The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. The Lord's Prayer: An Esoteric Consideration

[ 1 ] What I wish to say today concerns the question: To what extent do religious creeds reveal to us, through very specific examples, their spiritual-scientific—or, shall we say, esoteric-scientific—foundation? —Today I would like to share with you just a very small, yet infinitely important section from this chapter on the esoteric-scientific foundation of religions. You will see that this concerns a fact known to everyone in our culture, even the most naive, a spiritual fact within which the deepest esoteric truths and reasons are hidden—one need only seek them to see how wise and mysterious the interconnections within humanity’s spiritual life are.

[ 2 ] Let us begin with the question of Christian prayer. You are all familiar with what is today called Christian prayer. It has been discussed here on several occasions, and some of you have probably asked yourselves: How does this Christian prayer relate to the spiritual-scientific worldview? — Through this worldview, members of the spiritual science movement have in recent years heard of another form of the elevation of the human being—the human soul—to the divine-spiritual powers of the world; of meditation; of that way of experiencing a spiritual content within oneself, something of what has been given to us by the great guiding spirits of humanity or from the spiritual content of the great cultures into which one immerses oneself—and which provides the means to merge, for a brief time, within one’s soul with the divine-spiritual currents in the world.

[ 3 ] Whoever meditates—even in the simplest way, using any of the meditation formulas originating from humanity’s spiritual guides—whoever meditates and thus allows any of these formulas, any of these significant thoughts, to be present in their mind—you know, it cannot be just any thought, but must be one given by the Masters of Wisdom and the Harmony of Feelings—whoever meditates and allows these formulas to live in their heart experiences a merging with the higher spirituality; a higher power flows through them. He lives within it. He first generates strength to fortify, elevate, and invigorate his ordinary mental faculties, and if he has sufficient patience and perseverance and has allowed this power to flow into himself—perhaps to the point of moral and intellectual strengthening—then the time will also come when deeper powers, slumbering in every human soul, can be awakened through such a form of meditation. From the simplest moral strengthening and fortification to the highest realms of clairvoyant ability, there are all manner of stages that can be attained through such meditation. For most people, attaining higher stages of clairvoyant ability is merely a matter of time, patience, and energy. This form of meditation is generally regarded as a more Eastern way of rising to one’s God. In the West, particularly within the Christian community, prayer is practiced in its place—the prayer through which the Christian rises to his God, through which the Christian seeks, in his own way, to gain access to the higher worlds.

[ 4 ] First and foremost, we must realize that what is often regarded as prayer today would by no means be considered prayer in the early Christian sense, and least of all in the sense intended by the founder of the Christian religion, Christ Jesus himself. In the true Christian sense, it is never a prayer when any individual asks God for something intended to satisfy his own personal and selfish desires. When anyone implores or asks for the fulfillment of personal wishes, he naturally very soon comes to completely disregard the universality and comprehensiveness involved in the granting of what is sought through prayer. He assumes that the Deity will specifically fulfill his wishes. A farmer who has grown this or that crop may need rain, while another next to him needs sunshine. One prays for rain, the other for sunshine. What is the divine world order and providence to do in such a case? One need not even consider what the divine world order and providence are to do when two armies face each other, each praying that victory be granted to them, and each regarding its own victory as the only just one. There one will immediately see how little such a prayer—arising from personal desires—possesses in terms of universality and general humanity, and how even a grant from God can correspond only to one of the parties making the request. When one prays in this way, one disregards the very prayer through which Jesus Christ set the fundamental tone that should prevail in every prayer—that prayer which says: “Father, let this cup pass from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” This is the fundamental Christian spirit of prayer. Whatever is implored and requested, this fundamental spirit must live as a bright undertone in the soul of the person praying if they wish to pray in a Christian manner. Then the prayer formula itself becomes merely a means for the person to elevate themselves into higher spiritual realms in order to feel God within themselves. But then this prayer formula will also bring about the exclusion of every selfish desire and impulse of the will, in the spirit of the words: “Not my will, but yours be done.” It will result in a merging, a sinking into this divine world. If this state of mind is then attained as the true spirit of prayer, then Christian prayer is exactly the same—only with a more emotional tone—as meditation. And originally, this Christian prayer was nothing other than what meditation is. Meditation is more intellectual in nature, and through it one seeks, by means of the thoughts of humanity’s great leaders, to achieve harmony with the divine currents that flow through the world. In prayer, the same is achieved in a more emotional manner.

