The Final Word on "The Secret": Deep Dish's Exposé on the Naked Truth

[Deep Dish]

When I posted a scientific criticism of The Secret, I knew beforehand it would stir up controversy but I never imagined it would receive 150+ replies. As the discussion raged on, there were those who insisted the author of the review misinterpreted The Secret. The Secret they insisted, is about positive thinking and nothing much to do with quantum physics. So grave the misinterpretation, it was implied, perhaps the reviewer had merely only relied upon the jacket cover. So, in the interest of fairness on behalf of all critics, I decided to give it a spin and vindicate. ABC's Nightline was apologetic and let the filmmakers off the hook—"The Secret has been successful in blending science and faith in a way that readers and viewers can easily follow, and, despite the doubts expressed by many critics, it's no secret that many Americans are eager to learn more"—but that is a travesty. My review is scathing, unrelenting, unwavering, and thorough in ways I know best. I only post this essay because I said I would; I always try to keep to my word.

Methodology

There are numerous versions of The Secret, as there were at least the film, the printed book, DVD, and from what I could find a series of audio CDs. I used (removed) to find a mp3 collection apparently of a four-CD version. Consequently, I don't have page numbers to cite but only tracks and quotes might not be exactly verbatim but I tried my best.

Before I begin, one might wonder "why bother" arguing against silliness. There certainly is the general rule of thumb which must be adhered to which is never debate or, if you can, even talk to people who hold fringe beliefs; whether that be wild-eyed conspiracy theories, the face of Mars, the hoax of the landing on the moon hoax, or even the IRS doesn't have authority to collect income taxes (it does). They don't think rationally; debating them only gives them a "voice" (credence there might maybe be something to their delusion); and they engage in a pervasive modus operandi of denying reality and avoiding the issues. But, however, there is a threshold that is sometimes crossed where a bad idea becomes pervasive enough there arises the moral imperative to fight the good fight or else serious damage threatens the fabric of rational thinking.

Here I go...

Science is hierarchical and domain-specific. Science strives for the most simplistic explanations of causation and there are hierarchical levels to explanation. Medicine is explained by physiology, molecular reactions are explained by chemistry, atoms are explained by Newtonian physics, subatomic particles are explained by quantum physics. Science is reductionistic but to the simplest necessity to establish causation. Greedy reductionism is a term coined by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett of the inappropriate jumps in explanatory hierarchy. Don't ask your local physicist why your tooth aches. The key point to remember is greedy reductionism does not yield mechanisms of causation and especially towards alternative results. Quantum physics cannot explain why a young teenage boy makes out with a beautiful girl and even if a series of events were strung along from quantum physics to sultry lips, it would not explain why make out with a girl rather than guys or a pet llama. Quantum physics is the panacea of paranormal claims; cited by everyone from supporters of telepathy, ghosts, astral planes, UFOs, talking to the dead, as the much sought after mechanism by which will hopefully their claim will be validated. It is by therefore if quantum physics is demonstrably too small to affect classical Newtonian physics then all paranormal Boogie Mans walk to the unemployment line.

In the normal world of science, scientists do research, conduct experiments, publish their results in peer-reviewed journals, attend conferences, and engage in healthy debate. It's an evolutionary process in which the fittest ideas survive and discredited ideas die. In science, you are free to disagree but your arguments must be convincing. Hence, why the scientific establishment is the establishment and why the fringe is ignored. So, it always is worrisome when someone purporting to make a revolutionary discovery or revolutionary new interpretation of science forgoes peer review and heads straight to news reporters. Journalists are so gullible. But worse still, when someone forgoes the scrutiny of reporters and produces a film, book, and DVD. And then appears on Oprah. Twice.

Enter The Secret. It is a patently scientific book but not in the good and not in the traditional sense. "The universe" is invoked in what seemed to be every other sentence; "the universe" was mentioned probably hundreds of times. In addition, there were countless references to "energies", "frequencies", "vibrations", and I even heard "reverberations". It's almost surprising I didn't hear anything about perpetual motion machines but then again maybe I am going deaf.

frequency: see also vibration.

vibration: An object or substance which oscillates from a neutral position (node) to positions (crests) on either side of the node is said to vibrate. An example would be the movement of the tines of a tuning fork, of a violin string, or of a pendulum (all “transverse” vibrations), or the compression effect on air or another medium when it vibrates with sound waves, an example of a longitudinal wave. The general condition of such oscillation, or a single cycle, is known as a vibration.

Occultists have used the word vibration freely but without much notion of its meaning or respect for its true nature. It is a highly popular catchall description for imaginary forces, powers, or influences.

—excerpt from An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

The Secret is listed as non-fiction and rightfully so I am justifiably proper in taking the words seriously. As demonstrated throughout the whole material, Byrne makes it explicitly evident the "Law of Attraction" is not intended as metaphorical but as a real scientific theory. Bob Doyle was certain to rally this point by stating on his Wealth Beyond Reason website: "Contrary to mainstream thinking, the law of attraction is not a 'new-age' concept. It is a scientific principle that absolutely is at work in your life right now."

Wealth Beyond (RATIONAL) Reason

I digress for a moment and want to talk about Bob Doyle. After all, he seemed like such a nice and personable guy. If you visit his website for Wealth Beyond (Rational) Reason, there is a video of him saying if you only give your name and e-mail address you would gain access to a free sample of his material. My e-mail already gets enough SPAM and so what the heck, right.

The pages you see beyond the home page is typical all-hype and no-content marketing enough to wonder if he is somehow related to Kevin Trudeau. But alas, on the first page after handing away our privacy we read....

I know you're not interested in "hocus-pocus"...

...But what I'm talking about is science. It's not "new age". It's not some pie-in-the-sky theory. I don't buy into anything like that, as much as I'd sometimes like to. I'm probably a lot like you in that I need EVIDENCE of these ideas before I can possibly hope to implement them into my life.

I'm here to give you all the evidence you'll ever need and then some. I have so much evidence that what I'm telling you is true that I have literally hundreds of pages of testimony from people who have studied with us, telling us exactly how their lives have changed for the better. I've got so much scientific evidence to share with you that it would boggle your mind if you tried to take it in at one sitting.

