The Secret
by Rhonda Byrne
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Book Reviews of The Secret
Book Review: Why the Secret will harm you spiritually
Summary: 1 Stars
The first and most obvious problem with "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne is its title. The author's premise is that she has sifted through all the religions and philosophies of the world and has discovered that the secret to life has been under our noses all this time. It is truly thrilling to know that Rhonda has finally achieved what billions of people over thousands of years have failed to understand or at least articulate well.
The true secret is that there is no "secret". The purpose and meaning of life have been clear to any person in the past two thousand years who cared to take the time to pick up a Bible. Dear reader, please realize that by the very naming of her book, Rhonda Byrne is claiming that God has been hiding the purpose of life from us until now.
This is a great offense to God. He has taken great pains over the millennia to reach out to us and communicate His heart. He even came to the earth in the form of a man and died for us so we could understand the great extent of His love. We have simply ignored His words.
Byrne's great arrogance is also shown in that she has the audacity to improve upon the Bible. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. It has changed Billions of lives for the better. Its existence is responsible for the creation of hospitals, orphanages, public schools for children, and even the abolition of slavery. None of those things would have occurred without the Bible. Yet Rhonda, in her little 200 page book, believes she can correct the amazing life-changing Word of God.
Are you one of those people who think our opinion represents just one interpretation of the Bible? Or that we're being too narrow? Is it your opinion that we can't really know what the Bible means or says? Or that its words aren't the most powerful of any book ever written? If so, then it is most likely you are also a person who does not read and study the Bible regularly. No man or woman who knows the Bible well and studies it could be misled by the teachings of Ms. Byrne.
All that said, let's get to Rhonda's "secret". What is the amazing "secret"? That the universe has a law of attraction. That everything good that happens to you is because you think positively. If bad things happen to you, it's because you are negative, so negative things are attracted to you. If you don't have everything you ever wanted, then it's because you aren't thinking positively enough. According to Byrne, this goes for everything. Including health, wealth, romance, and whatever else you can imagine.
According to Byrne, if your father gets cancer, it's his own fault for the way he thinks. Too bad for him! What about the mentally retarded? What about babies born with birth defects? Did they attract their disabilities while they were meditating in the womb? What about people who are killed by drunk drivers? What about the faithful wife whose husband opts to cheat on her after thirty years of marriage? What about people who die in earthquakes, tidal waves, or hurricanes? Did these people simply receive what their minds attracted?
Now, the general principle of positive thinking is a good one. It's common sense that if you have a positive outlook, your life will be happier than if you think pessimistically. It's also common sense that if you take action in your life, you'll achieve much more than if you sit on the couch.
But that isn't Ms. Byrne's point. She says there are spiritual forces at work which will bring us great blessing, in fact, everything we want, if we simply think good thoughts strongly enough.
This is the most fundamental problem with Rhonda's book. She is trying to use Christ and His teachings to encourage you to become a selfish individual. She wants you to focus on your needs and your wants so strongly that you will make them happen through the strength of your thoughts.
God hates this teaching. Jesus taught us to be selfless. To love others as ourselves. To submit to God and His will. Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer. It begins "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy will be done..." Notice it says "Thy will be done", not "my will be done."
The purpose of life is to glorify God. It is to love Him with all our might and to submit our own wills to His. Jesus promised us that "Whosoever tries to save his life, shall lose it, and he who loses His life for my sake will find it." If you grasp and strive after your own dreams and aspirations, Jesus promised you will lose everything.
However, if you submit yourself, give up everything to God, He promises you shall gain more than you ever dreamed. If there is a secret, this is it. You will never gain life by thinking positively. The only way to true happiness is through submission to God and selflessness.
If you follow the path Rhonda wants you to follow, you will be left empty and wanting. Her words are exciting and stimulating like crack cocaine. It may feel real good at first, but the long term effect is devastating.
Books For Less will never carry Ms. Byrne's book because we care deeply for our customers. We don't care to make a dime off of something that will harm our customers and hurt their relationship with God.
It is our prayer, dear reader, that you will be discerning in the spiritual food of which you partake. Please be careful.
Book Review: The Gospel of Greed
Summary: 1 Stars
Occasionally you come across some things so ludicrous as to be unbelievable. The so called 'Secret' television series, slickly advertised and marketed, is just such a thing.
The Secret purports to unravel the 'Secret', the mysterious key to power, wealth and success known through the ages from the ancient Egyptians through to Greek Philosophers to the medieval Catholic Church to people like the Freemasons and the American Transcendentalists (most particularly Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoereau, who are quoted out of context at various points). The secret is then alleged to have been known by great luminaries of the scientific revolution, from Galileo to Newton to Albert Einstein, and finally by several obscure self-made entrepenuers and millionaires in 19th and 20th century America.
