Prayer - Part I

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Prayer is something that has degenerated considerably. For many it is only a habit based on the idea: "If it doesn't do any good, at least it will do no harm". For many, prayer is a mystical act kept up out of a certain reverence for something that has been handed  down from generation to generation. But nobody knows anymore what really happens or should happen.

In protestant life there is much praying. There are ministers who even develop prayer records. However, these do not impress the congregation very much but rather, arouse feelings of boredom, unless they attract attention by their emotionalism. Exceptions to this are rare. Countless people have given up prayer because they consider it nonsense.

Rosicrucians also pray. However, for them there is no question of acting out of mystical emotionalism or to express feelings of reverence, and certainly not out of habit. In this respect they have broken radically with tradition. The prayer of the Rosicrucian is based on the knowledge of a conscious process, for prayer is a magic invocation and every prayer is heard, although not in the sense imagined by the masses.

When we pray, we are thinking, willing and desiring. It is an activity of the whole human triangular fire and this results in creation. When we pray, we desire something that we grasp with our reason, supported by a certain feeling and rendered active by the spoken word. That is the creative fiat, the magic prayer. This process can be analyzed scientifically and it is easy to understand that the quality of prayer, the nature of the desire, motives, mentality and psychological state at that moment are decisive for the result.

There will be a result, because magic invocation travels as a force, a vibration, a creative unity, to  a sphere with which it corresponds in quality. Prayer then attracts forces from that sphere and the result will be in accordance with it. If man invokes God, Christ or the Holy Spirit out of his lower primitive state, prompted by a selfish desire, he will logically attract selfish forces, because he himself has invoked them by the black magic of his prayer. He invoked the "god", the force of his primitive imagination and it is this "god' who reacts. So there is always an answer to every prayer, although it is not always to our liking and corresponding to our intention. The well-known commandment warns against this kind of magic: "You shall not make yourself any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or on the earth or in the water under the earth".

It is said that a pyramid arises when we pray which vibrates and is coloured in conformity with our inner quality. Therefore, prayer can be something highly dangerous, for all misunderstood prayer turns against us. Such magic always results in the attainment of the unexpected. In practice it often happens that first of all we spoil things and get ourselves in a mess and then, when we see no solution to this self-created predicament we start to pray: "Oh, God, help us". Even the invocation "Oh, God". will turn against us. God is no servant of our animal or primitive state. It will be clear how undesirable this magic is.

End Part 1

From  "Prayer" - Elementary Philosophy of the Modern Rosycross - Jan van Rijckenborgh

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