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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Prayer
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Prayer
Schmidt Number: S-2171
On-line since: 17th Jamuary, 2008
A lecture by
Rudolf Steiner
Berlin, February 17, 1910
Bn 59, GA 59, CW 59
Medieval mysticism prepared the way for spiritual science; prayer
prepared for medieval mysticism. Today the essence of prayer has
been misunderstood. Prayer is intended to produce the divine spark,
the special life of the soul. For this, we must understand both
the soul and the soul in relation to the future set before us by
world wisdom.
This lecture, Das Wesen des Gebetes, was given by Rudolf
Steiner in Berlin, February 17, 1910, and is contained in
Pfade der Seelenerlebnisse (Vol. 59 in the Bibliographic
Survey 1961). The translation has been revised for this edition
by Gilbert Church, Ph.D. This First Edition, from 1952, is
copyright by Henry B. Monges.
Copyright © 1952
This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:
The Anthroposophic Press
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Thanks to an anonymous donation, this lecture has been made available.
In my
recent lecture on mysticism I spoke of the particular form of
mystic absorption that appeared in the Middle Ages between
the time of Meister Eckhart and that of Angelus Silesius.
This type of mysticism is distinguished by the fact that the
mystic seeks to become free of all the experiences aroused in
his soul by the external world. He seeks to acquire the
feeling that proves to him that, even when everything of the
everyday world is removed from his soul and it withdraws into
itself, a world of its own still remains within it. This
world always exists but is outshone by the experiences that
work so powerfully on man from without. Thus, it generally
appears as a light so faint that most men do not even notice
it. The mystic usually calls it “the spark.” Yet,
he feels sure that it can be fanned to a mighty flame that
will illumine the source and foundation of existence leading
man along the path of his soul to the knowledge of his
origin. This may, indeed, be called “knowledge of
God.”
In the
same lecture we saw how medieval mystics held that this
spark, constituted as it is at the moment, must grow by
itself. In contrast, we pointed out that modern spiritual
research calls for a conscious and controlled development of
these inner soul forces, so that they can rise to higher
forms of knowledge, designated the imaginative, the
inspirational and the intuitive. This medieval absorption is
thus the beginning of true higher spiritual research that
does indeed seek the spirit through the development of the
inner being but, through the method of approach, is led
beyond it to the source and foundation of the existence of
all facts and phenomena, and of our own souls as well.
Mysticism, therefore, appeared as a sort of first step to
true spiritual investigation. If we have the ability to sink
ourselves in the fervor of a Meister Eckhart, to recognize
what an immeasurable force of spiritual knowledge it brought
to Johannes Tauler, to see how deeply Valentin Weigel or
Jacob Boehme were initiated into the secrets of existence by
all that they attained through such absorption even though
they passed beyond it, or to understand what an Angelus
Silesius became through its means, how he was enabled not
only to gain an illuminating insight into the great laws of
spiritual order but also to utter with glowing rapturous
beauty all sorts of sayings about world secrets, we shall
then be able to realize the depth and force of this medieval
mysticism and to see what an enormous help it can be to
anyone who wants to tread the path of spiritual
investigation.
Medieval
mysticism thus appears to us, particularly as the result of
that lecture, as a great and wonderful preparatory school for
spiritual research. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? After
all, our own object is simply to develop the spark of which
the mystics spoke through its own inner forces. They believed
that they might surrender themselves in the peace of their
souls to the little glimmering spark, so that it might begin
to burn ever more brilliantly of itself. Spiritual science,
however, is convinced that, for the growth of the spark, we
must use the capacities and forces that are placed under our
control by the wisdom of the world.
This
mystical attitude, then, is a good preparation and guide for
spiritual science, and the soul activity that may in the true
sense be called prayer is a preparation for this medieval
absorption. Just as the mystic is enabled to attain a state
of absorption because he has, even though unconsciously,
trained his soul to have the right temper for such mysticism,
so if we want to work our way through to this absorption,
treading a path that shall end there, we shall find a
preparation in true prayer.
