Comment: Vladimir writes, “Dear Michael Laitman! I wanted to share my thoughts with you. My friend’s son is fighting in the current war. Recently I tried to do an exercise to imagine myself in the place of that friend. And I could not stand this exercise. Five minutes later, I found myself in a state of shock. After all, we exist in the same space with smartphones, this is a miracle of the 21^st century, without which it is impossible to imagine modern life. And this item is on the table. Any call makes my heart skip a beat! My hand becomes like lead and the horror strikes with the fact that on a familiar number you might suddenly hear someone else’s voice, ‘Your son…’ And so on, second by second, day by day, I could not imagine it.”

Tell me, please, what kind of world do we live in? Before you really could somehow exist in these pauses, even terrible, terrible ones, until, God forbid, something happens; time went by, you lived. And now, the distance from the shot to the sensation has shortened so much.

My Response: I understand that.

Question: What is it? Tell me, why is this given to us today?

Answer: So that we can experience all this and determine how we really live, how we create our reality.

Comment: Our reality is like this.

My Response: So let us place all the people who command our reality in this reality.

Question: Those who are twisting all this, let them have such a feeling?

Answer: Yes, so that they sit in the room and wait for the phone call. And so that they have no opportunity to change anything! Leave them that way for a week. And then see what happens to them.

One should feel that these are his own children. It does not matter that his real kids are in London.

Question: Will the prayer of parents arise from this state?

Answer: Yes, it is natural. Even if they do not understand, the heart itself will react like this: “Please do not let anything happen to them!”

Question: And where is the Creator’s answer to all this? Let everything be over, that is enough! How long can we be imposed on?

Answer: The Creator will bring them to a state so that they actually turn to Him, and so that they do everything in this world that depends on them so that there is no war.

Question: You say “they,” do you mean practically all people?

Answer: All people, mainly parents, on whom this decision depends.

Question: So until this prayer is raised with sufficient force, it will continue, and we will be brought to prayer all the time?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/21/22

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Question: Alexey writes: “It seems like we used to live in perfect harmony, and suddenly everything was over. We live separately, we try not to run into each other in the hallway or kitchen. We already understand that all conversations boil down to war. We met in Kyiv and got married in Omsk. We have constant accusations and war in our house. I don’t know what to do.”

How can we set up this household unit?

Answer: They must live for the future, not separating from each other, but creating something together in common—a family. There is no escape from this.

Question: And when eyes are covered with resentment and hatred, how can we come to the fact that we have a future?

Answer: Even in the case when a person who is in front of you is against you, you need to help each other to become friends, to be loving.

Question: They say that they lived in perfect harmony. How can they return to it, soul to soul? What does your constant offer mean to them: “Love will cover all transgressions”?

Answer: It means that they can raise themselves to the next level of existence. Because by overcoming hostility, even hatred, they strive for mutual connection and even love. And in this love they perceive the Creator because He is common to them.

There is nothing else left in common. And therefore, through such an action they can reveal Him, that is, a special property, a special feeling, the center of the world.

Question: Are you saying that this property, the Creator, must manifest itself between them?

Answer: I think that it must manifest itself because it comes precisely for this purpose from above.

Question: And their division and hatred comes from above?

Answer: Separation and hatred come so that they try to connect with each other and find in themselves everything “against” and then everything “for.” And when they collect these fragments inside them, they will suddenly feel how they put together such an interesting puzzle that they will discover a single force, a single property, a single matter of nature.

Question: And then will this connection between them become real?

Answer: Yes. And besides, they will discover a new life in this connection, a life already spiritual.

Question: So you are saying that this separation has been deliberately imposed on them?

Answer: Of course.

Question: That is, it was induced because they were already capable of connection?

Answer: That is why it all happens in our generation. And if they could not come to a mutual connection, then there would be no such thing. This is precisely because we in our generation can do it.

I wish them to rise above their egoism, which blinds them, and to understand that in fact it is the Creator who pushes them toward love.

These are already the beginnings of the next state of humanity when people will discover the absolute inconsistency in the previous level, as different in all respects. And now at this stage, they must unite.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/10/22

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Question: The Talmud says that the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. Why is she created as if from the middle?

Answer: Because the female part is created from the middle of the spiritual system Zeir Anpin, which represents the male part. But this does not mean that she is a consequence or an unnecessary appendix-type addition in relation to the male system.

On the contrary. Coming from the male part, she really grows up to his level. The Talmud speaks about this based on Kabbalah, from the knowledge of the inner part of nature. This is how our souls develop; first the male part of the soul, and then the female part. It has nothing to do with our bodies.

