1. The Sway of the Trinity in Human Destiny
At the end of the previous V. contemplation attention was already drawn to the relation between the two principal parts of the Sermon on the Mount—the Beatitudes and the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. There the view was expressed that the Beatitudes refer in particular to the path of Man toward the Son, whereas the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer concern the relation of Man to the Father, as this becomes possible through the mediation of the Son.
To understand, therefore, that part of the Sermon on the Mount which culminates in the Lord’s Prayer, one must consider the relation of Man to the Father-God. Yet this is accompanied by the greatest of difficulties, for it concerns a realm that ordinary human consciousness perceives no more than it perceives the experiences of the state of deep sleep. For here we are dealing with the domain of existence in which destiny is woven.
Now, Man ordinarily experiences only the visible effects of destiny, yet not the processes that prepare these effects. The latter remain hidden behind the threshold of waking consciousness. And it is good that this is so, for thereby the openness of initiative and hope is preserved for the human being. But after death (or on corresponding stages of initiation) Man gains insight into the processes through which the turns of destiny come into being. He experiences first of all the process of translating his entire life-tableau into the moral. What lived in his ether-body as memory-images is here illuminated by a source of light that makes clear not only the facts of the life that has passed, but above all their moral value. No selection is made, no separation of the good from the bad—the components of the biography are merely shone upon by an impersonal light that causes their moral content to appear.
This illumination of the life-tableau with the light of moral thought is the work of the Third Hierarchy. And the ‘reception’* of the network of destiny-connections of the deceased by the Angels, Archangels, and Archai consists inwardly precisely in this: that the life-tableau passes over from the light of human memory-force into the light of moral value-bestowal. The fabric of facts (‘web of destiny’) of the completed earthly life of a deceased human being is taken up by the Third Hierarchy at the moment when it has passed from the region of memory into the region of moral interiorization.
The subsequent process is a great, immensely important cosmic repetition of the process that was foreshadowed on the hill of Golgotha in a visible-sensory manner. On the hill of Golgotha, the Crucified One was offered a sponge with vinegar after He had spoken the words: “I thirst!” And He drank the vinegar.
Thus, the Second Hierarchy absorbs the human destiny that is offered to it from below. The beings of the Second Hierarchy ‘drink’ the drink of the human course of life, mixed as it is of good and evil. They absorb it just as directly as a drink is absorbed when it is drunk. And the ‘digesting’** of the rightful consequences of Man’s earthly life in the Exousiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes consists in the fact that the moral value‑substance of the earthly life is taken up by these beings into their star‑harmony‑perception. All poison and all gall of the earthly life is taken up by the Hierarchies, together with the Good that it contains. If this were not so—that is to say, if Heaven did not continually ‘drink’ the ‘vinegar’ from the ‘sponge’ of the Earth—then earthly existence would already have fallen prey to complete poisoning, just as the human organism would have fallen prey to poisoning if the poisons would not have been ‘drunk’ out of the liver‑’sponge’ and the gallbladder.
The third phase of the karmic formative process in the spiritual world consists in the designing of the future earthly life on the basis of the past through the deed of the entities of the First Hierarchy. Then the content of the past life disappears into the darkness of the world‑midnight—and from there the resurrecting future‑forms of the coming life‑content emerge. This content is now poured from above out of the bowl and taken up by the Second Hierarchy. In the Second Hierarchy it becomes sound—the sounding of the trumpet‑calls of destiny of which the Revelation of John speaks. And through the entities of the Third Hierarchy the future karma is inscribed into the “Book of the karmic mystery” and sealed with ‘seven seals’.
The ‘Keeper of the Seal’ of this book is, for the earthly destiny of every human being, his Angel. Only the Angel has access to the secret of the individual destiny; he knows it, and out of this knowledge he unfolds his protective activity toward his human being.
Just as the process of the ascent of the fruits of human life into the spiritual world in its essential characteristics can be found in the second lecture of the cycle on Karma Research (Dornach, 1924) by Rudolf Steiner, so, on the other hand, the essential characteristics of the descent of the ripened future destiny can be found in the Revelation of John. For the ‘Bowls of wrath’ of God, the ‘Trumpet‑calls’, and the ‘Seals’ of which the Apocalypse reports are stages of the descent of the ripened karmic judgment. Only, in the Apocalypse the process is depicted in the reverse order; for knowledge ascends in the opposite direction to that of the realm of events and revelation.
Thus, the three Hierarchies are involved in the forming of human karma. This process is in essence the pronouncing of a judgment of the world upon the workings of the earthly human being. In the coming‑into‑being of this judgment three world‑principles work together. The Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father work together therein, whose representatives the three Hierarchies are.
