Prayer and Aspiration, Part 1

When most people are asked about the nature of prayer, they respond that it is a formulation in words of a specific request to God, for some result or benefit they desire to see come to fruition. Prayer is much more than that, and need not be formulated in words. Each level of the being actually can formulate prayer. In some cases, prayer and aspiration become indistinguishable. For example, the Mother stated “Let us work as we pray, for work verily is the body’s best prayer to the Divine.” We see here the idea that the body has its own mode of prayer which constitutes putting out effort and energy in the realisation of some activity.

The prayer that issues from the psychic being is more experiential than verbal in nature. It takes hold of the being and creates a mood, an attitude, a sense of focus that does not require words.

A disciple inquires: “What is the difference between prayer and aspiration?”

The Mother responds: “I have written this somewhere. There are several kinds of prayers. … There is the purely mechanical, material prayer, with words which have been learnt and are mechanically repeated. That does not signify anything much. And that has usually only one single result, that of quietening the person who prays, for if a prayer is repeated several times, the words end up by making you calm.”

“There is a prayer which is a spontaneous formula for expressing something precise which one wants to ask for: one prays for this thing or that, one prays for one thing or another; one can pray for somebody, for a circumstance, for oneself.”

“There is a point where aspiration and prayer meet, for there are prayers which are the spontaneous formulation of a lived experience: these spring up all ready from within the being, like something that’s the expression of a profound experience, and which offers thanksgiving for that experience or asks its continuation or asks for its explanation also; and that indeed is quite close to aspiration. But aspiration is not necessary formulated in words; or if it is formulated in words, it is almost a movement of invocation. You aspire for a certain state; for instance, you have found something in yourself that is not in keeping with your ideal, a movement of darkness and ignorance, perhaps even of ill-will, something that’s not in harmony with what you want to realise; then that is not going to be formulated in words; that will be like a springing flame and like an offering made of a living experience, asking to grow larger, be magnified and ever more and more clear and precise. All that may be put into words later, if one tries to remember and note down one’s experience. But aspiration always springs up like a flame that rises high and carries in itself the thing one desires to be or what one desires to do or desires to have. I use the word ‘desire’, but truly it is here that the word ‘aspire’ should be used, for that does not have either the quality or the form of a desire.”

“It is truly like a great purifying flame of will, and it carries in its core the thing that asks to be realised.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter IX Aspiration and Prayer pp. 84-85