The Vedas are full of philosophical inquiry and I am giving two very important suktas from the Rigveda. There is no idol worship in the Vedas and Gods of nature like Indra, Agni, Varuna, Ushas etc are worshiped. Yet they make a distinction between gods and creation and the supreme being who they name as Brahman. The Brahman of the Vedas is unknowable and is beyond our intellect.
NASADIYA SUKTA.
Also known as Hymn of Creation in English and is in the Rigveda. It is concerned with cosmology and the origin of the Universe.
This is hymn full of philosophical inquiry into how the creation came into being. It says that even the supreme lord may not know how the creation has arisen.
The hymn goes
“In the beginning not even nothingness existed nor existence. What covered it (the thing which we can never say whether it existed or did not exist) and then where was it”.
“There was neither death nor immortality then and nor the heavens”.
“The one breathed windlessly and there was nothing else but that one”.
“But, after all, who knows, and who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened?”
“The gods themselves are later than creation, so who knows truly whence it has arisen?”
“Whence all creation had its origin, he(the supreme), whether he fashioned it or whether he did not”.
He, who surveys it all from the highest heaven, probably he knows - or maybe even he knows not.
PURUSHA SOOKTA.
The Purusha sukta is from the Rigveda and gives a description of the spiritual unity of the universe. It also points to the birth of the varna system.
It presents the nature of Purusha or the cosmic being as both inherent in the manifested world and yet transcendent to it.
From this being, the sukta holds, the original creative will proceeds which causes the projection of the universe in space and time.
The Purusha sukta, in the seventh verse, hints at the the four classes of the society.
