Comment: One of your videos was about children turning into stars and becoming leaders. How they’re raised on stage and become the best at singing or dancing. In this clip you spoke about love, about coming closer together, and what competition should really be.

Then we received this letter to you: “Healthy competition leads to success, leadership, and good outcomes. Being a laggard is never a good thing. Love, closeness, and empathy are false ideals. I want to be better, so I shall be; I want to be more successful, so I will. Winning gives confidence in oneself, in life, and leads to further success.

I doubt that Mr. Laitman would have turned out the way he did if he had no leadership skills or inclination to be a winner. Stop pretending! Only a weed grows by itself. We have to grow a harvest and overpower the weed. Only through leadership, only by winning do we succeed: it’s survival of the fittest.”

My Response: What he says is true! But this is all good among the weeds. While a man in the end has to come out a winner over himself, not over others. He has to see his inner self, and the way he should act in contrast to it on the outside. This is what I mean when I say this, I’m not referring to people as weeds.

Question: What about the competitiveness between children about who has the best voice or who is the best dancer?

Answer: In the end, there’s nothing good about it. Nothing! You’re training a child to be better, higher, and stronger, to win and rejoice in the victory. However, in the end you realize that this is not what makes one a winner in life.

Question: So they don’t grow up to be leaders?

Answer: No. Only an individual victory over oneself, this is where one should be a winner.

Question: In other words, the modern world is built on these concepts, do you reject it?

Answer: That’s for sure. I think that everyone who hears me, who reads what I write, understands that I accept the modern world the way it is in order to change it.
[278999]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/21/21

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Question: There is something that unites all nations—fairy tales. It is part of everyone’s life. We enter life listening to fairy tales. Some kind of morality is meant to pass on to us through them, so that it is understandable to children. Then we grow up and continue to tell fairy tales, but we call them stories, fables, and so on. Sages also write allegorically and convey a lot through a fairy tale.

What is in the fairy tale?

Answer: Everything! Absolutely everything. There is a woodcutter, a princess, a king, a puss in boots, a pumpkin on wheels, whatever you want. Horses moving their hooves nervously, and all that sort of thing. An unhappy prince who is looking for his princess. Either he is like a frog or she is trapped somewhere in a high tower. Whatever you want, everything is possible. A fairy tale can do anything! And moreover, it manifests itself in a very open, as if naked form.

That is, they love, they want to be together. Someone does not help, someone is against it. Everything is open. That’s what is good about the fairy tale. In our world, a lot of adults enjoy watching real fairy tales. Although they know that these are fairy tales.

Question: Why? Is it an escape from reality?

Answer: This is more real than our life actually.

Question: What is the reality of the fairy tale?

Answer: Justice is rewarded, loyalty is rewarded. But all this has to go through a lot of twists and turns, all sorts of nooks and crannies, mazes of our egoism.

Question: So the fairy tale actually tells about what will really happen? That good will triumph over evil?

Answer: Absolutely. Otherwise, nothing would have started. All fairy tales must have a good ending, because it is already set initially.

Question: And fairy tales with a bad ending, what about them?

Answer: There is no such thing. It means they are not finished.

A fairy tale is written from the end. But the good ending should be in that there is a beginning, a denouement, a climax. In general, absolutely everything and always a good ending. It was designed from the very beginning.

My conclusion is this: a fairy tale should start from the beginning. Then there should be some kind of demonstration process; educational, accusatory, and so on. The heroes have to diverge and be unhappy with what is happening, this one wants to kill and it does not work, this one wants to escape but can’t, they want to get married, it’s not working, and so on.

That is, in all this they cannot find ties between them, and who writes that fairy tale? The Creator! That’s when they gradually despair of solutions, each in their own way: ”What to do?” Then they begin to understand that they are under an upper will, and then everything begins to work out for them, to come together. And it turns out that this upper will, the upper force, leads them to the right decision, to a good end. And good triumphs.

Question: Were you really talking about our time just now?

Answer: It is precisely in our time that this upper force begins to manifest itself in various states, when humanity has no other answer to the questions than to say that it is the upper force

Comment: And this unkind fairy tale, as it seems to humanity, begins to move.

My Response: And then it will be kind! Because it points you to the ultimate solution—the one who conceived it, started developing it and doing it, and now has to finish it.

