The New Thought Movement and the Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction is a metaphysical New Thought belief that “like attracts like”, that positive and negative thinking bring about positive and negative physical results, respectively. According to the Law of Attraction, the phrase “I need more money” allows the subject to continue to “need more money”. If the subject wants to change this they would focus their thoughts on the goal (having more money) rather than the problem (needing more money). This might take the form of phrases such as “I have as much money as I need” or “I have a job that pays very well”.

The question is of course whether all this is positive, and that question is the foundation for this article.

The New Thought movement or New Thought is a spiritual movement, which developed in the United States during the late 19th century and emphasizes metaphysical beliefs. It consists of a loosely allied group of religious denominations, secular membership organizations, authors, philosophers, and individuals who share a set of metaphysical beliefs concerning the effects of positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power.

It promotes the ideas that “Infinitive Intelligence” or “God” is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, all sickness originates in the mind, and “right thinking” has a healing effect.

Although New Thought is neither monolithic nor doctrinaire, in general modern day adherents of New Thought believe that their interpretation of “God” or “Infinite Intelligence” is “supreme, universal, and everlasting”, that divinity dwells within each person and that all people are spiritual beings, that “the highest spiritual principle is loving one another unconditionally...and teaching and healing one another”, and that “our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living”.

The three major religious denominations within the New Thought movement are Religious Science, Unity Church and the Church of Divine Science. There are many smaller sects under the New Thought umbrella as well.

Thomas Troward, who was a strong influence in the New Thought movement, claimed that thought precedes physical form and that “the action of Mind plants that nucleus which, if allowed to grow undisturbed, will eventually attract to itself all the conditions necessary for its manifestation in outward visible form.”

In 1906, William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932) used the phrase in his New Thought Movement book Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, stating that “like attracts like.” The following year, Elizabeth Towne, the editor of The Nautilus Magazine, a Journal of New Thought, published Bruce Maclelland´s book Prosperity Through Thought Force, in which he summarized the principle, stating: “You are what you think, not what you think you are.”

The book “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D. Wattles espouses similar principles – that truly believing in the object of your desire and focusing onto it will lead to that object or goal being realized on the material plane (Wattles indicates in the Preface and later chapters of this book that his premise stems from the monistic Hindu view that God pervades everything and can deliver that which we focus on). In addition, the book also indicates that negative thinking will manifest negative results.

In 1937, author Napoleon Hill published his book Think and Grow Rich which went on to become one of the best selling books of all time, selling over 60 million copies. In this book, he discusses the importance of controlling your own thoughts in order to achieve success, as well as the energy that thoughts have and their ability to attract other thoughts. In the beginning of the book, Napoleon Hill mentions a “secret” to success, and promises to indirectly describe it at least once in every chapter of the book. It is never named directly for he says that discovering it on one´s own is far more beneficial. Many people have argued over what the secret actually is, with some arguing that is was the Law of Attraction. Hill states the “secret” to which he refers is mentioned no fewer that a hundred times, yet reference to “attract” is used less than 30 times in the text. Most students of the book claim the secret is hidden in its title: THINK (i.e., thoughts).

By the mid 1900s, various authors addressed the topic and related ideas under a range of religious and secular terms, such as “positive thinking”, “mental science”, “Pragmatic Christianity”, “New Thought”, “Practical Metaphysics”, “Science of Mind”, “Religious Science”, and Divine Science”.

Author Louise Hay in 1976 released a pamphlet in which she links various diseases and disorders to certain thoughts and states of mind. This list was included in her 1984 best-seller book You Can Heal Your Life, in which she promotes positive thinking as a healing method.

In 2006, a film entitled The Secret based on the “Law of Attraction” was released and then developed into a book of the same title in 2007. The film and book gained widespread attention in the media from Saturday Night Live to The Oprah Winfrey Show in the United States. The same year Esther and Jerry Hicks (who provided much of the original source material for The Secret) released The Law of Attraction, which was on the New York Times bestseller list.

The Law of Attraction´s modern interpretation, as presented in The Secret, is that physical reality is a reflection of inner (subjective) reality, summarized in the quote from The Secret, “your thoughts and your feelings create your life.” Author and business man Kevin Trudeau produced an audio compact disk called “Your Wish Is Your Command” which deals with the same subject of thoughts manifesting reality.

The success of the film and various books led to increased media coverage, both positive and negative. Oprah Winfrey devoted two episodes of her show to discuss the film and the law of attraction. Talk show host Larry King also discussed it on his show with Bob Solis, but criticized it for several reasons.

The dominating idea of all forms of New Thought is that thoughts or beliefs have an effect on things and people around us independently of our doing anything. Thinking creates reality. Happiness and health are the direct result of our beliefs and thoughts. We have the power to change our beliefs, and thus our state in life, at will. If we are sick, it is because we are not thinking correctly. If misfortune befalls us, it is because we are not thinking correctly. Health is due to correct thought; the truth will set you free and the truth is that you need only faith to be healthy, rich, saved, whatever.

