Rabbi Elazar said, “The Creator said, ‘The whole world was created only for that.’ This means that the whole world was created for the fear of God” (Rabash, “Purpose of Society – 1”).

There is an exalted goal that is not perceived within our egoistic sensations, within the aspiration to take everything “into oneself.” The exit “from oneself” and concern for what is “outside of me” is called spiritual fear (Yirat HaShem).

At present, I am anxious about how to fill and protect myself. This is called fear for oneself.

Subconsciously we are constantly preoccupied with attracting what is beneficial and distancing what is harmful to ourselves, to our egoism.

Spiritual fear means that I experience fear for what is outside of me. I worry about others and about the Creator like a mother worries about her small child when all her thoughts are in him and about him.

In this fear, in this concern for the other, outside of myself, outside of my egoism, I feel the upper reality.
[18070]
From Lesson No.1 Mega Congress, 7/24/10

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Question: How can the principle “love your neighbor as yourself” be fulfilled if I love my neighbor with selfish love, but I must love him altruistically?

Answer: Indeed, these are two kinds of love. But you can love another person more than yourself if you begin to realize that to love another is the same love, only at the next level, global, integral, eternal, perfect. And to love yourself means that you love only at the animal level.

Therefore, it is impossible to compare love external, integral and internal, linear, selfish. When both types of love arise in a person, he begins to love eternity, perfection, and the world more than his animal body.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/19/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How would you define love?“

Love is a quality, force and longing to fulfill the desires of others, which is directed from the person outward.

How is it possible to fulfill another person’s desires?

It is possible if we understand their desires.

If we have shared habits, thoughts and opinions with others, then we know how to fulfill them and express our love.

If we lack understanding of their desires, then we should aspire to have desires that are similar to those whom we love, i.e., to build an inner model that matches their desires.

Building an inner model through which we can understand the desires of others grants us the ability to give them fulfillment.

We can then understand our own feelings when we receive the same kind of fulfillment, so we know how to fulfill them.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, such a state is called “equivalence of form.” That is, by equalizing qualities with others, we achieve a state of unification, and love is the sensation of that unification.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is it important to have love in life?“

The principle of love, or more specifically, loving others as oneself, is known to all, yet there is a lot of confusion surrounding it.

There is a general agreement among most people that there needs to be love among people, yet we see that some people are willing to eliminate large portions of humanity in the name of love. It is even more surprising how vaguely this principle is reflected in different religions.

As a result, we are not very concerned about loving each other in actual fact. We are raised through a multitude of influences that completely neglect the question of how we can reach true love among people.

Therefore, the question here is correct, and we should definitely stop and pay attention to it: Is it important to have love in life? Is love really that important?

Perhaps it is enough to teach children morals and have a general atmosphere of respect among adults? Or should love of others nevertheless be life’s goal, which we strive to reach at every moment, and which we are concerned about reaching every person and everyone together equally? Maybe if we set love of other people, all people equally, as our goal, and tried to reach that goal in the fastest possible way, then we could spare a lot of suffering in humanity, and moreover, experience lives of much greater fulfillment and happiness?

Therefore, this is an extremely important question. If we discuss the meaning of life, the purpose for which we entered our world, then why do we neglect this principle so much?

In essence, we are extremely far from understanding the fact that this principle is the universal law of the universe and of nature. All other laws that we know, and especially ones we do not know, rotate around such an axis.

If we wish to understand ourselves and the world we live in, then we have to attain the laws of nature, which are fundamentally laws of love and connection. Without attaining love for others, or as it was written, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we will be unable to discover who or where we are.

Love is the key that lets us see the entire picture of reality accurately, to understand, feel and become included in it, and to use it for self-realization.

By acquiring love for others in practice, we attain the Creator’s quality. Other laws are just facets and partial expressions of this fundamental law of reality. It is similar to how the law of gravity can be expressed in different ways, but as a whole, it always determines how one object is attracted to another.

There is a general phenomenon and there are particular cases of it. There is a law of universal bestowal, and for us it is first and foremost expressed as the social principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” By realizing this principle in society, we carry out the universal law. It controls us, and if we want to arrange our lives well, we have to aspire to its realization.

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On the next degree, an even greater lack is felt: the lack of love. The need for love is a treasure and I suffer from the fact that there is no love in my heart.¹

The need to love is a new Kli. In our world love withers because we receive what we desire and enjoy it. How can we enjoy love in such a way that it would constantly continue to grow? I must feel the need to love and enjoy not by using my loved one for pleasure, but in the yearning for it.

This yearning is my Kli and the only joy that I desire. I don’t want to reveal the Creator, but I am fulfilled by my yearning toward Him, by the greatness of the one that I fulfill. Such love never withers. If such love existed in our world, there would never be any divorce. We must work on such love.

