When the body is broken, life departs
Based on the law of correspondences the trinity of body, soul and spirit is just another way to explain the phenomenal activity of the creative power of our Creator. This activity is carried out in a veiled, hidden and invisible fashion in this act of creation. Everywhere, on every level of the universe, matter contains energy and man’s material physical body possesses its own specific energy. It is this energy which one calls as the soul, the body is the form or container and soul is the energy which animates. Using the law of correspondences one can understand that the whole creation is built according to one identical structure or pattern with only a few minor modifications. Using this key of analogy or correspondences, wherever one looks one can find the same three divisions, form, content and meaning or body, soul and spirit. An egg, for example is an image of the universe. What does one see in an egg? The yolk which contains the living germ, the white that is the albumen, and the shell. The yolk is the spirit, the white is the soul and the shell is the body. The germ, therefore is in the centre, the white is in between and the shell is on the outside. When one breaks the shell of an egg, the white albumen and the yolk run out and the life is lost. So just as an egg shell protects the germ of life in an egg, the human body serves as a protection for the life inside it, i.e. the soul and the spirit. When the body is broken, life departs, the soul and spirit escape. But what is the soul? Just as the white of an egg contains the nutrient necessary to nourish the embryo chic, so does the soul contain all the nutrients necessary to sustain human life. Life itself belongs to the spirit, and it is this life that the soul sustains, nourishes and causes to circulate.
There is one thing which is very important to understand that in spite of the fact that one always speaks of spirit, soul and body as different realities, they are in fact the same essence. The difference between them lies in their consistency, there degree of materialisation and manifestation. The body is a condensed form of the spirit, the spirit is a subtle, more rarefied form of the body and the soul lies half-way between the two. Similarly based on the law of correspondences the physical plane is a condensed form of the astral plane or the plane of desires, and the mental plane or the plane of thought is a subtle and rarefied form of the astral plane and so on. When one takes the case of water, it is normally found in the liquid state, but it also exists in the solid state as ice, and in the gaseous state in the form of vapour. It is still water, the same substance, but in varying forms which differ in their degree of subtleness. In its normal state water is a liquid, when it is exposed to low temperatures it hardens into ice, and when it is heated it is converted into vapour, but it is always the same substance. Ice is solid enough but it is only a form, a temporary appearance, since it can become liquid or vapour. In the same way body, soul and spirit and the regions of life after death like the physical, astral, mental planes and so on are of the one and the same substance in more condensed or more subtle states. Thus one can see how much light can be thrown upon the understanding of the life in the regions beyond death if one can attain a clear understanding of this law of correspondences.
This article is taken from the book “Life Beyond Death” written by Anil Sharma