Theos-Talk Archives (June 2007 Message tt00157)

Dear Sveinn

Perhaps the following extract from the Key to Theosophy will clarify 
Madame Blavatsky's position on prayer:

"IS IT NECESSARY TO PRAY? 
ENQUIRER. Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray? 
THEOSOPHIST. We do not. We act, instead of talking. 
ENQUIRER. You do not offer prayers even to the Absolute Principle? 
THEOSOPHIST. 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. 
ENQUIRER. Do you not believe at all in the efficacy of prayer? 
THEOSOPHIST. 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 
popularised by the Pharisees. 
ENQUIRER. Is there any other kind of prayer? 
THEOSOPHIST. Most decidedly; we call it WILL-PRAYER, and it is rather 
an internal command than a petition. 
ENQUIRER. To whom, then, do you pray when you do so? 
THEOSOPHIST. To "our Father in heaven" -- in its esoteric meaning. 
ENQUIRER. Is that different from the one given to it in theology? 
THEOSOPHIST. 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. 
ENQUIRER. Then you make of man a God? 
THEOSOPHIST. 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?"3 Yet, let no man 
anthropomorphise 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. 
ENQUIRER. Do you mean to say that prayer is an occult process 
bringing about physical results? 
THEOSOPHIST. 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 
favourite 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." 

Regards
Nigel


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Henry B. Ellak" <henrybellak@...> 
wrote:
>
> Who did H.P.B. Pray to? 
>  I have understood that  HPB did not pray to
> anything. 
>  I may be wrong, but if I am wrong, who did HPB
> pray to? 
> As a side question, did HPB teach her disciples
> to pray?
> Also, I thought HPB's path was the path of
> knowledge, not faith.  Is it knowledge, gnois, or
> faith, that is the question. Henry
> 
> 
>  To whom do we pray if we do not have
> > Faith?   Without Faith we
> > can not pray.
> > 
> > Sincerely,
> > 
> > Sveinn Freyr
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >  .
> 
> 
> 
> 
>        
> 
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