The Evolution of Prayer

91:3.1Chil­dren, when first learn­ing to make use of lan­guage, are prone to think out loud, to ex­press their thoughts in words, even if no one is pres­ent to hear them. With the dawn of cre­ative imag­i­na­tion they evince a ten­dency to con­verse with imag­i­nary com­pan­ions. In this way a bud­ding ego seeks to hold com­mu­nion with a fic­ti­tious al­ter ego. By this tech­nique the child early learns to con­vert his mono­logue con­ver­sa­tions into pseudo di­a­logues in which this al­ter ego makes replies to his ver­bal think­ing and wish ex­pres­sion. Very much of an adult’s think­ing is men­tally car­ried on in con­ver­sa­tional form.

91:3.2The early and prim­i­tive form of prayer was much like the semimag­i­cal recita­tions of the pres­ent-day Toda tribe, prayers that were not ad­dressed to any­one in par­tic­u­lar. But such tech­niques of pray­ing tend to evolve into the di­a­logue type of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the emer­gence of the idea of an al­ter ego. In time the al­ter-ego con­cept is ex­alted to a su­pe­rior sta­tus of di­vine dig­nity, and prayer as an agency of re­li­gion has ap­peared. Through many phases and dur­ing long ages this prim­i­tive type of pray­ing is des­tined to evolve be­fore at­tain­ing the level of in­tel­li­gent and truly eth­i­cal prayer.

91:3.3As it is con­ceived by suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of pray­ing mor­tals, the al­ter ego evolves up through ghosts, fe­tishes, and spir­its to poly­the­is­tic gods, and even­tu­ally to the One God, a di­vine be­ing em­body­ing the high­est ide­als and the lofti­est as­pi­ra­tions of the pray­ing ego. And thus does prayer func­tion as the most po­tent agency of re­li­gion in the con­ser­va­tion of the high­est val­ues and ide­als of those who pray. From the mo­ment of the con­ceiv­ing of an al­ter ego to the ap­pear­ance of the con­cept of a di­vine and heav­enly Fa­ther, prayer is al­ways a so­cial­iz­ing, mor­al­iz­ing, and spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing prac­tice.

91:3.4The sim­ple prayer of faith ev­i­dences a mighty evo­lu­tion in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence whereby the an­cient con­ver­sa­tions with the fic­ti­tious sym­bol of the al­ter ego of prim­i­tive re­li­gion have be­come ex­alted to the level of com­mu­nion with the spirit of the In­fi­nite and to that of a bona fide con­scious­ness of the re­al­ity of the eter­nal God and Par­a­dise Fa­ther of all in­tel­li­gent cre­ation.

91:3.5Aside from all that is super­self in the ex­pe­ri­ence of pray­ing, it should be re­mem­bered that eth­i­cal prayer is a splen­did way to el­e­vate one’s ego and re­in­force the self for bet­ter liv­ing and higher at­tain­ment. Prayer in­duces the hu­man ego to look both ways for help: for ma­te­rial aid to the sub­con­scious reser­voir of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence, for in­spi­ra­tion and guid­ance to the super­con­scious bor­ders of the con­tact of the ma­te­rial with the spir­i­tual, with the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor.

91:3.6Prayer ever has been and ever will be a two­fold hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: a psy­cho­logic pro­ce­dure in­teras­so­ci­ated with a spir­i­tual tech­nique. And these two func­tions of prayer can never be fully sep­a­rated.

91:3.7En­light­ened prayer must rec­og­nize not only an ex­ter­nal and per­sonal God but also an in­ter­nal and im­per­sonal Di­vin­ity, the in­dwelling Ad­juster. It is al­to­gether fit­ting that man, when he prays, should strive to grasp the con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther on Par­a­dise; but the more ef­fec­tive tech­nique for most prac­ti­cal pur­poses will be to re­vert to the con­cept of a near-by al­ter ego, just as the prim­i­tive mind was wont to do, and then to rec­og­nize that the idea of this al­ter ego has evolved from a mere fic­tion to the truth of God’s in­dwelling mor­tal man in the fac­tual pres­ence of the Ad­juster so that man can talk face to face, as it were, with a real and gen­uine and di­vine al­ter ego that in­dwells him and is the very pres­ence and essence of the liv­ing God, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.