Self impowerment and your subconscious mind: Your unlimited resource for health, success, long life, and spiritual attainment

Self impowerment and your subconscious mind: Your unlimited resource for health, success, long life, and spiritual attainment
By Carl Llewellyn Weschcke and Joe H. Slate

Book review by Richard L. Weaver II

Yes, I should have realized what this book would be about when I read that Weschcke has been called “the father of the New Age for his public sponsorship of metaphysical subjects,” and that Slate’s previous books included “a variety of metaphysical subjects, from astral projection and aura energies to nature power to psychic vampires, reincarnation, and rejuvenation” (from the back cover).

Why did I pick up this book?  I am always interested in new perspectives, alternative ways of thinking, and counter-intuitive modes of analysis.  Curiosity, pure and simple!

Before offering several reactions to this book, you have to know that I was raised by parents immersed in science (one taught science and the other was a professor who co-authored a textbook on biology), and I was in pre-medicine from junior highschool through my second year of university work at the University of Michigan. It was total immersion in scientific or science-related courses for six years of my life.   I am not a scientist, but I read extensively about science and scientific subjects because they interest me and have always intrigued me.

The text of this book is only 151 pages in length after which there is a 13-page appendix, “Self-Empowerment and Self-Hypnosis,” followed by a 56-page “Glossary and Suggested Readings.”

I found the authors’ explanation of the Great Pyramid model of Personal Consciousness, presented in their chapter one, when they described the Queen’s Chamber, its foundation upon the Earth as well as its connection to the Subterranean Chamber in the earth, and then the King’s Chamber and the area above completely absurd.  Even silly.

To give you just a quick introduction to the nature of this book, this is what the authors say in the section, “Psychic Skills and Paranormal Phenomena”: “The conscious mind, working through the subconscious mind, is able to manage these abilities that include clairvoyance, mind-to-mind telepathy, spiritual healing, automatic writing, psychokinesis, spirit communication, dowsing, astral projection, precognition, remote viewing, past-life regression, personal rejuvenation, psychic defense, and more.  Our goal is to intentionally make use of psychic skills for our practical benefit . . . “ (p. 69).  If you, as a potential reader of this book, believes in, supports, or truly endorses any of these activities or behaviors, then this book is definitely for you.

This is what the authors say in the section, “The American Middle Pillar and “Auric Energizer”: “The psychic centers themselves are not to be visualized as images or symbols, but rather as colored spheres of intense light, each about one and one-half inches in diameter, located—as indicated—either as a full sphere external to the body, or as a half sphere partially within the body and partially projecting out in front of the body” (p. 143).  If this isn’t nonsense in the extreme—psychic, supernormal, extrasensory, or mystical—I don’t know what is!

This is a totally ridiculous book—preposterous, ludicrous, farcical, irrational, nonsensical, and laughable.  If you enjoy farce, if you like charade, if you don’t mind wasting your time, then this book is for you.  It is harebrained, cockamamie, foolish, and stupid.  I award the book zero stars out of five.  If I could award a negative number of stars, somewhere between negative five and ten might not even begin to capture my assessment!  What a sham!  How is it that authors of the absurd can even find a legitimate vehicle to publication?  This book is not worth the paper it is printed on!