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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 91
THE EVOLUTION OF PRAYER
91:0.1
PRAYER, as an agency of religion, evolved from previous
nonreligious monologue and dialogue expressions. With
the attainment of self-consciousness by primitive man
there occurred the inevitable corollary of
other-consciousness, the dual potential of social
response and God recognition.
91:0.2
The earliest prayer forms were not addressed to Deity.
These expressions were much like what you would say to a
friend as you entered upon some important undertaking,
"Wish me luck." Primitive man was enslaved to magic;
luck, good and bad, entered into all the affairs of
life. At first, these luck petitions were monologues --
just a kind of thinking out loud by the magic server.
Next, these believers in luck would enlist the support
of their friends and families, and presently some form
of ceremony would be performed which included the whole
clan or tribe.
91:0.3
When the concepts of ghosts and spirits evolved, these
petitions became superhuman in address, and with the
consciousness of gods, such expressions attained to the
levels of genuine prayer. As an illustration of this,
among certain Australian tribes primitive religious
prayers antedated their belief in spirits and superhuman
personalities.
91:0.4
The Toda tribe of India now observes this practice of
praying to no one in particular, just as did the early
peoples before the times of religious consciousness.
Only, among the Todas, this represents a regression of
their degenerating religion to this primitive level. The
present-day rituals of the dairymen priests of the Todas
do not represent a religious ceremony since these
impersonal prayers do not contribute anything to the
conservation or enhancement of any social, moral, or
spiritual values.
91:0.5
Prereligious praying was part of the mana practices of
the Melanesians, the oudah beliefs of the African
Pygmies, and the manitou superstitions of the North
American Indians. The Baganda tribes of Africa have only
recently emerged from the mana level of prayer. In this
early evolutionary confusion men pray to gods -- local
and national -- to fetishes, amulets, ghosts, rulers,
and to ordinary people.
1. PRIMITIVE PRAYER
91:1.1
The function of early evolutionary religion is to
conserve and augment the essential social, moral, and
spiritual values which are slowly taking form. This
mission of religion is not consciously observed by
mankind, but it is chiefly effected by the function of
prayer. The practice of prayer represents the
unintended, but nonetheless personal and collective,
effort of any group to secure (to actualize) this
conservation of higher values. But for the safeguarding
of prayer, all holy days would speedily revert to the
status of mere holidays.
91:1.2
Religion and its agencies, the chief of which is prayer,
are allied only with those values which have general
social recognition, group approval. Therefore, when
primitive man attempted to gratify his baser emotions or
to achieve unmitigated selfish ambitions, he was
deprived of the consolation of religion and the
assistance of prayer. If the individual sought to
accomplish anything antisocial, he was obliged to seek
the aid of nonreligious magic, resort to sorcerers, and
thus be deprived of the assistance of prayer. Prayer,
therefore, very early became a mighty promoter of social
evolution, moral progress, and spiritual attainment.
91:1.3
But the primitive mind was neither logical nor
consistent. Early men did not perceive that material
things were not the province of prayer. These
simple-minded souls reasoned that food, shelter, rain,
game, and other material goods enhanced the social
welfare, and therefore they began to pray for these
physical blessings. While this constituted a perversion
of prayer, it encouraged the effort to realize these
material objectives by social and ethical actions. Such
a prostitution of prayer, while debasing the spiritual
values of a people, nevertheless directly elevated their
economic, social, and ethical mores.
91:1.4
Prayer is only monologuous in the most primitive type of
mind. It early becomes a dialogue and rapidly expands to
the level of group worship. Prayer signifies that the
premagical incantations of primitive religion have
evolved to that level where the human mind recognizes
the reality of beneficent powers or beings who are able
to enhance social values and to augment moral ideals,
and further, that these influences are superhuman and
distinct from the ego of the self-conscious human and
his fellow mortals. True prayer does not, therefore,
appear until the agency of religious ministry is
visualized as
personal.
91:1.5
Prayer is little associated with animism, but such
beliefs may exist alongside emerging religious
sentiments. Many times, religion and animism have had
entirely separate origins.
