Rudolf Steiner Audio CW 206: Human Beings as Spiritual Being: Lecture 11: Knowledge of living things; of sentience; of the truth nature of the human being [End of Book] (Dornach, 20 August 1921) by Rudolf Steiner
Feb 25, 2026
A tour through shifting human soul-states across history and how ancient breathing and inner speech yielded living concepts. Connections between intellect and the mineral realm are explored alongside plant fertilization, animal continuity, and the emergence of the human I. The talk urges reviving imaginative perception from modern scientific seeds.
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Four Historical Modes Of Human Consciousness
- Human consciousness shifted historically: from breathing-based bodily perception, to rhythmic/musical soul life, to inwardly heard word in Greece, to modern abstract intellect since the 15th century.
- Each mode corresponds to perceiving a different natural kingdom: human form, animal sentience, plant life, and mineral/inorganic respectively.
Rhythmic Soul Access To Animal Sentience
- Earlier eras experienced the world through rhythm and harmony, not abstract concepts, giving inward access to animal sentience and feeling.
- Greeks later lived in inaudible speech-sound experience, enabling perception of plant-like formative processes.
Breathing As Ancient Source Of Self Knowledge
- In the most ancient epoch cognition occurred within breathing: inhalation revealed imaginative perception of human form, holding joined soul and form, exhalation united soul with outer world.
- Practices like yoga breathing preserve traces of this instinctive, bodily knowing.
