University of Missouri; Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Haag Hall
5 March 1974

I pray. I pray to become God’s perfect instrument. I pray to God to free me from
the little ‘i’ and to make me the big ‘I’, the universal ‘I’. The little ‘i’ tells me what
it can do for me. It tells me that it can destroy the world or bring the whole world
to my feet. The universal ‘I’ tells me that I am of God and for God. It tells me that
I am all love for God the Creator and for God the Creation.
I pray. I pray to God to act through me and for me. When I act for myself, I
create constant problems, untold problems. But when God acts in and through
me, it is all divine achievement, fulfilling achievement.
I pray to God to choose for me. When I choose, I choose desire unconsciously
or consciously. Then there comes a time when I consciously treasure desire,
imperfection, limitation and bondage. I consciously want to remain in the finite
and wallow in the pleasures of ignorance. But when God chooses for me, He
chooses aspiration, the inner cry. This inner mounting flame takes me high,
higher, highest and then brings me down to offer my realisation-fruit to aspiring
humanity. When God chooses for me, He chooses Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.
Infinity, Eternity and Immortality—these are only vague terms for those
who do not aspire. But for those who aspire, these are living realities in the very
heart of the seeker’s aspiration.
I pray to God to make me one with suffering humanity. I pray to God to make
me one with aspiring humanity. I pray to God to make me one with illumined
humanity.
When I pray to God to make me one with suffering humanity, it is because the
physical in me is at last seeing the truth that there is no end to suffering in the
unenlightened physical consciousness. When I expand my physical consciousness,
I share and thus lighten the burden of the suffering earth.
But now suffering humanity does not want to remain forever in its deplorable
condition, so it begins to aspire. When it aspires, I have a free access to its
aspiration, for when I expand my psychic consciousness, I become one with
aspiring humanity. Then, when suffering has been ended by aspiration, when
humanity is flying with the wings of aspiration, it enters into the world of
illumined humanity. It is here, when we become part and parcel of illumined
humanity, that we discover the meaning of life.
When I pray, I converse with God. I tell God that I need Him. God tells me,
“My son, you need Me now. But I always needed you, I need you now and I shall
always need you.” Then God asks, “Son, why do you need Me?” I reply, “Father,
I need You because with You I am safe, with You I am happy; without You I am
unsafe, without You I am unhappy.” God says, “Son, I needed you to become My
Dream-Boat. I need you to become My ever-flowing Life-River. I shall need you
to become the Golden Shore of My ever-transcending Beyond.”
When I pray loudly, my prayer is not soulful, and I cannot hear the faint Voice
of God. But when I pray in silence, when I pray soulfully, I hear God’s powerful
Voice clearly and most significantly. When I pray to God out of fear, my fearful
prayer does not reach God’s Door. But when I pray to God with love, my prayer
reaches God’s very Heart. And my loving prayer places me at the very Feet of
God, my eternal Haven.
My prayer is a magnet and God’s Concern is another magnet. When I pray, my
prayer-magnet reaches the Highest and pulls God down into the very breath of my
earthly consciousness. At that time, God offers me what He eternally is: Immortality’s
Smile. And when God’s Concern-magnet pulls me up, I give Him what I
have always been: the inner cry, the inner cry of millennia.
When I reach the Highest on the strength of my prayer, God makes me His
Dream-fulfilling Reality. When God comes down and feeds my heart on the
strength of His unconditional Compassion, He makes me His Dream-fulfilled
Reality. It is our reciprocal self-giving that makes us inseparably one. Through
my prayer, I offer to God all that I have and all that I am: ignorance. And through
His Compassion, God offers to me what He has and what He is: Peace, Light and
Divinity’s ever-flowing Bliss.
In the Western world, we use the vehicle of prayer to reach the Highest. In the
Eastern world, especially in India, we use the vehicle of meditation. Both are of
paramount importance; both are of equal value. Prayer and meditation will give
us the same result provided they are both soulful. But we have to know what
actually happens when we pray, and what actually happens when we meditate,
even though the result is the same. When we pray, we feel that God is the
Listener and we are the talker. We cry from within, and God listens to our cry
and consoles us. Our prayer is our conversation with God. But when we meditate,
we empty our minds, purify our hearts and become receptivity itself. At that time,
God the Guest, the eternal Guest, enters into us and sits on the throne of our
hearts. When this happens, God talks and we listen. In this way the conversation
is always perfect. In prayer, we talk and God listens; and in meditation, God talks
and we listen. Let us pray; God is bound to listen to our prayers, our inner cry.
Let us meditate; we are bound to listen to God’s Voice, His inner Voice.
Prayer tells us that we are for God, for Him alone. Meditation tells us that we
are of God, of Him alone. It was through the power of meditation, the soul’s
meditation, that the soul came down into the physical world. And now the soul
will go back to its own Transcendental Height by offering its prayer. The soul
becomes one with earth-bound prayer, and this earth-bound prayer eventually
grows into Heaven-free realisation.
Let us pray; God is listening to us. Let us meditate; we shall hear God’s Voice.
When we pray, God becomes our Beloved Supreme and we His eternal Lover.
When we meditate, we become God’s Beloved and He our Divine Lover Supreme.