and some shelter for my family and children. But to obtain everything else beyond what is necessary for existence, I destroy my life just to gain recognition in the eyes of society—to become loved, respected, wealthy, and intelligent.

I have been working for years to buy a big house, a special car. And why do I need all this? Because it is respected in the eyes of the environment. In other words, I am a slave to my environment.

Question: When a person loves someone, it fills him very much. There is no stronger feeling that penetrates so deeply into a person. Why does he feel good when he experiences love for someone? Why are we made this way?

Answer: The question can be asked differently: why do I have both the need to be loved and the need to love someone? This comes from our nature, that within us there is a desire to feel our relations with the environment, to receive love from them and to love them.

Question: Why is it important to me that I also love them?

Answer: This stems from the upper root. We are created this way and receive an impression from the upper force of nature, which gives birth to us and nurtures us, as well as from the home, from parents, from the family. That is why I also have the desire to love someone.

This is my attitude toward the world, because otherwise I feel that I exist among haters whom I myself hate. There are people who do not feel love even in their own homes, and we see how improperly and badly they grow up. The lack of love that they do not feel from parents, their family, and environment makes them corrupted human beings.

And this comes from nature. We are not creatures that can exist in isolation. We see that even the young animals need maternal love and the help of their pack.

Question: Can a person who has never felt love give love to others?

Answer: No, a person will not be able either to give love or to receive it. Such a person is a very miserable, incomplete being, and it is difficult for him to exist.

Question: Let us imagine that in a hundred years a child will be born to robot parents. They will take care of him and provide him with everything possible, like in a royal palace, except for the feeling of love. What will he be lacking?

Answer: Everything! He will not feel that he is being filled with everything. He will lack the attitude because we come from a system called Adam, and there, in that system, we are all inwardly connected to one another as one body. And if we do not feel any connection between us, then we are lost. Nature will not support us, and we will not be able to exist.
[180099]
From the 692^nd conversation New Life 692 “What Is Love?” 2/16/16

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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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Question: You once said that our entire life unfolds between love and hatred. But how are these two feelings connected?

Answer: If there were no hatred, there would not be love either. If I did not desire something and feel fulfilled by it, then how could I feel that I love it?

The measure, quality, and depth of love always depend on the measure, quality, and depth of hatred.

Hatred is when I either reject something and want to push it away from me, or I suffer deeply because I do not have it. Within this spectrum lies the whole range of our relationships. In truth, everything in life is divided only into what I hate and what I love.

We are created from the desire to enjoy. Therefore, there are things that I hate and want to distance myself from since they negatively affect my desire to enjoy and there are things that I love and want to draw closer to because they positively affect my desire for pleasure. My entire life is woven between these two poles, between what is good for me, and what is bad for me, between hatred of what feels bad and the love for what feels good.

Yet perhaps we should re-educate ourselves to reconsider what is good and what is bad, what is worthy of enjoyment and what is not. Education, in this sense, means reshaping our attitude toward what appears attractive and pleasant, and toward what appears unpleasant or harmful.

This shift allows us to move beyond the simple question of what to love or what to hate, and instead to ask: what is true and what is false? After all, some things that I love turn out to be deceptive and damaging, while some things that I instinctively reject are true, and ultimately beneficial. I should pay attention to them, draw closer to them, and I will discover that they genuinely lead me to goodness.

In other words, I should not live according to my instinctive or culturally-acquired sense of good and evil—what I love and what I hate—but add a rational inquiry to it: What is truly good and what is truly bad? Not from the perspective of what feels pleasant or unpleasant, but from the higher perspective of what is worth experiencing as good or bad. Thus, I will no longer define good and evil by my personal tastes or by natural attraction or repulsion, but by absolute good and absolute evil—above my instincts.

This is possible because the human being is a social creature. We can determine what is good or bad not only by our personal sensations, but also by the influence of the environment. After all, we need those around us: they can respect us or, on the contrary, shame us. Because we are subject to the influence of the environment, we can completely change our values by learning to hate what we once loved.

