In the News (“Grandchild or $650,000: Indian parents take son to court“): “An Indian couple is taking their son to court, demanding that he and his wife either produce a grandchild within a year or cough up almost $650,000. …

“they exhausted their savings by raising and educating their pilot son and paying for a lavish wedding.

“Now they want payback.

“‘My son has been married for six years but they are still not planning a baby. At least if we have a grandchild to spend time with, our pain will become bearable,’ the couple said in their petition filed with a court in the north Indian town of Haridwar last week.

Question: Do you think this request of the parents is legitimate?

Answer: This is a problem. On the one hand they are selfish. No one can oblige a couple to have children. I understand them. But in principle, there is no such law that a couple is obliged to give birth to children, and as if, by their parents’ request.

Comment: “Then return the money that was invested in you,” the parents say.

My Response: “Did you want me to get married in order to make you grandchildren?” It turns out that it is so. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

I’m just putting myself in the position of a victim. “I didn’t sign up for this.” But, on the other hand, the parents can also be understood.

I think there is a need for a society that should affect young people—to influence them in a way, so that they eventually have children for themselves. For themselves and for their parents. Especially in India.

Comment: You’ve been to India; you’ve seen it. There are a huge number of children and people, and still they give birth. One and a half billion!

My Response: It depends on the kind of society. If they are rich people with a good marital status, they give birth to two or three children, no more.

Question: So do you think that the parents’ request is egoistic, and their children are egoistic too?

Answer: The parents are not egoists. They really want grandchildren and they can be understood. But the children, of course, are egoists. They don’t want to do anything nice to their parents, they don’t want to burden themselves, and I also understand them in this, to burden themselves with raising children. But it is necessary to somehow come to an agreement after all. The case went to court. So it’s not easy. They need to come up with something.

Question: This is what is happening in the world right now. Many people don’t particularly want to give birth.

Answer: At least one or two children. Without this, a person is not considered a person. If he has no children, and he does not care about procreation, then this is an inferior person. It is considered so.

Question: But this does not apply if health does not allow and so on, right?

Answer: This is understandable.

Question: So a husband and wife who do not have children are not a family?

Answer: Firstly, such a family is not a family. There should definitely be both a boy and a girl in the family. Preferably both. But there are cases when having both doesn’t work out.

It is necessary to help raise the status of having children. We also have a problem with this, both in the state and in people; today people do not want to have children.

The Torah says, “Be fruitful and multiply.” But in fact, why breed, much less multiply?

Question: Why is all this happening right now? Why is there such a sudden desire not to give birth?

Answer: People want to take care of themselves. That’s all. On the other hand, children are also very egoistic. You invest in them for 20 or 30 years, and then they leave. Well, why then did I invest my capital, my labor, my funds, my nerves, and my strength? And where did it all go? It is an unprofitable business.

Question: And what to do in such cases?

Answer: Do nothing. Learn from mistakes. It all depends on the upbringing.

And the upbringing should be like this: “You must!”
[300027]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/26/22

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Comment: You recently said, “First there was the word, and it was the word of God.” What was the first word?

My Response: “Bereshit.” There are Kabbalistic explanations for the word “Bereshit” that take thousands of pages. Thousands of pages! Entire treatises explain what Bereshit means. Because this word “Bereshit” contains absolutely everything! Apart from it, everything else is a consequence of it.

Question: Can “Bereshit” be translated as “at the beginning”?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Can you compress these thousands of pages of treatises into a few sentences?

Answer: This word “Bereshit” contains the essence of the Creator, the purpose of creation and its full program of development, up to the last state.

Question: What is the essence of the Creator?

Answer: The essence of the Creator is good who does good.

Question: What is the essence of the creation that He created?

Answer: The desire created by the Creator, which yearns for adhesion with the Creator, for coming closer to the Creator is called creation.

Question: Does it mean that the program of creation is to come closer to the Creator? If we yearn for coming closer to the Creator, do we fulfill the purpose of creation?

Answer: Yes.
[300430]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/20/22

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Question: Some psychologists list basic conditions needed for the happiness and health of a child. The first condition is that the parent should be a source of information for the child, and not a tablet or a laptop.

I cannot imagine how it is possible today for a parent to become a source of information. Do you think this is possible today, in our era?!

Answer: Today I am 75 years old. If I do remember something, it is not from school, but from what I heard from my parents. Some pieces, fragments of words, sentences, some of their comments. For some reason, this pops up in my mind.

