The “Cosmic Our Father” and the Lord’s Prayer

One of the most immediate experiences rising from the words of the Cosmic Our Father is the experience of extreme anguish. It was not only the people in the world but the whole earth that was God-forsaken, and that through the completion of a process that had begun with the Fall of Man. The prayer falls into two disconnected parts, in both of which cause and effect follow their course of necessity. In the first part, the situation on earth is set forth: how under the leadership of the prevailing evil human egotism has been set loose in the world, leading to the universal phenomena of the competitive struggle for existence and its manifestation right down to the approach to our daily bread. The second part, separated from the first through the word “not”, summarizes how humanity has lost connection with the spiritual world. Through loss of consciousness, through sundering form the kingdom of the spirit, humanity no longer brings about the will of the gods.

So we can imagine the voice crying out these words as a truly inclusive cosmic voice It speaks the anguish of the gods who experience humanity and the earth fallen beyond their reach. It speaks the anguish of humanity, fallen into a world in which they can only experience the inevitability of an unredeeming death. But it also expresses the anguish of all other creatures of the earth and the spirits of the elements, who have fallen with humanity and who out of themselves cannot experience the possibility of redemption.

From the Cosmic Our Father to the Lord’s Prayer there is a reversal of order, and there is a correspondence sentence by sentence, with one exception which we shall take up later. In the lecture of October 6, 1913, Rudolf Steiner described the transformation which the Christ made. I shall do the equivalent, with a couple of small variants.

• From “you fathers in the heavens” Christ formed the new line: “Our Father, who art in the heavens.” We look to a single spiritual being, with whom we feel a direct personal connection. Also, we establish with the words “our Father” that this is a prayer to be prayed by human beings, on behalf of all humanity and the earth as a whole.
• From “and forgot your names”, the new line is “hallowed be thy name.” Perhaps the beginning of this hallowing is a recognition of the true significance of the words “I AM.”
• From “since man departed from your kingdom” the new line is “Thy kingdom come.” We do not strive to leave the place to which we have come, but to make possible that also this place can become part of our Father’s kingdom.
• From “in which heaven’s will does not prevail” the new line is “thy will be done”. All three of these sentences are not simply supplications but also resolutions — if they are to be fulfilled, it must be with the active participation of those who are praying.
• The line “as above in the heavens, so also on the earth” is actually something completely new. It is the focal point of the whole newly formed Lord’s Prayer, and we shall have to consider it more fully.
• From the line “experience it in daily bread” comes the new petition “give us this day our daily bread.” This is also a resolution as well as a petition: that we should receive our daily bread in such a way that it is the gift of God, and is not wrested from our fellow human beings.
• From the line “Incurred through others, selfhood guilt” comes the new petition “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Here the active resolution is not merely implied; it is emphasized.
• From the line “witness of unleashing of egohood” comes the new petition “lead us not into temptation.” This is perhaps the hardest line to comprehend, as it creates the picture of the kind of protection we imagine ourselves to have outgrown. In forming such a picture we make the mistake of putting too much emphasis on the word “temptation” at the expense of the words “lead us”. When we accept the leadership of our Father in the heavens, we can know with confidence that we will not come to anything we cannot handle. If we think we cannot handle a situation under those circumstances, it is actually because we have accepted for the moment the leadership of a being other than our Father in the heavens.
• Finally, from the line “The evils prevail” comes the new petition “but deliver us from the evil.” This is the one true petition, which we offer in recognition of our powerlessness.