Esta é a versão em html do arquivo http://www.rosicrucianfellowship.com/rays/q&a_1103.pdf.
G o o g l e cria automaticamente versões em texto de documentos à medida que vasculha a web.
Para criar um link para esta página ou armazenar referência a ela, use: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:vPegX8vIuD8J:www.rosicrucianfellowship.com/rays/q%26a_1103.pdf++Does+Prayer+Actually+Work%3F+&hl=pt-BR&ie=UTF-8


 

O Google não é associado aos autores desta página nem é responsável por seu conteúdo.

Os seguintes termos de pesquisa foram destacados:  does  prayer  actually  work 

Page 1
Q
UESTION: This may be a bit of an odd
question but I was hoping you could
answer. How is prayer a useful thing and
can it actually help, in terms of material
matters? It seems illogical that prayer
alone could actually do any good. Is it just a matter
of superstition or does prayer actually work?
Answer: Perhaps, in answering your question, we
might ask you, Can thinking help? If you think(!)
that thinking makes possible or facilitates achieving
results on the material plane (why else do you make
plans, schedule your day, re-mind yourself to do
things?), what then may be said of prayer, which may
fairly be called God-thinking? As commonly under-
stood and practiced, prayer is is a petition to God for
the purpose of obtaining a certain result. While
Scripture tells us that if we ask we shall receive, the
asking must be in faith, that is, doubting nothing, in
full confidence that our heavenly Father always
knows our needs and will grant what we both
earnestly desire and what our self-created destiny
permits. In a shallow sense, we are praying much of
the time, not to God but to the universe to grant us
our heart’s—or more likely, our liver’s—desire, that
is, respond to our worldly, selfish, and bodily wants.
Thus the saying, be careful what you pray for, you
might get it. If we contend that we were not praying
for what we got, a retrospect will show we were
thinking about it, dreaming about it, desiring it, and
petitionary prayer is desire prayer, I want prayer.
Prayer in its highest form is adoration, which
enables us to affirm that the Creator is ever attuned
not only to our personal needs and existence, but to
all facets of creation, leaving nothing to so-called
chance. When we affirm not only God's omniscience
and omnipotence, but His operation in our individual
lives to our spiritual advantage, both with and with-
out our cooperation, we can with assurance live more
committed, effectual, productive lives, knowing that
we shall receive as we give, shall reap as we sow.
Prayer is the highest form of mind and heart con-
trol, where soul-infused consciousness is focused on
the Source and Center of all being: As you think in
your heart, so are you. A supreme irony is that that
which is most truly present, is often that which is
least acknowledged, for while in God we live and
move and have our being, our senses, particularly
our eyes, seem to set limits on what exists. Prayer
makes contact with this Being in which we have our
being. God is always in contact with us, but only
with conscious intention and unremitting earnest
seeking do we begin to realize our contact with Him.
Question: Would you please give your opinion of the
charismatic movement, now popular here—that is,
being prayed over with the hands and passing out due
to being touched by the spirit.
Answer: “Charisma” means a special divine gift,
which, in practice, seems to be distinguished most
prominently by glossolalia, or speaking and praying
in tongues. In order to investigate thoroughly and
understand clearly just what is taking place in the
“charismatic movement,” it first is necessary to
know something about man’s invisible bodies and
the invisible worlds in which he lives.
Occult philosophy teaches that man, the individu-
alized, indwelling Spirit, is threefold, corresponding
to the triune nature of God: The Father (or Will
Principle); the Son (or Love-Wisdom Principle); and
the Holy Spirit (or Activity Principle). This three-
fold nature of man, the Spirit, is correlated to his sev-
eral vehicles as well as to the invisible worlds about
us. The dense or physical body is correlated to the
Will Principle and the material world; the vital, or
38
RAYS 03
Does Prayer Actually Work?
The Charismatic Movement
READERS’ QUESTIONS

Page 2
etheric, body is correlated to the Love-Wisdom
Principle and the Etheric Region of the Physical
World; and the desire or emotional body is correlat-
ed to the Activity Principle and the Desire World.
During man’s past evolution, he was given various
religions to assist in his spiritual development, each
race being provided with a religion suited to its par-
ticular needs. All race religions are of the Holy Spirit,
and the Race Spirits (mighty members of the
archangelic life-wave) govern all things concerning
their respective races.
In The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception it is stated
that race religions have been given to help humanity
to overcome the desire body and prepare it for union
with the Holy Spirit. The full operation of this help
was seen on the day of Pentecost. As the Holy Spirit
is the Race God, all languages are expressions of it.
That is why the apostles, when fully united and filled
with the Holy Spirit, spoke with different tongues
and were able to convince their hearers. Their desire
bodies had been sufficiently purified to bring about
the wished-for union, and this is an earnest of what
the disciple one day will attain to—the power to
speak all tongues.
The true union with the Holy Spirit, or the con-
scious ability to speak in other tongues, represents a
very advanced stage of evolution, and one which is
not attained until many initiations have been accom-
plished. Anyone who has reached such a high stage
of unfoldment has the ability to speak all tongues,
since the Holy Spirit (Jehovah) is the Lord of the
Race Spirits, the authors of the race languages.
However, there is another means of speaking in
unknown tongues, and that is by being mediumistic
or subject to control by invisible discarnate entities
or spirits. A medium is a person whose dense and
etheric bodies are loosely connected and subject to
control by discarnate spirits in the Desire World. He
or she corresponds to the subject of a hypnotist in the
Physical World. This is a negative condition wherein
the person’s activities are not under the control of his
own will. Any activity not under the control of one’s
will is of a questionable nature and usually is wholly
undesirable because it may lead to complete obsession
or control of one’s dense body by another entity.
The phenomenon of “passing out due to being
touched by the spirit” appears to be a similar mani-
festation, in which the individual’s act is beyond the
control of his own will. It would be hard to picture
the apostles, for instance—who, as said, attained their
abilities through positive development—as passing
out during their moments of revelation. The person
who develops positively will retain full conscious-
ness and will be able to utilize his new powers bene-
ficially and in complete awareness of what he is doing.
Emotions are intensely active during the various
manifestations of the charismatic program. To the
occult student this is quite significant, because when
a person is in a highly emotional state, he is most
easily affected by superphysical forces over which he
has no control. To allow another entity to direct one’s
actions on the spiritual plane is even more dangerous
than permitting such direction on the physical plane.
As far as “being prayed over with the hands”
(which we assume refers to the practice of “laying on
of hands”) is concerned, this, too, can lead to nega-
tive occurrences. No matter how sincerely the person
praying may be motivated to the good, he does, in a
sense, impose his own will on the person upon whom
he is laying his hands. This again could lead to exter-
nal direction of that person’s activities and develop-
ment, a practice, from the occult point of view, to be
shunned.
Certainly, we believe in praying for other people,
but such prayers always should be offered in the con-
text of “Thy will be done,” for who are we to know
what lessons must be learned by, or what destiny
awaits, another individual? Only the higher Powers
know this and safely can deal with the matter. We can
pray for other people from a distance as well as when
we are next to them, and, indeed, we do not believe
that the personal contact of “laying on of hands” is
desirable if the prayer is to be a petition that “His will
be done” on the other individual’s behalf.
As evolution proceeds, the bodies of men are
becoming more and more refined and responsive to
superphysical forces. The dense body and the vital
body are generally becoming more loosely connect-
ed. Hence it is obvious that there will be increasing
evidence of response to these forces. However, peo-
ple should not allow themselves to become passive
enough to be dominated by others, no matter how
honest, upright, religious, and well-meaning they
may be. Our task is to keep our will active, our hearts