When the Rig Veda and I Conversed

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Yesterday I read an article on Medium by Kumar Tito, The Dawn of Vedic Wisdom. Among the ten teachings he collects, one stopped me cold:

Nāsad Āsīn No Sad Āsīt Tadānīm “Then there was neither existence nor non-existence.”

I felt unease. For months I have been writing about three ways of inhabiting the world: existing, being, and coexisting. I have explained them with a metaphor of light — the lightbulb, the laser, the rainbow — and also with a metaphor of distillation — the still that reveals the essence of the agave without destroying its context — . For me, “existing” is pure consciousness, open, the space where everything is possible but nothing is defined. But that verse seemed to say that in the beginning there was no existence. Was I in contradiction with one of the oldest texts of humanity?

Before judging, I did the only thing that seemed honest to me: verify the translation.

The method: distilling to see clearly

In my essay Distilling Is Thinking I proposed that distilling is not separating essence from context, but revealing the essence without losing the context that makes it possible. The master mezcal maker does not destroy the agave: he cooks it, crushes it, ferments it, heats it. What rises through the still is the essence. What remains, the bagasse, is the memory of the origin.

I applied that method to the Vedic verse. I took the most common translation — the one Kumar Tito cites — and put it in the still. I heated it. I broke it down word by word:

• ná = not
• ásat = non-being, the non-existent
• āsīt = was, there was
• nó = nor
• sát = being, the existent
• āsīt = was, there was
• tadā́nīm = then, at that time

The essence that rose through the still was this:

“Before, there was neither being nor non-being.”

That is the translation that best captures what the Vedic seer meant. It does not speak of an absence. It speaks of a state prior to our categories. A primordial moment where neither “being” nor “non-being” applied. Where the very distinction between something and nothing did not yet exist.

The definition: proximate genus and specific difference

In another essay, The Grimoire of Letters, I explained that writing is an act of definition. To define, in logic, is to find the proximate genus (the field from which something emerges) and the specific difference (what distinguishes it from everything else within that field). It is not separating. It is pointing with precision.

When I read the distilled translation of the verse — “before, there was neither being nor non-being” — my unease turned to wonder. Because that “before” is exactly what I call “existing” in my metaphor of light.

Now I can define it with logical precision:

• Proximate genus: consciousness.
• Specific difference: the formless state where the categories of “being” and “non-being” have not yet been born.

That is the lightbulb. That is the “existing” I describe as the space where everything is possible but nothing is defined. The Vedic verse was not contradicting me. It was pointing to the same thing I was, but with words from three thousand five hundred years ago.

The coincidence is not chance: it is the structure of consciousness

True knowledge does not belong to an era. It transcends time because it coexists in human consciousness. When a Vedic seer meditates three millennia ago and an ordinary person writes today about lightbulbs and stills, the structure of the experience is the same. Existing, being, and coexisting are not historical stages. They are simultaneous dimensions of the same consciousness that has always been there.

The Vedic verse describes the timeless “before”. I call it “existing”. Both of us point to the same formless ground. The only difference is the cultural garment. The agave is the same. The mezcal is the same. What changes is the still.

The bagasse: what is not thrown away

The bagasse of this essay is the context that made the distillation possible: Kumar Tito’s article, which gave me the verse without knowing it. My honesty in not forcing the translation. My refusal to turn another’s text into a mirror of myself — precisely what I warned about in The Grimoire of Letters: “using reading only to find coincidences is dangerous, because we turn every message into a mirror of ourselves” — . But when the coincidence appears after verifying, when it is born of honesty and not of projection, then it is not a mirror. It is an encounter.

The Rig Veda and I do not say the same thing by chance. We say it because both of us have looked inward and called things by their name.

The final distillate:

What the Vedic seer called “before” and I call “existing” is the same lightbulb lit in two different languages. Consciousness has no dates. Honesty has no owner. The agave is one.

References from this journey:

👉 The article that triggered it all: The Dawn of Vedic Wisdom, by Kumar Tito 🔗 English

👉 My metaphor of light: What the Light Taught Me About Existing, Being, and Coexisting 🔗 English 🔗 Español

👉 My inner journey: ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ 🔗 English 🔗 Español

👉 The distillation method: Distilling Is Thinking 🔗 English 🔗 Español

👉 The art of reading and writing: The Grimoire of Letters: On the Difference Between Reading and Writing 🔗 English 🔗 Español