A fragment from the book: Prayer The Art of Believing
PRAYER is an art and requires practice. The first requirement is a controlled imagination. Parade and vain repetitions are foreign to prayer. Its exercise requires tranquility and peace of mind, "Use not vain repetitions," for prayer is done in secret and "thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."The ceremonies that are customarily used in prayer are mere superstitions and have been invented to give prayer an air of solemnity. Those who do practice the art of prayer are often ignorant of the laws that control it.
They attribute the results obtained to the ceremonies and mistake the letter for the spirit.
The essence of prayer is faith; but faith must be permeated with understanding to be given that active quality which it does not possess when standing alone.
"Therefore, get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding."
This book is an attempt to reduce the unknown to the known, by pointing out conditions on which prayers are answered, and without which they cannot be answered.
It defines the conditions governing prayer in laws that are simply a generalization of our observations.
The universal law of reversibility is the foundation on which its claims are based.
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If you knew how you would feel were you to realize your objective, then, inversely, you would know what state you could realize were you to awaken in yourself such feeling.
The injunction, to pray believing that you already possess what you pray for, is based upon a knowledge of the law of inverse transformation.
If your realized prayer produces in you a definite feeling or state of consciousness, then, inversely, that particular feeling or state of consciousness must produce your realized prayer.
Because all transformations of force are reversible, you should always assume the feeling of your fulfilled wish. ...
