Dr. Joseph Murphy’s The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, published in 1963, is a foundational text in New Thought philosophy, exploring the profound influence of the subconscious mind on every aspect of human life. Murphy, a prolific author and minister, synthesizes spiritual wisdom, psychological insights, and practical techniques to demonstrate how individuals can harness their inner power to achieve health, wealth, happiness, and success. The book’s core message is that our subconscious mind, being a non-discriminating and creative force, manifests whatever thoughts and beliefs are consistently impressed upon it.
Chapter 1: The Treasure House Within You
Murphy introduces the central concept that within each individual lies an infinite treasure house – the subconscious mind. He posits that this inner power is capable of bringing forth anything we desire, provided we learn how to access and direct it. The chapter emphasizes that the solutions to all problems, the cure for all diseases, and the source of all abundance reside within us, waiting to be tapped. It sets the stage for understanding the mind as a powerful tool for creation.
Chapter 2: How Your Own Mind Works
This crucial chapter distinguishes between the two primary functions of the mind: the conscious (or objective) mind and the subconscious (or subjective) mind.
- The Conscious Mind: Described as the reasoning, analytical, and logical mind, it perceives the world through the five senses. It’s the “gatekeeper” that chooses what thoughts to entertain and acts as the “captain” of the ship, giving orders.
- The Subconscious Mind: This is the infinitely more powerful, non-reasoning mind that accepts whatever the conscious mind impresses upon it. It’s the seat of emotions, habits, and memories, and it tirelessly works to bring accepted thoughts into reality. Murphy likens it to the “soil” that accepts any “seed” (thought) and brings it to fruition, or the “crew” that carries out the captain’s orders without question. The fundamental principle introduced here is the Law of Belief: whatever you believe to be true, your subconscious will work to make true.
Chapter 3: The Miracle-Working Power of Your Subconscious
Murphy elaborates on the inherent power of the subconscious mind, describing it as omnipotent and omniscient, connected to Universal or Infinite Intelligence. It possesses infinite wisdom and knows the answers to all problems. The chapter highlights that the subconscious is the creative principle within us, responsible for all bodily functions and for manifesting our dominant thoughts and feelings. It emphasizes that the subconscious does not differentiate between good and bad thoughts; it simply acts upon the dominant impression.
Chapter 4: Mental Healing in Ancient Times
This chapter delves into historical and ancient practices of healing, attributing their success to the understanding and application of subconscious principles, even if not explicitly termed as such. Murphy discusses various forms of healing, from ancient temples to spiritual practices, suggesting that the underlying mechanism was always the patient’s faith and the subconscious mind’s ability to respond to that faith, leading to physical restoration.
Chapter 5: Mental Healing in Modern Times
Murphy brings the concept of mental healing into the modern context, providing contemporary examples and scientific explanations (from his perspective) for how the subconscious mind can influence physical health. He presents numerous case studies of individuals who experienced miraculous healings by consciously impressing the idea of perfect health upon their subconscious, dismissing symptoms, and maintaining unwavering belief. He introduces the concept of “mental surgery” – vividly imagining the affliction being removed and the body restored to wholeness.
Chapter 6: Practical Techniques in Mental Healings
This chapter offers concrete methods for applying the subconscious mind’s healing power. Murphy outlines techniques such as:
- Visualization: Creating vivid mental images of the desired healthy state.
- Affirmations: Regularly repeating positive statements about perfect health.
- Scientific Prayer: A method of clearly defining the desired outcome, mentally accepting it as already achieved, and giving thanks.
- The “Picture Method” and “Mental Movie Method”: Detailed visualization techniques where one holds a mental picture or runs a mental movie of the desired outcome. The emphasis is on feeling the reality of the desired state with conviction and faith.
Chapter 7: The Tendency of the Subconscious Toward Life
Murphy discusses the inherent inclination of the subconscious mind towards life, growth, and health. He explains that the subconscious is constantly working for our well-being and that any illness or negativity is a result of conscious thoughts and beliefs that interfere with this natural tendency. The chapter reinforces the idea that by aligning our conscious thoughts with the life-affirming nature of the subconscious, we can promote health and vitality.
Chapter 8: How to Get the Results You Want
This chapter provides a comprehensive guide to achieving any desired outcome by effectively communicating with the subconscious mind. Murphy reiterates the importance of clarity in desire, unwavering belief, and emotional conviction. He introduces the “Argument Method” for problem-solving, where one asks the subconscious for answers and then trusts the inner guidance. The chapter stresses that doubt and fear are the greatest impediments to manifestation.
