We all know that education is a big problem. I see how children are brought up in schools. Therefore, children’s depression will not go away! We just need to answer the children’s request.

Depression is a consequence of their inner request. Moreover, this is a huge social problem because it manifests itself in more than one child. We observe this in absolutely all children from different countries of the world.

There is such a thing as depression in animals, especially in pets that live near their owners. I am sure that both wild animals and plants have it.

That is, depression is a feeling of lack of the force of life, which is beginning to be felt in our world. It depends on the person because he must rise to another level so that through him the spiritual upper force, the force of life, passes into our world. And then the problem with the environment, with our health, with social relations, with everything, will disappear.

We lack vitality. We see that everything is exhausted, aging, disappearing, and losing its value, meaning.

We try our best to inspire ourselves with all sorts of fashions, aspirations, to keep each other playing with the help of technology. But if you look at the truth, we need a completely different level of existence, some other level, an understanding of what we are for, where we are going. This is the challenge all of humanity is facing, especially now.

And children in this case should play a very important useful role. After all, we will not get rid of them, this is our problem, and this is our pain. We can deal with ourselves somehow, and when a child feels bad, there’s nothing you can do about it.

So when I look at my children and especially my grandchildren, I start to feel these requests. They exist literally in the baby. It shows that even at such a young age, he is internally missing something in his life. It’s hard to explain. I just see it with my inner vision, from the depth of the nature that I have discovered for myself, but it exists. We’re not getting away from this.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Question: You say that names are given randomly according to a certain trend or for other reasons. How should we give a child a name correctly so that it will reflect the Creator’s attributes in him?

Answer: I wouldn’t do that. First of all, give him a simple ordinary name that is popular among people and not a name that will hurt or humiliate him in any way, a name that he will not be ridiculed for at school or at the playground.

Second, don’t think that if you give a child or any other person a specific name you will change his fate by that.

It is said, “He who changes his place, changes his fate.” But the term “place” refers to levels of the spiritual ladder. So of course you change your fate.

It is the same regarding a name: the higher we ascend on the spiritual ladder, the higher our names are. But calling a person one name or another does not mean anything. Stop believing in those amulets.

Question: Does a person who begins to climb the spiritual ladder acquire a name automatically?

Answer: He receives a name according to the spiritual level he is on. This is the reason that he can be called by one name at one time and by another name another time. The Torah also tells us about it when it seemingly tells us about people: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s daughter Batya, etc. Yet, these are not people but parts of a single soul!

A person who attains the spiritual world goes through these states. At one time he is like Pharaoh, another time he is like Abraham, and another time he is like King David, etc. So go through these states as quickly as possible. This is the main thing.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/24/19

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Question: Modern psychology assures that the phrase “Don’t cry, my child, here is a candy for you” is a terrible mistake parents make. Psychologists say that you need to help your child get through the sadness.

What do you think about that?

Answer: First, I believe that parents should not answer their child: “Get over it and get used to it.” This is not a parenting approach—on one hand. On the other hand, since it is necessary to explain why someone is in such a state, even a child, it is necessary to teach parents how to answer correctly.

Question: So you don’t support giving candy?

Answer: No. It is not good to avoid and remove yourself from the need to go through these states with the child. While he is still a child, it is necessary to teach him how to get over it correctly. Together with the parents. And then he will be able to do it himself.

Question: That is, the child got hit, he is crying, you should not buy him a candy so that he stops crying. We need a conversation with him. What can you say to a child who got hit?

Answer: Explain to the child that he needs to be more careful, why he was hit, what happened.

Question: So you seem to be talking to him like equals?

Answer: No, he should feel that an adult is talking to him. And yet, he should feel that he is being educated. A child should understand that the adult wants to explain to him how to treat any, especially unpleasant circumstances in his life correctly. Even animals teach their offspring: they help, explain, and play with them.

Question: And if a child is assembling a kit and he fails, a parent comes, does he have to assemble the kit for him?

Answer: You have to be a teacher. The teacher is the one who hints at the correct options, explains the wrong ones, mistakes, and so on. That is, it is “debriefing.”

Comment: Psychologists say that if a child is sad, there is no need to rush and get him out of this by any means. It is necessary for him to feel what sadness is.

My Response: Not sadness for the sake of sadness, but for him to just know how to get out of it, and that these states have the right to be with us just like fun and joy.

