The Secret | Spirituality & Health Magazine

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Neuroscience

The Secret?
by Peggy La Cerra, Ph.D

Almost three years ago after seeing The Secret, my friend announced that she was going to meet a man and then marry him within the month. She believed this with every fiber of her being because, after all, she had asked. "Ask, believe, receive -- it's the Law!" she told me, beaming with certainty. And not just any law, according to the movie's website, but "the most powerful law in the universe": The Law of Attraction. No wonder she was so confident. A universal law is a statement of fact that a particular phenomenon always occurs when specified conditions are met. With asking and believing out of the way, my friend was fully prepared to receive. And yet, sadly, her man has yet to manifest. Her question was why?

Of course, many people have achieved remarkable success by thinking positively, crafting 'vision boards', holding a good feeling and practicing various other techniques promoted by proponents of The Secret. So, perhaps the critical question is how do these practices work, when in fact they do? Do we have an agent acting on our behalf in the universe -- if only intermittently?

Starting with the premise of the film, that everything is energy, consider that our mind -- and, more to the point, the neural behavioral intelligence system that gives rise to it -- is our energetic connection to the rest of the universe. It was crafted by universal laws -- the laws of energy and evolution -- and helped our ancestors generate sound behavioral decisions based on the energetic reality of human existence. These decisions enabled our predecessors to get the 'energetic goods' they desired -- resources like food and shelter, mates and friends (all of the kinds of things you might put on your vision board). With every experience, a neural network is created or modified in the brain that represents it. All of the disparate bits of information about the particular moment get yoked together -- 1) internal information about how we felt, 2) sensory information about where we were and who was there, 3) cognitive and behavioral information about what we and others did, and 4) internal feeling state information about consequences of these events. If we get a positive result, the network becomes easier to activate, and if we don't, it becomes harder to activate, and in this way, we home in on optimal strategies for success. The functional design of these 'network memories' enables these strategies to be called up again when we're in a similar circumstance, and this enables us to behave in a way that increases the probability of acquiring what we desire.

So what happens when we want something? Let's start with a simple goal -- like finding a good meal in a new city. Our goal is established by #1 -- how we feel: hungry. The psychological state of hunger is preceded by a neural signal that activates networks with similar 'hunger components'. Sensory information about where we're currently located (#2) narrows the neural search to those networks that have similar sensory components (there's no point in searching for a Whole Foods if you're out in a forest.) Let's say that we're actually in a nice hotel. Memory networks with stored information about previous stays in nice hotels light up, and with that, so do 3) thoughts about room service, as well as behavioral output programs that enable us to find the menu and make the appropriate phone call. The next thing you know, a delicious meal appears at your door. If we were hoping for a cosmic bellhop, we'd be hard pressed to find a more competent one.

Telling others about our desires can be enormously helpful in some instances. A case in point is the little boy in The Secret who asked the universe for a bicycle and received one from his grandfather. But if you're looking to meet someone and marry them within a month, you might want to exercise some discretion in who you tell (your best friend, maybe; the potential Mr. or Ms. Right you just met, probably not . . . ).

So what happens when we think positively, craft a 'vision board', hold a good feeling and put into practice various other techniques promoted by proponents of The Secret? We're focusing our behavioral intelligence system on the goal and keeping its problem-solving capacity on task rather than allowing negative or extraneous information to divert our aim. We're lighting up all of the relevant information we have stored in our brain and mind, readying it for use in our search. We're focusing our senses on potentially relevant information in the world. In effect, we are making ourselves a 'living prayer", aligning our mind -- the universe within -- with our desire.

Rabbi Rami's Reflections

The Secret?
by Rabbi Rami Shapiro

The Secret is a New Age version of age-old snake oil. But if that were all it is, I wouldn’t bother talking about it. If Rhonda Byrne, the author of The Secret, is willing to go through the hard work of writing a book and producing a film, and then taking on the daunting task of selling these worldwide, she deserves whatever money she can earn from her efforts. The fact that she is selling the idea that you can be as successful as she is without doing what she did is a glorious irony.

What is the secret at the heart of The Secret? It is the Law of Attraction: like attracts like.

According to The Secret “you are the most powerful magnet in the Universe” (p. 7), sending out thought frequencies that attract to you whatever you are thinking about. Once you know the Secret “you can have, be, or do anything, and there are no limits” (The Secret p. 47).

This is pure baby-boomer narcissism: the universe is your personal concierge. “Make a command to the universe. Let the universe know what you want. The universe responds to your thoughts” (p.47). The thought that the universe is some kind of genie (the actual image used in the DVD version of The Secret) whose sole purpose is to fulfill the endless desires of human beings is terrifying.

