“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Rabbi Akiva said this is a great principle of the Torah.

We must understand that a “great principle of the Torah” is the fundamental law of nature encompassing the entire universe. With a correct preparation, we see that everything exists only thanks to this law of love for the other like for oneself.

The relationship between anything is possible only by means of a special power, which allows and even requires various, even opposite parts—be they particles, fields, elements of living cells or people—to unite. This external force—the plan of creation—influences them, obliges them to communicate, and as a result, parts do not move from each other but gradually get closer, jointly building more complex systems of the still, vegetative, animate, human, and then spiritual nature.

All this together is the rule of the Torah, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Torah” is the essence, the system, existing between the Creator and the created being. And its law is love for the other as for oneself.

The “other” is the one who is diametrically opposite to me, just as we are opposite to the Creator. Nevertheless, the law of love works in the system obliging us to establish connection between each other because we cannot exist without each other at any of the levels.

This law of stage-by-stage integration is realized without the participation of the created being, by evolutionary processes in the still, vegetative, and animate nature, as well as the similar levels of human nature. Here, the universal law determines and dictates everything, and the created being is under the “press” of development.

However, at the highest level of human nature, the created being begins to adopt and take upon himself the realization of this law. He finds out that the principle of love for someone else or even the opposite is the law of life. After all, there would be nothing without the connection between the created being and the Creator. Being aware of the importance of interconnection, defined as “love for your neighbor,” the created being begins to realize it on his own accord, although at the beginning he discovers that all the other parts are not like him, are foreign and opposite to him.

In general, our entire work is to realize this law. But first it is necessary to study it, to see how it acts in creation. After all, beginning with the Big Bang, all our development, although it seems to us as the process of disintegration and disagreement, is in fact a gradual linking of all the parts of creation, until matter is compelled to realize the fundamental law of nature and perform it on its own accord.

Thus, the created being identifies himself with the Creator, and then they both will come to the basic principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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