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When You Pray,
Dare Ask to Whom You Speak
By James Donahue
A few years ago I taught an adult Bible class in a fundamental Bible Church in Michigan.
There
was an elderly man named Archie in my class who I admired very much, not only because of his sincere interest and concern
for the people around him, but also because of his ability to pray. When Archie prayed he seemed to bring the entire class
in direct contact with a higher authority. It appeared as if a soft glow surrounded his face.
Archie was dying. He
had an illness that was sapping the life out of him daily. He made frequent visits to the local hospital where my wife, Doris,
worked as a medical technologist, so we were more aware of the seriousness of his illness than most of the others in our church.
A
few days before he died, Archie was in the hospital and Doris was alone with him for a few moments, drawing blood from his
arm for testing. He looked at her and said something very strange.
"When you pray," he asked, "have you ever asked
who you are praying to?"
"No, I never have," she answered. After all, we always assumed we were praying directly to
God. Who else would we be praying to?
"Why don't you ask the question the next time you pray. Then let me know what
you find out," Archie said.
Doris told me about this strange conversation that night when she got home. Mostly out
of curiosity, we both prayed and asked the question.
We didn't get an answer right away. Archie was long dead and buried
before it came to us. But the answer did come and it was a shock. It took us a long time to accept it.
The answer to
that prayer changed our lives forever. We now have an entirely new understanding of just who God is, and the role of existing
religious orders in world affairs. Our discovery was that all religions are based on a little truth. All religions also are
deeply theologically flawed. Allow me to explain.
Author and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson once wrote about an experiment he tried with prayer. He said he declared
that God was Isis, an ancient Egyptian Goddess, and began praying regularly and fervently to her. After a few weeks he said
he noticed that his prayers were being answered.
After that, Wilson said he changed his focus and began praying to
another thing, it may have been a rock or a statue of some forgotten war hero in the local park. Again, after a few weeks
of fervent prayer, he said he again received results.
No matter who or what Wilson chose as his god for the experiment,
he said he found that he eventually had his prayers answered.
Last year I noticed another interesting experiment tried
by popular night radio talk show host Art Bell.
It was summer in 1998 and both Florida and Texas were suffering from extreme drought. One night Bell got all of his radio
listeners to think very hard about rain in Florida, where forest and brush fires were raging out of control. He was asking
for collective thought, with many people wishing for rain all at the same time. In effect, they were all praying for rain.
The
next day it rained in Florida. Bell was astounded to think that his experiment may have worked. Just in case it was a coincidence,
however, he decided to try the experiment again. A few nights later he had his listeners think collectively of rain for Texas.
And sure enough, the next day it rained in Texas.
What Wilson and Bell were discovering was the same thing that Doris
and I learned. God is not a big spiritual grandfather looking down on us from above. He is us.
That is what is meant
in Genesis 1:26-27 when the Bible says "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness?" and "So God created man
in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
In other words, we are the
creators of everything around us. Collectively, we all make up the total of what God is. Our thoughts, collectively, have
the power to make the world, the universe, and everything around us exactly what we want it to be.
Taking this concept a step further, we
all create our own individual universe. Everything we see is observed from our own personal perspective. Nobody else can envision
things in that personal way that we see them. What may be lovely to one person might well be an ugly object to someone else.
We
have an unexplored power in our minds. Mere thought, if applied in the right way, can bring dynamic change. This is why people
are able to heal themselves of cancerous growths by merely thinking the disease away. Others are healed of various maladies
at religious prayer meetings. Sometimes just wishing hard for something makes it come true.
Mental thought is a powerful
force. It is more powerful than most people realize. I believe that people, collectively, can head off wars and change the
course of history. This is what is so disturbing about the Christian belief in a looming apocalypse. With so many people believing
this event is going to happen, we are in great danger that it will really happen.
I believe that thing inside of us
that we call a soul is a piece of God. God manifests Himself in us as a light that literally glows from within our bodies.
We all have the ability to see this light, or aura, although most of us stopped looking at it when we were little children.
We learned that seeing auras was not an acceptable thing to do in this society. If you work at it, however, you can teach
yourself to see them again.
My fear is that we, as humans, have failed our destiny. We were supposed to be so much
more than we are. Instead of using our powers and abilities, we have created a social order that demands suppression. Instead
of evolving into the god-like men and women we were supposed to be, we have de-evolved.
We have created foolish religious orders that are so filled with rules and restrictions we have made ourselves prisoners of them.
What is worse, each religious group thinks it is right and all the others are wrong. Most wars have been fought over religious
differences.
It was never supposed to be this way.
I believe there has been a force hard at work in sub-space
that has done everything possible to chain the human race and prevent its growth. I have written about this alien force in
the past. Zecharia Sitchin calls them the Annunaki. I believe the Annunaki are aided by the angels.
Why
would these alien forces want to work against us? There is a logical answer to this question. The Bible is correct when it
says we were created higher than the angels. We have the potential of being their masters and making them our servants. Rather
than allow us to evolve as we were supposed to, the angels skillfully plotted against us from the start. They planted ideas
in our heads that made us their slaves.
We humans must realize who we are, and understand that the angels are not a
gift from God. How can they be if we are God? They are aliens who do not belong in our world. They invaded here thousands
of years ago, and through skillful mind control, have been the secret masters of our lives.
The great lie that bound
us is exposed. The concept of looking outward to an external god has always been wrong. The only great religious leader who
understood this was the Buddha, who taught his followers to look inside themselves to find God. He taught techniques of meditation
and self-control. Some of his principles are still practiced by followers of that faith today, but, unfortunately, the angels
have skillfully done their dirty work here, as well. The Buddhist faith is also tarnished.
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