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The Lord’s Prayer and the Human Form

In his lectures on the structure of the Lord’s Prayer Rudolf Steiner spoke above all about the nature of petitional prayers, and pointed out that the archetypal prayer consist of Christ’s words “not my will but thy will be done.” As these were introductory lectures, he recapitulated the description of the human being from the point of view of Anthroposophy: the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral or soul body, and the ego; and the higher aspects of the human being which result from his work on the lower members: the spirit-self as transformed astral body, the life-spirit as transformed etheric body, and the spirit-man as transformed physical body. He then showed how the sentences of the Lord’s Prayer each express the needs of one member of the human being:

“Give us this day our daily bread” addresses the needs of the physical body;
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” addresses the needs of the etheric body;
“Lead us not into temptation” addresses the needs of the astral body;
“Deliver us from the evil” addresses the needs of the ego;
The earlier three sentences “Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; the will be done” address the needs of those parts of the human being which will come to full expression in the future, and which Rudolf Steiner called the spirit-self, the life spirit, and the spirit-man.

We may also find insight into another aspect of the human being through the Lord’s Prayer, and this is the mystery of the human form. Let us observe how the archetype of the human form comes to expression through the Lord’s Prayer.

We begin with the words “Our father, who art in the heavens”, and consider what form arises from these words. If we focus on that our father is in the heavens, we can imagine to begin with the sky arching over us. To this picture we can then add the sun by day, or imagine the stars shining at night. The overall shape is that of a dome filled with light. And this is an image which corresponds to the shape of the human head, which is also a dome. Rudolf Steiner has again and again pointed out how the head is formed as an image of the heavens. And we begin our embryological development as a sphere—we are “all head”; we are a copy of the universe. In this way we can see the human form begin to arise when we contemplate the opening of the Lord’s Prayer.

Now we continue with the words, “hallowed be thy name.” What, as Shakespeare asked, is in a name? I know that for me the first image that arises when I hear the name of a friend is the friend’s face. I do not think of the friend’s head—that is part of the friend’s universal humanity. Through the form of the face I recognize my friend as an individual, as unlike any other. With the words “hallowed be thy name” we contemplate the countenance of the universal, archetypal human being, whose image we carry in ourselves. To look upon this image has not always been possible. When Moses asked to look on God’s countenance, he was told, “No man can look upon my countenance and live.” We can see this aspect of our father represented in the sun, which will make us blind if we look at it too long.

With the words, “Thy kingdom come”, we approach the realm of the human rhythmic system, and to some extent, the metabolic system. Here is a kingdom with its provinces and its governing laws. The laws are ones that we fortunately do not have to administer consciously; when our consciousness does reach into this kingdom, it is usually because something is not quite right in it. Let us imagine how the harmony of our Father’s kingdom is reflected in the orderly rhythmic movements of the planets. In a similar way our body’s organs work in a harmonious relationship with each other, which can largely be expressed through laws of rhythm. As long as we live according to harmonious rhythms of day, week, month, and year, we can expect to live in good health. Illness is often the result of living “out of rhythm.”

September 16, 2011/0 Comments/by CCNA

Essays and Articles

Working With the Angels

Address given at Delegates Conference*
Chicago, Nov. 4, 2005

There are three characteristics of angels that are frequently pictured in artistic renderings. The first characteristic is that angels have wings. We think of the earthly creatures that have wings, the birds: they inhabit a sphere above the earth, the air regions. They live in a world of light and uplift, not limited by earthly gravity.

Picturing angels as having wings is an artistic way of saying that angels too are not bound to the earthly. They are limitless; they live in expanses. They live with the world of eternity at their backs.

In Ezekiel 10:12 there is a mighty description of great angelic beings covered in eyes. Therefore angels’ wings are pictured as having eyes on them. Eyes convey consciousness. They take things in, into a consciousness that is broader, brighter, clearer, purer, and more transparent than human consciousness. Eyes also shine forth; the gaze of an angel radiates love and recognition.

