Prayer can be true prayer only if we realize the truth about the God we pray to. God is all-powerful. He is the Creator of the universe, of life on earth. We may not exactly know who God is, where God is or what God is, but we know beyond doubt that God is. You and I are proof of God’s existence. If there are Samsung mobile phones, we don’t need to prove the existence of the company Samsung.
While there is no doubt that God exists, the problem lies in our ignorance about realizing the truth about God. In the world today, new Gods appear like new multi-dollar corporations. And then, they don’t go away. Their followers keep on promoting their ‘God’ leading to a world in which we have thousands of Gods. This is not about criticizing or condemning any God or religion. It is about going beyond religion to realize the truth about God.
Religion is only a kindergarten that teaches us the ABC of God. It helps us start our belief system and teaches us to pray. But it doesn’t make us realize the truth about God. Thus, our prayers remain shallow as they are built on a weak foundation of ignorance and myth. All religions are good. But we need to go beyond religion. We need to evolve spiritually to realize the truth about God to make prayer truly meaningful.
When we are told about God, we need to ask questions - is God mortal like you and me? If God can die, then what makes him God? God is immortal. The names and forms that we create continue to enhance our ignorance about God.
For prayer to be true prayer, we must be absolutely clear to whom we are praying. And this is not possible until we realize the God to whom we pray.
Sam was excited when he was given a bungalow by his father-in- law. As soon as he took possession of it, he started renovating the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the lawns. He spent his entire life’s earning on his beautiful new house. It was undoubtedly the best house in the neighborhood. Shortly thereafter, his father-in-law died. He was looking for the documents of the house when in horror he realized that the house actually belonged to somebody else. His father-in-law had just leased it and had been paying the rent for him to use. His entire life’s savings were wasted because he had to leave the house.
Don’t we too live like this? We spend our entire life praying to a God who is not truly the God that we seek to pray to. Can we relive our life and redo our prayers? While we can’t, at least we can realize the truth now and discover our ignorance about the God we pray to. If Sam had realized the truth, would he have invested his entire life’s savings in a house that did not belong to him?
Actually, there is no harm in praying to any God as long as we eventually realize the truth about God. Then those prayers are not wasted. I prayed to a God for 40 years, only to realize that God is not a statue or a saint. I changed my paradigm. Instead of praying to that God, I started praying through that God to the Power that is everywhere. Those who don’t realize the truth about the Divine Power, may find this to make no sense, but the fact is that we do not truly know who the God is that we pray to. From the time we are children, we are taught to blindly believe in God, not to ask questions, and we live and die without realizing God.
If we stop for a moment, we will realize how God has created each human being so unique that we have our own individual fingerprints. Each of us has over 30 trillion cells. The human eye has roughly 125 million retinal cells. If the eye was to be compared to a camera, it would be a whopping 576-megapixel camera. It can see 1 million colours. The nose can smell 1 trillion different types of smells. There are 200 different types of cells and 35 billion skin cells. There are 100 billion neurons in the brain. And our brain produces up to 60,000 thoughts per day. Our body holds a capacity of 6 litres of blood, and our blood vessels stretch up to 60 , 000 miles. Every day, approximately we take 23,000 breaths and our heart beats 1,15,000 times. There are around 1 lakh hair follicles on the human head. The body produces 23,000 litres of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill a humongous swimming pool. Our brain's electricity when awake can light a small bulb. The heart creates enough energy daily that can drive a truck for 32 kilometres. The heart pumps 1.5 million barrels of blood in a lifetime. Our taste buds are replaced every 10 days. It is astonishing to know just how ignorant we are about the greatest machine ever conceived - the human body. And there are 8 billion such human beings. Then there are trillions of animals, insects, birds, and other creatures. How powerful that God must be who has created all this! The Sun, the Moon, the stars, the birds, the animals, and the flowers, must make us realize how powerful the Divine Power truly is.
And instead of realizing this, we quarrel with each other about whose religion and whose God is more powerful. When will we realize that God is one Power, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent? Unfortunately, we human beings are slaves to our own minds. The mind is a monkey. It is a rascal. It keeps jumping from thought to thought. It does not permit us to contemplate God. It stops us from remaining still in silence. Thus, we don’t discover the truth about God. Unless we use our intellect to take control of our mind, we cannot realize the truth about God.
God cannot be discovered. The way to God is known as realization. It starts with self-realization and ultimately goes on to God-realization. The truth is that God exists in each one of us. God is in you and in me; God is in everybody! But because we are covered by layers of ignorance, we are unable to realize the truth about God and we continue to pray to the God that we have been praying to for decades.
If you look at me, you will say I am wearing a T-shirt. The truth is that I am not wearing a T-shirt. It appears to be a T- shirt to you because you do not see the hundreds of threads that are knitted together to create the T-shirt. So also, we human beings are not able to see deep into the truth and realize God. We don’t realize that God exists in each of the trillions of cells in our body as Divine Consciousness. God is what creates life in us. When God or Divine Consciousness departs, there is no breath and we are dead. Although this is the truth, we do not realize this because of the cosmic illusion that projects a myth and hides the truth. When we realize the truth about God, then our prayers will become profound. But this will not happen until we go on a quest that will take us from self-realization to God- realization.
I prayed to God with tears,
When I realized the truth
of who God was, after 40 years.