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The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963) by Joseph Murphy

Channel: Master Key Society
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Solb9uA-tgQ

A full audiobook reading (20 chapters) of Joseph Murphy's New Thought classic, whose single claim is that the subconscious mind is a creative power that accepts whatever the conscious mind believes as true, so by deliberately impressing it with the right thoughts and feelings you can heal the body, attract wealth, and reshape your circumstances.

Key points

The core law

  • The mind is one but works on two levels: the conscious (reasoning, choosing, the "captain" that gives orders) and the subconscious (feeling, memory, the seat of habit and the body's autonomic functions - the "crew" that obeys). The subconscious does not reason or reject; it accepts as true whatever the conscious mind repeatedly and feelingly presents to it.
  • "As a man thinketh in his subconscious mind, so is he." The law of life is the law of belief: not the thing believed in but the belief itself produces the result. This is why people of any religion (Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hebrew) get answers to prayer - the common factor is mental acceptance, not the creed.
  • The subconscious is impersonal and neutral, like fertile soil or a magnetic tape: it will grow thorns or corn, prosperity or lack, with equal willingness. It reproduces whatever is impressed on it, so guard the conscious mind as the gatekeeper and refuse to entertain fear, lack, and ill will.
  • "Scientific prayer" is the harmonious, directed interaction of conscious and subconscious for a specific purpose. Desire is prayer; answered prayer is the realization of the heart's desire.

How to impress the subconscious

  • The subconscious accepts an idea most readily when the conscious, reasoning mind is quiet - in the relaxed, drowsy, sleepy state before sleep or on waking. Enter a passive, receptive state, then present your desire calmly and repeatedly.
  • Techniques Murphy names and demonstrates with anecdotes: the passing-over / drowsy-state method; the "thank you" method (give thanks for the good already received until you feel it is real); affirmation (repeating a statement like "my body and all its organs were created by the infinite intelligence in my subconscious mind, it knows how to heal me"); visualization (mentally seeing the desired end); the mental-movie method; and the "sleeping on it" technique - handing a problem to the subconscious before sleep and letting it deliver the answer.
  • Feeling is the secret: an idea must be felt as true and accepted emotionally. Imagination charged with faith, not willpower or force, does the work. Straining or trying to compel a result signals doubt and produces the opposite (the "law of reversed effort").
  • Avoid conflict between the conscious wish and a subconscious counter-belief; do not decree with anxiety. Live as though the wish were already fulfilled, then relax and let the deeper mind bring it to pass. Persist until the mind accepts it, then act on the assumption of the answer received.

Healing

  • The healing power is the same subconscious intelligence that built and maintains the body; it can heal its own handiwork. Murphy repeatedly claims to have dissolved a malignancy (a sarcoma) in himself using this power, and opens by asserting he has seen miracles of healing worldwide.
  • He surveys "mental healings in ancient and modern times" - claiming all healing across religions and methods (prayer, faith cures, hypnosis, placebo, Lourdes, various sects) operates by the one law: the patient's subconscious responds to accepted belief. The specific creed or ritual is incidental; suggestion and expectancy are the active ingredients.
  • Anecdotes recur: incurable diagnoses reversed, a woman's stiffened limbs freed, absent-treatment healings for relatives at a distance. The instruction is to affirm wholeness with feeling and to picture the loved one radiant and well.

Wealth and success

  • "It is your right to be rich." Poverty is a mental disease; wealth begins as a state of mind. Do not condemn money or the rich; feeling wealthy and claiming abundance impresses the idea of supply.
  • A key trap: affirming "I am wealthy" while inwardly feeling it is a lie only deepens lack, because the subconscious accepts the stronger feeling. Better to affirm what the mind will accept without contradiction - e.g. "I am prospering now," "wealth is flowing to me freely" - said calmly and often, especially before sleep.
  • Make the subconscious a silent partner in your work: turn a problem over to it, ask for guidance and right ideas, and expect the answer to rise into awareness. Many scientists, inventors, and writers (he cites Edison, Stevenson getting his stories in dreams, a chemist Kekule-style dream solution, a steelworker who dreamed a $15,000 switch design) drew on the subconscious to solve problems in sleep.

Relationships, happiness, and human relations

  • Marital problems begin in the mind before the divorce court; radiate love, appreciation, peace, and harmony and the subconscious builds the relationship to match. Do not nag or hold resentment - what you affirm about your partner tends to externalize.
  • Happiness is a choice and a habit: "choose happiness" by starting the day with constructive thoughts and refusing gloom. Harmonious human relations follow the Golden Rule and the law of mind - hostility and criticism you send out register in your own subconscious first and rebound on you.

Clearing the obstacles

  • Forgiveness heals: resentment, ill will, and grudges poison the subconscious and the body. To forgive is to give for - to identify with your spiritual aim until the sting is gone; you know you have forgiven when you can meet the person mentally and feel no negative reaction.
  • The subconscious removes mental blocks and inferiority when you feed it the opposite: replace "I can't" with quiet, repeated assurances of ability. Bad habits and addictions are broken by impressing a stronger contrary idea - picture and feel yourself already free.
  • Fear is the great enemy - "do the thing you are afraid to do." Fear is a negative use of the same imaginative faculty; move toward what you fear, affirm confidence, and starve the fearful picture. He recounts stage-fright and phobia cures by mentally rehearsing calm, successful outcomes.

Staying young

  • The subconscious never grows old; age is not a disease but the dawn of wisdom. Refuse the belief that you decline at a fixed number of years; expect to remain productive, creative, and full of life, and impress agelessness and vitality on the deeper mind.

  • Throughout, Murphy frames these as universal, scientific "laws of mind" and cites cases from his counseling and lectures. The claims (spontaneous cures of named diseases, wealth on command, dream-delivered inventions) are presented as demonstrated fact; no controlled studies or sources are given - they are the author's assertions and reported anecdotes.

Reception

  • The comment section is overwhelmingly devotional and gratitude-driven, and reads more like a testimony wall than a review of the recording. Blessing and chain-comment "if you are reading this" posts dominate the top by likes ("may 2025/2026 be your year," "I wish you the best life has to offer," mass "I AM healthy, I AM wealthy" affirmations).
  • The dominant theme is personal testimony that the book works. Listeners report concrete wins they attribute to applying its techniques: two dream jobs after years of unemployment, completing a PhD and gaining tenure, a pregnancy after four years of infertility, a house, a freelance job, self-healing. Many say they return to it for years or decades.
  • Several note they first read it young (given by parents at 11, found at 16) and credit it with the shape of their whole life; others say the tools "do work" after only days of listening.
  • Praise for the production is common: listeners thank the uploader for the narration (reader Ken Van Life is singled out as excellent) and for the page-by-page video quality.
  • Light pushback / caution is rare but present: one commenter warns the book's power "is for both good and dark intentions" and that the knowledge is neutral, in the hands of the beholder. The channel's own pinned note plugs its Patreon members' library.