In the
development of the last centuries, even from a spiritual
aspect, the essence of prayer has been misunderstood in many
ways by various spiritual currents or thought. Thus, it will
be difficult for us to get a true understanding of it. If we
remember, however, that the last centuries have been
associated particularly with the appearance of egoistic
currents of spiritual thought that have laid hold of all
sorts of people, we shall not be surprised to find that
prayer has been dragged down among the egoistic wishes and
desires of men. In fact, prayer can hardly be more
misunderstood than when it is permeated with some form of
egoism. In this study we shall try to consider prayer
entirely and without prejudice from the point of view of
spiritual science.
To get
some preliminary understanding of prayer we might say that,
while the mystic assumes the existence in his soul of some
spark that his mystical absorption can brighten and
illuminate, prayer is intended to produce that spark
and special life of the soul. Whatever leads to prayer
displays its efficacy just in this stirring of the soul, so
that, if it lives there, even though hidden, we either
gradually discover the spark, or else we kindle it. To study
the need for, and the essence of, prayer, we shall have to
enter on a description of soul depths of which the words of
Heraclitus are only too true: “You can never fathom the
boundaries of the soul even though you tread every path, so
all-embracing is it.” Thus, even if in prayer we seek
only for the secrets of the soul, it is true that these
inmost feelings that are stirred in prayer teach even the
simplest of us something of the infinite expanses of soul
life.
We must
comprehend this soul as it lives in us and carries us forward
in life somewhat as follows. This soul that is in process of
living evolution does not merely come from the past and
progress into the future, but at every moment of its life it
carries within itself something of the past and, indeed, also
of the future. The actual moment in which we are living is
penetrated by both the effects of the past and the effects
that come from the future. Anyone who can see deeply into the
life of the soul will feel that there are two streams
continually meeting in it, one rising from the past, the
other from the future.
Possibly
in other spheres of life it might seem mere folly to talk of
the approach of the events of the future. It is, after all,
easy to say that the events of the future do not yet exist,
thus preventing us from saying that what will happen tomorrow
approaches us. But it is possible to say that what happened
in the past stretches its effects into the present — a
standpoint that is easy enough to establish. Who would
dispute that our lives today are the result of our lives
yesterday, or that we are today under the influence of our
activity or idleness of yesterday or the day before? No one
will deny the penetration of the present by the past. Yet, we
ought no more to deny the reality of the future since we can
see in the soul the reality of such intrusion of future
events before they happen. There is, for example, such a
thing as fear or anxiety of something that is to happen
tomorrow. Is that not a sort of feeling or perception that we
direct to an as yet unknown future? Every moment the soul
experiences fear or anxiety it shows by the reality of its
feelings that it reckons not only with the effects of the
past but also that it vividly allows for what is coming to it
from the future. These are, of course, trivial indications.
They will show, however, that even a casual observation of
the soul contradicts the logical abstractions that proclaim
the future can have no effect because it does not exist. This
is proved in living reality when we study immediate soul
life.
In our
souls, then, the past and the future unite and produce there,
as everyone who observes himself would admit, a sort of
whirlpool comparable to the confluence of two streams.
Observation of what lives in our souls from the past shows
that they come into being under the impression of our
experiences of the past. The way in which we have used those
past experiences has made us what we are, and we bear within
us the legacy of our past doing, feeling and thinking. We are
what we have become. If we look back from today's standpoint
to our past experiences, particularly those in which we were
ourselves concerned in their actual happening and in the
judgment of them, if we allow our memory to play over the
past, we shall be driven to a judgment of ourselves. We shall
realize that today we have attained a certain quality of
character. With that as our basis we shall find we are not in
agreement with a good deal that happened in our pasts because
we have acquired the capacity to be opposed to, even ashamed
of, some past actions.
If we
thus measure our pasts against the present, we shall come to
the conviction that there is something within us that is far
richer, far more significant than what we have made of
ourselves by our will, consciousness and individual forces.