New Thought is, in the words of American physician, psychologist, philosopher, and investigator in the paranormal William James, “a deliberately optimistic scheme of life.” James was one of the first to try to characterize the sources of the New Thought movement, also known as Mind Cure or Mind Science movement:

“One of the doctrinal sources of Mind-cure is the four Gospels; another is Emersonianism or New England trancendentalism; another is Berkeleyan idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages of ´law´ and ´progress´ and ´development´; another the optimistic popular science evolutionism of which I have recently spoken; and, finally, hinduism has contributed a strain. But the most characteristic feature of the mind-cure movement is an inspiration much more direct. The leaders in this faith have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary states of mind....Mind-cure might be briefly called a reaction against all that religion of chronic anxiety which marked the earlier part of the 19th century in the evangelical circles of England and America.”

The number of New Age promotors of the delusion of mind cures is staggeringly high. Television and radio talk shows and the Internet have opened the floodgates for promotors of these alleged panaceas. Many of these New Age mind cures have incorporated references to quantum physics and Eastern mystical notions, such as chi and chakras, into their repertoires. To name just as few: Barbera Brennan, Rosalyn L. Bruyere, David L. Cunningham, Cyndi Dale, Donna Eden, David Feinstein, Guy Finley, Richard Gerber, Burt Goldman (Quantum Jumping), Soleira Greene, Stanislav Grof (Holotropic Breathwork), Stephen Halpern, Louise Hay, Vernon Howard, Dorothea Hover-Kramer, W. Brugh Joy, Byron Katie, Rachel Kohler, Dolores Krieger, Bruce Lipton, Grant McFetridge (Peak States and Whole-Hearted Healing), Mary Morrissey, Carolyn Myss, Peter Occhiogrosso, Judith Orloff, Simon Rose (Reference Point Therapy), Linda Salvin and Marianne Williamson.

In addition to promoting delusions about the ability of people to cure others and themselves of horrible diseases by the poewer of thought, the New Thought Movement encourages delusions in other areas of life. Outside the healing arena, New Thought beliefs contribute to what might be called the empowerment delusion: the false belief that feeling empowered, or believing you are empowered, is the same as being empowered. The empowerment delusion leads people to believe they can create health or wealth or anything material by willing it or asking God to will it. A corollary is the delusion that poverty or sickness is their own fault: their bad thoughts, stinkin´ thinkin´, negative ideas, lack of faith, etc., cause all misery.

The empowerment delusion is fed by appeals to wrong interpretations of karma, like the law of attraction, to nonsensical appeals to quantum physics (Deepak Chopra, Rhonda Byrne, and a host of others), or to faith in faith (like all faith healers and prosperity preachers like Reverend Ike or Joel Osteen). The billion-dollar self-help industry is largely driven by the empowerment delusion (see my article Management theory and the self-help industry). The popularity of Helen Schuman´s (1909-1981) A Course in Miracles gives testament to the attractiveness of New Thought´s revisionist biography of Jesus as wanting more love and forgiveness, and less suffering and sacrifice. Heaven awaits us all and there is no hell (A Course in Miracles in an example of pseudohistory created by a postulate of being a channeler - see my article Paranormal phenomena seen in connection with channeling).

And here we have the central spiritual and ethical delusion in New Thought: New Thought tends to dismiss the existence of evil, failure and suffering. Some New Thought promotors claim that New Thought is a new, more “optimistic and positive” interpretation of karma, that have to replace the old “pessimistic and negative” interpretation. But this is an example of the belief in magical thinking (subjectivism and relativism). Do they really think that the traditional law of karma dissapears because they have decided to interpret it in a new way?

As an example of how law of attraction devotees are trying to redefine karma, read the article Definition Karma, by Kalyn B Raphael. She is an author, spiritual Life Coach, a Channel, and a Coach of Coaches (wonderful title). Note that she already in the beginning claims that the customary definitions of karma don´t make sense to her. Instead she wants to give a "deeper" definition that she thinks will resonate as true in others as well (as if the definition will decide what karma is). Also note that when she is talking about love she is talking about that love is about loving yourself, or self-love (I will return to this curious belief later in this article). Finally, read the comment by Jay Steven Levin, where he gives a critique of her article. Kalyn´s answer to this critique is an example of the weird conversations you can involve yourself in, when talking to law of attraction devotees. Either she simply doesn´t understand that his comment is a critique, but instead a confirmation. Or else she is turning the whole thing upside down, which would be an example of the thought distortion Conversion to the opposite - see my article A dictionary of thought distortions.

Anyway, if you are in a true, intensive spiritual practice - that is: in a proces of awakening - then it is absolutely necessary, that you have some guidelines that know the dangers and pitfalls, and which will lead you in the correct direction. As a part of this is the original teaching of karma, as formulated, both in original texts, and by the great enlightened masters. If you actually followed Kalyn´s teaching, you would really get in troubles, if your spiritual essence was beginning to wake up. Loving yourself is based on positive psychology, which means that loving yourself, loving your karma, loving your desires, loving everything negative in you - is the same as seeing everything in yourself as positive, and therefore as something good. You can´t be wrong. The same surrealistic approach is seen in NLP, which claims, that there isn´t such a thing as failure, only feedback (see my article Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) and Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT)). Read about the stages of awakening in my article Paranormal phenomena seen in connection with spiritual practice. Read about karma in my article What is karma?

