The Evolution of Prayer

91:7.1Mys­ti­cism, as the tech­nique of the cul­ti­va­tion of the con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God, is al­to­gether praise­wor­thy, but when such prac­tices lead to so­cial iso­la­tion and cul­mi­nate in re­li­gious fa­nati­cism, they are all but rep­re­hen­si­ble. Al­to­gether too fre­quently that which the over­wrought mys­tic eval­u­ates as di­vine in­spi­ra­tion is the up­ris­ings of his own deep mind. The con­tact of the mor­tal mind with its in­dwelling Ad­juster, while of­ten fa­vored by de­voted med­i­ta­tion, is more fre­quently fa­cil­i­tated by whole­hearted and lov­ing ser­vice in un­selfish min­istry to one’s fel­low crea­tures.

91:7.2The great re­li­gious teach­ers and the proph­ets of past ages were not ex­treme mys­tics. They were God-know­ing men and women who best served their God by un­selfish min­istry to their fel­low mor­tals. Je­sus of­ten took his apos­tles away by them­selves for short pe­ri­ods to en­gage in med­i­ta­tion and prayer, but for the most part he kept them in ser­vice-con­tact with the mul­ti­tudes. The soul of man re­quires spir­i­tual ex­er­cise as well as spir­i­tual nour­ish­ment.

91:7.3Re­li­gious ec­stasy is per­mis­si­ble when re­sult­ing from sane an­tecedents, but such ex­pe­ri­ences are more of­ten the out­growth of purely emo­tional in­flu­ences than a man­i­fes­ta­tion of deep spir­i­tual char­ac­ter. Re­li­gious per­sons must not re­gard ev­ery vivid psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment and ev­ery in­tense emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ence as a di­vine rev­e­la­tion or a spir­i­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Gen­uine spir­i­tual ec­stasy is usu­ally as­so­ci­ated with great out­ward calm­ness and al­most per­fect emo­tional con­trol. But true pro­phetic vi­sion is a super­psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment. Such vis­i­ta­tions are not pseudo hal­lu­ci­na­tions, nei­ther are they trance­like ec­stasies.

91:7.4The hu­man mind may per­form in re­sponse to so-called in­spi­ra­tion when it is sen­si­tive ei­ther to the up­ris­ings of the sub­con­scious or to the stim­u­lus of the super­con­scious. In ei­ther case it ap­pears to the in­di­vid­ual that such aug­men­ta­tions of the con­tent of con­scious­ness are more or less for­eign. Un­re­strained mys­ti­cal en­thu­si­asm and ram­pant re­li­gious ec­stasy are not the cre­den­tials of in­spi­ra­tion, sup­pos­edly di­vine cre­den­tials.

91:7.5The prac­ti­cal test of all these strange re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences of mys­ti­cism, ec­stasy, and in­spi­ra­tion is to ob­serve whether these phe­nom­ena cause an in­di­vid­ual:

91:7.61. To en­joy bet­ter and more com­plete phys­i­cal health.

91:7.72. To func­tion more ef­fi­ciently and prac­ti­cally in his men­tal life.

91:7.83. More fully and joy­fully to so­cial­ize his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

91:7.94. More com­pletely to spir­i­tu­al­ize his day-by-day liv­ing while faith­fully dis­charg­ing the com­mon­place du­ties of rou­tine mor­tal ex­is­tence.

91:7.105. To en­hance his love for, and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of, truth, beauty, and good­ness.

91:7.116. To con­serve cur­rently rec­og­nized so­cial, moral, eth­i­cal, and spir­i­tual val­ues.

91:7.127. To in­crease his spir­i­tual in­sight—God-con­scious­ness.

91:7.13But prayer has no real as­so­ci­a­tion with these ex­cep­tional re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences. When prayer be­comes over­much aes­thetic, when it con­sists al­most ex­clu­sively in beau­ti­ful and bliss­ful con­tem­pla­tion of par­a­di­si­a­cal di­vin­ity, it loses much of its so­cial­iz­ing in­flu­ence and tends to­ward mys­ti­cism and the iso­la­tion of its devo­tees. There is a cer­tain dan­ger as­so­ci­ated with over­much pri­vate pray­ing which is cor­rected and pre­vented by group pray­ing, com­mu­nity de­vo­tions.