It is said of an Idaho railroad driver that no one was ever killed on a train he drove. In one case, when a train was barely saved, passengers rushed to him and thanked him for saving their lives, but he...
An amazing story about how the Lord God unexpectedly provided for the existence of Hudson Taylor's mission in China through the hands of the Russian Count Alexei Bobrinsky.
I was returning from morning prayer. Heading home, I had to walk along a narrow street. The street seemed even narrower because on one side of it, near the fence, there was a large truck. Unexpectedly for me, out from behind the truck...
One day, a fisherman was transporting one person on a boat. The passenger hurried the fisherman: - Hurry up, I'm late for work! Suddenly he saw that on one oar of the boat it was written “pray”, and on the other - “work”. - Why is this? - he asked. - For…
In the house of some rich people they stopped praying before meals. One day a preacher came to visit them. The table was set very elegantly, the best fruit juices were taken out and a very tasty dish was served. The family sat down at the table. Everyone was looking at...
The Church of England has published a prayer for the unemployed to help these people during the economic crisis. The prayer is intended to console those who have lost their jobs as a result of staff reductions, and to inspire that faith in God will help cope with...
One of the British mobile operators has offered its customers a new service - joint prayers via mobile phone. For just 25 pence (about half a dollar) a week, users will be able to receive the text of a prayer from their friends and...
It is said that in China the sun never rose without finding missionary Taylor on his knees. It is not surprising that under such conditions the Chinese mission enjoyed blessings from God.
On September 1, 2007, an American woman from Ohio gave birth to triplets for the second time in a row. In both cases, the couple managed to get pregnant naturally, without the use of ovulation-stimulating drugs. According to Victoria Lasita, she and her...
Prayers benefit the human body, American scientists say. According to researchers, prayers provide invaluable help to people with high blood pressure and diabetics: within a few minutes the level of...
One day, a fisherman was fishing when he suddenly heard an unfamiliar man calling him from the shore. The stranger begged the fisherman to take him to the other side of the river. The fisherman agreed. ─ Could you row faster? ─ the passenger hurried the fisherman...
A new telephone service has appeared in Russia. Now all citizens dissatisfied with life can call and complain to God. The “Complain to God” service is available by calling 8 903 538 84 12. This phone number is popular, and…
One rich farmer, whose granary was bursting with grain reserves, in anticipation of rising prices, often said the prayer that had become familiar to him “for the poor and those in need.” When praying, he always added the following request: “God, remember...
I wish you would spend 15 minutes every day in prayer for the pagan mission, one preacher told several young men in his congregation. - But watch how you pray, because - I warn you - this prayer is for you...
Dr. Wilson was the pastor of a large church. He learned that a member of the church, a poor widow with small children, lived in great need. He visited her and saw that the children were freezing from the cold, and there was no food in the house. The widow asked to pray with her, but...
Many atheists answer the question about God: “When I see God, then I will believe.” It’s strange: no one denies that there is good and evil. But for some reason many deny God and the devil. But just as the autumn wind gives rise to falling leaves, God gives birth to good, and the devil gives birth to evil. We do not see the wind, but we have the opportunity to see the leaves falling from it. We do not see God, but we have the opportunity to see the good generated by him. And the evil generated by the devil.
Somehow in my mind I turned to God with regret that I could not see Him and talk to Him. She asked Him to show Himself at least in a dream: I really wanted to communicate. I didn’t have any dreams, and the next morning, when I was walking in the forest, two women (Jehovah’s Witnesses) approached me with a smile and handed me a piece of paper. It literally said the following about God: “Contact me through prayer and communicate with me through prayer.”
Prayer truly has enormous power, which only atheists do not believe in. And this is because, having never prayed, they cannot see the result of prayer. It’s true - let’s be honest - I also didn’t really believe in the power of prayer before, although I prayed every day from the age of 6 until my youth. But the incident changed everything.
Once my family and I went on vacation to Turkey in the summer, and in the hotel restaurant I liked one very handsome waiter. And although I had no goal of cheating on my husband, I still felt guilty. And for the fact that she tried to look better in front of that waiter, and for the fact that she smiled more at him than at everyone else. And especially because, seeing him, my heart began to beat faster. But I didn’t like this at all. In any case, I would really not want my husband to feel this way towards some other woman. Therefore, I myself wanted to get rid of this obsession as quickly as possible, deciding to try praying. Swimming further into the sea, where no one interfered, I prayed to God, asking him to deliver me from my sinful obsession. Amazingly, I didn’t even have to pray more than two or three times: neither the next day, nor the day after, nor on the day of leaving the hotel I felt absolutely nothing for that waiter! Apparently it was some kind of devilish obsession. But it became an experience, and a very useful one. Now I had great faith in the power of prayer. After all, I knew myself well: if I liked someone, it was for a long time. And then suddenly - and it was gone. This was not just surprising, but extremely amazing, because it was unusual for me.
Now I already perceived prayer not only as an appeal to God, but also as a way of fighting dark forces. The Bible says that “this generation is driven out by prayer and fasting.” In the Old Testament, in the third book of Ezra, God says: “So, if you pray again and fast again for seven days, then I will show you more...” Monks know this well, and thus advance in the knowledge of the spiritual and the unknown.
As for me, the experience gained in Turkey soon became very useful, because nightmares began to torment me almost every night for weeks on end. In my entire life I have seen maybe no more than 20 nightmares, and then suddenly this... For the first few days I hoped that everything would go away on its own. But 3-4 days passed, and the nightmares did not stop, even though I read “Our Father” every time before going to bed. Therefore, I began to read another, shorter prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” She helped sometimes, but still she often continued to have nightmares. Then I decided not only to read these two prayers, but also to be baptized while reading them. And then the nightmares disappeared! Having realized this, she began experimenting as a sin: she was baptized before going to bed, and then she was not baptized. When I didn’t get baptized, nightmares immediately began. When she was baptized, they were not there. Having experimented like this 5 times, I probably already clearly saw a pattern that struck me to the core. Later, in the book “Unholy Saints,” I read that one famous person was also constantly tormented by nightmares, and a short prayer with the sign of the cross also helped him, which further confirmed me in the idea that all this was not just a coincidence. Now I already knew a way to deal with nightmares, and they no longer came.
