It is told about Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin, known as the holy Ruzhiner, that once a Jew came to him and told him that the scientists (they were not called scientists at that time, but rather, researchers of nature) now say that it is not the sun that revolves around the earth but the opposite—the earth revolves around the sun. The Ruzhiner bowed his head and after a few minutes said, "Because this is the will of the tzaddikim now." It is beyond the scope of this article to delve deeply into the issue, but the Lubavitcher Rebbe explained that although most people, including a large portion of scientists, believe that the heliocentric (sun-centered) model of the solar system is correct, formally, science cannot definitively determine whether this is indeed the case or whether the geocentric (earth-centered) model is correct. How then could the Ruzhiner accept the words of the scientists and even say that the matter was determined by the tzaddikim of the generation?
Scientific Discoveries as Matters of Divine Service
The explanation for Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin's response can be found when applying his words to the realm of the soul. According to Maimonides, scientific research should serve as an aid to fulfill the commandments to love and fear God. As he writes in the Laws of the Fundamentals of Torah (Chapter 2, Halacha 2):
"And how is the way to love and fear Him? When a person contemplates His wondrous and great deeds and creations, and perceives in them His wisdom that is beyond compare and infinite, immediately he loves, praises, and glorifies Him, and has a great desire to know the great Name… And when he thinks about these very matters, he immediately recoils in fear and knows that he is a small, lowly, dark creature, standing with a tiny and limited understanding before the Perfect Knowledge."
If so, the words of the Ruzhiner imply that the tzaddikim do not determine reality but rather ask God to reveal to humanity a particular aspect of nature so that the study of nature will help guide people to fulfill the commandments to love and fear God. In other words, every genuine scientific discovery agreed upon by the majority of scientists is meant to convey a message in Divine service. Thus, we should strive to understand the transition from a geocentric to a heliocentric perspective in this context.
All These Were Created to Serve Me
The geocentric approach teaches us that we are at the center of reality, not to inflate our sense of self, but to help us understand the great responsibility placed upon us and to reinforce the awareness that all our actions have cosmic significance. Indeed, “All these were created to serve me” (and indeed, the primary meaning of שמש [sun] is service – that it comes to serve humanity, and thus is perceived as revolving around it). However, all this is to help me fulfill “and I was not created but to serve my Creator.” With the historical changes in the structure of the soul and the development of self-awareness and personal importance, the geocentric worldview led to increased egocentricity. Hence, there was a need to change the worldview.
Changing Perspective and Soul Correction
The Ruzhiner Rebbe understood that to remove a person from a sense of exaggerated self-importance, which does not enhance his service of God, it was necessary for scientists to “discover” that it is precisely the Earth, and the humans upon it, that revolve around the sun. Man is required to change his perspective. No longer is he the center with everything serving him so that he can serve God; rather, he and others (represented by the additional planets) revolve around a common center.
This change in perspective has led to many implications, particularly in the field of psychology. Most psychological problems that modern people suffer stem from the fact that, consciously or unconsciously, they feel that they are the center of the world and that everything revolves, or at least should revolve, around them. The correction of the soul begins with understanding that very few things, if any, truly revolve around me; rather, each soul has its own axis, and all of them together revolve around another common center, which is God.
The Carousel Parable
Since the purpose of investigating nature is to bring about love and awe of God, it is not enough to merely understand cognitively the difference between a heliocentric or geocentric worldview. We must transform this understanding into an experience—what Chasidut calls giving birth to new emotions in the heart from this insight.
To grasp the experience of generating a new feeling in the heart, Rabbi Hillel of Paritch, one of the great "ovdim" (spiritual workers) in Chabad, gave a beautiful analogy. He explained that the moment of transition in the soul from a geo/egocentric experience to a heliocentric experience is similar to the sensation of approaching and stepping onto a spinning carousel. As long as he is approaching, he still feels like he is standing still and the carousel is moving— he feels that he is the center and everything revolves around him.
The entrance into serving God and the beginning of soul rectification occurs when a person steps onto the carousel, and in one moment his sensation changes from standing still to revolving. Gradually, he becomes accustomed to the feeling that he and everything on the carousel are revolving around its center.
However, over time, a person gets used to this sensation and feels like he is standing still again. Therefore, he must step onto the carousel anew, as if for the first time, to once again experience the transition from a perspective where he is at the center to a perspective where he, along with everyone else, revolves around God.
