Prayer and Devotion

Prayers, mantras, music and songs play an important role in the spiritual and mystic life. They evoke spiritual aspiration and devotion (bhakti) from the individual and invoke mystic and spiritual powers from the higher realms, generated by their use by a multitude of earnest seekers for hundreds and even thousands of years. They give evidence of true inspiration and spiritual realization and reveal the deepest occultism and mysticism.

One can become an occultist by acquiring occult knowledge through the intellect, but that is not enough, for man has more than the mind to satisfy, he has a heart also. And that heart hungers for the spiritual food of love and a realization of God as a personal experience, just as the mind hunger for the intellectual food of logical explanations of laws and phenomena of the world we see around us. Hence, something more is necessary for complete soul satisfaction; a higher contact is necessary. To become a true Mystic requires the development of heart qualities as well, which are attained through aspiration and devotion. Hence the emphasis placed upon the devotional side of the mysteries by many masters and teachers throughout the ages. Says Blavatsky about the higher qualities of devotion:

“Tell him, O Aspirant, that true devotion may bring him back the knowledge; that knowledge which was his in former births.”

True devotion, that seeking and seeing nothing but the Supreme (Inner God) in all, mastering and overcoming the domination of the lower ego, and renouncing the ever-incessant pull of the lower worlds; wedding oneself to a Higher Contact in the ever-growing joy of contemplative and meditative practices. That “knowledge” then, is our realization of our high destiny, that we are not separated from the Supreme, but one with IT – working towards and attaining, once again, that state called God-realization.

The object of all religions is worship of the Divine and the primary object of all worship is personal contact with, and realization of, the Divine within us. As there is a method or mechanism by which the whole manifested universe comes into physical expression, so is there a method or mechanism by which conscious contact is made between the human personality and those higher expressions of God toward which the heart aspires?

While there are many avenues by which such contact is made, ranging from contemplation, meditation and silent aspiration to the sudden despairing cry for help and protection in times of crisis, nevertheless, the avenue most readily available to the average consciousness is prayer.

“Prayer is a channel leading to the attainment of a fixed purpose. To pray for ourselves is, if rightly understood, merely recognizing the inflow of Divine Love and striving to make a place for and direct it. To ask for guidance is but to take hold of the Power of Divinity as a little child grasps its father’s hand.”

This does not mean that one must necessarily repeat certain stipulated words or mantras as set forth by another, for each heart can usually formulate its own words to express its desires and needs. As words symbolize and embody definite ideas, set prayers and mantras can produce specific effects. They engender definite vibrations, whose use is designed to tune the consciousness of the user into the wavelength of definite states of consciousness, and to certain Hierarchies of Beings in the higher worlds.

Says Blavatsky on prayer: “Prayer . . . is rather an internal command than a petition. We pray to ‘our Father in heaven’ – in its esoteric meaning. The Theosophist addresses his prayer to his Father which is in secret . . . and that ‘Father’ is in man himself. In our sense, the inner man is the only God we can have cognizance of.”

“Man offers himself to God. He stands before Him like the canvas before the painter or the marble before the sculptor. At the same time, he asks for His grace, exposes his needs and those of his brothers in suffering . . . The modest, the ignorant, and the poor are more capable of this self-denial than the rich and the intellectual. When it possesses such characteristics, prayer may set in motion a strange phenomenon, the miracle.”