Preparing for a New Birth

SUMMARY
LECTURE SEVEN — Preparing for a New Birth

We pass about a third of our life asleep, or eight hours out of every twenty-four. This familiar fact is rarely the subject of adequate astonishment. All over the world, people of all kinds lie down on those flat places and disappear from normal activity for hours at a time. What is going on? Why do we need it? What are we up to during all that sleep? The challenge of Steiner's view is that we are not inactive at night, but supremely active.

Instead of the subjective, selfish coloration by which we view our lives during the day, nighttime consciousness is both more universal and more moral. Our prime activity during the night is self-review. We carefully scroll backward through the previous day, finding and savoring each moment of significance (and what moment has none?). According to Steiner, we do this through the grace of higher beings who accompany and guide this process.

The period called “death” — the period between two incarnations — involves us in a similar backward-scrolling review. Again in the company of higher beings, we review our lifetime of sleep. This review is a preparation for later stages of “death” where we turn aside from our biography and immerse ourselves still less selfishly in the spiritual beings and meanings around us.

The cumulative effect of Steiner's teaching here is to turn human existence inside out, like looking at the back of a carpet. What was formerly the figure becomes the background, and what was previously the background emerges into new prominence. Earthly life is an interlude between spiritual states — sleep and death — that permeate and surround it. “Our little life is rounded with a sleep.” And yet instead of diminishing this little life, the spiritual context makes us marvel at the chance we have on Earth, and give thanks for the opportunity to love.