Seeing the miraculous power of prayer, I began to use it in completely different life situations and was surprised to notice that in some moments of irritation, anger, and aggression, I didn’t feel like praying at all! Moreover: it becomes almost impossible - you can’t force yourself to say it, it’s just as if someone isn’t letting you open your mouth! My daughter felt the same thing in similar situations of irritation and anger.
Once, having learned that Saint Matrona advised baptizing water, praying over it, and then drinking it (this is useful not only for weak, sick people, but also for completely healthy people), she suggested that her daughter test this method in practice, and in moments of anger, read the prayer repeatedly “Our Father” over a glass of water, making the sign of the cross during prayer. She did just that. After reading the prayer 12 times, I drank all the water. The aggression went away immediately after that. And immediately my daughter started having diarrhea. I remember that she was very impressed by the effective result, but, like me, she could no longer repeat it - as if some unknown force prevented her from starting to pray during human anger. Often at such moments there is not even a single thought about praying. So it turns out that you either forget to pray, or, if you remember, you can’t bring yourself to do it.
I noticed another feature: when reading the Lord’s Prayer, it becomes extremely difficult to fully concentrate, and this despite the fact that the prayer lasts less than a minute! I wondered if this was only happening to me. I asked my husband - he had the same problem. Later I found out that we are not the only ones experiencing this - even the priests know about it. It’s an amazing thing - if a person thinks about pressing problems that concern him, thoughts about this will be in his head for 5 minutes, half an hour, and even more. And at the same time he will not be distracted by anything else. But how many extraneous thoughts are in your head while reading just a minute of the Lord’s Prayer! Very often at this time thoughts creep in about material things and benefits or about the possibility of acquiring them. Here it is, the clear influence of evil spirits on human consciousness! Here it is - the visible invisible...
From the book “We are just learning to live on earth,” in one of the stories it was written that if you read the 90th Psalm with faith 40 times a day, the most advanced and hopeless diseases are cured. We remembered this when our daughter got sick. Her husband tried to heal her when she was suffering from nausea and stomach pain. The result exceeded all expectations: when he read this prayer over a glass of water 40 times in a row and gave it to his daughter to drink, she immediately vomited, after which she quickly recovered. But what was more surprising was that the husband’s hand, which had previously been in severe pain for two months, was healed on the same day. Therefore, of course, we knew firsthand how effective this prayer is. The Bible says, “According to your faith you will be rewarded.”
One winter I got sick. The sensations in my body were bad, the temperature of 37.5 was for some reason unusually difficult to experience. My husband and child went for a walk, and I, left to my own devices, began to pray. I remembered an incident that happened a few years earlier, when I swore at God with almost, it seems, even obscene words, angry because He did not help my then seriously ill child. At that time, I was a girl of little faith with a completely different worldview, typical of most modern non-believers. And when the child’s temperature rose above 38 degrees for 4-5 days in a row, she first began to pray to God, and, mind you, to become furious with Him for the lack of help on His part. When I remembered this incident from the past, I felt very sorry that I behaved this way. And, lying in bed with a fever, I began to pray, asking God to give me a sign whether He would ever forgive me for such behavior. I did not hope for forgiveness, but continued to pray with tears in my eyes. And an hour later, the temperature dropped by half a degree - and this despite the fact that it was evening, and, as you know, in the evenings with acute respiratory infections, the temperature usually only rises, and does not fall. It was unusual and unexpected, I began to feel better without the pills. And in the morning I was already completely healthy.
One day, after having a fight with my husband, I decided to go for a walk with my daughter in the forest without him. First we went out onto a path in the forest, where we rarely walked, and then we turned off it altogether and went deeper into the thick of the forest - we were looking for mushrooms. I calmed down a little and began to think that it would still be nice if my husband were nearby. I mentally turned to God with thoughts about this. To my amazement, after 5-10 minutes I saw my husband - he found us where, in general, he should not have found us - the forest was large, and we had already left the path (and there are hundreds of these paths in the forest). As it turned out later, not only me, but also my daughter and my husband himself prayed to God so that we would meet soon. Later, the husband said that when he entered the forest, it was as if someone told him that he needed to go in this direction and not otherwise. And my daughter and I, walking away from the beaten paths, heard some strange crunch ahead, and, getting worried, decided to turn in the other direction. If I had not done this, my husband and I would have separated. But then it was even more interesting: while walking through the forest together, we came across a picnic of a family with a dog. The dog, for some unknown reason, suddenly got angry and barked at me. Her owner was very surprised by this behavior and told us not to be afraid, because she does not bite. However, I saw that the dog’s intentions towards me were very serious. She ran towards me, brutalized, angry, and I realized that now she would bite me. When she ran up and made a lunge to grab me, I thought: “The Lord will protect me.” Just as I thought this, her mouth, clanging against the fabric of my jeans, but no longer able to grab my leg, began to close as if by itself - against the will of the dog. She continued to growl angrily, but she could no longer bite me. So she stood there - angry, growling, but unable to do me harm, because I thought: “The Lord will protect me.”
In connection with this story, I remembered another similar one. It was told by grandfather Victor, our good friend. One day, as usual, while walking in the forest in the evening, he saw a man walking towards him. Moreover, this man was clearly aggressive: he grabbed a stick from the ground and walked towards Victor with it. The old man realized that this was not a good thing. And he began to pray while the distance between them allowed it. And as soon as he read the prayer to the end, the man’s stick fell out of his hands, he caught up with his grandfather and walked past. Here is a real story... It is not for nothing that the words of Jesus are written in the Bible: “According to your faith, be it done to you.”
