Chapter X

PEAYEE 1

What is sometimes called "the modern
spirit " is exceedingly antagonistic to prayer,
failing to see any causal nexus between the
uttering of a petition and the happening of
an event, whereas the religious spirit is as
strongly attached to it, and finds its very
life in prayer. Yet even the religious man
sometimes feels uneasy as to the rationale of
prayer; is he teaching the All-wise, is he
urging beneficence on the All-Good, is he
altering the will of Him in "whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning"? 2
Yet he finds in his own experience and in
that of others "answers to prayer," a defin-
ite sequence of a request and a fulfilment.
Many of these do not refer to subjective

1 Much of this chapter has already appeared in an earlier
work by the author, entitled, Some Problems of Life.

2 S. James i. 17,

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experiences, but to hard facts of the so-
called objective world. A man has prayed
for money, and the post has brought him
the required amount; a woman has prayed
for food, and food has been brought to her
door. In connection with charitable under-
takings, especially, there is plenty of evi-
dence of help prayed for in urgent need,
and of speedy and liberal response. On the
other hand, there is also plenty of evidence
of prayers left unanswered ; of the hungry
starving to death, of the child snatched
from its mother's arms by disease, despite
the most passionate appeals to God. Any
true view of prayer must take into account
all these facts.

Nor is this all. There are many facts
in this experience which are strange and
puzzling. A prayer that perhaps is trivial
meets with an answer, while another on an
important matter fails ; a passing trouble is
relieved, while a prayer poured out to save
a passionately beloved life finds no response.
It seems almost impossible for the ordinary
student to discover the law according to
which a prayer is or is not productive,
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The first thing necessary in seeking to un-
derstand this law is to analyse prayer itself,
for the word is used to cover various activi-
ties of the consciousness, and prayers cannot
be dealt with as though they formed a sim-
ple whole. There are prayers which are
petitions for definite worldly advantages,
for the supply of physical necessities — pray-
ers for food, clothing, money, employment,
success in business, recovery from illness,
&c. These may be grouped together as
Class A. Then we have prayers for help in
moral and intellectual difficulties and for
spiritual growth — for the overcoming of
temptations, for strength, for insight, for
enlightenment. These may be grouped as
Class B. Lastly, there are the prayers that
ask for nothing, that consist in meditation
on and adoration of the divine Perfection,
in intense aspiration for union with God —
the ecstasy of the mystic, the meditation of
the sage, the soaring rapture of the saint.
This is the true "communion between the
Divine and the human,'5 when the man
pours himself out in love and veneration for
That which is inherently attractive, that

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compels the love of the heart. These we
will call Class C.

In the invisible worlds there exist many
kinds of Intelligences, which come into re-
lationship with man, a veritable Jacob's lad-
der, on which the Angels of God ascend and
descend, and above which stands the Lord
Himself.1 Some of these Intelligences are
mighty spiritual Powers, others are exceed-
ingly limited beings, inferior in conscious-
ness to man. This occult side of Nature —
of which more will presently be said 2 — is a
fact, recognised by all religions. All the
world is filled with living things, invisible
to fleshly eyes. The invisible worlds inter-
penetrate the visible, and crowds of intelli-
gent beings throng round us on every side.
Some of these are accessible to human re-
quests, and others are amenable to the hu-
man will. Christianity recognises the ex-
istence of the higher classes of Intelligences
under the general name of Angels, and
teaches that they are " ministering spirits,
sent forth to minister";3 but what is their

1 Gen. xxviii. 12, 13. 2 See Chapter xii.

3Heb. i. 14
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ministry, what the nature of their work,
what their relationship to human beings, all
that was part of the instruction given in the
Lesser Mysteries, as the actual communica-
tion with them was enjoyed in the Greater;
but in modern days these truths have sunk
into the background, except the little that
is taught in the Greek and Eoman commun-
ions. For the Protestant, "the ministry of
angels" is little more than a phrase. In
addition to all these, man is himself a con-
stant creator of invisible beings, for the vi-
brations of his thoughts and desires create
forms of subtle matter the only life of
which is the thought or the desire which
ensouls them ; he thus creates an army of
invisible servants, who range through the
invisible worlds seeking to do his will.
Yet, again, there are in these worlds hu-
man helpers, who work there in their subtle
bodies while their physical bodies are sleep-
ing, whose attentive ear may catch a cry
for help. And to crown all, there is the
ever-present, ever-conscious Life of God
Himself, potent and responsive at every

