In our book, we will obviously be talking only about the soft, natural change of belief systems, through gradual acceptance of new, true knowledge.
There immediately arises the pointed and fully reasonable question: but where can one find true knowledge about the soul, Universe and meaning of life? And how does one separate the “wheat from the chaff” if we live in an ocean of illusions and fallacious conceptions? (Recall the multivolume Encyclopedia of Delusions that we referenced in the first chapter). How does one avoid falling from one delusion into another, no less harmful? Where is that prophet who can be trusted?
In modern times, the shelves of bookstores are literally breaking under thousands of books claiming to be “textbooks for life.” Among them there really are wise guides for changing one’s conscious, but readers’ skepticism renders them useless. Overcoming this most widespread of worldviews is undoubtedly difficult, and if an author didn’t work to include weighty enough arguments in defense of his or her views, the book will either be met with bayonets or will be indifferently laid aside after the first unsuccessful attempt at implementing it. This failure, of course, is written off by the reader as the author’s fault, not understanding that it is precisely the inadequacy of one’s own faith in the recipes presented that renders them ineffective.
The thing is that lack of faith is also a faith, but with a minus sign. For example, if a person doesn’t believe in his or her abilities, they believe that they don’t possess them. And the strength of the faith with a “plus sign” and faith with a “minus sign” are identical. As such, even the slightest distrust in information is capable of fully neutralizing it.
In 2006—2007 Australian television and radio producer Rhonda Byrne’s documentary film The Secret and her book by the same name, written about the contents of the film, received wide popularity in many countries all over the world. The film, released on DVD, and book not only became popular, they were thunderously successful and underwent millions of printings throughout the world. Time magazine included Rhonda in its 2007 list of most influential people in the world, and soon after this she was included in the Forbes rating of “The 100 Most Famous People.” The essence of The Secret can be briefly laid out:
Our thoughts are concrete and form reality around us in agreement with the Law of Attraction, according to which “like attracts like.” All that remains is to think positively and all aspects of your life – family, finances, love, health, and others – will change in the most magical of ways.
In support of this idea Rhonda Byrne conducted interviews with many dozens of people who she considered “gurus” and “experts”.
Any popular work, be it a book or film, which creates a wide resonance throughout society inevitably divides viewers or readers into two camps: ecstatic supporters and fierce opponents. Since the theme of Rhonda Byrne’s film and book is so closely intertwined with the contents of our book, we will allocate a bit of time to this work.
Before all else, we’ll immediately define our position: we fully share the fundamental idea of The Secret and consider Rhonda Byrne’s film and book absolutely correct and extremely beneficial. But we can simultaneously establish the sad fact that these works turned out to have little effect. This is explicitly proven by the surveys we conducted among thousands of students of our School, among whom The Secret was as popular as it was throughout the world. Among our students there were no opponents of The Secret; all those polled about it gave favorable responses. But to the question how did The Secret influence their lives, an absolute majority responded “no influence whatsoever.” Naturally, we weren’t satisfied with such a response and began to dig for the reason – we were already working on our book at that time and were concerned about its future effectiveness. Here is what we found:
Practically none of the respondents worked with the book The Secret. They read it, approved and placed it on the shelf. People didn’t underline phrases in the book, didn’t write them down on note cards, didn’t reread it a second time; in general, they did nothing to ensure that the ideas laid out in the book penetrated their subconscious and became part of their worldviews. And ideas that haven’t seeped into the subconscious don’t work! Only having reached the subconscious will ideas begin to create, to call up automatic reactions associated with them, as in the surrounding world (by attracting and forming events) so in an individual organism (by healing, change in figure, etc).
The second reason for the low effectiveness of The Secret lies in the fact that the majority of readers (noting that we are speaking here only of our students) didn’t unconditionally believe in the Law of Attraction and the concrete nature of thought. These ideas contradicted their previously formed material worldview and Rhonda Byrne’s proofs didn’t strike them as convincing. One system of views can only take the place of another (particularly a contradictory other) under the influence of extremely strong arguments; the new system needs to dislodge the old, to defeat it through strength of proof. But such proofs were only seldom revealed in Rhonda Byrne’s book. Regarding The Secret’s “gurus” and “experts,” people said: “These are not experts, but simply propagators of positive thinking, like Rhonda Byrne herself, and nothing more.” In reality, among those the author included as experts there were primarily psychologists, motivational and personal development trainers and “experts on achieving success”. They presented correct ideas, but didn’t reinforce them with scientific facts, proofs and experiences. A few short scientific references couldn’t influence the unconvincing situation as a whole. Meanwhile, namely scientific proofs for the materiality of thought and the Law of Attraction already sufficiently exist, and we will turn to them several times in the pages of this book.
The Secret’s weak scientific base gave an avenue for opponents to fall upon it with a hail of criticism, which extended even to rude accusations. “outlandish psychology,” “thoroughly false occult story,” “masterful phrase-mongering,” “closely tied to witchcraft and pagan movements,” “devoid of anything scientific,” “an insatiable vampire, sucking all blood from its victims” – this is far from a full list of the epithets awarded to The Secret and its author by Jean-Charles Condo and Natacha Condo-Dinucci in their book Enquête sur Le Secret. Their critical arguments are very characteristic of all skeptics, and as such we will turn to them time and time again in order to help our readers look into definitively complicated questions. As an example let’s examine just one of the many assertions of Enquête sur Le Secret’s authors:
“All modern scientific thought points to the fact that the Law of Attraction is nothing more than an imagination game. Despite The Secret’s assertions, thoughts are not magnetic waves that permeate the universe, and also, not one scientific experiment worthy of being called such has shown that mental processes can exercise direct influence on the surrounding world or the course of events” [16].
First of all, in terms of “all modern scientific thought,” research in the area of quantum physics refutes the claims of Enquête sur Le Secret’s authors and provides evidence in Rhonda Byrne’s favor. Enquête sur Le Secret itself once again affirms our thesis about the wide spread of ignorance and skeptical worldviews.
We suggest that you acquaint yourself with legitimately scientific concepts, look what conclusions modern science came to regarding