Can spirit produce shadow? Can light pass through spirit?
Question from Bishop Cowan. Can light pass through spirit and can spirit produce shadow? I have seen at the back of Second Chance book. Answer? Yes, in 2.7. Light cannot affect spirit.
So light in that sense, spirit is beyond matter. So it can pass through matter. And when any shadow is produced, that shadow is not so much due to the light being obstructed as it is a visual depiction of an intangible reality.
In the purport of 2.17 in the Bhagavad Gita, Abhinashita will be yena sarvam idam tatam, Vinasham abhaya sthyasena kashyat kartum ahati. Ramanujacharya in his Gita commentary describes that here yena sarvam idam tatam, everything is pervaded. So everything is pervaded means that nothing can pervade it, everything it pervades.
So the context of this verse is that the soul is indestructible and normally one object is destroyed by another object entering into it. You know, a weapon enters into our body, fire enters into our body, when a person drowns, water enters into our body. So but if, but he says that nothing can enter into spirit because spirit enters into everything.
Spirit is subtler than everything else. So that's why nothing can, nothing material can destroy the spirit. So here sarvam refers to all the material elements.
So light is also a part of fire. Light and all electromagnetic radiations are associated with the element fire. So that is also not capable of entering, permeating or penetrating or breaking spirit.
So that's why light which is passed through spirit. Now as far as the pictures are concerned, we have to understand that these are visual depictions of subtler realities. So they are not exactly precise philosophical principles that are being depicted over there.
There are, they are sort of metaphorical, not in the sense that the higher reality doesn't exist, but a higher reality is depicted in a way that is easily perceivable for us. So the whole purpose over there is to depict how the soul is being dragged at the time of death against will. Now how is the soul dragged? By dragging the subtle body.
For the soul is attached to subtle body. So now there whatever shadow is being depicted, even subtle body will not cast a shadow. But to emphasize the point that there is a subtle body distinct from the gross body and distinct from the soul also, it is depicted that the subtle body is being dragged.
And what is sometimes thought of as the shadow of the soul is actual subtle body. In other words, shadow can be used as in two sense, as something which is cast by the obstruction of the light and some, and otherwise sense of the shadow is something which is a constant companion. Just let me say that.
So and so is a constant shadow of somebody else, doesn't always accompany somebody else. So here, so in that sense, we can say subtle body is the shadow of the soul material existence, wherever the soul is the soul, shadow body also goes. And what is depicted over there is the subtle body.
And the subtle body that is caught by the Yama Pahashyam, by the noose of Hindu Dal, that is taken elsewhere.