Question: You have a student, and I have a very close friend, Gilad Shadmon, who has been with us for 30 years.

His father was in Auschwitz and at the age of 15 he was evacuated as part of the Death March from Auschwitz in 1945. The remaining living prisoners were marched to other camps across Poland. People died of hunger and exhaustion during the forced march and many were shot along the way.

His father recounted that he was with 12 teenagers, 15-year-olds. They were terribly hungry, but when they got hold of a piece of bread, they decided that each would take a small piece and pass it on to the next.

He was one of the first, almost a whole piece of bread was passed to him. At that moment when he was biting into it, he felt: “I cannot hold back, I will eat the whole piece.” But he restrained himself, and everyone else did too. Each took a small piece and passed it on.

This story impressed me a lot. Why do you think he restrained himself, this absolutely ravenous teenager?

Answer: Because he was connected to his friends. What else could have restrained him? And so he held back.

Question: So this is real connection?

Answer: Yes, it does not allow a person—to the point where they would just die on the spot.

Question: So this state of connection you just mentioned, it is higher than everything, right? Higher than hunger, higher than death.

Answer: Probably. I do not know, I have not experienced it. I cannot say.

Question: But you still have confidence that this happened precisely because of that? He saw these guys standing next to him and felt it?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Although it is known that starving people—and there are many examples in history—forget everything, even their closest relatives. It is an instinct, they start eating. They are not to blame maybe, those people?

Answer: No.

Question: But here, these are teenagers. Is there still something in this?

Answer: At that age, people can neglect themselves. Adults, not anymore. And younger than that age, children of course, no. But teenagers, yes.

Question: So, something in adults still dies out? And teenagers still feel that there is a future in this connection?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Another question. These were starving people, and we are well-fed today. We do not think about others, that is, those who are hungry, and so on. And even teenagers today who are well-fed do not think about other hungry people.

Why? What happened? Do we need to see it for ourselves, or what? What is needed?

Answer: No, these are completely different circumstances, different areas of consciousness are activated in us, the well-fed. And therefore, we cannot be compared with them.

Comment: So you cannot say: “There was such nobility there…”

Answer: No! You cannot mechanically transfer that.

Question: You cannot compare?

Answer: No.

Question: Can this be called nobility? In the Russian language, there is such a lofty word as “nobility.”

Answer: I do not know if it is nobility. Life just does it like that.

Question: So at that moment comes the realization that connection is everything, above life and death, above everything—connection?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Sooner or later will humanity, the world, come to feel that that is everything?

Answer: It will come.
[329028]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/8/24

Related Material:
The World Is a Reflection of a Person’s Inner State
We All Live For The Sake Of Others
Do Good to the World