Before there was anything, Krishna told Arjuna, there was no day and no night, no up and no down. There was only darkness, soft and endless, like a deep sleep with no dreams.

But the darkness was not empty. Resting inside it was great Nature herself, vast and quiet, holding within her every shape and color that would ever be: every mountain not yet raised, every river not yet poured, every creature not yet born. She was like a womb as wide as everything, waiting.

Then, into that waiting vastness, the Lord placed a single seed of light.

It was the smallest spark — and the brightest. And as soon as it was set down, it began to glow and grow. The darkness gathered around it and shaped it into an egg: a great golden egg, shining like a thousand suns, floating all alone in the dark.

Inside the egg, the spark slept and stirred and grew for a very long time. And when at last the egg was ready, it opened.

Out of the two halves came everything. From one half rose the bright sky and all the shining worlds above. From the other half spread the wide brown earth, with its mountains and valleys. The waters poured out and became the seas. The breath of it became the wind. And then — softly, everywhere — life began: little green shoots, then trees, then fish in the water, birds in the air, deer in the forest, and at last people, opening their eyes for the very first time.

"Do you see, Arjuna?" Krishna asked. "Great Nature was the womb. I placed the seed of life inside her. And from that, every being you have ever met came to be. The cow in the field, the eagle on the cliff, your own dear self — all of you were born from that golden egg, from that joining of my seed and her vastness."

Arjuna looked out at the soldiers and the horses, the grass and the far blue hills, and for a moment he saw them all as one enormous family, every one of them hatched from the same shining egg, long, long ago.