WHAT IS A PRAYER? I would like to tell you what I think prayer really means. To me it is a cry from inside, addressed to we know not whom, for the fulfillment of a need within. Take a tiny baby. It cries when it is hungry and its mother rushes to feed it. But does the baby know it is hungry? Surely not! It is a cry of nature from within for the fulfillment of a need which it does not know, and nature in the form of its mother responds from outside to fill the need thus expressed inarticulately by the baby. I would therefore define prayer as a call from nature within to Nature outside for the fulfillment of a need of which the self is not consciously aware. But the inner nature recognises the need and gives utterance to it.

If we view prayer in this light, then we find that the idea of asking or begging for something, generally associated with prayer, no longer exists. Master himself has said, "prayer is begging" and it is an unfortunate fact that, that has been the only attitude in prayer - to beg for something. But we should not misunderstand Master as saying that prayer has to be an act of begging. All that Master means is that through the religious history of mankind, prayer has rarely risen above this attitude of begging to anything higher.
In Sahaj Marg, we don't ask for anything, because Master has said, that is begging. Prayer is not begging. "Then what is prayer?" I asked Master. He said, "You must just have your hands stretched out with a beggar's bowl in it; you should not be aware that you have a bowl in that hand; you should not even be aware if something is put into it."

WHAT IS SAHAJ MARG PRAYER? Our Sahaj Marg prayer is profoundly different. It is different in content and in purpose. It is a mere statement of certain facts with no request attached to it. Master says that by uttering this prayer mentally just once, a connection with Him is created, and that is its only purpose. The flow of transmission commences thereafter. It is like a switch which, when activated, permits electricity to flow. It is therefore vital to our purpose. If the system we are following is to help us achieve our goal, the use of the prayer is of absolute importance. I would remind you that Master prescribes the mental recitation of prayer just once in the morning, before meditation is commenced. Now if the prayer is what connects the abhyasi to the Master, then if the prayer is not mentally repeated, the connection is not established. It is perhaps for this reason that many abhyasis show lack of progress. In our morning practice, it therefore works as a connecting switch.

HOW SHOULD WE ADDRESS A PRAYER? When we address a prayer to the Master or to God with derogation, with lack of respect, with derision, it is like a mountain echoing back our words to us. He does not answer. But when we pray humbly, submissively, in some way it reaches His heart and the reply comes. So prayer should be done with the utmost devotion, with the utmost love.

Prayer remains the most important and unfailing means of success. Through it we have established our link with the Holy divine. The reason why prayer should be offered with a heart full of love and devotion, is that one should create within oneself a state of vacuity so that the flow of Divine Grace may be diverted towards him.

WHY SHOULD WE PRAY BEFORE MEDITATION? Babuji said it is the way of connecting yourself at one instant of time to the Almighty whose guidance, whose help, you are seeking. And if that is done effectively your meditation becomes something sublime, something effective.

THE PRAYER OF THE MISSION: (which Master himself has declared as having come to him from above.)

The first line states who and what is my goal. And it is the real goal, you see, there can be so many spurious goals, false goals, temporary goals, glittering goals. What is my real goal? "Thou art the real goal of human life." The next line is an illustration of what I am this moment. "We are yet but slaves of wishes putting bar to our advancement." The third line makes a statement: by your grace alone I can reach it, "Thou art the only God and power to bring us up to that stage." So Babuji said, "Do not misunderstand this prayer, it is not asking, it is not begging, it is nothing of that sort. It is you reminding yourself every morning of your goal, of the purpose of your existence, of your present condition, and trying to remember Him who alone can lead you to that stage which you want to achieve. It is just a statement of fact, it is a remembrance."
WHY IN OUR PRAYER DO WE SAY, "O, MASTER!" AND NOT, "O, GOD?"
It is my Master's teaching that God has no mind. The Ultimate, God, you see, has no mind. (The mind is what, you know, relates to consciousness.) So since he has no mind, how can he hear our prayer or answer our prayer? Therefore, Sahaj Marg says, prayer to God is useless. For two reasons: the first reason is, we are responsible for what we are doing; the second reason is, He cannot hear and answer us.

Therefore, the ancient eastern wisdom says that what God cannot do himself, he sends a master to do for Him. It is the belief of spiritual, shall we say, elevated souls that the Master is God in human form with a mind and heart. Therefore, he is able to respond to our prayer, and he is able to have compassion for us, because he feels as a human being what we are feeling as human beings.

