Before we address ‘divine love’, let us look at the one syllable, one-word state we call ‘love’. There are probably more paintings, music, poetry and artworks created that have love as their theme than almost any other emotion. However, because the machine is naturally subjective, when one person utters this word they mean one thing, another says it and means an entirely different experience, and both believe they share a common understanding.
And why would it not be this way? We know that the human machine is comprised of lower centers. When the instinctive center experiences love, it is connected to a pleasant physical sensation. The moving center loves movement – from ballet to F1. The intellect loves ideas, theorems and concepts. The emotional center experiences affections and infatuations to varying degrees. Include the different body types, centers of gravity, and various alchemies, we have a Tower of Babel in relation to this word.
The esoteric meaning of the word ‘love’ is presence. Schools use the word ‘love’ to indicate the state of presence. Yet outside of a school environment, the word ‘presence’ is also problematic. For example, call or whistle to your dog. His ears prick up. The dog is present to its master’s call. Watch a cat play with a toy or stalk its prey with its finely tuned instinctive-moving presence. On a higher scale, a higher order of creation, self-remembering is divine presence.
Addressing the inner or esoteric meaning of ‘divine love,’ we can say: Divine love is divine presence. Because higher centers are simple and direct, schools foreshortened the expression ‘divine presence’ to ‘presence’. One word that encompasses the immortal state of higher centers. And so, too, is the expression ‘divine love’ foreshortened to ‘love.’ Love is presence; presence is love.
Because the word ‘presence’ has no association with the extreme emotion of infatuation that is often ascribed to the word ‘love,’ if we substitute ‘presence’ for ‘love’ in various poems, thoughts and statements, they become descriptions of, as well as signs pointing to, higher centers.
Presence is not Presence
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests (the many ‘I’s) and is never shaken.
~ William Shakespeare
Presence does not dominate; it cultivates.
~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your presence and affection.
~ Buddha
You may call God presence.
~ Meister Eckhardt
The most beautiful words of presence are told in silence.
~ Leonardo da Vinci
Knowing the true meaning of the word ‘presence’, we are closer to Divine Love.
Charles Robertson has been a student of the Fourth Way for several decades. For other articles by Charles, see: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/charles-robertson/.