Excerpt from The Secret of Shambhala by James Redfield, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"What did they find?" I asked.

"They were studying the effect of praying for people who have medical problems, and found that patients who received regular prayers from others had fewer complications and got well faster, even when they weren't aware that prayers were being said. It's undeniable proof that the force of prayer is real. But they also found something else. They found that the most effective prayer of all was structured not as a request, but as an affirmation."

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said.

He was staring at me with crystal-blue eyes. "They set up the study to test two types of prayer. The first was just asking God, or the divine, to intervene, to help a sick person. The other was to simply affirm, with faith, that God will help the person. Do you see the difference?"

"I'm still not sure."

"A prayer that asks God to intervene assumes that God can intervene but only if he decides to honor our request. It assumes that we have no role except to ask. The other form of prayer assumes that God is ready and willing but has set up the laws of human existence so that whether the request is fulfilled depends in some part on the certainty of our belief that it will be done. So our prayer must be an affirmation that voices this faith. In the study, this kind of prayer proved to be most effective."

I nodded. I was beginning to get it.

The man looked away as though thinking to himself and then continued. "All the great prayers in the Bible are not requests, they are affirmations. Think of the Lord's Prayer. It goes, 'Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.' It doesn't say please can we have some food, and it doesn't say please can we be forgiven. It merely affirms that these things are ready to happen already, and by faithfully assuming that they will, we make it so."

He paused again, as though expecting a question, still smiling.

I had to chuckle. His good mood was so contagious.

"Some scientists are theorizing," he went on, "that these findings also imply something else, something that has a profound significance for every person alive. They maintain that if our expectations, our faithful assumptions, are what makes prayer work, then each of us is beaming a force of prayer-energy out into the world all the time, whether we realize it or not. Do you see how this is true?"

He continued without waiting for me to answer. "If prayer is an affirmation based on our expectations, our faith, then all our expectations have a prayer effect. We are, in fact, praying all the time for some kind of future for ourselves and others, we just aren't fully aware of it."

He looked at me as though he had just dropped a bombshell.

"Can you imagine?" he continued. "Science is now confirming the assertions of the most esoteric mystics of every religion. They all say we have a mental and spiritual influence on what happens to us in life. Remember the scriptures about how faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. What if this ability is the secret of true success in life, of creating true community." His eyes twinkled as though he knew more than he was saying. "We all have to figure out how this works. It's time."

I was smiling back at this man, intrigued by what he was saying, still amazed at the transformation in the mood around the pool, when I instinctively glanced around to the left in the way we do when we feel someone looking at us. I caught one of the pool attendants staring at me from the entrance door. When our eyes met, he quickly looked away and began to walk back along the sidewalk that led to an elevator.

"Excuse me, sir," came a voice from behind me.

When I looked around, I realized it was another attendant.

"May I serve you a drink?" he asked.

© 1999 by James Redfield. All rights reserved. Published with permission of the publisher, Warner Books.