Chapter 16

Correcting the World

What is Tikkun Olam? It literally means, to correct the world. But, what does that mean? Is the world broken or is it only our perception and our approach to life that needs to be fixed?

Many people all over the world can clearly see now, that we’re currently in a crisis of direction and purpose and any understandable sense of the future is all but gone. We feel that we’re kind of in a creeping chaos and that all human activities are coming to a kind of dead end, from science to social, religious and national relationships, right down to the core of the family, we see that we simply don’t know how to deal with the events and the forces that are working on us right now.

Our whole problem is really only a problem of perception, because we’re built to do whatever is in our best interest, but we can’t do this on a large scale because we can’t perceive on a large scale. If we could clearly see the rules concerning the whole, we’d simply do them.

We’re constantly grappling with this problem. How can we really help the world in this situation? We have thought of this idea of Tikkun Olam (correction of the world) as social activism, giving and doing and all of these sorts of actions that we account as 'kindnesses' to people. But, we can clearly see that social activism or political intrigue will not producing the outcome that we had hoped.

Perhaps the meaning of the correction of the world is something else entirely. Now, Baal HaSulam has an article called The Revelation of Godliness and in this article he deals precisely with what it is that Tikkun Olam is; what it will do, and how it can really affect the individual and the world as a whole. So, let’s take a look at it and discover what actions we really can take to help the world.

He begins, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Leviticus 19:18).  “This is a great rule in the Torah.” This statement demands explanation, because the word 'law', the word for law in Hebrew also means whole, indicates a sum of details, that when put together, form the above whole. This is why it is a matter of a problem of perception.

[Drawing]

There is a whole and there is our perception of that whole, and the whole is hidden from us as though we were separated and as though this didn’t exist at all. Example a iceberg, only a small speck of the total unit is visible. Now, all of this is really us. It really is all that we can discover and there’s no innovation here. There’s nothing new added at any point in this development that we go through. The revelation of this is the revelation of what we are, which is the same thing as the whole. This whole structure of reality well, you can look at it a lot of different ways.

[see drawing]

You could look at is as though it were a system of worlds… and us sort of isolated from these spiritual upper worlds in a place called this world. So, this is really this same idea inverted. It is just sort of upside down, compared to what this is.

This is what we need to be able to feel and to see in order to know how to really operate in such a way that what we call 'godliness' or 'reality,' becomes revealed to us. So, this wholeness is really peace, and this is the thing that the Torah wants to bring us to know. It is really only about how to reveal this CREATOR, this wholeness, this 'what we are' and to do it in such a way that it is a whole, that it is what you call Shalom or peace; that it works in such a way that this wholeness brings about the correct and good experience of existence.

He continues. "It turns out that when he says about the Mitzva (precept, commandment) of love thy neighbor as thy self, that it is a great rule in the Torah, we must understand that all the other 612 Mitzvot (plural of Mitzva) or precepts in the Torah, with all their interpretations, are no more and no less than the sum of the details inserted and contained in that single Mitzva of love your neighbor as yourself."

This article is telling us that the Bible’s not a bunch of stories and rules, it is actually a manual that explains what we’re building in our existence, how to build it and after it is built, how do you operate it. It is the means of revealing all the hidden details of reality in such a way that they work together in a harmony for a single good purpose.

The whole of the Bible and all the books of Kabbalah are only about how to achieve "love your neighbor as yourself" for real, not just act as if you do, because when we just act as if we do, we really bring destruction to the world; and what we actually achieve when we achieve it for real, it is something very different, something very real happens.

He continues. "Before we delve into the heart of it, we must observe this precept carefully, as we are told, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” The word self tells us that you must love your friend in the same measure that you love yourself and in a manner less than that, meaning that you must constantly stay on guard to satisfy the needs of each and every one of the nation, just as you stand on guard to satisfy your own."

He’s saying here that my feeling towards another has got to be identical to my feeling about myself. This is clearly not about being a nice guy and a good citizen; it is about a fundamental change of perception that would clearly reveal to a person that this is how he must act.

He continues. "This is utterly impossible, for not many are the people who can satisfy their own needs during the daily works, so how can you tell them to work to satisfy the wishes of the entire nation. And we couldn’t possibly think that the Torah exaggerates, for it warns us not to add or subtract, to demonstrate that these words and laws were given with utter precision."

"And if this is still not enough for you, let me tell you that the simple explanation of that precept of loving your fellow man is even harsher--that we have to put the needs of our friends before our own. As our sages have written regarding the verse, “Because he is happy with thee,” regarding the Hebrew slave, when sometime, he has but one pillow. If he lays on it himself and he does not give this to his slave." Well, when he’s speaking here about a master and slave, he’s not talking about an owner and some poor soul who must work for him. He’s talking about an inner aspect of a single person.

"If he lays on it himself, and he doesn’t give it to his slave, then he doesn’t observe “because he is happy with thee,” for he lays on a pillow and the slave, on the ground. And if he does not lie on it and he does not give it to the slave as well, this is the Sodomite rule."

The Sodomite rule is the law of the city of Sodom, which is, “what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine.” If you can’t have it, then I can’t have it and it gets worse than that and you may notice that what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine is really the law of every nation in the world. It is how all societies are organized.

He continues. "It turns out that against his will, he must give it to his slave, while the master himself lies on the ground." Now, I’m skipping around, jumping to another paragraph.