Therefore, he can help us to rise out of a human situation and develop into the divine level of existence. Therefore, it is wiser to pray to the Master than to God, for he is able to - even though he understands that we are responsible for what we are undergoing - yet he is able to sympathize with us, because he is also a human being. And it is that sympathy and compassion which makes him release his divine powers to help us.

So, we have to pray to the Master, and when our prayers are answered, we have to be grateful to the Master. And this is not any disrespect to God. Because it is to God as the Master that we pray. Incidentally, this is an answer to the question why in our prayer we say, "O, Master!" and not, "O, God."

THOU ART THE REAL GOAL OF HUMAN LIFE - what for? This is not the stotra-priya aspect of worship you see. This is not the abhisheka-priya aspect of the worship. This is a positive heart to heart link that we are trying to establish with sincerity, with devotion, with love. It is not a mechanical thing. The process is mechanical, but the attitude behind it is one of devotion and of love. So, when we practice mechanically, we are not getting the full benefit of it. As Babuji said - "If you do it mechanically, there is no motive force behind it, no steam power behind it."

So what is it that distinguishes one abhyasi from another? It is the devotion, it is the love for the Master as something which is very potent and which He cannot resist. When the two are coupled, we have a bhakta, a devotee, one who is doing the practice and also loving his Lord. Then comes this miracle that He showers on us, His gifts.

The prayer indicates very, very clearly, very unambiguously what is the real goal of human life, and the words 'real goal' must be taken particular note of. Why did he use the words 'real goal'? Why not just say 'goal'? Because there are so many goals, you see.

Babuji himself says, He is the real goal, we are only His representatives on earth. But it is my direct experience, you see, I have no hesitation in saying it, I have experienced the presence of my Master as the presence of the Ultimate! I experienced this not once, but several times. And this mistake of thinking that the Master and God are two separate things, and having got God I could negate my Master and leave Him behind, was made by several persons, many of whom do not know Sahaj Marg today. So we need the Master till the completion of this yatra. This will show you where the real goal lies.

WE ARE YET BUT SLAVES OF WISHES PUTTING BAR TO OUR ADVANCEMENT: Our prayer says our desires are putting bar to our advancement. Desire for anything. It may be pleasure, it may be comfort, it may be wealth, riches, health, anything. Why I say this is, there cannot be any such thing as a good desire; there is no such thing as a good desire. If we are able to fulfill the desires it's worse, because the desire is going, like from a small fire, to a big fire, to an explosion. And again it leads to destruction. So that makes it very clear, you see, that desire is, per se, our enemy.

THOU ART THE ONLY GOD AND POWER TO BRING US UP TO THAT STAGE: Here we recognize the fact that by our own effort nothing is possible. We are stating to ourselves the fact that He alone can help us to take us up to that stage of existence. Again, please note that we are not asking God for any help whatsoever.

So the prayer consists of three statements where the first one puts before us the Goal. The second one tells us what is the only impediment to our progress, namely our wishes, and the third one states that the Goal that is God Himself has to assist us to reach Him.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF PRAYER? We certainly have a right to ask for that which we need, not which we want. You see, we have a right to the needs of existence. The wants are created by us. And it was Babuji's very forthright, downright, unambiguous, often repeated statement that we never pray for our needs, we pray for our wants. And he said this is why it is called begging. So, let us pray humbly, "Master, don't over burden me with your blessings. I may not be able to bear it. Let me have it in small doses, such as I can bear."

Master's blessings come in ways that we cannot see; in quantities we can hardly see or perceive. But they are always there. Otherwise we would not exist long enough to make the next prayer for his blessings! So when we pray, let us pray humbly for small mercies. "Master! You know what I need, it is impertinent of me to try to remind you of this. But you know, nevertheless a human being, my suffering makes me refer the matter to you again and again. Forgive me for doing it. I know you are doing what you have to do. I am unable to perceive it . Please make me capable of perceiving what you are doing for me." I think it is about the best prayer that we can make.

So prayers, blessings are very potent things. And when a man wants to pray for getting a ticket to go for Basant, we are making the same mistake that Babuji said, when you use a crane to pick up a needle. Prayer is supposed to move mountains, not to buy railway tickets. "O, Master, I want an autorickshaw. Kindly send me one. And the miracle, you know", the abhyasi says, "three autorickshaws came from three directions!" Now we are making the Master a fool, you see. One was not enough, He had to send us three! You know how stupidly we handle prayer and blessings? So it is easy to become a saint, but it is very difficult to become a sadhak (aspirant). To be a proper sadhak is to realize our relationship with the Master, to realize that it is always one of humility, one of submissiveness, one of subordination. To realize that even prayer must be done in such a subtle fashion that you do not know you are praying - you are not conscious of it. And that prayer must become something like the background of your existence when every heart beat becomes, not a prayer, but an utterance of your gratitude for the existence that He has permitted you to lead. Then we are true sadhaks.

So, let us pray to the Master, "Please, make me first of all, an abhyasi in the true sense, in the true spirit of what that means - one who lives by your principles; one who obeys your orders and commandments; one who is following the practice as established, sincerely, honestly, with dedication. Keep me aware of the goal I have got to go to. Am I in this game for politics, for money, for this, that and the other? No, I am here for personal spiritual evolution. Please, divert not my mind away from this goal. Please let me remember that I am doing this for Myself. Let me not have flights of imagination, flights of fantasy, that I am doing it for my mother's sake, father's sake, society's sake, India's sake." That will come later, God willing, if you are fit for it. So, Master once told me the first law of spiritual life; "Love yourself so much that you cannot destroy yourself, but have to make yourself into that, which you love." Then we will see the rest.

Don't limit your vision. Don't say, "Babuji was in Shahjahanpur". Yes, it is like the centre of a circle. Where is the centre of a circle? It depends on where the circle is. All the circles in the universe can have one common centre. Isn't it? He can be here and not be here depending on me. How He is here and also in my house in Madras, also in Shahjahanpur, how He is spread out through the Universe, if my consciousness, the perception that He gives us is sufficiently widened and expanded to feel His presence everywhere. So for this, we have to pray, you see. "Master! I have seen you as this. Please give me in your benevolence, in your love, in your mercy, in your Divinity, that which can alone make me see you as you really are." Unless this is fulfilled, whatever region we may get - and I pray that we should all get everything in that region you see - it is still very much short of what we should become in spirituality.

WHEN SHOULD WE PRAY? Really prayer should be done only when something exceeds our capacity to do something. If I have to take a chair and put it here, I cannot pray to God! So, until human capacity is at its limit, prayer has no meaning, it should not be used. Otherwise, it is either a sign of laziness or of a lack of understanding of God's place in this universe.

Babuji Maharaj, was always saying that He should be allowed the freedom to do the work as He thought it fit, as He thought it in the best interest of all of us. And everytime an abhyasi came to Him with a petition or a request or prayer - even a prayer, it was in some way a restriction imposed on His abilities to work for us. He felt bound by what we asked for. He felt bound in two ways. One, because of His total generosity and love for us, He felt compelled to give us what we wanted, sometimes knowing that it was not good for us. On the other hand He was bound because He could not do what He really wanted to do for us. He has written about this in so many places, that "if you leave me free to do my work as I think fit, you shall derive immense benefit from it. But if you come with a list of things that you need or you want, and impose those on me, then out of a feeling of love for you, I may do it. That is my mistake also." He concedes, you see, that it is a mistake. "But I feel compelled to do it because you come to me for that." But then we are denied the higher benefit that He could give us.

PRAYER AT BEDTIME: Offer daily the brief prayer at bed time in the most suppliant mood with a heart overflowing with divine love. Repeat the prayer in your mind once or twice and begin to meditate over it for a few moments. The prayer must be offered in a way as if some most miserable man is laying down his miseries with a deeply afflicted heart before the Supreme Master imploring for His mercy and Grace, with tearful eyes. Then alone can he become a deserving aspirant.

WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF THE BED-TIME PRAYER? I believe the function is now of an entirely different order. By meditating on the meaning we are embedding the spiritual meaning of the prayer in our deeper consciousness, in the subconscious, to keep it alive there right through the period of sleep. In the morning, when we repeat the prayer just once, the spiritual consciousness is brought out into our waking consciousness again, and thus a 24-hour cycle of permanent, uninterrupted spiritual consciousness is maintained. It is like covering live burning coals over with ash at night before we retire to bed. The fire is not allowed to go out. In the morning all that we have to do is to blow away the ash, and the fire is there ready to be built up as we want it.

WHAT DOES THE PRAYER REVEAL? It is an important element, because by practicing that aspect of our Sahaj Marg practice by which we repeat the prayer a few times mentally, and then meditate on the meaning of the prayer, we find the prayer assuming, or revealing to us, different aspects of its meaning. It is not what it seems to say. Very often the beginners ask the question, "When you say 'O Master!', who is this person? Who is the Master? Because Babuji writes in Reality at Dawn, and in Voice Real, 'God alone is the real Master.' Then you say, He is my Master, Babuji is my Master.' You also say that he had his Master Lalaji. For heaven's sake, will you clear this confusion?" Now the easiest way of finding out what and who is the Master is this meditation on the prayer at night. It is not without purpose that it has been given to us as one aspect of our practice. That it connects our consciousness at bedtime with the next morning through the facet of sleep, it's okay. It's one of the aspects. That we go to bed in a divine consciousness is another aspect. It helps us to have a relaxed sleep and dream-free sleep, in fact, real sleep. But is that all?

