In Tune With the Infinite - Ralph Waldo Trine

I am slowly working my way through the classics of New Thought, and have just finished what is probably the grandaddy of them all, Ralph Waldo Trine's 1897 In Tune With the Infinite.
In Tune With the Infinite is one of those books that you see referenced everywhere. Quotes from it regularly start chapters of New Thought books, and Trine's name is invoked even now in all kinds of self-help books. In Tune With the Infinite was motor magnate Henry Ford's favourite book of all time, and he gave copies of it to all of his executives, insisting they read it. Ernest Holmes, founder of the Church of Religious Science, was great fan of Trine's work, and to date In Tuune With the Infinite has sold over 2 million copies.
That said, it is not an easy book to read. Written in the slightly flowery language of its day, In Tune With the Infinite probably deserves some more careful re-reading to get past its stylistic failings. And yes, I acknowledge that it's foolish to criticise an author for conforming to the literary conventions of his day, just because expectations are different now. I just feel I should warn prospective readers that an amount of patience is needed when reading the book. Though not long, it is packed with ideas, and really is in many ways the sourcebook of New Thought teaching.
Trine was s tudent of world religions, and one thing that really does shine through the book is his deep indebtitude to the ideas of the Eastern faiths, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism. In many ways In Tune With the Infinite is a reworking of the doctrine of karma, rendering it in a more theistic way and making the idea more palatable to a Western mind trained in conventional Christian ideas.
And like most New Thought writers of the time (and since), Trine was keen to emphasise that he was not advocating a new religion or a new set of dogmas and fanciful supernatural ideas. He advocated rationality in the face of the mystical, and the book is surprisingly free of the overtly devotional language that one encounters when reading Charles Fillmore or any of the later New Thought writers. He saw the new attitude as one of science and reason yoked to a spiritual vision based on quite a sophisticated understanidng of God and the universe:

"Reason is not to be set aside, but it is to be continually illumined by this higher spiritual perception, and in the degree that it is thus illumined will it become an agent of light and power."

An advocate of science and reason, Trine could also see the dangers of a more thourough materialism, and wanted his readers to negotiate a western Middle Way between the two. And while convinced of the infinite possibilities of the human mind, he was also no advocate of magical thinking. Like his more stolid Victorian forebears, people such as Samuel Smiles, he endorsed hard work as the very best way to ensure happiness, prosperity and good fortune.
Self-help critic Micki McGee suggests that Trine's work popularised the transcendentalism of his namesake Ralph Waldo Emerson, and melded it with a more materialist philosophy, the fusion becoming the very essence of New Thought.
"Thoughts are forces, subtle, vital, creative, continually building and shaping our lives according to their nature" says Trine, setting out clearly what would become the ultimate trope of self-help writing until the present day - the notion that our material reality is a product of our own thinking. As problematic an assertion as that is, it is one that carried (and continues to carry) an immense cultural power, and Trine's influence on the modern imagination and concepton of the self has been greatly undervalued.

Practising the Presence - Joel Goldsmith

Joel Goldsmith is a fascinating figure in New Thought, one I have written about before.
Growing up in a Jewish home in New York, Goldsmith became a Christian Science healer as a young man, having witnessed his own father's miracle cure at the hands of Christian Scentists. He would quite quickly, however, break away to establish his own school named, after his bestselling book, The Infinite Way.
His books definitely lie at the more mystical end of New Thought teaching, and Goldsmith and his followers seem to have been always aligned more closely to Christian Science than to the more free-wheeling milieu of New Thought. Indeed, much of his philosophy seems to me to be almost entirely a re-iteration of Mary Baker Eddy's teachings, though with a slightly less dogmatic spin, and a more willing and enthusiastic nod towards the richness and validity of other relgious traditions.
After The Infinite Way, Practising the Presence is Goldsmith's most popular and frequently cited work. As the title would suggest, it deals very much with the same territory as that great Catholic mystical classic The Practice of the Presence of God. Oddly, Goldsmith never mentions it.
Like all of Goldsmith's work, Practising the Presence is a meditative, poetic and brief text, dealing, in several small chapters, with the different ways the spiritual practitioner might be able to deepen her experience of the Christ within. It is actually quite beautifully written, its concise nature making it constantly inspirational and giving the reader pause to reflect on their own exercise of spiritual discipline - most specifically prayer and meditation. In fact, the practice of prayer and meditation take up two full chapters, and is dealt with extensively in the others.
A note on the title: I read a 1958 edition published in England, and it is spelled "Practising" - later US editions seem to spell it "Practicing." This is the eternal England/US practise/practice controversy that I still haven't quite got my head around, but I felt I should mention it for the sake of any spelling nazis lurking amongst my readership.
The book's central message is that we need not worry about anything because ultimately we do and control nothing - all is in God's hands. Our lives would improve immeasurably if we would only abandon any sense of ownership of our actions. As soon as we allow the universal love of God to flow through us we become spiritual beings, and our anxieties are at an end. One of the book's prayers says:

