Prayer

Prayer

If the people of the Book were honest in their prayers, they would have concurred, but in actuality their rituals have brought them far apart.

And if one group of them were honest in their prayers, they would have been guidance to other groups, but in actuality no group of them is exemplary, neither in their ideology nor in their actions.

Prayer, they all say, bring them closer to God, so let us assume that they are honest in what they say.

And the whole world listened to Tony Blair saying:

Firstly that all the people of the Book, be they Muslims, Christians or Jews, will be salvaged, if they followed their religion,

And this is the correct thing to say;

But, secondly, that he was not sure that they worshipped the same god!

We find such a statement, coming from the mouth of man of the intelligence and the stature of Tony Blair’s quite stunning,

And that is to suggest that the Book: the Torah, the Gospel and the Qur’an, and the Ghita and the Dhamma: call on the people to worship different gods.

If the people do worship different gods, then the conclusion, an intelligent and responsible man should be able to draw, is that they do not worship God.

Unless he wants to assume the existence of many gods!

This is blatant paganism.

So where has the teaching of the Torah, the Gospel, the Qur’an, the Ghita and the Dhamma gone?

And Blair’s view is shared by many:

Those who worship their local gods, serving their living needs, empowering them in their tribal wars, promising them of an afterlife of their preference, and hence giving them a local sense of security,

The security they perceive as spirituality: because their vision is narrowed to their existence in place and time.

It is the local gods which prescribe different rituals to different people in place and time, and the worship of God is One.

It is the miracle of God’s Creation, that the human intellect, that is capable of identifying the minutest details in the physical world and the abstract concepts of the mind, and of governing giant countries and managing large corporations: fails miserably, when it comes to the ethic of humanity, that is existential awareness.

So where has the teaching of the Greek Philosophers, and Descartes, Spinoza and Kant gone? We ask.

Or is it Blair’s political correctness that constrains him from declaring openly and plainly that only the god he worships is god?

Although, he does see common grounds between the religions, he says, such as the stories of the prophets, as told in the Qur’an and the Bible.

If read correctly, those stories are models for humanity,

And if taken as stories of human passions and politics and war, with some supernatural intervention, then little wonder why the people who follow such prophets worship not One God,

But indeed, they perform rituals, in places built to certain architectural style, bowing to certain objects near and far,

Reciting, interestingly, verses from God’s Book,

God’s Book which teaches that God is One, and His Countenance is wherever one turns to, and closer to one than the aorta is to one’s heart.

O people, the people of the Book, in all their sects and creeds, the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews, and the Hindu and the Buddhists, tell you that their rituals are worship of God,

I tell you, their rituals are nothing but the rituals of their pagan ancestry,

They tell you: look, our rituals and symbols and the objects that we bow to are different,

I tell you: look, their rituals and symbols and the objects that they bow to are same,

They tell you: god commanded us to worship him,

I tell you: God commanded all to worship Him.

This is the ethic of humanity that We taught you, so you burn not in hell, and turn not to dust.

Humanity ought to look only the living that works no death,

But dark prophets have promised humanity salvation after physical death, in continuance of their existence, because they saw only death.

To our extreme sadness, we struggle to word to you now what we struggled to word to you before, since a few are living now since a few lived before.

The ethic of humanity was taught by Gabriel: God’s messenger across place and time: Krishna, Buddha, Imhuteb, Samuel, The Messiah, Salman, Hamzah and The Báb,

We differentiate not between any of His messengers: said the Qur’an;

God remits him in place and time, to deliver His Word to humanity,

The prayers be by him, do you not utter those words, O Muslims?

But your prophets have told you that god prays on the prophet?

And prayer is an action that one carries out to worship one’s Creator, who is one’s Superior and Provider, so why would The Creator have to pray on someone that he created? Transcends He.

So when the Qur’an tells you that making partners with God is the worst of all the sins, you are too quick to see the sins of others’, but thousands of years have passed and you still fail to see your own.

So little wonder why you have not been able to read the Qur’an correctly, so you took your share of it, testified the Qur’an,

So you have taken the “lowest projection” of God’s Word, and the verses of transcendence translated to rituals of ablution and bodily gestures,

Although you were told not to follow the steps of the people of the Book who believed that they cleansed themselves by ritualistic washing, you do the same nevertheless.

