"3. THE SUPREME MOMENT AND AFTER

In the supreme moment of the cosmos I, as the cosmical mind, seemed to
myself to be confronted with the source and the goal of all finite
things.

I did not, of course, in that moment sensuously perceive the infinite
spirit, the Star Maker. Sensuously I perceived nothing but what I had
perceived before, the populous interiors of many dying stellar worlds.
But through the medium which in this book is called telepathic I was now
given a more inward perception. I felt the immediate presence of the
Star Maker. Latterly, as I have said, I had already been powerfully
seized by a sense of the veiled presence of some being other than
myself, other than my cosmical body and conscious mind, other than my
living members and the swarms of the burnt-out stars. But now the veil
trembled and grew half-transparent to the mental vision. The source and
goal of all, the Star Maker, was obscurely revealed to me as a being
indeed other than my conscious self, objective to my vision, yet as in
the depth of my own nature; as, indeed, myself, though infinitely more
than myself.

It seemed to me that I now saw the Star Maker in two aspects: as the
spirit’s particular creative mode that had given rise to me, the cosmos;
and also, most dreadfully, as something incomparably greater than
creativity, namely as the eternally achieved perfection of the absolute
spirit.

Barren, barren and trivial are these words. But not barren the
experience.

Confronted with this infinity that lay deeper than my deepest roots and
higher than my topmost reach, I, the cosmical mind, the flower of all
the stars and worlds, was appalled, as any savage is appalled by the
lightning and the thunder. And as I fell abject before the Star Maker,
my mind was flooded with a spate of images. The fictitious deities of
all races in all worlds once more crowded themselves upon me, symbols of
majesty and tenderness, of ruthless power, of blind creativity, and of
all-seeing wisdom. And though these images were but the fantasies of
created minds, it seemed to me that one and all did indeed embody some
true feature of the Star Maker’s impact upon the creatures.

As I contemplated the host of deities that rose to me like a smoke cloud
from the many worlds, a new image, a new symbol of the infinite spirit,
took shape in my mind. Though born of my own cosmical imagination, it
was begotten by a greater than I. To the human writer of this book
little remains of that vision which so abashed and exalted me as the
cosmical mind. But I must strive to recapture it in a feeble net of
words as best I may.

It seemed to me that I had reached back through time to the moment of
creation. I watched the birth of the cosmos.

The spirit brooded. Though infinite and eternal, it had limited itself
with finite and temporal being, and it brooded on a past that pleased it
not. It was dissatisfied with some past creation, hidden from me; and it
was dissatisfied also with its own passing nature. Discontent goaded the
spirit into fresh creation.

But now, according to the fantasy that my cosmical mind conceived, the
absolute spirit, self-limited for creativity, objectified from itself an
atom of its infinite potentiality. This microcosm was pregnant with the
germ of a proper time and space, and all the kinds of cosmical beings.
Within this punctual cosmos the myriad but not unnumbered physical
centers of power, which men conceive vaguely as electrons, protons, and
the rest, were at first coincident with one another. And they were
dormant. The matter of ten million galaxies lay dormant in a point.

Then the Star Maker said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.
From all the coincident and punctual centers of power, light leapt and
blazed. The cosmos exploded, actualizing its potentiality of space and
time. The centers of power, like fragments of a bursting bomb, were
hurled apart. But each one retained in itself, as a memory and a
longing, the single spirit of the whole; and each mirrored in itself
aspects of all others throughout all the cosmical space and time.

No longer punctual, the cosmos was now a volume of inconceivably dense
matter and inconceivably violent radiation, constantly expanding. And it
was a sleeping and infinitely dissociated spirit.

But to say that the cosmos was expanding is equally to say that its
members were contracting. The ultimate centers of power, each at first
coincident with the punctual cosmos, themselves generated the cosmical
space by their disengagement from each other. The expansion of the whole
cosmos was but the shrinkage of all its physical units and of the
wave-lengths of its light. Though the cosmos was ever of finite bulk, in
relation to its minutiae of light-waves, it was boundless and
center-less. As the surface of a swelling sphere lacks boundary and
center, so the swelling volume of the cosmos was boundless and
center-less. But as the spherical surface is centered on a point foreign
to it, in a “third dimension,” so the volume of the cosmos was centered
in a point foreign to it, in a “fourth dimension.”

