There have been many times in my life that when chips have been down that help has come from unexpected sources. Also mostly whatever I have desired I have achieved.
All these events show that there are forces which help an individual when the desire is very strong. That probably is the power of prayer. How this happens or its possible mechanism is the subject of this essay.
Human brain is a very powerful sender and receiver of thought. Thus when one thinks very deeply and consciously about somebody or an object then tremendous churning takes place in the brain and various possibilities are brought forward by the brain which can help in making a decision about the object of concentration. This is called Sanyam by Sage Patanjali. Nevertheless this is the internal thinking process and helps the individual to do the needful.
Then there are external forces which also help the individual in this process. It seems there are entities, both malevolent and benevolent who do come to help the individual depending on the quality and strength of thought and desire. Many modern saints like Ramakrishna, Vivekanand and Aurobindo Ghosh have spoken about these entities. That these highly advanced Yogis spoke about them meant these entities exist. Sage Patanjali also alludes to them in his Yoga sutras.
Many times in my life it has happened that I was involved in a dispute. No matter how hard I tried avoided thinking about it but the external thoughts always came to haunt me so I was forced to think deeply about it.
This internal churning helped me in looking at all the eventualities and helped me come to a certain conclusions.
At the same time I never wished any harm to the person involved in dispute and always prayed to the higher forces to give him/her wisdom. I do feel that both these things helped in getting the matter solved in a satisfactory manner.
I have never been able to explain why this happens and hence believe that there are forces out of our control that help in this process.
Thus we should always be grateful to these forces who help us and probably this could be the genesis of prayer and worship of gods and goddesses. Too often this type of analysis could be termed as Voodoo but I cannot explain why only few individuals achieve all what they want to achieve and not others.