Entries in the 'Television' Category

How Can We Be Grateful for Suffering?

627.1Andrey writes:

Michael, there is a certain formula: We will never receive what we want until we are grateful for what we have. How do we give thanks for troubles, pain, and suffering? This is what I have now.

Comment:  There are a lot of letters like his.

My Response: Yes, but we must understand that, in general, all of this goes into our piggy bank. The suffering itself and what we are going through, even if we cannot be grateful for it, is still considered a positive for us.

Question: Is it possible to live with this and think that it is necessary to go through these sufferings? This is what I get, and I have to go through it. Is such annulment before the sufferings taken into account?

Answer: The fact is that it depends on the person. It depends on me whether I suffer or not, how many cases, surgeries, and health problems I have endured in my life. But this is life.

Question: Can we say that life is a chain of suffering that one feels or does not feel, but it is still a chain of suffering?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: If you look at the history of humanity, it is a continuous chain of suffering. You say that somehow it all falls into a general piggy bank somewhere. What do I receive from it? This is Andrey’s and everyone else’s question.

Answer: What do you get out of it? What if you do not get anything? Have you suffered in vain?

Comment: That is right! Then there really is suffering. I have to get something out of this; I have to. Someone is told: “You will have a happy life in the next world.” Someone else is told: “Never mind, you will be purified through this.”

My Response: Is it worth making such a calculation? Personally, I try not to do this so that I do not have requests and complaints to the Creator regarding what I will get from this: “Well, now let us make a calculation of how much You owe me.”

Comment: “I was suffering; now You pay me.”

My Response: Yes, there is no such thing.

Comment: Very often, when a person looks back, he says that what I went through was right, or it was not in vain. This calculation that we make afterward, does it turn out to be correct? That all the suffering I went through was not in vain.

My Response: Yes. I do not think that we are coming to a state where we still condemn the Creator.

Question: Even though it sounds here and there, do you still think that we justify Him?

Answer: Yes.

Question: How does He do everything so interestingly? He takes a person through great suffering, and then the person says: “I did not go through them in vain.” How does He show it to us?

Answer: The fact is that everyone suffers, any part of nature: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and even more so humans.

Absolutely everyone suffers! Even the pleasure they experience just covers up a little bit of the previous suffering.

Question: Is it correct to say that I want to go through this life full of suffering, but to suffer as little as possible? Is this the correct formula?

Answer: You can say that too, although you do not have to say it; it does not matter. But according to your nature, you cannot desire suffering.

Question: But is it somehow embedded in my path? You say: “The root of my soul…” Do I one way or another have to go through them?

Answer: Yes.

Question: If I live with the fact that I have to go through them, does it make my life easier? Is that right?

Answer: Yes.
[324538]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/18/23

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Turn Hatred into Love

962.3If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world (Nikola Tesla).

Question: In Tesla’s time there was not so much hatred, but today we would burn the world. He thinks like a scientist, he sees hatred as energy. What is your attitude to the fact that hatred is energy?

Answer: Of course. Our hatred is above all other kinds of energy in the world.

Question: Would there be enough electricity here?

Answer: Yes.

Question: How can this energy of huge hatred be converted into some kind of positive charge today? Can hatred be turned into love?

Answer: Yes. To do this, we need to change man, force a person to change, to move from hatred to love.

This is possible only with the help of what the science of Kabbalah explains about how we can turn hatred into love.

Question: How?

Answer: With the help of the upper light! There must be an even higher level that will affect and change us.

Question: And how can we draw it on us?

Answer: Only by our desire. That is, I must change.

Question: Then it turns out that hatred should fill everything?

Answer: This is what we are moving toward. But in principle, as we understand, we are already prepared for this.

Question: So, do you think man already understands that he is overwhelmed by this?

Answer: Yes. Otherwise, we may burn out. There simply would be nothing left to redo.

Question: Do you see that a person is already coming to the point that he understands what he is, what he hates?

Answer: Yes. Enclosed in himself, absolute egoism, I hate everyone else.

Question: And I will not be able to live with this after a while?

Answer: Not only will I not be able to live, I will not be able to die, and I will not be able to live. Then the decision will come that we must shift inversely to another level.

