Joseph Murphy and The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Joseph Murphy was born in 1898 in Ballydehob, in County Cork, Ireland. He trained for the Catholic priesthood as a young man, left, and moved to the United States in 1922. There he found the New Thought movement, was ordained in Religious Science in 1946, and in 1949 became the minister of the Divine Science Church in Los Angeles, which grew into one of the largest New Thought congregations in the country.

He wrote more than 30 books and spoke to large crowds for decades, with a message of hope instead of fear. He died in 1981 in California.

The book, first published in 1963, says you have two minds working together. Your conscious mind thinks, chooses and decides. Your subconscious mind does not argue or judge: it accepts what you impress on it, especially what you repeat with feeling, and then works day and night to bring it about.

So the work is to choose what you give it. Murphy taught that a desire, said calmly and felt as already true, sinks in most easily when you are relaxed and drowsy. Worry, said over and over, sinks in the same way. That is why he cared so much about the last thoughts of the day.

The book is full of ways to impress the subconscious. A few of the best-known: the sleep technique, where you repeat a short line as you drift off. The "thank you" technique, where you give thanks again and again as if the thing has already come. The mental movie, where you picture a short scene of your wish fulfilled, like friends congratulating you. And the affirmative method, where you state what you want in clear, simple, positive words.

All of them share one rule: relax first, keep it short, feel it as done.

Murphy taught that the drowsy state just before sleep is when the subconscious is most open, because the busy conscious mind is quieting down. A line said then, with a feeling of calm certainty, slips in without a fight. Many methods use the same moment: Neville's state akin to sleep pictures the end scene as you fall asleep, and the pillow method puts your line under your pillow.

Murphy knew that repetition is how a new idea becomes a belief. Saying a line every day, calmly and with feeling, slowly replaces the old story your subconscious was running. It is the same idea behind robotic affirmations: say it often enough and it becomes the background of your mind.

Murphy belongs to the same family of teachers as Neville Goddard: both came from the New Thought tradition, both taught that your inner state shapes your outer world, and both put the moments before sleep at the center. Murphy speaks of the subconscious, Neville of imagination and assumption, but the practice feels very close.