Question: While a child is still at an age when they can be influenced, do they subconsciously absorb the influence of their environment?

Answer: Yes. If a child remains in a specific environment until the age of thirteen, they will continue to develop according to its values. I saw this with my own children.

My youngest son suffered from allergies, and I was compelled to send him to Canada, a country with a northern climate. When he turned sixteen, I bought him a student travel pass, and with it, he traveled through twenty-seven countries in Europe. After that, he went to the Far East and India. In short, he traveled almost everywhere. I wanted him to discover the world.

After all that, he returned to Canada and said, “Never again! I do not need anything else.” Meaning, “Leave me alone.” Later, he got married, started a family, and that was it, no problems. Neither drugs nor anything else that could have negatively influenced him or affected him because he had been given a clear direction in life.

We see the same thing in our own children. Just look at how many examples there are here. You see an eighteen-year-old young man, strong and capable. You would think, “Go ahead and do whatever you want.” But no, he is interested in the wisdom of Kabbalah. He is here. He enjoys our television programs, our projects, and everything else we are doing.

Question: They like being here because they feel they have a kind of home base here. You create a certain environment for the children, a school and other activities, and they naturally gather around it. If this did not exist, where would they meet and interact with one another?

Answer: Naturally! How else could it be? Inevitably, we create such centers for them and for ourselves as well.

Wherever our friends are, they form groups, get together, hold lectures, lessons, and activities for children and women. They publish a newspaper and distribute it throughout their region. Naturally, their children also take part in all of this.

We are now opening a film school, as well as a video and audio production school. Our children will study there. Those who have a talent for writing children’s stories will start doing it there, and as they grow older, they will continue to advance. We want them to become dedicated disseminators.

We will arrange meetings with lawyers, psychologists, and other professionals for them. We will take them to museums, hospitals, and wherever else is beneficial. We will do everything possible to help a person discover the world.
[358413]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Kabbalah for teenagers” 10/12/10

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Comment: I clearly remember how, as a child, I was deeply attached to my parents. I depended on them greatly and listened to their opinions. For a child, what his father, mother, or grandparents says is extremely important. But then a stage comes when, no matter how he was raised, he breaks away from his parents and changes.

My Response: It is the environment! He comes under the influence of a different environment.

But in our community, it is different. Here, a child and his parents share the same outlook, the same goal in life, the same values, and the same sense of importance. Therefore, there is no conflict. The child passes through all these stages very smoothly. He sees that there is no contradiction: what he experiences at home, at school, and with the other children outside is all the same.

Let him see the world! Nothing is hidden from him. He will see that our view of the world is sober and true.

We educate our children so that by the age of eighteen they have completed both school and university.

Comment: Suppose the terminology we use sounds unusual when it comes from their mouths. People outside might react differently to these children.

My Response: I do not think so. What could be unusual about them? That they do not use the coarse language heard on the streets? So, they will simply speak differently. Today’s world is very mixed.

Comment: But they will still be different from other children.

My Response: They will differ in that they are more balanced, calmer, not easily influenced by outside pressures, and they know why and how to live. They will become very beneficial to everyone. It will be an entirely new generation, properly formed.

All this is possible because we have both the method and the force, the light, that will act upon them. But we cannot simply hand this over to outsiders and say, “Take it and use it.” They do not possess this inner feeling.

Therefore, children who have grown up within our educational method and reach adulthood at eighteen or twenty years of age become a true asset to humanity. They will form the layer of instructors that humanity lacks. Can you imagine how much they will be needed?

Comment: But they will also have a great ego. Couldn’t they still fall into all the temptations of this world?

My Response: No! That will not happen under any circumstances! We see this in our own young people. Those who have been raised in this way, the light does everything; not us.

Those who may fall into the temptations of this world are people who come to us from outside. There have been individuals who tried to build their own businesses on the basis of Kabbalah. How many have there been over the decades of our existence? Just a few. It simply does not happen.

It does not interest a person. He cannot think: “Who will respect me there? What will I gain? What will they give me?” because he has an entirely different system of values within him. You can see for yourself how we live.

Comment: I mean that sometimes people relapse because of personal predispositions, some toward alcohol, others toward something else.

