Creation

Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.

What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, of unfathomed depth?

Death was not then, nor was there immortality: no sign was there, the divider of day and night.

That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

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 Singularity.

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire the primal seed and germ of Spirit.

Sages, who searched with their hearts, discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.

Transversely was their severing 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.

Who verily knows and who can declare it, when was it born and whence comes this creation?

The gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then when it first came into being?

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.

[from Rig-Veda Samhita ~ Transl. R.T.H. Griffith]