Many of us pray to God with faith, love, and devotion. We believe that our prayers will help us find God, will lead us to God. Unfortunately, this is not true. Prayer is very important indeed. It helps us to connect to God. It builds faith. It is the very foundation of our life. As said, ‘You can do very little with prayer, but you can do nothing without it’. Of course, we must pray, connect and communicate with the power we call God. But if we pray, and if we don’t know to whom we pray, and what we say, then, we don’t pray, we just bray! In fact, do we even know who God is? God is not who we think God is. God is not a person or a saint. God is a power, a power beyond human definition and comprehension. God is the Supreme Immortal Power.
Prayer is not a scheme to find God. And meaningless, ritualistic prayers, mere lip movement is pointless. Unless our prayers grow and translate into a deep love and yearning for God, compelling us to go in quest of the Divine, we will never realize God. We will simply live and die. We will pray to God, asking for favours, begging the Divine to turn our dreams into reality and this may indeed happen, but, unfortunately, we would have not achieved what prayer is meant to achieve. What is the purpose of prayer? The end goal of prayer is to liberate us from the cycle of death and rebirth, and unite us with the Divine. If we truly seek God, we must realize that we cannot find God through prayer. To begin with, we must seek God, more than we seek anything else. We must only want God, more than anything else in the world. We must want God so passionately, that we must ask questions though it may seem like blasphemy to our religion. To realize God, we have to go beyond religion. While begins our journey towards God, it won’t finish that journey. Religion will not make us realize God, even though it is the foundation of faith. We can pray through the day and chant, read the scriptures, but we will never find God. Why? Because we cannot find God. God must be realized.
Why do most people pray? Usually people pray because they want God to fulfil their wishes, they want God to solve their problems — it could be problems related to finance, health, relationships, education — the list is endless. This is not what we should ask God for. We must ask God for God. True prayer is to stop asking for things, for products, for the fulfillment of wishes. True prayer is surrendering to God, accepting God’s Divine Will, and living life with just one objective – to realize God.
We must realize that God is not a person that we can find. Will we find Lord Shiva on Kailash Mountain? Or Krishna midst his gopis in Vrindavan? All our Gods and Goddesses are a figment of our imagination. God is a Power — a Power that is everywhere, in everything. God is SIP, the Supreme Immortal Power. The sun that glows, the wind that blows, the water that flows, are all a part of God’s Power which we cannot see. God cannot be found, has to be realized!
-Air Atman In Ravi
