Who knows? Who can declare whence has sprung ... this creation?
....Who then knows whence it arose?
From what this creation arose,
And whether anyone made it or not,
He who in the highest heaven is its ruler,
He verily knows, or does not know ...
Rg Veda X.129
At last not even a buttercup remained. But all, even the Tupperware, was gone to earth. And earth became water, water became fire. Fire to air and air to space. After that there was silence for exactly 311,040,000,000,000,000,000 years when a one-stringed lute was again heard in the universe. Again and again the same note, slowly at first and soft. Then faster and louder. Louder and faster, on and on until — Bang!
The great sound woke up a little Hindu. He sat up and looked around him and then shut his eyes tight. "Good Gawd —" he bawled. And the two words went sailing across the universe. "Why," he said after a while, in a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper, "I have been asleep in a lotus flower."
Indeed, he was right. A lotus floating on an ocean without beginning or end. It was a cosmic ocean and those things run on forever. The lotus flower was swaying on that and Brahma inside was queasy, so he put his head out through the canopy of pink petals and was seasick. Later he would be ashamed of that.
Aeons went by, but they seemed like hours to Brahma lying on his lotus. "Just a moment, old chap," Brahma said to himself, already beginning to speak like an Englishman. "There might be others around. After all, how did I get here in the first place?"
It was quite clear there was no one around on the Cosmic Ocean. There was certainly no one with him in the lotus bed. Brahma crossed his legs underneath him, closed his eyes. Slowly the idea grew in him: All flowers have stalks, everyone knows that. The lotus is a flower. Ergo, the lotus must have a stalk. Feverishly, he burrowed in the centre of the lotus — bits of pollen and lily filament lay strewn around him. Deeper he went, thousands and thousands of miles into the heart of the lily. "No end to the bloody flower," Brahma groaned as he clambered back into his bed now with a hole in it and pollen all over the place.
The next step was meditation. Brahma stood up and shut his eyes. Nothing happened. Then he stood on one leg, and lifting his eyelids a fraction stared at his nose. Things began to happen. An empty can of Miller Beer bobbed across that Cosmic Ocean and rattled tinnily against the lotus. Centuries passed by hundreds and thousands, an anthill covered Brahma and birds had nested in his hair; the fledglings, in fact, were just being taught to fly. Thorny vines wrapped themselves around his torso. But Brahma refused to budge. His raised leg had atrophied and his narrowed eyes were white with gook but Brahma stood firm. Then Brahma heard a tiny voice. "Create," it said. "Go on, create." Brahma opened his eyes in surprise. There was no one around. And then the voice repeated the word "create."
