Currently Reading: The Magic

Rhonda Byrne is a self-help superstar. The once-obscure television producer from Australia became a household name in 2006 when she produced a simple talking-heads-style film about New Thought ideas and the Law of Attraction and released it as The Secret. Someone - it is not clear who - came up with a simply brilliant promotional campaign based on networks and influencers and releasing different versions of the film to key tastemakers and influencers. I worked in a New Age bookstore at the time, and remember dozens of people coming in and telling me how they had been given a version of a new film that was going to change the world....
It was a whisper-campaign that worked, and the film was quickly turned into a book which became a mega-seller which culminated in Byrne's appearance on Oprah. The Secret became a cultural artefact, and was ridiculed and scorned by people on all sides, all the while speaking in some way to the general public as it went on to sell millions of copies across the world.
Byrne has herself never been much of a self-promoter or even a public figure - she rarely gives interviews, and is something of an enigma. This year she has quietly released a new book called The Magic. Its emphasis is on gratitude and on the active expression of gratitude. This, says Byrne, is the key to a successful life. By actually invoking the words "thank you" we are employing a a metaphorical magic spell, hence the book's name.
For all of her critics and detractors (and they are myriad), Rhonda Byrne, or her team, is good at producing simple, clearly-expressed texts that communicate very well the basic tenets of New Thought, a religious idea that dates back to the 1860s. I am, in fact, a fan of Byrne's work, and I think she is one of the truly great post-modern authors, producing books that owe more to the traditions of television, film, advertising and  the oral traditions of Protestant Chrstian worship than to stale literary traditions and formats.
Though her message is repeated constantly, there is not an ounce of fat in The Magic - it has been edited to perfection and is an inspiring and entertaining read.
The central message of the book is that gratitude must be cultivated self-consciously. Byrne connects this to biblical narrative and the Western Mystery magical traditions, employing her usual scattershot approach to references, citations and quotes from across the canon of self-help.
I'm interested in the fact that this book kind of launched itself, with very little fanfare. I had no idea it even existed till I was browsing through Kinokuniya bookshop in Bangkok a month ago and saw a modest pile of the books on a well-placed table. Considering just how many copies of The Secret were sold, you would think the publisher would make more of a song and dance about a new book from the same author. Perhaps Byrne's famous reticence and shyness have an impact here. As it is, each new instalment in The Secret franchise seems like a surprise.
I call it a franchise deliberately. The Magic is designed and branded in such a way as  to advise the reader that this is an extension of The Secret. The cover art is an extension of The Secret's usual antique magical motif, and the first thing you see on the cover is the imprint of The Secret itself, above the title of the book. I think we are being presented with a series here, the publisher determined to remind the reader of the famous  book in order to sell this new one.
The book's format appeals to me because, unlike The Secret which was the presentation of quotes and ideas designed more for occasional inspiration than applied reading, The Magic is presented as a practical workbook, filled with 28 exercises designed to enhance the application of magical gratitude in your life.

"You will be captivated while you read this life-changing knowledge, but without practicing what you learn, the knowledge will slip through your fingers..."

It's an interesting exercise because there is not a great deal of literature that deals with the concept of gratitude as an exercise in mental and spiritual development.
Interestingly, a prominent Australian writer contacted me recently to tell me he has been working his way through The Magic and getting a great deal from it, because it was dealing in concepts and techniques that he had never actively considered before.

Catherine Ponder and the Rich Jesus

I am still working on my The Secret chapter -  it is the final chapter and seems as though it will never end.
One of the authors that Rhonda Byrne urges people to read is Catherine Ponder, who, she says, teaches the truth of the Bible stories - that Jesus, the prophets and patriarchs were in fact wealthy people who despised poverty.

