The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Mystery of Death
GA 159

Here are fifteen lectures, five of them untranslated as of this publication date, given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities in the first half of the year, 1915. They are from the lecture series entitled, The Mystery of Death (also known as The Secret of Death, published in German as, Das Geheimnis des Todes. Wesen und Bedeutung Mitteleuropas und die europaeischen Volksgeister.

The translation is based on Das Geheimnis des Todes, volume 159/160 of Rudolf Steiner's Complete Works (Gesamtausgabe), published in German by Rudolf-Steiner-Verlag, Dornach (Switzerland), second edition in 1980. Copyright © 1967: Rudolf-Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung Dornach.

Except for the poem at the end of the talks, the translations of the verses were taken from Our Dead, volume 261 of Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works, edited by SteinerBooks, Copyright © 2011.

The translations of Goethe's Faust were taken from: Faust I and II, edited and translated by Stuart Atkins, Princeton University Press, paperback printing 1994. Copyright © 1984 Suhrkamp/Insel Publishers, Boston. Inc.

I.	The Four Platonic Virtues and Their Relation with the Human Members	January 31, 1915
II.	The Path of the Human Being through the Gate of Death - A Transformation of Life	February 19, 1915
III.	Spiritual Science and the Mystery of Death	February 21, 1915
IV.	The Intimate Element of the Central European Culture and the Central European Striving	March 07, 1915
V.	The Intervention of the Christ Impulse in the Historical Events	March 13, 1915
VI.	Moral Impulses and Their Results	March 14, 1915
VII.	Cosmic Effects on the Human Members During Sleep	May 07, 1915
VIII.	The War, an Illness Process	May 09, 1915
IX.	The Relation of the Human Being to the Realms of Nature and the Hierarchies	May 13, 1915
X.	Central Europe between East and West	May 15, 1915
XI.	Christ's Relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman	May 18, 1915
XII.	Spiritual Science as an Attitude	June 13, 1915
XIII.	Common Ground above Us; Christ in Us	June 15, 1915
XIV.	Post-mortal Experiences of the Human Being	June 17, 1915
XV.	Overcoming Death through Knowledge	June 19, 1915