[ 5 ] Thus we see that both in prayer and in meditation, one seeks what may be called the union of the soul with the divine currents flowing through the world—that which, at the highest level, is the so-called *Unio mystica*, the mystical union with the Divine. This is the beginning in prayer; this is the beginning in meditation. Man could never unite with his God, nor could he ever come into contact with the higher spiritual beings, if he were not himself an emanation of this divine-spiritual being.

[ 6 ] As we all know, human beings are of a dual nature. First, they possess the four components of human existence that we have often mentioned here: the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body, and the I. Within the “I,” they then possess the potential for the future: Manas, Buddhi, Atma, or the Spiritual Self, the Life Spirit, and the Spiritual Human.

[ 7 ] If we wish to correctly understand the connection between these two entities, we must take a step back in time to the origins of humankind. You all know from previous lectures that human beings, as they are today, represent the harmony of these two entities: the three faculties for the future—Manas, Buddhi, and Atma—the three higher members, and the four lower members—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego; and that humanity, as such, developed in a distant past that we call the Lemurian Age of the Earth.

[ 8 ] If we trace our way back through our present era to the Greco-Latin, Egyptian-Assyrian-Chaldean, and on to the Persian and Indian cultures, then as we go further and further back, we gradually arrive at that great Atlantean flood, which is alluded to in the flood myths of all peoples, and we then arrive at those ancestors who lived in the land that lay between Europe and America, which we call Atlantis. Going even further back, we come to ancestors who lived in ancient times in a land that was then situated between Australia and India. It was not until the middle of this epoch that what we call the upper triad of the human being—the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human—united with what we call the four lower members of human nature: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego.

[ 9 ] We will understand the matter correctly if we think of it this way: Back then, during the Lemurian epoch on this Earth, the highest being was not yet a physical human being in our sense, but rather a kind of highest animal form of our present-day human being—a being or a collective of entities that at that time consisted of the four lower members of human nature. That which constitutes the higher human being—that which is eternal in human nature, and which will continue to develop further and further in the future through the three faculties of Manas, Budhi, and Atma—remained until then in the bosom of the Deity. If you wish to imagine that fact as it occurred at that time—albeit in a somewhat trivial, yet more vivid way—then imagine that all the people who live today within the whole of humanity had, up to that moment, built up bodies that enabled them to receive the human soul, comparable to a sponge that is able to absorb water.

[ 10 ] Imagine a vessel filled with water. In this water, you can never distinguish where one drop ends and another begins. But now imagine a number of small sponges submerged in this mass of water; each of these sponges will absorb a portion of the water. What was previously a uniform mass of water in the vessel is now distributed among many sponges. So it was with human souls back then, if we may use this trivial comparison. Previously, they rested in a non-autonomous state in the bosom of the divine Primordial Spirit, without individuality; but they were then absorbed by human bodies and thereby individualized, just as the water is by the sponges.

[ 11 ] What was absorbed at that time by the individual bodies—the four lower members—has continued into our own time, evolving ever further; it will continue even further into the future and will keep evolving further and further. In what is known as spiritual or esoteric science, the upper trinity has always been referred to, and as a diagram for this human being who emerged in the middle of the Lemurian race—particularly in the Pythagorean school—the triangle and the square were chosen, resulting in the following diagram for the composite human being.

[ 12 ] Now, however, as you can easily imagine, this Higher Self, this Eternal Self that passes through all incarnations, can be viewed from two perspectives. On the one hand, one can regard it as the primordial essence of humanity; on the other hand, however, one can also regard it as a part of the divine essence that humanity once yielded—as a fragment or a drop of its own substance—and which is now immersed in the fourfold human vessel, so that what now resides within us humans is a drop of the divinity that has become individualized in its own right. In this way, you come to realize that you cannot regard the three higher members of human nature—its eternal aspect—merely as the three highest principles of human nature, but also as three principles within the divinity itself. The fact is, therefore, that what constitutes the three highest members of human nature simultaneously represents the three lower members of the divinity closest to humankind. If you were to list the principles of those deities who, in times past, bestowed the soul-drops upon humanity, you would have to begin with the physical body in humans, continue with the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I,” and ascend from Manas to Atma—beginning with Manas, continuing with Budhi and Atma, and ascending to the principles that lie even above Atma, of which modern man can form a conception only when he becomes a disciple of the Initiates. So you see that we can regard the three principles of the human being—which he contains within himself as his essence—as three divine principles as well.

