Theos-Talk Archives (June 2007 Message tt00169)

Dear Henry
My apologies. I have just realised that I inadvertently overlooked 
your posting and replied to Sveinn Freyr, thinking it to be his. 
Please excuse this mistake, it was not my intention to ignore and 
bypass you. 
Hopefully you have read this posting as to Madame Blavatsky's 
position on prayer. If not, I repeat it below as it is a particularly 
significant extract with profound philosophical implications in terms 
of her and her teachers' version of theosophy.

"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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