New Life 444 – Hanukkah: The Maccabean War Against The Greeks
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

What does Hanukkah symbolize? What is the war that took place between the Maccabees and the Greeks and how is it related to the goal of the creation and to the role that the nation of Israel has to fulfill?

Hanukkah symbolizes a person’s first spiritual ascent.

The Greek’s domination is a shell, Klipa, an evil force that limits our consciousness so that we will not feel the Creator. The Greeks did not demand a change in our corporeal life; they wanted to control our spirit. The Greeks objected to our worship of our God according to which, through love of others, a person connects to the Creator.

The Maccabean war was an ideological war about the definition of who and what the upper force is. The main war was between the nation of Israel, between the Maccabees and the Hellenists. The nation of Israel exists only because it has a spiritual root. If we are not connected, there is no nation of Israel.

Yashar-El means that through the love and connection between us we reach a greater love, which is the upper force. We build a shelter by the love between us that will be able to absorb the upper force that is absolute love and bestowal.

Idolatry exists even today. We worship the “God of science,” for example.

Hanukkah symbolizes our return to our internal war, to connecting to others and to discovering the upper force between us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 444 –  Hanukkah: The Maccabean War Against The Greeks,” 10/7/14

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New Life #334 – The Wisdom Of Relationships
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

We live in a world that is highly connected but with a lot of inequality and we suffer from conflicts in relationships. How can we learn to establish connection and good communication between us?

In the past, people were categorized into classes, and relations were clear and simple. Today, all the boundaries have been breached, the differences between people are disintegrating. Interdependence has been created between everyone. In the end we will have to be like brothers. But until then, all relationships will be confusing.

The best means to develop correct relationships is discussions in connection workshops In connection workshops we discuss the correct relations between people, we try to be equals, to be close to each other. The attitude of equality and mutual acceptance is the basis of all good relations between us. In the connection workshop, a person acquires integral eyeglasses and through them he sees his life in a new light.

Today a social educational system should be established that will clarify the need for us to connect. On the one hand, the world has become one global village, everyone depending on each other, and on the other hand, great hatred is revealed.

In the state of interdependence, we must learn to consider others, to pass from narrow egoism to mutual acceptance.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #334 – Me and the society: The wisdom of Relationships,” 4/1/14

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New Life #333 – Revolution In Relationships
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

How does it happen that there is abundance in the world and with this revolutions in all areas of life, how is this connected to relationships between people, and can they be avoided?

The sign that we are facing the next revolution are the multivariate crises in all realms of life. The next revolution will be unique because technology will make it possible for us to engage with connection. A revolution in relationships is ahead for us: on Earth there is great abundance, we only lack good relationships.

Today people build themselves up through ruining others, even though all of us depend on each other. I have an urge to harm you, even though I know it will be bad for me. As it is among couples.

When we have digested well that this is our situation, it will be a pre-revolutionary situation. The next revolution, the revolution of relationships, must happen. This is simply because there is no choice. This will be an educational revolution in the whole society. The revolution will bring one thing with it: an improvement of relationships between people, love and mutuality.

When we begin to feel others as our children, we will want to make things better for them. When we become a completely new humanity, all of us as a single person, the perception of reality will be upgraded. We will achieve a revolution in relationships either as a result of much suffering or through the development of consciousness while there is still time. If everyone begins to talk about this with all the people around them, this will advance us greatly.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #333 – A Revolution In Relationships,” 3/30/14

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New Life #332 – Leadership And Government: What Will The Next Revolution Be?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Revolutions usually involve wars and bloodshed. How will the next revolution be different from its predecessors, how will it change society, and what will the role of education be in the process?

An ideal life is possible only when everybody is content, feels equal to one another, like in a family. But human nature is egoistic and it always wants to be better than the others. How can we use human nature for the better with clean competition, for the benefit of society as a whole? We need education dedicated to what is most honorable in our eyes would be the one who contributes most to society; education for connection.

