Sri Aurobindo

[Guest guest]

Prayer and the Universal Will

 

The efficacy of prayer is often doubted ...It is true that the

universal will executes always its aim and cannot be deflected by

egoistic propitiation and entreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who

expresses himself in the universal order that, being omniscient, his

larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be done and it does not

need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the

individual's desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true

determining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the

universal will altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers

and forces of which for human life at least, human will, aspiration

and faith are not among the least important. Prayer is only a

particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms

are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no

defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance.

Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man

into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom

we can enter into conscious and living relations. For our will and

aspiration can act either by our own strength and endeavour, which can

no doubt be made a thing great and effective whether for lower or

higher purposes, -- and there are plenty of disciplines which put it

forward as the one force to be used, -- or it can act in dependence

upon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And

this latter way, again, may either look upon that Will as responsive

indeed to our aspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of

energy, or at any rate quite impersonally, or else it may look upon it

as responding consciously to the divine aspiration and faith of the

human soul and consciously bringing to it the help, the guidance, the

protection and fruition demanded, YOGAKSEMAM VAHAAMYAHAM.

 

Prayer helps to prepare this relation for us at first on the lower

plane even while it is there consistent with much that is mere egoism

and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual

truth which is behind it. It is not then the giving of the thing asked

for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man's life

with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the

seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power;

it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle

and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience.

Necessarily, in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for

which it prepared us, -- in fact the form we call prayer is not itself

essential so long as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there, --

or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the

ARTHA or interest it seeks to realise, become higher and higher until

we reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of divine love

pure and simple without any other demand or longing.

 

The relations which arise out of this attitude towards the Divine, are

that of the divine Father and the Mother with the child and that of

the divine Friend ... The soul goes to the Mother-Soul in all its

desires and troubles and the divine Mother wishes that it should be

so, so that she may pour out her heart of love. It turns to her too

because of the self-existent nature of this love and because that

points us to the home towards which we turn from our wanderings in the

world and to the bosom in which we find our rest.