1. Then was neither non-existence nor existence: There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. what covered it, and where? And what gave shelter? Was there, an unfathomed depth of water?
2. Death was not then, nor was there anything immortal: no sign was there, the Day’s and Night’s divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3. Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that One.
4. Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart’s thought discovered the kinship of existence with non-existence.
5. Transversely [across the universe] was their dividing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.
6. Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7. He the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows it not.
The Hymns of the Rig Veda 10.129 1
Carl Sagan contemplated the conditions before the Big Bang, pondering whether the universe was once a tiny, matter-devoid space that suddenly gave rise to everything. He found that the difficulty in finding the answer leads to further profound, unanswerable questions about the existence and eternity of God or the universe itself. 2
For today’s science, grappling with such questions is a monumental task, as it operates within the realm of the created world. While science may not provide conclusive answers, exploring ancient creation myths offers glimpses into the enigmatic pre-creation era.
The Rig Veda, an ancient collection of hymns from India, describes a primordial state where only “That One Thing” existed. This resonates with Tolle’s concept of a state ‘before creation,’ where only the Unmanifested One prevailed. 3
This pre-creation state lacked dual aspects, such as death or immortality, existence or non-existence. It was a realm without space and things (likewise, silence and sound), concepts that emerged only when the One transformed into the multitude through what we now call the Big Bang. 4
In the previous post, we made a glimpse of the creative urge of All That Is – the yearning for expression of the primordial Creator who couldn’t find the means.5 But what was it that All That Is wanted to do through the expression, the creation? And what difficulty was there in finding the expression?
Alan Watts metaphorically captures the dilemma of the primordial Creator, emphasizing the necessity of space as the relationship between bodies for energy and motion.
“Space is the relationship between bodies, and without it there can be neither energy nor motion. … If there were a body, just one single ball, with no surrounding space, there would be no way of conceiving or feeling it as a ball or any other shape. If there were nothing outside it, it would have no outside. It might be God, but certainly not a body! So too, if there were just space alone with nothing in it, it wouldn’t be space at all. For there is no space except space between things, inside things, or outside things. This is why space is the relationship between bodies. 6
All That Is, seeking to experience Its own beingness by creating many reference points, created the world by dividing Itself into many, losing a part of Itself in the process. 7
Watts likens God’s playful act of hide-and-seek to the Creator pretending to be everything in the world, experiencing diverse adventures akin to fleeting dreams upon waking.
“God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear. 8
In the “Conversations With God” series by Neale Donald Walsch, God’s revelation succinctly clarifies the process of self-knowing. All That Is, aware of Its solitary reference point within, chose to divide Itself, giving rise to three elements – ‘this,’ ‘that,’ and ‘neither here nor there’ essential for the existence of the previous two. 9
“The one thing that All That Is knew is that there was nothing else. And so It could, and would, never know Itself from a reference point outside of Itself. Such a point did not exist. Only one reference point existed, and that was the single place within. The “Is-Not Is.” The Am-Not Am.
“Still, the All of Everything chose to know Itself experientially. This energy—this pure, unseen, unheard, unobserved, and therefore unknown-by-anyone-else energy—chose to experience Itself as the utter magnificence It was. In order to do this, It realized It would have to use a reference point within.
“It reasoned, quite correctly, that any portion of Itself would necessarily have to be less than the whole, and that if It thus simply divided Itself into portions, each portion, being less than the whole, could look back on the rest of Itself and see Magnificence.
“And so All That Is divided Itself—becoming, in one glorious moment, that which is this, and that which is that. For the first time, this and that existed, quite apart from each other. And still, both existed simultaneously. As did all that was neither.
“Thus, three elements suddenly existed: that which is here. That which is there. And that which is NEITHER HERE NOR THERE—BUT WHICH MUST EXIST FOR HERE AND THERE TO EXIST.
“It is THE NOTHING which holds the everything. It is the NON-SPACE which holds the space. It is THE ALL which holds the parts.”
This divine process mirrors the birth trauma of feeling separated from our Source, instilling a connection to the Creator within us. 10 This connection emphasizes our unity within the body of All That Is, affirming the truth of ‘There is no separation.’
Jay
Note:
1.
This version is a translation by Ralph T.H. Griffith in 1896
https://wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/workbook/ralprs5a.htm
2.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980, published by Ballantine Books, 2013
P271, Chapter 10. The Edge of Forever
3. 4.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, published by Hodder & Stoughton, 1999
Page 116, Chapter 7. Portals into the Unmanifested
5. 7. 10.
Essay: The Birth Throes of the Creator
6.
Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, 1915
Random House Vintage Books Edition, 1988
p28, Chapter 2. The Game of Black and White
8.
Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, 1915
Random House Vintage Books Edition, 1988
p15, Chapter 1. Inside Information
9.
Neale Donald Walsche, Conversations with God Book 1, 1995
published by Hodder & Stoughton
p23
Leading by Reading 