Russia tried to educate the population, saying that whatever was in the best interests of the society would benefit the person as well, but the time was not ripe for it. They lacked the recognition that we have today, that capitalism does not make us happy. Material abundance and advanced technology are essential preconditions for a social revolution. Capitalism had to bring us to a state as in Europe today: a multi-faceted crisis.

The next social form can begin only in a society of abundance, where there is not equitable distribution. Today there is material abundance, but no happiness. Each person is an individualist, closed within himself.

Another prerequisite is the acknowledgement of the evil in the present situation. If we don’t connect, we will fall into an abyss. We must set a new education that will open warm relationships between people’s hearts. When we begin to feel interdependence on each other, we will understand there is no alternative but to build good relations between us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #332 – Leadership And Government: What Will The Next Revolution Be?” 3/30/14

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New Life #381 – The Good Life Channel: All Of Us Are Actors
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Every person plays many different characters in his or her life. How can you be an “educated actor” and how is it possible to be the right actor in the play of life and take the correct role in the world?

We don’t know who we truly are. From the moment we were born, we copy the behaviors of our environment.

Today we need to change fundamentally, but there is nobody to take an example from. We need to relate to everyone as a single family. We have no choice but to be actors and start performing in the play of life.

Each one is a wild man inside but plays the same corrected person in his relationship with others. It is up to us to open the “Theatrical University of New Life” to learn psychology and acting.

Act One: All the actors behave well toward others. Act Two: We learn to respond to the negative attitude that is aroused in us from others. Act Three: We achieve the perfected image of each one and of all of us together. This is mutual bestowal. All of life is a stage, and that is how we realize life. All of us are heroes and nobody disturbs another.

A good actor is an actor who achieves perfection, completion, and love toward everyone.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #381 – The Good Life Channel: All Of Us Are Actors,” 5/22/14

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New Life 402 –The Root Of The Problem Of Suicide In Our Time
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

What leads a person to think about suicide, in what state is he in before taking this step, and in what way is it possible to get him out of this emotional state?

The Root of Suicide

Some of the people who are going to commit suicide see all other people as unfortunate. We must find a solution because there is growing emptiness, depression, and despair, and finally suicide. There are those who don’t find any reason for a life like ours, maintaining our body and our descendants until we die.

Existential questions arise in a person depending on his level of development. They distinguish the animal from the human.
A person who is going to commit suicide feels like his life is to no avail and he has no reason to live. Before committing suicide, a person suffers, he lacks any possibility of some kind of benefit for himself or others. The suicidal person feels that everyone is drugging themselves in order to carry on in life, and he is already disgusted by this.

Someone who grasps the meaning of life can open the eyes of a person who has suicidal tendencies. The meaning of life is to strive toward a new life during our lives. Break through from darkness to the Light.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 402 – The Root Of The Problem Of Suicide In Our Time,” 6/12/14

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New Life 401 – Suicide
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

How does a Kabbalist relate to the phenomenon of suicide? How can it be prevented with the help of learning about the purpose of life, and what social inquiry does the phenomenon lead us to?

We can see the phenomenon of suicide even among animals. This indicates that this phenomenon is embedded in nature. There have always been suicides. People do not consider their corporeal life as the most important thing. Going out to war endangers a person’s life and there is also the death penalty.

On the one hand, we spend a lot of money on saving people’s lives and, on the other hand, on wars and killing. A person who commits suicide calculates matters and sees that his life isn’t worth the effort of preserving it.

It is possible to heal the inclination to commit suicide as well as depression and despair. If a creature from another planet studied our life today, he might not find a justification for living it. Suicide is a call for us to examine our life: why are people brought to depression and despair? Our life probably has another purpose, a more internal purpose, than just living the way we do.

It cannot be that nature has developed us for no real purpose. We have to find that purpose. Our sages said that a man would be better off if he weren’t created, but since he was created, he has to study the reason for which he was created. The purpose of life is to reach “love thy friend as thyself.”

