New Purchases - Thesis Related

I'm probably quite fortunate in that I'm dealing with a topic that is based on mass-market books, so second-hand bookstores are usually a treasure-trove for me of interesting and related material. And from this pile you can see that I've been a very busy little bee indeed. So, from the top, here are the thesis-related books I've bought this month:

• True North by Paul Fenton-Smith
• The Breakthrough Experience by Dr. John F. Demartini: Demartini is a prolific American self-help author who publishes with Hay House. A chiropractic doctor, he was married to Australia's own fabulous Athena Starwoman until her untimely death.
  
• The Tibetan Art of Positive Thinking by Christopher Hansard: This is for my chapter on the Eastern influence in self-help. My thesis being that Eastern religion in the West is frequently packaged as self-help rather than religion. This being the perfect example.
  
• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: Having been inspired by the gorgeous exhibition at the NSW State Library I bought this cheap little Penguin Classic edition. After Emerson and the Bible, The Prophet is just about the most quoted text in self-help literature.
  
• How to Use Your Twelve Gifts From God: This is meant to be a New Thought classic.
  
• 4 Books by Robert Schuller: Schuller is relevant to the chapter I am currently working on, which is an examination of how mainstream Christianity co-opted the New Thought ideas and gave them a more orthodox Christian veneer. Schuller was a master at this.
  
• Rev. Ike's Secrets for Health, Happiness and Prosperity: Rev. Ike was a tremendously important figure in African-American history, and he popularised New Thought ideas among black churchgoing communities.
• New Thought, Common Sense by Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Wilcox was one of the pioneers of New Thought.
  
• Letters from Emerson to a Friend: As noted, Emerson is really the moving hand behind New Thought and therefore behind all contemporary self-help.
  
• Rip This Page by Karen Benke: Actually, I think I bought this one for me, as I felt I needed some creative inspiration.
• Enlightenment to Go by David Michie: Perfect for my Eastern Religion chapter.
• God's Salesman: A serious examination of the life and work of Norman Vincent Peale, who is the main focus of my current chapter.
  
• Love & Law by Ernest Holmes: Holmes was one of Peale's uncredited influnences, and his work is essential to any understanding of slef-help literature.
  
• Ernest Holmes, His Life & Times
• Out on a Limb by Shirley Maclaine: One of the great books from my teenage years, I rescued this book from the reject sale at the Neilson Hays Library in Bangkok. It is a lovely edition, and I felt I owed it to Shirley. Plan on re-reading it 'cos I loved it so much as a teenager.
  
• Seth Godin omnibus: Godin is one of THE most iunfluential thinkers of the moment. I have followed his blog for a long time now, so thought it was time I read some of his books.
  

The New Testament in The Science of Mind

The Fifth part of Ernest Holmes' The Science of Mind is taken up with a more in-depth exploration of the New Testament, dwelling particularly on the healing stories of Jesus. Citing chapter and verse, Holmes attempts a metaphysical explanation of these familar stories, stressing the ways in which they might show us that the healing powers of God are available to us all. Because Christ consistently healed the pathetic, the outcast and the seemingly unworthy, Holmes sees this as evidence that the Love if God is complete and all-encompassing - no-one is unworthy in the eyes of the Divine.
He says adamantly that "God knows no evil" (p. 438), and this kind of rhetoric is directly traceable to his teacher Emma Curtis Hopkins, who herself learned it from Mary Baker Eddy. Holmes says that Jesus was teaching this reality as he healed - by pointing out that people themselves laboured under the delusions of sin, sickness and unforgiveness. Jesus freed them from these self-imposed states of misery by making them realise that in God's eyes they were entirely perfect.
He reads Matthew 9:16 as an injunction to abandon old spiritual ideas. For Holmes the new is invariably the right, because the human is forever on an evolutionary path. Those new realisations we gain are to be embraced, and not mixed up with the old cloth of old, limiting beliefs.
This section is using the New Testament to reinforce Holmes' New Thought ideas about spiritual healing and the perfected self. he uses Christ healing sytories to reinforce the idea that our miseries are only ever illusory, and can be dropped in a moment with the right inspiration.

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?

Science of Mind

Science of Mind is the organisation/philosophy based on the great New Thought philosopher Ernest Holmes. It was also the name of his enormous book, which still serves as the bible of the movement, and of the monthly magazine which is still published.
Holmes was a prolific writer, and a late-arriving student of Emma Curtis Hopkins, the woman most people consider the grandmother of New Thought, the teacher of teachers.
Holmes was obviously a charismatic and energetic man, because he established a religious empire which is still going on today. One of its most illustrious followers is Louise L. Hay, probably the most famous exponent of New Age beliefs in the world.
The basic philosophy of Science of Mind is pretty much the same as you would find in Unity or any of the other New Thought based churches. Also known as Religious Science, its founder Ernest Holmes never really intended it to be a new church. The magazine Science of Mind, which has been in continuous production since 1927, certainly has a readership well beyond the church membership, and many subscribe to Holmes' ideas without declaring themselves a formal part of the movement.
The fundamental idea behind Science of Mind seems to be that we are created perfectly, just as God is perfect, and so we are capable of achieving anything. We are all moving into a new age of possibility, and if we can align our thoughts with the energy of the Divine, we can become a race of supermen.
Like much New Thought philosophy, Science of Mind flirts with the fringes of spiritualism and Theosophy, and Holmes' magnum opus is littered with tantalizing references to the extraordinary possibilities of the human mind freed from the old ideas of negativity. The book itself is reasonably difficult to read these days. Its enormous size and frequently prolix style means that it is best consumed in small bites, rather than sitting down to read it from cover to cover.

Myrtle & Charles Fillmore

The Fillmores, founders of the Unity School of Christianity, were the great popularisers of New Thought, and their cultural importance and influence reach far beyond actual members of the Church.
Meeting reasonably late in life, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore were always an odd couple. At some point soon after their marriage, the sometime Christian Scientist Myrtle Fillmore attended a lecture in which the idea that God created only perfection sank into her consciousness at a really deep level. She meditated on this idea, and soon after she was cured of the tuberculosis which up until that point had been a death sentence for her. She never again suffered from its effects, and lived to a ripe old age.
Her husband Charles, a younger man, was an atheist and exceedingly sceptical about this new method of spiritual healing. However, upon witnessing his wife's complete recovery, he decided to investigate the metaphysical ideas of Christian healing in depth.
He and Myrtle became converts to this new religious idea, and after many years of study they established their own group, which eventually came to be called the Unity School of Christianity.
Charles Fillmore survived his wife by many years, and until his dying day he kept applying the principles of spiritual healing to his own legs, one of which was much shorter than another and required special shoes. He never managed to cure himself completely, but he maintained that his bad leg had grown many inches over the years, and the type of orthotics he required changed drastically as a result.
The religion they founded, The Unity School of Christianity, is still going strong. It is a positive thinking religion par excellence, with branches all over the world (including Australia). The Church is famous for publishing The Daily Word, a monthly magazine providing day-by-day affirmations and positive reflections. The world headquarters of Unity is also famous for maintaining Silent Unity, a 24 hour global prayer ministry.
The Unity Churches have distinguished themselves by being at the forefront of both New Age and progressive social thinking. They have sustained the careers of many notable self-help authors by inviting them to speak and lead worship, and Unity has an outstanding record when it comes to respect for gay people and other minorities. The majority of Unity ministers are women.
Charles Fillmore was a reasonably prolific writer, and he is most famous for his Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, his magnum opus that attempts to analyse the entire Bible according to New Thought metaphysical ideas.