And indeed, the Spirit shows the spiritual‑moral balance of the earthly life of the human being; the Spirit gives the entire—morally re‑valued—image of the earthly life that is to be judged. Then the Son takes it into Himself and raises His intercession to the Father. What on the hill of Golgotha sounded in human language from the lips of the crucified Christ Jesus: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”—that resounds in the spiritual world again and again whenever the life of an earthly human being is judged. In essence this is the cosmic intercessory argument of Christ before the Father, which gathers into itself all the details of the mitigating moral reasons.
And for this intercession the following holds: the unconsciously accomplished evil has wholly different consequences for the course of destiny than the consciously accomplished evil. The ‘not knowing what one does’ is always placed upon the scales before the highest judgment‑seat of the world, where the mitigating is weighed.
When the life‑image of the human being has been illuminated by the Spirit and has become permeated with the interceding Spirit of the Son, it ascends into the dark region of the world‑midnight hour. There it is judged by the Father, for the decision lies in the hands of the Father.
This event too was foreshadowed on Golgotha in a physical‑sensory manner: the words of the dying Christ Jesus, as they are transmitted in the Gospel of Luke, express in human language the final event before the entry into the darkness of death. For because Christ Jesus spoke the words before dying: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit”, He handed over in the hour of death the destiny of mankind—permeated with His own entity—to the decision of the Father, who rules over death. And the subsequent Resurrection was the judgment of the Father upon mankind permeated by Christ.
In a similar way, out of the mysterious darkness of world‑midnight after death the souls of human beings arise, enveloped by their newly created ‘body of destiny’, which is woven out of the resurrected righteous forms of the consequences of the destiny of their previous life.* Thus the mystery of the Resurrection takes place for every destiny of the human being between death and rebirth in the spiritual world, just as it took place nineteen centuries ago in the physical world.
From this total picture of the formative processes of the future karma it may be gathered, among other things, that the Father‑God speaks to Man through accomplished destiny‑events. Whereas the Spirit speaks through the moral contents of knowledge and the Son through the moral life, the Father speaks only through events—that is to say, through morally judging occurrences. Thus, destiny alone is the realm in which Man has his relation to the Father. Karma is the organ through which Man receives, develops and deepens his relation to the Father.
This fact gives rise to the following important question: when the relation of Man to the Father during earthly life is determined by the fulfilled, ripened karma from the past, is there then a possibility that Man can change this relation out of his consciousness and his will? Is there, in other words, a way to change the already ripened karma—that is to say, the karma that has been caused and shaped through judgment? Is there a way to move the Father-God to a change of His judgment?
To this question Christ Jesus Himself gave an answer in the Sermon on the Mount, in that He instituted the Lord’s Prayer as the primal example of the conscious human intervention in the realm where the ordinations of the Father hold sway. The seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are destiny‑wrought words, which can be heard by the Father, and thereby trace out the path along which a more intimate, more conscious, and deeper relation of Man to the Father-God can be attained.
How, and in what sense, the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer can become destiny‑forming currents, and wherein the approach of Man to God the Father consists—this is what the following considerations on the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer aim to express.
2. Some General Viewpoints on the Lord’s Prayer as a Whole
If one approaches the Lord’s Prayer with a soul filled by the questions mentioned above, one is deeply moved by a fact that stands out in the text of the seven petitions. One is moved, namely, by the fact that the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer in no form mention the ‘I’, the individual ‘I’ of Man. Nowhere is there any mention of my Father, my guilt, etc., which would be a starting‑point for, for example, mystical deepening or religious devotional prayer‑mood — but there is exclusively mention of the ‘we’: of our Father, our guilt, and so forth.
This fact can lead to the first fundamental point of view under which the Lord’s Prayer must be considered, namely, the point of view that the Lord’s Prayer is not intended at all for personal use; because, in other words, a consciousness occupied with personal and individual matters cannot find its way with the Lord’s Prayer. For the fulfilment of special wishes of the individual, for the blissful sinking of the solitary mystic, for the pursuit of ‘self‑development’, the Lord’s Prayer is not intended. It cannot be intended for these things for the reason that it is addressed to the Father‑God. For the Father‑God is concerned with the Hierarchy of humanity, not with groups or individuals.
Individuals can come into consideration for a conscious relation to the Father‑God only insofar as they can be regarded as representatives of their Hierarchy, as a cosmic destiny‑community. And as representative of the Fourth Hierarchy only that human being can be regarded who has made the destinies of this Hierarchy his own. His consciousness must occupy itself with the questions of the destiny of mankind when he, in the name of mankind, utters the seven petitions concerning the seven needs of the destiny of humanity. Then his voice has become the voice of humanity, for the unconscious voices of all human beings form the accompanying choir to the voice that consciously utters the seven needs of humanity.