A third artistic motif used in picturing angels is as a musician. A good piece of music opens up heaven for us. In music, spiritual creative forces permeate space, harmonizing souls, ensouling and spiritualizing community; tuning souls to one another.

These three motifs, wings, eyes and musician, can help us understand the relationship between the human and the angelic realms.

There are nine ranks, or choirs of angel above the human realm. The third group of three, the angels, the archangels and the Primal Powers or Archai, are the three choirs we want to look at today.

Angels

The lowest of these choirs, the angels, are the ones closest to the human realm. Angels are intimately connected with individual human beings. We each have an angel assigned to us, a guardian angel, who accompanies us along our paths through lifetimes. Their ‘wings’ give them the overview that it is not possible for us to have. The angel’s ‘eyes’, angelic consciousness, sees, takes in, and remembers everything for us. The angel can remember what we have been and who we want to be. Angelic consciousness is, like that of a chess player, able to anticipate the results of our moves. Our angel is the carrier of our higher self. Angels listen to our thoughts. To become aware of one’s angel is to feel oneself to be watched, seen and recognized. Our angel’s eyes radiate love, recognition.

The Angel in You
Rose Auslander

The angel in you
Rejoices over
Your light
Weeps over your darkness

Out of his wings whisper
Words of love
Poems, tender affection.
He watches over
Your path

Direct your step
Angelwards.

September 16, 2011/0 Comments/by Rev. Cynthia Hindes

Essays and Articles

Apocalypse 1: The Writer¹

The Revelation to John, the last book of the New Testament, belongs to those four centuries around the birth of Christ, two before and two after, which many people experienced “an open door” in heaven. It’s the time that apocalypse, revelation was rife, that many “apocalypses” have been written. Most of them could remind us of our own dreams – pictures following each other, often without a “logical” sequence, without beginning or end. One of them stands out: this book which made it into the Bible, even when quite some people didn’t like it at all and wondered why it had been taken into the canon of the Bible. Luther, the German reformer, must have said that his spirit could not find itself at ease in it.

Introduction

In the first three verses, John states that God gave this revelation to Jesus Christ, to show his servants what must soon take place. In order to give this revelation, he sent his angel to his servant John, that he would witness to the contents: to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, “even to all that he saw”. Then John adds a blessing, the first of seven “beatitudes” found in the Revelation, blessing those who read aloud, who hear and who keep what is written in this book, “for the time is near”.

As we see in the Gospel of John, the “witness” comes forward with his testimony as John the Baptist did (see for instance 1:6-8 and 10:41-42), as well as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (see from chapter 11 and after 12:17: 19:35 and 21:20-24). That Gospel also knows well the importance of “keeping” the words of Christ (8:51, 14:15 and 15:10).

After having, as it were, legitimized himself as to the source and the revelation he is to be shown, in 1:4-8 John addresses his audience, the “seven churches in Asia”, in the area colonized by the Greeks where he had lived and worked for so long, giving them blessings from the One we would call God the Father (“who is and who was and who is to come”) and from the spirits before his throne, as well as from Jesus Christ in three manifestations: as faithful witness (of the Father), as first-born of the dead (himself, as the Son), ruler of kings on earth (in whom the Spirit has come into its own).

Then out of the revelation he has experienced, John breaks out in a glorification of him whom we know in three ways: the One who loves us, who has freed us by his blood from our sins, who will make us into self-reliant priests to his God and Father. And speaks of His Coming, with the clouds, so that every eye will see him, “every one who pierced him”; directly introducing the pictures of Cross and Lamb. As a kind of affirmation to what John has written, the voice of the Lord God comes through, of Him “who is and who was and who is to come”, Alpha and Omega, the Almighty.

Now John begins to speak for and out of himself (“I, John”), evoking shared martyrdom over years of “patient endurance” because of “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (as he had already written). Having spent years of being exiled on the island of Patmos, lying before this part of the coast of Asia Minor, he exactly pinpoints the beginning of his revelation: the Lord’s Day – the day of divine service, when he “was in Spirit”, and received his task: to write what he sees in a book and send it to the seven churches in the seven cities named.

September 14, 2011/0 Comments/by CCNA