Onwards!

31:30 [A sense of dread has started accompanying this ritual]

We start with their favourite bit of filler - the flashy bits.

I would like you to know that I am now sitting here, staring at my screen in horror. I'm struggling to finish chewing my bacon flavoured biscuit, I am just that astounded. The initial nonsense was much of the same (something about feeling trapped, yadda yadda) but then that Esther women dropped a bomb. If I didn't have food in my mouth, I would be on my knees, calling out to Karl Popper to come and save me.

Apparently the reason why we are stuck in cycles of "bad stuff" (bills, bills, bills) is because we have the same thoughts over and over again and the reason for our looping thought process is:


Most people offer the majority of their thought in response to what they are observing.

Good Karl. I am not even sure where to start on this one, my mind is simply reeling. With lots of new and unusual thoughts. A lot of things make sense to me now. These people have just admitted that they are completely cut off from reality and basically just making stuff up. While normal people observe the world through five senses and devote some brain power to analysing the data they collect (ranging from the basics - "duck!" - to more complex musings - "Jenna has lovely legs, I wonder if she's single..."), these people poo-poo that practise. Don't mentally respond to observations about the world around you! That's a bad direction for your thoughts to travel in! You should think about the unobserved, focus on things that don't happen, such as laws of attraction and the universe rearranging itself to suit your desires.

James Ray struggles with the concept of linear time. He thinks that most people look at their current situation and think "this is who I am". He assures us that, right now, in our current situations, we are not who we are. We are who we...(he really pauses here)...were!

He gets even funnier. I need popcorn. Hmmm, yummy.

"You see, if you look at your current state of affairs right now, let's say for instance that you don't have a lot of money in your bank account, uh, or you don't have the relationship that you want or your health and fitness isn't up to par, that's not who you are! That's the residual outcome of your past thoughts and actions. So we're constantly living in this residual, if you will, of the thoughts and actions we've taken in the past. When you look at your current state of affairs and define yourself by that, then you...you doom yourself! To have nothing more than the same in the future."

Phew! That's a lot of mindless repetition. Let's see. Indeed our past actions lead us to our current situations. Murdering in the past might get us in jail in the present. But that is very much who we are. A currently incarcerated murderer. It's known as "living in reality". But people really should not be looking at their "state of affairs" to define themselves by. Who we are is defined by our minds, our personalities. I will be the same me whether in jail or on an island, sipping cocktails. My mood might be different, but I have never defined myself by my external surroundings or external state of affairs or how much money I have or whether I have a boyfriend or not or whether I was ill or healthy. To do so is to be misguided.

Now we get to the bit Oprah must have liked. Powerful processes, bla bla, the first on the list is gratitude. This list will help us turn things around, by the way. Joe tells us that gratitude will "shift your energy". This is the same Joe, who on his Missing Secret website, assures us that we are not dealing with "some kind of new-age voodoo flake-out". Energy. Shifting energy. Somehow I don't think he's talking about "the capacity for vigorous activity; available power". I think what Joe has in mind is more...wispy. And non-existent.

I am so bored now that I can feel my brain trying to gnaw its way out of my skull in search of greener grass. I'm going to just go over this superficially.

Yes! A new face! The prettiest one yet. "Marci Shimoff MBA - Author". Thank you universe for circumventing that pesky rule of negation and giving me the opposite of what I was attracting! And here's more! John Gray, who believes men are Martians and women are Venusians. He appears to have some highlighter make-up under his eyes. Clever trick, makes you look younger and fresh-faced. Good for you, John. Lee Brower, a teacher, makes an appearance. Honestly, nobody is saying anything worth repeating. It's all "be grateful for what you have, even if it's not what you want, you might soon get what you want". Boring.

Lee carries what he calls a "rock" with him, but I'd describe it as a "pebble". Every time he touches this pebble, he must come up with something he is grateful for.

We're supposed to take advice from the kinds of people who carry rocks in their pockets. Sheesh! A guy from South Africa once saw Lee drop the pebble and asked him what it was. Upon explanation, the South African man (who is black, by the way) started calling it a "gratitude rock". Two weeks later, the man emailed him from South Africa. Cue images of dying boy lying on bed while the father types his letter on the computer. They are both covered in sweat, because it's hot here in Africa, you know. The boy is dying of a rare disease, (his stomach is swollen and he is sweating, so probably feverish) a type of hepatitis. The man requests three "gratitude rocks" to be sent to him. I must also add that, you know, because we're living on the dark continent, the boy has a carved wooden lion and what appears to be a small skull on his bedside table.

Lee laughs at the man's stupidity - "Now they're just rocks that I found off the street, you know?" *laughs* "So I said "sure!" He did make sure that the rocks were very special, so he picked them out from a stream and sent them off. About four months later the man sent another letter, his son is better, doing terrific. He also wants Lee to know that they have sold over 1000 rocks at $10 a piece. Now we see them handling rocks over a sign written in Afrikaans, my first language. It is derived from Dutch and not really spoken by black people much. We have 11 official languages and most black people speak Xhosa or Zulu and English. Anyway, this man can certainly be an exception. Why not.

The poster reads: Dankie Klippe - R10 - Alle winste word geskenk aan die kinder hospitaal.

That translates into "Thank you rocks - R10 - all profits are donated to the children's hospital".

I would also like to point out that R10 is definitely not $10, like Lee said. $10 for a rock would be a rip-off. They were selling the rocks for about $1.40 (a little bit less with the current exchange rate). Lee concludes that it is very important to be in an Attitude of Gratitude, as he calls it.

So fondling a pebble and being thankful for things while your son is dying of a rare disease will make him better. That, or using the perfectly capable doctors we have here in the perfectly adequate hospitals. Despite being a third-world country, we do manage to achieve greatness on the medical front, occasionally. That whole heart-transplant thing was thought up right here on African soil by a South African doctor. I digress.

Joe can't find the words to describe how powerful this next tool is going to be for us. It's "so huge". But apparently not huge and powerful enough, because we still need that "Missing Secret", ey Joe? This powerful process is "Visualize" Look, I even overcame my pedantry and used the American spelling, like they did. *hiss*

"When you visualize, then you materialize". U-huh. I visualise several things on a nightly basis and I have yet to wake up with the cool green eyes of HIM singer Ville Valo staring into mine. (I figured my Johnny Depp infatuation was getting old, but I also admire Ville and British actor Paul Bettany...yum! I'm vi-zjoo-a-lize-ing really hard!)

Now we're listening to some guy who doesn't seem to understand how visualisation can signal the same muscles in the same sequence as the action itself can. What he is saying is when I think about running, my brain sends signals to my leg muscles in a certain sequence, and that corresponds to the signals my brain sends to those same leg muscles when I actually run. He concludes that the brain does not know the difference between thinking about it and doing it. Hehe. Good stuff. Without hauling out my big books here, I'm going to venture a very basic explanation:

Visualising it: I think about running. My mind sends the signal to the muscles "run!" This signal is followed, before implementation of the first signal, by a restraining order - "don't really run!"
Running: I think about running. My mind sends the signal to the muscles "run!" With no secondary signal to prevent the action, I run.