Only choirs of the Hierarchies penetrate upward to the Father‑God; the solo voices fall silent already on earlier, nearer thresholds. For this reason, poets depict choirs of angelic hosts (whether the spiritual Hierarchies sing Gloria or Hosanna to the Father‑God may remain undecided here). The Fourth Hierarchy forms no exception: if its word is to ascend to the Father‑God, it must occur spiritually‑morally in choir. And what the choir of humanity has to say to the Father‑God is contained in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, which were spoken by Christ Jesus as representative of mankind.
The Lord’s Prayer is the spiritual‑moral choral utterance of the Fourth Hierarchy. It contains within itself everything that human beings, through all the toil of labor, through all the pain of illness, through all the anxiety and fear of death, but also through all striving toward the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, say upward — up to the threshold of the Father‑sphere. For this reason, the Lord’s Prayer is also the best means of schooling for unselfishness and the most comprehensive and secure source from which knowledge of the true destiny of humanity can be obtained.
The fact that the Lord’s Prayer expresses seven existential needs of mankind brings with it another point of view of fundamental importance for understanding the Prayer. For if the seven petitions signify needs of mankind, then there must also be something present in these petitions that contains within itself a possibility of resolving these needs. For if the situation of need of mankind is karmically determined, then it would certainly not suffice to influence karma merely through petitions — the petitions themselves must contain something that grants them karmic validity. This karmically effective element is indeed contained in the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer — yes, it is not only present in the petitions, it is also added by Christ Jesus Himself as a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer. For immediately before the Lord’s Prayer the Gospel of Matthew cites the words: “Do not do as the heathen do. For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8).
And immediately after the Lord’s Prayer it says: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your trespasses; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14–15). Thus, the Lord’s Prayer does not concern mere petitions, but justified petitions. And that which justifies the petitions is the principle of the moral balance that underlies the karmic destiny‑disposition. The scales are not only in ancient mythology a symbol of justice, but they are a cosmic reality that manifests itself as karma. The constellation Libra in the zodiac is its cosmic sign. And one understands the Lord’s Prayer as a karmic possibility of working only when one considers it under this sign. *
Now, the concept of ‘scales’ however is connected with a ‘right’ and ‘left’, that is to say, with the horizontal direction. And this representation applies especially when it is applied to the causal relation of former earthly lives to the present. For there, a continual balancing is indeed taking place. But for understanding the Lord’s Prayer this representation is not sufficient. For in the Lord’s Prayer, it is not a matter of the realization of the karma caused by the past, but of the determination of a future karma in the present. The seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer signify an active determination of karma, not merely a petition that karma may be fulfilled — in this respect Man need not be concerned.
Since the Lord’s Prayer concerns the present determination of karma, the ‘scales’ that underly the Lord’s Prayer and that grant the petitions their karmic justification are to be imagined not horizontally but vertically. One pan of the balance is to be thought in Heaven, the other on Earth. The upper pan is in the realm of grace of the Father, but the lower in the realm of initiative of Man. And in the middle, which provides the balance, stands the Son, through whom alone one can ‘come’ to the Father.
The fact that the Son becomes the Lord of karma means, among other things, that the karmic scales weigh not only horizontally but also vertically. Christian karma, in which the principle holds: “Ask, and it shall be given you; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” differs in this from the ‘Law of the Ancients’, the karma of the Old Covenant, which after the sacrificial deed of Christ Jesus is weighed not only horizontally but also vertically; which means that, in addition to the law whose principle is “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” the new law becomes increasingly valid, whose principle is expressed especially in the Lord’s Prayer. What the vertically oriented scales of karma mean morally‑spiritually, and what the essential nature of the ‘new law’ is of which Christ is the Lord — these are the questions for the following considerations, whose answering forms the task of these deliberations. It will therefore further be a matter of making visible, on the basis of the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, the essential nature of the new relation of Man to the Father‑God — that is to say, of the ‘New Covenant’ as the Christian karma in which the weighing is vertical.
3. The Seven Petitions of the Lord’s Prayer as a
Path to the New Destiny‑Relationship with the Father‑God
It is one of the real difficult tasks of the present time to make clear to those who have
remained untouched by spiritual science, the difference between thinking,
reflection, and meditation. This is made particularly difficult by the fact
that, on the one hand, meditation presents itself as a consequence of a deeper reflection,
yet on the other hand, in certain respects, it not only differs from reflection,
but is also opposed to it. For while in ordinary thinking the aim is to
obtain a unique insight into the subject of reflection, in meditation the aim
is a repeated immersion in such an insight. Thinking stops at the point where
it has discovered something – for occupying itself any further with what is
already known it finds no occasion. Yet this is the point at which meditation
can begin. For the occasion for meditation lies not in the acquisition of a new
knowledge, but in living within the knowledge already attained.
