The power of your subconscious mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy has many innovative approaches to healing the human thinking flaws. Negation and skepticism of the self is one of the key subjects it handles. He invokes the power of prayer as one of the tools to overcome these two strong negative forces. His portrayal of the tool goes beyond the limitations of religion and tradition. Unlike the many spiritualists he treats “Desire” as a positive element that can lead to the orientation of the mind on the right path. He says desire is also the infinite power that lifts the subconscious mind from the state of mediocre thinking into a state of a dynamic force.

Subconscious Mind and Belief

Surprisingly, Dr. Murphy makes no distinction between belief, faith and blind faith in this book. According to him, they are multiple forms of the same power that transcends the known barriers and transforms life. At the same time he cautions about belief that can cause harm to the self and the others. Here one needs to use the logic of the conscious mind to differentiate the good from the bad.

· End Goal: Being in the state of realized goals while setting them is the stated method to attain them without any deviation from the path. Here you can think of an athlete who wishes to run the 100 meters sprint within a specific time limit. If he starts suggesting to his subconscious mind that he has already done it once, the probability of achieving that goal increases multiple times.

· Mind Feed: According to Dr. Murphy, the subconscious is a powerful machine that simply works according to the input from the conscious mind. If a person feeds fear, self-doubt, and other negative inputs to the subconscious, it will walk on the same path without questioning. On the contrary feeding of positive aspects can result in the desired results, sooner or later.

· Scientific Prayer: According to Dr. Murphy, prayer is an act that stimulates the subconscious mind into accepting the belief of the conscious mind. It knows no logic, reason, analytical thinking, or the knowledge to differentiate the good and bad. When a person starts praying from the conscious mind, the waves naturally pass onto the subconscious to make it flexible and strong. These prayers are stated to be the indelible and indestructible imprints on the subconscious. The praying individual can never forget them while being awake and asleep.

Dr. Murphy goes on to suggest many techniques and methods for sleep, gratitude, affirmation, argumentation, decree, body to mind connectivity, etc. According to him, every organ in the human body has its own intelligence that is untouched by the conscious mind. The working of the heart, lungs, white blood cells, blood veins, and countless other organs are examples he illustrates. This intelligence will take care of the body and the subconscious when it is left undisturbed by the conscious mind.

The book is worth reading only when its principles are put into practice. It does take time, effort, and patience to start growing towards the set goals in life.