760. It is a natural consequence that an intimate prayer will lose some of its lustre and fervour, and in many cases will not be answered, if we at the same time through our relationship to our neighbour unleash all kinds of phenomena that bring sorrow and suffering upon the very Godhead to which we direct our prayer. This makes it easier to understand why in so many cases the intimate or authorised prayer is not answered. One is quite simply colliding with the particular technique of prayer. If we are to have any hope of a really intimate relationship to the Godhead and of a real answer to our most secret wishes, these wishes must of course be first and foremost something that we ourselves are prepared to fulfil for our neighbour, regardless of whether or not we at this moment see this neighbour as an enemy because we otherwise would be asking God for something that we ourselves would absolutely not want to give the Godhead if the relationship was reversed, and it was the Godhead that was the one that was praying to us. Do you not think that stipulating that the Godhead has to do something for us that we ourselves would absolutely not do for the Godhead, were we able, would be enough to neutralise the prayer, no matter how intimate and fervent an appeal to the Godhead it was? It will be important to remember this analysis every time we go into the "secret closet" and make our intimate appeals to the Godhead. Every so-called "prayer" is worth nothing as long as it gives consideration to God only in the "secret closet". As long as it does not give true consideration to whichever neighbour we may happen to be confronted with, regardless of what this neighbour looks like to us, it will really be only a camouflage of our outer way of being. But the Godhead will not be affected by such a camouflage since he is the same being whether in the "secret closet" or in the form of our neighbour.