THE COSMIC DREAM-IDOL

The Spirit, the Silent One, who remained hidden behind dream space as an Invisible, tore away the veil of eternity and appeared as a Visible Cosmic Dream-Idol of Finitude. In the boundless temple of space, in the shrine of cosmic dreams, the Idol of Finitude rests or moves slowly or dances with His millions of feet of motion and life. Every day—when with closed eyes I seek to grasp infinity, until my brain aches from the strain—I open my spiritual eyes and fly my mind-architect far away into the region of eternity, and there build for myself a measureless temple of space, a sanctuary of silence; and there I place my Cosmic Dream-Idol of Finitude, my Idol with starry eyes, blue skiey body, bejeweled with moons, decorated with garlands of the milky way, blossoms of light, and wearing on His head 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 hands of all living creatures. I behold this, my Great Idol, walking through fifteen hundred million pairs of feet. I hear His footsteps in the floating feet of the gossamer and in the fast flying footsteps of the hunted deer. In the throbbing of all hearts, I hear the throb of His one heart. I feel His one thought and one feeling and one will through all the thoughts, feelings and wills of all mortals. It is the Cosmic Idol's one brain which is the brain of all brains.

Every day, during sunset hour, 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, with the rod of my fancy, I beat the drums of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Seas, and 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 the opening in all atoms. I join the chorus of soul desires of all creatures, and they chant in one language of heart their craving for the Idol of Finitude.

O! 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 and ceaselessly send wisps of fragrance in 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 choruses of harmony only, offering unto 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 they were not those eyes that I had lost. There were many black eyes that sought to mother me, but they were not those eyes that I loved. I pulled the Divine Mother's veil of silence within me very hard, and I asked Her: "Why art Thou so cruel? Why didst Thou take away my beloved earthly mother? Why dost Thou deny her to my heart's gaze?"

She replied, "Little child, it was I who became your mother. Many times have I nurtured you. Some times 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. Now I have broken that little form, because your love was becoming too locked up and clogged within a limited boundary, which I broke, that your released love might flood through all mothers and feel My one vast love in all hearts. I shattered the little form of your mother, that you might seek Me, your same Mother, in the form of infinitude, and in the form of the infinite Cosmic Idol of finitude."

In the chain of universes, I beheld the luminous spine of my cosmic Idol. Around it was built His vast blue body of eternity. Tiny sands, crystal drops of blue brine and my tears, the tissue of stones, flowers, and my flesh, air, earth, clouds, space, time, and life: all these I had viewed as existing apart and engaged in perpetual strife. Now, with the vision of my Cosmic Idol, I suddenly found all these diverse created things were but His living cells, and in them I saw the flow of His one ever-living blood of life. There was no death possible. for in this blood I saw the continual birth of His new cells of 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 sadly gazing with the moon at the folly and pride of delusion-intoxicated, truth-forgetful civilizations. I saw Him angry with the storm, uprooting trees, and then shedding repentant tears of rain on the earth's lap. I saw His somber face in the cloudlets and in the mists of the earth. I felt Him sorrowing in discouraged hearts and coaxing them to smile with the joy of His omnipresent beauty.

I realized that He was the fountain of joy, percolating through the joys of all human hearts and all the pores in the soil of omnipresence. I beheld Him as the ocean of immortality, heaving with the sighs of 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—playing over the limitless gardens of His unfading memory.

My Cosmic Idol broke His vow of silence, and came out of His invisible home to lure us with the assumed laughter and cries of His nature-moods, to make us forget our dream-sorrows and divert our truant footsteps homeward to His bosom of eternal joy.

The many called to the One through the lisping prayers of conscience, theology and intuition—and my Idol of Finitude responded. He was invisible; He became visible. He was one and He became many. He found that the many children of phenomena, especially His human children, became entangled in their self-woven nets of delusion, and were unable to release themselves by their misused reason from the pits of illusion, dug by themselves. So He took pity and became the Father to protect the little helpless child; and then again He stabbed His heart and let the blood of His most precious heart's love flow earthward; and He clothed the blood clot of His love with a divine form, and it became the Mother—divine love became mother love.

The Divine Mother's love in the human mother became the unconditional lover of the baby, so that, even if the baby should later become a criminal, forsaken by all the world—still he could go to this miniature incarnated Divine Mother, the earthly mother, and find ready forgiveness, tender sympathy and wise assistance to find a way out of the error.

He became the baby, to keep the cold, reasoning fatherly love balanced and expanded by the unconditional love of the mother. He gave the motherly divine love to soften the stern, calculating love of the father. He became the baby so that He might keep the protecting and surrendering love together, unified to express the divine, unconditional love in the baby. By becoming the helpless child, He united the parents in a greater unselfish love, felt for the baby. He unified the father and mother in body, mind, and all-surrendering love, to express unconditionally His divine love in their souls.

He became the lover in order to give love, to teach and express unconditional, unselfish love; and He became the beloved to receive love and to appreciate unselfish love and to rouse unconditional love in the lover. He became the teacher to warn Himself with love, thus warning Himself as the erroneous many.

But when the many heeded not the voice of their One Cosmic Lover, they hurt themselves. And as often as they hurt themselves, He admonished visibly, vocally, tangibly, through the father, and shed soul-softening, protesting and loving tears through the mother's or the beloved's eyes.

He was not satisfied to become only the protecting parents, so He appeared as immortal life, to destroy death. He became the minister of wisdom in each temple of conscience to give secret, silent sermons to erring souls.

He was not contented to render help through the family instincts, so He appeared as the unlimited number of friends, to offer continuously fresh added help to all individuals. He throbbed as health to eject sickness. He smiled in the minds of men and women to destroy the intruder, sorrow.

He became the light to shut out darkness in which many of His children stumble. He became the golden sun to give vitality, and he spread the silver rays of the moon as salve to soothe the fever-parched body of man. He sang as the nightingale in the halls of nature, that His children might be induced to sing the spontaneous songs of the heart to Him. He peeped through the beauty-window of the blue bell to give His children a glimpse of His beauty, that they might run after Him.

He spread Himself as fragrance to lure the mind to seek His undying fragrance hidden within the ignorance-corked bottles of the human senses. He visited as determination in the hearts of the weak that they might awaken the all-freeing, all-accomplishing cosmic will sleeping in their souls. He became love in all hearts, so that through the doors of their little loves they might escape forever and find protection in His omnipresent land of love.

He sowed the soul-seeds on the soil of larger love, and they grew into petals, all joined together on the stem of family love. Now, when the petals of souls exuded the fragrance of one family-love, they began to fall away through separation or death. The divine love and the fragrance of family love were harvested on the petals of souls. Blown by the wind of omnipresent love, the progeny pollen of these souls migrated and fell on the wider soil of social, patriotic and international love; and then they became bigger and brighter flowers, emanating volumes of sweeter fragrance of social, patriotic and international love.

At last, from these were born larger living seeds. These better and more vital soul-seeds no longer were satisfied to grow on soil with boundaries; so God planted them in the garden of infinitude; and there they all bloomed as His immortelle of infinite love, the one flower from all flowers, forever knitted in the heart of His omnipresence—ever-fragrant, with ever-new, everlasting joy.