91:1.6
With those mortals who have not been delivered from the
primitive bondage of fear, there is a real danger that
all prayer may lead to a morbid sense of sin,
unjustified convictions of guilt, real or fancied. But
in modern times it is not likely that many will spend
sufficient time at prayer to lead to this harmful
brooding over their unworthiness or sinfulness. The
dangers attendant upon the distortion and perversion of
prayer consist in ignorance, superstition,
crystallization, devitalization, materialism, and
fanaticism.
2. EVOLVING PRAYER
91:2.1
The first prayers were merely verbalized wishes, the
expression of sincere desires. Prayer next became a
technique of achieving spirit co-operation. And then it
attained to the higher function of assisting religion in
the conservation of all worth-while values.
91:2.2
Both prayer and magic arose as a result of man's
adjustive reactions to Urantian environment. But aside
from this generalized relationship, they have little in
common. Prayer has always indicated positive action by
the praying ego; it has been always psychic and
sometimes spiritual. Magic has usually signified an
attempt to manipulate reality without affecting the ego
of the manipulator, the practitioner of magic. Despite
their independent origins, magic and prayer often have
been interrelated in their later stages of development.
Magic has sometimes ascended by goal elevation from
formulas through rituals and incantations to the
threshold of true prayer. Prayer has sometimes become so
materialistic that it has degenerated into a
pseudomagical technique of avoiding the expenditure of
that effort which is requisite for the solution of
Urantian problems.
91:2.3
When man learned that prayer could not coerce the gods,
then it became more of a petition, favor seeking. But
the truest prayer is in reality a communion between man
and his Maker.
91:2.4
The appearance of the sacrifice idea in any religion
unfailingly detracts from the higher efficacy of true
prayer in that men seek to substitute the offerings of
material possessions for the offering of their own
consecrated wills to the doing of the will of God.
91:2.5
When religion is divested of a personal God, its prayers
translate to the levels of theology and philosophy. When
the highest God concept of a religion is that of an
impersonal Deity, such as in pantheistic idealism,
although affording the basis for certain forms of mystic
communion, it proves fatal to the potency of true
prayer, which always stands for man's communion with a
personal and superior being.
91:2.6
During the earlier times of racial evolution and even at
the present time, in the day-by-day experience of the
average mortal, prayer is very much a phenomenon of
man's intercourse with his own subconscious. But there
is also a domain of prayer wherein the intellectually
alert and spiritually progressing individual attains
more or less contact with the superconscious levels of
the human mind, the domain of the indwelling Thought
Adjuster. In addition, there is a definite spiritual
phase of true prayer which concerns its reception and
recognition by the spiritual forces of the universe, and
which is entirely distinct from all human and
intellectual association.
91:2.7
Prayer contributes greatly to the development of the
religious sentiment of an evolving human mind. It is a
mighty influence working to prevent isolation of
personality.
91:2.8
Prayer represents one technique associated with the
natural religions of racial evolution which also forms a
part of the experiential values of the higher religions
of ethical excellence, the religions of revelation.
3. PRAYER AND THE ALTER EGO
91:3.1
Children, when first learning to make use of language,
are prone to think out loud, to express their thoughts
in words, even if no one is present to hear them. With
the dawn of creative imagination they evince a tendency
to converse with imaginary companions. In this way a
budding ego seeks to hold communion with a fictitious
alter ego. By
this technique the child early learns to convert his
monologue conversations into pseudo dialogues in which
this alter ego makes replies to his verbal thinking and
wish expression. Very much of an adult's thinking is
mentally carried on in conversational form.
91:3.2
The early and primitive form of prayer was much like the
semimagical recitations of the present-day Toda tribe,
prayers that were not addressed to anyone in particular.
But such techniques of praying tend to evolve into the
dialogue type of communication by the emergence of the
idea of an alter ego. In time the alter-ego concept is
exalted to a superior status of divine dignity, and
prayer as an agency of religion has appeared. Through
many phases and during long ages this primitive type of
praying is destined to evolve before attaining the level
of intelligent and truly ethical prayer.
