Another proof that our welfare resides up there is the love that is
innate in our souls, as is taught in the descriptions and myths which
represent love as the husband of the soul.[210] In fact, since the
soul, which is different from the divinity, proceeds from Him, she
must necessarily love Him; but when she is on high[211] her love is
celestial; here below, her love is only commonplace; for it is on high
that dwells the celestial Venus (Urania); while here below resides
the vulgar and adulterous Venus.[212] Now every soul is a Venus, as
is indicated by the myth of the birth of Venus and Cupid, who is
supposed to be born simultaneously with her.[213] So long as she
remains faithful to her nature, the soul therefore loves the divinity,
and desires to unite herself to Him, who seems like the noble father
of a bride who has fallen in love with some handsome lover. When
however the soul has descended into generation, deceived by the false
promises of an adulterous lover, she has exchanged her divine love for
a mortal one. Then, at a distance from her father, she yields to all
kinds of excesses. Ultimately, however, she grows ashamed of these
disorders; she purifies herself, she returns to her father, and finds
true happiness with Him. How great her bliss then is can be conceived
by such as have not tasted it only by comparing it somewhat to earthly
love-unions, observing the joy felt by the lover who succeeds in
obtaining her whom he loves. But such mortal and deceptive love is
directed only to phantoms; it soon disappears because the real object
of our love is not these sense-presentations, which are not the good
we are really seeking. On high only is the real object of our love;
the only one with which we could unite or identify ourselves, which we
could intimately possess, because it is not separated from our soul
by the covering of our flesh. This that I say will be acknowledged by
any one who has experienced it; he will know that the soul then lives
another life, that she advances towards the Divinity, that she reaches
Him, possesses Him, and in his condition recognizes the presence of
the Dispenser of the true life. Then she needs nothing more. On the
contrary, she has to renounce everything else to fix herself in the
Divinity alone, to identify herself with Him, and to cut off all that
surrounds Him. We must therefore hasten to issue from here below,
detaching ourselves so far as possible from the body to which we still
have the regret of being chained, making the effort to embrace the
Divinity by our whole being, without leaving in us any part that is not
in contact with Him. Then the soul can see the Divinity and herself, so
far as is possible to her nature. She sees herself shining brilliantly,
filled with intelligible light; or rather, she sees herself as a pure
light, that is subtle and weightless. She becomes divinity, or, rather,
she is divinity. In this condition, the soul is a shining light. If
later she falls back into the sense-world, she is plunged into darkness.