Prayer Is Resurrection – In Gita Verse 7.23 Men of small intelligence worship the demigods, and their fruits are limited and temporary. Those who worship the demigods go to the planets of the demigods, but My devotees ultimately reach My supreme planet.
Krishna when he uses the – small intelligence – he means ignorant. The person who is ignorant regarding himself that he is a human being. He still wants to live in his unconsciousness. All his prayers are directed towards the goal, manifestation of the objective world. Krishna never denies the fact that we have to live in this objective world but we should not forget that now we have been given birth by the universe as a human being so we have brought the potentiality to grow in consciousness. When we direct our prayer for the goal of the objective world we manifest the goal but it is temporary. It will not make any difference in us as a human being. So we always live in the vicious circle of manifesting desire. Our whole life will go in for the manifestation of one after the other desire.
Look back into your own life when you have certain goals and if it has manifested how long it will remain with you. As soon as it has manifested the whole charm has gone. Again we set up a new goal and run after that. It is like a mirage. Small intelligent or ignorant people will not get a hint from their own experience. So they remain as they are.
But Krishna says that My Devotee means a person of self-alertness he will see the futility of again, again manifesting desire doesn’t take them anywhere so they change the direction from outward to inward journey. Instead of praying they become prayerful.
WHAT EXACTLY IS PRAYER?
PRAYER IS AN EXPERIENCE OF RESURRECTION, A REBIRTH, the birth of a new vision, a new dimension, a new way of looking at things, and a new way of being. Prayer is not something that you do: prayer is something that you become. It is a state of being. It has nothing to do with the words that you utter in the temples, mosques, churches. It is a silent dialogue with existence. It is to be in tune with the total with the whole. To fall in harmony with the whole is prayer.
The experience is so enormous that it is impossible to be exact about it. It is indefinable. All definitions fall short. Each definition says something about it, but only something. Much remains unsaid.
And prayer is such a vast experience that it contains contradictions. So one can say: Prayer is silence – and he is right, absolutely right. And another can say: Prayer is a dialogue – and he is right too, because prayer is a dialogue in silence. Now, dialogue and silence seem to be contradictory. In dialogue you speak, in silence you hear. In dialogue you communicate, in silence you are simply there – there is nothing to say.
What can be said to God? He knows all that you can say in the first place. You can bow down. You can celebrate. But still your bowing down, your celebration, your festivity, your thankfulness, your gratitude, they are still ways of speaking. You are trying to say something without words, because words are very small and the heart really wants to say something.
So it IS a dialogue, although silent. It is a communication in a sense, because you are there and the whole existence becomes your beloved, the whole existence becomes a ’thou’. And yet there is no ‘I’ and there is no ‘thou’ – both disappear. Both meet and merge into one unity, one organic whole. Just as the dewdrop disappears in the ocean, you disappear. There is no separation between you and existence, so how can there be a dialogue?
Both the definitions are true. Those who say prayer is a dialogue – Christians say that, Jews say that, Hindus say that – they are right. But they are talking only about one fragment of the enormous experience called prayer. Buddhists say: There is no dialogue. Jainism says: There is no dialogue – because there is no ‘I’ and no ‘thou’. There is absolute silence. They are also right, but then it is very difficult to be exact about prayer.
Krishna says that My devotee means self-alert person – His prayer is subjectivity. It is not an object that can be analyzed. In fact, you cannot show your prayer to anybody. And if somebody insists that “I don’t see any prayer in you,” you cannot prove it either. It is like love – less like water, more like love. That’s why Jesus says: God is love. Love is also indefinable.
In nutshell if I will say then both the ignorant person and self-alert person does the prayer but the context is different. For an ignorant person’s prayer is a demand and for a self-alert person the same prayer is resurrection.
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