Question: And we are led to love, to happiness?

Answer: Yes!
[278873]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/21/21

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Question: Iceland is considered one of the safest countries in the world. You were there and you saw that the murder rate there is lower than in most other countries. People do not lock their cars, and this is especially true in rural areas. People there know each other.

Perhaps we should take an example from such countries and try to adopt their way of life?

Answer: No, you cannot do that because Iceland is an island. They live only by raising birds, sheep, etc. and have no massive industry.

Tourism there is quite developed and they have the right conditions for that. We cannot compare ourselves to them. It is impossible to live according to their way of life. What is more, these are people with a totally different state of mind.

You can see a line that is half a mile long to buy bread, and I am not exaggerating. A person there can stand in line for half an hour and even more.

Question: Doesn’t he get angry about that?

Answer: No, he waits patiently

Question: How can that be?

Answer: It is because they are not connected to the rest of humanity. It makes no difference to them that they have so many tourists and all means of communication. In spirit, they are so…. non-European. The distance from one house to another there is several kilometers.

Question: But is it possible to live this way and be happy? To be disconnected from each other and live?

Answer: But we cannot. It is impossible for all the people in the world to live this way. Who would want that today? You need to have a special character in order to live like that.

In Iceland, the land itself is such that it does not make people sociable. It is because it is all made of rocks! Only rocks.

Question: What is the future of humanity?

Answer: The future of humanity is unity, of course. Nature will give us such conditions that will force us to unite. But people in Iceland will be the last to feel the desire to unite.

Question: Does it bother you? Doesn’t it bother you that they are happy and satisfied with life and have no need to unite?

Answer: No. I wish people joy.

Kabbalah is opening to the world that now evolution is reaching a dead end. Then Kabbalah says: “That’s it, it is my turn now.”

Question: And you are saying that they will be last in line?

Answer: Yes. And they will stand. A kilometer long line—they will stand.
[243619]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/4/18

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Comment: Larry King, the legendary presenter and television icon, has died at the age of 87. He conducted over 40,000 interviews and was included in The Guinness Book of World Records. In an era when emotional leaders were quick to ask questions, interrupt others, he mostly listened. He asked the question, “Why? What do you think,” and he listened.

This made him stand out from all. Among his interlocutors were all the U.S. Presidents, starting with Nixon, and also Margaret Thatcher, Vladimir Putin, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Mike Tyson, Paul McCartney, and you, Michael Laitman.

At the end of the conversation with you, he suddenly said to the production team: “I want to talk to him more, continue the time.”

My Response: Yes, he knew how to show the interlocutor that he was interviewing him. And he listened and heard. And although at first I did not feel any special interest in me on his part, in just a few minutes he began to change. He began to get used to the situation, he himself began to live in it, to empathize.

Listening is a gift from God. Who knows how to listen nowadays? No one. Even psychologists. The main thing for them is to foist on you what they think, and that’s it. They do not work for internal contact with the patient, with the sick person, with the interlocutor, or with the interviewee. This is not the case today.

Question: So, in principle, the art of listening is the main art?

Answer: Yes. This is what Larry King was famous for. We had nothing pre-assigned—an unexpected meeting. I practically answered the questions that interested him. And in no case as an interviewer, but as a person who wants to understand a little bit about life, what is going on in his family, what is happening in his life, with work, with a view of the world.

He understood me. That is, he did not have such an automatic switch on what only he needed and the rest does not matter, as television and radio hosts usually have. No, he absorbed it all for himself.

Question: What are the main qualities of a leader? To reveal a person, what do you need to be able to do?

Answer: To reveal a person, you must enter into him without need to spin it.

It is not necessary, because you unwind him, and he, therefore, like a child in your arms, is very light, external. This is not his inner essence. It is necessary to do so that a person opens up himself, and in such a way that he begins to open up in everything that he did not even think about, did not imagine, that he would ever be able to speak.

Question: And this happens when the one who asks presents the question and kind of cancels and listens?

Answer: Not only is it canceled, but when he wants to enter into the interlocutor, sympathize, be with him, not just empathize. And even more so not to show that you catch him on something or you spin it on something. With Larry King, I felt that this is a person who is really interested in understanding me.

At that time he had problems with his loved one, who was very sick. He disconnected from it and went into what I was telling him. This captured him more than his personal problems, and that is why he was so interested in me, and he was late for this interview. And he did not want to leave, he held my hand.