When a person fulfills this rule, he breaks through to eternity. Suicide is a result of the lack of understanding of the purpose of life and of what a person can attain during one’s lifetime. The rate of suicide is growing because the ego is growing, requiring more strongly inside us to fulfill life, but it doesn’t happen… the younger generation looks at us as dinosaurs, “what are you living for…?” All the virtual connections and the advanced technology only intensify their feeling of emptiness and despair.

The wisdom of connection brings people to a special connection between them, a connection in which they discover an enlightened upper world.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 401 – Suicide,” 6/12/16

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New Life 791 – A New Era In America
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The current global trend must change. We must learn to be connected, round, and similar to nature.

• The American public can be divided into two: the general US and residents of the major cities, who have different values and different world views.
• Trump is opposed to the world view which was dominant in America in the last years and wants to bring about a change.
• The issue of the refugees and the immigrants requires treatment and Trump will have to cleanse the US of the illegal immigrants and thus also help Europe.
• If the US does the right thing, it will receive Russia’s and China’s support because the future of the world is about connection.
• It is most important to start with general social education teaching mutual acceptance and living in connection. People today are losing the taste of life and the connection will give them a new life.
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  From KabTV’s “New Life 791 – A New Era In America,“ 11/10/16

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New Life 789 – The Senses And The Feeling Of Life
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

We don’t know what is outside of us, but only what we perceive with our senses.

• A person is not able to exist without receiving information from the environment; he is a part of it, he receives and emits information.
• As a part of evolution, our desire to receive developed five senses to serve it. If a person would cut all of his senses off from absorbing information, within a few minutes he would collapse and become disconnected from life.
• The sense of touch is the most basic sense, without the sense of touch a person stops feeling his existence. When the tactile sense ceases to function, it stops a person’s life.
• Even imagination is only a result of the senses.
• The general sense is the desire to receive, to enjoy, and the senses are like its branches, its limbs.
• It is also possible to develop a spiritual existence through a desire to bestow. This desire to bestow is a spiritual concept that we don’t understand; it is possible to develop it through the wisdom of Kabbalah.
• When the desire to bestow is developed, five spiritual senses are developed within it: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut.
• The difference between the various senses is in the kind of waves they absorb.
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  From KabTV’s “New Life 789 – The Senses And The Feeling Of Life,” 11/8/16

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New Life 788 – The Five Senses
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Everything in nature is divided into five, that is the nature of creation.

Main topics of the program:

• Each one of the five senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—are composed of five subsystems.
• There are people whose range of the senses is much greater than that of others.
• The sense of touch consists of impressions from the environment that are not absorbed through the other four senses.
• The sense of sight made the development of reading and writing, the transfer of information, possible.
• The function of the senses is to make it possible for a person to be in connection with the environment and to portray within us an internal picture of reality.
• There is a lot of information that is not perceived through our senses. We don’t absorb the complete reality, only a part of it.
• To develop the ability to absorb, we must study the wisdom of Kabbalah.
• Plants feel if a person next to them is good or bad.
• The desire to receive pleasure and enjoyment, the desire for pleasure, which is the substance of creation, developed the senses to serve it.
• A desire is a lack. If I lack something, a desire for it develops within me.
• People, like animals, have five senses because they are a part of the animate world, and plants are on a lower level of development.
• Beyond the corporeal desires of the animate level—nourishment, sex, and family—humans have a desire for wealth, respect, and knowledge.
• The degree of sensitivity of our senses depends on our needs. Animals feel more than us because they have to hunt for their nourishment.
• We are about to acquire one additional sense that is fundamentally different than the rest of the senses. It is called the “sense of bestowal,” love, whose meaning is going out of oneself.
• The desire to receive will be replaced by the desire to bestow, to give, to love, which will develop five new senses in us.
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  From KabTV’s “New Life 788 – The Five Senses,” 11/8/16

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