Take, for example, a person who once behaved carelessly, as he pleased. Then, under the influence of his surroundings, he suddenly realizes that others do not respect him, even scorn him, for his sloppiness or poor manners.

He feels he has no choice but to change, to correct himself because society’s influence is powerful and felt sharply as either positive or negative. He begins to see his neglect of others as harmful to himself, and so he puts effort into correcting his behavior and attitude. In doing so, he reshapes his values.

This is how we can transform what we love and what we hate.
[180094]
From KabTV’s New Life 692 – What Is Love? 2/16/16

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Question: Love, everyone wants to love, to be loved, to work at a job they love, to visit places they love. Within us there is an enormous drive toward love. Personally, I feel that all our life we are searching for love, wanting to be loved.

Why do we chase after love, why are we so drawn to this powerful feeling?

Answer: Because we are nothing more than created beings, and our nature is the desire to enjoy. What fulfills this desire is the pleasure we feel. Depending on what each person strives for, where they feel emptiness, and what fills them, toward that they experience love.

I love fish, I love my mother, I love my children, I love the sun, coolness, warmth, it doesn’t matter what. If I am filled with what I strive for, if I fill my desire, I call that love for what presently delights me.

There are things I know in advance that I love either by habit or by nature because that’s how I was made. And there are things I accustomed myself to, and then I also love them.

In the end, what we call love in our lives is fulfillment by the pleasure I strive for, because it fills my desire. And the sensation that my desire is being fulfilled is what we call love.

For example, I love fish. That means I want to eat it and can fill myself with the fish lying in front of me on the plate.

Question: And still, we strive more toward human love than material love…

Answer: Love has many levels depending on what we love, meaning what fulfills us. A person has needs for fulfillment, which the science of Kabbalah divides according to a ladder of desires and aspirations. This ladder begins with desires for food, sex, and family. Then follow desires for wealth, honor, and knowledge.

In essence, all of our aspirations and fulfillments can be included in these six types of desires. If I strive for some kind of fulfillment, that means I love it. Moreover, I not only love the fulfillment itself, but also its source, which becomes important to me since it gives me pleasure.

That is how we build our lives. And our entire life takes place between hatred and love.
[180090]
From KabTV’s New Life 692 – What Is Love?, 2/16/16

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Question: When speaking about the relationship between man and woman, you described the “mirror principle,” according to which I see a reflection of myself in my partner since I radiate my egoism onto him. What does this mean? If it seems to me that my husband does not value me, does it mean that I do not value myself?

Answer: Why do you demand more recognition from him? In essence, it is your egoism that requires this fulfillment. And what do we gain if we rise above egoism and do not make such demands?

First, by doing so we will not suffer from feeling undervalued by our partner. Second, we thereby acquire a new quality. The demand for respect and power reveals its opposite: by overcoming a certain egoistic quality and beginning to rise above it, I receive a quality opposite to it. This allows me to gain a new tool, a new attitude toward the world.

For example, if earlier I demanded attention and respect from my partner, now I become more modest in my claims. After all, I already understand that if I look objectively, he treats me quite normally, it was simply that my egoism inflated the bar of expectations. So let us concede, let us reduce our egoistic demands.

I want my partner to be attentive, considerate, and to keep promises, I want to stop his endless “offenses” in everything concerning household matters, neglect of my interests, lack of signs of love and care. After all, with the years the husband calls his wife less and less to ask how she is doing, takes less and less care of her. And so, if I lessen my complaints, if I do not keep count of grievances and work hard on myself—because for me this is still very important—then I annul the former, spoiled connection between us.

I rise above the inflated demands and relate to my partner with love, like a mother to a child. Even if on his side there still remains “crime,” despite my efforts, I hold to the principle: “Love will cover all crimes.”

How do I thereby help my partner, considering that he also has joined into the framework of our course? I give him an example, and also awaken a readiness for the same reciprocal relation in him. Thus, here lies an invitation to a new life. In essence, I open myself in order to receive a new attitude from my partner. And I check this attitude not egoistically; on the contrary, what matters here is that we both mutually develop our relationship above egoism and support each other.

By my example I help my partner to rise above egoism. I make efforts, I speak with him about how good life will be if we rise above our natural, base, egoistic impulses. And as a result, mutual example and mutual support lead us upward.

Moreover, each of us now looks at the world correctly, sanely, with readiness to yield. Again and again, I see the world in comparison with myself as something perfect. The new outlook allows me to see it as perfect nature. It is no longer only about my partner, the whole world becomes my mirror.

This is a kind of psychological training, a psychological method of the highest order, which allows a person to ascend to a new perception of reality, of the world, of family, and of relations with the partner; it is a perception that we did not have before.

Of course we must first practice this in the family, and in the end, we will build a new world, new relationships. And here mutuality is necessary. We both must understand that we represent something like a small “laboratory” in which two egoists strive to use the egoism that has developed in them correctly. In our generation it has grown to such an extent that it destroys everything, and we want to use it as a lever and build healthy relations above it that will allow life to continue. Otherwise, only ruin awaits us.
[83478]
From the 32^nd conversation New Life 32 – New Kind Of Relationships, 7/11/12

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Question: What does love give to a person?

Answer: Love gives a person an inner radiance that enlivens him. Life.

But the problem is that love is a much deeper relationship that we must reveal between us.

It is not about those feelings that arise according to a person’s inner inclinations, which are instilled in him by nature or acquired through upbringing. We must first reveal the proper values—to understand what is truly called love, to what extent we exist within the nature of mutual hatred and mutual rejection, and if that is so, then what must be done in order to attain love, since the source of life is love.

Question: Must we reveal what love is?

Answer: We must reveal the secret of life. This secret is connected with love. For without it, there is no continuation.

If there were no attraction between plus and minus on the still level, no joining and separating between molecules on the vegetative level, if there were no such calculations between living bodies, when one hates or loves another depending on the level of development, if there were no feeling of a mother’s love for her child on the animate and human level, then without this, nature would not develop, not even the simplest cell would exist.

Everything exists according to love and hatred, according to the force of attraction and repulsion. These two forces must be balanced.

Therefore, it is not by chance that it is written in the wisdom of Kabbalah: “Love will cover all crimes.” These two fundamental forces, located at the center of creation, must be balanced with one another, and then between them there will be proper, gradual development until such a degree that both love and hatred will develop to infinite proportions. And in this way we will attain the world of infinity, the world of truth, which is the goal of our development.

Therefore we still have to reveal how to come to the clarification of what love truly is—for it is the source of life.
[180108]
From the conversation “New Life 692 – What Is Love?”, 2/16/2016

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Question: There are many songs created about love, and many wonderful romance novels written throughout the history of humanity. On the other hand, love has led to a great number of tragedies and wars. So much has been said about love. Perhaps it is a person’s  most sublime feeling. What is love?

Answer: Love is a special attitude of a person to someone or something. I love the sea, music, pleasant smells, etc. This is also called that I love.

Why do I love? Because it gives me pleasure. I enjoy the sea, the music, the smells, the skies. I love what gives me pleasure. Conversely, I hate what causes me suffering or problems. This is how love or hate that arises to people and animals.

It is “egoistic love” when I love something that gives me pleasure and hate what causes me suffering. We are like animals; we love what is good for us and move away from things that are bad for us. This is called love. Meaning, it is not love toward some object, but rather love for what it awakens within me.

For example, I run into a friend and he tells me that he has divorced. “What has happened?!” “Love has gone.” It means that love exists up to the moment where we can receive pleasure from one another. Even today doctors say that love between partners disappears in 2 to 3 years.

This is not the love that the wisdom of Kabbalah is talking about. The wisdom of Kabbalah talks about love as something that is above a person’s ego, which enjoys using someone or something. Love is something we build on two levels.

There is a level of relationship between us which may involve arguments and even hate, i.e., disagreement with one another. At the same time, above these disagreements, we build a special connection called “love.”