Question: What should the correct attitude of a parent toward a child who is growing up be?

Answer: To become his friend and to do things with him.

Comment: Is it possible to become a child’s friend at any age? Can I be a friend to my three-year-old son?

My Response: It is already too late with a three-year-old one. Starting at about one year of age, a child already understands that you are playing with him and how you are playing, as equals or not.

Question: That is, you need to become a child’s friend?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/15/21

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Question: Should our children already exist at a new, spiritual stage?

Answer: In principle, yes. But we lost our generation, we didn’t make it in time.

Question: What does “lost our generation” mean? You said that a person in this generation has not yet had internal requests.

Answer: There were such requests, but we ignored them. We felt that we should suppress them or implement them in some other way. We created all kinds of toys for ourselves: television, fashion, public opinion, all kinds of computer things. This, of course, can’t take us to the next level.

Question: So man developed all the means in order to adapt them to life in this world?

Answer: Not only. After all, the spiritual world is also in our world. The person just didn’t want to change. He did not want to understand that he had to change, not the technology around him.

And now, having changed all the technology, we are finally beginning to realize that it has brought us nothing, that the huge global crisis in all areas is pressing on us, and that health problems, ecology and everything that threatens us, all require primary reforms.

Obviously, it should not take place in the outside world. I think we have already realized that we cannot cope with this in any way. This reform must be within us.

People don’t want to turn inward yet. But I hope that our activities to disseminate Kabbalah will still affect them and they will change. We cannot even imagine how the slightest movement toward our change, in cohesion and harmony with nature, will change absolutely the whole world, our children, us, and will give inner harmony in everything.

Comment: You sound so confident about it.

My Response: I just know this system that works in both worlds. This is not mysticism, but a clear control system. Therefore, I speak as a person who has been practicing Kabbalah for 35 years.

I see that many people come every day and will come to this, and in the end we will change our existence.

Kabbalah is given to change this world, not to fly away somewhere in your imagination. And then we will see our children happy and joyful, and not with Ritalin, depression, and drugs.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Comment: In the last 15 to 20 years childhood depression has become very common. Doctors do not know what to do about it. They cannot find the reason. There can be some reasonable explanations for adult depression.

My Response: It is not just that. We can restrain adult depression. You can force a person to be lower, more limited. But we need to develop our children.

A person who is depressed is given sedatives, tranquilizers, even some drugs just to “put him to sleep.” How can we do this to children? By doing this, we detach them from their natural growth. The manifestation of depression in children is opposite to the tendency that they must develop, overcome, and grow. We encounter a phenomenon here that we cannot conquer.

Question: The fact is that patients are five to six years old children. Why is a six-year-old child depressed and finds that nothing pleases him?

Answer: The question of the meaning of life! Many great Kabbalists wrote about this and in particular Rav Kook and Baal HaSulam.

As long as I can remember, as a child, I had this question. Not explicitly, but it was: “Why? What for? What is all this about?” This question did not allow me to live, did not allow me to rejoice. It was necessary to find an excuse to have fun: to go on a spree, to get carried away with something in order to escape this question. And it was all during childhood.

But let us assume that the soul has no age. Then it will be easier for us. Let’s not look at the young generation as being children.

A soul is a soul. We received it from our past incarnation in which we lived to our old age. And today, in our brand-new young body lives an old soul that has lived on this earth for many generations and has been through a lot.

The fact is that you evaluate a child by its small body, but you should look at its soul. It is already old, wise, and understands that all this is pointless. It has already lived for so long that you cannot confuse it. What will you do with it?

So through depression it gives you its external emptiness and lack of fulfillment. So what if it manifests itself in a small child? And if it was in its thirties, in its forties, is it different?

Depression does not come from life. Absolutely not! We see that there is a lot of depression and suicides among people who have everything in life.

Comment: Usually they say about such people: “They get mad from fat” [unsatisfied from prosperity.]

Answer: No, not from fat. A person simply needs to know what he lives for. And when he has everything and his daily bread is not in question, he really does not see what to live for.

As long as you are forced to take care of your body, you have no opportunity to free yourself for other matters. And as soon as you provide it with everything you need, the question of the meaning of life immediately arises.