See Martin Gardner 1993 for an account of how the New Thought Movement stripped Christianity of such things as sin, hell, demons, and other nasty things, and replaced them with beliefs in a hodge-podge of beliefs from Eastern mysticism and Western paranormalism and spiritualism. Gardner focuses on a minor poet and writer who was a major player in expressing the beliefs of New Thought, Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919). She penned some memorable lines, e.g., “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.”

New Thought gives the illusion of control over things that can´t be controlled but which are inexorably linked to our well-being and happiness. New Thought absolves the allegedly benign creator of all responsibility for bringing evils to good people and it does so without resorting to the claim that the ways of God are not our ways, or that evil is really good, or the most absurd of all, evil isn´t real. New Thought just ignores evil and tries to get us to look the other way.

New Thought probably won´t have much influence on most corners of the world. More than one-third of the people on our planet don´t even have access to a flush toilet. As the critical thinker Robert T. Carroll says: “Will Oprah Winfrey, one of the great promotors of New Thought in our time, advice 2.5 billion people to just believe in hygiene and it will come? Can anyone believe that if you happen to have the misfortune of being born, say, in a squalid Indian village governed by a caste system, that all you have to do is believe your way out? An ignorant person might blame karma or God´s will, but nobody in his right mind should believe that anyone (for example children) born in those conditions lives and dies in those conditions because of her thoughts or beliefs, which could be changed by an act of the will.”

New Thought has grown into thousands of little movements in the past 150 years. The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? are just two recent manifestations of what Robert Carroll calls a Hydra-headed monster guarding the gates of wishful thinking, suggestion and self-hypnosis. There have been many others. Some might have heard of Jerry and Esther Hicks (they claim they were the discovers of the law of attraction!). Some might remember Émile Coué´s optimistic mantra therapy, Maxwell Maltz´s Psycho-Cybernetics, or the prosperity preachers Norman Vincent Peale, whose bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) was a New Thought offshot (see my article Hypnosis, hypnotherapy and the art of self-deception).

There are many anecdotes of people who quit behaving as if they were ill/poor and in need of healing/money started acting as if they were healthy/rich and healed (got success) after they began thinking more positively and developed some self-confidence. Such anecdotes are often used as “proof” of that New Thought is true. But we also know that we can´t cure cancer, heart disease, measles, diabetes, high blood pressure, and a host of other illnesses by prescribing belief as a placebo. Likewise, we know that teaching people to feel powerful and go for their dreams is not enough to guarantee success. You have to have more than belief in yourself. You need talent and you need some good fortune. For every success story like Oprah or Obama, there are thousands of failures who never get to tell their stories. Our evidence is incomplete. As Carroll says, then we never hear from the countless bartenders and waitresses who thought their desires would be enough to make them movie stars. In fact, we rarely hear from the ones who found out the hard way that hard work alone doesn´t guarantee success. We never hear from the folks who tried the mind cure but died. They aren´t around to give their testimony. So far, Carroll says, we have only the words of alleged psychics that the dead are appearing on Oprah or Larry King. When the dead do show up to give their testimony, however, the may cast some doubt on the power of belief.

As mentioned, the Secret is a best-selling 2006 self-help book written by Rhonda Byrne and based upon William Walker Atkinson´s prior works and school of thought. A film based on The Secret was released before the book in DVD format. After being featured in two episodes of Oprah, the book reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Rhonda Byrne has written a follow-up to The Secret called The Power after answering several thousands letters from readers of The Secret.

Before the film and the book were released Rhonda Byrne (born 12 March 1951) was an Australian television writer and producer. According to the dramatic narrative of the Secret, Byrne was shattered by the sudden death of her father and the news that Prime Time was effectively bankrupt. Byrne says her teenage daughter handed her a copy of the 1910 get-rich-quick classic The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles, a book that led her to a deep immersion into self-help literature and the epiphany that most of these books sell the same message – that positive thoughts yield positive outcomes. Or as the management theorists say: “It is not facts, but the best story, that wins!”

As I have mentioned before, then New Age will, in the future, in large scale be based on the ability to tell a good new story. This will often be mixed with an ability to use modern technology within computer science and production of films. Make a great website, and tell a story like in a Hollywood film, and you have success. The latest within New Age is for example the so-called WingMakers Project. The difference between a Hollywood film though, and a New Age guru, is that the New Age guru is claiming that his story is true, though very well knowing, that the whole thing is a fiction. It is interesting, that the creator of the WingMakers Project, Mark Hempel, already now is defending his story as being true, against critics, who say that the story is a hoax. Hempel precisely have a background working in the computer and IT industry (see my article Time travel and the fascism of The WingMakers Project). Or take the Human Design System, which is created by Alan Robert Krakower, who claims to have received it in a vision, whereafter he calls himself Ra Uru Hu. He was a well-educated and successful businessman, who worked as a contractor and magazine publisher with own advertising agency (see my article A critique of the Human Design System).

These kinds of story telling will be the future of New Age, and it will be amusing to follow, what the next “true” story will be. There is no doubt about that what I call The Matrix Conspiracy (which is a strong advocate for the use of hypnosis and hypnotherapy) will be made propaganda for through mass media phenomena such as Transmedia Storytelling, Alternate Reality Games (for example The Blair Witch Project), Viral Marketing/Internet Hoaxes and Collaborative Fiction.