If there were not something stretching beyond what we have
made of ourselves, we should be unable to reproach ourselves
or even to know ourselves. There must, then, be something
within us greater than all that we have employed to form
ourselves from the past. If we allow such a judgment to be
transformed into a feeling, we shall be able to observe what
is known and visible to us in our past deeds and experiences.
This will lie as clearly before us as memory can make it.
Then we shall be able to compare this clear vision with our
souls, and we shall see there something bigger seeking to
work itself out, urging us to set ourselves face to face with
ourselves and to judge ourselves from the standpoint of the
present. In short, we shall feel something projecting beyond
ourselves when we observe the stream flowing into the soul
from the past. This sense of something greater is the first
glimmer of the inner feeling of God within us, a feeling that
there is something within us that is greater than our own
will. So we are enabled to see something leading beyond our
limited egos to a divine spiritual ego. Such is the
impression of an observation of the past that has been
transformed into feeling and perception.
What is
the message, then, of what we may call the stream of the
future, when we transform it into feeling and perception?
This speaks even more emphatically and definitely to us. In
looking back over the past, our feelings assert themselves in
the form of a judgment of rejection, of regret or shame, but
only after the event. In relation to the future, however, we
deal at once with the feelings of fear and anxiety, hope and
joy, but the actual events to which these feelings refer are
not yet existent. We cannot see through to them and it is
thus easier in this case to transform the idea into a
feeling, something the soul does of itself. As it can, in
relation to the future, give no more than the feeling of
reality, these feelings exist as something born from an
unknown stream of which we know only that it may have
different effects and bring different hopes. If we can
transform into a right feeling what comes so surely to us
from the lap of the future, and if we experience its course
into our souls and the way in which our own perceptions meet
it, we shall realize how our souls are always being kindled
anew by the experiences approaching from the future. Here,
above all, we feel how our souls can become richer and more
comprehensive. Even now in the present we can know that in
the future our souls will have an infinitely richer and
mightier content. We feel ourselves akin to the future. We
must feel it. We must feel our souls to be equal to
everything the future can give.
Such an
observation of the streaming together of the future and the
past into the present will show us how the life of the soul
grows beyond itself. When, in looking back over the past, the
soul observes the important things that play on it and of
which it does not feel itself to be equal, we shall
understand how it can unfold a basic attitude and feeling in
relation to the outcome of the past. When the soul, whether
in judgment or in shame and regret, feels something great
flow into itself out of the stream of the past, it creates
within itself what we may call a devotion toward the divine.
This devotion toward the divine that looks down upon us from
the past and that we can imagine as something acting upon us,
although our consciousness cannot take it in, is produced by
one of two forms of prayer that lead to an intimacy with God.
If the soul surrenders itself in inmost calm to these
feelings about the past, it will begin to wish that the
mightier thing it left unused and that has not permeated its
ego may become present in it. The soul will know that if it
were possessed of this greatness, it would be different, but
the divine did not belong fully to its inner life and that is
why it has failed so to form itself that it can approve of
all that it is. When the soul experiences this, it can
overcome the feeling by asking itself clearly how it can make
truly part of itself what has lived unconsciously in all its
actions and experiences, how it can draw into itself this
unknown that its ego has failed to grasp. When the soul holds
this attitude, either in feeling or in word and idea, we have
the prayer to the past and thus seek to approach the divine
through one of the ways of devotion.
Another
attitude is held toward the divine gleam shining through the
approaches of the future. To distinguish it from the one with
which we have just been dealing, let us ask once again what
it is that leads to prayer as regards the past. It is that we
have remained imperfect even though we can feel something
divine shining into us. We have not developed and unfolded
all the capacities and forces that might have flowed to us,
and we feel all the defects that make us less than the divine
shining into us. What is it, then, coming to us from the
future that makes us defective in similar fashion and
restricts our ascent to the spiritual?