Question: So it is quite a science that you are talking about? There is bad energy inside me and I want to convert it into good energy.

Answer: Yes. Tesla talked about energy, and we too are talking about energy.

Comment: So, we proved that Kabbalah is a science.

My Response: There is no doubt about it.
[316331]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/20/23

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Where Does Nobility Come from in Us?

571.03Question: The nature of man is egoism. But when I read the facts of the deaths on the Titanic, it struck me that the orchestra remained playing until the end. The Titanic was sinking, some people and women and children were put into boats, some people stayed onboard, some panicked, and all the while the orchestra played, played, and played to the end, and sank together with the Titanic.

Among other things, there was some billionaire who could have bought 30 of these Titanics, but he stayed on the ship and said, “Until the women and children are all saved, I cannot leave the Titanic.” Couples remained. Women were saved first, but some of them stayed with their husbands to end their lives together as they lived together.

Where does this nobility come from in a person? I am particularly struck by the orchestra that stayed to play. They could have been saved, so they say. Where does this power come from?

Answer: This may be because they all played together and supported each other with this.

As for women and men, it is natural that men in such cases suddenly feel the obligation to save women, children and women. And this can manifest itself everywhere and in everything.

Question: So, the fact that the four musicians stood together supporting each other and playing to the end, was it this force that held them?

Answer: It did. Because they connected in this place, therefore it held them.

Question: You have said more than once that we must look for this force together all the time, constantly, we, each individual, and the world. In this case, can any states be bypassed, so to say?

Answer: Yes, in this case we will not drown.

Question: What is in this force?

Answer: The fact that everyone holds the other. And what appears between them is already a special power of the Creator.

Question: Where does the fear go at this moment?

Answer: They do not feel themselves, they feel others, and therefore there is no fear.

Question: So when my concern is not for myself, but for another, then the fear goes away?

Answer: Yes, the nature of fear is solely self-care. And when a person thinks about others, he is not afraid for himself. He switches to care for life and the fate of another, and this is the most important thing for him. He is, in a way, getting out of himself.

And the nature of the panic that was around, on the contrary, closes in on itself.

Question: Is it possible to give some advice here? At such a moment, in a time of fear and internal panic, of which there are many now, how can you suddenly escape to a different level of life?

Answer: To do this, we need to strive to connect with each other, to be together. And then we will begin to feel like a common part of something common, higher. We will feel good and at ease.

Question: I want to ask you as a Kabbalist, you talk all the time about the connection between people, about a good connection, and at the same time you talk all the time about the connection with the Creator. If I make this connection with the Creator, what happens to me, to fear, to everything in general?

Answer: It just disappears.

Question: What does fear turn into?

Answer: It is not there, it evaporates because the connection with the Creator is above the animal level of our existence. And that is why we should strive for it.

Question: How do I reach this connection? The connection of a person with another can be imagined somehow, but how can a person connect with the Creator?

Answer: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Comment: But it is a neighbor like yourself.

My Response: A neighbor is another like yourself.

Question: Where is the Creator here?

Answer: It is in this union that the Creator will be felt. It is felt precisely between you and the other. If you strive to feel the other as yourself, then instead of yourself and the other, you feel the Creator who actually fills everything, and there is none else besides Him.

Question: What kind of feeling is this?

Answer: This is the feeling of getting outside of oneself into another dimension, into another space. This is what gives a person a sense of a new existence.

We must strive for this.

Question: These four musicians who were together, did they have at least a little sense of the Creator between them at that moment?

Answer: I do not think they really had a sense of the Creator, but quite possibly they experienced the feeling of eternal perfection, elevation above animal life.

Question: So the music they played, was it in them all the time?

Answer: Yes, they were in it.
[313433]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/15/23

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Why Is It Forbidden to Pronounce the Name of the Creator?

294.3In the News (ati): “Interesting Words From Other Languages We Wish Existed In English” “Mamihlapinatapei, Yagan (language of Tierra del Fuego)

“This word is mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most succinct word, and is also considered the hardest word to translate. Roughly, it means ‘the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start.'”

Question: What is the depth of the word?

Answer: The word is the universe, the word is everything. “In the beginning was the Word.” In general, this word is “Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey.