Anyway, this is just me musing, I don't even know if his test results were accurate and scientific, so let's go on.

Dooley tells us to "always and only dwell on end results" when we're visualising. Aw! That would mean skipping all the juicy bits inbetween Ville staring into my eyes and us driving along the highway in a really great car!

Ooh! Neat coincidence now. We're told to look at our hands, really look at our hands (mine are a bit scarred from kickboxing, a car accident and a burn wound, because life is rough here in the jungles of Africa) and then visualising our fingers curling around the steering wheel of the car we want. Ville should be doing that, though, because in my visualisation, he's driving.

Joe again, telling us how real this experience will feel and how we won't feel like we need the car, because it will feel like we already have it. So practise these delusional tactics, everyone. Soon you'll have everything you want. Inside your mind.

Now it's the "feeling" that's attracting stuff. It's not about thinking about it and picturing it, but it's really the feeling of already having it that does the job. Just to be safe, I'll think about it, picture it, desire it, feel it and pretend it has already happened, because I'm confused by all this mucking about. And I'll do all that passionately. So that the universe can respond speedily.

Oh good, Bob's back for a sentence. "This is where the secret really moves into action." Thanks Bob. Missed you.

I'm stopping at 40 minutes into this joke. Last sentence: "How bad do you want change?"

It's how "badly", Mike Dooley. 49 minutes to go. Badly.

Joe needs money

Not satisfied with what he is currently attracting from the universe, Joe Vitale has decided to take things into his own hands.

He is selling his audioprogram "The Missing Secret: How to Use the Law of Attraction to Attract What You Want - Every Time" on this website.

So what he's trying to tell me is that the BOOK wasn't enough, the DVD is not enough, I still need this AUDIOPROGRAM to teach me the missing parts of the Secret.

He asks:

• Are you getting some of what you want, but not all of it?
• Do you feel like the Law of Attraction “works” for you sometimes, but not all the time?
• Are there things in your life that seem to run counter to your conscious intentions?
• Have you already experienced the incredible power of the Law of Attraction, and are you ready to take it to a whole new level?

The first question will always result in a "yes" answer - everyone gets some of what they want, but not all of it.

The second question is exactly the same as the first, only he adds in "feelings" and the imaginary "Law of Attraction" to piggyback on the answer to the first question.

The third question is also an obvious "yes" - people screw up. Sometimes they say something unintentionally that results in a huge mess. Sometimes we offer to help and end up making a bigger mess.

The last one goes in for the kill. One can safely assume that the type of person reading this message probably believes in the Law of Attraction, feels it's only working "sometimes, but not all the time" (the way it is with everyone, that has nothing to do with any fake laws), so here is the solution, buy my spiffy new missing secret program.

I deduce from this that The Secret is indeed the huge heap of crap that I suspected it to be (and am slowly confirming right here) and now that people realise it doesn't work, Joe must find new ways of getting money from suckers.

Just in case some skeptics are reading his site, he casts his net wide: "If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you should order a copy of my new audioprogram: “The Missing Secret: How to Use The Law of Attraction to Attract What You Want — Every Time."

Joe continues to tease us: "In it, I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned, done, proven, and taught others about how to correctly use the Law of Attraction to consistently get the results you’re looking for..."

Ok, let's read that again. Joe will tell us how to correctly use the Law of Attraction. I should now direct your attention up towards the introduction on that page, just below his comparison of the "Law of Attraction" to the law of gravity. This is what he says:

"It’s a LAW - not a feel-good principle or some kind of new-age voodoo flake-out.

You can’t “do” the Law of Attraction wrong. It doesn’t turn off and on, like a light switch. It’s not subject to fate or fancy. It is a powerful but neutral force that is constantly operational."

'Kay. I can't do it wrong. And yet, I must be doing it wrong, because Joe will show me how to use it correctly.

Other things that caught my eye:

"What this is all about is awakening.

I’m probably the only teacher in the movie The Secret that has stood my ground about this. I’ve taken heat for it, too. I feel like Freud when he introduced his idea of the unconscious mind in the late 1800s and was booed off stage.

He didn’t back down.

Neither have I."

No part of this is about "awakening". It's all about money. For Joe to compare himself to Freud is simply hilarious. And the idea that Freud was "booed off stage" is ridiculous. I have read several papers (here's an online one) indicating that the idea that Freud was ostracised by his peers is largely a myth. Even if his ideas about seduction theory were considered shocking, his ideas on the already known subject of unconsciousness were not. (Joe's statement is ambiguous, but if he's trying to say Freud came up with the idea of the unconscious mind, he did not.)

So Freud didn't back down after he was not booed off a stage for stating his perfectly accepted ideas on unconscious, so I don't know what Joe is trying to pull here. Maybe he's just continuing the trend of invoking the names of impressive people to try and envelop himself in an air of authority.

Joe: "How do you get rid of the inner roadblocks and go warp speed ahead, right to whatever it is you’re trying to achieve or attract?

It took me some time to figure out the answer to that question. But once I did, it was as if all the limits in and around me shattered."

He should've just watched The Secret. The universe likes speed, as I recall. And the key to achieving a speedy result is passion. Come now, Joe, we've been through this.

"I thought life was good before - but I had no idea it could be this good.

I thought I’d achieved a pretty high level of personal and professional success - but the success I experienced once I got clear absolutely blew me away."

Sounds like Joe has turned to Scientology.

"For every person who has told me how much the Law of Attraction has positively transformed his or her life, there have been three who have related a different experience:

Confusion.

Inconsistencies.

Frustration."

What? No! Surely not, Joe! So the secret to success is not merely to watch The Secret? Like you guys have been saying on The Secret? You're really destroying my will to watch the rest of it, Joe old buddy.

"How to eradicate the “virus of the mind”. Got negativity? The negative images that bombard you each day from all sides bear a lot of the blame. I’ll tell you how to protect yourself from these misery-magnets. Do these few things and you’ll notice an immediate change in what’s showing up in your life."

Next, Joe will be selling tinfoil hats to protect us from the negative signals being beamed into our heads from inside the hollow moon.

"The totally counter-intuitive belief that will make you wealthy. It helped me turn $15,000 into twice that with virtually no effort at all."

Lemme guess: "Scamming innocent people is not the bad idea your mother told you it was! Invest $15 000 in an audioprogram telling people how to think wealth and happiness into their lives, and watch your money double. Virtually no effort!"

"The single most mind-blowing story you’ll ever hear. I share it in Session 5 of The Missing Secret. To call it shocking would be an understatement. The best part? You will walk away from it with one of the most effective transformation tools ever discovered. The effects? Too incredible to describe. You’ll just have to find out for yourself."

I've had enough of his waffling. You can read the rest of it on his little site. You can even order it and pay the $119.95 without too much concern, because as Joe kindly reminds us: "Remember, there’s a one-year guarantee, too."

On the order site, there is even more! Look at this:

"Turn ANY desire into reality, using the proven 5-step Attractor Factor Process."

Wow.

"Begin to instantaneously heal injury, illness, disconnects, and more, using 4 simple phrases."