We have
only to remember that feelings and sensations, fear and
anxiety of the unknown future, gnaw at our souls. Is there
anything that can pour some certainty about the future into
our souls? It is what we may call the feeling of devoted
acceptance of what enters our souls from the hidden future,
and it can only work properly if it arises as an attitude of
prayer. Let us avoid misunderstanding. We are not praising
what here or there is considered to be acceptance, but a
definite form, an acceptance of what the future can bring
forth. If we look to the future with fear and anxiety, we
strangle our development and hamper the free unfolding of our
soul forces. Nothing so obstructs this development as anxiety
about what may come to the soul from the future. Only actual
experience, however, can judge the results of the right
feeling of acceptance of the future. What does such devoted
acceptance mean?
In its
ideal form it would be the sort of soul attitude that would
assure us that no matter what might come, no matter what the
next hour or day might bring, were it unknown to us, we could
not alter it by fear or anxiety. We should wait for it,
therefore, in complete inner peace and utter
tranquillity.
This
experience, resulting from devoted acceptance of future
events, means that anyone who can thus calmly and quietly
meet the future and can yet prevent his energy and activity
from suffering in any way, is able to develop his soul forces
most intensively and freely. It is as if hindrance after
hindrance falls away as his soul is gradually pervaded by
this feeling of acceptance of the events that approach from
the future.
This
feeling, however, cannot be produced in our souls by some
edict or arbitrary decision lacking foundation. It is the
result of this second form of prayer that is directed to the
future and the course of events, pervaded by wisdom, within
it. To give ourselves up to the divine wisdom of events, to
be certain in our thoughts, feelings and impulses that what
will be must be and that it will have its good effects
somewhere, to call forth this feeling in the soul and to live
it in our words and ideas is the second form of prayer, the
prayer of devoted acceptance.
It is
from these feelings that we must acquire the impulses to what
is called prayer. The soul possesses the urge, and
fundamentally it attains the attitude of prayer when it
raises itself even only a little above the immediate present.
The attitude of prayer, we might say, is the upward gaze of
the soul from the transitory present into the eternal that
embraces past, present and future. Because to live looking
upward from the present is so essential, Goethe has Faust
speak these great and significant lines to
Mephistopheles:
Were I to
say the pleasing present should remain,
And that is what I truly meant ...
This is,
if ever I could be satisfied with living merely for the
moment,
Then you
may throw me into chains,
And I will gladly seal my doom.
We might
say, then, that it is the attitude of prayer for which Faust
begs in order to escape the fetters of his companion.
Prayer
leads to the observation of the limited ego that has worked
from the past into the present. Upon examination, we see how
much more there is in us than we have put to actual use. It
also leads us to the study of the future, showing how much
more can flow from the future into the ego than it has
comprehended in the present. Every prayer must coincide with
one of these attitudes. If we take this to be the spirit of
prayer, and prayer as the expression of this spirit, we shall
find in every prayer the force to lead us beyond ourselves.
Prayer that is born in this way is nothing else than the
kindling of the power that seeks to pass beyond what our ego
is at the moment. As soon as the ego is seized by this
striving, it already has this power of development. When the
past has taught us that we have more within us than we have
ever used, our prayer is a cry to the divine to come to us
and fill us with its power. When we have reached this
knowledge by our own feelings and perception, prayer becomes
the source of further development. It is thus one of the
means of developing the ego.
When we
live in anxiety over what the future may bring, still lacking
that submissiveness that prayer can give when it is directed
to our future destiny, we can do something similar. By means
of prayer we realize that the future is set before us by
world wisdom. If we surrender ourselves to this feeling, we
produce something quite different than we do when we meet
coming events with fear and anxiety. These only restrict our
development, pushing back from our souls what the future can
give us. If, however, we meet the future with submissiveness
and devotion, we draw near to it in fruitful hope and make it
possible for it to enter our souls. Thus, submission, which
seems to make us small, is a powerful force carrying us
forward toward the future, enriching our souls and bringing
our development to a higher level.
So we
see prayer as an active force within us. We can also see in
it a cause drawing with it as immediate effects the growth
and evolution of our egos. We need not expect external
results. We know that by prayer we have put within our souls
what we may call a force of warmth and light — light
because we free the soul in regard to what is coming to us
from the future and prepare it to assimilate what the obscure
future may bring; warmth because it helps to realize that
even though in the past we have failed to bring the divine
within us to full development, we have now permeated our
feelings and sensations with it so that it can really work
within us. The attitude of prayer that we attain from our
feeling of the past produces the inner warmth of soul of
which all those speak who can understand prayer in its true
being. The effect of light appears in those who know the
feeling of submission in prayer.