After some flashy and intruiging imagery suggesting a great hidden knowledge so dangerous people have killed for it through history, a procession of celebrities, televangelists, 'metaphysicians', philosophers and businesspeople are wheeled out, claiming the 'Secret' has changed their lives for the better in infinitely many ways. During these interviews we also see flashy images of expensive sports cars, palatial houses, people in corporate boardrooms, and other images suggesting great personal success, health, happiness and material wealth all flow like a river from the well of the 'Secret.'
So what is the secret? The secret begins with a genie appearing from a bottle, asking what your wish is. The chorus of gurus then says the secret is essentially wishing for whatever you want, and when this happens, the universe begins to put into motion the necessary events and means by which every whim and desire of yours, no matter how grand, will be met. This is based on the so called 'law of attraction' where it is argued your thinking about something brings it into being, and attracts things to you which are either good or bad depending on whether your thoughts are 'negative' or 'positive.' Of course many analogies to the laws of nature are given, from gravity to quantum mechanics to electromagnetism, to support this purported law. Because whatever we think brings the universe and its contents into existence, in principle anything we want or desire can become reality itself. A 'thought experiment' is then given as an example is given where a young boy sees a beautiful but expensive bike in a shop window. He wishes to have the bike, and after some minor frustrations and waiting, his wish comes true...because he wished it and because of the law of attraction.
While in itself the philosophical idea behind this (idealism) is well known in both classical and modern philosophy, and to an extent also in Eastern Philosophy, the general aim of philosophy both East and West was never to make as much money or career success as possible, but to understand the nature of mind, the world, and reality. In fact, Buddha, one of the most refined ancient Philosophers of Mind, came up with a notion of mind in a lot of ways similar to the so called 'Law of Attraction' but then derived the conclusion all phenomena which appear to the mind are basically empty. Buddha then in his teaching most strongly condemned all forms of greed, desire, lust, and attachment to material possessions, because in his eyes this ignored the true nature of things and also brought out the worst vices in mankind; Buddha would be especially disgusted at the notion that you think yourself into being poor or thought on your own efforts can cure you of cancer or serious handicaps. A similar position was reached by many other great idealist Philosophers, such as Plato, Augustine, Eriugena, Aquinas, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Plotinus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Descartes, and Edmund Husserl.
Changing the way we think does not change fundamental reality, a point many philosophers and scientists emphasize; changing the way we think, or rather removing our prejudices and preconceptions which blind us to the true nature of the world, including our tendency to be greedy and unsatisfied with what we currently have, allows us to cope with reality as it is, and transfigure it into a beautiful everyday richness.
In my view the Secret is designed to tell us what we wish to hear and says there is an easy, trouble-free way to make our wishes come true. In so far as serious philosophy or religion goes, this is a complete cop out, a retreat from the problem of existence, as Sartre might put it, and from the viewpoint of the practical life, suggests absurdly we can reach wealth, power, status and glory without virtue, hard work, sensible practical planning, and individual merit. Any reasonably intelligent person with common sense and some capacity for reflection can see how absurd most of the claims made in the 'Secret' are, and while even someone like John Stuart Mill said the aim of human life is happiness, material plenty and pleasure, he would also be jolted in the way philosophy and learning (for which he had great respect and considered to constitute the happy life) are debased in this show into mere sophistry and wishful thinking.
Caveat emptor, in so far as this Secret is concerned.
