The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. The Lord's Prayer

[ 1 ] When speaking of prayer in the Christian sense, one must first and foremost realize that the form of prayer is little more than contemplation—surrender to the Divine. In those major religions that seek to achieve this surrender more through intellectual contemplation, it is called meditation; in those religions where devotion springs more from the heart than from the mind—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. Millennia ago, people already knew that there is something eternal, something divine. Take, for example, the slave who tells himself: “One life among many.”—Hope for life, courage, strength, and security thus lived within people at that time. It was a kind of looking beyond the temporal toward the eternal. But an age had to come for humanity in which human beings would personally look up to their God. Exoteric Christianity says: An immense amount depends on the personality that journeys from birth to death. Thus, meditation also took on this personal character of prayer. But we must not forget that there is a primordial 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 atmosphere, then you have a Christian prayer. A prayer that asks for one’s own interests or personal affairs is not a Christian prayer. For example, imagine two armies prepared for battle, both praying for victory. — Two farmers: one prays for rain, the other for sunshine. What is God to do? True Christian prayer has nothing to do with such personal wishes and desires. Personal prayer—true prayer—can include personal petitions, but the overriding principle must be: “Not my will, but yours be done.” This sets the tone for prayer, drawn from 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 of which one can say that there is hardly anything in the world that contains as much and as important a message as this Lord’s Prayer. And then let us remember how Jesus Christ teaches us to use this prayer. “When you pray, go into your inner room,” he says.

[ 3 ] Everywhere, in all religions, you will find meditative formulas and incantations. These incantations even have the same meditative significance as the meditations themselves. Through them, people have sought to surrender themselves to their God in meditation; they have also sought to surrender themselves to their God through magical practices. But Jesus Christ admonishes: “You should not pray about what happens on the street; you should go deep, deep within yourselves when you pray.” Something of the divine essence lives within human beings; a drop of the divine essence lives in human beings, who are of the same substance as the deity. — The entire sea and the drop of water are also of the same substance.

[ 4 ] And now let us consider the universe and humankind in the manner that was customary in the early esoteric schools. To do so, let us go back to the time when human bodies, as it were, were preparing themselves and waiting for the divine seed of the human soul to descend from the Godhead. The world’s population at that time consisted of plants and other beings, including animal-like human bodies. The human being as we know him today did not yet exist. The souls were gradually preparing themselves for their present bodies. A spiritual fluid surrounded the Earth. Now imagine that someone took a hundred small sponges and collected a drop of this fluid in each one. Now you have a drop of the Divine in each one. The souls were previously in the ocean of the Divine; then they incarnated as drops. These souls were still very imperfect at that time during their first incarnation, but in embryonic form they already possessed the higher human essence—Atma, Buddhi, Manas—within them, ready to unfold and develop during earthly life. The animal-like human already possesses the four lower sheaths, but it is only through the soul that he transforms them and thereby receives Atma, Buddhi, and Manas.

[ 5 ] Now let us consider this development from an esoteric perspective, from two points of view: First, human beings are increasingly deifying themselves in Atma, Buddhi, and Manas; second, the drop of the Divine is within them.

[ 6 ] Let us first consider the higher human being from the perspective of his divine aspect. It has been said in Christian schools: First, consider the highest level of the divine essence, to which man will have ascended at the end of his development. Atma, the Will, which is of a volitional nature, is this highest level. 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. Through the Atma, the Divinity first allowed its will to flow into us. The divine will lives within us and in all things.

[ 7 ] Second, we have the buddhi within human beings. As the Divinity flows down into human beings, it moves from Atma to buddhi. How, then, does the divine will operate? We can only begin to grasp the divine will through the concept of sacrifice. Imagine you are looking into a mirror and see your image: this image resembles you. Now imagine that there were a creative will within you; you would then have sacrificed everything you have—your entire life, your whole being—to that image. You live within that image. In this way, you can comprehend the sacrificial creativity of the divine will. The divine Will is not only reflected in things and in images; it sacrifices everything into them, and thus the sacrificed divine Will is present throughout the entire universe. Thus, the Christian sees in every single thing in the world a reflection of the Divinity, of the divine will. You have the sacrificed Divinity throughout the cosmos, and this reflection of the Divinity was referred to in esoteric Christianity as the “Kingdom.” The divine will, reflected back a millionfold, was perceived as the Kingdom. That which creates as Atma, that which lives within us as Buddhi, that which creates outwardly in the world—this was referred to as the Kingdom.

