(I do not know who the author is. I am retelling the story as I remember it.)
This story best helps to understand the distinction between the principle of separation, hatred, rivalry, and struggle on one side and union, love, mutual help, and cooperation on the other; the distinction between low and high consciousness; the distinction between unlimited and limited freedom; and distinctions between unequal and equal relations. It helps best to understand that in the circumstances of political, religious, national, and class division there is hatred, rivalry, struggle, fear, plight, and suffering; in a word – evil. Where there is no such division i.e. in the circumstance where the only division is an equal division of work and work results, there is harmony, satisfaction, and good.
The Story:
“A man died and came to Heaven to St. Peter to be sent where he belongs. St. Peter asked him if he wanted to go to Hell or to Paradise. The man asked St. Peter to show him Hell and Paradise before he made his decision. St. Peter opened both doors and the man saw two equally well provided and decorated dining tables laden with food. Since he saw no difference, man entered Hell without thinking. But as he approached the table, people came bursting from all sides. They started to scramble, fight and ravish, the table was turned upside down, everything was spilt and stepped over and all of them stayed hungry and received bruises. The man repented for entering Hell, he pulled out of it and asked St. Peter to move him to Paradise, so St. Peter did so. Having entered Paradise, the man started walking towards the dining table, but St. Peter stopped him and put boards along his arms and tied them so that he could not bend his arms at the elbow. As the man, afterwards, approached the table and took the food, he found out that with his tied and outstretched and stiff arms he was not able to bring the food to his mouth. Looking around himself intending to find St. Peter and ask an explanation from him, he again saw many people approaching the table. But unlike those from Hell they all had tied, outstretched and stiff arms. It is not hard to judge what went further on. The men approached the table, but since no one could feed and pamper himself, they started to carefully feed and pamper each other, so that the meal finished in peace and order. At the end they were all fed, satisfied and happy, and there were still plenty of leftovers on the table.”
An analogous example that proves that this story is based on reality is the human body. Each of its organs and parts, in order to survive, takes exclusive care of all the other parts of the body as a whole, not just of itself. It takes care in the way that it works for the whole body and not for itself. Thus for example legs carry the whole body, hands work for the whole body, lungs breathe, the heart beats, the brain thinks, the eyes see for the whole body, and so on. All the organs of the human body must care and work for the other organs and the whole body, as this is the only way they can care about themselves since their individual survival is dependent on the survival of the body as a whole. They care in such a way that they attempt, for the benefit of the entire body, to perform perfectly the task that belongs to them according to the division of work.
Therefore, in the whole human body, there is mutual help and love. Everything is based on the equal division of work and work results. Of political parties, nations, religions, or classes in the human body there is no trace, no sound. This only occurs when it happens to the body that some cancerous, parasitic (political) tissue starts to grow uncontrollably that will eventually eat and destroy it. In this case, the parasite tissue will be destroyed too when the body as a whole is destroyed. This has been happening to human societies for thousands of years because of their political, religious, national, and class divisions leading to their mutual destruction.
As it is inside the human body, so it is inside all of the systems in all of nature. It is all about the equal division of work and work results. Based on this, we can conclude that the principle of union, mutual help, and love is the best principle and the way of self-survival and that everything in the universe is built on it.