The Evolution of Prayer

91:2.1The first prayers were merely ver­bal­ized wishes, the ex­pres­sion of sin­cere de­sires. Prayer next be­came a tech­nique of achiev­ing spirit co-op­er­a­tion. And then it at­tained to the higher func­tion of as­sist­ing re­li­gion in the con­ser­va­tion of all worth-while val­ues.

91:2.2Both prayer and magic arose as a re­sult of man’s ad­jus­tive re­ac­tions to Uran­tian en­vi­ron­ment. But aside from this gen­er­al­ized re­la­tion­ship, they have lit­tle in com­mon. Prayer has al­ways in­di­cated pos­i­tive ac­tion by the pray­ing ego; it has been al­ways psy­chic and some­times spir­i­tual. Magic has usu­ally sig­ni­fied an at­tempt to ma­nip­u­late re­al­ity with­out af­fect­ing the ego of the ma­nip­u­la­tor, the prac­ti­tioner of magic. De­spite their in­de­pen­dent ori­gins, magic and prayer of­ten have been in­ter­re­lated in their later stages of de­vel­op­ment. Magic has some­times as­cended by goal el­e­va­tion from for­mu­las through rit­u­als and in­can­ta­tions to the thresh­old of true prayer. Prayer has some­times be­come so ma­te­ri­al­is­tic that it has de­gen­er­ated into a pseu­do­mag­i­cal tech­nique of avoid­ing the ex­pen­di­ture of that ef­fort which is req­ui­site for the so­lu­tion of Uran­tian prob­lems.

91:2.3When man learned that prayer could not co­erce the gods, then it be­came more of a pe­ti­tion, fa­vor seek­ing. But the truest prayer is in re­al­ity a com­mu­nion be­tween man and his Maker.

91:2.4The ap­pear­ance of the sac­ri­fice idea in any re­li­gion un­fail­ingly de­tracts from the higher ef­fi­cacy of true prayer in that men seek to sub­sti­tute the of­fer­ings of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions for the of­fer­ing of their own con­se­crated wills to the do­ing of the will of God.

91:2.5When re­li­gion is di­vested of a per­sonal God, its prayers trans­late to the lev­els of the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. When the high­est God con­cept of a re­li­gion is that of an im­per­sonal De­ity, such as in pan­the­is­tic ide­al­ism, al­though af­ford­ing the ba­sis for cer­tain forms of mys­tic com­mu­nion, it proves fa­tal to the po­tency of true prayer, which al­ways stands for man’s com­mu­nion with a per­sonal and su­pe­rior be­ing.

91:2.6Dur­ing the ear­lier times of racial evo­lu­tion and even at the pres­ent time, in the day-by-day ex­pe­ri­ence of the av­er­age mor­tal, prayer is very much a phe­nom­e­non of man’s in­ter­course with his own sub­con­scious. But there is also a do­main of prayer wherein the in­tel­lec­tu­ally alert and spir­i­tu­ally pro­gress­ing in­di­vid­ual at­tains more or less con­tact with the super­con­scious lev­els of the hu­man mind, the do­main of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster. In ad­di­tion, there is a def­i­nite spir­i­tual phase of true prayer which con­cerns its re­cep­tion and rec­og­ni­tion by the spir­i­tual forces of the uni­verse, and which is en­tirely dis­tinct from all hu­man and in­tel­lec­tual as­so­ci­a­tion.

91:2.7Prayer con­tributes greatly to the de­vel­op­ment of the re­li­gious sen­ti­ment of an evolv­ing hu­man mind. It is a mighty in­flu­ence work­ing to pre­vent iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity.

91:2.8Prayer rep­re­sents one tech­nique as­so­ci­ated with the nat­u­ral re­li­gions of racial evo­lu­tion which also forms a part of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial val­ues of the higher re­li­gions of eth­i­cal ex­cel­lence, the re­li­gions of rev­e­la­tion.