I used to think so too, until the meditation on the prayer revealed itself in many ways. If you make the right decision in the beginning and accept him without judging him, with all his so-called defects, as happens when a girl bride of four years accepts a boy groom of eight years - innocently, knowing nothing of what it is all about, but with faith in the future - then we understand and unfold this miraculous understanding of nature, where that man with whom we associated, progressively becomes more and more lovable, more and more adorable, until a day comes when we cannot exist without him.

UNIVERSAL PRAYER: At 9 p.m. sharp every abhyasi wherever he might happen to be at that time, should stop his work and meditate for 15 minutes, thinking that all brothers and sisters are being filled up with love and devotion and that real faith is growing stronger in them.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE NINE O'CLOCK PRAYER: The main difference is that everything else we do, we do for ourselves. The nine o'clock prayer we do for the universal and spiritual well-being of all.

Let me amplify it a little. See, there is a wisdom in trying to have the whole of humanity raised to our level. We all know well that if there is only one rich man in a place he is the target of attack by all robbers around him. Similarly if you have only one healthy man surrounded by sickness, he is not safe. So we have two aspects to our Sadhana: one is for personal development - the other is a prayer that all should develop with me so that nobody is envious of me, that nobody casts eyes on my progress, that there is no jealousy and no selfishness. We must all rise like that, well, that is still a rather self-centered approach to this universal prayer.

The next approach is: "Lord, if I am to remain here, at least let them go up, because when they go up, somebody can lift me up later on." Only a man who has fallen knows that there must be some people around him who can raise him up. There is still an element of self-centeredness there.

The highest approach is of the saint who says: "I am prepared to be eternally here - so long as I can move people up." He is able to pray like that because for him the difference between high and low, between spiritual and non-spiritual, between heaven and hell, have all disappeared. So when we do our individual Sadhana we develop spiritually day by day. When we continue with the nine o'clock prayer we bring in a certain universalism to our approach. And our own spiritual growth is matched by the change of attitude in the universal prayer from total self-centeredness to partial self-centeredness and then to complete other-centeredness.

WHEN SOMEBODY IS SICK WHAT SHOULD WE DO? When you ask for yourself it is begging, when you ask for somebody else it is never begging. We have a right, I mean it is a right, perhaps even a duty cast upon us by love itself, that when we love we have to ask for those whom we love. We are never allowed to ask for ourselves. So you see, there is a fine distinction between praying for oneself which is begging for oneself and praying for another which is a prayer to the Almighty, "God bestow your mercy on him," or "Master bless him, or her." There is no difference, you see. So that is another aspect of prayer.

We should not distinguish between who deserves our prayer and who doesn't deserve our prayer. I remember one family, two children were sick. One was very sick, almost dying, and the other was not sick at all, you know, just a little fever and things like that, and everybody was praying for this child which was dying. The funny thing happened on the seventh day. The dying child started to recover and the child which was not at all sick died. That is why it is wise to pray for all. Because I don't think we are really competent to decide who is going, and if this going can be stopped by praying.

The second thing is a little bit more difficult, because we are always concerned with human sympathy, human love, things like that: is it right to pray at all for such persons? Because if we have rightly understood the theory of samskaras, and that a person's life takes a particular course because of the samskaras, then the right understanding would seem to decide that we have no right to interfere in that process. Of course, I'm now only talking about abhyasis, and it is very important to understand this correctly.

This brings us to an important division in our attitude: on one side we have the duty as human beings to help other human beings, and that duty is always with us. On the other side, we have to accept the divine will as the ultimate thing and leave it to decide what has to be done and not. I think the difficulty in perceiving this decision is what raises so many questions.

The law of evolution says, "Become that which you must become!" Then you are in a position to help others who have to be helped, who need to be helped. Otherwise we are left to this rather, weak-kneed approach of prayer. No doubt prayer is very effective, but the prayer of a weak man who cannot even help himself? See, when a Master prays, it is almost a demand upon Divinity. God cannot refuse.

So at that stage, whether by prayer or by direct intervention in the lives of others, you are able to help in both ways. It's twin-pronged sort of ability you develop. When we are weak, we can neither help ourselves nor anybody else. Nor can we pray in that sustained, devoted, strong way which can attract the attention of whatever it is - God, Divinity.