prayer

• practice of prayer › futile to appeal to God to escape just consequences of natural laws

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

• practice of prayer › Father knows our needs before we ask

3:3.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the only per­son­al­ity in all the uni­verse who does ac­tu­ally know the num­ber of the stars and plan­ets of space. All the worlds of ev­ery uni­verse are con­stantly within the con­scious­ness of God. He also says: “I have surely seen the af­flic­tion of my peo­ple, I have heard their cry, and I know their sor­rows.” For “the Lord looks from heaven; he be­holds all the sons of men; from the place of his habi­ta­tion he looks upon all the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” Ev­ery crea­ture child may truly say: “He knows the way I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” “God knows our down­sit­tings and our up­ris­ings; he un­der­stands our thoughts afar off and is ac­quainted with all our ways.” “All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” And it should be a real com­fort to ev­ery hu­man be­ing to un­der­stand that “he knows your frame; he re­mem­bers that you are dust.” Je­sus, speak­ing of the liv­ing God, said, “Your Fa­ther knows what you have need of even be­fore you ask him.”

• practice of prayer › should be directed to Eternal Son, Creator Son

5:3.2Sup­pli­ca­tions of all kinds be­long to the realm of the Eter­nal Son and the Son’s spir­i­tual or­ga­ni­za­tion. Prayers, all for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, ev­ery­thing ex­cept ado­ra­tion and wor­ship of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, are mat­ters that con­cern a lo­cal uni­verse; they do not or­di­nar­ily pro­ceed out of the realm of the ju­ris­dic­tion of a Cre­ator Son. But wor­ship is un­doubt­edly en­cir­cuited and dis­patched to the per­son of the Cre­ator by the func­tion of the Fa­ther’s per­son­al­ity cir­cuit. We fur­ther be­lieve that such reg­istry of the homage of an Ad­juster-in­dwelt crea­ture is fa­cil­i­tated by the Fa­ther’s spirit pres­ence. There ex­ists a tremen­dous amount of ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate such a be­lief, and I know that all or­ders of Fa­ther frag­ments are em­pow­ered to reg­is­ter the bona fide ado­ra­tion of their sub­jects ac­cept­ably in the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Ad­justers un­doubt­edly also uti­lize di­rect preper­sonal chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God, and they are like­wise able to uti­lize the spirit-grav­ity cir­cuits of the Eter­nal Son.

• defined as › embodying self-interest

5:3.3Wor­ship is for its own sake; prayer em­bod­ies a self- or crea­ture-in­ter­est el­e­ment; that is the great dif­fer­ence be­tween wor­ship and prayer. There is ab­so­lutely no self-re­quest or other el­e­ment of per­sonal in­ter­est in true wor­ship; we sim­ply wor­ship God for what we com­pre­hend him to be. Wor­ship asks noth­ing and ex­pects noth­ing for the wor­shiper. We do not wor­ship the Fa­ther be­cause of any­thing we may de­rive from such ven­er­a­tion; we ren­der such de­vo­tion and en­gage in such wor­ship as a nat­u­ral and spon­ta­neous re­ac­tion to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther’s match­less per­son­al­ity and be­cause of his lov­able na­ture and adorable at­tri­butes.

• practice of prayer › should be directed to Eternal Son, Creator Son

5:3.4The mo­ment the el­e­ment of self-in­ter­est in­trudes upon wor­ship, that in­stant de­vo­tion trans­lates from wor­ship to prayer and more ap­pro­pri­ately should be di­rected to the per­son of the Eter­nal Son or the Cre­ator Son. But in prac­ti­cal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence there ex­ists no rea­son why prayer should not be ad­dressed to God the Fa­ther as a part of true wor­ship.

• spiritual status of any religion may be determined by nature of its p.

5:4.8The Greek re­li­gion had a watch­word “Know your­self”; the He­brews cen­tered their teach­ing on “Know your God”; the Chris­tians preach a gospel aimed at a “knowl­edge of the Lord Je­sus Christ”; Je­sus pro­claimed the good news of “know­ing God, and your­self as a son of God.” These dif­fer­ing con­cepts of the pur­pose of re­li­gion de­ter­mine the in­di­vid­ual’s at­ti­tude in var­i­ous life sit­u­a­tions and fore­shadow the depth of wor­ship and the na­ture of his per­sonal habits of prayer. The spir­i­tual sta­tus of any re­li­gion may be de­ter­mined by the na­ture of its prayers.

• mechanism of prayer › transmitted instantaneously by spirit-gravity circuit to all divine personalities concerned
• practice of prayer › immaterial whether p. addressed to Creator Son or Eternal Son
• practice of prayer › should be directed to Eternal Son, Creator Son

7:3.3The spirit-grav­ity cir­cuit is the ba­sic chan­nel for trans­mit­ting the gen­uine prayers of the be­liev­ing hu­man heart from the level of hu­man con­scious­ness to the ac­tual con­scious­ness of De­ity. That which rep­re­sents true spir­i­tual value in your pe­ti­tions will be seized by the uni­ver­sal cir­cuit of spirit grav­ity and will pass im­me­di­ately and si­mul­ta­ne­ously to all di­vine per­son­al­i­ties con­cerned. Each will oc­cupy him­self with that which be­longs to his per­sonal prov­ince. There­fore, in your prac­ti­cal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, it is im­ma­te­rial whether, in ad­dress­ing your sup­pli­ca­tions, you vi­su­al­ize the Cre­ator Son of your lo­cal uni­verse or the Eter­nal Son at the cen­ter of all things.

7:3.4The dis­crim­i­na­tive op­er­a­tion of the spirit-grav­ity cir­cuit might pos­si­bly be com­pared to the func­tions of the neu­ral cir­cuits in the ma­te­rial hu­man body: Sen­sa­tions travel in­ward over the neu­ral paths; some are de­tained and re­sponded to by the lower au­to­matic spinal cen­ters; oth­ers pass on to the less au­to­matic but habit-trained cen­ters of the lower brain, while the most im­por­tant and vi­tal in­com­ing mes­sages flash by these sub­or­di­nate cen­ters and are im­me­di­ately reg­is­tered in the high­est lev­els of hu­man con­scious­ness.

7:3.5But how much more per­fect is the su­perb tech­nique of the spir­i­tual world! If any­thing orig­i­nates in your con­scious­ness that is fraught with su­preme spir­i­tual value, when once you give it ex­pres­sion, no power in the uni­verse can pre­vent its flash­ing di­rectly to the Ab­so­lute Spirit Per­son­al­ity of all cre­ation.

• mechanism of prayer › no lodgment in spirit circuit for unworthy p.

7:3.6Con­versely, if your sup­pli­ca­tions are purely ma­te­rial and wholly self-cen­tered, there ex­ists no plan whereby such un­wor­thy prayers can find lodg­ment in the spirit cir­cuit of the Eter­nal Son. The con­tent of any pe­ti­tion which is not “spirit in­dited” can find no place in the uni­ver­sal spir­i­tual cir­cuit; such purely self­ish and ma­te­rial re­quests fall dead; they do not as­cend in the cir­cuits of true spirit val­ues. Such words are as “sound­ing brass and a tin­kling cym­bal.”

• practice of prayer › motivation validates; words are valueless

7:3.7It is the mo­ti­vat­ing thought, the spir­i­tual con­tent, that val­i­dates the mor­tal sup­pli­ca­tion. Words are val­ue­less.

• practice of prayer › learn to pray as children

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.

• practice of prayer › celestial beings do not assist those who refuse to act on available truth

48:7.97. Blind and un­fore­seen ac­ci­dents do not oc­cur in the cos­mos. Nei­ther do the ce­les­tial be­ings as­sist the lower be­ing who re­fuses to act upon his light of truth.

• examples of prayers › Onagar’s prayer

63:6.6“O Breath of Life, give us this day our daily food, de­liver us from the curse of the ice, save us from our for­est en­e­mies, and with mercy re­ceive us into the Great Be­yond.”

• examples of prayers › Father’s prayer taught by Hap in Dalamatia

66:5.14None of the Prince’s staff would pre­sent rev­e­la­tion to com­pli­cate evo­lu­tion; they pre­sented rev­e­la­tion only as the cli­max of their ex­haus­tion of the forces of evo­lu­tion. But Hap did yield to the de­sire of the in­hab­i­tants of the city for the es­tab­lish­ment of a form of re­li­gious ser­vice. His group pro­vided the Dala­ma­tians with the seven chants of wor­ship and also gave them the daily praise-phrase and even­tu­ally taught them “the Fa­ther’s prayer,” which was:

66:5.15“Fa­ther of all, whose Son we honor, look down upon us with fa­vor. De­liver us from the fear of all save you. Make us a plea­sure to our di­vine teach­ers and for­ever put truth on our lips. De­liver us from vi­o­lence and anger; give us re­spect for our el­ders and that which be­longs to our neigh­bors. Give us this sea­son green pas­tures and fruit­ful flocks to glad­den our hearts. We pray for the has­ten­ing of the com­ing of the prom­ised up­lifter, and we would do your will on this world as oth­ers do on worlds be­yond.”

• practice of prayer › Adam encouraged individual p., not set p.

74:7.21The pub­lic wor­ship hour of Eden was noon; sun­set was the hour of fam­ily wor­ship. Adam did his best to dis­cour­age the use of set prayers, teach­ing that ef­fec­tive prayer must be wholly in­di­vid­ual, that it must be the “de­sire of the soul”; but the Eden­ites con­tin­ued to use the prayers and forms handed down from the times of Dala­ma­tia. Adam also en­deav­ored to sub­sti­tute the of­fer­ings of the fruit of the land for the blood sac­ri­fices in the re­li­gious cer­e­monies but had made lit­tle prog­ress be­fore the dis­rup­tion of the Gar­den.

