Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00263)

>Prayers are regarding not only my words but my
>thoughts and the establishing
>of good will at a mental level. This is necessary
>in my life and I welcome
>the use of prayers here on theos-l.

>From THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY by H.P. Blavatsky, pages 66-67:

ENQ: Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray?
THEO: We do not. We ACT, instead of TALKING.

ENQ: You do not offer prayers even to the Absolute Principle?
THEO: Why should we? Being well-occupied people, we can hardly afford to
lose time in addressing verbal prayers to a pure abstraction. The Unknowable
is capable of relations only in its parts to each other, but is non-existent
as regards any finite relations. The visible universe depends for its
existence and phenomena on its mutually acting forms and their laws, not on
prayer or prayers.

ENQ: Do you not believe in the efficacy of prayer?
THEO: Not in prayers taught in so many words and repeated externally, if by
prayer you mean the outward petition to an unknown God as the addressee,
which was inaugurated by the Jews and popularised by the Pharisees.

ENQ: Is there any other kind of prayer?
THEO: Most decidedly; we call it WILL-PRAYER, and it is rather an internal
command than a petition.

ENQ: To whom, then, do you PRAY when you do so?
THEO: To "our Father in heaven"--in its esoteric meaning.

ENQ: Is that different from the one given to it in theology?
THEO: Entirely so. An Occultist or a Theosophist addresses his prayer to HIS
FATHER WHICH IS IN SECRET (read, and try to understand, ch. vi. v.6,
Matthew), not to an extra-cosmic and therefore finite God; and that "Father"
is in man himself.
*********************

H.P. Blavatsky seems to be saying there is no prayer at all (worthy of the
Theosophist) except that addressed to one's own higher nature. There is no
point in praying to Christ or the Masters or the World-Soul or any other
being, real or imagined. And I can't see why one would post one's personal
will-prayers to the Higher Self on a public bulletin board. What is to be
gained?

Rich