His entire convincing, compelling, overwhelming, gripping, captivating; persuasive, potent, powerful, plausible—gotta love those p's—conclusive scientific case is quantum physics. "Our thoughts are linked to this energy and they determine what the energy forms. This explains things such as positive thinking, prayer, faith, creativity, goal-setting, disease, and much more in a very scientific way. Your thoughts literally shift the universe on a particle-by-particle basis to create your physical life." He even calls for a paradigm shift which is something espousers of the pseudoscientific always say.

Before I continue, I need to make sure that you're still "with me" on this whole Energy thing. I know that when we talk about Energy, we're talking about something that we don't normally think of as tangible. And because that's the case, it's our inclination to dismiss it as "not real". But this is how we've been conditioned, and you've GOT to wake up to that. We've been conditioned like crazy over the years by well-meaning (and NOT so well-meaning) teachers, parents, religious institutions, etc. to have a certain set of beliefs which fit into THEIR belief parameters, or suit THEIR agenda. That's just the plain truth.

The typical diatribe of someone holding a discredited and unsubstantiated argumentative stance. Let there be no doubt: Bob Doyle explicitly inexorably obstinately connects quantum physics to consciousness and in no metaphorical sense the Law of Attraction is a scientific law. According to his website, all this quantum physics can be available to you for $227.00 (with payment plan now available).

 

[Deep Dish]

(P.S. I received an email which stated "Join us now, while tuition is still low!")

But I digress.

You say "potato", I say "BULLS*T

Supporters / believers of The Secret and the Law of Attraction contend it is about positive thinking. "Forget", they say,"about mysticism. I know the secret works because it works for me and if you want to dismiss it as mysticism then that is your loss. And it's not about mysticism." Simultaneously, they contend critics and skeptics are criticizing positive thinking. The following is the modus operandi as I have observed. First, they begin by insisting The Secret is about positive thinking and not about quantum physics. Second, they construct a straw man argument by insisting critics are attacking positive thinking and are misinterpreting The Secret. Third, when critics continue to persist the quantum physics angle, they persist the positive thinking angle and notably do not address scientific refutations; i.e. that is to say, they ignore when good science refutes their arguments and so they continue to press on with positive thinking (classic to the pattern of why you don't debate people holding fringe beliefs).

The Reality

The Secret is entirely about quantum physics and has nothing much to do with positive thinking except in the context of quantum physics; i.e. vibrations, frequencies.

Part I: The Case for Literal Interpretation

In my trademark long-winded essays, I never cite anyone or anything said on SoSuave but here I mark a rare exception. A-Unit said:

1) The article misunderstood the video, interpreted what it wanted, and has never faced straight up what it was about. If it's not directly facing what The Secret was about, then what argument need I make to defend anything? I don't defend things anyways. If perspectives are off, I'll realign them.

2) It's evident that some have only seen Oprah, or seen the glitzy version of The Secret and never dl'ed the link I originally posted.

Okay, now it's MY turn....

Firstly, I want to direct readers to Bob Proctor & John Assaraf's appearance on Ellen. Remember, when you appear on a talk show and are asked point blankly what a book is about, there is no time for dancing around the issue. Secondly, per the many hours I spent listening to the full The Secret mp3's and expended my poor little fingers to their maximum, time for the quotes and foot-in-mouth disease:

• Your thoughts become things. (Byrne, disc 1, track 07)
• What most people don't understand is that a thought has a frequency. We can measure a thought. And so if you're thinking that thought over and over and over again or if you're imagining in your mind, okay, having that brand new car, having the money you need, building that company, finding your soulmate; if you imagine what that looks like you are emitting that frequency on a consistent basis. (Assaraf, ibid)
• Thoughts are sending out that magnetic signal that is drawing a parallel back to you. (Vitale, ibid)
• Thoughts are magnetic and thoughts have a frequency. As you think, those thoughts are sent out in the universe and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source and that source is you. Think of it this way. We understand a television station transmission tower broadcasts a frequency which is transformed into pictures onto your television. Most of us don't really understand how it works but we know that each channel has a frequency and when we tune into that frequency we see the pictures on our television. We choose the frequency by selecting the channel and we then receive the pictures broadcast on that channel. If we want to see different pictures on our television we change the channel and tune into a new frequency. You are a human transmission tower and you are more powerful than any television tower created on earth. You are the most powerful transmission tower in the universe. Your transmission creates your life and it creates the world. The frequency you transmit reaches beyond cities, beyond countries, beyond the world. It reverberates throughout the entire universe and you are transmitting that frequency with your thoughts. The pictures you receive from the transmission of your thoughts are not on a television screen in your living room. They are the pictures of your life. Your thoughts create the frequency. They attract like things on that frequency and then they are broadcast back to you as your life pictures. If you want to change anything in your life, change the channel and change the frequency by changing your thoughts. (Bryne, disc 1, track 08 )

At no point that I could find did they say they're only joking. The difference with literature is in literature we know we're being lied to but in The Secret none of the liars directly admit they're lying (although at one point we get close). At a few points, Rhonda Byrne compares humans as the most powerful transmitters in the universe and while she does later admit that was an analogy, the clarification seems only to be that we aren't actually tower transmitters. We aren't radio towers or traffic control towers at the airport, but nonetheless we literally beam our thoughts through the whole universe which is then beamed right back to us and "manifested" in our lives. Ergo, the transmitter analogy is no analogy.

• Quantum physicists tell us our entire universe emerged from thought. (Byrne, disc 1, track 10)
• And so you end up attracting to you the predominant thoughts that you were holding in your awareness, whether those thoughts are conscious or whether they are unconscious—that's the rub. (Beckwith, disc 1, track 12)

In other words: thoughts you never even had.

• Your life is a physical manifestation of your thoughts that go on in your head. (Nichols, ibid)
• I'm not talking to you from the point of view of just wishful thinking or imaginary craziness. I'm talking to you from a deeper, basic understanding. Quantum physics really begins to point to this discovery. It says that you cannot have a universe without mind entering into it. That the mind is actually shaping the very thing it is being perceived. (Fred Alan Wolf, ibid)
• If you think about the analogy of being the most powerful transmitter tower in the universe you will see the perfect correlation with Dr. Wolf's words. Your mind thinks thoughts and the pictures are broadcast back as your life experience. You not only create your life with your thoughts but your thoughts add powerfully to the creation of the world. If you thought you were insignificant and had no power in this world, think again. Your mind is actually shaping the world around you. The amazing work and discoveries of the quantum physicists over the last 80 years has brought us to a greater understanding of the unfathomable power of the human mind to create. (Byrne, ibid)
• Let's go one step further. What if your feelings are actually communication from the universe to let you know what you are thinking? (Bryne, disc 1, track 16)
• All energy vibrates at a frequency. Being energy you also vibrate at a frequency. What determines your frequency at any time is whatever you are thinking and feeling. All of the things you want are made of energy and they are vibrating, too. Everything is energy. Here is the Wow Factor: when you think about what you want, and you emit that frequency, you cause the energy of what you want to vibrate at that frequency and bring it to you. As you focus on what you want, you are changing the vibration of the atoms of that thing and you're causing it to vibrate to you. (Bryne, disc 4, track 9)

Some people take this seriously... and then maybe not.