• practice of prayer › use of solemn style not more efficacious

87:6.14It was long be­lieved that by re­vert­ing to the us­ages of the more an­cient mores the spir­its and demigods could be forced into de­sir­able ac­tion. Mod­ern man is guilty of the same pro­ce­dure. You ad­dress one an­other in com­mon, ev­ery­day lan­guage, but when you en­gage in prayer, you re­sort to the older style of an­other gen­er­a­tion, the so-called solemn style.

• materialistic prayer › bargaining petition for health, wealth, and life

89:8.7Prim­i­tive forms of prayer were noth­ing more nor less than bar­gain­ing with the spir­its, an ar­gu­ment with the gods. It was a kind of bar­ter­ing in which plead­ing and per­sua­sion were sub­sti­tuted for some­thing more tan­gi­ble and costly. The de­vel­op­ing com­merce of the races had in­cul­cated the spirit of trade and had de­vel­oped the shrewd­ness of barter; and now these traits be­gan to ap­pear in man’s wor­ship meth­ods. And as some men were bet­ter traders than oth­ers, so some were re­garded as bet­ter prayers than oth­ers. The prayer of a just man was held in high es­teem. A just man was one who had paid all ac­counts to the spir­its, had fully dis­charged ev­ery rit­ual obli­ga­tion to the gods.

89:8.8Early prayer was hardly wor­ship; it was a bar­gain­ing pe­ti­tion for health, wealth, and life. And in many re­spects prayers have not much changed with the pass­ing of the ages. They are still read out of books, re­cited for­mally, and writ­ten out for em­place­ment on wheels and for hang­ing on trees, where the blow­ing of the winds will save man the trou­ble of ex­pend­ing his own breath.

• primitive prayer › earliest luck petitions not addressed to Deity

91:0.2The ear­li­est prayer forms were not ad­dressed to De­ity. These ex­pres­sions were much like what you would say to a friend as you en­tered upon some im­por­tant un­der­tak­ing, “Wish me luck.” Prim­i­tive man was en­slaved to magic; luck, good and bad, en­tered into all the af­fairs of life. At first, these luck pe­ti­tions were mono­logues—just a kind of think­ing out loud by the magic server. Next, these be­liev­ers in luck would en­list the sup­port of their friends and fam­i­lies, and pres­ently some form of cer­e­mony would be per­formed which in­cluded the whole clan or tribe.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › conserves higher values

91:1.1The func­tion of early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is to con­serve and aug­ment the es­sen­tial so­cial, moral, and spir­i­tual val­ues which are slowly tak­ing form. This mis­sion of re­li­gion is not con­sciously ob­served by man­kind, but it is chiefly ef­fected by the func­tion of prayer. The prac­tice of prayer rep­re­sents the un­in­tended, but nonethe­less per­sonal and col­lec­tive, ef­fort of any group to se­cure (to ac­tu­al­ize) this con­ser­va­tion of higher val­ues. But for the safe­guard­ing of prayer, all holy days would speed­ily re­vert to the sta­tus of mere hol­i­days.

• materialistic prayer › material things not province of p.

91:1.3But the prim­i­tive mind was nei­ther log­i­cal nor con­sis­tent. Early men did not per­ceive that ma­te­rial things were not the prov­ince of prayer. These sim­ple-minded souls rea­soned that food, shel­ter, rain, game, and other ma­te­rial goods en­hanced the so­cial wel­fare, and there­fore they be­gan to pray for these phys­i­cal bless­ings. While this con­sti­tuted a per­ver­sion of prayer, it en­cour­aged the ef­fort to re­al­ize these ma­te­rial ob­jec­tives by so­cial and eth­i­cal ac­tions. Such a pros­ti­tu­tion of prayer, while de­bas­ing the spir­i­tual val­ues of a peo­ple, nev­er­the­less di­rectly el­e­vated their eco­nomic, so­cial, and eth­i­cal mores.

• practice of prayer › agency of religious ministry must be visualized as personal

91:1.4Prayer is only mono­logu­ous in the most prim­i­tive type of mind. It early be­comes a di­a­logue and rapidly ex­pands to the level of group wor­ship. Prayer sig­ni­fies that the premag­i­cal in­can­ta­tions of prim­i­tive re­li­gion have evolved to that level where the hu­man mind rec­og­nizes the re­al­ity of benef­i­cent pow­ers or be­ings who are able to en­hance so­cial val­ues and to aug­ment moral ide­als, and fur­ther, that these in­flu­ences are super­hu­man and dis­tinct from the ego of the self-con­scious hu­man and his fel­low mor­tals. True prayer does not, there­fore, ap­pear un­til the agency of re­li­gious min­istry is vi­su­al­ized as per­sonal.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › may lead to morbid sense of sin and guilt, harmful brooding over one’s unworthiness
• materialistic prayer › dangers attendant upon perversion of p.

91:1.6With those mor­tals who have not been de­liv­ered from the prim­i­tive bond­age of fear, there is a real dan­ger that all prayer may lead to a mor­bid sense of sin, un­jus­ti­fied con­vic­tions of guilt, real or fan­cied. But in mod­ern times it is not likely that many will spend suf­fi­cient time at prayer to lead to this harm­ful brood­ing over their un­wor­thi­ness or sin­ful­ness. The dan­gers at­ten­dant upon the dis­tor­tion and per­ver­sion of prayer con­sist in ig­no­rance, su­per­sti­tion, crys­tal­liza­tion, de­vi­tal­iza­tion, ma­te­ri­al­ism, and fa­nati­cism.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › conserves higher values
• primitive prayer › merely verbalized wishes

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.

• materialistic prayer › pseudomagical avoidance of effort requisite to solve problems
• practice of prayer › must never be a substitute for action

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.

• defined as › trusting communication of spiritual nature with Creator

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.

• mechanism of prayer › sacrifice idea unfailingly detracts from p.

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.

• defined as › trusting communication of spiritual nature with Creator
• practice of prayer › agency of religious ministry must be visualized as personal

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.

• defined as › much p. is intercourse with subconscious
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › attains degree of Adjuster contact
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › phase concerns reception by true spiritual forces

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.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › prevents isolation of personality

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.

91:3.1Chil­dren, 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.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › induces ego to look to subconscious for material aid, to superconscious for inspiration
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › phase concerns reception by true spiritual forces
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › reinforces self for higher attainment

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.

91:4.1No prayer can be eth­i­cal when the pe­ti­tioner seeks for self­ish ad­van­tage over his fel­lows. Self­ish and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pray­ing is in­com­pat­i­ble with the eth­i­cal re­li­gions which are pred­i­cated on un­selfish and di­vine love. All such un­eth­i­cal pray­ing re­verts to the prim­i­tive lev­els of pseudo magic and is un­wor­thy of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tions and en­light­ened re­li­gions. Self­ish pray­ing trans­gresses the spirit of all ethics founded on lov­ing jus­tice.

• practice of prayer › must never be a substitute for action

91:4.2Prayer must never be so pros­ti­tuted as to be­come a sub­sti­tute for ac­tion. All eth­i­cal prayer is a stim­u­lus to ac­tion and a guide to the pro­gres­sive striv­ing for ide­al­is­tic goals of super­self-at­tain­ment.

• materialistic prayer › involves confessions, petitions, requests for material favors
• practice of prayer › do not expect God to show partiality

91:4.3In all your pray­ing be fair; do not ex­pect God to show par­tial­ity, to love you more than his other chil­dren, your friends, neigh­bors, even en­e­mies. But the prayer of the nat­u­ral or evolved re­li­gions is not at first eth­i­cal, as it is in the later re­vealed re­li­gions. All pray­ing, whether in­di­vid­ual or com­mu­nal, may be ei­ther ego­is­tic or al­tru­is­tic. That is, the prayer may be cen­tered upon the self or upon oth­ers. When the prayer seeks noth­ing for the one who prays nor any­thing for his fel­lows, then such at­ti­tudes of the soul tend to the lev­els of true wor­ship. Ego­is­tic prayers in­volve con­fes­sions and pe­ti­tions and of­ten con­sist in re­quests for ma­te­rial fa­vors. Prayer is some­what more eth­i­cal when it deals with for­give­ness and seeks wis­dom for en­hanced self-con­trol.

• materialistic prayer › destined to bring disappointment, disillusionment
• materialistic prayer › leads to exertions that contribute to its answering
• practice of prayer › exercise caution in discouraging immature minds regarding faulty prayer

91:4.4While the non­selfish type of prayer is strength­en­ing and com­fort­ing, ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pray­ing is des­tined to bring dis­ap­point­ment and dis­il­lu­sion­ment as ad­vanc­ing sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies demon­strate that man lives in a phys­i­cal uni­verse of law and or­der. The child­hood of an in­di­vid­ual or a race is char­ac­ter­ized by prim­i­tive, self­ish, and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pray­ing. And, to a cer­tain ex­tent, all such pe­ti­tions are ef­fi­ca­cious in that they un­vary­ingly lead to those ef­forts and ex­er­tions which are con­trib­u­tory to achiev­ing the an­swers to such prayers. The real prayer of faith al­ways con­tributes to the aug­men­ta­tion of the tech­nique of liv­ing, even if such pe­ti­tions are not wor­thy of spir­i­tual rec­og­ni­tion. But the spir­i­tu­ally ad­vanced per­son should ex­er­cise great cau­tion in at­tempt­ing to dis­cour­age the prim­i­tive or im­ma­ture mind re­gard­ing such prayers.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › ancestor of much peace of mind
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › does not change God but he who prays in faith
• practice of prayer › pray in faith and confident expectation

91:4.5Re­mem­ber, even if prayer does not change God, it very of­ten ef­fects great and last­ing changes in the one who prays in faith and con­fi­dent ex­pec­ta­tion. Prayer has been the an­ces­tor of much peace of mind, cheer­ful­ness, calm­ness, cour­age, self-mas­tery, and fair-mind­ed­ness in the men and women of the evolv­ing races.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › enhances character and unifies personality

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.

