For the majority of people, death means one is swallowed up by an empty black void, that’s it, the END; all someone has loved, achieved, experienced is erased as if they never existed.

Ironically, the truth is, we need death and sleep la petit mort (the small death) because we are eternal spiritual beings. When we sleep our astral body and ego roam in the world we lived in before we possessed a physical body. A home where, according to our level of spiritual development, we can commune with the formative forces, the thought patterns from the great mind behind our existence and the Cosmos. This period immersed and learning in the greater reality which moulds our beings is as an important component of our life as our waking state. How often have people woken up (including myself) possessed with an understanding about something or the solution of a problem, many inventions have been produced with the help of dreams; for instance, the man who created the sewing machine.

 Death, the sleep if you like from which you don’t wake up, is vitally important for our eternal selves, death isn’t the end but a new beginning, one of a long line of beginnings in the round of death and rebirth; through our various incarnations whereby we spiritually grow and learn; in our ultimate journey back to the divine. Spirits between physical death and rebirth, nearer the celestial hierarchies and possessing a greater overview of cosmic events – play an important, but presently unrecognized, part in human destiny. Rudolf Steiner indicated that in the future when humanity has achieved cosmic consciousness a bridge will be built between realms and these hidden influences will be evident.