Before the the­ory of relativ­ity offered a sat­is­fact­ory explan­a­tion for most of the phys­ic­al prob­lems that had aris­en, research­ers at the begin­ning of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury devoted close study to an intan­gible dimen­sion, the ether, which was taken to be the basis, the back­ground medi­um, of every other move­ment and phe­nomen­on already vis­ible and meas­ur­able. Then they aban­doned this inquiry…

Greek philo­sophy dealt with four ele­ments, and it was the Far East that added the fifth, ether, to the doc­trine of the ele­ments.

Of all the prim­al ele­ments, ether has the finest struc­ture. It is also iden­ti­fied with the concept of the void, or space, not only as a cos­mo­lo­gic­al fact but also as the prim­al state of exist­ence. As a prin­ciple it is insep­ar­able from the mani­fest­a­tion of ener­gies and from time, with which it forms a con­tinuum of its own, while as a mys­tic­al concept it is the prim­or­di­al state of the worlds, the pre-nuc­le­ar, pro­to­plas­mic organ­isa­tion of mat­ter. Ether, moreover, per­vades world-space and makes room for the outer and inner exist­ence of every liv­ing being.

Ether Ele­ment

Invis­ible one, I pray, move through all that I am,

bless me with com­mu­nion and peace,

bring me to peace with all things, per­meate me with the divine essence!

If we accept the par­al­lel between micro­cosm and mac­ro­cosm, we can make sense of the expres­sion inner void, which refers to the inner space of man. Inwardly, ether defines the body's vas­cu­lar sys­tem and the space filled by the life-air.

Three levels of the inner void are known: i) the inner space of con­scious­ness (chidakasha) is the state of unbound aware­ness, seated in the space behind the closed eyes and linked to the chakra of the third eye. Here sense per­cep­tion is inter­n­al­ised, and through this the work­ings and the respons­ive­ness of indi­vidu­al aware­ness can be observed. From anoth­er point of view it is an expans­ive field of con­scious­ness, unlim­ited know­ledge and unbound intel­li­gence, or the mind under­stood as all-embra­cing space. The second, ii), is the deep void (daha­ra-akasha), man's physiolo­gic­al being, which embraces the root, sac­ral and stom­ach chakras. Finally, between the two, the link is made by iii) the psych­ic region of the heart centre (hri­dayakasha), where the cre­at­ive nuances of the emo­tions can be observed and which is often iden­ti­fied with the heart chakra. Between body and mind, it is the eth­er­ic plane that forms the con­nec­tion.

When the ether ele­ment becomes dom­in­ant in us, the res­ult is an absence of aware­ness and pres­ence, and we have no points of con­nec­tion, which leads to a kind of root­less drift­ing. Too little ether makes us prone to being ruled by whatever arises. We exper­i­ence our tasks, our sur­round­ings, as a bur­den. But when the ether ele­ment is in bal­ance with­in us, we feel that we have enough time, emo­tion­al capa­city and tol­er­ance. Whatever comes into our lives, there is room for it.

Fire burns, water is cool, air caresses, where­as ether is the ele­ment least per­cept­ible to us. Its sole char­ac­ter­ist­ic is sound, the cos­mic man­tra, which reveals itself through hear­ing. So the ether ele­ment is by no means a vacu­um… Hear­ing is our chief help both in find­ing our bear­ings in every­day life and in find­ing our way in the spir­itu­al life. In the spir­itu­al sense, hear­ing is listen­ing, the attent­ive receiv­ing of the teach­ings. In the trans­mis­sion of the teach­ing, the guru rep­res­ents the ether ele­ment, and the teach­er is the expanse.

And what does the guru trans­mit? The teach­er rep­res­ents God revealed in the world of sounds, and what he trans­mits is in truth the prim­al logos, the sound­ing secret of cre­ation. Bey­ond space and time it is pre­cisely the ether ele­ment that car­ries the inform­a­tion from which cre­ation unfolds, and which man can fol­low to find his way home, back to God…