 
Scourge Book I:

The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of "The Secret"

~~~

Exploring the Genesis of the Post-Truth Age and how the rise of Donald Trump parallels that of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany

Newton Fortuin

Copyright Newton Fortuin 2008

Published at Smashwords

Previously

Mammon I: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of "The Secret"
Scourge

Book I

The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of "The Secret"

Book II

Belief Orientations behind the Great Recession

Book III

Thriving in the Age of Austerity

These books are available in most eBook reader formats

at

Smashwords.com

_The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history_

~ Friedrich Hegel ~
[18 July 2008]

A philosopher to take note of...

I had the fortune to read some of Newton Fortuin's work and find it very incisive, imaginative and courageous, given the fact that he has little formal training in the many branches of academic philosophy.

At the end of the day, people like us are all lovers of wisdom and seekers of truth, so we should help one another, since we are a rare species, almost on the brink of extinction in the present consummerised world...

The Scourge of our Time is a very original and provocative work.

WL van der Merwe, Ph.D.

Professor: Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Culture and Metaphysics – Free University of Amsterdam

[18 September 2008]

Thank you for this very readable text.

Franz J. Vesely, Ph.D.

[Viktor Frankl's son-in-law]

Professor: Computational Physics – University of Vienna

Former Publisher and Editor-in-chief: "The International Journal for Logotherapy and Existential Analysis", a bilingual peer-reviewed scientific journal

[18 September 2008]

As far as I can tell (and I am not an economist), your economic arguments are sound and well argued. I just don't understand the desire to take on one DVD/book/concept, i.e., The Secret. It certainly reads like a personal vendetta. Over the years, many people have put forward many ideas – a lot of which turn out not to be valid or even bordering the insane. The joy of living in a diverse world is that we allow all such ideas, and thinking, to "wash" over us, thereafter "spitting out the bones and eating the meat". Why do you single out this particularly whacky idea ... this is not clear to me? You write so well, and good flowing arguments – only to steer all that sound argument against a single idea which you find whacky.

[Refer to Foreword for a general response to the above]

Kurt April, Ph.D.

Professor of Diversity at the University of Cape Town and an associate fellow at Oxford University

[22 September 2008]

I follow your writing with great interest (in response to a copy of Scourge).

Eon Smit, Ph.D.

Director: Stellenbosch Business School (EQUIS/AMBA)

Professor: Economics, Statistics

[16 June 2012]

For certain if you are a thoughtful reader you would appreciate this book.

It is a book for our age, the age of the "Secret". The secret is out that the "Secret" is the scourge of our time.

As responsible adults we likely believe in the power and necessity of critical thinking in our personal lives.

To be advised that thought is a danger and wishful thinking is a value above it, makes me shudder. I personally know people who are well educated, honest, and ambitious who consider those who question their commitment to the tenets of the "Laws of Attraction"... etc. to be toxic.

Now if that is not dangerous to rational thought in an age of "The Secret", I don't know what is!

Read this book to arm yourself against the temptation not to think straight. It is a temptation, as, thinking clearly requires some thought.

Phyllis Antebi, Ph.D.

Psychologist: Irvine California

Amazon US Customer Review

When I purchased this book I expected little more than a pamphlet with a few arguments against the Law of Attraction silliness. Instead I get a fairly large book that goes into Mass Psychology and Economics as well as Marketing. Very well researched and even if you are not interested in the New Age movement you will find something interesting in this book.

Amazon US Customer Review

Am I the only person who finds this whole current obsession with wishy-wishy thinking and quantum gods slightly disturbing?... But there's a more insidious side to this style of thinking besides the self-delusion and deceit that is darker and more disturbing. And this is what this book nails. And it nails it hard. It's compelling reading and a fine effort at dissecting 'the secret' and showing the 'new (dark) age' in its true colours. Fascinating and disturbing in equal measure. It's a book that needs to be written and needs to be read. I hope more people read it.

Amazon UK Customer Review

I really love the succinct way you write about living positively regardless of the circumstances of your life and couldn't agree more. Believing in the new age prosperity thinking (along with some bad luck) led me down a bigtime abyss of depression to the point of contemplating suicide. Thankfully that is behind me now. I made a mistake, and now truly value the power of realism and living positively.

 Kathy

I'm writing first and foremost to thank you for your enlightening manuscript on The Secret. My brother has been smoking a lot of marijuana, and believes in The Secret completely, and is now following a creep Bashar from a documentary called "Tuned in". The point is that he now has serious psychosis. He was arrested for marijuana possession, after telling the cops where his marijuana was because he thought he could positively think his way out of it, and has been throwing out the notices about his court dates ever since. He has dropped out of college now, and I'm not sure what to do.

Vincent

My awakening to the crazy world of self help and recovery from its vice like grip occurred after a quite fantastical and unique experience. One thing I have learned is that you cannot download anyone else's 'system' or 'process' and make it work for you. I think you need to pick through each person's life experiences for the wool to weave your own tapestry. Certainly with the money, time, energy and hopes invested in other people's ego creations I could have weaved the Bayeux and then some!!!

What I can say though is that in a bid to understand my abusive childhood and how different I appeared to be from my family I embarked upon a 20 year quest to understand who and what I was. Yes, I fell, hook, line and sinker for the self help and personal development game.

More recently, over the last 10 years I have stuffed myself silly with Law of Attraction (loA) type teachings that mainly block out anything negative or 'not of the light' and thus, have given my power away more or less to anyone with a cheering claim or nice smile. Then, even worse I started creating courses and taught them to other unsuspecting fools. Cringe worthy stuff called how to be happy and living the attitude of gratitude...(spewing into a bucket).

Yes, I was a spiritual prostitute except that I paid to turn tricks. God, put like that it is embarrassing and hysterical in equal measure.

Then, a catastrophe of epic proportions that turned all of the LOA stuff on its head, inside out and doing somersaults occurred!!!!

It would fill a book and then some and perhaps one day I will come across someone who wants to take it on. Certainly NBC Dateline wanted to make a 2 hour documentary around events that led from my catastrophe....

Well, your wondering what it was, aren't you? Mmmmmm how to encapsulate the magnitude in a few paragraphs... (deep breath).

Essentially I met a psychopath (probably the physical manifestation of all the repressed and ignored negativity and blocked out critical thinking from the last 10 'positive' years!!!).

I sunk every penny into a series of businesses with him, got into a hellish personal relationship with him that involved every kind of abuse and threats etc, helplessly watched him systematically destroy several other people and then once I had withdrawn from him and the businesses despite what was on the line (everything material I had) – saw him flee the UK leaving a quagmire of 103 serious problems that escalated into near bankruptcy, over 50 threatened court actions, insurance issues, tremendous weight gain and the utter desecration of everything I believed in. I was massively affected – physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually, financially and spiritually.

Essentially 'I' ceased to exist. I became a recluse, stayed away from everyone and everything except what I could not possibly avoid, stopped going out, answering the phone, showering, getting dressed. The only respite from the fireball of pain and stress engulfing EVERY facet of my life was the safety net of suicide. I knew I could kill myself. I longed for absolute annihilation! I didn't just think it, I investigated the subject, formed a plan and came seconds away from carrying it out several times – stopped only by my love for my cats and who would care for them?

Without a doubt the worst aspect of all of the above was the belief I had created and attracted it. I spent nearly a year on a wild goose chase torturing myself further by trying to work out why and how a lifetime of positive thoughts and actions had created a monster and a monstrous situation that took 2 years hard time to resolve and was so permanently life changing...

There wasn't any answers other than the LoA was either horse shit or used wrongly could be disastrous.

I stumbled upon your book which helped as it showed all the guru's in meltdowns of their own, and I started looking at the shadow stuff that was all around me. For 8 months I delighted in oozing out every shred of anger and negative energy that had long been encased in the basement of my psyche until one day I realised that negative energy was not better or worse than its opposite - just different and that both are required for a reasonably happy existence. Duh...

I knew I was in recovery when my critical thinking skills began to creak into action again and I started reading novels (!!!). I have emerged back out into the sunlight but armed with self reliance that life goes up and down and around and around and 'this too shall pass...'

Having been kicked out of society I feel quite content to potter around doing not very much. I take each moment as it comes. I delight in the joy that flows out of simple things but at the same time when I feel enraged or angry or pissed off I beat up my pouf fee and enjoy that just as much as all the smiling.

I am content to not know who/what is behind everything and to surrender to whatever pulled me through. Forgiveness has and is helping me with all that happened – even the near murderous hatred I feel towards lawyers (laughing).

Footnote: My former business partner Michael Lane went on to murder a woman in a particularly gruesome way and then tried to run over and kill a transsexual in the dead woman's car. He is currently in Clark County Detention Centre, Vegas (where else?!) awaiting trial and possible death penalty next year.

Mmmmm not sure any of this would help anyone. There may be a few ears of corn if you pick through... (raucous giggles).

Hope all in your world is dark and light!!!!

Sarah Damellweek

Thank you for sending me this (previous mail), it is one of the most unfortunate side effects of believing in new age beliefs, that we want to spread it to others, and rather than helping them are actually spreading a virus. I'm reminded of the recent film Inception, where they say that the most contagious agent is an idea, it acts like a virus, and once it is planted it is very hard to get rid of. We live in an age of many crazy ideas manifested in tea partiers, global warming deniers, conspiracies of many kind and the like. I truly hope that critical thinking survives.

To update you on my brother. He still has not recanted, so to speak, and unfortunately he has withdrawn all the money from his trust fund, around 80,000 dollars, which is supposed to be used for his college education, and now has the resources to live on his own. Eventually I hope he will realize, and this person has, that he is delusional, but it's a terrible, terrible waste. At the end of the day however, we can only live by example, and be there for those who realize their mistakes. You are doing important work. Thanks again.

Vincent's response

Old-fashioned methods of mass mind control are breaking down. With the advent of the Internet, propaganda delivered by trance-inducing television is no longer as effective as it once was. This is why the control of information flow is now so important to the powerful. Why China is censoring the Internet. Why our government is so incensed by the revelations of Wikileaks.

I'm reading a good book now. It is strange in that it's very poorly edited, full of misspellings and syntactical errors yet brilliantly original and insightful. Part of the reason for its value is that it's written by a South African, ie by a person who is not part of the American system but who knows American media well. It's called 'Scourge: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of "The Secret"'

He shows how notions of solving one's own problems and finding peace within oneself, etc. are robbing us of agency. The notion that with the help of "The Secret" we have control over the Universe and what life gives us is of course pathetic and yet believed by so many. It's the source of the magical thinking notion that good thoughts lead to good lives. No. Critical thinking at least gives us a shot at getting good things out of life . And so much more. I could quote and quote from this book.

I'm annoyed by the many people I know who subscribe to this hooey right up to the moment when they have to make practical decisions involving screwing over other people, at which time they become hard as nails. But on second thought, if the universe owes you a living and someone is getting in your way, that makes sense. You're still a good person, because you are innately good and worthy no matter what your deeds are. It's more honest to assess the situation and do what you have to do without making special claims for yourself.

 Marianna Scheffer
Forward

The first concern you may have about reading this book is: why read a critique about what many, including Deepak Chopra, referred to as ridiculous years after it was first published?

An important reason is that this definitely ridiculous book/DVD was proliferated and accepted to the extent it was. But moreover, that it is not going away, and to date is still doing untold harm. The death of three participants and hospitalization of 18 others in a "spiritual warrior" program conducted by one of the co-writers  James Arthur Ray attesting to this, eventually leading to his arrest and conviction.

And even the legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have been influenced by similarly destructive new age ideologies. This is suggested by the fact that he  delayed vital medical treatment for nine months to find alternative "spiritual" cures. A decision his biographer indicated he subsequently greatly regretted.

The Secret moreover is an indicator of the greater social milieu we are finding ourselves in at this time, and particularly before the 2008 economic crisis. For this reason I isolated it as a good example of how similar frauds are conveyed, to make the overall point of how we may unknowingly be giving away our power to quacks and con-men. That's if we fail to think critically, instead to abandon our sanity for reckless delusion.

My "attack" is therefore particularly strong and pointed towards The Secret. Here the distinction between it and other wacky ideas is that it is an overt misrepresentation of reality, while others very often are views based on some or other true conviction.

The following extract from a Newsweek review of "The Power" (with reference to the power of love, Byrne's latest book) gives some context to the greater argument in this work.

In Byrne's life, it's all about her: "Whenever I hear something, even if they are words from a conversation of two strangers who are standing near me, if I can hear their words, their words have meaning in my life. Their words are a message for me, they're relevant to me, and they're giving me feedback on my life. If I am traveling and I notice a sign and I read the words, those words have meaning for me." There is, as it happens, a term for this belief. It's called "ideas of reference," and it is a common symptom of psychosis. I have no reason to think that Byrne is crazy, but The Power is certainly a deeply, disturbingly strange book. I didn't think it was possible to give love a bad name, but after reading The Power, all I can hope is that Byrne puts a little ... something else in her heart. I recommend the power of reason.

And indeed, the danger is in the mentality it fosters which may well be called "The Secret's Psychosis", and that those influenced by it to a greater or lesser extent develops what can only be viewed as a form of  induced (or influenced) psychosis. Induced psychosis is used as it is not necessarily a result of a mental disease or disorder. In its broadest definition psychosis is "the loss of contact with reality" including having distorted beliefs about the nature of reality and having an incoherent sense of one's actual power to affect the world around one.

Despite the unscrupulousness of The Secret's pseudo-theology, I think many Christian groupings are far more insidious and destructive. An example is the London based  Synagogue Church Of All Nations who convinced their followers to stop taking their AIDS medication; in its place to donate generously to the church in exchange for a supposed 100% cure of their disease. Or the 115 people who died in a  building collapse of a TB Joshua hostel which resulted from flouting building regulations. To indicate the level of the associated brainwashing, most of the charismatic leader's victims' families almost immediately and unconditionally forgave him. But the most prominent and destructive example is Islamic fundamentalism as exhibited by Al Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, ISIS and Boko Haram; but also as exhibited by the severe intolerance and punishment — often by death — for "blasphemy", adultery and free-speech by many of the prominent Islamic nations.

But most important of all, it also explains the "post-truth" world of Donald Trump and Brexit. But most alarming for freedom loving people everywhere, how his rise parallels that of Hitler who also was labeled a buffoon that shouldn't be taken seriously. In hindsight we now generally acknowledge that this turned out to be one of the most costly omissions in human history.

Crucially, I'm not arguing that quacks and lunatics be barred from airing their wayward views, but rather, that one be equipped with the mental skills to protect one's own sanity from their perversions.

Rather to sensibly argue against them whenever the opportunity avails instead of meekly allowing truth to be as mercilessly sacrificed under the politically correct altar of freedom of speech.

The Secret is isolated as a particularly good example of how similar frauds are conveyed. And it certainly is my right to vociferously argue the facts for any reader to make up their own mind. This is to make the overall point of how we give away our power if we fail to think critically, rather to be governed by our unsubstantiated fantasies.

Finally, note that each subsection is a philosophical discourse which stands on its own albeit that it is an intrinsic part of the greater discussion. It therefore is recommended that the work be read a subsection at a time, allowing its argument to be fully grasped first before continuing. For this reason it may most likely take longer to complete the manuscript than one otherwise would have.
Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

"THE SECRET"

NEO HERESY

INTRODUCTION

MASS HALLUCINATION

THE FOLLY OF THE AGES

HYPNOTIC MARKETING

THE POPULAR MIND

THE AGE OF CANT

BLISSFUL IGNORANCE

THE DECEPTION

THE ANTIDOTE

COUNTING CHICKENS

COMMON INTERPRETATION

THE UNIVERSE IS CONFUSED?

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE

IN A CIVILIZED WORLD

IGNORANCE AND EVIL

VOODOO SCIENCE

COSMIC COMEDY

THE SCIENCE OF DECEIT

SPIRITUAL NON-SCIENCE

THE MIRACLE OF HEALTH

FOOLS FALLACY

SILENT KILLER

THE ENERGY UNIVERSE

THE OBJECT UNIVERSE

THE ENLIGHTENMENT EFFECT

EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES SYNDROME

THE SECRET'S PSYCHOSIS

THE GENIUS FACTOR

PARADOXIC INTENT

MOTIVATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

A QUESTION OF FAITH

MIRRORING TRUTH

HAPPINESS DELIRIUM

COMEDIAN'S CURSE

SLIPPING FROM REALITY

THE PATHOLOGY OF HOPE

Demis of Critical Thinking in Action

MOST PRECIOUS GIFT

CONCLUSION

FINAL NOTE

ADDENDUM

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION: Harmful Effects

Critical Thinking in Action: Pondering the "Vaccines cause Autism" Debate

MOTIVATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: Examples from the 2010 Soccer World Cup

COPYRIGHTS ISSUES PERTAINING TO USE OF EXTRACTS
Prologue

"The Secret"

Cogito ergo sum / Je pense, donc je suis / I think, therefore I am

~~~

[René Descartes]

We all work with one infinite power. We all guide ourselves by exactly the same laws. The natural laws of the universe are so precise that we don't even have any difficulty building spaceships, we can send people to the moon, and we can time the landing with the precision of a fraction of a second.

Wherever you are – India, Australia, New Zealand, Stockholm, London, Toronto, Montreal, or New York – we're all working with one power. One Law, It's attraction!

The Secret is The Law of Attraction!

Everything that's coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it's attracted to you by virtue of the images you're holding in your mind. It's what you're thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you.

It's the greatest and the most infallible law upon which the entire system of creation depends.

Wise people have always known this. You can go right back to the ancient Babylonians. They've always known this. It's a small select group of people.

Why do you think that 1 percent of the population earns around 96 percent of all the money that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's designed that way. They understand something. They understanding The Secret, and now you are being introduced to it.

Neo Heresy

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion

~~~

[Baruch Spinoza]

To highlight the reality delusion associated with many neo esoteric beliefs I want to recount an incredibly horrific incident.

It concerns an atrocity that occurred just a few miles from my home in which a seven year old girl was brutally raped, her throat slit, set alight and left for dead.

In spite of the inhuman savagery the girl suffered, she miraculously survived, though now most certainly having to bear the scars of this unspeakable horror for the rest of her life.

And to add to the depravity of the act, it was perpetrated by a close friend of the girl's family, someone she knew and most likely trusted unconditionally. Though someone who in a single hour shattered her innocence, and with it most likely diminished the potential of her young life.

However the real tragedy is that this is a far too common occurrence in a society having been the victim of centuries of brutal colonialism, savage slavery and racial oppression. Though now in post-colonial South Africa the former victims of past oppression are sadly brutalizing their own.

When looking at this particular instance of inhumanity logically and you do hold strong esoteric views, then you unavoidably have to come to some rather irrational conclusions about why this girl supposedly must've earned or even deserved her fate.

For instance if you believe in karma and reincarnation, then it must also be your view that what happened to her – as a consequence of your belief – had to be as a result of her past misdeeds. That is in this life but also of her past lives, and that she now must be repaying back some monumental karmic debt.

Or if you believe in personal spirit guides then they in their infinite wisdom must have orchestrated this monstrous event from some or other higher cosmic vantage. Perhaps it is so that the girl had willingly chosen this lifetime to learn her spiritual lessons through pain and indignity.

Or if you subscribe to the views of The Secret, that "You cannot "catch" anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought", in spouting this profanity you must be of the view that her conscious or unconscious thinking must've been responsible for bringing this cruel inhumanity upon herself.

Or if you are of the opinion that "love is all there is, all else is an illusion", a quote by John Demartini a contributor on The Secret, explain to her that her horror is not really real, but that from a deeper perspective had been an act of love. And furthermore that the actions of the perpetrator were in fact not a vile and monstrous one, but motivated by some or other form of cosmic love which he had unconsciously enacted upon.

If these indeed are your views then my honest opinion is that you are not living in my reality, and particularly not of that girl's, but rather in a sick delusional fantasy.

Though if you are of the opinion that you are not deluded, then you must be an incredibly cruel and unfeeling person for having had the gall to confidently proclaim that these are your views. What you therefore are implying is that at some supposed more consequential level, this poor girl had not been the innocent victim of human savagery, but at some obscure 'cosmic' level had deserved what happened to her.

Such attitudes are very real and unfortunately are significantly increasing with the advent of New Ageism. The real danger in these neo 'spiritual' views is that they essentially are escapist. For instance at a talk I gave in Cape Town where I spoke about this very incident, a prominent person in the city's New Age movement attempted to defend the notion that "love is all there is, all else is an illusion" by indeed rationalizing it from Demartini's perspective.

In defense of his ideology he intimated that, unless one takes mental heed of the event, it did not really happen at all from one's individual perspective.

In his argument he literally equated the events of our lives to the fictitious events on a movie screen by indicating that, if a particular event was not captured on film, it then does not exist from the vantage of the movie audience watching the showing of it at all and thus is not a reality for that particular audience.

Quite frankly, this is the most inhuman argument that I have ever heard.

I say this because I always understood from my Judeo-Christian upbringing (not that I'm a Christian or Jew but an Agnostic, if anything) that one's capacity to become conscious of the suffering and inhumanity around one and then to actively reach out to those ill-fated by circumstance, is the most consequential act of humanity one can ever show.

Moreover, it is imperative we fully acknowledge that the brutality of 'humans' are real and omnipresent and cannot be wished away or meditated into spiritual oblivion as is becoming the predominant view.

Rather it is incumbent on us to fully acknowledge that this type of barbarity takes place, being a scourge within humanity that must be bitterly fought against if we indeed are to collectively evolve to a higher level of being.

________________________

The incident referred to occurred on Guy Fawkes day, 5 November 2006.

_________

The Judeo-Christian and Islamic perspective does not apply to this section. This is because the notion of Judgment Day does not preclude this girl from entering heaven and places no judgments on her as pertains to the events that led to the atrocity. It however has its own shortcomings which are discussed in The Enforcer and The Vortex in The Seven Shades of Darkness.

Introduction

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity,

of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.

It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

~~~

[Albert Einstein]

In essence this book is not about The Secret or Donald Trump. In fact Donald Trump is not mentioned once in the book. Rather it is about the general mentality that prevailed before the rise of the Third Reich and is clearly prevalent in many forms today.

It was written in 2006, and The Secret became a poignant backdrop to what I perceived as a general demise in critical thinking. To emphasize this point I found the following quote from a critical thinking website.

