The Spirit, the Silent One, who remained hidden behind dream space as Invisible, tore away the veil of eternity and appeared as a Visible Cosmic Dream‐Idol of Finitude. In the temple of boundless space, in the shrine of cosmic dreams, the Idol of Finitude rests, moves slowly, or dances with His millions of feet of life and motion. Every day, when with closed eyes I seek to grasp infinity, until my brain aches from the strain, I open my spiritual vision and fly my mind‐architect far away into the region of eternity, there to build for myself a measureless temple of space, a sanctuary of silence. There I place my Cosmic Dream‐Idol of Finitude, my Idol with starry eyes, blue skiey body bejeweled with moons, decorated with the garland of the Milky Way and with blossoms of light, and wearing a golden crown of jeweled rays.
I behold Him in the cosmic temple, His ever‐busy hands working through the electrical forces and through the millions of paws, hands, and feet of all living creatures. I behold this, my Great Idol, walking through hundreds of millions of pairs of human feet. I hear His footsteps in the floating gossamer and in the fast-flying hooves of the hunted deer. In the throbbing of all hearts I hear the throb of His one heart. I feel His one thought, one feeling, and one will through all the thoughts, feelings, and will power of all mortals. It is the Cosmic Idol’s one intelligence that infuses all brains.
Every day, at the hour of sunset, with open eyes I fly my mind’s gaze into infinite space and its temple of golden rays, and in it I behold this vast Idol of Finitude.
Every day, India‐wise, I beat the drum of my fancy on the Atlantic, Paci c, and Indian Seas: They roar to honor my Idol of Souls. I play the harp strings of electronic rays, and they all sing. I blow the conch shell of cosmic vibration through all atoms. I join the chorus of soul‐desires in all creatures, and they chant in the one language of the heart their adoration of the Idol of Finitude.
Oh! I have lighted the candles of all human inspirations and aspirations, of all devotions, of all hearts, of the love of all saints. The incense sticks of my love slowly, ceaselessly send up wisps of fragrant incense spirals of eternity to His infinite temple.
And in the temple choir even the moth and the glow‐worm fold their wings in devotion, and tiny‐eyed lights fold their palms of rays together along with mine, to worship Him. The temples, mosques, viharas all sing in harmonious chorus, offering up to my Idol of Finitude the different songs of multitudinous teachings.
When I lost my earthly mother, I sought her two black eyes in the stars until they twinkled black eyes everywhere. But those were not the eyes I had lost. Many black eyes sought to mother me, but these were not the two eyes I loved. I pulled very hard at the Divine Mother’s veil of silence within me, and asked Her: “Why art Thou so cruel? Why didst Thou take from me my beloved earthly mother? Why hast Thou denied me her heart’s loving gaze?”
And my Divine Mother replied, “Little child, it was I who became your mother. Many times have I nurtured you. Sometimes it was as a mother nightingale, sometime as a deer in the forest. I have suckled you through many breasts. The last mother, whom you loved so dearly, was I. The reason I have withdrawn that little form was that your love was becoming too con ned in that one form. I broke those narrow boundaries that your love, released, might ow outward to all mothers and know My one, vast love in all hearts. I burned the little form of your human mother that you might seek Me, your same but infinite Mother, in all space as well as in the Cosmic Idol of Finitude.”
In the chain of universes I beheld the luminous spine of my Cosmic Idol. Around it loomed His vast blue body of eternity. Tiny sands, crystal drops of blue brine and of my tears, the tissues of stones, flowers, my flesh, air, earth, clouds, space, time, and life: all these I had once viewed with limited gaze, as existing separate from one another and engaged in perpetual strife. Now, with the vision of my Cosmic Idol, I suddenly found these diverse created things all to be but His living cells; in them I saw the ow of His one, ever‐living lifeblood. No death was possible, for in this blood I saw continual rebirth of new cells of His life.
My Cosmic Idol, made after our pattern, indulges in many moods, even as do we. I beheld His smile on the lips of the lotus, His rays of smiles in the light of all faces; I caught Him gazing sadly with the moon at the pride and folly of delusion‐intoxicated, truth-forgetting civilizations. I saw Him angry in the storm, uprooting trees; then shedding repentant tears of rain upon the earth’s lap. I saw His somber face in the cloudlets and in the mists of earth. I felt Him sorrowing in discouraged hearts, but then coaxing them to smile again with joy at His omnipresent beauty.
I realized that He was the fountain of all joy, percolating through the joys in human hearts and through all pores in the soil of omnipresence. I beheld Him as the ocean of immortality, heaving with the sighs of constant change.