With
this view of prayer we shall not be surprised that, in
devotion to prayer, the greatest mystics found the best
training for what they were seeking in mystic contemplation.
They guided their souls by means of prayer to the point where
they were able to ignite the spark previously mentioned. It
is just the study of the past that can give us the deep
intimacy that comes over us in true prayer. Experience and
living in the external world really estrange us from
ourselves, just as in the past they prevented the unknown and
more powerful ego from coming to the surface. We are given
over to external impressions, wasting our energies in the
variety of external life, thereby upsetting our composure. It
is this that prevented the higher and stronger divine force
from unfolding in us. Now, when we unfold it in such deep
intimacy with God, we no longer feel ourselves given over to
the dissipating effects of the external world. Rather are we
filled with that wonderful and ineffable warmth, as with an
inner blessedness, that we really may call divine. It is the
heat in the cosmos that appears in higher beings as physical
inner warmth and it originally created the higher beings; the
lower beings, of course, have the same body temperature as
their surroundings. As this physical heat interiorizes a
being, so the psychic warmth, born of prayer, can make a soul
that is losing itself in externalities collect itself in
inwardness. In prayer we are warmed in the feeling of God. We
not only feel warmth but we find ourselves intimately within
ourselves.
When we
approach the external world, however, we always find it
confused with what has been called “the dark lap of the
future.” Upon close observation we always find that
there is a germ of the future in whatever we touch of the
outer world. We are continually thrust back when we still
feel fear of what may befall us, and the world is like a veil
before us. If we develop this feeling of submission in regard
to all that may come to us from the future, we shall find
that we meet everything in the external world with the same
certainty and hope. This we have gained from our
submissiveness. We know that in everything it is the wisdom
of the world that shines before us. As a rule, in everything
that comes to meet us, we see a darkness that passes into our
feelings. Through our submission, however, we now see how the
feeling arises in us that all the wisdom of the world shines
through what we long for and desire as the highest. Thus, it
is hope for illumination of the entire world that comes to us
in the devotions of prayer. When darkness encloses us within
ourselves and narrowness and confusion surround us even in
the physical, when we stand in the gloom and black of night,
we feel when morning comes and we meet the light as though
set beyond ourselves. Yet this is not in such a way that we
should lose ourselves, but as though we could transfer into
the real world all our soul's truest longing and highest
aims. Surrender to the world, estranging us from ourselves,
is overcome by the warmth of prayer uniting us with
ourselves. Then, too, the warmth of prayer becomes a light.
We pass beyond ourselves and know that when now we unite with
and behold the outer world, we are no longer disturbed and
estranged by it. What is best in our souls flows from it and
we are united with what radiates toward us from the external
world.
These
two types of prayer can be better comprehended in pictures
than in ideas. Consider, for instance, the Old Testament
story of Jacob and the bitter nocturnal struggle that seared
his soul. It is as if we ourselves were given over to the
manifoldness of the world in which our souls at first were
lost and could not find themselves. When the striving to find
ourselves begins, the struggle between the lower and higher
egos follows. Feelings surge up and down, but we can work our
way through this turmoil by prayer. As illustrated in the
story of Jacob, the moment finally will come when, as the
morning sun shines upon us, the inner struggle of our souls
during the night is leveled out in harmony. That is really
the effect of prayer in the human soul.
To think
of prayer in this way is to be free of all superstition. It
brings out the best in us and works within us immediately as
a force. Prayer in this light is preliminary to mysticism,
just as mystic contemplation is itself preliminary to what we
know as spiritual investigation. From this discussion it
should now be clear that, as has so often been emphasized, we
continually err if we think we can find the divine, or God,
in ourselves by mystic thought. This has been a common
mistake of many mystics, and even of ordinary Christians in
the Middle Ages, because at that period the attitude to
prayer began to be permeated with an egoism that impels the
soul to concentration on an ever-increasing inner perfection.
