The Lord's Prayer E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 109

Beschreibung

The Lord's Prayer stands at the heart of Christianity. Over the past two millennia it has been spoken millions of times by millions of people around the world. Rudolf Steiner affirms the power of this prayer, given by Jesus Christ himself, and encourages us to begin to understand it at deeper levels. Such an understanding, he explains, is now necessary for humanity's further development. In the four lectures he gave on this subject, collected here under one cover, Rudolf Steiner penetrates the esoteric meanings of the Lord's Prayer, relating its seven petitions to the seven spiritual and physical bodies of the human being. He also discusses the difference between prayer and meditation, and shows how true prayer is selfless in nature. This volume features an introduction by Judith von Halle, whose work is valued for her experiential knowledge of the Lord's Prayer and the events of Christ's life.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

An Esoteric Study

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Earlier English publications in: The Lord’s Prayer (Anthroposophic Press 1970); The Christian Mystery (Anthroposophic Press 1998); The Christian Mystery (Completion Press 2000). See also Notes

Originally published in German in the following volumes of the GA (Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach: Ursprungimpulse der Geisteswissenschaft (volume 96), and Das christliche Mysterium (volume 97). This authorized translation is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translated or checked against the original German and revised by Pauline Wehrle. The Introduction is translated by Matthew Barton

Translation and selection © Rudolf Steiner Press 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 290 8

Cover by Andrew Morgan DesignTypeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

Contents

Foreword by Judith von Halle

Lecture 128 January 1907, Berlin

Lecture 24 February 1907, Karlsruhe

Lecture 318 February 1907, Berlin

Lecture 46 March 1907, Cologne

Notes

Note on Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Foreword

In the progressive rise of consciousness soul development, and at a time when society largely regards secularism as an enlightened position, people often ask what the point or relevance of religious worship can be. The Christian churches are battling to stop their members continually drifting away—a result not only of weariness with outmoded institutional structures but also of the loss of spiritual content both within the churches themselves and in the hearts and minds of their adherents.

In the wake of these developments, prayer—both its form and meaning for modern people—is under critical scrutiny. One can often hear it said that prayer is no longer relevant to our age.

It is certainly legitimate to ask oneself such questions, and a fruit of human spiritual development. Nor need one refrain from critically examining religious traditions. Our human relationship to worlds of spirit is subject to continual change and therefore also requires a corresponding transformation of religious traditions, as called for by the founders of the Christian Community, the movement for religious renewal, in 1922. The goal of ‘I’-evolution is naturally to go beyond pure belief to knowledge of and insight into the reality of the human being’s divine home. Anthroposophical spiritual science provides the right tool for such endeavours for those engaged in spiritual self-development.

But even within the anthroposophical movement one can sense a certain distance from Christian concerns, also in relation to a deeper preoccupation with prayer. This is due not least to a misunderstanding about ways to advance scientific knowledge in the realm of spirit.

But time and again we should remember that anthroposophy owes its entire existence and influence to the Christ impulse, and that this legacy also includes Christianity’s archetypal prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.

We connect anthroposophy with the striving for freedom in individual self-development. In the Lord’s Prayer, however, it is not the first person singular that resounds but the first person plural—not ‘I’ but ‘we’. Doxologies and petitions are both directed to the world of spirit from the fraternal community of souls. Thus mere reason can, for a moment, hold fast to the idea that this displaces full expression of individual qualities. And one can ask whether personal, individually conceived prayer might be a more appropriate form of connection with the world of spirit for the consciousness soul age. But by finding greater clarity about the origin and nature of this prayer—indeed, if we study it with the means anthroposophy itself makes available to us—we can come to a quite new understanding of this prayer’s significance.

This prayer is unique in the world for it entered it through the God Himself who taught it to His disciples, and through them gave it to all humanity. It may strike people as strange that this prayer had to be taught to Christ Jesus’ companions, for we know that since pre-Christian times praying was not an activity reserved for special days of festival but practised each and every day. In Palestine at the start of the Christian era prayer was integral to life and indivisibly linked with it. So we can be sure that the disciples too, who did not belong to the priestly caste, were well versed in prayer. Yet this was one they had to learn. I do not mean that they had to learn the words by rote, but that they had to relearn praying in a deeper sense, to learn a new way to pray.

This teaching and learning suggests that the Lord’s Prayer marks a turning point in human evolution, the start of the human path towards freedom. Never before had a prayer been spoken in this way, for what comes to life in it derives directly from the source of all powers of knowledge which entered the human being with the ‘I’ through the sacrifice of the Son of God. So we should not think that the precisely formulated wording of the Lord’s Prayer, which first needs to be learned, stands in opposition to free human self-development. The content of this prayer, springing from the mouth of the incarnated Logos, is so mighty that a strictly formulated wording was indispensable—as deed of love accomplished to support and nurture human evolution. Only after millennia will the human being work his way through to a stage where he can, autonomously, grasp the content of the prayer learned at the turning point of time, perceiving and assessing his true spiritual nature through it. How full of future potential the Lord’s Prayer is will become apparent through this slow and gradual process of learning. The Logos imbued this prayer for humanity with science of the spirit—as it can be understood today through anthroposophical spiritual science: a mighty, creative work of spirit for gradually developing self-reliant perception and knowledge of the supersensible world, poured into earthly language.

