Daily Meditation: Wednesday, December 24, 2025

Birth - the child’s position at birth is symbolic

12/24/2025

Why, when a child comes into the world, does it leave its mother’s womb head first? Have you ever seen a person dive? They plunge head first into the water, an element that is denser than air. And when they come up to the surface again for air, they also emerge head first. The fact that a child comes into this world head first is an analogy for the descent of the spirit into matter: the spirit, coming from the higher plane, has to dive into the denser regions of matter. The child’s position at birth is therefore symbolic: it indicates that the spirit plunges into matter. Conversely, when human beings die, they leave a very dense region and rise to a more subtle one, just as a diver emerges from the water to come up for air. So birth, you see, is a form of death: the birth of a child on earth is a death in the subtler regions; whereas the death of a human being on earth is a birth on high.*