Question: If my wife is a part of me, is it possible to judge a friend by his wife?

Answer: It depends on the couple. If you and your wife have lived a long time together, but you are an ordinary earthly couple, then this is immediately felt. If you are a spiritual couple, it is also felt. It is even felt if you are at different degrees.

A spiritual couple is two people who feel a mutual aspiration to one another and to the goal, who feel each other and see themselves united in the goal with each other, with the rest of the world, and with the Creator.

In principle, people who live together for a long time feel each other without words, understand each other without words, and, as they say, live in perfect harmony. It is natural. And on a spiritual level there is an even greater closeness. It is part of telepathy, of the feeling of others.

Comment: You always say that a man should be married because through his other half, so to say, he speaks with the Creator. But there are completely opposite, conflicting couples. You look at them and it seems that this single whole consists of the two of them.

My Response: In our time, a couple is not at all what it used to be when people took care of each other, when they had the same feelings, the same thoughts, and the same goals, when they were engaged in a common household, and so on. They had joint standard sensations.

Today this is practically non-existent. Everyone does their own thing; in the morning they run away, in the evening they run back to the same apartment for a few hours of sleep, and then run away again. It is the kind of slavery where there is no place for anything shared.

This is good because they have become so egoistic that it would be difficult for them to live with each other for a long time, but only for a short time if they go somewhere on vacation where there is nothing in common and they do something external. If they took care of their household and were free a couple of days a week, then it would be a terrible state.

That is why those people who are unemployed today are so unhappy. This is a cause for very big conflicts.
[302145]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Spiritual Couple” 3/24/13

Related Material:
The Family Of The Future Is A Fusion Of Minds And Hearts
A Spiritual Family
On Equality And Precedence

Filed under: Man and Woman, Q&A, Women's Spirituality - No Comments →

Question: Is there any similarity between the Tu B’Av holiday and Purim?

Answer: Yes, of course. Both holidays speak of the highest possible condition.

Question: Could you give a short formula of love?

Answer: The formula of love? Don’t know. I think it’s H_₂O.

Question: Just like that?

Answer: Yes. The most important thing in love is the justification of the other. Permanently! Give in to the other all the time, justify him or her all the time, and tell him or her more compliments.
[301523]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 8/5/22

Related Material:
Developing True Love
From The Day Of Love To Purim
The 15th Of Av —A Step From Hatred To Love

Filed under: Holidays, Man and Woman, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Some researchers say that the secret to a perfect marriage is simple. You need six meaningful conversations, three long walks, and two fights every month. Two short and two longer vacations are mandatory. It’s important to say “I love you” up to 10 times a week, kiss three times a day, and embrace 11 times a week. Be proud of your partner in front of others, forgive bad habits, always concede to the other regardless of who is right. And very importantly, fairly divide household chores.

What do you think?

Answer: All these conditions make up a man’s prison. Hang up a big sign on the wall and set a reminder with a loudspeaker, announcing: “It’s time to talk about love!” 🙂

Question: So, “It’s time to kiss! It’s time to bring flowers! It’s time…” Won’t work?

Answer: You see, it’s a habit. It will work actually. If a person does it for a month or two, he will come to feel: “It’s been a while since I last brought flowers.”

Question: So the habit will become second nature?

Answer: “The habit is given to us from above.”

Comment: You were talking about the institution of men and women, the fact that upbringing is necessary.

My Response: It is education. It cannot be taken lightly as some sort of secondary schooling, but has to be nurtured within every family. Radio, television, all these things out there have to be incorporated in this education. Movies as well, anything really works, so it would be absorbed from an early age.

Question: So you support the statement we used to hear: “It is a healthy cell of a society. If the family is healthy, then the society is too…”

Answer: It must be so. You cannot replace it with anything else no matter what the times are! It evolves from human nature, the real one, which we have lost long ago. Who can take it? People live up to 100 years and 80 are spent with the same partner to whom you are constantly obliged.

Question: Maybe one can turn this obligation into a benefit? The fact that he is obliged to someone would be to his benefit?

