Course III - Teaching 2: Prayer

Prayer as a mystical-ascetic mean is excellent in spiritual life, but at the same time is full inner life and becomes divine life by permanent contact with the Divine Mother.
Prayer is life; so it is not easily understood. Every human understanding is mere understanding and cannot comprise vast inner states or living forces brought into play in the mystical asceticism of spiritual life.
But it is necessary clearly to know both technique and prayer states of the souls, and to understand the need of prayer as an ascetic mean to divine realization.
Prayer is supernatural life of the soul, and in this sense it cannot be said it is necessary. It is, but humanly it is necessary as a mean to attain that supernatural life.
The eternal presence in the soul of its divine vocation is a latent state of inner prayer. But for practical purposes, prayer is taken as conscious attempts of the individual being to update in him that divine presence. These exercises of prayers produce a direct effect on the soul and are like little consecutive shocks that are continuously transforming the soul. At the same time they bring about reactions and inner states forming sediment of spiritual power within the individual being.
Regardless exercises of prayer, there is a particular mode of the soul that can be called state of prayer. It is a simple act, regardless time and action, which fixes statically the individual being on a singular inner point as fixed center of his existence. This state is achieved by the permanent offering of the soul by means of Renunciation.
Even though exercises in themselves can achieve noticeable conquests in the field of mental and supernatural possibilities, they are insufficient to introduce the soul into the mystery of divine states. Inner spiritual life is achieved not only by ascetic prayer but also by ascetic Renunciation. Only Renunciation transforms acts of prayer into a permanent state.
Prayer produces in the soul contingent effects and permanent effects.
Prayer gradually leads to a physical, mental, astral and psychical adjustment, to successive higher and higher states; purifies affections and mental mechanism; situates intellectual, rational and emotional values; gradually simplifies the soul complex; brings to consciousness obscure subconscious states; gives wealth of ancestral experience gathered by the unconscious of the race; produces capacity to live super conscious states; tunes the sensibility of the soul and gradually raises to a divine state, to the union with the Divine Mother.
Prayer synchronizes intrinsic and extrinsic values and supernatural and natural values transforming being into a harmonious, integral whole.
Prayer leaves in the soul a permanent feeling of peace and certainty, a consciousness of being, staying on the road, and knowing that one arrives to its end.
Prayer gives life to the soul, makes man be conscious of his true vocation and divine destiny, and creates potentials of human and supernatural forces which he needs.
Prayer gives a direct knowledge of divine verities, presenting them to the soul with no other intellectual mechanism at all.
Prayer grants the gift of knowing and the gift of teaching: the gift of penetrating into the divine mystery and into unfathomable depths of the human heart.
Prayer gives infinite patience and supernatural comprehension of human problems, and there you find the secret to be able to live a divine life in a world that is darker and darker by sorrow, ignorant passion and separateness.