The Power of your Subconscious Mind

By Victor M Fontane

A native of Ireland who resettled in America, Joseph Murphy, Ph. D., D.D., (1898-1981) was a prolific and widely admired New Thought minister and writer, best known for his motivational classic The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, an international bestseller since it first appeared onto the self-help scene in 1963.

According to estimates, only 5% of human brain activity is conscious. The remaining 95% takes place subconsciously and not only do we have no real control over it, but we are also not even aware that it is taking place.

Murphy traveled to India and spent a lot of time with Indian sages, learning Hindu philosophy. He later on formed a new church in America with Hindu ideologies.

In the mid-1940s, he moved to Los Angels, where he met Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes, and was ordained into Religious Science by Holmes in 1946, thereafter teaching at Rochester, New York, and later at the Institute of Religious Science in Los Angeles. A meeting with Divine Science Association president Erwin Gregg led to him being re-ordained into Divine Science, and he became the minister of the Los Angeles Divine Science Church in 1949, which he built into one of the largest New Thought congregations in the country.

Murphy wrote more than 30 books. His most famous work, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, was first published in 1963. It became an immediate bestseller and sold millions of copies worldwide.