Answer: Either way that’s very tough. We run away from our own mother after a few years.

Question: So these cells, these families, are falling apart because the individual cannot endure the pressure?

Answer: He cannot tolerate the limitations he is obligated to live within.

Question: Then the question is, how can they be tolerated?

Answer: By means of working out a number of variables. One of which is the necessity to do so given to us by nature, which we inhabit, and within this framework we attain our highest spiritual eternal state of being. So the family represents a kind of “production farm” in which we work on our higher self. This is the greatest opportunity, the chance for us to reach the spiritual state.

I don’t really talk about this during my lessons because it’s not for our present time yet. But it will happen!

Moreover, there is an absolutely clear distribution of responsibilities, opportunities, and reciprocal fulfillment in which children also play a significant role as they are included in the relationship between husband and wife according to their age and with the fact that they get to have their own children, grandchildren, and so on. That is, it is a “combine,” it is a whole system. It should be a huge complex “production.”

It will happen! Our world won’t be able to exist without it, but accordingly nature will lead us to it. So we are in for some tough years ahead.

Comment: You just spoke about children and their children.

My Response: It is all growing and developing. There must be and is obligatorily through three generations. Children should see their grandparents and parents and really feel them.

Question: What is an ideal family for you?

Answer: The ideal family is the one that will come to be and it will meet these requirements. At this point we are trying to lay some sort of foundation for this movement. But it is still very risky to talk about this. It appears as though we are loading the heaviest responsibilities upon ourselves.

Question: By whom, by you or the young people?

Answer: By everyone! At the point when one can actually see the inner essence of one’s partner and the years spent together mean nothing, the appearance means nothing, because everything is determined only according to their inner state.

It’s an extraordinary world that we’re going to build. And it will be spiritual! I won’t see the appearance of my partner, or their habits and so on, like I see today. It’s going to be a continuous renewal between us and within each of us.

Question: Are we renewing all the time? The same couple, but it is continuously renewed?

Answer: Of course. Not the same, but a new one in a way.

Comment: I’d like to live in a world like that.

My Response: 🙂 It has to be earned! We’re not there yet.
[301007]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/6/22

Related Material:
The Family Of The Future Is A Fusion Of Minds And Hearts
Love Is Paradise
About Love And Success

Filed under: Children, Education, Man and Woman, News - No Comments →

Comment: There is a touching love story told of two twenty-two-year-olds; we even know their names: Jess Peak and Joe Matthews. It began 20 years ago in a nursery school and continued through kindergarten. At the age of four, Matthews proposed to Peak and they had a make-believe wedding. After kindergarten, these two British kids went to different schools and lost contact.

And now suddenly, after 14 years, they met on a social network and realized they had been waiting for this meeting all their lives. They are just as happy together as they were back in kindergarten and nursery school. They are happily planning a wedding today. That’s what the buzz is all about on social media. “This is indeed love!”

My Response: What kind of love is this? They haven’t been together.

Comment: They didn’t see each other, but they kept this longing for each other.

My Response: Well, this is true. Things that happen in childhood leave great impressions.

Question: Now they are getting married. They say that most likely this wedding, this connection, will be a guarantee that they will have a long and happy life. What do you think about this conclusion?

Answer: There is a book that begins with the words: “Rarely do we marry our first love.”

Question: Let’s say we rarely marry our first loves. But if we do, is that a guarantee?

Answer: No. Usually we go through many, many mistakes, trials, meetings, divorces, and separations. And then, at an age closer to the end rather than the beginning, we meet someone and start appreciating [this connection].

Of course, she is not the same little girl with bows anymore and you are not the same boy. Their ideas of connection, closeness, and relationships are totally different now. This is how it usually works.

Question: Do you think that until they go through hard times in their ups and downs together, we cannot say anything?

Answer: No! Only out of destruction can one learn. That explains why a person who has never gone through ups and downs is not able to appreciate things. He will not cherish a relationship.

Question: So, you’re saying that you’re in favor of a sense of destruction in a connection between people? As if everything falls apart?

Answer: Of course. It is crucial they experience such feelings also so they would protect their relationship and not let it get to this.