Book Review: All men are not equal: the 1% elite
Summary: 4 Stars
The book and the video are the two sides of the same coin and I would advise you to follow the one or the other. I will suggest though that you concentrate on the video because the commentary between the quotations are nothing but the proof that some people need a lot more explanations and a lot of paraphrase to understand the basic meaning. Are we all without limits? And that is going to be my very first remark. From my long experience I know that some people are physically handicapped, or mentally handicapped, or psychologically handicapped, or with many hurdles on their road and around them. You should see the state of some of those children born to deep alcoholics or drug addicts. Or what about children with a severe genetic disparagement? And I refuse to say they are just disabled, or differently-abled. They are handicapped by being materialistically in their very body or mind at a disadvantage that will prevent them from doing what most people around them will be able to do. If the mind is intact, and working on positive thinking is the only way for these people, then they can compensate their physical limitations with their spiritual achievements. But you can't run in the standard Olympics without legs just like a bicycle will not run without wheels. And this time, in most of these situations, one will not be able to excel, full stop and period, and if one can excel in one particular field in which he is not or is less limited, it won't be without the help of other people around them. You cannot think positive if there is no signs along that road. The second remark is positive. Apart from these special cases, everyone, absolutely everyone can excel somewhere and that excellence can only be reached if it is targeted, looked for and built. Positive thinking, education, understanding that the pleasure of such achievements is in the goal when reached and not in the effort you have to accomplish, even if for those who will reach the highest points this very effort is a pleasure, the pleasure of the effort itself. A runner has to train day in and day out and that is never, absolutely never a plain entertaining phase of relaxation and abandon. Physical pleasure requires sweat and heart speed. But if one does not set their minds on the aim they are going to strive towards, they will never reach it. Success is enormously in the mind, in the conscious and subconscious motivation of the candidate. Yet it is absolutely false to say that man has no limits. Humanity, and every member of it, has always been limited historically and no one could think plasma physics or quantum computers under Julius Caesar. Each historical period produces its possible fields of investigation that are limited because in a later historical period those fields of investigation will always be vaster, larger, deeper, more intense. Or then the author is speaking metaphorically of man as the representative of humanity in its cosmic history. But that is not helping any individual who is striving to achieve something in his own life. Icarus did try to fly but wax wings were kind of primitive. Then my third and last remark will be a question: why only ONE percent of humanity controls NINETY-SIX percent of wealth? If this is a fact, and it is, it is the proof that all men are not equal in facts but only in rights, and that is so by our collective decision to say so. But one thing is sure: thinking negatively is never good. Think of McCain and Palin and their negative campaigning. Think of all the anarchists of the world who have never achieved the slightest beginning of their dream which is only a negative picture of the world the way it is. If you criticize the world systematically, then your dream becomes the inverted image of this world, hence a negative picture of reality, and that will never guide or inspire people into desiring such a future. When I don't like something I do not ask for the reverse. I wonder what the situation is, what the possibilities are and if another solution is possible and which one. Then I will think positively along that objective, or rather as objective as possible, line, but to demand black because what I don't like is white, or to require red because what I don't like is blue is primitive negative thinking. That kind of realism and collective striving is absent from this book or video and that is a shame because they forget attraction holds the world and the cosmos up because it is always counterbalanced by repulsion. Otherwise the moon would have fallen onto the earth a long very long time ago, even if this repulsion is itself the product of attractions that are standing abreast and against the attraction of the earth. The apple did not fall as long as the stem was strong enough and the apple light enough for the stem not to break. The author of this book or video seems to have forgotten that the cosmos is a complex system of opposed spheres and when a weak point appears, then a catastrophe develops in that weak point, and the earth is doomed sooner or later in cosmic time to disappear, just like the sun which will one day have burned all itself fuel.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Book Review: The Review "They" Don't Want You To Read
Summary: 1 Stars
Catchy review title? Thought so. Robert Cialdini, renowned psychology researcher and author of Influence: The Power of Persuasion (perhaps the best book ever written on the subject) identifies six basic rules employed by politicians, advertisers and scam artists alike to persuade others. Each of them are employed quite adeptly by Rhonda Byrne in this book.
Cialdini's first principle is SCARCITY; people want what's expensive, exculsive, or otherwise attainable. Byrne's mastery of this principle is clearly shown by the very name of the book: The Secret. We all learned this the first week of kindergarten as we felt the jealousy of watching two classmates, hands cupped over ears, sharing a secret out of earshot.
This message is reinforced throughout the book and its advertising campaign which pitches "The Secret" (whatever it actually is) as jealousy-guarded information hoarded by the happy, wealthy and successful. Whenever someone tries convincing you of something, whether it's a way to make enormous sums of money, to lose weight, etc - be wary of when it's pitched as "the knowledge THEY don't want you to have." Think about it - everything from the "secrets that Wall Street doesn't want you to know" to "uncovered - celebrities' secrets to staying young" are phrased not simply to pique your interest but to make you jealous. Appeals to our emotion are far more powerful than appeals to reason, and Byrne demonstrates mastery of this principle throughout "The Secret."
Cialdini's second principle is LIKING. We like those who like us, and in turn, we do business with them. Positive thinking and emotional intelligence has been linked to strong interpersonal relationships, academic and professional success, and good health, but there is a fine line when positive thinking crosses over to unjustified exuberance. Instead of simply noting the substantial benefits of positive thinking (a well-accepted principle which wouldn't sell books), Byrne crosses the line so blatantly that anyone with a modicum of modesty would find it blasphemous.
AUTHORITY is another Cialdini principle, also in play in "The Secret" in quite subtle ways. Another technique which differentiates this book from just another book of positive thinking is the heavy use of quasiscientific language, which gives the impression that the "law of attraction" is (or will become) an accepted scientific principle, just like the law of gravity or the law of attraction of oppositely-charged particles in chemistry. Many people are both intimidated and confused by the authority of science, a fact exploited by manipulators ranging from Byrne to peddlers of magic weight-loss pills.
Since no respected physicist would ever publish a paper on the universality of the "law of attraction," Byrne indirectly seeks experts in other ways. She attributes the success of people ranging from Einstein to Beethoven to adherence of "The Secret," thereby manufacturing experts. After all, if Einstein and Shakespeare mastered "The Secret," who are YOU to question it?