point of His realm, of Him without whose

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knowledge not a sparrow falleth to the
ground,1 not a dumb creature thrills in joy
or pain, not a child laughs or sobs — that
all-pervading, all-embracing, all-sustaining
Life and Love, in which we live and move.2
As nought that can give pleasure or pain
can touch the human body without the sens-
ory nerves carrying the message of its
impact to the brain-centres, and as there
thrills down from those centres through the
motor nerves the answer that welcomes or
repels, so does every vibration in the uni-
verse, which is His body, touch the con-
sciousness of God, and draw thence respon-
sive action. Nerve-cells, nerve-threads,
and muscular fibres may be the agents of
feeling and moving, but it is the man that
feels and acts; so may myriads of Intelli-
gences be the agents, but it is God who
knows and answers. Nothing can be so
small as not to affect that delicate omni-
present consciousness, nothing so vast as to
transcend it. We are so limited that the
very idea of such an all-embracing con-

1 S. Matt. x. 29. 2 Acts xvii. 28,

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sciousness staggers and confounds us; yet
perhaps a gnat might be as hard bestead
if he tried to measure the consciousness
of Pythagoras. Professor Huxley, in a re-
markable passage, has imagined the possi-
bility of the existence of beings rising higher
and higher in intelligence, the consciousness
ever expanding, and the reaching of a stage
as much above the human as the human is
above that of the blackbeetle.1 That is not
a flight of the scientific imagination, but
a description of a fact. There is a Being
whose consciousness is present at every point
of His universe, and therefore can be affect-
ed from any point. That consciousness is
not only vast in its field, but inconceivably
acute, not diminished in delicate capacity to
respond because it stretches its vast area in
every direction, but is more responsive than
a more limited consciousness, more perfect
in understanding than the more restricted.
So far from it being the case that the more
exalted the Being the more difficult would
it be to reach His consciousness, the very

1 T. H. Huxley. Essays on some Controverted Questions,
p. 36.

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reverse is true. The more exalted the Be-
ing, the more easily is His consciousness
affected.

Now this all-pervading Life is every-
where utilising as channels all the embodied
lives to which He has given birth, and any
one of them may be used as an agent of
that all-conscious Will. In order that that
Will may express itself in the outer world,
a means of expression must be found, and
these beings, in proportion to their receptiv-
ity, offer the necessary channels, and be-
come the intermediary workers between one
point of the kosmos and another. They act
as the motor nerves of His body, and bring
about the required action.

Let us now take the classes into which
we have divided prayers, and see the meth-
ods by which they will be answered.

When a man utters a prayer of Class A
there are several means by which his prayer
may be answered. Such a man is simple in
his nature, with a conception of God natu-
ral, inevitable, at the stage of evolution in
which he is ; he regards Him as the supplier
of his own needs, in close and immediate
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touch with his daily necessities, and he
turns to Him for his daily bread as natu-
rally as a child turns to his father or moth-
er. A typical instance of this is the case
of George Miiller, of Bristol, before he was
known to the world as a philanthropist,
when he was beginning his charitable work,
and was without friends or money. He
prayed for food for the children who had no
resource save his bounty, and money always
came sufficient for the immediate needs.
What had happened? His prayer was a
strong, energetic desire, and that desire
creates a form, of which it is the life and
directing energy. That vibrating, living
creature has but one idea, the idea that en-
souls it — help is wanted, food is wanted;
and it ranges the subtle world, seeking.
A charitable man desires to give help to the
needy, is seeking opportunity to give. As
the magnet to soft iron, so is such a person
to the desire-form, and it is attracted to
him. It rouses in his brain vibrations iden-
tical with its own — -George Miiller, his or-
phanage, its needs — and he sees the outlet
for his charitable impulse, draws a cheque,

Prayer

and sends it. Quite naturally, George Mul-
ler would say that God put it into the heart
of such a one to give the needed help. In
the deepest sense of the words that is true,
since there is no life, no energy, in His uni-
verse that does not come from God; but
the intermediate agency, according to the
divine laws, is the desire-form created by
the prayer.

The result could be obtained equally well
by a deliberate exercise of the will, without
any prayer, by a person who understood the
mechanism concerned, and the way to put
it in motion. Such a man would think
clearly of what he needed, would draw to
him the kind of subtle matter best suited to
his purpose to clothe the thought, and by a
deliberate exercise of his will would either
send it to a definite person to represent his
need, or to range his neighbourhood and be
attracted by a charitably disposed person.
There is here no prayer, but a conscious ex-
ercise of will and knowledge.