When I worked in a New Age bookshop in Sydney in the 90s and 2000s Ponder's books were very popular, despite their high price. Published by DeVorss publications, Catherine Ponder is a Unity minister (ordained in 1956) who wrote quite a number of books, all based around her particular reading of the Bible as a prosperity text. After her endorsement in The Secret, it seems as though her books have reached a whole new generation of readership, and I notice that the Rev. Dr. Barbara King, one of my favourite women in the world, is teaching at the moment a course based on Ponder's books at her New Thought-based Hillside Chapel in Atlanta, Georgia.
I have gone back to look at Catherine Ponder's book The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity - a substantial text at 430pp. Ponder's style is folksy and engaging, and highly reminiscent of the earlier books of Florence Scovel Shinn. The book is filled with miraculous stories of people who have applied the techniques of New Thought in  their lives and achieved marvellous and unexpected results, usually in the shape of improved finances, work opportunities and greater prosperity. Ponder urges her readers to re-awaken to older dreams of greatness, happiness and wealth, and to employ the usual New Thought technologies of visualisation and affirmation to progress towards greatness. 
I'm not sure that Ponder needed to write quite as many books on the same theme as she did - the central message is repeated ad infinitum - but I have no doubt that she was sincere in her beliefs and her passion and enthusiasm is patent in her writing style. Hers was a thoroughly New Thought vision of the possibility of all people to be great, to be rich and happy and ultimately useful. There is, as well, something of the old-fashioned self-help notion of thrift and financial indepenedence, not to mention self-responsibility. The Ponderian subject is financially independent, working hard to enjoy good and beautiful things and to help others who may be less fortunate.
Ponder sees the individual as the primary source of their own poverty. The natural state is one of wealth, and if we would only stand aside we would allow the Universe to assert its own inevitable prosperity in our lives once again. She writes:

"In order to become financially independent, to the extent of having a constant financial income, it is necessary to discard a number of negative attitudes."

For Ponder, the first step towards wealth is the reorganisation of the mind, filling it with images of the  things we want and of the limitless possibilities before us. No wonder she is endorsed so heartily in The Secret.

• For more information about Florence Scovel Shinn, one of Ponder's principle influences, look here
• To read more about Catherine Ponder on her publisher's website, look here
• An interview with Rhonda Byrne, creator of The Secret

The Law of Attraction

Probably one of the most vilified tenets of self-help philosophy is the concept of The Law of Attraction. This "Law" has achieved a significant amount of cultural currency in recent years due to The Secret - basically, the Law of Attraction WAS The Secret (sorry if that's a bit of a plot spoiler!), and many millions of people encountered the idea for the first time there.
But it is a mistake to think it is a recent invention. Rhonda Byrne herself freely admits that she came across the idea of LOA while reading the works of Wallace Wattles, books published around the turn of the 20th century. The idea in its recognisable form can probably be dated back to Charles and Myrtle Fillmore and the Unity School of Christianity in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
What is the Law of Attraction? Simply put, it is the idea that whatever you think about, you attract. As the Buddha used to say in the opening credits of Monkey, "With our thoughts, we create the world."
This idea goes well beyond the pioneers of New Thought, of course. This kind of "mind only" philosophy has a long history in Buddhism and, before that, Advaita Vedanta schools of Hinduism. I think the real difference between these Eastern and Western forms is where the emphasis lies. For the most part, this realisation in Hinduism and Buddhism is meant to lead the seeker to try and transcend this world, realising that ultimately nothing is real, and all is meaningless, a creation of our desire. Law of Attraction as it has manifested in popular American thought has been directed in a thoroughly more worldly manner: since we're creating our world, how about we create a really nice one.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. Indeed, many of the spiritual practices of Mahayana Buddhism involve just this process, visualising the jewelled Buddha lands and the extraordinary treasures of various divine realms. The Law of Attraction enthusiasts are, if anything, a shade more honest than most of their consumerist counterparts, by recognising that they want nice things in their world, and seeking to create these things at a metaphysical level. Whether or not you believe this is possible is a whole other question, and one in which I do not engage.
What I do find interesting is the vehemence with which such beliefs are denounced by those who don't share them. As religious beliefs go, I consider the Law of Attraction a pretty benign one. It certainly beats a whole lot of other worldviews, including those of most who pour such scorn on the LOA scene.
At its simplest I really just see LOA as a Western re-casting of the same ideas of karma and rebirth that are subscribed to by pretty much most of the Hindu and Buddhist world. As such, it attracts many of the same criticisms and is subject to all the same shaky logical and philosophical premises. It's just that, being an idea seen (incorrectly) as the product of modern consumer culture, it is subjected to the kind of paternalistic scorn that people would never dare direct toward a Hindu or a Buddhist.
The fact that it is always described as a "Law" is also significant. The new religious movements that emerged in America at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were all, to some extent, responding to modernity. One of the ways they did that was by casting their new ideas not as religious revelations, but as much more scientific-sounding "Laws", "Principles" and "Sciences."
Apart from The Secret, the great proponents these days of the Law of Attraction are a cuddly pair of middle-American trance channelers called Esther and Jerry Hicks. Esther channels the voice of a disembodied entity called "Abraham" and this material sells wildly throughout the world, making the Law of Attraction more and more one of the strongest contemporary popular religious beliefs.

