Selling Secrets
We are such a pop culture. America is roughly 86 percent Christian, and you’d like to think these people know their faith. But anything that comes out purporting to uncover new versions of an ancient religion excites so much imagination (and generates so much in sales) you’ve got to wonder why believers are so willing to…believe anything.
Secrets. People love secrets. And pop theology has churned out one sensation after another for the past couple of years based on the ‘discovery’ of secret knowledge. In fact, the latest one cranked the titillation factor up a notch by unabashedly calling itself just that…”The Secret”.
It’s the publishing phenomenon of the year so far, a small book with a parchment-brown cover engraved with the image of a red wax seal.
“The Secret,” its title proclaims matter-of-factly, as if the slim volume held the answer to life’s deepest mysteries. Which is precisely what it purports to do. Written by an Australian television producer, this latest contribution to the bursting shelves of New Age self-helpiana has come out of nowhere to sell more than 1.3 million copies in the United States alone.
Yet as bookstores nationwide have sold out of it again and again, controversy has begun to swirl around “the secret.” Working in a bookstore recently and discussing the book with customers lured by the promise of instant success, I finally delved into its message myself. And where the buyers I talked to hoped to find the path to a better life, I found a disturbing little book of blame.
The secret of “The Secret” is, very simply, the “law of attraction.” Despite claims on the book’s Web site that it is revealing hidden wisdom “for the first time in history,” the idea dates back nearly 3,000 years to early Hindu teachings that “like attracts like.” But author Rhonda Byrne takes it to a new level. She told Australia’s Herald Sun newspaper in January that she stumbled upon “the secret” while mourning the death of her father in 2004, via a 1910 book called “The Science of Getting Rich,” by one Wallace D. Wattles.
The revelation that inspired her? “Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life,” Byrne writes. “You are the most powerful magnet in the universe . . . so as you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you.”
This is a re-tread of an old New Age belief. And like the others, it has a distinct down-side.
In February, Los Angeles Times editorial writer Karin Klein reported that local therapists were seeing “clients who are headed for real trouble, immersing themselves in a dream world in which good things just come.” Klein told me in an e-mail that she had heard from readers who were worried about friends who “suddenly start buying things, certain that the money to pay for them will just show up.”
Still worse is the insidious flip side of Byrne’s philosophy: If bad things happen to you, it’s all your fault. As surely as your thoughts bring health, wealth and love, they are also responsible for any illness, poverty or misery that comes your way.
That isn’t just implied, it’s spelled out: “The only reason why people do not have what they want is because they are thinking more about what they don’t want than what they do want.” By this logic, Holocaust victims brought it on themselves, as did those who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. Come on, New Orleans, get over it! Think positive!
This combination of psycho-babble/New Age mysticism has been selling in popular books for decades, by gurus still out there profiting from fooling some of the people all of the time – especially when they include media folk who lavish attention on the self-help strategies. “The Secret” is getting over-the-top attention. This op-ed writer relays the TV comedy skit in which a man from Darful is scolded for lamenting his starving people, because “it was all the result of his lousy attitude.”
I took a closer look, and all at once the book’s blame-the-victim philosophy didn’t seem so funny…
That (skit) was played for laughs, but later that week I watched Bob Proctor, author of “You Were Born Rich” and one of the “gurus” Byrne quotes most often, being asked on “Nightline” whether the starving children of Darfur had “manifested” — that is, visualized — their own misery. In utter seriousness, he replied, “I think the country probably has.”
This is unbelievable.
“Imperfect thoughts are the cause of humanity’s ills,” Byrne asserts, in a stunning sentence that had me pondering how to perfect my thoughts, pronto.
Poverty? “The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.”
Illness? “You cannot ‘catch’ anything unless you think you can. . . . You are also inviting illness if you are listening to people talking about their illness.” So . . . got any sick friends who need a shoulder to cry on? Tell ’em to bug off! As for Elizabeth Edwards — how selfish is she? By making people think about her cancer, she’s basically giving them the disease.
What at first glance looks like the world according to Disney — wish on a star, and it will all come true — turns out to be a pretty ugly little secret indeed.
This is not new, it’s only the latest manifestation of neo-Gnosticism. The truth is exciting enough, and available to everyone.