Fwd: Message not approved: "Is There Anything in Prayer?" - An article

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>sampath kumar <sampathkumar_2000

>Ramanbil

>Re: Message not approved: "Is There Anything in Prayer?" - An

>article

>Mon, 15 Oct 2001 23:32:00 -0700 (PDT)

>

>

>--- Ramanbil wrote:

> >

> > Dear friend:

> > Can you post it directly in a readable form? I am not able to open

> > the document. Thanks.

> > Dasoham

> > Anbil Ramaswamy

> >

> ******** ********* ********

>

>Dear SrimAn Anbil swamy,

>

>Of course! Here it is: (This article appears to me basically an

>expansion of the theme of our own "tiruppAvai"!).

> ____

>

>

>The Atlantic Monthly | October 1921

>

> "Is There Anything in Prayer"?

>

> "Prayer is the organization of one's unsatisfied desires so that God

>may work through them for the end desired"

> by J. Edgar Park

>

> .....

>

> One of the earliest discoveries made by the adventurer who dares

>to penetrate into the land of Common Sense is that in that land

>mere wishing does not accomplish very much. Sundered lovers wished

>their hearts away for centuries, longing for the sound of the other's

>voice through the intervening miles of space. But all was of no avail

>until to that wishing was added the minute knowledge of

>electro-magnetism, which resulted in the invention of the telephone.

>

>The longest road in the world is the road that lies between feeling

>and fact. The road can be made passable only by knowledge. Wishing is

>just the initial motive force designed to drive one to seek the

>knowledge of the way. Processions of longing, beseeching human beings

>through plague-stricken cities, imploring the removal of the curse,

>effected nothing, until their desires were converted into patient

>investigation of the causes and cure of plague. The processions were

>valuable in so far as they incited and stung the lethargic scientific

>mind into investigation and discovery. Wishing, looked upon as an end

>in itself, is barren, but it is the initial stage of all progress.

>

>Desire, when it can be transmuted into action, is the joy of life.

>Desire, when it cannot immediately be transmuted into action, is the

>basic problem of literature, art, philosophy, and religion. What is

>to be done with it? Prayer is the organization of unsatisfied desire.

>Unless it is organized in some way it leads to ruinous consequences.

>Worry, nervous disorders depression, temptation, morbid mental

>conditions — these are the names of some of the results of

>unorganized, unsatisfied desires. A mother returns home on a sudden

>call, to find her child sick unto death. She immediately gets the

>best doctors and the best nurses and does all she can for his cure.

>At last she has done all she is able to do. Can she then put the

>matter from her mind and go to the movies? No, there remains, after

>she has done everything possible for her child, a mass of desire for

>that child's recovery which she has not been able to work off into

>action. What is she to do with? She may either go into another room

>and worry herself to death over the child, and thus make herself a

>prophet of death to the child and the whole household, or she may

>pray. Prayer is the control of the overflow of desire above that

>which can be immediately transmuted into action.

>

>What then is her mental attitude in prayer? It has been largely

>represented as that of a slave asking for a favor before the throne

>of an oriental potentate. 'I have done many favors for Thee in the

>past. I have contributed to the church, and attended thy services and

>kept thy laws. Now I humbly ask, in return for these offerings, the

>life of this child!'

>

>Or it has been supposed that here is the one exception to the

>otherwise inexorable principle that mere wishing does not accomplish

>anything. She is simply to wish and ask, as a child would wish and

>ask a parent for, something desirable.

>

>Prayer in both these cases is looked upon as a triangle. The mother

>and the child are at the base angles; God is at the apex. The mother

>sends up a prayer to God, which God considers, and, if it seems good

>to Him, sends down the answer to the child. The conditions of

>effective prayer under these conditions are, as set forth in a recent

>hand-book on prayer, faith, humility, and submission.

>

>There has been, however, a growing school of religious thinkers who

>have felt that the use of terms and figures like these must not blind

>us to the fact that the realm of Prayer is no exception to the

>general rule; that it is necessary, not only to wish, but to know how

>to wish; that there are laws governing the organization of

>unsatisfied desires which must be observed. Prayer for them is not so

>much a triangle as a

>straight line. Prayer is the organization of one's unsatisfied

>desires so that God may work through them for the end desired. The

>mother's

>unsatisfied desire for the life of the child may be so organized as

>to be the channel through which the healing power of God may reach

>the

>child. Prayer is not, then, that passive acquiescence of the

>Irishman,

>who hung the Lord's Prayer over his bed and, every night, before he

>jumped in, jerked his thumb in the direction of the petitions and

>ejaculated, 'Them's my sentiments.' Prayer is an activity of will and

>mind and feeling, which makes us the natural channel through which

>good effects flow to those for whom we pray. Psychology studies the

>conditions of that activity.

>

>Religion asserts that these good effects are the result, not merely

>of a personal, but also of a cosmic wish.

>

>What is the condition of mind of such a mother, which most conduces

>to the cure of the child? If it is true, as we have surmised, that

>prayer is not simply wishing but organized and directed wishing, then

>it is evident that, as in any other art, power in prayer will come

>with practice. It is necessary, as in any other art, to begin with

>little things and gain skill and power from the small to the great.

>Prayer is the personal influence, which we recognize so well in

>social intercourse, at its highest point of efficiency. We all

>recognize that personal influence is a hard attainment; power in

>prayer is equally open to all, but requires great effort to attain.

>Much as we may dislike the word, there is a technique of prayer which

>can be mastered. The mother must have learned to pray, in order to be

>of much help to her child at such a crisis. To be a healing

>personality is a high achievement. But let us suppose that she has

>been practising prayer for years. She has gained her power in the

>attainment of lesser ends than this very life of her child. It is, in

>general, almost impossible to generate in the face of a sudden

>emergency a hitherto unused power. Prayer ought to start with

>trifles—the sublimation of petty personal desires, the gaining of a

>rational spiritual attitude toward minor social problems in the home

>and school. Prayer does not generally emerge into the consciousness

>as a desire for the evangelization of the world in this

>generation; it rather begins with a desire for a new doll or the

>winning of a game.

>

>Some years previously, this mother has found that her child was not

>getting on well at school. He began to bring home bad report-cards,

>he

>did not like the teachers, he hated the studies. The mother finds

>herself beginning to anticipate more trouble. She expects another bad

>report, more tales of being disliked by the teachers, more inability

>to do the work prescribed. Her very face as she meets the child at

>the door tells what she anticipates. Suddenly she realizes that the

>whole atmosphere of the home is melancholy with the sense of

>impending failure. Her personal influence, through the black

>background of her consciousness, is, in spite of anything she may

>say, foreboding. Then she endeavors to 'get hold of herself '; to

>prevent this thwarted desire for her child's happiness and success

>from turning sour and becoming a fixed, if almost unconscious,

>conviction that the child will not get on well at school.

>

>She begins to pray. She invokes another conviction, that the good

>Spirit of the universe has no such intention for her child. She

>recalls some of the great passages of religious inspiration, the

>words of the saints who have been sure of a power outside ourselves,

>as well as in ourselves,making for righteousness. Thus gaining the

>prayer mood, she then reminds herself that she must be the channel

>for bringing this good-will into the life of her child. She replaces

>the picture of failure, which threatens to become fixed in her mind,

>with a more vivid and living picture of success. With all the love

>and sympathy and imaginative fire she possesses, she pictures to

>herself her petition being granted — the new attitude on the part of

>her child, his awakened interest in his studies, his liking for his

>teachers, his expectation of success. She prays intensely, with all

>her desire, through and in this mental picture.

>

>This act is exceedingly difficult; but, if done, it changes the whole

>atmosphere of the home. The very face of the mother as she meets the

>child is magnetic of success for the child instead of being prophetic

>of failure. In the thousand ways, known and unknown, in which the

>mother's mind touches the mind of the child, encouragement,

>expectation of achievement, faith in his powers now flow in upon the

>will of the child. In petitions of this nature, the whole personality

>is stirred; desire, intellect, and imagination are at their highest

>point of efficiency, that she may become a conductor of God's

>good-will. She concludes her prayer with thanks-giving to God that

>the prayer has been granted, a supreme act of faith.

>

>There is all the difference in the world between the man who says, 'I

>am going to give up my bad habit,' and the man who says, 'I have

>given

>up my bad habit.' So there is between feeling that God may answer the

>prayer and that God has answered it. The latter is the act of faith

>that the answer will be hindered only by the defect of the channel.

>The answer is granted; the flood of happiness and success is forcing

>its way through the narrow and obstructed channel of the mother's

>personal influence upon the child. Prayer has substituted such an

>influence for the previous, almost unconscious, suggestions of

>failure. There is no dogmatism in such prayer as to the method of the

>of the answer — that is left to the infinite possibilities of actual

>experience. The claim is simply made on the universe for the

>happiness of the child, and in the making of the claim the

>psychological machinery is set in motion for its being honored by the

>universe. And this effort to organize unsatisfied desire not only has

>its influence upon those for whom we pray, but tends to purify and

>enlighten the desire itself, so that, when the petition is granted,

>it may be on a much higher plane than when it was first offered. Yet

>it is the same prayer. The desire is always satisfied. But it often

>is sublimated in the process of satisfaction.

>

>In the face of the impending death of her child, a mother who has so

>practised prayer on lesser matters has great powers. Her very face in

>the sick-room as the child dimly sees it, is on the side of health

>and life. And who can tell in what numberless ways the minds of those

>who love touch one another, all unseen even by the argus eyes of

>science.

>Miracles occur, and the tide of life returns into sluggish veins,

>when the desire of life is kindled through the touch of kindred

>minds.

>

>Many objections will occur to one who reads for the first time this

>theory of prayer. Does not this explanation of prayer, it will be

>asked, run counter to the practice of One who said in his prayer,

>'Not My will but Thine be done'? This phrase has been greatly

>misused. It has been misused so as almost to justify the Irishman's

>type of prayer, before mentioned. Rousseau best expressed a

>prevailing interpretation of it thus: 'I bless God, but I pray not.

>Why should I ask of Him that He would change for me the course of

>things, do miracles in my favor? I, who ought to love, above all, the

>order established by his wisdom and maintained by his

>providence—shall I wish that order to be dissolved on my account? As

>little do I ask of Him the power to do well. Why ask what He has

>already given?'

>

>But God's highest will is carried out only through human wills

>working

>at white heat. Prayer is not asking God to change the course of

>things, but asking Him to help me to be a part of that course of

>things. I become so, not in spite of my will, but through my will.

>The Master used this phrase, not before He had exerted his own will,

>but after the great drops of the sweat of desire were falling from

>his brow to the ground. The phrase is no idle excuse for listless

>praying; in it we see the sublimation of desire taking place. Idle

>prayers, which place this phrase, misused, in the forefront, will

>ever excuse injustice and sickness and unhappiness as the will of

>God. Justice, happiness, health, surely these are the will of God for

>all; as to the detailed method of their coming, our desires in prayer

>are ever being enlarged and enlightened by the inflow upon us of the

>cosmic desires of God.

>

>Again, it will be asked if this theory will not lend itself to the

>idea that, if you want a purse of money, you must imagine it very

>vividly lying on the pavement outside your house, and then go out and

>find it. A father heard his little girl praying for the red doll in

>the window of the corner store, and told her she ought not to pray

>for things like that; she ought to pray to be a good girl, or for the

>heathen. The fact was that she did not want specially to be a good

>girl in the father's meaning of that phrase, and she did not care

>about the heathen, but she did want the red doll. Why make a

>hypocrite of her at the start? So it is with money. If that is what

>you really want, pray for it. If you pray sincerely, you will receive

>an answer which will satisfy you. Possibly not the pocket-book, but

>an ability to get up earlier in the morning, or to keep awake between

>meals, or to reduce your expenditures. The answer always comes and

>abundantly satisfies anyone who dares persistently to carry out the

>art of praying. But prayer always initiates effort.

>

>Prayer is a hard task without the mystic sense of the personality of

>God. In all the lesser problems of life it is easy enough to look

>upon it as the simple demonstration of a natural law. But when the

>storms are out and the floods let loose, when one has done all one

>can by action and has done all one can by prayer, then life is hard

>and cruel, indeed, unless one can feel, behind all the laws and

>beneath all the principles, in higher reaches of spiritual communion,

>a love that understands and forgives.

>

>

>

>

>

>Make a great connection at Personals.

>http://personals.

 

 

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