Thus, originating from the divine, the prayer is able to accompany human ‘I’-evolution. It has been with us since the awakening of the fourth member of our being on the Easter Sunday of the turning point of time, and leads us towards freedom, into the future. We attain this future freedom as soon as we have fully penetrated the words: not only understanding them but wholly living them and transforming ourselves through them. Until we reach the point of fully developing the three higher sheaths of our being through the I’s conscious, moral, and indeed Christian power of action, this prayer will remain wholly ‘contemporary’: that is, until the end of earthly time, the end of the world.

The purpose of the Logos’ appearance in the physical world was to give human beings the possibility of returning to the Father, to the divine originating source of their being. This is why Rudolf Steiner called the Lord’s Prayer the ‘most universal prayer’.* It encompasses the whole of human development from the beginning of our era, all the way through to our evolution into a divine condition, our spiritualization through the Christ impulse as rendered possible by development of the higher bodies through the work of the ‘I’. The human being’s return to his divine nature is called ‘going to the Father’, and means merging with the Father will. This is the expression of the highest and only true freedom. This is how we should understand the ‘we’ form in the Lord’s Prayer, for in the evolutionary process of spiritualization the only possible path is that of wholly unegotistic appeal to the divinity. We know that ego is not the same as I.* A truly I-imbued invocation resounds in harmony with the invocations of the Christian family, in harmony with all souls yearning for the Trinity.

Anthroposophical spiritual science is dedicated to the perception and study of all things. It is the science of all that exists based on insight into the fact that all things have their originating source in spiritual reality. In this view we can study the significance of the Lord’s Prayer not just for the soul but also, more particularly, for the spirit. And when someone starts to devote himself conscientiously to this task, there rises in him an intuition that this prayer, taught by the Son of God, itself emanates living anthroposophy, and that, through speaking this prayer in a way appropriate to the consciousness soul age, he is transforming the tree of knowledge within him into the flourishing tree of life.

Judith von HalleDornach, Easter 2007

* Translator’s note: In German, ‘das umfassendste Gebet’.

* Translator’s note: The distinction is difficult in English as ‘ich’ is often translated as ‘ego’.

Lecture 1

28 January 1907, Berlin

Today I should like to talk about the extent to which religious denominations reveal, in specific instances, their spiritual-scientific or, let us say, their esoteric foundations. I want to tell you about a very small yet infinitely important part of the inner scientific basis of religions. Everyone, even the most unsophisticated people in contemporary society, know of this spiritual actuality within which the most profound truths and origins lie concealed. And we have only to seek for these to bring to light how wisdom-filled and mysterious are the connecting links in the spiritual life of humankind.

I should like to begin with the subject of Christian prayer. You are all aware of what is called Christian prayer today. We have often discussed it here, too, and many an anthroposophist will have wondered how this relates to the spiritual-scientific view. Over recent years members of the anthroposophical movement have heard, through this world conception, something about another form of raising the human being—the human soul—up to the sphere of the divine-spiritual cosmic powers, namely meditation, the kind in which one experiences a spiritual content within oneself, something belonging to what has been given to us by the great guiding spirits of humankind, or something from the spiritual content of great civilizations, something in which we immerse ourselves so that for a short while our soul merges with the divine-spiritual currents in the world.

Those who meditate, even in the simplest way, on one of the meditative formulas coming from the spiritual leaders of humankind, devoting their mind entirely to the thought content of any of those formulas and ensuring that it really comes alive in their hearts, will experience a uniting with the higher spirituality—a higher force will flow through them. But not every subject is suitable for this, you know, only one given by the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings.1 Those meditating will live in this higher force. And the first thing that will happen is that they will acquire the strength that will enhance their ordinary mental capacity, raising it up and enlivening it. If they then have enough patience and perseverance to the point of enabling this flow of power to strengthen them morally and intellectually they will reach the moment when the content of such a meditation can awaken deeper forces latent in every human soul. Through this kind of meditation any of a number of stages can be reached, from the smallest gain in moral strength to the highest attainments in clairvoyance. For most people the attainment of higher stages of clairvoyant abilities is only a matter of time, patience and energy.

Meditation is usually regarded as more of an oriental way of raising oneself to one’s God. In the West, particularly in Christian communities, prayer has taken its place. It is by prayer that Christians reach up to their God, and this is the way they endeavour to seek entry into higher worlds.