"I am not concerned with whether anybody is grateful or anybody is loving or anybody is just. I renounce all that. I look for love, justice, recognition, reward, and compensation in, of, and from God."

So we should not look without for solutions or satisfactions. The ultimate satisfaction lies with God, who is within us at all times. This is, of course, enormously comforting in a religious sense, though people of a more political turn of mind could (and would) criticise such an attitude as a form of ideological escape, as a disengagement from the world's very real problems. It is hardly a charter for social justice.
What it is, quite specifically and quite obviously, is a mystic's charter. Goldsmith himself was a supremely unwordly figure, and Practising the Presence frequently reads like the manifesto of a monk or saint. It says that the only relationship that will ever count in our lives is the one we have with God.
Goldsmith was, in fact, a popular religious figure in his day, and was famously followed by Doris Day and other celebrities in the 50s.
The book sets out to be little more than a devotional guide, a collection of moral musings on the technology of prayer and the necessity of turning everything over to Christ. It is still in print, though the Christian rhetoric would probably be difficult for most 21st century readers to cope with. Stripped of its Christian jargon I suspect it would read very much like Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, which it constantly reminded me of.
The whole Goldsmith-ian theology is quite fascinating, veering as it does between Christian Science certainty, soft-boiled New Thought assurance and a more deeply mystical reflection perhaps inspired by Goldsmith's own Judaism. Like many New Thought books (and as illustrated in so much camp glory in the film Magnificent Obsession), there is a peculiar insistence on secrecy in our spiritual and charitable actions. This fascinating philosophical thread is one I would like to explore more closely, perhaps in a full-length scholarly paper. Goldsmith confidently declares in the book that:

"Secrecy and sacredness go hand in hand."

But do they, really? It is an odd motif that I notice repeated throughout the literature. Goldsmith tells us it is better to pray in private, and to be circumspect in sharing our spiritual realisations with others - mostly because he insists that people need to reach their own conclusions, and so can never be forced along the path of progress.
The overriding message of the book is, to the seasoned reader of New Thought, not a radical one. We are possessed of a Divine energy which we need establish a reasonably constant contact with, and this contact is most efficiently made in prayer and meditation.