• Remember that your thoughts are the primary cause of everything. So when you think of a sustained thought, it is immediately sent out into the universe; that thought magnetically attaches itself to the like-frequency and then within seconds sends the reading of that frequency back through your feelings. Put another way, your feelings are communication back to you from the universe telling you what frequency you are currently on. Your feelings are your frequency feedback mechanism (Byrne, disc 1, track 16)

...but alliteration doesn't necessitate intelligence.

• When you're feeling good, you're putting yourself in the frequency of what it is you're wanting. (Marci Shimoff, disc 2, track 5)

It's then a wonder what some people attract!

• Get yourself on the feel good frequency and you will receive. (Byrne, ibid)

I really could use some weed right now.

• The fast track... is to say "I am receiving now." (Byrne, ibid)

I am receiving weed now... damn time delay.

 

[Deep Dish]

Part II: The Case Against The Secret

Byrne asserted:

Einstein said the most important question any human being can ask themselves is: "Is this a friendly universe?" Knowing the law of attraction, the only answer to give is "Yes! The universe is friendly!"... Einstein posed this powerful question because he knew the secret. (disc 1, track 20)

Indeed, my research indicated Einstein did pose that question... but Einstein was a realist. There is one objective reality, the moon is there even if no one looks at it, and he outright rejected quantum consciousness. It is this author's humble opinion Einstein would consider it sheer blasphemy and misrepresentation of his work to associate him with a "secret" which he outright rejected.

Quantum mechanics confirms it, quantum cosmology confirms it, that the universe essentially emerges from thought and that all this matter around us is just precipitated thought. Ultimately we are the source of the universe and we will understand that power directly by experience we can exercise our authority and begin to achieve more and more, create anything from within the field of our own consciousness which ultimately is universal consciousness that runs the universe... there is no limit to human potential. (Hagelin: disc 4, track 10)

Logic tells us ad hominem is a logical fallacy: address the issues and not the person. However, when it comes to citing expert authorities in academic papers, an expert's interpretations of fact is intrinsically necessary in our believing their interpretations as appeal to authority (relying on their credentials) is another fallacy. John Hagelin proposed to the United States Congress that it should implement "Invincible Defense Technology" which essentially postulates al Qaeda can be thwarted and nuclear missiles from North Korea can be averting by simply meditating; conventional defense technology is "based on obsolete science". By comparison, Nikola Tesla's idea of a death ray sounds far more realistic. Hagelin is a follower of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and lead the transcendental meditation experiment in Washington, DC which claimed to reduce crime by 18% (when in fact that year was the worst ever in its recorded history). For more information, read the illuminating article "Voodoo Science and the Belief Gene". Given that Hagelin's interpretations of science includes levitation and our potential innate supernatural ability to fly like Superman (given enough meditation and no tickets on Delta?) the question arises: is he a credible and reliable source of information? He co-founded the Natural Law party, ran for president three times, and the best he ever mustered was 0.1% of the vote which in my humble opinion seems a fair estimate of his credulity.

A moment of truth about credulity and credentials:

When I discovered the secret, I wanted to know what science and physics understood in terms of this knowledge. What I found was absolutely amazing. One of the most exciting things about living in this time is that the discoveries of quantum physics and new science are totally in harmony with the teachings of the secret... I never studied science or physics in school and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly (my emphasis). (Bryne, disc 4, track 9)

I think this was the point in which the charade halted and the house of lies came tumbling down smacked out of existence. Finally, Byrne admitted what her secret is all about: illiteracy and ignorance. Tragically, she started right back up with dishonesty in the second half of the sentence.

Here is my moment of truth:

The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world (such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the more precisely you know a particle’s position, the less precisely you know its speed, and vice versa) to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate to connect the two comes from physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light in scientific circles.

Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that act like structural scaffolding. The conjecture (and that’s all it is) is that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave function collapse that leads to the quantum coherence of atoms, causing neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses between neurons and thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern, thereby creating thought and consciousness. Since a wave function collapse can only come about when an atom is “observed” (i.e., affected in any way by something else), neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another proponent of the idea, even suggests that “mind” may be the observer in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms….

In reality, the gap between sub-atomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious Quantum, the University of Colorado particle physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described quantum mechanically the system’s typical mass m, speed v, and distance d must be on the order of Planck’s constant h. “If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically.” Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules, and their speed across the distance of the synapse, are about three orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro connection. Subatomic particles may be altered when they are observed, but the moon is there even if no one looks at it. So what the #$*! is going on here?

Physics envy. The history of science is littered with the failed pipedreams of ever-alluring reductionist schemes to explain the inner workings of the mind — schemes increasingly set forth in the ambitious wake of Descartes’ own famous attempt, some four centuries years ago, to reduce all mental functioning to the actions of swirling vortices of atoms, supposedly dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. Biology envy.

—Michael Shermer, PhD in history of science from Occidental College; editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine; resident contributor of Scientific American; author of The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense; Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time.; The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience; The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule; and Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, among a few other books. To answer a question in the original thread of "Who is that guy?"

What The #$*! Do We Know? (And maybe I can answer)

I digress for a minute to discuss the cult film What The #$*! Do We Know? It's The Secret's partner in crime and when I say cult film I mean a film produced by and mostly starring followers of a bonafide cult. The Secret borrowed two scientists who appeared in Bleep, John Hagelin and Fred Alan Wolf, and had the same basic interpretative underpinnings: by quantum physics you create your own reality. Of all the "experts" in the film, in a film patently about quantum physics, very few were actually quantum physicists (and no, graduate student don't count). Of those who were, some were followers of the cult leader, JZ "Ramtha" Knight (think 35,000 year old warrior from the "lost" continent of Atlantis), and all but one of the others were dubious and not mainstream scientists. The only mainstream quantum physicist who does not belong to a cult was David Albert. Most tellingly, he did not appreciate his portrayal in the film...

 

[Deep Dish]

[The film] is swarming with scientific inaccuracies, and its overall thesis is (in my opinion) wildly and irresponsibly wrong. Let me elaborate on that a bit...

Up through the end of the 19th century, science (and physics in particular) was at work on the construction of a thoroughly mechanical, thoroughly clockwork sort of a picture of the universe - a picture that seemed to have no room in it for God and spirit and freedom and mystery and all sorts of other stuff that we thought we wanted. And in the 20th century, with the advent of Quantum Mechanics, there was a great crisis in that project, and there were announcements, from many quarters, that the project had broken down, that it was now at an end, that it would need to be replaced by something else. And the argument of the movie is that this crisis somehow obviously amounts to a dramatic and long-awaited re-affirmation of the truth of this other, ancient, pre-scientific world-view, a re-affirmation of the existence and of the centrality of God and freedom and spirit and mystery and so on.

And there are two very large and very serious problems with that argument:

1) The film neglects to make any mention whatever of the fact that there has been a growing consensus among serious investigators of the foundations of Quantum Mechanics for 30 or 40 years now that this crisis of mechanism has passed, that we now see a way out of it, that (in so far as we can tell at present) the original, mechanistic, scientific project is very much alive and well. (The second film...

(The film had a "sequel")

...actually does a reasonably good job, with some help from me, of explaining how that crisis arose. But, as I said above, it makes no mention at all of the fact that that crisis has now passed. All of my numerous attempts to explain to the producers how we have now found our way out of that crisis were cut out of the final versions of both movies.)

2) Both of these films are wildly wrong about what a collapse of the project of mechanism (if such a collapse had indeed occurred, which it did not!) would have meant. Both of these films are wildly wrong (that is) about where a collapse of the project of mechanism (if such a collapse had indeed occurred, which it did not) would have left us. The film makers are apparently convinced that such a collapse would straightforwardly resuscitate the old metaphysics of God and spirit and so fourth, but they offer no reasons whatsoever for thinking that, and I cannot imagine what such a reason might be.

It seems to me that what's at issue (at the end of the day) between serious investigators of the foundations of quantum mechanics and the producers of the "what the bleep" movies is very much of a piece with what was at issue between Galileo and the Vatican, and very much of a piece with what was at issue between Darwin and the Victorians. There is a deep and perennial and profoundly human impulse to approach the world with a demand, to approach the world with a precondition, that what has got to turn out to lie at the center of the universe, that what has got to turn out to lie at the foundation of all being, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of ourselves. That's the impulse that the What the Bleep films seem to me to flatter and to endorse and (finally) to exploit - and that, more than any of their particular factual inaccuracies - is what bother me me about them. It is precisely he business of resisting that demand, it is precisely the business of approaching the world with open and authentic wonder, and with a sharp, cold eye, and singularly intent upon the truth, that's called science.

Part III: Incomprehensible Immorality

After the first audio disc, the grand majority of the material covered "how-to" apply the Law of Attraction to ordinary life. There were chapters on money, love, and health, and David Schirmer claimed to use the Law of Attraction to locate parking spots. However, for the sake of brevity I want to skip to Chapter Eight: "The Secret to the World" which I aptly call "Social Irresponsibility."

People have a tendency to look at the things that they want and say "Yes, I like that, I want that". However, they look at the things they don't want and they give just as energy if not more energy with the idea they can stamp it out. They can eliminate it, obliterate it. In our society, we've become content with fighting against cancer, fighting against poverty, fighting against drugs, fighting against terrorism, fighting against violence; we tend to fight everything we don't want. (Lisa Nichols, disc 4, track 1)

And therefore are attracting more of it. I think the people involved with those causes would be terribly insulted at what Nichols is insinuating. Moving onward..

Often when people first hear this part of the secret, they recall events in history when masses of lives were lost and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. By the law of attraction they had to be on the same frequency as the event. It doesn't necessarily mean they thought of that exact event but the frequency of their thoughts match the frequency of the event. If people can believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time." (Byrne, disc 1, track 15)

Think of six million Jews. Think of the friends and families of victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001; of the passengers on the airplanes, of the thousands massacred at the World Trade Center, of the roasted Pentagon employees. If you lived in the United States, there is a fairly decent chance you were either personally affected or know someone who was. Think about the Indian Ocean tsunami which wiped out over 118,000 lives in a brief moment in time. Byrne is pissing on the lives and memories of great people; many whom thought positively, had love in their hearts, lived a life of doing the right thing; and Byrne says it's all their own doing. I was not affected by those tragedies but I truly hope the worst in life for Byrne. That is what I want to happen and ergo that will be attracted. Byrne baby burn.

When I was researching the backgrounds of the "experts" in the Bleep film, I noticed one of them is a child molester, the theologian Miceal Ledwith. I ask: what happens to morality when you think you create your own reality and therefore by extension shape and dictate morality? Byrne et al. would counter the argument by arguing that is not what they are arguing but I contend it is an inevitable consequence albeit potentially unintended. Byrne et al. argue thoughts and feelings create physical reality, the universe realigns itself to suit your fancy regardless of its merit; thereby if you are a child molester the universe must and will deliver you infants. Moving onward...

Mother theresa was brilliant. She said, "I will never attend an ant-war rally. If you have a peace rally, invite me." She knew, she understood the secret, and look at what she manifested in the world. (Jack Canfield, ibid)

In the episode "Holier Than Thou" of the award-winning Showtime series Bullsh*t!, Penn & Teller conducted an exposé of Mother Teresa among a few others. She stole from the poor and those who met her described her as terribly cruel. She ran a scam in Haiti and accepted dirty money from her good friend Charles Keating which is the pre-historic Jurassic Park version of accepting money from Kenneth Lay of ENRON. (The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens). She also spoke out against contraception which is lethally ironic because South Africa is plagued by the AIDS epidemic. During a 1981 press conference she was asked "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" to which she responded, "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

If you're anti-war, be pro-peace. If you're anti-hunger, be pro-people having more than enough to eat. If you're anti- a particular politician, be pro- his opponent. Often, elections are tipped in favor of the person that people are really against because he's getting all the energy and all the focus. (Hale Dwoskin, ibid)

If elections truly operated by that mechanism then all of history's racism, bigotry, and sexism conspire against WASPs—White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men—by blacks, Jews, and women. I am a WASA but I do suppose am anti-Hale Dwoskin.

 

[Deep Dish]

I found a rock, I stuck it in my pocket. I said you know what, every time I touch this rock I'm going to think of something I'm grateful for. So, every morning when I wake up in the morning, I pick it up off from the dresser and put in my pocket and I go through the things I'm grateful for. At night, what do you do, you empty your pocket and there it is again. I've had different experiences and i've had some amazing experiences. I've had a guy from South Africa and he saw me drop it. He said, "What is that?" I explained it to him and he called it a gratitude rock. Two weeks later I got an email from him from South Africa. He said, "My son is dying from a rare disease," he says, "a type of hepatitis." He said, "Would you send me three gratitude rocks." I know they're just rocks I found on the street, so I said sure. I had to make sure the rocks were special. So I went out to the stream, looked, picked out the right rocks, and sent them off to him. Four or five months later I get an e-mail from him. He said, "My son is better, doing terrific," but he said, "but you need to know something." He said, "We've sold over a thousand rocks at ten dollars apiece as gratitude rocks and we raised all this money for charity and thank you very much. (Lee Brower, disc 2, track 18 )

A sourceless anecdote. How can we investigate the veracity of these claims? Besides, the claim of selling of a thousand rocks is dubious and scamming impoverished South Africans sounds mighty unethical. Clearly, by referencing South Africans and purportedly selling them "gratitude rocks" there is the unmistakable association with selling to impoverished people. Rich people don't need the rocks—why would they, they know the secret—Byrne clearly states elsewhere the poor are poor because they lack gratitude—and so the question arises why steal from the poor to give to the poor? Charities routinely distribute only a small fraction of their proceeds and thus the real immorality of the "gratitude rocks" is thus unveiled.

(I am reminded of this interview of Stephen Jay Gould by Charlie Rose in which the subject of cancer arose. Gould went through treatment of a rare abdominal cancer in which the average diagnosis was eight months to live. He survived and twelve years later was obviously alive enough and cheerful enough to do the interview. He stated "I'm if not totally cured." Look at him, Gould had such a naturally cheerful and optimistic personality and expressed the same about his attitude towards the diagnosis. He stated that at the time he felt the odds of him living a long life were favorable if he was in the upper half of people who lived longer than eight months. Rose asked him, "So who put you in the top half?," to which Gould answered, "I don't want to mystically argue that it was good attitude. I think there were a lot of tough treatments, mostly chemotherapy." Rose then tried to sway back towards positive thinking but Gould answered, "No, I think I got cured because of good treatment, but I do think interpreting the statistics properly were tremendously life-affirming and saving at that time." A few short years after the interview his academic career was cut woefully short when he died of lung cancer (a different cancer). Carl Sagan comes to mind as another highly positive and personable luminary whose academic achievements were cut woefully short by cancer. Did they die because they lacked enough gratitude? Yes, according to Dr. John Demartini: "Our physiology creates disease to give us feedback to let us know we have an imbalanced perspective and we're not loving and we're not grateful" (disc 3, track 15). Bastard.)

Here is what I think about unverifiable anecdotes such as the aforementioned gratitude rock story:

A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of (Mother Teresa), which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No.

(As for the veracity of the gratitude rock story, my research pointed me to www.mygratituderock.com which is only more all-sell, no cited sources, and "When you order right now, you get your very own My Gratitude Rock, Booklet and Pledge Card all wonderfully encased in a beautiful gift box for only $29.97!" Three times more expensive than in the story! Boy, how does vulture capitalism spread the gratitude—and just who is Skyla Spencer?)

Part IV: The Proverbial Nail in the Coffin

People are attracted to the paranormal and pseudoscientific partly because it gives them hope. They not only want UFOs, fairies, and telekinesis to be true but they need it to be true. This was most revealing when Hagelin (you know, the quantum physicist) said:

We are using at most five percent of the potential of the human mind. (Hagelin, disc 4, track 22)

Notice how Hagelin specifically says human "mind", presumingly as reference to "brain", rather than "life" or leaving it squarely at "human potential". I could potentially agree perhaps most people don't lead lives which fulfill their greatest potential, although that cannot be quantified into statistics. I do, however, wish to address the wildly held myth that people only use ten percent of the brain, as perpetuated by innocent people but also by such charlatans as Uri Geller. Geller has used only two-and-a-half percent of his potential, being as he is a one-trick magician bending spoons for twenty-odd years after having been exposed on The Tonight Show with the assistance of James Randi.

Excerpt from the book Uri Geller's Mind-Power Book:

Our minds are capable of remarkable, incredible feats, yet we don't use them to their full capacity. In fact, most of us only use about 10 percent of our brains, if that. The other 90 percent is full of untapped potential and undiscovered abilities, which means our minds are only operating in a very limited way instead of at full stretch. I believe that we once had full power over our minds. We had to, in order to survive, but as our world has become more sophisticated and complex we have forgotten many of the abilities we once had.

(italicized phrases emphasized in original)

Therein lies the secret to The Secret, telepathy, ESP, god, and the whole range of bizarre unjustifiable claims; for it's not that believers see a credible phenomena and believe in pseudoscience for the pseudoscience, but they believe because it gives them hope. Hope springs eternal. It lends a sense of magic to their life in face of cold mechanistic determinism, and by believing their thoughts shape physical reality they believe they have a mechanism to control their life out of their misery.

Belief in belief starts out strong when you're young. Toddlers need to believe everything they are told because they cannot be skeptical to stay away from crocodiles. Gradually, though, for most of us and for most aspects of our lives, belief is first filtered through skepticism as we realize we held false beliefs. However, though, belief in the paranormal soars in the later years. The death of friends, loved ones, and the increasing proximity of your own final demise; belief in the paranormal provides comfort and answers when reality is ungrateful.

 

[Deep Dish]

I'm all for optimism but everyone (except Terry Shiavo) uses 100% of their brain. Scopes.com has a great write-up...

What follows are two of the reasons that the Ten-Percent story is suspect. (For a much more thorough and detailed analysis of the subject, see Barry Beyerstein's chapter in the 1999 book Mind Myths: Exploring Everyday Mysteries of the Mind.)

1) Brain imaging research techniques such as PET scans (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) clearly show that the vast majority of the brain does not lie fallow. Indeed, although certain minor functions may use only a small part of the brain at one time, any sufficiently complex set of activities or thought patterns will indeed use many parts of the brain. Just as people don't use all of their muscle groups at one time, they also don't use all of their brain at once. For any given activity, such as eating, watching television, making love, or reading, you may use a few specific parts of your brain. Over the course of a whole day, however, just about all of the brain is used at one time or another.

Also, the human brain is so large and requires a tremendous amount of energy (nutrition) that from the evolutionary vantage point it makes no sense for the gigantic squalor of energy (and not in the sense of frequency vibrations).

2) The myth presupposes an extreme localization of functions in the brain. If the "used" or "necessary" parts of the brain were scattered all around the organ, that would imply that much of the brain is in fact necessary. But the myth implies that the "used" part of the brain is a discrete area, and the "unused" part is like an appendix or tonsil, taking up space but essentially unnecessary. But if all those parts of the brain are unused, removal or damage to the "unused" part of the brain should be minor or unnoticed. Yet people who have suffered head trauma, a stroke, or other brain injury are frequently severely impaired. Have you ever heard a doctor say, ". . . But luckily when that bullet entered his skull, it only damaged the 90 percent of his brain he didn't use"? Of course not.

In Summary

There is no quantum-consciousness connection. There is no untapped potential lurking in your brain which you can access if you only thought about it hard enough. You are what you are already. Proponents of The Secret cannot evade negative criticism regardless how much they think positively. I am an exceptionally positive guy in seemingly good health—just ask STR8UP, Rollo Tomassi, or KarmaSutra—but I still contend The Secret is horse dung on your shoes. Now, go ahead and wipe your shoes off and let's drink tea.

Q.E.D.

 

[God_of_getting_layed]

I agree "the secret" is horse sh1t on my shoes.

I make sure I dont step in it. I know better

 

[God_of_getting_layed]

okay, why does it say I replied, yet when I open this thread, my reply is no where to be found?

 

[Holland]

Wow, you just invested even more energy into something you do not even believe in?

Nice move :crackup:

 

[Vypros]

So, you basically spent all this time disproving something you DON'T believe in?

why? Why? why????

Imagine if you had taken that energy and focused it on something you DO believe in, and used that energy to affect a real change in your life. Imagine where you'd be right now.

As it stands, you've just developed a lot of words that most of us aren't going to read, to disprove something that most of us don't really care about.

If someone has a technique they use, then let them have that technique. Not all techniques work for ALL people. I'm willing to assert that this "Secret" has worked for some people. Hell, even if it works for just one person, it's worth it.

Why spend your time tearing something down when you could spend it building something UP?

 

[reset]

I agree, it's a waste of time to put something down you don't believe in.

I used to do this with religion, because I had a lot of bitterness against the church/family experiences. Arguing against it helped me get over it, but once I got over it, it's like "whatever".

I officially don't buy into it anymore. When I was the most adamant against it, is when I secretly thought it might be true. Now I figure, what the hell. Let people believe what they want. What does it have to do with me anyway? I know what I believe. And I have the right to believe it, no matter how weird or wrong someone else may think it is. And on the flip-side, I'm not as judgemental towards others who DO believe in the church, because a: it's their life, what the hell do I care (live and let live), and b: I don't feel threatened by it anymore.

What I've noticed about Secret bashers though, aside from all the spiritual/metaphysical stuff, is they probably work really hard doing something they may not enjoy, and the idea that life doesn't have to be a constant uphill battle goes against all the pain and suffering they have earned.

 

[Rollo Tomassi]

I've changed my mind! The Secret IS the answer I've been looking for all along! It changed my life and it can change yours too. All I needed to do was keep my Peruvian power crystals in my pocket every day to channel my positive energy back out into the universe,..how simple! As a matter of fact, I've got a few extras here and I'm willing to part with them for a mere $1500. Just think, what a small price to pay for an aid that'll get you anything your heart desires - they're guaranteed to pay for themselves the first day you use them if you think about it. Better act now before I put them up on ebay where they're sure to go for far more than $1500.



Law 32: Play to People's Fantasies
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

 

[reset]

Secret's got nothing to do with power crystals.

Think of what you want.
Visualize/affirm that it's real/like it's already happened.
Look for proof it's showing up, pay attention.
Get what you asked for.

Don't have to pay me anything for that one.

I used to be a huge skeptic. Big time. Still am, but I can't deny the "coincidences" and things that have been happening to me. But that's me.

I have no interest in convincing or dissuading anyone about anything really. I think the important thing in life is to find something that works for you and just go with it.

 

[DjDreamer]

Think of what you want.
Visualize/affirm that it's real/like it's already happened.
Look for proof it's showing up, pay attention.
Get what you asked for.

Sounds like some magical incarnation from out of a fantasy book...

Defy the laws of physics... you can get whatever you want once you believe... believe... believe... :crazy:

 

[reset]

Sounds like some magical incarnation from out of a fantasy book...

Defy the laws of physics... you can get whatever you want once you believe... believe... believe... :crazy:

Well, whatever. Like I said I was a hardcore skeptic for a long freaking time, so any arguments you could make against it, I've made the same ones against other things. Nothing new to me. I put it into a nutshell to make it free.

If the science aspect interests you, I would just forget about the secret aspect and look into things like quantum physics. I am not an expert and yes there are very different viewpoints about it. The movie What the Bleep? gets into it.

But as far as LOA, it's in the bible (as far as jesus saying ask for what you want, believe it, you'll receive it) and many great thinkers have said the same thing over time, people like Joseph Campbell, Edison, Einstein, whoever.

Whether you buy this or not, I don't really care. But I would ask you to think about the coincidences you've experienced. Like, have you ever thought about calling someone for a few days, maybe you haven't talked to them in a while, and all of the sudden you bump into them or they call you out of the blue? Or have you ever been thinking something, and then someone on tv says the exact same thing? Those are really minor examples. Most people brush them off as coincidences. Some think there's more to it than that.

There's a lot about the Secret here already. Look into it if it interests you, I guess.

Lots of things we take for granted now, at one point in time, defied all the laws of science. Imagine how messed up things would be if we still thought the earth was flat or the sun revolved around the earth.

