Depression is one of the most serious diseases today. About 280 million people in the world suffer from depression that in the most severe cases leads to suicide, but antidepressants no longer help. What is the reason that medications for depression stopped working?

Depression is caused by spiritual dissatisfaction. Therefore, it is impossible to cope with it with medication; it must be treated from the root. And the root of spiritual dissatisfaction is that we are increasingly moving away from our root of life. If we do not start consciously approaching it, then nothing will help us.

Antidepressants have stopped working because a person is changing all the time, and thus the root of depression is changing because it is caused by the blockage of the streams of the upper light on the way to us. This is the true cause of depression.

I have to get fulfillment through the 613 channels of the upper world, and some of these tubes are clogged: one, another, then the third. And I begin to feel that some of my parts are not getting filled up—as if I do not have enough oxygen.

It is believed that depression is caused by the lack of certain hormones in the brain. But the real reason is the blockage of those channels through which the upper energy should flow to me and revive me. This is the cause of all diseases and especially depression as a feeling of lack of supply in the highest system related to the sphere of feelings.

The question is, why does such a blockage suddenly occur? The Creator wants to push a person to treat his illness. After all, he himself blocks the streams of the upper light, and doesn’t allow them to pass to his desire. A person develops, and at the same time his egoism grows and clogs the channels through which the upper light flows. But a person is not looking for a cure to clear these channels.

And then the light presses on these plugs, which cause more and more severe pain and lead to all kinds of diseases—physical and mental—at all levels.

Depression is not a flaw in the heart or in the head, but dissatisfaction in the desire. The desire does not receive fulfillment, and a person feels that he is suffocating.

Depression has become so common nowadays because we are approaching serious, genuine spiritual corrections, and therefore, we must feel dissatisfaction. This is a problem of a developed organism that has an increased sensitivity to feelings and pain.

Animals are not so sensitive, and the more developed a person is, the more he suffers from feeling the pressure. Therefore, he needs to wash his channels with the help of the upper light of Hasadim (mercy), called “water.” It is only necessary to turn off your egoistic intention and strive for bestowal, and all channels will be cleared. If a person turns at least a little toward bestowal and connection, he will immediately get rid of all troubles. The result will be immediate.

If the law of loving one’s neighbor as oneself spreads in society, then we will no longer see any cases of depression and no diseases at all. People will live healthy lives to the age of 120 and die peacefully in their sleep.

Love for one’s neighbor is a guarantee for a happy life because it brings the upper abundance that fills all the cells of the body into the world. There will not be a single cell in the outer or inner body of a person left that would not be filled with the energy that suits it.

A huge barrier has been created over humanity on the path of the upper light, and we need help from each other to open it. No one can open this cork for himself, but only if “a person helps his neighbor.” It is time to start working to break these barriers in our hearts.
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From KabTV’s “Conversation with Journalists” 4/24/22

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Question: Was Abraham the first to break the idols and get to know the one God?

Answer: Yes, before Abraham, many people, naturally, believed in all sorts of gods, as they did after him too. But he founded an attitude toward nature as a single force that holds and preserves everything within itself, and this is how it should be related to.

Question: In a figurative sense, idolatry is interpreted as the worship of ideas, people, and idols. For example, can the idea of world domination also be considered idolatry? Are all the wars from Alexander the Great to Napoleon and beyond and the belief in these ideas also idolatry?

Answer: In some ways we are all in this. A man, without realizing it, always fights the idolater in himself.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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Question: Your teacher Rabash, commented on a passage from the Torah, in his notes: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” Why should a person remember this?

Answer: Remember means that you must constantly awaken the state in yourself when you were a slave of egoism. Now you are not in egoism, but you incite it in order to work with it even more deeply, even more, and rise even higher above it.

Let us say you jumped out of Egypt, you are in faith above reason. And then what? You need to constantly incite the Egyptian states in order to always rise above them higher and higher, up to complete correction.