Moreover, I already was not a little kid. Starting somewhere from the age of six or seven and up to 16-17 years old.

Question: Do you think that even today, the information that comes from parents is much higher than any computer information?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: The next condition: Teach the child to express emotions. Does he not know how to express emotions? What does it mean to teach him?

My Response: It is necessary to show him how he can unite with other people, connect with them, influence them, and perceive them, and so on.

Question: With other children?

Answer: Yes. But I am not thinking about children, but rather about teenagers.

Comment: Next, Do not buy off the child with new sneakers, tablets, and toys. How should you buy a child?

My Response: By showing him that you are his friend and that you are supposedly on his level. How much you have to remake yourself for this, and to change yourself…

Question: Yes. It is me who has to change. What do you mean by the word “friend”?

Answer: You understand him, you are ready to help him, to approve of him. The main thing is to understand.

Comment: Another is not to overdo with the developmental courses, sections, and groups. Let the child live his childhood organically.

What does it mean to live childhood organically?

My Response: Basically, yes. The child should do what he wants.

Question: To that extent?

Answer: After all, he receives a desire, an opinion from his friends. So, it is not his personal opinion. But we still need to encourage him.

Comment: But you said that you were surrounded by composers, music.

My Response: It did not give me anything special.

Question: It gave you an ear for music. You have a musical ear, of course. So, do you think a child should be given freedom of choice?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: Next is to keep your word. Say it the first time, do it the second time. Maybe it is better not to promise anything to the child at all so as not to deceive him?

My Response: No. But if you want to demonstrate education, then you must both promise and fulfill.

Comment: Another principle is to allow the child to make mistakes. Some scientists go as far as to say that a mistake is wonderful. And if a child makes a mistake we can even say to him: “Well done. You made a mistake.” Is it even possible to use such a move?

My Response: Not to say, “Well done,” but, “Find this mistake and correct it. You have a mistake here.” But this is not a claim and not an accusation of him.

Comment: The next condition is to not be afraid to love your child too much.

My Response: There is a problem here. In general, all these questions are very difficult.

Question: What does it mean to love too much?

Answer: Not to show excessive love, especially where it can cause harm.

Question: Can it cause harm?

Answer: Of course, everything should be dosed and in balance.
[300366]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/9/22

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In the News (Financial Times): “‘Japanese start-up wants to cause real-life pain in the metaverse’ 

“H2L’s technology replicates the sensation of touch by using electrical stimulation to manipulate the arm muscles and mimic sensations… 

“’Feeling pain enables us to turn the metaverse world into a real [world], with increased feelings of presence and immersion,’ said Emi Tamaki, chief executive and co-founder of the Tokyo-based company.”  

Question: How do you like this idea?

Answer: In principle, of course, controlling a person with pain is a thing as old as the world.

Question: But to create reality, meta reality, as if taking a person away from this pain into another pain? In pain again?

Answer: Naturally. We can’t do without it. Otherwise, we cannot define ourselves —where we are, who I am, and whether I exist at all. If you remove sensations of pain from a person, everything will disappear.

I’m sitting in an armchair right now. The armchair presses on me, I feel pain, pressure. And the pressure feels good to me. But this is, in principle, a small pain.

And if I pass a certain pain threshold, then I begin to feel that it is unpleasant for me. Then I have to move away from this object, from this source.

And so I am controlled everywhere and in everything: from cold and hunger, heat, pressure, everything! That’s how I’ve been led primitively from pain to non-pain in every dimension, in every relationship.

Question: So you think what they are doing is right? Is it necessary to introduce pain even into virtual reality?

Answer: Otherwise it will not be a reality, even virtual.

Question: You are always talking about the passage of a person into the spiritual spheres, into the spiritual world. Is there pain there?

Answer: Yes, of course. If there is a feeling of “plus and minus,” then there is pain and pleasure. The pain of being far from the Creator and the pleasure of being closer to Him. It’s very simple. But, in principle, the parameters are the same.

Question: Can we say that this is the root of all the pains in our world: my remoteness from the Creator or my closeness?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: And what we are going through here in this world is our withdrawal from the Creator?

Answer: Yes, it teaches us how we can approach Him.

Question: And all these crazy wars, are they all from the same sphere?

Answer: Yes, of course. Inevitably. This is the only way to teach a person.

Question: How can we make all this turn into different pain in our world?

Answer: In our world, we can do it very simply. Each of us has to put ourselves in a very clear direction. If I get closer to others, and through them to the Creator, then I have to imagine it as pleasure. If I move away from the connection with others and thus from the Creator, I feel pain. That’s the state I need to come to. This will be called the revelation of the spiritual relationship.