All the stories described above clearly illustrate that the Lord hears us, our thoughts, good and evil motives, our hopes for His help.
Atheists and doctors are surprised in some inexplicable way that prayers heal patients. More recently, scientists began to study the effect of prayers on the human body. They used to think that the mutterings of Christians were nonsense. Scientific data could surprise even hardened atheists.
The research was carried out at Duke Durham University and a local hospital. Scientists invited monks, sisters and priests to pray for 700 patients who suffered from heart ailments. Several days passed after the prayers and the doctors took notes on the condition of the patients. Professor Mitchell Krushoff reported the results: in 500 patients, the rate of recovery increased by 93 percent thanks to prayer.
The professor did not understand what was happening, but suggested that the work of the heart was influenced by concentration on the divine words of both priests and patients. The person who prays and for whom they pray is completely focused on communicating with God, and this probably leads to the normalization of processes in the body that scientists still need to study.
Later, scientists were able to find out that prayer kills harmful bacteria not only in the human body, but also in water.
When this study was done, samples were taken from various bodies of water: rivers, lakes, wells, which contained E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus. It turned out that if you read the “Our Father” prayer, the number of bacteria in the water will decrease by almost 100 times.
Therefore, do not forget to pray before eating and Thank God for it.
We invited the believers and asked them to pray earnestly. When they prayed, an electroencephalogram was taken from them in order to use the device to track the processes occurring in their heads. And a phenomenon was recorded.
Until now, it has been customary to distinguish three main phases of the working brain: REM sleep, slow-wave sleep and wakefulness. Each of these phases has its own rhythm of biocurrents. And as it turned out during the experiment, during prayer the rhythm of the brain’s biocurrents slows down so much that it becomes possible to talk about the existence of a fourth state of consciousness - “prayerful wakefulness.” In this state, the brain actually turns off: active mental activity ceases, and it seems to me - although I cannot yet prove it - that consciousness begins to exist outside the body.
“On an electroencephalograph,” the scientist continues, “the phenomenon looks like this. During wakefulness, the cerebral cortex of an adult generates alpha and beta rhythms of biocurrents with a frequency of 8 to 30 hertz. When our subjects immersed themselves in prayer, the rhythm of biocurrents slowed down to a frequency of only 3 hertz. These slow rhythms are called "delta rhythms" and are observed only in infants up to 2 - 3 months.
Some subjects have an encephalograph showed a complete absence of alpha and beta rhythms, only delta rhythms. From the point of view of neurophysiology, praying people seem to fall into childhood. Moreover, this unusual neurophysiological phenomenon was observed regardless of what kind of prayer the subjects read. It’s probably not for nothing that the Gospel says: be like children and you will be saved.
We believe that during prayer, pathological connections between brain neurons are destroyed, because a person stops thinking about the disease,” says Dr. Slesin. - Sometimes this leads to complete recovery of terminally ill people. Science knows of cases of cancer cure, but they require more careful study. You just have to believe and pray truly, earnestly, from the heart, otherwise there will be no healing effect.
My colleagues both here and abroad It has been experimentally established that saying prayers helps people with high blood pressure and diabetics: within a few minutes the level of cholesterol in the blood decreases and metabolic processes are normalized.
Praying is especially useful for those and for those who at times fall into deep depression and suffer from manic-depressive psychosis. In general, the more severe the disease, the more often a person turns to God for help. For example, scientists from Pasadena Theological Seminary and the University of California interviewed more than 400 patients with schizophrenia, severe forms of depression and some other mental illnesses. And they found that 80 percent of those surveyed turned to religion to cope with despair, attacks of aggressiveness or tearfulness.
The successful American psychiatrist J. T. Fisher, at the end of his life, wrote:
“If you add up all, without exception, the authoritative articles of the most outstanding psychologists and psychiatrists on issues of mental hygiene, thoroughly shorten them and clear them of verbal husk, i.e. if we take only the essence, and if the most talented poet in the world is able to briefly express these purest grains of scientific knowledge, then the result will be just a primitive and incomplete retelling of the Sermon on the Mount, which cannot stand any comparison with it.
For two thousand years now, the Christian world has held in its hands a text that contains, without exception, all the answers to the confused and fruitless questions of mankind. It is a universal blueprint for a fruitful human life filled with optimism, mental health and satisfaction.”
REFERENCE:“According to the WHO (World Health Organization), every fourth or fifth inhabitant of the Earth suffers from mental disorders, and by 2020, mental disorders, including depression, will become the leading morbidity,” said Minister of Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova, RIA reports. "News".
According to her, recently there has been a significant increase in the number of people seeking medical help with symptoms of somatic disorders, but in fact needing psychological and psychotherapeutic help. According to the minister, mental health and rehabilitation after illnesses are becoming a critical factor.
“Prayer is not an idle pastime for old ladies. When properly understood and applied, it is a most powerful tool of action.” Mahatma Gandhi
The positive effect of prayers is known today throughout the world. Various scientific studies of this method of self-improvement, presented in the sacred scriptures, confirm it as the deepest and safest means for the human psyche, and amaze even optimists, not to mention skeptics of introducing the methods of the most ancient treasury of wisdom into the life of modern man.
Famous scientists, such as Pavlov, proved with their experiments that this method is not some incomprehensible miracle or superstition, but is a scientifically based process. All you need is sincerity and impartiality. Only the stubborn and proud do not perceive the revelations of the holy fathers and the holy scriptures and live in a way that suits their false ego, so they do not “climb out” of problems.
And yet, a deeper study of this pearl of ancient wisdom illuminates more and more new facets of this phenomenal phenomenon. Studies were conducted in many countries around the world on representatives of a wide range of ages and professions, and in all cases the results were stunning...
First of all, it should be noted that during prayer a person’s oxygen consumption noticeably decreases (by about 20%, while during sleep - only by 8%). This suggests that prayer leads to better normalization of functioning and restoration of the body than even sleep.