But from the examples of our world, we see that, on one hand, a woman, according to her nature, is in need of support, attention, and guardianship by a man. On the other hand, thanks to this care and attention, she grows to a level equal to him.

Then she can give him something that he himself will never achieve.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Siamese Twins” 9/19/10

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To come to complete transformation and exit to the next level, humanity must reach the state of revealing a terrible evil: when people will literally devour each other, children and parents will hate each other, man will live in a house among his haters, among the most ardent enemies. We will reach such a state so that we force ourselves to look for a way out of it, a real way out, i.e., to rise above our nature and not just embellish it.

Nature will force us to deal not with all sorts of small compensations and small improvements, but to reach a complete crisis where we cannot do anything with it in education, upbringing, social relations, broken families, drugs, depression, technology, or financial affairs.

The crisis will cover everything that man does. And regarding the surrounding nature, there will be an ecological crisis. When all this begins to put pressure on us from the outside and from the inside, from all sides, then we will feel that we are obliged to do something.

Only then will we realize that there is an exit to the outer world: a small hole in the sphere in which we exist. This way out is in changing our egoistic nature.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Unwanted Children” 11/28/10

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A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better (Ecclesiastes 7:1-3).

In general, Kabbalah teaches that a person should think about what his life amounts to. King Solomon reached the answer. He was at a very high kabbalistic level.

Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) is a great book written by him from what is called the left side of creation (kav small, left line). King Solomon reveals the questions one should ask oneself and the required search for answers, otherwise one’s life would be meaningless.

When King Solomon says, A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth, he means the day of death of the ego in a person and his ascent to the next degree. King Solomon achieved this, therefore he is considered the wisest of all. That is, he absorbed the entire light of wisdom precisely because he prepared himself for spiritual ascent.

The Book of Zohar has a whole chapter dedicated to Ecclesiastes. It reveals what is written in the light of Kabbalah, the light of the entire structure of the universe, and explains how a person should enter Ecclesiastes in order to see this world, this ascent, and this perspective through the eyes of King Solomon.

True perspectives are being revealed before us. It turns out Solomon was right to say that sorrow is better than laughter because in this a person sheds his former shallowness, pride, and empty fulfillment to arrive at total devastation. Before that, he never questioned the true meaning of life. He simply existed like a small animal. But once he arrives at this question, he must find an answer to it.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Summing Up” 4/7/10

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 1, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Chapter 4, Item 20

Selected Highlights

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Question: Why was gold always an important asset for Jews?

Answer: And where hasn’t it been? It has been so in all ancient cultures. Do we find anything other than gold in Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Persian excavations or anywhere else?

As for the Jews, they have long been engaged in currency transactions because in all countries, wherever they lived, they were connected with each other. Their having one language, one mentality, allowed them to communicate closely with each other. That is when they turned trade into a global, integral business. Naturally, small pieces of gold were convenient to exchange.

But then states began to print gold coins. Then they were replaced with other metals. The main thing was to have a state stamp. Surely, they should not have stopped using gold. But egoism does not want to recognize boundaries, and therefore, people filed coins and cut-off corners from them. And eventually, gold was replaced with another equivalent.

And among Jews, if something was valued, it was mostly silver, silver candlesticks and items related to religious worship. And only those who were engaged in international trade were interested in gold.

Question: What is the spiritual makeup of gold and silver?

Answer: What is so spiritual about gold or silver? Nothing.

The spiritual root of gold is very simple. It represents egoistic power and authority. Silver is much less. Therefore, silver cleanses, and gold does not react with anything, it is a dead metal.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Dollars, Gold or Diamonds?” 4/21/10

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Medium published my new article “Are Rivers in the Sky Flooding the Earth?”

“When temperatures in Antarctica soared to 38 degrees Celsius above normal — around 70 ‎Fahrenheit — in March, a teetering ice shelf the size of Los Angeles collapsed,” wrote CNN. “The heat rushed in through what’s known as an atmospheric river,” the story continued, “a long plume of moisture that transports warm air and water vapor from the tropics to other parts of the Earth. … these ‘rivers in the sky’ — which dump rain and snow when they make landfall — are also causing extreme temperatures, surface melt, sea-ice disintegration and large ocean swells which are destabilizing ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula.” Every time disaster strikes, we search for its immediate cause. This is how we avoid acknowledging the real cause of our adversities: human nature.

It is not only the climate that is becoming inhospitable. It is also the disappearing forests and the raging plagues that are telling us, “You are the menace! You are the plague! You have worn out your welcome!” Scientists warn that if we do not curb global warming, we will lose our coastal cities. I think it is far worse than that: Our entire planet will become uninhabitable for humans through our own making. Earth seems to be disgusted with us.