The last two Cialdini principles are CONSISTENCY and SOCIAL PROOF. The success of this book should leave little doubt it will be followed by more (and more expensive) forms of media peddling "The Secret." The audio recordings, weekend seminars, advertising tie-ins, and other follow-up products certain to follow will exploit these two principles. Once people commit themselves to believing happiness will come from "The Secret," they will attribute future successes, whether a promotion or a great new relationship, to adherence to it. Conversely, setbacks will be even more powerfully in committing people to "The Secret," as people will attribute their failures to not living up to "The Secret" (and buying more of Byrne's books). Consistency dictates it will be less painful to buy more books and immerse one's self further into "The Secret" than to accept the whole premise is a quite ridiculous; while not as pernicious as a domineering cult, "The Secret" promises to charge you handsomely for a positive outlook on life.
Byrne's book is problematic on many levels. On it's face, it's a manipulative marketing tool meant to flatter, confuse and deceive. It's also pseudoscience at its best, the last thing we need to encourage in an increasingly technological world which requires healthy skepticism and critical thought. Most damaging, though, is how the book perverts reality by encouraging people to equate a positive outlook on life with a childish, idiotic narcissism. Ayn Rand must be rolling in her grave hearing about the modern manifestation of her objectivist movement reduced to the intellectual equivalent of canned pork.
If you're interested in "The Secret," I highly encourage you to read the book - yeah, READ the book - if for any other reason so not to be manipulated by its brilliant marketing. Read it with a critical eye, with a copy of Cialdini's book in the other hand. You may not learn the secret of happiness, but you WILL learn a lot about manipulation and influence from a master of the subject in Rhonda Byrne.
Book Review: Power of Mind Yes, Informercial NO!
Summary: 2 Stars
I have been interested in the power of the mind to allow us to feel better through visualization, positive thought and positive action for many years. But I found "The Secret" to be a disappointment and can't really understand what the hype is all about surrounding this book. It gives a distorted message in which personal development, self effort and growth take a backseat to wishful, magical thinking. I would rather read the new Harry Potter Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) if I want magic in my life.
The book and DVD are like a slick infomercial where you can have your wants fulfilled with very little effort or the need for self development. Once you get past the slick production values, you soon realize that the ideas offer little practical help in terms of personal growth nor do they offer a practical approach that asks for clear action not merely wishful thinking.
Positive thinking can allow us to recognize the power of our mind in re-framing experience and to overcome mental distortions that hinder our personal best. We are always in charge of our reaction and response to life events but the idea that the universe is merely a catalog or a genie that merely waits to serve our desires no matter how selfish, childish or unintelligent they might be is a highly arrogant attitude.
Yes, gratitude is very important in moving us away from negative thoughts and feelings of lack in our life. It's important to count our blessings and to move in the right direction. Nevertheless, the direction promoted in this book is no better than any other get-rich-quick scheme with no need for effort or personal development. Worse still "The Secret" gives little consideration for the environment or other people. In fact, it twists the Law of Attraction as a justification for blaming-the-victim and for lack of care for those who suffer.
Real mental power allows us to change our perception though reflection, insights and paradigm shifts. Magical thinking is an unscientific form of reasoning based on superstition. In "The Secret" magical thinking is presented as your thoughts having power to influence events, either beneficially through positive vibes or negatively through negative vibes.
Certainly the human mind has power: We have the power to move our own arm but I can't will a piece of paper to move just by my thoughts. Nor can my thoughts will another person to move in order to give me a parking spot when I want it. Positive thinking in terms of personal self development through transformation of our perception has an important place in our spiritual growth but superstitious ideas need to be avoided.
"The Secret" also makes the assumption that everyone's happiness rests in basic materialistic values largely centered around getting cars, money and mansions. The message is centered around "getting" with little mention of being giving or transforming ourselves at deeper psychological and spiritual levels. Personal effort, action, humility and care for others have little place in the world-view presented in "The Secret." Even with some of the positive thoughts presented in the book and DVD, these flaws reduce the value of the message.
Whoever reads or watches "The Secret" needs to exercise common sense, good judgment and listen to their conscience when receiving the slick presentation. Take it with a grain of salt is the best recommendation. I also encourage people to read other books that expand awareness in different ways. Some books that I recommend:
1. Nexus: A Neo Novel for its message of overcoming pain and finding compassion
2. The Master Key System on which "The Secret" is based
3. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Classics) who is strongly influenced by Vedanta as clearly evident from "The Over-Soul"
4. The Alchemist A story about following your dreams
5. Walden: (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau) Thoreau influenced the ideas of Gandhi, Dr. King and was the one of the first environmentalists