Question: But it will keep hanging over them, right?

Answer: By all means! They are two egotists! How can they cut selfishness out of themselves and become so sweet? It’s impossible. We meet, learn our lessons, come to desperation, and understand how to build a life where we strive only for good relationships. We no longer need to be in bad relationships as we used to in our youth, then in good ones, and so on; we need only good ones.

Question: But do ups and downs we go through at a young age lead us to this?

Answer: Of course! Without them, there is nothing. You must accumulate an arsenal of various negative sensations and states, and only then can you avoid them.

Comment: That’s interesting. You store weapons, fight, and then suddenly cast them aside.

My Response: This is how it will work for humanity.

Comment: Meaning, humankind is now accumulating various weapons, and then…

My Response: It will understand they need to be cast aside.

Question: Is that why now all wars and other troubles are happening? Is the accumulation of weapons also happening for this reason?

Answer: Everything is only for this reason. There can be no good without the recognition of evil. Not in private life nor in the general world.

Question: What advice would you give if these young people listened to you?

Answer: I don’t know if they have accumulated enough suffering and expectations or a desire to appreciate the other, to show every minute you love them, to care for them, to like them the way they are, and so on. In other words, they need to have qualities, impressions from life, which simply do not exist at a young age.

The accumulation of these impressions must take place during their lifetime. If there were such an injection to gain an instant understanding, to see things for what they are, we’d live happily. Instead, we get divorced, sometimes more than once. And only afterward, possibly, can we create the right relationships.

Comment: What is your advice to young guys and gals who enter a life together with the feeling everything will be just fine and they will live together forever!

My Response: They need to have very, very long, nagging conversations with each other. Spill out whatever each of them thinks, like two explorers. And gradually they will be able to reach a state where they will mutually explore themselves and one another.

Then life becomes interesting; it turns into research: how can we make our relationship different, to change it somehow, to get closer. And if so? What if it’s different? What if they constantly try to discover their qualities, feelings, and their relationship as vibrantly as possible? Even if people do think about such things and realize them, it’s only after about 50 to 60 years.

The time will come that people will live this way. But we can teach them about it! This needs to be said: we can train these youngsters how to become researchers. We can, so to say, “age” them by teaching them. They can gain practical experience.

Question: Even before they join together? Prepare them for this life?

Answer: Yes, of course. And then they will see for themselves how to act one way or another.

Question: So, you say young people should come to their wedding and begin their life as old people?

Answer: Yes, on the inside. Of course. Do you want them to discover who they really are through their own experience? No.

They must come with communication experience! As if psychological interaction. This will give them confidence that they will be able to overcome all sorts of challenges, to get closer and turn these problems into greater contact.

Comment: Beautiful! We talked about a scientific laboratory.

My Response: Yes. The world needs it very much!
[300852]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/27/22

Related Material:
The Family As The Center Of The Universe
Homework For Two
Model Family Man

Filed under: Crisis, Globalization, Man and Woman, News - No Comments →

Comment: Psychologists say that each of us often wants to force other people to change their behavior or point of view. We know this very well. The boss wants to change employees so that they work more. Employees want to change the boss to have him or her be more flexible. We change husbands, wives, friends, and so on. And all attempts, most of the time, fail.

Some psychologists also propose that within four steps you can change almost anyone, and the first step is to change yourself. The first step is: to turn from a critic into an ally.

How can we turn from a critic into an ally? Can this advice be put into practice or is it a utopian fantasy? What do you think?

My Response: Why on earth would I agree with someone? Never! Then everyone will be taking advantage of me?! I do not agree to this in advance.

Comment: The second step is determine the result you want to get together. Can it be? I am against someone, but together we are building what we want to come to.

My Response: I agree with that. The vision of the future must be mutual. Despite the fact that I am against the other and I want to bend him and change him; nevertheless, we need to determine the future and then through gradual movement toward this future, we can already get closer.

Comment: The third step: to discuss together how to solve the problem.

My Response: This is correct. This is unrealistic, but correct.

Comment: The fourth: together build a step-by-step plan for achieving results.

