Symbology of the Golden Lotus Temple

The spiritual ideals and mysticism of the ages are symbolized in the Golden Lotus Temple. Every detail of the Temple is a spiritual symbol.

The three flights of five steps leading to the Temple signify the stages of self-unfoldment, self-revelation, and self-realization. The shape of the Temple, a keystone, signifies that religion is the keystone of life. The predominating colors, gold, rose, and blue, used both without and within the Temple, represent wisdom, love, and peace.

The blue reflecting pool in front of the Temple is built in the shape of a left foot. It represents the lasting imprint left by great souls.

The reflection of the Temple in the pool also has symbolic significance. Just as the entire temple is reflected in the pool, so must the entire life of the devotee reflect that he follows the path of God and the way of great souls with his whole life and his total being, body, mind, heart, and soul.

Of all the symbols utilized over the ages by man for his spiritual understanding and enlightenment, the most simple, the most sublime, and the most universal is surely the cross. The cross bears meanings that are as infinite and miraculous as the universe itself. In fact, the whole cosmogony of this universe can be perceived as a cross in its three attributes.

The meaning of the cosmic cross is nature’s union or Yoga, the divine union of the Creator and the created. As such it is both the ideal of nature’s oneness with the transcendental reality and also the unfoldment or progressive means to attain it. The vertical line suggests ascension and aspiration towards the heights of attainment. The horizontal line shows the level of attainment itself and the expansiveness of spirit as it links with the whole universe. When I behold the many objective expressions of the cross that I can see and touch in the universe around me I am filled with awe and inspiration at the manifestation of the perfection of God in law and harmony, order and beauty.

We finally arrive at the highest and most sublime significance of the divine symbol: the Mystic Cross—purely subjective and infinitely sublime in its power of revelation. Ancient rishis, scientists in the study and the discoveries of spiritual truths, utilizing their subjective powers of light and energy, discovered that the cross actually evolves to a transcendental meaning within the consciousness of man. They found in the figure of the cross a revelation of the evolution of man’s consciousness ascending in gradual stages. Their precise philosoply of gradual and progressive unfoldment of self-consciousness is preserved in the beautiful symbol depicted above. Its every detail has been corroborated by science and psychology without fault.