Finding a new content of thought is not the motive for meditation, but bringing this content into the realm of feeling and willing. To make the content of truth into the content of the whole human being — this is the aim of meditation, which is continued for as long as is necessary in order to transform the clear content of thought into clear content‑of‑force of the will. For this treason meditation is an exercise, whereas reflective thinking is a single purposeful act.
But now something similar happens to meditation in the course of its development, as happens in the course of the development of reflective thinking that becomes meditation. Just as reflective thinking, once it has arrived at insight, can at this point either stop or transform itself into the practice of meditation, so a meditation that has advanced to the illumination of the will can at this point either cease, or transform itself into another, higher activity. This higher activity, which can come to blossom out of meditation — as its higher stage — sets in at the point where the original motive for meditation has exhausted itself. For when the aim of the meditator consists in permeating himself completely with a content, then there can come a certain moment in which the meditator knows: the thought fills my whole being.
This moment, however, can at the same time give birth to the motive for a further activity. For through the fact that the content of the meditation permeates the will, it becomes a will dedicated to the world. This dedication of the will to the world brings with it also the demand for its activity for the benefit of the world. If the motive of meditation had until then been the strengthening of the clear and good capacities of one’s own soul, it now becomes the will to contribute to the strengthening of the Good and the Clear in the world. The repeated exercise of the forces of the soul thereby becomes a repeated exertion of these forces. There it is no longer a matter of something being done for one’s own development, but rather of something necessary coming to pass in the world. Meditation thereby becomes a conscious participation in the objective world‑process.
The question concerning the essence and origin of the concept of God can, for example, give rise to a many‑sided and deep reflection. Thus the ‘Name of the Father’, imprinted since primordial times as a seal‑impression into the consciousness of humanity, can become the subject of meditation. Yet this meditation elevates itself to a participation in a spiritual event when the human being lets the forces of his thinking, feeling, and willing stream into the sentence: “Hallowed be Thy Name.” Then it is no longer a matter of the question what the Name is, nor merely of the exercise for the sake of schooling; but it becomes a matter of the Name of the Father being hallowed.
Such an outpouring completed in the name of humanity of the thought-, feeling- and will-faculties of Man, proceeds from a living connection with a higher member of Man than the members designated as psychical. For the reflective thinking that makes use of the logical faculty of thought is an activity made possible by the Intellectual Soul. If the reflective thinking becomes meditation, in the sense of an ever more intensive becoming‑conscious of what is already known, then in the meditative practice the Consciousness‑Soul is active; however, if the meditation reaches the realm of macrocosmic events, then the Spirit‑Self (Manas) enters into the spiritual activity of Man. The former expresses itself in the fact that Man devote his faculties to the affairs of the world.
Of the world affairs to which Man can devote himself, the most important for him to begin with is to counteract the estrangement of heaven and earth, in that he can strive to create a connection between the two realms. This is the first task of the free human ‘I’: to become a free link between heaven and earth.
Now the ‘I’ is that which signifies the most primordial essence of Man’s nature. The ‘I’ of Man is his true name in the cosmos. This name can be spoken only by the human being concerned himself (a fact to which Rudolf Steiner has pointed on several occasions in different contexts). No human being can say ‘I’ to the other; this word has meaning and weight only when it is heard from the mouth of the human being in question himself. This absurdity of the primordial usage of the name by one human being toward the other is at the same time an expression of the inviolability of the inner sanctuary, of freedom, of the ‘I’. The unutterability of the ‘name’ of another human being is the outermost sensibly perceptible expression of the fact of this name being protected, as the primordial property of Man, against misuse — that is to say, against the violation of his freedom. That the sanctuary of the human name is hallowed — that has been provided for by world‑karma for as long as Man himself does not betray his ‘name’, that is to say, does not himself give up his freedom and consciously bows before another power (Luke 4:7).
If the human ‘name’ can only be ‘spoken’ by the human being concerned, so the ‘Name’ of the Father‑God can be ‘spoken’ by no one in the above-intended sense. For the individualities of the beings of the world have arisen out of the Beingness of the Father, so that this Father-Beingness is transsubjective for all beings, that is to say: it stands behind the individual subject. And because the individualities of these beings exist, the Beingness of the Father itself utters their ‘names’. The separate individualities are ‘letters’ through which the ‘Word’ of the spoken Name of the Father comes to expression. And the totality of human individualities signifies the Name of the Father, as He manifests Himself in the world through the human hierarchy. Therefore the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, according to its content, says: “Hallowed be the freedom of all individualities of humanity, just as the freedom of the individual personalities is hallowed; for the freedom of the individual (his ‘name’) has meaning and significance only when it resounds in the great Freedom‑Name of humanity, that is to say: in the Name of the Father.”
