How can one convince a man who watches television to stop doing so?
ANSWER:
Take him out in the street to a sewer, and dip a cup of water into the sewage as it's rushing from the sidewalk into the sewer, and say l'chaim my friend, take a drink.
So he says, it's dirty water!
So tell him "it's much cleaner than what you drink every day on television, because you are pouring the dirtiest kind of filth onto your mind, besides atheism!" The worst thing that can happen to a man is to get water on the brain, and to get sewage on the brain? Then there's no hope for him.
Television today is poison. Anybody with a little bit of understanding knows that if he wants to have any hope of coming to the Next World… it says Elokei neshama sh'nosato bi tehora he, You gave me a pure soul, and you're supposed to return it to Hashem, at least the way you got it. The truth is, you should make it better, but at least the way you received it. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to be pretty angry when you return the soul to Him and it smells bad. It's waterlogged with sewage. Because the way a man dies, that's the way he's going to remain forever.
If a man leaves this world with a soul that's putrefied with television garbage, he'll have to live with it all his life forever and ever for the next million years. That's a principle; the way a man leaves this world, the Rambam says that in Avos, that's how you are going to remain forever.
Therefore it's important to purify the mind, and put into it as much kedusha as you can, and that's what you are going to exist with forever and ever.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210