The planet earth stabilized after eons of time, and over many millennia when the surface of earth cooled sufficiently, it separated into five distinct states of matter. In the Vedic Scriptures, these five different states of matter are called “Panch Mahabhootas” which literally means, Five Great Spirits. Rev. Dadaji referred to them as the Five Elementals – not elements. This is because these elementals are the source of the elements identified in chemistry and organized in the Periodic Table.
The Five Elementals, or Panch Mahabhootas, are space, heat/light, air, water and earth earthy. Space is also referred to as sky or ether. As a primal elemental, space is much more than the sky or the ether, as the terms are commonly understood. In the Vedas, space is referred to as “akash” and is phonetically pronounced (aaa-kaaa-sh). Akash or space contains within it subatomic particles and is a medium through which the life principle, known as “prana”, gets created. Further, akash is also a medium through which spiritual records are stored within the realm of consciousness that is referred to as “Living Silence”.
The physical mass of space is greater than all the galaxies that float within it. Indeed, all the galaxies are part of space, just as all the creatures that live in the ocean are a part of the ocean. These Five Elementals are present wherever there is any form of life. This is so, even when the environment is toxic and there is great physical pressure, which commonly known life forms on the surface of the earth cannot withstand. Biological life has also been observed in the depths of the ocean where, through cracks in the earth’s mantle, hot gases and other matter from within the earth are spewing forth and all the Five Elementals are present. The source of the heat/light at these depths is provided by the hot molten lava that comes from within the earth. Air is dissolved in the water and water abounds in the ocean, and space is present in every atom and molecule, and earth earthy matter wells up through the cracks and is also present from other sources in the water.
It has been recorded in the Vedic Scriptures that wherever these Five Elementals meet in the right proportions, life begins spontaneously. Rev. Dadaji, Dr. Dinshah K. Mehta explains this in terms acceptable to modern science and understandable by those who have some basic scientific education. When the five elementals combine in the right proportion and right combinations, this combination of the elementals provides the platform which enables DNA molecules to come into being. Life as we know it begins when the Five Elementals come together in the right proportions and combinations and at the same time, the spiritual life principle (soul) and the material life principle (prana) intersect with the Five Elementals.
These initial ultra-microscopic life forms have very short life spans, but after these ultra-microscopic life forms stabilized in due course of time, they evolved unto microscopic life forms, which in turn over thousands of years evolved into the different species of plants and animals. However, unlike the present-day understanding, Rev. Dadaji says that the different life forms did not evolve from the same DNA and RNA molecules. Dr. Mehta revealed that each species of animals, birds, plants etc. originated from a DNA molecule that is unique to that particular species and that this distinction will be discovered by the ascending sciences sometime in the future. Eventually, beginning with a distinct set of DNA molecules, human beings evolved in stages and went through various life forms till what is accepted as modern man became.
Ascending sciences are those sciences which piece together information which is called knowledge by taking the mind outwards and observing physical life outside oneself. Descending sciences, on the other hand, observe by going within and learning from the physically invisible Source. The following Script will shed some light on this difference.