Anyway, the Secret was released around the same time as the film version of “The Da Vinci Code,” and it was cleverly packaged as a historical mystery. There are lingering shots of faded cursive script on parchment paper, often accompanied by pounding drums or wordless choirs, and Byrne talks about “tracing the Secret back through history,” revealing all the great thinkers who have harnessed its power. (According to one titlecard, “The Secret was suppressed,” though we never learn how, or by whom). This is also an example of pseudohistory within New Age.

Intercut with this is a succession of American self-help gurus explaining that by really focusing on what you want, your “positive” energy flows out into the universe and is rewarded (notice how it is an implied assumption, that it is “positive”, to focus on your own wishes/greed). And intercut with this mantra are dramatised scenes of this “law of attraction” in action: a little boy visualises a brand new bicycle and gets one from his dad; a woman focuses on some jewellery in a shop, and gets it; a man is visualizing a parking space, and vupti, there it is! At one point the “miracles coach” Joe Vitale likens the universe to a giant shopping catalogue. He says: “You flip through it and say, “I´d like to have this experience and I´d like to have that product and I´d like to have a person like that. It is you placing your order with the Universe. Its really that easy.”

Since appearing in bookstores, the book has sold 1,3 million copies and 2 million DVDs, outselling even the new Harry Potter novel. After translation the book sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. It is currently on track to becoming the fastest selling self-help book on record.

Oprah loves it. Hollywood stars Nicole Kidman, Meg Ryan and Scarlett Johansson swear by it. So you are really getting in trouble if you are criticizing it. But I will take the chance.

The film is launched – by the way like a number of other similar New Age products – with that Rhonda Byrne, one day at the end of 2004, discovered the secret laws and principles behind the whole of the universe, and therewith made her able to see through the secret behind everything, that has made the world´s large geniuses so brilliant and successful – including the greatest thinkers, scientists, artists and philosophers. She was surprised, why nobody else had discovered this, and will therefore share the secret with us.

The Secret is both something new and something old. It is something new in the sense, that it is based on management theory and positive psychology (see my articles Management theory and the Self-help industry and Humanistic psychology, self-help, and the danger of reducing religion to psychology). It is something old because it, by first view, talks about ancient spiritual/universal laws. However these laws become distorted to fit together with the management theories.

It is shortly told a giant manipulation-project, which purpose is to scrape so many money to itself as possible. The circulation of the idea happens via multi-level-marketing structures - that is to say: sales networks, which are built up in a pyramid structure – the ideas that also lie behind the illegal pyramid games.

The central concept in The Secret is  ”The Law of Attraction” – that is to say: if you think in compliance with this law, then you can attract a successfull life as it fit you. This is because, as the book says, that your thoughts directly creates the world, including the physical world. Everything that happens to you of negative or positive, is in other words due to your own negative or positive thoughts. You therefore have to change these negative thoughts with more positive thoughts.

Here the book, apparently in compliance with the wisdomtraditions, mentions a concept such as love. But it is important to understand what precisely it is the book understands by love (I have already mentioned this weird belief). It namely urges readers to rid themselves of illness through “harmonious thoughts,” to attract love by loving themselves. Love is about loving yourself. Positive thinking is about adding love to your own needs, feelings, wishes, yes even to your dark sides; that is: see everything in you, not as something negative, but as something positive. It has nothing to do with the spiritual concept of love where you feel compassion with other people, and through this compassion receive the good. The spiritual concept of love is turned upside down in the book: you receive the “good” by loving yourself, by seeing everything in yourself as something positive, and therefore good. 

It is this demonical turn I have referred to as the 666 aspect of the Matrix Conspiracy. The law of attraction movement is the most obvious example of the use of black magic/satanism within the Matrix Conspiracy (read more about the 666 turn in my article The four philosophical hindrances and openings).

I will here exlain it in short. In a spiritual practice it is important to know the difference between a selfish use of energy, and an unselfish use of energy. You can also term this as a demonical use of energy, and a spiritual use of energy, or as black and white magic.

The ego-religion and the ego-exercises are the ego´s incessant confirmation or denial of the ego: “it is no use with me!”; or: “Wonderful me!”. Both, either the denial or the confirmation of the ego, maintain the ego-proces, the ego-identity, and the ego-centralization. The ego´s religion and exercises are the ego´s needs and longings and will: I want to, I think, I believe, I feel, I wish, I hope, I think, I believe, I feel, I wish, or, in its most common core: I, I, I...Me, Me, Me...

It should now be easy to see, that the positive psychology of the New Thought movement, and the law of attraction, are based on the ego-religion and the ego-exercises, where it is about moving the focus away from the denial of the ego (the negative, evil), and encourage the confirmation of the ego, which is considered as positive, and in compliance with the divine, universal laws.

In the Danish New Age magazine Nyt Aspekt (New Aspect, January-March 2012), there is an article called “Super Thoughts” by the Health Coach Anni Simonsen. After having stated that “New research has shown...” that “everyting is subjective”, and “Fantasy=reality” she claims that you can think yourself healthy, by standing in front of a mirror and repeating: “You are so beautiful!” “I love you!” She states that it is about giving yourself positive confirmations, to acknowledge, praise and love yourself as unconditional as possible. Thereafter she states that critical thinking belongs to the denial side of the ego, wherefore you of course should avoid such kind of negative thinking. She concludes that giving yourself positive confirmations are synonymous with healthy thoughts, and that such thoughts are good thoughts, light thoughts, super thoughts.