Question: In principle, is this a way of revealing the Creator, which means the gradual disappearance of wars, suffering, tragedies, so to say, from me, from this world?

Answer: I don’t even think about it. I think about how I can get closer to others and through them to the Creator, so that it will be my pleasure.

Question: Then reveal the secret, please, how to get pleasure from connection with others?

Answer: Ask the Creator, there is nothing else. There is no other action that will help you.

Question: There is only prayer in this world so that I can get closer to others and so get closer to the Creator. Maybe there is another way?

Answer: No, you can’t. It won’t do much here. You’ll be turning as if you’re in a frying pan but not going anywhere.
[299899]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/7/22

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Comment: Supervised drug injection sites have opened in New York City. Here drug addicts can legally inject drugs and seek help from a doctor.

Basically, their model is that if you are still going to use drugs, let us teach you how to do it safely. This is what the organizers say.

We are talking about intravenous administration of serious drugs. People do not have to hide, they will not be arrested. You can take a shower, wash your clothes. And everything is free. How do you like this solution of not banning, not putting in jail, and not catching them?

My Response: Prohibitions have no effect. All sorts of punishments have no effect. Only love.

Question: Does it mean that by allowing them to do all this, we can slowly explain something to them, talk about something?

Answer: They will even quit these drugs for you, from the fact that you provide them with these conditions. They will feel your attitude toward them. This removes half, even more, of the reasons to have an injection.

Question: Can it be that this is how we can solve the world drug problem?

Answer: No, you cannot solve it that easily. For this we need to rebuild society. But as society becomes more and more gentle, understanding, and accepting all people correctly, all negative problems will be disappearing.

Love is a powerful thing, you just need to awaken it correctly. And the body will give us a reaction. Not immediately, but if there are large groups of people with this common approach, then you will see what happens. People will fight with their hands and teeth for such a government that treats them in this way—with love.

Question: How can we grow such a government that will treat people with love?

Answer: This is only through Kabbalah. So that a person will understand nature, study it on himself, how impossible and difficult this is, how much he can influence himself through others. This is a process.

Question: Do you think that the path to the love that you radiate for the other is only through the wisdom of Kabbalah? Why is Kabbalah engaged in radiating love?

Answer: Because Kabbalah itself is the science of love, the science of the Creator, of His influence, attitude to creation, to a person. So far it is being studied by small groups here and there, the masses still do not understand anything. But when this enters into the mass, into the stream, it will blast everything with love! The way a mudslide descends from the mountains.

It will be an enormous force. There is nothing higher, bigger, or stronger than such love.
[300282]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/9/22

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Comment: They say that we cannot escape from the constant ticking of the clock in our head. That is, we are in a hurry, we are constantly running out of time, and this causes stress and all sorts of problems.

And then, a traveler went somewhere in the North Atlantic on his yacht and started observing himself. He says the first thing he did was to throw away his watch.

Suddenly he felt that the body easily adapts to existence in sync with nature. “It felt like I am a part of it,” he writes. “It was easy to understand what time of day it was. It was harder to return to the world later. The feeling that I am a part of nature slowly went away.” He says he wants to go back there all the time. To throw away the watch and go back, but something always stops him.

Is it possible, without going on a yacht, to break free from this running, from time, from the ticking of the clock, the dial, all of it? Is it possible to do this in our world? Me, the stars, and nothing else.

My Response: That is good. Romantic.

Question: When you talk about rising above egoism, above this world, are you actually talking about rising above time?

Answer: Above time as well, but this is a completely different ascent.

One cannot express it. It is when your senses disconnect from the earthly ones, and you rise in these feelings to their common root—inanimate, vegetative, and animate—and connect with the Creator. You begin to feel the common root of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature.

Question: Does it mean that I am rising above my animalistic nature?

Answer: If you set this goal, then you must rise above the inanimate, vegetative and animate nature in you. This way you begin to feel that, in principle, you belong to the upper governing force called the Creator.

To the extent that you get included into the upper force, you lose the sensation of time and space, everything that is an attribute of our world. There is only one single force that fills everything.

Question: Is this the path of humanity—to adhere to this force?

Answer: Yes, but, of course, not in such a way that we have to go somewhere in North America.

We must somehow give up our world a little by not obeying it in something and look for the way we can obey the upper force of nature instead. Then we will succeed.

Question: Are we inside this upper force?

