For thousands of years – since people had the luxury of thinking (which is based on successful economies) people have been searching for the underlying reality.

From Greek mythology and philosophy, to Jewish Divine blueprint for life, and certainly, as the industrial revolution freed man from so much psychical labor, universities and their accompanying philosophers, like mushrooms, dotted the landscape.

Great faith was placed in the new priests, but that has dissipated, as our lives have become far more confusing, than even before.

Rising in the midst of this chaos, like a column of clear Divine light, is the wisdom of Rabbi Yisroel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidus, revolutionizing the entire perspective on reality.

Fundamentally realized, not by the philosophers aka Kant, Hegel, rather, the empirical data: Einstein, Heisenberg etc. it sheds a paradigm, that no man could have ever imagined!

Apart from the obvious (which we mentioned) that all is a Divine flow – that life is algorithmic growth – the ultimate in E-Pluribus-Unum – perhaps the final frontier is not Pluto rather, our inner universe!

Freud took a stab, and what he concocted was more devil’s broth than chicken soup; but at the very least he unraveled the paradigm, that there is a deeper universe – much like physics did to matter – then meets the eyes.

And here, elucidated in the awesome heart, mind, soul and pen of the Alter Rebbe in his magnum-opus the Tanya – a new philosophy hitherto unrevealed, appears!

Simply stated, it balances the forces of light and darkness and explains how they (co)exist within.

The human is divided into four chambers:

The soul, the mind, and the emotions, of which there are two primary: love and fear.

The soul, states the Kabbalists, is the Divine breath – literally, a part of God (as God is indivisible, hence, in the Baal Shem Tov’s words, “A part of indivisible matter, is, actually the whole.”)

But this soul, travels into the mind – the independent observer (this of-course is what separates us from animals, for animals do not observe objectively.)

But the mind is under constant attack (hence the deep schizophrenia we are all under, as repeated and observed by all religions, philosophies, psychology, often called the mind / body dichotomy (Aristotle etc.))

For the heart, inborn and learnt fear (survival, shame) and loves (survival, pride, social, pleasure, anger, laziness, fun, comedy) have and to a large extent access, and control the mind!

What is unique to the human – a privilege not granted to an other species – is the ability to change what we think about – once we understand this, WE CAN CONTROL OUR THOUGHTS! – we then have the ability to downland new positive emotions, as well as download anti-virus (to overcome fear.)