b) The Rig Veda also describes (i)samadhi and (ii)the
descent from that state:
(i) Samadhi: 'There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep?
There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond.
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning;
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water. The life force
that was covered with emptiness, that one arose through the
power of heat.'
(ii) Descent: 'Desire came upon that one in the beginning; that was the first seed of mind. Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom found the bond of existence in non-existence.
Their cord was extended across. Was there below? Was there above? There were seed-placers; there were powers. There was impulse beneath; there was givingforth above.
Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen - perhaps it formed
itself, or perhaps it did not - the one who looks down on it, in
the highest heaven, only he knows - or perhaps he does not
know.'
Rig Veda 10.129 (Wendy Doniger translation; Penguin,
London, 1981)
c) Plotinus confirms that Rig Veda 10.129 was speaking
of the return from mystical union, not the origins of the cosmos,
in the following passage:
'Time at first - in reality before/ that 'first' was produced by
desire of succession - Time lay, though not yet as Time, in the
Authentic Existent together with the Cosmos itself; the Cosmos
also was merged in the Authentic and motionless within it.
But there was an active principle there, one set on governing
itself and realizing itself (= the All-Soul), and it chose to aim at
something more than its present: it stirred from its rest, and the
Cosmos stirred with it. 'And we (the active principle and the
Cosmos), stirring to a ceaseless succession, to a next, to the
descrimination of identity and the establishment of ever new
difference, traversed a portion of the outgoing path and
produced an image of Eternity, produced Time. '
Plotinus, EnneadsIII.7.11 translated by Stephen MacKenna
(Penguin, London, 1991).