Power of Faith & Mantra

Lobsang Rampa was a prolific, albeit a bit controversial, writer of last century. He has written many books & pamphlets. The following are the excerpts of his popular book "You-forever," which is akin to the recent best seller "Secret":               

Faith is a definite thing which can and must be cultivated in much the same way as a habit or a hothouse plant must be cultivated. Faith is not as hardy as a weed, it is indeed more like a hothouse plant. It must be pampered, must be fed, must be looked after. To obtain faith we must repeat, and repeat, and repeat our affirmation of faith so that the knowledge of it is driven into our sub-conscious. This sub-conscious is nine-tenths of us, that is, by far the greater part of us. We often liken it unto a lazy old man who just does not want to be disturbed. The old man is reading his newspapers, perhaps he has his pipe in his mouth and his feet are encased in comfortable slippers. He is really tired of all the racket, all the noise, all the distraction constantly going on around him. Through years of experience he has learned to shield himself from all except the most insistent interruptions and distractions. Like an old man who is partly deaf he doesn't hear when he is called the first time. The second time he is called he doesn't hear because he doesn't want to hear, because he thinks it might be work for him, or some interruption of his lazy leisure. The third time he starts to get irritable because the caller is disturbing his trend of thoughts while he is perhaps more anxious to read the racing results than to do anything which requires effort. Keep on and on repeating your faith and then the "old man" will come to life with a jerk, and when the knowledge is implanted in your sub-conscious then you will have automatic faith. We must make it clear here that faith is not belief; you can say "I believe that tomorrow is Monday," and that means a certain thing. You would not say "I have faith that tomorrow is Monday" because that would mean a completely different thing. Faith is something which usually grows up with us. We become a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Jew because, usually, our parents were Christians, Buddhists, or Jews. We have faith in our parents — we believe that what our parents believed was correct — and so our "faith" became the same as our parents'. Certain things which cannot definitely be proved while upon the Earth require faith, other things which can be proved can be believed or disbelieved. There is a distinction, and one should become aware of that distinction.

But, first of all, what do you want to believe, what is it that requires your faith? Decide what it is that needs faith, think of it from all angles. Is it faith in a religion, faith in an ability? Think of it from as many angles as you can, and then, making sure that you think of it in a positive way, affirm — state — to yourself that you can do this or that, or that you will do this or that, or that you firmly  believe  in this or that. You must keep on affirming it. Unless you do so affirm you will never have "faith." Great religions have faithful followers. Those faithful followers are ones who have been to church, or chapel, or synagogue, or temple, and by repeated prayers, not merely on their own behalf but by others also, their sub-conscious has become aware that there are some things which must be "a faith." In the Far East there are such things as mantras. A person will say a certain thing — a mantra — and say it again and again, and repeat it time after time. Possibly the person will not even know what the mantra is about! That does not matter because the founders of the religion who composed the mantra will have arranged it in such a way that the vibrations engendered in repeating the mantra knock into the subconscious the thing desired. Soon, even though the person does not fully understand the mantra, it becomes part of the person's subconscious, and the faith then is purely automatic. In much the same way, if you repeat prayers time after time you begin to believe them. It is all a matter of getting your sub-conscious to understand and to co-operate, and once you have faith then you do not have to bother any more because your sub-conscious will always remind you that you have this faith, and that you can do those certain things.