Chapter 9: How to Use the Power of Your Subconscious for Wealth
Murphy asserts that poverty is a mental condition and that true wealth begins in the mind. To attract prosperity, he advises cultivating a “prosperity consciousness” by:
- Consistently affirming and believing in abundance.
- Visualizing financial success.
- Dismissing thoughts of lack or limitation.
- Blessing money and seeing it as a tool for good, rather than condemning it. The chapter emphasizes that one must feel wealthy to attract wealth.
Chapter 10: Your Right to Be Rich
Building on the previous chapter, Murphy argues that it is our spiritual right to be rich and live a full, abundant life. He challenges the notion that poverty is virtuous, stating that true spirituality involves prosperity in all areas. He encourages readers to embrace a mindset of deservingness and to release any subconscious blocks or guilt associated with wealth.
Chapter 11: Your Subconscious Mind as a Partner in Success
This chapter positions the subconscious mind as an invaluable partner in achieving professional and personal success. Murphy explains that by impressing clear goals and aspirations upon the subconscious, it will work tirelessly to open doors, provide insights, and guide us towards their realization. He encourages readers to define success on their own terms and to consistently visualize themselves achieving their highest potential.
Chapter 12: Scientists Use the Subconscious Mind
Murphy provides examples of renowned scientists, inventors, and thinkers who intuitively or consciously tapped into their subconscious minds to find solutions to complex problems, make groundbreaking discoveries, and achieve breakthroughs. He suggests that flashes of inspiration, intuition, and sudden insights are often the subconscious mind revealing answers to conscious inquiries.
Chapter 13: Your Subconscious Mind and the Wonders of Sleep
The period just before and during sleep is highlighted as a particularly potent time for impressing the subconscious mind. Murphy explains that as the conscious mind relaxes, the subconscious becomes more receptive. He advises reviewing the day’s events before sleep, correcting any negative impressions, and affirming desired outcomes, peace, and joy. He also discusses how the subconscious can provide guidance and solutions through dreams.
Chapter 14: Your Subconscious Mind and Marital Problems
Murphy applies the principles of the subconscious to improving marital relationships. He suggests that relationship issues often stem from negative beliefs, resentment, or unexpressed emotions held in the subconscious. He advocates for projecting love, peace, and goodwill towards one’s partner, forgiving past grievances, and affirming the divine presence in the other person to attract harmony and understanding.
Chapter 15: Your Subconscious Mind and Your Happiness
Happiness, according to Murphy, is a state of mind that can be cultivated by consciously choosing positive thoughts and beliefs. He explains that true happiness comes from within and is not dependent on external circumstances. By impressing joy, peace, and gratitude upon the subconscious, one can create a consistent inner state of happiness.
Chapter 16: How to Use Your Subconscious Mind for Forgiveness
Forgiveness is presented as a critical step for mental and spiritual liberation. Holding grudges, resentment, or bitterness creates a toxic environment within the subconscious, leading to emotional and physical ailments. Murphy advocates for a conscious process of forgiveness, where one mentally releases the person or situation that caused pain, recognizing that forgiveness is primarily for one’s own well-being and freedom.
Chapter 17: How to Use Your Subconscious Mind to Remove Mental Blocks
This chapter focuses on identifying and overcoming limiting beliefs, fears, and negative thought patterns that act as “mental blocks.” Murphy provides techniques to reprogram the subconscious by consciously replacing negative impressions with positive, empowering ones. He emphasizes the importance of persistence and consistency in this process.
Chapter 18: How to Use Your Subconscious Mind to Remove Fear
Fear is identified as one of the most destructive emotions, as it impresses negative outcomes upon the subconscious. Murphy teaches that the antidote to fear is faith. By consciously replacing fearful thoughts with thoughts of confidence, peace, and desired outcomes, one can reprogram the subconscious. He encourages facing fears by understanding their illusory nature and by affirming divine guidance and protection.
Chapter 19: How to Stay Young in Spirit Forever
Murphy concludes by discussing the concept of eternal youth, not just physically but spiritually and mentally. He argues that age is largely a state of mind and that by maintaining a positive, optimistic, and forward-looking attitude, one can stay vibrant and energetic regardless of chronological age. He encourages continuous learning, growth, and contributing to life, keeping the subconscious active and engaged.
