The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Nature of Prayer

[ 1 ] In the lecture “What Is Mysticism?” delivered here eight days ago, we discussed that particular form of mystical contemplation that emerged in the Middle Ages, beginning with Meister Eckhart and continuing through to Angelus Silesius. This particular form of mystical contemplation was characterized by the mystic’s attempt to become free and independent of all those experiences that are stirred up in our soul by the external world, and by his attempt to penetrate to that experience, that insight, which shows him: even if everything in our soul that stems from the ordinary events of the day is extinguished, and the soul, so to speak, withdraws into itself, there remains within this human soul a world of its own—a world that is always there, but which is merely overshadowed by the external experiences that otherwise have such a powerful and overwhelming effect on human beings, and which therefore initially appears only as a faint light; a light so faint that many people probably do not even notice it. That is why the mystic initially calls this inner world of the soul the “little spark.” But he is well aware that this inconspicuous little spark of his soul’s experiences can be fanned into a mighty flame, which then illuminates the sources and depths of existence; in other words: which leads a person on the path into his own soul toward the recognition of his own origin—what one might well call “knowledge of God.”

[ 2 ] Furthermore, that lecture pointed out how the mystics of the Middle Ages initially assumed that this little spark must, so to speak, grow of its own accord, just as it is. In contrast, it was emphasized how what is today called “spiritual research” is based on development—on the conscious development of these inner soul forces, directed by the human will—and ascends to higher forms of knowledge, which we have described as imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. Thus, that medieval mystical contemplation appeared to us as the starting point of true, higher spiritual research, which, while initially seeking the spirit through the development of the inner self, is led beyond this inner realm precisely through the very way in which it follows its own paths; and is led beyond it to what lies as the sources and foundations of existence underlying all phenomena and facts—and to which we ourselves, with our very souls, belong. Thus, that medieval mysticism appeared to us as a kind of preliminary stage to true spiritual research. And whoever has the insight to immerse themselves in the depth of Meister Eckhart, whoever has the insight to recognize what immeasurable power of spiritual knowledge that mystical contemplation brought to Johannes Tauler; who has the insight to see how deeply Valentin Weigel or Jakob Böhme were later led into the mysteries of existence through all that they were able to gain from such mystical contemplation—though they did, of course, go beyond it—; who has the insight to understand what Angelus Silesius became precisely through such mystical contemplation—how he was able not only to gaze with luminous insight into the great laws of the spiritual world order, but also what this Angelus Silesius accomplished in terms of captivating, heartwarming beauty in the sayings he was able to utter about the mysteries of the world: whoever recognizes all this will appreciate the power of human nature’s inner life that lies in this medieval mysticism, and the infinite help that this mysticism can offer to those who wish to walk the paths of spiritual research themselves. Thus, especially in light of that lecture eight days ago, medieval mysticism appears to us as the great, wondrous preparatory school for spiritual research. And how could it be otherwise? Does the spiritual researcher seek anything other than to bring that tiny spark—of which the mystics spoke—to full bloom through his own inner powers? He differs from the mystics only in that they believed they could, with a calm soul, surrender themselves to that tiny, luminous spark so that it might of its own accord begin to burn and shine ever more magnificently; whereas the spiritual researcher is fully aware that human beings must apply their abilities and powers—which have been placed within their will by the wisdom of the world—to the expansion of that little spark.

[ 3 ] If, then, the mystical mood is a good preparation and points everywhere toward spiritual research, we may, on the other hand, say: A preparation, a preliminary stage to that mystical contemplation as it emerged in the Middle Ages, is the activity of the soul that we shall examine more closely today, and which can be called prayer in the true sense. And one could say: Just as the mystic becomes capable of his contemplation by having already—perhaps unconsciously, but nonetheless—has already worked on his soul, so that he already possesses a disposition conducive to mystical contemplation; so, too, will the one who wishes to work toward this mystical contemplation—who wishes to follow paths that may ultimately lead to it—find a preliminary stage in true prayer.

[ 4 ] However, due to intellectual developments over the past few centuries, the true nature of prayer has been misunderstood in countless ways by various intellectual currents. Therefore, it will not be easy today to penetrate to the true nature of prayer. If we consider that all spiritual development over the past few centuries has been linked to what one might call the emergence of specifically egoistic spiritual currents—which have taken hold of broad segments of society—it is not surprising that prayer, in particular, has been drawn into people’s egoistic desires and cravings. And one may well say: There is hardly anything that leads to a greater misunderstanding of prayer than being steeped in some form of egoism. In this lecture, an attempt will be made to examine prayer entirely independently of any partisan or other orientation, purely from the perspective of spiritual science.

