The fivefold compounding
From the tamas part of these five elements, the five fivefold-compounded elements come to be. And how is the fivefold compounding done? Of these five great elements in their tamas aspect: divide each single element into two; set one half of each aside, kept apart; divide the remaining half of each into four; and join to its own half the four quarter-portions from the others. Then the fivefold compounding is done. From these five fivefold-compounded great elements the gross body comes to be. In this way the oneness of the single body and the whole cosmos came to be.
From the tamas of these five elements come the five quintuplicated elements. How is quintuplication (pañcīkaraṇa) done? Take each of the five elements in its tamas aspect. Divide each element in half. Keep one half of each aside, untouched. Divide the other half of each into four parts. Then join to each element's own retained half one quarter-portion from each of the other four. This is quintuplication. From these five quintuplicated elements the gross body is formed. In this way the individual body and the whole universe are seen to be one.
- pañcīkaraṇa
The passage ends by calling the body and the whole cosmos one. In what sense does it mean that?
- They share one substance: the same five compounded elements make the body and every gross thing.
- They are one because a single Self has already been shown to be their only reality.
- They are one because the body is large enough to contain a model of the cosmos.
- They are one because the elements, once mixed, can never again be told apart.
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The same five, woven into body and world
Up to here the elements have been split into their finer aspects: the sattva that becomes the senses and the inner instrument, the rajas that becomes the organs of action and the vital breaths. Now the coarsest aspect, tamas, is taken up, and from it the gross world is made. But not before the elements are mixed. Space, air, fire, water, and earth do not stay pure; each keeps half of itself and gives the other half away, a quarter to each of its fellows, so that what we call earth is mostly earth and partly all the rest, and the same for every element.
This is pañcīkaraṇa, the fivefold compounding, and the care taken over it is deliberate. The aim is not to describe how matter is mixed. It is to show that there is no such thing in the gross world as a pure single element, that every solid thing, the body included, is a weave of all five. What looks like one is already many, held together.
And then the line the passage has been walking toward: the individual body and the whole cosmos are one. They are made of the same five elements, compounded in the same way, so the body is not a thing set against the world but a small gathering of the very stuff the world is. The wall between inside and outside is built of one material on both sides. This stays at the level of name and form, the level the later inquiry will look through; here the teaching only brings the world close, dissolving its strangeness, so that when the Self is sought it need not be sought in something foreign.
Whether this oneness of body and cosmos is the final word or only the near shore of it, the passage does not yet say.
If the world is made of the same five elements as this body, where exactly does the world end and you begin?
In the commentaries
Pañcīkaraṇa, the fivefold compounding, is how the subtle elements are made gross: each element keeps half of itself and takes a quarter from each of the other four, so no physical thing is ever one element alone but always a weave of all five. The aim is not to teach physics. The text has just traced ear and eye, breath and mind to these same five elements, and now it shows those elements compounded into the gross body and into every solid thing, so that body and cosmos are not two fabrics but one, woven on the same loom from the same threads. The seeker is told this so the world stops looking foreign: what stands outside as earth and water is the very stuff that stands here as this body.