We work a lot on this, make efforts, and invest time building it. This is called “love will cover all transgressions.” It means that we build love precisely above transgressions, above disagreements that exist between us.

Only in this way can two people connect one with the other so their mutual connection would be good, strong, healthy, and truly human. This connection is between people who understand that they are egoists and that again tomorrow they can have a dispute but they will still continue working to make their connection beautiful and kind, and it is called “love.”

This is not love that is built on sexual attraction, habit, or something that is good for me today but tomorrow may be the opposite.

On the contrary, it is love between people: a man and a woman, children, within a nation, or within a group of people. But with all this we do not treat each other based on receiving pleasure one from another, where I receive pleasure from the other one and therefore I love. After all, this would be the animal level.

At the human level we create connections of love between us above everything that we receive one from another—pleasures or the opposite—up to the point that I can hate the other for his habits that I do not like. Still I have to love him, for example, for the reason that we belong to the same nation.

Then we will work on how we can also become closer one to another in the habits at the level of this world—physical, national, and so forth.

In other words, love is the highest value in relationship between people who are going to connect with each other since they are obliged to be tied and they chose this connection. Then they constantly work on this.

Therefore it is said that “love will cover all transgressions.” There are “transgressions” between us, various disagreements, and above them we are constantly building love. Even more, the more disagreements, the stronger love should be above them.

This is the way we have to educate people. Then we will be able to come to the state where we will be able to open an umbrella of love above the entire world, above all of humanity. This is precisely what love is. Otherwise, it is just a physiological love where you love something that is good for your body; this is love of animals, whereas human love is built above all that makes me unhappy about the other one. There is some reason, a higher value, that obliges me to be in connection with the other one.

We both understand that at the regular level we have all kinds of disagreements with regard to the country, life, and everything else, but in any case we come to the decision that we have to be connected despite that we are different and our structure is different.

We build this connection, our love, slowly, step by step, based on our superior goal which we together have to reach in connection between us and above our physical bodies.
[178308]
From the Program on Radio Station 103FM, 2/14/2016

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Comment: Recently I checked what is currently popular on television. Almost everything is built on two parameters: sex and violence. The more naked the body, the better.

My Response: Naturally, a naked body distracts people from everything else, because this is our most important instinct, the so-called “basic instinct.”

Sex is the foundation of all pleasures, since it stems from our connection with the Creator, which in the corporeal world manifests in the form of the union of opposite sexes. This is the strongest attraction and the greatest distraction for a person from all other problems.

Sex always arouses a pleasant sensation, because its root comes from the Creator’s desire to give us the entrance of light into our desire, which is felt as sexual union. In Kabbalah, this is called coupling, “Zivug de haAka’a.”

And violence is something scandalous. I don’t think it particularly attracts a person. But in our time, it is necessary for the recognition of the nature of evil. Later on it will disappear.
[347564]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Basic Instinct” 8/9/10

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Question: What is your advice to young people who are starting a life together with the feeling that everything will be fine for them and that they will live together for a long time, forever?

Answer: It takes a lot of long, even tedious, conversations with each other. Pour out everything you think and so should your partner, like two researchers. Gradually, you will reach a state where you both begin to examine yourselves and one another, and your partner will also examine himself and you.

Then it turns out that life becomes interesting and it becomes a study: how can we change our relationship, make it different somehow, and get closer? What if we do it this way? What if that way? And constantly try to reveal these qualities, feelings, and relationships as vividly as possible.

If people think about this and understand it, then somewhere after fifty or sixty years, this is what happens. That is all. Until then, it is: “If youth only knew, if old age only could.”

Comment: So this turns out to be the golden rule. Let’s hope some kind of change happens.

My Response: The time will come, and people will live like this. But we can already teach them! This is what must be added. We can teach these young ones how to become researchers. We can “age” them through our lessons, so to speak. They can undergo a kind of practicum.

Question: Even before they have joined together? To prepare them for this life?

