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Prayer is one of the oldest of human acts and one of the first of human needs.
12.18.2.1The quest begins with prayer and even ends with it too. No man, whether novice or proficient, can afford to throw away this valuable means of communion, adoration, worship, and request.
12.18.2.3The call for prayer which, in most religions, is timed for once or twice a day and, in the Islamic religion, for five times a day, has at least two objectives in the mind of those sages who originally framed it. The first is to act as a reminder of what one is--a soul--and where one is going--ultimately to God. The second is to rescue us from the narrowing materializing routine of work or business.
12.18.2.4…Prayer is not only asking, it is first and foremost an act of worship and love of God. Only after that is done you may ask for something for yourself--mainly, of course, for spiritual things and not material…
12.18.2.5,There is no man so advanced that he can afford to dispense with prayer. It occupies a most important place in the philosophic aspirant's life.
12.18.2.6There is no one so sinful or so degraded in character that he is denied this blessed privilege of a contrite yearning for communion with his own divine source. Even the failure to have ever prayed before, even a past life of shame and error, does not cancel but, on the contrary, merely enhances this right…
12.18.2.8,... The man who is earnestly seeking to advance spiritually will usually be ashamed to carry any worldly desire into his sacred prayer. He will be working hard upon himself to improve, purify, and correct himself, so he need have no hesitation to engage in prayer--for the right things. He will pray for better understanding of the higher laws, clearer sight as to what his individual spiritual obligation consists in, more and warmer love for the Overself.
12.18.2.9,... He should become as a child at the feet of his divine Soul, humbly begging for its grace, guidance, and enlightenment. If his ego is strong, prayer will weaken it. Let him do this every day, not mechanically but sincerely and feelingly until the tears come to his eyes. The quest is an integral one and includes prayer alongside of all the other elements.
12.18.2.11,We are called to prayer because we can achieve no success, whether in human life or in the spiritual quest, without seeking and gaining divine help.
12.18.2.17The first value of prayer is that it is a confession of personal inadequacy and, by consequence, an aspiration to personal upliftment. It is a self-humbling of the ego and the beginning of a detachment from it. It is a first step in obedience to Jesus' paradoxical proclamation, ”He that loseth his life shall find it.”
12.18.2.20The Christian grace before, the Hebrew thanksgiving before and after meals, were prescribed for the same reason that the Muhammedan's brief five-times-a-day prayer was prescribed. And this was to bring the remembrance of life's higher purpose into everyday living.
12.18.2.25Too many individuals--and some of them are followers of this Quest--fail to remember the importance of simple prayer. There is not enough humbling of intellectual pride at the feet of the Higher Power and there is an obvious neglect of reverent worship in their attitudes and daily lives.
12.18.2.27The mystic has to pass through the earlier stage of regarding the Overself as an “other” before he can arrive at the later stage of regarding it as his own essential self …
12.18.2.29,A philosopher’s prayer: “That which is the ever-living presence in man: to That I turn when in trouble; on That I meditate when at rest; may That bless with its grace my entry into the other side of death.”
12.18.2.34It is good to pray that the coming year may find in you a more aspiring and more determined person, a calmer and better balanced seeker after truth.
12.18.2.35At some point during your prayer surrender your personal self to God, and your personal will to His Will.
12.18.2.46If you want a workable and faultless prayer, what is better than the one which Socrates habitually used, ”Give me that which is best for me”, or the one which some older pagan used, ”May I love, seek, and attain only that which is good”?
12.18.2.47To enter this stillness is the best way to pray.
12.18.2.60Whenever an emergency arises wherein you require help, guidance, protection, or inspiration, turn the thought away from self-power and bring it humbly to the feet of the higher power in prayer.
12.18.2.64Prayers really begin when their words end. They are most active not when the lips are active but when they are still.
12.18.2.65Too often prayer is mere soliloquy, a man talking to his own ego about his own ego, and heard only by his own ego. It would be far better for him to learn how to keep his thoughts silent, to put himself into a receptive listening attitude; what he may then hear may convince him that “the Father knoweth what ye need.”
