The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11.The Lord's Prayer

[ 1 ] When speaking of prayer in the Christian sense, it is important to realize that the form of prayer is little more than contemplation, devotion to the divine. In those major religions that seek to achieve this devotion more through mental contemplation, the term meditation is used; in those religions where devotion comes more from the heart than from the head, more from the personality, this devotion is called prayer. In the Christian religion, this devotion has taken on a personal character; in the ancient religions, it was much more unconscious and impersonal. Thousands of years ago, people already knew that there was something eternal, something divine. Take, for example, the slave who says to himself: one life among many. — Hope, courage, strength, and security therefore lived in people at that time. It was a kind of looking out from the temporal into the eternal. But an age had to come for humanity in which people personally looked up to their God. Exoteric Christianity says: An immense amount depends on the personality that exists from birth to death. That is why meditation also took on this personal character of prayer. But we must not forget that there is a primal prayer in Christianity: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”

[ 2 ] If you create this mood, then you have a Christian prayer. The prayer that asks for one's personality, for one's affairs, is not a Christian prayer. For example, there are two armies prepared for battle, both praying for victory. — Two farmers, one asking for rain, the other for sunshine. What should God do? True Christian prayer has nothing to do with such personal wishes and desires. Personal prayer, true prayer, can also include personal requests, but the highest principle must be present: “Not my will, but yours be done.” This is the mood that prayer should have, as expressed in the original Christian prayer of Christ Jesus, the Lord. There are many Christian prayers, but the Lord's Prayer, the original Christian prayer, is the one about which it can be said that there is hardly anything else in the world that contains as much and is as important as this Lord's Prayer. And then we remember how Christ Jesus uses this prayer. “When you pray, go into your room,” he says.

[ 3 ] Everywhere, in all religions, you will find meditation formulas, magic formulas. These magic formulas have the same meditative meaning as meditations. Man has wanted to devote himself meditatively to his God, and he has also wanted to devote himself to his God through magic practices. But Christ Jesus admonishes: “You should not pray for what happens on the street; you should go deep, deep within yourselves when you pray.” Something of the divine essence lives in human beings; a drop of the divine essence lives in human beings, which is of the same substance as the deity. The whole sea and the drop of water are also of the same substance.

[ 4 ] And now let us consider the universe and human beings as was customary in the first esoteric schools. Let us go back to the time when human bodies were preparing themselves, as it were, waiting for the divine seed of the human soul to descend from the Godhead. The world population at that time consisted of plants and other things, including animal-human bodies. Humans as we know them today did not exist. The souls gradually prepared themselves for their present bodies. A spiritual fluid surrounded the earth. Now imagine someone taking a hundred small sponges and collecting a drop of this fluid in each of them. Now you have a drop of the divine in each one. The souls were previously in the sea of the deity, then they are embodied as drops. These souls were still very imperfect at the time of their first embodiment, but in their germ they already had the higher human essence: Atma, Buddhi, Manas within them for unfolding, for development in earthly life. The animalistic human already has the four lower sheaths, but only with the soul does he transform them and then receive Atma, Buddhi, Manas.

[ 5 ] Now let us consider this development esoterically from two points of view: First, the human being becomes more and more divine in Atma, Buddhi, Manas; second, the drop of divinity is within him.

[ 6 ] Let us first consider the higher human being from his divine aspect. In Christian schools it has been said: First consider the highest member of the divine being, to which man will have ascended at the end of his development. Atma, the will, of a volitional nature, is this highest member. When man has become perfect, his will will be his greatest power. The will must then flow outward. There will then be no decision of the will in man that does not immediately become action. Our Atma is of a volitional nature. The Deity first poured its will into us through the Atma. The divine will lives in us and in all things.

[ 7 ] Secondly, we have the Buddhi in man. As the deity flows down into man, it goes from Atma to Buddhi. How does the divine will work? We can only understand the divine will with the concept of sacrifice. Imagine you look in a mirror and see your image: this image resembles you. Now imagine that you have a creative will within you, and that you have sacrificed everything you have, your whole life, your whole being, to this image. You live with this image. In this way you can understand the sacrificial creation of the divine will. The divine will is not only reflected in things, in images, but it sacrifices everything into them, and so you have the sacrificed divine will throughout the entire universe. Thus, the Christian sees in every thing in the world a reflection of the deity, of the divine will. You have the sacrificed divinity in the universe, and this reflection of the divinity was referred to in esoteric Christianity as the “kingdom.” Reflected back millions of times over, the divine will was perceived as the kingdom. That which creates as Atma, that which lives in us as Buddhi, that which creates outside in the world, was referred to as the kingdom.

[ 8 ] Now look up at what lives in the mirror image of the deity in the cosmos. The individual being can distinguish this through the “name.” This is Manas within us, the spirit self, which is our name. Manas is the name within us and within every thing outside. Thus, for humans, the name of every thing was sacred. And the student was told: You must realize, even when you eat a bite of bread, that this too is a thing in which the deity is present, and therefore it should be sacred to you.