In the case of most people, however, ig-
norant of the forces of the invisible worlds
and unaccustomed to exercise their wills,
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the concentration of mind and the earnest
desire which are necessary for successful
action are far more easily reached by prayer
than by a deliberate mental effort to put
forth their own strength. They would
doubt their own power, even if they under-
stood the theory, and doubt is fatal to the
exercise of the will. That the person who
prays does not understand the machinery he
sets going in no wise affects the result. A
child who stretches out his hand and grasps
an object need not understand anything of
the working of the muscles, nor of the elec-
trical and chemical changes set up by the
movement in muscles and nerves, nor need
he elaborately calculate the distance of the
object by measuring the angle made by
the optic axes ; he wills to take hold of the
thing he wants, and the apparatus of his
body obeys his will though he does not even
know of its existence. So is it with the
man who prays, unknowing of the creative
force of his thought, of the living creature
he has sent out to do his bidding. He acts
as unconsciously as the child, and like the
child grasps what he wants. In both cases

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God is equally the primal Agent, all power
being from Him; in both cases the actual
work is done by the apparatus provided by
His laws.

But this is not the only way in which
prayers of this class are answered. Some
one temporarily out of the physical body
and at work in the invisible worlds, or a
passing Angel, may hear the cry for help,
and may then put the thought of sending
the required aid into the brain of some
charitable person. "The thought of so-and-
so came into my head this morning," such a
person will say, " I daresay a cheque would
be useful to him." Very many prayers are
answered in this way, the link between the
need and the supply being some invisible
Intelligence. Herein is part of the ministry
of the lower Angels, and they will thus sup-
ply personal necessities, as well as bring aid
to charitable undertakings.

The failure of prayers of this class is due
to another hidden cause. Every man has
contracted debts which have to be paid ; his
wrong thoughts, wrong desires, and wrong
actions have built up obstacles in his way,
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Esoteric Christianity

and sometimes even hem him in as the wails
of a prison-house. A debt of wrong is dis-
charged by a payment of suffering; a man
must bear the consequences of the wrongs
he has wrought. A man condemned to die
of starvation by his own wrong-doing in the
past may hurl his prayers against that dest-
iny in vain. The desire-form he creates
will seek but will not find ; it will be met
and thrown back by the current of past
wrong. Here, as everywhere, we are liv-
ing in a realm of law, and forces may be
modified or entirely frustrated by the play
of other forces with which they come into
contact. Two exactly similar forces might
be applied to two exactly similar balls; in
one case, no other force might be applied to
the ball, and it might strike the mark
aimed at ; in the other, a second force might
strike the ball and send it entirely out of its
course. And so with two similar prayers;
one may go on its way unopposed and effect
its object; the other may be flung aside by
the far stronger force of a past wrong. One
prayer is answered, the other unanswered ;
but in both cases the result is by law.

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Prayer

Let us consider Class B. Prayers for
help in moral and intellectual difficulties
have a double result; they act directly to
attract help, and they react on the person
who prays. They draw the attention of the
Angels, of the disciples working outside the
body, who are ever seeking to help the be-
wildered mind, and counsel, encouragement,
illumination, are thrown into the brain-con-
sciousness, thus giving the answer to prayer
in the most direct way. " And he kneeled
down and prayed .... and there appeared
an Angel unto Him from heaven, strength-
ening Him."1 Ideas are suggested which
clear away an intellectual difficulty, or
throw7 light on an obscure moral problem,
or the sweetest comfort is poured into the
distressed heart, soothing its perturbations
and calming its anxieties. And truly if no
Angel were passing that way, the cry of
the distressed would reach the " Hidden
Heart of Heaven," and a messenger would
be sent to carry comfort, some Angel, ever
ready to fly swiftly on feeling the impulse,
bearing the Divine will to help.

1 S. Luke xxii. 41, 43.

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Esoteric Christianity

There is also what is sometimes called
a subjective answer to such prayers, the
reaction of the prayer on the utterer. His
prayer places his heart and mind in the re-
ceptive attitude, and this stills the lower
nature, and thus allows the strength and
illuminative power of the higher to stream
into it unchecked. The currents of energ37
which normally flow downwards, or out-
wards, from the Inner Man, are, as a rule,
directed to the external world, and are util-
ised in the ordinary affairs of life by the
brain-consciousness, for the carrying on of
its daily activities. But when this brain-
consciousness turns away from the outer
world, and shutting its outward-going
doors, directs its gaze inwards; when it
deliberately closes itself to the outer and
opens itself to the inner ; then it becomes a
vessel able to receive and to hold, instead of
a mere conduit-pipe between the interior
and exterior worlds. In the silence ob-
tained by the cessation of the noises of ex-
ternal activities, the " still small voice'5 of
the Spirit can make itself heard, and the

concentrated attention of the expectant

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mind enables it to catch the soft whisper of
the Inner self.