[ 5 ] If one wishes to understand prayer—and let this be said merely for the sake of a preliminary understanding—one might say: While the mystic assumes that he will find within his soul some small spark that can then continue to shine and burn through his mystical contemplation, the person praying seeks precisely to kindle that spark, that inner life of the soul, in the first place. And prayer, whatever its starting point may be, proves its effectiveness precisely by stimulating the soul to gradually either discover that spark of the mystic—if it is there, shining within the soul, albeit hidden—or to cause it to shine on its own. If we wish to examine the need for prayer and the nature of prayer, however, we must delve into a characteristic of the human soul in its depths—about which we said in one of the previous lectures that the saying of the ancient Greek sage Heraclitus applies so well to them: “You will never find the limits of the soul, even if you were to walk every path”; so vast is that which it encloses with its mysteries.” And even if the person praying is initially only searching for the mysteries of the soul, one may still say: From those most intimate states of mind that can be stirred by prayer, even the most naive person senses something of the infinite expanses of the soul’s life. We must one day grasp this soul—as it lives within us and propels us forward—in its development in the following way:

[ 6 ] We must realize that something like the soul, which lives in a process of living development, does not merely come from the past and move onward into the future, but that in every moment of its present life it carries within itself something from the past—and even, in a certain sense, something from the future. The moment we call the present is permeated—especially in the life of the soul—by the effects of the past and the effects that seem to rush toward us from the future. To those who look more deeply into the life of the soul, it may well seem as though two currents are constantly meeting within the human soul: one current that flows upward from the past, but also one that comes toward us from the future. It may be that, in other areas of life, one initially regards it as mere daydreaming or fantasy when speaking of events rushing toward us from the future. After all, it is easy—albeit trivial—to say: What will happen in the future simply isn’t here yet; therefore, we cannot say that what will happen tomorrow is “rushing toward us,” whereas we can very well say that what happened in the past extends its effects into the present. — For the latter, it is of course very easy to find justification upon justification. Who would deny that our life today is the result of our life yesterday? Who would deny that we are today under the influence of our diligence or our carelessness from yesterday or the day before? No one will deny that the past intrudes into our inner life. But neither should the reality of the future be denied, if we see within our own souls the reality of such an intrusion of future events before they have occurred. Or is there not such a thing as anxiety about something we expect tomorrow, or fear of something that might happen tomorrow? Is this not something like a feeling, a sensation, that we direct toward a future—albeit one unknown to us? At every moment when the soul fears and is anxious, it proves, through the reality of its feelings and sensations, that it not only anticipates the effects of the past, but that it vividly anticipates within itself what is rushing into it from the future. These are merely a few hints. Anyone who seeks to gauge the life of the soul will find much that perhaps contradicts the abstractions of the intellect, which assert: the future is not yet here; therefore, it cannot yet have an effect—yet it reveals itself in its living reality when we look directly at the immediate life of the soul.

[ 7 ] In our soul, two currents—from the past and from the future, as it were—converge and form there—who would deny this, if they observed themselves?—something like a “whirlpool,” much like the confluence of two rivers out in the world. If we now take a closer look at what flows into our soul from the past, we must say: Our soul has been shaped by the impressions of what we experienced in the past. We are today what we have made of our past experiences, and we carry within our soul the legacy of our actions, our feelings, and our thoughts from the past. We are what we have become. If we now wish to look back from our present vantage point on our earlier experiences—namely, those experiences in which we ourselves were involved in their coming about and their significance for our soul—if, in other words, we let our memory wander into the past, we will very often, when we turn inward, arrive at a judgment about ourselves and say: “This is who we are now; and as we are, we are unable to say ‘yes’ to many things that took place in our past; we have become capable of disagreeing with many things now, and perhaps even of feeling ashamed of certain past actions.” When we link our present to our past in this way, a feeling creeps over us that we might call: Oh, there is something within us that is infinitely richer, infinitely more significant than what we have made of ourselves through our will, through our consciousness, through our individual powers! For if there were not something within us that transcends what we have made of ourselves, we would not be able to reproach ourselves, nor would we be able to recognize ourselves. We must say: Within us lives something that is greater than what we have so far made of ourselves! When we transform such a judgment into a feeling, then we will look upon what is familiar to us—what we can observe in our past deeds and experiences; and that can lie clearly before us—as clearly as memory allows—and we will be able to compare this clear, evident reality with something within us that is greater than what is evident, with something in the soul that seeks to emerge, that guides us to rise above ourselves and judge ourselves from the standpoint of the present. In short, we will sense something within us that transcends ourselves when we look at that stream flowing from the past into the soul. And this sense of something greater within ourselves is, in essence, the first glimmer of the inner sense of God in the soul; a sense that something lives within us that is greater than anything initially subject to our own will, and this causes the sense of the divine to awaken within us, so that we look toward something that leads us beyond our narrowly defined “I” to a spiritual-divine “I.” Thus speaks a contemplation of the past transformed into feeling and sensation.

