Life-spirit / buddhi (6)
Lebensgeist — etheric transformed by the I
Lebensgeist — life-spirit: the etheric body transformed by the I. Where spirit-self transforms desire, life-spirit transforms the deeper formative forces of the body. The I work that produces life-spirit is more difficult and slower than the I work that produces spirit-self: it requires the conscious participation of the will in processes that ordinarily run below conscious awareness — habit, body-rhythm, sleeping and waking, the re-formation of the body in sleep. Steiner uses buddhi (Sanskrit) as a Theosophical loan for life-spirit, again with a redefined meaning oriented to evolutionary development rather than to a Vedāntic interpretive framework.
Point 6 of 7 in Anthroposophy — Steiner's Seven-Fold Human
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
Rudolf Steiner, Theosophie (primary_canonical)
Steiner, Theosophy, ch. I, 'The Essential Nature of Man,' defines life-spirit (Lebensgeist/buddhi) as the higher transformation of the etheric member by the I; the Sanskrit equivalence is Steiner's adapted terminology.
Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Esoteric Science (primary_canonical)
Steiner, An Outline of Esoteric Science, ch. I, 'The Nature of Humanity,' places life-spirit/buddhi in the developmental sequence above spirit-self; the chapter supports the relation of etheric body to its future spiritual transformation.