The Infinite Way

The Infinite Way is one of the great classics of self-help literature - indeed, it is one of the books on the 'Timeline of Self-Help Writing' that I put together for my thesis.
Based largely on the teachings of Christian Science, it is a slender book, quite poetic in its content and deeply mystical. Though not a formal exponent of Christian Science, Joel Goldsmith was influential in Christian Science circles. His works were great favourites of Doris Day, who said she went to bed every evening listening to audio recordings of Goldsmith's lectures. But in rejecting the formal affiliation with the church, Goldsmith places this, his most famous and enduring work, in the canon of New Thought, and it's is still read and enthusiastically recommended by serious students of New Thought.
Though short, it is reasonably dense, and is really meant to be read slowly and reflectively. Indeed, since its publication groups have sprung up devoted to the reading and study of the book, establishing around Goldsmith a quasi-religious structure. Such groups were active in Sydney well into the 1990s, though I'm not aware that there are any still going.
The central message of the book is the basic Christian Science doctrine that we are merely expressions of God, and therefore perfect. Goldsmith tells us that God's reality is all-good, and so the only truth is in abundance, health, happiness and prosperity. The only truth is God, expressed in many different ways. "God, Consciousness is forever expressing Itself and Its qualities. Consciousness, Life, Spirit, can never fail. Our task is to learn to relax and let our Soul express itself" (38).
The book is really an extended meditation in that same style - there is little that is practical here, for Goldsmith returns again and again to his central theme: we need only awaken to God, who is already in us. It is a devotional text rather than an instructive text. And as such it frequently transports the reader with great gusts of hope, and with a carefully constructed mystical longing. This is Goldsmith's power as a writer - he can make his particular philosophy, singular as it may be, distinctly beguiling.
"We must begin our days with the inner reminder of our true identity. We must identify ourselves as Spirit, as Principle, as the law of Life unto our affairs. It is a very necessary thing to remember that we have no needs: We are infinite, individual, spiritual consciousness embodying within ourselves the infinity of good..." (80). The Infinite Way (Goldsmith's first book), then, serves as a textual way to remind us of this heavenly identity. There is much of Swedenborg in this, as of course there is in the work of Mary Baker Eddy.
There is some discussion of healing in the book, and it seemed as though healing was a central part of Goldsmith's lectures, but he tends not to be too specific in The Infinite Way. The book takes an extreme position: there is no illness, and all healing is but the return to the promised spiritual state of perfection.
Goldsmith was a prolific author, and many of his books remain in print. The Infinite Way remains his greatest achievement, however, and is an absolutely intriguing exercise in New Thought absolutism.

Martha Beck

Martha Beck is a truly fascinating figure in the world of self-help.
I first became aware of her years ago when she wrote an absolutely inspirational book called Expecting Adam, in which she detailed the birth of her beautiful son who happened to have Down's Syndrome. It was a sensitively written, intelligent book, and I became very interested in its author - obviously a woman who could deal with complexities and who had a very delicately honed moral sense.
Soon after Beck re-invented herself as a self-help author, producing a series of books based on her work as a business lecturer and executive coach. I also learned something of her extraordinary background. She was the daughter of a revered Mormon scholar and historian who had grown up in Salt Lake City and had herself been a devout Mormon. The Mormon impulse toward self-help is not, of course, unusual (cf Stephen Covey), and I simply put her down as another Mormon inspirational writer, that sect having taken the Protestant work ethic to its ultimate extreme.
But I always enjoyed her work. As well as being sensible and quite psychologically sound, it expresses a self-deprecating humour and a willing acknowledgement of the real world that is noticeably absent from most American self-help writing. Her brick of a book, Finding Your Own North Star, is these days considered a classic, and groups have been established around the world to study it and to put its exercises and reccomendations in place (there's even a virtual one on Facebook).
A couple of years ago Beck shocked everyone by releasing a book called Leaving the Saints, a searing expose of Mormon paranoia and insularity, and the hypocritical approach to childhood sexual abuse that seems to exist among Mormon communities in Utah. This book was something light years away from her usual stuff (with titles like The Joy Diet), and I wonder how many readers were scarred by unwittingly reading it, expecting some cheery, no-nonsense self-help. In many ways it is a book I felt deeply uncomfortable about while reading, and I do think there are some ethical problems in making such serious allegations in print, particularly when you are a famous, Oprah-appearing author who patently holds the balance of cultural power. That said, it's a darkly fascinating book, and Beck's talent as a writer makes it well worth reading.