I just understood what he needed, that he was going to the hospital right after talking with me, and so on. It was impressive. That is, in the end I interviewed the person. Although this is not my specialty, not my task, I was impressed by him. It is precisely this turn, what he can do. He remained human.
[278603]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/25/21

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Comment: An Indian wisdom says, “Neither mother nor wife, nor brother, nor children can be trusted as much as a true friend.”

My Response: This is obvious. Because all of them are related to you biologically, they depend on you, and you on them. If not for this biological dependence, they probably would not be close to you.

And the one who is close to you without being your relative, is close to you mentally, you can really tell him more, explain more to him, and be closer to him.

A friend is a completely different level. You are close to each other. You are already created in this one soul of Adam in such a way that there is some connection between you. Yet, you are not related. Connections between relatives are only good at the level of our world. However, a sensory, spiritual connection is only possible with friends.

Question: Who do you call a true friend?

Answer: The one, with whom you can connect in order to reveal the Creator. Here the Creator is the source of our connection, so we feel close to each other, and we develop this connection in order to reveal the Creator more.

The Creator created us close to each other because He wants to be revealed in us. We feel this between us as a kind of spiritual closeness, and therefore we are friends, we get closer to each other in order to reveal Him between us even more.

Question: So, His summon comes first?

Answer: Of course. All of this is the system of Adam, in which we are all closed, tied up. It is all planned in advance. We just need to make a little effort by ourselves.
[278224]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/22/20

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Question: Psychologists have one common point for all problems—pure music, without words. Music is a remedy from stress, from pain, from depression. What is there in music that heals and cleanses and raises?

Answer: Music affects the ear. This is the most sensual thing in a person, not smell, not touch, not taste, but hearing. When harmony is properly tuned, it affects you almost immediately. A few beats, and a person is already in it.

Music is able to lift and lull and heal. But these are all such small, weak, earthly means.

Do not be seduced by this, because the fact is that it depends on the preparation of a person, on his upbringing. He must understand this music. The Papuans will not understand Bach. And the classics will not understand contemporary music.

But no matter what kind of music it is, it is still a very strong accompaniment to the entire history of mankind, because it is at the level of Bina, and this is the sense of hearing.

Music is very powerful.
[278409]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/18/21

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Comment: On the second Israeli TV channel there was a story about a charity canteen that opened in Tel Aviv.

The number of their clients increased by almost 70%. These are new people who come there for a free lunch. And these people feel very uncomfortable. They are the former waiters, former El Al flight attendants, a real mix of different kinds of people. There are a lot of young people, boys and girls. They do not look up so as not to see each other. They come up, get lunch, and carefully ask: “How much does it cost?” They learn that it costs nothing and step aside.

The feeling of shame was conveyed very strongly.

My Response: Shame is the most burning feeling. Stronger than any pain. Even sometimes stronger than death.

Question: Do you need to rise above this feeling when you go to such a place?

Answer: The point is that either you want to justify this feeling of shame: “I don’t care, everything is so, and I am like that,” and so on. That is, you can somehow chat about it at the everyday level, at the level of our world.

But, in principle, this is the most terrible feeling. Because the feeling of shame is actually a feeling of annulling a person in you. That is, you are really nothing and nobody.

We do not even understand to what extent we must remove what is called “I” from ourselves and leave only the animal shell from this. And the animal is not ashamed.

It is, of course, very difficult. And I do not think that humanity will correct itself based on this, although this is the most serious level of correction. I think that after all, we will reveal the path of light to people and not the path of suffering.

Question: Is this the path of real suffering?

Answer: This is the path of real suffering, because in fact, if a person is brought to a very serious feeling of shame, he will only pray to die. “Why did I live to see this ?!” I would like to just cease to exist.

Question: What do we do with this state?

Answer: We only need to reveal our purpose, that this is the highest governance, the system is so arranged and it causes such feelings of shame in us so that we rise above our “I,” so they would not annul it, but rise above it.

Question: Can you say how to rise above my “I,” which cries out, is ashamed, as it is said: “Death is better than this kind of life”? How do we rise above this “I,” above this shame?

Answer: With a good attitude toward people. This shame is designed to make us lose our temper.

Question: Then tell me, how can I not be ashamed? In difficult situations, what should I do?

