AceBassMan

Any time Shards interact, is it in the Cognitive Realm or the Spiritual Realm?

Definitely some examples, like when the returned in Warbreaker are on the other side before they come back, I wonder if they are in the Cognitive Realm or the Spiritual Realm.

Cognitive only? I think windspren have a true form somewhere. In Oathbringer, when Kaladin draws the windspren to him on the ship, and the honospren tell him that winsdpren live mostly in the Physical Realm, I would have imagined that they'd have a larger form there. So I'm still not satisfied we've seen the entirety of any windspren.

All I know is Sands is going to find a way to visualize how things work/appear/interact in the Spiritual Realm, and that it has the potential to have differences within it much akin to the differences between the Scadrian Cognitive Realm and the Rosharan Cognitive Realm. Id be surprised if there isn't something living there somehow, with one of the candidates being spren. Spren essentially have access to all three realms, since they are a piece of the divine, and windspren can choose to appear more in the Physical Realm, but otherwise only appear as a ribbon of light on Roshar and a pinprick of light in Shadesmar. I think creationspren are similar as well.

How so? I would be rather interested to see some perspective from the spiritual realm, I truly enjoy when B-Sands can bring us into alien mindsets and picture mind-warping realities, like shard perspectives. Also I think it makes more sense that Ati would think he was in the place you go when you die rather than an entirely different planet from the one he knew he was just on.

I think it could be confusion from Ati as he lost his shard and died, and the secrecy could be about whether its possible to visit the Spiritual Realm. Also, Shadesmar is/is in the cognitive realm so there is precedent for this kind of naming convention.

Vax could be the singular "place" in the Spiritual Realm where all things converge.

Very good points about Brandon's refusal to nail down the Beyond, I wasn't aware of that stance of his. But now this is working to separate The Beyond and the Spiritual Realm in my mind, which I had thought were one and the same. I'm theorizing now that Vax could be a location in the Spiritual Realm, which the Shards ASSUREDLY have access to.

So after listening to some excellent podcasts from Shardcast and their musings on the weirder things in the cosmere, I was struck by a theory about the term "Vax". There have been other posts here about Vax and various explanations, but the comments were closed, so here goes. I believe that Vax IS a location...in the Beyond/Spiritual Realm. Going off of Ati's last words before he goes to the beyond, he dies, shows up in the cognitive realm, looks around, and asks (mostly to himself) "Vax?", gets suckerpunched by our pal Kelsier, and stretches away to infinity. I think he was expecting to be in the beyond, and that it is possible for some, probably just shards, to travel there and back. Adonalsium could probably do it, so why not the shards? Brandon has said in the Arcanum that investiture works differently in Vax than other places, and considering the spiritual realm is the source of all investiture, I can't help but think it makes sense. Your thoughts?

Creationspren appear like most spren do in the physical realm: small representations/parts of a presumably larger entity. And while most other spren appear larger and more complex in the cognitive realm aka Shadesmar, creationspren are smaller there than even in the physical realm. Windspren similarly. What I'm theorizing is that creationspren at least, if not all secondary spren for radiants, have most of their forms existing in the spiritual realm rather than the physical or cognitive realms.