I’m not someone who reviews books that I have read or movies I watched because I’m not a critic and I’m not really consuming the media with an intention to rate it or give it a score. I either like it or I don’t, its not that complicated.
I had to read this one because I joined a book club at my workplace. The goal of this book club was not really to debate or share opinions on books we read but to encourage reading habit, help improve public speaking and presentation skills. So I didn’t really want to explain how I felt about this book. But this book disturbed me so much that I had to write about it, I had to let it out.
This book is roughly two hundred pages long. I have read books that are both shorter and longer than that and this is usually the size of something I would complete over a weekend. But the author, Joseph Murphy, decided to break this short book into twenty odd chapters, that’s ten pages per chapter and sometimes even less with subchapters that are at most three paragraphs long. What I mean to say is that there is a lot of churning and very little continuity that allows the reader to follow and hold on to the book for a while. I was reading maybe 1-2 chapters and then putting the book down, its also partly due to the weird material. It took me a month to finish it and I am writing this on June 30, 2024.
The book starts off with stuff that any other self help book would start with. And it doesn’t take long for it to get weird. Would you like to be successful? Would you like to be rich? Wouldn’t it be nice if someone told you secrets and shortcuts of instant wealth? The target demographic of self help books are people who are trying to find out quick solutions to problems in their lives. The author uses icky language and indirectly calls out readers who are poor, ill or confused and gaslights them into believing that all of this their own doing and they can magically fix everything.
The language used in the book is very close to what you would hear in an MLM conference or from people who are into network marketing. If you pay attention, you can immediately spot the grift. Every chapter, regardless of the chapter title, has almost identical structure. First the author says something that supports the chapter title. Sometimes its about mental strength, sometimes its about disease prevention and sometimes its about getting rich quick. Soon he explains why the reader is unable to achieve things they want and a magic trick that would solve all of reader’s problems. A few Bible verses are also mentioned to get his point across. After that, the author continues with the most unimaginable story, who’s entire origin is trust me bro and claims that his methods worked and this anecdote is sufficient evidence for him to believe that his methods are bullet proof.
According to the author, most of humanity is sleeping on the Infinite Intelligence that they possess and are utilizing their subconscious mind. He repeatedly uses the involuntary actions of human body like breathing, heartbeat, dreams and healing of outer layers as skin as the proof of existence of some kind of all knowing and omnipotent thing inside everyone’s head. He also confuses placebo effects with the involuntary actions of mind and mixes them both and creates this repetitive word salad that is present in every chapter. The actual solution the author provides is just to chant or repeat affirmations a few times a day just before sleeping. He calls these “prayers” and says these prayers would cause “healing” and solve all of reader’s problems like disease, poverty, job loss. At one point the author claims that repeating the sentence “Infinite intelligence governs and watches over all my financial transactions, and whatsover I do shall prosper” would somehow protect your stock portfolio. They should have done that in 2008.
A list of diseases the author claims to have cured with the power of subconscious mind:
- Lung Cancer
- Paralysis
- Tuberculosis
- Memory Loss
- Sarcoma
- Ulcers
- Arthritis
- Someone else’s Cancer
- many more…
I found first ten chapters of the book ableist and scientifically inaccurate. The rest of the chapters are just very out of touch and do not apply to anyone living in the modern world. The author claims that it is normal to be healthy and abnormal to be sick. He says poverty is a mindset and if someone is poor, it just means that they don’t like money. At this point, I did not feel like continuing and did not finish the book.
I googled the term “infinite intelligence” because that phrase was used quite a few times in the book and I found out that this book is related to the New Thought movement. Its origins can be traced back to mid 19th century and during the times when western “experts” came to India and China, misunderstood the eastern religions and spread the same misinformation as an alternative to the traditional beliefs. This infatuation combined with a thirst for anything exotic and oriental caused the rise of these fake gurus back then.
In conclusion, I did not like this book. If you are in trouble, please contact a medical practitioner or a financial planner or at least someone who cares about you. Not a grifter.
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