In the News (Stanford Business): “A Global Look at the Connections Between Happiness, Income, and Meaning”

“Wealthy people may be happier. But a new study finds that money can’t buy a sense of purpose.

“‘Humans think happiness is this one thing: You’re either happy or you’re not,’ Jennifer Aaker says. Of course, it’s not so simple: New research conducted by Aaker and her colleagues not only challenges the assumption that happiness is binary but also finds that the relationship between happiness and our sense of meaning can change depending on our financial situation.

“‘This is particularly interesting because research has shown when people get wealthier, they experience greater happiness,’ explains Aaker, a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business who has extensively studied happiness, meaning, and money. ‘But this research suggests that the nature of happiness also shifts based on income.’

“In a forthcoming study…, Aaker and her coauthors find that meaning is a stronger predictor of happiness for people with low incomes than those with greater financial resources. In other words, people with more money may be happier, but people with less money view happiness as tied to a sense of meaning — the belief that their life has purpose, value, and direction.”

Comment: Money appears to buy a person and extinguish the search for the meaning of life. 

My Response: It clogs him.

Question: So we quite possibly will fall for money despite the fact that we have found a high meaning of life?

Answer: Money starts to twist you: Do this, do that, and just like that you’re gone.

Comment: Explain to us the system, the mechanism of this. I have found the meaning of life and I am happy that I have found meaning in life. Then abruptly such a force appears, which is called money, business, politics, and suddenly…

My Response: It’s the ability to create with the help of politics, money, power, or whatever. And you start participating in it and it swallows you up. Nothing can be done.

Question: Even in our case, there are a lot of questions here. Guys come and they seem to be completely immersed, but politics or business suddenly appear and it takes them away. We saw them burning with desire for the goal, but alas!

Why is this done from above? After all, the Creator directed humans to search for the meaning of life, and then found the meaning of life. Why is the Creator taking a person away?

Answer: He takes them away in order for a person to realize, once again by going through one’s desires, sufferings, goals, and opportunities to once again make a choice.

Question: Which means, a person has to make a round once again and it is unknown whether he or she will return in this life or in another one? Is this done intentionally by the Creator?

Answer: Of course, yes. Well, what will you do? It will be better next time.

Question: And what is cleaned up at the same time? What does this person have to clean up during this period?

Answer: The determination to find meaning and not sell this meaning for dollars, for a position, or for something like that.

Question: A person can be retained by saying, “Well, what are you doing?! Is it possible to change the meaning of life for this?!”

Answer: It depends on his current condition. But in fact, no, not seriously.

Question: Even based on your experience, do you think something could buy you when you came to your teacher hot and burning?

Answer: Nothing.

Question: Is this determined by all the previous sufferings that you went through?

Answer: This is the point in the heart that requires only one thing—the meaning of life. And it can’t accept the meaning as being in some government structure, in wealth, in a house in Hawaii or something else.

None of it is a draw. But this is because a person is created this way and not because he is so great, big, or special. So it’s just luck.

Comment: Your answer regarding an opportunity to create was unexpected. So with money, business, a person has a thought: “Now I will create.”

My Response: Yes, this is about creativity! But of course! If I can travel the world, buy, and sell. I’m not interested in wealth; I’m interested in the process.

Question: And what about politicians?

Answer: The politician even more so.

Question: Let’s say that in our case you see to a smaller extent that you can really create? Or not?

Answer: In our case, everything is combined together because we are spreading the method of correcting the world. And it turns out that without this, the world will definitely not be able to see where it will roll. So we are preparing a methodology for the proper development for it.

Question: So this should be approached as a real and high form of creativity?

Answer: Yes, real and the highest creativity when you are just preparing a methodology for the world.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/7/22

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Comment: Until a person overcomes financial dependence on material work, it is very difficult for him to adjust to spiritual work. He can agree with you from afar: “Yes, you are saying an interesting thing, but I have a salary and I feel very good.”

My Response: I do not think that the financial channel should be closed. A person will have everything. Why not? I see that these guys who run around and break windows in the suburbs of London, Madrid, and Paris. They do not look like they are weakened from lack of food. All of them have mobile phones sticking out of their pockets.

