The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Origin of Religious Creeds and Prayer Formulas

[ 1 ] Humanity started out with an all-encompassing basic view of the world, and depending on the character of the peoples and the climatic conditions in which they lived, this view was expressed in different ways in their religious creeds. As in the Lord's Prayer, the basic concepts of spiritual science are found in all other religious formulas and creeds. Although some may say that they are merely dreamed up, they are actually contained therein. But how did they get there? To answer this question, we must realize that what we are taught today was not presented in the same way in the oldest beliefs. The formulas of religious creeds were very different at different times. The older views speak in images, not in concepts, as we do today. These images have been retained in a certain way, and we find them again and again. Thus, knowledge is always spoken of as a light, and wisdom is spoken of as flowing water. But how is it that the older peoples spoke in images? Let us first clarify how, before Hermes, before Buddha, Zarathustra, and Moses, before the greatest founder of religion, before Christ, the religious teachers spoke to the peoples.

[ 2 ] We must distinguish between everyday consciousness and imaginative consciousness. We have objective, everyday consciousness from morning to night. We see things as they appear to our senses. The other states of consciousness are initially hidden from us. We have all heard of the state of dreamless sleep. For the initiate, this has a completely different meaning than for ordinary people. From falling asleep to waking up, the initiate is in a conscious state. He perceives a world, albeit differently, in a completely different way than usual. Ordinary people know nothing about this state. The consciousness of dream-filled sleep is more familiar. So let dream-filled sleep explain dreamless sleep to us.

[ 3 ] Dream-filled sleep shows everything in symbols. It is similar to the state of consciousness of the initiate when he is in the spiritual world. The initiate also sees images, but not chaotic dream images, although his images are also constantly changing. On the physical plane, every thing has only one form, for example, a table or a stone. But the higher we ascend, the more the form is in the process of transformation. Plants transform and move, animals even more so, and humans are the most mobile and transformable of all. In Devachan, everything is constantly undergoing transformation. Through certain exercises, it is possible to achieve a state where, when looking at a plant, its color stands out and floats up and down in free space. Then one must learn to be able to direct such freely floating colors and also sounds toward certain things and beings. Then the color becomes an expression of inner life. This is how the human aura also works in color and form. Inner spiritual experience is expressed in it. It, too, is never still. It is eternal movement; eternal movement is the essence of the higher world. This is also what is confusing about the spiritual world for those who enter it for the first time. What manifests itself moment by moment confuses the inexperienced. No spiritual being can hide its soul life from those who see with spiritual eyes. Ordinary people must infer the inner from the outer. In the spiritual world, the inner life of every being lies freely and openly before us. There we are together with the innermost essence of things. Only the initiate, who can add the inner to the outer, can now attain this. And they do this consciously. Long ago, people were able to do this unconsciously. The older people are, the less they can do what we can do: they cannot calculate or count. They know nothing about logic. This was the case in the middle of the Atlantean period. But the Atlanteans could do something else. They could feel a very specific feeling rising within them when they looked at a plant, for example. Our feelings, on the other hand, are pale and shadowy. The first Atlanteans did not yet have such clear ideas of color as we do. Like mist, the Atlantean saw color rising freely from the plant. Nor would he have seen the color of a crystal. For example, he saw a halo of colors around a ruby, the ruby itself only as an incision in it. Before this time, humans did not even see the outlines of people, animals, and plants. But when they approached an enemy, they saw a brownish-reddish shape rising up. A beautiful bluish-reddish color showed them their friends. In this way, they perceived inner life in individual colors.

[ 4 ] If we go back even further, to the Lemurian period, even all impulses of will were different. The will still had a ‘magical’ effect; it showed its kinship with the forces of nature outside. If a human being placed their hand on a plant at that time and let their will take effect, it grew visibly. By enclosing themselves in skin, humans distanced their powers from the forces of nature.

[ 5 ] The powers of thought are most dissimilar to nature. Even further back, there were beings who would have considered it absurd to say: I grasp a concept of an external thing. For they saw the concept outside, working, as a being. Concepts originally formed things. Today, we look at a clock and form a concept of it. But we could not form the concept of a “clock” if someone had not first formed this concept before clocks existed and then constructed a clock. It is the same with the concepts of all things. The concepts we form about the things of the world existed as realities in the distant past. At that time, they were placed into things. Everything comes into being according to such concepts, just as people do today with their creations. Those beings of that time watched, as it were, the master craftsman of things. They had a creative intellect. They were not yet embodied in physical bodies. What dwells in the human body today still rested in the bosom of the deity at that time. Down on earth, there was already physical life and beings that stood between today's animals and humans and were ready to receive the human soul. You can imagine this with an image. When many small sponges are dipped in water, each sponge will absorb water droplets, and thus the water is divided into many individual drops. The physical earth, with its teeming swarms of beings, was then surrounded by a spiritual envelope, as we are today by an envelope of air. The individual souls only came into being when each being had absorbed a spiritual drop. This also initiated the process by which human beings acquire a complete, objective consciousness.

[ 6 ] Before that, the soul received everything from the world soul as if from within, for the world soul knew everything. That is the difference between knowledge today and knowledge then. The inner world sinks into the darkness of dreamless sleep when the bright consciousness of day enters. It is the astral body that perceives the outside world: it sees colors, hears sounds, feels pleasure and pain, but it cannot do this without the physical body. The astral body is also the same as the one that was once in the communal soul substance. If all human beings fell asleep at the same time and their astral bodies were mixed together and also mixed with that which did not descend from the general world soul into individual bodies, then dreamless sleep would cease, colors and sounds would rise in the astral bodies, just as it was in former times when all souls still rested in the world soul. What is dark tonight was once filled with light, filled with perceptions in the spiritual world. This is how all of humanity once perceived astral reality.

