But what are prayers but thoughts?

[Guest guest]

……“Prayer saves. But what are prayers but thoughts?

Many a person fancies that he must put forward a

definite demand in prayer to the ‘highest’ powers and

get it granted by force of prayer. There is some truth

in this mixed up with much error and confusion. What

comes often after prayer and is supposed to be the

result of prayer is very often something fixed up by a

higher power which, as part of its plan, produces the

thought of prayer first. Prayer often proves to be the

immediate predecessor, but not the efficient and

direct cause of the result. ‘Post hoc, ergo propter

hoc’ (i.e. ‘after that; therefore due to that’) is

what we frequently say and believe. Many a man says ‘I

prayed; I got it. So it is prayer that got it’. But

this is neither logically nor theologically sound. The

fact is that prayer is a means of placing one in

contact with higher beneficent powers and there it

serves its primary purpose. Incidentally when a devout

soul is deeply concentrating on God, what happens is

that the soul gets so thoroughly saturated with the

divine that divine power infiltrates into the Jiva and

the combined power or the higher power (both are the

same, despite difference in names) produces certain

results. It is the man of prayer that draws down

divinity, i.e. turns divine at the moment of intense

prayer and is responsible for certain results (Etad

hyeva aksharam jnaatwa yo yad ichchati tasya tat¬

Khat, i.e. Having realised the Imperishable, if one

has desire, that is fulfilled, even when the results

have not been previously fixed up, as the result of

previous karma. Anyhow, Chandorkar’s thought and

longing constituted a good prayer on account of its

earnest faith and contact with Supreme Power and

Mercy.

 

It is always good to pray, because it brings one in

contact with God. The prayer, however, that is found

most common in society is occasional prayer for a

definite material object, and there it stops. It is

always advisable to avoid the commercial spirit when

dealing with God. We should not bargain with God. Nor

should we say, ‘I will pray to you only for such and

such an object being gained’. The thought of God

purifies the soul, and the purified soul gets power to

draw God more and more into it. The commercialised

soul, if too much oppressed with the contemplation of

the worldly benefit is handicapping itself and

preventing its purification, that is, saturation with

God idea (purity means having God-idea and impurity is

lack of God or God ¬idea). The very idea of material

objects may so obsess a mind as practically to

obliterate the thought of God. God then becomes only a

secondary consideration, a sort of side element, a

weak coloration when the main object before the mind’s

eye is worldly gain. Such approaches are deplorable,

however attractive the object to be gained by prayer

may be. One ought to have prayer without concentrating

too much on worldly gains. Concentration on God alone

is purity. Purity means power, and when a soul is

thoroughly pure, and then the objects entertained in

the mind of the prayerful soul some time previously,

that is even before the prayer began, remain in the

subconscious, i.e. at the back of the praying party’s

mind and may come to fruition by the power of the

purified and strengthened soul. This is an incidental

benefit, which ought not to turn the scales when one

considers how he should pray. Prayer is primarily and

essentially only an affair of the soul with God. All

intervention of outside objects is an interference

with the soul’s concentration on God. Prayer must be

purified by very keen practice, i.e., it must be shorn

of all undesirable gross elements just as we keep off

the floating moss repeatedly when we bathe in a tank.

In cases where however one is in dire extremity and

prayer comes out from him for a much needed object, in

spite of oneself, as was the case with Chandorkar on

the Harischandra hill, then prayer cannot be condemned

at all. Prayer is the natural vent for the heart. We

leap out at what we want on the wings of prayer. It is

God Himself that has implanted this tendency to seek

God’s help to attain objects of great importance to

one’s material or spiritual life and each time we so

seek, we should stress in our mind that God is our

first and final object and that other objects form a

temporary and partial diversion or screen. ”……