Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals :Ch-4. Part - 18.

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :

 Part-18.

But the Sankhya thought out this matter more deeply, and felt that it is not true that there are five elements.

They are only five degrees of the intensity of one element.

One element or principle, one being or stuff has modified itself into various densities.

This was what Sankhya taught.

There are not five elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether.

Even the mind is not an independent entity.

It is also a modification, in a particular form, of the very same stuff which is the substance out of which the cosmos is made.
And if at all we have to accept more than one reality due to the exigency of experience and thought, we can at best accept only two entities :

consciousness which sees and that which is seen, the experiencer and the experienced, the seer and the seen –

or, to put it more precisely, consciousness and matter.

These are the only two things that exist anywhere, and not more.

We do not have five elements, many souls, etc., absolutely independent in their inner structure.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ....