If we strengthen our life of spirit in this way through prayer, then we need only await the effects, which will certainly become apparent. But only someone who has himself first perceived the power of prayer as reality will seek it’s effect in the outer world. Those who recognize this reality can try the following experiment.
Having spurned the power of prayer for ten years, look back upon this ten-year period during which prayer has not figured in your life; then also look back upon a second ten-year period during which you did perceive the power of prayer. Then compare these two periods.
You will see how the course of your life has changed under the sway of the power that you have imbued your soul with through prayer. Powers reveal themselves in their effects.
It is easy to deny powers if one never calls forth their effects. How can anyone have the right to deny the power of prayer without ever having tried to actively invoke it within himself! .... We can only perceive a power that is to work in and through the soul by invoking and using it.
But however lofty as stage one may have attained, one has never finished working with a prayer, for it can always raise the soul to a higher level. And the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer that not only can be prayed but can also invoke a mystic mood, and can also be the object of higher meditation and concentration.
If this mood of soul and sensibility is achieved as a truly prayerful mood, then Christian prayer is exactly the same as meditation — but just with a greater colouring of feeling quality. Originally Christian prayer was nothing other than meditation.
Meditation involves a greater accentuation of thought, and through it one tries to attain harmony with the divine current that flow through the world, by thinking of the great guide and helper of humanity. In prayer we can achieve the same thing in a more feeling way.
It is not an actual mantra, although they can have mantric powers. Naturally it had the greatest power in its original language. But since it is a thought mantra, it will not lose its potency even if translated into a thousand different languages .... The content of thought in it is so mighty that it will not suffer diminution in any language.
Rudolf Steiner spoke as a person of deep experience and familiarity with these matters — as someone who had practiced them for many years.