Page 39 - All India Magazine Jun-2025

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 believe 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 good. 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 some-
body 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.
*
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. Do you un-
derstand?
CWM 5: 141-43 The Mother

The flame of the aspiration must be

so straight and so ardent
that no obstacle can dissolve it.

The Mother, CWM 14: 74

All India Magazine, June 2025 39