Answer: Yes, we are not exiting anywhere beyond it. We cannot exit, there is nothing else.

Question: Does it mean that our entire work is to start existing in accordance with it? Is this understanding called slowly leaving this time?

Answer: Of course.

Comment: Then he did well. He had gained some experience after all.

My Response: But what is next? He got rid of some restrictions of our world. And what did he get? Nothing. Emptiness.
[300147]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/7/22

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Time is motionless, it is we who are moving in the wrong direction in it (Stanisław Jerzy Lec).

Question: What does this mean to you?

Answer: If we want to cancel our egoism, we will immediately feel how time uncurls like crumpled paper. Suddenly it is straightened up, and becomes smooth again. All crumpled surfaces and corners straighten out and become one common whole, and we are on it. This is the plane of time.

Question: Is it a harmonious state? Is it harmony?

Answer: Harmony is when I merge with this plane and feel that there is no vector of movement in anything. There is only me and this plane with which I have to align myself. That’s it.

I go into this plane, and I exist in it. This gives a person a sense of simplicity and singularity of the world.

Question: So does all this running around, all this complexity of everything suddenly disappear, and only this simplicity remains? What is this simplicity?

Answer: The fact that there is only one force that exists and operates, which I need to get to know, discover it for myself, and become like it. This is the force of bestowal, of melting into everything.
[299774]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/7/22

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Question: There was another tragic school shooting in America; an 18-year-old resident of Texas opened fire at an elementary school, killed 19 students, two teachers, and seriously wounded his grandmother before that.

“President Biden on Tuesday evening urged Congress to end the ‘carnage’ of gun violence after more than a dozen elementary schoolchildren were killed by an 18-year-old in Texas.

“’As a nation we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?’ Biden said in an address to the nation. ‘ … How many scores of little children, who witnessed what happened, see their friends die as if they’re in a battlefield, for God’s sake?’” (Washington Post)

If you were given all the powers, that is, if they told you: “Dear Michael Laitman, here is the money, here is the power, here is the law, here is the police, here is the army, whatever you want, just change this situation,” what would you do?

Answer: I think it is unrealistic to confiscate weapons from hundreds of millions of people. (And each gun has a couple of barrels.) I remember, I went into a basement in New York—there is a gun! And everything else as well—please, in bulk, take it away.

“A gun? Please, take it.”

And what can you do? It cannot be changed in a split second. For this it is necessary to educate people; it is not easy.

Comment: That is, for example, if you were given all the authority to forcibly take the weapons, pull it out…

My Response: It would not help. They can buy them in any alley.

Comment: Close all stores, close the alleys.

My Response: There is no way to do that. Anyone who wants—specifically wants to buy a weapon in order to kill someone—can do so anywhere in the world.

Question: This problem of America is well-known. What is the solution?

Answer: There is no solution except for gradual education of society.

Question: What should society come to?

Answer: Society must come to the conclusion that it is not good to kill another.

Question: This is the basis of all religions, all spiritual practices. What you said is repeated: killing is not good, only peace. But humanity is not improving in any way, and it is getting worse and worse. You see what is going on, right?

Answer: Naturally. Egoism is growing, people around me are getting worse, so I take a gun and start “correcting” society.

Comment: The “correctors” of society are a terrible thing.

My Response: Nothing can be done. I do not see anything else except what Kabbalah says: education, serious education, universal, from a young age and throughout life.

Question: What should it lead to?

Answer: To the fact that there is no place for violence. He who raises his hand against another must receive punishment.

A person must understand that he has no right to rule over the life of another. Only good, kind things can he do to another. Just set a good example. And he has no right to show violence; this is not his authority. To act against the wishes of another is not in his authority.

Question: Why have all the practitioners that talk about the same thing not succeeded and Kabbalah will succeed if you conduct education according to Kabbalah?

Answer: It is true that no practices have succeeded in this, and many are talking about it. But they talk, and they do it differently.

And Kabbalah will succeed because it uses the upper force. It causes the influence of the upper positive force on a person, and then a person changes.

I do not see any other way out. It says what needs to be done. It is necessary to be accustomed to “love your neighbor as yourself” from a young age. Literally each and everyone. If it happens on a daily basis and on the scale of, say, a country, then it will have an impact. This together with the media and everything else.

Question: So you say the whole task is to summon this positive force upon yourself. To do this, I have to understand that there is nothing positive in me or around me? Is that what I need to understand as a student?