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

This was by Adolph Hitler taken from his autobiography and manifesto, Mein Kampf. When exploring the origins of Hitler's ideology I found that he was largely influenced by a French intellectual Gustave Le Bon's book The Crowd: The Study of the Popular Mind written in 1896. It theorized propaganda as an adequate rational technique to control the seemingly irrational behavior of the masses.

Indeed Donald Trump clearly had managed to gain presidential power today using these principles. But moreover, it is evidenced in the rise of populism around the globe including the prevailing mentality among a great many Brits that had led to Brexit and how this mentality was exploited by clearly populist and opportunist operators.

Clearly, what this suggests is that the destructive lessons society had learnt from the destructiveness wreaked by the likes of populists such as Hitler and Mussolini, clearly has been forgotten. That their legacy is sadly being forgotten and even denied, and now are set to be repeated.

In the broadest context, Scourge is a critique of a phenomenon I refer to as Spiritual Consumerism, and how its associated Psychology of Consumption had largely contributed to The Great Depression, and how it too is greatly responsible for The Great Recession of 2008.

In particular it investigates how purveyors of offshoot new age religious views hawk their so-called spiritual wares to their unsuspecting uncritical following.. This includes prosperity Christianity, but critically the religiosity that has empowered Donald Trump, turning a blind eye to his obvious immorality.

This work emphasizes The Secret as it provides a very striking example of the greater uncritical consumerist milieu that is prevailing at present, and how easily this mindset can be exploited for financial gain.

This is evidenced by the unprecedented appeal it has achieved in having topped the Amazon.com list as the fastest bestseller in any category ever, achieving even greater sales than the latest Harry Potter book and by January 2009 was still a New York Times Bestseller.

But far more spectacular is the rapidity with which its views were accepted and proliferated. However, since The Secret literally amounts to the promulgation of a new religion, the question its unparalleled invasion on our psyche begs is: whether this intrusion is for the betterment, or psychological impoverishment of humanity?

My assessment as argued in this work is that it will be to our greater detriment. That is unless we learn crucial lessons about how such an unprecedented mass psychosis was possible in the first place.

Many of Le Bon's ideas are apparent in the way The Secret is formulated, and that it ultimately amounts to be a subtle form of indoctrination. Why it is important to mull over The Crowd, is not for the purposes of becoming a mass manipulator oneself as those who wish to gain such power very often do—Hitler and Trump being particular cases in point. But rather to gain an insight into the methods used by the mass seducer that one may become aware of how one too may be subtly manipulated.

It is because it is incumbent on the still apparently conscious few to wage a battle of wits and wills against an increasingly omnipresent plague threatening to engulf the mind of mankind. Ever seductively seeking to draw us back to the murky unconscious depths from whence we came.

Chapter One

Mass Hallucination

The Folly of the Ages

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. – [James Baldwin]

What is to follow essentially is an argument suggesting The Secret is evil (at least based on the definition in this section), and in doing so I know I am treading on very delicate ice.

This is because the labeling of something as such usually is associated with the ultra-conservative religious in their attempt at warding off any new information about the true nature of reality. Their usual strategy being to declare such new insights either are anti-God, the anti-Christ or the work of the devil. Or to use more contemporary examples, that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and The Golden Compass encourages demonism. However the reality of our time is that many are indeed finding it incredibly difficult to make a meaningful distinction between fact and fiction, to the extent that unreality is increasingly replacing our notion of reality.

Thus before I start my argument let me first clarify the specific definition as used in the context of this chapter. To this end it is useful to first consider the following quote.

Though the demonism of the Middle Ages seems to have disappeared, there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought – especially the so-called "prosperity" psychology, "willpower-building" metaphysics, and systems of "high-pressure" salesmanship – black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name be changed its nature remains the same.

This quote may appear to have been a direct critique of The Secret. However it is from a book written in the early 1920's titled The Secret Teachings of all Ages by Manly P. Hall. In fact Hall published his book in 1926, three years before the October 29 stock market crash of 1929 which spelt the beginning of The Great Depression.

Whether one agrees with his philosophy, why Hall's impressions are of particular importance is that they are a direct testimony to the attitude that prevailed before this global economic catastrophe. And considering that the concerns by Hall was raised more than 80 years ago in a time when there was not nearly as much of a concerted commercial media onslaught, how much more relevant are these concerns not in our instant gratification culture of today?

While I personally prefer to view these matters less esoterically and have serious doubts about whether we can affect material outcomes by any kind of magic, for the purposes of this discussion it is important to also consider the following extract from the book.

The most dangerous form of black magic is the scientific perversion of occult power for the gratification of personal desire. Its less complex and more universal form is human selfishness, for selfishness is the fundamental cause of all worldly evil. A man will barter his eternal soul for temporal power...

Note that Hall uses terms such as "gratification of personal desire", "temporal power" and "human selfishness", to identify the dark or evil aspects of humanity.

This particular designation of evil – in fact more correctly, that these are aspects of the root cause of evil within ourselves – would be the particular reference used in this work. Thus not necessarily external evil or evil as defined in the conventional religious or demonic sense.

In this regard this essay essentially is a critique of modern day "black magic", in this particular case, as espoused by The Secret with its claims that material riches can magically be conjured by means that do not require any physical effort.

Though instead of it remotely being any form of concrete magic, it merely is the promotion of the idea that we can get what we want by magic by supposedly evoking the power of the universe to accomplish our wishes for us.

The merits of these claims aside, what The Secret literally amounts to is, that it is a carefully crafted cross-promotional DVD – essentially a mind-power infomercial – shamelessly flaunting the wares of its contributors by claiming that the techniques proposed will somehow manifest the physical world to conform to our wishes and desires. That is by merely wishfully thinking it so.

And peculiarly, these contributors are all American with the exception of its supposed lone Australian originator.

Hypnotic Marketing

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. – [Stendhal]

While I may not necessarily agree with aspects of Hall's philosophy, this is not important within the context of this critique. However, what is, is that a person of his intellect had done a critique of the mentality of the time, that is three years before the great depression had actually happened, and therefore is a credible eyewitness account of the prevailing mindset at the time which predicated the dramatic economic decline.

To relate Hall's quote on black magic to The Secret, consider the following quote by Joe Vitale taken from How to Control The "Command Center" In Your Prospect's Mind.

Here's a million-dollar secret I've never shared with anyone before. When you use it, you will get inside your prospects' heads and manipulate their thinking to get them to do what you want—including sending you money right now for your product or service. Sound hard to believe? Keep reading and I'll prove my point to you...

To put a spell on people, that turns them on to your product or service, guides them directly to your order page and like a robot, programs them to send you money 24-hours a day, 7-days a week!

Vitale, CEO of Hypnotic Marketing, is widely known as a marketing genius. When considering that The Secret essentially is a book of quotes with Rhonda Byrne merely filling in the blanks, it is noteworthy that Vitale is one of the most prolific of the 30 contributors listed in the biography section of the book. In fact he is responsible for more than 10% of the almost 250 extracts. This is opposed to Neale Donald Walsch who has less than one percent of the quoted content attributed to him. It is also noted that only 1% (three short extracts) of the quotes are credited to Wallace Wattles, the author of the 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich which supposedly was the source of Byrne's inspiration. Though based on Vitale's prodigious coverage when compared to that of Wattles, in the very least Vitale had been a far more significant inspiration.

What is abundantly apparent is that the book bears the hallmarks of his hypnotic writing style. And because what The Secret actually amounts to is targeted marketing, Vitale is suspected to be the true mastermind behind the project—specifically because it was initially marketed through the internet, viral marketing, Vitale's other brainchild.

The previous extract was taken from a promotional publication titled Energy Marketing. Though at times giving some useful marketing tips, specifically on marketing through the internet, the objective of the 115 page document was to sell Vitale's hypnotic writing services. Specifically the article was about convincing why Hypnotic Marketing works and why companies should pay Vitale $50,000 to write them a hypnotic script which he guarantees will significantly increase their sales revenue.

To get an idea of what Hypnotic Marketing is, I've extracted the following from the article.

Your prospects are all in trances. If you merge with their trance, you can then lead them out of it into the "buying trance" you want them to be in.

Agree with them. Merge with them. Accept that trance as your door. Then lead into what you want to sell by tying it back to their trance.

Let's break down this process into steps:

1. What do your prospect's believe right now (current trance)?

2. Agree with their beliefs (rapport).

3. Lead their beliefs into your offer (new trance).

That's the real secret to "Hypnotic Selling."

Let's look at possible existing trances your prospects may be in when you call, or send them a sales piece.

They include:

"I'm worried about money" trance; "I'm lonely trance"; "I'm afraid of people" trance; "I'm sick and tired of my job" trance; ...

And so it goes. You'll notice that each of these trances are self-serving. That's the nature of people. They are interested in their well-being first. They are preoccupied with their own needs, desires, pains and more. Any inward state is a trance...

Vitale further gives us insight into how he goes about controlling the command center of his prospect.

I learned the one hypnotic command that always works from hypnotists. A good hypnotist will never give a subject a choice or offer a list of "reasons why you should fall asleep right now."

Instead, a good hypnotist will simply issue a command, "when I count to three, you will close your eyes," or, "When I snap my fingers, you will bark like a dog." The subject responds because they want to please the hypnotist and because they don't have much of a choice.

Your prospects are nearly the same. Give them one hypnotic command and they will do your bidding.

Know the exact one thing your prospect want and tie everything you say to it. You use every trick you've learned to grab and hold attention, build desire, and lead to a strong close, because you know that's how you create truly hypnotic writing.

Because this is a way for you to plant hypnotic commands right into the skulls of people. This is a staggering power. You are in their command center.

What Vitale admits in this article is that the page itself is Hypnotic Marketing in practice, and thus to any lucid thinking person the contents ought to be of little consequence. That is with the exception of the previous quotes which speak to Vitale's unmistakable intent: to control and manipulate the command center of his prospect's mind by putting a spell on them that they, like a robot, give him money.

His "one command" he uses to put his prospects under his spell being that "they can gain anything their hearts desire"—that one can achieve happiness beyond one's wildest desires, and without having to make the commensurate effort at all. While words such as spiritual, ethical and legitimate, are carefully chosen words to convince "his prospect" that what he is suggesting is morally above board.

What is apparent is that The Secret had taken Hypnotic Marketing to the ultimate mass level.

While there certainly are deeper moral issues with regard to using what otherwise can be considered mind control methods to influence one's 'prospects' mind for financial, political or other gain, the issue this work attempts to address is not that of the morality per se as it pertains to the methods; but rather of the content being propagated. I suppose in the dog eats dog world we are forced to eek out a living in, one can be somewhat excused for using whatever means one has at one's disposal to draw attention to one's commercial wares, particularly if there are those gullible enough to fall for it.

The real issue therefore, and the one this work attempts to address, concerns one's own responsibility in having been duped. And how the following terms consequently would aptly apply to oneself.

To have been put a spell on ... to act predictably like a robot... to have been programmed to send money to somebody you don't know...or that you perpetually are in a self-serving trance...

And if one cannot see The Secret as such a concerted means of mass commercial indoctrination, then clearly Vitale and his cohorts have already put such a binding spell on your own command center. Moreover, as if you were a robot, will also uncritically buy whatever esoteric non-existent wares they may be offering you.

In any event Vitale certainly appears to have scant regard for his 'prospect', viewing them as mere targets for his wares. Though at the same time Vitale clearly markets himself as a spiritually enlightened person. In his biography on The Secret it is indicated he holds a doctorate in metaphysics and is an ordained minister. Though clearly one cannot reconcile the above utterances with what these roles are supposed to represent.

For the purposes of this work it is important to impress on one's intellect that: these roles gives him the necessary psychological legitimacy in the mind of his prospect which allows him to exert the level of control over those he wishes to commercially exploit.

Furthermore, while I admittedly had not read any of Vitale's other material, what is apparent from browsing through this 2004 publication, is that it can be regarded as a manifesto for The Secret. Particularly as it contains much of the Hypnotic Writing which had made the DVD and book such a monumental success.

To put it plainly, these marketers know how we are programmed and thus how we on mass are likely to respond to their suggestions. Perhaps it's their right to take full advantage of our stupidity, so to exploit us in any way we allow them to. But certainly the onus must be on us to wizen-up and take control by not giving up our conscious power as easily as they are expecting us to.

________________________

One third of the quotes listed in the book are attributed to Joe Vitale, Michael Beckworth and Lisa Nichols, and only 1% by Wallace Wattles. The average contribution is 3% of the content. This is an important statistic considering that there are thirty contributors listed in the book. Other significant contributors are James Arthur Ray and John Demartini.

The Popular Mind

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. – [Adolf Hitler]

To get a sense of the extent of The Secret's debauchery, consider the following.

[The Secret] is like having the Universe as your catalogue. 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. It's really that easy.

This extract once again is attributed to Vitale. To understand how this obvious fabrication can pass as truth, it is important to refer to Gustave Le Bon's 1896 The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. This book informed Adolf Hitler, the most notorious mass propagandist (or hypnotist) in history.

...

While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the increase. The age we are about to enter will in truth be the Era of Crowds.

In its ordinary sense the word 'crowd' means a gathering of individuals of whatever nationality, profession, or sex, and whatever be the chances that have brought them together. From the psychological point of view the expression 'crowd' assumes quite a different signification.

The disappearance of the conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which is the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals in one spot.

The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: whoever be the individual that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.

It is only by obtaining some sort of insight into the psychology of crowds that it can be understood how slight is the action upon them of laws and institutions, how powerless they are to hold opinions other than those which are imposed upon them, and that it is not with rules based on theories of pure equity that they are to be led, but by seeking what produces an impression on them and what seduces them.

In practice the most unjust may be the best for the masses. Should it at the same time be the least obvious, and apparently the least burdensome, it will be the most tolerated.

We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical direction, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individuals forming part of a crowd.

He is no longer himself but has become an automation who has ceased to be guided by his will (as per the quote by Vitale).

In consequence, a crowd perpetually hovering on the borderland of unconsciousness, readily yielding to all suggestions, having all the violence of feeling peculiar to beings who cannot appeal to the influence of reason, deprived of all critical faculty, cannot be otherwise than excessively credulous. The improbable does not exist for a crowd, and it is necessary to bear this circumstance well in mind to understand the facility with which are created and propagated the most improbable legends and stories.

To combat what precedes, the mental quality of the individuals composing a crowd must not be brought into consideration. This quality is without importance. From that moment they form part of a crowd the learned man and the ignoramus are equally incapable of observation.

________________________

The above also gives insight into how mass indoctrination had been used to develop the current gun psychosis (otherwise referred to as gun culture) in the US. It is noteworthy that this psychosis supposedly is an inalienable position held in defense of 2nd Amendment rights as espoused in the American Constitution.

It is noteworthy that this wasn't understood as an absolute individual right until the 1970's after which gun lobbyist somehow had influenced a significant percentage of the American populace to view it as such. The explanation of the history of this interpretation is by legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin in an artic le titled  So you think you know the Second Amendment?.

The gun propaganda is further enforced by catch-phrases such as "It's not guns that kill people, people kill people" or by propagating the idea that more people are killed with baseball bats and knives than guns. The  US Census however shows that one is fifteen times more likely to be killed with a gun than any blunt object (baseball bats, rocks, vases, pipes, hammers, etc.) and five times more likely to be killed with a gun than a knife. Statistics also shows that twice as many die as a result of gunshot  either in accidents and suicides than homicides, while one is  12 times more likely to be killed or injured with one's own gun than by an unknown intruder.

In relation to the main discussion, these facts are irrelevant for those indoctrinated to hold their view. What nevertheless is revealing about the proliferation of The Secret and the irrational defense of uncontrolled ownership of guns (and the need to have military style assault rifles in particular) is how susceptible a great many Americans appear to be to such mass indoctrination.

The Age of Cant

It's been demonstrated that well within two minutes of watching television, most people enter a hypnotic alpha state bordering on theta. Viewers in this state are no longer able to critically evaluate, discern, or pass judgment from their own moral database on the material being viewed. The information just flows, unimpeded, into their subconscious year in and year out. – [Jeff Rense]

To reiterate, Le Bon's work was written in 1896 long before the advent of mass media, and that Le Bon identified the coming epoch as "The Age of Crowds" without him remotely foreseeing this technological revolution. We now know that modern media had a significantly greater impact on the formation of a mass populist mentality than he could even have imagined.

Indeed, these theories were used with devastating effect by Hitler who indisputably proved Le Bon's ideas to be correct.

In the greater context of this book it is important to note that Le Bon refers to a psychological crowd. As he describes in the previous section, this does not necessarily mean a physical assemblage of people as the literal meaning of the word implies. In the broadest sense the reference implies a heterogeneous group of individuals united by some or other unconscious uniting force, such as an ideology or a belief. In Hitler's case it was his "Superior Arian Race" concept, with the radio being his particular means of mass propagation.

Within the context of this discussion the reference to "The Crowd" therefore specifically pertains to the psychology of the populist mind. It should be borne in mind that Le Bon was one of the first western thinkers to postulate on the workings of the Unconscious Mind. His reference to the Psychological Crowd can be viewed as a reference to the Collective Unconscious which has gained increasing attention since then.

But more specifically as it pertains to this work, the reference to "The Crowd" more correctly applies to: anyone who abdicates their critical thinking capacity for mass conformity.

It goes without saying that the internet, as an unprecedented direct and far more personal means of mass communication, will have a significantly greater impact on the populist and mass mentality than anything that had gone before.

Vitale therefore in a manner of speaking can be regarded as the Le bon of the internet era. To draw the analogy, we can view Le Bon's work as How to Control the Command center of your Prospect in the Age of Crowds, while Vitale's may very well be called How to Control the Command Centre of your Prospect in the Age of Information—or should that rather be, The Age of Spin Doctoring and Information Fabrication.

In short, it is frighteningly apparent that we have well entered what can only be described as The Age of Cant.

________________________

Cant was a secret vernacular language used by thieves and vagabonds in Elizabethan times. It usually is associated with giving slanted or deviously concealed information. Its antonym is sincerity.

Chapter Two

Blissful Ignorance

The Deception

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies. – [Mark Twain]

The following extract from the cover of the book provides a sense of how The Secret's mind manipulation is conveyed.

It has been passed down through the ages, highly coveted, hidden, lost, stolen, and bought for vast sums of money. This centuries-old Secret has been understood by some of the most prominent people in history: Plato, Galileo, Beethoven, Edison, Carnegie, Einstein—along with other inventors, theologians, scientists, and great thinkers. Now The Secret is being revealed to the world.

This is barefaced falsehood.

To realize the deception one must first fully dismiss that any of these individuals had found any secret of whatever kind that had resulted in their success. Perhaps they persevered or had a particular genius, or they simply received a lucky break.

By the above Byrne is inferring that they would not have achieved their specific greatness if they had not somehow discovered the purported 'secret'. Thus it is implied that The Secret is a specific requirement to all great success in all fields of endeavor—that is irrespective of whether it is consciously or unconsciously applied.

And therefore the fact that she wishes to infer they somehow had acquired a formula to their success which she just so happen to have stumbled upon and now wishes to generously share with all humanity, simply is malicious and opportunistic. And for any reasonably lucid person, ought to immediately have raised alarm bells as to Byrne's true intent.

This though is the recurring method used to convey the respective ideas in the book. What is important to bear in mind is that it is a form of deliberate brainwashing. The specific quote being a form of autosuggestion that anyone can achieve such success if they only gained access to "The Secret?" method. Though, as per Vitale's suggestion, it must be understood that this is the "one command that works" used to evoke our emotional buy-in.

The other method used to deceive is equivocation by deliberately over-exaggeration and use of facts out of their proper context without due consideration of its implications—this is as discussed in Voodoo Science.

Another aspect to be mindful of is the means of deception used by the many so-called wealth gurus quoted in the book. Essentially by way of the content of their rhetoric it is clear they are feeding off the neediness (or trances) of their target audience. Their modus operandi very closely resembling the way born-again and charismatic Christianity is similarly promoted.

Usually the associated Christian rhetoric follows like this.

I once was a wretch and then I met the Lord who saved me and I became the righteous man I now am today, and since then my life never was the same again.

While The Secret's formula tends to follow along these lines.

I was broke and my life was in a mess, and then I stumbled across The Secret, and its life formula of success and abundance known only by an elite few, brought me riches beyond my wildest imaginings.

Though, what is notable, is that in this case the reward is not heaven or nirvana, or that one has become a righteous person, but instead, instantly conjured up material wealth.

Specifically the by-line used by Rhonda Byrne is that she discovered a book written in 1910 by Wallace Wattles titled The Science of Getting Rich that had completely changed her life.

To illustrate the point of how similar personal storylines are followed when these 'spiritual' wares are promoted, Ilana Howell – the woman responsible for promoting The Secret in South Africa and who also obtained copyright of The Science of Getting Rich – writes a carbon copy of Byrne's storyline in the introduction of her print of the book.

Some years ago I found myself at the financial low point of my life. I had raised myself up from a small town housewife and mother to become a practicing attorney. Yet despite my hard work, I just couldn't find the financial success I wanted. My frustration continued unabated until a friend gave me a copy of this book (The Science of Getting Rich).

What is most noteworthy about the boldfaced claims about Wattles is that he died in 1911 at the age of 51, one year after publishing his book. Besides that he died relatively young, he also was not particularly rich during his lifetime. Thus he most certainly was not in a position to have practiced what he had preached. And since he must have known The Secret before writing it, it is apparent that it did not particularly work for him as Byrne purports (that is logically speaking based on the inference).

Notwithstanding this I'm of the opinion that Wattles propounds a reasonably useful albeit floored philosophy. Though as was intimated in Hypnotic Marketing, his actual message is not reflected in the pages of Byrne's book.

Another example that further gives some insight into the associated mentality of some of the co-authors of the book, reflect on the following extract found on a side menu of executive producer and contributor John Demartini's website.

The greatest people of all time: Who are the true business pioneers of history? What did they know that so many of us simply don't? How can you utilize their knowledge? Find out who they are and what they achieved to be known as "The Greatest People of All Time".

And his list in reverse order includes Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Ralph Waldo Emerson (not a businessman), Andrew Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln (not a businessman), John D. Rockefeller, and second from top, Albert Einstein (not a businessman). But lo and behold, at the very top of his list of immortals, he had placed himself.