[ 13 ] Today, let us consider them not as human principles but as divine ones, and describe them according to their nature. That highest principle, which in human beings is the Atma—and which they will develop at the end of their earthly, or let us say, their present planetary career—can be characterized in the sense of spiritual or esoteric science by comparing its primordial essence to something known to modern human beings only in a vague sense: namely, to what human beings possess within themselves as will. A will-like nature, a kind of volition, is the fundamental character of this highest divine principle within human beings. What is currently the least developed aspect of human inner being—the will—will become humanity’s most preeminent principle in the future, as human beings ascend ever higher and higher.

[ 14 ] Today, human beings are essentially beings of cognition, and their will is, in fact, still limited in a multitude of ways. Human beings can, to a certain degree, comprehend the world around them in its universality. But consider how little of what they can comprehend they are also able to will, how little power they have over what they can recognize. Yet what they do not yet possess today, the future will bring them: Their will will become ever more powerful until they have attained their great goal, which in spiritual science is called the great sacrifice. This consists in that power of the will whereby the being who wills is capable of surrendering himself completely—not merely surrendering the little that a human being is capable of surrendering with his weak powers of feeling and will, but surrendering his entire being, allowing himself to flow out as an entity that extends into the material realm.

[ 15 ] You will get an idea of what this means—of the great sacrifice, the highest expression of will in the divine nature—if you imagine the following: Imagine that you are standing in front of a mirror, and your reflection is looking back at you from that mirror. This reflection is an illusion that is completely like you. Imagine further that you have died by sacrificing your own being—your feelings, your thoughts, your very essence—in order to bring this image to life, to make this image into what you yourself are. To sacrifice oneself and surrender one’s life to the image—that is what spiritual science has always called emanation, the outflow. If you could do that, you would see that you are no longer there, because you have surrendered everything to awaken life and consciousness within the image.

[ 16 ] When the will has reached a level where it is capable of accomplishing what is called the great sacrifice, then it creates—it brings into being—a universe, large or small, and this universe is a reflection that receives its purpose from the very essence of the Creator. In this way, we have characterized what the creative will is in the divine essence.

[ 17 ] What we must characterize as the second principle in the Deity—insofar as it has flowed into humanity—is already evident from this comparison: it is the reflection itself. Imagine yourself vividly as a Deity who, as the creator of the world, is the center of the universe. If you imagine a point here in this room and, instead of the six walls, picture it surrounded by a hollow sphere that reflects inward, then you will see yourself, as the center, reflected in all directions. You have the image of a deity as the center of will, reflecting in all directions, and this mirror is both the image of the deity itself and the universe. For what is a universe? It is nothing other than a mirror of the essence of the deity.

[ 18 ] But the fact that the universe lives and weaves stems from the fact that the Deity emanates when it makes the great sacrifice, when it mirrors its universe, as we have just considered in the example of the animation of the mirror image. The entire universe is animated by the universal Will, which expresses itself in infinite diversity. This process of infinite diversification, of infinite multiplication—this repetition of the Deity—is called the “Realm” in all esoteric or spiritual sciences, in contrast to the Will. The Will is thus the center; the mirror of the Will is the Realm, so that you can compare the Will to Atma, the spiritual human, and the Realm—or the mirror image of the Will—to Buddhi, or the life spirit.

[ 19 ] Now, this realm is such that it reflects the essence of the Divine in infinite diversity. Take a look at this realm in its entirety, insofar as it is our realm, our diversity, our universe; look at it in its visible part—in the minerals, plants, animals, and human beings. In each and every one of these beings, the kingdom is manifested, and we can still sense this today in the expressions of our language, insofar as we call these vast realms of our universe “kingdoms”—that is, the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom. But when we consider the details as well, we see that all details, too, are of a divine nature. Nature is reflected in all of them just as the center would be reflected in a hollow sphere. Likewise, those who view the world through the lens of esoteric research see God reflected in every mineral, every plant, every animal, and every human being—an expression and imprint of the Divine.

[ 20 ] In infinitely graded entities and in infinite diversity, the Divinity manifests itself in the Kingdom, and one distinguishes the individual entities in the sense of esoteric science—if one stands at that high level where one can regard them as emanations of the Divine—by giving them their “name.” The name is what the human being then conceives as the individual entity; it is that through which the individual members of this great diversity are distinguished from one another. It is the third of the three highest human principles that flow forth from the Divine, and would correspond to the Manas or the Spiritual Self. The esoteric teachings of the various religions have thus taught—naively taught—what has flowed forth from the Divinity and flowed into you, becoming your eternal image.

