Throughout the ages prayer has been an important factor in man's life. Regardless of different religious convictions or cultural backgrounds prayer has been found to be productive of results.

This would imply that there is some universal factor involved, although it has been interpreted in many ways. For prayer to consistently have the desired result seems to depend upon going behind the various interpretations, the superstitions involved, the dogma and ritual, and getting back to the basic factor itself.

To do this requires a certain degree of understanding of the nature of Life and man, an understanding that is based on the spiritual wisdom of the ages and at the same time incorporates the truth of the ever-advancing front of knowledge in today's world.

WHAT I BELIEVE NATURALLY DIVIDES ITSELF into three parts: What I believe about God, what I believe about man, and what I believe about the relationship between God and man.

First, I believe that God is universal Spirit, and by Spirit I mean the Life-Essence of all that is, that subtle Intelligence which permeates all things and which, in man, is self-conscious mind. I believe that God is present in every place, conscious in every part, the Intelligence or Mind of all that is.

I believe that man is the direct representative of this Divine Presence on this plane of existence. Man is the most highly evolved intelligence of which we have any knowledge. Man, being the highest representation of God here, is more nearly like God than any other manifestation on earth.

I believe that the relationship between God and man, between the Infinite and the finite, is a direct one; and that the avenue through which the Mind of God expresses to the mind of man is through the mind of man himself. We have the ability to think, to know, to perceive, to receive, and to act. What are these attributes other than a direct channel through which the universal Spirit flows to us?

I do not feel that we approach God through any formula, sacred prayer, or intermediary but rather that the Spirit of God, the eternal Mind, is the Power by which we think and know. It is self-evident that the only God whom we can know is the only God whom we do know, and that this knowing is an interior process of our own belief and perception. We can know no God other than the God whom our consciousness perceives.