This question also appears in children. Why not? I don’t see much difference. The fact that it occurs in children suggests that, after many reincarnations in this world, our souls have come to a state where they actually need the answer to: “Why do we exist?”

Question: You want to say that we incorrectly approach a person from the very beginning by focusing on him as the biological body?

Answer: Of course! After all, this is not a person at all but his animal body. An animal! And how does it differ from other animals?

But its inner part, our “I,” has nothing to do with this body. It goes through many different improvements, dipping into the body, coming out of it, accompanying it. As a result, these metamorphoses lead it to such a development, when—that’s it! We already live in a generation in which we must necessarily answer the question: “What for?”
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Comment: Now in our generation, simultaneously with emptiness, there is an aspiration for something that a person is not yet aware of. Then, as Baal HaSulam said, it turns out that all this is a game, as in the parable with the slave.

My Response: Of course, this is a great game of nature or the Creator. Nature and the Creator are one and the same.

As a result, we will all laugh at what happened, the way we laughed at ourselves when we were little children, grew up, got confused, played, fell, disassembled, and re-assembled something not knowing what and how. But thanks to such a farce, during many years of development we become adults. We never know what we are doing.

Look at a small child. Does he know anything? But he makes some attempts all the time. In principle, our development is very incomprehensible. It should be incomprehensible. That is what is interesting!

How can I understand in advance my next state if it is more developed than the present one?! In a day or in a minute or in a year I must be better, taller, stronger than today; that is, I must be more developed.

How can I understand it now?! With my mind, I cannot! How then can I achieve it? It is through this messy, diffuse movement.

To us, it seems disorderly, because we do not realize with our brains that there is a magnificent order, a higher harmony, a harmony of a higher level, but I still do not understand it. It appears to me as utter nonsense. We look at the children: “This is creepy! Look what they do!”

I recently watched my grandson. For half an hour, he walked and collected pinecones under the trees, and then scattered them, then collected them again and scattered them again.

Well, collect it once and that is it! No. His nature drives him all the time, pushes him to such interesting actions.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #13

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Question: Based on what do you think that is necessary to change schools and the approach to education?

Answer: I proceed from Kabbalah. My basis is Kabbalah. I see the ongoing process and its next stage also, I understand their purpose. Therefore, if we do something with violence, then everything will turn out bad for us. We have no right to do this to our children!

I personally left regular school and attended evening school for the last few years. Also, at university for the last two years I attended evening classes, not the daytime.

So, I was free. I could not bear that pressure! I never put pressure on my children.

My eldest daughter, who attended a religious school, said in the eighth grade that she wanted to be a geneticist. I agreed for her to go to a regular school. She graduated from it, received a diploma, and entered university. She is now in charge of the genetics laboratory at the Tel HaShomer hospital in Israel.

My second daughter graduated from school with a design bias. I remember the beautiful medieval dresses she sewed for her exam. Then, literally in the last year of school, she became interested in Kabbalah. Without my intervention. She entered Tel Aviv University’s Department of Philosophy and Kabbalah.

That is, I let the children develop as they wished. You cannot put pressure on children! It is said: “Raise the youth along his path.”(Prov 22:6). Each has his own soul. How can I push?!

Question: But did this come to you after you began to study Kabbalah?

Answer: If I had not studied Kabbalah, none of this would have happened, of course.
[282256]
From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Comment: Now a generation is coming into the world called the coronavirus generation. Analysts believe that this generation will be familiar with free money from the state and have the desire to receive an unconditional basic income. They say there will be a lot of emptiness, drug use, and longing in this generation. We are bringing into the world a generation about which we speak in advance as “lost.”

My Response: It is not our fault. It is nobody’s fault. This is the order of development, this is the evolution of our desires.

To begin with, this generation does not have such desires as we had: to achieve something, to be someone, and so on. This athlete, that writer, this rich man—there is no such thing anymore! There are no desires whatsoever for anything. There is no special ambition.

But I hope that at the same time with the feeling of emptiness, they will begin to feel a radically new filling of giving, a loving attitude toward others.

I cannot fulfill myself, and I do not want to. I am already detached, I no longer have any of that in me. I am too lazy, I do not want to get up or do anything, I do not have anything for myself. But toward others, I can develop such qualities in myself that when I fulfill the other, I begin to feel that it makes sense. There is a desire in it, there is a fulfillment in it.

