Comment: Living conditions in some Chinese villages are very harsh. In some they do not even know what a toilet is. Like in old times it is just a hole, and that is it.
A young man who grew up in a village became a millionaire and decided to help his fellow villagers. He built houses with warm toilets and bathrooms for them. Something unexpected occurred. People began quarreling over who was entitled to real estate and who was not. Moreover, they started demanding bigger houses from the businessman, since their families had grown. The millionaire did not expect this and almost fell into depression.
My Response: He simply did not understand that human egoism is structured a little differently. It is such a disappointment.
Question: Can people really not suddenly calm down at some point, get a house, a warm toilet, and live like that?
Answer: No, because existence determines consciousness. You corrected their living and thereby changed their consciousness. Their consciousness became a thousand egoistic levels greater, and that is it—people can no longer cope with it, and now they will gnaw at each other, and kill each other.
Question: So the millionaire let the devil out of the box?
Answer: Yes. People will now go to court: this one’s toilet is warmer, that one’s bathtub is bigger, and so on.
Question: So they lived calmly in harsh conditions and they lived their lives that way?
Answer: You cannot even imagine how harsh those conditions are! Even in Beijing itself I saw horrible little rooms! A person sleeps on a bed that is directly on the ground. And it is cold there in winter. In continental China, the cold is like in Siberia. In the room there is a small TV set, a bed on the floor, and a little bag with something, maybe vegetables. And that is everything he has.
Question: So the conclusion is that one should not change the conditions that are familiar to a person?
Answer: Under no circumstances! Conditions must be changed very carefully, only to the extent of the population’s development and only to the extent of a correct ideology.
Question: So such a leap should not be made?
Answer: It must not. According to Kabbalah, progress must go hand in hand with education, with inner consciousness. Otherwise, nothing good will come of it. In the end, they will invent atomic bombs. So what if everyone has bread? They will feel even more unhappy.
Question: How can a person be prepared for this transition so that he receives a bathroom, a warm toilet, and good conditions?
Answer: Why does he need this? In order to start looking askance at his neighbor? If he felt his existence as normal and accepted life as it was, why would he need more? And now his wife demands a wardrobe! The closet is bursting with clothes, but she needs more; so now you need to buy a second closet.
Question: So the story of the goldfish is always relevant?
Answer: Absolutely. Only the development of a person’s should determine one’s material status.
Question: Get us out of this impasse. How can a person live well and happily? What is needed for this? You said that progress is not needed for a person to be happy.
Answer: Not at all. Humanity has been given more or less normal conditions, and in 100 years the world’s population has increased from two billion at the beginning of the 20th century to eight billion at the beginning of the 21st century. And what will happen next? Although they say that now this is already beginning to decline. But why is it decreasing? Because people do not want to reproduce further; they think only about themselves: “I would rather create such conditions that I will be cared for, I will be buried, and everything will end with me; ‘Let there be a flood, I don’t need children.’”
Comment: People also justify this by saying that they do not want to give birth to children in this terrible world full of suffering.
My Response: They are not thinking about children! They are thinking about themselves. Why should I invest in children? In the past I had to do this because later the children would support me, take care of me, and I would be happy to see my grandchildren. And now this is gone. Egoism has grown. It does not need these grandchildren, it needs nothing. Until the last day of my life, I will be fine, and then they will bury me. I will pay now so that later I will be buried, and everything will be fine—that is it. Hospitals and funeral houses, that is all.
Question: Still progress exists. How can a person be happy today?
Answer: This progress is not good. It confuses a person, pushes him into some, forgive me, warm toilet, and the person exists in this warm toilet his entire life. He thinks this is a blessing. And besides this, he has nothing more. Nothing!
Question: Let us get back to the Chinese millionaire. How can things be done so that people feel good? Suppose he had such an intention. What should he have done? And in general, what should be done so that people feel good?
Answer: I would advise him to open schools. It is a village of, probably, twenty to thirty thousand people, no less. Give children the opportunity to study. “They have finished their school education? Yes. And now, I will build a university next to the school.”
Question: What should a child understand and feel in school?
Answer: He should learn to be an integral element in the world. That is, he should know nature, the world, how it turns, and how he should turn together with it in order to be an integral element connected with nature, without violating its harmony. This is what he should be taught in school, and then at the university as well. This is a long process.
Question: Is this the main thing, in your opinion?
Answer: Yes, because it is necessary to change a man.
Comment: So I change not the world, but, on the contrary, myself.
My Response: It is precisely education in the right environment that changes a person. And then we will see a completely different generation of, for example, of Chinese people.
Question: And what about the world? How can good be brought to the world?
Answer: In the same way, there is nothing else. Only education, and only to the extent that they are willing to accept it.
Question: Education toward the same integral person?
Answer: Of course. Absolutely!
Question: So that a person feels his or her connection with nature?
Answer: Yes, a person should feel it consciously, and understand that he must consciously move toward this. And this must be obligatorily instilled from early childhood.
Question: If, for example, we direct humanity onto such a path—integrality, mutual connection, understanding that it exists within nature—can progress then be built on this basis?
Answer: What is this progress?! When spaceships plow the expanses of the universe? What for?! All progress will be in relationships between people and in penetrating into the depths of integral nature. There a person will find everything. He does not need to leave his village. He soars in the universe! He understands and feels what is happening around him. Why should he leave the village to go somewhere to a neighboring city?
Question: Does a person feel that he is truly happy then?
Answer: Of course! He understands where he exists, what he lives for, who created him, for what purpose, and how he fulfilled this purpose, how with its help he revealed the universe for himself. He feels it in a complete way. He has no problems at all, not even the transition from life to death. He feels himself eternal, perfect—like that what he attains. What could be better? And this is instead of becoming a modern city-dwelling Chinese person! You must provide a person with inner comfort! You will not be able to provide him with external comfort anyway!
Question: Is this the main progress—to provide inner comfort to a person?
Answer: Yes. Because in external comfort everyone will only look at one another.
Inner comfort is when everyone achieves balance with himself, with nature, and with the Creator. Then nothing is frightening to him. This is what every person wants. And by providing someone with corporeal things more or less, you will only generate revolutions, squabbles, and so on.
In short, the millionaire has made a mistake.
[259715]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 1/29/20
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We must take upon ourselves faith in the sages (RABASH, Article No. 4, “What Is a Flood of Water in the Work?”).
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