By this not even waiting for posterity or at least others' to adjudge him great. Yet this man is one of the most influential shapers of new age thought today. But the real tragedy that speaks to the mentality of our time and the crux of my vehement criticism, is that his considerable gullible following cannot hear alarm bells when he makes such narcissistic claims.

Yet this irrationality is perfectly logically explainable. As Hitler intimated, the masses will rather fall for a big hairy audacious lie, than a small one. And I'm sure Demartini must've been fully aware of this when he made his own preposterously audacious claim.

Finally, the reality is that Wattles was not the initial inspiration as it is purposed to be in the book version. Rather, it was the psychic incarnation of Abraham channeled by spiritualist Esther Hicks. Abraham, via Hicks, who had supposedly provided the insights into the Law of Attraction. Because of personal differences in the making of the film, Hicks discontinued her association with Byrne. In the end Wattles and his The Science of Getting Rich were then used as a convenient substitute.

The Antidote

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act — [George Orwell]

After I noticed Scourge was located on the web using the search keywords "Demartini Breakthrough Experience Narcissistic" I decided to Google it myself and stumbled across the following article on a website Narcissistic Abuse Recovery: For survivors of a relationship with a Narcissist or Psychopath. It is titled My N-sensors were triggered by the innocent book...

...

Ladies and gentlemen, please give me some feedback here, I need some reality check badly.

I needed some break from digging in my FOO and N-madness, so I decided to buy some positive book instead. I scanned shelves and bought a book I have never heard before. "The Breakthrough Experience" by Dr. John F. Demartini. As I realized later the same guy is the one on whose ideas the movie 'Secret' was made. I never watched this movie, though I heard a lot about it.

I started reading the book and it talks about physics laws and spiritual laws and that one can get to the point of enlightenment if they visit his (Demartini's) seminar(s). He teaches about balance and equilibrium. I found certain things were rather annoying in his book, for example the Exercise#1 where he asks you to recall in the most vivid detail the time when somebody was putting you down by scolding or criticizing, or saying you are no good. He asks you to recall as vivid as you can the scene and then recall who and how was lifting you up by praise and by putting you on a pedestal EXACTLY in the same moment!

I found this exercise impossible because if I can recall the moment when somebody was putting me down, I cannot 'recall' who was lifting me up exactly at the same moment, because even if that was happening somewhere at the same exact split of a second, I was not present there.

He calls emotions and feelings lies. His theory is mesmerizing in a way and at the same time my inner resistance was growing and growing. I decided to go to YouTube and see him speaking, thinking that maybe I will build some trust by seeing him and listening to him.

Here is one of the links I have tried: Memory and Imagination is a lie!

When I was watching him I all of a sudden realized that my unpleasant and worrisome feeling that started growing while reading his wisdom is basically a fear of N.

What do you think? I can use some sensible feedback to calm my nerves! May be I am just not ready to comprehend his "Breakthrough Experience" yet. I bumped into a problem of a very strong Mistrust.

________________________

Also refer to Spiritual Non-Science for a discussion on The Breakthrough Experience.

Counting Chickens

The gods laugh at those who pray for money. – [Japanese Expression]

Besides the deceptive rhetoric in The Secret, what can one distil as actually being the supposed great secret it attempts to convey.

Essentially it is that one can supposedly master the universe to give one what one wants by following these simple steps.

Step 1: Ask. Make a command to the universe... You do not need to ask over and over again. Just ask once. It is exactly like placing an order from a catalogue...

Step 2: Believe. Believe that it is already yours... The universe will start to rearrange itself to make it happen for you... How the universe will bring it to you, is not your concern or job... When you are trying to work out how it will happen, you are emitting a frequency that contains a lack of faith—that you don't believe you already have it...

Step 3 – Receive. Begin to feel wonderful about it, feel the way you will feel once it arrives. Feel it now... And in the process it's important to feel good, to be happy, because when you're feeling good you're putting yourself in the frequency of what you want... It could be you wake up and it's just there. It's manifested...

Ask once, believe you have received, and all you have to do is feel good. When you are feeling good, you are on the frequency of receiving... and you will receive what you have asked for.

The above is tantamount to reversing the age old wisdom that says "don't count your chickens before they hatch" to in fact say "most definitely count your chickens before they hatch because they are absolutely guaranteed to if you just plan ahead as if it will be so".

And to further help with this fait accompli, it is recommended that this inevitability will be enhanced through visualization, and that any material or other wish can be manifested in this way. However the supposed key to its outworking is the so-called Law of Attraction which requires we send positive mental vibrations unto the universe for us to in this way, receive the results of our positive mental manifestation abundantly back in return.

While the above clearly is questionable as to whether there is even a remote reaction on the part of the universe, for all intents and purposes "The Law of Attraction" as suggested by Byrne amounts to a manipulation on the part of the asker. This is because the intention in all likelihood would have been informed by the darker or shadow aspects of our psyche. To be specific, our neediness and greed, but which I'm convinced "The Universe" would be fully equipped to detect if there indeed is such an intelligent law which governs it capable of tuning into our every thought.

As Vitale correctly intimated, that these unconscious states of mind are trances. And as he further commented: "You'll notice that each of these trances are self-serving. That's the nature of people. They are interested in their well-being first. They are preoccupied with their own needs, desires, pains and more. Any inward state is a trance."

And thus ultimately, it is not that the above is even remotely so. Rather it is that he with the help of Rhonda Byrne had simply transferred their prospects, or should that be victims, from the "need and greed" trance, to "the universe can get you what you want if you only use The Secret's methods" trance. And once you have done so, you have abdicated personal control to Vitale and his cohorts, placing them smack in the middle of your command center. A terribly scary place to willingly allow an unscrupulous money monger in.

Common Interpretation

The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain't so. — [Josh Billings]

The following quote by Bill Harris – another contributor on The Secret who received less media exposure on Larry King Live and Oprah than his co-conspirators – gives a first-hand insight into The Secret's supposed efficacy.

As powerful as The Secret is, there are a few things — a few very important things — it either leaves out, or de-emphasizes. I want to discuss these things, because once you understand them you'll have the maximum ability to use these important principles to take change of your life. Without them, The Secret won't benefit you at all.

Note that by the above Harris in fact is saying that "unless you learn my little secret of 'The Secret', The Secret won't benefit you at all."

In spite of this apparent expression concern, one's common sense should raise alarm bells that this once again is a marketing ploy. In this particular instance, it appears that Harris may be capitalizing on the increasing detracting views that were emerging at the time.

Most noteworthy in Harris remarks is the comment "either leaves out, or de-emphasizes". Here Harris alludes to the actual intent of the film, which as mentioned before, is misdirection to confuse its target audience. The ultimate intent it is abundantly clear based on the law suits and other questionable activities around Byrne, Vitale and James Arthur Ray in particular, being unbridled commercial gain.

Despite this apparent opportunism, Harris does appear to add a somewhat more sobering spin on the associated rhetoric. Though in doing so also letting the proverbial cat out of the bag as well.

His more toned down message was found in an article on his Dream Manifesto—The Quantum Method for Manifesting Your Dreams website titled Without Two Important Principles The Secret won't Benefit You. In it he wrote: "there's more to The Secret and The Law of Attraction than just putting something out to the universe and hoping to get something back".

He further explains that The Law of Attraction only works because our mental focus on what we want allows in information that will benefit us in achieving that particular goal.

Besides what he intimates, there furthermore are complex psychological imperatives at play as will be discussed in The Secret Psychosis. However a long understood and generally applied principle known as Cognitive Dissonance is at play in how we ultimately achieve our goals. This ability allowing one's mind to operate as a powerful goal-seeking and problem-solving mechanism subconsciously striving to find ways to achieve that which we have set our mental focus on.

Unfortunately, this mechanism can also be exploited and indeed is at the heart of the success of The Secret. What invariably happens once one buys into its delusion, is that one will begin to filter out any information which may disprove it while conversely only allowing in isolated facts or events which will affirm one's belief—refer to Emperor's New clothes Syndrome. Thus the very mechanism which can indeed work towards us achieving success, had been carefully manipulated as a tool for the indoctrination of those who latches on to this view.

It is noted that Harris does not provide his two 'principles' in his article, but that one has to attend one of his seminars to get it. From reading this article, it appears that one of these require one first have good intentions about how one will spend one's future wealth for one's primary intention of wealth creation to work... or something along that line...

Even though he may appear to present a more sober tone, what is apparent is that some of the commenters on his website clearly interpret his views in a very ungrounded way.

1. Commenter 1: I agree that "The Secret" missed this. Maybe the "The Secret II" will cover it. Action, inspired action, doing what you love is key (a view I certainly have no objection to).

2. Commenter 2: I focused on winning the lottery and took action by buying tickets. Now how do I apply the second part of the equation by giving value to others?

3. Commenter 3: Make an intention to give away a part of your money from the lottery winning. Look around you and you will find someone or something you can support. Don't wait with this intention until you have won - make it now.

4. Commenter 2: I have already visualized myself standing in front of the congregation giving 10%+ to the church and also $100 bills to individuals. Now what?

5. Commenter 4: Now what you say? well mind vision before going sleep, how you have won and how you going to buy that place you dreamed and pay attention how you are feeling as well... well you would be feeling incredible would you not winning so much money... lol, keep with the vision and feeling before going sleep and first thing in morning on waking... and maybe for good measure during the day at least once...now don't forget to share some ok... lol

6. Commenter 5: Begin to follow the principles of receiving today, my friend:

1. Become joyful and remain joyful for your daily gift -life as it is now!

2. Begin to give your tithes to your place of worship with each income you already receive. Do so consistently.

3. Begin to do something good today and every day for someone else and expect nothing from them in return.

4. Begin to live in the moment and enjoy today!

5. Detach from any outcome of your goal to win the lottery and know that whatever the outcome, you are already wealthy and infinitely prospering today!

While Harris suggests on his web article that the universe does not work by magic, but rather by a very definite law (The Law of Attraction), it is clear his readership seems to want magical results from his proposed method.

This admittedly is a very small group that cannot necessarily be reflective of the whole. However the comments are noteworthy, particularly that these individuals believe they can win a lottery of chance by using a bogus scientific method. It nevertheless demonstrates the nature of the associated delusion. And based on my interactions with those taken by it (and there are many), appears to be the common attitude by those who buy into similar views.

It however must be appreciated the reason for this confusion is patently obvious: the name of Harris site being the dead giveaway, The Quantum Method for Manifesting Your Dreams.

What more do I need to add?

Since these individuals are fixated on the images of their wants and desires as depicted within their daydreams, they perceive that any means are rational ways of realizing them. And the quicker and easier it claims to be, the better. This though is nothing more than abdicating one's sanity for dangerous delusional fantasy. Nevertheless having one so deluded is tremendously powerful for those who wish to profit from such irrationality.

Perhaps the latter commenter sums up the best mental path to true wealth and abundant riches, and which certainly cannot be ascribed to The Secret. Not that our place of worship necessarily should be the greatest benefactor of our generosity, though that certainly is one's individual choice to make.

The Universe is Confused?

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. — [Aldous Huxley]

To give another example of the above delusional thinking, consider the following post titled The Universe Got Confused? taken off Steve Pavlina's Intention Manifestation online discussion forum.

Hello. This is my first post here and I hope I can get some good replies. I was drawn to this forum, so perhaps it was for a reason.

I have been trying to manifest a relationship intentionally for about a year now, and I had a lot of work to do on myself during that time, and I kept manifesting all the wrong people.

I finally clean up my vibration and feel very positive that I have told the universe what I wanted enough in detail and let go of it finally.

Over the next three days I get 3 people from this dating service I'm on, and they are all wrong for me. Not attractive to me physically which was a big deal for me, had the wrong religion, was more overweight than I'd like, basically they are not my type. Everyone has a type and so do I.

I thought I have made it clear to the universe how clear my type was and don't understand why it got it wrong, or if it was a momentary glitch. What I keep coming back to is, if it's confused, then what on earth can I tell it that's any different? How do you tell the universe what your type is? That's not an easy thing to do. I have fantasized about her and discovered all kinds of things I was looking for, and thought the universe was smart enough to pick up on my ideal image, hair color, etc. and it picked up none of these things.

And how about this post, How does Intention Manifestation (IM) explain the Holocaust taken off the same forum.

This comes from a (secular) Jew, by the way. I'm not looking for a Jewish explanation of it. I'm looking for an IM explanation of it. Do groups manifest the experience that happens to them? What role did Jews have in the Shoah? This is the brick wall I keep hitting when I think about IM on a global scale too much. I have no trouble coming up with ideas about this, but it's not a very popular viewpoint.

With the bulk of the responses going along this line.

Indeed it was very chaotic period for many people and I truly give all sympathy to anyone still effected. IM played a MAJOR part in the holocaust, and because of the large amount of people focused on negative circumstances it became a dominant vibration and by the Law of attraction "the universe" matches anything that is concentrated upon with enough emotion.

Basically, the underlying philosophy behind Intention Manifestation, stems directly from the supposed Law of Attraction and the Secret's steps to creating reality with our thoughts alone, no action required.

What is particularly disturbing is the many (in fact the far greater majority) in this discussion thread who similarly argued that the Jews had brought the holocaust upon themselves by their thinking. This though is a general view by those who have this worldview, Byrne for instance publicly claiming that the Katrina victims too had attracted the disaster, and that this abominable view is rapidly growing, particularly amongst American youth.

Besides their right to free speech what for me is most alarming is that such a discussion in fact is taking place in America in the first place. That history can as easily be conveniently subverted in this way, at least for me, is a very frightening occurrence.

Quite frankly, this is a worldview is spawning a mentality that increasingly highlights extreme narcissism as the highest state of being. Consequently many teenagers increasingly perceive the world with such a jaded lens.

The Devil's Advocate

Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool. — [Proverbs 19:1]

If you are a fan of Oprah, please note that this section is very critical of her. It is not that I think she is a horrible ogre. Not at all. The criticism simply is an example of how we should be critical of celebrity if we are to indeed think critically, rather to be swallowed in the quagmire of the celebrity morass.

But moreover, we must be critical of her actions because she appears to have elicited an almost cult-like following, and this with unprecedented media power behind her. But perhaps more crucially, because she does subtly espouse a particular religious world view, and can be regarded as its religious leader of sorts. And she certainly appears to be worshipped as such. This doesn't mean you should stop watching her, I too find her shows mostly very uplifting. Rather, to also be critical and not to be taken by every word and view she utters.

With that cautionary note, let's resume.

What for me in doing this analysis is becoming patently obvious is that The Secret is the grandest most elaborate confidence scam ever conceived, with even the likes of Oprah appearing to have fallen for it.

Or has she really?

The following article by Peter Birkenhead titled Oprah's Ugly Secret, sees it as follows.

The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it — and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it — the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme — is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

Despite Birkenhead's rather strong opinions on Oprah, I'm nevertheless of the opinion that she is an innocent victim of a very sophisticated and elaborate hoax. And perhaps because of her previous obsession with The Law of Attraction, has allowed one of the most powerful platforms afforded a single human being, to be abused for the vulgar proliferation of this brazen sham. Using Vitale's words, it is clear that she must have been given the "one hypnotic command that works", and now clearly is doing their bidding.

My suspicion is, in having already been the greatest proponent of The Law of Attraction before the film was released, that she may indirectly have given the producers the idea for the film. She additionally had definitely been almost singly responsible for having created the captive audience for its content. Using the language of Le Bon, with the powerful media machine at her disposal she was almost solely responsible for having created the psychological crowd which The Secret ravenously fed into.`

To lend credence to the claim, in a show with a The Secret panel she proudly commented "you know I've been saying these things for years" as if she indeed had discovered a profound new law of the universe. These though merely being the regurgitated views of her then spiritual mentor, Gary Zhukov—since then replaced by Michael Bernard Beckworth of The Secret, as indicated, the third most prolific contributor (10% of content).

That Oprah may have been deliberately targeted is further suggested by the following.

A particular reference by Vitale in Energy Marketing provides a strong suggestion that she likely had been such an influence. In a chapter titled What I learnt From Wanting A Z3 Roadster, Vitale discusses a farcical concept called Spiritual Marketing in which he wrote.

I began by setting an intention for getting that car. Oprah once said that "intention rules the earth." I know it. My car's license plate holder says "I'm the power of intention." Once you declare that something will be so, you send a signal into the universe that will bring that something to you, and you to it.

And most conclusively, on hosting a The Secret panel, James Arthur Ray casually commented that it was one of his intentions to be on her show years before. In the context of the show he made as if it was one of the intentions the universe had manifested, and thus was proof positive of the philosophy. However what through all the smoke and mirrors must have been the case, was that there had to have been a conscious plan of action accompanying the intent. Thus, that it was not merely "the universe" responding accordingly.

However a far more subliminally compelling reason for suggesting Oprah had been the focus of the producers, is that it is peculiar that the greatest contributor in the book is Lisa Nichols. In fact more than 12% of the extracted quotes in the book are attributed to her (considering there are 30 contributors – the average contribution being 3.33%). This includes the essence of what The Secret supposedly is, the three steps discussed in Counting Chickens.

The question this begs is: why a very obscure African American woman was given such prominence when compared to the other significantly more prominent contributors? Nichol's particular claim to fame being that she co-authored Chicken Soup for the African Soul with Jack Cranfield, the creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, while he – a significantly more prominent author – only has half of the quotes attributed to him.

I'm making this point in spite of a reluctance to bring up the issue of race and gender. Though considering Oprah's by now renowned suggestibility on these two issues, is very relevant within the context of her inadvertent promotion of this scam. This notwithstanding that both these proclivities I have absolutely no objection with considering America's slave legacy and the continued gender prejudice prevalent in many parts of the world.

In any event, if she too was not also scammed, she then would've been directly complicit as Birkenhead suggests. In the light of her well known gender bias and that she is known to strongly promote African American achievement, it does not take a rocket scientist to conclude that the makers pandered to her ego and that this predictability must have been concertedly targeted by these wily producers.

To put it bluntly, Oprah unwittingly laid the groundwork for the eventual market. And the vultures who envisaged the tasteless infomercial merely took advantage of the inherent business opportunity which she created. Then she further promoted it as if it was an idea she had created, and which indeed she inadvertently did.

Once again if this was in fact the case, hats off to them. But again, bringing it back to the overriding thesis of this book, what level of responsibility must be attributed to the fool who allowed herself to be as brazenly duped?

Quite frankly, being the innocent victim in a sham of such a magnitude is unforgivable. This is particularly since in most instances where evil flourishes to this extent, ignorance and evil are very intimate bed fellows indeed.

I suppose now that the true score is being revealed, the biggest obstacle Oprah and others have to becoming enlightened about this matter, is the inherent difficulty in accepting one was as foolhardy to have fallen for such an obvious bag of tricks in the first place.

As such, until one is yet to face the consequences of one's folly, ignorance will undeniably be bliss.

In A Civilized World

There go I but for the grace of God. – [John Bradford]

It is important to firstly acknowledge that Oprah's life indeed is the classic rags to riches tale which can only be admired. At least as she claims it is. Although this is disputed in an  unofficial biography by Kitty Kelly which suggests Oprah's early life story had been greatly embellished. One must nevertheless not be infatuated by this now largely irrelevant fact. After an undoubtedly rough start she all the same was blessed by fortune very early in life. Without question, however, her entire adult life was lived as a significantly financially privileged individual.

By this I'm not suggesting that she didn't work hard to get there or that she wasn't particularly gifted. This undoubtedly was the case.

The reality on the other hand is that most people with exceptional talents and who also work extremely hard, usually end up living fairly ordinary lives irrespective of their effort. It simply is that many factors must come to play for one to indeed achieve extraordinary artistic success.

Thus when assessing Oprah's life one must also be mindful that it must be near impossible for her to have a rational grounded sense about the greater reality outside her exceptionally privileged existence.

Simply put, hers had been a fairy-tale that in no way mirrors everyday reality.

Though to add insult to injury, despite her good fortune she openly declares she does not believe in luck. Moreover, when a The Secret panel was on her show she even declared she does not believe in coincidence either.

The issues in this regard are subtle but have profound implications on how one, because of this belief, views the nature of one's greater reality.

For in her utterances she is either implying one of two things. The first being that she worked hard for what she had acquired and that it was not a matter of luck. The other is that some master manipulator of the universe bestowed greater heavenly gifts on her by some preordained design, and thus that she is specially blessed by this divine force.

In the context of the discussion, she obviously meant the latter.

This then excludes that: she was genetically gifted (this being equivalent to winning the ultimate lottery of chance); she was blessed with the right set of circumstances that allowed her to develop the confidence and belief in herself; and she was blessed by providence allowing her to meet the right people at the right time, in this way to have been aided by the generosity of spirit of those who helped pave the way for her to achieve her almost unparalleled level of success and influence.

The generosity of others certainly must've been all-important in her earlier years considering individuals in authority must've had the power to make or break her if they so wished. And the prevailing sentiment at the time must've been to put as many obstacles in any ambitious black woman's way. Yet despite these dramatically climbing the ranks of an overwhelmingly white male dominated industry. That is aside from the fact that any such accomplishment would've been impossible to even contemplate a few years before.

Albeit that she certainly had been very fortunate in her career, her views on luck once were a cause of some on air contention between her and Sydney Poitier. He openly acknowledging he was incredibly lucky in the circumstances that had led to his phenomenal success. And because of this total acceptance, says he fully embraces every precious moment with abundant gratitude as the hour glass of his time on earth is nearing its end.

To put the above in perspective. The reality of it all is that Poitier would not have stood a chance to become the icon he had become if he was not blessed by the particular physical characteristics he indeed had. That's despite all the efforts he certainly did make. For without it, Hollywood, as shallow as it is, would not have given him even a fleeting glance.

Why the acknowledgement of one's luck, therefore, is critical is that it can be equated to the Christian notion of "counting one's blessings". This being the same as the Hindu worldview upon which her new age philosophy is largely based which says "You have a right to work, but not to the results thereof. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities" (Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 2, verse 47).

Other than the Poitier case this was also her view when interviewing other famous guests such as Simon Cowell, Charlize Theron, amongst others. Whenever they expressed a more humble view of their success, usually expressing a sense of awe and humility at their accomplishments, Oprah suggested they should rather have a diametrically opposite view.

To put this into perspective, in an  interview on CNN, former English international cricketer and author of Luck: What It Means and Why It Matters powerfully expressed this sentiment as follows.

It's a civilized world when those who had some luck acknowledge it.

And it also is a civilised world when we accept the fact that not everyone has as much good fortune as some of the most fortunate.

For this reason acknowledging that one was blessed by circumstance (or that one was lucky) when one has reached such phenomenal success (particularly when one has achieved Hollywood type fame and fortune), is the most compassionate response one can give. And not having this view, the most self-entitled arrogant mentality one possibly can possess.

While the above may seem petty, it is in fact of great philosophic importance—that is irrespective of whether there indeed are esoteric factors and forces which may be involved in the unfolding of our lives. It is so, for in her failing to acknowledge that she was dealt an exceedingly good deck of cards by life by unequivocally embracing that she was lucky, Oprah risks becoming theomanic. In other words, having the narcissistic belief that the universe somehow revolves around her.

I suppose the understandable dilemma for her is that, in having been as blessed as she had been, and having acquired the incredible means she now has, it truly must appear from her perspective that the universe is like a virtual catalogue in which she merely can flip through to have her every earthly desire met.

But moreover, that the rest of humanity, are pawns to achieve the ends she desires.

________________________

Thought I was alone on the above view until I found this blog post –  Oprah Knows Everything... – which expressed a similar sentiment.

Ignorance and Evil

Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession – their ignorance. – [Hendrik Van Loon]

In the final analysis, most who act destructively in the world do not do so with overt malice in their minds.

What must be borne uppermost in mind is that evil in its most ordinary manifestation is largely inseparable from ignorance. And this is so not merely because those with evil intent invariably prey on the less conscious to achieve their devious ends.

To elaborate, the following extract from psychiatrist Stephen A. Diamond's The Psychology of Evil puts a more ominous face on the omnipresence of this scourge.

While it may be very tempting to succumb to Peck's argument that evil insidiously manifests itself most commonly in deceptively well-functioning but subtly pathological personalities—or in blatant caricatures of evil like Ted Bundy, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or Richard Allen Davis—we would do well to remember that evil remains an ever-present, archetypal potentiality in each of us.

To naively or narcissistically think otherwise is tantamount to denying the personal capacity for evil—the permanent presence of the "shadow" or the "demonic"—forever dwelling in the fathomless depths of each and every fallible human being. Such denial is evil of the most insipid, prosaic, and dangerous kind.

The reference was in response to M. Scott Peck's emphasis in The People of the Lie: the hope for healing human evil that extreme narcissism is the primary cause of human evil, and which indeed it is. Diamond suggesting that the ignorance of our own deeper motives and how we consequently deny these potentialities within ourselves can be very insidious and destructive to our state of mind.

This sentiment is further emphasized by Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

This more unconscious aspect of our psyche is a remnant of our more primitive animalistic selves. These darker proclivities significantly impacting our interactions in the greater world, and often with devastating consequences to our own and others wellbeing. The tragedy of humanity being embodied in this very denial, mainly because the acknowledgement of our personal responsibility in its trail of destruction, is more often than not, a far too painful specter to endure. Therefore many if not most prefer to live in the myth of the relative perfection of their lives.

What it comes down to is this: that despite all its esoteric significance, the literal opposite of consciousness, is unconsciousness. And that the associated words are denial and ignorance. Denial perhaps being more destructive than mere ignorance as it can be regarded as an active form of ignorance, indeed in many instances, actions committed in ignorance can even be legitimately excused.

And thus, if consciousness embodies the good, and even God can be regarded as the Collective Conscience (or Truth Consciousness) of humanity, then ignorance, and in particular, denial, must then truly be the embodiment of the bad or evil aspects of our collective humanity.

As a corollary, therefore, if we were to say that God is Truth, then the opposite definition would apply as denial would then be the action of concertedly veiling Truth. In other words denial would be representative of the desire to remain in the dark. And again, if we were to continue the argument, darkness would be the opposite of Light, or enlightenment...

To reiterate, on an intrinsic level equating denial of reality to evil unto self, certainly is so as we very often do end up unconsciously doing incredible physical and psychological harm unto ourselves if we actively choose to ignore reality. But the ripple effect of our actions or inaction in many if not most instances have severe repercussions on those around us as well. And because we had been responsible, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are yet complicit regardless.

________________________

If you are the view that my criticism of Oprah in this section is too harsh, please read the Final Note for some perspective. My main reason for being so harsh is that Oprah indeed is so revered, and oftentimes worshipped, to the extent she is. This unquestioning reverence of an individual with clear financial motives being the very mindset we should guard against, regardless of what her actual bona fides may being. This critical engagement and questioning being the cornerstone of critical thinking.

Hardly a month after the deaths at the James Arthur Ray Spiritual Warrior Camp in October 2009, Oprah announced that she was going to end her show. Interestingly, there were mounting calls – even on her own internet chat forum – for her to take some level of responsibility for the deaths as she had promoted James Arthur Ray on her show.

Interestingly in May 2010, a few months after announcing that she was going to end her show, Oprah decided to close her charity network as well. The cynical view would be that she has no need for it now as its primary purpose would have been the promotion of her show. The other question also is, given her considerable wealth, why she needed a network in the first place, and that much of her good deeds were not necessarily as a result of her own direct contribution. The timing of this action, however, does put a question mark on her true motives. Conceivably, if she indeed is sincere about this, she would dedicate her life to charity as many who have retired tends to do, and thus she could have continued her network into the future.

Again, as a critical thinker I pose these questions regardless of what her actual motivations may be, while still appreciating the very important messages apparent in many of her shows and documentaries.

_________________

A particularly poignant example of collective ignorance and apathy is that around American Gun culture.

This apparent collective denial and inaction (my apologies for the generalization as there are those who indeed are vociferous and active) manifests itself as many instances of evil as in the schoolyard massacre at Sandy Hook in Connecticut. In this gruesome incident 20 six and seven year olds and 7 adults were gunned down with a legally owned semi-automatic assault rifle. This being one of many similar instances that have escalated to what can now only be regarded as an epidemic of mass killing in the US which reached unprecedented proportions in 2012.

By this I'm not saying that American's as a collective are evil, or even that the shooter, Adam Lanza, is evil. He too was a victim for if guns were not as readily available in that moment of madness this potential genius may well have developed to become a very productive member of society.

In this case evil has once again been greed. Again the worship of mammon was put before the slaughter of the innocents, propagated by those with deep pockets who advocate for even proliferation of deadly weapons of murder (not just ordinary guns) to acquire even more financial means.

They, however, are merely exploiting the fertile uncritical and ignorant milieu of the US today upon which evil invariably feeds.

_________________

Donald Trump's "Make America great again" in a time when America has recovered much of its esteem and financial capacity after the disastrous Bush years, and "Crooked Hillary", are examples of mass imprinting of ideas may do not have any intrinsic truth.
Chapter Three

Voodoo Science

Cosmic Comedy

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings. – [Helen Keller]

Before revealing how The Secret blatantly fabricates scientific fact, it is firstly important to realize why the facts are not important in influencing the actions of the uncritical mind.

But before I do so, first consider the following lines by Byrne as background

How long will it take to manifest the car, the relationship, the money? I don't have any rulebook that says it's going to take thirty minutes or thirty hours or thirty days.

It's more a matter of you being in alignment with the universe itself...Size is nothing to the universe. It is no more to attract on a scientific level, something we consider huge to something that we consider infinitesimally small.

The Universe does everything with zero effort... There are no rules according to the Universe. You provide the feelings of having it now; it will respond—whatever it is. There is no time for the universe and there is no size for the Universe.

With the above the subliminal suggestion is made that we can manifest anything in hours or days. Once again this is deliberately misleading as it should very well have read "three days, three months or three years" instead of "thirty minutes or thirty hours or thirty days". And the bigger our vision the longer the time and the more resources we require if we ordinarily go about achieving our goals. The above timelines were however carefully chosen to make one believe that 'manifesting' anything is quick and easy once one has obtained the supposed 'secret' method.

That, "size is nothing to the universe. It is no more to attract on a scientific level, something we consider huge to something that we consider infinitesimally small", also goes completely against scientific common sense. For instance the force of any true law of attraction such as gravity and magnetism, suggests that the forces to be overcome are related directly to: the mass of; and the distance it is apart from; the object being attracted.

The law of gravitational attraction for instance explicitly says it will take significantly more energy to pick up a giant granite boulder than one would a pebble. To be exact, the energy required will be as many times as the boulder is heavier than the pebble. Thus similarly I would assume if we could lift objects by thought alone, it would take significantly more mental energy to lift a pebble than it would a grain of sand. Though even lifting a grain of sand with one's mind does not appear to be something anyone I'm aware of is capable of doing.

Here are some more extracts which relates to the supposed miraculous powers of our thinking.

You don't have to fight to get rid of disease. Just the simple process of letting go of negative thoughts will allow your natural state of health to emerge within you. And your body will heal itself.

I've seen kidneys regenerated. I've seen cancer dissolved. I've seen eyesight improve and come back.

I had been wearing reading glasses for about three years before I discovered The Secret. One night I was tracing the knowledge of The Secret back through the centuries, I found myself reaching for my glasses to see what I was reading. And I stopped in my tracks. The realization of what I had done struck me like a lightning bolt.

This sounds like Benny Hin at one of his 'healing' conventions. Simply put, the above is probably the most dangerous claim I have ever read. It is because cancer or kidney failure cannot remotely be cured by thought.

That's even though the disease itself will inevitably cause morbidity and depression. Thus if one does attempt to heal oneself with one's thinking alone one more than likely will die much sooner than later because of the disease.

The ironic outcome of this would be that, because of this mentality one actually would've killed oneself as a direct consequence of one's thinking.

On the other hand Atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Skeptics and every other religious or non-religious designation you can think of, will as likely experience miraculous recovery on the very rare occasion. Though in the eyes of the non-religious the term miracle will merely be replaced by remarkable, unbelievable, extraordinary or inexplicable.

While it goes without saying that a positive state of mind indeed goes a long way in aiding one's recovery, it otherwise is foolish to have the notion that merely having a positive attitude is a guarantee for such a reversal back to health.

The problem with the above is that it is nice to believe such claims as they fill one with an overwhelming sense of hope, particularly if one is destitute and perhaps facing the debilitating discomfort of disease. However what now must be patently obvious is that those who make such claims prey on the vulnerability of the less fortunate by giving them such a false sense of hope.

As a consequence those so taken with such views would stop taking their medication, or not go for cancer treatments at all. This is because The Secret's simple formula that does not require one to fight with every ounce of inner strength, will painlessly and effortlessly cure them of their disease.

Thus while it to some extent is understandable that one may be taken by such simplistic arguments, one's rational mind must nevertheless inform one that the above is a dangerous gross over-exaggeration of fact. But more importantly, that those who make them are not in the least concerned about our health and wellbeing at all, but rather in how they can gain from it. For this reason, based on the many similar inconsistencies in the book I can report on, I have to question whether Byrne indeed had her eyesight cured in three days as she claimed. That is simply by pondering the "wisdom of The Secret".

Or to be consistent, she once again is deliberately hoodwinking her unsuspecting readership.

________________________

After hosting a The Secret panel on her show, Oprah had to make a public announcement after receiving numerous letters of people who had stopped their cancer and other medication because they now believed The Secret would cure them. I am of the view that many people had in fact indirectly died because of this, and that Oprah should immediately have distanced herself from the book/DVD and the makers of the film once she became aware of this. Instead she mentioned that the law of attraction is not the only law that governs the universe, but that there are other laws as well, such as the law of circulation, and many others.

The Science of Deceit

Only the ignorant speak of devotional service as being different from the analytical study of the material world. Those who are actually learned say that he who applies himself to one of these paths achieves the results from both. – [Bhagavad-Gita 5:4]

The general term for conveying gross misrepresentations, particularly of isolated scientific findings, is referred to as equivocation.

Synonyms would include indirectness, caginess, crookedness, ambiguousness, vagueness, slipperiness, shiftiness and the like.

Though for the psychological crowd who had been so deceived, the facts are of little importance. That's with the exception of any isolated finding which may remotely support their belief. This is further revealed by the following lines taken from The Crowd.

...

The unreal has almost as much influence on them (The Crowd) as the real. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two. The power of conquerors and the strength of States is based on the popular imagination. It is more particularly by working upon this imagination that crowds are led.

The propagation of legends which so easily obtain circulation in crowds is not solely the consequence of their extreme credulity. It is also the result of the prodigious perversion that events undergo in the imagination of the throng. The simplest event that comes under the observation of a crowd is soon totally transformed. A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the rest.

We can easily conceive this state by thinking of the fantastic succession of ideas to which we are sometimes led by calling up in our minds any fact. Our reason shows us the incoherence there is in these images, but a crowd is almost blind to this truth, and confuses with the real event what the deforming action of its imagination has superimposed thereon. A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images evoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed fact.

All the great statesmen of every age and every country, including the most absolute despots, have regarded the popular imagination as the basis of their power, and they have never attempted to govern in opposition to it. "It was by becoming a Catholic," said Napoleon to the Council of State, "that I terminated the Vendéen war. By becoming a Mussulman that I obtained a footing in Egypt. By becoming an Ultramontane that I won over the Italian priests, and had I to govern a nation of Jews I would rebuild Solomon's temple." Never perhaps since Alexander and Caesar has any great man better understood how the imagination of the crowd should be impressed. His constant preoccupation was to strike it. He bore it in mind in his victories, in his harangues, in his speeches, in all his acts. On his deathbed it was still in his thoughts.

How is the imagination of crowds to be impressed? Let us confine ourselves for the moment to saying that the feat is never to be achieved by attempting to work upon the intelligence or reasoning faculty, that is to say, by way of demonstration.

Spiritual Non-Science

No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer. – [Thomas Browne]

Thus we see that The Secret's greatest power to influence comes from the boldness of its lies. The boldest of these being that it unequivocally claims its philosophy is based on science.

It however is abundantly apparent that much of the scientific facts are distorted, misrepresented or inflated in order to support the particular pseudo-philosophy on which it is based. Instead of going through all of them, I merely will cite a few critical ones to make the overall point.

The most important is the supposed Law of Attraction. In the section introducing this work, Bob Proctor described it as follows.

The natural laws of the universe are so precise that we don't even have any difficulty building spaceships, we can send people to the moon, and we can time the landing with the precision of a fraction of a second...

Wherever you are we're all working with one power. One Law, It's attraction!

The Secret is The Law of Attraction!

Everything that's coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it's attracted to you by virtue of the images you're holding in your mind. It's what you're thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you.

It's the greatest and the most infallible law upon which the entire system of creation depends...

Essentially this 'law' as described above is a regurgitation of the belief in Karma. Though what is apparent from the above misdirection is that it is deceptively worded as if it is a law of the known universe such as the law of motion, magnetism, or conservation of energy, is. By referring to it in this manner it is given a far broader appeal and legitimacy than its interpretation within the usual religious context.

With regard to the supposed scientific basis one must realize that claims about the universe being responsible for outworking our wants and desires are complete misrepresentations of scientific fact. These usually are concocted by pseudo-scientists and pseudo-philosophers, though often by scientists wanting to advocate a particular personal agenda.

The following quote taken from The Breakthrough Experience by John Demartini illustrates how ridiculous notions have become accepted by many as such unquestionable scientific fact.

People have different definitions of love, but I'm defining it as "the synthesis or perfect blending of all dualistic perceptions, the summation of all polarities". When happiness and sadness are synthesized, they make love. Like and dislike, positive and negative, pain and pleasure, electron and positron—all dualities, when totally synthesized, are love. No matter what "ology" you investigate, they all lead to the same essence: love. The unified field theory that permeates every human being and links us all.

The above embellished though substantively meaningless quote clearly having been derived from terminology used in quantum theory.

This though is not a mere isolated quote taken out of context. When reading the Breakthrough Experience it is the most pertinent and substantive claim made in the book. And to the uninformed is incredibly convincing.

However as with the name of Harris website, Dream Manifesto – The Quantum Method for Manifesting Your Dreams, it must be fully grasped that this is a very deliberate means of deception suggesting that advanced sciences such as quantum theory supposedly provides the scientific basis for such otherwise laughable claims.

However let me say this categorically: this rhetoric has absolutely no basis in science—or true philosophy.

________________________

The belief in Karma is not merely the experience of the consequence of one's actions. Specifically the belief is coupled with the greater belief in reincarnation. Karma is perceived as a very definite cause-and-effect dynamic as Newton's Laws of Motion is. This is not the same as the notion of consequence where very often one indeed does not have to face the consequence of one's actions, particularly if one is calculating enough at circumventing them. Karma as proposed by Buddhist and Hindu religious doctrine suggests that one will definitely experience the consequences of one's actions, that is either in this lifetime, and if not, in the next life.

On the other hand it suggests that the any negative circumstance experienced in this life, if it cannot be accounted for by one's actions in this lifetime, must have emanated from one's negative actions in a previous life. This being a prerequisite to the belief as Karma is supposedly a very definite law that forces consequence regardless of our conscious endeavors to avoid it.

Interestingly, what is perceived as the effects of karma – like a self-fulfilling prophecy – in fact is the result of the heightened consciousness resulting from the belief itself—refer to Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome.

The religious/spiritual issue then is why bother being righteous and honorable if there is not an absolute predictable consequence for our actions. The problem with the associated mentality, however, is that righteousness results as a fear of consequence—as is the case with the Christian view of damnation—and not a sincere expression of one's higher sense of right or wrong, in other words, our conscience.

The Miracle of Health

To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life. – [William Londen]

I say this even though science does show that our thoughts do have a limited impact on matter—that is other than how we impact it through our physical actions. Those claiming to have scientific backing for such claims in my view are opportunists and fraudsters exploiting the limited scientific knowledge we currently do have available on these matters.

Thus views as the following by Quantum Physicist Dr. John Hagelin taken from the book are in part definitely true, but also incredibly misleading.

Our body is really the product of our thoughts. We're beginning to understand in medical science the degree to which the nature of thoughts and emotions actually determines the physical substance and structure and function of the body.

While there certainly is truth in this, the reality nevertheless is that our genes overwhelmingly determine the physical substance, structure and function of our bodies.

For instance many a child having gone through an incredibly negative childhood, while they may also hold incredibly negative and toxic thoughts and emotions because of their experiences, has as good a chance of developing to become a physically healthy adult. This is particularly so if they do take in reasonably good nutrition. These supposedly negative circumstances may even from time to time be responsible for strengthening the eventual character of such an adult in the long run.

Though admittedly negative emotions can build up toxicity within the body which can be pathogenic over time—this again is largely dependent on the respective body's ability to handle the associated stress. Again what may eventually be the outcome is largely a factor of the respective genetic makeup of the individual. Then there are those who remain constantly in a state of disease simply because they do certainly think themselves so. Most often this is the case because they are overly preoccupied with the issue of health, while in truth psychosomatic diseases are the only ones that can be fully cured with the mind as the mind was in fact directly responsible for creating the disease in the first instance.

On the other hand I've seen many individuals with extremely destructive lifestyles – such as smoking, drinking, eating badly, with bad attitudes – live rather long and healthy lives. In this regard I recall a French lady, Jean Calment, a smoker and drinker, eventually becoming the oldest person on earth. Calment only quit smoking at the age of 117, five years before her death. She nevertheless started smoking again only a year later indicating she would rather not give up on anything she enjoyed doing that much, particularly since she was not able to do much else at the time. And she also indicated that it was all the better if it indeed helped her to die a little sooner than she otherwise would've.

Please don't come to the wrong conclusion about the above example. The point simply being that the person with the longest confirmed lifespan, ironically, had for most of her life taken an incredibly toxic substance that should have significantly curtailed her life expectancy. Or in the very least have impacted her quality of life. But the greater irony of Calment's story is that her only child died at thirty six of a lung disease—and I don't know whether she smoked or not.

On the other hand I also had experienced a personal loss of someone who could've been regarded a poster boy for magnificent health (at least if we are to believe the rhetoric of The Secret) to an incurable cancer. In fact until his very last day he was by far the most positive and enthusiastic person I knew. Till then never needing to take a single day off from work because of illness, that is until he was finally crippled by a brutal and indiscriminate disease.

A popular example is the death of Linda McCartney at 55 to breast cancer. Certainly someone who had significant means to fight the disease, and on all accounts was a highly positive and focused person. That is besides her being an international activist for a healthy vegetarian lifestyle.

Again, the fact that she out of principle refused to use treatments tested on animals may very well have further contributed to her untimely death. This is because she in all likelihood could not have used the best drugs at her disposal at the time. Now, breast cancers have a near 100% cure rate primarily due to the efficacy of modern medicines. By giving this example I'm not tempting to argue for animal testing, but that the irony most certainly must be noted within the context of the greater argument.

________________________

The reference to Linda Mcartney was merely to indicate the complexity involved with death and disease. In her case a vegetarian diet did not preclude her from getting a deadly cancer. The argument is not whether a non-vegetarian diet is better or not, indeed it could have many health benefits, particularly compared to diets where meat is overconsumed. It however may have many deficiencies which could lead to various other related diseases as well.

By this example I'm not advocating for animal testing, except that it indeed had allowed medicine to progress signficantly. My view is that it should however be ethical, and subscribe to humane standards which is strongly regulated. And as a rule, be a means of last resort, and not be done if it can be avoided.

_________________

Also see Did Brandon Bays have Cancer? In Book III.

Fools Fallacy

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. – [John Lubbock]

More than any other example, and certainly one that ought to completely dispel Byrne's notions, is the number of calamitous events that occurred ever since Oprah—arguably the greatest proponent of The Secret—endorsed it.

Only months from airing a The Secret panel, she's had what she's described as the lowest point in her life when girls were sexually molested at her exclusive school in South Africa. She also had a dramatic drop in ratings, and has had serious health issues.

As far as health issues are concerned, after losing dramatic weight and keeping it off for more than 15 years, she has in fact gained significant weight since that show, and indicated that she is very embarrassed and demoralized by this. Since the show she also had been diagnosed with a medical condition, a dysfunctional thyroid, and now even alluded to being depressed.

These in spite of her having the best personal trainer in Bob Green, a personal The Secret spiritual advisor Michael Bernard Beckworth of Agape, and the best medical help in the form of Dr. Oz. Interestingly, her financial, physical and spiritual decline appeared to have started on the very day she aired the show.

What then about our poor mortals without even a fraction of these resources to assist us in our daily lives?

