Dr. Michael Laitman Education Series
with Limor Soffer-Fetman, educational psychologist and psychotherapist,
and Eli Vinokur, education content manager for the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute
Eli Vinokur: In the previous program we discussed childbirth and nursing, but there is a certain core question that interests me regarding the bond between the mother and the baby and perhaps the father as well. Does the mother somehow affect the child’s soul, and is there a special spiritual bond between the mother, the child, and the father?
Michael Laitman: No. Neither the father nor the mother affects the souls because the soul is “a part of God from above” (Job 31:2), if we are talking about the actual soul, not the beastly soul, which is the animate spirit, but about the soul that exists in a person and he needs to develop it in order to recognize God, to discover the Creator, the upper force. Through the soul, we should attain the feeling of a higher world, a more superior reality than our own. This has nothing to do with the father or the mother, or with one’s whole environment. It happens to a person because from the outset, he has this unique spark from the Creator called, “a part of God from Above,” and it begins developing and demands of one to develop.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: So is there no connection between a specific soul that arrives and its family?
Michael Laitman: No, there is, but the mother and father are not associated with the spiritual development. They cannot assist or impede the child’s development; it is a totally and distinctly separate development from the corporeal development.
Eli Vinokur: Not even to help? If, for example, they build an environment for the child?
Michael Laitman: We need to understand that we are talking about the development of the soul. In our world, we are like marionettes carrying out orders, which are all intended to facilitate the development of the soul. So the father, the mother, and the child’s corporeality develop solely to bring him to the development of the soul, and from the development of the soul onward we can already talk about the development of the human in him.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: This is exactly where psychology doesn’t touch, it doesn’t know.
Michael Laitman: Yes, because it’s already a different phase, a different level of human development.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Does it connect to the development of the soul within the body?
Michael Laitman: There is the level of development in which we develop in this world as we were born and raised: kindergarten, school, college and so on, the usual growing up of people. In that regard, we are talking about psychology and what it treats. This has nothing to do with the soul.
However, we can learn what happens with our bodies and their development in this world from the wisdom of Kabbalah—from the ways and the stages of the soul’s development. What happens with the spiritual part of a person, how it forms and develops arrives at our world by precisely the same stages as they occur in spirituality, providing us with an exact image of the body’s development and its psychology. Therefore, we can use the wisdom of Kabbalah to learn what happens to us here in the physical body, in its psychology, and in its attitude toward others.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: So you are saying that nothing the parents do affects the development of the soul.
Michael Laitman: No, because in this world, it is an animate spirit that a person lives with. With it, he lives his life and ends it.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: So why is it so important for parents to behave this way and not another? Why are we discussing how to build a better environment for the child?
Michael Laitman: My point is that we cannot influence spirituality from here. An individual desiring to develop his soul, who is driven to it, is a special person. There are many of them today, studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, reading its books and discovering the soul within them, and how they can develop a soul.
Eli Vinokur: But can we say that if I build the environment for children, it prepares the conditions for them to reveal the soul or that it will be easier for them later?
Michael Laitman: When I came to my teacher I had a seven year-old son. Whatever I learned with my teacher, I would return home after the lessons and read the material along with him. After a few months he remembered everything. Really, what I didn’t remember, he would remember, “Oh, this is written here and that is written there, it says this or it says that.” It gave him a foundation, a special feeling in life, a certain level from which he could not drop.
At age fourteen, he was already on his own in a foreign country, in Canada. There he completed studies on his own, got married on his own, and built everything all by himself. I was not worried for one moment that he might stray.
Eli Vinokur: So it does help.
Michael Laitman: Absolutely! I even urged him to travel to Europe, to travel to Asia, to all sorts of places, so he’d be familiar with the world. He took those trips but he wasn’t very happy about them. In other words, the wisdom of Kabbalah provides such a foundation that foreign societies, foreign environments cannot really tempt him.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: As if compared to that, everything seems tasteless?
Michael Laitman: Yes.
Eli Vinokur: I grew up in this environment from the age of twelve and I can say from experience that there is a distinct feeling that it truly develops a foundation in you. There is a certain limit to how far you can fall, and beyond that, it simply does not interest you. It isn’t that you don’t want to do all those things that many of the young people do these days, but you feel that it’s not it. That foundation is a very powerful thing. Here you have a feeling that if you ever have a question, you know there is a place where there is an answer.
Michael Laitman: And yet, we cannot force a child into spiritual development; there is no coercion in spirituality. Many of our students’ children have no inclination for it, but it safeguards them. It tells them that there is something higher in life, and that keeps them from going downhill.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: You are actually describing a type of vaccine.
Michael Laitman: Yes, exactly, that’s a nice term. I think that with it, we could save the generation.
Eli Vinokur: So, a concluding question: What is the essence of the connection between parents and children?
Michael Laitman: Consider we could give such values to children that they would grow with an awareness that there is something above this world, which could be uncovered and sensed, and which transcends the boundaries of life, that they could feel life as eternal and not as a transient life in the body. Consider that we could also let them know that there is freedom of choice, that they could see and feel great things, have such a perspective of history as if we live through thousands of years to the past or to the future. For a child who grows up with us, these things are simple.