• group prayer › all made better from participation

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.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › daily p. is quickest way to overcome criticizing

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.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › institutionalizes religion

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.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › no direct effect upon physical environment unless in liaison with divine will

91:6.1Prayer, un­less in li­ai­son with the will and ac­tions of the per­sonal spir­i­tual forces and ma­te­rial super­vi­sors of a realm, can have no di­rect ef­fect upon one’s phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. While there is a very def­i­nite limit to the prov­ince of the pe­ti­tions of prayer, such lim­its do not equally ap­ply to the faith of those who pray.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › cures numerous mental and emotional ailments
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › promotes health, happiness, self-control, social harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment
• materialistic prayer › p. not technique for curing organic diseases

91:6.2Prayer is not a tech­nique for cur­ing real and or­ganic dis­eases, but it has con­tributed enor­mously to the en­joy­ment of abun­dant health and to the cure of nu­mer­ous men­tal, emo­tional, and ner­vous ail­ments. And even in ac­tual bac­te­rial dis­ease, prayer has many times added to the ef­fi­cacy of other re­me­dial pro­ce­dures. Prayer has turned many an ir­ri­ta­ble and com­plain­ing in­valid into a paragon of pa­tience and made him an in­spi­ra­tion to all other hu­man suf­fer­ers.

91:6.3No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be to rec­on­cile the sci­en­tific doubt­ings re­gard­ing the ef­fi­cacy of prayer with the ever-pres­ent urge to seek help and guid­ance from di­vine sources, never for­get that the sin­cere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the pro­mo­tion of per­sonal hap­pi­ness, in­di­vid­ual self-con­trol, so­cial har­mony, moral prog­ress, and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment.

• defined as › most efficient approach to reserve powers in unconscious mind

91:6.4Prayer, even as a purely hu­man prac­tice, a di­a­logue with one’s al­ter ego, con­sti­tutes a tech­nique of the most ef­fi­cient ap­proach to the re­al­iza­tion of those re­serve pow­ers of hu­man na­ture which are stored and con­served in the un­con­scious realms of the hu­man mind. Prayer is a sound psy­cho­logic prac­tice, aside from its re­li­gious im­pli­ca­tions and its spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance. It is a fact of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence that most per­sons, if suf­fi­ciently hard pressed, will pray in some way to some source of help.

• defined as › asking God for wisdom and strength while attacking problems at hand

91:6.5Do not be so sloth­ful as to ask God to solve your dif­fi­cul­ties, but never hes­i­tate to ask him for wis­dom and spir­i­tual strength to guide and sus­tain you while you your­self res­o­lutely and coura­geously at­tack the prob­lems at hand.

• practice of prayer › must be honest, unselfish, fair, intelligent, trustful, without doubting

91:6.6Prayer has been an in­dis­pens­able fac­tor in the prog­ress and preser­va­tion of re­li­gious civ­i­liza­tion, and it still has mighty con­tri­bu­tions to make to the fur­ther en­hance­ment and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of so­ci­ety if those who pray will only do so in the light of sci­en­tific facts, philo­sophic wis­dom, in­tel­lec­tual sin­cer­ity, and spir­i­tual faith. Pray as Je­sus taught his dis­ci­ples—hon­estly, un­selfishly, with fair­ness, and with­out doubt­ing.

• defined as › best technique to contact God
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › efficacy not dependent on worshiper’s intelligence

91:6.7But the ef­fi­cacy of prayer in the per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the one who prays is in no way de­pen­dent on such a wor­shiper’s in­tel­lec­tual un­der­stand­ing, philo­sophic acu­men, so­cial level, cul­tural sta­tus, or other mor­tal ac­quire­ments. The psy­chic and spir­i­tual con­comi­tants of the prayer of faith are im­me­di­ate, per­sonal, and ex­pe­ri­en­tial. There is no other tech­nique whereby ev­ery man, re­gard­less of all other mor­tal ac­com­plish­ments, can so ef­fec­tively and im­me­di­ately ap­proach the thresh­old of that realm wherein he can com­mu­ni­cate with his Maker, where the crea­ture con­tacts with the re­al­ity of the Cre­ator, with the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

• group prayer › prevents danger associated with overmuch private praying

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.

• defined as › not getting our way but taking God’s way
• primitive prayer › arose independently of magic

91:8.2Prayer is not an evo­lu­tion of magic; they each arose in­de­pen­dently. Magic was an at­tempt to ad­just De­ity to con­di­tions; prayer is the ef­fort to ad­just the per­son­al­ity to the will of De­ity. True prayer is both moral and re­li­gious; magic is nei­ther.

• defined as › meaning of p. to various individuals

91:8.3Prayer may be­come an es­tab­lished cus­tom; many pray be­cause oth­ers do. Still oth­ers pray be­cause they fear some­thing dire­ful may hap­pen if they do not of­fer their reg­u­lar sup­pli­ca­tions.

• defined as › trusting communication of spiritual nature with Creator

91:8.4To some in­di­vid­u­als prayer is the calm ex­pres­sion of grat­i­tude; to oth­ers, a group ex­pres­sion of praise, so­cial de­vo­tions; some­times it is the im­i­ta­tion of an­other’s re­li­gion, while in true pray­ing it is the sin­cere and trust­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the spir­i­tual na­ture of the crea­ture with the any­where pres­ence of the spirit of the Cre­ator.

91:8.5Prayer may be a spon­ta­neous ex­pres­sion of God-con­scious­ness or a mean­ing­less recita­tion of the­o­logic for­mu­las. It may be the ec­static praise of a God-know­ing soul or the slav­ish obei­sance of a fear-rid­den mor­tal. It is some­times the pa­thetic ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual crav­ing and some­times the bla­tant shout­ing of pi­ous phrases. Prayer may be joy­ous praise or a hum­ble plea for for­give­ness.

91:8.6Prayer may be the child­like plea for the im­pos­si­ble or the ma­ture en­treaty for moral growth and spir­i­tual power. A pe­ti­tion may be for daily bread or may em­body a whole­hearted yearn­ing to find God and to do his will. It may be a wholly self­ish re­quest or a true and mag­nif­i­cent ges­ture to­ward the re­al­iza­tion of un­selfish broth­er­hood.

• defined as › not getting our way but taking God’s way

91:8.7Prayer may be an an­gry cry for vengeance or a mer­ci­ful in­ter­ces­sion for one’s en­e­mies. It may be the ex­pres­sion of a hope of chang­ing God or the pow­er­ful tech­nique of chang­ing one’s self. It may be the cring­ing plea of a lost sin­ner be­fore a sup­pos­edly stern Judge or the joy­ful ex­pres­sion of a lib­er­ated son of the liv­ing and mer­ci­ful heav­enly Fa­ther.

• practice of prayer › talking things over with God

91:8.8Mod­ern man is per­plexed by the thought of talk­ing things over with God in a purely per­sonal way. Many have aban­doned reg­u­lar pray­ing; they only pray when un­der un­usual pres­sure—in emer­gen­cies. Man should be un­afraid to talk to God, but only a spir­i­tual child would un­der­take to per­suade, or pre­sume to change, God.

• mechanism of prayer › utilizes ascending spiritual currents of universe

91:8.9But real pray­ing does at­tain re­al­ity. Even when the air cur­rents are as­cend­ing, no bird can soar ex­cept by out­stretched wings. Prayer el­e­vates man be­cause it is a tech­nique of pro­gress­ing by the uti­liza­tion of the as­cend­ing spir­i­tual cur­rents of the uni­verse.

• defined as › spontaneous outburst of God-consciousness

91:8.10Gen­uine prayer adds to spir­i­tual growth, mod­i­fies at­ti­tudes, and yields that sat­is­fac­tion which comes from com­mu­nion with di­vin­ity. It is a spon­ta­neous out­burst of God-con­scious­ness.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › God answers p. by increased revelation of truth
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › most potent spiritual-growth stimulus

91:8.11God an­swers man’s prayer by giv­ing him an in­creased rev­e­la­tion of truth, an en­hanced ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty, and an aug­mented con­cept of good­ness. Prayer is a sub­jec­tive ges­ture, but it con­tacts with mighty ob­jec­tive re­al­i­ties on the spir­i­tual lev­els of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; it is a mean­ing­ful reach by the hu­man for super­hu­man val­ues. It is the most po­tent spir­i­tual-growth stim­u­lus.

• practice of prayer › motivation validates; words are valueless

91:8.12Words are ir­rel­e­vant to prayer; they are merely the in­tel­lec­tual chan­nel in which the river of spir­i­tual sup­pli­ca­tion may chance to flow. The word value of a prayer is purely au­to­sug­ges­tive in pri­vate de­vo­tions and so­cio­sug­ges­tive in group de­vo­tions. God an­swers the soul’s at­ti­tude, not the words.

• objects of prayer › for values, not things; for growth, not gratification

91:8.13Prayer is not a tech­nique of es­cape from con­flict but rather a stim­u­lus to growth in the very face of con­flict. Pray only for val­ues, not things; for growth, not for grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

91:9.1If you would en­gage in ef­fec­tive pray­ing, you should bear in mind the laws of pre­vail­ing pe­ti­tions:

91:9.21. You must qual­ify as a po­tent prayer by sin­cerely and coura­geously fac­ing the prob­lems of uni­verse re­al­ity. You must pos­sess cos­mic stam­ina.

91:9.32. You must have hon­estly ex­hausted the hu­man ca­pac­ity for hu­man ad­just­ment. You must have been in­dus­tri­ous.

91:9.43. You must sur­ren­der ev­ery wish of mind and ev­ery crav­ing of soul to the trans­form­ing em­brace of spir­i­tual growth. You must have ex­pe­ri­enced an en­hance­ment of mean­ings and an el­e­va­tion of val­ues.

91:9.54. You must make a whole­hearted choice of the di­vine will. You must oblit­er­ate the dead cen­ter of in­de­ci­sion.

91:9.65. You not only rec­og­nize the Fa­ther’s will and choose to do it, but you have ef­fected an un­qual­i­fied con­se­cra­tion, and a dy­namic ded­i­ca­tion, to the ac­tual do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will.

91:9.76. Your prayer will be di­rected ex­clu­sively for di­vine wis­dom to solve the spe­cific hu­man prob­lems en­coun­tered in the Par­a­dise as­cen­sion—the at­tain­ment of di­vine per­fec­tion.

91:9.87. And you must have faith—liv­ing faith.

91:9.9[Pre­sented by the Chief of the Uran­tia Mid­way­ers.]

• primitive prayer › Tibetans fasten prayers to wheels

94:10.2These sim­ple-minded Ti­betans would not wholly give up their an­cient magic and charms. Ex­am­i­na­tion of the re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als of pres­ent-day Ti­betan rit­u­als re­veals an over­grown broth­er­hood of priests with shaven heads who prac­tice an elab­o­rate rit­ual em­brac­ing bells, chants, in­cense, pro­ces­sion­als, rosaries, im­ages, charms, pic­tures, holy wa­ter, gor­geous vest­ments, and elab­o­rate choirs. They have rigid dog­mas and crys­tal­lized creeds, mys­tic rites and spe­cial fasts. Their hi­er­ar­chy em­braces monks, nuns, ab­bots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to an­gels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They prac­tice con­fes­sions and be­lieve in pur­ga­tory. Their monas­ter­ies are ex­ten­sive and their cathe­drals mag­nif­i­cent. They keep up an end­less rep­e­ti­tion of sa­cred rit­u­als and be­lieve that such cer­e­mo­ni­als be­stow sal­va­tion. Prayers are fas­tened to a wheel, and with its turn­ing they be­lieve the pe­ti­tions be­come ef­fi­ca­cious. Among no other peo­ple of mod­ern times can be found the ob­ser­vance of so much from so many re­li­gions; and it is in­ev­i­ta­ble that such a cu­mu­la­tive liturgy would be­come in­or­di­nately cum­ber­some and in­tol­er­a­bly bur­den­some.

• practice of prayer › wrongly emphasized to neglect of more essential communion of worship

102:4.5Prayer is in­deed a part of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, but it has been wrongly em­pha­sized by mod­ern re­li­gions, much to the ne­glect of the more es­sen­tial com­mu­nion of wor­ship. The re­flec­tive pow­ers of the mind are deep­ened and broad­ened by wor­ship. Prayer may en­rich the life, but wor­ship il­lu­mi­nates des­tiny.

• mechanism of prayer › urge to pray often result of seraphic influence

113:4.4The im­pulse of wor­ship largely orig­i­nates in the spirit prompt­ings of the higher mind ad­ju­tants, re­in­forced by the lead­ings of the Ad­juster. But the urge to pray so of­ten ex­pe­ri­enced by God-con­scious mor­tals very of­ten arises as the re­sult of se­raphic in­flu­ence. The guard­ing ser­a­phim is con­stantly ma­nip­u­lat­ing the mor­tal en­vi­ron­ment for the pur­pose of aug­ment­ing the cos­mic in­sight of the hu­man as­cender to the end that such a sur­vival can­di­date may ac­quire en­hanced re­al­iza­tion of the pres­ence of the in­dwelling Ad­juster and thus be en­abled to yield in­creased co-op­er­a­tion with the spir­i­tual mis­sion of the di­vine pres­ence.

• mechanism of prayer › seraphim not directly concerned with our p.

113:5.3The ser­a­phim act in your be­half quite in­de­pen­dent of your di­rect ap­peals; they are ex­e­cut­ing the man­dates of their su­pe­ri­ors, and thus they func­tion re­gard­less of your pass­ing whims or chang­ing moods. This does not im­ply that you may not make their tasks ei­ther eas­ier or more dif­fi­cult, but rather that an­gels are not di­rectly con­cerned with your ap­peals or with your prayers.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › what true son desires and Father wills IS

118:6.5Vo­li­tion on any level short of the ab­so­lute en­coun­ters lim­i­ta­tions which are con­sti­tu­tive in the very per­son­al­ity ex­er­cis­ing the power of choice. Man can­not choose be­yond the range of that which is choos­able. He can­not, for in­stance, choose to be other than a hu­man be­ing ex­cept that he can elect to be­come more than a man; he can choose to em­bark upon the voy­age of uni­verse as­cen­sion, but this is be­cause the hu­man choice and the di­vine will hap­pen to be co­in­ci­dent upon this point. And what a son de­sires and the Fa­ther wills will cer­tainly come to pass.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › changes attitude toward life

118:10.23When men pray for prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion in the cir­cum­stances of life, many times the an­swer to their prayer is their own changed at­ti­tudes to­ward life. But prov­i­dence is not whim­si­cal, nei­ther is it fan­tas­tic nor mag­i­cal. It is the slow and sure emer­gence of the mighty sov­er­eign of the fi­nite uni­verses, whose ma­jes­tic pres­ence the evolv­ing crea­tures oc­ca­sion­ally de­tect in their uni­verse pro­gres­sions. Prov­i­dence is the sure and cer­tain march of the galax­ies of space and the per­son­al­i­ties of time to­ward the goals of eter­nity, first in the Su­preme, then in the Ul­ti­mate, and per­haps in the Ab­so­lute. And in in­fin­ity we be­lieve there is the same prov­i­dence, and this is the will, the ac­tions, the pur­pose of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity thus mo­ti­vat­ing the cos­mic pan­o­rama of uni­verses upon uni­verses.

• practice of prayer › talking things over with God

123:3.6Dur­ing this year Joseph and Mary had trou­ble with Je­sus about his prayers. He in­sisted on talk­ing to his heav­enly Fa­ther much as he would talk to Joseph, his earthly fa­ther. This de­par­ture from the more solemn and rev­er­ent modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with De­ity was a bit dis­con­cert­ing to his par­ents, es­pe­cially to his mother, but there was no per­suad­ing him to change; he would say his prayers just as he had been taught, af­ter which he in­sisted on hav­ing “just a lit­tle talk with my Fa­ther in heaven.”

• practice of prayer › Jesus did not fully approve of formal p.

126:3.3Dur­ing this year Je­sus first for­mu­lated the prayer which he sub­se­quently taught to his apos­tles, and which to many has be­come known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” In a way it was an evo­lu­tion of the fam­ily al­tar; they had many forms of praise and sev­eral for­mal prayers. Af­ter his fa­ther’s death Je­sus tried to teach the older chil­dren to ex­press them­selves in­di­vid­u­ally in prayer—much as he so en­joyed do­ing—but they could not grasp his thought and would in­vari­ably fall back upon their mem­o­rized prayer forms. It was in this ef­fort to stim­u­late his older broth­ers and sis­ters to say in­di­vid­ual prayers that Je­sus would en­deavor to lead them along by sug­ges­tive phrases, and pres­ently, with­out in­ten­tion on his part, it de­vel­oped that they were all us­ing a form of prayer which was largely built up from these sug­ges­tive lines which Je­sus had taught them.

• practice of prayer › must be honest, unselfish, fair, intelligent, trustful, without doubting

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

• group prayer › cf: let not men hear your personal p.

131:10.8“Hence­forth will I do my good deeds in se­cret; I will also pray most when by my­self. I will judge not that I may not be un­fair to my fel­lows. I am go­ing to learn to love my en­e­mies; I have not truly mas­tered this prac­tice of be­ing God­like. Though I see God in these other re­li­gions, I find him in ‘our re­li­gion’ as be­ing more beau­ti­ful, lov­ing, mer­ci­ful, per­sonal, and pos­i­tive. But most of all, this great and glo­ri­ous Be­ing is my spir­i­tual Fa­ther; I am his child. And by no other means than my hon­est de­sire to be like him, I am even­tu­ally to find him and eter­nally to serve him. At last I have a re­li­gion with a God, a mar­velous God, and he is a God of eter­nal sal­va­tion.”

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › unifies faith urges

132:3.10Uni­verse prog­ress is char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing per­son­al­ity free­dom be­cause it is as­so­ci­ated with the pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of higher and higher lev­els of self-un­der­stand­ing and con­se­quent vol­un­tary self-re­straint. The at­tain­ment of per­fec­tion of spir­i­tual self-re­straint equals com­plete­ness of uni­verse free­dom and per­sonal lib­erty. Faith fos­ters and main­tains man’s soul in the midst of the con­fu­sion of his early ori­en­ta­tion in such a vast uni­verse, whereas prayer be­comes the great uni­fier of the var­i­ous in­spi­ra­tions of the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion and the faith urges of a soul try­ing to iden­tify it­self with the spirit ide­als of the in­dwelling and as­so­ci­ated di­vine pres­ence.

• practice of prayer › Father knows our needs before we ask
• practice of prayer › use not vain repetitions, meaningless phrases

140:6.11When Je­sus heard this, he said: “Be will­ing, then, to take up your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and fol­low me. Do your good deeds in se­cret; when you give alms, let not the left hand know what the right hand does. And when you pray, go apart by your­selves and use not vain rep­e­ti­tions and mean­ing­less phrases. Al­ways re­mem­ber that the Fa­ther knows what you need even be­fore you ask him. And be not given to fast­ing with a sad coun­te­nance to be seen by men. As my cho­sen apos­tles, now set apart for the ser­vice of the king­dom, lay not up for your­selves trea­sures on earth, but by your un­selfish ser­vice lay up for your­selves trea­sures in heaven, for where your trea­sures are, there will your hearts be also.

• practice of prayer › God always open to

142:7.105. Com­pan­ion­ship and loy­alty. The af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther holds in­ti­mate and lov­ing in­ter­course with his chil­dren. Al­ways is his ear open to their pe­ti­tions; he is ever ready to share their hard­ships and as­sist them over their dif­fi­cul­ties. The fa­ther is su­premely in­ter­ested in the pro­gres­sive wel­fare of his progeny.

143:7.1At the evening con­fer­ences on Mount Ger­izim, Je­sus taught many great truths, and in par­tic­u­lar he laid em­pha­sis on the fol­low­ing:

143:7.2True re­li­gion is the act of an in­di­vid­ual soul in its self-con­scious re­la­tions with the Cre­ator; or­ga­nized re­li­gion is man’s at­tempt to so­cial­ize the wor­ship of in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists.

143:7.3Wor­ship—con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual—must al­ter­nate with ser­vice, con­tact with ma­te­rial re­al­ity. Work should al­ter­nate with play; re­li­gion should be bal­anced by hu­mor. Pro­found phi­los­o­phy should be re­lieved by rhyth­mic po­etry. The strain of liv­ing—the time ten­sion of per­son­al­ity—should be re­laxed by the rest­ful­ness of wor­ship. The feel­ings of in­se­cu­rity aris­ing from the fear of per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion in the uni­verse should be an­ti­doted by the faith con­tem­pla­tion of the Fa­ther and by the at­tempted re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › self-reminding, spiritually sustaining

143:7.4Prayer is de­signed to make man less think­ing but more re­al­iz­ing; it is not de­signed to in­crease knowl­edge but rather to ex­pand in­sight.

143:7.5Wor­ship is in­tended to an­tic­i­pate the bet­ter life ahead and then to re­flect these new spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cances back onto the life which now is. Prayer is spir­i­tu­ally sus­tain­ing, but wor­ship is di­vinely cre­ative.

143:7.6Wor­ship is the tech­nique of look­ing to the One for the in­spi­ra­tion of ser­vice to the many. Wor­ship is the yard­stick which mea­sures the ex­tent of the soul’s de­tach­ment from the ma­te­rial uni­verse and its si­mul­ta­ne­ous and se­cure at­tach­ment to the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of all cre­ation.

143:7.7Prayer is self-re­mind­ing—sub­lime think­ing; wor­ship is self-for­get­ting—super­think­ing. Wor­ship is ef­fort­less at­ten­tion, true and ideal soul rest, a form of rest­ful spir­i­tual ex­er­tion.

143:7.8Wor­ship is the act of a part iden­ti­fy­ing it­self with the Whole; the fi­nite with the In­fi­nite; the son with the Fa­ther; time in the act of strik­ing step with eter­nity. Wor­ship is the act of the son’s per­sonal com­mu­nion with the di­vine Fa­ther, the as­sump­tion of re­fresh­ing, cre­ative, fra­ter­nal, and ro­man­tic at­ti­tudes by the hu­man soul-spirit.

143:7.9Al­though the apos­tles grasped only a few of his teach­ings at the camp, other worlds did, and other gen­er­a­tions on earth will.

• practice of prayer › Jesus did not fully approve of formal p.

144:1.10John had taught his dis­ci­ples a prayer, a prayer for sal­va­tion in the com­ing king­dom. Al­though Je­sus never for­bade his fol­low­ers to use John’s form of prayer, the apos­tles very early per­ceived that their Mas­ter did not fully ap­prove of the prac­tice of ut­ter­ing set and for­mal prayers. Nev­er­the­less, be­liev­ers con­stantly re­quested to be taught how to pray. The twelve longed to know what form of pe­ti­tion Je­sus would ap­prove. And it was chiefly be­cause of this need for some sim­ple pe­ti­tion for the com­mon peo­ple that Je­sus at this time con­sented, in an­swer to Thomas’s re­quest, to teach them a sug­ges­tive form of prayer. Je­sus gave this les­son one af­ter­noon in the third week of their so­journ on Mount Gil­boa.

• examples of prayers › John the Baptist’s prayer
• practice of prayer › Jesus did not fully approve of formal p.

144:2.1“John in­deed taught you a sim­ple form of prayer: ‘O Fa­ther, cleanse us from sin, show us your glory, re­veal your love, and let your spirit sanc­tify our hearts forever­more, Amen!’ He taught this prayer that you might have some­thing to teach the mul­ti­tude. He did not in­tend that you should use such a set and for­mal pe­ti­tion as the ex­pres­sion of your own souls in prayer.

• defined as › spiritual communion which leads to worship

144:2.2“Prayer is en­tirely a per­sonal and spon­ta­neous ex­pres­sion of the at­ti­tude of the soul to­ward the spirit; prayer should be the com­mu­nion of son­ship and the ex­pres­sion of fel­low­ship. Prayer, when in­dited by the spirit, leads to co-op­er­a­tive spir­i­tual prog­ress. The ideal prayer is a form of spir­i­tual com­mu­nion which leads to in­tel­li­gent wor­ship. True pray­ing is the sin­cere at­ti­tude of reach­ing heav­en­ward for the at­tain­ment of your ide­als.

• defined as › breath of soul

144:2.3“Prayer is the breath of the soul and should lead you to be per­sis­tent in your at­tempt to as­cer­tain the Fa­ther’s will. If any one of you has a neigh­bor, and you go to him at mid­night and say: ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine on a jour­ney has come to see me, and I have noth­ing to set be­fore him’; and if your neigh­bor an­swers, ‘Trou­ble me not, for the door is now shut and the chil­dren and I are in bed; there­fore I can­not rise and give you bread,’ you will per­sist, ex­plain­ing that your friend hungers, and that you have no food to of­fer him. I say to you, though your neigh­bor will not rise and give you bread be­cause he is your friend, yet be­cause of your im­por­tu­nity he will get up and give you as many loaves as you need. If, then, per­sis­tence will win fa­vors even from mor­tal man, how much more will your per­sis­tence in the spirit win the bread of life for you from the will­ing hands of the Fa­ther in heaven. Again I say to you: Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For ev­ery one who asks re­ceives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door of sal­va­tion will be opened.

144:2.4“Which of you who is a fa­ther, if his son asks un­wisely, would hes­i­tate to give in ac­cor­dance with pa­ren­tal wis­dom rather than in the terms of the son’s faulty pe­ti­tion? If the child needs a loaf, will you give him a stone just be­cause he un­wisely asks for it? If your son needs a fish, will you give him a wa­ter­snake just be­cause it may chance to come up in the net with the fish and the child fool­ishly asks for the ser­pent? If you, then, be­ing mor­tal and fi­nite, know how to an­swer prayer and give good and ap­pro­pri­ate gifts to your chil­dren, how much more shall your heav­enly Fa­ther give the spirit and many ad­di­tional bless­ings to those who ask him? Men ought al­ways to pray and not be­come dis­cour­aged.

144:2.5“Let me tell you the story of a cer­tain judge who lived in a wicked city. This judge feared not God nor had re­spect for man. Now there was a needy widow in that city who came re­peat­edly to this un­just judge, say­ing, ‘Pro­tect me from my ad­ver­sary.’ For some time he would not give ear to her, but pres­ently he said to him­self: ‘Though I fear not God nor have re­gard for man, yet be­cause this widow ceases not to trou­ble me, I will vin­di­cate her lest she wear me out by her con­tin­ual com­ing.’ These sto­ries I tell you to en­cour­age you to per­sist in pray­ing and not to in­ti­mate that your pe­ti­tions will change the just and righ­teous Fa­ther above. Your per­sis­tence, how­ever, is not to win fa­vor with God but to change your earth at­ti­tude and to en­large your soul’s ca­pac­ity for spirit re­cep­tiv­ity.

144:2.6“But when you pray, you ex­er­cise so lit­tle faith. Gen­uine faith will re­move moun­tains of ma­te­rial dif­fi­culty which may chance to lie in the path of soul ex­pan­sion and spir­i­tual prog­ress.”

• examples of prayers › Jews had some 25 set
• examples of prayers › John the Baptist’s prayer
• group prayer › cf: let not men hear your personal p.
• Jesus › spent entire nights at p.

144:3.13It is not strange that the apos­tles de­sired Je­sus to teach them a model prayer for be­liev­ers. John the Bap­tist had taught his fol­low­ers sev­eral prayers; all great teach­ers had for­mu­lated prayers for their pupils. The re­li­gious teach­ers of the Jews had some twenty-five or thirty set prayers which they re­cited in the syn­a­gogues and even on the street cor­ners. Je­sus was par­tic­u­larly averse to pray­ing in pub­lic. Up to this time the twelve had heard him pray only a few times. They ob­served him spend­ing en­tire nights at prayer or wor­ship, and they were very cu­ri­ous to know the man­ner or form of his pe­ti­tions. They were re­ally hard pressed to know what to an­swer the mul­ti­tudes when they asked to be taught how to pray as John had taught his dis­ci­ples.

144:3.14Je­sus taught the twelve al­ways to pray in se­cret; to go off by them­selves amidst the quiet sur­round­ings of na­ture or to go in their rooms and shut the doors when they en­gaged in prayer.

