In many religious traditions, the Guru gives a brief “mantra” to their students.  Mantra is supposed to have powers to deliver all kinds of benefits from wisdom, health and prosperity.    This always bothered me as non-scientific till I realized the implication and real use of Mantra through personal experience.  (Some of the thoughts here also crystallized on reading a book by Eknath Easwaran).

Mantra is really a way to enhance focus.  Focus is a fundamental challenge for any performance enhancement regimen.  It is about mind control.  Our mind is essentially fickle.  When you observe your own mind, you will realize that there is almost a random, subconscious process by which thoughts keep getting thrown up for consideration by the mind.  Mantra stills the mind and focuses its energies.

Usually the mantra is associated with “good” words anyway.  When you focus on “good words” for extended period of time, you are cleaning and repairing your subconscious processes.  It is like your web-search history.  When you spend time searching for sports trivia (or any other thing) on the google, google prioritizes sports related material for any search that you conduct.  Similarly, your mind also stores and processes all your thoughts and actions.  And it throws up the most relevant things (according to your historical thoughts) for your consideration.  This is why it is so  hard to break away from habits.  A habitual gambler’s thoughts will automatically drift towards gambling.

Mantra is a way to cleanse your thought “browsing” history.  When you replace your older thoughts of anger, revenge, jealousy or insecurity with thoughts of doing good, service, love and happiness, you heal yourself.  Your thoughts improve and it reinforces the cycle that is started by using a “mantra.”

So it does not matter what mantra you use.  We should keep a mantra (or a piece of good advice) in our consciousness and keep repeating it!