Save as PDFJust as we can see that with this prayer Rudolf Steiner gave indications for esoteric deepening within the exoteric, we must see that he went further. To address this next step in esoteric deepening, in relation to the reversal of cult, it is necessary to turn to the Prayer of Bath Kol.
PRAYER OF BATH KOL
The following is the prayer of Bath Kol:
Aum, Amen!
Evils prevail,
Evincing the Ego’s struggling free,
Debt for selfhood at other’s expense,
Enjoyed in the daily bread,
Wherein the Heavens’ will prevaileth not,
Since Mankind severed themselves from Your Kingdom
And forgot Your Names,
Ye Fathers in Heavens.
It is quite possible to see that this prayer has a relation with the Lord’s Prayer of the usual Christian world. However, it is just as possible to see that one starts in this prayer where the Lord’s Prayer ends. One does not begin in heaven, one begins where “Heavens’ will prevaileth not”. The point of departure is in the world which has fallen. Into this fallen world the Christ has descended. What in the past was a macrocosmic prayer, a prayer before the events of the Mystery of Golgotha, is now the prayer that exists within the fallen, be it man or our earth. The task is to raise this world, not so much by petition, but by an inner striving that is not stated. What is needed then is to take a look at the origin of the prayer and perhaps this can lead us to an insight as to how such a prayer might be understood and used.
The first time this prayer can be found is its use by Rudolf Steiner when he laid the foundation stone of the first Goetheanum. For the first time in world history this prayer was spoken openly to a group of men. It was later identified as a prayer given by Bath Kol, a being identified in Jewish mystical circles, as best as I can learn thus far. Where next we hear of this prayer is in the cycle called the Fifth Gospel. Here Rudolf Steiner tells that this prayer was revealed to the Zarathustra being in the process of making his way to the Baptism.
To grasp the moment of the revelation of this prayer, we then have to take a look at the antecedent events in the life of Jesus. This immediately leads to a renewal of an old wisdom known to the occultists and esotericists of the past. This old wisdom is that there were, in fact, two Jesus children. Rudolf Steiner tells that this is the reason for the two genealogies to be found in the Matthew and the Luke Gospels. There are paintings where this twofold origin of the Jesuses can be found. The two Jesuses are both within the house, the blood line of King David. Thus the stream is a Jewish stream with two branches as it were. The one branch is identified by the being known as the Nathanic Jesus. The other branch is identified by the being known as the Solomonic Jesus.
The Nathanic Jesus, as we have already heard, incorporated or better said was overshadowed by the being we have identified as Adam Cadmon and then Krishna. The Solomonic Jesus was overshadowed by the being of Zarathustra. As already noted, the Nathanic Jesus leads us to the sister soul of Adam, and the Solomonic Jesus to Zarathustra. Zarathustra was one of the three Bodhisattvas who had worked again and again to lead the west in spiritual life, exoteric and esoteric. The other two bodhisattvas are known as Buddha and Schythianus. The Nathanic soul is identified as an etheric ego being. This can be thought of as an ego, which is not of true ego nature, but an ego which is living, is life, is an all encompassing life with an ego nature. This all encompassing life and ego nature we can meet when Arjuna, asks his charioteer in the Bhagavad Gita, to reveal his true spiritual nature and this we have already spoken to. As we noted, one can be awe struck just by reading what stands in the Gita.
From Rudolf Steiner’s researches, we then hear that the two Jesuses were born approximately at the same time. The Nathanic Jesus was a “Simple Soul”, who has been described in the light of a carpenter. The Solomonic Jesus was not simple, but was a very wise being. As noted, at the time that the two Jesuses were twelve, the Zarathustra Being deserted his body, and stepped into the body of the Nathanic Jesus. The latter soul-spirit departed for the spiritual world, while the remaining organism from Zarathustra died shortly thereafter. So it is the Being of Zarathustra who walked to the Baptism living in an organism, where the etheric ego of Adam Cadman had worked to bring a very living ego-activated ether organization.
Prior to the Baptism, we hear that this Zarathustra-Nathanic-bodied Jesus lived among the Essenes. There this Jesus had many experiences, and one that is revealed by Rudolf Steiner, out of his investigations, is that the being of Zarathustra came to hear the words of the Bath Kol. The prayer of Bath Kol thus can be considered to arise out of the ether body of Jesus, where the Nathanic-Adam-Cadmonic had dwelled. The prayer arose from within Jesus, reflecting the worlds of Bath-Kol (Krishna).
One can find in Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, that the great Krishna was able to lift the striving, struggling Arjuna into the spiritual world to reflect His higher make up in the loosened etheric body (brain) of Arjuna. In like fashion, we might consider that ether body from the departed Nathanic-Krishna, lifted the ego of Zarathustra out of the physical body of the Jesus, so the words of Bath Kol could be reflected in the ether body freed from the brain of this Jesus. This Jesus carried the soul-spirit of Zarathustra. This could mean that Bath Kol is, in fact, the Nathanic-Krishna being, and it is he who gives the prayer to be reflected in the ether body of Jesus which has been slightly raised. With this event, a possible archetype for all mankind may be taken into the ether body for those to come in the future. The spiritual economy of such a circumstance demands that such an ether body, in which a prayer for the striving soul is placed, be preserved for all those to come, for the future seekers in the spirit.