Answer: You cannot be ashamed only in two cases: either you lose your human appearance and become an animal, that is: “Oh, I don’t care! I don’t care about anything!” In general, when you sort of annihilate everything that is outside of you. When you annul society, the whole environment, then you have no shame. You cancel it, so what are you ashamed of?

Or, when you annul yourself in relation to society and say: “I am worth nothing. I am ready to do everything for the sake of society, to belong to the society in everything! My “I” is nothing, only “we” exist!” And then shame also disappears.
This second option is preferable. But there are also higher ones.
[278192]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/2/20

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Question: “I came back from dead in the full sense of the word: I  experienced clinical death after falling from the eighth floor of a building. I survived. What I saw and felt cannot be expressed in words—it was a sense of peace and love. The kind of love that does not exist. I now understand that it is not terrible to die. It is much worse to live in this world.

Can you explain what I saw and why I was brought back to this world? And why do we suffer so much here if it is so good there?”

Answer: I also experienced clinical death. I also felt this inspiration and this peace. So what? We must still fulfill all the conditions that are given to us from above, from the highest level of nature. You should not dwell on it too much.

You will not understand it now anyway, I am not going to explain it to you either. You must live by the law, that is, to try and stick to the good in spite of everything that nature awakens in you.

Comment: What about the fact that a person lives with this memory of how good it was and is no longer afraid to die? This man is no longer afraid.

My Response This too is given to him now. It is his destiny to undergo such states.

Question: Well, you know, there are a lot of TV programs and incredible books that people cannot put down, they become bestsellers. They describe how a person comes back from the other world and how good it was there: a tunnel of light, love, and on and on. Is this all to calm us down?

Answer: It has nothing to do with the truth. No connection.

Comment: You are breaking people’s hearts now. They are holding on to this notion.

My Response The main thing is to sweeten this life of yours. They say that life here is not that important as long as there is something waiting for us later.

There will be no Egyptian pyramids, no dancing concubines or whatnot—nothing is awaiting for us there at all.

Question: But you constantly tell us that if we reach the spiritual world, that it is a state of love, a state of bestowal, a state of peace. When you say that, what do you mean?

Answer: The upper world is a state of correct self-assessment. Meaning, it is more like a trial, a very deep psychological evaluation of your feelings, your thoughts, and your actions from the standpoint of truth, which becomes revealed when you break away from the body.

After all, what is it about living or dying? It is about giving up your ego. Only then can one see not through his ego, but the true picture of what is happening in the universe. Then a person can see what is called the future world, the upper world. Not through the ego. Through the ego, one only sees this world.

Question: So you can actually say that gradually, if you let a person break away from egoism, from this body even a little, that he can already experience the states that make such an impression on him?

Answer: Yes, you can say so.

Question: And the truth, is it a billion, many billion times greater than all of this here?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And you are telling us that man can come to the truth in this life, in this body, in this world? Even to a much greater state than he has felt and is dreamed of?

Answer: Of course! A billion times greater.

This requires a special inner state of man, of his desires, intentions, his strength. Otherwise, it will crush him. Therefore, man is not allowed to experience it until he acquires in this world the screen—the force of resistance to egoism—in order not to trade these special states for something sweet. Then it is given to him.

Comment: You are saying that there is such great, incredible love and happiness in store for us that we have to …

My Response: … be prepared for it. And a person gets prepared for it in this world If he wants to.
[277727]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/2/20

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Comment: It is said that the first letters that appeared after rock paintings [pictographs] were the letters of the Hebrew alphabet: Aleph (א), Bet (ב), and so on.

My Response: They did not appear. They were discovered by Adam who lived almost 6,000 years ago.

He discovered these letters because he began to understand the correlation between the quality of bestowal and the quality of reception and the connection between them. He saw that there are only 22 connections, and that through these connections between reception and bestowal, he could express all the qualities of the world. Therefore, he depicted them in the form of lines and dots. From that time, we have the alphabet.

Question: What is the black dot in a Hebrew letter from which everything starts?

Answer: It is something that is completely opposite to the quality of bestowal and goodness. Bestowal, love, and goodness are the positive qualities that flow from one object to another only for the benefit of the other, and they are called light. And the opposite of it is called a black dot.

Question: Does any letter start with this black dot?

