Three Readings, One Journey: Napoleon Hill, Consciousness, and the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress
From Desire to Higher Purpose: How Three Readings of Napoleon Hill Eventually Led Me to the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress
Author’s Note:
Some books stay with us for a lifetime, not because their pages change, but because we do. In this reflection, I trace three encounters with Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich—across Atlanta, Iowa, and Cambridge—and how each reading revealed a new stage of my own unfolding. Along the way, I discovered how Hill’s timeless principles dovetail with the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress that now anchors my life and work.
There are books that one reads once, nods politely to, and leaves on the shelf as a curiosity of a former season. And then there are books that seem to wait for us. They whisper differently each time we open their pages, not because the text has changed, but because we have.
For me, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich (1937) has been such a book. My wife and I keep a 1939 edition in our family library that I secured during my time in Atlanta—its spine only slightly worn, its pages browned by decades of quiet endurance. Each time I have sat with it—once in Atlanta, again in Iowa, and not long ahead of my 2023 dissertation defense here in Cambridge—I have discovered not just Hill’s words, but a mirror of my own unfolding.
In retrospect, I see that these three readings were not accidents of timing but rather milestones—Nature’s way of guiding my footsteps toward what I would one day articulate as the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress (MPGP). That model, born of my doctoral research and steeped in the rituals and philosophy of Freemasonry, is now becoming the foundation of my life’s work—interwoven with Transcendental Meditation, the recently launched On Transcendence podcast, the International Meditation Hour, and the forthcoming Transcendental Brain App.
What follows is both a personal reflection and an invitation: a story of how a classic of twentieth-century self-mastery became braided with the twenty-first-century articulation of consciousness and growth.
Atlanta: The First Reading—The Seed of Desire
Atlanta was where I first encountered Think and Grow Rich in earnest. I was a little younger, filled with ambition, and wrestling with the perennial questions of purpose and possibility. Hill’s chapters on Desire and Faith struck me with particular force.
“Desire is the starting point of all achievement,” he wrote. I recall sitting with those words for some time afterward. In that season, what I desired was clarity—clarity about vocation, about responsibility, about the meaning of success for someone like me—an educated forward-thinking man of African ancestry in America.
Looking back, I now recognise that this first reading firmly placed me in Tier I of the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress: the realm of the Knower, the Process of Knowing, and the Known. It was the stage of raw potential, where one recognises that all begins in consciousness itself. Hill insisted that riches begin as a state of mind. My research decades later would affirm the same: that consciousness is the ground of being, the unified field from which all emerges.
In Atlanta, I did not yet have the vocabulary of the MPGP. But I felt the spark. Hill’s admonition that “whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve” was my second encounter with the truth that intention shapes reality. The initial seed was planted with U.S. Andersen’s book Three Magic Words (Click to read or listen to my essay on that aspect of my journey to learn more about this foundational experience).
Iowa: The Second Reading—Knowledge, Study, and Persistence
Years later, in Iowa, I returned to Hill’s work. By then, my responsibilities had expanded, my intellectual pursuits deepened. I was engaged in graduate study, serving as a Teaching Assistant, and expanding my horizon of service. Mina and I wed in 2010 and we were seriously contemplating moving on our nascent desire to become Certified Teachers of Transcendental Meditation®. Given our shared journey and its refining nature in every area, this second reading was less about raw desire and more about discipline.
Hill’s chapters on Specialised Knowledge, Autosuggestion, and Persistence resonated most strongly during this particular reading. I saw in his insistence on continual learning the same principle that undergirds Tier II and Tier III of the MPGP: the Seeker of Knowledge, Masonic Education Incorporating TM (or education broadly conceived), and the Evolving Mason, as well as the Desire of the Heart, Deep Consistent Study, and Compassion for Everyone.
Iowa was where study became devotion. Where my early encounters with the truth that self-mastery is not a moment but a method was put to the test and subsequently refined. Hill’s instructions to harness autosuggestion—the daily rehearsal of one’s deepest intentions—felt uncannily similar to the contemplative practices that would later become central to my teaching of Transcendental Meditation.
