KABBALAH Michael Laitman: Nursing & Primary Attachment

KABBALAH Michael Laitman

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.

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KABBALAH Michael Laitman-Childbirth

 

KABBALAH Michael Laitman

Limor Soffer-Fetman: In the previous program, we discussed Kabbalah’s perception of fetal development inside the womb. You described the perspective of Kabbalah on the great perceptual ability of the fetus, the bond developing between it and the mother, through which it actually develops a bond with the surroundings, even when it is in the womb. Today, we would like to touch on the topic of childbirth.

Perhaps we should begin with the issue of contractions. Is there a particular, spiritual significance to contractions?

Michael Laitman: First, I’d like to complete one more sentence regarding the fetus’ connection with the surroundings through the mother. It is not just the surroundings, because afterward, through all his years of growing up he eventually comes to a situation, willingly or unwillingly, where he sees life through his mother’s and father’s eyes. In the end, he adopts his mother’s perception of the world and acquires his parents’ values after all. One cannot rid oneself of them. Afterward, the surroundings, the friends, and perhaps other things do impact us, but it is still mounted on that initial background.

Now, regarding contractions, the mother develops contractions, as if she wants to expel the fetus, but she wants to expel it on the condition that it is prepared for the outside world. That is, it excretes certain substances and hormones and is not simply positioned head down toward the cervix, pressing to get out. In Kabbalistic terms, there is a lot to it, the fetus truly wishes to exit the mother; it neither wants nor is capable of receiving its provisions through her anymore.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: Despite that amazing place called the womb?

Michael Laitman: At that point, it has become hostile and he must emerge from it. It is written that the host sends out the guest. The mother, being the host, actually pushes the child and sends him out. It is written that the doors open, two doors, and there are Tzirim [in Hebrew, Tzirim means both labor contractions and door hinges].

It is written (Daniel, 10:16), “My pains [also hinges in Hebrew] have turned on me.” These are the contractions. It is not pressure, but the womb opening and expelling. In other words, all of a sudden we find here opposite forces to what existed before, because to the extent that the womb was guarding the fetus and caring for it, keeping it inside, now it has become hostile toward it and must expel it. This is the first time we see that the force of love of the superior, the mother, toward the lower one seems to be reversed.

By that, the fetus acquires the strength to overcome. By expelling it, the mother provides it with the strength to overcome, and now he is capable of coping with being outside, precisely because he senses this push, when her force of love appears as pressure, seemingly hostile. By that, she establishes in it another “line” of approach, which seems to be a negative line, though the negative is still to its benefit.

The mother is also under immense forces and great pressures. It is written in The Zohar that the snake bites her in the womb, and then she gives birth. In fact, it is the addition of the evil, addition of our ego, precisely in that action of spiritual birth. Likewise, the child acquires an addition to his ego, and this is why he can be outside and cope.

Also, the child acquires the contractions and the attitude of the mother, her overcoming. This gives him a great addition of strength that makes him ready to exist outside.

Then the open channel [umbilical cord] closes and the closed channel [mouth] opens. The naval is also considered a mouth, the mouth of the fetus, and the regular mouth is the mouth of a child. That is, there are several places in our body where a connection between bodies are made, between the upper and lower. By that, they transfer fulfillment from one to the other. This is done through the mouth, through the umbilical cord, through the breasts. At that time, the fetus moves from the place called NeHY, between the mother’s legs, to her chest. It is considered that it ascended in degree.

In nursing, the child begins to bond with the chest, and the chest is another degree of bonding altogether, where blood turns into milk. In fact, it is the same blood, but because it ascended a degree from NeHY to HaGaT, meaning from a lesser degree to a greater degree, it acquired a totally different manner—of milk—but in the baby, that milk turns back into blood.

It is a very special system, the way the mother’s blood turns into milk, and back into blood once it is in the baby. According to Kabbalah, a child should be in that system of nursing for two years, until the age of two.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: Despite the development of teeth?

Michael Laitman: Yes.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: And the ability to walk and run, and to disappear?

Michael Laitman: Even so. From this we can draw several conclusions regarding childbirth, such as that natural childbirth is far more favorable than a Caesarean. We know that it’s very healthy for both the mother and the fetus, although it is an almost tragic situation for both.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: Painful.

Michael Laitman: Not only painful; it can be dangerous. When I was a student, I was present in a delivery room and I feel how much it affected me. I was 19, and suddenly I found myself in the delivery room, and there were all kinds of cases, I actually had a bit of a trauma seeing it. Nevertheless, it is extremely important for the body and the health of both of them, and they must go through it.

Eli Vinokur: What happens during this process?

Michael Laitman: I don’t know how to explain it in terms that we will understand, but it is the perception of another level. We can put it this way: a child who was not born naturally, but in a Caesarean section, it is as if in a sense, he hasn’t been born; he didn’t go through this process. And the mother, too, seemingly did not give birth; she didn’t rid herself of the fetus, didn’t pressure it and didn’t expel it. In other words, it is as though they are still in some type of faulty bond. It is too internal, and it interferes with the child’s development, as if continuing the mother’s attitude toward him.

There are actually a lot of writings about birth in Kabbalah, but they all speak in the language of Kabbalah and it’s very hard to “translate” it from the language of Kabbalah to the physiological or medical language. I have never done that, so there is a problem making the parallels, although it is possible. I once held talks with an expert in gynecology, but when I began to explain to him the whole process of the three days of fusion of the semen, the forty days of creating the offspring, and other similar issues, I saw that they still don’t know about it.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: That means that it is knowledge that hasn’t even been discovered.

Michael Laitman: Yes. You see, what happens at the level of the souls is at a much higher and subtler degree than what we find in physical bodies. Although it cascades from the souls and exists in the body, once in the corporeal world, it loses many subtleties, and many discernments are lost along the way. This is why we don’t need them so much.