“Hallowed be Thy Name” is therefore the petition for the realization of the Hierarchy of Freedom as a whole; it is the petition for the great consonance of the many names in the one Name of the Father, which is no mere sum of individual names, but a revelation of the Father through the consonance of all beings of the human hierarchy. And in the sense of this petition not a single being of this choir may be lost, for then the revelation of the great Name would be incomplete. Hallowed the great Name of the Father ought to become – and with it also all individual personalities, added as they are to the hallowed, that is, the inviolable and protected All‑Union in the Name of the Father.
The striving toward this All‑Union is the revelation of the essence of the Spirit‑Self or Manas in Man, that is, of the bearer of the mission of the ‘I, of his true individual ‘name’, from incarnation to incarnation. The Spirit‑Self is in fact that member of Man that aspires to bring to manifestation the tone of individuality that is included within the harmony of the world.
Now this tone would have come into its own, had it not been opposed by a false tone, a wrong ‘name’. For just as the Spirit‑Self is attuned to the harmony of individuality with the cosmos, so is the Luciferic personality principle in the astral body attuned to a tone of its own, one that fails to take into account the harmony of the world. A consequence of this Luciferic intrusion is the emergence of the cacophony, the dissonance in the human hierarchy.
All fragmentation of humanity occurs as a consequence of this ‘false name’ of Man, which has arisen out of the principle of egoism. And against this fragmentation of humanity, against the false freedom of egoism, the petition of the Lord’s Prayer is directed: ‘Hallowed be Thy Name’ — to which petition the knowledge is foundational that the hallowing of the Name of the Father means the hallowing of every individual true name, but that the true name of the individual being can only come into its own insofar as Man regards the ‘name’, the inner freedom, of every other human being as just as holy as his own name is hallowed, for Such an outpouring, completed in the name of humanity, of the thinking, feeling, and willing faculties of Man, proceeds from a living connection with a higher member of Man than the members designated as psychical. For the reflective thinking that makes use of the logical faculty of thought is an activity made possible by the Intellectual Soul. If the reflective thinking becomes meditation, in the sense of an ever more intensive coming conscious of what is already known, then in the meditative exertion the Consciousness‑Soul is active; however, if the meditation reaches the realm of macrocosmic events, then the Spirit‑Self (Manas) enters into the spiritual activity of Man. The former expresses itself in the fact that Man dedicates his faculties to the affairs of the world.
Thus the scale‑principle lies at the foundation of the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer. One could therefore inwardly think the words ‘as we hallow the names of human beings’ along with the petition ‘Hallowed be Thy Name’. This inwardly thought part of the petition gives the inner justification for the petition. For only the hallowing of the inner source of freedom in the other human being gives Man the right to express the petition that through this source of freedom of all human beings the Father may reveal Himself and may hallow this source, in that His Name itself be hallowed.
But in contrast to, for example, the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, where the justified part of the petition is indeed expressed, this part remains unspoken in the first petition. The reason for this silence can well be understood when one considers that the Lord’s Prayer was on the one hand given in a particular developmental epoch of humanity, but on the other hand was not intended solely for that epoch. Can it then be said, in an exoteric‑general sense, of that stage of development toward freedom that was reached in the fourth cultural epoch, or even of the present stage of development: "as we hallow the name of human beings"? Was the inviolability of the human inner freedom valued so highly at that time — and is it valued so highly today — that such words corresponded, and still correspond, to the actual developmental stage of humanity? — The unspoken parts of the Lord’s Prayer will resound — gradually — when humanity shall have reached the corresponding stage of spiritual development. And during the sixth epoch (of ‘Philadelphia’ from the Apocalypse) the Manas‑petition of the Our Father will also, in its unspoken part, sound within the consciousness of a wider circle of humanity.
If the essence of the striving of the Spirit‑Self lies in the petition for the hallowed All‑Union of all human beings, the intrinsic striving of the Life‑Spirit (Buddhi) goes further in that same direction. Here it is not only a matter of the realization of the unity of the human hierarchy, but above all of the realization of the mission of this united human hierarchy in relation to other beings. For there are beings in the world that are dependent on humanity. These are the beings that are encompassed by the collective concept ‘nature’. The dependence of the kingdoms of nature on humanity consists in this, that nature is indeed subject to so‑called ‘laws of nature’, but that the moral law is valid only in the inner being of Man, whereas nature is excluded from it.
This fact, and the tasks and duties arising from it for humanity, were already discussed in the previous contemplation (in connection with the saying ‘the salt of the earth’); what is essential here is to take a further step, in the sense of a deeper and more precise understanding of these tasks and duties. And what matters first of all is that one considers more closely the stages of the work of the redemption of nature by humanity.
The first of these stages is the insight of the consciousness‑soul having become conscience‑soul into the connection between the condition of nature as decadent humanity and the human Fall; upon this there follows, as a further stage, the realization of the connection of nature with the moral‑spiritual through the Manas‑bearing humanity.