Persistence, too, took on a new weight. In the fertile plains of Iowa, I cemented my understanding that growth requires more than desire; it requires weathering seasons, planting consistently, trusting the unseen processes of germination. And while prior experiences had shown me this reality, many times over, my second reading of Hill helped me embody this lesson more fully.
Cambridge: The Third Reading — Execution and Higher Purpose
It was here, in Cambridge, not long before defending my dissertation, that I opened Hill once more. Now the words felt entirely different. With several years of teaching TM under my belt, family life consisting of three young children at the time, and a lifetime of earlier experiences containing weighty lessons, they no longer struck me as motivational; they rang as confirmation.
Hill’s later chapters—Organised Planning, Decision, the Mastermind, and the Sixth Sense—aligned seamlessly with Tiers IV, V, and VI of the MPGP: Contemplation, Self-Realisation, Acceptance of Change; Necessary Action, Redefined Life Purpose, Evolving Sense of Self; Execution, Eyes on the Prize, and Commitment to Higher Purpose.
Reading in Cambridge, with the work of years behind me and the vision of new projects and possibilities ahead, I could see plainly: Hill’s map was always pointing toward what I had come to articulate as Commitment to a Higher Purpose. Not merely the accumulation of wealth, but the alignment of consciousness, study, action, and calling.
In Cambridge, the text became less about me and more about service. Hill’s “Mastermind Principle”—the idea that minds harmonised in pursuit of a common goal generate an exponential force—echoed my own conviction that collective consciousness, enlivened through meditation and shared intention, can reshape society. This is precisely what undergirds the recently conducted International Meditation Hour.
At this stage, the MPGP no longer seemed an abstract model. It was alive. And Hill’s book, once a guide for ambition, had become a companion in vision.
Hill’s Method and the MPGP: A Harmonious Parallel
What fascinates me most is how naturally Hill’s principles dovetail with the MPGP:
Desire → Tier I (Knower, Process of Knowing, Known). Both insist that all begins in consciousness and in the heart.
Faith and Autosuggestion → Tier II–III (Seeker, Study, Compassion). Belief and repetition shape the evolving self, cultivating persistence and empathy.
Specialised Knowledge, Planning, Mastermind → Tier IV–V (Contemplation, Action, Redefinition). The disciplined study of symbols, rituals, and knowledge finds its echo in Hill’s insistence on organised planning and collaboration.
Sixth Sense → Tier VI (Commitment to Higher Purpose). Hill’s “sixth sense,” that intuitive faculty born of experience and faith, corresponds with the MPGP’s final ascent toward calling—recognising that one’s life is to be lived for something larger than oneself.
This harmony was not engineered by me. It revealed itself only after years of wrestling with both Hill’s text and my own path of inquiry and experience—both the good and not-so-good. It is as if Nature herself were orchestrating the readings, aligning each encounter with the level of growth I was then ready to embody.
The Perpetual Student
Both Hill and the MPGP share one final conviction: the journey never ends.
Hill closes Think and Grow Rich with the reminder that riches are not static; they require continual cultivation, continual persistence. The MPGP likewise insists that even at the highest tier—Commitment to Higher Purpose—we return again as Seekers. Growth is perpetual, not finite.
This has been my experience. Each reading of Hill has not been a repetition but a spiral, each turn higher, wider, more integrated. The book did not change. I did. And in changing, or rather evolving, I could hear and feel the text differently.
Beyond Riches: Consciousness as True Wealth
It is important to remember that Hill published Think and Grow Rich in 1937, claiming it was the fruit of twenty-five years of research initiated at the suggestion of Andrew Carnegie. Yet historians have found no record that such a conversation ever took place. Carnegie biographer David Nasaw went so far as to state that he “found no evidence of any sort that Carnegie and Hill ever met” or “that the book was authentic.” Nor are there reliable records of Hill meeting the many other famous figures he claimed to have interviewed, apart from a brief encounter with Thomas Edison.