If you find it difficult, she says, you must borrow (here we see that Anni Simonsen also is a NLP coach, and that New Thought is the source of inspiration for both the law of attraction and NLP – see my article Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), and Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT)). She continues the exercise: Let yourself be inspired by a person, whom you would like to be like, and use this model to create your own self-image. When this self-image is ready, it is time to put sound on. Listen to your own voice. Find the sound that tells you, that you speak to the world with confidence and trust. It is a voice people will listen to! Listen to how the whole world will answer with acknowledgement, respect and love.

I am afraid I don´t agree that the whole world will love Anni Simonsen because she stands in front of a mirror repeating to herself: “You are so beautiful!” “I love you!” I think it sounds like the evil queen from the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She ends the article with a preconceived response to critique. If you think that the image not is true, but only is fantasy, then remember that everything is subjective.

And now to my claim that such thoughts are an expression of black magic, a way of turning spirituality upside down.

First of all: Subjectivism means that truth only is something you create yourself – there is no absolute, or objective truth. This of course raises the Socratic question: from where does Anni Simonsen (and other New Thought thinkers) know that everything is subjective? She can´t know this if reality only is a fantasy you create yourself. Subjectivism is self-refuting. The self-refuting aspect is that subjectivism makes an exception of its own position. The very assertion of subjectivism is itself non-subjectivistic (see the thought distortion Self-refuting arguments in my article A dictionary of thought distortions). Besides this self-contradiction, then the assertion of subjectivism is in opposition to spirituality, which in its worship of a divine reality, of course believes that truth is absolute and objective. The opposition is due to, that religion, and therefore spirituality, has been reduced to psychology; a reductionism, a distortion of the human being (see my articles Humanistic psychology, self-help, and the danger of reducing religion to psychology, and The pseudoscience of reductionism and the problem of mind).

Secondly: The ordinary ego-consciousness functions by being identified with the physical world, with instincts, sexuality, emotions and collective ideals. The true spiritual practice works through these aspects by means of, for example the core which exists in the basic monastic vows: poverty, chastity and obedience. These promises work with a restructuring of the ego´s ownership to things, food and power, and they re-structure sexuality and emotions. First thereafter the mystical process can begin. Again: it should now be easy to see how positive psychology and New Thought are doing the exact opposite.

The ego is a demonical structure, and it attracts demonical powers and energies, which also have been created by the ego phenomenon. The same energy-process and function, which realized spiritual teachers use, can therefore be used for other purposes than spiritual. When the energy-processes of the astral plane´s collective history are used spiritual, then the ego, in its egoistic isolating and self-affirmative function, steps aside, and the energy is turned into the now, and therefore in towards the source and the spiritual dimension. The people, who around a spiritual teacher, constitute an energy-mandala, are in this way made transparent for a higher common human spirituality.

In a lesser realized person´s use of energy the contact with, and the ability to manipulate with such collective forms of astral energy, can be used for other puposes than spiritual. It can be creative, ego-affirmative, political, demonical, and so on.

The powers that, by realized spiritual teachers are given to others´ disposal in healing, energy transmission and spiritual information exchange, the same powers can be turned in through the ego-structures, and therewith into past and future, and fragmentation (conflict). In this way there can be opened creative channels, created super egos (super thoughts), created political leaders and popular seducers (in my book Dream Yoga, I have, in the article Sympathy for the Devil, investigated these phenomena in detail).

These phenomena are well known from history and from literature. In the story of the temptation in the desert, we can see these possible ways of using the energy pictured in anticipated form. Here you see the possibility of using the freedom and the power, to elevation of the ego and the consequent power and material glory. But Jesus abstains from this deification of the ego. It is also known from the Faust myth, described by for exampel Goethe and Thoman Mann.

When you in a selfish way use the powers from the collective history of the astral plane, and which demonical astral beings will help you with (because the ego phenomenon is their magnet of attraction), you can create personal power and material glory. That is the essence of Black Magic, and it is the backgound for the creation of the concept of the law of attraction (though the worshippers probably don´t realize this - I think they have perfectly good intentions - see the thought distortion Good Intentions Bias in my article A dictionary of thought distortions). But you will eventually meet the compensatory karma, or Nemesis.

You can in short not use these energies as you want to; that is: through thinking, and therefore not through will, choices or feelings.

The eternal circling around your own dreams, desires, success etc., will in other words be contra-balanced through the opposite categories. New Thought here exposes its worshippers for the posibility of Nemesis.

An example: as soon as your thoughts spread themselves too much out in an extreme, the energy-system compensates by seeking to bring itself back to the balance of the middle. The system does this by seeking over towards the opposite extreme (for instance from perfectionism to a feeling of fiasco). That is: through a contrabalancing, a compensation. The energy works as a pendulum. The more energy, which is invested in an extreme of a pair of opposites, the larger the swing in the opposite direction will become (read more in my article Humanistic psychology, self-help, and the danger of reducing religion to psychology).