The Secret

I've just read all the way through The Secret. This book will take up the entirety of the final chapter of my thesis, and it is a fascinating object of study.
Of course, part of its interest to the literary scholar is the fact of it being so excessively - and unashamedly - intertextual. There is really very little in the book that is original prose - most of it is quotes from motivational speakers, or excerpts from much older New Thought books. This makes it a treasure-trove for me, allowing me to mine it for its influences and its references, all of which it wears very much on its sleeve.
The Secret still manages to infuriate people, and whenever I mention I am working on self-help books for my PhD, 8 people out of 10 will bring up The Secret. Such a powerful cultural artefact is a rare thing indeed, and I am always fascinated to hear why people dislike it so. They have invariably never read it, and have no idea about the social, cultural and religious movements that inform its philosophy. But its enormous popularity seems to give people some sense of ownership over it, and everyone seems to have an opinion one way or another.
My take on The Secret? Well obviously I can't give a whole chapter's worth of critical analysis here (mostly because I am yet to write that chapter!), but I see it as a manifestation of quasi-religious faith, and hope for a pleasant future in a world that offers people very little of either. Most people that read and enjoy The Secret and view the movie do not, in my experience, belong to any particular church or espouse any particular religious faith. And so the message of The Secret is something quite new to them, and something to which they can respond positively.
When I was in Melbourne recently a dear friend told me that The Secret was listed on a website called Things Bogans Like, and I was fascinated by this. Because I think that this encapsulates a large part of why self-help - and The Secret in particular - is so derided in some sectors. It is consumed by working-class people, and speaks largely to their hopes and dreams. As such it falls well outside of what is designated as high culture - particularly any kind of literary culture - and so is still open to the kind of paternalistic condemnation that other genres were once subject to.

Reviling The Secret

I find it interesting that, six years after its release, The Secret still has the power to excite the emotions of people, especially journalists and commentators. Just a couple of weeks ago the Sydney Morning Herald contained not one but two mentions of The Secret in its weekend edition, both, naturally, condemnatory.
This is fascinating because it proves the immense reach and impact that The Secret has had on our culture - one of the central premises of my thesis, as it happens. The hostility toward it as cultural artefact and popular-religious text also speaks to my other premise, which is that many writers, theorists and commentators have an extremely limited knowledge of the history of religion and of popular literature. If they did even the slightest amount of research in the area they would find much to intrigue them, and they also wouldn't slip so easily into foolish, uniniformed and paternalistic cliches when talking about the genre.
The Secret is, for the most part, a collection of much older texts and ideas re-packaged for a 21st Century audience - interestingly, it largely strips the overt references to theism and Christianity from the writings and and instead re-casts the central tenets of New Thought in a manner much more palatable to a secular readership.
As we know, New Thought, the philosophy that informs The Secret, is not new - it's about 150 years old now, and is loosely based in any case on much older mystical notions that can be found, without much trouble, in the literature of most of the older religions.
Because The Secret has been immensely popular, and because it is targeted so bluntly at a post-literate, short-attention-span kind of audience, it is easy to make fun of it. But to my mind it is a cheap kind of joke, and speaks more of the writer's underlying elitism and lack of knowledge than their rapier-like wit.
In her piece ostensibly slamming the soft-liberal, ecological subtext of the film Avatar, Miranda Devine makes a doozy of an error in equating this kind of philosophy with the ideas that inform The Secret. Even a cursory amount of research would have shown Ms. Devine that New Thought is more closely associated with the rhetoric of libertarianism, individualism and utilitarianism, and explicitly rejects the kind of millenarian ecological rhetoric that underlies Avatar. Most people of Mr. Cameron's political stance find the ideas of The Secret repugnant, re-inforcing as they do the primacy of personal choice and responsibility, independent of identity politics and other broader social movements. If anything, the philosophy of The Secret is almost entirely in line with the liberal neo-conservative values espoused by Ms. Devine herself.
Later on in the paper Tim Dick provides a ho-hum kind of opinion piece in which he offers us his not-very-interesting take on The Secret. In a particularly vitriolic (yet vapid) passage he says:

The only thing Byrne proves is how idiotic our mindless aspirations can make us, and that it is possible for human society to regress. The success of the ''book'' is surely one of the great bafflements of recorded time; that this ''positive'' mumbo-jumbo can top bestseller charts while great works of fiction struggle, even though most fiction is closer to reality despite being entirely made up.

Putting aside the fact that the comparison he makes is pointless, this passage points to his complete dis-connect, not just from the history of religion, but from the history of literature itself. It is no "bafflement" that a book espousing most of the central ideas of modern Western culture should strike a chord with readers, particularly since the dawn of printing such books of popular advice, exhortation and hope have always sold extraordinarily well, and outstripped fiction in both sales and cultural influence.
I am heartened by the fact that self-help attracts critics from all sides of the political spectrum, often for wildly contradictory reasons.
But let's ease up on making cheap observations based on a book you probably haven't read, and a historical cultural movement you've made no effort to research or understand. It's just not funny.