Where do you see that this person is suffering from hunger? This is a hunger of a completely different type, an informational one. A person is lost. He does not know why he exists. He wants to know the meaning of life!

When he had a job, he had everything: a family, a house, a car, a vacation. He lived like an animal in a stall. He led a normal existence and looked at the world and saw I am like everyone else. In accordance with this, there was the appropriate culture, propaganda, brainwashing, and everything else.

And suddenly everything turned around with no school, lack of clarity as to what kind of work there is, no one getting married or starting a family. That is, everything turned toward an unclear direction.

Past motives: study, work, career achievement, money, home, family, children, car, retirement, health care—everything stopped working. The inner desires of a person have changed: “Now you will not buy me with this.” The desire disappears. “I will work, do something, out of necessity. I do not want to rush somewhere, fight to be an assistant professor or a successful person.”

These ideals are slowly fading away.

This is on the one hand. On the other hand, you cannot give people jobs anyway! You cannot think of anything for them!

Suppose, with the help of the media, you will specifically incite a movement in them toward universities, knowledge, specialization, and so on! And then what?

They will demand: “Give me a job!” So, it is better to calm them down somehow. Therefore, everything is lost. We are moving toward the fact that people will be unemployed, but they will not be considered as such since this will become a normal state.

A person moves into another area of work, the spiritual one. This work is in connection with each other, constant learning, communication, creation of a single human mass, a single community, and mutual guarantee. A person will be engaged in this.

Feeding yourself will not be a problem! Today 3% of Americans feed the whole of America and half of the rest of the world. If they were not paid extra for producing less, they would cover everyone with their agricultural goods. So, everything is completely different from what we think!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. If You Lost Your Job” 3/13/14

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In recent years, new technologies in medicine have been developed that make it possible to extend human life to limits that previously seemed to be fantasy. But is there any point in extending life to 200 years?

A thousand years ago, people lived for 20 years and this was considered normal; today life expectancy is already approaching 100 years and this is considered normal. The question is how to fill this life so that it will not be filled only with trips to the doctor.

First of all we need to find out what benefits this brings to humanity so as not just to prolong human life. After all, we see increasing the number of years a person lives does not change one’s views on life. Over several centuries, life expectancy has increased many times, but nothing, in fact, has changed. Egoism does not change. The question is, what to live for—for the benefit of humanity or for yourself? What does a person live for, and is it worth prolonging such a life?

If we needed the long life provided by modern artificial organ transplant technologies, then nature would have given it to us.

For how many years is it worth living? For as many as a person can really benefit himself and others. If the meaning of a person’s life is to achieve the purpose of his existence, to reveal the upper force, and thereby rise to the highest level of human function, then it is really worth the effort to prolong life. But without an upper purpose, why prolong life if half the time a person will suffer from medications and operations and never leave the doctor’s office?

First of all, let’s try to use the allotted years of our lives correctly, in order to find out what we live for, and if we succeed, we need to tell others about it. There is no greater achievement in life than to find the reason for life, its purpose, and to help others reach the same.

The purpose of life is to understand the formula of life, and in accord with it, become perfect in our actions and justify and fully agree with the force of creation, the Creator, and humanity. After all, this means that you do not curse the Creator and are in solidarity with His creation. You understand creation, what happens in it, your life within it, how it embraces you, and how it acts.

Agreement with creation reveals all our sensations, and we begin to feel it directly, as if we were skinned. To attain the essence of creation, to attain the Creator, and to attain the root of creation and its purpose means to experience the entire creation directly, as if you exist inside this one force with naked perception.

We achieve all this through love for the created beings, because when we come to the feeling of the Creator, we feel that we are connected with all created beings.
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From KabTV’s “Conversation with Journalists” 8/9/22

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I was the absolute master of my old robe. I have become the slave of my new one (“Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown, or A warning to those who have more taste than fortune,” Denis Diderot).

Question: The philosopher Diderot spent almost his entire life in poverty and did not care much about material wealth, but he suddenly received a red robe as a gift. It was a beautiful red, satin robe! Soon after, he noticed that his chair was old and made of straw; therefore, he changed it to a beautiful, leather chair. Suddenly, he also spotted that his desk was shabby. So naturally, he replaced it with a large, gorgeous table. Not long after Diderot fell into debt.