We change our attitude toward unity. Our Kli becomes different, we gradually approach it from a new angle: instead of wishing to reach the goal, I enjoy my desire for it. I want to remain in this yearning and receive fulfillment from it like from my first love, from romantic thoughts, from the fact that I enjoy looking at the subject of my affection, from hearing their voice. The Creator gives everyone such an example in life, from it one can understand how this works in spirituality.

We can live in the pleasure of striving for the Creator. Then we will no longer be deceived as before when we wanted to reveal Him and enjoy this love. This is a lie, and this is how we kill it. Love can be enjoyed only if you go above your egoistic desires. Any relationship below this level destroys love.

Therefore, the spiritual and the corporeal are two different worlds. In corporeal life, we love the way we can, but in spirituality, love must be built on faith above reason.

Baal HaSulam, “Letter #19”: “This means that, during the preparation, the beauty and grace appear and the essence of perfection that one yearns and longs for. However, at the time of correction, when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,” then, “I shall see an opposite world,” because only fear and longing are the essence of the desired perfection. Then one feels that, during the time of preparation, one was lying to oneself.”

Indeed, in this manner, our spiritual vessel is not limited, we can feel eternity in it—the Creator. The need to love is pleasure: joy from yearning, desire, and longing. It is in this very yearning that love is achieved, not in receiving it and satiating oneself with it, which destroys it all. We see that such love ends and turns to ruins. The desire to love is not a void, but a fulfillment that never ends. Each time you can increase it, like love for a baby that never ends, it is there for life.

The goal of the Bulgarian congress is to learn how to love, to reveal a genuine desire toward the Creator, and to make the greatest leap toward the first spiritual degree. Genuine love is realized in the group, in unity for the sake of bestowal that the Creator can dress into. It means that the Creator dresses into His creations.

Everyone experiences their first love in their youth; it is given to us from above as an example of selfless platonic love. But we understand that it is impossible to achieve perfect love in our corporeal desires except under the condition that we rise above them. That is why we are given an example in our childhood of enjoying not the physical relationship, but the dreams of our beloved.

This is the attitude I should have toward the Creator: enjoying my yearning for Him so that it would completely fills me. I am content just thinking about the Creator, dreaming of bringing Him joy. This is a limitless Kli that can always be expanded further. This is not the romantic desire we felt in childhood but a desire to bestow, which is very deep and serious. It is more important than this entire world and all the desires to enjoy.

Inside, there are many different properties, wars are waged not for life, but for death, and all about this relationship: for the pleasure of striving toward the Creator. This means bringing joy to the Creator. What else can we give Him; what can we add to His perfection? Only our aspiration to Him.

It is said: “Beware of reaching out for love.” I do not want to receive what I want because this would destroy my love, weaken it, and it would immediately vanish. Therefore, I only need the aspiration.

This originates from the beginning of creation, from the four phases of direct light. The quality of stage four (Behina Dalet) is restriction and yearning. I do not want to receive anything, because I felt shame and understood that I am destroying the way the Creator is relating to me, and in this case, nothing can ever happen between us. It is good that I have developed a feeling of shame, a warning about my inability to love. Therefore, I restrict my desire.

How great it is that I found a solution: the restriction after which there is only the reflecting light, only the yearning toward the Creator. The restriction stays between us, I do not reveal Him, because this is called the disclosure of nakedness. We cannot do that. I always remain in love above reason, and the romantic love fulfills me completely.

I cover the source of my love with a screen so that I will relate to it above my animalistic desires, above the desire to enjoy.²
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/13/19, Preparation to the Europe Convention

¹ Minute 1:17:35
² Minute 1:20:30

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New Life 1148 – How To Arouse Love In Couple Relationships
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Couples need to learn how to build, inspire, and revive their love relationships by rising above egoism. We need to learn how to understand our egoistic human nature and why we cannot tolerate one another. Couples who want to undergo such a process need guidance in a group course where participants show each other how much they try to rise above their own desires for the benefit of their partner. Love is like an animal and must be constantly fed. Rising above egoism opens new horizons according to the principle, “love will cover all transgressions.”
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1148 – How To Arouse Love In Couple Relationships,” 8/1/19

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New Life 223 – Romantic Love – The Perfect Pleasure
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

How can the limited love we are familiar with be transformed into real “true” love, eternal love? In true love relationships, the goal is to bring pleasure to each other by learning what the other enjoys and working to benefit and serve the other. Each one enjoys that the other enjoys. The two have to build a third thing between them, a kind of ball full of fear and mutual love, and live together inside it. The fear and the love are the deficiency and the filling that are constantly renewed. This mutually loving attitude brings eternal happiness and endless pleasure.
[131962]
From KabTV’s “New Life 223 – Happiness: Love – The Perfect Pleasure,” 8/15/13

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Question: From the point of view of science, isn’t the love a person feels for another simply a chemical process occurring in his body?

Answer: Of course, these are all chemical processes.

Question: What is love in terms of Kabbalah?

Answer: It is love at another level. But ultimately it is realized in us in the same physical and chemical processes. Only in Kabbalah it is studied from its upper source, from where it appears in us.