91:3.3
As it is conceived by successive generations of praying
mortals, the alter ego evolves up through ghosts,
fetishes, and spirits to polytheistic gods, and
eventually to the One God, a divine being embodying the
highest ideals and the loftiest aspirations of the
praying ego. And thus does prayer function as the most
potent agency of religion in the conservation of the
highest values and ideals of those who pray. From the
moment of the conceiving of an alter ego to the
appearance of the concept of a divine and heavenly
Father, prayer is always a socializing, moralizing, and
spiritualizing practice.
91:3.4
The simple prayer of faith evidences a mighty evolution
in human experience whereby the ancient conversations
with the fictitious symbol of the alter ego of primitive
religion have become exalted to the level of communion
with the spirit of the Infinite and to that of a bona
fide consciousness of the reality of the eternal God and
Paradise Father of all intelligent creation.
91:3.5
Aside from all that is superself in the experience of
praying, it should be remembered that ethical prayer is
a splendid way to elevate one's ego and reinforce the
self for better living and higher attainment. Prayer
induces the human ego to look both ways for help: for
material aid to the subconscious reservoir of mortal
experience, for inspiration and guidance to the
superconscious borders of the contact of the material
with the spiritual, with the Mystery Monitor.
91:3.6
Prayer ever has been and ever will be a twofold human
experience: a psychologic procedure interassociated with
a spiritual technique. And these two functions of prayer
can never be fully separated.
91:3.7
Enlightened prayer must recognize not only an external
and personal God but also an internal and impersonal
Divinity, the indwelling Adjuster. It is altogether
fitting that man, when he prays, should strive to grasp
the concept of the Universal Father on Paradise; but the
more effective technique for most practical purposes
will be to revert to the concept of a near-by alter ego,
just as the primitive mind was wont to do, and then to
recognize that the idea of this alter ego has evolved
from a mere fiction to the truth of God's indwelling
mortal man in the factual presence of the Adjuster so
that man can talk face to face, as it were, with a real
and genuine and divine alter ego that indwells him and
is the very presence and essence of the living God, the
Universal Father.
4. ETHICAL PRAYING
91:4.1
No prayer can be ethical when the petitioner seeks for
selfish advantage over his fellows. Selfish and
materialistic praying is incompatible with the ethical
religions which are predicated on unselfish and divine
love. All such unethical praying reverts to the
primitive levels of pseudo magic and is unworthy of
advancing civilizations and enlightened religions.
Selfish praying transgresses the spirit of all ethics
founded on loving justice.
91:4.2
Prayer must never be so prostituted as to become a
substitute for action. All ethical prayer is a stimulus
to action and a guide to the progressive striving for
idealistic goals of superself-attainment.
91:4.3
In all your praying be
fair; do not
expect God to show partiality, to love you more than his
other children, your friends, neighbors, even enemies.
But the prayer of the natural or evolved religions is
not at first ethical, as it is in the later revealed
religions. All praying, whether individual or communal,
may be either egoistic or altruistic. That is, the
prayer may be centered upon the self or upon others.
When the prayer seeks nothing for the one who prays nor
anything for his fellows, then such attitudes of the
soul tend to the levels of true worship. Egoistic
prayers involve confessions and petitions and often
consist in requests for material favors. Prayer is
somewhat more ethical when it deals with forgiveness and
seeks wisdom for enhanced self-control.
91:4.4
While the nonselfish type of prayer is strengthening and
comforting, materialistic praying is destined to bring
disappointment and disillusionment as advancing
scientific discoveries demonstrate that man lives in a
physical universe of law and order. The childhood of an
individual or a race is characterized by primitive,
selfish, and materialistic praying. And, to a certain
extent, all such petitions are efficacious in that they
unvaryingly lead to those efforts and exertions which
are contributory to achieving the answers to such
prayers. The real prayer of faith always contributes to
the augmentation of the technique of living, even if
such petitions are not worthy of spiritual recognition.