12.18.2.70Oh, Lord, if I have any prayer at all it is, ”Make the ’me’ absolutely quiescent and lead me into thy utter stillness where nothing else matters but the stillness itself.”
12.18.2.71What shall he pray for? Let him aspire more intensely than ever to the Overself and ask to become united in consciousness with it, surrendered in will to it, and purified in ego.
12.18.2.73Pray by listening inwardly for intuitive feeling, light and strength …
12.18.2.77,… the eternal laws of karma will not cease operating merely for the asking … He must set going a series of new causes which shall produce new and pleasanter consequences that may act as an antidote to the older ones.
12.18.2.81,... God is in every atom of the Universe and consequently in full operation of the Universe…
12.18.2.95,The true purpose of prayer is not to keep asking for some benefit each time we engage in it, but rather to express the yearning of the underself for the Overself, the attraction felt by the ego living in darkness for its parent source dwelling in light.
12.18.2.118The internal ego does them more harm than anything or anyone else, yet how few appeal to the Divine for protection against themselves, how many for protection against merely external evils?
12.18.2.122He who can kneel down in utter humility and spontaneously pray to his higher self out of a genuine desire to elevate his character, will not pray in vain.
12.18.2.141If the confession of sins and faults is an indispensable part of philosophic prayer, striving to forsake those sins and faults must be made an active part of the daily life after prayer.
12.18.2.142The best kind of prayer which we can make for another person is uttered without words—that is, by leading him to the stillness; the lesser kind is to beg for him by voiced sound.
12.18.2.156If you seek to invoke the divine grace to meet a genuine and desperate physical need or human result, seek first to find the sacred presence within yourself and only after you have found it, or at least only after you have attained the deepest point of contemplation possible to you, should you name the thing or result sought. For then you will not only be guided whether it be right to continue the request or not, but you will also put yourself in the most favourable position for securing grace.
12.18.2.159Both prayer and receptivity are needed. First we pray fervently and feelingly to the Overself to draw us closer to it, then we lapse into emotional quietness and patiently wait to let the inner self unfold to us. There is no need to discard prayer because we take up meditation. The one makes a fit prelude to the other. The real need is to purify prayer and uplift its objectives.
12.18.2.178In prayer we are trying to speak to God. In meditation we are trying to let God speak to us …
12.18.2.181,A further difference between prayer and meditation is that in prayer, when successful, there is felt an intimacy with the Holy but not an identity with it, as is the case in the latter.
12.18.2.182Every philosophic aspirant should devote a little time to prefacing meditations or studies with a worshipful, devoted, and reverent supplication of the higher self for enlightenment.
12.18.2.184… where an aspirant is unable to calm his restless thoughts, in addition to the constant daily regular effort to do so--for perseverance is part of the secret of success--he may pray to the higher self to take possession of his mind. Such prayer must be deeply heartfelt, constantly repeated, and animated by a longing to get away from the peaceless ego.
12.18.2.188,… For the only God he can reach, and the only one who will help him, is the God in him, the Overself.
12.18.2.190,It seems to be a law of the inner life that we have to ask for the inner help that is needed long long before it begins to manifest.
12.18.2.192Such is the untouched depth of the human being that when a man prays to God he really prays to himself, his Overself.
12.18.2.199The Power to whom prayer should be addressed—for Its Grace, Its Self-Revelation and Guidance—is one’s own higher self, the Overself.
12.18.2.201In praying, the aspirant should direct his prayer to the only God he can know, that is, the God-Principle within himself—his own Divine Soul.
12.18.2.202The man who finds God within himself feels no need to pray to a God who is to be sought and addressed outside himself.
12.18.2.203If the sincere desire of his heart is echoed by a prayer that expresses humility and requests guidance, it will be heard. Although he may receive no answer for quite a time, sooner or later it will come.
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