[ 8 ] How, then, does what we might call the flow of the stream of the future into the soul speak to us when we transform it into a feeling, into a sensation?

[ 9 ] This speaks to us even more clearly and more profoundly. While, when looking back on past events, our sensations and feelings may assert themselves like a judgment of disapproval, like remorse, or perhaps like shame, our sensations and feelings toward the future are, from the outset, those of anxiety and fear, of hope, and of joy. But when faced with these feelings, the stream of events itself is not yet present to the individual; he does not yet perceive it. Here, he can even more easily transform the concept, the idea, into a feeling than in the first case. For the soul does this itself. Because it gives us only the feelings of reality in relation to the future, our feelings and sensations regarding the future stand before us as something that wells up from an unknown stream, of which we know: it can affect us in one way or another; it can grant us this or that. When we now transform this into the proper sensation—what is surely coming toward us from the dark bosom of the future—and when we feel how it flows into our soul, and how our worlds of sensation stand in opposition to it, then we feel how our soul is continually rekindled by the experiences that come toward us from the future. Here we feel all the more keenly how our soul can become richer and more comprehensive than it is; we already feel our soul in the present in such a way that it will surely encompass an infinitely richer and more powerful content in the future. We already feel a kinship with what is coming toward us from the future; we must feel a kinship with it. We must feel that our soul is capable of embracing the full content that the future can still give it.

[ 10 ] If we thus consider the past and the future as they flow into the present, we see how the life of the soul grows beyond itself in a sense of foreboding. We will therefore find it understandable that when the soul looks back on the past, it becomes aware of that which is significant—which plays a role within it and which it cannot fully grasp—and that it can develop a mood, a fundamental feeling toward what thus reveals itself as the result of the past. When the soul—whether in judgment or in remorse and shame toward itself—feels the powerful force from the stream of the past flowing into itself, then what might be called a sense of reverence arises toward the Divine that looks upon us from the past. And this reverence toward the Divine that gazes at us from the past—which we can sense as something that acts upon us, but which we cannot fully grasp with our consciousness—gives rise to a certain mood of prayer—for there are two such moods of prayer—; that mood of prayer which we can describe as the one that leads to divinity. For what will the soul be able to desire when it quietly and intimately surrenders to these sensations and feelings toward such a past? It will be able to desire that the greater power—which it has left untapped, which it has not penetrated with its “I”—become present within it. The soul will be able to say to itself: If this greater power were within me, I would be a different person today; it has not lived within me, it was not present within me. The divine, which I sense, was not something that belonged to my inner life; that is why I have not made myself such that I can say a wholehearted “Yes” to myself today. — When the soul feels this way, it is overcome by that mood through which it asks itself: How can I bring into this soul what has indeed lived in all my deeds and experiences, yet was unknown to me? How can I draw in this unknown, this which my “I” has not grasped? When this mood plays itself out in the soul—be it through a feeling, a word, or an idea—then we have prayer in relation to the past. Then we seek, on a path, to approach the Divine with devotion.

[ 11 ] In contrast to what we have described as the divine shining upon us from the stream of the unknown future, there is now a different mood. And if we wish to compare it with the one just described, we ask ourselves once more: What leads us to a prayerful mood toward the past? The fact that we have remained imperfect, even though we can sense that something divine shines within us; that we have not developed all the abilities, not all the powers that can flow from this divine; our shortcomings, which make us less than the divine that shines within us—this leads us to a spirit of prayer toward the past. What, looking toward the future, makes us feel similarly deficient? What, from the future, hinders our development, our ascent toward the spiritual?

[ 12 ] We need only consider that it is precisely those feelings and emotions we have already mentioned—anxiety and fear of the unknown future—that gnaw at our inner life. But is there anything that can pour into the soul as a source of security in the face of the future? — Yes, there is. But it will only truly take effect in the soul if it arises as a spirit of prayer. And that is what one might call a sense of surrender to whatever enters our soul from the dark bosom of the future. Let us not misunderstand one another in this regard. We are not here singing the praises of whatever might be called “surrender” here and there, but rather characterizing a very specific kind of surrender: surrender to what the future may bring us. Whoever looks anxiously and fearfully at what the future may bring hinders their own development and stifles the free unfolding of their soul’s powers. Nothing actually hinders this free unfolding of the soul’s powers as much as the fear and anxiety of the unknown that flows into the soul from the stream of the future. Only experience can truly judge what resignation to the future may bring. What is resignation to future events?