But the spiritually advanced person should exercise
great caution in attempting to discourage the primitive
or immature mind regarding such prayers.
91:4.5
Remember, even if prayer does not change God, it very
often effects great and lasting changes in the one who
prays in faith and confident expectation. Prayer has
been the ancestor of much peace of mind, cheerfulness,
calmness, courage, self-mastery, and fair-mindedness in
the men and women of the evolving races.
5. SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS OF PRAYER
91:5.1
In ancestor worship, prayer leads to the cultivation of
ancestral ideals. But prayer, as a feature of Deity
worship, transcends all other such practices since it
leads to the cultivation of divine ideals. As the
concept of the alter ego of prayer becomes supreme and
divine, so are man's ideals accordingly elevated from
mere human toward supernal and divine levels, and the
result of all such praying is the enhancement of human
character and the profound unification of human
personality.
91:5.2
But prayer need not always be individual. Group or
congregational praying is very effective in that it is
highly socializing in its repercussions. When a group
engages in community prayer for moral enhancement and
spiritual uplift, such devotions are reactive upon the
individuals composing the group; they are all made
better because of participation. Even a whole city or an
entire nation can be helped by such prayer devotions.
Confession, repentance, and prayer have led individuals,
cities, nations, and whole races to mighty efforts of
reform and courageous deeds of valorous achievement.
91:5.3
If you truly desire to overcome the habit of criticizing
some friend, the quickest and surest way of achieving
such a change of attitude is to establish the habit of
praying for that person every day of your life. But the
social repercussions of such prayers are dependent
largely on two conditions:
91:5.4
1. The person who is prayed for should know that he is
being prayed for.
91:5.5
2. The person who prays should come into intimate social
contact with the person for whom he is praying.
91:5.6
Prayer is the technique whereby, sooner or later, every
religion becomes institutionalized. And in time prayer
becomes associated with numerous secondary agencies,
some helpful, others decidedly deleterious, such as
priests, holy books, worship rituals, and ceremonials.
91:5.7
But the minds of greater spiritual illumination should
be patient with, and tolerant of, those less endowed
intellects that crave symbolism for the mobilization of
their feeble spiritual insight. The strong must not look
with disdain upon the weak. Those who are God-conscious
without symbolism must not deny the grace-ministry of
the symbol to those who find it difficult to worship
Deity and to revere truth, beauty, and goodness without
form and ritual. In prayerful worship, most mortals
envision some symbol of the object-goal of their
devotions.
6. THE PROVINCE OF PRAYER
91:6.1
Prayer, unless in liaison with the will and actions of
the personal spiritual forces and material supervisors
of a realm, can have no direct effect upon one's
physical environment. While there is a very definite
limit to the province of the petitions of prayer, such
limits do not equally apply to the
faith of
those who pray.
91:6.2
Prayer is not a technique for curing real and organic
diseases, but it has contributed enormously to the
enjoyment of abundant health and to the cure of numerous
mental, emotional, and nervous ailments. And even in
actual bacterial disease, prayer has many times added to
the efficacy of other remedial procedures. Prayer has
turned many an irritable and complaining invalid into a
paragon of patience and made him an inspiration to all
other human sufferers.
91:6.3
No matter how difficult it may be to reconcile the
scientific doubtings regarding the efficacy of prayer
with the ever-present urge to seek help and guidance
from divine sources, never forget that the sincere
prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of
personal happiness, individual self-control, social
harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment.
91:6.4
Prayer, even as a purely human practice, a dialogue with
one's alter ego, constitutes a technique of the most
efficient approach to the realization of those reserve
powers of human nature which are stored and conserved in
the unconscious realms of the human mind. Prayer is a
sound psychologic practice, aside from its religious
implications and its spiritual significance. It is a
fact of human experience that most persons, if
sufficiently hard pressed, will pray in some way to some
source of help.
