Fooling Ourselves
Many high-brow ideologies are nothing but “respectable” disguises for pursuing bodily appetites or for animalistic tendencies to want to destroy for no reason.
Part 5 of “The Journey,” by Erez Moshe Doron: an elaboration of Rebbe Nachman’s famous tale of “The Rabbi and the Only Son”
The son went to tell his father about his feeling that something was missing in his worship….
The father, who is the Rabbi, represents the human intellect. Its true purpose, as we explained in the beginning of the story, is to assist a person to understand his life, to examine the values by which he lives, to find the proper way of life and to perfect himself. It is an instrument in the service of the soul, and a very powerful one. However, as any tool, the results of its use depend upon the one who is using it, and here we come to a perplexing problem.
When a person is born his intellect is not fully developed. It will only develop little by little until it reaches maturity. Meanwhile, his physical aspects are already in place. Within them are situated the evil inclination and its tendencies, such as desires and inordinate lusts. These spread their net over a person while he is still in early childhood.
The mastery of the evil inclination over childhood can be easily seen when we consider the behavior of a child and his plain motivations. The words “I want,” “I want it now,” “Give it…,” are the signs of childhood’s lust for immediate gratification. A child does not yet know how to defer or overpower his desires. Neither does he know that someone else may need his help, nor how to take his friend into his considerations.
Only when his mental abilities develop and receive enrichment from education and socialization will the first signs of the good inclination begin to appear.
Therefore, the physical and egoistic aspects of a person have an advantage over the intellect because they manifest first in early childhood. Also, the child is usually accustomed to the speedy satisfaction of his physical desires. These facts make the integration of the intellect into the human personality very difficult, and it may even be perceived as a “foreign body.”
Therefore, the intellect often fails to provide the means for a person to rule over his inherent powers and turn them towards a positive and useful purpose.
(This is even more likely when a person does not receive proper education.) What happens then is that the intellect becomes a tool to serve the physical body. In other words, we have before us an adult who is essentially a child. He still “wants it.” His justification is still “I felt like it,” and his goal is still anything that seems likely to give him immediate pleasure. However, since he is an adult, his desires and egoism are presented in a serious and respectable manner, and he takes care to convincingly make it appear that there is a real need for them. The question of whether something is really necessary or not is not decided by the insight which he has gained from contemplation and examination. Rather, his starting point is a purely emotional desire which is merely dressed subsequently in garments of intellectual inquiry.
His reasoning is pre-set to produce the desired results.
There are many examples of this phenomenon because they are everywhere throughout our lives. Consider a person who smokes. The only possible reason for this behavior is that he wants to smoke. Nevertheless, in order to quiet his mind he will invent a thousand and one theories to explain his psychological condition, how the cigarette relaxes him, etc. Or, an adult who feels that he has been slighted may go wild with rage, just like a child who has had a toy taken away from him. However, the adult will be quick to explain that his rage was entirely justified and totally dependent on some external cause and not himself. As a final example of the perfidies of the intellect when it is making rationalizations for the adult-child reflect upon the person who deals falsely in business. He is sure to contend that his deceptions are nothing and that his hoaxes are just “white lies.”
All these instances are examples of trying to paint reality in respectable colors. However, if we are permitted to be open about it, all these are nothing more than the feeling of “I want it.” Even the animalistic tendency to want to destroy and murder for no reason can be dressed in elaborate ideologies and legalistic disguises. The Nazis were an extreme manifestation of this case.
In this way a person will fool himself and those around him. He will waste his most precious vessel… his mind … in order to make himself and his deeds appear acceptable, whereas in reality they are nothing more than the petty desires of an immature and unlearned child. The intellect, instead of leading, has become an advertising agent.
When the soul makes her small voice heard and beseeches the help of the intellect, it is no wonder that she finds herself in a fixed game. The intellect has learned to serve the body instead of directing and ruling it. In our parable, the father, representing the intellect, does not help his son (the soul). Rather, he dissuades his son from journeying to the holy man and manages to turn him aside from his true quest.
His father answered him, “How could you think about such a journey. You are a greater sage than him, and your ancestry is more important than his.
In this parable the intellect has no intention of helping the soul. Surprisingly, he blocks all openings and prevents any development. He has no intention of exerting himself for the sake of a spiritual search. Being an advertising agent for respectability is a good and comfortable job for him.
He also knows how to work on everyone’s weak point … a person’s self-pride. “Why do you need to fight the feeling of emptiness. People will laugh at you. You will learn to live with it.
“There are many acceptable poses that you can adopt. You are wise…, you will have an important position some day…. Isn’t the money that you will earn enough for you? Or the privileges that come with it…? Or the status…?”
With words like these the intellect, which has already been bribed long beforehand, manages to choke the voice of the soul. With arguments like these the journey is stopped before it even begins.
To be continued.
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With sincere gratitude to www.levhadvarim.com
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