The congested and exploding cloud of fire swelled till it was of a
planet’s size, a star’s size, the size of a whole galaxy, and of ten
million galaxies. And in swelling it became more tenuous, less
brilliant, less turbulent. Presently the cosmical cloud was disrupted by
the stress of its expansion in conflict with the mutual clinging of its
parts, disrupted into many million cloudlets, the swarm of the great
nebulae.

For a while these were as close to one another in relation to their bulk
as the flocculations of a mottled sky. But the channels between them
widened, till they were separated as flowers on a bush, as bees in a
flying swarm, as birds migrating, as ships on the sea. More and more
rapidly they retreated from one another; and at the same time each cloud
contracted, becoming first a ball of down and then a spinning lens and
then a featured whirl of star-streams.

Still the cosmos expanded, till the galaxies that were most remote from
one another were flying apart so swiftly that the creeping light of the
cosmos could no longer bridge the gulf between them.

But I, with imaginative vision, retained sight of them all. It was as
though some other, some hypercosmical and instantaneous light, issuing
from nowhere in the cosmical space, illuminated all things inwardly.

Once more, but in a new and cold and penetrating light, I watched all
the lives of stars and worlds, and of the galactic communities, and of
myself, up to the moment wherein now I stood, confronted by the infinity
that men call God, and conceive according to their human cravings.

I, too, now sought to capture the infinite spirit, the Star Maker, in an
image spun by my own finite though cosmical nature. For now it seemed to
me, it seemed, that I suddenly outgrew the three-dimensional vision
proper to all creatures, and that I saw with physical sight the Star
Maker. I saw, though nowhere in cosmical space, the blazing source of
the hypercosmical light, as though it were an overwhelmingly brilliant
point, a star, a sun more powerful than all suns together. It seemed to
me that this effulgent star was the center of a four-dimensional sphere
whose curved surface was the three-dimensional cosmos. This star of
stars, this star that was indeed the Star Maker, was perceived by me,
its cosmical creature, for one moment before its splendor seared my
vision. And in that moment I knew that I had indeed seen the very source
of all cosmical light and life and mind; and of how much else besides I
had as yet no knowledge.

But this image, this symbol that my cosmical mind had conceived under
the stress of inconceivable experience, broke and was transformed in the
very act of my conceiving it, so inadequate was it to the actuality of
the experience. Harking back in my blindness to the moment of my vision,
I now conceived that the star which was the Star Maker, and the immanent
center of all existence, had been perceived as looking down on me, his
creature, from the height of his infinitude; and that when I saw him I
immediately spread the poor wings of my spirit to soar up to him, only
to be blinded and seared and struck down. It had seemed to me in the
moment of my vision that all the longing and hope of all finite spirits
for union with the infinite spirit were strength to my wings. It seemed
to me that the Star, my Maker, must surely stoop to meet me and raise me
and enfold me in his radiance. For it seemed to me that I, the spirit of
so many worlds, the flower of so many ages, was the Church Cosmical, fit
at last to be the bride of God. But instead I was blinded and seared and
struck down by terrible light.

It was not only physical effulgence that struck me down in that supreme
moment of my life. In that moment I guessed what mood it was of the
infinite spirit that had in fact made the cosmos, and constantly
supported it, watching its tortured growth. And it was that discovery
which felled me.

For I had been confronted not by welcoming and kindly love, but by a
very different spirit. And at once I knew that the Star Maker had made
me not to be his bride, nor yet his treasured child, but for some other
end.

It seemed to me that he gazed down on me from the height of his divinity
with the aloof though passionate attention of an artist judging his
finished work; calmly rejoicing in its achievement, but recognizing at
last the irrevocable flaws in its initial conception, and already
lusting for fresh creation.

His gaze anatomized me with calm skill, dismissing my imperfections, and
absorbing for his own enrichment all the little excellence that I had
won in the struggle of the ages.

In my agony I cried out against my ruthless maker. I cried out that,
after all, the creature was nobler than the creator; for the creature
loved and craved love, even from the star that was the Star Maker; but
the creator, the Star Maker, neither loved nor had need of love.

But no sooner had I, in my blinded misery, cried out, than I was struck
dumb with shame. For suddenly it was clear to me that virtue in the
creator is not the same as virtue in the creature. For the creator, if
he should love his creature, would be loving only a part of himself; but
the creature, praising the creator, praises an infinity beyond himself.
I saw that the virtue of the creature was to love and to worship, but
the virtue of the creator was to create, and to be the infinite, the
unrealizable and incomprehensible goal of worshipping creatures.