Esther & Jerry Hicks

Probably the biggest stars on the self-improvement circuit right now are Esther and Jerry Hicks, an unassuming, middle-aged couple from Arizona who have slowly built up a following until, around 5 years ago, they suddenly became massive.
Mrs. Hicks is a channel, and she channels a disembodied collection of entities that, rather confusingly, go by the singular name Abraham. The copious books and CDs produced by the couple are, in fact, the teachings of Abraham, though the name Esther and Jerry Hicks appears prominently on book jackets etc.
The message of Abraham seems to be a perfectly innocuous collection of New Thought ideas, with a heavy emphasis on the Law of Attraction and the concept of co-creation. In truth, it is hard to know why the books are so enormously popular. They have a tendency to ramble, and are incredibly repetitive. I suspect it is the sheer folksy charm of the Hicks, and the relentless positivism of the message. There is also a distinct message of the inevitability of progress, which I suspect is also comforting in a world that is normally heavy on the doom and gloom and the downward spiral of humanity's journey.
Jerry Hicks credits the influence of both Napoleon Hill (Hicks was a teacher of Hill's methods for many years) and the channeled Seth writings of Jane Roberts. These latter are what inspired Esther to accept her own talents as a channel.
The Abraham material is focused on the idea that we are at a particularly important juncture in universal development, and that all people are capable of flowering and prospering if they will only do the necessary spiritual work and cultivate a sufficiently positive worldview. The books, audios and DVDs are normally reproductions of talks and seminars conducted by the Hicks, replete with question and answer sessions from the audience. With this format it would appear that the potential to produce new material is endless, and certainly their publisher, Hay House, is pushing out Abraham stuff at a rate of knots. It will be interesting to see if the market can continue to absorb such a high volume of releases.
The Hicks' have become incredibly influential on the New Age/Self-Help scene. They were the original inspiration for the movie The Secret, but by all accounts they withdrew over financial issues, and The Secret was eventually unleashed on the world without their contributions. Both Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay are great fans of the Abraham material, and constantly endorse it.
Hay House has been quite visionary in its handling of the Hicks and their work. Realising that more and more consumers are moving away from books, Hay House has focused just as much on audio and DVD in its Abraham releases, and it seems to have been working for them.
It is hard to be offended by the Abraham material, as it is entirely free from controversial claims and statements. My only reservation regards the style of the books, and the basically unedited nature of the content. There really is an enormous amount of duplication from book to book, and I daresay that the serious reader need only read one of them to get the full gist of Abraham's message.

Wayne Dyer

Dr. Wayne Dyer is the godfather of the contemporary self-help scene.
He rocketed to fame in the 70s with his saucily title Your Erroneous Zones, a self-help classic that I can remember everyone was reading when I was a child. I think the local librarian even banned it, thinking it too racy for a small North Queensland town.
Ever an energetic self-promoter, Dyer's face loomed large on the cover of that book, and he bore a striking resemblance to my father. He still does, as a matter of fact, so that may be the reason for my fondness for him.
Dyer's work has shifted with his readership over the years - from basic, psychology-based self-help to more spiritually inclined material. He was banging on about the law of attraction long before The Secret, and in recent years he has been basing his work on the Tao Te Ching.
Apparently he is returning to his roots in Jungian psychology, and is very big on the idea of "the afternoon of life," which is borrowed from Jung. I have just bought his newest book, but am not very far in, so can't report on what influences are obvious in it yet.
Dyer was at the forefront of producing audio visual product based on his work, maybe seeing the limited future (and earning potential) of books. Last year he released a very fine film, which seems to have largely escaped people's notice. He declined, apparently, to appear on The Secret - a decision I'm sure he's been kicking himself over ever since. I recently listened to a CD of he and Marianne Williamson in conversation, and the regret they both shared over dismissing Rhonda Byrne's offer was palpable. Which just goes to prove, you're never too big to turn down a promotional opportunity.
I like Dyer's recent work. Very much, in fact. I think that, as usual, he is absolutely tuned in to the zeitgeist and has seen that people are looking for an excuse to step back a bit and stop pushing their lives so frantically. I'm also interested in the way that he has re-incorporated Eastern ideas into his life and teaching (I think in his early years he was an enthusiast for Ram Dass' guru).
He's a likeable figure, avuncular and relentlessly sensible. And incredibly productive - I don't know how he maintains the energy!