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.
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