Come! Let Us Join to Pray to Make 2016 A Happy New Year!

Today is Friday, January 1, 2016 according to the Common Era that is now almost global. I wish all a Happy and Prosperous new year 2016!

In my life time so far spanning six decades, our world has progressed much in many fields. But unfortunately, that progress has done little to a good majority of our fellow beings.

Our world is still a world of inhuman acts and chaos, mercifully not everywhere, all the time! As intelligent humans possessing a divinely piloted mind, we have many collective challenges ahead!

The year that just passed, the 2015, was not a pleasant one for millions of our brothers and sisters elsewhere. There have been so many incidences of human cruelty against fellow beings, whether that happened in the name of law enforcement or otherwise. The Syrian refugee crisis and the manner in which other nations responded to that crisis are all there for us to introspect. Then there have been natural calamities aggravated by human mismanagement such as the Chennai floods that happened just recently in 2015.

But on the positive side, I see great humanitarian leaders like Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Unified Germany who has been reportedly adjudged as the contemporary world's second most powerful person and the most powerful lady. I consider the German people fortunate now to have Dr.Merkel as their national leader having all the desired qualities that a good leader should have- the 4C's representing competency, character, courage and compassion. While all the other world leaders showed varying degrees of arrogance or insensitivity towards the problems of the Syrian refugees due to their lack of courage and compassion, it was Dr.Merkel who stood out as a humanitarian champion for the cause of the refugees courageously facing challenges from within her own country. Nothing surprising then that the Time Magazine had chosen her as the Person of the Year (2015)!

Leaders like Dr.Merkel may be few in this world now. The number of good individuals also may be lesser as of now. But surely and definitely, in the coming generations, such people will definitely increase and this world would gradually change from bad to good!

And I am confident that the present day crisis of the world is a passing phase and our world is not going to be a hopeless disaster facing the ultimate Armageddon, as some pessimists keep believing.

Our collective wisdom will keep increasing as we move forward through the future generations. Our future generations will learn the advantages of being good, rather than being bad people. But the collective learning may not be anything very quick!

Ultimately good will prevail over bad. 

Do you feel an inclination to agree with me?

Come! Join me! Let us pray to make this year and all those coming years to bring joy and prosperity to all! 

The Possible Processes of Miracles that Happen on Earth!

My wife is a regular watcher of Christian TV programs and channels. As the time for watching the TV programs is limited, she has now prioritized one such TV show in Malayalam language that is beamed in the morning on all weekdays on Surya TV.

That one is the Blessing Today TV program of Brother Antony Damien and his wife Sister Kshama Damien. 

Thousands of people go to attend the live programs that they organize at different locations. The programs routinely have bible preaching sessions, prayer sessions and miracle sessions that are told as divine interventions of  Jesus Christ whom Christians regard as the Son of God.

But Blessing today is not the only such program. There are several other such programs, some of which also get sponsored in some TV channels. And such programs are not limited to Christians alone, either.

God's answer, to prayer requests in some miraculous manner, is one of the key feature of these programs. Apparently, prayers of people like Brother Damien are heard and answered by God without any doubts. People are overwhelmed by such miracles and more and more people get flocked to such gospel preaching and prayer events.

Sometimes I too watch these programs on TV. My wife knows me as a person having a different view regarding my understanding and approach towards spirituality, God and religion.

So she asked me once: Do these miracles happen in reality? Do our prayers get answered in miraculous ways as they are projecting? 

My answer to that question is both an yes and a no. Yes, God's acts sometimes appear as miracles to people. But it is not God who is always responsible for the miracles. Miracles in human life happen due to many reasons. To make that clear, I have to explain things with some background information that I know now as the truth. Truth that may not be so palatable to people for various reasons!

The first universal truth about God is this: God is Almighty and God is Love. 

All living beings on all worlds are children of God because God has been the source of Creative Power to every one, all the time. God is also the source of all universal and natural laws. God's power is limitless and if at all it has any limits it is by His own will.  

