June 21, 2025
One thing that is practiced universally is some sort of worship. When I love God I want to express my love directly. I think more and more people should learn to approach the divine directly. Prayer, chanting and singing are possible. You can learn to chant in your own way, using your own formula, singing in your own way. In the case of chanting it is the feeling that counts. The prayer can be in any language, in any tune and said in any way you like, but what is prayer and how does one offer a prayer?
Both for prayer and chanting it is good to create a certain atmosphere. Theoretically it should be possible for you to pray in a supermarket; but the environment helps, so that here it is better to make use of the mind's own weakness of working on the basis of association. So when you want to pray or meditate, use a certain room or a certain portion of your room and don't use that spot for anything else. So that the moment you go there, the mind already says "Prayer time". Chanting is very useful and very powerful. While we chant we are merely invoking the presence of God; and if there is a feeling of devotion, it is possible to experience when this presence is actually felt. It doesn't happen always, but when it happens it's very clear. That is what we are looking for in prayer or in devotion. It happens fairly easily while chanting. If you use one of those hymns that the great saints have used, there is some inspiration in it. It has got its own association, its own power or shakti.
In prayer or in chanting the idea is for the ego, the self, to melt away. If at the same time you are praying for something, then the self wakes up again, it becomes strong. Therefore prayer, if it is to be really effective, must be unselfish.
Again it is the brain, the intellect, that interferes. The intellect can support the heart by realizing that if there is a need, God knows it already. Knowing this, the mind or the intellect does not clamor for this or that and the prayer is just prayer, merely to feel the presence of God here. In other words the prayer is: "God you are omnipresent, let me feel your presence, let me experience your presence here." That is probably easier for me to experience in a temple or in an image of God, but once I have experienced it there, it is not difficult for me to experience it everywhere. That is when one's whole life becomes yoga, karma yoga.