Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00008)

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Text supplied by Eldon Tucker
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         Is it Necessary to Pray?

Q. Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray?

A. We do not. We act, instead of talking.

Q. You do not offer prayers even to the Absolute Principle?

A. 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.

Q. Do you not believe at all in the efficacy of prayer?


A. Not in prayer 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 popularized by the Pharisees.

Q. Is there any other kind of prayer?

A. Most decidedly; we call it WILL-PRAYER, and it is rather an
internal command than a petition.

Q. To whom, then, do you pray when you do so?

A. To "our Father in heaven", in its esoteric meaning.

Q. Is that different from the one given to it in theology?

A. Entirely so. An Occultist or a Theosophist addresses his
prayer to his Father which is in secret, not to an extra-cosmic
and therefore finite God; and that "Father" is in man himself.

Q. Then you make of man a God?

A. Please say "God" and not a God. In our sense, the inner man
is the only God we can have cognizance of. And how can this be
otherwise? Grant us our postulate that God is a universally
diffused, infinite principle, and how can man alone escape from
being soaked through by, and in, the Deity? We call our "Father
in heaven" that deific essence of which we are cognizant within
us, in our heart and spiritual consciousness, and which has
nothing to do with the anthropomorphic conception we may form of
it in our physical brain or its fancy: "Know ye not that ye are
the temple of God, and that the spirit of (the absolute) God
dwelleth in you?" One often finds in Theosophical writings
conflicting statements about the Christos principle in man. Some
call it the sixth principle (Buddhi), others the seventh (Atma).
If Christian Theosophists wish to make use of such expressions,
let them be made philosophically correct by following the
analogy of the old Wisdom-Religion symbols. We say that Christos
is not only one of the three higher principles, but all the
three regarded as a Trinity. This Trinity represents the Holy
Ghost, the Father, and the Son, as it answers to abstract
spirit, differentiated spirit, and embodied spirit. Kisha and
Christ are philosophically the same principle under its triple
aspect of manifestation. In the Bhagavad-Ghta we find Kisha
calling himself indifferently Atma, the abstract Spirit,
Kshetraja, the Higher or reincarnating Ego, and the Universal
SELF, all names which, when transferred from the Universe to
man, answer to Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. The Anughta is full of
the same doctrine.

Yet, let no man anthropomorphize that essence in us. Let no
Theosophist, if he would hold to divine, not human truth, say
that this "God in secret" listens to, or is distinct from,
either finite man or the infinite essence, for all are one. Nor,
as just remarked, that a prayer is a petition. It is a mystery
rather; an occult process by which finite and conditioned
thoughts and desires, unable to be assimilated by the absolute
spirit which is unconditioned, are translated into spiritual
wills and the will; such process being called "spiritual
transmutation." The intensity of our ardent aspirations changes
prayer into the "philosopher's stone," or that which transmutes
lead into pure gold. The only homogeneous essence, our
"will-prayer" becomes the active or creative force, producing
effects according to our desire.

Q. Do you mean to say that prayer is an occult process bringing
about physical results?

A. I do. Will-Power becomes a living power. But woe unto those
Occultists and Theosophists, who, instead of crushing out the
desires of the lower personal ego or physical man, and saying,
addressing their Higher Spiritual EGO immersed in Atma-Buddhic
light, "Thy will be done, not mine," etc., send up waves of
will-power for selfish or unholy purposes! For this is black
magic, abomination, and spiritual sorcery. Unfortunately, all
this is the favorite occupation of our Christian statesmen and
generals, especially when the latter are sending two armies to
murder each other. Both indulge before action in a bit of such
sorcery, by offering respectively prayers to the same God of
Hosts, each entreating his help to cut its enemies' throats.

Q. David prayed to the Lord of Hosts to help him smite the
Philistines and slay the Syrians and the Moabites, and "the Lord
preserved David whithersoever he went." In that we only follow
what we find in the Bible.

A. Of course you do. But since you delight in calling yourselves
Christians, not Israelites or Jews, as far as we know, why do
you not rather follow that which Christ says? And he distinctly
commands you not to follow "them of old times," or the Mosaic
law, but bids you do as he tells you, and warns those who would
kill by the sword, that they, too, will perish by the sword.
Christ has given you one prayer of which you have made a lip
prayer and a boast, and which none but the true Occultist
understands. In it you say, in your dead-sense meaning: "Forgive
us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," which you never do.
Again, he told you to love your enemies and do good to them that
hate you. It is surely not the "meek prophet of Nazareth" who
taught you to pray to your "Father" to slay, and give you
victory over your enemies! This is why we reject what you call
"prayers."

Q. But how do you explain the universal fact that all nations
and peoples have prayed to, and worshiped a God or Gods? Some
have adored and propitiated devils and harmful spirits, but this
only proves the universality of the belief in the efficacy of
prayer.

A. It is explained by that other fact that prayer has several
other meanings besides that given it by the Christians. It means
not only a pleading or petition, but meant, in days of old, far
more an invocation and incantation. The mantra, or the
rhythmically chanted prayer of the Hindus, has precisely such a
meaning, as the Brahmins hold themselves higher than the common
devas or "Gods." A prayer may be an appeal or an incantation for
malediction, and a curse (as in the case of two armies praying
simultaneously for mutual destruction) as much as for blessing.
And as the great majority of people are intensely selfish, and
pray only for themselves, asking to be given their "daily bread"
instead of working for it, and begging God not to lead them
"into temptation" but to deliver them (the memorialists only)
from evil, the result is, that prayer, as now understood, is
doubly pernicious: (a) It kills in man self-reliance; (b) It
develops in him a still more ferocious selfishness and egotism
than he is already endowed with by nature. I repeat, that we
believe in "communion" and simultaneous action in unison with
our "Father in secret"; and in rare moments of ecstatic bliss,
in the mingling of our higher soul with the universal essence,
attracted as it is towards its origin and center, a state,
called during life Samadhi, and after death, Nirvana. We refuse
to pray to created finite beings, i.e., gods, saints, angels,
etc., because we regard it as idolatry. We cannot pray to the
ABSOLUTE for reasons explained before; therefore, we try to
replace fruitless and useless prayer by meritorious and
good-producing actions.  Q. Christians would call it pride and
blasphemy. Are they wrong?

A. Entirely so. It is they, on the contrary, who show Satanic
pride in their belief that the Absolute or the Infinite, even if
there was such a thing as the possibility of any relation
between the unconditioned and the conditioned, will stoop to
listen to every foolish or egotistical prayer. And it is they
again, who virtually blaspheme, in teaching that an Omniscient
and Omnipotent God needs uttered prayers to know what he has to
do! This, understood esoterically, is corroborated by both
Buddha and Jesus. The one says:

Seek nought from the helpless Gods, pray not! but rather act;
for darkness will not brighten. Ask nought from silence, for it
can neither speak nor hear.

And the other, Jesus, recommends: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my
name (that of Christos) that will I do." Of course, this
quotation, if taken in its literal sense, goes against our
argument. But if we accept it esoterically, with the full
knowledge of the meaning of the term Christos which to us
represents Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the "SELF," it comes to this: the
only God we must recognize and pray to, or rather act in unison
with, is that spirit of God of which our body is the temple, and
in which it dwelleth.


[Read, and try to understand. Matt. 6:6.  - H.P. Blavatsky]

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