To the Reader

Man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

St Matthew 4:4

Prayer is the salt of life and we cannot do without it. It is ingrained in the nature of man to pray for the fulfilment of his wishes whatever these be. But more often than not we do not know what we may really pray for, how to pray and what we may do to make our prayer a great dynamic force as may stir up Heaven’s Mercy.

The secret of a successful prayer lies not so much in the words we use, nor in the time we devote to it, nor in the effort that we put into it, as it lies in the concentrated attention that one may give it at the seat of the soul so as to make it soulful. The most natural form for a fruitful prayer is the yearning of a soul without the agency of words, oral or mental, with the tongue of thought. A prayer like this generates and releases such a fund of Spiritual Energy that all the Cosmic Powers are attracted, and combined together, shaping out things as best as possible.

A True Prayer is one continuous process, independent of form, time and place, and leads ultimately to the stage of Sehaj – a halcyon calm, a perfect equipoise and a complete satiety, with no desire what-so-ever. This then is the climax of a genuine prayer and here prayer itself ceases to be a prayer and becomes a state of being as one gradually rises first into cosmic consciousness and then into super-consciousness, with the Divine Will fully revealed unto him. This is the be-all and the end-all of prayer: and how to achieve it is the object of this enquiry.

At the end of the book, by way of an appendix, are collected, in classified form, specimen prayers from various Saints and Scriptures, for the benefit of the interested reader.

Kirpal Singh

Sawan Ashram, Delhi.
Dated, the 1^st July, 1959.

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My wishes count but little: let Thy will prevail.

Nanak