Hiranyagarbha (the Golden Egg)

"On mighty waters floated the universal egg of the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha, which gave birth to the flame of life, the One Spirit of all the Gods." ~Rig Veda (X.121)

And now I tell you this: the golden egg is the center of your heart.

As the Vedic scriptures speak of Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Egg, so many of the world's creation myths contain the image of a luminous egg floating on the dark primal waters of Being, floating on the waters of consciousness prior to the creation of form, where the earth is yet "formless and void" (Genesis 1:2). Yet I tell you, this Golden Egg is floating inside you now.

This image of the egg and the mother is even embedded in the Bible's creation story, where "the Spirit-Breath of God was stirring over the deep." The word for "stirring" is the Hebrew root, "rakf," describing the ruffling movement of a mother bird's feathers as she broods over her egg: a feminine image of the Creator in the opening verses of the Bible.

Yet this mythic Golden Egg is a very real experience in deep meditation. Hiranyagarbha is a perfect sphere of pure ineffable Light: the Light who witnesses its Self, and by witnessing its Self generates two out of One. And thus, in the space between the Self and its own Self-awareness, the possibility of all worlds, all creation, is born. This is how the non-local field of Self-reference creates a space for localized particles to bubble up from the spaceless timeless singularity of the quantum vacuum.

On the shell of the egg are runes and letters, scriptures made of the same golden Light as the egg they dance upon. Light writes on darkness in vibrant pulsations of its own purity. This is the the fertility of light, the sheer exuberance of the void, yearning to express itself. And this script contains all the names of Allah, mantras of the Veda, letters of the Torah, songs of the Forest as silent hieroglyphs of uncreated Light before creation.

The egg floats upon an onyx sea, which is the black hole of the divine womb. Yet the music of Light will not be contained. As the Fourth Gospel declares: "The light shines in darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it." This does not mean that darkness is the enemy of light, or the opposite of light. It means that darkness is the womb of light.

Out of darkness light sings golden rays into the silence of no-thing. Streams of the song of light shine from the Golden Egg. So the infinite vibration of oneness co-mingles with the night, its vibration slow down and coalesce into the forms of the cosmos, condensing into atoms of matter. The most essential particles, sub-nuclear leptons and quarks, have energy so subtle that they exist only in virtuality at first, on the verge of creation, as uncreated light and uncreated sound, mathematical probabilities in the vacuum.

Yet these virtual particles are not "things" exactly: they are both wave and particle, consciousness and matter. These vibrations are the seed-mantras of the Veda, and the seed-equations of quantum physics. They are both sacred language and physical science. For in the luminous aura of the Golden Egg, heaven and earth, subject and object, spirituality and science, are as yet undivided.

This Music of Light continues to stream forth, its rays coalescing into elements, elements into the dust of galaxies and stars, dragon-fly wings, mist, flowers. Hence every plant in the forest contains a song. Ask indigenous forest people, who can hear the medicine of herbs singing to them. This is why such people need no written scriptures. They hear the sacred music of Light and Darkness and in the creatures around them.

Walk in the woods, listen to the voice of a seed as you hold it your hand. Listen to the infinitesimal pulse of a stone, the ballad of a leaf, even when there is no breeze. Nestle the curves of your body in the roots of an old cedar, take a nap there, and let her send you a dream. Enter the cathedral of mycelia, whose naves and corridors, chapels and pews, extend throughout the underworld. This song of creation, this hymn of forest silence, is green energy. It is what Hildegard of Bingen called "the greening power of the Spirit."

Hearing the music that streams out of silence is meditation. To the physical senses, the chanting of mantra is merely a physical vibration against the ear drum. But this audible resonance is just the material pole of a living spectrum, a sentient continuum extending inward through subtler fields of energy, toward the Golden Egg at creation's source. And where is this secret silent source of creation? At the center of your heart.

So we come round in a circle to the beginning. Which is the whole meaning of an egg, after all. Let the sound of the mantra carry you effortlessly within, by the grace of the Creator, who loves you and draws you to Herself. To follow this golden beam of sound inward is the Word of creation in reverse. In Biblical terms, this is the practice of Tshuva, "Returning."

Follow this golden song that emanates from your heart. Follow it down into sweet brilliant darkness. Touch the egg, where the Mother is always stirring, warming, bringing your radiance to birth, and resurrection.

Painting: St. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th C.