44
Beyond Birth and Death
into being, grows, stays for a while, produces some by-products, dwindles and then vanishes. Kṛṣṇa indicates that beyond this changing cloud-like nature there is a spiritual nature which is eternal. In addition, when this material nature is annihilated, that  avyak-tāt sanātanaḥ  will remain.
In Vedic literatures there is a good deal of information about the material and spiritual skies. In the Second Canto of  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  there are descriptions of the spiritual sky and of its inhabitants. There is even information given that there are spiritual airplanes in the spiritual sky and that the liberated entities there travel about on these planes like lightning. Everything that we find here can also be found there in reality. Here in the material sky everything is an imitation or shadow of that which exists in the spiritual sky. As in a cinema we simply see a show or facsimile of the real thing, in  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  it is said that this material world is but a combination of matter modelled on the reality, just as a mannequin of a girl in a store window is modelled on a girl. Every sane man knows that the mannequin is an imitation. Śrīdhara Svāmī says that because the spiritual world is real, this material world, which is an imitation,  appears  to be real. We must understand the meaning of reality—reality means existence which cannot be vanquished; reality means eternity.
nāsato vidyate bhāvo  
 nābhāvo vidyate sataḥ  
 ubhayor api dṛṣṭo 'ntas  
 tv anayos tattva-darśibhiḥ