Here is one of Rhonda Byrne ´s own examples on positive thinking: If you as a female has a problem with being too fat, then this is due to that you think fat thoughts. Feeling a bit overweight these days? According to Rhonda Byrne, it is not an excess of food that´s making you fat – it is your thoughts that are adding on those extra pounds.

“To put it in the most basic terms, if someone is overweight, it came from thinking ´fat thoughts´ whether that person was aware of it or not,” writes Byrne. “A person cannot think ´thin thoughts´ and be fat. It completely defies the law of attraction.”

So if one simply think ´thin thoughts´, refrains from observing fat people and follows Byrne´s three-step process of “Ask-Believe-Receive” then you are guaranteed to lose weight, without actually doing anything about it.

The ”positive” in Rhonda Byrne´s example on positive thinking, is in other words an Egoistic ideal of beauty without any kind of ethics: avoid observing fat people!

The film is coming with a number of similar examples on, that its own concepts of positive thinking are equivalent with pure egoistic thinking. In addition to this the film also has some messages to sick, weak and poor people, which is as ethical problematic. Sick, weak and poor people are namely told, that their disease, weakness or poverty are their own fault, because they think sick, weak and poor thoughts. The examples on, how they instead shall think, are as absurd as Byrne´s own example: for example are cancer-sick people told, that they miraculous can heal their disease by watching funny films in three weeks, or by having send a few Gratitude-stones from LA.

For those of us unfortunate enough to fall ill, it really is all our fault. “You cannot ´catch´ anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it into your thought,” says The Secret.

The flipside of the “law of attraction” that the Secret so keenly promotesis that as sure as positive thoughts bring wealth, health and happiness, negative thoughts are also responsible for any illness, poverty or bad luck that happens your way. The problem is the propensity for self-blame when it doesn´t work. Besides that it is an invalid ad hoc clause (rationalization), to say that if the law of attraction doesn´t work, then it is because you are not doing it correct, then such statements are inducing a false dichotomy in people, that makes them easy targets for guilt, shame and depression (see my article A dictionary of thought distortions).

(Another weird aspect of this is something I have experienced when talking to law of attraction devotees. For example I talked with a woman, who for years had tried to "attract" a man into her life. But the men she "attracted" wasn´t good enough. She said: "Well, you get what you are asking for!" She simply thought, that the "wrong" men was due to mistakes in her thoughts, in her way of attracting these men. She didn´t talk about the men as human beings, but as objects for her own wishes. She was exposing a me-me-me-and-then-perhaps-you-if-it-fits-me-logic. The last thing she was considering, was that a person with such a logic would be a nuisance to other people).

Anyway, in an interview with Newsweek Rhonda Byrne is asked, if the victims of the genocides in Rwanda in 1994, then had attracted this destiny themselves, what she answers on with confirmation.

“If we are in fear, if we are feeling in our lives that we are victims and feeling powerless, then we are on a frequency of attracting those things to us,” says Byrne in reference to Rwanda.

So, a spiritual concept of compassion with people who are suffering, as for example the victims of Rwanda, will in the law of attraction involve a risk of attracting the weak and powerless thoughts of these people. So instead you should turn your back to them.

The thought falls for a Reductio ad Absurdum argument. Any psychopath, multiple murderer or tyrannical dictator would namely love the thought. Just try to use the idea on the German mass extermination camps under Second World War. The idea would actual be very useful in order to justify crimes in this style. It is, as mentioned, a way of thinking that is completely devoid of ethical thinking – that is: a psychopathic way of thinking.

The film/book uses a long line of the greatest geniuses of history to confirm its theories (from Emerson to Shakespeare, from Plato to Lincoln, from Victor Hugo to Newton and Beethoven) – as well as that all wisdomtraditions also are used to confirm them. But these people become – just like the wisdomtraditions -  systematically abused by taking their statements out of their right connection, and twisting them in order to mix them with the film's theories.

The thought distortions, which the authentic spiritual traditions try to explore, change and restructure, are namely in the film directly used to manipulate with. Meanwhile I don´t think the creators of the film do this fully consciously. I actually think that they believe in the idea. They are just extremely uneducated and naive. Without any philosophical or scientific training. And in this they remind about a lot of other New Age worshippers.

Like many other New Age directions (for example illustrated in the New Age film What the bleep do we (k)now?) The Secret wallow itself in the philosophical viewpoints relativism/subjectivism – that is to say: philosophical viewpoints, which can justify the management theoretical idea about, that it is not facts, but the best story, which wins (your thoughts directly create the world, including the physical!). Here the film uses – again like many other New Age directions – Einstein´s theories of relativity, as well as quantum mechanics, to ”prove” its theories. But again like many other New Age directions, these scientific theories are on the worst distorted (see my article Quantum mysticism and its web of lies).

The Secret´s performers/followers manipulative sign themselves with all kinds of titles. Here is some examples from the book (which, by the way, also is quite revealing): “philosopher, lecturer, author and creator of true wealth, prosperity, and human potential programs,” (James Arthur Ray), “moneymaking and business-building expert” (John Assaraf), “philosopher, chiropractor, healer and personal transformation specialist” (John DeMartini), “metaphysician and one of the top marketing specialists in the world” (Joe Vitali), “a nonaligned, trans-religious progressive” (Michael Beckwith).