Answer: Of course.

Comment: And then we draw a horizontal line, and a vertical line.

My Response: Yes, on the background of white light. On the background of the white sheet of paper.

Question: When the whole letter is written, what does it mean?

Answer: I depict to what extent negative qualities can become similar to the positive qualities.

Question: Do you mean that this black letter can become similar to the white sheet of paper, to the white light?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And when I combine letters into a word?

Answer: By this you just explain how you move from one quality of bestowal to the second one, and then to the third, fourth, and so on.

Question: And when I write a sentence and completely fill this, for example, white light, this sheet of paper?

Answer: By doing this, you lay out all your capabilities of bestowal against the background of the white light. After the Torah was written, which depicts absolutely all potential mutual qualities of bestowal and reception, there is no point in writing anything else. Everything is just all sorts of additions and commentaries to the Torah.

Question: So, does the Torah describe all the desires and aspirations of man to become bestowing and loving?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What if a person writes in English, Russian, German, Armenian, or any other language?

Answer: The fact is that what is being written now, you cannot read correctly because the languages are constantly undergoing changes. If you take a modern Frenchman today and one who lived during the Crusades, they would not understand each other. The language has changed so much!

Question: What about Hebrew?

Answer: No. Hebrew has not changed. We read books that were written two or three thousand years ago. Adam wrote his book The Angel Raziel 6,000 years ago, and we read it as if it were written today. It is not very clear, but we read it. We could talk to Adam just as we would to our contemporaries.

There is no other nation that could meet their ancestor who lived thousands of years ago and understand him and speak with him in the same language.

And the Jews could easily!

Question: Is it because the code did not change?

Answer: Yes. It cannot change because it is the interaction between the light and the darkness, the interaction between two forces.

Question: When they say that there is a certain code embedded in the Torah, is it about this interaction between the light and the darkness?

Answer: Yes. Darkness is the letters and light is the background on which we write.

The letters represent the equivalence of a person’s quality to the quality of the Creator. When man comes to this equivalence, then there will be no difference between the letters and the light. All the letters will only express the quality of light.

All the letters exist only to emphasize all the qualities of the light in those lines, in those images where it is absent.

Question: Is it true that horizontal and vertical lines represent different lights?

Answer: Yes, of course. There are many different signs, and there are many secrets in this, that is, things that we have not solved yet.

Question: Are there really unsolved secrets in the letters?

Answer: Of course! There is nothing but letters. The letter is a sign between us and the upper force. There is nothing else but these signs.

Question: Can we say that the light passes from above through a stencil called “letter” and is imprinted in a person?

Answer: Yes, that is also true.

Question: You once told a story about a completely ordinary person living in Siberia who wrote you a letter in Hebrew in the highest, purest, poetic language.

Answer: Yes. I showed it to my teacher Rabash. And he said that it was a Kabbalistic text written by a simple man because he had such spiritual enlightenment.

Question: Can we conclude from this that all the letters are within us, within each person in the world?

Answer: Yes. Later I met this man, and he did not understand or know anything. He came to Israel when he was released from Siberia after many years. There was nothing left in him from the state he had experienced then. It was given to him as such a brief flash because he was suffering so much. He wanted to exit himself, his body, with all his might! And this tension brought him to such a state that he was able to write in Hebrew. It just came out into the world through him.

Question: But can we say that it was his prayer?

Answer: Of course.
[278359]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/4/21

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Question: I would like to know if everything that happens to me, all this nonsense, is this my fate? I was fired from my job, scandals at home, my health is worse and worse. I am told: “Fate.” I don’t want such a fate. I want to know how to get out of this circle!

Answer: You must stop. Stop and think how to live nonetheless. And what to live for, which is the most important thing. And then you will be in a state when you can reveal the deeper meaning of life.

So, you actually are in a very good period in your life—a revelation. A revelation of the next level of understanding, awareness of nature and yourself in it.

Only do not close your eyes and do not try to run away from all of this. Continue to exist on the same level as you are now, like in an automatic mode, on autopilot, and at the same time dig deeper. From where, why, and how do all these commands manage me and people around me? Why is all this happening? And what does the commander of all this want from me?

And let everything else spin automatically. I am ready to agree with all this. Just like a machine.

I think that it will quickly bring a person to the connection with the true manager of his life.
[278102]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/7/21

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