• practice of prayer › must be honest, unselfish, fair, intelligent, trustful, without doubting

144:3.17Je­sus taught that ef­fec­tive prayer must be:

144:3.181. Un­selfish—not alone for one­self.

144:3.192. Be­liev­ing—ac­cord­ing to faith.

144:3.203. Sin­cere—hon­est of heart.

144:3.214. In­tel­li­gent—ac­cord­ing to light.

144:3.225. Trust­ful—in sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s all-wise will.

• Jesus › spent entire nights at p.

144:3.23When Je­sus spent whole nights on the moun­tain in prayer, it was mainly for his dis­ci­ples, par­tic­u­larly for the twelve. The Mas­ter prayed very lit­tle for him­self, al­though he en­gaged in much wor­ship of the na­ture of un­der­stand­ing com­mu­nion with his Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › digs out deeper channels for divine bestowals

144:4.2The earnest and long­ing rep­e­ti­tion of any pe­ti­tion, when such a prayer is the sin­cere ex­pres­sion of a child of God and is ut­tered in faith, no mat­ter how ill-ad­vised or im­pos­si­ble of di­rect an­swer, never fails to ex­pand the soul’s ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity.

• defined as › spiritual communion which leads to worship

144:4.4Prayer led Je­sus up to the super­com­mu­nion of his soul with the Su­preme Rulers of the uni­verse of uni­verses. Prayer will lead the mor­tals of earth up to the com­mu­nion of true wor­ship. The soul’s spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity for re­cep­tiv­ity de­ter­mines the quan­tity of heav­enly bless­ings which can be per­son­ally ap­pro­pri­ated and con­sciously re­al­ized as an an­swer to prayer.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › antidotes harmful introspection
• Jesus › prayed for others; only rarely for himself
• objects of prayer › for others

144:4.6Prayer is an an­ti­dote for harm­ful in­tro­spec­tion. At least, prayer as the Mas­ter taught it is such a benef­i­cent min­istry to the soul. Je­sus con­sis­tently em­ployed the ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence of pray­ing for one’s fel­lows. The Mas­ter usu­ally prayed in the plu­ral, not in the sin­gu­lar. Only in the great crises of his earth life did Je­sus ever pray for him­self.

• defined as › breath of soul

144:4.7Prayer is the breath of the spirit life in the midst of the ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion of the races of man­kind. Wor­ship is sal­va­tion for the plea­sure-seek­ing gen­er­a­tions of mor­tals.

• defined as › recharging spiritual batteries of soul

144:4.8As prayer may be likened to recharg­ing the spir­i­tual bat­ter­ies of the soul, so wor­ship may be com­pared to the act of tun­ing in the soul to catch the uni­verse broad­casts of the in­fi­nite spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › exchanges human will for divine will

144:4.9Prayer is the sin­cere and long­ing look of the child to its spirit Fa­ther; it is a psy­cho­logic pro­cess of ex­chang­ing the hu­man will for the di­vine will. Prayer is a part of the di­vine plan for mak­ing over that which is into that which ought to be.

144:5.1From time to time, dur­ing the re­main­der of Je­sus’ so­journ on earth, he brought to the no­tice of the apos­tles sev­eral ad­di­tional forms of prayer, but he did this only in il­lus­tra­tion of other mat­ters, and he en­joined that these “para­ble prayers” should not be taught to the mul­ti­tudes. Many of them were from other in­hab­ited plan­ets, but this fact Je­sus did not re­veal to the twelve. Among these prayers were the fol­low­ing:

144:5.102Though the apos­tles were not at lib­erty to pre­sent these prayer lessons in their pub­lic teach­ings, they prof­ited much from all of these rev­e­la­tions in their per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences. Je­sus uti­lized these and other prayer mod­els as il­lus­tra­tions in con­nec­tion with the in­ti­mate in­struc­tion of the twelve, and spe­cific per­mis­sion has been granted for tran­scrib­ing these seven spec­i­men prayers into this rec­ord.

• group prayer › cf: let not men hear your personal p.

145:5.2Je­sus went out in the hills to pray so many times be­cause there were no pri­vate rooms suit­able for his per­sonal de­vo­tions.

• materialistic prayer › inconsistent with laws of God is abomination

146:2.32. That prayer which is in­con­sis­tent with the known and es­tab­lished laws of God is an abom­i­na­tion to the Par­a­dise De­i­ties. If man will not lis­ten to the Gods as they speak to their cre­ation in the laws of spirit, mind, and mat­ter, the very act of such de­lib­er­ate and con­scious dis­dain by the crea­ture turns the ears of spirit per­son­al­i­ties away from hear­ing the per­sonal pe­ti­tions of such law­less and dis­obe­di­ent mor­tals. Je­sus quoted to his apos­tles from the Prophet Zechariah: “But they re­fused to hear­ken and pulled away the shoul­der and stopped their ears that they should not hear. Yes, they made their hearts adamant like a stone, lest they should hear my law and the words which I sent by my spirit through the proph­ets; there­fore did the re­sults of their evil think­ing come as a great wrath upon their guilty heads. And so it came to pass that they cried for mercy, but there was no ear open to hear.” And then Je­sus quoted the proverb of the wise man who said: “He who turns away his ear from hear­ing the di­vine law, even his prayer shall be an abom­i­na­tion.”

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › sincerity, motive, is assurance of p. being heard
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › universe consistency of p. determines time, manner of answer

146:2.65. They who would re­ceive mercy must show mercy; judge not that you be not judged. With the spirit with which you judge oth­ers you also shall be judged. Mercy does not wholly ab­ro­gate uni­verse fair­ness. In the end it will prove true: “Whoso stops his ears to the cry of the poor, he also shall some day cry for help, and no one will hear him.” The sin­cer­ity of any prayer is the as­sur­ance of its be­ing heard; the spir­i­tual wis­dom and uni­verse con­sis­tency of any pe­ti­tion is the de­ter­miner of the time, man­ner, and de­gree of the an­swer. A wise fa­ther does not lit­er­ally an­swer the fool­ish prayers of his ig­no­rant and in­ex­pe­ri­enced chil­dren, al­beit the chil­dren may de­rive much plea­sure and real soul sat­is­fac­tion from the mak­ing of such ab­surd pe­ti­tions.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › what true son desires and Father wills IS

146:2.76. When you have be­come wholly ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, the an­swer to all your pe­ti­tions will be forth­com­ing be­cause your prayers will be in full ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will, and the Fa­ther’s will is ever man­i­fest through­out his vast uni­verse. What the true son de­sires and the in­fi­nite Fa­ther wills IS. Such a prayer can­not re­main unan­swered, and no other sort of pe­ti­tion can pos­si­bly be fully an­swered.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › opens Father’s storehouse

146:2.87. The cry of the righ­teous is the faith act of the child of God which opens the door of the Fa­ther’s store­house of good­ness, truth, and mercy, and these good gifts have long been in wait­ing for the son’s ap­proach and per­sonal ap­pro­pri­a­tion. Prayer does not change the di­vine at­ti­tude to­ward man, but it does change man’s at­ti­tude to­ward the change­less Fa­ther. The mo­tive of the prayer gives it right of way to the di­vine ear, not the so­cial, eco­nomic, or out­ward re­li­gious sta­tus of the one who prays.

• defined as › not getting our way but taking God’s way

146:2.98. Prayer may not be em­ployed to avoid the de­lays of time or to tran­scend the hand­i­caps of space. Prayer is not de­signed as a tech­nique for ag­gran­diz­ing self or for gain­ing un­fair ad­van­tage over one’s fel­lows. A thor­oughly self­ish soul can­not pray in the true sense of the word. Said Je­sus: “Let your su­preme de­light be in the char­ac­ter of God, and he shall surely give you the sin­cere de­sires of your heart.” “Com­mit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.” “For the Lord hears the cry of the needy, and he will re­gard the prayer of the des­ti­tute.”

• practice of prayer › guard against becoming self-centered in
• practice of prayer › in doubt, ask in Jesus’ name

146:2.109. “I have come forth from the Fa­ther; if, there­fore, you are ever in doubt as to what you would ask of the Fa­ther, ask in my name, and I will pre­sent your pe­ti­tion in ac­cor­dance with your real needs and de­sires and in ac­cor­dance with my Fa­ther’s will.” Guard against the great dan­ger of be­com­ing self-cen­tered in your prayers. Avoid pray­ing much for your­self; pray more for the spir­i­tual prog­ress of your breth­ren. Avoid ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pray­ing; pray in the spirit and for the abun­dance of the gifts of the spirit.

• objects of prayer › for those who curse and persecute us

146:2.1110. When you pray for the sick and af­flicted, do not ex­pect that your pe­ti­tions will take the place of lov­ing and in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the ne­ces­si­ties of these af­flicted ones. Pray for the wel­fare of your fam­i­lies, friends, and fel­lows, but es­pe­cially pray for those who curse you, and make lov­ing pe­ti­tions for those who per­se­cute you. “But when to pray, I will not say. Only the spirit that dwells within you may move you to the ut­ter­ance of those pe­ti­tions which are ex­pres­sive of your in­ner re­la­tion­ship with the Fa­ther of spir­its.”

• group prayer › cf: let not men hear your personal p.
• practice of prayer › “your will be done” always appropriate

146:2.1211. Many re­sort to prayer only when in trou­ble. Such a prac­tice is thought­less and mis­lead­ing. True, you do well to pray when ha­rassed, but you should also be mind­ful to speak as a son to your Fa­ther even when all goes well with your soul. Let your real pe­ti­tions al­ways be in se­cret. Do not let men hear your per­sonal prayers. Prayers of thanks­giv­ing are ap­pro­pri­ate for groups of wor­shipers, but the prayer of the soul is a per­sonal mat­ter. There is but one form of prayer which is ap­pro­pri­ate for all God’s chil­dren, and that is: “Nev­er­the­less, your will be done.”

