About the Lord's Prayer

From various sources, including myself.

by Ruth Salles

From a very young age, I imagined what we call God as a central point in space that, at a given moment, expanded, giving itself and generating the universe on the periphery of an immense sphere, as if this universe were the reflection, the mirror of this creative Being. Years later I read, in a little book for laymen about Einstein, that the universe is on the periphery of a kind of sphere, and that it is expanding and then there must be a retraction. Now this is what the Hindus say about Brahma: that the universe is his breath; that he breathes out and then breathes in the universe. So I was very happy, thinking that Einstein, the Hindus and I were in agreement! What a cocky young lady I was!

Much later I learned, from Rudolf Steiner, that when the Creative Principle (which, as a creator, we call FATHER) reaches the moment when, by its Will, it is able to give itself, it expands creating the universe. Thus, even the tiniest beings and things arising in this way are emanations of the Divinity itself, as we call it. And that the aspect of creation that we call the SON is responsible for the organization of the universe, and that, spiritually, this action of the Son is also called the KINGDOM. Finally, the third aspect of this creation is the identification, or individualization of each being or thing by the SANCTIFYING or HOLY SPIRIT, because each created being or thing must always achieve harmony, must always be made sane (which means holy, when healthy, cured of any disharmony). And then each being or thing is given a NAME, which must always be within universal harmony. Therefore, the three aspects of the Creator Spirit are: from the Father, the Will; from the Son, the Kingdom; of the Holy Spirit, the Name.

Jesus Christ taught the apostles the essential prayer, with simple words, because they were simple men, mostly fishermen, who also heard the words of their master through parables, so that they could understand the deep meaning of the teachings.

The OUR FATHER actually consists of seven prayers:
"Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come to us.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our Debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.

But, you see, for the Hindus, man is made up of just seven bodies: the physical body of our mineral structure, the body of our vegetable organism, which they call the illusory body where prana (life energy) circulates, the body we have in common with animals, which they call the illusory desire body, and the body of our thinking, self-conscious mind, our self. Hindus call it the illusory body because they know that they are really force fields of various natures or degrees of evolution. These four bodies make up what we have reached until today, and it is called the lower Quaternary.

There remains the superior Triad, which they call Manas, Budhi and Atma, which will be transformations of the mineral (also called physical body), vegetable (also called vital body) and animal (also called soul body) bodies.

If the entire universe is an emanation of the First Cause, so are we and we carry within us a primordial perfection, in terms of Goodness and Love. There was a Christian monk who said that each of us is like a note, a sound, emanating from the Divinity, and that our greatest attempt must be to be that sound. But the case is that we are out of tune a bit… I immediately remember my aunt Olga's puppy: he would lie face down on the floor in the backyard, taking care of the hen with her chicks; if a chick strayed too far from the hen, the puppy would go there and give it a little paw so it would come back to it. Oh, oh, that's what fate does to us: when we're out of tune with our individual note, it pats us, sometimes very painfully, to get us back into the harmony of our sound.

But let us return to our bodies which, according to the Hindus, form our superior triad, Manas, Budhi and Atma. Atma is the highest of them, and I find it interesting to know that in German, atmen means to breathe. And we come down to earth to live an evolution to the Atma, just as if we were thrown into a deep pool without knowing how to swim. Smart that we are, we stamp our feet deep inside, giving an impulse to return to the surface and… we finally breathe (atmen) the AIR that is our life, our greater truth.

But it is the superior triad, which is within us, but which we have not yet reached, it is this that first addresses the three aspects of Divinity in the Lord's Prayer. It is important not to get out of tune and give a good push with your feet at the bottom of the pool, because it is only by living the lower quaternary well that we arrive at the upper triad!

We say, first, “Our Father”, because the Initial Cause forms a Whole with the universe, and both the universe is ours and we are the universe's, everything is interconnected. And we say "who art in heaven", because that Initiating Cause is in a situation of perfect harmony, which is what that expression "heaven" means. Then we started. Our Manas, addresses the third aspect of Divinity saying “Hallowed be thy Name”, because in the depths of this Manas, the first transformation that we will have to achieve, we wish that everything that exists, and that has been individually identified by a Name, be sanctified. , healed, healed of any deviation from harmony by the sanctifying or Holy Spirit. Then our Budhi addresses the second aspect of Divinity, the Son, also called the Word because it represents the action that resulted in the universe. We say “Your Kingdom come to us”, because the super-harmonic action that resulted in the universe, in the Kingdom, we need to discover it within ourselves too, because all this harmony, all this peace is at the bottom of our Budhi, our second transformation to be achieved. No wonder Jesus Christ said “The kingdom of God is within you.” Then our Atma addresses the first aspect of the Divine Trinity saying “Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, because our Atma knows that the highest degree to be achieved is the Right Will, in fact one of the steps of Buddha's eightfold path. There is a lot of talk about free will, but until today we have only managed to have, not a free will from attachments, but a desire attached to opinions and ambitions related to our daily lives. And we ask that this harmonious will of the Most High be done on earth as it is done in heaven.

As I try to explain this, I wish "that all Names be healed", "that we come to discover the Kingdom in ourselves" and that we can climb the highest degree of ourselves "acting with Right Will".

Awaiting the night of the blessings that come to us from the birth of the Child Jesus, let us think about this mainly, so that the natural hustle of modern life does not affect us.

Our superior triad always addresses the divine Trinity “from the bottom up”: Manas, the first step to ascend, addresses the third aspect of the creative Being; Budhi, second degree, addresses the second aspect of this Being; Atma, the highest degree, addresses the first aspect.

Our lower quaternary is also always directed from below to above, but towards the All of the creative Being. So the physical, mineral body (so mineral that, when we die, it hardens, returns to the state of stone) asks: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Because there is always an exchange in our physique, substances are exchanged every ten years, at least, there is a need for the impulses of universal atomic movement for this, and this is the food that we ask for, symbolized by bread. The vegetable body, the vital energy that permeates the physical body, asks: “Forgive our debts”, because when we fail in our love for our neighbor, we owe our harmony to him, and we ask the greater Being to forgive us. Now, for-giving means to-for-giving oneself. Ah, may the Most High give himself a little to us and help us to restore our harmony with our neighbours! When we fail in this, we also injure our own vital body. It is as if we knead it a little with a finger, and these dents flow into the physical body and generate diseases. But we ask "as we forgive our debtors," that is, "as long as we forgive our debtors." For if we give ourselves to our neighbor, exchanging offense for understanding, we disarm our debtor and contribute so that our neighbor no longer gets into debt with us. As for our soul body (or astral, as it is called), it is subject to impulses and outbursts, and it is this that influences our mental body, so that the mind decides to carry out something that can be called evil. For this reason, our soul body asks “Lead us not into temptation”, the temptations of the raptures, which are sometimes very harmful; and the mental body completes: “but deliver us from evil.”

Dear ones, I wish you all a Merry Christmas inside, and that we can be born again each day, unharmed from the harmful influences that we can cause ourselves and others.

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