That remains to be seen; I can't tell you at the moment. What one ought to do will become apparent for each and every one. But the best thing one can do is, of course, to get oneself (and keep oneself) on an even keel.

But one inevitably reaches a stage where one must pray. People are not normally willing to do so. When I used to give my big lectures and many people came to me with their problems I asked them, "Do you ever pray to God?"

"No, that is just fanciful nonsense!"

"But it isn't at all!"

I have never said the Lord's Prayer."

"But you don't have to say the Lord's Prayer. You need only think of what you want to have help with. Then you will get help! That will do it! It doesn't matter if you believe it or not."

Providence is not so small-minded that it says, "Would you please get down on your knees!" Those beings who hear our prayers know very well how people are. Believing is not an act of will; either one believes or one doesn't. It is not something one can will oneself to do. One can certainly use one's will but still one doesn't believe. It doesn't help if I say to you that two plus two is twenty-seven. You may want to believe it but you can't. You know all too well that it isn't true. It doesn't matter that one doesn't believe; one has to pray all the same.

I, for example, pray many times a day. Praying has nothing to do with joining one's hands or kneeling. That just hurts one's knees, and that is a pity for the micro-beings. No, one should just be quite ordinary and talk to one another, to friends and acquaintances, and just think of God or what one wants help with. Every single time I feel a dark impulse approaching I have my thoughts on God, and I get help with everything. My cause had its birthday last Friday [24^th March 1978]; it was 57 years old. It was then 57 years since I had my cosmic experience, and since then I have had a perfect contact with God. I do not do anything about which I do not get impulses. I must have impulses from above if I am to do something or not. Even if it seems foolish I do it, and later it turns out to have been the right thing to do.

People think it is naive and primitive to pray, but it isn't at all. We are surrounded by spiritual beings; they are not somewhere out in outer space. There can well be a large gathering of them here among us. Those who hear our prayers are Christ-beings. When a human being reaches the perfect double-poled (Martinus is here referring to the male and female sexual poles in both men and women, which come into balance when we become Christ-like human beings. MMcG) state and gets cosmic consciousness, his consciousness melts together with the consciousnesses of all the other Christ-beings, and then they are one. They are completely, totally one, and then it is not so that one says, "No, it's not like that! You are wrong about that! You don't understand! That's not right!" But they are all totally identical, and when they are identical, it is one consciousness. This one consciousness is the consciousness of God. But all the I's still exist. The beings' I's exist as God's tools of consciousness; so we are just as important for God as God is for us. God could not exist and experience without the individual I's he experiences through us.

I say "he"; it's an old figure of speech. God is neither a he nor a she, but is double-poled or perfect. God's primary consciousness consists of all the Christ-beings, and this consciousness is all the time at its peak, for, as people gradually become perfect or Christ-beings, they go up and become God's primary consciousness and form the highest kingdoms from which God governs the world. They thereafter degenerate and go down while there are others who grow upwards. That is why it is a cycle; not a circle but a spiral cycle. We are not the same again in the next spiral cycle, where we come into the planetary area. There we are not human beings but planets. Here from the earth we cannot observe any examples, but mini-planets are the first to arise. I intend to write more about this if I live long enough. I had prepared some material but then I got an impulse that that had to wait since people could do without it if I didn't manage to finish it. There are other things that are more important. You can research into the higher spirals when you get cosmic consciousness yourselves.