BEYOND
THE SECRET
How secret can it be when everyone is talking about it?
(2007)
What if I told you that the universe not only responds to
your thoughts, but rewards them? That’s the secret that
Prime Time Productions, an Australian media firm, has hit
on. Through public relations, viral marketing and word of
mouth, its multimedia paean to self-empowerment has become
Down Under’s most successful cultural export since
Crocodile Dundee. The DVD is a top seller on Amazon.com and
the accompanying hardcover book has broken the New York
Times bestseller list. Recently, Oprah gave
The
Secret her
blessing. Entering the Vancouver Chapters store, the first
thing I saw was an entire book display devoted to the video
and book.
I picked up a copy of the hugely popular DVD to give it a
spin. In the opening scenes, a toga-clad figure is
frantically burnishing a scroll on a tablet. Armour-clad
soldiers break into the room, just as their target escapes
with the tablet. “The secret was buried,” we are told, as
the fellow drops the tablet into a hole in the ground. The
scene fades to men in a smoke-filled room, and we learn
that a select few throughout history have unearthed this
hidden knowledge, using it to their selfish benefit. Other
great men, on the side of life and light, have hinted at
the truth, in an attempt to share it with the rest of us:
Churchill, Einstein, Buddha, Henry Ford, mythologist Joseph
Campbell and others.
The
Secret examines
how thought creates reality. Think about what you don’t
like or don’t want and it will come your way. Think about
what you desire and it will come your way. All of this
apparently functions through the “Law of Attraction,” a
cosmic principle in which like attracts like. The Secret
explains how people can exploit this law for greater
health, wealth and loving relationships.
In the film Secret, producer and writer Rhonda Byrne tells
how she went looking for contemporary teachers of this
ancient wisdom. It turned out most of these gurus weren’t
hidden in the dusty halls in academia or tucked away on
mountain peaks. Most of her Secret
teachers
were found in the business world, working as management
consultants and motivational speakers in the US. They all
get to have their say in the film and the book.
According to her website Marci Shimoff is “… one of the
nation’s leading motivational experts.” Business consultant
Bob Doyle maintains a website (wealthbeyondreason.com).
Loral Langemeier is “… a master coach and financial
strategist.” Dr. John Demartini is a “… doctor, author,
business consultant and dynamic, international,
motivational professional speaker.” Bob Proctor is a
motivational speaker who runs The Science of Getting Rich
seminar and Dr. Joe Vitale is known on the web as “Mr.
Fire,” a consultant with the power to corral consumers in a
“hypno-buying trance.”
Much of The Secret’s message could be summed up with a
Wayne Dyerism: “Change the way you look at things and the
things you look at change.” You do have some control over
your own neurochemistry through positive self-talk and
visualization. As for negative thinking, if you think you
have problems and you’re looking for problems, you’ll have
problems. Helpful, and good to remind people, but hardly a
secret with a supernatural foundation. The problem with
this Aussie effort is its central thesis.
Most of the featured teachers in the film credit the Law of
Attraction for their fame and fortune, and promise it can
do the same for you. It’s all “really fun,” to use the Law
of Attraction to your own ends, says Dr. Joe Vitale. “This
is like having the universe as your catalogue and you flip
through it and say, ‘Well, 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 just placing your
order with the universe. It’s really that easy.”
In one scene in the film, a boy gazes longingly at a red
BMX bicycle in a store window. In bed at night, he
contemplates a picture of the bike in a catalogue. We next
see him at a riverside, staring at the picture torn from
the catalogue. We learn that by focusing on this desired
object, he aligns the universe with his thoughts. At the
scene’s close, he opens a door, and there stands a smiling
adult – presumably his father – with the bike he had wished
for.
Wouldn’t it have been more straightforward for the boy to
ask his dad for the bike, rather than the universe,
skeptics may ask. Instead of meditating on the object of
his desire, wouldn’t it have been a better idea for him to
get a paper route to make some spending money? Yet the film
assures us that the Law of Attraction is as dependable as
gravity and as serviceable as electricity. (Another scene
shows a guy visualizing himself successfully into the seat
of a new Porsche and a woman visualizing a gold necklace,
and then receiving it as a gift.)
As with any cosmic principle, however, the Law of
Attraction is a harsh mistress with big demands. “You
deserve to be happy; you deserve to be joyful; you deserve
to be celebrative, but in order to do that, you must first
fall madly in love with yourself,” Lisa Nichols tells us in
the film. And once you’ve learned to love yourself – truly,
madly deeply – you’re ready for your very own Renaissance.
“You are the masterpiece of your own life; you are the
Michelangelo of your experience,” says Dr. Joe Vitale. “The
David that you are sculpting is you. And you do it with
your thoughts.”
The DVD shows people’s thoughts expanding from their heads
across the globe in high production, computer generated
ripples. Everything is energy and consists of vibrations,
we are told, a long-known scientific fact rather than a
secret. Yet the film tries to have things both ways, first
claiming that the universe responds unerringly to our
thoughts and later claiming that it requires action on our
part to bring our thoughts into reality.
Yet every cultural creation, from cantatas to cruise
missiles, began as a thought in someone’s head. The end
results didn’t assemble spontaneously, but through hard
work. The DVD labours to inform us that thought creates
things, but that’s just another truism, and hardly a
secret.
As for the Law of Attraction, it first appeared as a
popular expression in the work of Ernest Holmes, the
founder of a movement known as Religious Science. Holmes
counselled readers to “… never look at that which you do
not wish to experience,” and legions of authors, including
Norman Vincent Peale, have since taken up the positive
thinking banner and marched off into the self-help market.
In 1957, Earl Nightingale, a famous motivational speaker
and author made a record called The Greatest Secret. Same
secret.
Many of the film’s participants insist the Law of
Attraction is endorsed by science. That’s not so; in the
form they put it, it’s a notion that can be neither
invalidated nor proven by scientific methods. That doesn’t
necessarily mean it’s nonsense. What it means is that it’s
a metaphysical claim people have to try out themselves. In
any case, it’s a psychological truism that intent and
attitude shapes the world to a significant degree, in terms
of how you see it.
A Google search for the non-Newtonian version of the Law of
Attraction yields well over a million hits. A secret? Only
in the sense of being hidden in plain view.
What’s problematic is when the film’s participants stray
from boggy territory into uncharted nonsense. On Ellen de
Generes’ talk show, one of The Secret’s featured teachers
told the audience that each one of us has “… about a
hundred trillion cells that act as little magnets and those
little magnets attract a frequency that attracts to that
frequency, whatever it resonates with.” That’s not a
secret; it’s pseudoscience.
So is the universe really some celestial piñata that can be
whacked and cracked from the right mental angle? Do the
prizes of wealth, health and happiness rain down on you if
you love yourself enough? Or is this just setting up a lot
of people for failure? On the talk show circuit, The
Secret’s various teachers insist that debt is the result of
focusing always on debt, rather than thinking about
abundance (even though it was the average consumer’s ideas
about personal abundance that probably got them into
trouble in the first place).
Recently on Oprah, a whole phalanx of Secret teachers
assured the audience that negative thoughts draw nasty
things toward them, including car accidents. Had I been in
the audience, I would have mentioned the baby that dies of
crib death, or the child that dies of cancer. Were they
thinking the wrong thoughts? And what of all the many
millions of human beings throughout time whose prayers
weren’t answered? Were they getting their karmic
comeuppance, by not thinking the sunny thoughts of
motivational speakers?
The quick-cut editing of the film reduces sophisticated
ideas to easily digested soundbites, sugary-sweet but with
empty calories of information. These conceptual gummy-bears
are also preserved in the accompanying book and on the
official website. “Anything that makes you feel good is
always going to be drawing in more,” says Dr. John Gray.
Tell it to a heroin addict. “Incurable means curable from
within,” says Dr. John Demartini.” Tell it to a lung cancer
victim. “All we know is that you are, if you will, the acme
of perfection,” says Dr Fred Alan Wolf. Tell it to pig
farmer Willie Pickton.
It all seems less about the music of the spheres than the
ringing of cash registers. On the official website
(www.thesecret.tv), you can sign up for a newsletter and
order a magic genie lamp like the one seen in the film for
$49.95 (the cheesier merchandise appears to have been
pulled recently, however). On the commentary section of The
Secret DVD, creator Rhonda Byrne explains that she got
inspired after reading the 1910 classic The Science of
Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. At
(www.officialsecretseminar.com), Byrnes approvingly quotes
from Wattles: “Whatever may be said in praise of poverty,
the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really
complete or successful life unless one is rich.”
On Larry King Live, the host had a telling exchange with
several Secret teachers, along with Ramtha channeller J.Z.
Knight. The latter will be familiar to viewers of the film
What the Bleep Do We Know? There is a lot of crossover
between the talking heads in The Secret and those in the
pop-science film that preceded it.
King: “Time Magazine had an article Does God Want You To Be
Rich?” In a nutshell, it suggests that God who loves you
does not want you to be broke. It’s been propelled by Joel
Osteen’s four-million-selling book, Your Best Life Now.
Does He want you to be rich?”
Demartini: “Absolutely.”
Beckwith: “Absolutely.”
Proctor: “Absolutely.”
Knight: “Absolutely.”
Assaraf: “But most people don’t understand...”
Anytime anyone talks “absolutely” about what God wants, I
get edgy. On Larry King Live, dapper Secret teacher and
“visionary” Michael Beckwith tells the audience: “God has
always loved you. What is so? Wholeness is inside of your
being. What is so? Infinite supply surrounds you. What is
so? It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. Who’s in
your house?”
