Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 91
THE EVOLUTION OF PRAYER
1. With the attainment of self‑consciousness by primitive man there occurred. the inevitable corollary of other‑consciousness, the dual potential of social response and God. recognition.
2. Religion and its agencies, the chief of which is prayer, are allied only with those values which have general social recognition, group approval...Prayer, therefore, very early became a mighty promoter of social evolution, moral progress, and spiritual attainment.
3. Early men did not perceive that material things were not the province of prayer. These simple‑minded souls reasoned that food, shelter, rain, game, and other material goods enhanced the social welfare, end therefore they began to pray for those physical blessings. While this constituted a perversion of prayer, it encouraged the effort to realize these material objectives by social and ethical actions.
4. True prayer does not...appear until the agency of religious ministry is visualized as personal...The dangers attendant upon the distortion and perversion of prayer consist in ignorance, superstition, crystallization, devitalization, materialism, and fanaticism.
5. When the highest God concept of a religion is that of an impersonal Deity, such as in a pantheistic idealism, although affording the basis for certain forms of mystic communion, it proves fatal to the potency of true prayer, which always stands for man's communion with a personal and superior being.
6. During the earlier times of racial evolution and even at the present time, in the day-by-day experience of the average mortal, prayer is very much a phenomenon of man's intercourse with his own subconscious. But there is also a domain of prayer wherein the intellectually alert and. spiritually progressing individual attains more or less contact with the superconscious levels of the human mind, the domain of the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
7. Prayer contributes greatly to the development of the religious sentiment of an evolving human mind.. It is a mighty influence working to prevent isolation of personality.
8. Prayer ever has been and ever will be a twofold human experience: a psychologic procedure interassociated. with a spiritual technique. And. these two functions of prayer can never be fully separated.
9. Selfish and materialistic praying is incompatible with the ethical religions which are predicated on unselfish and divine love...Prayer must never be so prostituted as to become a substitute for action...In all your praying be fair; do not expect God to show partiality. .Prayer is somewhat more ethical when it deals with forgiveness and seeks wisdom for enhanced self‑control...The real prayer of faith always contributes to the augmentation of the technique of living.
10. Remember, even if prayer does not change God, it very often effects great and lasting changes in the one who prays in faith and confident expectation. Prayer has been the ancestor of much peace of mind, cheerfulness, calmness, courage, self‑mastery, and fair-mindedness in the men and women of the evolving races.
11. But the minds of greater spiritual illumination should be patient with, and tolerant of, those less endowed intellects that crave symbolism for the mobilization of their feeble spiritual insight ...Those who are God‑conscious without symbolism must not deny the grace- ministry of the symbol to those who find it difficult to worship Deity and to revere truth, beauty, and goodness without form and ritual.
12. Prayer is not a technique for curing real and organic diseases, but it has contributed enormously to the enjoyment of abundant health and to the cure of numerous mental, emotional, and nervous ailments. And even in actual bacterial disease, prayer has many times added to the efficacy of other remedial procedures. Prayer has turned many an irritable and complaining invalid into a paragon of patience and made him an inspiration to all other human sufferers.
13. Prayer is a sound psychologic practice, aside from its religious implications and its spiritual significance. It is a fact of human experience that most persons, if sufficiently hard pressed, will pray in some way to some source of help.
14. Do not be so slothful as to ask God to solve your difficulties, but never hesitate to ask him for wisdom and spiritual strength to guide and. sustain you while you yourself resolutely and courageously attack the problems at band.
15. Prayer has been an indispensable factor in the progress and preservation of religious civilization, and it still has mighty contributions to make to the further enhancement and. spiritualization of society if those who pray will only do so in the light of scientific facts, philosophic wisdom, intellectual sincerity, and. spiritual faith. Pray as Jesus taught his disciples—honestly, unselfishly, with fairness, and without doubting.
16. The psychic and spiritual concomitants of the prayer of faith are immediate, personal, and experiential. There is no other technique whereby every man, regardless of all other mortal accomplishments, can so effectively and immediately approach the threshold of that realm wherein he can communicate with his Maker, where the creature contacts with the reality of the Creator, with the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
17. Altogether too frequently that which the overwrought mystic evaluates as divine inspiration is the uprisings of his own deep mind. The contact of the mortal mind, with its indwelling Adjuster, while often favored by devoted, meditation, is more frequently facilitated by wholehearted and loving service in unselfish ministry to one's fellow creatures.
18. The great religious teachers and the prophets of past ages were not extreme mystics. They were God‑knowing men and women who best served their God by unselfish ministry to their fellow mortals...The soul of man requires spiritual exercise as well as spiritual nourishment.
19. Genuine spiritual ecstasy is usually associated with great outward calmness and almost perfect emotional control. But true prophetic vision is a superpsychologic presentiment. Such visitations are not pseudo hallucinations, neither are they trancelike ecstasies.
20. The practical test of all these strange religious experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to observe whether these phenomena cause an individual:
1. To enjoy better and. more complete physical health.
2. To function more efficiently and practically in his mental life.
3. More fully and joyfully to socialize his religious experience.
4. More completely to spiritualize his day‑by‑day living while faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of routine mortal existence.
5. To enhance his love for, and appreciation of, truth, beauty, and goodness.
6. To conserve currently recognized social, moral, ethical, and spiritual values.
7. To increase his spiritual insight—God‑consciousness.
21. But real praying does attain reality. Even when the air currents are ascending, no bird can soar except by outstretched wings. Prayer elevates man because it is a technique of progressing by the utilization of the ascending spiritual currents of the universe.
22. Genuine prayer adds to spiritual growth, modifies attitudes, and yields that satisfaction which comes from communion with divinity...Prayer is a subjective gesture, but it contacts with mighty objective realities on the spiritual levels of human experience. ..It is the most potent spiritual‑growth stimulus.
23. Words are irrelevant to prayer...God answers the soul's attitude, not the words. Prayer is not a technique of escape from conflict but rather a stimulus to growth in the very face of conflict. Pray only for values, not things; for growth, not for gratification.
24. If you would engage in effective praying, you should bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:
1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.
2. You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.
3. You must surrender every wish of mind and every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth...
4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
5. You not only recognize the Father’s will and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual doing ofthe Father's will.
6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom...
7. And you must have faith—living faith.
Discussion Questions
1. Do people generally regard material things as the province of prayer?
2. How can prayer be a stimulus for action? Do religious people tend to substitute prayer for action?
3. How does prayer add to the efficacy of other remedial procedures?
4. Why do people bargain with God or think they need to persuade God to do good things?
5. Is service more effective than meditation in connecting us with God?
6. What are the practical tests of effective praying?
7. How does knowing that words are irrelevant in prayer change our prayer life?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship