The Essential Difference Between Prayer and Aspiration

While there is a real difference between prayer, as an external action and aspiration as an inner status of being, there is also connection between the two which can be extremely potent in terms of bringing forth the aspiration into the external world and making it a living and real thing. When prayer is done purely by the external being, it can take on a mechanical or rote feature. The real potency comes when it is harnessed by the psychic being to become the instrument of turning the aspiration into a form that can change or even transform the mental being, the vital being or the physical body. If powerfully enough expressed it can go beyond and have impacts in the environment, and in the society. Harnessed to the psychic aspiration, prayer can become a potent force for change.

While prayer is generally directed toward a being who can influence events, it can also be directed to the living consciousness manifesting the universe, and through prayer, an alignment can take place so that the individual takes on the expressive force of that universal consciousness.

The Mother writes: “To be clearer, we may say that prayer is always formulated in words; but the words may have different values according to the state in which they are formulated. Prayer is a formulated thing and one may aspire. But it is difficult to pray without praying to someone. For instance, those who have a conception of the universe from which they have more or less driven out the idea of the Divine (there are many people of this kind; this idea troubles them — the idea that there is someone who knows all, can do everything and who is so formidably greater than they that there can be no comparison; that’s a bit troublesome for their amour-propre; so they try to make a world without the Divine), these people evidently cannot pray, for to whom would they pray? Unless they pray to themselves, which is not the custom! But one can aspire for something without having any faith in the Divine. There are people who do not believe in the existence of a God, but who have faith in progress. They have the idea that the world is in constant progress and that this progress will go on indefinitely without stopping, towards an ever greater betterment. Well, these people can have a very great aspiration for progress, and they don’t even need any idea of a divine existence for that. Aspiration necessarily implies a faith but not necessarily faith in a divine being; whilst prayer cannot exist if it is not addressed to a divine being. And pray to what? One does not pray to something that has no personality! One prays to someone who can hear us. If there is nobody to hear us, how could one pray? Hence, if one prays, this means that, even when one doesn’t acknowledge it, one has faith in somebody infinitely higher than us, infinitely more powerful, who can change our destiny and change us also, if one prays so as to be heard. That is the essential difference.”

“So the more intellectual people admit aspiration and say that prayer is something inferior. The mystics tell you that aspiration is all very well but if you want to be really heard and want the Divine to listen to you, you must pray, and pray with the simplicity of a child, a perfect candour, that is, a perfect trust: ‘I need this or that (whether it be a moral need or a physical or material need), well, I ask You for it, give it to me.’ Or else, ‘You have given me what I asked of You, You have made me realise concretely those experiences which were unknown to me and are now marvels I can attain at will; yes, I am infinitely grateful to You and I offer a prayer of thanksgiving to sing Your praise and thank You for Your intervention.’ It is like that. To aspire it is not necessary to direct the aspiration to someone, towards someone. One has an aspiration for a certain state of being, for knowledge, for a realisation, a state of consciousness; one aspires for something, but it is not necessarily a prayer; prayer is something additional.”

“Prayer is a personal thing, addressed to a personal being, that is, to something — a force or a being — who can hear you and answer you. Otherwise you can’t ask for anything.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter IX Aspiration and Prayer pp. 87-89