An existence where the faculty of intelligence cannot guarantee true happiness, and where pain and suffering flourish, is bound to reveal an intellectual barrenness to such a degree that the human being intuitively will feel a longing for the Godhead. But this longing is not a strong desire to play a very conspicuous leading role in his father's house, to be the "son of the house" or the like. This desire is totally devoid of vanity. No, in his debasement the "prodigal son" had come to love his heavenly father so dearly that just to be his father's humblest servant or hired worker would be complete happiness or the fulfilment of his strongest desire for this son. And now the mystery of prayer for the first time begins to reveal itself. While the deeply religious believer sends his fervent prayers above the sky to an imagined glorious being and expects this being to miraculously intervene in this or that field in order that the prayer be granted, the returning "prodigal son" desires only that not his own wish but the father's wish should be granted. Wanting to become a "hired servant" and not the "son of the house" shows that he did not return to "be served" but "to serve".
      No wonder that the father was glad and arranged a feast for this son and no wonder that the other son took offence at the father's happiness and at the feast in honour of the returning son. It is nothing less that life's two great contrasts which collided in the mentality of the two brothers. It is also life's own demonstration of the analysis of the relationship between the living being and the Godhead. Of course, this relationship is above all the fundamental basis of the individual's attitude towards praying. The brother who had stayed with his father all the time, and thus had not yet experienced being away from the ancestral home and gone through abasement, did not have the faculty of humility. He was prepared only to be served. This being his attitude, he got angry when he saw that the home-coming of this poor ragamuffin of a brother was going to be celebrated by a feast and that this valueless person was even going to be honoured. He felt that he had been deprived of something and that he himself had a right to all this honour because he faithfully stayed at home with his father. It is thus evident that as long as he had not discovered that the father would share out the same amount of sympathy and love to the "unworthy" brother as to himself, the worthy one, he felt completely happy in his relationship with his father. But then the collision came. And do you not think that this was the beginning of the break with the father which would result in this son leaving the ancestral home? He had neither understood nor learned that love, which is the same as absolute justice, is not just something which is shared out as a favour for this or that. In the same way as the light of the sun shines upon the unrighteous as well as the righteous, so should love be something which radiates from us to the criminal, the ragamuffin, the beggar as well as to the Godhead, the world-redeemer or to all those whom we favour or love. As long as we want to be especially favoured by the Godhead's love for this or that deed and we can easily be happy in our relationship with this Godhead. We have no reasons whatsoever to leave the "ancestral home" and we live according to our own concept of justice. We share out favours to all those who are in our good graces and we kick all those we do not like just as we expect great advantages or favours from those we have favoured and we feel it depressingly unjust that we are persecuted by those we have kicked.
      Here the son is the greatest contrast to the father. Here we surrender our command and control over our own lives, i.e. the creation of our own fate. Here we discover that love is not an article of commerce. It cannot be gained as a payment for favours. Has it not happened that people we have favoured have sometimes become our persecutors? Love is the Godhead's own inner radiating fire which pervades everything and everybody, indeed, which is the inmost fundamental spirit and power of the universe itself. It is the Godhead's perception of the son of God. And this perception is so overwhelmingly dominant that all existing forces or phenomena in life or in the universe can only be its subordinate details, its substance, organs and tools. It is the beginning, culmination and end of everything. It is Alpha and Omega. That a power so all-pervading and sovereign, i.e. an eternal radiating flood of light, cannot be diminished or intensified by the denial or acceptance of its existence by a son of God is as natural as the fact that the light of the sun is completely unimpeded by what this or that person on the earth is thinking about its nature. It was this brilliant display of love from the father, which was independent of previous adoration or favours or, in short, its identity with total unselfishness, that the son at home could not grasp or understand. But the returning son had fully realized what it meant and what is was worth. By believing in his own self-righteousness he had shut himself out from its rays and he had thereby seen how life then lost its radiance and how life was turned into the abasement and surrender which showed him that everything in his father's house was perfect, so that even the life of the father's humblest worker or hired servant was a radiant, attractive perfection. The road back to his father thus became the all-embracing brilliant light. But suppose the father had driven him back into the darkness! Then of course the father would have come into the good graces of the other son. But then it would have been impossible for this son to discover his own error or disharmony with the law of love itself and the other son would have perished in the swamps of abasement and mental despondency. The first son would not have got to know his father's real nature and the second son would have had to consider his father as having the mentality of a monster, far worse than the robbers and bandits which he had encountered in the shadow world of his life. By virtue of pure love being independent of light or dark patches, the event shaped quite differently. The eternal father gratified his beloved son's wish to return and live with him just as generously as he had previously granted the same son's wish to have the money he was to inherit and be allowed to travel away from his home. And was it a disaster that he granted the son's wish to travel? Was it a disaster that he did not grant the other son's wish that he should ignore the homecoming son by not in any way showing him honour or giving him a feast? No! Would it not have been a disaster for all three parties if the opposite had been the case? The first son would have stayed at home with the father and he would thus never have experienced the dark background of abasement which made it possible for him to see the immense greatness of the father. The other son would never have had the opportunity to discover that his concept of justice was different from that of his father. No basis for the creation of any wish to leave his father would have been formed. The disharmony or discrepancy, which cannot possibly be removed now without the son's view or concept of justice concerning the returning brother becoming one with the father's, would not have arisen. And to the divine worthiness of the father such a conduct would have been disastrous. His identity as love's eternal sparkling sun would have been rather darkened. The two sons of God would never in all eternity have had the opportunity to experience themselves as consciously being one with their father and his radiating flood of light, spirit and consciousness. Here is something to think about for the person who wants to pray to this father.
