I simply could not allow myself to go buy other books without commenting on William H. Hewitt's book, Psychic Development for Beginners. It is an excellent book with simple, practical excercises that make meditation and awakening the awareness of one's inner self as easy as following a proven recipe in a cookbook, and it works! The simple undeniable assurance that all ages, genders, nationalities, vocations, etc have psychic abilities is wonderfully refreshing, and releases doubt one may have in the matter. Afterwards practical information creates a sensible understanding of why we have such abilities, and how they can be best used. William H. Hewitt is a humanitarian, and an excellent author. The excercises are reasonable with out any need for special equipment, except your mind. The steps lead to wonderful daily tools, greater abilities and safeguards to help you protect them and yourself from mismanagement. Mr. Hewitt encourages practical daily applications without fear of wearing something or someone's welcome out. The "More practice the better" is encouraged with a lighthearted "be creative and have fun with it" attitude. I have found wonderful tools in my psychic abilities. Thank you Mr. Hewitt for helping me to see that I could programm my subcounscious for an alarmclock which means that now I don't have to worry about power outages, it just works so well! :D And thank you for the Beach of Time, my favorite place now to do a great many things. All the excercises can develop and gradually become more advanced without discouragement, many of my internet friends have read my tiny excerpts and have bought their own copies just for some tidbit of common sense here or there they missed in other books. The excercises and references are easy to relocate.Chakras and chakra cleaning are not mentioned much in this book, but healing, by the hands, is. This is the best book on the metaphysical that I currently have, it helped me to have a few wonderful experiences that are quite profound for me. I enjoy going back to it for review and encouragement. I am not through with this book by a long shot! :) I highly recommend this book for all beginners and searchers of psychic awareness and awakening.