Do we really have to live our lives in old robes to understand it?

Answer: Generally speaking, yes. And what is wrong with living your life as is, not investing all your energy into external things? Why would you care for them?

If we are talking about children or other living creatures, even kittens or other animals, that is a very different story. But if it is furniture or something material…

Comment: But man wants to dress well. It is in his nature.

My Response: If external circumstances do not force him, then he can by the virtue of his internal circumstances continue living as he were.

Question: In an old robe?

Answer: Of course.

Comment: Then there is no progress. Look, everything around us is about buying a new house, dressing well, keeping up with styles.

My Response: You need everything to comfortably pursue your goals while making sure you do not become a slave to your possessions or to the times we live in—a slave to your environment.

And all our free time should be devoted to “our beloved selves.”

Question: So, is this how we should live?

Answer: Yes. Why should I work for a robe, or a desk, or anything like that?

Comment: You are saying: do not waste your life, stay in your old robe, and take care of yourself.

My Response: Yes.

Question: What do you mean when you say: “Take care of yourself?”

Answer: Do what you want. Do what you deem important. Meaning, what you think is important and not what your peers think.

Question: So, your advice is to stop?

Answer: Instead of stopping, never even get into such traps. Do not fall for it.

Question: No matter how much I crave these things internally, right?

Answer: It should be a goal of the basic human developmental stage, that is, the animate level in a person not to follow any other goals, habits, and so on. Live for yourself! Although it appears to be egoistic. And so you will live for others: for a woodworker, for a carpenter, for a fashion designer, and so on.

Question: You just gave a very egoistic formula: live for yourself and not for others.

Answer: Choose a goal! And live for it. People must validate their path, direct and shape it in a way not to harm anyone, including themselves. That is about it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/27/22

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Comment: The environment influences a person, builds him up. But this does not always happen. For example, soccer used to be very popular and still is. A lot of people are fans of this sport. However, among the fans there are those who seem to be present at the matches, root for it, immerse themselves in this environment, but remain unaffected.

Similarly, people engaged in Kabbalah should immerse themselves in a certain state, but they are perhaps not ready for this at all?

My Response: Football is one thing, but striving for the goal of creation is quite another since every person must move toward it because his personal life and everything connected to it depends on it.

The fact is that everything that happens to us is necessary precisely in order for us to take at least some small step toward the goal of creation on our own, like a child who is learning to walk. A small step for a person is a big step for all mankind.

Even if one person takes a small step toward the goal of creation, toward its realization, it resonates throughout humanity because we are all integrally interconnected. Therefore, there is a big difference in whether I am interested in soccer or in implementing a program that depends on me.

Take any person, whoever he may be, even if he only participates in it mentally or by a small action somewhere, it is recorded in his spiritual genes, it affects him, the whole of humanity, and the whole picture of the world revealed in the next moment because everyone who accepts a reasonable, conscious participation in it spiritually improves the overall situation, and it becomes much easier for everyone.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Impact of Football on a Person” 2/18/11

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Question: A doctor writes to you. “Recently I have been observing that young people are under extreme stress. The demand for antidepressants is growing rapidly. The familiar world is collapsing for them. They lose their jobs, a quiet, stable life, it is unclear what will happen tomorrow.

I’m a doctor, and I see that we can’t offer them anything other than medication. All different training sessions are ceasing to work. My question to you, dear Michael Laitman: Where can they get a point of support? Where should they advance next?”

Answer: About 100 to 200 years ago people were not so disconnected from the earth: this is my house, these are my parents, and this is my village, town, or whatever. There is a friend of mine here whom I will marry, and my children will grow up here, and so on. In general, everything was obvious, clear, and simple.

Basically, animal life. But it did not give a person such uncertainty, huge uncertainty in everything.

Today, a person is inflated from the inside with questions about the universe, about life, about his own psychology and behavior. It’s on a mental level.

On a psychological level, he feels that the whole world is in some kind of incomprehensible state. The confusion is so internal for everyone: “Where to?! What?! Why?! For what?!” Nothing is known! This is a time that forces us to understand the overall picture of the world, the system of the world. It didn’t exist before. And today it does.