The possibility of the influence of self-hypnosis was excluded by an experiment in which a person unfamiliar with prayers was asked to repeat a different phrase (a combination of certain sound vibrations, repeated in a strictly defined order, is used). In this case, the above phenomenon was not observed.
Another remarkable result of the practice of prayer is the elimination of the predominance of one hemisphere of the brain over the other. As you know, usually one of the brain hemispheres prevails over the other. What determines a person’s propensity for imaginative or logical thinking. As a result of prayer practice for some time (from 2-4 weeks to several months), the weak hemisphere is pulled up and reaches the level of the strong one, and the electrical rhythms of both hemispheres are synchronized. This makes a person more intellectually healthy, energetic, protected from stress, and able to show talent and intuition.
It should also be noted the influence of prayer on the human biological field. Over the course of two to three months, the biofield intensively increases with a change in color towards light tones (dirty shades in the biofield usually indicate significant changes in the human psyche, metabolic disorders), and the disharmony of the biofield is eliminated.
Interesting results have been obtained in the field of sociological research. Two cities were compared, identically located, with approximately the same number of inhabitants, standard of living, etc., but in one of them the number of people practicing a prayer life was significantly greater than in the other. The results, also confirmed in further in-depth studies, were stunning: crime in its various aspects in the first city decreased by 5 - 7%, while in the second city it increased.
This suggests that people who lead a prayerful lifestyle not only improve themselves, but they also improve those around them. And this improvement and harmonization also extends to the entire nature around us, spiritualizing matter. In fact, this is due to the fact that the biofield of each person is not isolated from other living beings, from nature as a whole. We are all connected and bear great responsibility to each other, as well as to all that exists.
At a recent world conference held at the University of Arizona, USA, entitled “The latest achievements of the science of consciousness,” theses were published by a St. Petersburg scientist, Doctor of Biological Sciences and Candidate of Medical Sciences, President of the St. Petersburg Association of Psychopuncture, Head of the Psychophysiology Laboratory of the Psychoneurological Institute. V.M. Bekhterev Professor V.B. Slezin and Candidate of Medical Sciences I.Ya. Rybina. These theses, which have aroused considerable interest among scientists from many countries and scientific directions, speak of the discovery of an unusual (unique) phenomenon - a special state of a person during prayer. We asked one of the authors of this study, V.B., to tell our correspondent more about this scientific discovery. Tear.
– Valery Borisovich, what prompted you to discover this phenomenon?
– For many years, in the practice of treating functional neurotic disorders, that is, neuroses, the method of self-hypnosis, or, as we also call it, meditation, has been used. This method, according to experts, gives good results. We decided in our laboratory to study what processes occur in the cerebral cortex. They took an electroencephalogram and found that during meditation, excitation mechanisms are activated in the cerebral cortex. And at one fine moment we asked ourselves the question: what happens to the brain when a person prays?..
– Some followers of various schools of yoga claim that meditation is the same prayer, the same communication with God.
– This is far from being the case, as we found out in our research. For the purity of the experiment, we invited the abbot of one of the monasteries and recorded his electroencephalogram during prayer. The result shocked us. We discovered that in a fully conscious, prayerful state of an Orthodox clergyman, the electroencephalogram showed a complete shutdown of the cerebral cortex... The man sat and prayed, but he completely lacked an electrical impulse, indicating the functioning of the cerebral cortex. That is, we observed a state of complete brain shutdown with clear consciousness. We called this phenomenon the fourth state of man. Before our discovery, science knew three states of human consciousness: wakefulness, slow and fast sleep, which differ from each other in the nature of electrical impulses in the cortex. Now we have become aware of another condition - a complete shutdown of the electrical activity of the cerebral cortex with full consciousness.
– Valery Borisovich, I had the opportunity to meet one amazing woman, a parishioner of the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, who told an amazing story from her life. She was dying of cancer in the hospital, the doctors gave up on her, but she was haunted by the thought of the fate of her children... And she began to cry out to God day and night and ask to heal her for the sake of the children... And a miracle happened - she recovered, recovered, raised his children and, naturally, constantly thanks the Lord... What do you think is the secret of the healing properties of prayer? For a believer - God heard and healed - this is clear. And for a materialist scientist?
– Research shows that the electroencephalograms of wakefulness and REM sleep are identical. Now we have discovered that a complete shutdown of the cortex occurs, both during slow-wave sleep and during prayer. It turns out that the prayer state is just as characteristic and necessary for the human body as the three previously known to us. After all, in a person’s life there are transitions from one state of consciousness to another, there are systems of inhibition, shutdown…. When a person’s life, by his own will, lacks the fourth physiological state of the brain that is necessary for him, then, apparently, some negative processes occur. After all, please note that a characteristic feature of the ascetics of the church, the monastic elders, is a peaceful state of soul...
– Yes, during the service the priest more than once proclaims: “Peace be with you!” That is, he wishes us a peaceful state of mind...
– Apparently, without introducing into practice the state of prayer, this peaceful structure in the soul is difficult for us to achieve. Hence the healing properties of prayer.
– Is every prayer accompanied by exactly this state of the cerebral cortex? Have you had the opportunity to study brain activity during prayer among representatives of other faiths and religions?
– We recorded the electroencephalogram of a Catholic priest. Here we did not observe such a complete shutdown of the cortex, although the trend persisted. He himself admitted that Orthodox Christians are stronger prayer books, and that only here the practice of (continuous) Jesus Prayer has been preserved among monastics. We invited a Muslim cleric, a representative of the Protestant Church, but they did not respond to our proposals.
During real prayer, there is a departure from reality, which leads to the destruction of pathological connections. By moving away from the world, from images of pathology, a person contributes to his recovery. The fourth state is the path to harmony.