[ 13 ] In its ideal form, this resignation would be that state of mind that could always say to itself: Whatever may come, whatever the next hour or the next morning may bring, I cannot, at least at first—when it is completely unknown to me—change it through fear or anxiety. I await it with the utmost inner peace of mind, with the perfect calm of the sea in my soul! The experience that arises from such a sense of resignation toward future events is this: the person who can face the future with such composure, with the complete stillness of the sea in their mind, yet without allowing their energy or drive to suffer in any way, is able to unfold the powers of their soul in the most intense and freest manner. It is as if, so to speak, one obstacle after another were falling away from the soul as it is increasingly overcome by that state of mind that has now been characterized as “resignation” toward the events flowing toward us from the future.

[ 14 ] The soul cannot impose this sense of devotion upon itself through a decree of power, nor through an arbitrary act conjured out of thin air. This sense of devotion is the result of what might be called the other prayerful disposition—that prayerful disposition which is directed toward the future and its course of events, imbued with wisdom. Devotion to what is called divine wisdom in events; constantly evoking within oneself the thought, the feeling, the impulse of the emotional life that what is to come must be, and that it must have its beneficial effects in some way: evoking this mood in the soul and expressing this mood in words, in feelings, in ideas—this is the second kind of prayerful mood, the mood of prayer of surrender.

[ 15 ] It is from these states of mind that the impulses toward what is called prayer must be drawn. For the impulses are already present within the soul itself, and, in essence, a prayerful state comes to every soul that rises even slightly above the immediate present. A prayerful mood, one might say, is the soul’s looking up from the transient present of time into the eternal, which encompasses the past, present, and future. Precisely because this looking beyond and living beyond the present moment is so necessary for human beings, Goethe has his Faust utter these great and significant words to Mephistopheles:

I’ll say to the moment:
Stay a while! You’re so beautiful!

[ 16 ] that is to say: could I ever be content with a life lived in the mere moment

Then you may put me in chains,
Then I will gladly perish!

[ 17 ] One could therefore also say: It is a prayerful mood that Faust implores in order to break free from the bonds of his companion, Mephistopheles.

[ 18 ] A spirit of prayer thus leads us, on the one hand, to contemplate our narrowly defined “I”—which has worked its way up from the past into the present—and which, when we look at it, clearly shows us how infinitely more there is within us than we have utilized; and on the other hand, this contemplation leads us into the future and shows us how, from the unknown bosom of the future, infinitely more can flow into the “I” than this “I” has already grasped in the present. Every prayerful mood must be brought into one of these two states of mind. When we thus grasp the mood of prayer and regard prayer as an expression of this mood, then we will find within the prayer itself that power which leads us beyond ourselves. For what else is prayer, when it arises within us in this way, but the shining forth of that power within us that seeks to go beyond what our “I” was in a single moment! And when the “I” is seized only by this striving outward, then that very power—which is the power of development—already lives within it. When we learn from the past: We have more within us than we have used! — then our prayer is a cry out to the Divine: may it be there, may it fill us with its presence! When we have arrived at this realization through our feelings and sensibilities, then prayer becomes the cause of further development within us. And we can then count prayer among the forces of development within our own “I.”

[ 19 ] We can apply the same attitude of prayer to the future when we live in fear and anxiety about what the future may bring. For then we lack that sense of surrender that flows from the prayer we offer in response to the fates that rush toward us from the future—fates of which we have said: “They have been imposed upon us by the wisdom of the world.” Surrendering to this spirit of resignation has a different effect than when we meet what is to come toward us with fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety hinder our development; through the waves of fear and anxiety, we reject what seeks to enter our soul from the future. But we approach it with inspiring hope, so that it can enter into us when we live toward it in resignation. Thus, this resignation, which seemingly makes us small, is a powerful force that carries us toward the future, so that the future enriches the content of the soul and raises our development to ever-new levels.

[ 20 ] We have thus grasped prayer as an active force within ourselves. Therefore, we see in prayer a cause within us that brings about immediate effects, namely, the growth and development of our self. We need not wait for any special external effects; rather, we realize: Through prayer itself, we have instilled something into our soul that we can call an enlightening and warming power. It is an enlightening power because we free the soul to face what is rushing toward us from the future, and we make it capable of receiving whatever may emerge from the dark bosom of the future; we have a warming effect on the soul because we can say: Although we have failed in the past to fully allow the divine within our self to unfold, we have now imbued ourselves with it through our sensations and feelings, and it can work within us. The spirit of prayer that arises from our sense of the past generates that inner warmth of the soul of which all those who are able to experience prayer in its true essence can speak. And its enlightening effect is evident in those who know the sense of surrender that prayer brings.

