“At first there was neither Being nor Nonbeing.
There was not air nor yet sky beyond.
What was it wrapping? Where? In whose protection?
Was water there, unfathomable and deep?
In the beginning Love arose,
Which was the primal germ of the mind.
The seers, searching in their hearts with wisdom,
Discovered the connection of Being in Nonbeing.
Who really knows? Who can presume to tell it?
Whence was it born? Whence issued this creation?
Even the gods came after this emergence.
Then who can tell from whence it came to be? “
The above is from the Vedas. Included in the Afterward by Michael Nagler (Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature, University of California) to ‘The Upanishads’ by Eknath Easwaran. The Vedas apparently precede all other writing (in the current civilisation?). These words appeal to both mind and emotion.
Nagler continues: “The Vedas give us glimpses into a mythological world which looks like those of Greece, Rome, and the rest of Europe, but different. The Upanishadic universe also contains ‘three worlds,’ but those are not the underworld, ‘middle-earth,’ and heaven as in the West, but the visible world, heaven (or the sky), and another plane that is far beyond phenomenal reality.”
“The human being is not a puny speck in this cosmos, as we may appear physically. By virtue of a power called tapas … or in deep stages of meditation, ordinary men or women can compel profound changes in the universe. The hard line between mortality and immortality, between and the gods … is blurred and crossable.”
Yet more uplifting thoughts!
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 