Cosmic Waters and the Mystery of Creation

The Rigveda, in its beautiful hymn called the Nasadiya Sukta, reflects on the great mystery of creation. It says that before the universe came into being there was neither existence nor non-existence. There was no realm of air and no sky beyond it. The rishi wonders: what covered it and where, what gave shelter, and was there water, deep and unfathomed?

Here “water” does not mean rivers or oceans. It is a symbol, a way to describe the primordial and formless state from which everything arose. Water has no shape of its own and takes the form of whatever holds it. In the same way, the seer used “cosmic waters” to describe that vast and fluid reality, unbounded, self-existent, and full of hidden potential. It was not held by anything, for there was no outside. It was infinite and all-encompassing.

The Upanishads explain this mystery further. The Chandogya Upanishad says, “In the beginning, all this was Being, one without a second.” The Taittiriya Upanishad describes how creation unfolded step by step: from the Self arose space, from space air, from air fire, from fire water, and from water earth. Here the Self, spoken of as Brahman or Ātman, can be loosely compared to what modern science calls the quantum vacuum or singularity, the unseen source from which everything emerges. “Water” again is not ordinary water but the first principle of creation, the creative energy of the infinite.

That infinite is Brahman, the eternal reality, pure consciousness, limitless and undivided. When Brahman expresses itself, it becomes Shakti, the creative power, the primordial energy from which the world arises. Brahman is like a still ocean and Shakti the waves upon it. The waves are not separate from the ocean, they are its own play. Similarly, the universe is Brahman’s own expression and not something outside it.

Modern science, in its own way, tells a similar story. Before the Big Bang there was no time, no space, no matter. Yet scientists speak of a state called the quantum vacuum, not empty but full of potential energy. From it the universe burst forth. How close this sounds to the Rigveda’s cosmic waters. The only difference is that Brahman is not energy but undifferentiated, infinite reality in its Nirguna, formless aspect. Its manifestation as energy is Saguna, with form.

Both ancient rishis and modern scientists remind us that creation began from a state beyond our normal understanding, a mystery that holds all within itself. Rigveda wisely admits that perhaps no one can fully know: “He who surveys it from the highest heaven, He alone knows, or perhaps even He does not know.” This resonates with modern thought too, for the scientific theories of creation we speak of are probabilities, not certainties.

For us, the message is not only about how the cosmos began long ago. Creation is happening even now in every breath we take, in every thought that rises in the mind, in every heartbeat that sustains us. To live with this awareness is to recognize that we ourselves are expressions of that same Brahman, the eternal ocean of existence.