"On Prayer"
Another question that then comes up: "What if I pray alone or if I pray together with others? Does it make a difference?" Mother refers to an ancient tradition which states that if twelve people pray intensely, then God is sure to manifest. There is in this, she says, twelve is not so important, but the fact that a collective prayer has an effect. If you light one candle, yes, it lights up the room, it has a flame which rises up, but if you light a dozen diyas or a hundred diyas the mutual heat support each other. The light is that much more intense, and so it is with prayer. When we all combine our prayers in one intense call, the response also is that much stronger. "But then, why aren't all my prayers answered? Sometimes I prayed so sincerely with such intensity but the prayer is not answered I feel." And Sri Aurobindo has a humourous response to that. He says: "Why should all prayers be answered? Prayer is not a machinery, He says, "Put a prayer in a slot and get your asking. That's not how it works" And he adds: "God would be in a rather awkward hole if He had to answer all the contradictory prayers which are being made." We have fields near the Lake Estate where those who work will be praying "Please, gives us rain" and then we have a small program in the school courtyard on the same evening; and the people who have organised the program are praying "Please don't give us rain." What is the Divine to do! Well, often, and we are so ungrateful to it, often the Divine answers both. We have seen especially in Pondicherry, in many such occasions, where it has rained hard just outside the Boulevard area, but then hardly five hundred metres off the Ashram, and the whole area near the Ashram is absolutely dry. It has happened many times. Even that the Divine tries to grant. But very often prayers are not granted for our own good. There is a Chinese curse which goes thus: "May all your prayers be granted." If you think about it, all the things you have asked for in your life, if they were actually granted for you, what you would be like today? Would you really be what you are? You would have… in whatever condition you were in, you would have been trapped by the circumstances which you have yourself created by your prayers. So, it is in fact the great, profound Grace that all prayers are not answered. But there is always a response to all prayers. The response may be not necessarily in the form that we asked for: I may pray to the Divine "Please, solve this problem for me" but Divine won't solve the problem. He may instead give me the strength to overcome the problem, or to survive through it, or the knowledge of how to solve it. But He might want me to solve it with my strength for my growth. Sometimes, the soul has asked for a difficulty and it is in acknowledgment of the soul's choice that the Divine does not permit, or does not grant, the prayer asked by the mind or the desires. Often, we have to pass through difficulties for our own growth; and when we look back, we find: if it were not for those difficulties, we would not have grown to be what we are today. So, at that time, the response to the prayer comes and the response to help us gives us the strength to go through it and you will see, after the difficulty has passed, that strength which came out of nowhere, it all fades. That strength was given to you, it was not yours. Obviously, when the help comes, our receptivity makes a great difference. And we need to work on it. Receptivity can be on several levels, in the mind, in the heart, in the actions, in the will, in the psychic. There is also the kind of prayer that we may ask for… You can ask the Divine for help to overcome the situation, or you may offer the situation to the Divine without asking for anything specific. And that makes a difference. Mother says that the most powerful prayer is that in which you offer the whole problem to the Divine, ask for His intervention as He chooses, formulated thus: "Thy will be done."