• objects of prayer › for more laborers; extension of kingdom

146:2.1312. All be­liev­ers in this gospel should pray sin­cerely for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom of heaven. Of all the prayers of the He­brew scrip­tures he com­mented most ap­prov­ingly on the pe­ti­tion of the Psalmist: “Cre­ate in me a clean heart, O God, and re­new a right spirit within me. Purge me from se­cret sins and keep back your ser­vant from pre­sump­tu­ous trans­gres­sion.” Je­sus com­mented at great length on the re­la­tion of prayer to care­less and of­fend­ing speech, quot­ing: “Set a watch, O Lord, be­fore my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” “The hu­man tongue,” said Je­sus, “is a mem­ber which few men can tame, but the spirit within can trans­form this un­ruly mem­ber into a kindly voice of tol­er­ance and an in­spir­ing min­is­ter of mercy.”

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › digs out deeper channels for divine bestowals
• practice of prayer › must be honest, unselfish, fair, intelligent, trustful, without doubting

146:2.1413. Je­sus taught that the prayer for di­vine guid­ance over the path­way of earthly life was next in im­por­tance to the pe­ti­tion for a knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s will. In re­al­ity this means a prayer for di­vine wis­dom. Je­sus never taught that hu­man knowl­edge and spe­cial skill could be gained by prayer. But he did teach that prayer is a fac­tor in the en­large­ment of one’s ca­pac­ity to re­ceive the pres­ence of the di­vine spirit. When Je­sus taught his as­so­ciates to pray in the spirit and in truth, he ex­plained that he re­ferred to pray­ing sin­cerely and in ac­cor­dance with one’s en­light­en­ment, to pray­ing whole­heart­edly and in­tel­li­gently, earnestly and stead­fastly.

• defined as › spiritual communion which leads to worship
• practice of prayer › use not vain repetitions, meaningless phrases

146:2.1514. Je­sus warned his fol­low­ers against think­ing that their prayers would be ren­dered more ef­fi­ca­cious by or­nate rep­e­ti­tions, elo­quent phrase­ol­ogy, fast­ing, pen­ance, or sac­ri­fices. But he did ex­hort his be­liev­ers to em­ploy prayer as a means of lead­ing up through thanks­giv­ing to true wor­ship. Je­sus de­plored that so lit­tle of the spirit of thanks­giv­ing was to be found in the prayers and wor­ship of his fol­low­ers. He quoted from the Scrip­tures on this oc­ca­sion, say­ing: “It is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to the name of the Most High, to ac­knowl­edge his lov­ing-kind­ness ev­ery morn­ing and his faith­ful­ness ev­ery night, for God has made me glad through his work. In ev­ery­thing I will give thanks ac­cord­ing to the will of God.”

• practice of prayer › afterwards remain in silent receptivity

146:2.1716. Je­sus taught his fol­low­ers that, when they had made their prayers to the Fa­ther, they should re­main for a time in silent re­cep­tiv­ity to af­ford the in­dwelling spirit the bet­ter op­por­tu­nity to speak to the lis­ten­ing soul. The spirit of the Fa­ther speaks best to man when the hu­man mind is in an at­ti­tude of true wor­ship. We wor­ship God by the aid of the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling spirit and by the il­lu­mi­na­tion of the hu­man mind through the min­istry of truth. Wor­ship, taught Je­sus, makes one in­creas­ingly like the be­ing who is wor­shiped. Wor­ship is a trans­form­ing ex­pe­ri­ence whereby the fi­nite grad­u­ally ap­proaches and ul­ti­mately at­tains the pres­ence of the In­fi­nite.

• Jesus › features underwent rapid changes in

148:3.5Many times, when Je­sus was alone for hours, but when two of his apos­tles were near by, they ob­served his fea­tures un­dergo rapid and mul­ti­tudi­nous changes, al­though they heard him speak no words. Nei­ther did they ob­serve any vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of ce­les­tial be­ings who might have been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their Mas­ter, such as some of them did wit­ness on a sub­se­quent oc­ca­sion.

• objects of prayer › for more laborers; extension of kingdom

150:4.1The next evening, hav­ing gath­ered to­gether the twelve apos­tles, the apos­tles of John, and the newly com­mis­sioned women’s group, Je­sus said: “You see for your­selves that the har­vest is plen­teous, but the la­bor­ers are few. Let us all, there­fore, pray the Lord of the har­vest that he send forth still more la­bor­ers into his fields. While I re­main to com­fort and in­struct the younger teach­ers, I would send out the older ones two and two that they may pass quickly over all Gal­i­lee preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom while it is yet con­ve­nient and peace­ful.” Then he des­ig­nated the pairs of apos­tles as he de­sired them to go forth, and they were: An­drew and Pe­ter, James and John Zeb­e­dee, Philip and Na­than­iel, Thomas and Mat­thew, James and Ju­das Al­pheus, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Ju­das Is­car­iot.

• group prayer › where 2 or 3 are gathered together

159:1.3“The Fa­ther in heaven loves his chil­dren, and there­fore should you learn to love one an­other; the Fa­ther in heaven for­gives you your sins; there­fore should you learn to for­give one an­other. If your brother sins against you, go to him and with tact and pa­tience show him his fault. And do all this be­tween you and him alone. If he will lis­ten to you, then have you won your brother. But if your brother will not hear you, if he per­sists in the er­ror of his way, go again to him, tak­ing with you one or two mu­tual friends that you may thus have two or even three wit­nesses to con­firm your tes­ti­mony and es­tab­lish the fact that you have dealt justly and mer­ci­fully with your of­fend­ing brother. Now if he re­fuses to hear your breth­ren, you may tell the whole story to the con­gre­ga­tion, and then, if he re­fuses to hear the broth­er­hood, let them take such ac­tion as they deem wise; let such an un­ruly mem­ber be­come an out­cast from the king­dom. While you can­not pre­tend to sit in judg­ment on the souls of your fel­lows, and while you may not for­give sins or oth­er­wise pre­sume to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of the super­vi­sors of the heav­enly hosts, at the same time, it has been com­mit­ted to your hands that you should main­tain tem­po­ral or­der in the king­dom on earth. While you may not med­dle with the di­vine de­crees con­cern­ing eter­nal life, you shall de­ter­mine the is­sues of con­duct as they con­cern the tem­po­ral wel­fare of the broth­er­hood on earth. And so, in all these mat­ters con­nected with the dis­ci­pline of the broth­er­hood, what­so­ever you shall de­cree on earth, shall be rec­og­nized in heaven. Al­though you can­not de­ter­mine the eter­nal fate of the in­di­vid­ual, you may leg­is­late re­gard­ing the con­duct of the group, for, where two or three of you agree con­cern­ing any of these things and ask of me, it shall be done for you if your pe­ti­tion is not in­con­sis­tent with the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. And all this is ever true, for, where two or three be­liev­ers are gath­ered to­gether, there am I in the midst of them.”

• practice of prayer › talking things over with God

161:2.109. In his prayer life he ap­pears to com­mu­ni­cate di­rectly with his Fa­ther. We have heard few of his prayers, but these few would in­di­cate that he talks with God, as it were, face to face. He seems to know the fu­ture as well as the past. He sim­ply could not be all of this and do all of these ex­traor­di­nary things un­less he were some­thing more than hu­man. We know he is hu­man, we are sure of that, but we are al­most equally sure that he is also di­vine. We be­lieve that he is di­vine. We are con­vinced that he is the Son of Man and the Son of God.

168:4.1On the way from Beth­any to Pella the apos­tles asked Je­sus many ques­tions, all of which the Mas­ter freely an­swered ex­cept those in­volv­ing the de­tails of the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead. Such prob­lems were be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion ca­pac­ity of his apos­tles; there­fore did the Mas­ter de­cline to dis­cuss these ques­tions with them. Since they had de­parted from Beth­any in se­cret, they were alone. Je­sus there­fore em­braced the op­por­tu­nity to say many things to the ten which he thought would pre­pare them for the try­ing days just ahead.

168:4.2The apos­tles were much stirred up in their minds and spent con­sid­er­able time dis­cussing their re­cent ex­pe­ri­ences as they were re­lated to prayer and its an­swer­ing. They all re­called Je­sus’ state­ment to the Beth­any mes­sen­ger at Phil­a­del­phia, when he said plainly, “This sick­ness is not re­ally to the death.” And yet, in spite of this prom­ise, Laz­a­rus ac­tu­ally died. All that day, again and again, they re­verted to the dis­cus­sion of this ques­tion of the an­swer to prayer.

168:4.3Je­sus’ an­swers to their many ques­tions may be sum­ma­rized as fol­lows:

168:4.41. Prayer is an ex­pres­sion of the fi­nite mind in an ef­fort to ap­proach the In­fi­nite. The mak­ing of a prayer must, there­fore, be lim­ited by the knowl­edge, wis­dom, and at­tri­butes of the fi­nite; like­wise must the an­swer be con­di­tioned by the vi­sion, aims, ide­als, and pre­rog­a­tives of the In­fi­nite. There never can be ob­served an un­bro­ken con­ti­nu­ity of ma­te­rial phe­nom­ena be­tween the mak­ing of a prayer and the re­cep­tion of the full spir­i­tual an­swer thereto.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › all sincere p. answered
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › delay in answer often betokens better answer

168:4.52. When a prayer is ap­par­ently unan­swered, the de­lay of­ten be­to­kens a bet­ter an­swer, al­though one which is for some good rea­son greatly de­layed. When Je­sus said that Laz­a­rus’s sick­ness was re­ally not to the death, he had al­ready been dead eleven hours. No sin­cere prayer is de­nied an an­swer ex­cept when the su­pe­rior view­point of the spir­i­tual world has de­vised a bet­ter an­swer, an an­swer which meets the pe­ti­tion of the spirit of man as con­trasted with the prayer of the mere mind of man.