Eli Vinokur: I would like to ask about Caesareans. Statistically, about a third of the women give birth through Caesarean section. What can mothers do in order to make that bond properly?

Michael Laitman: I don’t think the percentages should be that high. Although surely, the medical advancement is to our advantage, but we shouldn’t overuse it.

Eli Vinokur: Is there anything the mother can do afterwards?

Michael Laitman: No, no. The child somehow compensates for it later, but it is very hard. What the child did not receive at birth, he will not receive. That transition did not occur naturally. There is a reason why nature demands natural childbirth.

Eli Vinokur: Is there a reason why mothers avoid natural childbirth these days?

Michael Laitman: As a result of our general corruption, we don’t want childbirth. We don’t want natural childbirth and we don’t want to suffer. We want everything to go smoothly. If it could be done in an incubator, perhaps many people would do it. In a few more years who knows what will happen. Perhaps we will have some surrogate machine and that is what we’ll do. But it will really be deficient in us. According to the soul, any childbirth other than natural one is considered an accident.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: When a child is born, should he be separated immediately after birth, because there are all sorts of approaches to that question?

Michael Laitman: He must immediately sense the mother. Other than the hands assisting to take him out and fix him up, he must feel the mother immediately, to smell her, as quickly as possible. He should be cleaned up a little, washed, but perhaps he should be given contact with the mother even before that. He must have it. After all, it is the animate degree.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: Is there any reference to whether or not the child should sleep with the mother?

Michael Laitman: I recommend very simply to look at animals. Why don’t we learn from the animals? How are we different in that? In our bodies, we are at the animate degree.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: True.

Michael Laitman: So? In what are humans different? In nothing. It is best to take them as an example and this will be exactly right, according to nature. Therefore, of course a child should be near his mother, and she shouldn’t sleep next to her husband right away. That was never customary in human history in any of the cultures. The baby should be right next to her. Until the age of two, the baby needs to sense only the mother, and maybe her assistants.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: What about the father? What is the father’s role in the beginning?

Michael Laitman: It is only through the mother. He doesn’t impact the baby. Just as during the pregnancy, after birth he doesn’t have any connection with the baby, but only through his mother. Perhaps he is near her, but there is no contact.

Eli Vinokur: Is a man’s support significant during childbirth, in the delivery room?

Michael Laitman: No, Kabbalah doesn’t even think about that. We also know that there were always midwives next to her. A man would never come near it.

Eli Vinokur: When you look at a baby growing, the pace of changes, of development is breathtaking. Is there a spiritual root specifically for these early years?

Michael Laitman: Certainly. The more we grow, the slower the changes, until we revert to regression. So of course in the first year you can see changes every several weeks, even every several days. We also want to see these changes. Afterward, a slight change occurs once a week. Around the age of one to two years old, changes happen once a month. This is natural.

But we also see it in all of those degrees of Ibur, Yenika, and Mochin [conception, nursing, adulthood respectively]. If the first period was nine months, the second period is two years, then until the age of six, nine, twelve, thirteen, twenty, seventy, and one hundred and twenty. In other words, those are already longer periods.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: Are you describing periods as stages of development?

Michael Laitman: As stages of development or aging. In Kabbalah, it is all development. In our physical lives we decline, but in Kabbalah we constantly advance.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: Yes, may I ask a non-believer’s question?

Michael Laitman: Yes. There is no such thing in Kabbalah. Everything is subject to scrutiny. It is a science.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: When psychologists divide into age groups, they do it based on data gathered through observations and research. When you say that Kabbalah divides into age group, what proof, what tests does it rely on?

Michael Laitman: On the fact that Kabbalists experience it themselves. When you enter the spiritual world, you go through the first stage, called “conception.” You enter what is called “the upper Ima [Mother,” a kind of superior which you permeate and stay there as an embryo. And the way we develop are like a fetus in its mother’s womb for nine months. These are not nine physical months, but nine discernments that are called Hidushim [months], from the word Hadashim [“new” or “innovations”], meaning new discernments. The word Hodesh [month] comes from the word Hadash [new]. I see how I am being renewed.

Nine months represent nine Sefirot, and when the last Sefira arrives, Malchut, it is forbidden to be in Malchut, and this is why we are born. In spirituality, you go through these stages very clearly. I could be a man of 40, 50, or even 60 years of age undergoing the phases of spiritual conception and birth as a fetus, as a spiritual infant, and continue to develop.

The two years of nursing mean that now I nullify myself. It is not like the way I nullified myself before toward the upper Ima to be within her. Now I nullify the upper one in order to receive from it from the outside. In part of my spiritual life, I am independent and I grow slightly more independent with each phase. I also become more familiar with the surroundings, with my upper one, and this is how I grow. So a Kabbalist who goes through these stages examines them, records them on himself as though he is conducting a real experiment.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: So all those elaborate details are out of personal experience?

Michael Laitman: Out of the personal experience that he goes through. This is why they know it down to the smallest detail, and this is why they can write a thousand-page book about the nine months of conception.

Eli Vinokur: It actually seems that perhaps compared to psychology, where people didn’t actually go through the process themselves, observe and contemplate it, here it is very accurate.

Michael Laitman: It is not that I disagree with what they are doing; I actually respect their work. But perhaps if they took into account what the Kabbalists do according to the soul, they would have a certain approach, a direction of research, where to look. They would already know, “Here we should see this result, that phenomenon”; it would be easier for them.

Limor Soffer-Fetman: Fascinating. May I say one last sentence? I think it creates an amazing process between the man and the woman, the fact that a man can understand himself so well at such levels.

Eli Vinokur: If he studies Kabbalah...

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