This is the four-letter name of the Creator that explains the four steps through which the upper emanation descends on His creation. And everything else comes from this word.

Question: If you say that everything else comes out from it, then is this word in every word, in every action, in general, in everything?

Answer: In everything! “Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey” includes absolutely everything.

Question: What is this magic? What kind of secret is it? What are these four letters that are in everything, in absolutely everything?

Answer: This is the name of the Creator. That is, it includes the four stages of the expansion of the light from the Creator Himself to all creations.

Question: Does the light exist practically, in every word, in every action, and in everything?

Answer: Yes. And this word, the name of the Creator,  includes all the words, practically everything, and everything that happens.

Question: These are four letters. What does the first letter “Yod” – “י” mean?

Answer: Yod” is the source of the light. “Hey” – “ה”is the expansion of the light. “Vav” – “ו” is its descent downward. And the last “”Hey” – “ה” is the clothing of the light in the lower ones that already exist.

Question: It is said that it is forbidden to pronounce the name of the Creator. What is meant by this?

Answer: In principle, you cannot pronounce it in any way. No matter how hard you try. This is because they are letters. And the word itself is not a word. It is just a code. “Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey” is a code.

Question: And when it is said that it is forbidden to pronounce the name of the Creator?

Answer: It means that it is forbidden to try to name His action. Because, in principle, it is hidden from a person. So do not try to do it. Forbidden means impossible.
[310922]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/23/23

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Whatever Should Be Will Be

294.3Comment: A Sufi was asked: “Venerable, why are there no traces of sadness on your face?” “I do not have anything worth grieving about the loss of,” the Sufi replied.

We are in sorrow all the time. We wanted something, but did not get it. A scratch on the car, we were fooled, or we were not given the position we wanted. We are constantly sad, all the time.

My Response: What a disaster!

Question: Yes! Humanity is like that. You see what is happening! It is in sorrow all the time. And this chain of sadness becomes our life. Can you, please, explain how not to be sad? How can we not be sad?

Answer: First, accept everything as coming from nature—from the Creator. And there should be no objections. And ask for one thing all the time—rapprochement, connection, and adhesion. Then everything will be fine.

Comment: But man is desire. And I always have desires. This one did not come to pass, that one did not come to pass, and still another one did not come to pass. How can I work with this? I am not filled with what I wanted to be filled with.

My Response: What would you like to be filled with?

Comment: What would I like? You name it!

My Response: If you imagine that in the next minute you are gone, then everything is fine.

Comment: Yes, then you are happy with the moment you are in now. That is all.

My Response: You are happy not because you are alive and have continued to live for one more minute but because you simply exist in this moment that the Creator has given you. And you live in it and try to adhere to Him.

Of course, one must strive to the best of one’s ability to ensure one’s future, and so it is written in the Torah, but nothing more.

Question: But if it is not secured, should I accept it?

Answer: Of course.

Question: That is, I want something, but whatever happens, happens and that is it?

Answer: Yes, definitely.
[308943]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/12/23

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A Beautiful Act of Friends

627.2Comment: I’ve read very touching stories that lead to important questions. One girl writes on Facebook: “I am 13 years old. Six months ago, I started losing my hair and I lost all my hair. I refused to go to school because I was sure that everyone would laugh at me. But 12 of my friends came to me with their heads completely shaved. They did this out of solidarity with me. Three of them were girls. I burst into tears. I wrote about it on my Facebook. I was told in the comments that they didn’t do it from the heart, that they know that their hair will grow back, but yours won’t, that they just want to become famous, and so on. But I don’t want to hear them,” the girl writes. “They are still my best friends forever!”.

My Response: Of course!

Question: Tell me, please, even if this was done like what people wrote, with such an intention, what kind of act is this?

Answer: This is a high deed. It is compassion, it is empathy, and it means a lot.

Compassion is a very powerful force. As a result, they will show everyone at school how to act, what kind of relationships should be. And I think they will quickly stop paying attention to appearance.

Question: Do you think this is a step toward that?

Answer: Yes. Or maybe, on the contrary, many people at school will cut their hair out of solidarity.

Question: In spiritual understanding, what is compassion?

Answer: In the spiritual understanding, compassion is life in another.

