Chapter IX
THE COMMUNION OR PRAYER ASPECT

1. PRAYER DEFINED

This series of discourses on Religion led naturally to a discussion of some of its practical aspects. The discussion was started by a question as to the nature of prayer. Is prayer, asked our questioner, simply a mechanical device by which we get in touch with assistance? Or is it a spiritual realization?

"If you mean the formal thing called prayer," replied Gaelic, "its value is solely that it implies a certain effort and desire to come into contact with what you differentiate as spiritual forces. If you mean the actual feeling of communion or harmony or mystic contact which many people describe as the state of prayer, it Is a realization.

"If it is a realization - but do not minimize the sincere formal prayer, because that sort of effort and desire is necessary from your end, before what we have led our end can operate."

"A formal prayer may also be a state of prayer," observed Betty.

"A formal prayer may very successfully induce a state of prayer, but it is not the words of the formal prayer that bring 'realization.' It is only that the words form an easy route," Gaelic corrected her.

2. THE ART OF INSPIRATION

"Prayer in its widest meaning," Gaelic suggested, "is really a placing of oneself in the divine current." He desired us to imagine ourselves at the lowest point of a great circle on the arc of which flows this current.

"It is only an illustration," he warned us, "and not an inclusive symbol. As a figure of speech it is intended to cover only the aspects I discuss; if you try to extend its symbolism to other phases which might occur to you, you may find it inadequate.

"The movement of the great current, then, is always in the sweep of an arc which will eventually close a circle. The segment of the arc at which you are situated is so placed that the current enters from above, sweeps through the lowest point, and is about again to rise when it escapes your conditions. This is a general law that obtains in all mediums through which the current manifests. In normal sweep you will note that it cannot return upward against itself, and the current must, for proper expression, swing smooth, unbroken and undeflected from the true arc. This, as I say, is a law of universal application. We will now, however, consider it only as applied to the inner life and that life's expression.

"The natural course is an entering of inspiration through perception down through the focusing faculties into external expression in material form, which touches the lowest point of the arc. Then, on the first rise, toward appreciation, emotional assimilation, and outgoing as the circle slips beyond your ken. This is a normal course. Each step in the process is of equal importance; each must be carried to a rounded symmetry of perfection if it would fulfill its function properly. An attempt to reverse the current, returning the perception mistakenly back toward inspiration, inhibiting it within you or checking its smooth rhythm, results in all sorts of sometimes disastrous consequences. Equally, any attempt to retrack or to omit entirely any bit results in a broken curve, or a distorted curve, or an interrupted rhythm, all of which produce far-reaching disharmony."

3. FALSE INSPIRATION: ECSTASY

This concept he thought of sufficient importance to restate.

"We conceive, then," he repeated, "a great current sweeping downward from an unknown apogee, through the perigee of your activity and comprehension, and upward again beyond your powers to follow. Any attempts to interrupt the smooth flowing, rhythm, or to break its continuity, have always had bad results. Also, any attempts to check it, or turn it back towards its source, are equally bad."

We must keep our place, he warned.

"A certain type of sincerely indulged religious ecstasy comes within this category; the reception of divine contact is not passed on through its legitimate channels, but, in solitude, is reflected back towards its source under the mistaken impression that the emotional glow thereby excited is an identifying of the recipient with the source. The ordinary mingled impressions of ordinary humanity toward such incidents are based upon sane instincts; that type of barren saintship has always been looked upon with awe and, at the same time, with a trifle of hidden contempt. The awe is for the evident contact that is, which is felt by the multitude, if not understood; the contempt, equally not understood, is for a fundamental futility.

"The forcing type of attempted development is also fundamentally of this nature; a reaching back up the current towards the source of power that should be obtained downstream, so to speak, by development. The source of power is felt to be intimately near and therefore more easily graspable in its pristine purity. The doctrine and the practice are fallacious because they contravene this great law. This statement should be taken in conjunction, remember, with other statements on this subject.

