Do Blessings (आशीर्वाद) or Prayers (प्रार्थना) really work?

The mildest form of blessing is the casual "good morning" that we utter when we meet someone and I guess the strongest one is the traditional अष्ट पुत्र सौभाग्यवती भव् (May you beget eight sons and may your husband be alive) given to a newly married woman. Do you think that these or other blessings would come true just because they have been uttered in sincerity and goodwill by the giver?

There is no doubt that the giver of blessings is your well wisher but does he or she possess some power (it will have to be supernatural) to determine your future? If this was so, why would we have ever worked hard to achieve our objectives? It is obvious that receiving blessings makes us feel good so we readily convince ourselves that they are indeed going to come true. There are some amongst us who hanker after "blessings" - they would go out of their way (a visit to Shirdi or Tirupati?) to receive them in the mistaken belief that this act will somehow ensure success in their venture. There are others who get addicted to this process and keep seeking opportunities to ask for blessings - for nothing in particular (If you don't know where to go how will you ever reach there?). You must remember that projects succeed because of your thoroughness and hard work and they fail because you goofed up somewhere. Blessings only make you "feel good".

We often "pray" to an Almighty power (now you have got to be religious to do this because the existence of such an almighty power has never been demonstrated under neutral conditions) for success, wealth, happiness, even 'rains' and many times for the defeat of our enemies (though these enemies are creations of the same almighty power). We must have prayed thousands of time in our life but have you ever statistically calculated the rate of success of our prayers? In your business, would you choose a media for your next advertisement before analysing the enquiries that the last one generated? It is obvious that we pray more for our own satisfaction (at having done our best) than really achieving success in whatever we are requesting the Almighty power to do for us. So brain washed are we that if inspite of our sincere prayers, things do not happen as intended, we never blame the Almighty ( Henry Kissinger once famously said "the advantage of being a celebrity speaker is that even when you are boring the audience to death, they feel it is their fault).

Blessings and prayers do give us a sense of calmness and composure (मनः शांती) which eventually leads to better performance but we must understand that they could generate a false sense of security. For adults, I would strongly recommend meditation (ध्यान) which generates the same kind of mental strength without the side effects.