[ 21 ] When we consider the nature of prayer in this way, we will not be surprised that it was precisely the great mystics who found in their devotion to prayer the best preparation for what they were then seeking in mystical contemplation. Through prayer, they guided the mood of their souls, so to speak, toward that point where they then became capable of letting that characteristic “spark” shine forth. It is precisely through reflection on the past that we can begin to understand that deep intimacy, that wondrous closeness of the soul’s life, which can overwhelm a person during true prayer. After all, it is the experience of the external world that alienates us from ourselves—and it is precisely this same experience that, in the past, prevented the more powerful force within us—our conscious “I”—from emerging. We were given over to external impressions; we were absorbed in the diversity of external life, which distracts us and prevents us from achieving inner stillness. But this is the very same thing that prevented the more powerful, stronger divine force within us from unfolding. Now, however, as we unfold this within ourselves in such a mood of divine presence, we do not feel within ourselves at the mercy of the distracting influences of the external world. This is what fills us with that indescribable, wondrous warmth of being within ourselves, as with an inner bliss—what can be called true inner divine warmth. And just as the warmth in the cosmos manifests physically in higher beings as inner warmth, and thereby shapes the higher beings out of the lower beings—who possess the same warmth as their surroundings—; just as this physical warmth is materialized within the being, so it is the warmth of the soul generated through prayer that transforms a soul being that is lost in the external world into one that unites within itself. We warm ourselves in the sense of God within us through prayer; we do not merely warm ourselves—we find ourselves intimately within ourselves.

[ 22 ] When we then approach the things of the external world from the other side, they essentially always appear to us intermingled with what one might call the “dark bosom of the future.” For anyone who observes things more closely must admit to themselves: In everything they encounter in the external world, there is always an element of the future. Everywhere, so to speak, something repels us when we feel fear and anxiety about what might befall us. The external world stands before us like a dense veil. But if we develop a sense of surrender, a prayerful attitude, toward what comes toward us from the dark womb of the future, then we can experience how we can face all beings in the external world with the same sense of security and hope that flows to us from this sense of surrender. We can then say to ourselves in the face of all things: It is the wisdom of the world that will shine upon us! Whereas otherwise darkness stares at us from everything we encounter, and that darkness enters into our perception, we will now see how, through the feeling of surrender within us, the perception arises that, fundamentally, only through what we can yearn for and desire in our souls as the highest will the world’s wisdom-filled essence shine forth to us from everything. — Thus we can say: It is the hope for enlightenment from the entire environment that arises within us from the spirit of devotion in prayer. And just as darkness draws us inward upon ourselves, just as darkness reveals to us a sense of abandonment and confinement even in the physical realm—when we stand somewhere in the darkness of night and blackness spreads around us—so, when morning comes and the light meets us, we feel transported out of ourselves; but not in such a way that we would lose ourselves, rather as if we could now carry our soul’s best will, our soul’s deepest longing, out into the outer world. Thus we feel that devotion to the world—which alienates us from ourselves—overcome by the warmth of prayer, which unites us with ourselves. And when we allow the warmth of prayer to unfold within us to the point of a sense of surrender—which can flow through prayer—then the warmth of prayer ignites into the light of prayer. We now step out of ourselves once more and know: When we unite with the outside world and direct our gaze toward everything in our surroundings, we do not feel scattered or alienated from ourselves within it; rather, we feel how that which is best for our soul flows out from within it, and we feel united with that which shines toward us from our surroundings.

[ 23 ] These two currents of prayer can be expressed even more vividly through imagery than through concepts—for example, when we recall the account in the Old Testament of Jacob’s powerful, soul-searching struggle that took place during the night. It appears to us as if we ourselves were surrendered to the diversity of the world, in which our soul initially loses itself and which does not allow it to return to itself. When the striving to find oneself within finally awakens, then the struggle between our higher self and our lower self begins; then our moods ebb and flow; but then we work our way through precisely that prayerful mood, and finally comes that moment, which is shown to us in the story of Jacob by the fact that the inner, nocturnal struggle of his soul is resolved, illuminated, and brought into harmony as the morning sun shines upon him. This is indeed how true prayer works in the human soul.

[ 24 ] When we view prayer in this way, it is free from all superstition. For then it is what best enables our soul to unfold, what directly instills strength into our soul. Viewed in this way, prayer is the preliminary stage of mystical contemplation, just as mystical contemplation itself is the preliminary stage of everything we might call spiritual research. And the very nature of prayer will also make clear to us what has been mentioned here frequently: that, fundamentally speaking, we are actually heaping error upon error upon our soul when we believe that we can find the Divine—God, so to speak—mystically only within ourselves. Mystics and other Christian-minded people of the Middle Ages, however, frequently made this mistake. They made it because the spirit of prayer, particularly during the Middle Ages, began to become imbued with egoism—that egoism through which the soul says to itself: “I want to become more and more perfect and think of nothing else but this ever-increasing perfection.” Essentially, it is merely an echo of that selfish longing for mere inner perfection when a misguided theosophical movement today claims that, if a person were only to disregard all external matters, he could find God within his own soul.

