Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00027)

KEY19.TXT

Prayer Kills Self-Reliance

Q. But did not Christ himself pray and recommend prayer?

A. It is so recorded, but those "prayers" are precisely of that
kind of communion just mentioned with one's "Father in secret."
Otherwise, and if we identify Jesus with the universal deity,
there would be something too absurdly illogical in the
inevitable conclusion that he, the "very God himself" prayed to
himself, and separated the will of that God from his own!

Q. One argument more; an argument, moreover, much used by some
Christians. They say, I feel that I am not able to conquer any
passions and weaknesses in my own strength. But when I pray to
Jesus Christ I feel that he gives me strength and that in His
power I am able to conquer.

A. No wonder. If "Christ Jesus" is God, and one independent and
separate from him who prays, of course everything is, and must
be possible to "a mighty God." But, then, where's the merit, or
justice either, of such a conquest? Why should the
pseudo-conqueror be rewarded for something done which has cost
him only prayers? Would you, even a simple mortal man, pay your
laborer a full day's wage if you did most of his work for him,
he sitting under an apple tree, and praying to you to do so, all
the while? This idea of passing one's whole life in moral
idleness, and having one's hardest work and duty done by
another, whether God or man, is most revolting to us, as it is
most degrading to human dignity.

Q. Perhaps so, yet it is the idea of trusting in a personal
Savior to help and strengthen in the battle of life, which is
the fundamental idea of modern Christianity. And there is no
doubt that, subjectively, such belief is efficacious; i.e., that
those who believe do feel themselves helped and strengthened.

A. Nor is there any more doubt, that some patients of
"Christian" and "Mental Scientists", the great "Deniers", are also
sometimes cured; nor that hypnotism, and suggestion, psychology,
and even mediumship, will produce such results, as often, if not
oftener. You take into consideration, and string on the thread
of your argument, successes alone. And how about ten times the
number of failures? Surely you will not presume to say that
failure is unknown even with a sufficiency of blind faith, among
fanatical Christians?

Q. But how can you explain those cases which are followed by
full success? Where does a Theosophist look to for power to
subdue his passions and selfishness?

A. To his Higher Self, the divine spirit, or the God in him, and
to his Karma. How long shall we have to repeat over and over
again that the tree is known by its fruit, the nature of the
cause by its effects? You speak of subduing passions, and
becoming good through and with the help of God or Christ. We
ask, where do you find more virtuous, guiltless people,
abstaining from sin and crime, in Christendom or Buddhism, in
Christian countries or in heathen lands? Statistics are there to
give the answer and corroborate our claims. According to the
last census in Ceylon and India, in the comparative table of
crimes committed by Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Eurasians,
Buddhists, etc., etc., on two millions of population taken at
random from each, and covering the misdemeanors of several
years, the proportion of crimes committed by the Christian
stands as 15 to 4 as against those committed by the Buddhist
population. No Orientalist, no historian of any note, or
traveler in Buddhist lands, from Bishop Bigandet and Abbe Huc,
to Sir William Hunter and every fair-minded official, will fail
to give the palm of virtue to Buddhists before Christians. Yet
the former (not the true Buddhist Siamese sect, at all events)
do not believe in either God or a future reward, outside of this
earth. They do not pray, neither priests nor laymen. "Pray!"
they would exclaim in wonder, "to whom, or what?"

Q. Then they are truly Atheists.

A. Most undeniably, but they are also the most virtue-loving and
virtue-keeping men in the whole world. Buddhism says: Respect
the religions of other men and remain true to your own; but
Church Christianity, denouncing all the gods of other nations as
devils, would doom every non-Christian to eternal perdition.

Q. Does not the Buddhist priesthood do the same?

A. Never. They hold too much to the wise precept found in the
DHAMMAPADA to do so, for they know that, If any man, whether he
be learned or not, consider himself so great as to despise other
men, he is like a blind man holding a candle, blind himself, he
illumines others.

[The new sect of healers, who, by disavowing the existence of
anything but spirit, which spirit can neither suffer nor be ill,
claim to cure all and every disease, provided the patient has
faith that what he denies can have no existence. A new form of
self-hypnotism.  See "Christian Lecturers on Buddhism," Lucifer,
April 1888, 147.]

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