Even more markedly does help come from
without and from within, when the prayer
is for spiritual enlightenment, for spiritual
growth. Not only do all helpers, angelic
and human, most eagerly seek to forward
spiritual progress, seizing on every oppor-
tunity offered by the upward-aspiring soul;
but the longing for such growth liberates
energy of a high kind, the spiritual longing
calling forth an answer from the spiritual
realm. Once more the law of sympathetic
vibrations asserts itself, and the note of
lofty aspiration is answered by a note of its
own order, by a liberation of energy of its
own kind, by a vibration synchronous with
itself. The Divine Life is ever pressing
from above against the limits that bind it,
and when the upward -rising force strikes
against those limits from below, the separat-
ing wall is broken through, and the Divine
Life floods the Soul. When a man feels
that inflow of spiritual life, he cries: "My
prayer has been answered, and God has sent
down His Spirit into my heart." Truly so;
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yet he rarely understands that that Spirit is
ever seeking entrance, but that coming to
His own, His own receive Him not.1 " Be-
hold, I stand at the door, and knock : if any
man hear my voice, and open the door, I
will come in to him."2

The general principle with regard to all
prayers of this class is that just in propor-
tion to the submergence of the personality
and the intensity of the upward aspiration
will be the answer from the wider life with-
in and without us. We separate ourselves.
If we cease the separation and make our-
selves one with the greater, we find that
light and life and strength flow into us.
When the separate will is turned away from
its own objects and set to serve the divine
purpose, then the strength of the Divine
pours into it. As a man swims against the
stream, he makes slow progress; but with
it, he is carried on by all the force of the
current. Vln every department of Nature the
divine energies are working, and everything
that a man does he does by means of the

1 S. John i. 11. 2 Rev. iii. 20.

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Prayer

energies that are working in the line along
which he desires to do ; his greatest achieve-
ments are wrought, not by his own ener-
gies, but by the skill with which he selects
and combines the forces that aid him, and
neutralises those that oppose him by those
that are favourable.! Forces that would
whirl us away as straws in the wind become
our most effective servants when we work
with them. Is it then any wonder that in
prayer, as in everything else, the divine
energies become associated with the man
who, by his prayer, seeks to work as part of
the Divine?

This highest form of prayer in Class B
merges almost imperceptibly into Class C,
where prayer loses its petitionary character,
and becomes either a meditation on, or a
worship of, God. Meditation is the steady
quiet fixing of the mind on God, whereby
the lower mind is stilled and presently left
vacant, so that the Spirit, escaping from
it, rises into contemplation of the divine
Perfection, and reflects within himself the
divine Image. "Meditation is silent or un~
uttered prayer, or as Plato expressed it : 6 the

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ardent turning of the Soul towards the
Divine; not to ask any particular good (as
in the common meaning of prayer), but
for good itself, for the Universal Supreme
Good."51

This is the prayer that, by thus liberating
the Spirit, is the means of union between
man and God. By the working of the laws
of thought a man becomes that which he
thinks, and when he meditates on the
divine perfections he gradually reproduces
in himself that on which his mind is fixed, |
Such a mind, shaped to the higher and not
the lower, cannot bind the Spirit, and the
freed Spirit leaping upward to his source,
prayer is lost in union and separateness is
left behind.

Worship also, the rapt adoration from
which all petition is absent, and which seeks
to pour itself forth in sheer love of the Per-
fect, dimly sensed, is a means — the easiest
means — of union with God. In this the
consciousness, limited by the brain, contem-
plates in mute ecstasy the Image it creates

1 H. P. Blavatsky. Key to TlieosopJiy, p. 10.
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Prayer

of Him whom it knows to bo beyond imag-
ining, and oft, rapt by the intensity of his
love beyond the limits of the intellect, the
man as a free Spirit soars upwards into
realms where these limits are transcended,
and feels and knows far more than on his
return he can tell in words or clothe in form.

