"On Prayer"
There is an interesting article that I read, of a research done by some scientists on the effect of prayer. And for the sake of this research they had three groups of plants: the first group was left as it is, and with the second group people would go everyday and pray for the plant to grow more healthy and more fast, [to] the third set of plants people would go every day and pray "Thy will be done." While the first group grew normally, the second group of the plant grew faster, more healthy, but the third group grew fastest and most healthy. Why is this? Because the Divine knows better than us how best to handle the situation. If you pray for the growth of plants, we want the leaves to grow quickly, but for the long-term growth, it is the roots which must grow first, then the leaves, then only the leaves can grow better. We don't understand because our knowledge is limited, our formulation is limited. The perfect formulation, then, is: to offer the whole to the Divine and pray "Thy will be done. Show me the way, lead me, give me the strength, give me the wisdom." When we pray in an environment like this, or even at the centre, where the charge is built up, there is not even a movement of hesitation or delay. I recall hearing from one of the sadhaks from the Ashram his experience in this, he said: "I had always read that Mother grants our prayers wherever we may be, however we may pray instinctively, but how instinct is this?" So, one day he was in the queue approaching the Mother for blessings and at the tailing of the queue he closed his eyes and prayed to the Mother no specific prayer, just to test her response. When he opened his eyes, he found the queue had stopped, Mother had stopped giving blessings, she had turned and was looking straight at him and when she noted that he had seen her, she went on giving the blessings as before. Such an instant response, even when she is in her physical body, and free of the physical body the response is even more powerful and immediate. The problem we have to face is: "What shall we ask for?" I can say: "Solve this problem, give me comforts, give me whatever I desire." But is that the best prayer? Is that the best that we can ask of her? Someone asked the Mother: "Mother, what do you expect from us?" She said "Nothing."
"What should we except from you?" She said: "Everything." When she is ready to give us everything, expecting nothing in return, what shall we ask? It was a sadhak who had gone to the Mother on his birthday and it was precisely such a situation when his whole being was ready. Mother, ready to pour everything in him; and she asked him: "My child, what do you want for your birthday?' and the sadhak said: "Mother, I want a bottle of hair oil." Mother looked away to an attendant and said: "Give him what he wants" and after he left, she commented: "I was ready to give him everything." So, here she is ready to give us everything. Her response would be immediate on our asking, what [then] shall we ask? And it is a question each one of us needs to introspect on.
… And aspiration. So far, we have been speaking of prayer but, as part of sadhana, this practice of prayer is a preparatory practice which has to eventually merge into the state of aspiration. What is the distinction between the two? Mother explains, she says [that] a prayer is always formulated and aspiration need not be. It is a state, a state identified, or intentionally, aspiring for. A prayer is addressed to someone and aspiration is not addressed. It is a state of intense opening and call. And a prayer can rise from any centre of our being. From the mind, from the emotions, even from the body, but an aspiration rises first from the psychic. All prayers are the initial means through which we have to cultivate and intensify the aspiration. If you look at the four attributes we spoke off, all of them at the core refer to something of the psychic. The intensity of the call is not emotional intensity, it is not devotionalism, it's not by singing louder and clapping my hands that intensity builds up. The intensity we refer to is an intensity of the aspiration. The formulation which rises from there also is a formulation that raises, if at all, as a state or as a form through the psychic. There is a popular saying that if you pray for something when a shooting star falls it will come true. Mother explains the deeper psychology behind this. She says: "It is not what you ask which will come true because shooting star is falling." Rather she says that, at that moment when the shooting star falls, there is not enough time for you to formulate and think of what you want; something emerges from deep within you spontaneously. Your deepest aspiration comes forward. And because it is your deepest aspiration it is answered. When Mother appeared for the Darshan it was the connection that she made directly between the sadhak and herself and from herself to the Divine, to the Supreme. And she said that, at that moment, whatever is the highest aspiration within you it will be granted. May be not immediately but it will be granted. Even if a thief aspires to steal better it will be granted. When we are preparing ourselves for the Darshan to come, what is the state in which we will be approaching her? What is the prayer, or the aspiration, with which we will meet her? What is that highest aspiration of our being, a deepest aspiration of being that we need to bring forward and, if necessary, formulate? This is part of the preparation that we all have to make in the coming two days. I will pause here and invite your questions.
