This book, written for younger readers in 1941, before Harding saw he was headless, shows Harding exercising his communication skills. He uses straight-forward, everyday language, with many simple and amusing-drawings to illustrate his ideas. Both his determination to write in a way that anyone could understand, and his use of drawings, would find even greater scope in his next and greatest book, The Hierarchy of Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth. Many ideas in that book can be found, in embryonic form, in The Unconventional Portrait of Yourself.

The essential message of this book, backed by deep and courageous thinking, and written with heart, with passion, is that you are not what convention says you are. You are far older, deeper, wiser, more mysterious. Don't let your life pass by without appreciating the miracle that is 'you'.