Gift From the Sea

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's remarkably long-lasting popular classic Gift from the Sea is one of those books that more properly belongs in the category of inspiration rather than self-help, mostly because its more conventional, straight-forward narrative format does not fit the template of self-help books.
However, I feel it is important to read and analyse because it is a frequently quoted book, and one of those that people often say changed their lives.
I was surprised at how specifically the book was focused on women's issues and problems. I'd always imagined it to be more general than that, but open reading it I mostly felt excluded from the message. Of course, much of what she says could be applied to the male journey as well, but she seems to be directing her narrative specifically toward women.
I found the structure of the book a little contrived - each chapter is named after a particular seashell, and is made up of the moral lessons she has arrived at through examining the particular qualities of each shell. The writing, too, is quite pedestrian.
She does, however, have some interesting things to say. She speaks eloquently about loneliness and solitude - pre-empting Australia's own Stephanie Dowrick, who would, decades later, write a beautiful book called Intimacy and Solitude - and the necessity of creating islands of peace in our lives in which we are not afraid to be alone with our own thoughts.
On occasion she addresses herself, as a writer, to other writers, and once more she stresses the importance of loneliness in the process of creativity. In this I think she serves as something of a predecessor of Julia Cameron, whose mega-selling The Artist's Way speaks of "artist's dates" in which the artist needs to go somewhere alone in order to cultivate a talent for observation and self-absorption.
In general, Lindbergh's message is quite an old-fashioned one, especially when she discusses matters of the heart. Her own life was, of course, fascinating and filled with tragedy, but she rarely alludes to it here. Instead she talks about the different kinds of pleasures available to the mature person, and to the long-term couple.
I think that might be the secret to the popularity of this gentle, slight and even inconsequential little collection of essays. Its ultimate message seems to be that we should be content with the little we have, and to find pleasure in the simple offerings of an uneventful life.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

In the course of organising my research I have put together a list of books that quite plainly constitute a canon of self-help literature. Any attempt to discuss the genre necessarily means that I must be familiar with all of the books on the list. I call it my "Classics List," and whenever I have a spare moment I am always working away at it, absorbing the thoughts of the most successful self-help authors of the past three centuries.
One of those classics is, of course, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. It was one of the books that defined the 90s, and I still remember going to the gym and seeing people with the book propped open at the treadmill while they did their obligatory kilometres. At that stage I was highly dismissive of self-help books (I was only 21), and I sneered at the sweating 30-somethings intent on their self improvement.
When I actually read it, I found it quite interesting and helpful. Of course, I have heard all the stories about the author, Stephen Covey, and his right wing political links and rank homophobia. Once a lesbian friend caught me reading it and she demanded to know what I was doing "reading that Mormon bigot?"
A little essay in the universality of self-help ideas is the example of how once I attended a talk by an Ananda Marga monk and he set forth the 7 Habits as enunciated by Covey as a perfect example of the practical application of Tantric philosophy.
Self-help academic and critic Micki McGee identifies Covey's brand of rhetoric as particularly masculinist, and points out the tortuous circles Covey ties himself in in order to disguise his peculiarly theistic - indeed, Mormonistic - worldview.
In a recent essay appearing in the Human Relations journal, John G. Cullen presents a fascinating analysis of Covey's success, identifying The 7 Habits... as a kind of secret religious propaganda, re-packaging quite distinct spiritual ideas in the language of management and success.
Probably Covey's most lasting contribution to popular culture is his introduction of the word "paradigm" into popular parlance. Where would pontificating CEOs and politicians, not to mention earnest undergrads, be without that particular well-worn buzzword?

Richard Bach

When I was just a toddler I was taken to see the film version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Perhaps it was the Neil Diamond soundtrack that attracted my parents (my father was always a huge fan), or perhaps they imagined a Disney-esque animated feature filled with singing, cavorting seagulls. They stoically sat through the film, and later on it became a part of family legend - how insufferably bad and terminally dull was Jonathan Livingston Seagull. All throughout my childhood it was held up to me as the pinnacle of boredom. Should I complain of having nothing to do, my mother would roll her eyes and say, "Oh you're bored? Well you obviously don't remember sitting through the entire length of Jonathan Livingston Seagull..."
Richard Bach's novel, on which the film was based (what an idea!) was absolutely ubiquitous in the 70s. Every home had a copy, and as a child I would be drawn to it. With trepidation I would pull a copy down from my aunt's bookshelf and, just before I could crack it open, my father would shout, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull!? Ho ho, you're in for a treat there. Most boring book ever written. But it back, right now. Did I ever tell you about the time I took you to see the movie...?"
Years later I worked for a long period at Australia's then-largest New Age bookshop. I was surprised at how popular Richard Bach's novels continued to be. We always kept them in stock, and they would always sell a dozen or so copies a year, which is quite respectable for a backlist book. Even the dreaded Jonathan Livingston Seagull would be asked for on occasion.
Now, because of this childhood stigma I have never read a single word of any of Mr. Bach's books, so I'm not about to offer a critique. I'm sure they are lovely, and they are certainly an essential part of the history of New Age/Self-Help publishing, which means I'll have to be reading them sooner, rather than later.
Last weekend I went to the big book sale at the Great Hall at Sydney Uni, and it was heaven. I scored a box and a half of self-help classics, including a copy of Richard Bach's The Bridge Across Forever. I'll start reading it as soon as I've finished the wonderful Dennis Cooper short stories I'm currently reading. I don't like to have two fiction projects going at the same time.

Samuel Smiles

I'm doing a talk about Samuel Smiles and the invention of self-help at the Sydney Unitarian Church on Sunday August 8, so have been immersing myself in the wonderful world of Smiles.
Possessed of what is quite possibly the most gorgeous name in the world, Samuel Smiles was a Scottish doctor, newspaper editor and pamphleteer who went on to become the biggest selling author of the Victorian age.
The book that rocketed him to fame was the simply named Self-Help - he being the first ever person to employ the term.
Now Self-Help is quite different to contemporary self-help books - it is frequently moralistic in tone, and is really just a collection of biographies of the great and good and how they became that way. Smiles also moralises about the virtues of a simple life, and how through hard work and self denial the working classes might be able to improve their lot. I doubt such advice would be very popular these days. But all in all it is the original, the very template for a genre that has gone on to become one of the most popular in modern publishing. Mr. Smiles probably never dreamed that he'd spawned a monster industry - though he certainly made plenty of money from his book, and from the subsequent follow-ups that were all variations on a theme: Thrift, Duty, Character etc.
But criticise him as much as you like, Mr. Smiles set out a moral and social vision that is still admirable, and his great conviction was that honesty and good cgaracter were infinitely more important than riches and social position. He disparaged cleverness for its own sake, and he despised the various elites that held sway during the Victorian era. He was an unpretentious man, a country doctor with Unitarian leanings.
The fact is that Smiles believed that everyone was capable of improving and becoming something better, regardless of natural talents or inherited social class. His was an egalitarian vision that has ultimately triumphed, and I think he was a great visionary.

The Power of Positive Thinking

While I was in Phnom Penh I was delighted by the presence of really quite good second-hand bookshops - something that is absent from Vietnam. As usual in such places, there was an eclectic collection of books - heavy on chick-lit and murder mysteries, and also a substantial number of business and self-help titles. For US$3 I bought this well-thumbed copy of the self-help classic The Power of Positive Thinking, and it travelled with me all through Cambodia and Vietnam.
I had never read it before, so was surprised to discover that it is extremely religious in content - Peale's main advice throughout the book is to read and memorise scripture and use quotes from the Gospels as positive affirmations. I can't imagine it appealing at all to modern day self-help readers, who are largely an unbelieving bunch, and those that are interested in spirituality tend to steer away from the old-fashioned style of 'memorise scripture' Christianity.
It would be unfair, however, to characterise Peale as some sort of fundamentalist Christian idealogue trying to propagate a religious agenda by stealth. He was, after all, an ordained minister, and a famous one at that. Kind of like the Benny Hinn of his time, only nicer and more substantial.
Peale had been born a Methodist, but became a famous clergyman with the Reform Church in America, which was very similar in theology and worldview. And while the religious advice he offers in this book is perfectly inoffensive and acceptable to almost any kind of Christian, his own personal beliefs were reasonably unconventional and progressive - influenced as they had been by the New Thought teachings of Charles Fillmore and Ernest Holmes, and incorporating a species of spiritualism influenced by his reading of Swedenborg.
So it's an odd book - I wouldn't even call it self-help, more a prayer manual and a practical guide to using the Bible. But if you find it in any bookshop (and it is still in print) it will almost certainly be filed under "Self-Help."