Our research has given us the opportunity to make some more discoveries. So, we found out that despondency and rock music lead a person away from a state of harmony, also causing electrical impulses in the cerebral cortex that are close to an epileptic seizure.
– Can we say that the fourth state resists the destructive force of modern mass culture?
– Since we live on planet Earth, where, as we have found out, there are four physiological states of a person, then they should all alternate in a person’s life. The absence of one of them disrupts the harmonious development of a person, leading him to degradation and illness. Therefore, I dare to say that the fourth state allows or helps a person to remain human!
Valentina KAZAK, St. Petersburg. The article was published in the magazine “Russian House” No. 7 for 1999.
Scientists of the Psychoneurological Research Institute named after. V.M. Bekhterev confirmed the beneficial effects of prayer
Seven students of the Theological Academy and Seminary came to the Psychoneurological Research Institute named after. V.M. Bekhterev to participate in research. Researchers from the Neuro and Psychophysiology Laboratory recorded their electroencephalograms (EEG) as guests prayed.
“We were shocked by what we saw!” - says the manager. Laboratory of Professor Valery SLEZIN. — We saw a gradual slowdown in the rhythm of brain biocurrents - finally, only slow delta rhythms remained ((with a frequency of 2-3 Hz). This state of consciousness in an adult occurs only during the so-called “slow” sleep, and during wakefulness - only in infants up to two months. Probably, the words of Christ: “Be like babies, and you will be saved...” can also be attributed to the state of the brain. The EEG picture of the most diligently praying student of the Theological Academy showed a complete shutdown of the cerebral cortex, although he was conscious! After praying, he said calmly: “Okay, that’s enough...” - and the rhythm of the electrical impulses of his cerebral cortex returned to the usual alpha (8-12 Hz) and beta rhythms (13-30 Hz).
Having studied the human condition during prayer, scientists from the Bekhterev Institute made a scientific discovery. They called this phenomenon the “fourth functional state of the brain.” Before this, science knew only three states of the body: wakefulness, rapid sleep and slow-wave sleep. And now one more thing - “slow”, or prayerful vigil.
— The most important conclusion we made: the fourth state of the brain is as necessary for a person as all the others. The absence of one of them disrupts the harmonious development of a person, leading to illness and degradation,” explained Professor Slezin. - When in a person’s life there is no fourth physiological state of the brain necessary for him, there is no prayer, some kind of processes occur... And I, who was an atheist all my life (my father was a commissar during the revolution and the Civil War), having made such a discovery, came to the temple and was baptized. And then my wife and I got married, having lived together for more than 30 years.
— Valery Borisovich, have you studied representatives of other faiths?
— Yes, we recorded the EEG of a Catholic priest during prayer - there was no complete immersion, although there was a tendency to slow down the rhythm. The priest admitted that the Orthodox are stronger prayer books, that only here the practice of continuous Jesus Prayer among monks has been preserved... They studied a Muslim from North Yemen (though not a mullah, but a layman) during prayer - no visible EEG changes were found, but spectral analysis showed that the power of his alpha rhythm had clearly decreased. For the Zen Buddhist, the picture was more complicated: first an increase in the rhythm, and then a significant decrease in it. The Hindu, on the contrary, experienced excitement during meditation.
I also had our Russian guru, he also meditated. I ask him: “Why did you turn to someone else’s faith?” He replied that he remained Orthodox. Well, read, I say, “Our Father.” He began to pray - and the EEG picture showed convulsive discharges, as before an epileptic seizure! I had to urgently stop the experiment... Then he told me that he went to church, stood on his knees in front of the icons all day, repented, and completely abandoned his “imported” faith.
— You said: the absence of the fourth state of the brain leads to diseases. But how does prayer heal?
— During deep prayer, a person withdraws from reality, which leads to the destruction of pathological connections in the brain and body. By moving away from images of pathology, a person contributes to his recovery. He feels that the world is frail and temporary, accepts true values, and comes to harmony with God. Even cancer patients in an inoperable stage recover through prayer (such facts are known to science).
Evgeny GOLUBEV (“AiF” St. Petersburg, No. 1 (386), 2000)
Scientists are trying to understand: why do prayers help?
Neurophysiologists from St. Petersburg have discovered a fourth state of consciousness - “prayerful wakefulness”, which has a healing effect.
You can negotiate with death
What do the weak most often ask God for when they place candles in front of images? Live longer. And it turned out that the Almighty is responding. Even terminally ill people, if they sincerely pray and believe, can postpone their death until some specific date that is important to them. This was proven by the research of Dr. Donn Young from Ohio University.
The scientist turned to his state's mortality database and analyzed the medical records of 300 thousand people who died of cancer between 1989 and 2000. Jung took three special dates as a basis - Christmas, Thanksgiving and the patient's birthday - and began to see if the number of deaths decreased during these times. The result, of course, was not stunning, but impressive: almost 4,000 of those dying - more than one percent - somehow inexplicably managed to postpone death until the day immediately after the festivities. This means that death still has days off.
"Our Father" against staphylococcus
Prayers benefit the human body, American scientists say. According to researchers, litanies (and not only - let’s be clear right away, we are not talking about Catholics alone) provide invaluable help to people with high blood pressure and diabetics: in a few minutes the level of cholesterol in the blood decreases, and metabolic processes are also normalized.
According to scientists, praying is especially useful for those (and for those) who at times fall into deep depression - of course, this method of treatment is also recommended for mentally ill people with progressive manic-depressive syndrome.
The research was carried out in collaboration with the cardiology department of one of the city hospitals: scientists invited several monks, sisters and priests to pray for patients suffering from various heart ailments. Note that there were more than seven hundred “passive participants” in the experiment: for several days, doctors made notes in special journals about the condition of these patients, and when the experiment was completed, they collected all the data and transferred it to the scientists.
Professor Mitchell Krushoff, a cardiologist at Duke University in Durham, reported the amazing results of the experiment: “Thanks to prayer, the rate of recovery of many patients almost doubled - by approximately 93%.” Of course, these are averaged data, but all the “core patients”, without exception, improved much more confidently than before.
