"On Prayer"
I recall a very interesting incident narrated by someone from Orissa. He had a friend who used to practice some tantric pooja, who boasted to him that "I can invoke the power of Kali." So, they were both sitting in a darkroom and this friend did his pooja and, the devotee that we know, narrates how suddenly there was a presence in the room, a fearful presence and it came with a thummm as if [it was] her footfall and in, close to his face, a rapid violent panting of breath. At first, he felt fear and then his mind took charge, he said: "Why should you be afraid? After all Kali is an aspect of Divine Mother." So, he raised his hands in pranam and prayed to Kali saying, "O Kali, you are an aspect of the Divine Mother and I pray to the Divine Mother who is present within you." Within a few seconds, the presence dissolved and the sound vanished. After they got out of the room his friend seemed very angry: he didn't understand what had happened; but somehow the presence of Kali had got dissolved. I found this [a] very important clue that, whatever attributes or the aspects of the Divine we may be face to face with, say a part of the social occasion, or otherwise we have to visit a temple, our concentration should be on the Divine Mother's presence in that form. And I mean we need not be concerned ourselves, too much with specifics of that attribute before us. Some of us also drawn to nirakar – the formless, and in practice those, because it is not very easy for the mind to connect to the formless, it makes us rather reject form. Rejection of form doesn't help to create the relationship and, as we saw, it is [the] relationship that matters. It is only [when] we can relate to the formless directly that that prayer to the nirakar can be effective.
This being a kind of a broad picture of the question of the form to pray to, let us now take up the second question which comes. "Well! I have before me the Divine Mother, how do I pray to Her? Is there a right way to pray?" Mother explains that for prayer to be effective, there has to be four different attributes present. The first is the attitude with which we pray. And attitude can be of several kinds. More often than not our attitude is of mechanical prayer. Every morning, after bath, I sit down and I do my bla, bla, bla for hundred and eight times. My mind is busy thinking of what work I have to do next, the fact I am late, on and on, I look on the watch, when will my hundred and eight count finish. So, you have done something mechanically. Certainly, the intrinsic power of the mantra has its effect but as they say in the Mantra Shastra the effect is very little.
If the prayer is done consciously, the effect is amplified; for, in proportion of hundred to one sometimes, they say. So, that is the second kind of prayer – the prayer which is intentional. Now this prayer comes up when, generally, we have [a] difficulty. "So, I've tried everything; all my friends failed me. Now, God please help me." So, I'm making a conscious effort and there is a certain intensity and awareness in my call.
But there is a third kind of prayer which is the one which comes spontaneously. And in spontaneous prayer there is not enough time for the mind to think. Say, for example, an accident is in the process of taking place, a vehicle is heading straight on against you. You don't have time to think. What comes from you spontaneously you shout out "Mâ help me." And you think about it later: "Why did I use these words?" It was not a conscious shout, it came spontaneously. These prayers often have the greatest intensity and, because they come from deep within without the filter of the mind, also the greatest power. So, this is the attitude: the mechanical, intentional or spontaneous. And it makes the difference what attitude you take.
Second attribute of the prayer is the formulation. Mother points to this as an important attribute because a prayer, by definition, is formulated. How formulated is important. If you say "Help me", yes, you will get help. If you say "Help me to remove this problem", you will get a different kind of help. If you say "Give me the strength to overcome the problem", you will get a different kind of help. Your formulation is the groove in which the response slides. And it places a very important responsibility on us how we pray. Again, if I may refer to a joke, a man asks God: "God what is one crore of rupees to you?" God says: "It's like one paisa." So, this man asks: "What is one million years to you?" "It's like a one second" God says. Then the man tells God, "God, could you please give me one of your paisa?" God replies: "Just a second."
So, when you ask a boon, the boon may be granted, but it may have its own limitations. And we have so many narrations in the Purana, when someone asked for immortality God says: "I can't give you that, you can ask any conditional life." So, the person says: "I can't be killed any day, I can't be killed in time, I can't be killed in water or land or" etc, etc. and there is something God finds: a way through the formulation to solve the problem and destroy the asura. At least, the formulation is important. Again, we have a story of the asura praying, and while praying because he is asking of some wonderful boon, Lakshmi comes on his tongue and makes him slip a word and a wrong word is used and God grants this, God says: "Tatastu!" and the prayer, which the asura wanted, actually is not granted, something else is granted. So, this formulation is given a great importance in the science of mantras. And the formulation with the clarity of the mind has a certain precision and clarity to what you pray for.
