"Oh Lord! give us unto this day our daily bread".
"Lord! Thank you for giving us your love"
"Lord! Help us in times of need and grief"
These and a milloin other forms of chants, with the names of Lord, Bhagwan, Allah, Jesus substituting each other, are a part of all our daily lives. So what is this prayer, is it a conversation with God? Is it a request for more? Is it a way of expressing gratitude? Is it to praise the almighty?
We all chant a prayer in joy, in pain, in grief, in triumph, in love, in hate, in fear, in anger, and in every other kind of emotion. There is a prayer for every situation, in every language, of every race and for every cult.
But how sure are we that our prayers are being heard, how sure are we that our prayers will be answered, how sure are we that there is someone above us all looking after us, providing us in our endeavours? None of us billions who pray every day can be certain about this, there are a few who would claim to be, to have seen this almighty or that they meet him everyday in their dreams or through other modes of-lets say-heavenly communication. Yet with no solid proof, the only force common amongst all our diversities is this conviction in the existence of the unknown.
Prayer is more of a psychological phenomenon than a spiritual one. The point of a prayer is not to convince someone far above us to hear our pleas but to make believe that there is someone else who will help us succeed if the need arises. When in grief, one turns to God so that he can find someone share his sorrows; the omnipresent knows it all, so it’s not embarrassing to tell him about one's misdoings; God is the almighty forgiver, so you can turn to him to ask forgiveness and relieve yourself from the curses of your conscience. When in fear, pray to God which gives us the confidence that there is someone stronger who will save us from our perils. He is the punisher and will guillotine the tyrants.
All these drive me to sometimes think if God - the creator of the universe, creator of the earth, creator of all life, nature and man, is he something synthetic, a figment of man's imagination?
A soldier on a battlefront prays to God for triumph, there is a similar prayer being chanted on the other side of the same battle field. Now who do you reckon would God listen to? I guess to the one who comes out of his mental block first and fires a bullet on the target in front.
We have created a kind of illusion around us, of the existence of this comforter, given him all the traits that a young boy ‘let’s call him Calvin’ finds in his soft toy. He looks onto him for help when in a problem, for support when in fear, to share his grief, his anger and his joys.
Similarly as we grow up, the figment of our childish imagination Hobbes is broken, and we move on to start believing in GOD.
PS: I am not an atheist; I point here to a slight variant of the Advaita theory.