[ 21 ] If you wish to discover that to which you are ultimately meant to ascend, you will find that it is of a volitional nature.

[ 22 ] Do you wish to rise to that which is the bearer of this will, this Atma, to the Buddhi—in the Divine, it represents the realm.

[ 23 ] And if you wish to rise to that which you recognize as the names, concepts, or ideas of things—in the Divine, it manifests as a name.

[ 24 ] What we have just discussed here is an ancient teaching that states that the Name, the Kingdom, and the Will constitute that aspect of the Godhead which has flowed into human nature as its eternal component. Thus, we have recognized what is called the higher trinity of the human being as a part of the Divine.

[ 25 ] To complete our discussion, let us now take a look at the four lower aspects of the mortal human being. We know that the three higher aspects can actually be viewed from the other perspective, by considering them as aspects of the Deity. In a similar way, we can regard the four lower aspects of the human being as aspects of the transitory world and as aspects of the human being.

[ 26 ] Consider the physical body. It is composed of the same substances and the same forces as the seemingly lifeless world around it. This physical body could not exist if matter and force were not constantly flowing into it from the physical world surrounding it, rebuilding it over and over again. In fact, the physical body is a continuous waystation for everything we possess within it. The substances flow in and out; they constitute the external universe just as much as they are temporarily within us. It has been mentioned here many times that over the course of seven years, the entire material composition of the human body is renewed. None of you today contain the same substances that were in you ten years ago. Human beings continually renew the matter of their physical bodies. What was within us back then is now somewhere else entirely—scattered throughout nature—and other matter has taken its place within us. The life of the body involves a continuous flow of matter in and out.

[ 27 ] Just as we have regarded the three higher elements of human nature as parts of the Godhead, so we can regard the four parts of lower human nature as parts of the divine nature.

[ 28 ] We can regard the physical body as part of the material aspect of our planet; its substance is drawn from our material planet and returns to it. When we consider the etheric body, we must likewise regard it as a part of what surrounds us here, and the same applies to the astral body.

[ 29 ] Let us consider the life body, the etheric body, and the astral body in context. You know that the astral body is the bearer of all the drives, desires, and passions that live within a person—the bearer of everything that surges up and down in the human soul as joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain—while the life body, or etheric body, preserves, represents, and serves as the bearer of the more enduring, longer-lasting qualities of the soul.

[ 30 ] I have often compared the development of the life body or etheric body and the astral body to the hour and minute hands of a clock. I have pointed out that if you recall what you knew and experienced as an eight-year-old child, and compare it to what you now know and have experienced, you will perceive a great difference. You have learned an infinite amount and absorbed many ideas; much of what you did back then has passed before your soul in experiences of joy and sorrow—not merely passed before it, but passed right through it. But if you now compare this with your temperament, your character, and your enduring inclinations, you will come to realize that if you were a quick-tempered child at age eight, you will likely still be so at your present age. Most people retain throughout their entire lives what lies within them as the foundation of their being. It has often been emphasized here that esoteric training does not consist of theoretical learning, but rather in directing evolution toward the otherwise stationary structures of the etheric body. The student has accomplished more if he has transformed one of these qualities of his temperament or his fundamental disposition and thereby moved the hour hand of the clock forward a little faster than it would otherwise have done. Everything that develops so slowly—the enduring inclinations, the enduring traits of temperament, the enduring habits—is anchored in the etheric or life body. Everything that changes comparatively as quickly as the minute hand of a clock is anchored in the astral body.

[ 31 ] If you now apply this to a person’s environment, to our life in the outside world, you will see that you are connected to your era, your people, and your family through your habits, temperaments, and enduring inclinations. It is precisely those qualities that a person possesses as enduring and constant within himself that one will find not only in him but in all those with whom he is connected in any way—that is, in his family, his people, and so on. The individual members of a people can be recognized by the fact that they share common habits and temperaments. This foundation of human inclinations and habits—which must be transformed if a person is to undergo higher spiritual development—is what constitutes his higher being. Such a person is therefore said to be “homeless,” because he must transform the etheric body through which he is otherwise connected to his people.

[ 32 ] So when we consider our coexistence with the communities into which we were born, we find that the qualities through which we belong to a family or a people—and through which we feel a kinship with the members of that people—are similar to the qualities that are alive in our own age. Just imagine how little you would be able to understand one another if a member of the ancient Greek people were to stand before you today. His etheric body is already too different from that of modern humans. It is through the shared characteristics in the etheric body that people understand one another. But that which sets people apart from what they have in common—that which makes them unique within the family or the nation— yet at the same time an individual in their own right—not merely a Frenchman, not merely a German, not merely a family member, but a unique member of the nation, the family, and so on—that which can emerge from the sum of the characteristics of their lineage is anchored in the astral body; the astral body is its bearer. The astral body thus contains more of the individual, the personal.

