Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

The Mystery of the Five Elements

THE material world, as the ancient sages viewed it, is composed of five elements. They are, as we know, (I) earth (ksiti), (2) water (ap), (3) fire (tej), (4) air (marut), and (5) space or ether (vyom), mounting from the grossest to those that are more and more subtle. The subtlest, the topmost in the scale is space or ether. As we descend in the scale, each succeeding element becomes more and more concrete than the preceding one. Thus air is denser than space, fire is denser than air, water is denser than fire and earth is the densest of all – solidity belongs to earth alone. Water is liquid, fire gaseous, air is fluid, and ether is the most tenuous. Now this hierarchy can be considered also as a pyramid of qualities, qualities of matter and the material world tapering upward. The first one, the topmost, space, possesses the quality of sound or vibration; it is the field giving out waves that originate sound.¹ The next element is air, its special quality as found in the ancient knowledge is the quality of touch: it gives the sensation of touch, you can touch it, it touches you and you recognise its existence in that

¹ Science, that is modem Science, will perhaps demur a little; for Science holds sound to be the exclusive property of air, it is the vibration of air that comes to the ear as sound, Where there is no air, there is no sound. But Science itself admits now that sound audible to the human ear is only a section of a whole gamut of vibrations of which the ear catches only a portion, vibrations of certain length and frequency. Those that are outside this limit, below or above, are not seized by the ear. So there is a sound that is unheard. The poets speak of unheard melodies. The vibrations – the sound-vibrations – are in fact not merely in the air; but originally and fundamentally in a more subtle material medium, referred to by the ancients as vyom.. The air-vibrations are derivations or translations, in a more concrete and gross medium, of these subtler vibrations. These too are heard as sound by a subtle hearing. The very original seed-sound is, of course, Om, nada. That, however, is another matter.

Like inaudible sound, we know now, there is also invisible light. The visible light, as given in the spectrum, is only a section of the entire series of light-vibrations. There is a range above and one below – both are invisible to the normal physical eye.

way. Touch however is its own, its primary quality but it takes up also the quality of the previous, the subtler element, in order to become more and more evolved, more and more concrete, that is to say, in the material way. Air has thus a double quality, sound and touch – It is tactile, and it is sonorous. The third one, fire, has the quality of possessing a form; it has visibility in addition to the two qualities of the two previous elements, which it takes up: thus fire is visible, it can be touched – yes, it may burn also and it gives out sound. The fourth element, water, adds a fourth quality which is its own, namely, taste. Water has taste, very delightful taste to mortals. A Greek poet² says water has the best taste, hudor men ariston. So you can taste water, you can see its form, you can touch it, you can hear it gurgle. Coming to the last, earth has all these, qualities: in addition, what it has is, curious to say, smell. So you can hear earth's vibrations, you can touch it, see it, taste it – for some earth has a very savoury taste – but its own special quality is smell: it is odorous, it is sweet-scented. Kalidasa speaks with ecstasy of the strange scent that the earth emits when the fresh rains fall upon it.

So, the five senses open out to the five elements, each sense linked to its own element, each sense presenting a particular aspect of the material universe. Thus ether, the subtlest element, is present to the ear, the organ of hearing, air to the skin (twak) the organ of touch, the fire-element (radiant energy) to the eye, the liquid to the organ of taste, and earth is given over to smell. Earth is linked with smell, perhaps because it is the perfume of creation, the dense aroma of God's material energy. Also earth is the summation of all the elements and all the qualities of matter. It is the epitome of the material creation. The physical beauty of earth is well-known, the landscape and seascape, its rich variegated coloration, we all admire standing upon its bosom, but up in the air, in the wide open spaces earth appears with even a more magical beauty to which cosmonauts have given glowing tribute. But even this visible beauty pales, I suppose, before the perfume it emits which is its celestial quality, that can only be described indeed as the sweet-scented body of the Divine Substance.

The five elements are thus the five orders of material existence

² Pindar: Olympian Odes, ¹

viewed as correlates to the five senses of man. But they are also realities in their own right. They represent the fundamental principles underlying or characterising the nature of matter. Science speaks of the three states of matter-solid, liquid and gaseous. The five elements enumerate five states instead. Thus earth=solid, water=liquid, fire=gaseous or radiant, air = fluid, ether or space=etheric. A distinction is made between gaseous and fluid, fluid being still more dispersive and tenuous. We might take air as representing the ether spoken of in science and what we have been equating with ether may be termed the field – the gravitational field, for example, of our days.

The last two may, however, be represented somewhat differently. The Maruts may symbolise the region of the subtler or supra-electromagnetic forces – what are now called cosmic rays: they are waves or particles of such infinitesimal magnitude that some of them at least have only a mathematical substance or reality, a probability-point, although of calculable or incalculable energy! Vayu then would represent the fundamental field where these forces play – perhaps something like the Einsteinian field with its "corrugated" surface: or it is like the "Pradhana" of Sankhya, the original Prakriti or basic Nature before it burst out in its creative activity.

Again, the five elements are not merely substances or states and qualities of substance, but they are also forces and energies, material forces and energies-since we have confined ourselves to matter and the material world. Science (we are always referring to Science, we have to do so since we are dealing with and speaking from the standpoint of matter and material existence), Science has familiarised us with the various forms and types of forces and energies. They are, starting from the most patent and gross, going up to more and more subtle energies, first of all mechanical energy, then (2) chemical energy, (3) electrical energy, (4) gravitational energy, and finally (5) the field energy; the last two are perhaps not very clearly differentiated and distinguished, but still one may make the distinction. And this mounting ladder of energy with its various steps, with its five steps corresponds exactly to the old Indian quintet – earth, water, fire, air, space.

This is not to say that the ancients exactly knew the mysteries of modern scientific exploration. This only means

that there is a parallelism between the ancient and the modern knowledge. The scale or hierarchy, from the most concrete substance through the subtler ones, to the subtlest, representing the constitution of the material world as conceived by the ancient seers finds a close and curious echo in the picture that modern science has drawn of material existence.

It must be noted, however, that parallelism means similarity but also difference. The manner of approach to the reality, the way of expressing it is different in the east and in the west. The ancients express a truth or a fact symbolically, the moderns express it in a straightforward matter-of-fact way. The ancients used symbols; for they wanted a multiple way of expression, that is to say, a symbol embodying a movement refers at the same time to many forms of the same movement on different levels, along different lines, in diverse applications. It is like the multiple meanings of a verbal root in Sanskrit. The scientific terms, on the other hand, are very specific; they connote only one thing at a time. Each term with its specific sense is unilateral in its movement.

Now furthermore, the Great Five need not be restricted to the domain of matter alone as being its divisions and levels and functions, but they may be extended to represent the whole existence, the cosmos as a whole. Indeed they are often taken to symbolise the stair of existence as a whole, the different levels of cosmic being and consciousness. Thus at the lowest rung of the ladder as always is the earth representing precisely matter and material existence; next, water represents life and the vital movement; then, fire represents the heart centre from where wells up all impulse and drive for progression. It holds the evolutionary urge: we call it the Divine Agni, the Flame of the Inner Heart, the radiant Energy of Aspiration. The fourth status or level of creation is mind or the mental world, represented by air, the Vedic Marut; finally, Vyom or space represents all that is beyond the mind, the Infinite Existence and Consciousness. The five then give the chart, as it were, of nature's constitution, they mark also the steps of her evolutionary journey through unfolding time.

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