With regard to weight loss, perhaps she took Byrnes advice too literally, and that in accepting her rhetoric also interpreting it to mean that she now did not need to fight a daily battle to keep her weight down, and so to maintain her overall state of health, rather that it will become easy once she simply begins to have happy thoughts, and that in this way the fat will magically melt away on its own, or put another way, that the universal energy intrinsic in every atom of her body, will melt it away for her.

Silent Killer

God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars. – [Elbert Hubbard]

A further fallacy is the notion that stress and disease are absolutely related. Certainly hyper levels of stress are not healthy, but it is noteworthy that obese individuals tend not to be particularly stressed. On the other hand it is noteworthy that the super fit and health conscious are more often than not A-type personalities (often borderline Anxiety Disordered / Obsessive Compulsive individuals) who thrive on relatively high levels of stress. This bearing in mind that a significant percentage of the most financially successful individuals had been obsessive compulsive—most notably billionaire Howard Hughes.

The ability to handle stress, as opposed to the mere avoidance of stress as The Secret proposes, therefore appearing to be the key to great health, wealth, and perhaps even happiness.

A more public example which points to the arbitrary nature of disease is the death of Richard Carlson, the author of Don't Sweat The Small Stuff (a book I recommend for anyone who wishes to be more centered) who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart aneurism at 45.

Within the context of Byrne's rhetoric on health, and particularly considering The Law of Attraction, it is noteworthy that Richard was commonly regarded as an incredibly giving person. He was also one of the foremost experts on happiness and stress reduction. But as fate would have it, died of a condition that was in stark contradiction to what he preached and how he lived his life. This definitely not being reflection on Carlson as I doubt his state of mind in any way played a role in his very untimely death. That is, except in it serving as a particularly poignant example which ought to completely discredit Byrne's view.

Despite questioning this type of oversimplified assertions about the impact of our thoughts, I again want to somewhat contradict myself by pointing out that Hagelin's assertion does hold some truth. It is that we do largely shape the world within and around us with our thoughts. This is so because our thoughts affect our attitudes which in turn impact our chosen actions. This then eventually having an impact on the quality of our relationship with the outside world.

As such we would begin to experience the positive effects resulting from our improved personal interactions. The upshot being that we likely would feel better about ourselves, and in the long run this should begin to result in improved prospects for health as well as wealth.

Though this is the likely outcome, we should nevertheless be mindful of the fact that life never offers any guarantees. What we nevertheless can console ourselves in is that our positive effort would more than likely significantly have improved the odds.

The Energy Universe

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. – [Albert Einstein]

What happened to Oprah is a very poignant public example of what are some of the consequences for the victims of the associated The Secret mentality. In particular, the notion that life is simple and easy, and that the universe will take care of the details of how we are to get what we want.

To further assess the greater implications of some of the "new science" upon which many new age ideologies are based, it is important to firstly separate truth from fiction. But more importantly, not to infer too much from quantum physics as its mechanics of uncertainty and unpredictability, does not have the slightest bearing on our universe at large which obeys very determinable scientific laws.

So for instance the following extract from The Secret is undeniably an absolute scientific fact.

Everything is energy, and let me help you to understand that just a little bit. There's the Universe, our galaxy, our planet, and then individuals, and then inside of this body are organ systems, then cells, then molecules, and then atoms. And then there is energy. So there are a lot of levels to think about, but everything in the Universe is energy.

This does not now imply that, because at some level the universe is energy, we now also have conscious control of the movements of animate and inanimate phenomena without the need for any physical intervention on our part. This being exactly what the proponents of The Secret wants us to believe.

Again, where the confusion comes in is that scientists have also conclusively determined that our body has a virtual energy field which is largely controlled by our brain. However the energy field within and around our body is pure liquid light emitted from the fuel burned within all living cells. And that without it as a source, that is when we are well and truly dead, it will cease to have a source that would allow it to emit any form of energy whatsoever. This does not negate that consciousness itself, which is not energy at all, does not survive.

To make sense of it, it must be understood that the energy referred to in the previous extract, is the absolute indivisible building blocks of any form of matter. And since it is formed in a particular physical structure, that is as matter, is essentially very different in form and function to the radiation emitted by any energy source such as the sun, a star, a light bulb and of course, a living cell.

To put this into perspective, our body does assume different energy frequencies depending on our moods, attitude, and therefore that our mind does have an effect on matter. But crucially, that it only has such an affect within the greater locality of our physical body.

It furthermore is so that we can heel certain conditions by manipulating this ambient energy field. This is as the Chinese for many centuries have done through ancient healing modalities such as Acupuncture and Gigong. The power we have to do so, however, is largely limited to our capacity to focus mentally on the particular problem area in our own body. Other methods such as Hypnosis only work because we give conscious control to the hypnotist to influence a psychosomatic disorder. And though we receive verbal commands from the hypnotist, our own psyche is ultimately responsible for the resulting effect. Reiki on the other hand appears to work at some telepathic level, but it too would be ineffective unless the patient is a conscious and willing participant in the healing process.

Notwithstanding the power of our thought, disease and cancer do not respond to our conscious inducements at all. These pathogens literally having a mind all of their own, but which our mind can fight with its own in built defense mechanisms. Exercise, healthy diets, and lack of exposure to environmental pollutants and dangers, furthermore are the important conscious ways in which we use our mind to stay alive and healthy for longer.

In short, the fact that all material phenomena at its most indivisible level, is energy, is of relatively little consequence if it happens to simply be dead inanimate matter not within the greater ambit of our own living body. The energy in the previously mentioned healing modalities is about the energy emitted by a cell by virtue of the fact that it is alive to begin with, and not the mere energy building blocks of matter at the atomic level. The fact that these cells are to a greater or lesser extent under our conscious control, is because it is within the confines of our organic structure. As such it is controlled by blood circulation and neurons which serve as the physical channels conveying electrical impulses, hormones and nourishment throughout the body.

While there certainly is evidence that we indeed can control our body's energy flows, Byrne confuses this understanding with the unrelated topic of atomic energy, and goes on to make the following preposterous inference.

In simple terms, all energy vibrates at a frequency. Being energy, you also vibrate at a frequency, and what determines your frequency at any time is whatever you are thinking and feeling. All the things you want are made of energy, and they are vibrating too. Everything is energy.

When you think about what you want, and you emit that frequency, you cause the energy of what you want to vibrate at that frequency and you bring it to You! As you are focusing on what you want, you are changing the vibration of the atoms of that thing, and you are causing it to vibrate to You.

That as much had been inferred from the basic understanding of the intrinsic nature of matter as energy, unless you think I'm just an incorrigible cynic, is once again nothing but unabashed equivocation.

The Object Universe

A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. – [Carl Sagan]

The energy level referred to in the quote is known as the Conversion Zone but can otherwise be referred to as The Quantum Zone or The Event Horizon as well. And as science unequivocally reveals, no time exists in this zone at all. This is a very confusing notion which goes completely against our usual sensibilities and requires a very detailed discussion before any in depth philosophic conclusions can be made. In Understanding Existence I attempted to do so where I argued that an even deeper layer of reality exists than this energy layer which for all intents and purposes can be referred to as Consciousness, or the realm of God if you like. And that in this realm, time has no restrictions, and can move in any direction the mind that governs it wishes it to—at least when operating in this dimension alone. Though ultimately, even with this complete inner freedom, its physical manifestation is obliged to unfold in forward-moving time as defined by the external laws of nature.

While I do not wish to go into any detail as it is a very complicated technical discussion which is beyond the scope of this work, what it fundamentally argues for: is that we logically interpret the meaning of our reality from these separate perspectives. This however is not merely as an intellectual exercise, but to interpret how the deeper layers ultimately inform our everyday experience of reality. As ultimately, without such a final focus, the exercise certainly would be meaningless.

Indeed because of these discoveries many new age philosophers are now simplistically postulating that objective reality does not exist, or that we are all one with creation. That we are all 'interconnected!', and therefore, that we should not view ourselves as discreet entities at all.

While I have no principled objection with this notion, and can even fully accept that at some level we all most definitely are interconnected, it nevertheless is not useful to our intellectual interpretation of our reality to draw too many profound conclusions from it.

Such an example is again provided by John Demartini – a chiropractor, providing much of the 'scientific' and 'medical' and 'philosophic' substantiation for the views expressed in The Secret – with a previously referred to quote.

Our psychology gives us disease to give us feedback, to let us know we have an imbalanced perspective, or we're not being loving and grateful. So the body's signs and symptoms are not something terrible. I always say that incurable means incurable from within.

The above is incredibly revealing as it speaks to the integrity of Demartini in having uttered it. This considering that hardly a year before making these preposterous remarks, his then wife – notably world famous astrologer Athena Starwoman – died from breast cancer—as mentioned earlier, a reasonably medically curable disease. One must therefore logically infer from his utterance that she too could not have had a "balanced perspective" or was not "loving and grateful" in her manner, and hence attracted her fatal disease. And so too, if one uses Demartini's perverse logic, must Richard Carlson and Linda McCartney.

Clearly this is reductionism (as is scientific reductionism) regurgitated in another disguise; instead attempting to make the 'spiritual' dimension the all-important focus – or 'object' – of our being. Such an orientation nevertheless is not a practical one.

The fact of the matter is that the deeper spiritual world is not objective, but completely subjective; and is formed in the limitless ways we can give meaning to it in the physical dimension of our being.

Furthermore, love cannot be equated to light as Demartini had done in Spiritual Non-science. Light being a quantum phenomenon associated with the Conversion Zone (or Quantum Zone). Love on the other hand is a deeper dimension of Consciousness, and thus by implication is limitless, formless, having absolutely no locality whatsoever. That is unlike the instantaneous locality of light which obeys very definite impersonal laws of the physical universe. Love on the other hand is constantly being redefined by our unique interpersonal experiences as we navigate the oftentimes harsh objective reality of our physical world.

Thus it resides in a deeper dimension where the laws of the physical world do not apply at all—let alone as mechanistic and inflexible a law as "The Law of Attraction".

In our approach on these matters what should conceptually be appreciated is that a greater dualism — or a tension of opposites — is at play within the greater dynamics of our lives. In other words, reality for the most part is a paradox.

This is just as the nature of light is both a wave representing its infinite possibilities, as well as a very definite singular particle—at the same time. Similarly, while we may experience unlimited freedom within our mind, we indeed are very much constrained by the hard realities of the physical world.

And so for instance, if one were to decide to step off a ten story balcony in defiance of gravity because we unconditionally believe in the esoteric nature of reality, one most definitely will be reduced to a pulp irrespective of the conviction with which one argues for it in one's head.

Therefore, while physical reality may logically be viewed as an information template of sorts that intricately defines it, it nonetheless must not, and most certainly can not, be viewed as anything other than being absolutely very real.

At least not while we still are perceptive, walking, talking, breathing, thinking beings, very much alive on this amazing pale blue planet.

The Enlightenment Effect

Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace. — [Bhagavad-Gita 12:12]

Dr. John Hagelin referred to before in The Miracle of Health is Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at the Maharishi University of Management.

While he and his colleagues had done numerous experiments to prove the power of the mind as indicated in this comment, I do nevertheless question the objectivity of his overriding philosophy.

The most noteworthy of these experiments are the Washington DC Prayer Experiment, and hence his previous claim is not baseless. This is otherwise known as the "Maharishi Effect" where it is claimed that: if 1% of a population group actively does Transcendental Meditation, the calming effect would be transmitted throughout the group and would significantly reduce violent behavior in the entire populous in that vicinity.

When examining the findings of this experiment published in a reputable peer reviewed journal Social Indicators Research, it appears that the 4000 meditators who converged on Washington DC and meditated for a period of 8 weeks, had conclusively affected the social indicators of the city for the period of the meditation by reducing the crime by 23%. The odds of this spontaneously occurring is 1 in ten billion

However what is revealing is that according to the Iowa Uniform Crime Report, the crime statistics for the Fairfield (Iowa) area in which the Maharashi University is found, shows that violent and property crime increased between 1981 and 1988. The same applies for the state of Iowa which, because of the Maharishi University, has the largest concentration of TM practitioners in the US. This is contrasted with neighboring states such as Wisconsin and Arkansas that showed an overall decrease in violent crime.

What this indicates is that in the area in which the largest concentration of TM practitioners are to be found, violent crime had a net increase instead of a decrease as the studies central hypothesis asserts.

Further studies have conclusively shown that the form of meditation practice proposed by TM have a net harmful psychological effect (this is discussed in the Addendum).

In the face of the dangers highlighted in the research, and as much as experiments of this nature provide some substantiation for Hagelin's worldview, the real danger is this. The invariable inclination by these scientists is that, instead of putting the experimental findings into perspective, the tendency is to make radical conclusions about the intrinsic nature of reality as Hagelin appears to have done in this case.

To gain some insight into why this is, again with reference to the Hagelin experiment, it is important to note that he strongly promotes a Vedic (essentially Hindu) philosophy, and one of the conclusions from the Washington DC experiment in particular, is that we can create world peace through meditation. The Maharishi Vedic University puts it as follows.

These studies clearly indicate the powerful influence available through the collective practice of Maharishi's TM and TM-Sidhi Programme. With the creation of groups in all the nations of the world, there will be a phase transition of world consciousness leading to Heaven on Earth for all mankind. In this way, Heaven on Earth is being created through the complete scientific knowledge of Natural Law that is now available to everyone through the programmes of Maharishi's Vedic Science and Technology.

The most powerful way to create invincibility is through groups of Yogic Flyers, for it is through the group practice of Maharishi's TM-Sidhi Programme, including Yogic Flying, that the quality of a nation's collective consciousness can be most effectively improved. By creating enough groups throughout the world, every nation can enjoy invincibility, and the entire world will enjoy Heaven on Earth—life filled with happiness and success, free of problems and suffering, where every individual spontaneously lives in accord with Natural Law.

On one level this certainly is so. It is that, if we would all become meditators we should have diminished our personal compulsion to react violently in circumstances we otherwise may have.

Though if there were to be a realistic critical mass of humanity which had to do so for such a universal eventuality to become true as he contends, we conceivably would not have had the problem of human violence and destructiveness to begin with. This does not mean we should not all meditate and pray for world peace and to promote it actively irrespective of what its physical efficacy may actually be.

However, that there may even be a remote chance it has such a positive collective impact, but mainly that it creates a much more peaceful demeanor within oneself, we all very well should take at least some time a day to meditate or pray on world peace.

Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols. — [Aldous Huxley]

Aside from the experiment itself, my assessment is that the logic of Hagelin's philosophic conclusions falls way short of reasonable intellectual acceptability. This though is understandable as his intellect is significantly stunted by the imposition of a significantly limited worldview.

The reason for making such a bold assertion is that, once we have adopted a belief in the way we presume reality is, our mindsets invariably become locked to its overriding perception. As such we then tend to judge all our interactions from its unchangeable underlying value system. Very often the accompanied fundamental perception of reality created by such a belief orientation becomes the higher authority with which we judge the rightness or otherwise of all our actions.

But importantly, because beliefs are assumed facts we tend to have in the absence of knowledge, they are not truly reflective of reality at all. Rather, they are reflective of the way we prefer to view the facts irrespective of what the facts actually may be. And even more crucially, when we subject our intellect to a strongly held subconscious belief orientation, it usually becomes an unchangeable aspect of our ingrained identity as well. Because of this imposed rigidity the tendency is to develop a blockage against incorporating reason into our mental frame of reference, or at least any kind of reason that counters our worldview. As such we become ignorant, and in our ignorance, the potential pawns to the deceptive ends of evil and evil doers.

Thus as with the previous discussion on Ignorance and Evil, with regard to his participation on The Secret, I'm certain Hagelin's motives likely were pure as he truly believes in the views he is proliferating. That is unlike the apparent economic motivation of its producers who selectively extracted aspects of his greater philosophy to further their own agenda. In this way he inadvertently became part of an evil scheme because of the unconscious narcissism imposed by his belief.

As such Hagelin' methodology is retrospective in that his science is used to support his and the greater religious community's unconscious belief orientation. In other words they suffer from what I refer to as Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome as they are only perceptive to information that appeal to their ego's—or as with the Emperor in the fable, to his vanity.

I however have to emphasize that in saying that "his intellect is significantly stunted by the imposition of a significantly limited worldview", I'm not implying that his worldview is more or less limited than any other religious view, except that attempting to prove any religious point of view tends to interfere with one's scientific objectivity, but moreover, one's objectivity in general. Indeed Vedanta (the greater religious orientation upon which the Maharishi institute is supposedly based) is more than a mere religion as it encompasses a very ancient – and indeed advanced – understanding of the energy systems that govern the mind and body, and which western medicine only now are coming to terms with.

Chapter Four

The Secret's Psychosis

The Genius Factor

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness. – [Aristotle]

To further highlight how baseless the many claims in The Secret are I will look a little more closely at one in particular. The following was given attention to in The Deception and there indeed are innumerable references throughout the book. But since it was paraded on the cover, is particularly revealing about the blatant falsehood that is being professed.

This centuries-old Secret has been understood by some of the most prominent people in history: Plato, Galileo, Beethoven, Edison, Carnegie, Einstein—along with other inventors, theologians, scientists, and great thinkers.

In her book Byrne also claims that Socrates (Plato's mentor) had also known The Secret. Though it is apparent that, even with possessing this supposed knowledge, was put to death for his views.

Or was he in fact persecuted because he indeed did not practice The Secret as he should have?

But then again if we follow this logic, we also have to conclude that Christ for example could not have followed it either hence his unfortunate fate.

It is also apparent that Galileo received much rebuke in his lifetime for standing by his views. This included spending his last years in house arrest under the orders of the Catholic Inquisition. It therefore is apparent that The Secret does not guarantee a comfortable livelihood as is the predominant emphasis, but also poverty, ridicule, rebuke and even death.

Beethoven's fortunes were not that rosy either. He for instance went deaf early in his life—an unthinkably cruel fate for one whose talent was based on sound. He also was known to have suffered from debilitating Dementia. Based on his life story it is clear that his was not a particularly happy one. Once again, if he indeed had known The Secret, he certainly did not use it to great effect in his personal life.

And if this logic is to be continued the same can then also be said of the life of other musical geniuses such as Mozart as well. Though what is important in this context is that they created great music in spite of their at times negative mindsets. Elvis for instance did not stop writing what many consider to be great music simply because he abused alcohol and valiums. This negative behavior notably also not preventing him from continuing to earn enormous sums of money either.

With regard to Edison, it is well known that he had a learning disability which had him disallowed from school. Though what is apparent based on the life stories of some of the most prominent geniuses, is that most had some or other learning 'disability' or apparent "mental deficiency". Retrospectively it appearing to have been the particular secret to their genius and eventual success, and not that they had acquired some magical formula.

However based on Edison's life story as well as other entrepreneurial successes such as Andrew Carnegie, one must conclude that – besides their particular genius – that their success formula was based on good old fashioned hard work as well as an unwavering belief in what they had set out to achieve.

Edison's success perhaps having been more a factor of genius than other successful entrepreneurs, though a factor he had in common with a few other business successes is that he was dyslexic—Richard Branson being particular case in point. Dyslexia in this case being the reason he had not furthered his formal studies and were forced to pursue commercial interests early in life. He also was forced to develop creative mental strategies to compensate for the inability to lean in the conventional way. This though is not a precondition for business success as the condition often is incredibly debilitating and could very well be the direct reason for the business failure of others. Donald Trump being the contradicting case in point of how a great education can also relate to a fabulously successful business career. Indeed this is so in the majority of generally unreported success stories as their success therefore is not as remarkable as when considerable obstacles needed to have been overcome.

Einstein also received much ridicule for his views for a great part of his life, his greatness only being acknowledged at a much later stage. In fact his preparedness not to retract his views despite the predominant ridicule — that he resigned himself to be a maverick scientist in the eyes of the mainstream scientific community — appears to have been the secret to his eventual success.

What is apparent about Einstein's life is that he had been very forthcoming about his views about the nature of reality. It therefore is highly likely that he would have been forthcoming if he indeed knew of any secret that had aided his incontestable rise to the apex of his profession.

Though The Secret unashamedly claims he practiced this supposed mystic formula that had allowed him to perceive his great scientific discoveries. And of course by implication, he could not conceivably have done had he not consciously or unconsciously done so.

The last very important aspect to consider regarding Einstein is that – while some claim he was dyslexic – his genius may very well have been linked to him being a carrier of the Schizophrenia gene. He nevertheless was not schizophrenic. We know that he was a likely carrier because one of his sons had the full blown disease and that this had to be genetically passed down.

To help shed some light on the issue of mental disease and genius, a combined Harvard University and University of Toronto study links genius and madness to a condition they describe as Low Latent Inhibition (or LLI). LLI being an indicator of the level of environmental stimuli the brain filters out. Those with LLI filtering out far less information, in other words it allows in far more information into the psyche than an ordinary individual would. This can be likened to the opposite of Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome, except that those with LLI are naturally predisposed not to limit the filtering of information.

This high volume of environmental information however literally has the potential to drive one insane. It is the thesis of the above study that a significant level of intelligence to cope with this bombardment of sensory information is the distinguishing factor between whether one will potentially become a genius or whether this sensory overload will drive one mentally insane.

What it comes down to is, as much as we may aspire to become an Einstein, a Michelangelo, or a Mozart, that it takes a rare confluence of genetics, circumstance, character, endurance, stubbornness, realism, madness, non-conformity, arrogance, obsession, eccentricity, humility, aptitude, daring, restraint, and fate, that one indeed would realize such greatness. And furthermore, that those who may have only the mental genius for this without much of the others, are most likely to be found in insane asylums, or begging for their daily morsels on street corners, or drowning the despair over society's rejection of their grand visions in a bottle.

The sober realization this requires is this: that the far greater majority of us, are not called upon to significantly leap humanity forward.

But rather: for the far more important task of being the custodians of the enormous collective gains we have already made.

This is an all-important responsibility, and without which we most certainly would not be likely to endure the harsh realities of life with, at al, and should therefore not in the slightest be diminished as being a very noble virtue.

Again, since the claims about these great people remotely knowing a mystic secret of any sort that had supposedly been responsible for their phenomenal achievements, clearly is ludicrous, one is obliged to question the bona fides of those who fabricated them. The conclusion one inevitably must make is that they are deliberate and convenient falsehoods giving credence to a wholly preposterous worldview so blatant, it ought to insult any reasoning person's intelligence. Yet in the final analysis, the absence of intelligence, and even a lack of education, was not the common denominator of those who fell for its lies.

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Please note that, notwithstanding the merits of the LLI theory as it relates to the onset of insanity or not, the theory is a useful one within the onset of this discussion, particular with regard to one's ability to critically assess information, or else to rather give in to reckless delusion, and how this cognitive ability has consequences for mental health.

________________

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Sotry of Success, provides a more detailed analysis of what it requires to be successful. The main tenet of Outliers is that there is a logic behind why some people become successful.He explores factors such as luck, timing, hard work, opportunity, legacy, as well as mental and other ability as a complex of factors that are in part contributors towards extraordinary success. Those individuals are regarded as outliers—those who are markedly different from the social norm.

Paradoxic Intent

The greater the emphasis on perfection the further it recedes. — [Haridas Chaudhuri]

To get a sense of why the overtly positive message of The Secret is potentially psychologically damaging it is useful to gain some insight into the very complex issues around the psychology of motivation, particularly as it applies to competitive sports.

Indeed in Sports Psychology it is becoming increasingly evident that overly focusing on the end result can be very counterproductive.

In this regard it is far better to visualize how one does something, then repeat the technique in one's head whenever one can, than actually visualizing oneself already holding the trophy on the podium. In fact the latter is considered downright psychologically dangerous, but other than it affecting one's actual performance, is also the root cause of some of the most serious mental illnesses. These psychologically destructive methods, however, is the very techniques The Secret is propounding.

In the past this had been the primary strategy employed where players were psyched up into visualizing that they had already won the event. Though what very often results, is that the very intention of winning, paradoxically results in the same psychological condition as that induced by fear.

In other words overly focusing on the positive as well as the negative is conducive to the onset of Neurosis.

Here the psychological condition which results from our overly positive intentions, is referred to as Hyperintention. While the opposite equivalent condition which manifests our fears, is known as Anticipatory Anxiety.

Thus the irony is that being overly positive can result in the same psychopathology as those who suffer from phobias.

Viktor Frankl, the prominent Viennese psychologist specializing in the psychology of meaning, in his acclaimed book Man's Search for Meaning, suggests that the effects of both Anticipatory Anxiety and Hyperintention can be countered with what he referred to as Paradoxical Intention. It being a deliberate opposite intention to what one actually would want to happen.

For instance if one sweats profusely in social circumstances, it has been found to be an effective psychotherapy to get the patient to concertedly intend to want to sweat profusely in circumstances they ordinarily would've. Similarly if one suffers from premature ejaculation, a possible mental intervention if the root cause is psychosomatic would be to concertedly intend failing at the act. In this way one would in contradiction to the intention, increase the chances of the success of one's sexual conquests because of the incongruous mental intercession.

Thus it is evident that – depending on the psychological makeup of the individual – it often is the case that the very intention of achieving a particular end result could be the very stumbling block holding that person from actually achieving it.

It therefore is evident that a psycho-neurological paradox is at play which completely disproves the simplistic positive thought message of The Secret. What paradoxical intention overwhelmingly suggests is that strong visualizations and affirmations of the end goal can be counterproductive to achieving them and that a very delicate middle ground must be sought.

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Viktor E. Frankl was an Auschwitz death camp survivor and recounted his experiences in Man's Search for Meaning. He was Professor of Psychotherapy at the University of Vienna and regarded as one of the world's foremost thinkers in this field since Freud and Adler.

Motivational Psychology

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. — [Charles R. Swindoll]

Thus what modern sports psychology – though psychology in general – has found is that: greater success can be achieved in any endeavor if there is a downplayed focus on the outcome.

Instead focusing one's attention on developing confidence in the process and practicing the respective performance techniques are proving to have the greatest impact. This includes developing confidence in the coach, one's team members, the support staff, and the training methods. What is avoided is having any concerted or deliberate focus on winning. In this regard even having great victory celebrations after achieving a significant win in a tournament is considered psychologically counterproductive and distracting. That is until one has actually won the event or achieved that final goal one has set for oneself.

This approach in part uses the principle of paradoxical intention in that the end goal is consciously relegated to the level of unimportance. That is in terms of having any active thought about it such as intentions, prayers or visualizations, albeit that it is the very purpose of all the dedicated effort.

The success of teams such as Italy in the 2006 soccer world cup, Australia in the 2007 cricket world cup, India in the 2007 20twenty cricket world cup and South Africa in the 2007 rugby world cup, attests to the overwhelming superiority of such an approach. It also is particularly effective when the statistical odds tend to be against one actually winning and as a consequence, that there was not a strong expectation of winning to start off with.

Then again the phenomenal departure of the New Zealand rugby team from the 2007 World Cup attests to the same. Before the tournament they were by far the odds on favorites having won every match and tournament before. And because of their phenomenal string of victories until then the players had an air suggesting they already had the cup in the bag. Yet regardless of their confidence, humiliatingly lost to France in the quarter finals of the tournament. This being the first time in World Cup history they had failed to reach the semi-final round. In fact New Zealand is regarded as the most powerful rugby nation but had only won the world cup once twenty years previously (though in 2011 the All blacks had taken that monkey off their back with a home World Cup win).

The English soccer team appears to have similar problem. Many decades after their 1966 World Cup win, the English public are still basking in the famous win, and at every major tournament are devastatingly disappointed in their lads not bringing back the gold as they indeed had been viewed as the favourites to win.

Another noteworthy example is that the South African cricket team is regarded as one of the two best in the world. Even while having this ranking have never won a World Cup competition, consistently choking during almost every major event. As with premature ejaculation, failing every single time it truly mattered. This happened again in the 2011 World Cup, losing to less favored New Zealand in the quarter finals.

It appears that South Africa's undoing is that they have an uncanny ability to top the world rankings at the time of any major world competition. So inadvertently also attracting the tag of favorites' and the associated expectations that follows. My own view is that the mentality of the South African public is that losing is not an option, and indeed, that they more often than not do exactly that, so much so that they are consistently amongst the top two rated teams in the world. This was also the case before the 2011 World Cup, even convincingly beating eventual winners India in the group stages of the competition.

The following comment by England cricket captain Andrew Strauss before their game with Sri Lanka is revealing about attitudes aiding winning and losing at the top level.

Whenever we went looking too far into the future we came crashing down in a big heap... that's why I prefer taking it one game at a time.

However, the ultimate example is the dramatic victory of Japan over the far more fancied US in the 2011 Women's Football World Cup. The US, the number one ranked team in the world, until then undefeated against Japan. Linking this discussion to the idea of only focusing on the positive, and only needing to send positive vibrations into the universe in order to get the results you want, juxtaposed to this notion, the Japanese coach inspired his team to give their best by showing them pictures of the devastation of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Indeed, when one considers the message of The Secret, one can well say that this can be viewed as focusing on the negative, yet it led to extraordinary success.

What must rank as the most poignant example of the consequences of hyperintetion, is the quest by the most prolific cricket batsman, Sachin Tendulkar, to score the first hundred century (scoring a hundred runs in an international cricket match)—bearing in mind that the next cricketer after him only managed 71. After regularly scoring centuries until his 99th, it took him more than one year which included tours of England and Australia and a home series against the West Indies to do so. On this quest Tendulkar commented that he personally did not make the 100th an issue, but that he couldn't avoid it as this was the only thing everyone else were interested in, and thus began to affect his own mentality as well. However, commenting after his historic knock, he indicated that he was able not to think about the hundred at all and just enjoyed playing the game. Now, after dislodging this monkey off his back, I'm certain he would resume his former prolificacy. That is, if he does choose to play the game for much longer.

A final poignant example is that of 2012 Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggens—the first Brit to do so—who refused to talk or even think about winning the event until he actually crossed the line. But moreover, that he too was not considered as an outright favorite to indeed do so.

What this suggests is that confidence, or the type of one-dimensional positive thinking proposed by The Secret in particular, does not necessarily equate to motivation, though they are by a long way not mutually exclusive terms.

If anything, the above clearly suggesting that the issues associated with motivation are complex and largely dependent on the respective personality characteristics of the individual. Though what is clear from the examples of top sportsmen is that their high levels of confidence throughout the year may not necessarily serve them well when it matters the most.

Or as the popular wisdom goes, that success is 99% perspiration, and only 1% inspiration.

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Go to Examples from the 2010 Football World Cup for more.

A Question of Faith

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. — [Reinhold Niebuhr]

The mental technique of deemphasizing the end result is essentially based on the tenets of Zen. It suggesting that, the need to win drains one of one's power. This in itself explaining the inefficacy of overly focusing on the end result.

Zen philosophy and methods suggesting one mentally detaches from the end goal while executing the task—hence the focus is on the inputs as opposed to the outcome as is increasingly becoming the focus in America. This only being possible once one mentally masters the activity one is involved in through continuous and successful repetition of components of the overall task. That is until the individual methods eventually become part of the autonomous processing of the brain.

In this regard it has been scientifically proven that repetitive visualization of the required task has an almost equivalent impact on incorporating the technique as compared with continued repetition of the actual activity—that is as opposed to merely focusing on the end result alone as suggested by The Secret.

This view is also iterated by martial arts legend Bruce Lee.

The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or in defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.

Logically speaking this view can in fact be interpreted as the very definition of the religious notion of faith. Faith in fact being a sort of resignation to fate, but not in a passive sense. Rather it requires one confront any eventuality with a full sense of awareness that one has done whatever is in one's power to achieve a desired end, but still having a sense that there is much we cannot control in spite of our best efforts.

Having faith therefore should not be a mental process that happens in a vacuum. How it is interpreted is central to all religions, but also points to some their fundamental differences. In particular this points to what appears to be a major schism between the Christian and Buddhist worldview.

Hebrews 11 verse 1 providing an excerpt which informs a predominating Christian view.

Faith is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead.

According to many Christian followers who subscribe to this worldview, prayer and devotion to God being the only necessary requirements for achievement of the ends we desire. When looking at the passage literally, there clearly is very little difference between it and the worldview presented in The Secret—though the fundamental difference is the Christian notion of receiving God's grace which counterbalances its simplistic view.

The Buddhist understanding provides a different, perhaps more realistic, perspective on this issue. In One Dharma, an exploration into Western Buddhism, Joseph Goldstein describes Buddhist faith as follows.

Faith, devotion and confidence are all translations of the Pali word saddha. All of these terms refer to that feeling that opens the mind and heart to what is beyond our usual ego concerns and desires; saddha opens us to what is greater than ourselves, to the possibility of freedom. Faith becomes both our initial inspiration to practice and explore and what sustains our continuing efforts.

This view specifically applying to Buddhist practice, but could as readily apply to any practice one is dedicated to as Bruce Lee alluded to with the following.

Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish.

Notwithstanding this pragmatic Buddhist view the practice of praying to an effigy of the Buddha for one's wishes to be fulfilled is widespread as well, and in this regard is no different to that of The Secret and other similar philosophies.

However if the notion of faith can be viewed as an acquired mental capacity – as Bruce Lee intimated previously, that it is a discipline – I believe it can indeed be a highly productive force to achieving one's wishes and desires. Specifically it should be regarded as technique to control one's emotional equilibrium when faced with an uncertain future, that is to be in a state of confidence about what is yet to happen because one had done all in one's power to meet its potential challenges and then to let it be. I also believe that on some level, that is once we've done our share of the task at hand, some greater force more often than not does appear to take care of the many details of the final execution. Albeit that in its outworking many aspects of this force may be far less esoteric than one would suppose.

Whether one believes that an underlying force does indeed do the final outworking, or not, the key here is a willingness to make peace with the idea that potential future outcomes other than the one we may have intended, may also come to pass irrespective of our efforts.

A further mistake many make is to imply complacency when an undesired eventuality does befall. Rather, faith has to do with one's prior mental state, particularly when we are faced with a future which oftentimes has a life of its own regardless of what we may have planned for or anticipated.

Disappointment, depression, melancholy, are therefore circumstantially appropriate emotional states which should not be denied or fought against given that a set of negative circumstances transpiring. In fact a false positive façade can be wholly inappropriate, and may even have counterproductive consequences in the long run as well. What indicates a positive attitude however is the steps one takes and the effort one makes to rectify the status quo.

What the greater discussion therefore points toward, is this: if we indeed are to successfully achieve our goals, the prayers for our wants and desires should rather be replaced by prayers for strength, wisdom, courage, fortitude and resilience, so to be able to endure the execution of the tasks which could get us there, but also the grace to accept any eventuality – positive or negative – with sincere humility.

However even if we have an unbreakable faith, whether we are indeed to achieve the end would largely be fuelled by the burning desire within us — our passion — which will ensure that we make the commensurate effort to do what is physically and mentally required of us to get there.

This passion can to some extent be enhanced by visualization albeit that it may be a forced and unauthentic aspiration for ourselves. Though, because of our passion, we may already clearly see and feel the desired end irrespective.

The acknowledgement we must nevertheless bear uppermost in mind if one indeed wishes to be a success, is to without fail affirm to oneself that one is a winner, irrespective of whether one actually are to win or not.

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The Alcoholics Anonymous creed "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference", is an example indicating the importance of having a balanced construct of faith for the recovering addict. It would also apply to other forms of compulsive behavior as well, but generally, can be viewed as an overall mental attitude that fosters mental health. In particular, aligning it to the context of the above discussion, articulates a practical construct for the application of faith.

Mirroring Truth

Truth is God and God is Truth. — [Gandhi]

The same general principle applies to the psychology of weight loss. A powerful example is that the most successful proven mental strategy for those who wish to lose weight, is to purposefully diminish the emphasis on losing the weight itself.

According to prominent exercise physiologist Bob Greene (Oprah's trainer), studies have shown that those who do make weight loss their primary goal, in all likelihood would regain even more weight after they indeed had succeeded in achieving this goal (a comment made on her show).

This view is reiterated by Paul Ryan's fitness coach, Tony Horton, whose mantra is "stop being attached to the outcome".

Compare this to the by now familiar ridiculous recourse of Byrne.

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. A person cannot think 'thin thoughts' and be fat. It completely defies the law of attraction... Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight.

When considering the Ask... Believe... Receive... action plan, having a vision of the ideal thin person one wishes to be imprinted in one's head, I suppose, is what it means to have a 'thin thought'. However, as will be discussed below, this amounts to a form of virtual torture.

A far more effective, and certainly realistic, motivation which will have far longer lasting results, is to instead focus on becoming healthy and more participative in life, while setting realistically achievable medium to long-term goals to get there. This being opposed to holding a grand vision that one is already thin, but still having to face the reality shattering specter of the current body one is still miserably unhappy with every time one is confronted by a mirror. Therefore only to be reminded that one is still a very very long way from the ideal picture one has fabricated in one's head.

Instead the best way to reclaim one's life is first to make peace with the mirror by fully accepting the current reflection for what it is.

In other words one has to fully accept oneself the way one is right now, regardless.

This though should not be acceptance for acceptance sake, but rather to seek the psychological cause which had allowed one to slip to such a state of despair. Then to dig deep to reclaim back one's life one painful step at a time.

And one can only do so by facing the true reason for the physical state of affairs by not being overly preoccupied by its mere outer manifestation.

Considering the level of insatiability prevalent in America at this time, it is not a surprise that Americans are the most obese people on the planet with one in every three having this condition. Obesity poignantly not being a mere reflection of the fact that Americans eat poorly or too much, but rather is an outer manifestation of a more ominous underlying societal scourge.

What must be borne in mind when considering this is that it is estimated that around twenty percent of obese individuals are so purely because of some or other biological malfunction. It is otherwise known as Clinical Obesity. Therefore that it was not as a result of emotional or other psychological reasons. As such motivational methods alone are not the answer as the only efficient recourse would be to seek medical treatment.

Though as always, a realistic positive outlook would go a long way to ensure success in such an undertaking. That is irrespective of what the actual underlying cause may be.

Happiness Delirium

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief. But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. – [Kahlil Gibran]

When arguing against the views expressed in The Secret one of the major obstacles is that it is incredibly difficult opposing a message that suggests one should focus exclusively on the positive.

The primary objection of this work however is that this requirement is far too limited and misleading. And I'm certain, purposefully so. In fact merely arguing the obvious demerits as was done in this work, is seen as such a negative act. As such, despite that various aspects of the message were targeted, this analysis unavoidably had to be an act of also shooting the proverbial messenger instead of only the message.

It is important to appreciate that by not seeing the negative clearly for what it may be, or potentially could be, is to be in denial of reality as it actually is. It rather is incumbent on us to face our reality squarely, whether positive or negative, but with the intention to turn our negative circumstances around that we may yet triumph in spite of any adversity.

This in truth should be the only definition of what it means to be positive. And intrinsic in this is that we are often required to make incredibly painful choices (otherwise known as sacrifices) that may increase our state of discomfort in the immediate future. On the other hand a false sense of positivity may only delay a cataclysmic string of events which will inevitably snowball into a future disaster.

My admittedly limited personal life experience suggests that true spiritual growth cannot be rushed. And when one is in the valley of one's life it most often does not aid one's growth by attempting to avoid or sugar coat the way things are at that time. In fact those circumstances must be seen for what they are; requiring we garner the inner strength to overcome life's obstacles and setbacks that we may reach even higher psychological heights than before.

While this may be a noble requirement, the problem with our time is that the pursuit of happiness – a freedom enshrined in the American constitution – is increasingly becoming the object of many people's striving. It has become the destination so to speak.

To cite a particular instance, I recently heard someone remark that a dear friend of hers was diagnosed with terminal cancer and that she only had a short while to live. However as per The Secret, she did not let this circumstance interfere with her current state of bliss. Instead of focusing on the impending loss of her friend, used the methods she learnt to turn her feelings of loss around by rather focusing on the beautiful memories she and her friend had shared. But also to send positive mental vibrations into the universe for her friend to be cured.

Though as much as one may feel good in the moment in doing so, one nevertheless is living one's life in denial of reality as it is presenting itself at that time.

I say this because the appropriate response based on the medical diagnosis, should have been to accept the inevitability of the condition, and to mourn the impending loss. And certainly not to think or find methods to get oneself out of the painful reality of that circumstance. The reality predicament at the time requiring she identify on the deepest level with that loved one. Though to still find the courage from within to be strong for her and to do whatever was in her power to make those precious last moments as joyous as can be. But not for her own sake. It is to accept that then was not a happy time. And as such it was incumbent on her to put her own need for momentary happiness aside. Instead to fully avail herself deeply with somebody she was supposed to have had a profound kinship with.

And after all, the good memories are not for now, but when her friend had passed on, and through which she would very much remain alive for as long as one was still alive to cherish them.

Ultimately the pursuit of happiness should not be what our life's journey is about. In fact the pursuit itself has become the very reason many Americans (in particular) tend to be unfulfilled though may present a happy façade to the world. It very much is analogous to searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow while the rainbow was the pot of gold all along.

The following extract taken from Wellbeing, one of the Art of Living Series, titled Happiness in a Mad World by English writer/philosopher Mark Vernon PhD, provides a sense of the overall folly of merely focusing on the external object of our desire, and which we believe will be the cure to our existential ills.

Psychologist Oliver James, author of Affluenza and now The Selfish Capitalist, believes that the madness does not just stem from Freud's tension between the individual and civilization, or from Eliot's observation that we have to put on faces to meet faces, but from the fact that politics has gone profoundly wrong in the English-speaking world.

We have been infected by affluenza, the notion that our most profound psychological needs – for security, intimacy, autonomy – can be met by things, decisions, actions that cannot possibly meet them. The sex addict is emblematic: they long for intimacy and seek it in promiscuity, the very action that prevents intimacy. James has assembled evidence to show that the people who suffer most from mental illness are those who suffer most from status anxiety, as Alain de Botton put it – the desire or pressure to be beautiful, famous, wealthy...

Why should this result in poor mental health, that is unhappiness?

Advertising tells us this by manufacturing desire and keeping images of how the rich live in front of us... It leads to massive debt – personal and corporate – and a fear-based career as you struggle to earn to pay the mortgage. It undermines intrinsic values... It is a bleak picture, one of massive collective neurosis... The implication is that we are missing the good life even as we think we are pursuing it...

A similar sentiment is iterated by Frankl in the forward to Man's Search for Meaning.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person (or persons) other than oneself.

Happiness must happen: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

The trick with happiness, therefore, is a very simple one: it is never to expect it, but to delight in it whenever it comes.

Or put another way: if your life isn't about being happy, you likely are already happy.

I'm sure that, if the American founding fathers were to look back on the consequences of that clause, they probably would've realized the monumental error they had inadvertently made. Yet I don't propose it be scrapped any time soon, but rather that it is incumbent on us to make the necessary mental shift that happiness may indeed ensue.

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See YouTube video of Alain De Botton on Al Jazeera – Status Anxiety in the Age of Austerity. Also refer to Is Happiness Overrated?

Comedian's Curse

There is pleasure derived from eliciting laughter from others, even though the laughter is frequently at someone else's expense. But no matter how satisfying the pleasure, it is only momentary, thus the need quickly becomes addictive... In truth, there is nothing funny about any of this. And therein lies the rub for comedians––it's an old cliché, but they laugh to keep from crying––and so do we. – [Tom Cordle]

Why do apparently deliriously happy comedians have a higher suicide rate than the rest of us ordinary boring folk?

The issue was brought to my attention in a blog post titled Happiness in a Mad World after this contribution.

Happiness is what everyone wants. Of course, who doesn't? In a world of Madness, happiness does exist as well. And for some comedian, behind their lighters there is some loneliness that makes them cry; similarly to Michael Roof. Not many have heard of Michael Roof, but it's likely they have seen him. A standup comedian and film actor, who also went by the nickname Chicken, was recently discovered as having passed away at the age of only 32. He had roles in films such as the xXx series, the Dukes of Hazard movie and Black Hawk Down. He had been reportedly struggling with mental illness, and it is suggested that he committed suicide.

To which I replied.

It's interesting that you've mentioned comedians because it's very ironic that there appears to be a very high number of incidences of suicide attempts of high profile comedians. It just shows that it's hard to discern truth from fiction these days as the perception of the jester wearing a happy face, may very well be a mere happy façade that may belie what really is going on underneath the surface. I'm certain it must be very stressful to have to be funny or come up with a funny one-liner all the time.

Based on the number of apparent incidences of comedians either dying of some or other drug or alcohol binge, or indeed ending their life, I thought I may be onto something and did some further digging. After some investigation I discovered that quite contrary to what one would expect, comedians as a social group are in fact most at risk than others.

One article I found in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Badger Herald phrased this paradox as follows.

Why do comedians do this to themselves? It seems like more than most professions, depression is a prominent condition with comedians. I guess it's the classic sad clown syndrome? the smile is sometimes only painted on. Some comedians seem to have no happiness of their own, aside from the moments when they provide happiness to others.

Even in death, especially in the age of the Internet, they can at least rest assured that they are still providing people with happiness.

This is a sure example of how truth certainly seems stranger than fiction, and that perception very often is very far removed from reality. The next time you see a happy face, and think "if only I could be like that", you may very well be completely mistaken as to who the truly happy cheerful one actually may be.

But moreover, it may well be that the happiest amongst us are more than likely those who have learnt to laugh at ourselves.

Slipping from Reality

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer? – [George Price]

The previous discussion on the psychology of motivation and happiness is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg of what can be a very exhaustive treatise. In this regard visualization and affirmations most certainly are powerful tools that can be used to achieve our goals. But when using them, once again, we must be cognizant that matters of the psyche are not in the least bit as easy and foregone as many neo soothsayers wish us to believe.

To make any psychological headway despite our physical or other circumstances, we should reflect on what reality actually is. The first realization, is that reality and Truth, are synonymous. Furthermore, related words for truth are objectivity, integrity and wholeness. Hence being in one's Truth ultimately is about how our inner sense of who we believe ourselves to be, is also congruent with the greater physical world we are an intrinsic part of. And as much as our consciousness deviates from this, we may for very good reason be regarded by those who view our incongruous actions, as being out of touch with reality and therefore mentally ill.

Thus the greater issues associated with success and failure, are deep rooted psychological matters which must go hand in hand with having a coherent sense of self. For this reason very superficial means of focusing the attention on externally defined achievement alone, more often than not, can be incredibly counterproductive—that is both psychologically as well as in the actual outworking of events. In fact these methods may well cloud our pathway to defining our unique sense of purpose and meaning, and therefore the pathway to our uniquely personal definition of success.

It therefore is important to realize that a discussion is entirely floored if it suggests only one mental orientation without regard for the situational appropriateness of the recommended mental response. Thus the issue for instance should not be about optimism versus pessimism.

Besides that it often is a direct consequence of a particular personality type, to at times be pessimistic when appropriate can in fact be the most productive approach to have depending on the circumstances one is confronted with. For example the more pessimistic Jews who did not see any hope for themselves and their families during the Nazi regime, because they were pessimistic in this regard, were motivated to flee and settled in countries such as Britain, the United States and Australia. On the other hand those who still had faith in humanity and that their old lives would someday be restored, experienced the most inhuman indignity in German and Polish concentration camps.

With regard to the above, pessimism usually is associated with realism, while optimism is generally associated with idealism. These states of being, however, should not be mutually exclusive conditions that are confined to how we may philosophically define ourselves, or that they are hardwired in our personalities, but ought to be cognitive responses we choose based on the circumstances we are confronted with at any point in our life. Thus to be pessimistic when there is absolutely no good reason for it, but merely because one considers oneself a realist, also is to be completely out of touch with reality as it may present itself at any point in time.

The previous section also only focused on Neurotic Disassociations that can result from being overly focused on the positive. Though more prevalent and destructive are Delusional Disorders resulting from unrealistic associations with reality. In particular, that being unrealistically, or euphorically, over optimistic with inflated self-esteem and freely expressing grandiose ideas are conducive of Bipolar Disorder.

What however happens is that, the coming to terms with one's limitations and the true state of reality as life circumstances and situations tend to do, literally is depressing. Regardless of the respective person's brain dynamics, such a predisposed individual may yet avoid the eventual lows. That is if they develop a capacity to psychologically modulate the highs which would invariably result in the debilitating slumps.

Thus while being overly pessimistic is indicative of Depression, being overly optimistic can equally be an indicator of potential mental malaise. This though is less obvious because of the positive association. For this reason those who are inclined to be manic depressive is well advised not to participate in a lottery or go gambling as they would be disposed to mentally as well as actually spend their winnings before they had won it. And for the same reason those with such proclivities would be drawn to overtly positive doctrines such as The Secret's, but in all likelihood would exacerbate their disease.

Another less obvious but particularly prevalent mental pathology associated with religious views (orthodox and new age), is where individuals develop a self-righteous disposition because they believe they have adopted a superior life philosophy. A particular incidence is that of cutting out supposed negative influences and negative people from one's life in the belief that these individuals are holding one back from being happy.

Interestingly it is very often the case that those who make such pronouncements, that is the person doing the cutting out, more than likely would be the real toxic party in the relationship. Their actions being a perpetuation of their continued denial of their personal role they are unconsciously playing in the greater drama of their life.

________________________

Also refer to  How We Opt Out of Overoptimism: Our Habit of Ignoring What Is Real Is a Double-Edged Sword.

The Pathology of Hope

There can be no true despair without hope. – [Bane (The Dark Night Rises)]

Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. – [David T. Wolf]

Perhaps the following extract from an article titled Pathologies of Hope by Barbara Ehrenreich I stumbled upon on a skeptics blog (though originally in Harper's Magazine) is useful to consider in the light of some of the issues raised until now.

I hate hope. It was hammered into me constantly a few years ago when I was being treated for breast cancer: Think positively! Don't lose hope! Wear your pink ribbon with pride! ...

I got through my bout of cancer in a state of constant rage, directed chiefly against the kitschy positivity of American breast-cancer culture. I remain, although not absolutely, certifiably, cancer-free down to the last cell, at least hope-free.

Do not mistake this condition for hopelessness, in the beaten or passive sense, or confuse it with unhappiness.

The trick, as my teen hero Camus wrote, is to draw strength from the "refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation." To be hope-free is to acknowledge the lion in the tall grass, the tumor in the CAT scan, and to plan one's moves accordingly.

Admittedly this quote definitely is€€ on the too cynical side, though it nevertheless raises a crucial question.

If one is faced with a bleak forecast, what is more productive: seeking a constructive course of action that would get one out of that circumstance and be weary of all the potential dangers ahead; or to immerse oneself in the illusion that one's salvation will happen of its own accord?

To indirectly answer this question, it usually is the case that those who are the most jaded and cynical amongst humanity, more than likely at some point in their life were of the most optimistic and enthusiastic about the prospects for their life. And in particular, those who once had unwavering faith that their fellowmen will with open arms welcome their creative endeavors. It's not that most people are bad or even have negative intent. Indeed it is not so, but one's optimism often becomes a magnet for the leaches of humanity, who because of one's naivety, may purposefully seek us out.

Hence the reality is that life very often plays itself out in the exact opposite way as that proposed by "The Law of Attraction". Because of this, as time wears on and we experience the indifference and opportunism of others, one likely will perceive the world as largely uncaring to one's dreams and ideals. That is other than how they can directly benefit from us.

Consequently the sooner we learn that it is incumbent on us within the limits of our own power, to do whatever we personally can to bring our dreams to fruition, the more successful we likely will become.

To this history attests that "many of the greatest achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who simply kept on working" (unknown author).

Thus by all means aspire to become rich, but don't think you can fool the universe into giving you a head start. The bottom line is that if this is what you truly wish for, you're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way — by earning it through your intellect, cunning, resourcefulness, sacrifice, compassion, endurance and sweat and tears, as opposed to merely setting out with a hope and a prayer — to even stand a remote chance of doing so.

In other words, by not having any delusions about what such an ambition requires of you.

Nevertheless, irrespective of the circumstance, the ability to muster a positive attitude even if the odds are not in our favor always is more beneficial than being in a state of despair and hopelessness. That's beneficially mentally, but also in what may actually transpire.

That is regardless that one may very well be deluding oneself.

Demise of Critical Thinking in Action

Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life – [Marilu Henner]

The questions linked to the issue of hope I want to answer in this section are: Did Brandon Bays have Cancer? And how May this be linked to the Death of Steve Jobs?

I at first had no intention of researching Brandon Bays on what on initial deliberation did seem dramatically spurious claims—that she cured terminal cancer by positive thinking and a vegan diet. That is until I noticed that the search words "Brandon Bays Satanist" had been used to access this book. My initial thought was that someone had a serious religious gripe against this woman. However at more or less the same time my wife Fiona had been diagnosed with colon cancer (a familial disease in her case), and had to have an emergency colostomy (the complete removal of the colon).

On this news a family member started spewing (at least that is how it felt) how Brandon Bays miraculously cured her cancer through positive thought and that Fiona can do the same. I found this highly offensive as I was certain, given the prognosis, that nothing else but aggressive medical action was going to save Fiona's life, albeit that a positive attitude would surely help the process. I then decided to do more research on Bays. And based on which I decided either one of the following three scenarios could be the reality regarding her assertions.

Firstly, that Bays did cure herself of cancer as she claims. However it is apparent that no medical doctor or medical institution had indicated that she indeed had cancer of any type although she did refer to this in her book. For verification of such an audacious claim and the medical implications it could have it would be reasonable to expect Bays to indeed provide such definitive evidence. Though, since medical records are private, it cannot be proved to the contrary by an outside investigator either. On the other hand the very absence of such clear and easily obtainable proof which would readily put aside very serious question marks about the claim, in itself should cast significant doubt on the truthfulness of her claims. The evidence provided suggest that a naturopath of some sort was the supposed medical person who made the diagnosis. No offense to naturopaths intended as I think they can be of great benefit in preventative health in particular and as a complimentary regimen in recovery, but that the qualified person to make such a definitive assertion should be a relevant medical specialist. That is someone who is a trained pathologist who actually examines the affected tissues, not someone who merely looks into one's eyes or makes some or other superficial diagnosis. Apart from the veracity of the claim, assuming that she had a miraculous recovery, this should not mean that hers now become an accepted protocol for curing all disease. Thus that all disease somehow is a consequence of embedded "cellular memories" which now has to be remedied by some or other "spiritual correction"—in Bays case, the process of Journeying.

The second is that Bays had some other condition which was misdiagnosed by the alternative therapists she had sought. In that case the tumor in all likelihood would have been imminently curable. The following response on a  Skeptical Community blog discussing this matter is useful to consider in this regard.

I imagine you'd have a problem investigating this case, given that private medical records are involved. Access to such records might be extremely difficult if not impossible.

We do know that women can be susceptible to a transfer of genetic material, which can enter certain cells in a woman's body, causing abdominal swelling, development of a rather large sac of fluid, plus growth of the genetically combined tissue within that sac. We do know that good nutrition is routinely recommended by doctors who deal with such cases. We also know that the typical duration of these conditions is approximately nine months. The course of the condition is so typical that predictions can be made to the day of its normal termination. However, surgery is often required to relieve the condition and to remove the growth as well as the accumulated fluid."

In addition, many of these cases terminate spontaneously prior to the usual normal nine-month termination point, for a variety of factors. It is possible that in the Brandon Bays case, poor nutrition and overdoses of minerals caused a weakened condition that led to early termination, although if the "tumor" was indeed "basketball sized", that termination would have been quite dramatic. Some herbal remedies are contraindicated for women in the condition described earlier; if the woman's diet has been explained in detail, maybe one or more of such herbs was included in her diet.

If the description of symptoms of the tumor match those of the condition described here, it could cast suspicion on the diagnosis of "tumor", which is not sufficiently descriptive to identify precisely what was growing in the woman's body.

The third is that Bays is an outright fraud, and thus that she had maliciously set out to fabricate medical claims for financial gain. If indeed so the problem is that it is as clear a medical fraud as Bays did not fabricate her credentials claiming that she was a medical doctor or some or other medical expert. She also had not provided a physical substance which could be examined that she claimed as being the potential cure. In her case it merely is the claim that she had cured cancer by her own means. Importantly, suggesting that any doubt or thoughts that diverted the full belief in the process would negate its efficacy. On all accounts a very difficult prospect to prosecute in the conventional way, and it certainly appears that legislation as it currently stands is ill-prepared to do so unless there is a direct death as was the case with James Arthur Ray.

From my limited investigation I cannot definitively conclude any of the three, but if one is to employ a very basic level of critical thinking to the above one can only conclude that either two or three is the likely answer—particularly given the absence of Bays medical records and that this conclusion can ultimately be a life or death one for many. And even if she indeed had cancer, it is not helpful — and it is indeed very dangerous — to infer that all cancers can now be cured this supposed full-proof protocol. The problem here is directly linked to that discussed in The Pathology of Hope, and that such fabrications and equivocation of facts do well up a sense of hopefulness that the any disease can be cured. Moreover, without the negative side-effects of what an actual cure may acquire—and as in Fiona's case, the rather unpleasant prospect of having to live without a very important organ. The reality is that it indeed is depressing. As iterated many times in the book, being depressed when confronted by a bleak or undesirable future reality is not being negative. In fact it is the very opposite as the one's depression signals a willingness to accept the negative prospect and thus to make the required adjustment. Notwithstanding this, not letting the depressing reality get the better of one and therefore to drown in depression is the far greater challenge, and indeed, the true challenge which will increase one's odds of survival.

It is important to understand that it is not ignorant or unintelligent individuals who fall for this type of contrived suggestion. For instance Apple Founder and late CEO  Steve Jobs delayed his cancer treatment for nine months to seek alternative therapies, including spiritual therapy. Alarmingly what is evident from media articles is that his rare imminently pancreatic cancer had been detected at a very curable stage, but in his delay to undergo aggressive treatment had progressed to a form which significantly minimized his odds for survival. John Travolta's son Jett too may well have died as a consequence of his belief in Scientology, and that he therefore did not explore the full range of medical help which may have been at his disposal. A colleague in my faculty – an eminent professor – had made a similar decision and also subsequently succumbed to cancer because of it.

Why Jobs circumstances is critical to consider in the context of this book is that he more than the vast majority were best equipped to take advantage of such "cures". That is particularly as far as financial means is concerned, but moreover, that he is a particularly positive "can do" individual. But instead his hesitation to deal directly with the reality of his disease, had allowed it to progress from imminently curable to terminal in that nine month period. By this I do not want to be critical of Jobs and his decision, one that his biographer indicated he came to regret, but that I merely am doing it to put forward the lesson. It is that even he – one of the most rational inspirational minds in the world – in the desperate circumstance of have a deadly disease may have become vulnerable to the likes of Bays "spiritual" innuendo.

I am also not disputing that "miracle remission" of disease does from time-to-time occur. The reality, however, is that they are exceedingly rare, and that the few are normally quickly and dramatically brought to our collective attention. Furthermore, at least when one considers the religious definition of miracles – the receiving God's grace – that to wait in expectation of a miracle more than likely is the surest way not to have it occur. What however is apparent is that most miracles come about in very ordinary ways, such as detecting the disease early, or finding a particularly good medical doctor who is very versed with the associated pathology.

What seems to be common with these "ordinary miracles" is that they appear to be serendipitous. Serendipity being defined as "the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for". "Things not sought for" appearing to be at the heart of the definition. Though, because they were not sought for to begin with, these extraordinary "coincidences" more-often-than-not are not noticed.

This serendipity conundrum, then, is the real dilemma that those enamored by the likes of Byrne and Bays ultimately are faced with. And its eventual conclusion may very well be deadly.

Most Precious Gift

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. – [Vaclav Havel]

Perhaps I'm putting too demanding a requirement on hope, a word which to many embodies a very special place of solace away from their respective humdrum, tumultuous or demanding lives. That there at least is an imaginary semblance — even if it is a mere chance — that their world may yet be better than the limitations they may currently feel themselves confined in.

At this point it is important to take a mental pause and stop to reflect on the following for a while.

It is imperative to grasp that I'm not arguing that hope in-and-of-its-own is a pathology, for that it certainly is not.

Rather, that hope in isolation or hope that has no foundation, can be extremely counterproductive, even pathological, in the long run when one bases much of the intended outcomes one wishes to achieve for one's future largely on it.

In fact the absence of hope is reflective of how well one had prepared for any eventuality that may lie ahead.

As such the dividing line between delusion (and therefore one's sanity) is drawn very fine indeed if hope is the overwhelming factor one had harnessed for one's possible success.

So for instance hopefulness is the primary pathology of the gambling addict. In this regard this insightful comment by poet David Jimenez from a discussion on my deleted blog, provides a very useful perspective.

I see Sanity is a three legged stool, with hope, cynicism, and 'life' each a leg that keeps it Stable. I use life as a leg rather than chaos or the unknown which to me mean the same thing in this case. That is, forward momentum in time without the benefit of knowing what the future will bring.

What is critical to grasp from The Pathology of Hope is that hopefulness is not necessarily about achieving results, but rather about the ability to pick oneself up from any state of destitution, and to still stay the required course in spite of impending hardships along the way. Therefore that it is not the mere façade of groundless positivity.

However the paradox of hope is that, whenever one is confronted by circumstances where there is a near impossible situation to overcome and where there truly ought to be no hope, hopefulness is all we may have to carry us through to the other side. For then, all we truly do have is nothing but hope.

One must also guard against false hope or hope for hope sake as this is the single greatest destroyer of sanity, even more so than hopelessness itself. This is because hopefulness in-and-of-its own can be a form of seeking a release from reality, or a virtual resignation to the impossibility of the circumstance of the moment, and thus an abdication of one's power to forces that are not in one's ambit of control.

As mentioned before, not that such acceptance is a bad thing per se, particularly when one really does not have power over a particular circumstance. On the counter side though, is that for a death row inmate having no realistic chance of a release, having hope which invariably would be dashed, in all likelihood, would become the ultimate psychological death sentence. In this case the most prudent course is a virtual resignation, an acceptance, of one's inevitable fate. That is, unless he is actively working on an escape which in this case would not be such a bad preoccupation.

Admittedly, as aspirational forces faith, hope and belief are our greatest motivators that at times can inspire us to superhuman achievement. But as CNN journalist Anderson Cooper once said in the wake of the resulting confusion of the Hurricane Katrina disaster that: "Hope is not a plan". Or the Arab saying: "Pray to Allah, but tie your camel anyway".

In this is the all important lesson.

It is that hope and belief has power because of the motivational energy it allows us to muster. Not that it creates the reality we want merely by hoping and believing it so.

This dangerous notion, however, is exactly what The Secret preys on through the purveyance of its unscrupulous religion. That the hopefulness of the vulnerable, the ill befated, the sick, the destitute, the desperate, but more often than not, simply the lazy and greedy, places them at great risk of such potential exploitation.

It therefore is incumbent on us to consciously guard against this omnipresent scourge, not to be sucked (or suckered) into its delusional web of deceit.

It therefore is far more beneficial to our sanity to be skeptical and cynical about these matters than to become uncritically enamored by them.

For us to grow to full mental and emotional maturity, a delicate middle ground must be sought. This requires the recognition that the only single thing in all reality we are truly fully responsible for, is our sanity.

For this reason we must be cognizant that our state of mental health is more precious to preserve than anything else we could ever hope for, desire or possess.

________________________

Also refer to The Conjurer in The Seven Shades of Darkness.
Conclusion

Victory is often a thing deferred, and rarely at the summit of courage... What is at the summit of courage, I think, is freedom.