[ 33 ] Thus, when a person commits errors through his etheric or life body, he is more likely to become a sinner in the eyes of his fellow human beings, more likely to neglect the social duties that bind people together and make human social life possible. However, those sins that are more individual in nature—through which a person fails only as a distinct personality—are transgressions brought about by the qualities of the astral body.

[ 34 ] In all esoteric sciences, that which constitutes a fault against the community—that which flows from the flawed etheric body—has always been referred to as “guilt.” The common, trivial word “debt” has an origin quite similar to that of the moral term “guilt,” which refers to what one is morally indebted to another. Guilt is thus something that can be traced back to flawed qualities of the etheric body. But what adheres to the astral body as a flawed quality is called “temptation.” Temptation is that through which the individual takes on a personal sin. Now there remains the transgression of the “I,” the actual personality. This transgression of the “I”—that through which the “I” in particular can fall—is alluded to in the myth of Paradise: back when the human soul descended from the bosom of the Deity and entered the earthly body for the first time—that is, was absorbed by the earthly body like a drop of water by a sponge—its higher soul became the “I.”

[ 35 ] This higher soul, this sense of self, can commit errors within the “I.” Human beings can fall not only because of flawed qualities of the etheric and astral bodies, but there is also a fundamental possibility of sinning that arises from the very fact that human beings have attained independence in the first place. After all, in order to gradually and consciously ascend to freedom and independence, human beings had to pass through selfishness and egotism. They descended as souls that were once a part of the Divinity, which cannot fall into egotism. No part of an organism ever imagines itself to be independent. If, for example, a finger were to imagine this, it would break off and wither away. This independence, toward which human beings must develop and which will only attain its full significance when the fundamental quality of independence is selflessness, could never have come into being if it had not originated in self-interest.

[ 36 ] Selfishness took root in the human body, and as a result, man became a selfish, egotistical being. Thus we see how the “I” follows all the drives and inclinations of the body. Man devours his fellow man; he follows all manner of drives and desires; he is completely entangled in the earthly vessel, just as a drop of water is in the little sponge.

[ 37 ] The very fact that human beings, by becoming such “I”-beings—truly independent beings—were capable of sinning is hinted at in the myth of Paradise. Whereas he formerly drew from the universal, like a drop still in the water that draws its power from the collective mass of water, he now has all his impulses within himself. This is symbolized by the biting into the apple in the myth of Paradise; and not without reason—for all true meanings of words, insofar as they pertain to esoteric science, have a deep inner connection—not without reason does the Latin word *malum* mean both “evil” and “apple.” In esoteric science, the word “evil” is never used to refer to anything other than a transgression originating from the “I.”

[ 38 ] Evil, then, is a transgression originating from the “I”; guilt is the transgression committed by the etheric body in social life as it interacts with other people. Temptation is that which can affect the astral body insofar as it is individually and personally flawed. The transgression of the etheric or life body is therefore guilt; the transgression of the astral body is therefore temptation; the transgression of the “I” is therefore evil.

[ 39 ] When we consider the relationship of the four lower members of human nature to the environment—to the planetary body—we see that the physical body continually takes in physical matter as nourishment and thereby sustains its existence. We see that the life of the life body—or etheric body—in the finite world comes about through the fact that the human being, having grown up within a community of fellow human beings, sustains that community. We see that the astral body sustains itself by not succumbing to temptation. And finally, we see that the “I” sustains itself and undergoes its development in the proper way when it does not succumb to what is called evil.