Question: But we said that, on the contrary, it is necessary to cultivate the greatness of the Creator’s quality of bestowal, this upper force of nature, and not to remember how bad it was in egoism. Or do we need both?

Answer: No, you are not remembering these qualities, but you incite them within yourself because you still have them in you. But anyway, they are already above your transition from egoism to altruism. Then, once you are already in altruism, you incite them for further work.

Question: Does it mean that when we left Egypt we had not yet reached the final correction, and this is just the beginning?

Answer: There are 125 degrees ahead of us!
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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Question: The dysfunctional social environment and troubled family lead to the fact that children from such conditions suffer a backlash from it from childhood. Most of people who became serial killers were unwanted children in a family.

How can a woman’s unwillingness to have a child affect him in such a way that later he begins to perceive the world negatively and hate his own kind?

Answer: We see that the formation of a person happens under the influence of the environment.

According to Kabbalah, the environment forms even those inclinations and qualities with which we are born, i.e., we either inherit them or have no idea where they come from. All the baggage with which a person comes into this world is formed under the influence of society.

Let us say that from birth, a person is endowed with very sharp, dangerous inclinations to violence or demonstrates some socially negative actions. But under the influence of the environment, these inclinations can be actualized in the socially correct plane, that is, for the benefit of society.

For example, if a bully becomes a security guard or a killer becomes a butcher, then their inclinations will be directed to correction. Thus, in our world, we can find the right application of any human quality, whatever it may be.

Everything depends not on the inclinations themselves, which exist in us in an unrevealed informative form, i.e., in the form of our internal informational records (in Kabbalah called Reshimot), but on how we show a person their correct application and give him or her the opportunity to implement them.

But if we begin to suppress a person’s inclinations, then we lead him to the internal problems as he explodes at a certain age and begins to apply them anyway, but in an unpredictable form. He cannot restrain himself and, naturally, finds an excuse for it.

In other words, if the mother and everyone in the household treats the child as unwanted, then in this way they form a negative attitude toward the world in him. Then he naturally implements all negative inclinations into evil.

Kabbalah says that everything depends only on education. The inclinations that a person has have been given to him only so that he can realize himself correctly.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Unwanted Children” 11/28/10

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Question: A man is looking for a mother in a woman-companion. But still, she is not his mother. How can she see a man in him even if she understands his nature?

Answer: This is becoming more and more of a problem in our society, and therefore, we see what is happening with the family.

But a man subconsciously chooses a woman who is somewhat like his mother; he wants to see her like that. It is established in him from childhood in a sense of security, support, and love, which may even be unrequited from the side of a child to his mother. He is just sure that it will be with him all the time—a feeling of something big, warm, and reliable.

Comment: But when he becomes an adult, a problem arises, because a woman does not want to be big, warm, and reliable.

My Response: Then he does not need her. Why does he need her? Today everything is bought: cooked food, pre-made products, and women too.

The fact is that we need to understand the basis and teach children in schools what kind of mutual support, mutual complement, compensation, and replenishment they need.

One person without an opposite partner is still without validity, imperfect, and, in general, unhappy. It is true that he compensates for this with all kinds of entertainment provided by society as he gets lost in them. But as time passes, old age approaches. I do not see people who would be happy to grow old alone.
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Siamese Twins” 9/19/10

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Comment: In the legislative law of any country, punishment is determined not by the action itself, but by the intention that preceded it. It is clear that the most serious crimes are those that a person commits intentionally. A crime is considered intentional if a person consciously accepted the possibility of criminal consequences.

According to the main law of Kabbalah, a person is also defined not by his action but by his intention.

My Response: Yes, but in Kabbalah, intention 100% determines the consequence, and in our world, it makes up some percentage of everything that happens.

Our world is a world of actions that come from corporeal circumstances and activities. The spiritual world, however, is completely built on intention. There are no actions in it other than the intention that produces everything.

Desire is a force and intention controls this force. It defines for whom this force works, in whose direction it is aimed, and for whose benefit. All this is divided very specifically: either for the sake of bestowing to others or for the sake of the subject, that is, the person himself.

Therefore, both the action itself, its power, which determines its level, and the intention are taken into account here: either this is the intention to bestow, or this is the intention to receive. This refers to the strength of desire and its intention, just as in our world there is a physical action and its intention.

The problem is that in our world, we cannot accurately explain and accurately record the intention of a person. And in the spiritual world, these intentions are completely clear, and a person is evaluated according to his degree, vision, awareness, and attainment.

Depending on this, his position in the spiritual world by itself makes a judgment on him and qualifies him as to what degree he is, how external nature treats him and directs him precisely either by compelling forces or by helping forces, and so on.

That is, a person is not among people who evaluate him by some subjective political, social, or other standards, but in spiritual nature that is absolute and knows one’s capabilities and evaluates one’s abilities, actions, and successes on its 100% scale.

Question: Who can see and appreciate the purity of a person’s intention?

Answer: Only nature itself because it represents a general 100% altruistic intention.

Question: Can a person who is already at the degree of revelation of this nature evaluate the intentions of another?

Answer: Yes and no. After all, if I am at some degree of spiritual nature, let us say I am 80% corrected in my intentions, then I cannot evaluate everyone else 100%, but only to the level that I have reached myself.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outside The Law” 2/1/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the real essence of spirituality? How does it change one’s life in the best possible way?“

Our inborn human nature is a desire to receive for personal benefit alone. It is written, “The inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). By nature, we wish to grab, steal and kill for our own benefit, and if we do not reveal such extreme forms of our nature, at the very least, our thoughts are always aimed in the direction of self-benefit.

The question then becomes how much can we change from this nature?

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we learn that only through special exercises can we change ourselves. How does it work? If we are in a society, implement advice and adhere to conditions that kabbalists give us in that society, we then gradually and meticulously change over an extended period of time.

The essence of this transformation is that we start appreciating giving, which is the other side of nature to our inborn receptive one.

Nature consists of two forces: receiving and giving. We are born and raised in a nature of reception. This nature functions like an engine that constantly runs by calculating what is most beneficial for ourselves at every given moment from all possible options. It makes us constantly desire the best for ourselves, to move toward pleasure and move away from pain.

The flip side of our nature is giving. We have no idea what giving is. We know how to give in order to receive, and thus giving within our current nature is always done with the calculation that we will receive more than what we give. That is not the giving that is on nature’s other side.

Giving on the other side of nature means giving without anything in return, just like how we now wish to receive without giving anything in return.

If we add this ability to ourselves, then we would be able to see reality for what it truly is. We would then be able to view reality as forces of giving that exist between us and pass from one person to another, and in multiple directions all at once—filling the space between us like an ocean of light. In other words, we would attain a clear perception and sensation of the eternal and perfect spiritual reality.

Based on the video “What Is the Essence of Spiritual Transformation?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Foreword to The Book of Zohar“

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 1, Item 3 

Selected Highlights

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Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence“: Each of the manifold still, vegetative, animate, and speaking in this world has its corresponding part in the world above it, without any difference in its form but only in its substance.

Baal HaSulam writes that there is a law of root and branch; after all, spiritual forces manifest in our world in the form of matter.

Comment: So, when Kabbalists write in their books: “The Land of Israel,” they mean a person’s desire to become similar to the Creator. In our world however, this manifests itself in the form of matter: earth, people living on it, their bodies, and so on.

My Response: But this is on a level that does not exist in us. In principle, we are talking about those qualities that are revealed in people: how can we correct these qualities and to what level, what form we should reach.

Thus, an animal or a rock in this world is a corporeal matter, and its corresponding animal or rock in the higher world is a spiritual matter, occupying no space or time.

In the spiritual world, these are just qualities. That is, a Kabbalist sees spiritual qualities, describes them in his books, and those who have five corporeal sensory organs see them in our world in a materialized form.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/26/22

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