In this way we can think of this prayer as given out of the cosmos, as a macrocosmic prayer but reflected in the ether body of the Jesus on the way to sacrificing the organism to the incarnating Christ. As Christ was the mighty being of the Cosmos to incarnate in a very special body, he could then as man, as one born as son of man, not only born of God, but of man as well, bring forth the microcosmic prayer known as the Lords Prayer. The latter is brought to man to help lift man to a higher life. As we have indicated it can be used for the striving man as well with the help of esoteric knowledges. The Macrocosmic Lords Prayer, the prayer of Bath Kol, is a prayer for the esoteric striver, it can lie as a quiet gem in the ether organism of those who trod an inner path and have taken on the archetype into their ether body. The impulse for this prayer lies within the ether body of all those who have made copies of the ether body of the Jesus who walked the path to the Jordan. Thus it can be, that some souls will come to this prayer experience out of their karma, while some others will have to strive diligently with esoteric life.
What this suggests is that there lies a potential in the life organization of individuals today, a potential for individuals to come to the etheric events that surround the happenings at the time of the Incarnation. A raising is possible, if the archetype has not been taken in. With continued effort, that which lies in the depth of the living organism might be lifted by the effort of the individual himself to a stage where the events of the past might be reflected in a raised, freed ether organization. Such an individual can be considered to be seeking on a path of the reversed cult. Such an individual might make the process of striving and knowing, of wisdom search, an act of cultic nature. The prayer of Bath Kol can then be in itself the point of departure for an esoteric striving. How much esoteric knowledge might be needed can not be foretold, but individual effort might well surface this depth of spirituality.
We can carry this line of contemplation of the lifting of the ether body out of the head, as the soul is raised into the ether world, to be the case with raisings after the Krishna initiation of Arjuna. Rudolf Steiner through his investigation could find that the etheric force nature of Krishna, loosened the ether body of Arjuna, and as just noted, raised his soul into the ether world, where truth seeking is the sign of this etheric domain. The loosening of the ether body of the head assumes that this ether had over millennia come to conform to the physical configuration of the head. We can recall with the evolution of mankind that the ether of the head was not conforming to the physical head. During Atlantis, the form of the etheric became conforming with the physical (Noah’s Ark). Only slowly did the conforming of the etheric and physical head come about. The conformity was the circumstance which permitted the soul to have individual thoughts, have ideas that arise out of the self. Arjuna was at that time a kind of modern man. His questions are those that we can understand today, that is, why fight one’s relatives? Today we would ask, why battle one’s heredity?. If more would ask this question, we might have fewer battles in the Middle East where there is so much struggle between blood lines.
The loosening of the etheric of the head of Arjuna, permits Arjuna to see the cosmic form of Krishna, the form of the ether-ego. The etheric which served, serves, this form, is the same ether that was taken out of the earthly evolution at the time of Hyperborea, when the sun was extracted from the earth. At that time, light, tone and life-ethers were taken along. These higher ethers are those which bring about the phenomena of the cosmic word, cosmic speech and can raise the soul into the ether world of Devachan. Here archetypes exist and those for all the kingdoms. Here the archetype of man can be found. All this ether world comprises the ether of Krishna. Thus the form of Krishna encompasses all the archetypes of the kingdoms and appears as a mighty, a grandiose, and far-reaching Being. This Being has been identified as Adam Cadmon, Krishna and Nathanic Jesus. The Jesus incarnation of twelve years is revealed as the only incarnation of this Being, who for the most part exists in the ether world. This Being is the Bath Kol who gave the Macrocosmic prayer.
In our time, this ether Being can be known as the Being of Anthroposophia, a being who comes from great heights and distances, but Who now can be met on a spiritual path. The etheric nature of Anthroposophia should not be taken as the only member of this being, as there needs to be an astral, ego, and higher membering as well. In the case of Anthroposophia, it would appear that the ether nature of this Being is very close to the physical of light, warmth and sound as already noted and is ego revealing. For the evolution of the ego, this Being becomes very important in our time. This Ether-being may well have been the Being which Rudolf Steiner perceived when he encountered the threefold make up of man, for the first time. Rudolf Steiner was in his early twenties at the time. This is the Being Krishna whom Arjuna perceived at another time in the evolution of man, when this Being had not yet gone through an incarnation. We can think that this Being left an imprint of his ego in the ether body of the Nathanic Jesus. It was then this imprinted ether, which was lifted out of the physical head of Zarathustra-Nathanic body Jesus, in the circumstance where Bath Kol, Krishna, could “speak” the words of the Macrocosmic Lord’s Prayer, the Aum Prayer. It was this same Bath Kol, Krishna, who then united His Being with the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha as we have noted above. This is the Being who then also brought about the Damascus experience, so that Paul could encounter the Christ in his ego.