But God is not a respecter of persons that He keeps answering to all individuals for all things requested just as a call center employee! That means, God works for some universal cause rather than giving some personal attention to some individual's personal requests. In that process, perhaps some individuals seem to benefit occasionally. But that also does not mean that God is not aware of the individuals or their problems. God knows each and every individual personally! 

God is the first cause, the center of every thing and the universal father of all and  his divine love and blessings are equal to all beings regardless of their religion, understanding or status. God is for one and all regardless of what people understand about Him. 

That means, the God of the Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and all other such religions are one and the same. God has personality, but has no form as we humans understand. People may know God , pray and worship Him  the way they understand Him with their limited knowledge.

No humans ever has seen God. The existence of God has been revealed to humans by various subordinate agencies of God from time to time ever since human beings got evolved on earth. It is difficult for humans and even some of the super human immortal beings to comprehend God. 

Human mind therefore adopts the technique of anthropomorphism (visualizing and equating God as similar to humans with super human powers) to understand God. Though this is an innocent and simple outcome of the human limitation, it might lead to much conceptual problems and gross errors in human understanding about God. Human tendency to worship historical heroes, saints and various natural or human made objects is due to this. 

There exist millions of invisible beings who all have an origin and are all normally immortals with unique personality and intelligence much higher than humans and several of those orders of beings are present on earth performing various responsibilities for and on behalf of God. From times of eternity God has also distributed many of his powers and prerogatives to many of His immediate divine associates who originated either directly or indirectly from Him . The divine beings who are directly formed from God the first source, for all practical purposes are same as God Himself because they are all perfect and think alike.

There exist billions of planets which are inhabited by human like beings in the whole of the present universe. But we have little knowledge about them due to our human limitations.

As far as earth is concerned, the lower order immortal and invisible beings present, keep functioning for God. These beings while much superior to humans, are much inferior to higher order divine beings and may likely to adopt thoughts and acts that are not in alignment with the will of God, just as it happens among human beings.

Doing acts done willfully against the will of God is evil and sin, whether it is committed by humans or the immortal invisible beings. Sin and evil cause the individual to depart from God's grace which ultimately causes a permanent curtailment of life and personality for both humans and the invisible immortals. For humans it may happen too earlier. For the immortals, it may happen after a long time. 

Unfortunately, earth is one such planet among the billions where a large number of immortals who are assigned to function for God have willfully decided to act against the will of God and spoil His universe plans. But there are also a minor group of immortals who are still working according to the universal plans of God present on earth. The willful disobedience of the majority of immortals under the command of one of their senior members actually caused earth to become a world cut off from the direct universal circuits of God. This has been the situation for almost two million years now and in reality earth is a quarantined world.

The quarantine effect caused humans the ability to see the immortal beings present around them. It has also caused the humans to limit their capacities with regard to knowledge, memory and life span. It also curtailed their ability to know about other worlds and systems of universe administration directly. It also caused careless humans to commit errors, sins and evil just as their invisible supervisors who are present around them.

The rebellious invisible personalities present on earth know about their ultimate fate. They know that some time later they all would lose their graceful, immortal status for ever. But they are determined to doom the humans too along with them. As they are doomed by moving away from God, they want the humans of earth too to share their fate. 

Human beings of earth for the past thousands of years are living in a hostile situation and environment as they are living in a world where the God-appointed service providers have become rebellious and gone against God. There is a background to how all these happened. I am not going to that now. The laws of God are universal. Those who willfully go against the will of God and his universal laws perish sooner or later, whether they belong to the order of the immortals or the humans.

But God is ever compassionate and loving. He knows the situation of earth. He had installed alternate arrangements to provide enough guidance to the humans that they escape the perils at some point of time.

One of the arrangement is a unique power of God that is vested directly with all human beings. It is a fragment of God Himself which resides as an invisible personality within each and every human being. That is the god or divine power within humans. This unique divine power is very feeble in all normal beings but is capable of transacting independently with the individual and the invisible immortals beings present outside. The presence of this God fraction functioning within the hardware of human brain is capable of certain communications with God too.  Ordinarily, human beings are not conscious of the presence of this god power in them. But this is the power that gives guidance to humans regarding the Godly attributes of love, beauty, good, compassion and the consciousness about God Himself. 