91:6.5
Do not be so slothful as to ask God to solve your
difficulties, but never hesitate to ask him for wisdom
and spiritual strength to guide and sustain you while
you yourself resolutely and courageously attack the
problems at hand.
91:6.6
Prayer has been an indispensable factor in the progress
and preservation of religious civilization, and it still
has mighty contributions to make to the further
enhancement and spiritualization of society if those who
pray will only do so in the light of scientific facts,
philosophic wisdom, intellectual sincerity, and
spiritual faith. Pray as Jesus taught his disciples --
honestly, unselfishly, with fairness, and without
doubting.
91:6.7
But the efficacy of prayer in the personal spiritual
experience of the one who prays is in no way dependent
on such a worshiper's intellectual understanding,
philosophic acumen, social level, cultural status, or
other mortal acquirements. The psychic and spiritual
concomitants of the prayer of faith are immediate,
personal, and experiential. There is no other technique
whereby every man, regardless of all other mortal
accomplishments, can so effectively and immediately
approach the threshold of that realm wherein he can
communicate with his Maker, where the creature contacts
with the reality of the Creator, with the indwelling
Thought Adjuster.
7. MYSTICISM, ECSTASY, AND INSPIRATION
91:7.1
Mysticism, as the technique of the cultivation of the
consciousness of the presence of God, is altogether
praiseworthy, but when such practices lead to social
isolation and culminate in religious fanaticism, they
are all but reprehensible. Altogether too frequently
that which the overwrought mystic evaluates as divine
inspiration is the uprisings of his own deep mind. The
contact of the mortal mind with its indwelling Adjuster,
while often favored by devoted meditation, is more
frequently facilitated by wholehearted and loving
service in unselfish ministry to one's fellow creatures.
91:7.2
The great religious teachers and the prophets of past
ages were not extreme mystics. They were God-knowing men
and women who best served their God by unselfish
ministry to their fellow mortals. Jesus often took his
apostles away by themselves for short periods to engage
in meditation and prayer, but for the most part he kept
them in service-contact with the multitudes. The soul of
man requires spiritual exercise as well as spiritual
nourishment.
91:7.3
Religious ecstasy is permissible when resulting from
sane antecedents, but such experiences are more often
the outgrowth of purely emotional influences than a
manifestation of deep spiritual character. Religious
persons must not regard every vivid psychologic
presentiment and every intense emotional experience as a
divine revelation or a spiritual communication. Genuine
spiritual ecstasy is usually associated with great
outward calmness and almost perfect emotional control.
But true prophetic vision is a superpsychologic
presentiment. Such visitations are not pseudo
hallucinations, neither are they trancelike ecstasies.
91:7.4
The human mind may perform in response to so-called
inspiration when it is sensitive either to the uprisings
of the subconscious or to the stimulus of the
superconscious. In either case it appears to the
individual that such augmentations of the content of
consciousness are more or less foreign. Unrestrained
mystical enthusiasm and rampant religious ecstasy are
not the credentials of inspiration, supposedly divine
credentials.
91:7.5
The practical test of all these strange religious
experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to
observe whether these phenomena cause an individual:
1. To enjoy better and more complete physical health.
2. To function more efficiently and practically in his
mental life.
3. More fully and joyfully to socialize his religious
experience.
4. More completely to spiritualize his day-by-day living
while faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of
routine mortal existence.
5. To enhance his love for, and appreciation of, truth,
beauty, and goodness.
6. To conserve currently recognized social, moral,
ethical, and spiritual values.
7. To increase his spiritual insight --
God-consciousness.
91:7.6
But prayer has no real association with these
exceptional religious experiences. When prayer becomes
overmuch aesthetic, when it consists almost exclusively
in beautiful and blissful contemplation of paradisiacal
divinity, it loses much of its socializing influence and
tends toward mysticism and the isolation of its
devotees. There is a certain danger associated with
overmuch private praying which is corrected and
prevented by group praying, community devotions.