[ 25 ] We have seen, after all, that there are two currents of prayer: one leads to a warming of our inner being, while the other, in a spirit of devotion, leads us back out into the world and leads precisely to enlightenment and true knowledge. Anyone who considers the mood of prayer in this way will soon see that the knowledge we acquire through the ordinary faculties of the intellect is, in a certain respect, fruitless compared to another kind of knowledge. Anyone familiar with the spirit of prayer knows that withdrawal of the soul into itself—where it detaches itself from the diversity of the world that distracts it, where it gathers itself within and experiences within itself what might be called: complete self-containment and self-presence, recalling that which transcends the moment, that which reaches into the soul from the past and the future. Whoever knows this state of mind, where our entire surroundings become still as the wind and silent as the senses, where only the most beautiful thoughts and feelings of which we are capable hold the soul together within, where perhaps even these eventually fade and only a fundamental feeling lives in the soul, pointing in two directions: toward the God who reveals Himself from the past, toward the God who reveals Himself from the future—whoever knows these moods and knows how to live with them also knows that there are such great moments for the soul when it says to itself: I have now set aside, for the time being, whatever cleverness I can consciously bring about through my thinking; I have set aside whatever I can bring about through my feelings; I have set aside those ideals which I can grasp through my will—ideals to which I have been educated thus far; I have swept everything out of my soul. I was absorbed in my highest thoughts and feelings; I have swept these, too, from my soul and allowed only the fundamental feeling just described to remain. Anyone who knows such feelings understands: just as the wonders of nature reveal themselves to us when we turn our pure gaze upon nature, so too do new feelings shine into our soul—feelings we had not been able to perceive until now. Impulses of the will and ideals sprout within the soul that were previously foreign to us, so that the most fruitful moments awaken within this fundamental mood.

[ 26 ] Thus, prayer can, in the truest sense of the word, give us a wisdom that we are not yet capable of at that moment; it can give us the opportunity to experience feelings and sensations that we have not yet been able to cultivate in ourselves. And when prayer further advances our self-education, it can give us a strength of will that we have not yet been able to attain. If, however, we wish to cultivate such a prayerful disposition, then it must be the greatest thoughts, the most sublime feelings and impulses of which we are capable—those that come alive in the soul—that draw such a disposition forth from within it. And here, one can only refer again and again to those prayers that have been offered since time immemorial or during the most solemn moments of humanity.

[ 27 ] In my short treatise *The Lord’s Prayer*, you will find an explanation of its content that shows that the “seven petitions” indeed encompass all the wisdom of the world. You might think: This little book states that only those who know the deeper sources of the universe can understand the “seven petitions” of the Lord’s Prayer; but the naive person who prays the Lord’s Prayer surely cannot fathom these depths! But that is not necessary either. For the Lord’s Prayer to have come into being, it was necessary that what might be called the “deepest mysteries of the universe and humanity” be cast into words from the comprehensive wisdom of the world. But because this is now contained in the Lord’s Prayer, it takes effect through the words of the Lord’s Prayer, even if we are still far from understanding the depths of this prayer. But that is precisely the mystery of true prayer: that it must be drawn from the wisdom of the world. And because it is drawn from it, it is effective even though we do not yet understand it. We can understand it when we ascend to the higher levels for which prayer and mysticism prepare us. Prayer prepares us for mysticism, mysticism for meditation and concentration, and from there we are guided toward the actual work of spiritual research.

[ 28 ] It is not a valid objection to say that one must understand what one is praying if the prayer is to have the proper effect. That is simply not true. Who understands the wisdom of a flower, when one can still take delight in it? One need not fathom the flower’s wisdom, and yet joy can pour into the soul simply by looking at the flower. Wisdom was necessary for the flower to exist; but for us to take delight in the flower, wisdom is not necessary at first. For a prayer to come into being, the wisdom of the world is necessary; but for the prayer, once it exists, to pour its characteristic warmth and light into the soul, wisdom is no more necessary than it is for the flower to bring us joy. Yet something that has not come into being through the wisdom of the world could not possess that power either. The very way prayer works reveals to us the depth of prayer.

[ 29 ] If the soul is truly to develop under the influence of such a being living within it, it can be pointed out time and again that every person, no matter what stage of development and education they may be at, can benefit from a true prayer. Even the most naive person, who may know nothing beyond the prayer itself, can allow the prayer to work upon the soul. It is the prayer itself that can evoke forces capable of lifting him higher and higher. But one is never finished with a prayer, no matter how high one has risen; for it can always lift the soul one step higher than it already is. And the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer that can not only be recited but can also evoke a mystical mood and serve as the object of higher meditation and concentration. The same could be said of many other prayers. However, something has carried over from the Middle Ages that can make prayer and the prayerful mood somewhat impure today, and which can only be described by the word “egoism.”