[ 9 ] Insofar as our name is in God, it is Manas, the name. Our Buddhi is thus the realm. The divine will lives in our Atma. These three are the divine elements of the human being. Human beings received these divine elements, and out in the world they are enumerated as name, kingdom, and will.

[ 10 ] And now consider that Christ wanted to teach his disciples in such a way that he told them: The deity was called the Father and the divine was called Heaven. Union with the divine was only possible if this divine now gave itself to the higher three members of the human being.

[ 11 ] What must the Christian say if he wants to express this?

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

[ 12 ] Thus, in the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer, you have expressed the three higher members of the human being in the most definite way. These first petitions of the Lord's Prayer are formed out of the higher spiritual being of the human being.

[ 13 ] Now let us consider esoterically the four lower members of the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego.

[ 14 ] The physical body is the one that human beings have in common with all minerals, and into which physical substances and forces enter and leave every day. If human beings want to build up their physical body, they must ask that these physical substances, which are out there in the physical world, be given to them. We share the etheric body with all the people around us. The astral body is more than just a personal thing.

[ 15 ] In the etheric body, we have something in common in every family, in every people. You belong more to a species, a genus, in that you have an etheric body. You are more of an individual in that you have an astral body. You disturb the etheric bodies of those around you if you are not in harmony with them, and this is called “guilt,” what you do to another through your etheric body. But this also harms you yourself. Guilt therefore attaches to the etheric body or life body. You become indebted to your neighbor by injuring or damaging their etheric body or life body. Beware of this, for only in this way can your own debts be forgiven.

[ 16 ] What causes the astral body to flourish? The temptation is the straying of the individuality from the right path. The astral body is subject to temptation. Everything that the individuality sins is temptation.

[ 17 ] The ego is the source of independence in human beings and at the same time the source of egoism, of selfishness. In this sense, the ego is evil, the symbol of it. Malum means “apple” and “evil.” The Fall is evil, the absence of selfishness.

[ 18 ] If the Christian wants to pray for the proper flourishing of his four lower limbs, he says for these beings:

Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.

[ 19 ] These are the four other petitions of the Lord's Prayer.

[ 20 ] Thus, the Christian of the esoteric schools had to pray, and these four formulas are for the four lower members of the human being. If you look at the last four petitions of the Lord's Prayer in relation to the lower being of man, you will find the four petitions for the lower members, just as you have the three upper members of the human being in the first three petitions. Thus, in the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, you have the teaching of the sevenfold nature of the human being, as taught by spiritual science.

[ 21 ] In all the great religions, there is no prayer, no formula, that is not taken from the whole of the deep wisdom of the world, and it is only because they are born out of this that these prayers have their profound effect. The great religions owe their millennial effect to the wisdom of the primordial world.

[ 22 ] The Father expresses the primordial being of the world. This cannot be described more beautifully than it is described in the Lord's Prayer. Hence the effectiveness of the Lord's Prayer, the heartfelt, powerful nature of this prayer. It cannot be said that the naive person knows nothing of this wisdom. The naive person has the same thing. It is just as if he is enchanted by flowers and also has no idea of the wisdom with which they are constructed. So his soul can be enchanted by the Lord's Prayer without understanding its wisdom. Even if one does not understand this wisdom that lives in prayer, it can still have this power for people. Those who gave the prayers to people drew them from the deepest wisdom; hence the power of the great world prayer. That is the secret of these prayers, that they were drawn from primordial wisdom by initiates and founders of religions.

[ 23 ] Today the time has come when people need to know what these prayers mean. We should pray the Lord's Prayer every day. One needs to know nothing more about human nature than what is said in the Lord's Prayer. For then human beings would receive what theosophical wisdom has to say about human nature.

[ 24 ] The esotericism of the school founded by the Apostle Paul was profound. Outside, Christianity was represented exoterically. Dionysius the Areopagite was commissioned by Paul to cultivate this wisdom esoterically. Thus, the kingdom of the Spirit was imagined in the powers, dominions, and authorities, and it was said: If we live as the Lord's Prayer demands, we will ascend through the powers, authorities, and dominions to the cherubim, seraphim, and even to the Godhead itself in the Lord's Prayer.

[ 25 ] There you have these three stages: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,” because these three stages are in the kingdom of the spirit.

[ 26 ] It is difficult to speak about the Amen in particular. I can only say that it is an old formula, expressed in a somewhat mutilated form.

[ 27 ] So we have seen how the Lord's Prayer and its powerful effect on the human soul represent the teaching of the sevenfold nature of man. That is why it is the most effective prayer. This rhythm, which was struck in a soul, became conscious to those who knew esoterically: by praying the Lord's Prayer, the Christian prayed human theosophy, lived in prayer. This ‘theosophy’ is nothing new, but is what is in all hearts, what is grasped in the spirit, so that the light of knowledge can spread over the realm of the divine. When this happens in hearts and souls, human beings find their path to the highest heights of the spirit, to which they can develop.