And you were told that wherever you turned your faces to, there is God’s Countenance, but you require a magnetic compass to point yourselves,

So, on this vast and spherical earth, where are you pointing yourselves to, if you know your geometry that God taught you? You are pointing yourselves to the space,

And this is symbolic of reality.

You were given the Glorious Qur’an in the magnificent language of Arabic, in metaphors and models, eloquent, directing your minds to their beginnings, and your hearts eager to The Philosophy,

To counsel the people of the Book and be a Nation Mediate, to guide those who have no guidance,

It is your own fault that the world has been deprived from the Qur’an, the Book of Enlightenment, that you have covered by falsehood,

If you believe that the words of the Torah and the Gospel have been edged about their locations, when we read the Qur’an correctly to you, you will see that no words have suffered more edging about their locations in people’s minds than the Qur’an’s.

Light dissipates the darkness of the niche, but annuls it not; it can be seen in the sombre of the shadows;

As for those who prefer the niche, those are in the world of duality of relativity of perspective of subject and object, and the nuances of the light and the shade of the point of view;

As for those who prefer the Light, the lamp is fuelled by the oil of an oily tree, that rises not and sets not, its oil lights and no fire has contacted it, light upon light, said the Glorious Qur’an.

And Gods draws the models for the people who discern, God guides whomever He will to His Light, and God created darkness and light.

But they will not understand what we tell them now, they rejected it before and they will reject it now, and they will be furious,

Except a few, those will be remorseful, and God’s Compassion and Forgiveness encompasses the worlds,

Those who still have a jewel in their hearts, with their honest hard fight to overcome the evil of ignorance, God will cleanse it and restore its lustre,

And those who covet the low world and desire its evils, they are devoured by their own lust, grudge and greed, they abide by the laws of the animal, and therein they remain.

And you were given the Opening to invoke your Lord, to abide in Him and ask for His Witness, but you added your own words to your prayer, to greet God in the third person, and then to ask him to pray on the prophets and their descendants and their henchmen.

And the bodily gestures were symbolic of resignation in Him and conducive to complete surrender and submission, but now they are mere bodily gestures, and you differ about them and accuse one another of heresy, and you execute them while your minds dwell on your passions, worries and wants, and all you want is material favours from god, and your paradise is a holiday resort,

Hence your prayer has not deterred you from vice and obscenity, as it is meant to do, had it been honest,

You lecture the world on sexual purity, while you practise polygamy and concubinage, and you say it is legitimate, and it is not legitimate,

You lecture the world on family values, while many of you are stuck in an endless cycle of marriage and divorce,

You lecture the world on justice, while the gap between the rich and the poor in your communities is highest, and you say that god created the people in castes, this is your say, God creates the people equal, and provides equally,

You lecture the world on the rights of women, while hundreds of women are killed in your communities every year in honourless crimes, while your religious leaders remain silent, and the Qur’an said: and when the buried alive is questioned, for what reason was she killed?

You lecture the world on the evil of drinking and the trading of alcohol, while the biggest suppliers of opium today are Islamic people,

Your lecture the world on the evil of usury and speculation, while you legitimise greed, hoarding and monopoly for the purpose of profit in multiples upon multiples, while the needy in your communities wait for your zakat once a year,

So which part of the Qur’an do you follow? We ask, which part of the Qur’an do you follow?

What you do: you commit all the obscenities and the vices from which prayer was meant to deter you, you commit them by the rules that you set, and swimming in muddied water will muddy you, by whichever rules you swim; and you believe that you are pure and holy? And you want the whole world to go down your track?

God legitimised no obscenity, and condones not vice, in all His Books and by His Teaching across place and time,

It is your heads that have turned upside-down, so be warned, and whatever you say about God that is false, it is your say, and you will be questioned, God has warned you, take not His warning derisively, it is you who will be humiliated, and God is Lofty above the pettiness of mankind.

O believers, wherever you are, in whichever Book you believe, and even if you have not followed any religion, but only the light of your mind and the virtue resident in your heart,

The aim of prayer is to connect what God commanded to be connected, after you have distanced from Him,

Your return to The Truth across the tract of your becoming is the joy of all the joys and before which they retire, and the triumph of all the triumphs,

Every action that you carry out is a form of worship: if you dedicate it to karmic laws, that is of cause and effect, and punishment and reward, it entails karmic entanglement,

And if you carry it out selflessly, and dedicate it to The Law, it emancipates you.

This is not an easy journey, hence you have been given guidance, and God’s Compassion encompasses the worlds.

