Article: The Elements and the Ether:

The Elements and the Ether:
Alluded to by Avatars, Felt, Drawn and Articulated by Artists,
Found by Physicists and Seen by Psychics
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Recently I had the delightful experience of seeing a movie about the Impressionists, a group of painters that lived awhile ago. Slowly the story unveiled the passion of these painters. They saw something that most in their day did not see. Or it might be more correct to say that they felt what they saw. They were "impressed" with nature and beauty more than others of their time. Thus they saw and painted things differently.
Claude Monet, the father of Impressionism, painted not only the scene, but also his impression of the scene. His paintings tended to be a bit blurred because he was concentrating on an inner felt beauty of his subject. He painted to a large extent, light and color and feeling, more than rigid outlines and fixed frozen things. Monet's last masterpiece reveals a work of great complexity and beauty and one gets the feeling that he almost sees beyond the physical object to the field of energy that exists behind things that is the field out of which things are made.
I also saw another movie right afterwards. The next movie, called "Cosm", was about the unique art of Alex Grey. Alex's art has the same message but to a much greater degree and in a very different way. With many of the paintings in a specific series of paintings ( now housed in an art gallery on West 27th street in New York called "The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors"), Alex uses first ordinary sight, sight that focuses non-the-less on the inner workings of the body. Then he progresses slowly giving us an unveiling of things further within. Eyes are everywhere in his paintings, embedded in figures and in the field behind figures in an unbroken continuum. These ubiquitous eyes signify that there is a living energy field out of which all else comes, energy normally invisible. This is energy Alex has seen during psychic experiences. Alex Grey slowly includes, more and more in each successive painting, the energy patterns that exist just as prevalent in the space behind the figure as in the figure. The paintings of Alex Grey are progressively embedded with a depiction ( in the visible ) of energy that usually only psychics can see.
When one studies astrology one finds the elements "Fire" "Air" "Water" and "Earth". These are familiar subtle elements that go into the making of things. These are the parts of the living energy field out of which all else comes, an energy into which all returns. When we graduate to a higher realm of study the fifth element appears. That element is called "The Ether". Yogananda, a saint or avatar from the east, talks of this ether in his book The Bhagavad Gita by Yogananda. He tells us that it is the enlightened throat chakra, ( an energy center in the throat and spine ), that enables, ( when it is energized by increased spirituality ), the sensing of this field, and even of an increasing ability for creatively using it.
Likewise there is an etheric energy field in all space found by the physicists. It is called the "virtual realm" or the "implicate realm". The physicists say that subatomic particles come out of this virtual realm continuously and disappear right back into it in a steady stream.
So we see in this advancing civilization both artists, scientists and psychics finding the same things....an invisible grid of etheric energy that underlies and creates denser physical reality. Psychics see it, artists feel it and are trying to depict it so that the rest of us can sense it, and physicists are finding scientific proof that it exists. The human race is advancing in its comprehension. It is very interesting. And avatars like Yogananda tell of it in their writings, because we humans are evolving to the point that we can hear this information and begin to understand these wonderful and mysterious things.