Oneness

Let’s go a tiny bit back now, to the birth of Hinduism and see what their idea of God was or is.

To learn about the ideology rather than the rituals, we would have to go into the Vedas. Fun fact: the word Veda means knowledge and has the same root as the words wit/wisdom.

The Vedas are four: Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva. Each of these is further divided into four parts, which are Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaha and Upanishad.

And in Upanishad is where you find the details of the ideology and the inner belief system. So to catch a glimpse of what the idea of God might be like in Hinduism, let’s take a look at this Griffith English translation of an excerpt from the Rig Veda.

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

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

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.

Being raised around Hindus and in a Hindu household myself, it is so weird to read this. To comprehend what it’s actually saying. I can only imagine how weird it might be for someone who’s never come across such a belief system.

From the excerpt, one thing we can learn for sure is that it’s acknowledged here that God is a creation that came after the universe itself. It points out our limited knowledge of everything. And the main character seems to be The One Thing, which we know nothing of except believe that The One Thing has existed from before the existence of the universe itself. It is also shown that we do not know who formed the universe. It’s almost philosophical and it feels so real, the way the minds of those who wrote the Vedas worked and formed these ideas through thought and introspection. The last line says it all, even The One Thing may not know everything.

From the excerpt, one thing we can learn for sure is that it’s acknowledged here that God is a creation that came after the universe itself. It points out our limited knowledge of everything. And the main character seems to be The One Thing, which we know nothing of except believe that The One Thing has existed from before the existence of the universe itself. It is also shown that we do not know who formed the universe. It’s almost philosophical and it feels so real, the way the minds of those who wrote the Vedas worked and formed these ideas through thought and introspection. The last line says it all, even The One Thing may not know everything.