It is fundamentally an echo of such an egoistic desire for
inner perfection that impels a misguided theosophy today to
assert that, if we will only turn aside from everything
external, we can find God within ourselves.
We have
seen that there are two types of prayer, one leading to an
inner warmth, the other leading through a feeling of
submission out again into the world to illumination and true
knowledge. When we think of prayer in this way, we soon see
that the knowledge acquired through ordinary intelligence is
unfruitful compared to this other knowledge. When we come to
realize the attitude of prayer, we become aware of the soul's
withdrawal into itself, thus releasing it from the multiple
world in which it has been dissipated. It gathers itself
together and lives enclosed in itself, a complete self-being
living above the momentary and what comes to it from the past
and future.
When we
know this feeling, when our environment becomes breathless
and silent, when only our finest thoughts and feelings hold
the soul together, when perhaps even these vanish and only a
basic feeling remains directed toward the God who proclaims
himself from the past, and toward the God from the future,
when we know this and have learned to live in this feeling,
then we realize that there are moments when the soul sees
that it has turned away from, and disregards, all the
cleverness it created by its own thinking. What it brought
into being by its thinking and feelings, the ideals to which
it had been educated and grasped in its will have all been
swept away. It was given over to its highest thoughts and
feelings, but even these were swept away, leaving only that
last basic feeling. When we have come to feel this, we know
that in the same way that the wonders of nature meet us when
we look upon them with cleansed and purified eyes, these new
feelings of which we were hitherto unaware shine into the
soul. Impulses of will and ideals formerly strange to us rise
up in it, germinating fruitful seeds.
In its
best sense, then, prayer can give us wisdom that we are not
yet capable of acquiring by ourselves. It can give us the
possibility of feeling and thinking that we cannot attain by
ourselves. If we go further, it can give us a strength of
will that we have previously been unable to muster. In order
to feel this, it must be called up by the greatest thoughts,
the most splendid ideas and impulses living in the soul. Here
we must refer again to the prayers that have originated in
most solemn moments and that have been handed down to us from
time immemorial.
In my
pamphlet on the Lord's Prayer you will find an account
showing that its seven petitions embrace all the wisdom of
the world. It is no real objection to tell me that there it
is said that these seven petitions can only be understood by
those who know the deeper sources of the universe and that
simple people have no real comprehension of their depth. This
is not so. In order, however, that the Lord's Prayer should
have come into existence, it was necessary that the
all-embracing wisdom of the world should be set down in words
that may indeed be said to express the deepest secrets of man
and the world. Since this is what is contained in this
prayer, it works through the words even if we are far from
understanding the secrets. This can be understood when we
rise to the higher stages to which prayer and mysticism are
the prelude. Prayer prepares us for mysticism, mysticism for
meditation and concentration, and from that point on we are
directed to the real work of spiritual research.
Nor is
it an objection to say that we must understand a prayer if it
is to have its true effect. That simply is not the case. Who
understands the wisdom of a flower? Yet, we can take pleasure
in it. Even though we do not penetrate all its wisdom,
nevertheless the soul delights in its contemplation. Wisdom
was necessary that the flower might come into being, but it
is not necessary to be aware of such wisdom to take delight
in the flower. For a prayer to come into existence, the
wisdom of the world is necessary. That it should possess
warmth and light for the soul is just as possible without
understanding its wisdom as it is in the case of the flower.
If a prayer did not owe its existence to such wisdom,
however, it could not produce such an effect. The mere effect
of a prayer shows us its depth.
If one's
soul is really to develop under the influence of such a vital
quality within it, it makes no difference what one's stage of
development may be. A true prayer can give everyone
something. Even the simplest person, who knows nothing more
than the mere prayer, can still feel its effect, which calls
forth the power to raise him ever higher. But whatever height
we may have achieved, we are never finished with a prayer.
Our souls can always be raised higher. The Lord's Prayer can
be simply repeated, yet it can also call forth a mystical
frame of mind and even be the subject of meditation and
concentration. This is also true of other prayers.