"A form of illegitimate checking of the smoothness of the rhythm may also be observed in those who grasp what is received and retain it beyond the necessary formulating period for the purpose of adding the ornamental gimcrackery of their personal egotism to it before allowing it to take its course toward its proper recipients. This is an almost universal roughening of the rhythm, for entire selflessness is as yet the rarest of virtues which will ultimately become universal."

4. TRUE INSPIRATION AND ECSTASY

"The whole growing and reaching upward part of the human soul is toward its source, but the turning toward the source is in openhearted receptivity only. The projecting, manifesting, dynamic constructing side is turned the other way; only the same power of affinity that turns the flower toward the sun, that draws the mists from earth to sky - that reaching vitality of power, alone, is here exercised. Any other type whatever is wrong.

"The true type of seeking for spiritual contact is of the type that does not reach, but which expands to receive. You are in contact if you open out your spirit. You do not reach for it, it is with you always. But if you reverently and whole-heartedly open your heart to it, you get it. The reaching is tension... it is down stream.

"The function of your segment is the formulating and launching for utilization. But it is done actually after you have received through the contact. The reaching upstream by the formulative faculties is precisely your forced-system of gaining contact.

"Do not misunderstand that in ordinary common contact there may not be a feeling that you describe as ecstasy. I used the term in its mystic sense of tingling ... high pleasure, as in the communion of the nuns and monks of that type. He who carries his ecstasy eventually through the formulation period into manifestation of one sort or another, is functioning in the normal course. It might be so that one can receive from universal consciousness direct, but he cannot render back to universal consciousness except through manifestation. He cannot turn upstream and barrenly turn toward the source an emotion; however elevating and satisfactory that may seem.

"Anything normally functioning produces an emotion of pleasure; the pleasure is of a type and intensity according to the breadth and depth and cosmic significance of the function. The highest emotional content must be in the perfect functioning - that heart expansion which puts a man in contact with his source. The pleasure is legitimately enjoyed to its thrill of rapture so long as it is a concomitant of function, and does not become an end in itself. The proper action of any major function implies the proportionate functioning of any subordinate function. Can you not see then, that a neglect of one or more lesser functions, because you get pleasure in a larger function, immediately implies the pursuit of pleasure for itself? It therefore becomes a perversion as in the case of monastic ecstasy before mentioned."

"Wouldn't it be penurious to ask only for certain limited things in prayer," asked Betty pertinently. "Shouldn't one reach out and take all possible aliments of spiritual growth like a healthy, young animal?"

"You would become a terrible prig if you took only for the purpose of special manifestation," agreed Gaelic. "You receive what your instinct wishes, you enjoy what your enjoyment teaches, you give out what you have fully in your hands. If you are producing and manifesting in a constructive way, you will be utilizing in full that which comes to you from above. To try to get only that which you may expect self-consciously to pass on for the improvement of others is priggish and spiritually awful! If you were to pay too much attention to your spiritual processes or your digestion, you would probably get a fine case of dyspepsia in either event. Use only sufficient intelligence in the one case or the other to avoid spiritual or gastronomic imbecilities.

"To the extent to which they consciously functioned in the period of the times they were normal. To the extent to which they sought their souls' salvation or their own delights they were not.

"Prayer is in essence," Gaelic concluded, "a complete conscious unfoldment of self for the reception of the spiritual vivifying, healing and developing influence of spirit. Conscious unfoldment means necessarily a clear-eyed, honest, impersonal understanding of oneself. The conscious act of this understanding and appraisement acts as if it removed from each phase so recognized the film of insulation to admit the germinating waters; until that acknowledgment, those waters are prevented by that film from their nourishment office. In that conception is no room for a demand for specific favors beyond the demand made by acknowledgment of a lack in yourself.

"As to the intellectualization: there should be sufficient to produce complete manifestation. Sufficient and no more. The intellect is a tool for the specific and only purpose of complete manifestation."