"There is a verdict, that if he sits on in and does not give it to his friend, he breaks the commandment of “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” because he does not satisfy the needs of his friend as he satisfies his own. And if he does not sit on it and also does not give it to his friend, it is as evil as Sodomite rule. Therefore, he must let his friend sit on it, and he should either stand or sit on the ground. It is understood that this is the law regarding all the needs that are at his disposal and his friend’s lacks."

Now, go and see if this precept is in any way feasible. So, this is not a law that in the first place, can be kept by actions. Certainly the nature of people is completely against this, and we’re not speaking about making the kind of change that comes from external actions. We’re really not talking about fulfilling people physically, because we can’t begin there.

The reason we can’t begin there, is because every action that we do is wrong, even if it seems good, because, our so-called good actions do damage when they’re done for the wrong reason. In order for an action to have a good outcome, its point of creation has got to be good. It has to come from an intention, the correct intention when it is created. It has to have that in its preparation. If it has that, if the intention comes from that point and is prepared in that way, and the intention matches the intention of the force that cares for everything, in other words, godliness or the real force behind reality, then every action that we take will be good without exception.

It is about the intention behind our feeling about what another person is, and, it is describing precisely the way that the law of nature functions. From this intention, we can see and interact with all of life in a global manner, and it is not an admonition. It is not telling us to act in a way that we can possibly accept it and do it externally. It is not supposed to be taken as a burden like, “Hey mister, you better keep these rules.” You can’t. It is an inner direction as to how to remove all burdens and chaos from human experience.

Before we can go any further, we really need to ask ourselves… you know, this is a very fine and lofty idea, but when would a person ever really be required to do such a thing? Well, right now we’re being required to do it. We are at a point in human development where we have been thrust into a situation that we don’t know how to deal with. We are finding ourselves having to connect with everything all at once.

Now, it is coming to us first in, say, technological forms or the progression of economies, where we see a completely interconnected global economy. We can’t really do anything in one corner of the globe that doesn’t have tremendous impact everyplace else.

Even our system of communicating with each other has become so intermeshed, that it is starting to break down our ideas of what we are and what we possess. Everything that we have experienced over the last thousands of years has been only according to the development of one particular quality inside humanity; and that quality is just the development of egoism. Everything, our own corner, our own private property, our own nation, our own privacy. But this privacy, because of the tremendous growth of our desire to feel, to know and to fulfill ourselves, has now come to a point where we’re already in our next stage of development, except we don’t know how to live there.

You look at the Internet. If you put anything on the Internet, at once you can digitize it and it is there, it belongs to everybody. So, we’re already there, but because we don’t know how to live there, we finding ourselves becoming enmeshed in a global war. We’re finding that we rob from everybody in our global economies. We still have poverty and suffering everywhere and the only difference in how we’re dealing with it, is that now we can turn on the TV and see everybody’s suffering in every corner.

We need to know how to live in this globalized state and "love your neighbor as yourself" is the instruction as to how it is possible to turn this situation that’s overtaking us, into one that will actually bring us to completeness and wholeness.

Let’s look at the diagram again. So, this pre-existing reality needs to be revealed, and this is why we say that "love your neighbor as yourself" is both the means of revealing reality and of keeping all of the commandments. All 613 commandments are really the details of "love your neighbor as yourself" and this is how that is so.

[Drawing]

When we see ourselves in this reality and can only perceive a small part of ourselves, we see ourselves as separated here. This is me, the “I.” Now, every other person, all others, are these single viewing points in the collective soul that actually make up this whole, but see themselves as completely separated. Now if this I starts to expand and to view the egoism, these separate needs of the others, as his own need, then what happens is that they actually become his so that there’s an expansion. And, as a result of this expansion, an inclusion of others precisely as the self, this degree of the whole becomes revealed. And this happened, this larger degree of perception of the whole, happened only because of the love of the other as the self.

Once the vessels of the other are incorporated into the desires, the desire of the individual, then they become his. There’s no difference between the “I” of the one person and the “I” of the many people. So, what happens is, the more this individual perception expands outward, it begins to encompass every single point; so all of this pre-existing reality, this godliness becomes a whole, simply as a result of going beyond the border, not only of, what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours, but what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is yours. This increases the expansion to the point where there is no consideration of, this is just me, but that this becomes the whole reality.

This is how we both love our friend as ourselves, that is, keep all of the commandments, all of the details of the descriptions of how we should be treating others nicely, and actually attain a full grasp of reality. It is only through the love of others that the total of reality can be revealed.

This law of the Torah, this instruction of how to actually achieve this expansion of identification with others as yourself, is the only means by which we are going to be able to live in this global situation.

[Drawing]

The global situation is nothing but this boundary that we don’t see--that we already are completely interactive with all of these points. The only law that we need know in order to make the entire global system work, so that we are not exploiting each other, so that every action that we do comes from an impulse that is exactly the same impulse of the whole, is the love of the other as the self. Now, all religions and all philosophies and all people of good will say, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The only problem is that it is only a saying. There is no religious or political method of showing a person how to actually achieve this.

That is the only thing that Kabbalah deals with. All of its apparent complexities boil down to this one method, which is the way in which to reach a sincere, complete and whole desire to see the other as ourselves. This one commandment, so to speak, which is the command of the Upper Reality, because it is its very nature, is the only thing that we need to do. And, all we need is advice as to how this actually can be achieved.

Love your friend as yourself is the door to the spiritual world, because through that love, it connects each little personal egoistic opening to reveal the true nature of reality and what’s more, it reveals it not as external, but as internal.