Eli Vinokur: You’re talking about a child in an environment of Kabbalah students.
Michael Laitman: Yes, one who studies with us. They study these things as a whole in connection to the evolution of the universe. This leaves an impression in them. They are left with the impression that the world is large and everything is open, and they feel that they belong to it, that their fate is tied to the fate of the entire world.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: It gives him a very broad perspective.
Michael Laitman: Yes, very much so. He looks for different things. He is like a child who would be drawn to games, but because we expanded his boundaries, he can no longer be so limited.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Wait a minute, but on the issue of a child’s ability to stay in control, we often broaden their horizons very gradually; we don’t expose them to everything all at once. What you are saying sounds very broad and exposed; couldn’t it destabilize them?
Michael Laitman: Among Jews, it has always been customary to start teaching children to read and write from the age of three. They would be taught all sorts of things about the act of creation, the Creator, Adam and Eve, you can find everything in the Bible, Talmud, and the other scriptures.
Besides, if we take an example, say from the Vilna Gaon, Rav Kook, Baal HaSulam, from the Ari, they all said that from the age of six one can begin to study Kabbalah, six year-old children! Some said they should start at the age of nine. And I remember that when I asked Rabash about my son, he said, “Good, bring him over later, I would like to ask him.” I brought my son and he was very pleased.
I’ll tell you why this is so. The wisdom of Kabbalah is built exactly according to the soul. The Kabbalists wrote it out of the development of the soul, out of the most natural development that could be in a person. So when I give a child that wisdom, it is precisely aligned with his soul. Also, the soul is ageless, there is no age to the soul, we have all been through many incarnations. This is why when children receive it, they “drink” it. For them, it’s very natural. We can show you our children, dozens of children, how simply they absorb this information and relate to it as a fact of nature. So we can see from the words of Kabbalists, as well as from our own experience that it‘s a genuine remedy, a vaccine, as you put it.
Eli Vinokur: Well, in the short time we have left, we will continue with the original plan and try to touch on the topic of nursing, okay?
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Yes, we discussed nursing and you recommended nursing for twenty-four months?
Michael Laitman: It’s not a recommendation, it is according to the wisdom of Kabbalah.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: I want to ask about that. Today there is no dispute among psychologists that nursing builds the mother-child attachment seemingly effortlessly, naturally. However, after a year or a little more, when the child exits the mother’s authority and becomes more independent, is nursing still valuable?
Michael Laitman: Particularly here I think he needs to be in touch with the mother.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Why?
Michael Laitman: Because he can seemingly run away from her and begin to distance himself. And particularly here, the need and the permanent attachment that they maintain bonds them for life.
The two years are 24 months in which many very important things take place in terms of spiritual forces. This timeframe has great significance to our soul. And as a result, although we don’t see it in the physical body, there is big harm in that, I’m certain.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: This touches on a stage in psychology, which is called “reapproachment,” when the child moves away from the mother but very quickly returns to refuel. It is how children prepare to separate.
Michael Laitman: Yes.
Eli Vinokur: So it actually promotes development, in that he doesn’t just detach, but detaches correctly.
Michael Laitman: It promotes development; he knows he has a home, yes.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: In the modern world, we tend to push the child out to independence, and according to what you are saying, perhaps it is a bit early, perhaps children need the option of reattachment until the age of two.
Michael Laitman: The modern world doesn’t change nature. Having a few more toys like cell phones and being immersed in our day-to-day problems doesn’t change the fact that underneath we’re still the same. Putting them in nurseries or daycare centers is truly an injustice. They don’t need that. Until the age of two they don’t even realize there are other children.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: But many families financially cannot afford to stay home with the baby.
Michael Laitman: I understand that, but it’s wrong to the child. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a child must not be detached from the mother until the age of two.
Eli Vinokur: What added value does the child get during those two years?
Michael Laitman: He acquires internal communication with her. We do not understand that; we think they are only nursing. But during those twenty-four months they acquire those discernments, that corporeal and spiritual message that he did not receive in the womb.
When a child is born, blood from the womb that should have come to the fetus stops and rises to the breast, where it becomes milk. There the baby suckles it, and the milk turns back into blood within him, and from that he grows. In other words, it is the same uterine blood. We need to understand that the baby just emerged, but the bond is almost the same as when it was inside; we’re just unaware of that.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: So what about women who can’t nurse? Can another woman nurse instead of her?
Michael Laitman: Yes, we have numerous examples of that from the past.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: If everything is so synchronized, why are there many times when women have too much or too little milk?
Michael Laitman: If we turn to the days when the Temple existed, when nursing was the norm, so first of all, menstruation was on the first of the lunar month.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Of all the women?
Michael Laitman: Of all the women at once.
Limor Soffer-Fetman: Wow, what a bond with nature.
Michael Laitman: Yes, it is written. This is how it should be according to nature, it is renewal. Likewise, in the 24 months of nursing, everything truly ticked like clockwork. There were mishaps, it wasn’t perfect, but still, it was truly according to nature.
July 19, 2010