The pandemic can bind mankind together. When all else seems to fail, prayer might help. Prayer not necessarily of words and sounds. Though there are prayers in every religion and each comes packed with the power to move mountains, the words themselves become listless through overuse. The words remain, but lose their meaning, and the fervour they carry, they often turn into a repetitive pattern that only soothes our conscience and nothing else.
What we need is a different timbre of prayer. Prayer linked to the soul, not to any religion, or texts. An original prayer. Prayer, not only for oneself and one’s dear ones, but beyond. To include their dear ones, and the dear ones of that expanded list. As well as those not held dear. To include every person each of them comes in touch with, till there are ever expanding, widening circles that are touched by one’s prayer.
Prayer seeking release from the troubles that seem to have fallen like a net over the whole of mankind, tightening its grip sometimes here, and sometimes there, but never releasing its stranglehold.
Prayer that needs no intermediary, no negotiator with the divine to send it forward. For prayer, truly meant, will reach where it is sent, a missile of faith guided by love. Prayer that rises like incense from the soul. Wordless, felt with the entire being. Unselfish. All encompassing. Compassionate towards one and all. A prayer that recognises the divinity in each of us; and links it to our own to aspire to touch the greater divine, nameless, formless, unknown.
The world needs our prayers now. Prayer that can release us from fear, which in turn will strengthen faith. And true faith which can prevent, heal, cure. Faith is powerful medicine. The miracle maker. Whether faith comes from belief in a specific deity, religion or creed; faith in the power of prayer needs to be absolute. And the prayer to be powerful needs be pure, and not bound within the walls that try to exclude ‘others’.
Such a prayer that links us all cannot but succeed in helping the world as a whole free itself from this mesh.
No one needs to learn how to pray. It is an instinctive act, that comes unbidden in times of extreme need. And in this time of extreme need let our prayers mingle and coalesce to rise as one breath to reach some power, beyond our puny skills and patchy knowledge, that can reach out to help. When everything else seems to fail, prayer might help. True prayer, that is.
Sathya Saran
saran.sathya@gmail.com
Author & Consulting Editor, Penguin Random House