Hi there!
I'm reading a book called "Healing with Forms, Energies and Light" (The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra and Dzogchen) by Tenzil Rinpoche.
In it I found many interesting things about the Elements that are in accordance to what Bardon and Hermetics teach about them.
I will post an excerpt from the book. Be aware that for Akasha the author says Space.
If I'm allowed I can post link where you can download the book for free. Let me know if this is ok with the rules of this site?
Here is the excerpt:
THE FIVE PURE LIGHTS
The most subtle dimension of the five elements is known as the “five pure
lights.” In the Dzogchen tradition there are many texts of teachings about
the elements. From the Zhang Zhung Nyan Gyud, the primary cycle of
Dzogchen teachings in the Bön tradition, I am drawing from two main texts
which go into detail about the five lights. These are The Six Lamps (Sgronma
drug) and The Mirror of the Luminous Mind (‘Od-gsal sems-kyi melong).
One teaching, which is partially a story, explains how the elemental
energies, though always pure in themselves, come to be perceived as
substantial. It is also the story of how, in the intermediate state (bardo)
between death and birth, the individual goes toward either the delusions
of samsara or the freedom of nirvana. On another level, it is the description
of what can be done, in any moment, to end ensnarement in karmic
visions and remain in the natural state of mind. The teaching says something
like this:
For each of us, everything begins with the primordial space, the Great Mother
from which all things arise, in which all things exist, and into which all
things dissolve. In this space there is movement. What causes it, no one
knows. The teachings only say “the winds of karma moved.” This is the
movement of the subtlest level of lung or prana, the energy that pervades
infinite space without characteristics or divisions. Inseparably united with
the flow of prana is the flow of primordial awareness, pure and without
identity. In this pure awareness five lights arise.
The five lights are aspects of primordial luminosity. These are the five
pure lights, the most subtle level of the elements. We talk about the light
and color of the five pure lights but this is symbolic. The five pure lights are
more subtle than visible light, more subtle than anything perceived by the
eye, more subtle than any energy measured or perceived by any means.
They are the energies from which all other energies, including visible light,
arise.
The white or colorless light is space, the green light is air, the red light is
fire, the blue light is water, and the yellow light is earth. These are the five
aspects of pure luminosity, the rainbow-like energies of the single sphere of
existence (tigle nyag chik).
If the five lights are experienced dualistically, as objects of a perceiving
subject, they appear to grow more substantial. The five lights don’t become
grosser, but through the distortions of dualistic vision the individual perceives
them as grosser. As the elements seem to grow toward greater substantiality,
they are further discriminated, and through their interactions they
manifest all phenomena, including the subject and objects that make up all
dualistic experience.
Eventually the five lights become the raw, natural physical elements and
five inclusive categories of qualities belonging to external reality.
They become the different dimensions of existence that are various realms in which
beings with and without form exist. Internally the five lights seem to thicken
and form the organs, the five branches of the body, the five fingers of each
hand, the five toes of each foot, the five senses, and the five sense fields.
The five lights become the five negative emotions if we remain deluded, or
the five wisdoms and the five buddha families if we recognize their purity.
This is not a story about a creation that happened in the distant past. It is
about how we live as individual beings and about ignorance and enlightenment.
If the five lights are recognized as a non-dual, unceasing manifestation
of the pure basis of existence (kunzhi), nirvana begins. If the five lights
are perceived dualistically and thought to exist externally, as objects of a
subject, samsara begins. The awareness does not become delusory or become
enlightened—it remains non-dual and pure—but the qualities that
arise in it can be either positive or negative. If the awareness integrates and
identifies with the pure qualities, a buddha arises from the base; if with the
impure, a samsaric being arises. In this moment, right now, the process is
ongoing.
Depending on whether we integrate our immediate experience with nondual
awareness or cling to the false separation of our selves as subjects
experiencing external objects and entities, we will be in the non-dual natural
state or in the deluded mind.
The story of the five lights can teach us how to work with experience. What
manifests in experience usually begins on subtle levels and moves to grosser
ones. This is true for any process that leads to new things or new entities,
whether it’s the birth of an idea or the birth of a planet. The physical body of
an individual begins in desire that results in sex that brings two tiny cells
together that develop into the full human body. Language begins with pure
sound and leads to meaning and all the philosophies and poetry of humans.
Physicists tell us that the universe is born from energy condensed in a dimensionless
point, and a process of increasingly complex structures arise
as stars, planets, and organisms. Problems often begin from a misunderstanding
such as a difference in religious or political ideas and result in
arguments, life-long animosities, and even wars.
Karmic dispositions and conditioning determine the nature of the world
we inhabit: What we experience externally is a projection of what is internal.
This world is hell for some people, for others it is heaven.
Bön and Buddhist philosophy tell us that—beyond all these differences—
all things and beings are empty of inherent existence and are finally entirely
insubstantial. Modern physics agrees that matter is made of energy and space.
We can say that everything is insubstantial or empty, but of course, in
our experience things are substantial and separate. Stand in front of an oncoming
truck insisting that it is an insubstantial phenomenon and you’ll be
run over. But we must begin to change our minds about the condition of
phenomena. When we continue to react to experience as if it is made of
solid things and discrete substantial entities, the continuation of the ordinary
world is assured. This is not just abstract philosophy. If we react to our
problems as if they are real and solid, they are so, in our experience. But if
we recognize them to be fleeting and mirage-like, a display of the sacred
elemental energies in vast space, they are no longer problems.
Because the story of the five pure lights is not the story that science tells us,
it can be mistaken for fantasy, for something not true—by which is usually
meant that it is not fact. The five pure lights can’t be measured or weighed;
they aren’t facts in the way that a car is, or a rain storm. But facts are not
truth. The spiritual teachings continually point this out. While we accept it
as a fact that we exist surrounded by dead substantial things and living
substantial entities, the dharma tells us that there are no substantial things
nor are there separate, intrinsically existing entities. No one can show us
love as a fact, but when we are in love there is no doubt that love is real.
The five elements are true the way love is true and also the way a car is
true. A car is made from the elements: the hard earth of the metal, the water
of the gas and oil, the fire of the combustion, the air that allows the gas to
burn, and the space that allows the car to exist. Stop thinking of it as “car”
for a minute and instead see it as the interplay of the five elements. This is
how to think about the elements.
The story of the five lights and the stories later in the book are not meant
to entertain, nor should they be thought of as factual. Rather, this story is
truer than fact, and that’s why, if it is really understood, it can change the
way we experience the world. With a deep understanding of how the apparently
solid world is actually the play of pure elemental light, peace can be
found even in a troubled world, problems can be eradicated before they
manifest, and ultimately the nature of the mind can be fully realized. There
is a sequence or flow to all things that arise. Knowing this, one knows how
to stop negative processes and initiate and support positive processes.