Thus the Mystic gazes on the Beatific Vis-
ion ; thus the Sage rests in the calm of the
Wisdom that is beyond knowledge; thus
the Saint reaches the purity wherein God is
seen. Such prayer irradiates the worship-
per, and from the mount of such high com-
munion descending to the plains of earth,
the very face of flesh shines with supernal
glory, translucent to the flame that burns
within. Happy they who know the reality
which no words may convey to those who
know it not. Those whose eyes have seen
"the King in His beauty 'J1 will remember,
and they will understand.

When prayer is thus understood, its
perennial necessity for all who believe in
religion will be patent, and we see why its
practice has been so much advocated by all

*Js. xxxiii. 17.
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who study the higher life. For the student of
the Lesser Mysteries prayer should be of the
kinds grouped under Class B, and he should
endeavour to rise to the pure meditation
and worship of the last class, eschewing
altogether the lower kinds. For him the
teaching of Iamblichus on this subject is
useful. Iamblichus says that prayers
"produce an indissoluble and sacred com-
munion with the Gods," and then proceeds
to give some interesting details on prayer,
as considered by the practical Occultist.
"For this is of itself a thing worthy to be
known, and renders more perfect the science
concerning the Gods. I say, therefore, that
the first species of prayer is Collective ; and
that it is also the leader of contact with,
and a knowledge of, divinity. The second
species is the bond of concordant Commu-
nion, calling forth, prior to the energy of
speech, the gifts imparted by the Gods,
and perfecting the whole of our operations
prior to our intellectual conceptions. And
the third and most perfect species of prayer
is the seal of ineffable Union with the divin-
ities, in whom it establishes all the power

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Prayer

and authority of prayer; and thus causes
the soul to repose in the Gods, as in a never
failing port. But from these three terms,
in which all the divine measures are con-
tained, suppliant adoration not only concili-
ates to us the friendship of the Gods, but
supernally extends to us three fruits, being
as it were three Hesperian apples of gold.
The first of these pertains to illumination ;
the second to a communion of operation ;
but through the energy of the third we
receive a perfect plenitude of divine fire. . . .
No operation, however, in sacred concerns,
can succeed without the intervention of
prayer. Lastly, the continual exercise of
prayer nourishes the vigour of our intellect,
and renders the receptacle of the soul far
more capacious for the communications of
the Gods! It likewise is the divine key,
which opens to men the penetralia of the
Gods; accustoms us to the splendid rivers
of supernal light; in a short time perfects
our inmost recesses, and disposes them for
the ineffable embrace and contact of the
Gods ; and does not desist till it raises us to

the summit of all. It also gradually and,
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silently draws upward the manners of our
soul, by divesting them of everything for-
eign to a divine nature, and clothes us with
the perfections of the Gods. Besides this,
it produces an indissoluble communion and
friendship with divinity, nourishes a divine
love, and inflames the divine part of the
soul. Whatever is of an opposing and con-
trary nature in the soul, it expiates and
purifies; expels whatever is prone to genera-
tion and retains anything of the dregs of
mortality in its ethereal and splendid spirit ;
perfects a good hope and faith concerning
the reception of divine light; and in one
word, renders those by whom it is employed
the familiars and domestics of the Gods.'51

Out of such study and practice one inevit-
able result arises, as a man begins to un-
derstand, and as the wider range of human
life unfolds before him. He sees that by
f knowledge his strength is much increased,
that there are forces around him that he
can understand and control, and that in
proportion to his knowledge is his power.
Then he learns that Divinity lies hidden

1 On the Mysteries, sec. v, ch. 26.
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Prayer

within himself, and that nothing that is
fleeting can satisfy that God within ; that
only union with the One, the Perfect, can
still his cravings. Then there gradually
arises within hixn the will to set himself at
one with the Divine; he ceases to vehement-
ly seek to change circumstances, and to
throw fresh causes into the stream of effects.
He recognises himself as an agent rather
than an actor, a channel rather than a
source, a servant rather than a master, and
seeks to discover the divine purposes and to
work in harmony therewith.

When a man has reached that point, he
has risen above all prayer, save that which
is meditation and worship; he has nothing
to ask for, in this world or in any other ; he
remains in a steadfast serenity, seeking but
to serve God. That is the state of Sonship,
where the will of the Son is one with the
will of the Father, wrhere the one calm sur-
render is made, "Lo, I come to do Thy will,
0 God. I am content to do it; yea, Thy
law is within my heart."1 Then all prayer

1 Ps. xl. 7, 8, Prayer Book version.
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is seen to be unnecessary ; all asking is felt
as an impertinence ; nothing can be longed
for that is not already in the purposes of
that Will, and all will be brought into
active manifestation as the agents of that
Will perfect themselves in the work.

298