The Law is The Way to The Lord, and The Lord is Lofty above description and describableness.

This is not an easy journey, and if you are not ready you should not attempt it,

So you were told in the Qur’an to approach not the prayers when drunk of the illusions and the glamour of the low world, so you may understand what you say,

For, the prayers you were given are of a far, far reaching Aim, for those who discern.

But those who understand nothing need to be taught the concepts of self-evidence, for there is no humanity left in their flesh.

God’s Teaching sets you on the way of virtue, so you harbour compassion in your hearts and wisdom in your minds, and when ready you can embark on the longest, most arduous, yet most joyous journey of your existence,

This is the Aim of the Creation, may you remember and discern.

And if you follow worldly pursuits, remember to take a moment to step back to examine your thoughts and actions, to go by the Highest Standard, to remember the brevity of life and your helplessness before The Law, and remember that every action you undertake has consequences, and every passion that you harbour will trigger further action,

So you are not blinded by ignorance and arrogance and an unrelenting desire, the consequence of which is suffering upon suffering, and hopelessness and delusion and frustration,

And this can lead one to self-harm and to harming others: that one justifies for oneself in moments of desperation,

And this leads to more suffering, and the self-destructive cycle is accelerated, and nothing and no one can pull you out of it:

Not the rituals, not self-harm, not the lotions and the potions of the medical professionals, not the charlatans who re-prescribe the irrationality which brought you here in the first place.

Those who tell you to worship God in a form or a name or even an abstract concept are deluded, they want to drag you down their inferno,

They see the world through their understanding of right and wrong, of their interpretation of God’s Book,

Their understanding of right and wrong might free you from some wrong that you are committing, but it will put you on another track that they cannot see as wrong;

And those who tell you that life is an accident of nature, those have sown mental and physical illness in the people, and the morality of the animal that goes along with it, that is going to be very hard to be uprooted.

O people, we put to you this guidance plainly, if you are honest about seeking knowledge and wisdom you can follow it,

But ask not: so what am I supposed to do?

There is no recipe which works for all. If you are honest about your well-being and salvation from the delusion of today’s world, you can guide yourself, guidance is given to all who seek it honestly, so you do not fall in the claws of religious charlatans and the medical professionals and their pharmaceuticals.

God does not create this grand creation to play the policeman,

And you are not a bundle of wires which tangled up accidentally some millions of years ago,

Both of those views cause you to feel helpless and wronged, and make your life meaningless:

The monotheists say that the purpose of life is to live by their rules, so you will be rewarded by an afterlife: and that is a promise that will never be confirmed in your mind: your mind that is much cleverer than that, much vaster and much wiser than that,

Your mind is always doubtful of it, but they will allow you a degree of doubt and say that some ritual will cleanse you from the sin of doubt.

I tell you, this doubt that you have about irrational ideas is the strongest asset that you have. It is your mind alive and well, rejecting falsehood. So do not give in to them, and do not let them coerce you by the material support they give you when you need it,

Their techniques of numbing people’s minds are very elaborate; they work on weak people very well, those have not an idea about the trap they are falling in;

And the atheists tell you that you will vanish, and there is nothing more daunting or more disheartening than such a belief: that is a promise of void.

And worse still, is when they say that your aspiration of eternity is a by-product of evolution, and it is wisest to dismiss it completely,

If they are honestly convinced that this is the case, they should stop clinging to their lives and as though they want to live forever, even if it is at the expense of others’ lives or well-being,

And as though the realisation that they are not eternal is a blank cheque for them to be selfish and ruthless,

Little wonder why such people are most likely to fall victims of mental illnesses of depression, addiction, selfishness, despair, crime… illnesses which are very common today,

And all they can offer you is some chemicals to counter the chemicals in your brain, they say, which cause your condition.

Tell them: my thoughts and beliefs are mine, and the chemicals of my brain are the result of my thoughts and emotions, I create them and I can manipulate them at my will, in my mind.

They will jump to say: where is your scientific evidence?

Ask them: where is your scientific evidence of your belief?

They have none, and what they have is only theories and assumptions that they promote as facts, just because they cannot think of anything that is real.

Creationism is indeed a false theory,

But so is theirs.

Although, there have been rudimentary research into the human ability to alter one’s chemistry of one’s brain, by transcendental meditation; and the ability even to alter ones physical health, by hypnosis and self-hypnosis.