Since
the Middle Ages, however, a sort of egoism has occurred that
makes prayer and the attitude of prayer impure. If we use
prayer in order to become more perfect in ourselves, to
descend into ourselves, as was the case with the medieval
Christians and perhaps still is today — if we do not
look out into the external world with the illumination we
have received, then prayer can only estrange and isolate us
from the world. This has happened with many of those who have
used prayer as false and seclusive asceticism. They have
wanted perfection, not only as the rose, which adorns itself
that the garden may be fair, is perfect, but for their own
sakes that they might find blessedness in their souls. When
we seek God in our souls and then do not pass to the other
world the power we have thus won, we find that we are in a
sense punished. Thus you will find in the writings of many
authors who have known only the type of prayer in which inner
warmth is to be found — even in the work of Miguel
Molinos — remarkable descriptions of all sorts of
passions and impulses, fights, temptations and wild desires
that the soul has to experience if it seeks perfection by
inner prayer and complete surrender to what it understands to
be God. If we approach the spiritual world by seeking God
one-sidedly, if we only unfold that feeling for prayer that
leads to inner warmth and excludes illumination, this
neglected other side takes its revenge on us.
If I
look to the past only with feelings of regret and shame,
realizing that there is something great in me that I have
never allowed full play, thus failing to fill myself with
this greatness so that I may become perfect, then, even so,
to a certain extent a feeling of perfection does still arise.
But the imperfection remaining in the soul becomes a
counterforce that assails us with greater vigor in the form
of temptation and passion. But as soon as the soul that has
found itself in inner warmth and intimacy seeks for God
wherever he is revealed and thus strives for illumination, it
immediately comes out of itself and escapes the narrow
selfish ego. The wild temptations sink down in calm and
peace. This is why it is so harmful to allow an egoistic
impulse to be mixed up in prayer or mystical contemplation or
meditation. If we want to find God only to keep him in our
souls, we exhibit an unsound egoism that maintains itself
even into our soul's highest reaches. For this, we shall be
punished. Healing is to be found only when, having found God
in ourselves, we pour out unselfishly into the world in
thoughts, feelings and actions what we have won.
We are
often told today, particularly in the ideas of a falsely
understood theosophy, and we cannot be careful enough of
this, that we cannot find God in the external world because
he lives within us. We have only to look within ourselves in
the right way and we shall find God. I have even heard
someone say in flattery of his audience that we need not
learn or experience anything of the great secrets of the
world. If only we would look within ourselves, we would find
God.
But
something must be added to this before we can reach the
truth. To this, which may be true enough if it is kept within
proper limits, a medieval thinker gave a true answer. Let us
remember that it is not untruths that are most harmful. The
soul will soon uncover what is false. Most harmful are those
things that are true from one aspect but when applied on
false assumptions produce grave falsehoods. It is true that
in a sense we seek God in ourselves. Because it is true, it
is the more harmful if it is not kept within its proper
limits.
This
medieval thinker said, “Who would seek everywhere in
the external world for a tool he needed when he knows it to
be at home? He would be a fool to do so. Equally is he a fool
who seeks the instrument for the knowledge of God in the
outer world when it lies at home within his soul.”
Bear in
mind that he uses the words tool and instrument. It is not
God we seek in the soul. He is sought by an instrument that
we shall not find in the external world. It is found in the
soul in prayer and genuine mystical absorption, and beyond
that by meditation and concentration. We must approach the
kingdoms of the world with this instrument, and then we shall
find God everywhere. If we have acquired the instrument, he
reveals himself in all worldly realms and at all stages of
being. Thus, we find the instrument in ourselves but we find
God everywhere.
