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• Personal Growth

June 2016

By TA Balasubramanian

The Ultimate Guide to Health, Wealth and

Enlightenment, N.K. Sharma, Prabhat Paperbacks, INR 175; 185 pages

“The more you explore (and distinguish between) the power of the conscious and subconscious minds, the more you move towards a path of enlightenment. When you understand the original functions of these two minds, you can take charge of your personality, your behaviour, your desires and dreams. You can choose heaven or hell. You can take charge of your future and your destiny. You can rewrite everything.”

This concise, multi-faceted book about the characteristics of our conscious and subconscious minds by N K Sharma (Director and Founder of the Reiki Healing Foundation), is essentially a compendium of useful distinctions.  In the preface, he notes that there are no formal educational courses that help people understand and channel the immense power of their subconscious mental processes. He has therefore put together these assorted insights and tips to help us recognise and redirect our actions and energies to create a balanced and fulfilled life.

What we get is a stream of distinctions that enable us to identify the common beliefs, illusions and fears that are intimately governed by our subconscious mental processes. Across 33 chapters, Sharma draws upon his repertoire of experience in healing and counselling to guide us through many typical stressful or beguiling situations in modern life where we can tap into the subconscious levels and intuitive states of our minds to find solace.

For example, he directs our attention to the inherent tension of reconciling our beliefs (such as ingrained religious superstitions) with the demands made on us when we live in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society. When we realise that our reactions to other cultures are based on the early conditioning of our conscious and subconscious minds, we are better able to adapt ourselves to our neighbours. Many of the chapters are presented as short explorations of commonly held beliefs: for example, in the chapter on Eternal Youth or Early Old Age is a Gift of the Subconscious Mind, he points out that in India, people begin to experience the symptoms of old age in the 50s because of the conditioning of their subconscious minds. Our minds are conditioned to believe that we are destined to have diseases of old age because this is the conventional experience we have of people around us.

If you are interested in exploring your subconscious mind, this is a compact reference book for you.