“I don’t know why this happens,” the professor admits. “But I can assume that concentration on the divine words of both the priests and the patients themselves has a beneficial effect on the work of the heart. After all, the person for whom they pray or who prays himself is completely focused on communicating with the Almighty, and, probably, this leads to the normalization of many processes in the body that we have yet to study.
It should also be noted that representatives of various religions participated in the studies.
Many Christian associations have their own thoughts on this matter. The chairman of the Bavarian Adolf Kolping Society considers “miracles of cardiology” a normal phenomenon - in fact, it is quite natural: “Believers who attend church services at least twice a week live on average 14 years longer than those who never set foot on the threshold of a church, or did so extremely rarely.”
Later it turned out that prayer kills harmful bacteria not only in the human body, but also in water. St. Petersburg electrophysics engineer from the laboratory of medical and biological technologies of the Research Institute of Industrial and Marine Medicine, Angelina Malakhovskaya, a member of the Union of Orthodox Scientists of Russia, has been studying properties of seemingly unscientific phenomena: the power of the sign of the cross, the word of God and the healing properties of holy water. This is what she says:
“I tested the effect of the Lord’s Prayer and the Orthodox sign of the cross on pathogenic bacteria. For the study, water samples were taken from various reservoirs: wells, rivers, lakes, which contained E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus. It turned out that if you read the “Our Father” prayer and make the sign of the cross over the culture, the number of harmful bacteria decreases almost a hundred times.
Be like children and you will be saved
But the real discovery, proving the power of prayer, was made by the head of the laboratory of neuro- and psychophysiology of the St. Petersburg Psychoneurological Research Institute. V. M. Bekhtereva, professor Valery Slezin.
“Many psychiatrists and neurologists are aware of a phenomenon that is difficult to explain from a rational point of view, when after prayer mental disorders are alleviated, and patients who were considered incurable sometimes recover,” says Dr. Slesin. “Even the great Russian psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev said about his patients: “Let this one take medication, but this one better go to the priest.” Experiments have shown what exactly happens to the brain during prayer.
We invited Orthodox priests and seminarians, Catholic priests and followers of Islam, Zen Buddhists and Indian meditation masters. And they asked them to pray earnestly. While the subjects were whispering their prayers, we took an electroencephalogram from them in order to use the device to track the processes occurring in the brain. And, to their surprise, they registered the phenomenon.
Until now, it has been customary to distinguish three main phases of the working brain: REM sleep, slow-wave sleep and wakefulness. Each of these phases has its own rhythm of biocurrents. And as it turned out during the experiment, during prayer the rhythm of the brain’s biocurrents slows down so much that it becomes possible to talk about the existence of a fourth state of consciousness - “prayerful wakefulness.” In this state, the brain actually turns off: active mental activity ceases, and it seems to me - although I cannot yet prove it - that consciousness begins to exist outside the body.
“On an electroencephalograph,” the scientist continues, “the phenomenon looks like this. During wakefulness, the cerebral cortex of an adult generates alpha and beta rhythms of biocurrents with a frequency of 8 to 30 hertz. When our subjects immersed themselves in prayer, the rhythm of biocurrents slowed down to a frequency of only 3 hertz. These slow rhythms are called "delta rhythms" and are observed only in infants up to 2 - 3 months.
In some subjects, the encephalograph showed a complete absence of alpha and beta rhythms, only delta rhythms. From the point of view of neurophysiology, praying people seem to fall into childhood. Moreover, this unusual neurophysiological phenomenon was observed regardless of what kind of prayer the subjects read - Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim. It’s probably not for nothing that the Gospel says: be like children and you will be saved.
“We believe that during prayer, pathological connections between brain neurons are destroyed, because a person stops thinking about the disease,” says Dr. Slesin. “Sometimes this leads to complete recovery of terminally ill people. Science knows of cases of cancer cure, but they require more careful study. You just have to believe and pray truly, earnestly, from the heart, otherwise there will be no healing effect.
Psychologist's opinion
Psychotherapist Georgy Pogodin: All illnesses are caused by fears.
— The famous researcher Alain Bombard proved: a person who finds himself at sea after a shipwreck dies not from having nothing to eat or drink, not from a storm, but from fear. Bombar performed an experiment on himself: he lived in the ocean on a raft for a whole month without water or food - and survived due to the fact that he overcame fear. For the same reason, according to statistics, believers - among patients with cancer in an inoperable stage - live five years longer than atheists. Through prayer they relieve fears, feel that the world is frail and temporary, understand true values, finally calm down and thereby increase their immunity.
Candidate of Medical Sciences Igor Bragin: Divine singing will calm even a psychotic person.
— My colleagues, both here and abroad, have experimentally established that saying prayers helps people with high blood pressure and diabetics: in a few minutes the level of cholesterol in the blood decreases and metabolic processes are normalized. Praying is especially useful for those and for those who at times fall into deep depression and suffer from manic-depressive psychosis. In general, the more severe the disease, the more often a person turns to God for help. For example, scientists from Pasadena Theological Seminary and the University of California interviewed more than 400 patients with schizophrenia, severe forms of depression and some other mental illnesses. And they found that 80 percent of those surveyed resorted to the help of religion to cope with despair, attacks of aggressiveness or tearfulness, which medicine could not help get rid of.
Having studied the human condition during prayer, scientists from the Bekhterev Institute made a scientific discovery. They called this phenomenon the “fourth functional state of the brain.” According to the Medical Encyclopedia of Diseases, there are only three known states of the body: wakefulness, REM sleep and slow-wave sleep. And now one more thing - “slow”, or prayerful vigil.
The main conclusion of such studies is that the fourth state of the brain is as necessary for a person as all the others. The absence of one of them disrupts the harmonious development of a person, leading to illness and degradation.
