The Path of the Soul After Death: The Community of the Living and the Dead as Witnessed by Rudolf Steiner in His Eulogies and Funeral Addresses

"We are separated from the spiritual worlds only by states of consciousness, not by spatial circumstances. States of consciousness are what separate us." --Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner saw relationships with the dead as the "religious attitude of the future" in the highest sense. Becoming comfortable with thinking and speaking of the dead as concretely as we speak of the living will profoundly affect human activity. To Steiner, the "enlivening" and even the "sanctification" of earthly existence are not merely connected directly with our relationship to death and to the deceased; in fact, that relationship deepens these qualities and makes them possible. Steiner spoke frequently about death and the human soul's continued existence, as well as about the importance of establishing a new kind of community that unites spiritually active human souls that endure beyond death.

The Path of the Soul after Death shows how Rudolf Steiner commemorated the dead, the words he chose to use, and his descriptions--sometimes in great detail--of the inner processes involved. What becomes clear is the extent to which his connections to the deceased shaped his addresses and related to their new stage of existence. Inasmuch as his words were in harmony with human soul development after death, they not only recapitulated a biography but also assisted the deceased individual along the path after death.

Peter Selg has provided an important addition to the body of anthroposophic literature on our relationship on Earth to those who have died. He does a great service in gathering and amplifying much of what Steiner had to say on the subject.

C O N T E N T S

Preface

I: "Our Community"
1. Rudolf Steiner's Eulogies
2. Funeral Addresses
3. Deceased Coworkers and the Goetheanum Building

II: "In Christo morimur"
The Path of the Soul after Death

This book is a translation from German of Rudolf Steiners Toten-Gedenken: Die Verstorbenen, der Dornacher Bau und die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft (Verlag Ita Wegman Institut, 2009).

Born 1963, Stuttgart.

1986-1993 Study of human medicine at the University of Witten/Herdecke, in Berlin and Zurich. Doctoral thesis: Attempt to systematize Rudolf Steiner's human physiological ideas. An analysis of the entire lecture and written work (Witten/Herdecke 1995).

1993-2000 Further training as a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy. Senior physician in the psychiatric department for adolescents and young adults at the Herdecke Community Hospital.

2000-2002 Research associate at the Institute for Applied Epistemology and Medical Methodology (Freiburg).

2002-2006 Head physician at the Ita Wegman Clinic Arlesheim (adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy); since 2006 establishment and management of the Ita Wegman Institute for Basic Anthroposophical Research

Since 2007 professorship for medical anthropology and ethics at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences (Alfter near Bonn); teaching in the Studium fundamentale and in the accompanying studies in anthroposophic medicine at the University/Witten-Herdecke

Since 2020, co-leader of the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical Section of the School of Spiritual Science (Goetheanum)