Elements

Everything in nature is made up of five basic elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. Knowledge of the five elements allows the yogi to understand the laws of nature and to use yoga to attain greater health, power, knowledge, wisdom and happiness. This arises out of deep intuition of how the universe operates. Knowledge of the five elements is an essential prerequisite for more advanced yoga practice because the elements form the world we live in and the structure of our body-mind. All yoga practices work on the five elements, whether we know it or not. Knowledge of the elements (tattwas) is also the basis of yoga therapy and of Ayurveda, traditional Indian medicine. Through consciously working with the elements, we learn how to attain and maintain health and also how to consciously enjoy a long and fulfilling life based on higher awareness.

Each element is responsible for different structures in the body. Earth forms solid structures, such as bones, flesh, skin, tissues, and hair. Water forms all the liquids in the body. Fire forms hunger, thirst, and sleep. Air is responsible for all movement, including expansion, contraction, and suppression. Space forms physical attraction and repulsion, as well as fear. If any element is impure or out of balance with another, disease and suffering may occur. Yoga helps us purify these elements and restore balance and health, and to unfold the inner powers and abilities contained in each element. In fact, yoga is one of the most powerful ways to restore health because it gives us the means to bring even those elements that are natural enemies into harmonious relationships with each other.

These are known facts documented by several saints and yogis and used by Ayurverdic practitioners for years. But the purpose of this snippet is to stretch my imagination to another level of what we need to learn from the nature of the five elements present in our body. This is not something that I have read in the scriptures or even a book and anything I say here is unacceptable to any reader, I take responsibility. I am always fascinated to learn more and more from the nature what I could to develop my character. When I understand everything in nature is made of five elements including my own body, my though process went to what lessons I could learn from these five elements.

Earth: The moment I uttered this word, the usage “down to earth” comes to my mind. It means humility at the highest level. If we see around us, the earth has so many resources built into it and can convert a seed into a tree, absorb water and quench the thirst of many beings, contains all natural resources, gives food and shelter to all beings in this world yet remain silent and not boosting its capabilities. Most importantly, it holds all living-beings in the world yet remain down to earth. We are minuscule when compared to earth but we prefer to project every accomplishment of ours and always on selling mode in a competitive world that encourages such actions.

Water: Water never defies the gravitational force and pours down to quench the thirst of many living beings. It is instrumental in bringing the best out of earth to satisfy the hunger of living-beings. Water is an essential element for life to exist in the planet. Water comes out of earth in the form of a spring, flows down the mountain in the form of river and merges with the ocean to balance the ecosystem. Most importantly, it changes its shape to what holds it and is tasteless and reminds the need for us to remain calm, tranquil and unattached to the dictates of the senses.

Fire: This is the only element that has the capacity to change everything in this planet into another shape or form and has the ability to defy the gravitational force. Without this element, there will be no change in this world. It provides energy to all living beings by letting the food digest. It lends its hand to shape and form raw-materials into finished products be it gold becoming an ornament or rice and pulses becoming delicious food for consumption. When we see the open flame it has red and blue color in it indicating that it is capable of destruction and construction. When we see the flame coming out, it feels like it is worshiping the manifestation of the divine everywhere. A small fire turning into big reminds us of the potential in us by applying change to what we are.

Wind: Having mentioned about something that is stationary, something that flows down and something that rises up, it is time to talk about something that moves sideways. A gentle breeze gives all living-beings a great sense of happiness. In fact, without it, the life will cease to exist yet it embraces all the living-beings with love and compassion. It teaches us the important lesson, life is all about embracing the fellow-beings and co-exist with them peacefully. It constantly serves the living-being without expecting anything in return, facilitates the fire to change things in the world and helps the clouds to move around from low atmospheric pressure areas to high atmospheric pressure areas.

Space: This is an element that reminds in the higher plane as a witness unaffected by the four elements that help sustain the life in the planet. But according to the Vedanta, this is the first element that was formed in the material world followed by air, fire, water and earth. The first sound that is known as Pranava came out of this element. This is instrumental in giving the living beings emotions, discrimination, will power and sense of doership and ownership. This is the closest to what remains beyond these five elements known as vacuum or statelessness or silence.

Our ultimate goal is to move beyond these elements. We have to move from materialization that is nothing but manifestation (form) to vibration (food and air) that sustains all lives through energy in the planet to radiation (intellectual) that gives emotions, discrimination, will power and sense of doership & ownership before we achieve the state of consciousness. Vacuum or statelessness or silence is the ultimate form of every being. The reason for aspiring to attain this status is because it places the beings in a permanent state unaffected by other factors and become formless that is everywhere.

The only question that remains here is the destruction that is caused by earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions and tornados. In my humble view, it is a balancing act of aggression by these elements teaching us to remain balanced in life without tilting towards selfishness from selflessness to achieve our goal of transcending those five elements.

 

Dear Vijiakka,

Thank you as always for your first response. Your first opening remarks always bring more response to any snippet. I am hoping for better response this time.

Viswa

 

Dear Vaikhari,

Thank you for your response. I hope you enjoyed reading this snippet. I wasn't going to write about the five elements and how they came into existence as much as what qualities to learn from them. But that preamble is necessary to bring what I wanted to convey.

Viswa

 

Dear Shobamma,

I was curious why you addressed me Watson. Perhaps, my retirement age reminded you of the Australian cricketer. You are right about other countries having similar four or five elements that they pay attention to address health.

Yes. Each one of the elements that came out of the previous one had the qualities of the previous one plus a new quality.

The point I have made in the preamble was to tell that the five elements are mere manifestation that came out of vacuum that existed before the universe was formed. They are transient and not permanent and at some point in time, they would disappear similar to our gross body that perishes.

But my focus on this snippet is not to talk about the description of the five elements but what kind of lessons we could learn from the nature of these five elements.

Viswa

 

Dear Smt. Jayasala:

Thank you for your kind words and I am truly humbled by them. Your responses always add so much value to my otherwise incomplete snippet. You are very comprehensive in your responses always. It is educational to read your responses.

I understand that every element has perishable and eternal components as they are intertwined. The gross substance is needed to perform actions while the eternal substance is needed to provide the guidance.

Thank you for sharing the five Kshetras for the benefit of everyone and I had the opportunity to visit all five of them.

As I mentioned to others in my response, I was only using a small preamble to introduce the five elements and my focus on this snippet is to pay attention to what lessons we could learn from these five elements to develop our character.

These are just my thoughts and I am sure you may have much better thoughts on this subject. I have shared what I learn from these five elements to elicit other interesting thoughts from scholars like you.

Viswa