I gazed in ecstasy at His skill as He showed me His cosmic motion pictures on the screens of human consciousness. I spied the glimmering fountains of Creation, of time, of space, of immortality, of duality, of life, of love, of all forms of consciousness, and of ever‐new bliss. This spray played over the limitless gardens of His fadeless memory.
My Cosmic Idol broke His vow of eternal silence and emerged from His invisible home in Infinity to lure us with the mirage‐laughter and sobbing of His Nature‐moods. He hoped, by taking us out of ourselves, to make us forget our own dream‐sorrows and to divert our vagrant footsteps homeward, to His bosom of eternal joy.
The many called to the One through halting prayers of conscience, theology, and intuition—and my Idol of Finitude responded. Invisible, He became visible. He was one: He became many. He found that the many children of phenomena, His human children especially, had become entangled in self‐woven nets of delusion and were unable to release themselves by reason alone from the pits of illusion which they themselves had dug. He therefore took pity, and became to them their Father, protecting His little, helpless children. Again, He stabbed His heart and let the blood of His love ow earthward; He clothed His tender feeling of love in a divine form, and it became the Mother; Divine Love became mother love.
The Divine Mother’s love, expressed through the human mother, became unconditional love for the baby, so that even if the baby later became a criminal, forsaken by all the world, still he could go to this miniature expression of the Divine Mother, his earthly mother, and find ready forgiveness, tender sympathy, and wise guidance to find his way out of error.
He became the baby, to help the colder, reasoning fatherly love be balanced and expanded by the unconditional love of the mother. He gave the motherly expression of divine love to soften the more stern and calculating love of the father.
He became the baby so as to respond to the protective, unconditional love of the parents for the baby. In becoming the helpless child, He united the parents in their greater, unselfish love for their offspring. He uni ed the father and mother in body, mind, and all‐surrendering love to express His divine love unconditionally in their souls.
He became love in the human lover so as to teach and express unselfish love. He became the beloved in order, by receiving love, to appreciate love selflessly and to rouse unconditional love in the lover. He became the teacher so as to warn Himself in others lovingly, and thus warn Himself also, in His many erring children.
When, however, the many heeded not the voice of their One Cosmic Lover and Beloved, they hurt themselves. And as often as they did so, He admonished them visibly, vocally, tangibly through the father, and shed soul‐softening, protesting, loving tears through the mother’s, or through the beloved’s eyes.
He was not satisfied to become only the protecting parents. He appeared, therefore, as immortal life, transcendent above death. He became the minister of wisdom in each temple of conscience, giving silent inner sermons to erring souls.
Not contented with helping through limited family identity, He appeared also as extra‐familial friends, in order to give continuously fresh, needed help to the individual. He throbbed as health, which banishes sickness. He smiled in the minds of men and women, trying to destroy in them that intruder, sorrow.
He became the light of understanding to banish the darkness in which so many of His children stumble. He became the golden sun to give vitality. And He sent out silver rays of light from the moon as a salve to soothe the fever‐parched bodies of men. He sang as the nightingale in the concert hall of Nature, that His children might be inspired to sing spontaneously from their own hearts to Him. He peeped through beauty‐windows in the bluebell and the rose to give His children glimpses of His greater beauty, and inspire them to seek Him.
He spread Himself as flower‐fragrances to lure the minds of men to seek His deathless fragrance behind the stoppered senses. As determination, He prompted the hearts of those with faltering will power to waken to the all‐freeing, all‐accomplishing cosmic will power sleeping in their souls. He became love in all hearts, that through the doors of their limited love they might seek comfort in His land of limitless love.
He sowed soul‐seeds of love in the soil of life itself, and they grew to petals of individuality, all joined together on the stem of family love. Alas, when the petals of individual souls found pleasure in the fragrance of one family’s love, they began to separate and fall away in estrangement or death. Divine love, first appearing through the fragrance of family love, was then blown by the wind of omnipresent love; the progeny of these souls migrated like pollen and fell more widely on the soil of social, patriotic, and international love. Bigger and brighter flowers appeared, emanating volumes of sweeter fragrance.
At last, from these were born larger, living seeds. These better and more vital soul‐seeds, no longer satis ed to grow on fenced‐in soil, were planted by God in the garden of infinity. There they all bloomed as His immortelle of infinite love, the one flower of all flowers, forever knitted in the heart of His omnipresence—ever-fragrant with ever‐new and everlasting joy.
