Aphrodite Ourania: Divine Love

"Often I had been bewildered and inebriated in this love, and never was I able to understand its nature... for the faculties are almost totally united with God... The intellect is worth nothing here!" ~Saint Theresa of Avila

There is a love that has no object, and no opposite. This love is not a relationship. It is beyond relativity, beyond two, for this love annihilates both lover and beloved. This love falls in love with love itself, whispering a new commandment: "Love no other." Yet this love is not high above. It is intimate, and very present. In fact, it is Presence. All creatures burn up in this uncreated love. It cannot be known, but can be tenderly unknown. Don't be afraid. In this love you are not alone. You are held.

Ah, you want hearts and flowers? Chocolate? Valentine's Day comes once a year, but the feast of Aphrodite is a never-ending banquet. From Plato's Symposium we learn that there are two Aphrodites, two aspects of love: Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos. That is, the Love Goddess of the heavens and the Love Goddess of the world.

For Neo-Platonists, these two Aphrodites became two distinct goddesses, and their distinction had a profound influence on Christian mystics. In fact, Jesus himself made this distinction when he used the Greek word "agape" for love, as distinct from "eros." Eros is passion for an object or person, emanating from the second chakra. Jesus pointed to another kind of love, Agape, distinct from fleeting sensations and emotions, emanating from the heart chakra as pure compassion.

Jesus also told us that "the kingdom of heaven is within you." So Aphrodite Ourania, "of the heavens," is not above but deeper inside, nearer to my heart than I am.

Most humans have no conception of the divine Aphrodite, though we're quite familiar with the ordinary Goddess of love, who smites us with Cupid's arrows. The common Goddess is a love that is always a subject seeking to possess an subject. Her love is a subtle and romantic form of addiction. But, though obsessive, erotic love is short-lived. And it too easily reverses its polarity, turning into the very opposite energy: so desire becomes envy, lust becomes loneliness, joy turns to grief. The immature marriage often ends in hatred. Aphrodite Pandemos is  not only the Goddess of blind lovers, but the Goddess of divorce lawyers.

The inner and heavenly Aphrodite is quite different. Botticelli portrayed her in Birth of Venus, alone-born from Zeus's oceanic power (Greek, monogenase, "of one parent.") The Greek word monogenase occurs in the Nicaean Creed, 325 CE, because Jesus, like Venus, is alone-born of God. Botticelli was a mystic artist who intended to portray her as the feminine aspect of Christ. Here he evoked an ancient Gnostic tradition: the Holy Spirit of Christ as the Goddess.

The early Christian Gnostic, Valentinus, described the real Virgin Mother as "mystical eternal silence." She is the silence prior to creation. Therefore she is neither creator nor creation, neither I nor It. From the mystery of her Womb-Silence worlds arise. The modern analogy is quantum physics, where matter emanates as vibrating energy from a vacuum devoid of any inherent substance. Thus the Virgin generates all creatures and souls, subjects and objects, without herself being either. She is uncreated creativity, the Ever Virgin.

In his sublime Birth of Venus, Botticelli aimed to harmonize the Greek myth with Christian mysticism. This, in fact, was the intent in much of his art. Venus is sensuously beautiful, yet the very form of innocence. She is not an object of Eros, but an all-pervading subject. She is pure awareness, and her nature is Agape.

Zephyr and his consort, god and goddess of wind, represent the breath of the Holy Spirit. They want to spread flower petals over her, just as the goddess of Spring tries to veil her in a red garment. But Venus is not ashamed of her nakedness. Her sensuality and innocence are one and the same energy. She knows that in the end both loves, heavenly and earthly, must permeate each other. Transcendental awareness pervades the flesh and the senses, while the restless yearning of Eros finds fulfillment in samadhi, the bliss of meditation.

Most spiritual practices remain enmeshed in the duality of subject and object. Even the sweetness of Lover and Beloved remains trapped in the relativity of I and Thou. Our tenderest devotion to the Guru is still a relationship where yearning for union is a form of pain. Such yearning is the subtlest form of Aphrodite Pandemos. Sweet as it may be, this love affair does not transcend relativity, to taste the Absolute Being at creation's source.

This is why the practice of Transcendental Deep Meditation is so unique, and so ruthlessly loving! Truth holds not only the lotus of Krishna, but the scimitar of Shiva; not only the rose of Christ, but the sword of the Spirit. Eventually sweet devotional love, like a web of dew, dissolves in the blinding formless sunlight of Truth, and we soar into the heavens of Aphrodite Ourania. As daylight transcends the glow of a single candle, pervading the whole landscape, so divine love transcends the particular relationship of lover and beloved.

