Master Key System vs The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Joseph Murphy's The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963) covers much of the same ground as Charles Haanel's Master Key System, written about fifty years earlier. Both describe a conscious mind that chooses and a subconscious mind that accepts and carries out, and both say the subconscious connects each person to a larger power. They differ in method and tone. Haanel built a graded course of attention training with an exercise every week. Murphy, a minister, wrote a book of affirmations, prayer and case stories, with special weight on the drowsy state before sleep. Because Murphy's book is still under copyright, his ideas are paraphrased here. Haanel's words are quoted from the standard text of his course. Neither author's claims are endorsed.

The two books at a glance

• Authors. Haanel (1866 to 1949) was a St. Louis businessman who wrote his course in his forties. Murphy (1898 to 1981) was an Irish-born writer who became a New Thought minister in the United States, ordained in Divine Science and Religious Science.
• Dates. Haanel's course dates from about 1912, with a book edition in 1916. Murphy's book was published in 1963 by Prentice-Hall of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and has been reprinted by many publishers since.
• Form. Haanel wrote 24 parts in numbered paragraphs, each ending with an exercise and questions. Murphy wrote a book of chapters arranged by life problem: health, money, marriage, relationships, fear, aging.
• Status. The Master Key System is in the public domain. Murphy's book is not.

One mind, two functions

Both authors divide the mind the same way. Murphy calls the conscious mind the objective mind: the waking, reasoning, choosing part. The subconscious, in his account, does not reason or argue with what it receives. It accepts what the conscious mind impresses on it and works to bring it about. He compares the conscious mind to a gardener and the subconscious to the soil, so that whatever is planted grows.

Haanel's Part Two makes the same division. The conscious mind "has the faculty of discrimination, carrying with it the responsibility of choice." The subconscious "cannot argue controversially." The conscious mind is "the watchman at the gate" of the subconscious, and fear, worry and disease often arise from "false suggestions accepted by the unguarded subconscious mind." Haanel even uses a version of the garden image. Part Twenty-Two says that "every impression is a seed which will sink into the subconscious and form a tendency," and Part Seven warns against acting "like a child who has just planted a seed and every fifteen minutes goes out and stirs up the earth to see if it is growing."

Both writers drew on vocabulary that was already common in New Thought. Thomas Troward's Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science (1904) used the objective and subjective terms, and Haanel quotes Troward in Part Three. Our page on the subconscious mind covers Haanel's version in detail.

The link to a larger power

For Haanel, the subconscious is the point where the individual touches Universal Mind. Part Fourteen says the two differ "only as a drop of water differs from the ocean," and calls the subconscious "the connecting link between the Universal Mind and the conscious mind." Murphy, writing as a minister, uses more openly religious language, but the structure is the same: the subconscious is the channel through which a greater power acts on a person's life.

This is also where both explain prayer. In the introduction to Part Twenty-One, Haanel writes that whatever we hold in consciousness long enough is impressed on the subconscious, and "This is the secret of the wonderful power of prayer." He insists that the answer to prayer "is therefore subject to law." Murphy likewise treats prayer as a mental act: forming a clear image of the result and accepting it as already done.

Sleep and suggestion

The largest practical difference is timing. Murphy places great weight on the drowsy state just before sleep. His best-known technique has the reader relax into that state and repeat a short, positive phrase until it sinks into the subconscious.

Haanel says little about sleep as a method. His Part Two notes that "The subconscious mind never sleeps, never rests," and that "by plainly stating to the subconscious mind certain specific things to be accomplished, forces are set in operation that lead to the result desired." For changing a harmful habit, he prescribes "a strong counter suggestion, frequently repeated." So both rely on repeated suggestion. Murphy ties it to the edge of sleep. Haanel ties it to the waking, trained mind.

Method: course versus case book

Haanel's method is a program. It starts with the sitting exercise in Part One, then adds stilling thought, relaxing the body, letting go of negative emotion, holding mental pictures and, later, concentration on a single idea for long periods. Affirmation appears in Part Nine, with the line "I am whole, perfect, strong, powerful, loving, harmonious, and happy." The work is slow and cumulative. The introduction to Part Twenty-Three says that perfection in this science "is the labor of a life."

Murphy's method is a toolkit. Each chapter takes a problem and offers affirmations, visualizations and prayers to use, illustrated with short stories of people who, by his account, changed their health, finances or relationships by changing their beliefs. He also presents the nineteenth-century mental healer Phineas Quimby as a forerunner. Murphy's book is easier to dip into. Haanel's asks for weeks of practice before the larger promises are even discussed.

Health, money and other promises

Both books make strong claims about the body. Murphy places the body's automatic functions under the subconscious and tells of illnesses he says were healed through belief and prayer. Haanel, in Part Twenty-Two, warns that thoughts that "contain disease germs" will bring a harvest of "sickness, decay." Our page on health and healing sets out what Haanel taught. These are the authors' claims, and readers should not treat either book as a substitute for medical care.

On money the two are closer than they first appear. Murphy treats prosperity as a matter of inner conviction and warns against envy and criticism of money. Haanel's Part Twenty-Three calls "money consciousness" "an attitude of mind" and calls fear "poverty consciousness," while Part Sixteen insists that wealth is "a means, not an end." Our page on money and success follows Haanel's view further.

Evidence

Neither book offers evidence in the modern sense. Haanel argues by analogy with electricity and by quotation, and he prints testimonial letters. Murphy relies on case stories that cannot be checked. Modern psychology does study unconscious processes, habit and the effects of expectation, but it does not support the claim that impressing a belief on the subconscious will reliably heal disease or bring money. Both books are best read as statements of the New Thought tradition, which is what they are.

Which to read

Murphy's book is the more accessible, and for many readers it is the first contact with these ideas. The Master Key System is the older and more demanding of the two, built around exercises rather than stories. Readers who come to Haanel from Murphy will find familiar ideas in Parts Two, Three and Fourteen, set inside a longer course of mental training.