Scientific prayer is based on the premise that all people are connected through mind, not only with each other but with all of nature, and, most importantly, with God. This connection spans the entire spectrum of reality from the largest scale to the subatomic realms of energy and matter.

The basis of scientific prayer also includes the premise that the substance of mind is one and the same with the substance of the universe—not in the normal sense of the word “substance” but in a deeper, more fundamental way, the kind of substance that precedes matter and causes it to come into being.

Mind is energy—luminous, radiant, and all-pervasive. It is light. Within its frequencies are encoded all of the patterns of creation from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic—its periodicities, cycles, and waveforms. It is the All in all. Scientific prayer is the conscious and methodical use of these energies.

This raises a lot of red flags (ala Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice) amongst thoughtful people. And the modern day use of natural laws, such as genetic engineering and GMOs, shows just how risky fooling around with Mother Nature can be. It begs the question,  are we wise enough to do anything at all in this domain?

By citing genetic engineering and GMOs in the context of prayer, I am inserting yet another fundamental premise into this discussion: our ACTIONS are our prayers. This is prayer in its most practical form. It is different from purely devotional prayer or mystical contemplation. It is prayer with a purpose. It is how we bring ideas into physical reality. And for the religious amongst us, we can take comfort in Jesus’ words, “Whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, it will be granted unto you.” Nowhere does he say that we should only pray for spiritual things.

While most scientists don’t believe in God, they do have faith in the possible. They don’t beg the laws of physics to perform miracles, but they do know that the proper use and understanding of those laws—when put into action—will produce results. And they’ve gotten pretty good at that. The mystically inclined person could learn a lot from them.

Recently, I watched a lecture by the famous scientist, Richard Feynman, on the topic of nanotechnology. He explained how it is possible to make machines that are little more than a few atoms wide. To most people, this would seem impossible. But in reality, it is not only possible, it is now being done routinely. It turns out that by taking a simple element, such as silicon, and building it up layer by layer with other elements, and using techniques to etch patterns on these layers, complex mechanisms can be made on the sub-microscopic nanoscale. Such a technology makes possible a future that most of us cannot even imagine.

To be sure, there are risks associated with nanotechnology, but that’s a topic better suited to other websites. The reason I bring it up here is to point out that prayer has its risks as well. There is, after all, that saying: Be careful what you pray for; you might get your prayers answered! If prayer is real, which it is, then we must accept our responsibility in its use. Accepting our responsibility for our prayers is, in fact, an act of faith. Wishes are harmless, but prayers have consequences. You can’t get your prayers answered if you don’t believe it’s going to work.

New Thought experts say that we must not dictate to the Divine Mind how to go about giving us the results we want, that we should only present It with the outcome, not the process. Good advice. But practically speaking, the outcome we’re looking for almost always demands that we change ourselves, sometimes in drastic ways. We cannot expect to get the results we are looking for while going about our lives in the same old way. If our faith in God is great enough, the necessary changes will come without regard for our ability to adapt. We might pray for more money and immediately get fired from our job—one possible first step to getting a better paycheck.

From a practical standpoint, prayers are built from the ground up. Just as nano-machines are built through successive layering, each layer modifying the layer below it, so must our prayers begin with the elements at hand. We have to begin where we are. If it’s new wine we want, we have to start by making new wineskins. This is a little bit like build it and they will come in the movie, Field of Dreams. But in the movie, if we remember, the action had to be there; the ballpark had to have players, albeit invisible ones, in order for physical spectators to show up. In our minds eye, we have to see our outcome as a living reality before it can manifest in our experience.

There’s another popular saying: If you want to win the lottery, you have to buy a ticket. This is a good example of how we participate in the process. We’re not interfering with God by buying the ticket; we are simply creating an opening through which God can work. Another thing we might do would be to examine our attitudes about money and about being rich and to make any necessary adjustments in our belief system. This would be like grading the ground before digging the foundation for a new house, removing the boulders and tree stumps, which is something that we must do before our dreams can become a reality.

Scientific prayer is a participatory process. It’s interactive. We may not be able to “push the river,” but we can speed it up or slow it down. Our lives have momentum—we can use the energy of that momentum to either ride the rapids or generate electricity. We can deepen a riverbed by dredging the bottom (by deepening ourselves), and we can speed up its flow by narrowing its channel (by focusing our thinking). In neither case have we done anything to the water, but we have channeled its energy in ways that best serve our needs. So it is with the karmic energies in our lives. We can’t stop them, but we certainly can and do USE them.

If you don’t know about scientific prayer, I recommend that you read The Science of Mind, by Earnest Holmes. It’s one of the best books out there on the subject.