We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Topic: The Supreme Value of the Master’s PrayerDear folks of Baba, I was not brought up in any religion, and so the experience of reciting prayers was something foreign to me and h...
We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!
Topic: The Supreme Value of the Master’s Prayer
Dear folks of Baba,
I was not brought up in any religion, and so the experience of reciting prayers was something foreign to me and has required a great adjustment on my part over the years. Given my nature, I had to find a way to mean every word of the prayer, to somehow find a place within me where each word resonated and was comprehended in some way. This was not easy for me. Most of the words were beyond me entirely. I had the seemingly impossible task of making them have meaning in me (I couldn’t bear reciting the prayer from rote) and so the prayers became a huge struggle and uphill climb and initially not something I looked forward to. I would feel this reaction, even though afterwards I would always feel uplifted and expansive with love in my heart!
Baba composed the Master’s Prayer just after the New Life, on August 14th, 1953, and He participated in the prayer numerous times. In His later years, He would have Eruch read out the prayer faster and faster because Baba’s failing health prevented Him from standing for any length of time. On one occasion at Baba’s insistence, Eruch found himself reading the prayer at breakneck speed, and the image of a train madly racing past all the stations without stopping suddenly flashed through his mind and he burst out laughing. Baba was not happy with this and said pointedly, “You don’t know what I have endure to participate in these prayers for all of humanity! They are for all posterity. Whenever anyone recites these prayers, they will be helped spiritually because of My personal participation. It has nothing to do with how quickly you read the prayer or how much feeling you read it with or anything of that sort. All that matters is My having participated in the prayers. Any time anyone repeats these prayers, I am there with them, and they will be helped spiritually.” Baba said that even if we say the prayers “mechanically”, we are benefitted.
On another occasion, Baba revealed to Don Stevens (who was involved in the editing of God Speaks and Listen Humanity): "You must understand that whenever Baba gives out words for his lovers to use and read, he attaches a spiritual energy to them--something like an atomic spiritual bomb. ... Then, when one reads those words, even if he does not understand even one word of what he reads, a part of spiritual energy will be absorbed by that person. And this energy will be very important for that person in his spiritual progress."
At various times, Eruch shared with us in Mandali Hall the immense value of reciting the Master’s Prayer. Paraphrasing what he said, Eruch likened it to climbing a mountain. In progressing up the mountain there are switchbacks (paths) that are cut into the steep slope to make the climb gradual as it would be impossible to go straight up. What if a person were to go back and forth, thinking they were going higher but unwittingly were stuck at the same elevation and not going higher? A rut would be created. This is the inherent tendency of the mind. It gets stuck in a rut thinking all the time that it is going higher! Why? Because the mind wants to bring the Infinite down. It wants a finite truth. It wants all of life to be under the finite dome of the intellect. But the Master’s Prayer is a complete contradiction of that. Everything in the Master’s Prayer is infinite, superlative: “unlimited, unfathomable, beyond imagination and conception, eternal.” This is a blow to the mind! With the recitation of each divine attribute, its finite dome keeps getting shattered to pieces, and we are lifted consciously or unconsciously above the finite.
Each Baba lover has his or her own way of reciting the Master’s Prayer, and I remember Adi, one of the intimate mandali, once saying to me that he directed the prayer personally to Baba. All the attributes of God in the prayer he attributed to Baba! That was my inclination also, which he confirmed. What is your experience of the prayer? Do you experience an initial resistance, and how do you feel after reciting the prayer? Do you feel that it changes the tenor of your day? Is it a struggle to get started beforehand? Do you prefer doing the prayer alone rather than in a group?
In His love, Jeff
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