It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House? Try telling
that to the people of Iraq or Iran.
Can this avaricious secret, handed down through time from a
diapered Ancient to an Australian production house, really
be this disengaged from the real world and the suffering of
others? As the exchange with Larry King indicates, the
philosophy behind The Secret is in no way inconsistent with
religious fundamentalism. And in its genuflection toward
wealth, self-worship and apolitical complacency, it could
meld easily with fascist beliefs. It’s not difficult to
imagine the book as a big seller in Nazi Germany or
Franco’s Spain.
The Secret is all about you, but there’s one little
problem: other people. Even if the Law of Attraction really
works, what if other telepathic requests rippling across
the ether comes into conflict with your own? What if some
of those dreams and schemes are at odds? For example, can
everyone who shows up at one of The Secret’s teachers’
money seminars, really become a millionaire overnight? Even
if they all love themselves madly, and God wants them all
to be badass playahs with bling?
If many of the participants in the film come across like
motivational speakers, it’s because that’s their job
description. If you’ve ever listened to a motivational
speaker, it’s all about you, and not one whole hell of a
lot about the bigger picture. Motivational speakers don’t
discuss downers like dysfunctional work environments,
obscene CEO profits or jobs outsourced overseas. Their gig
is homespun wisdom, chicken soup for the solo and feel-good
fables for a shrinking middle class.
The Secret teachers have taken a tried and true approach
about being your own agent of change – something every
downsized employee has heard – and gone all cosmic with it.
In the past, workers out for a better deal didn’t
visualize, they unionized. For an eye-opening look at how
motivational speakers and job seminar leaders make big
bucks preying on the underemployed in the US, read Barbara
Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch.
For a documentary and book that seeks to engage the reader
with the cosmos, The Secret has little to say about
community, interdependence and the world around us. Yet all
our material hopes and dreams play out here and nowhere
else, in a thin, fragile margin called the biosphere. And
it’s the irrational belief in unlimited, material abundance
that got us into the environmental fix we’re in now. Is it
socially and ecologically responsible for The Secret
teachers to push the idea of universe-as-genie, granting
your wishes for more booty, when consumption threatens so
many beings on the planet? Is this so-called secret
profound or profane? Is this part of a spiritual path or a
spiritual Ponzi scheme?
If The Secret really wanted to wake people up, it would
have something to say about the social construction of
reality, a la The Matrix. There is also remarkably little
said about love – except in the narcissistic sense – and
nothing about compassion. Much of the film is beautifully
done and the ending is undeniably uplifting. It resonates
with people spiritually because it offers a twisted version
of the truth inside them: a vision of connection rather
than alienation. But it all turns out to be a bait and
switch game, a promise of perennial wisdom that turns out
to be a cult-like sales job for personal power.
In sum, this blunder from Down Under is a cleverly marketed
mash-up of self-help kit, sales seminar, spiritual
inflation, pop-science and pseudoscience, with some
discount solipsism tossed in. With all its talk about
positive and negative thinking, it is heavy on dualism. And
dualism is all about judgement.
Yet I still believe there’s a grain of truth in The Secret,
even though it heavily accreted with condescending
mumbo-jumbo. Many of us have experienced coincidences in
our lives so extraordinary that mere chance seems a pitiful
explanation. These incidents often produce a feeling of
awe, a sense of mystery and even humility. Perhaps the
feeling itself is the message.
Call it Jungian “synchronicity,” Christian “gratuitous
graces,” Islamic “occasionalism,” quantum “non-locality,”
or even the Law of Attraction if you like. It could be that
the universe whispers in coincidence because it’s the only
way we’ll listen, but we just don’t know for sure. That’s
what’s so maddening about The Secret’s teachers’ wide-eyed
claims of absolute knowledge about such things, inflating
the universe of Einstein and Heisenberg into “your
catalogue,” from which you order anything you like by
thought alone. This is perilously close to magical
thinking. It’s similar to how infants think.
Perhaps the bigger secret, the real secret, will forever
elude us, and after the initial wave of consumers caught up
in a “hypno-buying trance,” The Secret DVDs and books will
wash up in remainder bins and garage sales. Or perhaps this
multimedia marvel really does contain a core idea of
long-forgotten truth, even though it’s been bent out of
shape by modern misinterpretation. The relationship between
the mind and the world around it is a mysterious thing and
we still don’t know how deep it runs.
An attitude of gratefulness to be alive, as The Secret
teachers suggest, certainly seems a good way to start
changing yourself and the world as you see it. Whether or
not the rest of the DVD or book works is for you to decide.
But for me, it’s all about concision. Three words from the
Vedic tradition – tat tvam asi (that thou art) – sum up the
bigger mystery for me, far better than the 90 minutes sales
job in The Secret.
Geoff Olson
