Our level of Being attracts our life—and prayers of silence from our Being attract the response from above.

The Original Purpose of Prayer

“Prayer was originally to ask for help to lift one to a higher level of consciousness. The Lord’s Prayer is designed to make a man remember himself, for an entire change of his being, so that help can enter him.” Maurice Nicoll, Simple Explanation of Work Ideas, p7

“Each person has an ideal, an aspiration for something higher. It takes one form or another, but what matters is the call to this ideal, the call of one’s being. Listening to the call is the state of prayer. True prayer is establishing this contact and being nourished by it, nourished by this special material, which is called Grace.” Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being, p198

The Foundation: Recognizing Our Nothingness

“To pray—to enter into touch with a higher level—a man must know and feel he is nothing, in comparison with what is above him. Unless a man feels he is nothing prayer is useless, in just as practical a sense as a match is useless if wet. A man is pure in his emotional life in proportion as he feels his own nothingness, his own ignorance, and his own helplessness.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, p133

The Quality Required: Sincerity and Purity

“It is useless to pray from a wrong attitude and so a man must look into himself and see from what in himself he prays because no communication with a higher level is possible through what is insincere and false in him. Only what is sincere and genuine in him can touch a higher level. For example, any trace of vanity or self−conceit or arrogance stops communication with a higher level.” The New Man, p132

“To get a response to prayer, prayer must be of a certain quality. It must fulfill certain conditions, and one is that it must originate from an absolutely pure and genuine emotional feeling, otherwise it cannot reach its goal. So a man must purify himself from self, in his emotional life, and this means he must develop emotionally. That is, he must begin to love his neighbor.” The New Man, p134

The Universe as Response to Request

“Seen aright, the Universe is response to request.” The New Man, p135

“The Work says: ‘Your being attracts your life‘. Without knowing it, a man or a woman may be making request and so getting a response from the Universe that he or she does not like.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p154

“If the Universe, visible and invisible, material and psychological, gross and fine, as apprehended externally by the senses and internally by the mind and heart, is response to request, then you will see how important it is to realize what kind of requests you are making in order to understand why you get the response that you are getting. The level of your being enters into request as much or more than your knowledge. You may ask intellectually for happiness but not see how factors that govern your being, as love of your negative states, your grievances, your secret jealousies, your laziness, your dislikes, and so on, are asking for something quite different, and that the Universe is responding to these factors in your being that you are secretly willing and affirming.” Psychological Commentaries, p154

Scientific Approach to Prayer

“A man must have some idea about what he is asking for, and must persist in his request and believe that it is possible to obtain a result. And just as a scientist, in his particular mode of prayer to the natural Universe, makes a request once he has the idea that he can discover something and feels it is possible, and modifies again and again his request by trial and error and by ingenuity, until he obtains a response through finding the right request, so a man who prays to the spiritual Universe must have the same faith, patience, intelligence and power of inventiveness. A man must work and labour and invent in regard to his own development as much as the scientist must in regard to making a new discovery. The scientist will get a response if things are right as regards the request, and so will the man who prays if his request is right for himself. But he must know himself and understand what to request. To ask something that is impossible or to ask what will only harm oneself is to ask wrongly.” The New Man, p136

Vertical Respiration: Prayer and Grace

“The essence of vertical respiration is the alternation between prayer. and benediction or grace. These two elements of vertical respiration manifest themselves in all domains of the inner life—mind, heart and will. Thus a relevant problem for the mind, which is not due to curiosity or intellectual collectionism, but rather to the thirst for truth, is fundamentally a prayer. And the illumination by which it may be followed is the corresponding benediction or grace. True suffering, also, is fundamentally always a prayer. And the consolation, peace and joy which can follow are the effects of the benediction or grace corresponding to it.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p100-101.

Beyond Personal Request: The Three Forces

“To pray only for oneself, to work only with regard to oneself and those connected by self-interests with one cannot give any result. Three forces must enter prayer, and this is too difficult to speak of at present, but you will find them in the Lord’s Prayer if you think long enough about it.” Psychological Commentaries, p159

Prayer as Consecrated Intention

“The energy that’s carried in intention and attention is extremely powerful. And when you come back and look at prayer not as, you know, words jabbered to God, but as a consecrated intention, lifted then you can begin to see that you’re really dealing with a channel, a bandwidth, that has profound power in it. And so, you know that most liberal Christians have given up believing in the power of prayer these days. It’s only because their attention is not good enough. But that as you begin to really begin to collect, focus, and be present to the conscious psychic energies of attention, will, intention, love, powerful things happen that don’t have a localized connectivity. They come in from somewhere else.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2014 Jacob Boehme, 1:01:35 3d.Thurspm.TeachingGWS14.

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Logion 6
His students asked him,
"Do you want us to fast?"
"How shall we pray?"
"Should we give offerings?"
"From what foods must we abstain? "
Yeshua answered,
"Stop lying.
Do not do what you hate,
because everything here lies open before heaven.
Nothing hidden will remain secret,
for the veil will be stripped away
from what lies concealed behind it."

Logion 14
Yeshua says...
If you fast,
you will only be giving birth to sin in yourself.
If you pray,
your prayers will come back to haunt you.
If you give to charity,
you will create evil within your own spirit.
If, however, you travel through a region
and they welcome you,
eat whatever is put in front of you,
and heal their sick.
For it is not what goes into your mouth which contaminates you,
but what comes out of it.

Logion 37
His students asked him,
"When will you manifest yourself to us?
How long will it be
before we see you as you truly are?
Yeshua replied,
"On the day you strip yourselves naked
like those little children,
and take your clothes and trample them
on the ground under your feet without shame,
then you will be able
to look upon the son of the Living One
without fear."

Logion 48 
Yeshua says...
Should two make peace in one house,
they could speak the word,
"Move!" to a mountain,
and it would obey them.

Logion 104
They said to Yeshua,
"Come, let's fast and pray."
He said to them,
"Have I sinned? Have I been overcome?
No, only when the bridegroom leaves the bridal chamber,
will it be time to fast and pray." 

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Read more Impressions on the idea of Being.

Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019

Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being, Shambhala Publications, 2010

Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.