The world was created from Tohu vavohu. Everything since has context.
He was not defining people. He was writing about a rebbe. If benignuman is correct, it would apply to every yid in klal Yisroel. The rebbe was answering an age old question as to how one is allowed to ask a rebbe to daven for him when it is established that we don’t go through a middleman. His answer was that by going to a rebbe, you are going directly to Hashem because he is an atzmus ein sof etc. He said he had no sources, and it was just a feeling. If it was so elementary, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to apologize for it.