Question: Is this an attempt to live in another, what we see with these children?

Answer: Yes, it is spiritual. This is a step that is close to spiritual.

Question: And living in another is my dissolving into him or taking him into myself? Can I say that, or does it matter?

Answer: It is in the other. I want to enter him, I want to exist in him, in all his problems.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/15/22

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To Hell or to Heaven?

626Question: There is a well known parable regarding judgment taking place above—to hell or to heaven. The famous preacher’s turn comes; he is calm, and suddenly he is sent to hell. He asks, “Why to hell?! Right before me, a reckless driver was sent to heaven.” He is told: “What were you thinking? Everyone was asleep at your sermons. Meanwhile, when he was driving people, everyone was praying.”

How should we relate to this? Should we be led to prayer while we are alive; how should this happen?

Answer: We are being led. If we strive to reach a connection with the Creator, then all sorts of obstacles and conditions are put to us, and we involuntarily see that we cannot fulfill these conditions in any way, only if we get serious help from above.

Question: Does this mean that if we strive to connect with the Creator, then we can be grateful for all these things and obstacles?

Answer: For the stick.

Question: You keep saying, “Kiss the stick that beats you.” Then we kiss it? Otherwise what happens?

Answer: Otherwise we move along with our egoism, the way a fish swims, in such twisty ways.

Question: How should we treat everything that leads us, but is not yet directed, to the goal of creation, to prayer?

Answer: We have to push each other. We have to give an example. We need to shake things up a bit.

Question: How can I, an ordinary person who does not strive for the goal of connection with the Creator, someone who strives to live calmly and simply on our earth, also relate those misfortunes and troubles as things that should lead me to prayer?

Answer: Naturally a person does not want suffering, prayer, or anything.

Question: And how should I relate to this? Should I run away from them?

Answer: Of course. It’s best to run away from them and that’s what everyone does.

Question: This means I can run away if I’m not striving for anything, but I just want to live this life well on this earth?

Answer: In this case, “There is no need for suffering, and there is no need for rewards.”

Question: And what is the advice to such people?

Answer: The advice to such people is to try to live in peace, or even lower, quieter, and calmer. Try to go through life like this.

Question: Is this in order for the waves to pass over us?

Answer: Yes. But this is fate. There are some people who want it; there are those who disagree with this and those who disagree and yet with a couple of blows, they then agree.

Question: So one way or another, these blows bring a person down if he is here and wants to live his life here?

Answer: It depends on the root of the soul.

Question: And what is your advice to those who strive for the Creator and for connection?

Answer: For them, the most important thing is to get closer to the Creator, and it doesn’t matter in what way: either through getting a couple of blows on the way or any other way.

Question: So, one way or another they will and should treat these blows as help?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is it correct to say that this parable is intended more for those who are directed to the Creator?

Answer: There is always suffering, but if they are not critical and are instead ordinary everyday sufferings, etc., then they are always good.

Question: Is this the way to relate to them?!

Answer: Yes.

Question: What happens if I start to treat them this way?

Answer: I mean the suffering that does not distract from building a right life or a right connection with others and with the Creator. If there are too many of them, then this is a different sort of suffering.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/4/22

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The First Word of God

226Comment: 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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Dialog With Nature

738Question: There were so many different kinds of natural disasters last year. The year started with a wild cold spell in Spain. They did not expect it and were not ready for it. There were earthquakes; there were floods in Indonesia. A glacier came down in the Indian Himalayas and buried 170 people. There was a sandstorm in Beijing and flooding in Australia. In Western Europe, heavy rains washed away cars and flooded cities. Fires raged in California, Turkey, and Greece. An earthquake in Haiti killed 2,200 people died. On the Canary Island of Palma, a volcano erupted for three months. This has not happened for 500 years. Dozens of tornadoes swept across the United States. A typhoon hit the Philippines and left havoc in its wake.

This is a short list of what happened. Can you translate to us in human language what nature is saying to us?

Answer: Nature tells us: “It serves you right!” Really, how you treat nature—disturbing its balance in everything possible, at all levels, in all cases and possibilities—this is how nature reacts.

Imagine that you have a sick body, the whole Earth, the whole globe. And what will you do?

Question: So what do we do?

