Question

You’ve written several times that prayer is supposed (according to those opinions) to affect the person, to change him, and “go out and see”…
 
Prayer is standing before God—that is, stepping out of the circle of this world, remembering the Creator of the world and Giver of the Torah, and standing before Him. Before work in the morning, during it, and after it.
 
I’ve never tried not praying three times a day. Thank God, I observe Jewish law. But it seems to me that indeed, even if a person does not emerge from every prayer in a blazing holy fire, its effect in terms of God’s presence in his life is noticeable throughout the expanses of his conscious and subconscious mind; and if he were not to pray, the Holy One, blessed be He, would be less present in his life, in his awareness.
He is compelled (?) to stand before his Creator and Giver of the Torah. From that alone, he is impressed. He remembers God and His commandments. God is present in his life.
 
I won’t get into the whole issue of whether prayer works to fulfill our wishes, and if so then how. My claim is that it has a great effect in reminding the ordinary Israeli of God, His kingship, and His greatness in everyday life.
 
It should be added that many of the laws of prayer are connected to this point—to cause a person to experience standing before the King.
 
Indeed, one can say that there are people for whom this effect is less necessary. Someone who all day is required to prove God’s existence remembers Him well enough at every moment 🙂
The commandment is a general one, given to the whole people—to the working person, the wage-earner. Just as the Sabbath reminds us that God created the world, so too Torah scholars who prove God’s existence from proofs based on the fact that the world was created are still commanded to cease from work.
 
Perhaps indeed for Torah scholars engaged in Torah study, prayer is less necessary from the standpoint of this benefit. And that is Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who does not interrupt for prayer.
 
Though even about this one can invoke the famous saying of Rav Avrum: we need Torah scholar engineers, Torah scholar shoemakers, Torah scholar cooks, even Torah scholar rabbis…
And in the analogy—even a rabbi giving a general lecture is not guaranteed always to remember the Giver of the Torah, who originated migo as the force of a claim… 🙂