In the religious way people use to pray only when they are in misery, suffering, some trouble.

When they are happy, joyous, successful they never bother God. This behavior makes you aware of an intense involvement of all the religions with suffering, because only those who are suffering become victims in the hands of the priests. Otherwise, who cares about priests, who care about holy books? When you are happy, contented, joyful, you want to enjoy your life. You dont want to waste your time praying in a church or a temple. This behavior is as natural as it is when you are sick you will go to the doctor and when you are sick you will need medicine. You dont go to the doctor when you are healthy. You dont go to the druggist for some medicine when you are perfectly healthy. This natural mechanism has been exploited by the priest long, long ago. They have discovered by that if you can put an equal between suffering and sickness and create the illusion that religions and their priests have the cure and the medicines for the suffering, then those who are suffering become victims in the hands of the priests and can be easily exploited.

Politicians also became interested in religion and kings/leaders were very much supportive of organized religion, because religion provides opium to the people, a consolation, and if this opium is not provided for the people, revolt is going to happen. So those who are in power are deeply interested that you should remain sad, miserable, in anxiety, because your anxiety and your sadness will take you to the priests and they will give you the opium called hope. Dont be worried, pray. And if you pray with a pure heart, and if you pray with absolute belief, your prayer will be answered. This is illusory, nobody can have absolute belief. Belief as such is borrowed from somebody else, you dont know anything about it. How can you be absolute in your belief? At the most you can repress your doubt with the belief, but the doubt is there. So when your prayers are not heard, you know it is not the fault of God or the fault of prayer: your belief is not total, your trust has doubt underneath it. Although you are praying, you know deep within you,Who knows whether there is a God who is listening or going to answer? This helps the priest to keep you in your miserable situation.

If your prayer is not heard, then the priests recommend you to fast, purify yourself, do all kinds of disciplines and certainly your prayer will be answered. Nobodys prayer has ever been answered. But because of this strategy, they have planted in you the idea that when your prayer is not answered, you are at fault. So you have to be absolutely pure. They demand perfectionism. And because of their demand of perfectionism they have driven the whole of humanity neurotic. Nobody can be perfect. Perfection is simply out of the question; perfection means death. You have to go on trying to be perfect in this way evolution moves. You will be coming closer and closer to perfection, but you will never be perfect. The moment you are perfect you are finished; evolution has come to an end. The ideas of evolution and perfection are antagonistic. But all over world, through all the ages, civilizations and cultures, every child has been forced to be perfect. And once this cancer of being perfect enters your mind, you will always feel you are not perfect, you will always feel guilty. You will pray, but you know your prayer will not be heard.

But the religions have completely diverted your attention. Your suffering is being caused by the vested interests here, now, and they have shifted the whole idea to the future and not even to the near future... to after death. Different religions have tried different strategies, but the basic thing is to divert your mind from the exploitation which is going on right now. If all kinds of consolations are dropped, you will be able to see that your problem, your suffering, your misery is being created, manufactured by man. It has nothing to do with prayer. And this is a very dangerous situation because all the religions and almost everybody belongs to some religion are trying to divert you from the actuality of things to dreams of paradise and heaven and all kinds of joys. These people are sellers of dreams and they fill your mind with dreams so much that you stop seeing the reality. The reality is that a few vested interests politicians, the rich people, the priests they are the cause of your suffering, of your anguish, of your misery, and they can be removed. But who is going to remove them? Nobody will do it, because the people who are suffering never think that these good people can be the cause of their suffering.