Observations placeholder
Rig veda - In the Beginning [Muller transl]
Identifier
008231
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
There is another observation for this same passage, but this translation is poetic and seems somehow to keep the essence of the original well. It provides an alternative version of the same text. One of the severe difficulties of translating a text that is spiritual in nature, is that the symbolism can be lost in the translation, so it helps to have a number of translations sometimes to compare
A description of the experience
Rig Veda – The Song of Creation [translated by Max Muller]
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, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught 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.
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 unit
Thereafter rose desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal
seed and germ of spirit
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the
existent's kinship in the non-existent
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was
above it and what was below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action
here and energy up yonder
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?
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 not
The source of the experience
Rig veda, theConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
AetherAir
Chaos
Contrast
Divine love
Egg
Form
Objectives of the Great Work
Order of creation
Spirit
System
Ultimate Intelligence
Water