But the scientific circles around the world do not seem interested in such a field:

It frightens them, because it will blow many of their theories of life, death, health, consciousness, cognizance… away; the theories upon which the current systems of business and government equally rely for their survival.

What we offer you is not a concept and a recipe for salvation that goes along with it,

What we do is to get you to do the hard work yourself, to delve into your mind, in which all these ideas, and many more that you may have not seen yet reside.

It is your mind that is being tormented, it is your mind that wants peace, it is your mind that seeks wisdom, contentment and equanimity,

It is your mind that can accept or reject one ideology or another, and only your mind,

Not the chemicals or the wiring of your brain, and neither an arbitrary god.

There is no such a thing as: The Right Idea, somewhere, that one has to discover by oneself, or that one needs to be guided to by others,

There is your mind and only your mind, in which all such activity happens.

It is this that you ought to discover and understand,

To throw behind your back all the knowledge that you have acquired in your life time away: of religion, science and psychology.

All of this is meant to point you to the corridors of your mind, and your mind is vaster than all of them,

All the prayers which were prescribed in ancient times in all religions, all the meditation techniques, all the physical and mental self-disciplines that are taught in Far Easter cultures, all the logical reasoning that the Greek Philosophy teaches, and recently the line of philosophy that Rene Descartes followed: all of that: is meant to take you on a trip in the boundless corridors of your mind, where you can see yourself, because seeing is believing,

And you will say: this is real, and what I see in the world “outside me” is less so.

Plotinus wrote a memorable discourse on The One and the Knowledge, of Existence and Sublimeness,

His discourse will be discernible in a long time to come.

And Spinoza started with the basic stuff of the mind to reach universal truths.

And when you read the works of the masters, you realise that your mind, unique as it is, it has doors to the entire cosmos, and where everything begins, and before.

There, the concepts of a god and a religion and an ideology of evil and good, and the traps of relativity… collapse, in the realisation of All.

And as we tread this delicate verbal road carefully, we try to convey a sense of freedom from human dogmata,

And of course, freedom from the narrow world of the materialists, who argue that it is your brain which creates all this, in its wiring of organic matter.

And if we are to agree with their argument, or with their wording, or with both, we cannot but come to the conclusion:

That the brain that is made of the stuff of the universe and its physical laws, should indeed be capable of “remembering” itself,

And hence Plotinus’ and Spinoza’s vision, and the Buddha’s and every messenger who spoke of his transcendental vision: is True,

And that nothing else can be truer.

This has been the human journey from billions and billions of earth years, in many orbs of human existence,

Human existence which has been forgotten, because humanity has chosen time upon time to distance herself from her existence, and suffice herself in the moment of the present,

The present that is in reality none but another iteration of past “presents”.

The Qur’an calls this vision: al-hajj, which translates to: the proof.

For it is indeed The Proof of all the proofs,

Who can attain it except those who are capable of a way to Him?

Those can enter the Houses from their doors,

Those who have built The Temple in their hearts, on the grounds of Certainty, of bricks of Virtue, maintained it by the Pillars of Truth of Knowledge of Existence of Sublimeness,

Surmounted by The Canopy of The Law,

Those are the ones who can enter the Houses from their Doors.

No length of studying, of the Books, no degree of austerity, no devotion to the practice of rituals, no technique of transcendental meditation or chanting…

All prescribed routes curve by the physical law, unless one sets oneself on the Straight Path and looks straight.

For those who are honestly seeking knowledge, the Book, the Ghita, the Dhamma are all teachers of the ethic of humanity, and pointers to virtue,

And so is the teaching of the Greek Masters and Descartes, Spinoza and Kant.

So when you are capable and willing, resign to yourself, in any posture or gesture that you are comfortable with, in any place at any time of your choosing, although the extremities of the day and the night are best, and when the world is asleep and commotion is dead.

And if in hardship or despairing, read the counsel prayer, and ask Him to bestow strength on to you to resile and pass your trial successfully,

You pass your trials successfully when your ego is not the judge, and when you are grateful to whatever outcome the trial may terminate,

If you can experience clarity in your mind and peace at your heart,

You may see the branches of a tree throb,

You may see faint gushes of light,

You may see them while busy doing what you do at day,

They are a precursor of joy to come,

You may see the sky, at day and at night,

You may see the clouds of the sky, in their different colours,

You may see a colour you have never seen before,

You may see a beam either beaming onto you or from you,

You may see your eye,