My Response: This is very hard.

Comment: Hard? If we are in such a relationship, then as they say, everyone has their own plan.

My Response: Yes. And then, as this plan unfolds, you will see that you absolutely do not agree.

Question: Does it mean that the other one twists the plan for himself all the time and I twist it for myself?

Answer: Naturally.

Question: Then the question is: how can one build a relationship so as not to seek to change the other person? Psychologists say it can be done in four steps. What do you say? My natural state is to change the other for myself. How can I not do this, this is the guarantee of all wars, all quarrels, everything?

Answer: Just love the other. That’s all.

Again, we return to the first question. If we understand that the most important thing in our life is to be close to someone who understands you, helps you, loves you, and appreciates you, then we must really appreciate this and sacrifice everything for this.

Comment: That is, I practically really sacrifice my entire “I,” which requires conditions for itself. And say that, “I want to learn to love.”

My Response: Yes. I want to learn to love this person because I want to be with him. That’s all. It is good if he also thinks this way. Then it is a really really great, mutual, and very unusual feeling.

Question: Are you, in fact, addressing not only couples, but also potentially an employee, a boss, and even countries?

Answer: Practically, yes. This state of “learn to love” should shine above everything.

It needs to be taught. But, unfortunately, there is no such education. When we get old and understand, we no longer have the strength to do it. It does not work to approach the younger generation and try to pass something on to them. They ignore us and we try, but we cannot get closer. As Freud said, “If youth knew, if age could.”

Question: Do you think that everyone needs to receive blows? Are we simply unable to avoid them?

Answer: We need to demonstrate this intensively in all books and at schools. In general, we need to teach this to people. Moreover, to people at all ages. Then the entire society will be filled with this approach. We need to make sure that all this is up in the air, then it will become possible to love.
[300673]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/27/22

Related Material:
You Must Know How To Love
What Does Kabbalah Say About Love On Earth?
Earthly Love Is Worthless From The Start

Filed under: Children, Education, Man and Woman, News - No Comments →

And if so, what is beauty

And why do people deify it?

Is it a vessel in which there is emptiness,

Or fire flickering in a vessel? (Nikolai Zabolotsky)

My Response: Yes! This is precise, “fire flickering in a vessel.” The vessel is the light of Hassadim. And in this vessel, the light of Hochma begins to manifest. It is felt from the inside without any explanations.

Comment: Nevertheless, there was a feeling that there is external beauty and there is internal beauty. Love is simpler: I love the other, I just love him.

My Response: Who loves? Whom does he love? This is animalistic love. Of course, I am sorry that I am throwing your love off the pedestal. But in fact, love, if we penetrate deeper into its essence, is a manifestation of the Creator in the created being.

This is what attracts us; this is the source of attraction, the light called Hochma, which manifests for us only if it is clothed in the light of Hassadim.

The light of Hochma is the light of life, which is revealed in the light of good. Otherwise, it cannot be revealed.

Question: And what is good?

Answer: Good is when I wish another to exist even at my expense. When I am ready to give everything in order for everyone to exist. This is good. Then the glow of the Creator manifests in it, and in a way is reflected off it.

This glow of the Creator manifested in the good of a person, in the correct attitude of a person to people, to the world, to nature, is called “beauty.” This is practically what attracts us. But it is, of course, far away.

Question: External beauty is imposed on us, we know that. Fashion is imposed on us. But is this the inner beauty?

Answer: This beauty is built only on good, on bestowing, on self-sacrifice, on love. It has nothing to do with our feelings today. There is no way we can enjoy or suffer in them, that is, with our current understanding. In no way.

Question: Can I physically see the inner beauty? When I look at a person or communicate with him, can I feel or see the inner beauty?

Answer: Maybe you can, when you communicate with him. Gradually. When you reveal how good a person is and how much he can move and give room to the other. Not in a tram somewhere, but just everywhere, in life.

Question: If I feel this, do I still see that outwardly he is, for example, ugly?

Answer: You do not see that. If you have already lived to such a state, you do not see his appearance. For you, he is beautiful precisely with these manifestations of kindness.