Answer: Do not interfere, do not disturb its relative peace. It is in homeostasis—very well, let it stay that way, don’t touch it!

Question: But one way or another, don’t we have to produce something, extract minerals?

Answer: It depends in what doses. It’s like the doctor says: “In moderation.” It’s the same here: you dig into the ground, you start picking at it, taking stuff out, digging it out, pulling it out, sucking it out. You have to understand that it all needs to be replenished at some point.

We are slowly getting old and dying. The same thing probably happens with the Earth.

Question: How do we enter this dialog? How do we behave with nature so that we have homeostasis with it?

Answer: We must understand that this is a living organism, an actual living organism. And if we impact it, we must do everything very carefully and cautiously.

And it is necessary to compensate and to understand that if it is one organism, it does not matter where you operate. If you do something somewhere in Australia, it will resonate in Canada or somewhere in South America. We are really responsible here for everything and for everyone.

We have nothing but this land! We can’t fly anywhere and do anything. And we just do whatever we want here today! And there is no reaction, no calculation, no thought for tomorrow!

Comment: Our current thought is to gain from this—to earn more, more, and more money.

My Response: But then we lose 20 times more. We must compensate for all this.

Comment: A person has a thought: “After me, even a flood.”

My Response: The whole problem is in our egoism. That’s clear.

Question: If possible, can you give one more recipe? What is a person’s work with this organism called Earth?

Answer: The Earth is a very wise organism. Its laws, which are still unknown to us, hide huge layers of wisdom that are our future. And that’s why we need to treat it very carefully and with respect.

Question: So are you saying that if this thought enters a person and lives in him, then he will have a completely different attitude and everything in general?

Answer: Yes, which means if you dig with a shovel, you must explain why, for what, how, and how you will compensate for it. It’s as if you borrow from the Earth its matter, its energy, and its power that it will have to invest in what you, for example, plant in it.

Question: So even for such a small intervention, I have to make a huge calculation before I do it?

Answer: Yes. It’s an attitude, but it will save us. Otherwise the Earth, as it is said, “will spew you out.”

Comment: Yes, it will spew us out. It seems that the hints have already become very clear and are knocking on our door.

My Response: Yes. There is a beginning.

Comment: Let’s hope that we will understand.

My Response: No, there will be no hope here. Until a person corrects his egoism, he will inevitably harm nature and the planet he lives on. And it will be bad.
[293008]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/30/21

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Save Yourself Or The Child?

560Comment: You received a letter from a young man.

Hello, Dear Michael!

I know that you will help me. I subscribe to all your programs. May you be healthy! That is the main thing.

I have been bedridden since childhood. I have a rare disease, which is progressing. My beloved parents and I have been fighting it since childhood. But it has gotten worse lately. It is painful to move. And recently, just six months ago, a new method of treatment appeared that has already helped many recover. But it requires an organ transplant from a close relative.

My dad immediately decided to become my donor. He was tested, and everything checked out. But I found out that it is very dangerous for my father. He is not all that healthy and nobody knows how the surgery will affect him. When I found out about it, I told my father that I do not agree, that I do not want the transplant, but he insisted. He does not want to hear anything. What should I do? How to convince him? I do not want it! I am afraid. Naturally, I want to get well, but I am afraid for my father! My mother is not saying anything and neither is my sister.

I am writing to you. Help me! I am exhausted thinking about it! In the meantime, I am getting worse.

My Response: You must give your father the opportunity to give you life again. I feel for you and for your father. This is something you must go through together.

Question: But what will he feel if he accepts it?

Answer: They are going through this together, through this surgery, together!

Question: Meaning, as if the father is giving him life again?

Answer: Yes! And the boy already understands, you can tell by his letter, that otherwise he will have a tragic end. How will his father be able to live on if the boy dies?

Question: So he is actually saving his father, among other things?

Answer: Of course. He should give his father the opportunity to help him.

Comment: No wonder he wrote both my mother and sister are quiet.

My Response: Because this is his personal decision.

Comment: He will instantly mature, he will become an adult as soon as he makes this decision.

My Response: True.

Comment: Such mature questions for these children!

My Response: Life is full of challenging decisions.
[292217]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/1/21

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