[ 30 ] If one seeks through prayer only to turn inward, to perfect oneself only within—as indeed some medieval Christians sought to do, and perhaps still do today—if one does not also wish, through enlightenment, to turn one’s gaze back toward the world, outward, then prayer presents itself as something that simultaneously leads a person to separate themselves from the world, to be alienated from and distant from the world. This was the case with many people who used prayer in the sense of false asceticism and hermitage. Such people did not merely wish to be perfect in the sense of the rose that adorns itself to beautify the garden; rather, they also wished to be perfect for their own sake, in order to find their own bliss within the soul. Whoever seeks God within the soul and does not wish to return to the world with these newly found powers will then discover that such an endeavor takes its toll in a certain way. And you can find in various writings—whose authors know only the one mood of prayer that leads to inner warmth, even extending to the writings of Michael de Molinos— quite peculiar descriptions of all manner of passions and drives, temptations, trials, and wild desires, which the soul experiences precisely when it seeks perfection through inner prayer, through complete devotion to what it regards as its God. This can be attributed to nothing other than the fact that when a person seeks God one-sidedly, seeks to approach the spiritual world one-sidedly, and seeks only to cultivate the state of prayer that leads to inner warmth—and not also the other state that leads to spiritual illumination—the other side takes its revenge. If I look back on the past with only remorse and a sense of shame and say: “There is something powerful within me that I have not fully expressed in my experiences so far, but which I now wish to allow to fill me so that I may become perfect,” then this mood of striving toward perfection does indeed arise in a certain way. But the other aspect—the imperfect one—that resides in the soul asserts itself as a counterforce, surges forth all the more powerfully, and manifests as temptation and passion. At the very moment when the soul has truly found itself in inner warmth and godliness, and seeks God once more in all works where He reveals Himself, where it strives for enlightenment—then it will find that it is already stepping outside of itself and moving away from the narrow, selfish “I,” and that healing and the soothing of inner passions and storms are taking place. That is why it is so harmful when something egoistic creeps in during prayer, mystical contemplation, or meditation. If we want to find God and then wish to keep Him only within our own soul, it becomes clear that our egoism is unhealthy, that it has crept its way up into the highest aspirations of our soul; and then this egoistic disposition takes its toll. We can be healed only when, after finding God within us, we selflessly pour out what we now possess into the world—through our thoughts, feelings, will, and deeds.

[ 31 ] One hears so often these days—and one cannot warn against this enough—especially in the realm of a misunderstood theosophy: You cannot find the divine in the external world; God lives within you! Just look deep within yourself, and you will find God within you. — I even once heard someone say—someone who loved to flatter his listeners by drawing their attention to the God within their own souls: “You don’t need to learn or experience anything about the great mysteries of the universe; you just need to look within yourselves, and there you will find God within yourselves!”

[ 32 ] In contrast, we must hold fast to something else—something that alone can lead to the truth. A medieval thinker found the right words to counter this sentiment, which is valid as long as it is kept within its proper bounds. Let us be clear about this: It is not the things that are untrue that are the most harmful, for what is untrue will very soon reveal itself as such to the human soul. The worst things are those that are true under certain conditions, and which, when applied under false conditions, represent something entirely false. It is true, in a certain sense, that one must seek God within oneself; and because it is true, it has an all the more harmful effect if it is not kept within certain limits, within which it must be kept.

[ 33 ] A medieval thinker once said: Who would go searching all over the world for a tool he wants to use, when he knows full well that it is right there in his own home? He would be a fool to do so. But just as foolish is the one who searches everywhere in the world for a tool for knowing God, when it is right there at home, within one’s own soul. But take note: it is said “the tool”! One is not to seek God Himself within one’s own soul. God is sought by means of the tool, and that tool cannot be found anywhere outside. One must seek it within the soul—through true prayer, through genuine mystical contemplation, through meditation and concentration at various levels—and approach the realms of the world with this tool: one will find God everywhere; for when one has the tool to find Him, He reveals Himself in all the realms of the world and at all levels of existence. Thus, we must seek the tool of God within ourselves; then we will find God everywhere.