Question: Does it mean that I see this fire in a vessel, and I am no longer interested in the vessel, in this shell, in all this externality?

Answer: There must be a vessel, otherwise you will not see the fire. But in principle, you see fire.

Question: Is the most important thing to burst through the outer shell to this fire inside?

Answer: No. If you associate yourself with this vessel, with good, with bestowal, with love, and so on, then you attain its inner fire.

If you can associate yourself with the good of the other person, then you discover to this extent his inner fire.

Question: What if I say that I cannot do that? I will never be able to act like this.

Answer: It does not matter, then from afar in some way, at some distance; there are many dimensions to this.

Question: But do I have the greatness of a person who can live like this?

Answer: Whether you have it or not depends on how you will develop it or not.

Comment: We usually say, “Well, he can. Well, he has money.”

My Response: We do everything to make it pleasant and easy for us. If I set myself up to see the pleasant, easy, and beautiful in others, then I will see it. That is, I am sort of annulling myself before that.
[300547]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/20/22

Related Material:
The Beauty That Has Been Imposed On Us
Slender Figure: Beauty Or Harm To Health?
Taste For Beauty Remains

Filed under: Man and Woman, News - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is your take on gender equality?“

Nature made a specific distinction between genders, placing us into an unequal state. Male and female parts in nature are necessary for birth and procreation. If we try to impose an artificial removal of the difference between genders, destroying their influence and attraction, then we will have no next generation. The push for treating genders completely equally emerges specifically in our era when people have lost their bearings, not knowing where to further progress, and so they come up with ideas that there should be equality in a place where nature created inequality.

We thus need to differentiate between nature-made inequality between genders, and the man-made distortion of nature, which today has taken gender equality too far—something that is not in our hands to change.

If we let ourselves increasingly become influenced with the opinion that removes the differentiation between male and female, we will increasingly bear witness to society’s degradation. The expansion of such a view to the center of public opinion would mean people no longer giving birth. We would lose interest in each other, have no more families, and no next generation.

However, we also need to understand why today we experience more imbalance between the concept of our inner self and our external manifestation. In the past, we did not have such issues on mass scales as we do today, i.e. a woman was a woman and a man was a man. Our times, however, are characterized by overblown egoistic growth. Our ego has developed over millennia through its stages of base desires for food, sex and family, and social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge, and today we have started crossing the threshold where our egoistic approach to life can no longer fulfill us. Today, it thus comes as no surprise that we see such unreal and unreasonable egoistic mutations manifesting.

We need to go through these stages of egoism’s overgrowth in order to realize its failure: that we cannot fulfill ourselves and find happiness with the ego determining our way of life. Eventually, we will reveal the human ego as the sole evil quality in existence, that contrary to other levels of nature, the human ego pits us up against nature in its most basic aspects.

The two distinct genders in nature are essential for the development of society and life in general. There is no superiority or inferiority between the genders—only complementarity. Instead of distorting nature with our man-made definitions, which fail to make us happier and more fulfilled, we would be wiser to promote the ways in which we can complement one another, and by doing so, raise the value of positive human connections: among partners, in society and our relationships across the board. By building positive human connections, developing an atmosphere of mutual consideration, support and encouragement throughout society, we create the conditions to find meaning, happiness and true fulfillment, which is what we ultimately need.

Based on KabTV’s “Close-Up. The Future of Humanity” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 17, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

Filed under: Man and Woman, Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

In the News (BBC): “Some have called it ‘gender madness’, but the Egalia pre-school in Stockholm says its goal is to free children from social expectations based on their sex.

Question: Why does it come to such an absurdity?!

Answer: Because people have lost their bearings, they do not know where to go. It seems to them that equality should be where nature specifically made a distinction between the sexes and put us in an unequal state.

If there were no male and female parts in nature, how could we give birth and procreate?! Destroy the difference between the sexes, destroy the influence, the attraction between them, and we will not have the next generation, we will end life on Earth. This is such a distortion of nature, above which there is nothing!

