Here is a series of 3 blogs we will be publishing from the book, ‘The Power of Prayer’. We have taken the write-ups by Swami Chinmayananda. Prayer is a very personal thing for most of us. We all pray at different altars and with different techniques. There is no right or wrong. But if we understand the various aspects of prayer and its effects, our relationship with God might become stronger.
In the early stages of evolution man worshipped trees, animals, and the departed ones, as can be seen even today among the tribal civilization. As man grew under the pressure of his needs and the visions of his intellect, he came to make his gods out of stone, clay, wood, or metal. Idol worship then started. Even here, at the earliest stages of his history, man seems to have worshipped his God as mother. In this divine mother concept, the goddess is supposed to love her children just because they are her children and for no other reason. The divine mother is all-loving, and whatever we might do, we have only to cry out for her and she is supposed to forgive everything and gather us into her protective, nourishing bosom.
From these mother-centred days, religion slowly moved to father-centred attitude, wherein God was considered as a strict, but kind, father. He expects us to obey his laws, to live as his “Image”, and to fulfil what he expects of us. In case of default in any of his expectations, he inflicts severe punishments; but if we are obedient and industrious, humble and productive, he makes us his successors.
In general, most religions are now at this stage. Yet, it must be admitted that the concept of God as the supreme mother will never leave this world as long as man craves for his mother’s unquestioning and all-giving love.
Thus there was movement from the matriarchal to the patriarchal view in religion. Even in the patriarchal religion, as a man grew up into a fuller awareness of his own independent and separate existence and as he explored more of his own capacities in the consciousness of his fuller stature, his concept of God also gradually changed. From that of the unrelenting disciplinarian, the concept of the Lord evolved into a Divine Power of absolute mercy, love and justice.
This growth corresponds to the growth of the child into his adolescence, and from the adolescent stage, with its fears of authority-figures, his growth into the responsible status of young adulthood, when he matures and recognizes the reasonableness of his father’s authority, the blessings of his rules, and the justice of his laws. He is now able to recognize the anxious, loving, dedicated benefactor in his apparently fierce father.
The final stage is when the youthful man grows into full maturity, and the son comes to feel his intimate identity with his father. Religion at its highest recognizes this noble relationship between the devotee and the lord – a relationship of agreement, a sense of supreme nearness. Ultimately he discovers his total identity with the Lord – the one Infinite Reality, the Self in All.
This is not a mere hypothesis or an idle supposition. According to the type of people that constitute a given community at any given era of history, these different types of relationship between god are found emphasized. Sri Madhvacarya emphasized the view that the devotee and the Lord are ever separate – the Dvaita philosophy.
Sri Ramanujacharya declared that man is not totally different from the Lord, but that he and his Lord have a part-and-whole relationship. The Lord is whole while the devotees is a part of him – the Visishtadvaita philosophy.
According to Acarya Sankara, identification is the measuring rod of bhakti. When identification is complete, love is fulfilled. On identification of the ego – and all its weakness, imperfections, and limitations – with the absolute Reality, Perfection or Bliss or Supreme knowledge is achieved. Through constant remembrance of its nature of the self, the finite ego gets released from its false notions of limitations and discovers itself to be nothing other than the Supreme. In this self-discovery, it experiences complete identification with the Self. Then alone is bhakti entirely fulfilled. To live as the Self and to meet others in life while standing upon this solid foundation of the true nature of the Self is the Sankara as bhakti. He defines bhakti as the means and the end, where love and knowledge merge together to become the Experience-Divine.
Among the instruments and conditions necessary for liberation,
Bhakti alone is supreme. A constant attempt to live up to one’s own real nature
Is called single-pointed devotion.
(Vivekachudamani, verse 31).
Acarya Sankara says that bhakti is the path, but he adds a codicil explaining the term bhakti. According to him, bhakti is not a practice of beggary at the feet of the Lord, but is a constant and consistent effort at raising the egocenter from the welter of its false values to the knowledge of the Self.