 

[A-Unit]

Re:

Initially, I hesitated on writing a reply to this post and all the posts surrounding "the Secret," but as I thought more about it, I felt compelled to do so. I respect Deep Dish, and anyone who wishes to question views put out there, but as I've always personally stated, if you don't like what I've written, don't read it. Don't reply. Ignore it. I've always tried to write what I thought were helpful bits of information, because that's what this place is, helpful bits of information. The world has enough contradicting negativity to suppress the lot of us -- what we need is MORE hope, MORE BELIEF, MORE Idea for extending and uplifting human potential.

Your first post, purportedly exposing the fraud that the Secret is/was went quite a distance; 9+ threads. But what did it accomplish? Nothing. We might as well have argued about the existence of God for those threads. Two, well-written disertations by Deep Dish, but no contributions? I am planning on my own thread. Nothing to in fact contradict your's, but rather a compendium of everything I've read, written, viewed, talked about, found to work, and felt that worked. I will not make follow the trademarked "Two wrongs don't equal a right" cycle. That isn't what this place is about.

You are no more qualified than I to tell people what to believe or not believe. Any person here can do a cursory review of websites, books, and papers, put it together to make their point...and bammo, a well-written post that really...helps no one. I'd agree that some "Consumer Watch Program" be enacted if people were losing their lives, loved ones, or well earned dollars...but even right now, more people are blowing money on booze, drugs and sex, so if anything...let the wasted dollars make them thing a little more, rather than bury feelings.

So What Are We Talking About Here?

We're talking about reality. We're talking about BELIEF. We're talking abot navigating the mindfield of life and comprehending existence the best we can to empower ourselves AND enjoy it to the fullest. All of SoSuave's best posters, those who have bothered to stop by for a short duration of their life have done so by CONTRIBUTING empowering and positive literature, and then...when the site gets dragged down into the muck, they leave, and a new regime rises.

This site functions on the mutual interaction of all members. It's soul is ALIVE ONLY in the present. If great posters and members leave, new members and AFCS suffer; the bible as we know it is only as good as who's here to further it's knowledge and their collective experiences. And while I applaud people for contradicting thought...wasting the talent you've obviously demonstrated for writing and thought is a tragedy. If it suits you, fine. But nothing has changed for me. The only "nerve" you hit with me is the egotism you've displayed believing you can try to change the collective beliefs of hundreds of readers in the short-time you've taken to write what you've written.

Why not invest that talent in something that will empower guys? Why not explain what works for you and an alternative to "The Secret"? A good christian would explain his faith in Christ. It's very easy to say, "thats' STUPID, here's why." Life is full of critics, but few creators. Where's the creation? All I see is destruction. And sometimes destruction helps re-create. But what is left in it's wake? Two huge threads...and nothing to replace the destruction. Fine, you don't believe. You don't buy it. It's quite hard to speak about something you don't believe anyways. You're all logic, no emotion then.

It appears to be a very well-written post, but because I've never understood your thought process from the get-go, and the secondary thread and time-invested, I've not proceeded to go further. Rather, I'm choosing to pinup a different thread, a collective thread on 'thought', which may have some similarities to "The Secret." In all of this...I've not gotten one positive thing from you, and yet you've cited posters who I feel do nothing but give and contribute. Guys like POOK, and ANTIDUMP, and DIESEL may get laughed at, or even derided (that's easy, they're not here anymore), but at the very least...they gave to a bunch of strangers, totally bare for the internet to read, and even provided what little they could. They never said "Here, I present you with reality, THIS IS THE WAY world is." They said "Here, I offer you another pill, the green pill, another way, try it, if you don't like it, so be it, and move onto another poster."

But when a talented writer, and evidently veteran poster writes what I view to be rubbish, it's something that speaks about the state of so-suave. Even if you don't believe in it...post the thought you DO believe. That's what attraction is about my friend. Does it sink in now? You, a great writer, intelligent person, who claims to be positive, wrote in the hundreds of thousands of words to prove nothing to no one. A great many gigabytes of info was used and wasted, when you could be plying your talent. Alas, it is your talent to do with as you will. However, in the time the original thread came out, and this one was pinned up, more inner fighting occurred, which links back to times when the Anything Else Boards was inflames over Wyldfire.

The concepts of the Secret or anything else aren't bs, because all the posts related to the Law of Attraction perfectly correspond to it now. Two weeks of writing on this...and many great posters wasting time and thought on non-progressive writing and activities. This was an exercise in futility.


Good day to you gents,


A-Unit

 

[Nighthawk]

Beautiful post Deep Dish. The paucity of your critics prove you right - no criticism of your scalpel-like dissection of this dangerous psuedo-science rubbish, so instead they question your motives for writing it at all. For a start, because the beauty of truth beats childish make-believe and exposing charlatans is fun and and necessary.

But as far as LOA, it's in the bible[/QUOTE=reset]

So are talking snakes and magical virgins. Next.

Whether you buy this or not, I don't really care. But I would ask you to think about the coincidences you've experienced. Like, have you ever thought about calling someone for a few days, maybe you haven't talked to them in a while, and all of the sudden you bump into them or they call you out of the blue? Or have you ever been thinking something, and then someone on tv says the exact same thing? Those are really minor examples. Most people brush them off as coincidences. Some think there's more to it than that.[/QUOTE=reset]

Actually when you remember how long people live, how many people they know, and phone calls you took that weren't about the person you were just thinking about, wouldn't it be strange if there were NO coincidences?

Following is an excerpt from
J.A.Paulos,
Beyond Numeracy

Coincidences fascinate us. They seem to compel a search for their significance. More often than some people realize, however, they're to be expected and require no special explanation. Surely no cosmic conclusions may be drawn from the fact that I recently and quite by accident met someone in Seattle whose father had played on the same Chicago high school baseball team as my father had and whose daughter is the same age and has the same name as my daughter. As improbable as this particular event was (or as particular events always are), that some event of this vaguely characterized sort should occasionally occur is very likely.

More precisely, it can be shown, for example, that if two strangers sit next to each other on an airplane, more than 99 times out of 100 they will be linked in some way by two or fewer intermediates. (The linkage with my father's classmate was more striking. It was via only one intermediate, my father, and contained other elements.) Maybe, for example, the cousin of one of the passengers will know the other's dentist. Most of the time people won't discover these links, since in casual conversation they don't usually run through all their 1,500 or so acquaintances as well as all their acquaintances' acquaintances. (I suppose with laptop computers becoming more popular they could compare their own personal databases and even those of people they know. Perhaps exchanging databases might soon be as common as leaving a business card. Electronic networking. Hellacious.)