My Response: If we are speaking about someone who came from the outside and had long-standing problems with drugs, alcoholism, or something similar, then yes. But I am talking about people who have been raised among us from birth. They simply do not have those tendencies.

You can see this in our children. They are not drawn elsewhere. They say: “We want to spend time with our own young women, build families among ourselves, organize a club for us. We do not want to meet outsiders. We do not even have anything to talk about with them,” and so on.

We already have children who grew up here, started their own families, and now have children of their own. This is how the next generation begins to emerge—the generation that came out of Egypt, the generation that already bears fruit.

Question: Do you place great hopes in the children?

Answer: Yes! I believe this is the most important thing. The most important!

We see what Moses did with the people who came out of Egypt. That generation which he led out of Egypt had to die in the wilderness. Only those who were born in the wilderness entered the Land of Israel. The same principle applies here.

I believe only in raising a person from the very beginning and giving him the correct direction in life; that is all. It will remain with him throughout his life. It will not leave him, because life itself will continually show him that he was formed correctly.

In this way, these children will receive an education and upbringing, become professionals in various fields, and be able to integrate into our system and work with us. And if not, they will be able to engage in any other profession they choose.
[358470]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Kabbalah for Teenagers” 10/12/10

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Comment: The famous couturier Karl Lagerfeld managed to create his own image in fashion, and his statements are very popular. Yet it is surprising just how incredibly egoistic they are!

“I am a sort of vampire, taking the blood of other people” (The Observer Magazine).

“Vanity is the healthiest thing in life” (The Guardian).

“I hate intellectual conversations with intellectuals because I care only about my own opinion” (The World According to Karl).

People marvel at the way he speaks.

My Response: He speaks very well, straight to the point. He truly expresses what comes from his own nature.

He stated his credo very succinctly, like an ordinary person albeit one who understands his nature. He is peaking the truth!

Question: What is it in his statements that fascinates people?

Answer: What captivates them is that he says things they are afraid to say.

Question: So this exists inside a person?

Answer: Naturally, because each of us is like that.

Question: Does a person have a feeling that vanity is the healthiest thing in life?

Answer: Of course, because vanity elevates us. What else in our world can raise a person above everyone else? What is considered victory, achievement, success? nothing but the fulfillment of vanity.

Question: But you are engaged in a science that does the exact opposite aren’t you?

Answer: I am, yes. But “real” people, people like him, they glorify this nature. But it is nature! Therefore, it cannot be denied.

I think he is right in expressing himself so beautifully. He opens people’s eyes to what they actually are.

Question: Should we somehow fight this or not?

Answer: Why should we? On the contrary, we must open people’s eyes to the fact that they are like this, and perhaps this will lead them to the recognition of evil.

Question: Is this precisely what you call upbringing? Revealing that is is who they really are to a person?

Answer: Of course, absolutely. Only the revelation of evil in a person will compel one to correct oneself, to see “This is my nature, and it is evil.”

I like talking with people who are opposite to me yet are open and frank. That is the truth. Truth stands above everything else. If we gloss over the truth, what will come of it? We will never be able to accomplish anything in our world. We will always limit ourselves to half-statements,  vague hints, and evasions. And then what?

Without the revelation of evil, you will not even know or understand what good is and what it ought to be, or how to build it as the opposite of evil.

For example, imagine looking at an article of clothing and seeing something bad, baffling, incorrect, crude, or repulsive about it. Then you realize: it is turned inside out! You simply need to reveal the right side. And so you reveal it. Evil and good are two sides of the same upper force.

Question: What is the ultimate formula for you?

Answer: It is written in Kabbalah that “Love covers all transgressions.” It means that there is no other way to attain love; it is impossible to achieve that “covering” or the transformation of all the evil within oneself.

Only after all transgressions are revealed do you realize that love must necessarily take their place! It must cover them all—not destroy them! They must exist together. Only together, when they help and nourish each other in this way, will they truly exist.
[246745]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 3/3/25

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Love disarms and deprives another person of their evil energy, and yourself as well.

Question: Why can’t we do this today? We very much want to, yet we cannot.

Answer: We are not accustomed to it. It has to become a part of our upbringing.

I had a very interesting incident in my youth. I used to tease a certain girl, and once I put my fist right up to her nose. And she kissed it. It stunned me completely! To this day I cannot forget it!