But this connection, which will be realized through the addition of the ‘salt of the earth’, the Moral Ether, does not yet signify the redemption of nature. The latter is reserved for the future Venus‑existence of the evolution of the Earth, when the Buddhi‑ or Life‑Spirit‑principle of humanity will have been fully unfolded. Then the radiance proceeding from the moral strength of Man will not only give direction to nature, but it will endow the beings of nature themselves with moral life‑force. Nature will then not only be guided in that it will follow human beings in full trust, but it will itself come into the possession of its own moral forces. Then, for example, the descendants of the earthly plant‑kingdom will no longer determine their form through growth according to ‘organic’ laws, but according to moral laws. There will then no longer be species of, for instance, phanerogamous [seed‑bearing] and cryptogamous [non‑seed‑bearing] root‑plants, nor of leaf‑bearing and leafless or rootless plants, but imaginatively‑moving forms of, for example, Goodness, Gratitude, Humility, etc., which will come to blossom in resounding revelation.
The Kingdom of Nature will then become a fundamentally different realm. It will raise
itself morally and acquire an independent relationship to the Kingdom of the Heavens—no
longer in the sense of a hardened reflection of the cosmic past, but in the
sense of a present‑time response to
the spiritual events in the heavens. Nature will then awaken from its sleep;
that is to say, it will no longer be dependent on dream‑memories of the past, but will be placed within spiritual presence.
The Kingdom of the Father will become present. The petition that expresses the intrinsic
striving of the Life‑Spirit, of
Buddhi—“Thy Kingdom come”—is the petition that the Kingdom of the Heavens may
become present within
nature.
In order that this petition may, however, also be justified, it must contain something — even if unspoken — that could be laid on the other scale of the balance.
If nature is to enter into a different relationship to the Godhead, then humanity, too, would obviously have had to do something out of itself, in order that such a change might come about. For if the petition consists in this, that nature be freed from the bonds of the past and the Kingdom of the Heavens become present, then on the part of humanity, in its relation to time, something would have to take place that would correspond to the change in the relation of nature to time.
In order that nature be granted the presence of the Kingdom of the Heavens (that is to say, that the soul of nature awaken, for the present is the principle of the soul, just as the future is the principle of the spirit and the past that of the body), Man himself has to refrain from the present and live the future. This is the essential nature of Buddhi‑consciousness: all presence is given away to the surroundings, while Man himself lives only out of and for the future. And in that Buddhi‑consciousness will come into effect within humanity, humanity will cause soul to stream out into nature, while it will itself be devoted to the spirit.
It will then renounce the Present in favor of nature, and will itself be dedicated to the preparation and realization of the Future.
In this sense, the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer could, as a whole, be understood approximately in the following way: “May Thy Kingdom become Present, as we live the Future. Deliver nature from the bonds of the Kingdom of the Past and grant her the presence of Thy Kingdom, as we renounce the Kingdom of the Present and devote ourselves to the Kingdom of the Future.”
Now, dedication to the future is in essence living for the aims of the future, which Man takes up into his will. Then he lives in his will the future ahead, while devoting his heart to the surroundings. This state of consciousness is the state of his crucifixion. The crucifixion is the sacrificial devotion of the forces of the heart — that is to say of the present — to the surroundings, while the will extends itself into the far future. For this reason, the petition for the coming of the Kingdom always contains a certain degree of the crucifixion of human consciousness. And the degree of his crucifixion is also decisive for the degree of the justification and thereby of the efficacy of that petition.
The sacrificial deed of human consciousness can, however, go still further than the renunciation of the Present. It can also renounce the willing of the Future. Then the sacrifice is complete: nothing remains of consciousness — even its very existence becomes doubtful. If consciousness accomplishes this highest sacrificial deed, then it passes through the experience of death. And the wonder of its resurrection, which may follow upon it, is the act of the Father‑God, who brings about the revelation of the reality of the Spirit‑Man (Atma).
The petition “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in the heavens” is the renunciation of the will, yet at the same time the handing‑over of this will to the beings of the lower realm.
Just as the full realisation of the second petition is reserved for the future Venus‑existence, so is the full realisation of the third petition reserved for the future Vulcan‑existence. For it is a literal truth — applying in a special way to the Lord’s Prayer — that was announced in the words: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.”
Thus the words of the third petition retain validity up to the Vulcan‑period in the evolution of humanity. And their validity will prove itself in this period in that, as a consequence of the sacrificial death and resurrection of the advanced humanity, the lower, retarded human kingdom will be redeemed. Then the inner being of the Earth itself, the core of Evil, will be transformed, and the will of the Father will literally be done on earth as it is done in the heavens.
