In plain words
The very first of the five elements is space. This itself they called Śabdabrahman. The form of Śabdabrahman is the Praṇava. From this Praṇava everything began. The primal sound is the Praṇava. All the rest are the creation of this sound. Children who play the harmonium know it: you fill it with air and press each reed, and each reed gives its own sound. All these sounds were given the name vikāra-śabdas. The basis of these vikāra-śabdas is the sound of Oṃkāra itself. From this Śabdabrahman, air began. Air, too, is a form of God. Without air there would be no life at all. The third is fire. Without fire no living being can exist. Then water and earth began. Many kinds of living beings came forth: tiny insects, birds, animals and the rest. This is purely the will of God.
God resolved, “Eko 'haṃ bahu syām”, and He, the One alone, took on many forms. The five elements are forms of God Himself. Forests, hills, mounds, seas, crops... For all of these the earth alone is the support. The burden this earth bears rests on nothing else. It is by the five elements that this world has been sustained. After that, animals went on changing into men, and men into animals. That is why, when someone does wrong, the elders rebuke him: “What, fellow, are you some animal?” Many animal traits still lie hidden in man. For some of the old vāsanās have not yet gone.
Though they dig its bed in a plot of green camphor, pour out fragrant musk for its manure, and raise it watered with fine rose-water, will the onion give up its stink?
Wash an onion a thousand times, and its smell does not go. In the same way, however many sādhanas man does today, he cannot give up his animal nature. By learning, by sādhanas and by true resolves, man must hold down the animal nature in himself. All the sādhanas we do are meant only to hold down the animal nature.