The real meaning of prayer is communicating with the Divine. It is understanding what we are saying and to whom we are praying. It is, first of all, accepting that there is a Divine Power that is beyond human comprehension. It is realizing the truth about God. It is going beyond the God that we were told is God. Therefore, the first aspect of true prayer is complete acceptance and surrender to a Universal Power whom we call God. God is beyond religion and far bigger than the institutions we go to. Realizing the myth that we have lived with opens the first door to true prayer.
Human beings are blessed with an intellect. If we analyze, we will discover that the Divine Power is not made of bone and skin, Divinity is the power that is present within. The Divine Power is immortal, eternal, and omnipresent. While we are incapable of knowing what God is, at least we should know what God is not. While most of us are incapable of comprehending God, at least we should understand that our limited perception about God is incorrect when we confine God to some pictures, human- body forms, saints, or statues. This makes us pray to that Power that the world calls God.
The majority of the world religions accept that God is within us. The Bible says, ‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’ The Quran says, ‘Wherever you are, I am.’ The Upanishads, the Hindu scriptures say, ‘Neti Neti,’ ‘Not This, Not This.’ ‘Tat Tvam Asi,’ ‘Thou Art That.’ It means that neither are we this body nor this mind, we are the Divine Soul. True prayer is feeling the presence of the Divine and being constantly connected and communicating with the Divine.
It is unfortunate, that the world has been taught to pray in a way which it doesn’t understand. When we follow a ritual while we pray, most of us don’t know why we are performing that ritual. And the worst part is, we do not have the courage to ask. We follow rituals and traditional practices, taught by our religious heads or our elders, and somehow, we believe that this is true prayer. A small minority has the courage to question each action, trying to understand the relevance of what they are doing in prayer. The others think that following scriptures blindly is showing devotion to God. Some people think that just repeating the name of God is enough to go to heaven. When will we understand the meaning of true prayer?
Followers of all religions devoutly go to their place of worship and unquestioningly follow what they are told to do. How many people question the priest as to why we are having this bread and wine at the altar? People break coconuts at temples, but nobody asks the question, ‘Why?’ If we have to wear a particular attire when we pray, what is the relevance of the attire? It is a pity that we don’t understand our own actions and we are least concerned to find out. The bigger problem is that the leaders of most religions aren’t able to give a convincing answer to why we pray the way we do. This is more so because over the centuries, the reasoning, the sequence, and procedures have got lost due to the changes that have kept on creeping in, just like in the game of 'Chinese Whispers', an original message is distorted by being passed around in a whisper.
Once there was a man who asked a monk, ‘Why is it that we pray to the cat that is made out of stone?’ He was lucky that the monk was both honest and devoted. With due sincerity and integrity, the monk explained – ‘Many years ago, there was a monk who used to walk up to the monastery and because he wore a warm overcoat, a cat used to nudge him and walk with him right up to the monastery. And while the monk sat in prayer, the cat also used to sit as if it was praying. One day the monk died, but the cat continued coming up with another monk. Finally, one day, the cat died, and the followers built a stone cat as it had become a ritual to pray not just along with the monk, but also along with the cat.’ When will we overcome the myth about the stone cat and resort to real prayer?
Sincere believers in God do a lot of talking to God. They share their darkest secrets and do not hide anything from God. They talk to God every day in prayer, sometimes, many times a day. But the question is, ‘Is prayer just talking to God or more importantly, does it also involve listening to God?’ True prayer is an effective two-way communication. It is not only communicating our feelings, our fears, our gratitude, and our love, but also listening to God’s voice that may come to us as an instinct, an insight or a message from somebody. God knows how to communicate with us provided we are listening. But what if we are not bothered about what God is telling us? What if we believe that prayer is just about us blabbering things that we don’t even understand? This is the worst-case scenario where we talk to God in a language that is unknown to us. One step better is talking to God from our heart, but real and effective prayer is a two-way communication where we also listen to God.
We know the purpose of prayer, don’t we? It is a method or act of communicating with God. We need to know who we are talking to. What would you call a person who is walking in the garden and talking to nobody? You will consider him to be psychologically ill. In prayer too, if we just talk without knowing whom we are talking to, it makes no sense. Therefore, real prayer is all about building a relationship with God. It is about feeling the Divine presence and experiencing God. Then, we are not praying to the air that surrounds us, but rather to the Power that controls everything around us. Once we have a good relationship with God, through constant communication, our prayers strengthen our connection with the Lord. True prayer makes our love for God bloom.
The truth is that God is not somebody who is living far away. God is with us all the time, but we don’t realize this truth. Even though we don’t realize God, if our faith and love for God is strong, we can experience the Divine presence and pray effectively.
Isn’t it sad that most of us are looking for God in the wrong place? We get carried away by the myth and live with it. There was this young boy who was told by his mother to go and feed the priest with bread. The child asked the mother, ‘Why should I do that?’ The mother told the child, ‘Whatever you feed the priest, your grandfather in heaven will get it.’ The boy was very fond of his grandfather who had just passed away. The priest was a vegetarian, but the grandfather used to love roasted chicken and so, the child questioned the mother, ‘Why should I take bread when my grandpa used to love chicken?’ Because he was an innocent little child, she told him, ‘If the priest eats bread, your grandpa will get chicken in heaven.’ The child in love with his grandfather went and served the priest believing the story. We may laugh at the child, but don’t we all follow superstitions that make no sense? We are told so many fairy tales about God, but instead of questioning them, we innocently accept them, either out of being naive or in fear of blasphemy, questioning our religion.
If a child is taught that Mickey Mouse lives in Disneyland, he will grow up believing in the story of Mickey and Minnie. He will fantasize about Donald Duck! But while it is fine for children to enjoy the Disney cartoon characters, we should grow up to realize the truth. If an 80-year-old man still believes in the existence of Goofy and Pluto, then it is a pity. These are just comic characters created for the sake of children’s entertainment. While many religions around the world portray God with a name and a form that is fancy and attractive, is it difficult for us to use our intellect to realize the truth that God cannot be an imaginary character with an elephant head or somebody who lived with bone and skin and died or even still, somebody who lives up in the skies or rules from a distant planet? We must overcome these fantasies about God if we want our prayers to be meaningful and effective. Let us realize the truth about God.
Therefore, true prayer is realizing the truth about God. It is not mumbling or chanting something that we don’t understand. It is not just praying to a statue or a saint without realizing what we are doing. True prayer is a two- way communication with the Power who has created this universe.
True prayer, therefore, consists of two important things: 1) knowing whom we are praying to and 2) understanding what we are saying. Unless a prayer does both of the above, it is not true prayer. In fact, the moment we understand the truth about God, the way we pray will change. What we ask for in prayer will no longer be the same. Our innocent prayers are foolish because of our ignorance about God. Thus, we continue to say things in prayer, which, on contemplation, we realize make no sense. Prayer becomes true prayer when we know the God we are praying to, when we experience the Divine, and when we ultimately realize God.
While God-realization is not easy, it starts with devotion to God.