What will we do? Until we know the whole picture of the world and figure it out in such a way as to connect with it, understand it, perhaps even manage it at least to some extent, nothing will happen. It’s easy to forget and fall asleep. That’s why many people run away to drugs and other things.

Comment: That is, suppression by antidepressants.

My Response: Even the suppression by work. I don’t want to know anything. I have a house, a store, and a job. I go to the store from work, go home from the store, eat, go back to the computer, do something there, and go on vacation.

Happy is the person who finds some hobby, builds something in the computer or physically. That’s it. I don’t want to know anything else! There is nothing else left. It will really be an escape from the prison of our world.

This is such a natural antidepressant that many people use. Or they get into all sorts of beautiful or ugly hobbies. Nothing else can be offered to a person.

And all this is escape, absolutely everything! Up to the point that one goes for theft, for murder, goes for anything, sports, all this is just an escape. You name it. Great compositions, anything else, just an escape from the same question: “Why?” When there is no answer, then any other answer, if I consider it important, saves me.

Question: You said, “Why?” Why do I live? Why all this? It is not worth asking this question. It will drive you completely insane.

Answer: Of course. It chases us, hits us from behind every time until we come to our senses. This is what Baal HaSulam writes in the “Preface to The Book of Zohar.”

Question: Should we stop and take this question on ourselves?

Answer: We have to figure it out because it is not for nothing that it arises in every person and does not allow us to do anything else. Either we forget ourselves or do something, compile some herbarium, or we have to raise this issue and solve it.

Question: Will we ever dare to do this? It’s already a little scary to ask the question: “Why? What for? Why?” about everything.

Answer: It is very good. Then every minute of a person’s life will be filled with a higher meaning. Let’s try.
[299600]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/28/22

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Comment: Today there is only a very thin layer of people who feel, understand, and think about the meaning of life.

My Response: And the rest do not desire to do this and instead exist automatically. Ninety percent of people on earth do not know why and how they live at all and they just feed and reproduce offsprings. Only a small portion of people live with questions about the meaning of life and understand the why, how, and what in regards to the nature of their existence. There are very few of them, a couple of million on Earth.

But everyone should be corrected because we represent a huge single body in which there is flesh, various organs, and a small brain, and in the brain resides a small ball that controls everything, a kind of microprocessor. There is nothing else. Everything else is the body as subordinate to it.

That’s how everyone else is. They should just realize that there is no other way and that they need to listen to this little brain: “I want to listen to it, I have to! I want to cling to it, join it, grab hold of it, and thus ensure a good life for myself.” That is all. They are at such an animal level that they need no more than that.

And only the ones that can realize, understand, and absorb the whole picture of creation and all its greatness, scheme, and system are the conduits of light into our world for all the less fortunate people.

These special ones do not live for themselves, but for the whole of humanity. And the whole of humanity exists for each other through the reception of light from above from a small brain system that enables us to live mutually harmoniously even without understanding or realizing all the enormous work that is being done in connection between everyone—in one common soul.

As a result, we will all come to complete correction and will gradually rise to the next degree of the feeling of the universe.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Branch of Sakura” 5/15/11

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Comment: In an experiment, participants were allocated a virtual budget and asked to decide how much money they were willing to donate to charity. They were told they could keep any leftover amount not donated. Participants with strong empathy and sympathy traits were naturally more altruistic, so they gave more.

Afterward, the participants were subjected to stress. And right after, they were asked to decide once again how much money they were willing to give to charity. Interestingly, people with low empathy and low sympathy did not change, whatever sum they gave before stayed the same. But those who could empathize significantly reduced the amount.

My Response: Yes. If I have experienced stress, I know what it is like, so I have to protect myself against the stress I have been through.

Question: And the result is to think less about others?

Answer: Yes, it is a natural reaction of the body.

Question: So, if under stress we will not be able to help others anymore? Let’s say I am stressed, but I try not to think about myself and to keep thinking about others.

Answer: If it is real stress, then no.

Question: But you always call for a state where I can come out of myself and think of others. Is this the transition to a different state of being?

