Our Dead

This book collects Rudolf Steiner's memorial, funeral, and cremation addresses, as well as a sampling of prayers and meditations for the dead. The context, intimate and sober with grief, means that his intent is quite other than if he had been speaking in a lecture hall. His primary concerns--while based on spiritual-scientific research and, in some cases, the actual living expression of it in real time--are ethical and existential and, at the same time, ceremonial and communal. He stands as speaker before and for the living--relations, friends, and community members--and for the one who has died, even, in a way, for the greater "cloud" of all the dead. With his feet planted firmly on the Earth, Steiner moves seamlessly between the sensory-physical, embodied world and the invisible, suprasensory, discarnate one. Speaking in an intimate, personal manner to both worlds, he unites the living and the dead with words that are both practical and healing.