Once more, but in shame and adoration, I cried out to my maker. I said,
“It is enough, and far more than enough, to be the creature of so dread
and lovely a spirit, whose potency is infinite, whose nature passes the
comprehension even of a minded cosmos. It is enough to have been
created, to have embodied for a moment the infinite and tumultuously
creative spirit. It is infinitely more than enough to have been used, to
have been the rough sketch for some perfected creation.”

And so there came upon me a strange peace and a strange joy.

Looking into the future, I saw without sorrow, rather with quiet
interest, my own decline and fall. I saw the populations of the stellar
worlds use up more and more of their resources for the maintenance of
their frugal civilizations. So much of the interior matter of the stars
did they disintegrate, that their worlds were in danger of collapse.
Some worlds did indeed crash in fragments upon their hollow centers,
destroying the indwelling peoples. Most, before the critical point was
reached, were remade, patiently taken to pieces and rebuilt upon a
smaller scale. One by one, each star was turned into a world of merely
planetary size. Some were no bigger than the moon. The populations
themselves were reduced to a mere millionth of their original numbers,
maintaining within each little hollow grain a mere skeleton civilization
in conditions that became increasingly penurious.

Looking into the future aeons from the supreme moment of the cosmos, I
saw the populations still with all their strength maintaining the
essentials of their ancient culture, still living their personal lives
in zest and endless novelty of action, still practicing telepathic
intercourse between worlds, still telepathically sharing all that was of
value in their respective world-spirits, still supporting a truly
cosmical community with its single cosmical mind. I saw myself still
preserving, though with increasing difficulty, my lucid consciousness;
battling against the onset of drowsiness and senility, no longer in the
hope of winning through to any more glorious state than that which I had
already known, or of laying a less inadequate jewel of worship before
the Star Maker, but simply out of sheer hunger for experience, and out
of loyalty to the spirit.

But inevitably decay overtook me. World after world, battling with
increasing economic difficulties, was forced to reduce its population
below the numbers needed for the functioning of its own communal
mentality. Then, like a degenerating brain-center, it could no longer
fulfil its part in the cosmical experience.

Looking forward from my station in the supreme moment of the cosmos, I
saw myself, the cosmical mind, sink steadily toward death. But in this
my last aeon, when all my powers were waning, and the burden of my
decaying body pressed heavily on my enfeebled courage, an obscure memory
of past lucidity still consoled me. For confusedly I knew that even in
this my last, most piteous age I was still under the zestful though
remote gaze of the Star Maker.

Still probing the future, from the moment of my supreme unwithered
maturity, I saw my death, the final breaking of those telepathic
contacts on which my being depended. Thereafter the few surviving worlds
lived on in absolute isolation, and in that barbarian condition which
men call civilized. Then in world after world the basic skills of
material civilization began to fail; and in particular the techniques of
atomic disintegration and photosynthesis. World after world either
accidentally exploded its little remaining store of matter, and was
turned into a spreading, fading sphere of lightwaves in the immense
darkness; or else died miserably of starvation and cold. Presently
nothing was left in the whole cosmos but darkness and the dark whiffs of
dust that once were galaxies. Aeons incalculable passed. Little by
little each whiff of dust-grains contracted upon itself through the
gravitational influence of its parts; till at last, not without fiery
collisions between wandering grains, all the matter in each whiff was
concentrated to become a single lump. The pressure of the huge outer
regions heated the center of each lump to incandescence and even to
explosive activity. But little by little the last resources of the
cosmos were radiated away from the cooling lumps, and nothing was left
but rock and the inconceivably faint ripples of radiation that crept in
all directions throughout the ever “expanding” cosmos, far too slowly to
bridge the increasing gulfs between the islanded grains of rock.

Meanwhile, since each rocky sphere that had once been a galaxy had been
borne beyond every possible physical influence of its fellows, and there
were no minds to maintain telepathic contact between them, each was in
effect a wholly distinct universe. And since all change had ceased, the
proper time of each barren universe had also ceased.

Since this apparently was to be the static and eternal end, I withdrew
my fatigued attention back once more to the supreme moment which was in
fact my present, or rather my immediate past. And with the whole mature
power of my mind I tried to see more clearly what it was that had been
present to me in that immediate past. For in that instant when I had
seen the blazing star that was the Star Maker, I had glimpsed, in the
very eye of that splendor, strange vistas of being; as though in the
depths of the hypercosmical past and the hypercosmical future also, yet
coexistent in eternity, lay cosmos beyond cosmos."

Is the evolution and life cycle of the cosmos as described in this chapter similar to our current understand of the universe in regards to the Big Bang and Heat Death?