The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer therefore contain, as their inner justification, the renunciation of one’s own thinking — that is to say, of one’s own naming — of feeling, and of willing. And indeed, the renunciation of one’s own thinking is the condition for the Manas‑petition; the renunciation of one’s own feeling is connected with the Buddhi‑petition, and the renunciation of one’s own willing is present in the Atma‑petition of the Lord’s Prayer.
For the meaning of the fourth petition, as a petition, consists precisely in this: that our bread be received today from the hands of the Father. Thus, it is a matter here of the human consciousness orienting itself toward the working of the Father in the bread as physical substance. Nor is it a matter of a merely symbolic ‘bread’, nor of merely symbolic food. For food is that which is necessary for life in a physical body on earth — but it is not only necessary so that Man may live, but also so that he may live as a human being.
The physical body is not merely a combination of substances, but also a structure of forces — the moral will-forces of the world. And as such it needs, on the one hand, substances, and on the other hand, moral forces, in order to remain not only a merely physical structure, but also an organization directed toward the spiritual‑soul nature of Man.
The body of Man lives, as a human body, in the literal sense ‘not by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God’. In the deepest depths of the subconsciousness the Word of God resounds, shaping and supporting the body, just as on the other side, in the depths of the metabolic system, the processes of the assimilation of food for the building up of the body take place. And it belongs indeed to both the life and the sustaining of the body that the one as well as the other take place.
In the present time (‘today’) these two living conditions have the task of keeping the body in balance. In the scene of the temptation in the wilderness, the fact of the necessity of this balance was expressed through the words of the Christ Jesus when He said: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
The fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is thus an expression of the necessity of this balance — a petition for this balance. According to its inner meaning, it is the petition of humanity for the same strength that the Christ Jesus revealed in rejecting the temptation to turn stones into bread. Conceptually, it could therefore be rendered approximately as follows: “Give us in the present time the earthly bread that, just as the heavenly Word is permeated by the working of Your essence — the bread for which we hunger.”
As the fourth petition relates to the metabolic and volitional processes in the physical body, so the fifth petition relates to the corresponding inner sphere of activity of the etheric body. For the etheric body, too, possesses its own ‘metabolic‑will organization’. Its ‘metabolism’ expresses itself in its life of memory: the experiences of the past continue to live on in the etheric body and fill it, just as foodstuffs fill the physical body. Its volitional activity, however, expresses itself in the moral processes of ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’, that is, in the erasing of certain experiences or, conversely, in the strengthening of them.
Thus, the etheric body bears within itself both experiences from the past that bring about withering through cold currents, and experiences that bring about growth of being through radiations of warmth.
The moral aspect of ‘retaining’ and ‘forgetting’ in the etheric body lies namely in that sick‑making, negative contents are either outshone by the positive, health‑bringing contents, or themselves are outshone by them. Man can no longer change anything in this respect in the course of his life; the past stands there, immovable and unalterable, and its debts stand firm like pillars. And precisely because Man can no longer directly change anything in this respect, he directs the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer to the Father‑God — not merely on account of his personal guilt, but in the name of humanity, on account of the guilt borne by humanity.
The content of the petition is the hope that the negative Past from which humanity suffers will be erasesd. This wiping out of the Past, as a morally conscious ‘forgetting’, is forgiveness.
Yet the forgiveness on the part of the Father can take place only if, on the human, lower scale of the karmic balance, a counter‑value is laid. Thus the condition for the forgiveness of our debts is that we forgive our debtors.
If Man learns to ‘forget’ the morally negative in relation to other human beings within his astral being — where it is indeed within his power to change the contents — then his negativity will also be removed from his etheric body, where he has no power to change anything. Whoever erases in his astral body the guilt‑content of the other astrally - that is, as antipathy - in him the corresponding guilt‑contents in his etheric body will likewise be removed etherically, that is, as deep causes of illness.
However, in the fifth petition it is, as said, not only a matter of individual concerns, but of matters of humanity that encompass all that is individual. Therefore, it is not this or that individual guilt that is meant when forgiveness is asked, but the guilt of humanity from which individual guilt derives. This guilt of humanity is the same guilt that approached Christ Jesus in the temptation in the wilderness as a possibility: namely, to take possession of the earth at the price of worshipping the Lord of this world. Christ Jesus rejected this temptation; humanity, however, succumbed to it in the primal temptation in Paradise.
The so‑called ‘original sin’ is the result of the primal guilt of humanity, which on the one hand became ruler of the earth, but thereafter fell into a relation of dependence upon the Lord of this world. The forgiveness of the individual guilt of other human beings can therefore have the effect that the non‑individual primal guilt is extinguished in its consequences. For the petition joins itself each time to the voice of the Son, who continually lays before the Father the intercessory argument: “Forgive them, for they knew not what they did.” In order that this might come to pass, the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer — the prayer of the healing of the consequences of original sin — was spoken by Christ Jesus for humanity: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
Whereas the fifth petition concerns the forgiveness of the general guilt — the petition that found its justification in the forgiveness by the individual of the individual debts of other human beings toward him — the sixth petition concerns precisely the own individual debts of human beings. And it concerns these individual debts in the sense that the source, the very possibility of such debts, is the subject of the petition. For temptation is the cause and the beginning of such debts.