All of which, begs a serious question: Does this diminish the value of the book? Perhaps for those seeking it as pure history. But if we receive it as a text of myth and method—an imaginative construction offering principles for self-mastery—it remains deeply useful. After all, myths need not be factual to be true in their ability to inspire.
When read in the context of the aftermath of World War I and the Great Depression, Hill’s urgency comes through clearly. He was writing to men and women desperate to rebuild their lives, promising that wealth was not only economic but psychological: the capacity to rise from ruin through disciplined thought and persistence.
Today, I read Hill through a broader lens. Wealth, for me, is consciousness. True riches are not measured only in bank accounts but in clarity of mind, compassion of heart, and the ability to act in alignment with Natural Law.
This is why the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress matters now. It reframes the pursuit of growth from mere material success to perpetual alignment with Pure Consciousness. It reminds us that desire must mature into compassion, that planning must serve purpose, and that execution must culminate in service to the whole.
Looking Ahead: From Reading to Realisation
I sometimes wonder: what if I had read Hill only once? Would the seed have germinated without the later seasons of study and execution? Perhaps. But I doubt it would have blossomed into the work I am now called to do.
Three readings, in three places, across three chapters of life—each was necessary. Atlanta gave me desire. Iowa gave me discipline. Cambridge gave me vision.
And now, standing at this threshold—having hosted the International Meditation Hour, launching the On Transcendence podcast, developing the Transcendental Brain App—I see clearly that these are not disparate projects. They are the fruit of a single tree, planted long ago, watered by persistent study, and now mature enough to bear seeds for others.
The journey continues. The model remains perpetual. And Hill’s voice, still resonant nearly a century later, reminds me—and perhaps reminds us all—that whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can indeed achieve.
Closing Reflection
Each of us has books, mentors, or experiences that return to us like waves—never the same wave twice, but each reshaping the shoreline of our lives. Think and Grow Rich has been such a wave for me.
If you find yourself reading or rereading a book from your past, do not dismiss the repetition. Consider that you are not meeting the same text, but a new self. And perhaps, in that encounter, you may discover that life has been quietly preparing you for the higher tiers of your own model of growth—whether or not you have named it yet.
For me, the name is the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress. For you, it may be something else. This, I believe, is where the true riches of life are found: in consciousness rightly lived. But the truth is the same: the journey is not to possess riches but to awaken consciousness, refine character, and live in alignment with a higher purpose.
That, in the end, is what it means to think—and to grow—rich.
Suggested Practices: Thinking and Growing in Consciousness
Journal Prompts
Three Readings of Your Own: Which book, teaching, or idea has returned to you at different points in life? How did each encounter reveal a different “you”?
Desire and Calling: What is your deepest desire at this moment? If you trace it beneath surface wants, what higher purpose might it be pointing toward?
Persistence in Practice: Where in your life are you being called to persist—even when the results are not yet visible?
Reflection Exercises
Daily Seed Thought: For the next seven mornings, write one sentence affirming your highest aim. Keep it present throughout the day and observe how it shapes your choices.
Mapping the Model: Place yourself within the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress. Which tier most reflects your current season? Which action would help you advance?
Circle of Support: Identify your “Mastermind” (Hill’s term)—the people whose consciousness, vision, or encouragement can amplify your own. Reach out and name them.
—
About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a consciousness scholar, executive coach, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work—spanning the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and the Seven Layers of Manifestation framework—explores how Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social systems transformation intersect in the evolution of both the individual and society. Alongside his wife, Mina, he co-directs the Cambridge and Metropolitan Boston TM Program, where they have taught thousands the art and science of meditation.
Extending this mission globally, he is the Host/Founder of International Meditation Hour (IMH), a Quarterly worldwide gathering dedicated to experiencing the unifying power of silence in a time of division, precarity, and technological upheaval. An author of several forthcoming works on the future of consciousness in an age shaped by technology, he writes and teaches from the conviction that the most important race is not between nations or machines, but between the conditioned mind and the awakening soul. They are the proud parents of four children. To learn more about him, visit: https://www.barutikmtsisouvong.com/.