8. PRAYING AS A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
91:8.1
There is a truly spontaneous aspect to prayer, for
primitive man found himself praying long before he had
any clear concept of a God. Early man was wont to pray
in two diverse situations: When in dire need, he
experienced the impulse to reach out for help; and when
jubilant, he indulged the impulsive expression of joy.
91:8.2
Prayer is not an evolution of magic; they each arose
independently. Magic was an attempt to adjust Deity to
conditions; prayer is the effort to adjust the
personality to the will of Deity. True prayer is both
moral and religious; magic is neither.
91:8.3
Prayer may become an established custom; many pray
because others do. Still others pray because they fear
something direful may happen if they do not offer their
regular supplications.
91:8.4
To some individuals prayer is the calm expression of
gratitude; to others, a group expression of praise,
social devotions; sometimes it is the imitation of
another's religion, while in true praying it is the
sincere and trusting communication of the spiritual
nature of the creature with the anywhere presence of the
spirit of the Creator.
91:8.5
Prayer may be a spontaneous expression of
God-consciousness or a meaningless recitation of
theologic formulas. It may be the ecstatic praise of a
God-knowing soul or the slavish obeisance of a
fear-ridden mortal. It is sometimes the pathetic
expression of spiritual craving and sometimes the
blatant shouting of pious phrases. Prayer may be joyous
praise or a humble plea for forgiveness.
91:8.6
Prayer may be the childlike plea for the impossible or
the mature entreaty for moral growth and spiritual
power. A petition may be for daily bread or may embody a
wholehearted yearning to find God and to do his will. It
may be a wholly selfish request or a true and
magnificent gesture toward the realization of unselfish
brotherhood.
91:8.7
Prayer may be an angry cry for vengeance or a merciful
intercession for one's enemies. It may be the expression
of a hope of changing God or the powerful technique of
changing one's self. It may be the cringing plea of a
lost sinner before a supposedly stern Judge or the
joyful expression of a liberated son of the living and
merciful heavenly Father.
91:8.8
Modern man is perplexed by the thought of talking things
over with God in a purely personal way. Many have
abandoned regular praying; they only pray when under
unusual pressure -- in emergencies. Man should be
unafraid to talk to God, but only a spiritual child
would undertake to persuade, or presume to change, God.
91:8.9
But real praying does attain reality. Even when the air
currents are ascending, no bird can soar except by
outstretched wings. Prayer elevates man because it is a
technique of progressing by the utilization of the
ascending spiritual currents of the universe.
91:8.10
Genuine prayer adds to spiritual growth, modifies
attitudes, and yields that satisfaction which comes from
communion with divinity. It is a spontaneous outburst of
God-consciousness.
91:8.11
God answers man's prayer by giving him an increased
revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty,
and an augmented concept of goodness. Prayer is a
subjective gesture, but it contacts with mighty
objective realities on the spiritual levels of human
experience; it is a meaningful reach by the human for
superhuman values. It is the most potent
spiritual-growth stimulus.
91:8.12
Words are irrelevant to prayer; they are merely the
intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual
supplication may chance to flow. The word value of a
prayer is purely autosuggestive in private devotions and
sociosuggestive in group devotions. God answers the
soul's attitude, not the words.
91:8.13
Prayer is not a technique of escape from conflict but
rather a stimulus to growth in the very face of
conflict. Pray only for values, not things; for growth,
not for gratification.
9. CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE PRAYER
91:9.1
If you would engage in effective praying, you should
bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:
91:9.2
1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and
courageously facing the problems of universe reality.
You must possess cosmic stamina.
91:9.3
2. You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity
for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.
91:9.4
3. You must surrender every wish of mind and every
craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual
growth. You must have experienced an enhancement of
meanings and an elevation of values.
91:9.5
4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine
will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
91:9.6
5. You not only recognize the Father's will and choose
to do it, but you have effected an unqualified
consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual
doing of the Father's will.
91:9.7
6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine
wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered
in the Paradise ascension -- the attainment of divine
perfection.
91:9.8
7. And you must have faith -- living faith.
91:9.9
Presented by the Chief of the Urantia Midwayers.
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