For those rare human beings who have transcended their human egos and mind levels might become conducive agents that they would be in a position to learn the interactions of the divine power that resides in them more clearly than others. Such individuals might possess some such mind powers to foresee and foretell events that might be viewed as some super human ability. Such persons are valuable to God and therefore they might even have a few invisible servants of God around them to act as invisible protectors. The self mind of such individuals would be in a position to discern some interaction that take place between the god-power that resides within them and the external invisible servants of God.  

A person who lives synchronized with the God power within becomes a candidate for advancement of life and immortality even after material death. 

In all normal worlds, the lower order immortal beings are visible (at least some orders) to the human like beings of those worlds and the former give assistance to the evolving humans of those worlds to develop to higher levels of progress by giving them necessary guidance and knowledge from time to time. They help the humans of the living planets to live a material life peacefully and fruitfully in accordance with the plans of God.

But on earth, the majority of these human supervisors joined hands to form an independent world that is not according to the universal laws and became cut off from the direct communication links of the rest of the universe. These rebels are now determined that the majority humans too are doomed like them. They now adopt all techniques possible to make humans deviate from God and perish.

Humans have their own will and personality which are also provided by the universal laws of God. Since human will is originally intended as free and independent, God or any of his agencies will not tamper with that free will of humans at any time. The god power that lives in humans only gives feeble advice to humans who are willing to listen those. Humans who are too self conscious and egoistic are therefore likely to miss the guidance of the God power that is within them. 

It may also be remembered that there are also a group of the invisible immortals present on earth who still work for the universe administration of God. They are the ones who did not go against God to join with their fellows who rebelled.

So, there exist a larger group of invisible personalities who are rebellious to God now on earth. There is also a smaller group of invisible personalities who are working for the universe administration of earth and working hard to restore earth back to the universe system. 

God is capable of restoring order quickly without resorting to a longer duration plan. But God, for His wisdom would not do that. Perhaps, God would not like to break his own universal laws for restoration of order in a planet like earth! God could also destroy all rebels in a moment. But He is handicapped and limited by His own love and compassion to his creatures.

Now coming to the question of miracles that I mentioned in the beginning of this article. Why and how miracles happen in the lives of human beings?

As I have mentioned, our earth has been in existence cut off from the universal communication lines for thousands of years because the majority of immortal beings responsible for maintaining earth under the universal administration of God wanted to be independent of their own. Thus they caused a few worlds to fall in to an erroneous administration functioning not according to the will of God. 

They wanted the humans to be manipulated the way they liked in their independent worlds. They wanted the humans to regard them as gods and worship them instead of the universal law that stipulated all living beings to worship only the Universal Father God. 

But a smaller group among them realized the error and did not agree to follow the majority. They remained to be loyal to God's will as they all used to be earlier. 

The larger group wanted humans to deviate from God, while the smaller group tried to guide humans to live according to the will of God. The rebellion caused both groups on earth becoming invisible to humans as the power system that enabled them to be visible to the eyes of humans got adversely affected.

Human generations that came later lived on earth under confusion. They have been under the whims of a larger group of invisible and super human beings who tried all tricks to confuse humans about God and make them not to understand the truths. While the smaller group has been trying to help humans to alleviate  their difficulties that happened due to the rebellion.

The larger group mixed some truths with more untruths cleverly so that differentiating truth from untruth becomes difficult for humans.

Human difficulties and problems such as diseases, genetic disorders, poverty, racial conflicts, religious conflicts, political conflicts, apparent triumph of evil over good, etc began to rise on earth, all due to the acts of the larger group and also due to the people who fall easy prey to the clever ways of this group. Earth problems  also got enhanced due to people who have a liking and inclination to shift to evil willfully.

Even good people who are too willing to follow the directions of the god-power that is within them began to face problems of human life due to the acts of evil men and the unseen evil forces that are present on earth.

