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Prayer and Aspiration THERE are many kinds of
prayers. There is one external and physical, that is to say, simply words
learnt by rote and repeated mechanically. It does not mean much. It has
usually one result, however, making you quiet. If you go on repeating a few
words or sounds for some time, it puts you into a state of calmness in the end.
There is another kind which is the natural expression of a wish; you want a
particular thing and you express it clearly. You can pray for an, object or for
a circumstance, you can pray also for a person or for yourself. There is still
another kind in which the prayer borders on aspiration and the two meet: it is
the spontaneous formulation of a living experience; it shoots out of the depth
of your being, it is the utterance of something lived within: it wants to
express gratitude for the experience, asks for its continuation or seeks an
explanation. It is then, what I said, almost an aspiration. Aspiration,
however, does not necessarily formulate itself in words; if it uses words at
all, it makes of them a kind of invocation. Thus, you wish to be in a certain
condition. You have, for example, found in you something which is not in
harmony with your ideal, a movement of obscurity or ignorance or even bad will.
You wish to see it changed. You do not express the thing in so many words, but
it rises up in you like a flame, an ardent offering of the experience itself
which seeks increase and greatening to be made more clear and precise. It is
true all this is capable of being expressed in words, if one tries to recall
and note down the experience. But the experience, the aspiration itself is, as
I say, like a flame shooting up and contains within it the very thing it asks
for. I say "asks for", but the movement is not at all that of a
desire; it is truly a flame, the flame of purifying will carrying at its centre
the very object which it wished to be realised. The discovery of a fault in you
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you to make it an occasion for more progress, for greater self-discipline, for
further ascension towards the Divine. It opens out a door upon your future,
which you wish to be clearer, truer, intenser; all
that gathers in you like a concentrated force and tosses you up in a movement
of ascension. It needs no expression in words. It is indeed a flame that leaps up.
Such is true aspiration. Prayer usually is something much more external; it is
about a very precise object. It is always formulated; for the formulation itself makes what a prayer is. You may have an aspiration
and you can transcribe it into a prayer, but the aspiration itself exceeds the
prayer. It is something much more intimate, much more self-forgetful, living
only in the object it wishes to be or the thing to do, almost identified with
it. A prayer can be of a very high quality. Instead of being a request for a
fulfilment of your particular desire, it may express your thankfulness and
gratefulness for what the Divine has done and is doing for you. You are not
busy with your little self and its egoistic interests, you ask for the Divine's
ways in you and in the world. This leads you to the border of aspiration. For aspiration too has many degrees and it is expressed on many
levels. But the core of aspiration is in the psychic being, it is there
at its purest, for there is its origin and source. Prayers come from the other,
the lower or secondary levels of being. That is to say, there are physical or
material prayers, asking for physical or material things, vital prayers, mental prayers; there are psychic prayers and spiritual
prayers too. Each has its own character and its own value. I say again there is
a certain type of prayer which is so spontaneous and so disinterested, more
like an appeal or a call, generally not for one's own sake, but acting
sometimes like an intercession with the Divine on behalf of others. Such a
prayer is extremely powerful. I have seen innumerable cases where such a prayer
had brought about its immediate fulfilment. It means a great faith, a great fervour, a great sincerity
and also a great simplicity of heart, something which does not calculate, which
does not bargain or barter, does not give with the idea of receiving. The
majority of prayers are precisely made with the idea of giving so that one may
receive. But I was speaking of the rarer variety which also does exist, which
is a kind of thanksgiving, a canticle or a hymn.
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sum up then it can be said that a prayer is always formed of words. Words have
different values, according to the state of consciousness of the person when he
formulates it. But always prayer is a formulated thing. But one can aspire
without formulating. And then, prayer needs a person to whom one prays. There
is, of course, a certain class of people whose conception of the universe is
such that there is no room in it for the Divine (the famous French scientist
Laplace, for example). Such people are not likely to favour the existence of
any being superior to themselves to whom they can appeal or look up for
guidance and help. There is no question of prayer for them. But even they,
though they may not pray, may aspire. They may not believe in God, but they may
believe, for example, in progress. They may conceive of the world as a
progressive movement, that it is becoming better and better, rising higher and
higher, growing constantly to a nobler fulfilment. They can ask for, will for,
aspire for such progress; they need not look for the Divine. Aspiration
requires faith, certainly, but not faith necessarily in a personal God. But
prayer is always addressed to a person, a person who hears and grants it. There
lies the great difference between the two. Intellectual people admit
aspiration, but prayer they consider as something inferior, fit for unintellectual persons. The
mystics say, aspiration is quite all right, but if your aspiration is to be
heard and fulfilled, you must also pray, know how to pray and to whom – who
else but the Divine? The aspiration need not be towards any person; the
aspiration is not for a person, but for a state of consciousness, a knowledge, a realisation. Prayer adds to it the relation
to a person. Prayer is a personal thing addressed to a person for a thing which
he alone can grant.
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