During deep prayer, a person withdraws from reality, which leads to the destruction of pathological connections in the brain and body. By moving away from images of pathology, a person contributes to his recovery. He feels that the world is frail and temporary, accepts true values, and comes to harmony with God. Even cancer patients in an inoperable stage recover through prayer (such facts are known to science).
At the V.M. Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute, in the laboratory of neuropsychophysiology, the neurophysiological mechanisms of human emotions, behavior and consciousness have been studied over the past forty years.
The result of these studies was practical recommendations for people suffering from mental and psychoneurological diseases, i.e. people with disorders of consciousness and emotional behavior.
By praying, a cancer patient loses the fear of death, overcomes despondency, and this leads to a completely objective increase in immunity, resistance to the disease increases, life is prolonged, and self-healing is possible.
Experiments showed that the condition of patients improved when reading prayer.
The subjects were Orthodox and Catholic priests, representatives of Indian religious teachings (meditation). The duration of the experiment is approximately half an hour. Its participants were asked to read a poem and prayer “to themselves.” As a result, it turned out that when reading a poem, the rhythms of the brain became more frequent, and when praying, they became less frequent, almost disappearing.
During Orthodox prayer, a complete disappearance of cortical rhythms is observed. A person moves away from a traumatic reality and, returning to it, evaluates it more adequately.
The need for prayer is inherent in the human consciousness. Consciousness, that is, shared knowledge, has 3 levels:
- the first - prayer - is observed with low-frequency biocurrents (delta waves);
- the second - communication with loved ones - at a higher frequency (theta - rhythm - 7 Hz);
- finally, the third is social communication (alpha rhythm).
The need for consciousness at all of these levels is primordial, so a person needs to pray, have a family, and live actively in society.
Prayer turns off the cerebral cortex, freeing a person for a while from earthly worries and neurotic situations. In addition, the normal functioning of all three levels of consciousness determines a person’s mental health. However, in modern society the emphasis is on developing the social level of consciousness to the detriment of others.
Regularly reading prayers can have a beneficial effect on human health. This conclusion was reached by scientists from the University of Pavia (Pavia), Italy, who tested these techniques on volunteers.
The study involved 23 people who were asked to repeat either prayers or yoga mantras. Their actions were supervised by an instructor who was not associated with the researchers. Participants were not told how long to say the prayers or mantras.
It was found that during the experiments, the participants developed deep, rare breathing. The cardiovascular system is characterized by rhythms of 10 seconds. The same breathing rhythm was established when reading prayers, that is, the systems were synchronized. In addition, with deep and rare breathing, the blood is better enriched with oxygen.
When using this technique - reading prayers and mantras - patients with heart failure normalized their heart rate and became calmer. It was noted that prolonged reading of mantras and prayers normalized the breathing rate, meaning this technique may have long-term effects on health.
Prayers benefit the human body, American scientists say. According to researchers, saying prayers provides invaluable help to people with high blood pressure and diabetics: within a few minutes the level of cholesterol in the blood decreases, and metabolic processes are normalized.
The research was carried out in collaboration with the cardiology department of one of the city hospitals: scientists invited several monks, sisters and priests to pray for patients suffering from various heart ailments. Note that there were more than seven hundred passive participants in the experiment: for several days, doctors made notes in special journals about the condition of these patients, and when the experiment was completed, they collected all the data and transferred it to the scientists.
As a result of the experiments, thanks to prayers, the rate of recovery of many patients almost doubled - by about 93%. All heart patients, without exception, recovered much more confidently than before. A person saying a prayer is completely focused on communicating with God, which probably leads to the normalization of many processes in the body. It should also be noted that representatives of various religions participated in the studies.
A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina found that heart disease patients suffer fewer complications if they are prayed for, after tracking the postoperative recovery of patients who had undergone angioplasty. Those for whom we prayed had 20-30% fewer complications.
The experiment had a complex scenario: 150 people after surgery were treated with so-called alternative methods: relaxation, massage, guided imagery and prayer. This latest therapy involved seven groups of different religions praying for people who didn't even know it, like their doctors.
During prayer, pulse, blood pressure, blood composition and other parameters of the body are normalized.
Evening prayer neutralizes stress and worries of the day, calms the nervous system, and promotes good and sound sleep.
Scientists' discovery: prayer has amazing properties
A recent study by scientists from Ohio University (USA) showed that praying for others helps cope with negative emotions - anger, sadness, and feelings of loneliness.
If prayer is directed at those who are worse off than you, then anger subsides and your soul becomes better, researchers note. Their experiments showed that prayer for the sick and suffering helps to forget about the insult. At the same time, experts emphasize, it does not matter what religion you belong to or whether you are a religious person at all.
Perhaps, by praying, scientists believe, people rethink the events that triggered the mechanism of negative emotions in them. What happened is perceived more simply, not so close to the heart. The source of suffering becomes abstract, distant, consciousness switches to distant objects, one’s pain is forgotten.
Scientists have named the best way to overcome stress and anger. This is not pills or massage, but... prayer
And it doesn’t matter at all how religious you are. As Stephen King wrote in The Stand: “It doesn’t matter whether you believe in God, the main thing is whether he believes in you!”
So, American psychophysiologists from Ohio University conducted a large-scale experiment with students, playing out a variety of stressful situations and recording people’s reactions. The subjects were asked to cope with anger, fear and rage using various psychotherapeutic techniques, auto-training and reading prayers.
The result was unexpected: the greatest restraint, calmness and prudence were shown by those who, in an acute situation, read a prayer to themselves. These same participants were less likely than others to succumb to provocations and respond to aggression with aggression.
Moreover, not all of those who found themselves in the group of “prayers” were religious; many would not even call themselves believers.
— People often turn to prayer in difficult situations from an emotional point of view. This also applies to outbursts of anger, anger, and confusion. Prayer really helps. Perhaps it changes a person’s view of what happened so that he does not take everything too personally.