“The Secret," according to the film/book is, as mentioned “The Law of Attraction.” And, defined clearly and simply, this “law,” (as certain as the law of gravity) is that our thoughts always attract what they are about and bring them to reality. Think about wealth, and you will become wealthy. Think about that new car you’ve always wanted, and it will come to you. Think about getting a good parking spot on the lot, and one will open up for you. Think about your ideal weight (really, dwell on that number, write it on your scale), and you will attract that reality to yourself. (All of these are real examples in the book.) Rhonda Byrne is glad to report that since deciding her “perfect weight” is 116 pounds, she has moved to that mark, and nothing moves her from it, no matter what she does or eats, because she thinks “thin thoughts” (can thoughts also prevent her from getting older?).

Now here is how “the law of attraction” actually works, according to The Secret: “Thoughts are magnetic; and thoughts have a frequency. As you think, those thoughts are sent out into the universe and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything send out returns to the Source. And that source is you.”

As Mel Lawrenz says in an article (The Secret-Revealed): “Now here’s the bad news: whatever happens in your life is the result of what your thoughts have attracted - the good and the bad. Appendicitis? An auto accident? Poverty? You have brought it on yourself.”

And Bible verses are quoted in the book, as if the book was about something holy. Lisa Nichols, motivational speaker and one of the contributors, notes that: “in Proverbs it talks about "so a man thinketh, he is." In Matthew, it says "if you ask and you believe in your prayers, then you will receive it."

And then there is James Arthur Ray, author of The Science of Success: How to Attract Prosperity and Create Harmonic Wealth Through Proven Principles, who says, “Here’s the question I want you to consider - do you treat yourself the way that you want other people to treat you?”

Mel Lawrenz continues: “Does that sound familiar? It is a twist, a pretty severe twist, of one of the most universal principles of life called the Golden Rule, which Jesus described as “do to others as you would have them do to you.” So this tried and true egoless principle of life (“do to others...”) becomes the ultimate form of self-centeredness (“treat yourself...”). Oh, and by the way, you can attend James Arthur Ray’s seminar, his “harmonic wealth weekend,” for a seminar fee of a mere $997. Somebody has figured out how to attract wealth to himself.”

(As mentioned, then for example love is twisted in the same way: you will attract love by loving yourself, not by loving others. In the true spiritual traditions you attract love by loving others – what precisely is what Jesus talks about).

The Secret would lead you to believe that you are entitled to whatever you want, and you have the power within yourself to gain it. The book says: “Begin right now to shout to the universe: life is so easy. Life is so good. All good things come to me.” And “You deserve all good things life has to offer.” “You are the creator of you, and the law of attraction is your magnificent tool to create whatever you want in your life. Welcome to the magic of life and the magnificence of you.”

Very different from the message of Jesus: the first will be last and the last will be first; lose your life and you will find it.

And in this we find the confusion of The Secret. It is all about the Ego, for the Ego, obsessed with the Ego. Even Newsweek magazine offers this ethical critique: "On an ethical level, The Secret appears deplorable. It concerns itself almost entirely with a narrow range of middle class concerns -- houses, cars, vacations, followed by health and relationships, with the rest of humanity a very distant sixth."

The Secret appeal especially to professional, middle-class American women (spreading to women all over the world), who are turned off by traditional religion yet feeling a yearning for a personal, non-denominational spirituality. They often refer to themselves as the new feminists. Sentiments such as, “You are the creator of you, and the law of attraction is your maginificent tool to create whatever you want in your life”, resonate with them. They are not concerned with critics who wondered about the flipside: how people, even children, who suffer illness, violence, untimely death or other misfortune might have “attracted” that. The self-help industry as such is especially promoted through women´s magazines (see my article The new feminism and the philosophy of women´s magazines).

So, the Law of Attraction is the idea, that your positive or negative thoughts magnetically, magically, can attract the negative or positive into your life, so that it becomes reality. And what the idea considers as being positive or negative, is only circling around one special thing: how I can get my own wishes, feelings and needs satisfied. The believers claim, that the law of attraction is a spiritual law, which will help you in this quest. In other words: focus your thoughts on getting your own wishes, feelings and needs satisfied, and then you are living in compliance with the spiritual laws, and can make reality give you what you want.

An extremely manipulating thought, because if we take the true spiritual laws, then they say, that there is a duality in the Universe you have to realize in order to reach into non-dualism: for instance yin and yang, positive and negative, light and darkness, I and Thou.

This understanding of dualism goes on, that the opposites are defining each other; they are inseparable. If there comes an overweight of one of the poles it creates unbalance.

These laws exist everywhere: in nature, in society, in Man himself.

Now, if we take true spirituality, then you can say, that it contains three important concepts:

1) Critical thinking (spotting thought distortions, created by dualistic unbalance)

2) Investigating the shadow (ignorance, the unconscious, the painbody, the cause of suffering, your own dark side, the Ego)

3) The spiritual practice (going beyond all ideas and images)

And now, if we take the self-deception in the Law of Attraction in relation to the above-mentioned:

1) The believers close themselves in the positive; that is: what they think is positive: namely their own wishes, feelings and needs. In this way they leave out the negative, which causes a lack of ability to realize the laws of dualism. Their so-called exercises - which they think the idea of the law of attraction helps them with - is about how to drive out, force out, repress, even ignore, the negative.

