“Love others as yourself”: The single point where everything, including religions, sciences, and common sense converges

The Covid-19 virus pandemic has shown us in an unambiguous, decisive way that we exist in a closed, fully interdependent and integrated living system — like Nature’s integral system itself.

Whether we want it or not we are tied to each other with multiple ties, we depend on each other and we are mutually responsible for one another.

And if we need any extra proof, we have received it from the uncoordinated, contradictory, totally inadequate reactions, operations from the nations of the world, where no global leadership, any meaningful cooperation was seen, compounding the problem multifold. And this will get only worse when the inevitable, subsequent socio-economic crisis comes, and each will try to survive at the expense of the others.

If we could take a pause and reflect on this while we are helplessly sitting in our houses, quarantines due to the virus spread, then we would suddenly find the millennia-old principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” suddenly making sense.

This notion is on the flag of all religions, spiritual teachings, it is frequently used in speeches and different forms of arts. But when it came to implementing this notion, the principle in practice we either did not even try it or gave up very quickly rendering to empty lipservice.

And it is not surprising. The whole notion of me taking another person as important as myself, or more important than myself — unless it is my spouse or my children and even in this case it has become an increasingly difficult concept in our days — is alien to our inherently individualistic, egocentric, subjective nature, operating software.

But now suddenly we find ourselves in a situation, where we either learn how to survive, collectively together — being stationed on the same, sinking, global boat — or we will all perish together!

Now suddenly it does not matter in what context we are looking at “loving others as ourselves”.

We are in a Human bubble, which finds itself under pressure by unbending, “iron laws” that say that in fully integrated, interdependent living systems survival is possible only with mutually responsible, mutually complementing cooperation where the calculations for each and everyone have to be for the well-being of the collective above personal, individual benefit.

It is totally irrelevant if we consider these laws coming from a singular “Supreme Being”, or we consider them the laws of Nature, or we just want to know how to solve our global problems in order to survive another day. Laws are laws and either we follow them or we pay the price!

From ancient traditions through religions to biology and quantum physics we all consider our living space, the system as a closed, singular space, force-field, where everything is interconnected and follows a single developmental plan. By common sense, we already see that teamwork towards a common goal is more successful than individual geniuses exclusively competing with one another.

Thus it is simply a psychological barrier that we need to a breakthrough in order to start seeing “loving others as ourselves” as the single opening, the point through which we can solve problems, understand the reality we live in and rise to a qualitatively much higher level of Human existence. Then we will see that this principle is not mysticism, but a symbolic, poetic description on Nature’s most fundamental law for sustaining balance and homeostasis without which there is no life.

And of course, this “love” does not mean our self-oriented hormonal infatuation or the mother’s love based on natural instincts. “True love” existence and optimal development depend on are mutually entering each other’s desires, needs and fulfilling them according to the viewpoint, necessity of the other without any selfish, individualistic calculations, distortion — as it happens in our own biological bodies and in Nature in general.

This is a “love” we need to learn, we have to develop above and against our inherent nature, but when we do, through this “true love” we open a completely different dimension of existence, consciousness, and a perception that is unbounded by our inherently egocentric, subjective limitations of time, space and motion in a realistic, tangible way, here and now.

With this “love” we become Human beings, similar to Nature, thus seamlessly integrating into the systems “circle of life”, sensing the whole system as our own.