The Human Being: Bodies, Souls & Senses
The fourfold human being of anthroposophy: the physical, etheric and astral bodies, the I, the threefold soul, the twelve senses, and the temperaments as Rudolf Steiner described them. Part of Thalira's Anthroposophical Glossary of 515 terms, and companion to the in-depth guide Anthroposophy.
The bearer of sensation, desire, and consciousness that gives an organism inner experience, separable during sleep.
The fire-element temperament in Steiner's anthropology, in which the I (Ich) gains the upper hand and the will breaks outward through the blood.
The consciousness soul (Bewusstseinsseele) is the third soul member; it is the inner stage in which the I awakens to itself as a free, individually responsible knower, and is the formative task of the present cultural epoch from 1413 to 3573.
The field of organising life forces that holds a living organism together against the dissolving tendency of physical matter.
The formative life-forces that shape living organisms and preserve them against dissolution into mere matter.
The fourth and highest member of the human being, the eternal individuality that says I to itself.
The intellectual soul (also "mind soul" or "Verstandsseele") is the second of three soul members; it is the inner faculty in which the I begins to detach thinking from feeling and grasps the world conceptually.
Life-Spirit is the sixth member of the human being; it is the etheric body transformed by the I into a permanent organ of spiritual life, between Spirit-Self and Spirit-Man.
The earth-pole temperament, where the physical body presses heaviest on the soul and produces depth, brooding, and lasting attention.
The will-pole of Steiner's threefold human: digestion, metabolism, and voluntary limb-movement, carrying willing through sleep-dim consciousness.
The head pole of Steiner threefold body, the cool quiet bodily basis for ideation, perception, and waking thought.
The water-element constitution in which the etheric or life-body predominates, producing the calm, steadily-digesting, inwardly-rhythmic child.
The mineral material body shared with all matter, foundation on which the etheric, astral, and I are built.
The cardio-respiratory middle of Steiner's threefold human, where breath and heartbeat mediate feeling between thinking and willing.
Steiner's air-mobility temperament: the astral body works on the nerve-sense system, impressions enter and leave quickly, focus arrives through love for one trusted personality.
The sentient soul is the first of the three soul members; it is the inner experience that arises when the I begins to work upon the astral body, transforming sensation into felt meaning.
Spirit-Self is the fifth member of the human being; it is the astral body transformed by the I into a vessel for spiritual revelation, the first stage of higher development.
The Twelve Senses are Steiner's expansion of the human sensorium into bodily, soul, and spiritual sense-groups, mapped to body regions and zodiac correspondences.
The differentiated heat-body within the human being that the I directly inhabits, named by Steiner as the fourth member of human anatomy beside the solid, fluid, and aeriform organisms.