[ 40 ] Now imagine all of human nature—the lower fourfold nature and the higher threefold nature—brought before your soul, so that you can say to yourself: Within each individual human being lives a divine spark, and the human being is, in his or her development, moving toward the divine, toward the full expression of his or her deepest, innermost nature. — Once he has brought this deepest, innermost nature to full expression, then, through gradual development, he has transformed his own being into that which in Christianity is called the “Father.” What lies hidden within the human soul, what stands before us as the great goal of humanity—that is the “Father in Heaven.” If a human being wishes to develop toward this, then he must have the strength to develop his higher Trinity and his lower Quaternity to the point where they properly sustain the physical body: The etheric or life body must live in such harmony with the human being that a balance is achieved with what lives within him as guilt; the astral body must not succumb to temptation, nor the ego body to evil. Human beings must strive upward through the three higher members toward the Father in heaven—through the Name, through the Kingdom, and through the Will. The Name must be perceived as such that it may be hallowed. — Look at the things around you; in their diversity, they are an expression of the Divinity! When you speak their name, you grasp them as members of the divine world order. Whatever you may have in your surroundings, regard it as holy; and in the name you give it, see something that makes it a member of the divine Being. Hold it sacred, grow into the realm that is an emanation of the Divine, and evolve toward that Will, which will be an Atma, yet at the same time a part of the Divine.

[ 41 ] Now imagine a person who, in meditation, is completely absorbed in this concept of development and is to summarize this concept—these seven stages of development—into seven petitions in a prayer. What will he say?

[ 42 ] To express what this prayer is intended to achieve, before reciting the seven petitions, he will say: “Our Father, who art in heaven.” This points to the deepest core of human nature, to the innermost being of the human being, which, according to Christian esotericism, belongs to the spiritual realm. The first three petitions refer to the three higher aspects of human nature, to the divine essence of the human being: “Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done—.”

[ 43 ] Now let us turn from the spiritual realm to the earthly realm: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The last four petitions refer to the four lower aspects of human nature.

[ 44 ] What shall we say about the physical body so that it may be sustained in planetary life? “Give us this day our daily bread.”

[ 45 ] What shall we say about the etheric or life body? “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” The balancing of what occurs as a result of the transgressions of the etheric or life body.

[ 46 ] What shall we say regarding the astral body? “Lead us not into temptation.”

[ 47 ] And what shall we say regarding the self? “Deliver us from evil.”

[ 48 ] Thus, in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, you see nothing other than the expression of the fact that the human soul, when it elevates itself in the proper way, implores the divine will to guide the individual parts of the human being toward such a development that the person may find his or her proper path through the universe and develop all parts of his or her nature in the proper way. The Lord’s Prayer is thus a prayer through which a person, in moments of need, is to rise to an understanding of the purpose of the development of their sevenfold human nature; and the seven petitions, even when they arise in the most naive person—who cannot understand them at all—are an expression of the spiritual-scientific view of human nature.

[ 49 ] Every form of meditation that has ever existed in major religious communities has sprung from the secret science. You can take any genuine prayer and analyze it word for word; you will never find that it consists merely of words strung together at random. It is not that one has followed some obscure impulse and strung together beautiful words; no, the great sages derived their prayer formulas from the teachings of wisdom that are today called spiritual science. There is no true prayer formula that has not been born of this great knowledge, and the great Initiate, the founder of Christianity, Christ Jesus, had the seven members of human nature in mind at the very moment he taught prayer; in his prayer, he gave expression to this sevenfold nature of man.

[ 50 ] This is how all the prayers are arranged. If they were not arranged in this way, they would lack the power to be effective over the course of millennia. Only what is arranged in this manner has the power to affect even the most unsophisticated person—someone who does not even understand the meaning of the words.

[ 51 ] A comparison of what lives in the human soul with what takes place in nature will make this clearer. Consider a plant: it delights you, and you need know nothing of the great, universal laws that brought it into being. The plant is there, and you can be uplifted by it. It could not have been created unless the eternal laws had flowed into it. The simple mind need not understand these laws. But if the plant is to be created, it must arise from these laws. If prayer is to be an effective prayer, it must not be arbitrarily invented but must have emerged from the eternal laws of wisdom, just as the plant has emerged from the eternal laws of wisdom. No prayer has any real meaning for the wise or the unwise unless it has emerged from primordial wisdom.

[ 52 ] Today is the age for people who have long contemplated the plant and drawn inspiration from it, an age in which they can be led to the wisdom contained in the laws. For two millennia, Christians have prayed in the same way that a naive person gazes at a plant. In the future, they will recognize the power of prayer stemming from the deep primordial wisdom from which prayer has flowed. All prayers—especially the central, focal prayer of Christian life, the Lord’s Prayer—are an expression of this primordial wisdom. And just as light manifests itself in the world through seven colors and the fundamental tone through seven notes, so too does human life—rising toward its God in sevenfold ways—express itself in the seven distinct feelings of elevation that relate to the sevenfold nature of the human being, in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

[ 53 ] Thus, the Lord's Prayer, as it stands before the soul of the anthroposophist, is the expression of the sevenfold human being.