Now, the text of the sixth petition is such that one gains the impression as though the Father‑God would try to tempt the human being. That this is unthinkable is self‑evident; yet the fact remains that the petition still reads: “Lead us not into temptation.” The enigmatic character of this paradox resolves itself when one understands the relation of Evil to the Father‑God in the deeper sense in which it is presented, for example, in the Book of Job in the Old Testament, or also in Goethe’s Faust (Prologue in Heaven). There, a period is granted to Evil by the Father‑God during which Man may be tempted by Evil in order to be tested. Such periods truly exist, both in the life of the individual human being and in the course of the history of humanity. Thus, for example, what is referred to as the “Kali‑Yuga” is such a period in the history of humanity.
The ‘leading into temptation’ consists, on the one hand, in that the tempting powers are granted the possibility of approaching from without; on the other hand, it consists in the fact that, through the Luciferic intervention, the natural inclination is present in the human astral body to fall prey to temptation. The human ‘I’, however, is indeed in a position not to yield to this inclination. That the human ‘I’ withstands the inner temptation becomes evident from the fact that it does not doubt the efficacy of the Good and the True — which do not work as an external force, but through their very essence. For behind every grasp at external means of power and measures (even for the purpose of leading human beings toward the Good) there hides the doubt in the immediate efficacy of the True and the Good — that is, unbelief in God. And this unbelief in the power of the True and the Good, through of its very content, expresses itself above all in the demand that this power should manifest itself outwardly.
Karma had to remain a secret from the consciousness of European humanity during the Kali‑Yuga, so that this humanity might pass through the test and learn — and allow its faith in the True and the Good as such, not because of karmic consequences, to be put to the test.
And in the time when the working of karmic retribution was hidden, the temptation of Evil approached humanity in a visible manner. Thus, there arose the situation of a great trial: the Good and the True seemed to have faded into merely human ‘ideals,’ while Evil spoke with the thundering voice of elemental nature. Yet whoever in this situation remained faithful to the ‘ideal’ — that is: renounced every external ‘proof’ of the power of the Good and continued to believe in the invincibility of Truth and Goodness for the sake of their intrinsic value — thereby has the justification to utter the sixth petition, as the petition of the reciprocity of trust between Man and God. For the unspoken justifying part of this petition may be conceived in the following words: “And lead us not into temptation, as we do not tempt You, in that we expect no outward manifestation of Your power.”
Once again we find, in the temptation of Christ Jesus in the desert, the key to a deeper understanding of this petition: while the tempter approaches Christ Jesus with the temptation to prove the reality of the Divine through an outward miracle (the fall from the pinnacle of the temple), Christ Jesus rejects the tempter with the words: “It is written: ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God." And the justification for the petition to be spared from temptation consists precisely in this renunciation of the human inclination to tempt God — that is: in the refusal to see Him not as Truth, but as an outward power proving and demonstrating the Truth.
Just as the fourth, fifth, and sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer relate to the three temptations in the desert, so the seventh petition relates to the great trial that was endured by the Christ Jesus in the night of Gethsemane. Here it concerns the resistance of the objective working of the primordial Evil against the world, which can be identified with the word 'evil' (poneron). This Evil does not reveal itself, in its essence, in the consciousness of the human being at all; it works only as a distant force through the Ahrimanic being and manifests itself in its operation as a terrifying, dark force in the subconsciousness of the body. In this sense, this working is the complete opposite of the human ‘I’. For just as the ‘I’ produces the brightest point in the bodily organization of Man, so does Evil produce the
point of greatest darkness.
But the human being who takes upon himself the effort to combat the objective Evil in the world through knowledge can be delivered from Evil. The justification — that is, the efficacy — of the petition “But deliver us from Evil” depends on whether Man opposes Evil in the world. Therefore, this petition could inwardly be supplemented in the following way: “But deliver us from Evil, as we strive against the Evil of the world.”
Thus the spiritual‑moral structure of the Lord’s Prayer is such that three sacrifices and four ways of resisting temptation lend their karmic weight to the seven petitions. The triangle of the spirit and the square of the earthly personality that underlie the Lord’s Prayer are at the same time expressions of the capacity for sacrifice and resistance of the seven‑fold Man. In accordance with these capacities, the karmic balance of the New Covenant is weighed, whose lower scale is on the Earth and whose upper scale is in the hands of the Father.