Question: So, now I am blocked from anything that concerns fulfilling myself directly? Life for myself is blocked for me from all sides.

Answer: Yes. Man has simply spent himself. And here he begins to understand that by fulfilling others, he can fulfill himself. This is a kind of self-filling, but of a different type.

Question: That is, by loving someone else, giving to someone else, I fulfill myself?

Answer: Yes, I fulfill myself. But the point here is that you have to come to a state where you fulfill the other not in order to be fulfilled yourself, but because you want to be in the other and feel and enjoy his fulfillment, and not to think of yourself, absolutely not! Otherwise, you will be back to where you started from, just like in a circle.

I think people will be able to realize this quickly. That same egoism will lead us to this, which is interesting. It buries itself and brings out another type instead.

The masses will come to this from the inevitability, from suffering, from the feeling of insignificance, worthlessness, emptiness. Like how we came to Kabbalah. Only with them it will be more prominent. Because it will be a massive sense of the end. And through this end, through this void, they will see the light. Through the thorns to the stars, from the darkness to the light.

Question: That is, it is necessary to completely destroy everything, practically lay a man down, and then he will see a way out of this state?

Answer: And at the very last stage, when you are completely done, “that’s it, the end!”—that’s where you start to see: no, this is not the end, this is just the beginning! It will be so.

Question: But this is inhumane. And what does the word “humane” mean to you?

Answer: I think that the demolition of both the past regime and the method of filling up the ego is the greatest humanity that the Creator could do, when He exalted man with all his egoistic impulses, goals, and conceit, and then gradually, time after time, century after century, destroys, again and again, all this in man, showing him how unreal it all is.

But we will be able to realize this only at the very last stage.
[279891]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/7/20

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Question: Does inner emptiness manifest in an already developed soul?

Answer: It is not emptiness but a request for the next level of existence, the level of Man.

Man is not an animal. In our world there is inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature. We are on the animate level. But who is man then?

There is no man in our world. Man is a completely different being, it is not us. We cannot call ourselves human beings because we only care about our body: how to exist within it.

Comment: Because we do not know anything else.

My Response: Not that we do not know, we do not have a request for it. Therefore, we are also animals, only more highly organized ones, if you can say so.

Question: Let’s say that children are more developed souls. Parents are less developed because they do not have this request. It is good if they try to understand the child somehow. But if they suppress it, take him to psychologists, give him Ritalin?

Answer: Unfortunately, this is a big problem. But such actions will not achieve anything. It means it will take another generation or two before that goes away too. As a result, we will get a terrible generation.

We do not want to be engaged in giving our children a real understanding of the essence of life. We do not want to break the foundations of our schools made according to the conveyor type.

How old is the modern school? A little over a hundred years. Schools began to be created when the production line appeared. Then they began to quickly train workers who would be able to read a little, write a little, understand the orders, understand the conveyor-type machines.

Therefore, the modern school was created in exactly the same flow—to force people there, to train them into workers, and to put them to work on machines. Our education system emerged from that. And to this day, it is the same.

And today the world is different—informational. The needs of our children are completely different, and the school remains the same. Children cannot thrive in it! They just “die” in it.

The school does not educate a person. It fills them with knowledge, completely unnecessary for today. We need a different school, a different education system, a different atmosphere in the school! We must make schools suitable for the new generation! And then there will be no problems with Ritalin.

Maybe it is better for children to run from morning to night, and while running, organize some classes and not sit all day in drills and look at the hated teacher. This is not how things should be organized!

Who says this is correct? Because that is how it was arranged 150 years ago when workers were needed for the assembly-line industry? We do not need it now! How many people are employed in such jobs today? Everything is being rebuilt, everything is changing. And so we need to make the world fit the children who are growing up today, and not prod fit them into our Procrustean bed so they correspond to it.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Question: We see that each generation that comes into this world is more egoistic and cruder than the previous one. It denies the values of the previous generation. Why?

Answer: It does not deny. It just needs new values.

It seems to us that the next generation should break the previous one. Yet, it does not deal with the destruction of the old one, it just deals with itself and builds a new one. Whereas revolutionaries here and there wanted to destroy everything old, this is what was bad.

However, if it happens not through revolution, but as development in itself, then it involves growth, not destruction.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Generation” 8/24/09

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