Double wow. Does Joe know about James Randi's prize? "I have instant healing powers" sounds like a shoo-in to me!

Oprah's Involvement

Even I heard that Oprah Winfrey endorses The Secret, and I rarely watch television. I found an article on Salon that I'd like to share with you.

I particularly appreciated this line: "Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame." [emphasis mine]

They feel much the same as I do, then.

The Secret's David Schirmer exposed

More on David "I always get the best parking spot" Schirmer.

I hope The Secret's shine has faded by now

Because I looked at some of the comments on Anita Quigley's Daily Telegraph blog, and it was discouraging. How long can a fool sustain this type of flimflammery? How long can someone delude themselves about their own mental powers without tiring of it? I hope most people have moved on by now. I'm only doing this for nraider, who hasn't even commented yet. I'll have to mail him right away.

Quantum Consciousness, Quantum Miracles, Quantum Failure

I happened upon a link to this paper by Geoff Gilpin. It is relevant to my review of The Secret, since it addresses the "confusion about quantum mechanics and human consciousness".

It basically shows that this whole "it's quantum mechanics!" premise that The Secret is based on, is bogus. But we knew that already.

I'm ready to find out more about quantum thingymajigs now, thanks.

28:44 [Bob's face stares back at me, mouth wide open. Play]


Bob: "If it's a certain book you need, you'll attract it. You've got to pay attention to what you're attracted to." That's easy. I'm attracted to men who look like Johnny Depp, shiny things and shoes. What now?

"...because as you hold images of what you want, you're going to be attracted to things and they're going to be attracted to you."

That's what I've been doing all along, yeah. When I walk past pretty shoes, I desire them, I'm attracted to them. I never know quite how to read their signals - are they interested in me too? Usually I offer to buy them a drink, but now the answer has been revealed to me. As long as I'm attracted to the shoes, they will be attracted to me. This clears up a lot of confusion for me. What now, Bob?

"But it literally moves into physical reality with and through you. And it does that by law."

I really should brush up on the law, then. Here's my game plan. Enter shoe store. Be attracted to shoes. Shoes are attracted to me. Shoes will move from the shelf, through me, literally, into the physical reality of being on my feet. That's just the basic outline of my plan, I assume I might have to give people cash and physically carry the shoes from the shelf onto my feet myself. But the idea is there.

Beckwith and Canfield amuses with some more useless statements. Nothing worth sharing, or maybe I'm just too obsessed with clinging to the last remnants of my will to live to bother with transcribing this.

Joe is back to tell us how long this should take. To manifest these things, he means. He doesn't have a rulebook that says it's going to take 30 minutes. Once again, this is the most powerful law in the universe, according to these people. And they don't know squat about how it works. They should have some sort of mathematical model, be able to accurately predict a time-frame. Bigger things, 6-8 weeks, small things, half an hour. Else it's simply not a law. It's make-belief. Listen to me, I'm starting to sound as though I expected this to be anything other than fallacious hogwash. Of course they won't have anything valid to say, I'm here to point out what they are saying before I write my final opinion on the whole giant mess. I'll try and keep it together. Sorry.

Bob Doyle doesn't know much more than Joe, but he does know that size doesn't mean anything to the universe. Listen to the nonsense he spouts: "Size is...its nothing to the universe. It is no more difficult to attract, on a scientific level, something that we consider huge to something that we consider infinitesimally small. The universe does everything it does with zero effort. Grass doesn't strain to grow, it's effortless, it's just this great design. It's all about what's going on up here (he points to his temples with both hands). It's about what we put in place, saying "this is big, it's gonna take some time", "this is small, oh, I'll give it an hour". You know, those are our rules that we define. There are no rules according to the universe. You provide the feelings of having it now, it will respond. Some people have an easier time with little things, and so we sometimes say "well, start with something small, like a cup of coffee. Make it your intention to attract a cup of coffee today."

Ugh.

Size is nothing to the universe, because the universe is not aware, it is not conscious. It cannot have a concept of size, because it is simply a name we assigned to the totality of objects and phenomena throughout space.

There is no law of attraction, so to say "it's no more difficult to attract" and then suddenly adding "on a scientific level" is just pointless. If we are going to consider "attraction" from a scientific perspective, then size (or more correctly, mass) does matter. We should consult that other guy who also understood the secret, according to the makers of The Secret - Newton. He had some interesting ideas about this "law of attraction" thing. But I don't think that's what these "magnetic waves are coming out of your mind, dude" people are talking about.

Now Doyle reveals the extent of his ignorance. He is ascribing mental awareness to space. The reason the universe exerts "zero effort" is because "effort" means exertion of physical or mental power, or an earnest or strenuous attempt, or something done by exertion or hard work. The incorrect use of this word by no means indicate that everything in the universe came to be through uncomplicated means. Indeed, for the universe to have reached the state that we observe it to be in took tremendous forces and many millions of years. If the universe did have a mind to get us to this point, it would surely have broken a sweat by now.

Of course grass does strain to grow. We've managed (this time through real effort by real scientists) to create certain types of grasses that will grow more easily, be more manageable and even grow in shade. You need favourable conditions for grass and other seeds to germinate. Once it's stuck its little green head out of the soil, which needs to be the correct type of soil in the correct condition, it needs sunlight, water, oxygen and the correct temperature to grow. Once the food reserves in the seed are exhausted, it needs to start getting nutrients from the soil and through photosynthesis. If all these conditions are met, the plant must still struggle to survive amidst neighbouring plants, such as weeds.*

I would love for Doyle to look a grass seedling right in the culm and tell it that its very existence has been effortless. His next utterance, about design, shows me that I've been right all along. These people have more than dodgy logic in common with creationists, clearly.

So the fact that the universe is unaware of the effort that goes into creating planetary bodies and how grass grows is all about what is going on in our minds. These people take megalomania to extremes.

Excuse me now while I snigger at this belief that the universe will cater to our smallest needs, down to making us a cup of coffee. It's not about "attracting" a cup, it's about getting off your ass and making a cup of coffee. Or ordering a cup and paying for it. These are not difficult concepts to master. Even if I sit right here and someone brings me a cup of coffee without me asking, that would not mean that I "attracted" a cup of coffee. It would be very silly to think that. But Doyle thinks just that.

The other Bob wants us to hold an image of an old friend in our minds. Someone we haven't spoken to in a long time. "Somehow or another, someone's going to start talking to you about that person." Yup. It's called coincidence. It's not extremely statistically unlikely, since the people I talk to are probably aware of my friends, even old ones, and are therefore quite likely to bring them up. Especially with facebook and other social networking sites that are so popular today, the topic of old friends crop up frequently in my life. If a random stranger approached me on the street after I thought of Tessa and said "Tessa says hi", that would be staggering, but still not a miracle. Just a readily explicable coincidence.

We plunge ever further into the depths of absurdity, with the introduction of "David Schirmer - Investment Trainer". From the beginning of his understanding of the secret, David has been getting prime parking spots in parking garages. He would visualise the space that he wanted and get this - "95% of the time it would be there for me and I'd just pull straight in. 5% of the time I have to wait just a minute or two and the person would pull out and I'd pull in". I would love to see some verification of these percentages, because as someone with some understanding of our terrible perception of probability, I distrust any percentages not gleaned from scientifically sound methods. Humans tend to make the confirmation bias error frequently.

Regardless, this doesn't even seem that odd to me. My mother hates walking too far to the entrance of any store, so she will also circle the parking lot for "a minute or two" and invariably she will find a very convenient parking space. And if David goes in search of parking at the least busy times of day, he'll have an even higher success rate.

IF David Schirmer would be willing to take part in a proper scientific test to prove that, through his utilisation of The Secret, he will get the exact parking spot of his choice 95% of the time while this is an unusually high percentage for those of us who do not practice the secret, then he can earn one million dollars from the James Randi Foundation. The ability to control parking space availability with the power of thought would be considered supernatural. Someone should let him know.
As an investment trainer, I am positive that he can appreciate the thought of an easy million dollars. With that kind of cash, he could purchase a whole room full of garish neckties!

Ok, enough rubbish for today. I'm at 31:30. I'm getting less and less annoyed, now that I see the game they're playing here. Lies, damned lies and statistics.

*I can heartily recommend the BBC documentary "The Private Life of Plants" for an in-depth look at just what a struggle (effort!) it is for plants to survive in this "great design" as Doyle calls it.

Where are you taking me, Bob and co?

22:30 [Despite the urgent voices begging me not to, I press play yet again.]

Oooh, haven't seen these flashy bits in a while now. I think there is even a depiction of "the universe" in here. He looks like a giant naked guy:

It reaches a climax with the typewriter typing "how to use the secret", but then crashes and burns when they bring Joe back into the fray. He looks a bit uncertain.


A lot of people ask him what their job is in "the creative process" and what the job of the universe is. Yes, I have also often wondered about the universe. I understand my job in the creative process - "solve the client's problem with an award winning ad and do so by noon today", but the universe! It has a job too! Let's find out what it's supposed to be doing.

Oh no, I can't find out, because they've plucked Joe away from us and replaced him with another man telling us to look at Aladdin and his lamp. Let's. Oh, ok, sorry, my bad. That image above that they showed during the flashing sequence was actually Aladdin's genie. We continue. Genie just popped out of the lamp. "The genie always says one thing." The genie obliges by saying "your wish is my command". Wait, this is going to be good. Let me quote James Ray directly here:

"If you trace the story back to its origins, you know, we now think that there's [sic] three wishes...but if you trace the story back to its origins, there's absolutely no limit whatsoever to the wishes. Think about that one." Sorry James, I'm trying, but I'm too racked with laughter to think straight. Let's run after the point of this magical lamp metaphor. Let's see if we can catch it.

"Now, let's take this metaphor and blow it out and apply it to you and your life. Remember Aladdin is the one who always asks for what he wants and then you've got the universe (oh, so the genie is the universe...pick a lane!) at large, which is this grand genie and traditions, you know, have called it so many different things, your holy guardian angel, your higher self, I mean we could put any label on it, and you choose the one that works best for you."

The one that works best for me is "Mr Hyde". Yes, a homage to insane alter egos the world over. Very apt, I think.

"...but every tradition has told us there's something bigger than us." More elaborate hand motions. No, dear James. Every tradition does not tell us that. If a tradition is "the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, esp. by word of mouth or by practice", then I can think of several, right off the top of my head, that do not make any claims about "something bigger than us".

"...and the genie always says one thing! "Your wish is my command"." Esther takes over. "So we'd like to say to you that the creative process is a three-step process." [She looks as uncertain and confused as Joe did, earlier.]

Now we get to learn the steps.

1. Ask

"You must ask for what you want", but "you don't need to use words to ask, because the universe is not hearing words from us." "The universe is responding completely to your thoughts." Bob tells us to write down exactly what we want, on a piece of paper and in the present tense, and Joe assures us that this is fun, because the universe is like our own personal catalog.

"...and you flip through it and you're like wow [well?], I'd like to have this experience, and I'd like to have that product and I'd like to have a person like that. It is you placing your order with the universe."

2. Answer

This is "an answer to what you're asking". At step one, Joe said that "it's really that easy", but now it's getting more complicated. Are we supposed to answer on behalf of "the universe"? Is the universe really my own "higher self"/Mr Hyde? Earlier we could control the universe, but since we create our own reality, are we really the universe in its entirety? Is that the secret? I am the universe, therefore I control it? It's not any crazier than anything else they've been saying.

Esther goes on to baffle me by stating, directly following "answer, an answer to what you're asking" with "and that is not your work in your physical form, the universe will do that step for you." Huh? So these are the three steps that I have to follow, except for step two, I don't have to follow it in my physical form (what other form is there?) because the universe will do this step for me. Right. The genie repeats "Your wish is my command". I'm nodding off.

Until Joe says "and the universe will start to rearrange itself to make it happen for you." This is what his face looks like right after he finished that sentence:

Does he look sincere to you? Does this man honestly think the universe rearranges itself to comply with human whims? Surely not, Joe!

Jack is back with more nonsensical claptrap. "Most of us have never allowed ourselves to want what we truly want, because we can't see how it's going to manifest." I have never allowed myself. To want. What I truly want. Because I don't see how. It could happen.

DOES NOT COMPUTE!

Hey, luckily we don't need to know. We "don't need to know how the universe will rearrange itself." That's good, because it doesn't happen, so they couldn't possibly provide proof for this statement. Now they don't need to give us any, because "we don't need it". We don't need to know. I'd like to disagree and say that I really really need to know. But the data has been written to the disc and they can't answer me.

3. Receive

"You must bring yourself into alignment with what you're asking for." The child being used as an example of the three steps stares at the cut-out of the bicycle he wants. Let's see if he'll get it. Oh dear, no, he doesn't. He's been staring at the picture for days now. He takes it with him everywhere he goes. His little face shines while he imagines owning the bike. But when he goes to the store, the bike is sold. He suffers from despair, we are told, and crumples the picture up and throws it away. What now? "Bad feeling" is what now. But no worries. Without any explanation as to why, the child has rescued his crumpled picture and is now drawing more pictures of him on the bike. He smiles. That looks like positive thinking to me, surely now he will get that bike? YES! Looks like granddad bought it for him! The music is reminiscent of the half-sad songs that usually accompany the denouement in Disney movies. How sweet.

Bob informs us about the "Creative Process". When you turn fantasy into reality, that paves the way for us to make up bigger fantasies. "And that my friend, is the creative process". I did not know that, Bob.

Alright, we are privy to a slightly more in-depth evaluation of principles of the secret. We have to figure out what will help us generate the feelings of "having it now", like test-driving the car, going into the house, etc. Apparently it might manifest itself overnight, such as the elephant in the living room, or "you might get some inspired idea of some action to take".

AHA! My friends, I am a prophet. Did I not predict that "I'll soon hear about The Secret's ability to control time"? In part two of this lengthy review, I did indeed! Well, here it is:

Bob Doyle: "Action will sometimes be required, but if you're really doing it in line with what the universe is trying to deliver, it's gonna feel joyous, you're gonna feel so alive, time will just stop, you could do it all day."

