The Power of Intention in Prayer

We talked about this jokingly. Suppose you're praying, but your mind is confused, so instead of praying to Krishna, you're praying to 'Shri Kumar' or something. You spend your whole life doing that. Do you feel like God is going to say, 'No, no, you got my name wrong, so you wasted this life'? No, it's your intention that counts. There's a story of an Orthodox monk sitting in a cave for many years saying the Jesus Prayer. A bishop of a higher rank came and heard him say with lots of tears, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, don't have mercy on me a sinner.' He was confused; he had learned it wrong and for years he said 'don't have mercy.' So they taught him the right version: 'have mercy on me.' He was very sad that all his life he prayed it wrong. They taught him the right version and they left on a ship. As they left, he completely forgot the words. He was like, 'Oh my God, I forgot!' So he ran behind them, but they were in the middle of the sea by then. The bishop and his assistant look back and they see a man walking on the water, coming and saying, 'Sir, please tell me, I forgot the prayer.' Then the bishop says, 'I'm so sorry I corrected you. Please say the same prayer, that's the prayer for you.' He realized the monk had earned so much spiritual wealth. If your heart is in the right place, then the method is not that important.

Having said that, don't use it to short-change God. Don't say, 'Actually, I could have done it 30,000 times today, but I will say it thrice because God knows I love him.' Don't use the fact that the method is secondary to be lazy. What is most important is your intention. Is your intention to surrender yourself to God? Then the right method, everything will unfold for you. But if your intention is to use God to get personal benefit, then it's going to be very difficult because first your intention has to be cleaned up. When we hear of the Atma, the Holy Spirit, we should actually be in awe. What are you being informed about in satsang? Leave everything aside. What did you understand from this fact that there's an Atma? That God illumines us from within. This illumination is in the form of a living being, a living presence who is intelligent, who is alive. The highest intelligence is living inside you—not your body, you. You are being informed of this fact because you are being told about the possibility to merge with Him. And before that merging is fully apparent, you can create a loving relationship with Him. That is spirituality, because it is about Spirit. Any spirituality without Spirit is not spirituality.