It will lead to the degradation of society. They will not give birth at all! Under the influence of such public opinion, people will lose interest in each other, there will be no family, no next generation.

Why today is there such an internal imbalance between the inner “I” of a person and his external manifestation? This was not the case before. Before, a woman was a woman and a man was a man. And now various egoistic mutations are taking place, that is, in the end, the most incredible, unreal, unreasonable egoistic forms manifest themselves in the world.

They must show their complete failure. Egoism must reveal itself as the only evil: We are such unreasonable creatures that we go against nature in its most basic part. This is the agony of egoism, it buries itself.
[299682]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. The Future of Humanity” 7/17/11

Related Material:
When There Is No Correct Education
No More Girls And Boys
False Equality

Filed under: Children, Education, Egoism, Man and Woman - No Comments →

Question: A famous singer believes that a woman needs two things for success—a child and character, a man is not required at all. She had a child without a husband because, as she says, men themselves have become uninteresting. Is such a model acceptable from the point of view of Kabbalah?

Answer: What does Kabbalah have to do with it? This is about the world, about nature. We are not above nature, we cannot control it.

What can some singer, even if she is famous, know about human nature, about one’s destiny, about the laws that exist within us?

People want to invent new laws. They do not understand that we are part of nature and exist inside this vast system. If we do not act in accordance with it, then in the end we get a solid blow on the head.

But this is a high price to pay, we should not do it. We interfere with the ecology, we interfere with the family, we interfere with something else, we turn everything over, and then we just suffer. Nature does not change from this, rather we change in a bad way, and then we have to somehow climb out of this again.

We are created to build a family correctly and raise children together. But without a father, a child will not grow up to be complete, and a single woman will not feel complete either.

The thing is that we are creating a society in which it is more beneficial for a woman to be alone since a man does not do household duties, he is not a reliable partner, and does not provide her with what a husband, a man, should provide. Therefore, she comes to this conclusion. In the end, all this is just hormones.

If you talk to biologists, zoologists, and geneticists, they will explain to you the reason for the behavior of women and men from sexual, social, and other points of view.
[296288]
From KabTV’s “Close up. Siamese twins” 11/7/10

Related Material:
Women, Men, And The Mutual Guarantee
Men And Women: The Structure Of Humanity
The Nature Of Men And Women

Filed under: Man and Woman - No Comments →

Question: A new sexual minority, called asexuals, is actively growing in the world. These people voluntarily reject intimate relationships, arguing that they bring a lot of suffering, and in general it is better without them. How can it be that this basic instinct is rejected by us today?

Answer: I have not researched these issues. They are least interesting to me.

However, we must take into account that there are two aspects here. There is a physiological aspect, when the sexual instinct, being a physical instinct, is necessary for a person.

And there is a moral aspect, which is the feeling of closeness. Moreover, a woman feels it more than a man. For her, sex is an expression of connection with a man. For a man, this is more of a physiological need.

We need to separate these things. For a man it is more physiology, less connection. For a woman it is more connection, less physiology.

When this connection causes great suffering, meaning that we are in such a state that our egoism does not tolerate someone else, we push away and reject him or her, we do not want to have a family, and then these physiological functions can be a burden to a person because they impose some obligations on him.

So, we either agree to short meetings to couple and scatter away. Or we cancel sex altogether because it becomes simply unbearable to be indebted to another, to be connected with him. This is our egoism.

Therefore, if we do not correct the ego, then even at the physiological, meaning at the most animalistic level, we also will not be able to experience normal fulfillment and enjoyment.

Question: Why is it that after the hype around some phenomenon, some desire, there always comes a decline?

Answer: In all our desires, after fulfilling them, there immediately is a decline in order for us to prepare ourselves for a new fulfillment. Therefore, Kabbalah is called the science of reception, fulfillment. It teaches how to move toward more and more incessant fulfillments.

They are billions of times stronger than any sexual pleasure, which is the greatest of all human pleasures in our world.
[298370]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Pole Inversion” 5/15/11

Related Material:
The Greatest Pleasure
When Desires Disappear
Close To The Point Of Choice

Filed under: Man and Woman - No Comments →