Answer: To do this, you need to feel the meaning of life. For what sake we do this. Not just to help another. To help someone else is a very weak motivation.

Question: If I have an inclination to be such a corporeal altruist, to help others, then in an extremely stressful situation will I fail the test?

Answer: Of course! We are human. What do you want from people?

Question: So I won’t help Africa, the poor, or the unfortunate; I will not help anyone. Will I hold tight to my money?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So humanity is not going to advance with all these things?

Answer: No, not on its own.

Question: But how can I rise above it so that I can remain a man with a capital “M” even in a stressful situation?

Answer: To do this, we need to educate people. To do this, we must show the possibility of achieving something thanks to the fact that one neglects his personal interests, his personal wealth, his peace of mind, and can consciously reduce them.

Question: And give the rest to others?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And this must permeate into one’s understanding of the purpose of life?

Answer: This is not the goal of life, but the means.

Question: And what should the purpose of life be in this case for one to become such a person?

Answer: You must put your life on the scale of me or everyone else. Something has to outweigh. That is what the scale is there for.

Question: I have this scale: for my own sake or for others. Will this decision bring me closer to the goal?

Answer: Yes, one small step. And then another and another.

Question: So you are saying this scale is there all the way to the goal?

Answer: All the way to the goal and all the time, every time it becomes more difficult to decide what I can give. It is getting harder to walk on the right side.

Question: So, all the way to the goal one is on this scale—every step?

Answer: That is why it is an ascent.

Question: What is this goal?

Answer: The goal is complete bestowal and love, the quality of the Creator in which you merge with Him.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/21/22

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The question about the purpose of life begins to subconsciously awaken in us even though a person does not ask himself openly. He is constantly trying to bury this question so it would not pop up like a snake. And what is left for the person to do? He is fighting against ecological violations, for gays’ rights, for transsexuals’ rights, for other things.

Yet, if we are to show a person that there is a goal given to us from above rather than being invented by us and that it is coming from the upper force rather than from our low egoism, then it will be possible to lead people in a completely different direction—toward unity instead of division.

Egoism is a narrow space and it cannot embrace the whole world. Then what is it against and what is it for? It has to make itself concrete in a certain framework; it is us and that is all.

Therefore, we are very quickly moving toward either good or bad things in the world. Countries will start to unite between themselves, these against those, and those against these and so forth. It will be a big mess.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Energy around us” 10/20/09

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Comment: According to some statistics i saw, around 30,000 Americans, 25,000 Japanese and 70,000 Russians commit suicide every year and some sociologists say these numbers are understated by nearly half.

My Response: This is a consequence of the breakage of our human society.

The essence of man is the desire to enjoy. We want all the best for ourselves, to be warm, comfortable, safe, happy, but instead we constantly face negative feelings.

A person is brought to such a state where he is forced to ask: “What is the meaning of my life? Why do I need it? In fact, there is nothing to look forward to. I am awaiting cataclysms every day and reassuring myself that not only I but everyone will be affected doesn’t in fact make it better.”

A person can be morally and logically brought to a state where he wants to take his own life here and now. Why suffer?

If the whole of life consists of somehow maintaining my existence that constantly brings me pain and suffering, then only the instinct of self-preservation keeps me from not putting an end to it. But this instinct is not that strong. It can be easily neutralized and we see this happening. Largely, it depends on society.

For example, the Japanese have long held death in high esteem. They built it almost into a cult. Americans have another problem—drugs.

Comment: Today, the US is one of the global leaders in the growth rate of depression.

My Response: Naturally, because they are the most developed. This is the future of all mankind. But there is a way out of this and it is a very simple one.

Kabbalah says that people will nearly reach a state of looking forward to death. In this very state will the breaking point occur.
They will begin to realize that they have brought themselves out of balance with nature with their inner qualities and with how they relate to each other, that they must do something about it: “Instead of nature, we are to blame for this. We can’t expect any changes from it. We have acted in a way that caused it to become hostile toward us. This must be radically changed.”

Then they will reveal the methodology of changing themselves, achieving balance, happiness, and harmony; moreover, not only harmony at our level, but at the same time and through the merging of two worlds, the spiritual and ours, people will begin to feel immortal.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Pole Inversion” 5/15/11

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