The unseen agencies of God, however have been tirelessly working to reduce the problems of mankind by various techniques including some true revelations regarding God and some insights in to the root causes of human problems.

If humans do not use their intelligence and wisdom, they become gullible preys to the clever tricks played by the invisible super mortals and deviate from realizing God's will. They are likely to find falsehoods and half truths as truths. Under such circumstances, it becomes too difficult for humans to discern truth from untruths.

God or more correctly the agencies of God ( the divine beings and the several orders of invisible immortal servants of God) come to the help of praying humans when they are indeed in such helplessness. At times they create such circumstances in such a way that other humans are of help to them. But when it is very very essential, they may also use their divine powers to help humans that might appear to humans as miracles.

They may also act in some miraculous manner if such miracles are going to initiate a thought process in some humans that eventually prepare them to become good people who are willing to discard evil and follow good.

But unfortunately, the disloyal super humans may also use this as an opportunity to sway people away from God by using some miracles which cause men and women to be greedy for money and power. They often find success. 

With this much background I would like the readers to read this article too: Miracles-do they happen?

I am not sure how much you could understand.

I am also not sure whether the message I wanted to convey made any impact in your mind!

If yes, please feel encouraged to ask me your doubts using the comments facility.

I Pray Now This Way Everyday to God (The Brief Story of the Evolution of My Prayer ! )

During my early childhood, I still remember the way my grandmother (mother of my father) taught me to pray to God. I was too young at that time and was perhaps just a toddler. I was just beginning to understand and talk in my mother tongue, Malayalam. Yet I remember the day when she attempted to teach me the prayer and continued to pray that way later for many years. Often silently before I go to sleep in the night ! 

That prayer was simple and I demanded nothing much from the unseen God but just a request to take care of me and those in my family.

Later in the adolescent years partial learning of science and the readings of the writings by the so-called rationalists made me confused about the existence of God to some degree, though not fully. But yet I remembered God in my thoughts quite often. My prayer had now become shortened to just a salutation, that too in my thoughts. And it remained that way later for many years so long as I faced no threats and troubles.

But during the days of problems and sickness, I used to pray to God for his help and often I found that His comfort reached me miraculously. 

For me God was like an unseen father somewhere and I was just comfortable not to have any form of image of Him in my mind while I thought about Him. The Creator of the Universes cannot be comprehended and encapsulated in the form of some image of His creations. That reasoning was quite logical.

Though the religion of my parents, Christianity and the writings of its holy book, Bible initiated and enhanced my concepts of God, it was never complete or perfect. In reality, it was also some cause for me to doubt in the existence of God.

As I have explained in many of my earlier blogs in this site, the Urantia Book was the source ( and it still is) that gave me the opportunity to view life altogether differently and in a wholesome manner. The encounter with this source of information  I consider as the greatest fortune I got in my life. The immense treasure of revealed knowledge in this book has been the agent that allowed my imperfect concepts of life and God to advance and progress to much refinement.

My belief in God has now become stabilized and I have no doubts about that now. Besides, I understand why this world is like what it is now. The immense plans of God are getting more and more clear to me and I am able to appreciate and admire it even with my limited mind capacity. 

My prayer too have evolved. I realize the importance of keeping in touch with God through my prayers. But I do not pray to Him for worldly pleasures and material goals ! He knows what I need !

Now, I spend some time every day almost always in the evening to have our family prayer. The prayer, translated in English, is something like the following: 

" Our Heavenly Father !

This time we come to your presence, O God. Thank you for the opportunity that You have provided for that.

We thank you and praise you for keeping us well under your care and protection.

We thank you and praise you for keeping us under your protection for all these years right from our childhood.

We thank you and praise you because you are the source of our lives.

We thank you and praise you because you have given us the right to be considered as your children and the right you have given us to call you as our father.

We thank you for keeping us protected from all the dangers and sicknesses and other troubles that we face now in this world. We thank you for giving us the strength to over come such problems. We thankfully remember the times you have provided us comfort during the times of our miseries.

