The Evolution of Prayer

91:5.1In an­ces­tor wor­ship, prayer leads to the cul­ti­va­tion of an­ces­tral ide­als. But prayer, as a fea­ture of De­ity wor­ship, tran­scends all other such prac­tices since it leads to the cul­ti­va­tion of di­vine ide­als. As the con­cept of the al­ter ego of prayer be­comes su­preme and di­vine, so are man’s ide­als ac­cord­ingly el­e­vated from mere hu­man to­ward su­per­nal and di­vine lev­els, and the re­sult of all such pray­ing is the en­hance­ment of hu­man char­ac­ter and the pro­found uni­fi­ca­tion of hu­man per­son­al­ity.

91:5.2But prayer need not al­ways be in­di­vid­ual. Group or con­gre­ga­tional pray­ing is very ef­fec­tive in that it is highly so­cial­iz­ing in its reper­cus­sions. When a group en­gages in com­mu­nity prayer for moral en­hance­ment and spir­i­tual up­lift, such de­vo­tions are re­ac­tive upon the in­di­vid­u­als com­pos­ing the group; they are all made bet­ter be­cause of par­tic­i­pa­tion. Even a whole city or an en­tire na­tion can be helped by such prayer de­vo­tions. Con­fes­sion, re­pen­tance, and prayer have led in­di­vid­u­als, cities, na­tions, and whole races to mighty ef­forts of re­form and coura­geous deeds of val­or­ous achieve­ment.

91:5.3If you truly de­sire to over­come the habit of crit­i­ciz­ing some friend, the quick­est and surest way of achiev­ing such a change of at­ti­tude is to es­tab­lish the habit of pray­ing for that per­son ev­ery day of your life. But the so­cial reper­cus­sions of such prayers are de­pen­dent largely on two con­di­tions:

91:5.41. The per­son who is prayed for should know that he is be­ing prayed for.

91:5.52. The per­son who prays should come into in­ti­mate so­cial con­tact with the per­son for whom he is pray­ing.

91:5.6Prayer is the tech­nique whereby, sooner or later, ev­ery re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. And in time prayer be­comes as­so­ci­ated with nu­mer­ous sec­ondary agen­cies, some help­ful, oth­ers de­cid­edly dele­te­ri­ous, such as priests, holy books, wor­ship rit­u­als, and cer­e­mo­ni­als.

91:5.7But the minds of greater spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion should be pa­tient with, and tol­er­ant of, those less en­dowed in­tel­lects that crave sym­bol­ism for the mo­bi­liza­tion of their fee­ble spir­i­tual in­sight. The strong must not look with dis­dain upon the weak. Those who are God-con­scious with­out sym­bol­ism must not deny the grace-min­istry of the sym­bol to those who find it dif­fi­cult to wor­ship De­ity and to re­vere truth, beauty, and good­ness with­out form and rit­ual. In prayer­ful wor­ship, most mor­tals en­vi­sion some sym­bol of the ob­ject-goal of their de­vo­tions.