Answer: Yes, of course. Then they will already know how to act—this way or that.

Question: So you are saying that young people should come to the wedding to unite together already as if they were old people?

Answer: Yes, inside. Of course. Will they discover on their own who they are? No. They must come with experience in communication, psychological communication, so to speak. This will give them confidence that they can overcome all sorts of difficulties in closeness and even turn those difficulties into greater contact.

Comment: Beautiful! We are talking about a scientific laboratory.

My Response: Yes. Oh, how much the world needs this!
[347327]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 8/12/25

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Question: According to Kabbalah, earthly love is love of oneself. Does this mean that at its foundation there is always some calculation?

Answer: Absolutely. Today, as life expectancy has increased and egoism renews itself very quickly, it is natural that during one lifetime a person lives through several “lives.” If I am over seventy now, I have probably already lived through the equivalent of three past lifetimes. And yet I still live with the same family. We are bound by children, home, responsibilities, etc. But this is not what Kabbalah calls love.

Love in Kabbalah is a state that one attains as a direct, closest internal spiritual connection between oneself and others. Here it is not about hormonal attraction, or even about the relationship between man and woman, but about an attitude toward another soul, which you feel as a kindred spirit when you complement each other. You understand how to reach a state where you merge together into one soul. Then it becomes clear that this is truly necessary.

This can be attained between men, between women, and between men and women regardless of gender or age. It depends only on the awareness that in a certain inner, spiritual connection one can reach a state where, on the very contradictions between them, and at the same time on the connections between those contradictions, they build what is called a “soul.”

Then in this united desire that is composed of opposing states of distrust, rejection, mutual disregard, and even hatred at various levels (conscious or unconscious), a connection is formed. I must be connected to this person internally, above our contradictions, which we do not hide, because only through connection can we reveal the next, higher level of our existence. The Creator is revealed between us.

How does He reveal Himself? On the rejection (the hatred) between us, and simultaneously on the mutual connection (the love). For there is no hatred without love and no love without hatred. Even when I hate a person and am ready to do anything against him, this manifests precisely because within is the seed of our future love. That is why I can hate so strongly.

Then, despite the hatred that openly reveals itself between us, I consciously build states of reciprocity and love. At the same time the hatred does not disappear; it helps me in all its variations, in all its inner expressions. It helps me create such mutual connection where I hold both rejection and attraction in my hands, and I use them as resistance and the overcoming of resistance. In this way, I reach love, which is always built only above rejection and above hatred.

I must sense both states simultaneously. Then I truly stand firmly on both legs, on the right and the left. In Kabbalah this is called “being in two lines,” right and left. One cannot exist without the other.

In this state, I can govern myself, relate reasonably to my partner, understand all of our rejections and attractions, and use them only in order to reveal the Creator between us.

Thus, love is not for the sake of love itself, not for hormonal satisfaction or comfort, but in order to reveal the Creator and to love Him.

This brings us to a very interesting state, as it is said: “Husband, wife, and the Creator between them.” Only in such a state can one achieve true love, when this trinity exists together and you work toward attaining the Creator through the connection between you and your partner, whether woman or man, it does not matter. This is not earthly love. That is how Kabbalah interprets love.

As for earthly love, it can also exist, especially nowadays, when the truth of our purely utilitarian relationships is revealed. We satisfied each other and then split. And if there is shared property or children, it becomes difficult to separate, so we begin to think of ways to control one another. Otherwise it is impossible. These are all incorrect states.

Love in our world, if built correctly, must necessarily include a spiritual component, otherwise it cannot last long.

Comment: When I talk about this to people, many disagree, and say that love does exist in the way they are used to understanding it. But they have no other concept of love. Where would it come from?

My Response: We by no means deny anything else. Let people engage in love for whatever and however they wish. There are many manifestations of love. Material love is purely egoistic because a person enjoys it and derives pleasure from it. From the perspective of Kabbalah, this is not love, but egoistic fulfillment, love of oneself.
[216675]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 8/6/2017

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