      We have now clarified the relationship between father and son, which in this case means between the Godhead and the living being or the person who wants to pray to God. Either the suppliant must be the returning son or he must be the son who has not yet been away from the father. To which of the two categories the suppliant belongs can only be seen from his prayer. If a wish is radiating from this prayer to attain the power and the strength to make right what one has done wrong here or there, to be allowed to bless everything that one has cursed, to be allowed to bring joy and bliss to everything and everyone or in every way to be allowed to follow the Godhead's perfect will instead of one's own will, and if at the same time the prayer is saturated with a strong feeling of gratitude for everything one has been allowed to experience and go through and if one can see the divine love in the dark as well as in the bright experiences which life has bestowed upon one, then one is identical with the returning son. Then one has attained wisdom, the cosmic clear-sightedness of the great birth, the entrance of the gate of real life, the entrance of the Godhead's own sphere or zone. Here the attitude is expressed in "Thy will be done, not mine". And with this attitude the suppliant has become through his prayer a co-worker of the Godhead.
      However, if the suppliant's prayer radiates the desire to avoid this or that unpleasantness, to avoid this or that dark experience, this or that inconvenience, or if the suppliant in other respects is filled one hundred per cent with the desire to have his own will satisfied, then he will be extremely discontented if the Godhead does not grant his wish. Then he will feel more or less forlorn and unjustly treated by the Godhead. In such a situation, disbelief, antipathy or perhaps even anger towards the Godhead or everything contained in the concept of "religiousness" fill our consciousness. More and more we make ourselves believe that many other beings are much more favoured in their fate by Providence or the Godhead than we are. We even seem to find that these other beings are not nearly as conscientious or nearly as devoted to the Godhead or Providence as we have been. Perhaps these, our fellow beings, do not even pray to God or may even mock us because we have our minds on this being; and yet these beings are getting all the good things in life: health, wealth, power and glory; while we consider ourselves to be rather disfavoured by Providence in respect of these good things. Is it not easy to see that in this case we are the son at home who gets into disharmony with his father about his other son? We are filled with desire for the good things of life with which the father now favours the other son. But what are those good things of life in which this other son revels at a certain stage? Is it not just the "paternal inheritance" which has been paid out? Are they not just those good things of life which this son later squandered and through doing so, in the darkness of degradation, was able to see his father's brilliant perfection or divine glory? Is it not evident that we are quite ignorant concerning God's will behind the "good things of life", i.e. the son's transformation into "the image of God after his likeness"? We even believe that we are already in this "likeness" and we do not have the slightest idea that these "good things of life" are the basis for degradation and that they are therefore only a "means" to attain the divine serenity of consciousness or the completely perfect contact with the Godhead. We believe that they are the Godhead's "favours" and therefore constitute the final "ends" in the experience of life. And we therefore become dissatisfied and believe ourselves unjustly treated when we see Providence bestowing upon others these "favours" which are not at all "favours", seen in the cosmic perspective. They are entirely tools or means without which it would be impossible for any being to get into a complete spiritual contact with himself and thereby with the Godhead or Providence. It is this mental primitivism or spiritual barrenness which make us worship or devote ourselves to "means" instead of "ends" and which the Godhead can remove from our consciousness through debasement or darkness.