Conclusion: Mastering Your Destiny
“The Power of Your Subconscious Mind” ultimately empowers readers to become the architects of their own destiny. By understanding the profound difference between the conscious and subconscious minds, and by learning how to impress positive, constructive thoughts and beliefs upon the latter, individuals can overcome limitations, heal ailments, attract prosperity, build harmonious relationships, and achieve profound personal fulfillment. The book serves as a practical manual, urging readers to take full responsibility for their inner world, recognizing that the greatest power lies within the depths of their own minds. The timeless message is one of hope and empowerment: by changing your thoughts, you change your fate.
Sample Chapter from the Original Book:
Chapter 1: The Treasure House Within You
You have infinite riches within your reach. To gain them, all you have to do is open your mental eyes and behold the treasure house of infinity within you. There is a storehouse within you from which you can extract everything you need to live life gloriously, joyously, and abundantly.
Many people are closed off to their own potential because they do not know about this storehouse of infinite intelligence and boundless love within themselves. Whatever you want, you can draw it forth.
A magnetized piece of iron will lift about twelve times its own weight. But if you demagnetize this same piece of iron, it will not lift even a feather.
In the same way, there are two types of people. Those who are magnetized are full of confidence and faith. They know they are born to succeed and to win.
Others, so many others, are demagnetized. They are full of fears and doubts. When an opportunity comes, they say, “What if I fail? I might lose my money. People will laugh at me.” People of this sort will not get very far in life. Their fear to go forward makes them simply stay where they are.
You can become a magnetized person when you discover and put to use the master secret of the ages.
THE MASTER SECRET OF THE AGES
Suppose someone asked you to name the master secret of the ages. What would you answer? Atomic energy? Interplanetary travel? Black holes? No, it is not any of these. Then what is this master secret? Where can one find it? How can it be understood and put into action?
The answer is extraordinarily simple. This secret is the marvelous, miracle-working power found in your own subconscious mind. This is the last place most people would look for it, which is the reason so few ever find it.
THE MARVELOUS POWER OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS
Once you learn to contact and release the hidden power of your subconscious mind, you can bring into your life more power, more wealth, more health, more happiness, and more joy.
You do not need to acquire this power. You already possess it. But you will have to learn how to use it. You must understand it so that you can apply it in all departments of your life.
If you follow the simple techniques and processes explained in this book, you can gain the necessary knowledge and understanding. You can be inspired by a new light, and you can generate a new force that enables you to realize your hopes and make all your dreams come true. Decide now to make your life grander, greater, richer, and nobler than ever before.
Within your subconscious depths lie infinite wisdom, infinite power, an infinite supply of all that is necessary. It is waiting there for you to give it development and expression. If you begin now to recognize these potentialities of your deeper mind, they will take form in the world without.
Provided you are open-minded and receptive, the infinite intelligence within your subconscious mind can reveal to you everything you need to know at every moment of time and point of space. You can receive new thoughts and ideas, bring forth new inventions, make new discoveries, create new works of art. The infinite intelligence in your subconscious can give you access to wonderful new kinds of knowledge. Let it reveal itself to you and it will open the way to perfect expression and true place in your life.
Through the wisdom of your subconscious mind, you can attract the ideal companion, as well as the right business associate or partner. It can show you how to get all the money you need and give you the financial freedom to be, to do, and to go as your heart desires.
It is your right to discover this inner world of thought, feeling, and power, of light, love, and beauty. Though invisible, its forces are mighty. Within your subconscious mind you will find the solution for every problem and the cause for every effect. Once you learn to draw out these hidden powers, you come into actual possession of the power and wisdom necessary to move forward in abundance, security, joy, and dominion.
I have seen the power of the subconscious lift people up out of crippled states, making them whole, vital, and strong once more. Their minds made them free to go out into the world to experience happiness, health, and joyous expression. There is a miraculous curative force in your subconscious that can heal the troubled mind and the broken heart. It can open the prison door of the mind and liberate you. It can free you from all kinds of material and physical bondage.
NECESSITY OF A WORKING BASIS
If you want to make progress in any field of endeavor, there is an essential first step. You must discover a working basis that is universal in its application. Before you can become skilled in the operation of your subconscious mind, you must understand its principles. Once that is achieved, you can practice its powers knowing the results you will certainly obtain. You can apply these powers for the definite specific purposes and goals you want to accomplish.
For many years I followed the profession of chemist. One of the first things I learned in my early training was that if you combine two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, the product will be water—not occasionally or most of the time, always. If you take one atom of oxygen and one atom of carbon and combine them, you will produce carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas. But if you add another atom of oxygen, you will get carbon dioxide, a gas that is harmless to animals and vital to plants. These facts are universal and unchangeable. They are what we call principles.
