Prayer, alongside meditation, is an integral part of religious traditions. God can be prayed to but also saints and angels. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert and Mark ask whether and why prayer is not widely discussed, how prayer can be practiced, and what prayer might be. They share personal practices of prayer and explore the agency of angels and saints. They ask about the entities that people report encountering when using psychedelics, alongside other questions such as how to pray for people and what can be expected from prayer. The desire to pray seems to be an almost universal human impulse. Much more might be made of it.

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Dr Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to programmes on the radio, writes and reviews for newspapers and magazines, gives talks and podcasts. His books have covered themes including friendship and God, ancient Greek philosophy and wellbeing. His new book, out August 2019, is "A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness". He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, and works as a psychotherapist in private practice. He used to be an Anglican priest.

Mark's latest book is...
A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling, and the Evolution of Consciousness
http://www.markvernon.com/books/a-sec...

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Dr Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and From 2005 to 2010 was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, Cambridge.

https://www.sheldrake.org