Back to Joe, who shares with us a secret of a different kind. The universe has a habit. "The universe likes speed." I think this whole crew was on something, actually.

Joe then shares with us what I deem to be very bad advice. He's preaching impulsivity. "Don't delay," he says, "don't doubt". When the impulse is there, "act!". Of course, I am actively doubting every word he says, so I'm immune to this advice. He follows up this stupid instruction with "that's your job". Now I know not to become a metaphysician. It makes you downright loopy.

More of the "you'll attract whatever you need" spiel. I've harnessed the principles of the secret somehow, because my sister just requested that I go play some Wii with her. So I'll listen to the universe and go do that now.

28:44 Looks like I'm getting somewhere.

I'll be back, Bob. Just you wait.

I just can't get enough, I just can't get enough...

I find that it is always a good move to hum an upbeat tune before plunging back into an abyss of despair. Let's go.

19:30 - [Play]

I am pleased to report that the director placed the speakers in front of some very pretty backgrounds. Time and time again I find myself studying these backgrounds in detail. Right now there is some sheet music, the words "Martin L King", "doctor", what looks like "agape" something indiscernible followed by the word "leader" and a drawing of two hands holding a heap of dirt with a little plant in it. My favourite, so far, was what looked very much like half a body lying on the sidewalk. It had a Jack the Ripper feel to it and I was quite amused by it.

Look, it's a "street kid".

The narrative is still pointless, though. The director might want to try his or her hand at music videos.

Oh, ok, the indiscernible word is "spiritual". "Spiritual Leader". Of course.

Doyle again: "So basically, what you focus on with thought and feeling is what you attract into your experience, whether or not it's something you want."

Got that yet? They keep saying this, interspersed with those stern reprimands that this is not wishful thinking and if we don't get it, we shouldn't dismiss it out of hand. The boredom, it aches. It appears as though they are going to try and cruise through this little lecture by repeating themselves until we accept defeat. But not I. I will not give in.


We are confronted by the following bold claim (or bald lie, as I like to think of it): "What you think and what you feel and what manifests is always a match. Every single time. No exception."

This type of statement is readily falsifiable. I am glad she phrased it like that. Usually these types of people make the "there are no diamonds in Australia" type claims, claims that would require digging up all of Australia to disprove. All we need to disprove this statement is to find a single instance where what we thought and felt did not match what was "manifested". (Manifested means "to show or demonstrate plainly; reveal".)

I can think of a very recent, personal example from my own life. I am sure you can do the same.

If you can, that is an exception to her absolute - "every time, without exception" - rule, then, so her statement is false. I am sure you can think of countless examples of how what you felt and thought were contrary to what manifested. Think of accidents or sudden bad news - we will often remember being on top of the world when the earth-shattering news was delivered or singing along happily when someone drove into the side of our car.

Beckwith now reminds me of Jon Stewart imitating George W. Bush. He clamps his hands together and shakes them, while whispering in a conspiratory tone "It's hard to swallow." That it is, brother. He tells us that once we open ourselves up to this hard to swallow idea, the "ramifications are awesome". "It means that whatever thought has done in your life...it can be undone, through a shift in your awareness."

He doesn't tell us how, exactly, so we'll just have to keep watching.

Next, they desecrate the memory of Winston Churchill through some more quote-mining.



"You create your own universe as you go along" - Winston Churchill 1874-1965

Er, yeah. I greatly admire Churchill. He was a rational man. Here is the actual quote (my emphasis):

From “My Early Life” (1930)
"Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. The whole creation is but a dream; all phenomena are imaginary. You create your own universe as you go along. The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming,the universe ceases to exist. These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. I warn my younger readers only to treat them as a game. The metaphysicians will have the last word and defy you to disprove their absurd propositions."

Is it fair, then, to quote Churchill as saying those words? Really, his cousins said it, and only to tease him with the absurdity of it. This practise of using quotes out of context to misrepresent people upsets me more than any of their other lies. It is utterly repugnant. Do read the rest of the piece, since Churchill echoes my own feelings, rather more eloquently, by more or less telling metaphysicians to go to hell.

With a bad taste in my mouth, I persevere.

In an ironic twist, Joe the metaphysician is the first person to appear after the Churchill "quote". He feels that it is really important that we feel good. This is because this signal of feeling good is what we broadcast into the universe and that then attracts more of the good to us. How many times do you think they'll say this?

The very next sentence is "So the more you feel good, the more you will be attracting the things that help you feel good", so I guess many more times. I'll be ignoring this until they say something new.

Bob shares this sage advice with us: when we feel down, we can turn it around like that (he snaps his fingers). "Turn on a beautiful piece of music! Start singing. That'll change your emotion. Or think of something beautiful. Think of a baby." Ok, so next time you're standing over a butchered corpse, Mr Police Officer, think of a baby and hum a happy tune. That should overwrite the horror, like that! *snap* Bob guarantees us that if we block out everything else except the thought of a baby that we love, we will start to feel good.

James Ray approves of pets, because they bring "a great state of love into our lives". He mumbles more (he's a philosopher, by the way, but not very succinct) about pets putting us into a "great emotional state...when you feel love for your pet, that's a great state of love that's going to bring goodness into your life. What a gift that is."

Bollocks. I live in South Africa and am faced with a lot of poverty, often. I've often seen underfed dogs accompanying underfed children. They love these dogs, but that love is not manifesting anything new or good in their miserable little lives. Maybe the secret only works for wealthy people in first world countries.

Esther Hicks is the lady who keeps spouting the most bull. Under her name, it just says "the teachings of Abraham", so I'm not sure what she's supposed to be an expert on, but she just informed me that "before you know it, you will know that you are the creator of your own reality". This is my cue, right here. To whom it may concern: If ever I, Prazzie the blogger, profess to know that I am the creator of my own reality before I know it, lock me up in a padded room. Give my computer and Wii to my sister and my furniture to my parents to dispose of as they see fit. Donate my books to a library. Thank you.

Jack Canfield, the author, brags a bit about his "magical" life. He lives in a four and a half million dollar mansion. Here he is, with his "to die for" wife:

They look very happy. This could be because they "get to vacation in all the fabulous spots in the world". He's climbed mountains and been on safaris and all of this happened and continues to happen because he knows how to apply the secret. I guess all of those other people who do these things without knowing the secret are just living a happy coincidence. They are just naturally attuned to this most powerful law in the universe. And the rest of us suckers must suffer until we manage to "shift our awareness", by paying Jack and his ilk more money to watch this DVD to find out how we too can acquire mansions and go on safaris.

Bob again. "Life can be absolutely phenomenal! And it should be! And it will be. When you start using the secret." I'd love to, Bob, but what must I do? Initially I thought I just had to think about what I want. Then I was told that it is not "wishful thinking", but a "deeper understanding". You guys lost me there. But then you changed it again to more of "a feeling than a thought". I'm baffled, Bob, as to how to apply the secret. Hopefully I will find out within the remaining hour and seven minutes.

