Yuva Bharati - December 2006 - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

YUVA BHARATI DECEMBER 2006
PRARTHANA
(Thoughts on Prayer)
The Kendra Prayer is the soul force behind every Kendra worker. It is
chanted every day as a part of Sadhana with total surrender and
dedication. The Divine inspiration and the spiritual energy that
emanates from the prayer enable and equip the worker to carry on the
allotted work all through his life without the least expectation of any reward
in any form whatsoever. It is this cumulative strength of collective prayer
that sustains the purity, ability and strength of the organisation. Even the
drab and mundane daily routine and activities of the Kendra worker are
sublimated into a high order of spiritual sadhana by the Kendra Prayer
chanted and rendered everyday at the holy feet of the Ishta Devata - Bharat
Mata. That is why Mananeeya Eknathji could describe or define
Vivekananda Kendra as a spiritually oriented service mission.
Prayer, in fact, is universal. It is so because it is spontaneous to man. It is
as spontaneous as the need and desire to satisfy hunger or to quench the
thirst. Man, confronted with the immensity of the universe around him, is
filled with a sense of awe, wonder, mystery and often fear. Even before
language came into being, man must have prayed. Prayer does not
necessarily require the medium of a language. It requires a heart moved
by intense feelings.
Anthropologists say that prayer was born out of fear and helplessness. The
primitive man according to them felt threatened by the mighty forces of
Nature against which he had no adequate defense. So, out of his
helplessness, he invoked the same forces to help him and provide him a
safe passage through life. Earliest prayers were the outcome of this feeling
of fear and insecurity.
This may be true in most cases. But it cannot be universalized. At all times
there were men whose level of consciousness widely differed, from the
lowest to the highest. The awareness and approach to the universe and
various forces in nature depended upon the level of consciousness. Prayers
also varied accordingly. Even today we find that all human beings do not
have the same level of consciousness. While some have reached high