The grace of deep meditation gently snaps that silken thread and frees our awareness completely from the field of subject-object duality. We transcend the exquisite twoness of Master and Devotee, yes, even the Magdalene's love for Jesus, even Radha's love of Krishna, and we sink into the One. We drown in the abysmal unity of Absolute Being, the luminous darkness before God said, "Let there be light."

Do not suppose that the formless invisible power of this unitary divine love is far away. It is near, more intimate than a kiss! When lover and beloved kiss, they lose sight of each other and fall for a moment into exquisite unity, closing their eyes and dissolving their forms, do they not? So when we are lost in a kiss, it may only be for an instant, yet we are so lost that we do not even notice our complete annihilation.

This kiss is an important symbol in the literature of mystical love. In the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, we are told that "Jesus loved Mary Magdalene most of all, and used to kiss her on the mouth." Those who worship only Aphrodite Pandemos take this passage literally. But the kiss described here is not the momentary kiss of sensuality; it is the spiritual kiss of which true troubadours sing. Hafiz, Mirabai, St. Theresa, and Rumi all sang of this kiss. "There is some kiss we want with our whole lives," Rumi whispers, "the kiss of Spirit on the body." So the Song of Solomon yearns, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!" Where this kiss is given, lover and beloved dissolve into one.

Transcendence is not a dream. It is solid as a diamond. We must ever return to embodiment as the field where the jewel is mined. Divine love irradiates the universe, even while clinging to nought. Aphrodite Ourania tenderly enfolds all sentient creatures in the wings of Presence, yet knows no single one as lover. Her love is both impartial and promiscuous. She cares for a blade of grass as much as a king; infuses a photon with light as bright as a supernova; regards the distance from earth to the center of the galaxy as no greater than the distance of one breath, from your forehead to your chest.

All distances are her exhalation. The greatest journey is not to the stars, but to the heart. Both the ancient Yogic text, Vishnana Bhairava, and the Philokalia of the early Christian mystics, whisper the same sublime travel instructions for this pilgrimage: "Let the mind descend into the heart."

The cosmic expanse, clustered with galaxies, is the intimate space just above your sternum, traversed by a gentle inhalation. Here you will encounter Her, as nowhere else, in your beating heart's core! O lover, breathe in, breathe out; surrender to the mystery of your own rhythm; sink from your intellect into the abyss of love. St. Teresa will lead you. Mary Magdalene will guide. Kundalini Shakti will take your hand...

Now one might ask, Could this experience actually be part of the Christian tradition? Indeed. We might assume this is Indian non-dualism, Advaita Vedanta. Few Westerners have any idea that such an experience is essential to the Christian mystics.

Meister Eckhart, in the 14th Century, called this loving union "the Godhead beyond God," and prayed, "O God, quit me of God!"  Cistercian mystic William of St. Thierry, a contemporary of St. Bernard in the 12th Century, wrote, "Not that we become God, but what God is." Saint Catherine of Genoa declared in the late 15th Century, "My me is God, nor do I recognize any other me but my God."

For St. Theresa of Avila, this experience is "the prayer of union." Her autobiography offers many examples of unitary divine love, where the subjectivity of God-Consciousness becomes its own jewel-like object. Yes, the self-luminosity of I Am.

"Once while in prayer I was shown in a flash, without seeing any form, how all things are in God and how He holds them all in Himself. How to put this in writing I don't know... The Divinity is like a very clear diamond, greater than all the world... Everything we do is visible within this diamond, which contains all things within itself; there is nothing that escapes its magnitude." ~Chapter 40

St. Theresa sees all eternity in an instant of crystalline stillness. She calls it the "diamond." Indian scripture also uses this image for unitary love: "chitta-mani," the jewel of pure consciousness. Which is also the "jewel at the center of the heart-lotus" in the great Tibetan chant, "Om mani padme hum." In an instantaneous flash of silence, Theresa's bejeweled awareness holds the eternal past and future, all possible selves, every lover and beloved, essentialized in a sparkling singularity beyond relationship. This diamond singularity is the One who loves all without a lover - the intimacy of consciousness with its Self.  And this is the only love that has the power to "love thy neighbor as thyself." For in Christ, there is no other.

Images: St. Theresa in Ecstasy, by Bernini, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, Rome.
Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.