The principles of chemistry, physics, and mathematics are no different in their workings from the principles of your subconscious mind. If you want to make use of chemical or physical forces, you must learn the principles of these fields. If you want to make use of the force of your subconscious mind, you must learn its principles.
Take the generally accepted principle, Water seeks its own level. This is a universal principle. It applies to water everywhere, at any time, and to all liquids that behave like water.
The ancient Egyptians knew this principle. They used it to make the foundations of the great pyramids perfectly level. Today, engineers use it when planning everything from an irrigation system to a hydroelectric power station.
Or take the principle, Matter expands when heated. This is true anywhere, at any time, and under all circumstances. If you heat a piece of steel, it will expand, whether the steel is found in China, England, India, or in an orbiting space station.
Matter expands when heated… This is a universal truth. It is also a universal truth that whatever you impress on your subconscious mind is expressed on the screen of space as condition, experience, and event.
Your prayer is answered because your subconscious mind is principle, and by principle I mean the way a thing works. For example, an important principle of electricity is that it works from a higher to a lower potential. You do not change the principle of electricity when you turn on a lamp or cook on an electric stove. No, you use the principle. By cooperating with nature, you can bring forth marvelous inventions and discoveries that bless humanity in countless ways.
Your subconscious mind is principle. It works according to the law of belief. You must know what belief is, why it works, and how it works. Your Bible says in a simple, clear, and beautiful way:
Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
MARK 11:23
The law of your mind is the law of belief. This means to believe in the way your mind works, to believe in belief itself The belief of your mind is the thought of your mind, just that and nothing else.
All your experiences, events, conditions, and acts are produced by your subconscious mind in reaction to your thoughts. Remember, it is not the thing believed in, but the belief in your own mind that brings about the result. Stop accepting the false beliefs, opinions, superstitions, and fears that plague our humankind. Begin to believe in the eternal verities and truths of life that never change. At that point you will move onward, upward, and Godward.
All those who read this book and faithfully apply the principles of the subconscious mind that are set forth here will gain the ability to pray scientifically and effectively for themselves and for others. Your prayer is answered according to the universal law of action and reaction.
Thought is incipient action. The reaction is the response from your subconscious mind that corresponds to the nature of your thought. Fill your mind with the concepts of harmony, health, peace, and goodwill, and wonders will happen in your life.
THE DUALITY OF MIND
You have only one mind, but that one mind possesses two distinct and characteristic functional parts. The frontier that separates the two is well known to students of the mind. The two functions of your mind are essentially different from each other. Each has its own separate and distinct attributes and powers.
Many names have been used to distinguish the two functions of the mind. These include the objective and the subjective mind, the conscious and the subconscious mind, the waking and the sleeping mind, the surface and the deep self, the voluntary and the involuntary mind, the male and the female mind, and many others. All of these, whatever their implications, are recognitions of this essential duality.
Throughout this book I use the terms conscious and subconscious to represent the dual nature of your mind. If another set of terms comes more easily to you, by all means use it. The important starting point is to recognize and acknowledge the double nature of the mind.
THE CONSCIOUS AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
A wonderful way to begin getting to know the two functions of your mind is to think of it as a garden. You are the gardener. You are planting seeds of thought in your subconscious mind all day long. Much of the time you are not even aware of doing so, because the seeds are based on your habitual thinking. As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.
Imagine your subconscious mind as a bed of rich soil that will help all kinds of seeds to sprout and flourish, whether good or bad. If you sow thorns, will you gather grapes? If you sow thistles, will you harvest figs? Every thought is a cause, and every condition is an effect. This is the reason it is so essential that you take charge of your thoughts. In that way, you can bring forth only desirable conditions.
Begin now to sow thoughts of peace, happiness, right action, goodwill, and prosperity. Think quietly and with conviction on these qualities. Accept them fully in your conscious reasoning mind. Continue to plant these wonderful seeds of thought in the garden of your mind and you will reap a glorious harvest.
When your mind thinks correctly, when you understand the truth, when the thoughts deposited in your subconscious mind are constructive, harmonious, and peaceful, the magic working power of your subconscious will respond. It will bring about harmonious conditions, agreeable surroundings, and the best of everything. Once you begin to control your thought processes, you can apply the powers of your subconscious to any problem or difficulty. You will actually be consciously cooperating with the infinite power and omnipotent law that governs all things.