And our expert, family psychotherapist Anatoly GERMAN, calls prayer an excellent psychotherapeutic method:
—What is prayer essentially? This is a set of clearly structured phrases and intonations that are designed to calm a person and instill in him confidence that he will not be left without help. For people of deep faith, this is a conversation with God or saints that gives strength. But for most of us, this is a kind of auto-training, and, by the way, it’s really very effective.
For example, I often recommend to my patients who do not know how to control their emotions, are prone to panic or aggression, to read “Our Father.” This is a short, easy to remember and very energetically powerful prayer. And, you know, it often works much better than the most famous “secular” auto-training “I am calm...”.
Prayer helps...
Prayer helps people cope with attacks of rage and anger, despite the degree of their religiosity - this is the conclusion reached by experts from the University of Michigan.
They claim to have conducted the first evidence-based study on the effects of prayer on anger and aggression.
The study involved student volunteers who, while working, filled out special questionnaires designed to determine their emotional state, including anger and depression. The young people were asked to write an essay, which they promised to submit to a specialist for review. In fact, every essay was given an extremely negative grade, which made the students very angry.
In this aggressive state, they were asked to read about a student named Maureen who was seriously ill with a rare form of cancer. The young people were offered a choice: either just think about it or pray about it.
And then the scientists again measured the level of aggression of the volunteers. The results showed that among those who preferred prayer, it was much lower than among those who simply thought about the sick girl.
“When people are faced with their anger, they should remember the old advice - to pray for their enemies. This may not make the enemies feel better, but it will help them cope with negative emotions themselves,” says one of the researchers, Ryan Bremner. Scientists believe that prayer may change a person's perspective on what happened so that he does not take everything too personally.
Dag Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, former Secretary General of the United Nations, once said: “God will not die if we stop believing in him; but on the day when the unfading radiance of eternal wonder, the origins of which defy explanation, disappears from our lives, on that day we ourselves will die.”
Dear friend
Stories and examples about prayer
How much does a prayer weigh?
The only person I've ever heard of who has tried to weigh prayer still doesn't know the answer to this question.
At one time he thought he knew. This was when he owned a small grocery store. One day, an unhappy woman with a haggard face came into the store and asked the grocer to give her food so that she could prepare lunch for her children. He asked the woman how much money she had.
She answered:
‒ My husband died in the war. And I have nothing but a little prayer.
The merchant admitted that in those days he was not very sentimental and believed that his grocery store was not a place for free distribution of bread to the poor. He casually said:
‒ Write it on a piece of paper ‒ and got back to work.
To his surprise, the woman took a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to the grocer across the counter. She said:
‒ I did this at night while I was looking after my sick child.
Without having time to recover from the surprise, the grocer took a piece of paper, but immediately regretted that he had done it: what should he do now and what should he answer?
Suddenly he had an idea. Without even reading the prayer, he put a piece of paper on the scales and said:
‒ Let's see what he's worth.
To his surprise, when he placed a loaf of bread on the other scale, the scale needle did not even move. He became even more confused because the needle continued to stand still, although he quickly put food on the scale because customers were looking at him. The grocer tried to be rude, but failed. He blushed, and therefore became even more angry. Finally he muttered:
‒ Well, that's all the scale can handle. Here's the package. You will have to pack it all yourself. I'm busy.
Making what sounded like a soft sob, the woman took the bag and began packing the food, wiping her tears with her sleeve every time her hand came free.
The grocer tried not to look, but briefly noticed that he had given the woman a rather large bag, which still had some room left. So, without saying anything, he threw a large wheel of cheese onto the counter. He did not see the timid, grateful smile that sparkled in her moist eyes in response to the grocer’s kindness, which refuted the first deceptive impression of his stinginess.
When the woman left, the grocer walked up to the scales, scratching his head and shaking it in bewilderment. Later he found the answer. The scales were broken.
Years passed. The grocer often recalled this incident and did not know whether the solution he found was correct. Why was that woman's prayer already written and ready to satisfy his unexpected demand? Why did the poor woman come just when the scales were broken? What confused him so much that he didn’t even notice this breakdown and continued to add food when there was only a piece of paper on the scale? He felt stupid and barely knew what he was doing.
Yes, anyway, faith ‒ the thing is strange. And prayer too.
The grocer never saw the woman again. But he had never seen her before. And yet, until the end of his life, he remembered her better than any other customer.
He knew that the incident was not a figment of his imagination, because he still has a piece of paper where the woman's prayer was written: “Please, Lord, give us our daily bread.”
Joseph Sadoni
* * *
They say how once in a dream a Christian sister saw three women praying. While they were kneeling, the Lord approached them. He gently bent over the first of them: His smile radiated love, the speech addressed to her sounded like music. Then He approached the next one, but limited himself to touching her bowed head and giving her a look of encouragement. He passed by the third one without saying a word, without even looking at her.
The dreamer thought: “How great is His love for the first! The second He only expressed His approval, but the third must have deeply offended Him. I would like to know what she did that the Lord treated her so harshly?”
At that moment, the Lord Himself appeared before her and said: “O woman, how wrongly you have interpreted My actions. The first kneeling woman needed all My tenderness and care, otherwise she would not have stood on the narrow path. The second has more faith and deeper love, she will trust in Me in all circumstances, but needs encouragement that will help her not to look at people. The third has perfect faith and love. She knows Me so well and trusts Me so much that she does not need any visible manifestations of My encouragement. She is not embarrassed or discouraged by the circumstances through which I take her. She knows for sure that I am bringing to perfection the work I have begun in her for eternity...
Out of My Love I remain silent, because My Love is above the words that express it. For your sake I remain silent, so that you learn to love Me and trust Me. I want you, taught by the Spirit, to be able to respond to My Love without any external coercion.”
Have you comprehended the secret of His silence? If so, He will do miracles and you will praise Him even more!
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