2) When ignoring the negative they fail to understand the shadow, both their own dark sides, the Ego, as well as ignorance and suffering as such. And understanding your own suffering is a necessity in order to train compassion with other people (see my article Suffering as an entrance to the Source).

This causes that their empathy and compassion with other people can be hard to discover, illustrated Rhonda Byrne´s words: If you as a woman feels you are too fat, then turn your back to fat people, so that their fat thoughts don´t influence you - and in the words about, that peoples´ suffering are their own fault, and that you should turn your back to them, so that their negative thoughts don´t influence you.

The failure to realize their own dark side can be seen in another episode with Rhonda Byrne. She typical meets people with a loving facade. At one time she wanted to remind the world about the crucial importance of gratitude: “Remember,” Byrne was preaching, “if you are critizising, you are not being grateful. If you are blaiming, you are not being grateful. If you are complaining, you are not being grateful.”

It was an odd time for Byrne to be preaching these words, because at the same time her lawyers had just sued two of the very people, who were instrumental in launching her book and film The Secret to phenomenal success. Drew Heriot, the Australian director of the film, and Dan Hollings, an Arizona internet consultant whose “viral marketing” helped propel Byrne to global fame via Oprah Winfrey, had both been demanding that Byrne pay them a share of the estimated $ 300 million revenue they claim she´d promised them. In the weeks up to Thanksgiving, Byrne´s lawyers had counter-attacked by launching legal actions against both men in jurisdictions far from their homes, a tactic one judge has since described as vexatious and harassing.

For a woman whose central message is the power of positivity, Byrne has a surprisingly long history of such bust-ups, stretching back to her days as a television producer in Melbourne.

3) They close themselves in their own idea about the law of attraction, which causes, that they don´t have any spiritual practice (no training of realization and compassion).

All and all it causes a total stop of any spiritual development, any ability to learn. They lull themselves into a huge illusion and self-deception, which will cause an enourmous unbalance. The energy-laws of the wholeness will always seek towards the balance of the middle. When there is a focus in one extreme, the energy-system will do this through a swing over in the opposite extreme; that is: through a contrabalancing movement. That is what is meant by compensatory karma, or hubris-nemesis. REad more abour karma in my artticle What is karma? In my article Humanistic psychology, self-help, and the danger of reducinf religion to psychology, you can read about how the above-mentioned energy-laws works.

The idea of the Law of Attraction goes wrong from the start because it is based on a misinterpretation of quantum mechanics, which you can see repeated again and again in numerous New Age books. A misinterpretation, which the believers could see corrected, if they, (instead of their easy-solution-to-everything-quest), were seeking other sources to their ideas than New Age books, for instance Niels Bohr himself (see my article Quantum mechanics and the philosophy of Niels Bohr).

The manipulative in the idea is then of course, partly that it says it is proven by science, but also that all great thinkers, artists and spiritual traditions, support it. As mentioned then this happens by taking short or longer quotes out of the correct context, and placing them so that it seems like they support the idea. Some of the coaches and speakers in the invironment are masters in this manipulative art. Manipulating is also the swollen titles they use about themselves, such as for instance "Super Coach", "The World´s greatest Money Coach", and so on in the same style.

The word proven is also used manipulative in connection with the experiences the believers say they have had, after they have begun to use the Law of Attraction; that their experiences therefore “prove” that the idea is true (Law of Attraction meetings are often going off as testimonials about these “proofs”). Scientifical seen this is pure nonsense. Of course you can create success by creating a manipulative stunt like The Secret, but this doesn´t prove that the idea presented in the film therefore is true.

And concerning the idea, then believers of all kinds of other beliefs (totally different from the Law of Attraction) also always have had experiences, and a lot of believers don´t experience anything. It can also be pure fantasy, coincidence, etc., etc. Besides, black magic works. And psychopaths also seem to have a strange ability to attract what they desire and want. And look at the great Law of Attraction guru himself, James Arthur Ray. He must be able to give a lot of testimonials of his succes. But his career ended in complete failure and tragedy. He has been sentenced to two years in prison because of indifference to people in trouble during a sweat-lodge ceremony. Three people died because of this (see my two articles on the tragedy: James Arthur Ray and the sweat lodge tragedy, and New Age guru, James Arthur Ray, sentenced to two years in prison). So, testimonials doesn´t prove anything.

This raises another question. How can the law of attraction support the wishes of all people? What if these wishes are contradictory? What about two parts in a war? What if another person wishes me dead, and I wish to live?

And now, finally, to the most frightening thought: what if, that psychopaths, massmurderes, dictators, terrorists, got hold of the fact, that the Law of Attraction actually would justify their ideas of what they find positive (their wishes, feelings and needs)...? There is nothing at all in the Law of Attraction-concept, that can say that this would not be positive. Focusing on your wishes is per definition positive, and the concept doesn´t have any other ethical foundation than this.

The magnet of attraction, which the ego, and all demonical powers, are controlled by - (the ego´s identity with the material world: instincts, sexuality, emotions, desire, collective ideals, ownership, power) – will in a true spiritual practice loose its attraction, and the consciusness will be turned in towards the source: the Good, the True and the Beautiful. The law of attraction is promoting the direct opposite.