In fact, everything is determined by what is called “soul affinity,” that is, how much our souls, our spiritual components, are in a close state to each other in the common system of all souls in the world. Accordingly, we become attracted to and find each other.

It seems like it is a coincidence, that there are some circumstances. It is nothing of the kind. There are no coincidences in the world. Only the upper root brings us into some kind of movement toward each other. It obliges us to pay attention to each other and get close. At what level and in what sense to get close depends on the quality of our spiritual roots.

Question: How does this spiritual convergence occur?

Answer: A person in our world does not know this. We, as they say, “sniff” each other, study each other. It seems to us that we are suitable or not. It seems to us that circumstances lead to this, and everyone says: “You are so alike, similar,” and so on. This is all the world of dolls, the world of a game. But in fact, spiritual forces, spiritual roots, determine everything.

Question: How does one search for a spiritual partner?

Answer: People will not be able to. People do not understand. We study this in the science of Kabbalah and understand how it works. But in our world, we still cannot realize it.

Question: Is love a relationship of souls?

Answer: Love is the attraction of kindred souls. But this is spiritual, ideal love.

Question: What is a soulmate?

Answer: Soulmates are those who are in very close combination in the spiritual world.

There is a common soul. In it, there are many, billions of private souls that coexist with each other in all sorts of combinations. Their combinations determine the convergence, separation, and movement, including physical, in general, all this Brownian movement between us in our world.

Question: Does the name “my other half” imply a soulmate?

Answer: This is the perfect case.

Question: What is lovesickness?

Answer: Lovesickness in our world is purely egoistic suffering because I need fulfillment and I cannot find it. “Where is my second half that will fill me?” It’s just like: “Where is my dinner that I want to eat that I’m supposed to have?” It is absolutely the same. It is also the same with sex and with all the other fillings.

Question: What should be the principle of relationships of love in terms of Kabbalah?

Answer: This is a mutual understanding, the pursuit of a common goal, in which we unite together as one. But only in a common goal.

Question: Can this goal be anything?

Answer: No, only the spiritual goal! A spiritual goal is the union of our souls. As the great English poet Chaucer wrote: “Reach the merging of our souls in the tangle of our bodies.” He laughed at this—what we want.

Question: What is the lovesickness (“suffering out of love”) in Kabbalistic terms?

Answer: It is when I want to find my soulmate, including all the other souls in the world, in order to reach a state of spiritual connection between us, when I give everything, and through them I give it to the Creator. This is called true love. Eternal.

Question: Can there be a separation between soulmates, a break in communication? Why does it occur?

Answer: I did not observe such effects in our world. We are still in a state where our world is broken, and it only just begins its approach to the spiritual, corrected world.

We will definitely enter it. The question is when? We will reach a state where we will simultaneously perform actions in our world on the basis of spiritual actions. Then, we will fall in love with the soul and unite “soul to soul” as they say. Then everything will coexist in this way. I cannot imagine that separation is possible at this state.

Question: Then separation will not exist?

Answer: No. This is eternal love!
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From the TV program “News with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman”, 2/28/18

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Question: Can I ask the Creator for a blessing for my family and friends who are not interested in Kabbalah?

Answer: You can ask, but I do not know what will come of it. I do not think that something special will result because the request should be a request for correction and you ask for the improvement of a situation, but improvement is impossible without correction.

Question: Can I ask the Creator to send me the Light to correct my egoism?

Answer: Yes, it is possible, but your request should be as selfless as possible.
[240378]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/4/18

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/14/19

What is love? Among the masses, love has a very loose definition. It’s a source of inspiration of music, literature and poetry, yet its true significance is basically unknown to the majority. “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” is the general force that controls our reality, but what does love really mean?

Such love is not the kind we grasp in the corporeal world, which is an animalistic, material, egoistic manifestation enabling us to enjoy one another. Parents instinctively love their children, and children instinctively love their parents, to the extent that they both receive what is mutually expected.

Meanwhile, love between the sexes is simply the quest for hormonal fulfillment. It may suddenly disappear, or on the contrary, awaken out of nowhere. This refers to nothing more than an attraction that pertains to the animate level.

True love, on the contrary, is eternal and rooted above our earthly desires. It is born when we understand and realize that we belong to a single global and integral system, nature and humanity, where we depend on each other above egoistic calculations of self-benefit. It refers to the interconnected system we are parts of, which is sustained as a whole above the differences, as in a single family.

In a family, there is no person greater than or lesser than another. All members are equally important. That is how we need to see humanity, where each person is essential to complete the perfect picture of nature where we appreciate, value and support each other. That is the key for any relationship’s success.

Under this model, we do not erase any inclinations or flaws in us. We are only concerned on how to rise above them in order to connect under the canopy of true love, the kind of love that covers all hatred and rejection, everything that divides us. Building that cover is the condition to attain a new sensation of boundless love, any day, any time.

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