Before Anything, Water
The Bhāgavata's third canto is a conversation. Vidura, having left the Kaurava court, meets the sage Maitreya on pilgrimage and asks him how the world came to be. What Maitreya describes is not a single act but a rhythm. At the close of a kalpa the worlds are drawn back in. What remains is the causal ocean — undifferentiated, without sequence, because time itself has no purchase where nothing changes. On those waters lies Viṣṇu, asleep, and the sleep is not idleness; the Purāṇa calls it yoga-nidrā, a sleep that is a kind of holding. The elements are present but unmixed. The gunas — sattva, rajas and tamas — are in perfect balance, and while they are balanced nothing can happen, because everything that happens is a disturbance of a balance. Creation begins when time, glancing at that equilibrium, unsettles it.
✦ Visual cue — A vast dark ocean under no sky, a serene blue figure asleep on a coiled serpent, absolute stillness, deep indigo and pearl tones.