168:4.63. The prayers of time, when in­dited by the spirit and ex­pressed in faith, are of­ten so vast and all-en­com­pass­ing that they can be an­swered only in eter­nity; the fi­nite pe­ti­tion is some­times so fraught with the grasp of the In­fi­nite that the an­swer must long be post­poned to await the cre­ation of ad­e­quate ca­pac­ity for re­cep­tiv­ity; the prayer of faith may be so all-em­brac­ing that the an­swer can be re­ceived only on Par­a­dise.

168:4.74. The an­swers to the prayer of the mor­tal mind are of­ten of such a na­ture that they can be re­ceived and rec­og­nized only af­ter that same pray­ing mind has at­tained the im­mor­tal state. The prayer of the ma­te­rial be­ing can many times be an­swered only when such an in­di­vid­ual has pro­gressed to the spirit level.

• mechanism of prayer › intervening spirit beings translate

168:4.85. The prayer of a God-know­ing per­son may be so dis­torted by ig­no­rance and so de­formed by su­per­sti­tion that the an­swer thereto would be highly un­de­sir­able. Then must the in­ter­ven­ing spirit be­ings so trans­late such a prayer that, when the an­swer ar­rives, the pe­ti­tioner wholly fails to rec­og­nize it as the an­swer to his prayer.

• practice of prayer › must consist in spiritual realities

168:4.96. All true prayers are ad­dressed to spir­i­tual be­ings, and all such pe­ti­tions must be an­swered in spir­i­tual terms, and all such an­swers must con­sist in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Spirit be­ings can­not be­stow ma­te­rial an­swers to the spirit pe­ti­tions of even ma­te­rial be­ings. Ma­te­rial be­ings can pray ef­fec­tively only when they “pray in the spirit.”

• practice of prayer › must be born of spirit, nurtured by faith

168:4.107. No prayer can hope for an an­swer un­less it is born of the spirit and nur­tured by faith. Your sin­cere faith im­plies that you have in ad­vance vir­tu­ally granted your prayer hear­ers the full right to an­swer your pe­ti­tions in ac­cor­dance with that su­preme wis­dom and that di­vine love which your faith de­picts as al­ways ac­tu­at­ing those be­ings to whom you pray.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › answer may be delayed, modified, or postponed

168:4.118. The child is al­ways within his rights when he pre­sumes to pe­ti­tion the par­ent; and the par­ent is al­ways within his pa­ren­tal obli­ga­tions to the im­ma­ture child when his su­pe­rior wis­dom dic­tates that the an­swer to the child’s prayer be de­layed, mod­i­fied, seg­re­gated, tran­scended, or post­poned to an­other stage of spir­i­tual as­cen­sion.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › all sincere p. answered

168:4.129. Do not hes­i­tate to pray the prayers of spirit long­ing; doubt not that you shall re­ceive the an­swer to your pe­ti­tions. These an­swers will be on de­posit, await­ing your achieve­ment of those fu­ture spir­i­tual lev­els of ac­tual cos­mic at­tain­ment, on this world or on oth­ers, whereon it will be­come pos­si­ble for you to rec­og­nize and ap­pro­pri­ate the long-wait­ing an­swers to your ear­lier but ill-timed pe­ti­tions.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › all sincere p. answered

168:4.1310. All gen­uine spirit-born pe­ti­tions are cer­tain of an an­swer. Ask and you shall re­ceive. But you should re­mem­ber that you are pro­gres­sive crea­tures of time and space; there­fore must you con­stantly reckon with the time-space fac­tor in the ex­pe­ri­ence of your per­sonal re­cep­tion of the full an­swers to your man­i­fold prayers and pe­ti­tions.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › what true son desires and Father wills IS

180:2.1Then Je­sus stood up again and con­tin­ued teach­ing his apos­tles: “I am the true vine, and my Fa­ther is the hus­band­man. I am the vine, and you are the branches. And the Fa­ther re­quires of me only that you shall bear much fruit. The vine is pruned only to in­crease the fruit­ful­ness of its branches. Ev­ery branch com­ing out of me which bears no fruit, the Fa­ther will take away. Ev­ery branch which bears fruit, the Fa­ther will cleanse that it may bear more fruit. Al­ready are you clean through the word I have spo­ken, but you must con­tinue to be clean. You must abide in me, and I in you; the branch will die if it is sep­a­rated from the vine. As the branch can­not bear fruit ex­cept it abides in the vine, so nei­ther can you yield the fruits of lov­ing ser­vice ex­cept you abide in me. Re­mem­ber: I am the real vine, and you are the liv­ing branches. He who lives in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit of the spirit and ex­pe­ri­ence the su­preme joy of yield­ing this spir­i­tual har­vest. If you will main­tain this liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with me, you will bear abun­dant fruit. If you abide in me and my words live in you, you will be able to com­mune freely with me, and then can my liv­ing spirit so in­fuse you that you may ask what­so­ever my spirit wills and do all this with the as­sur­ance that the Fa­ther will grant us our pe­ti­tion. Herein is the Fa­ther glo­ri­fied: that the vine has many liv­ing branches, and that ev­ery branch bears much fruit. And when the world sees these fruit-bear­ing branches—my friends who love one an­other, even as I have loved them—all men will know that you are truly my dis­ci­ples.

• defined as › not getting our way but taking God’s way
• effect of, and answer to, prayer › what true son desires and Father wills IS
• materialistic prayer › in Jesus’ name viewed as supreme magic

180:2.4But great sor­row later at­tended the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s in­fer­ences re­gard­ing prayer. There would have been lit­tle dif­fi­culty about these teach­ings if his ex­act words had been re­mem­bered and sub­se­quently truth­fully re­corded. But as the rec­ord was made, be­liev­ers even­tu­ally re­garded prayer in Je­sus’ name as a sort of su­preme magic, think­ing that they would re­ceive from the Fa­ther any­thing they asked for. For cen­turies hon­est souls have con­tin­ued to wreck their faith against this stum­bling block. How long will it take the world of be­liev­ers to un­der­stand that prayer is not a pro­cess of get­ting your way but rather a pro­gram of tak­ing God’s way, an ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to rec­og­nize and ex­e­cute the Fa­ther’s will? It is en­tirely true that, when your will has been truly aligned with his, you can ask any­thing con­ceived by that will-union, and it will be granted. And such a will-union is ef­fected by and through Je­sus even as the life of the vine flows into and through the liv­ing branches.

180:2.5When there ex­ists this liv­ing con­nec­tion be­tween di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity, if hu­man­ity should thought­lessly and ig­no­rantly pray for self­ish ease and vain­glo­ri­ous ac­com­plish­ments, there could be only one di­vine an­swer: more and in­creased bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit on the stems of the liv­ing branches. When the branch of the vine is alive, there can be only one an­swer to all its pe­ti­tions: in­creased grape bear­ing. In fact, the branch ex­ists only for, and can do noth­ing ex­cept, fruit bear­ing, yield­ing grapes. So does the true be­liever ex­ist only for the pur­pose of bear­ing the fruits of the spirit: to love man as he him­self has been loved by God—that we should love one an­other, even as Je­sus has loved us.

180:2.6And when the Fa­ther’s hand of dis­ci­pline is laid upon the vine, it is done in love, in or­der that the branches may bear much fruit. And a wise hus­band­man cuts away only the dead and fruit­less branches.

180:2.7Je­sus had great dif­fi­culty in lead­ing even his apos­tles to rec­og­nize that prayer is a func­tion of spirit-born be­liev­ers in the spirit-dom­i­nated king­dom.

• practice of prayer › in doubt, ask in Jesus’ name

180:6.7And since Je­sus knew they asked these ques­tions, he said: “Do you in­quire among your­selves about what I meant when I said that in a lit­tle while I would not be with you, and that, when you would see me again, I would be on my way to the Fa­ther? I have plainly told you that the Son of Man must die, but that he will rise again. Can you not then dis­cern the mean­ing of my words? You will first be made sor­row­ful, but later on will you re­joice with many who will un­der­stand these things af­ter they have come to pass. A woman is in­deed sor­row­ful in the hour of her tra­vail, but when she is once de­liv­ered of her child, she im­me­di­ately for­gets her an­guish in the joy of the knowl­edge that a man has been born into the world. And so are you about to sor­row over my de­par­ture, but I will soon see you again, and then will your sor­row be turned into re­joic­ing, and there shall come to you a new rev­e­la­tion of the sal­va­tion of God which no man can ever take away from you. And all the worlds will be blessed in this same rev­e­la­tion of life in ef­fect­ing the over­throw of death. Hith­erto have you made all your re­quests in my Fa­ther’s name. Af­ter you see me again, you may also ask in my name, and I will hear you.

• effect of, and answer to, prayer › digs out deeper channels for divine bestowals

194:3.20Prayer did not bring the spirit on the day of Pen­te­cost, but it did have much to do with de­ter­min­ing the ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity which char­ac­ter­ized the in­di­vid­ual be­liev­ers. Prayer does not move the di­vine heart to lib­er­al­ity of be­stowal, but it does so of­ten dig out larger and deeper chan­nels wherein the di­vine be­stowals may flow to the hearts and souls of those who thus re­mem­ber to main­tain un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with their Maker through sin­cere prayer and true wor­ship.

• Jesus › meaning of p. to Jesus

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.