That was 65 or 70 years ago. Just imagine! And even now, when I recall it, I remember how unexpected it was for me, how utterly it disarmed me! I did not know what to do. I stood there confused, as though a bucket of filth had been poured over me! I suddenly felt who I really was.

It was terrible!

A single act like that, without words, without anything.

A terrible state!

Comment: And it remains. Listening to you tell this story now, I can see that it remains with a person for life.

My Response: Yes, it is within me. I still remember it.

Comment: It is a beautiful example! A very precise one.
[357669]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 6/8/26

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Question: How can we determine what is “truth” and what is “falsehood” if we ourselves create both?

Answer: Today we take various values, such as “truth” and “falsehood,” as standards or benchmarks. Yet all these things are relative. What appears to us as false today may seem to be truth tomorrow, and what seems to be truth today may appear as a falsehood tomorrow.

Everything depends on our egoistic development. The further we advance, the deeper we look into the surrounding nature and into ourselves. Therefore, there is no absolute standard either in nature as we perceive it or within ourselves; everything depends on the degree of our development. In that case, it is impossible to determine what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is false. All of it is highly relative.

However, if we were to discover the general law of nature—an absolute law that exists independently of man, not relative to him, not conditioned by the egoistic human being who undergoes development, but existing objectively in the surrounding reality—then, in accordance with that law, we would also come to know what truth is and what absolute falsehood is.

Then, through this, we would no longer be mistaken. On the contrary, we would be able to develop our attitude and our approach according to these standards. As a result, our development would truly become beneficial, desirable, and directed toward the good of the entire world.

Thus, the knowledge of the general law of nature and its implementation—not from the ego of man, but from the desire to come into balance and harmony with that universal law—is, in essence, the source of everything good. Through this we will come to a good life and truly discover what truth is and what falsehood is.
[236605]
From the Round Table of Independent Opinions, Berlin, 2006

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Comment: An ordinary person, even when suffering, cannot rise to a spiritual level until they are “hit over the head.”

My Response: Even when a person is suffering, they still do not hear us. If you take a stick and hit an animal, it runs away. It does not understand what you want from it. Likewise, when troubles fall upon a simple person, they do not understand what is being asked of them. “Just tell me what to do, and I will do it!”

And you tell them: “No, you need to think about the meaning of life.” They are completely bewildered. They do not understand what you want from them. Some instinct immediately kicks in to prevent them from going crazy, and they stop hearing you because your language sounds like that of an alien to them.

I understand this very well, and I do not address them directly. I have no complaints about them. That is why I always say to explain to the whole world in very simple language that such a method exists. “If you ever need it, here is the address. You do not have to run anywhere, or search for anything.”

And those in whom something has been ignited are welcome. For them there is real contact, help, and communication with us. There is no other way.

There is also a third approach that I very much want to bring to life: children’s education. Through this, I can show the world that it has no future. If there is no future for your children in the form that you are giving them, then there is no future for you either, not for your civilization, your family, or your marriage.

That is, you—mothers, fathers, grandparents—are unhappy because when you look at the younger generation, you see how it is “heading to the ground.” Seeing this happening to your own children makes life not seem worth living at all. It is incredibly hard for any person to watch children using drugs, engaging in prostitution, doing all kinds of things, the blurring of genders—all just to survive, and all of it empty.

When we see that the younger generation pays no attention to us, and we begin to feel almost the same toward them, something like rejection or aversion arises, and the question appears: “What should we do?”

And then you show them: “Look, it can be completely different” because it is in our hands. When a child is born, they lie in our arms; they are entirely ours. And while they are with us, we can shape them so that they will not drift away; they will remain connected to us, and no one will be able to take them away.

Therefore we will continue to develop together—children, parents, and grandparents—as one family. Children will not distance themselves from their parents, not because of insecurity or difficulty in exploring life, but because they will see entirely different possibilities that come from mutual connection with us.

Can you imagine what happiness is? Simple, earthly happiness for an ordinary person—this is what we need to show them. All the intellectualizing and endless proofs, none of that is needed. No one is interested in it.

We offer what no one else has or will have because only the light that you give a child during their upbringing shapes them into a human being somewhat similar to the Creator. The child does not even understand it, yet it is already within them and developing.

