"Divine love, is subtle consciousness. The infinitely delicate taste of God, whose sweetness can be experienced only in the quietness and vacuity specific to the will in repose. This love is pure light, intimate and diaphonous.....it is impregnated with knowledge....the knowledge concerned with the absorption of Love - the fusion between Divine and human will" - Lilian Silburn, La Bhakti. La Stavacintanami de Bhattanarayana
What is Divine Love ? What is Love for that matter? Understanding the nature of the Love which great mystics spoke of when they expressed their devotional spirit is something that occupied my mind for a significant period of time several years ago. Being someone who ordinarily tends more towards the rational and analytic mode of being there was something in this contemplation which I felt I just could not grasp. What does it mean to love God? What is God? Engrossed in the study of non-dual philosophy, God is not, for me, a being but rather Beingness itself. How then is it possible to love or to be in love with Beingness ?
At the time of pondering over this contemplation I don't think I actually reached a satisfying conclusion. There was no "aha" moment where I felt that i suddenly got it, and understood the essence of what those saints and sages were reffering to. I could understand the words they used, intellectually, but those words did not 'touch' down deep enough within me to fill me with a sense of fullfilment.
In looking back on the journey from that point forward I recognize that even though there wasn't a sudden moment of realization, the clarity around this contemplation has deepened, refined and stabilized in the clear recognition that Divine Love is an affirmation of existence itself. It is at the same time, the attitude that one who embraces a wholisitc vision of reality embodies, and it is the very cause of that embodiement itself. This entire manifest realm is born out of Love. This is not however the Love that most individuals are accustommed to, as a kind of positive emotional response to some conditional phenomena, a simple affectivity or sentimental tenderness. This love is the overflowing of the Divine delight, the basic bliss underlying everything - Ananda. Bliss and Love are here synonomous as the self-reflective and self-referential capacity of the Absolute; the capacity for the Divine to know itself through it's own self-luminosity. It is the Shakti aspect of Divinity - the creative power which has given birth to all that IS out of the Divine womb of Absoluteness.
The Divine Love expressed by a mystic is thus an affirmation of existence and the recognition of EVERYTHING as an expression of the One light of Divinity.