22:30. Part four done. Still bored. No Godzilla. No ugly orange shoes. No Coke. Not convinced of this powerful law.

Part Three, because I got my second wind.

Must be all the hot air emanating from my DVD drive.

Conspiracy theory drivel follows, the secret was kept a secret by some unknown "people in power" group. We are shown black and white footage of people working in factories. It appears to me that, if everyone knew the secret, the industrial revolution wouldn't have taken place.

More from Beckwith, let's see if he comes up with number 2 now.

"We live in a universe...in which there are laws. {Mumbled} there is a law of gravity, if you fall off a building, it doesn't matter if you're a good person or a bad person...you're gonna hit the ground."

Genius. Fill up the DVD with pointless rambling, that should up the runtime! It's a valid movie, damn it!

Joe Vitale is here to "be a little bit in your face" and inform you that you've attracted everything in your life. Even the things you disagree with. He's in your face! You're responsible. Trust him, he's a metaphysian. He feels that this responsibility concept is the hardest one to get, but once you accept it, it will transform your life. "This is part of the overall giant secret here". Now it's a giant secret. I can't wait to hear more.

They don't encourage us to monitor our thoughts - "that will sort of make you crazy". A very short while ago, we were encouraged to "choose your thoughts carefully". I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with "y" and ends with "et another massive contradiction in this gaping hole where logic goes to die". There are so many thoughts coming at us, from so many different sources, that we need (and have, how convenient) an "emotional guidance system". Now we see tattoo style graphics, to explain this guidance system.


This "emotional guidance system" helps us to understand what we are thinking. I am very interested in the human mind and in consciousness in particular. I can say with 100% certainty (yes, I am naturally risk-averse and would usually hedge my bets with a 99,9%, but I've read Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" and I think I can talk about this subject with confidence) that there is no such thing as an "emotional guidance system" that helps us understand what we are thinking. So these people don't know squat about the mental processes involved in thinking, either. I'm not too surprised.

I'm almost laughing at the next bit, but he's not joking. Our emotions are an "incredible gift that we have, to let us know what we are attracting". No, they are not. Emotions are "an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness." They are not gifts, at least not intentional ones. They are a product of the evolutionary process. In some instances, they can be a curse. Emotional pain is a terrible thing to suffer and hardly a "gift". They don't let us know anything that we don't already know. Emotions are reactionary. Events happen, emotions follow. If you are sad, that is not your "emotional guidance system" informing you that you are busy attracting sad events. I find this idea extremely offensive. And ignorant.

Oh my. "There are only two emotions, from our perspective." Want to guess what they are? No, really, try guessing.



The two emotions are: (are you ready for this?)

Good. Bad.

Yup. The entire gamut of human emotions can be condensed into "good" or "bad". They group guilt, anger and frustration under "bad" and say that they all feel much the same. Don't fall off your chair now - I don't agree with this. Occasionally, for me and for others I know, feeling sad is a good emotion. We wallow in self-pity and enjoy it. Occasionally, we enjoy crying - it feels good. Frustration can be good, the type of frustration you feel when you're stuck at a particularly difficult level of a computer game, or mathematical problem. It's a fun frustration. Anger, at times, was necessary for me to excel in kickboxing. It felt good. In any case, let's meet them halfway. Generally speaking, we could classify our emotions into "good" and "bad" categories, although all emotions are good, from a mental health perspective. I wouldn't want to, but they did, so let's see where they go with this.

When you experience a "bad" emotion, that is your system telling you that what you are thinking about is not in line with what you really want. Obviously. If I'm sad because my puppy was run over, my "system" is telling me "You feel terrible, because you don't really want your puppy to be run over". Pretty bloody useless system, wouldn't you say?

Dr Ben Johnson starts talking about "another level" being "bad frequency, or bad vibes, or whatever you want to call it". I'm going to go with "new age hippie crap". Next, some concrete advice. Want to know what you're attracting right now? How do you feel? If you feel good - good! "Keep doing that!" Do you think they wear shoes with velcro-fasteners? Serious question.

Our feelings are a form of feedback to us about whether we are "on course or off course". Ok. I can live with that. Our feelings are a type of feedback. They are determined by the events in our lives. Bad things happen, I feel bad. And they can tell me whether I am "on course", to an extent. Everyone wants to be happy, if you're constantly unhappy, you're clearly not on the right course. Innocent statement. Fine by me.

But now they go on to say that, what we are doing while we go through our day-to-day experiences, is offering thoughts that are literally formulating our future experiences. Back to the BS, then, I see. The lady says we can tell by the way we feel whether the things we are moving toward will please us when we get there.

Have you ever really wanted something and felt really happy and excited about it? And then you got it and it sucked? There's her statement, nullified. My feelings told me I'd be pleased and they were wrong. The universe sux0rs! The guy in the scene agrees with me, because he was feeling very happy while he locked up his bike, and he returned to find it stolen. Maybe he should've just left it, without a lock. The universe knew he didn't want his bike to be stolen, so it made some other guy steal it. I guess the thief walked by thinking "I don't want to steal the bike, I don't want to steal the bike" and the universe thought he DID want to steal the bike. Because for the universe, "no" does not mean "no".


"Whatever it is you are feeling is a perfect reflection of what is in the process of becoming". So we can all accurately predict the future. What am I missing?

Now "you're getting exactly what you're feeling about. Not so much what you're thinking about." Isn't that just dandy? I thought this whole "secret" was based on the premise that our thoughts emit certain frequencies that act as a "magnet" in the universe, with positive (affirmative) thoughts being "hundreds of times more powerful" - scientifically proven! - , but now it's more about what we "feel" than what we "think". That's cool too, emotions are all right there in the brain. We just don't have a lot of power over them. What's your current mood? Try changing it, right now. Not so easy. This "most powerful law" is slowly slipping out of reach. Can you feel it?

Let's all spell this out together now: C O N T R A D I C T I O N . Another one.


Haha. "That's why people, when they stub their toe out of bed, they tend to spiral". This lady knocks her alarm clock off the bedside table, stubs her toe, screams, crumples into a heap, ladders her stocking, spills toothpaste on her shirt, is enveloped in some sort of mechanical smoke and possibly misses a train...in one morning. And it's all her fault, because she doesn't know the secret. She has "no clue", according to Bob Doyle. Beckwith again: We can begin, right now, to "feel healthy". We can begin, right now, to "feel prosperous". We can begin, right now, to "feel the love that's surrounding you". "EVEN IF IT'S NOT THERE!"

This is preacher style rhetoric. The repetition of the same concept with different examples, say it three times, end with a dramatic conclusion. He's preaching, brothers and sisters. And sounding very silly doing it.

"And what will happen is, the universe will correspond to the nature of your song."

That's it. 19 minutes, 30 seconds. I leave you with that gem. So far, I've learnt nothing. It's all a sham. I expect heartfelt thanks for this pain I'm going through. I'm doing it in the name of education. And at the expense of my "good vibes".

Back For More

I dragged the slider to about 7 minutes in, to start where I left off. The seconds really dragged by. I suppose I'll soon hear about The Secret's ability to control time.