[ 7 ] What has humanity perceived since that time? What has man conquered since then? His self-consciousness, the ability to say “I” to himself. The entire older consciousness was only an heightened dream consciousness; people were not self-conscious. Self-consciousness was given to people when they descended into the body. And it increases more and more. It forms the content of the current development of humanity. “I am that I am” has been revealed to humans. That is the true name of Yahweh: “I am that I am,” or, expressed more fully: “I am who was, who is, and who will be.” In that distant past, humans did not have this consciousness. Where was there an “I am” consciousness? In the being in which souls were contained like drops in water. The Holy Spirit is the one who had the I-consciousness above before incarnation. The Spirit itself is what becomes I-consciousness in human beings.

[ 8 ] In that distant past, teaching was an outpouring of wisdom: it came from within, not from without. Between that time and our own there was an intervening period, the Atlantean era. In its midst, people already saw outlines of things and beings. But everything was still shrouded in a mist of colors and filled with sounds that had something to say, that were wise. At that time, a teaching arose that later developed into religious doctrine. A long time ago, there was a great school of adepts. Everything we learn today comes from those Turanian adepts. It has been passed down by students to the present day. At that time, however, teaching was very different from today. One had to take into account that humanity was in an intermediate state. The wisest men could not count beyond five. But if one responded to their inner being, one could enlighten them, teach them wisdom figuratively. One could not have told them the wisdom teachings, one would not have been understood. The people of that time did not yet have such clear daytime consciousness as we have today. But they could easily be put back into that state in which the deity enlightened them from within. The teachers brought the students into a state of hypnosis. This was not the hypnotic state that is used for so much mischief today, but something similar. The teachers used this state of sleep to enlighten the students. At that time, there were occult writings, which could also be called occult language. There are still mantras that are more than just food for thought. However, these are shadow-like compared to the sound compositions of that time. These sound compositions were simple, but when a sound was struck, the lost ability to enlighten was replaced. Then that world of inner enlightenment came artificially into the human being, and he saw the world spirits at work as they once were. The teacher then gave the student formulas and certain drawings. The student then perceived the secrets of the world directly. For example, how a seed becomes a new plant was revealed to him by this sign:

[ 9 ] Today's human beings cannot understand or feel anything without interpretation. This symbol had an immediate effect on the people of that time when they saw it or when it was tapped. The formulas that were used at that time were then taught by the founders of religions to later peoples.

[ 10 ] The further back we go, the more unified the world soul was. In sleep, the astral bodies of all people are still quite similar to each other. In Atlantis, for example, the astral bodies were all the same. It was possible to bring primal wisdom to all people. After the great flood had swept over the Atlantean people, unified wisdom was no longer possible. Now it was necessary to teach in India as the Indian body demanded, and again differently in Persia, differently in Egypt, differently among the Greeks and Romans, and again differently among the ancient Germanic peoples. But in all true forms of religion, that from which they arose lives on. In Atlantis, enlightenment was communicated through life, not through teaching. The sign of the vortex immediately awakened feelings. Today, feelings must first be ignited by concepts. The seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer were also once communicated like a musical scale in seven tones, connected with certain seven colors and smells.

[ 11 ] This is how the Atlantean student experienced the sevenfold nature of the human being. The greatest of the religious teachers, Christ, poured this into the Lord's Prayer. Everyone who prays the Lord's Prayer experiences its effect. It is not actually a mantra, although it can have mantric powers. It is a thought mantra. Of course, it had the greatest power in the original language. But since it is a thought mantra, it will not lose its power even if it is translated into a thousand languages. Just as one can digest food without knowing the laws of digestion, so one can reap the fruits of the Lord's Prayer even without knowledge, although those with higher knowledge reap quite different fruits from it.

[ 12 ] Such was the path taken by religious truths. All our souls were once somnambulistic in the world soul. It was divided and drawn down into many bodies. Spiritual perception was obscured, as was the possibility of recalling the original state. Religious teachings, and especially the formulas that were brought from the spiritual world, are only an echo in concepts and words. The wisdom of the Old Testament still speaks of primordial ideas and concepts. A faint reflection of the primordial ideas lives on in the concepts. But that primordial wisdom is not lost. It still rests in our slumbering souls. And to raise this to clear consciousness is the work of spiritual science. When, after the last incarnation, man has come to know the whole outer world, he will be accepted into the original clairvoyance and bring with him new enlightenment, clear consciousness. To merge into universal consciousness is salvation, they say in the East. It will not be so. In the past, before the first incarnation, there was no ego consciousness. But it will be there after the last incarnation. Every drop of the one soul fluid is colored with a very specific color, each with a different one. In the end, everyone brings their own color with them, and the formerly clear, bright water becomes iridescent with infinitely beautiful, luminous colors, each of which is unique. Each brings its own specific color, its individual consciousness, which cannot be lost. Harmony of all consciousnesses is ultimately universal consciousness. In freedom, the many will be one, because they so desire! We must imagine this as it really is. Each individual consciousness is wholly contained in universal consciousness.

[ 13 ] This development of humanity is not in vain. Yes, life has a meaning, and the most beautiful meaning is that man will ultimately lay down at the altar of the deity the piece of human existence that he himself has acquired. And from this is woven the garment that the earth spirit spins, as Goethe so beautifully and upliftingly says:

In the floods of life, in the storm of deeds
I surge up and down,
Weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weave,
A glowing life,
Thus I work at the whirring loom of time,
And weave the living garment of the deity.