[ 8 ] Now look up at what lives in the mirror image of the Divinity in the cosmos. The individual being can distinguish this through the “name.” This is Manas within us—the spiritual self—which is our name. Manas is the name within us and within every single thing outside. Thus, for humankind, 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 divinity resides, 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 dwells within our Atma. These three are the divine constituents of the human being. The human being was endowed with these divine constituents, and out in the world they are listed as Name, Realm, and Will.

[ 10 ] And now imagine that Christ wanted to teach his disciples by telling them: The Godhead was called the Father, and the Divine was called Heaven. Union with the Divine was possible only insofar as this Divine now gave itself to the three higher aspects of the human being.

[ 11 ] What must a Christian say when 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 aspects of the human being in the most precise manner. These first petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are derived from the higher spiritual nature of the human being.

[ 13 ] Now let us consider, from an esoteric perspective, the four lower bodies of the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego.

[ 14 ] The physical body is the one that humans share with all minerals, and into which physical substances and forces flow and out of which they flow every day. If a person wants to build up their physical body, they must pray 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, however, is more than just a personal one.

[ 15 ] In the etheric body, we share something in common within every family, within every people. By having an etheric body, you belong more to a species, to a genus. By having an astral body, you are more of an individual. You disturb the etheric bodies of those around you when you are not in harmony with them, and this was called “guilt”—that which one inflicts upon another through one’s etheric body. However, this also caused harm to oneself. Guilt therefore attaches to the etheric body or life body. You become indebted to your neighbor by injuring or harming 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 straying of the individual from the right path is temptation. The astral body succumbs to temptation. Everything that causes the individual to sin is temptation.

[ 17 ] The “I” is the source of human independence and, at the same time, the source of egoism and selfishness. In this sense, the “I” is evil—the symbol of it. Malam means both “apple” and “evil.” The Fall is evil—the absence resulting from egoism.

[ 18 ] If a Christian wishes to pray for the proper flourishing of his four lower members, he says the following on behalf of 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 ] This is how the Christian of the esoteric schools was to pray; these four formulas correspond to the four lower members of the human being. If you consider the last four petitions of the Lord’s Prayer in relation to the lower nature of the human being, you will find that they correspond to the four lower members, just as the first three petitions correspond to the three upper members of the human being. Thus, in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, you have the teaching on the sevenfold nature of the human being, as taught by spiritual science.

[ 21 ] In all major religions, there is no prayer or formula that does not stem from the profound wisdom of the universe, and it is precisely because they are born of this wisdom that these prayers have such a profound effect. The major religions owe their millennia-long influence to this primordial wisdom.

[ 22 ] The Father expresses the primordial essence of the world. There is no more beautiful way to describe this than in the Lord’s Prayer. Hence the power of the Lord’s Prayer—its ability to touch the heart and its strength. One cannot say that the naive person knows nothing of this wisdom. The naive person gains just as much from it. It is just as if he were enchanted by flowers yet had no inkling of the wisdom with which they are constructed. Thus, his soul can still be enchanted by the Lord’s Prayer without comprehending its wisdom. Even if one does not understand this wisdom that lives within the prayer, it can still possess this power for the person. Those who gave these prayers to humanity drew them from the deepest wisdom; hence the power of the great universal prayer. That is the secret of these prayers—that they were drawn from primordial wisdom by initiates and founders of religions.

[ 23 ] The time has now come for people to understand the meaning of these prayers. We are to pray the Lord’s Prayer, and do so daily. One needs to know nothing else about human nature other than what is stated in the Lord’s Prayer. For through it, a person would receive what theosophical wisdom has to say about human nature.

[ 24 ] The esoteric teachings of the school founded by the Apostle Paul ran deep. Outwardly, Christianity was presented in an exoteric manner. Paul commissioned Dionysius the Areopagite to cultivate this wisdom esoterically. Thus, the Kingdom of the Spirit was conceived as consisting of the principalities, dominions, and powers, and people told themselves: If we live as the Lord’s Prayer demands, we will ascend through the principalities, dominions, and powers all the way up to the cherubim, the seraphim, and ultimately to the Deity itself in the Lord’s Prayer.

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

[ 26 ] It is difficult to speak specifically about the “Amen.” I can only say that it is an ancient formula, expressed in a somewhat truncated way.

[ 27 ] We have thus seen to what extent the Lord’s Prayer and its powerful effect on the human soul embody the teaching of the sevenfold nature of the human being. That is why it is the most effective prayer. This rhythm, once struck within a soul, became conscious to those who knew esoterically: By praying the Lord’s Prayer, the Christian has prayed human theosophy and lived within prayer. - This “theosophy” is nothing new; rather, it is that which is in all hearts, that which is grasped by the spirit so that the light of knowledge may spread across the realm of the Divine. When this occurs in hearts and souls, the human being finds his path to the highest heights of the spirit, to which he can evolve.