The freedom that comes with the knowledge that no earthly power can break you;

that in the end it is the courage of conviction that moves things, that makes all change possible.

~~~~

[Paula Giddings]

I'm certain by now many are concluding that I must be against setting bold visions for oneself and that I most definitely am anti-belief.

In fact as an innovator my own pathology is that I as a natural consequence of my personality disposition tend to see the end very vividly. So much so that I already can feel and live it in my mind without making any effort to do so. And because of this I also am perhaps far too optimistic and confident about actually achieving these ends, often unrealistically so. This being the pathology of most inventors who in the overwhelming number of cases do not reap the economic rewards of their grandiose ideas. For this reason I'm forced to consciously temper my positive thinking, a mental balancing act of sorts, or else risk losing my objectivity as a result.

To put it bluntly: the ability to conjure up arbitrary fanciful visions, of itself, does not make one a visionary, but very often merely a fool or a romantic daydreamer, and in the worst case, mentally insane.

The problem with the dreamer, not being the size of their dreams, but that they more often than not set unrealistic goals which they cannot reasonably accomplish given the resources at their disposal.

What distinguishes the truly visionary from a mere dreamer, is in the ability to perceive the negative in advance, yet to proceed undaunted knowing exactly how it should be contended with if the circumstance does come to pass. As such they can discern the good and the bad with equal measure, though spend considerably more time on what may go wrong.

In fact the following is a very unrecognized fact that distinguishes such a visionary from the ordinary person seeking his daily comforts. It is that, if one is incapable of consciously perceiving the negative, one is also incapable of perceiving the opportunity it may present. The opportunity being inherent in the fact that reality is far from the ideal we would prefer, and by bringing it into our consciousness, we can begin to solve the difficulties it may yet present.

Thus the issue is not about visualizing itself, but rather about the claim that visualizing the ideal end will of its own assist in achieving the end we want. On the one hand it is certainly so for an artist or inventor or architect as they must be able to fully envision their creation in their mind for it to eventually be realized. This being a prerequisite to the particular vocation.

This would also be useful if one is to design and build one's own house, the vision therefore providing both the mental focus as well as motivation to achieve it. The vision (or dream) being the inspirational force galvanizing our attention and energy to accomplish the particular goal we had set.

However envisioning how one will spend one's earnings before one has in fact earned it, is where the mental dynamics becomes tricky and where one could find oneself sliding down the very slippery path of delusional fantasy which leads to despair. This is as the reality one is faced with refuses to conform to what we may have conjured up in our dreams.

Therefore one's motivation for setting a vision is important to consider. If it is a Z3 roadster we want the universe to fabricate for us or that we will attain our dream mansion in Malibu with the lottery we 'will' very soon win if we just intend to spend a portion of it on the less destitute, we are completely missing the point.

The reality is that the most powerful visions are not even visual at all. They essentially are firm personal commitments we make to ourselves that fills us with a subtle inner energy (or confidence) that drives us inwardly to see our goals and objectives through to its end in spite of the obstacles we're confronted with.

The purpose therefore is to aid us in sticking to what we believe is possible given our inherent potential, and then to stay on that mental course in spite of adversity. Often this resolve requires one hold a single unwavering grand idea for many a year, even decades, until the objective circumstances allows it to finally come to fruition. In this way our attention becomes galvanized against the uncertainties of life that we may persevere what at times can be a long and bitter course.

Having belief in one's ability however will vary depending on the circumstances one is faced with. But most importantly, whether it indeed is to come to pass, largely depends on how realistic our vision proves to be. Because of circumstance our belief in ourselves and what we have set out to do, may at times even be nonexistent. Then again our belief may have been so unrealistic to start off with that the vision must be soberly re-evaluated. So to perhaps be completely discarded if one is to actually live a meaningful and prosperous life.

At this point it is important to take a long mental pause before soberly considering the following.

It is that: when one starts off on a grand undertaking, one cannot afford to be deluded into thinking it will be smooth sailing.

In fact truly successful individuals tend to expect and plan for the absolute worse, yet in doing so are not daunted by the possibility of failure. Though in having this attitude, not to be taken off guard by any potential eventuality. On the other hand to believe that the size of one's endeavor does not matter, and that "The Universe" will calm all storms that otherwise would've wreaked havoc with our undertaking, is so frighteningly counter conventional wisdom, that the psychological and economic destruction it spells, we are yet to fully witness.

This then is the all-important part of the reality paradox The Secret conveniently failed to convey. It failed to convey this because it is not wisdom it wishes to impart. This is an intolerable omission that will sooner or later seal our doom in a harsh world that has scant regard for our wishful daydreams.
Final Note

This analysis of The Secret started when I first saw Oprah's promotion of the DVD and book, upon which I decided to write a letter airing my concerns. This eventually evolved into the book. Incidentally it was a very polite letter complimenting her when she warned her listeners not to take The Secret too literally after it came to light many enamored by the book sought remedy in The Secret instead of taking conventional medication—this included taking lifesaving cancer medication. I however was confused when she commented that there were others 'laws' at play, and that the Law of Attraction was not the only one—in retrospect she may have referred to Beckworth's the Law of Circulation amongst other similarly esoteric ones.

Aside from the strong assertions that were made in this text, I must declare that I nevertheless find Oprah's achievements inspirational and her shows for the greatest part very uplifting and insightful. In fact more so than most other similar shows. As a rule, however, I prefer not to lose my objectivity over her or any other apparently generous and benevolent public figure, and take such overt gestures of benevolence with a pinch of salt. After all it simply is good public relations which consequently resulted in her glorified appeal.

Other than the impact of her overwhelmingly positive public façade, another reason for having focused on her is that she also is a prime example of one who at times has shown an incredible lack of capacity to think critically. In my view more times than should be allowable or deemed acceptable by such an influential public figure. Hence she is also a great public example of the consequences of not fully engaging this capacity—that is assuming her actions with regard to the promotion of The Secret had not been a deliberate commercial act.

This is reflected by the many questionable guests and products she has promoted over the years. But the light bulb moment for me was her grandiose promotion of The Secret. In fact if it was not for her endorsing it, I would not even remotely have contemplated this manuscript and criticism of her as I otherwise would not have had a single compelling reason to indeed do so. But moreover, that since she promoted the book, the most influential person in the world's spiritual life is now being guided by a self-confessed 'former' criminal—a co-author of the book.

When one considers Oprah's contribution to society, one should also not be enamored by it for this should be the standard we ought to set for those with such a lofty public profile. However when assessing this, we should also ask if it counterbalances what one can regard as the considerable subliminal harm she also has done, and in my view, to the very fabric of society.

This danger is very strongly worded by Peter Birkenhead in Oprah's Ugly Secret.

For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character"... And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented.

Not that any of this is new... The big, big difference is, well, the bigness. The infinitely bigger reach of the Oprah's empire and its emissaries. They make their predecessors look like kids with lemonade stands. It would be stupidly dangerous to dismiss Oprah and "The Secret" as silly, or ultimately meaningless. They're reaching more people than Harry Potter, for God-force's sake. That's why what Oprah does matters, and stinks. If you reach more people than Bill O'Reilly, if you have better name recognition than Nelson Mandela, if the books you endorse sell more than Stephen King's, you should take some responsibility for your effect on the culture. The most powerful woman in the world is taking advantage of people who are desperate for meaning, by passionately championing a product that mocks the very idea of a meaningful life.

For this reason, because life has bestowed on her the power to singly affect the world in a way that no other ordinary person can, the responsibility not to be used as a pawn in human decay, must be significantly greater if you happen to be Oprah. Therefore I do think she needs to be held accountable for many of the negative effects of promoting her ideology, and The Secret in particular. Specifically the "sweat lodge" deaths, but also those who had died of cancer, or are now suffering the effects of depression, all because they unquestioningly trusted the Oprah brand. And my considered view is that she had greatly abused that position of trust, as unfortunately it appears to be the case, society at large appears not to hold her seriously to account.

What it comes down to is not that one necessarily stop watching her shows as she does very often provide a useful and entertaining service. But to in the very least, guard against the very subtle spurious life philosophy she appears to be hawking while one is blissfully doing so.

Addendum

Addendum

Transcendental Meditation: Harmful Effects

Meditation: Concepts, Effects and Uses in Therapy by Perez-De-Abeniz, Alberto and Holmes, Jeremy, International Journal of Psychotherapy, March 2000, Vol. 5 Issue 1, p49, 10p.

Abstract:

This article reviews 75 scientific selected articles in the field of meditation, including Transcendental Meditation among others. It summarizes definitions of meditation, psychological and physiological changes, and negative side-effects encountered by 62.9% of meditators studied. While the authors did not restrict their study to TM, the side-effects reported were similar to those found in the "German Study" of Transcendental Meditators: relaxation-induced anxiety and panic; paradoxical increases in tension; less motivation in life; boredom; pain; impaired reality testing; confusion and disorientation; feeling 'spaced out'; depression; increased negativity; being more judgmental; feeling addicted to meditation; uncomfortable kinaesthetic sensations; mild dissociation; feelings of guilt; psychosis-like symptoms; grandiosity; elation; destructive behavior; suicidal feelings; defenselessness; fear; anger; apprehension; and despair.

Excerpt, Physiological Effects section: "In summary, it seems that meditation has a bimodal biological impact along time. Initially there is a physiological relaxation response in the short term. This effect also corresponds with findings in the study of imagery on brain activity as described by Laine et al. (1997). More enduring hormonal and metabolic changes can later be detected in experienced meditations, some 12 to 18 months after starting meditation practice."

Excerpt, Side-Effects section: "Not all effects of the practice of meditation are beneficial. Shapiro (1992) found that 62.9% of the subjects reported adverse effects during and after meditation and 7.4% experienced profoundly adverse effects. The length of practice (from 16 to 105 months) did not make any difference to the quality and frequency of adverse effects. These adverse effects were relaxation-induced anxiety and panic; paradoxical increases in tension; less motivation in life; boredom; pain; impaired reality testing; confusion and disorientation; feeling 'spaced out'; depression; increased negativity; being more judgmental; and, ironically, feeling addicted to meditation.

"Other adverse effects described (Craven, 1989) are uncomfortable kinesthetic sensations, mild dissociation, feelings of guilt and, via anxiety-provoking phenomena, psychosis-like symptoms, grandiosity, elation, destructive behavior and suicidal feelings. Kutz et al. (1985a,b) described feelings of defenselessness, which in turn produce unpleasant affective experiences, such as fear, anger, apprehension and despair."

Meditation: An empirical analysis of pathogenic structures as an aid in counseling Bensheim, Germany: (Institut fur Jugend Und Gesellschaft, Ernst-Ludwig-Strasse 45, 6140.) Institute for Youth and Society, 1980 (188 pgs).

Excerpts from the full study:

4.3.3 TM has a detrimental effect on the decision making process. There is loss of self-determination and a turning toward the TM authorities for guidance, i.e. in the case of important decisions. Also, the variables, facial expression, bodily posture, voice and handwriting point to the fact that the total personality is gravely altered under the influence of TM.

4.5.4 Whereas before the TM phase performance at school was well above average, and those investigated were most happy with their school or job situation, a considerable worsening in these areas occurred as a result of the practice of transcendental meditation. 56% had decreased concentration abilities during the TM phase, only 16% reported an improvement. 61% found it more difficult to manage the workload, as against 13% who reported an increased capacity. TM had a negative influence on the professional careers of 58% of meditators. Altogether 28 meditators (42%) gave up their studies or professional career in order to work full time for the TM movement or to be able to go on long courses. They did this on the basis of promises made them by the movement. An analysis of the taped interviews and the stenographer's scripts only serve to strengthen the suspicion that the TM organization aims at cheap labor, which in the case of those people who became unfit to work in the course of time, can be sent away again without any real difficulty.

4.6.6 In 76% of cases psychological disorders and illnesses occurred, 9% of meditators had had therapeutic treatment before the TM phase, 43% had psychiatric treatment or had to have medical treatment during the TM phase. The psychological disorders most prevalent were tiredness (63%), "states of anxiety" (52%), depression (45%), nervousness (39%), and regression (39%). 26% had a nervous breakdown and 20% expressed serious suicidal tendencies. Psychological illness already present before the TM phase worsened considerably. TM can cause mental illness or at the very least prepare the way for the onset of mental illness. A lack of opportunity for the treatment of meditation experiences and/or altered perception of reality create suitable conditions for a pathogenic appearance. Added to this is the heightened delicacy and increasing helplessness in the personality of the meditator, which can develop into a complete depersonalization.

5.6.4 The suspicion grows that the meditation offered by TM, caused, in the meditators' cases which we have investigated, a far reaching alteration in the view of reality, which damages or causes further damage to social relationships, the drive to achieve (motivation) is considerably lessened, to the degree that practical work (i.e. in a job) becomes intolerable to the meditator, in addition to all conditions brought about by the intense practice of the meditation, it gives rise to physical and mental damage.

________________________

Extract from articles taken from behind-the-tm-facade.org website.

Krishnamurti on Mediation

A mind that is in meditation is concerned only with meditation, not with the meditator. The meditator is the observer, the senser, the thinker, the experiencer, and when there is the experiencer, the thinker, then he is concerned with reaching out, gaining, achieving, experiencing. And that thing which is timeless cannot be experienced. There is no experience at all. There is only that which is not nameable.

You know, in all this there are various powers like clairvoyance, reading somebody's thought – which is the most disgusting thing to do: it is like reading letters that are private. There are various powers. You know what I am talking about, don't you? You call them siddhis (these are expert TM practitioners discussed in The Enlightenment Effect), don't you? Do you know that all these things are like candles in the sun? When there is no sun there is darkness, and then the candle and the light of the candle become very important. But when there is the sun, the light, the beauty, the clarity, then all these powers, these siddhis – developing various centers, chakras, kundalini, you know all that business – are like candlelight; they have no value at all. And when you have that light, you don't want anything else.

Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy-if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

Man, in order to escape his conflicts, has invented many forms of meditation. These have been based on desire, will, and the urge for achievement, and imply conflict and a struggle to arrive. This conscious, deliberate striving is always within the limits of a conditioned mind, and in this there is no freedom. All effort to meditate is the denial of meditation. Meditation is the ending of thought. It is only then that there is a different dimension which is beyond time.

Meditation is the emptying of the mind of all thought, for thought and feeling dissipate energy. They are repetitive, producing mechanical activities which are a necessary part of existence. But they are only part, and thought and feeling cannot possibly enter into the immensity of life. Quite a different approach is necessary, not the path of habit, association and the known; there must be freedom from these. Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness.

Personal Note

I meditate whenever possible and convenient and do not find the practice personally harmful. I also attempt to do a yoga session once a week, but I find active exercise such as running and cycling far more therapeutic and relaxing.

From my own experience, I find meditation helpful, but as the studies seem to suggest, the eventual effect is dependent on the respective personality traits of the individual, but moreover, the grouping one participates in. While there are a number of journal articles indicating the dangers of meditation such as the one's referred to before, the greatest preponderance in fact show that mediation is greatly beneficial, however studies have specifically found pathologies in TM. My personal meditation is a simple breathing meditation focused at stilling the mind and I have no other ambitions (such as meditating for world peace) than merely having greater mental control.

Importantly, the dangers are associated with altered mind states – commonly referred to as being in a spiritual state of being, or a state of nirvana – where will and desire is lost, and replaced by a permanent restful state of being. This being synonymous to the 'meek' state Tolle referred to and can in fact be referred to as a "process of zombification".

This altered state I find problematic as meditation should merely be an exercise that allows one to have one's normal emotional states, but that it affords one greater cognitive mastery over them. In particular that one has greater control over one's negative emotional responses such as anger as well as an ability to regulate anxiety and stress. In fact research shows that it will improve focus and concentration and is considered the best natural therapy for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorders, and in the long-term, far more beneficial and effective than prescription drugs.

Finally, with reference to the discussion by Krishnamurti, "not thinking" refers to not thinking during meditation—which is its ultimate goal—and not "not thinking" per se.
Pondering the "Vaccines cause Autism" Debate

To begin with, I haven't made up my mind on this issue, incidentally, a fundamental requirement for critical thinking. And really, it is not an overwhelming issue in my neck of the woods—that is here on the Southern tip of Africa. So this piece is not directed towards anyone I know in living in my immediate surrounds.

At first glance the preponderance of credible evidence does point into a particular direction. It is that vaccines do not cause autism, or in the very least, that it is not a significant contributor that possibly could account for the dramatic increased incidence over recent years. Vaccines were also largely administered in the US long before then, thus the dramatic increase since 2000 does not coincide with the wide administration of vaccines in the US over more than 40 years.

I generally did not pay this issue much heed but an interview with Dr Stephanie Seneff, a MIT researcher, prompted some investigation. In another article she convincingly argues that glyphosate herbicide could be a contributing factor in causing autism, though not vaccines per se. She however is considered by activists against vaccination as strongly providing an argument against it. Her argument against glyphosate herbicide, used in common household weed killer, makes sense and she appears to have the statistical data to back it up. And surely, she would've been fired from MIT if she had made spurious assertions. It also is not helpful to call her a quack since most great pioneering scientists were indeed referred to with such derogatory language. She however does not definitively point to vaccines as a primary causative factor, although she does lead towards it as they too contain similar harmful chemical components.

Notwithstanding her argument, the increase incidence in the US is far more marked than elsewhere though they vaccinate worldwide. Given the steady increase, particularly in the US and other industrialized nations relative to less developed nations, there must be a direct environmental cause not prevalent to the same extent there. This therefore points to a greater environmental causal factor in the US other than vaccinations. The volume of supposed causative chemicals is additionally small relative to other agents generally found in the environment. Another diminishing factor is that vaccines are usually administered for one year olds and older, and the dose of harmful chemicals administered at that stage could most likely not be as detrimental as earlier childhood environmental factors would've.

Providing some clarity on the cause, a 2014 University of Chicago study suggests:

Essentially what happens is during pregnancy... there are certain sensitive periods where the fetus is very vulnerable to a range of small molecules – from things like plasticisers, prescription drugs, environmental pesticides and other things. Some of these small molecules essentially alter normal development. Autism appears to be strongly correlated with rate of congenital malformations of the genitals in males across the country, this gives an indicator of environmental load and the effect is surprisingly strong. The strongest predictors for autism were associated with the environment; congenital malformations on the reproductive system in males (that is given that males have a more than 5 times greater incidence).

The following extract from extract from the Harvard Health Review is also quite revealing:

Factors may also be responsible for the increasing rates in post-industrial countries... This immune dysregulation is post-industrial specific because of the way our immune system evolved. According to the "Biome Depletion Theory," our immune system co-evolved alongside microbes and parasites, of which are lacking in urban, post-industrial societies. It is therefore our lack of parasites or microbes interacting with our immune system that is causing our immune response to overreact. This is consistent with the observation that in some developing populations, such as in Cambodia, rife with parasites and infections, the autism incidence is extremely low. In this case, a probiotic drug that is able to control the inflammatory response in pregnant women may be able to prevent some of the onset of autism.

Perhaps what the above suggests is that the obsession with health and cleanliness in industrial nations, therefore, may ironically well be the indirect cause. This applies to other diseases as well. For instance pig farmers, but children exposed to farm animals in general, have a much lower risk of developing asthma and other respiratory diseases. This, as in Cambodia, is most likely because of their ubiquitous exposure to disease which consequently boosts their immune systems.

In fact that is exactly what vaccines do: providing a controlled exposure to disease to mitigate actually getting it.

I do however think that, other than the basic dread disease vaccinations, flu vaccinations and the like are mostly unnecessary and often may well be driven by profit. The problems experienced by Pakistan because of the Taliban's killing of vaccination officials on the other hand is an example of the consequences of not vaccinating against polio for example, and highlights the incredible human suffering that could result if we do not do so.

The definitive study that could answer this question would be to determine the ratio of autistic kids who were vaccinated against those who are not. A study from the Philippines indicates that those who are vaccinated do significantly better, even cognitively, than those who were not. Why the Philippines is an important study sample is that it has a relatively high unvaccinated population. This is opposed to the US where the benefits of vaccination are spread to the relatively small unvaccinated population because the general susceptibility of getting the disease is significantly decreased in advanced societies. So in a way, the unvaccinated individuals in industrialized societies are immunized by the significant population that is.

In the final analysis it is clear that the issue is not with the vaccines – i.e. the genetic organic compounds that counter the disease. Rather it is the chemicals used to administer it that appears to be the problematic factor cited by scientists as the concern.

Thus for me the solution to the problem appears to be obvious. Instead of spending vast amounts of money developing new and largely unnecessary vaccines, perhaps big pharmaceutical conglomerates should err on the safe side and take the claims made by Seneff and others seriously. Thus to rather change focus towards manufacturing less harmful, though perhaps more expensive, alternatives to safely deliver the life-saving vaccines that are already out there.
Motivational Psychology:

Examples from the 2010 Soccer World Cup

It's notable how some of the world's greatest football strikers, more often than they ought to, choke when the most vital victory is at stake. And very often how the relative nobody's or even non-strikers are the one's sealing the vital triumph. The latest case in point being Portuguese world player of the year Ronaldo – though not a striker but a leading goal scorer – missing a crucial penalty in the UEFA Champions League that could've cost his team a place in the final of the competition. During the final he was the only Manchester United player to miss his shot in the crucial penalty shootout that surely should've cost them the cup. That is had it not been for the most unlikely miss by Chelsea captain and absolute stalwart John Terry who slipped because of the wet underground conditions. He also has not scored once in more than two years (with the exception of a penalty) for his national team Portugal. He was also voted ad the flop of the 2010 football world cup in South Africa by CNN's Alex Thomas (his colleague Pedro Pinto, a fellow Portuguese, however voted Wayne Rooney).

The 2010 World Cup has provided quite a number of examples pointing to the complexity associated with Motivational Psychology, and often, that high levels of motivation may in fact be a deterrent to success. World Cup Winners Italy and runners up France for instance was unceremoniously kicked out during the first round of the tournament while favorites England and Spain had to fight hard not have the same fate. To underscore the above argument, Spain's coach intimated when arriving in South Africa for the tournament that he felt that his team was a bit too confident after their record-breaking run of wins, and indeed their loss to Switzerland may have been the catalyst that may spur the team to a higher level of performance, and particularly by not becoming complacent by taking their opponents for granted, which may well have been the reason for Italy and France's poor performances—the most likely reason is that, in their complacency, they underrated the ability of some of the perceived minnows in the tournament.

Regarding England's unceremonious departure from the Super16 stage of the competition with their worst world-cup defeat ever and the best paid couch of, is that they had the most expensive coach of all and a team full of superstars, while the youthful German team were not given much of a chance by many pundits. In fact polls that were conducted showed that German fans were happy if their team reached the quarter finals, while for English fans, the only outcome they were interested in was winning the competition.

USA provides another example. Goal-keeper Tim Howard indicated before the tournament that Team USA preferred having the underdog status as this puts less pressure on them while usually also spurring them on to do much better than expected—for instance by unrepentantly having become the runners up to Brazil in the 2009 Confederations Cup. This attitude also took them into the second round of the 2010 World Cup, but was unable to go further notwithstanding a relatively easy tournament draw in which they should have stood a very good chance to reach the finals.

Former England international John Barnes suggested after their loss that the USA's excellent performances in the qualifying rounds and their 'easy' draw had significantly increased their belief that they could go all the way, and that many Americans, echoed by utterances by president Obama, believed and expected that they indeed could do so. As a consequence Barnes iterated, they no longer went in as the underdogs, and that this changed perception may well have affected their eventual performance that had eventually lost them the game.

I admit that there were other factors, including that Ghana was the better team on the day, but, considering the context of the discussion, that a world class football international had suggested their changed status from perceived underdog to potential world cup winners may have been a psychological catalyst for this particular loss.
Copyrights Issues pertaining to use of Extracts

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

Scourge in part is a critique of The Secret and the extracts used in the book are related to the general thesis of this work. It is that the intent of The Secret is to deliberately misdirect the facts in order to confuse its readership. The use of the content therefore is to point this out by directly referencing the relevant text which provides such substantiation.

The extracts therefore are used in terms of Section 107 (Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use) of Chapter 1 of Title 17 of The United States Code (aka Copyright Law [Fair Use Provision] see Addendum – Copyright: Fair Use Provision).

With reference to section 107, as previously intimated this work is a critique of The Secret and the extracts referenced are used to provide the substantive basis for this criticism.

As per Section 107(2), the nature of The Secret is that it purports to reveal a natural law of the known universe as a definite scientific fact. This claim allows it to be scrutinized in the form of such a critique for it to be evaluated in order to ascertain the validity of the claims. Ascertaining such veracity can only be done by examining the direct excerpts from the book. It is also contended that the greater public good in providing clarity on this material outweighs the right to exclusivity of use as stipulated in the provisions of sections 106 and 10-6A.

As per Section 107(1), the work is not distributed for commercial gain. And per Section 107(3), the amount and substantiality of the portions used are not significant in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole and served merely as substantiating references within the greater context of the critique.

Energy Marketing by Joe Vitale

This extract is used based on the same motivation as above. This article is used to provide corroboration of the intent of Joe Vitale, a contributor on The Secret, as expressed in the associated published content of the book.

The Crowd: A study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon

The work of Gustave Le Bon has been available for general use in the public domain since 2002.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Copyright © 1959, 1962, 1984, 1992 by Viktor E. Frankl.

Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.

Wellbeing by Mark Vernon

Copyright © 2008 by Mark Vernon, PhD.

Published by Acumen as part of the Art of Living Series.

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