Answer: Of course. This requires very serious explanatory work. Very serious! Who we are, what we are, and what is happening around us, with us, and where we are going. Everyone suffers from this.

Question: How can we invoke this positive force? What should I say, think, do?

Answer: It is invoked by constant patient explanation. Movies, clips, anything else, television, the Internet, all this should be filled only by what educates a person for good. Otherwise, we are going nowhere. It is nature. Go against it?

It is necessary to direct a person’s thinking only to the positive, and people will gradually get used to how to speak, how to address, how to think. At least, such excesses will not occur, and people will not be able to realize them because they will not exist.

They will not want and will not be able to do it because there will be nowhere to get firearms and so on.

Comment: You are talking now as if you are taking the supreme law and connecting it with the practice of this world. A simple law that you cannot get weapons and so on.

Answer: One by one. It is necessary to limit people from this. According to their own desires.
[299942]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/26/22

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A letter from a viewer: “Some time ago, I was given the opportunity to feel an amazing sense of wholeness and peace with everything that exists. I included within myself everything in the world and beyond the world. I am a healthy person, have never taken anything, and work as a medical psychologist in a clinic where every day I help people with various severe psychological conditions. That is why I know what Kabbalah is talking about, about the power that leads us from above. But I cannot agree with the methods of the upper force: rude, ruthless, inhumane. What to do, how to live? It hurts terribly.”

Answer: Write a complaint to it: “That’s it! I cannot do anything.” Shout, complain.

Question: Are you in favor of direct, permanent communication?

Answer: When a person starts writing, he will realize that he has nothing to write about, that he simply does not understand the governance from above. No matter how ruthless and strict it may be, illogical and so on, he will simply understand not that there is no one to write to, but that there is nothing to write about. That, obviously, everything is already imprinted in him from the very beginning.

Question: Does this feeling of ruthlessness and so on, exist in the person himself and there is no such thing around him, so to say?

Answer: Of course not.

Question: So, what you are saying is: “You need to write.” The conclusion is: Do I need to write, demand? What will happen? What should I write on this piece of paper or in this note?

Answer: Write letters to the Creator. You write precisely like this: the first letter, the second. Just do not destroy them. The first letter, the second, the third, and so on. Then see what happens. You can publish a book.

Question: Are you suggesting physically to write it? Just take a pen and write?

Answer: Physically. It is good. It is better not on a computer, but with a pen. Then you will see who is leading your hand.

Question: Just to pour out all the tears all on a piece of paper?

Answer: Everything. Let everything be there.

Question: Does a person get answers at all?

Answer: He will get an answer then. He will write with tears and blood and will receive an answer.

Question: What should one ask for when he writes? What should one ask from the upper force, from the Creator?

Answer: To be in agreement with Him, nothing else: “Give me the strength to be in agreement with You because otherwise, I curse You.” After that, wherever it will go, wherever the hand will lead.
[299818]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/31/22

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Question: Maggi writes: “Explain to me why the closer a person is to power, the further away one is from harmony? Why did the almighty God create us in such a way that a taxi driver understands better what harmony is than a president?”

Answer: 🙂 Undoubtedly! This is because a president is being corrupted. The king, the president, the landlord, no matter who and how, to the extent of his position is corrupted, and he ceases to see the world directly. It’s like a little child that everyone indulges and adores, he doesn’t see the world, or, on the other hand, when he is being bullied all the time, and he does not know where to go and what to do with himself. That’s where this golden middle is. This is the problem of parenting.

Question: What is it, this middle line? So that the president does not lose his aspirations…

Answer: A person needs to be educated, so that he organizes both rewards and punishments for himself in order to keep himself in the middle line. It’s very difficult!

Question: Does he organize both rewards and punishments for himself? Does this mean he can critically look at his own work?

Answer: Yes. This direction should create an environment for him and keep him in this state. And he must always bend himself under this environment, and constantly direct himself to the result. To be both a “taxi driver and president” at the same time.

Question: And then will he be a good president?

Answer: Yes, then he will.

Question: But there have been such cases in history haven’t there?

Answer: These are unique personalities. Either they are romantics or philosophers who originally had such a purpose.

Question: Will we come to this?

Answer: Until we bring up a new generation, this will not happen. This was happening in the time of kings, Solomon and David.

Question: Can you name the main principle of such education?

Answer: It is when a person rises above his egoism and looks at the world only from the point of view of the common good and draws this line from the Creator down through himself.

Question: He directly becomes a conduit, is that it?

Answer: Yes. He becomes exactly what a king should be.
[299741]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/31/22

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