To see just how terrifying I spent a few hours wandering around the campus where I teach asking people what they would ask for if they thought the universe was a giant wish-granting machine. For every “world peace” there were 10 “SUVs.” For every “cure for cancer” there were dozens of “a million dollars.” For every “an end to injustice” there were 20 “a perfect body.” If The Secret is true, the universe is doomed. Thankfully it isn’t true all at. Here’s why:

First, the actual Law of Attraction, called Coulomb’s Law after the eighteenth century physicist C.A. de Coulomb, states that opposites attract and likes repel — just the opposite of what The Secret argues. Second, the electro-magnetic frequency your thoughts generate is much higher than the frequency generated by actual money. So, even if like did attract like, your thoughts could only attract other thoughts, while the actual money goes to people, like Rhonda Byrne, who actually do something to earn it. Third, the universe is so vast that it no more notices the frequency of your thoughts than you notice the frequency of the cells in your big toe. And fourth, most thinking happens subconsciously and so quickly that conscious control is impossible. The Secret says you can choose your thoughts, but to choose among them means they have already been thought, and, if The Secret is to be believed, are already attracting things to you without any conscious choice at all.

The real danger of The Secret, however, is not its bogus science, but its immorality. The Secret appeals to unrestricted greed and a callous disregard for the welfare of person and planet.

“Everything that is coming into your life you are attracting into your life” (p. 4). Rape, incest, spousal abuse happen because their victims wants them to happen. Poverty has nothing to do with racism, sexism, or social and economic injustice: “The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts” (p.98).

Illness has nothing to do with genetics or limited access to healthcare: “You cannot ‘catch’ anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought” (p. 132). AIDS? Your fault. Cancer? Your fault. No need for universal healthcare, immunizations, or access to insurance.

Concern for the environment is silly: “Nothing is limited — not resources or anything else. It is only limited in the human mind” (p. 149).

Taking The Secret seriously can only lead to environmental exploitation, socio-economic degradation, and spiritual pollution all in the name of self-gratification. The only thing unlimited about The Secret is the amount of injustice, greed, and narcissism it sanctions.

Are lovers of The Secret really this gullible and callous? Probably not, but they, like so many of us, are exhausted by the never-ending suffering, horror, and tragedy that assault us daily. We want it all to go away. Now.

We drink too much, eat too much, abuse drugs and one another, and spend hours playing videogames or surfing the Internet just to escape reality. The Secret offers us yet another narcotic: narcissism: “You can think your way to the perfect state of health, the perfect body, the perfect weight, and eternal youth. You can bring it into being, through your consistent thinking of perfection” (p.131).

Craving perfection is like craving backs without fronts, and peaks without valleys. Perfection and imperfection go together and make no sense without each other. Obsessing over perfection can only generate a sense of self-loathing and drive us deeper into despair.

The good news is that The Secret is a lie. You are not what you think. You are what you do. Thinking about love rather than acting loving is useless. Visualizing world peace without ending the violence in your life and the life of your community is vapid. Asking the universe to end hunger without personally feeding anyone is obscene.

One antidote to the immoral narcissism of The Secret is a Buddhist based philosophy called Constructive Living: Know your purpose; accept your feelings; do what must be done. Created by Dr. David Reynolds and taught by Gregg Krech and the ToDo Institute, Constructive Living blends a deep sense of gratitude, commitment to compassion and justice, with an uncompromising focus on behavior. Because thoughts and feelings are largely outside your control, Constructive Living urges you to accept these without judging them, to stay focused on your goal, and to take action to further that goal.

If you want love, act loving; if you want justice, do justly. This is the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi: be the change you want to see; not the New Age nonsense of Rhonda Byrne: see the change you want to be.

The Secret speaks to us at our most shallow. It isn’t enough to think different; we must be different and do differently. This isn’t easy and success isn’t guaranteed, but it is the only true route to happiness, and there is nothing secret about it.

Best Practices

Best Practice
by Stephen Kiesling

For about 20 years, starting in the 1970’s, our Department of Defense funded a Top Secret research program into what’s called Remote Viewing, the apparent ability of some people to quiet their minds and describe distant locations. Perhaps the most remarkable results of these experiments were some drawings of Soviet missile bases that were later confirmed by photographs from spy satellites. The government research was discontinued because Remote Viewing never proved to be very useful or reliable for espionage, but that doesn’t mean all psychic phenomenon are illusions. The best summation of the research remains essentially this: “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”

One of the lead researchers in the Remote Viewing experiments was a close family friend named Russel Targ, whose daughter Elisabeth Targ, M.D., was columnist for this magazine. A key lesson from their research was that the “viewer” needed to completely clear his or her mind to receive useful images. Providing a goal or reward for the viewer typically was counterproductive. For best results, the viewer had no attachment to the outcome. In other words, “trying” to tap into psychic powers is a recipe for failure.

This suggests a bit of a paradox for The Secret. While repeatedly telling the universe what we want may help focus mind and body on achieving our goal, it likely blocks us from receiving any form of psychic information. If we value such information, a much better first step would be to empty the mind, let go of any attachment, and open our hearts to listen. What does our best self, our community, and our environment ask of us?

Working on the spiritual practices in these web pages can help us open to that question --and learn to live it.

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