We thank you for giving us all that material things that we deserve to live  in this world so far even at times when there are problems and turmoil all around us.

We know, God, that we live in an imperfect world of evil and we have the faith in you that you will not allow us to be perished here.

We believe in your eternal plans for us which give us the confidence to live peacefully and confidently in this world. 

God, we know and admit that we are imperfect humans of limited knowledge and capacity. We know that we have human weaknesses that cause us to commit errors in our lives. We earnestly pray for forgiveness for all the errors and sins that we might have committed in our lives knowingly or unknowingly.

We pray for your forgiveness for all errors that we have committed in our words, thoughts and deeds.

We also pray to you for strengthening us in our body, mind and spirit so that we could live a life in accordance with your wish in this world.

Father, keep guiding us daily so that we live according to your wish. Give us the wisdom to know what is good and what is bad always.

God, we pray for all in the family and our dear ones. Keep them under your watch and protection.

We pray for all individuals in our family. Provide each one what is needed. Strengthen each one in body, mind and spirit. 

We pray for our world and all the people of this world. Have your mercy and providence to all in this world. 

Do not allow evil to pervade this world. Give us the knowledge and the wisdom to transform this world to one as per your liking just as those others in the heavens.

Teach us to live following the good path. 

Give us the mental strength to forgive those who might work against us and do harm to us either knowingly or unknowingly. 

Strengthen us to do our daily works sincerely and truthfully and in a manner that is pleasing to you.

We know God that our lives in this world are only for some years. But we also know about your promise of giving us a future life of eternal adventure even after our material deaths in this world. Make us God, worthy of that future everlasting lives.

Keep us God in your protection and care in our future days and years so long as we live in this world. 

Give us all the good that we may need.

In the name of Jesus Christ we pray.

Amen. "

Dear reader, you might wonder why my prayer ended in the name of Jesus Christ. As a person born in a Christian family and as per the Christian traditions we used to pray that way earlier. But to admit frankly, I was not sure of its purpose. But now, the book I have mentioned above removed all those doubts. I now know who is Jesus Christ for sure and why I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Elsewhere in my other blogs you could read much about those.

Would it be of any Benefit to Pray to God ? What Should Be Remembered When You Pray ?

Modern man is perplexed by the thought of talking things over with God in a purely personal way. Many have abandoned regular praying; they only pray when under unusual pressure—in emergencies. Man should not be afraid to talk to God.

The simple prayer of faith evidences a mighty evolution in human experience to that of a bona fide consciousness of the reality of the eternal God - the Universal Father (God) of all intelligent creation.

Prayer induces the human ego to look both ways for help: for material aid to the subconscious reservoir of mortal experience, for inspiration and guidance to the super conscious borders of the contact of the material with the spiritual.

Prayer ever has been and ever will be a twofold human experience: a psychological procedure inter associated with a spiritual technique. And these two functions of prayer can never be fully separated.

It is altogether fitting that man, when he prays, should strive to grasp the concept of the Universal Father (God).

No prayer can be ethical when the petitioner seeks for selfish advantage over his fellows.  In all your praying be fair; do not expect God to show partiality, to love you more than his other children, your friends, neighbors, even enemies. 

Remember, even if prayer does not change God, it very often effects great and lasting changes in the one who prays in faith and confident expectation. Prayer has been the ancestor of much peace of mind, cheerfulness, calmness, courage, self-mastery, and fair-mindedness in the men and women of the evolving races.

Prayer need not always be individual. Group or congregational praying is very effective in that it is highly socializing in its repercussions. When a group engages in community prayer for moral enhancement and spiritual uplift, such devotions are reactive upon the individuals composing the group; they are all made better because of participation. Even a whole city or an entire nation can be helped by such prayer devotions. Confession, repentance, and prayer have led individuals, cities, nations, and whole races to mighty efforts of reform and courageous deeds of valorous achievement.

Prayer, unless in liaison with the will and actions of the personal spiritual forces and material supervisors of a realm, can have no direct effect upon one's physical environment. While there is a very definite limit to the province of the petitions of prayer, such limits do not equally apply to the faith of those who pray.