We are told that this is happening because we pollute the air, water, and soil, destroy forests, hunt other species to extinction, and extract from the earth much more than it can give without collapsing the entire ecosystem. These are certainly flaws in our behavior, but there is a reason we behave this way. Our prime crime is our attitude toward each other.

Whatever harm we do to Earth, we do it ten times worse to one another. The harm that we inflict on Earth is part of our efforts to inflict harm on other people and nations; it is another facet of our battle against each other. If we stop fighting each other, we will also stop destroying our common home, and nature will recuperate and become friendly toward us once again.

Granted, it is not easy to stop fighting one another when mistrust and hostility reign supreme. From nations to individuals, aggression and intimidation dominate, and indeed define our relationships. Yet, since Earth is already driving us out, we have no other choice but to change, if we want to survive.

It is a learning process, but it must begin with acknowledging that our problem is not that we are burning too much fossil fuels, eating too much meat, or soiling the ground and water with plastics. Our problem is that we are doing all those harms in order to hurt and destroy others, to overpower and subdue, to take pride and cater to our egos.

Once we acknowledge that our egoistic attitude to others is our root problem, we will be able to deal with it. We will teach ourselves to rise above our egos and work together. However, first we must stop deluding ourselves that rivers in the sky are drowning us. We are drowning in egoism, and this is our real problem.

[Photo Caption: Satellite Images Show Conger Ice Shelf’s Dramatic March Collapse Where: Antarctica When: 29 Mar 2022 Credit: NASA Earth Observatory. It is relatively common for ice shelves in Antarctica to spawn icebergs. It is less common for an ice shelf to completely disintegrate. In March 2022, an ice shelf in East Antarctica did both. The collapse has reshaped a part of the Antarctic landscape where coastal glacial ice was once thought to be stable. The change happened fast. At the start of March 2022, the floating shelf fed by the Glenzer and Conger glaciers was still intact. ,By the middle of the month, it had fallen apart. This image pair, from 9 January and 23 March acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows the shelf before and after it disintegrated. “The whole shelf collapsed in just around two weeks,” said Christopher Shuman, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County, glaciologist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The icy remnants of both glacial shelf ice and adjacent sea ice dispersed from the waters around Bowman Island within weeks. “All of this took less than a month,” Shuman said. “It was quite the blowout.” The loss of an ice shelf is problematic because it can indirectly contribute to sea level rise. “Ice shelves are essentially the ‘safety band’ holding up the rest of the Antarctic Ice Sheet,” Walker said. When they collapse, the ice behind them can more quickly flow into the ocean. “And that is what raises sea levels.” By Antarctic standards, the ice shelf and glaciers that it held back are relatively small, so the impacts from the collapse are expected to be minimal. Scientists are more concerned about the location of the collapse. “All of the previous collapses have taken place in West Antarctica, not East Antarctica, which until recently has been thought of as relatively stable,” Walker said. “This is something like a dress rehearsal for what we could expect from other, more massive ice shelves if they continue to melt and destabilize. Then we’ll really be past the turnaround point in terms of slowing sea level rise.” REUTERS]
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Comment: It is written in the Torah that the Creator says to Moses: “Come unto Pharaoh.” He does not say “Go to Pharaoh to fight with him.”

My Response: Moreover, Moses does not want to go to Pharaoh at all, he is afraid. But the Creator says: “Do not be afraid, I will go with you.” He seems to reassure Moses: “There is nothing to be afraid of, let us go together.”

In fact, this is not a good approach because, from then on, Pharaoh begins to attack Moses and even the Creator, and says: “Who is the Creator that I should listen to Him”?

Question: What does “come to Pharaoh” mean? How does a person feel it?

Answer: A person wants to turn to the Creator so that the Creator would help him rise from his egoism to the level of bestowal, love, and altruism. This is the way out of Egyptian slavery and escape from Pharaoh.

Question: How does this process happen? Does a person hear a voice that says to him: “Come to Pharaoh, let us go together”?

Answer: There are not any voices here. Do not make a psychological problem out of Kabbalah.

Pharaoh is your egoistic state. To resolve it, you must take it, place it in front of your altruistic state, and correct one with the help of the other. You are prepared to use the quality of bestowal and love to correct the quality of reception and hatred.

Question: But we do not have the tools to feel it. It is like a child inside the mother who cannot understand whether there is a world, space, time, or movement. Can it be that it is the same here? You say some words, but there is no volume in them.  How van we get these feelings?

Answer: You can get the feelings only if you start trying to reveal this within yourself.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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