"I get to go first! How exciting," Lakshmi smiled, her eyes shining as brightly as the jewelry she wore. "Let me take you now through the most brilliant story of creation, the tale of the Hiranyagarbha."

To start, we must go far back, so much farther than you would even dream to go on your own. First, picture a world without things--no children running around in laughter, no feasts on the table, no tables on which to feast. Now go farther, and picture a universe with no world--just a large, dark cosmos, no boundary between earth and sky and water because there is no earth, sky, or water. It is not black, because color does not exist. It is not cold, or hot, because there are no atoms to move, so no temperature to sense. It is not dry or wet, moving or still, empty or full--there is simply nothing.

It is from this that Svayambhu, the self-manifested Being, arose.

Svayambhu is impossible to describe, because its form is beyond our senses. However, around this Being arose the primordial waters of the universe.

"I must say, I find so much peace in the waters of the Universe," Lakshmi sighed, deviating a bit from her tale as she reminisced. "The cosmic ocean is where Vishnu and I rest."

"Well, we haven't seen the last of the ocean's role in the Universe's beginning," noted Saraswati, thinking about her own favorite tale, while Durga nodded her agreement.

Now, imagine you can observe this vast ocean of nothing, and as you do, you see a pinprick of light, so faint and far away you're sure you must be imagining it. Zoom in closer, and you will see that this pinprick does indeed exist, and it is much more than a point of light--it is a huge golden orb, an egg that is humming with energy and potential.

The egg turns into a womb, and Svayambhu enters it.

The egg has not been here for any amount of time, because time does not exist yet.

"Do you think the humans hearing your story will be able to imagine this timelessness?" mused Durga.

"I mean, how it works is obvious, isn't it?" Saraswati rolled her eyes. "They just need to temporarily let go of time in their conscious awareness, and that will suffice."

"Let me continue my story, you two," Lakshmi brushed them off impatiently.

After the passing of what would be a year if time did exist, the egg begins to shake. Softly at first, and then more violently, vibrating with increasing intensity, until...

CRACK

"Hey! That's the Universe's first sound!" Durga nodded approvingly

and the egg split in two.

The top half of the egg has just become the Svarga (Heaven) , and the bottom half the Prithvi (Earth), and the birth of the universe has begun. That is when the egg began to sing.

And as the song continued, so it all came to be. All the beauty, wonders, and might we now enjoy stemmed from the most magnificent of all things, the womb of the Universe.

As Lakshmi finished her tale, the other goddesses applauded her.

"Well told, Lak!" Durga hugged her tightly.

Meanwhile Saraswati was already off in her own head, when she turned to the others. "I love the concept of all of the Universe starting from such a simple but beautiful element. But now I have to ask, what if instead of it being an egg, you had all the knowledge of the Vedas inside your head?"

Author's Note:

This first story, the Golden Egg, is a classic tale of Creation. Quite simply, first there was nothing, and then an egg was created, and from it everything else. After about a year in an ocean of nothing, the egg splits in two, one half forming the heavens (Svarga), the other half forming the earth (Prthvi). The poem was a rewriting from an English translation of a Sanskrit verse, which I tried to stay as true to form as I could. Here's a snippet of it:

There are different versions of where the Egg originates, and who is in it (Svayambhu, Brahman, the Trimurti), but I tried to keep it as straightforward as possible. Overall, I focused on the feeling of this magnificent Golden Egg existing in the midst of nothing, because I feel like that is a core element that every description of the story includes.

A couple of notes on formatting: I italicized all parts that had to do with the goddesses (who are our narrators, see the Intro if you're confused), and the rest is the story, told by Lakshmi. Hopefully the formatting helps make the interjections more clear. I also changed the size of the poem to make it stand out.

Bibliography: Hiraṇyagarbha, from Wikipedia

Image Source: Wikipedia