Awareness did not exist before creation

You can say

It is better to do the experiment for yourself !!

Spouting what the vedas says or doesn't say is a bit like quoting a yoga text which says this posture is good for that or people who say glibble since Qauntum mechanics so and so and yet don't have the foggiest notion what they are on about, it is just a form of ignorance.

From the depth of meditation and then coming back into a more normal sense of cosnciousness one ( i feel) there is no world either before or after this moment except that the Mind creates a sense of etc ( called conventional knowledge or understanding ) .

Constucts ie the very notion of space and time and the convolutions or disturbances that we sense as "energy" are all perceptions of the Mind , thus God existed before the Universe,

that is ..... The unimaginable God !!!