Ok, from 7:59, let's go. [Play]

Fantastic news right at the beginning. "The law of attraction is always working. Whether you believe it or understand it or not. It's always working."

Hold on to your hats, lads - this is going to be some ride. I can see it in Bob's face.

More "activated thoughts" booming out of a lady's head. And now we're told that the law of attraction is "the most powerful law in the universe". While that one lady's booming thought is depicted spreading out over the entire earth and then growing outwards into space. The world is filled with some very silly people indeed.

Hmmm. "Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith D.D. - Visionary" takes over. He shares his insights with us unenlightened folk: "Creation is always happening. Every time an individual has a thought, or a prolonged, chronic way of thinking, they're in the creation process. Something is going to manifest out of those thoughts."

Then Jack Canfield explains the tired old tale we've been hearing for the past 6 minutes once again. If we focus on the negative, the universe will focus on it too and give it to us. The visual example is of a man trying to attract a waiter's attention. His thoughts - "bad service" - booms out into the universe and he gets rewarded with even worse service - the waiter spills food all over him.

Let's consider the Jews, for a minute. Sitting in concentration camps, presumably thinking very bad thoughts. Sad thoughts. Whahey! According to these most learned scholars and feng shui practitioners, they were only making the situation worse for themselves! If only they had focused on more pleasant thoughts, such as having a beer with Herr Hitler, the universe would've responded in kind! Like attracts like! Keep this in mind, for the future, everyone. Maybe we can let those poor Iraqis in on the secret - they should all think about the Americans evacuating. I can only assume they're all sitting around thinking "stop killing us", because obviously the universe won't understand that and kill even more of them instead.

We're on to Bill Harris, a therapist who is going to tell us all about his "student", Robert. Robert was gay, which I suspect will be important. Let's see. Ok, Robert emailed Bill all the "grim realities of his life". Robert worked in the worst place in the world, because his meany coworkers would leave bananas on his chair for him to sit on and squash. He goes on to tell us that he was accosted on every block of the street, by homophobic people. That's very strange, I'll have to look out for the homophobic people on every block. I didn't know they were so rampant! Do they guard blocks in shifts?

Here is Gay Robert trying his hand at stand up comedy.


Apparently everybody heckled him. We know being a stand-up comic can be tough. If the jokes aren't funny, you will likely be heckled. But wait! Robert was being heckled...for being GAY! Seriously. Forgive me now if I don't believe Bill Harris here. He's laying it on too thick. Attacked by coworkers, random strangers and the audience in a comedy club. For being homosexual. I'd have suggested to Robert that maybe he stop mentioning this little fact to people, because clearly he lives in Hatred, Hatesville in the state of Intolerance. Anyway. What happened to Robert once he uncovered the "most powerful law in the universe"?

Before we find out how Robert's life turned into a blissful one filled with sunshine and daisies, we are informed by Harris that PASSION accelerates the workings of The Secret. "When you focus on something with a lot of passion, it makes it happen even faster!" Mmmkay.

Robert started really trying to focus on the positive things that he wanted. To help him with this, he climbed into a tree and listened to what appears to be a Walkman. There is also a bug in the tree, in the lower left corner. I noticed, because I was bored.

BAM! The secret started working in, according to Harris, "the next six to eight weeks". And according to him it was "absolutely a miracle". Which is weird, because the secret is the most powerful law in the universe...right?

Law (scientific):

a.	a statement of a relation or sequence of phenomena invariable under the same conditions.

b.	a mathematical rule.

Miracle: an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.

Not sure what to make of that statement, let's just add it to the handy pile of contradictory BS that comes free with your copy of The Secret.

Robert's miracle/obvious result was that all the employees who were bugging him were either transferred, quit, or stopped bugging him. He began to love his job. The homophobes gave up their watch posts on the block, because people were suddenly leaving him alone. He did his stand-up comedy routine (we can hear a bit of it - "I'm a very very gay man.") and got standing ovations. No, really.


Now we get to a man who should make a lot of sense. Or not, keeping in mind the nature of quantum mechanics and Feynman's famous quote. "Dr John Hagelin PH.D A.B. M.A. - Quantum Physicist" weighs in on the topic. Nothing new from him. Do you get their message yet? Because every new face just reiterates the same thing. "Happy, positive thoughts (or orientation, as Hagelin rephrases it) attract happy, positive events and angry, negative thoughts attract angry, negative events and people." I am so incredibly bored by now, I'm thinking of running to the gas station to grab some Coca-Cola, because Gay Robert walked past a Coke sign and it looked really red and pleasant. Too bad I'm in my pj's. I'm not au fait enough with the workings of the Secret yet, else I'd quickly materialise an icy cold Coke. I'd better continue and see what the next step is. If they're going to stick with "think positively" the whole way through, I'm doomed. Then the "most powerful law in the universe" is completely immune to my specific mental frequency.

Ooh, ok, new information from the "visionary" Beckwith. Your thoughts are registered by the universe whether they are conscious or unconscious. This is truly glorious! It seems you can make up anything in this film and they'll put it in! I have an advertising background and am trained to edit edit edit. If I got a hold of this reel, we'd have about 7 seconds of film left. "Don't worry. Be happy." That's what it boils down to. That's the Big Secret. Bobby McFerrin has been sharing the secret with us for years!

I am now on 11 minutes and 33 seconds. I'm not having fun yet.

"Dr John F Demartini D.C. BSc - Philosopher" feels that all we need to do is "open our eyes". "And look". He waves his hands as I imagine Moses might have done while attempting to part the sea. They all do. This is because they don't have any valid facts to convey. They're talking and talking but saying the same vacuous crap over and over, with a lot of hand motions. They're Jedi-wannabes. I'm not falling for it, though.

These people are clueless about causality. Here is their first "evidence" for the law of attraction. "The one who speaks most of illness, has it. The one who speaks most of prosperity, has it." That's an interesting statement. So if I pursue a career in cancer treatment and I focus on cancer passionately, will I get cancer? According to this law, I should. In a hurry too, since I have so much passion.

Any sane person would understand that we talk about the things that are relevant to our lives at any given moment. If I get a new car, I will likely be talking about my new car incessantly and boring everyone with the specs of my new car, from the moment I decide to get a new car, til long after I have it. It's only natural. I don't have cancer right now, nor do I know anyone who has it, so I'm not going to bring it up during conversation often. The minute I get cancer, you'll be hearing a lot about my cancer. I can state with a high degree of certainty that the "one who has illness" didn't speak about illness much at all before the "universe" struck them with their afflictions. More BS. Add it to the pile.

"The law of attraction is evident everywhere around you, if you are understanding what it is. It has to do with you being a magnet." I'm getting a bit miffed here. Magnet. Pah!

Oh finally, something to make me smile! "Fred Alan Wolf Ph.D - Quantum Physicist" wants me to know that he's not talking to me from the point of view of just [here he goes a bit spastic] "wishful thinking" or [here he puts on a hilarious voice and accent] "imaginary...craziness". I've been wrong these past 12 minutes and 28 seconds, then! Please, Quantum Physicist, enlighten me!

"I'm talking to you from a deeper, basic understanding."