There is a tendency, however, to home in on likely co-acquaintances. Such connections are thus discovered frequently enough so that the squeals of amazement that commonly accompany their discovery are unwarranted. Similarly unimpressive is the "prophetic" dream which traditionally comes to light after some natural disaster has occurred. Given the half billion hours of dreaming each night in this country - 2 hours per night for 200 million people - we should expect as much.

Or consider the famous birthday problem in probability theory. One must gather together 367 people (one more than the number of days in a leap year) in order to ensure that 2 of them share a birthday. But if one is willing to settle for a 50-50 chance of this happening, only 23 people need be gathered. Rephrasing, I note that if we imagine a school with thousands of classrooms each of which contains 23 students, then approximately half of these classrooms will contain 2 students who share a birthday. No time should be wasted trying to explain the meaning of these or other coincidences of similar type. They just happen.

One somewhat different example concerns the publisher of a stock newsletter who sends out 64,000 letters extolling his state-of-the-art database, his inside contacts, and his sophisticated econometric models. In 32,000 of these letters he predicts a rise in some stock index for the following week, say, and in 32,000 of them he predicts a decline. Whatever happens, he sends a follow-up letter but only to those 32,000 to whom he's made a correct "prediction." To 16,000 of them he predicts a rise for the next week, and to 16,000 a decline. Again, whatever happens, he will have sent 2 consecutive correct predictions to 16,000 people. Iterating this procedure of focusing exclusively on the winnowed list of people who have received only correct predictions, he can create the illusion in them that he knows what he's talking about. After all, the 1,000 or so remaining people who have received 6 straight correct predictions (by coincidence) have a good reason to cough up the $1,000 the newsletter, publisher requests: They want to continue to receive these "oracular" pronouncements.

I repeat that a useful distinction in discussing these and other coincidences is that between generic sorts of events and particular events. Many situations are such that the particular event that occurs is guaranteed to be rare - a certain individual winning the lottery or a specific bridge hand being dealt - while the generic outcome - someone's winning the lottery or some bridge hand being dealt-is unremarkable. Consider the birthday problem again. If all that we require is that 2 people have some birthday in common rather than any particular birthday, then 23 people suffice to make this happen with a probability of 1/2. By contrast, 253 people are needed in order for the probability to be 1/2 that one of them has a specific birth date, say July 4. Particular events specified beforehand are, of course, quite difficult to forecast, so it's not surprising that predictions by televangelists, quack doctors, and others are usually vague and amorphous (that is, until the events in question have occurred, at which time the prognosticators like to assert that these precise outcomes were indeed foreseen).

This brings me to the so-called Jeane Dixon effect, whereby the few correct predictions (by psychics, disreputable stock newsletters, whomever) are widely heralded and the 9,839 or so false predictions made annually are conveniently ignored. The phenomenon is quite widespread and contributes to the tendency we all have to read more significance into coincidences than is usually justified. We forget all the premonitions of disaster we've had which didn't predict the future and remember vividly those few which seemed to do so. Instances of seemingly telepathic thought are reported to everyone we know; the incomparably vaster number of times this does not occur are too banal to mention.

Even our biology conspires to make coincidences appear more meaningful than they usually are. Since the natural world of rocks, plants, and rivers does not seem to offer much evidence for superfluous coincidences, primitive man had to be very sensitive to every conceivable anomaly and improbability as he slowly developed science and its progenitor, 66common sense." Coincidences, after all, are sometimes quite significant. In our complicated and largely man-made modem world, however, the plethora of connections among us appears to have overstimulated many people's inborn tendency to note coincidence and improbability and led them to postulate causes and forces where there are none. People know more names (not only family members' but also those of colleagues and a myriad of public figures), dates (from news stories to personal appointments and schedules), addresses (whether actual physical ones or telephone numbers, office numbers, and so on), and organizations and acronyms (from the FBI to the IMF, from AIDS to ASEAN) than ever before. Thus, although it is a very difficult quantity to measure, the rate at which coincidences occur has probably risen over the last century or two. Still, for most of them it generally makes little sense to demand an explanation.

In reality, the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences.

 

[reset]

Actually when you remember how long people live, how many people they know, and phone calls you took that weren't about the person you were just thinking about, wouldn't it be strange if there were NO coincidences?

Yeah I've thought about it like this. "what about all the times that person DIDN'T call?" etc. All I can say is as you adopt this mindset, they just keep happening, more and more. Then it starts to get freaky.

The whole thing about the LOA is it's always working. So, if you think it isn't real, you will get things that support that belief. If you think it's real, things get strange. This has been my personal experience.

As far as talking snakes and immaculate conception, I'm with you there. I guess the difference between the way I look at this and the way you may be, is I don't look at it as supernatural or magic or anything out of the ordinary. Simply energy (thoughts) attracting energy (situations, circumstances, etc.) No gods, demons, angels, sprit guides, none of that.

For a different take on this, I'd suggest you read the Tao. This stuff has been around forever.

 

[reset]

Beautiful post Deep Dish. The paucity of your critics prove you right - no criticism of your scalpel-like dissection of this dangerous psuedo-science rubbish, so instead they question your motives for writing it at all. For a start, because the beauty of truth beats childish make-believe and exposing charlatans is fun and and necessary.

This isn't entirely true. There's a cool forum where I've already been in discussions like this, probably not going to see anything that I haven't read or haven't thought about myself at one point or another.

But there is truth to being for or against something. If you're for something, life seems to be more positive than when you're against something. The Secret gets into this a little, like with politics. You can either really hate the other guy, or just be really for the guy you're voting for. Which one is likely to have a more positive outcome? In the Secret they make the example that the candidate most people truly hate often wins, because they are receiving so much of the energy.

 

[Holland]

All truth passes trough 3 stages:

First, it is ridiculed
Second, it is violently opposed
Third, accepted as self-evident


Good Job on some more violently opposing Deep Dish

They don't want to turn they speakers up they claim I ain't deep enough
All that talkin' I feed off of - keep it up - Kanye West

This same thing goes for beliefs.
At first I entered PU and thought, whahaha no way this is going to work for me and so did my friends who saw me try things.
Then, I started to get succes and my friends were like, what, no way he really thinks that he can be this, and they started denying it.
Finally, it was excepted as self-evident by them that I was quite the DJ, to speak about it in those terms