[ 34 ] Reflections such as these on “the nature of prayer” are not popular today. Today one hears, for example: “Well, what difference could prayer possibly make to the course of the world when we ask for this or that?” After all, the course of the world follows necessary laws that we cannot change!” — Anyone who truly wants to recognize a power must seek it where it is. Today we have sought the power of prayer in the human soul and have found that it is something that moves the soul forward. And anyone who knows that it is the Spirit that acts in the world—not the fanciful, abstract Spirit, but the concrete Spirit— and that the human soul belongs to the realm of the Spirit, will also know that it is not only material forces that act in the world according to outwardly necessary laws, but that all spiritual beings also act in the world, even when the effects of these forces and beings are invisible to the outer eye and to outer science. So if we strengthen our spiritual life through prayer, we need only wait for the effects to manifest. They will come to pass. But only those who have first recognized the power of prayer as a reality will seek the effects of prayer in the outer world.

[ 35 ] Anyone who has realized this should try the following experiment. After having disregarded the power of prayer for ten years of his life, let him look back on those ten years spent without prayer; and let them look back on a second period—which has also already passed—that lasted another ten years, during which they recognized the power of prayer, and let them compare the two decades: they will see how the course of their life has changed under the influence of that power which they poured into their soul through prayer. Powers reveal themselves through their effects. It is easy to deny the existence of powers when one does not even bring about their effects. How could someone who has never even tried to allow prayer to take effect within himself have the right to deny the power of prayer? Or does one believe that someone who has never developed the power of light—or ever drawn near to it—truly knows it? A power that is meant to work in the soul and through the soul can only be recognized through its use.

[ 36 ] To go into the further effects of prayer—and let me admit this quite frankly—is not at all the right time, even if one approaches the present moment with the utmost open-mindedness. For the elements necessary to grasp—that a communal prayer, that is, the convergence of those forces arising from a praying community, possesses heightened spiritual power and thus heightened power of reality—the elements required to grasp this have not yet been brought into our understanding of time. Therefore, let us be content with what has appeared before our souls today as the inner essence of prayer. And that is enough. For anyone who has even a little understanding of this will certainly be able to rise above many of the objections to prayer that are so readily raised today.

[ 37 ] What, then, are these objections? They cover a variety of points. For example, one might say: Let us compare a modern, active person who devotes his energy to helping his fellow human beings at every moment with a person who withdraws quietly into himself and channels the powers of his soul into prayer: one might call the latter idle in comparison to the active one! — Forgive me if, speaking from a certain sense of spiritual scientific insight, I say that there is also another point of view. I would like to express it in a grotesque way, but it is not without foundation. Indeed, anyone who understands the interconnections of life today would assert that many who write editorials in this or that newspaper today would serve their fellow human beings better if they prayed and worked on perfecting their souls, as grotesque as that may sound. One can only long for people who might be convinced today that it would be wiser for them to pray rather than to write articles. This could also be applied to many other, particularly modern, pursuits of intellectual life.

[ 38 ] But understanding the whole of human life also requires an understanding of that power which finds its expression in prayer—a power that can reveal itself to us especially when we consider individual aspects of the higher spiritual life. Who could fail to recognize—if one does not view prayer merely in a selfish, one-sided way, but in the broad sense in which we have considered it today—that prayer in this sense is, for example, an integral part of art? Certainly, there is also another mood in art that, through comedy and humor, rises above what is to be depicted. But there is also in art that which expresses itself in a prayer-like manner: the ode, the hymn. Even in painting there is something that can be called a “painted prayer.” And who could deny that, in a gigantic, magnificent cathedral, we are confronted by something like a frozen prayer soaring toward heaven? — One need only be able to understand these things in the context of life; then, when we consider prayer in its essence, we will also see in it that which belongs to those things that lead human beings out of the finitude and transience of their lives into the eternal. This was felt in particular by those who found the path from prayer to mysticism, such as Angelus Silesius, whom I mentioned today and also last time. Once he had become a mystic, he owed the profound truth and magnificent beauty, the warm intimacy and radiant clarity of his mystical thoughts—such as those in *The Cherubic Wanderer* — the “pre-school of prayer”—which had had such a powerful effect on his soul. And what, after all, is it that permeates and illuminates all such mysticism as that of Angelus Silesius? What is it other than a sense of eternity, for which prayer prepares us? And every person who prays can sense something of that mood when, through prayer, they have attained true inner peace, inner stillness, and then, in turn, liberation from themselves; something of that mood that causes a person to look up from the fleeting moment toward eternity, which unites past, present, and future right within our soul. Whether or not a person is aware of it as a person of prayer: when they direct their prayer toward those aspects of life in which they seek their God, the sensations, feelings, thoughts, and words through which their prayerful mood finds expression will have been permeated by that sense of eternity that lives in the beautiful saying of Angelus Silesius, which may conclude our reflection today, and which, in essence, can permeate every true prayer like a divine fragrance, like a divine sweetness—even if often unconsciously:

I myself am eternity when I leave time behind,
And unite myself with God and God with me.