These children will become the light of humanity.
[356884]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Kabbalah for Children” 10/12/10

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Question: You gave someone a hand, helped an elderly woman get off the bus; in your opinion, these are not good deeds?

Answer: And you live with the feeling that you are accumulating good deeds for the future.

Question: Still, these are good deeds, are they not?

Answer: No, you do this only for yourself. Remove your personal benefit from it, and you will disregard it all and do nothing.

Question: Then how should I live? By what should I measure my steps?

Answer: If you do not overcome your egoism and do not perform actions against it, then you will not perform a good deed. It will be sold in advance.

Question: Does it mean that I am bribed all the time?

Answer: Yes. If a person imagines that he is performing the very best deeds from which he will later receive some benefit, then it is all a failure in advance.

Question: Then with what intention should I act?

Answer: Expect absolutely nothing in return.

Question: That I will receive nothing for it, no benefit?

Answer: No benefit at all. There will be benefits for the world and for people, but nothing for me. As if no one knows about it, and no one will ever know.

Comment: That is, my name is nowhere; it is not carved in stone, nor mentioned in captions. It is nowhere.

My Response: No.

Question: So, I did something, and that is all?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: Now people in the arts (and not only in the arts) will collapse when they hear this. Do you understand? The entire copyright system is built on “this is my music, this is my creation; if you use it, you must pay,” and so on. The whole world is built on this! And we are going against the world.

My Response: Yes. You may write it down in a notebook only for yourself and then burn it. But even in such actions, when a person thinks about what he will gain from it, as if saving up for a rainy day, it is still good if he acts this way.

In fact, it does not give him any real benefit, but it is still good. There will be less evil in the world because of it. And good deeds will begin from a higher threshold, from a higher degree.

Comment: And these deeds, when a person truly says to himself, “Did I do a good deed? No matter whether I will get to heaven because of it or not, I simply do a good deed”.

My Response: He raises himself to a higher level, and from there he must begin to work.

Question: You know, we have now saved the world. Because the world looked at this and said: “This is impossible to achieve—faith above reason.” But you have now added such a step: do these deeds anyway. They will not yet be good deeds, but will they be a step toward good deeds?

Answer: Yes. And then a person must get used to performing such actions not for himself, but for the world. And here his soul begins to reveal itself to the world.

Question: What is this space called “the soul”? You said “reveals itself.” What kind of space is that?

Answer: It is an absolutely empty space that a person must fill with his desire.

Question: Toward the world? From himself? And nothing for himself?

Answer: Nothing.

Question: Is this the degree to which humanity is heading?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And can it reach it?

Answer: Of course.
[353174]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 2/12/26

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Question: Why do we have certain boundaries in life? If a person crosses them people think he is crazy.

For example, small children are allowed to suddenly scream in public, and it is perceived as normal. But if an adult does this on a subway, then the people around him will say that he is sick.

Answer: The fact is that a small person has great desires, but he has not learned how to work with them correctly, to direct them to a goal, to hold them within certain boundaries in order to achieve some inner balance.

However we think that a grown person naturally has to have this inner balance and harmony.

A child does not have it since he exists under the influence of various forces that develop him. Hence, at times he jumps, or runs, or screams, or repeats the same thing over and over. He is thrown from one side to another. This is normal. This is called growing pains.

The same thing happens in Kabbalah. When a person begins to study Kabbalah, he can be tossed about. We look at it as a completely normal thing. Suddenly he falls into depression, and the next moment he feels good and laughs. After that he rushes into knowledge, then toward sensations, and so forth.

These are all growing pains and they are expected. Hence, we welcome and understand them and try to be loyal to each other, although this may seem not quite normal in a different place. However, here a person sometimes can do some unusual, original actions, but we look at them as normal because we look at him as a developing child.

In our framework, we accept it when a person sleeps during a lesson, skips a lesson, or suddenly becomes angry at everyone, yells at people, and calms down afterward. It means he exists under various developing forces, and hence this is his reaction.

At the same time, outside it is considered impossible for an adult person. There everyone has to be balanced, understanding, and in harmony.

