Michael Laitman on the Times of Israel: “What Are the Rules of Love?”
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Rabbi Akiva said this is a great rule of the Torah.
We must understand that a “great rule of the Torah” is the fundamental law of nature that encompasses the whole universe. If we prepare ourselves sufficiently, then we come to see that life itself exists solely due to this law of love for others as for ourselves.
Any kind of connection is possible only by means of a special power, which allows and even requires the unification of various, even opposite parts, whether they be particles, fields, or elements of living cells or people. This external force, the base law of nature that is a law of love and connection, influences all of nature’s parts, obliging them to connect, and accordingly, the parts gradually draw closer together, developing more and more complex systems on the still, vegetative, animate, human and then the spiritual nature.
The force of love and connection that brings about life on those levels is the rule of the Torah, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Torah” refers to the system that exists between nature itself and its creations, us people, and its law is that of love for others as for ourselves.
“Others” are those who are diametrically opposite, just as we are opposite to the nature’s form of love and bestowal. Its law of love operates throughout the system it created, obligating us to establish connections among each other because life can only exist through mutual connection at any of nature’s levels.
This law of love that fuels interconnection and interdependence throughout the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature comes about without human participation, i.e., by evolutionary processes on those levels. Here, nature’s law determines and dictates everything in life, and we people find ourselves under its so-called “evolutionary steamroller,” i.e., evolution itself drives us to connect more and more without asking our opinion on the matter.
Therefore, beyond the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature, at the human level, if we start adopting and accepting upon ourselves the realization of nature’s law, then we come to discover that this rule of “love your neighbor as yourself” is life’s law. Nothing would exist without the connection between us and nature.
Through such a discovery, we start gaining awareness of this supreme law on our own accord, although in the beginning we find that an attitude of loving others as ourselves completely eludes us, as others appear to be foreign to us, even completely opposite.
Nevertheless, we need to realize nature’s law of love and connection in our human connections. It is necessary first to study it and to see how it acts throughout nature. From the Big Bang until our current time, it might seem as if we develop through a process of disconnection and disagreement, but in fact there is a constant process of development to higher and higher states of connection, and such evolution continues, compelling matter to realize the fundamental law of nature on its own accord.
At the latter juncture, we humans will identify with the force and law of nature in our connections to each other, coming to realize the law of “love your neighbor as yourself” among each other and with nature.
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Question: If there is a great desire and striving for the Creator, how can we check whether it is directed for the sake of the Creator or for our own sake?
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