Love and Divine Fire
There is a Divine Fire within each of us.
Love Is a Fire
by William Keepin, Ph.D.
“Whoever stands near me stands near the Fire,” declares Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. The Qur’an concurs, “Blessed is the person near this Fire, and those around it” (Q 27:8). Similarly in Hinduism, “The journey to the Atman … begins and ends in fire.” Divine love is a blazing fire, and it burns alike in East or West. “God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), and the yearning for God, truth, or love is itself this same fire burning in the heart. The mystical journey is a process that transforms the human disciple into this living fire of love. “One who knows the Fire knows all that is, the secret of all being…. All the worlds are but the declension of Fire: beyond it there is Nothing.”
To unite with the divine fire of love, one must become this fire, on its terms. This is the secret fire of divine love, without which no true spiritual transformation can take place.
Fractal of Divine Fire
The fire of divine love burns on every level of existence—from the heart of the sun to the human heart, to each tiny cell in the human body, to the subatomic particles and the core of every star across all galaxies. It is a grand fractal fire of love. Although physics distinguishes between chemical fire and nuclear fire, the fundamental forces of fire—the strong and weak nuclear interactions, and the electromagnetic interaction—are believed to be a single unified force.
Love is a transforming fire. Like all fires, it ignites, incinerates, purifies, and shines with brilliant light and warmth. There is no force in the cosmos as powerful as love, and nothing propels spiritual evolution as swiftly as love. Ultimately the fire of love burns away everything that is not love.
“Set your life on fire,” proclaims Rumi, and “seek those who fan its flames.” Why? Because in the absence of divine fire, no transformation can take place.
There is a crucial need for a disciplined spiritual practice that kindles the fire of divine love and for the all-important sincerity and depth of aspiration that fuels the flames of divine love in the heart. With diligent practice, total self-giving, and surrender, this secret fire of love becomes a roaring blaze that burns away everything that stands between the devotee and the Divine.
The divine fire is one, yet is described differently in various traditions. As Heraclitus portrayed it, “The world order, the same for all beings, neither any of the gods hath made nor any human; but it was always, is and shall be ever-living Fire, kindled in measure and quenched in measure.”12
In Hindu terms, the fire of love incinerates the three “knots of the heart” that keep the soul bound to material existence. These three knots are: (1) the knot of Brahma that binds us to physical form, making us believe that “I am the body”; (2) the knot of Vishnu that binds us to our desires and makes us say, “I want this” or “I am happy” or “I am sorrowful”; and (3) the knot of Shiva that binds us to the mind, making us believe “I am my mind” or “I am my thoughts and beliefs.” As the three knots of the heart are removed, the soul is liberated into its original oneness with Brahman.
In Christian terms, “This flame of love … is the Holy Spirit…. And that flame, every time it flares up, bathes the soul in glory and refreshes it with the quality of divine life…. The more intense the fire of union, the more vehemently does this fire burst into flames…. As a result, all the acts of the soul are divine.”
In Islamic terms, Rumi’s teacher Shams i Tabriz ignited the fire of divine love within him, and Rumi sums up his entire life in two lines, and the result is not more than these three words:
I burnt, and burnt, and burnt.
“Shams had awakened in Rumi a fire that could only be satisfied with union, with the ecstatic loss of the self in the presence of the Beloved,” says Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. Rumi became a living embodiment of this divine fire and ignited the same fire in other souls wherever he went:
It is the burning of the heart I want; this burning which is everything.
More precious than a worldly empire, because
it calls God secretly, in the night.
The Essence of the Mystical Journey
Where does this fire lead? What becomes of those who give themselves to it? The Fire of Love is the supreme gift offered to every human being. Whatever name we give to this process, whether we call it henosis or theosis or divinization, whether we conceive of it as apophatic or kataphatic, whether it takes place in a Christian or Muslim or Hindu or as a spiritual but not religious practitioner, the process is basically the same. The soul is transformed into the Divine, by the Divine, through participation in the Divine.
We cannot understand the process; we cannot master it; we cannot force it; we cannot co-opt it anyway for our own purposes. We can only give ourselves to it, if we choose, and consent unconditionally to this process on its terms. And if we do this—or rather, allow it—the living truth of love empties us of ourselves and fills us with divine love.
You will also enjoy Ten Altars in Every Room and H.H. Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji
About the Author
Excerpted from Belonging to God: Spirituality, Science & a Universal Path of Divine Love by William Keepin, Ph.D. (Skylight Paths) In his book, William Keepin, a mathematical physicist, social activist, environmental scientist, and co-founder of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International (GERI), a non-governmental educational charity, illuminates the commonalities in the scriptures by focusing on the core teachings of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism to demonstrate how the path of divine love is the greatness of each of these traditions.