Prayer is not a technique for curing real and organic diseases, but it has contributed enormously to the enjoyment of abundant health and to the cure of numerous mental, emotional, and nervous ailments. And even in actual bacterial disease, prayer has many times added to the efficacy of other remedial procedures. Prayer has turned many an irritable and complaining invalid into a paragon of patience and made him an inspiration to all other human sufferers.

No matter how difficult it may be to reconcile the scientific doubtings regarding the efficacy of prayer with the ever-present urge to seek help and guidance from divine sources, never forget that the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment.

Do not be so slothful as to ask God to solve your difficulties, but never hesitate to ask him for wisdom and spiritual strength to guide and sustain you while you yourself resolutely and courageously attack the problems at hand.

The soul of man requires spiritual exercise as well as spiritual nourishment.

Religious ecstasy is permissible when resulting from sane antecedents, but such experiences are more often the outgrowth of purely emotional influences than a manifestation of deep spiritual character. Religious persons must not regard every vivid psychologic presentiment and every intense emotional experience as a divine revelation or a spiritual communication. Genuine spiritual ecstasy is usually associated with great outward calmness and almost perfect emotional control. But true prophetic vision is a super psychological presentiment. Such visitations are not pseudo hallucinations, neither are they trance like ecstasies.

The human mind may perform in response to so-called inspiration when it is sensitive either to the uprisings of the subconscious or to the stimulus of the super conscious. In either case it appears to the individual that such augmentations of the content of consciousness are more or less foreign. Unrestrained mystical enthusiasm and rampant religious ecstasy are not the credentials of inspiration, supposedly divine credentials.

The practical test of all  strange religious experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to observe whether these phenomena cause an individual:

1. To enjoy better and more complete physical health. 

2. To function more efficiently and practically in his mental life. 

3. More fully and joyfully to socialize his religious experience. 

4. More completely to spiritualize his day-by-day living while faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of routine mortal existence. 

5. To enhance his love for, and appreciation of, truth, beauty, and goodness. 

6. To conserve currently recognized social, moral, ethical, and spiritual values. 

7. To increase his spiritual insight—God-consciousness.

To some individuals prayer is the calm expression of gratitude; to others, a group expression of praise, social devotions. sometimes it is the imitation of another's religion, while in true praying it is the sincere and trusting communication of the spiritual nature of the creature with the anywhere presence of the spirit of the Creator.

Prayer elevates man because it is a technique of progressing by the utilization of the ascending spiritual currents of the universe.

Genuine prayer adds to spiritual growth, modifies attitudes, and yields that satisfaction which comes from communion with divinity. It is a spontaneous outburst of God-consciousness.

God answers man's prayer by giving him an increased revelation  of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness. Prayer is a subjective gesture, but it contacts with mighty objective realities on the spiritual levels of human experience; it is a meaningful reach by the human for superhuman values. It is the most potent spiritual-growth stimulus.

Words are irrelevant to prayer; they are merely the intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual supplication may chance to flow. The word value of a prayer is purely auto-suggestive in private devotions and socio-suggestive in group devotions. God answers the soul's attitude, not the words.

Prayer is not a technique of escape from conflict but rather a stimulus to growth in the very face of conflict. Pray only for values, not things; for growth, not for gratification.

If you would engage in effective praying, you should bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:

1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.

2. You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.

3. You must surrender every wish of mind and every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. You must have experienced an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values.

4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.

5. You not only recognize the God's will and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual doing of the God's will.

6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the  attainment of divine perfection.

7. And you must have faith—living faith.

[Adapted from the Revelatory Paper on Evolution of Prayer  as included as paper-91 in the Urantia Book ]

[Please also take some time to come back and read my previous  blogs and blogs on other topics as well. You can reach to those by clicking the links in this page. I would be happy if you take some time to express your views using the comments facility down below. Please  use the same comment facility to interact with me for any doubts or clarifications that you might have. Here is the page link that gives the   list of all my blogs  where you can open all my blog titles.]