Daily life

The symbolic dimension of our everyday gestures

September 23rd 2025

If you learn to recognize the symbolic dimension of your everyday gestures, you will realize that you are constantly repeating the two great processes of descent into the realm of matter and ascent to the spirit; of incarnation and disincarnation; of birth and death. When you get dressed in the morning, you start with your underclothes and light garments, such as shirts and blouses, then put on heavier garments, and end with an overcoat if you plan to go out of doors. In the same way, when we incarnate on earth we put on progressively denser bodies: the mental, astral, etheric, and finally physical body. And when we undress before going to bed, we reverse the process and take off these different layers one by one.
In the same way, we shall one day ‘take off’ our different bodies to return to the next world. Clothes, external wrappings, symbolize incarnation. We have to dress in order to descend into matter, and undress in order to return to the realm of the spirit. To take off our clothes is to go beyond the opaque world of appearances and discover the reality of the spirit.*
* Related reading:

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