Prayer

On Prayer

by Dr. Murdo MacDonald-Bayne

Now prayer depends upon the petitioner. When one asks for something there is an unconscious response and the response is from the unconscious experience of centuries and, according to the mental state of the petitioner, he receives accordingly. As Jesus said, 'Believe ye have received and ye shall have.'

But is the mind not all the time living in opposites, having and not having, health and ill-health, success and failure, good and evil, and so on? It is only when you understand the total process of the mind that you can go beyond, and this is much more important than prayer.

Prayer has no solution for the petitioner, nor is prayer a solution to the petition! You may get what you wanted but that does not prevent the mind from manufacturing again the very thing that you pray for release from. So it is not the finding of a superficial answer to your prayer but understanding of the whole process of the mind that creates the problem from which you want release.

The world has been praying for peace for centuries, but peace is just as far off.

Why pray for peace if you do not understand the cause of war? Why pray for success if you do not understand the cause of failure? Why pray for health if you do not understand the cause of sorrow?

You do not pray when you are joyous, when you have no problems. You pray only when you are in conflict, when you have difficulties you cannot solve.

What is essential is to understand the whole process of the mind -- the self which is the cause of the problem. Then the mind no longer chatters nor has to be made quiet, but becomes quiet through right meditation, as I have already explained. In that quietness there is the Real, and with Reality there is no problem.

The self alone makes the problem which the self prays about. The solution is in understanding the cause of the problem and that is in you -- the self -- and, when the self is understood to be what it is, having no existence in Reality, it dissolves away and so does the problem. Then Reality, which you do not create but is Creativeness itself, comes into Being immediately. That is true prayer. It is Being. The effectiveness, the extensiveness, the unlimited state of 'Being' has to be experienced to be realised.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RETURN TO:HOME BACK TO: PAUL'S PAGE

+ + + + + + + + +