Such
observations of prayer are not popular today. Nowadays we are
asked how on earth any of our prayers could alter the course
of the world, which after all is guided by laws of necessity
that cannot be altered. When we want to locate a force,
however, we should look for it where it really is. Today we
have sought the power of prayer in the soul and have found it
to exist there, thus enabling the soul to progress. If we
know that it is the spirit that works in the world, not an
imagined, abstract spirit but a real, perceptible spirit, and
that the soul belongs to the realm of the spirit, we shall
also know that material forces are not the only forces
working actively in accordance with external laws of
necessity. Spiritual beings also are at work in the world
even though the effects of these forces and beings are not
visible externally to the eye or outwardly available to
knowledge. If we strengthen our spiritual lives by prayer, we
need only wait for the effects. They will certainly appear.
No one, however, will seek the working of spirit in the
external world who has not first recognized the force of
prayer to be a reality.
When
once we have admitted this fact, the following experiment
will give evidence to support it. Consider a period often
years during which we have scorned prayer, and another period
often years when we have recognized its force. Compare the
two periods. We shall soon see how the course of our lives
was altered under the influence of the forces that poured
into the soul with prayer. Forces become visible in their
working, but it is easy to deny them when we shut our eyes to
their effects. Who can deny the force of prayer if he has
never let its force be effective within him? Do we believe we
can know the Light if we have never developed or approached
it? A force that is to work in and through the soul can only
be discovered by its use.
The
further effects of prayer, I am willing enough to admit,
cannot yet be discussed today, however unbiased the
discussion might be. Thus, to understand that a community
prayer in which the forces rising from a praying community
flow together, has an enhanced spiritual force and therefore
an intensified effect on reality, cannot be easily accepted
by the ordinary consciousness of today. So we must remain
content with what we have discussed as the inner being of
prayer. Indeed, it is sufficient since, if we have some
understanding of it, we shall rise above many of the possible
objections that are so easily raised against it.
We are
told, for instance, that if we compare an active man who uses
his powers to help his fellow men with one who withdraws
meditatively into himself and works on the forces of his soul
in prayer, then idleness is the only word that can truly
apply to the one who meditates. You will excuse me if on the
basis of spiritual science I tell you there is another point
of view. I will speak bluntly, but there is good reason for
it. Anyone who knows the interrelations of modern life will
maintain that many journalists would do others a better
service if they were to pray and work for the perfection of
their souls. Would that there were people who were convinced
that it would be better to pray than to write newspaper
articles. This attitude is equally applicable to many other
intellectual occupations today.
Further,
we shall never understand the life of man in its entirety
without the force that lives in prayer and that becomes
particularly clear when we look at certain departments of
higher spiritual activity. For instance, is it not clear that
prayer, when considered not in a one-sided egoistic sense but
in the broad sense in which we have discussed it today, takes
its place as an element of art? Art, of course, also
expresses the opposite attitude in comedy through the
humorous feeling with which it rises above what it depicts,
but there is in the ode and hymn, for example, a feeling of
prayer. In painting we have what might be called a
“painted prayer,” and surely in a massive,
majestic cathedral a prayer in stone towers heavenward.
We need
only to feel these things in relation to the whole of life in
order to see that prayer, looked at in the right way, can
lead us from the transitory finite of this world to the
infinite. This was felt especially by those such as Angelus
Silesius whom I have previously mentioned who passed from
prayer to mysticism. He felt that he owed the inner truth and
glorious beauty, the warm intimacy and brilliant clearness of
his mystical thought, shown for instance in The
Cherubinean Wanderer, to the training of prayer that had
worked so powerfully on his soul. In fact, following this
prelude of prayer, it is the feeling of eternity that streams
through and illuminates all such mysticism. Everyone who
prays has an idea of this, when in prayer he comes to true
inner peace and intimacy and thence again to liberation from
himself. It is something that teaches us to look from the
passing moment to eternity, embracing in our souls the past,
present and future. Whether we know it or not, whenever we
turn in prayer to those sides of life where we seek God, the
feelings, thoughts, and impressions accompanying us are
permeated by a sense of eternity. It dwells consciously or
unconsciously in every true prayer like some divine sweetness
and aroma. It lives in the following lines of Angelus
Silesius, which form a fitting conclusion to our
discussion.
When I
leave time,
I myself am eternity.
Then I am one with God
And God is one with me.
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Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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