Text: Quotes on prayer from Home Study Course, unit 2, Lessons 5, 6, 7 and 8: "Prayer is the desire basis of meditation and out of which meditation grew. Prayer is the mightest of man's powers, for through prayer -- if understood and rightly used, and accompanied by action -- man may have anything he desires, attain the loftiest heights, or extend his powers to others for their exaltation. Rightly and knowingly used, prayer can transform one's own condition or that of the whole world. If prayer is not rightly and knowingly used, the time consumed is wasted, for it will be of no avail." HSC, Lesson Five, page 75. The concept of prayer, as he and Lao explain, is wrapped up in the giving/regiving cycle. (Law of One) This means that taking only or praying for a giving to you is null and void unless that received is regiven again. I find this giving/regiving idea difficult to grasp. It sounds very much like the Rosicrucian Law of Amra. Here is part of their explanation: "You ask God for peace, happiness and prosperity to be given to you, but you take peace, happiness and prosperity away from another by malicious gossiping about your neighbor or treating your servant unjustly, thus taking happiness away from him or her, or by misrepresenting the product you are selling. Until you balance your desire for peace by giving peace, or happiness by giving happiness, or prosperity by giving prosperity, your prayer will be voided by you, yourself. The only way you can have happiness given to you by the Light of Love, which God is, is for you to give love to others. You cannot take happiness or love. You can only give it. If you give love, it will as surely be given you as light shone into a mirror will reflect light back from the mirror." page 77 "Prayer is just meaningless words if not felt in the heart; just as music is no more than sound if it does not reach the Soul. Prayer to God is a realization that the Soul of man is ONE with the Universal Soul. It is not an appeal by man to God. It is a communion between the divine man to the divine God of man. As such, it is the mightiest of man's powers, but when prayer is but words, not coming from the Soul, it is no more effectual than the hundreds of prayers written and distributed throughout the streets in Asia or prayers written into a disc and whirled to repeat themselves by turning the prayer wheel swiftly." page 84 "Those who thus pray might just as well not pray, for prayer is a union of Soul of man to Soul of God, and words alone cannot make that union." page 84 "When you pray for God to show His love for you by giving your field good crops, you must yourself give your love to your fields to regive His giving. Your love given to them is God's love given to you for regiving. Your love and God's love are ONE. Its manifestation is TWO in giving and regiving by that TWO is the ONE HEARTBEAT of God's body, even as the swinging of the pendulum is the TWO of the ONE source of their manifestation." page 86 "He who can say in his heart, "I and my Father are one," and feel the ecstasy of that unity, is continually IN PRAYER, even as he is continually IN LIFE and continually breathing. His prayer is like unto his inward-outward breath which is forever with him, forever vitalizing him. Every life should be a continuous Mind-Communion with God. "How shall I pray and when?" we say to you, "As you live and breathe continually, and as you are in life and love continually, so shall you be in prayer continuously." And as the air you breathe surrounds you abundantly, awaiting your need of it, so is that which you would ask for awaiting you in abundant supply; yea, even to overflowing fullness." page 87 "Realize, therefore, that prayer is not for the purpose of asking for something you wish to have. It is for the purpose of realizing that you already have what you have asked for. All power exists in the universe and is yours when you do your part in bringing it to you. You already have all the love of all the universe. Prove what I say to you by giving love out from you. You will find that all of the world loves you in the measure that you love the world." page 91

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