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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."
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