Thus, there is no problem when people exist under the influence of various stressful impacts from above. The greater the number and the more frequent they are, the faster the person is able to advance because from above he is not given more than he is able to realize.

However, if there is a desire to advance him, but he does not use this opportunity then this opportunity is taken away, and he is given an opportunity in some different form, in particular in the form of suffering. Then he already takes a different path, a slower and a harder one.

Question: What does the opportunity to advance mean?

Answer: In essence, it is a realization within a group. No matter how you look at it,  practical Kabbalah is still a realization within a group.
[351905]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Framework of Life” 10/7/10

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Comment: In 1938, a Swiss scientist accidentally developed LSD, a drug that supposedly shows a person a different reality. Those who tried it began to look at the world differently and allegedly felt a state “beyond time.”

My Response: I cannot be an expert on this question because I have never taken drugs. I have always believed that they are false, a disconnection from reality. With such means it is impossible to break beyond our world, to rise above time, space, and movement into a different dimension. They are simply various psychosomatic sensations. We disrupt the proper functioning of the brain and therefore supposedly soar in some other space.

It is clear that this has nothing to do with Kabbalah because a person does not acquire the quality of bestowal and love for the surrounding world. A person can somehow be tuned to this with the help of drugs, and be convinced that he will, so to speak, begin to love others, be cheerful, happy, and inclined to communicate with others. But all of this is only because we tuned him in that way and gave him means that suppress the feeling of egoism in him.

It is the same as if a person received some emotional wound or, on the contrary, a great gift of fate, but did not change himself and did not acquire new qualities.

It is clear that those people who take drugs do not become obvious altruists, and they do not see the world as kind, good, and purposeful. They see all kinds of distorted pictures within themselves.

Therefore, this has nothing to do whatsoever with the world that a Kabbalist reveals to the extent that his egoism is transformed into bestowal and love, into a quality opposite to the nature in which he was born.
[351910]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Kabbalah and LSD” 10/1/10

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Question: Today’s children do not want to listen to older people. What would you do if your students were the same, if they were disobedient and did not want to listen to you?

Answer: Wasn’t I like that myself with my parents? Did I really obey them in anything? They enrolled me in music school; I left it. Moreover, I left with a big scandal. They tried to push me to a medical school, but I ran away from it as well.

I did everything my own way. I went to one college, and I did not like it. I went to a different one, graduated from it as an external student, moved to Israel, and found an occupation for myself: Kabbalah. Why? For what? I abandoned a profitable business and so forth.

From their point of view, it seemed that I was doing everything possible against them: “After all, there are two doctors in the family, but the son is completely different.” He chose some path, he attached himself to some eighty-year-old man, and dedicated his life to him. From the age of thirty he devoted himself to being next to this old man and to learn from him. What can one learn from an eighty-year-old teacher without an education? To study some Kabbalah, wickedness, mysticism?

Imagine this was the early 80s. They looked at me as a very strange person, someone with an education, a wonderful business with opportunity to develop, and suddenly he left it all. What for? In order to study who knows what. During those years it seemed completely abnormal.

I couldn’t explain anything to them rationally at the level of our world. What was I gaining in money, in health, in wellbeing, in better education for my children, in life? The loss was in absolutely everything.

Therefore, no one supported it. When my parents asked religious people, “Our son is engaged in Kabbalah. What do you think? What is it?” they would answer “We feel sorry for you.” Hence my parents were at a loss. I understood it, and I felt for them.

It means that I was a rebel no less than today’s youth. My rebellion was not in wearing a cool jacket or a hat or shaving my head in a special way. It was a serious rebellion against the entire way of life. This rebellion is when you abandon an opportunity to earn millions, to live in luxury, to travel around the world, and so forth.

Comment: Disagreements between fathers and children is a well-known theme: the eternal struggle of generations.

My Response: No, before it was a battle of the greater egoism of the young generation and the lesser egoism of the previous generation when the latter did not agree with small changes made by the next generation at the same animalistic level.

However, now something completely different is taking place. Now the young generation totally rejects the way of life that the previous generation had. Now there is an absolute re-evaluation of values. It is not the kind of values where I need a car instead of a cart or a city instead of a village. The dispute is that I do not want to live if I have to live like you.
[351541]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Children of Israel, Part 1” 10/1/10

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