Whooosh! The screen is filled with scientific looking tubes. All black and silver. Very alien technology type shot here.

"Quantum physics really begins to point to this [he makes a vigorous rolling motion with his hands] discovery. It says that you can't have a universe without mind entering into it."

Well, what do you know? I admit that I am not one of the, what is it, seven people, who purports to understand quantum mechanics. But what little I do know of it, is that it categorically does not claim what he says it does. For all the sense it makes, this man could have been talking about the mating habits of Martians.

Allow me to paraphrase what he has said so far: "This isn't the quackery you think it is. I'm talking to you from a deeper understanding, but I can't clarify what that understanding is. This branch of science that very few people understand and you most likely don't, points to this discovery that I won't identify for you. This difficult branch of science that you won't understand says that this universe cannot exist without our minds involved in it somehow."

We continue. He states that "The mind is actually shaping the very thing that is being perceived." Bob, looking quite angry now, informs us that "If you don't understand it, doesn't mean you should reject that!" Thing is, Bob, my understanding of the universe, the laws of physics and life in general is not exactly lacking. I understand all too well that you are all a bunch of deceitful people out to make money out of those with open minds. I understand that if you really believe in what you are saying, you should not be allowed to dress yourself in the mornings. You should be sitting in a chair in a nice, friendly place somewhere, drooling into a bib. But you're not, so I can only assume that you are being deceitful on purpose. I understand your mendacity, Bob, and I am disgusted.

Bob patronizes us further by telling us that we probably don't understand electricity. "First of all, no one even knows what electricity is! And yet you enjoy the benefits of it. You know how it works. I don't know how it works. But I do know this. That you can cook a man's dinner with electricity...and you can also cook the man!"

This is what I meant by the creationist method of tossing so much crap out at once that the opponent won't even know where to start!

All of those who studied science at school understands electricity - how it works and what it is. I guess Bob skipped that part of school. First of all, we DO KNOW what electricity is, Bob. The term describes a lot of concepts, so you can study it in depth here or get a basic understanding here. It's not rocket science, honestly! Yes, I enjoy the benefits of electricity. Now he says I do know how it works. Ok, he's catching up. Bob still doesn't know how it works, but we know that already. You can certainly cook a dinner by utilizing electricity correctly, through a number of electrical devices, in existence today only through our understanding of electricity that Bob occasionally questions. I hope the last part was a joke.

What's the point here? Bob wants to tell us that we don't understand electricity -> we use it anyway -> we don't understand the "law of attraction" -> we should use it anyway.

The problem is that Bob starts off from a false premise. We do understand electricity, quite extensively, we can see it, hear it, feel it, test it, use it. This "secret" is complete bogus, it does not share a single characteristic with the concept of electricity and so everything that Bob just said is a load of nonsense.

Apparently when we begin to understand the "big secret", we often become frightened. I'm a little frightened right now, when I think how many people paid for this DVD and how many people are walking around on this planet right now, thinking they control the universe with the power of their minds. Beckwith shares with us two things:

"One. It has been proven now scientifically, that an affirmative thought is hundreds of times more powerful than a negative thought."

WTF? Really? People fall for this? Where has it been proven? By whom? When? I want names, I want references to the journals that published these findings. In what way is this "power" of thought measured? In electrical current? These people become more ignorant with each minute that passes. Some lady is talking now, so I'm waiting to hear "number two".

The lady explains how we really don't want to be in an environment where our thoughts serve us immediately. The scene shows a man looking at a postcard of an elephant and instantly an elephant is standing in his living room. Obviously this is not what we want, but as far as I can tell, this is what the secret promises, with a time lapse. It can "materialize" our thoughts. Presumably the elephant won't appear immediately, but it has at least started its journey towards Baldy when he looked at the postcard and started sending out his mental elephant vibes.

We are told that we want to be aware of our thoughts, we want to choose them carefully and we want to have fun with this. Nothing wrong with this statement. We should be aware of our thoughts. That's what consciousness is about. We should choose our thoughts as carefully as we can - some thoughts can't be stopped, but we should certainly not try to wallow in the negative all the time. It's not good for our mental health. We do want to have fun with our thoughts. I daydream all the time! I particularly enjoy involving Johnny Depp in my mental shenanigans, because I'm all about having fun. We should, however, draw the line there. These people go on to say that our thoughts have a power outside of our heads. They do not. They can only affect us. And even in that, they're not always very effective.

At 14 minutes and 34 seconds the story seems to change, so I'll end this post here and continue with part three in a new post.

I'm a naturally happy person, but I have to say this film is starting to depress me. It's just too ridiculous, and yet here it is, permeating the earth. How bizarre.

Review of The Secret

Despite having happily avoided watching "The Secret", I have finally been convinced to do so. The conversation went something like this:

"Have you watched it?"
"No, I refuse to watch crap."
"How do you know it's crap if you haven't watched it?"

Naturally I recognise crappy crap crap when I hear about it, but so as to uphold my reputation as a rational skeptic, here follows my review of "The Secret" for nraider. Who clearly must hate me, for making me watch this crap.

[But just a side note first - an amusing coincidence. My good friend and I have discussed and mocked The Secret before, despite not having watched it. Tonight, after writing the above paragraph, I mentioned to him that I was going to watch it, and he told me that his landlord gave him the DVD yesterday. I might convince him to watch it on his side, with me, then we can continue our mocking ways together. Maybe we've both been secretly wanting to watch the film and that is why we both ended up here tonight, with a copy of the damn thing...but I doubt it.]

Note: I will be blogging about the experience while I watch the DVD. This means that the post will be very descriptive and information heavy. I will probably break the film down into several seperate posts, because I don't want to sit here for days on end. If you have the DVD, you can watch or listen to it while you read this. That way we can be tortured together.

{I press play}A pretty teal colour fills the screen. A white-haired lady comes walking towards me, dragging lots of luggage with her and talking with what sounds like an Australian twang. Apparently bad things happened to her, like her dad dying and her relationships not working out. But luckily for her, out of her "greatest despair would come her greatest gift". She takes a journal out of her suitcase and then a lot of dramatic stuff happens, very quickly. With a lot of whooshing sounds and crazy camera motions. The secret, I guess, is revealed to the woman in a burst of mental images that causes her to gasp.

After these dizzying revelations, the lady started tracing the history of the still unidentified secret. We are shown a man from an ancient civilization, frantically making rubbings of "the secret" off an emerald stone tablet. The vision tracing the history of the secret moves at a rapid pace. Everyone seems in a great hurry. Apparently "the secret was buried" in a place near the great pyramids. And then the Knights Templar were somehow involved.
And they needed weapons. Then they tell us "the secret was coveted". Ok. Obviously the Catholic church is also involved in the whole coveting business, because they're in the scene . But then "the Secret was Suppressed". Oh no. And a boardroom filled with men in suits did the suppressing. A typewriter dramatically informs us, through a close-up shot, that the secret will never be revealed to the public, by order of the men in the boardroom.

I'm yawning already and I'm not through the intro yet...

Oh, now it gets interesting. They show us a list of "the greatest people in history" who knew the secret, much to this lady's amazement. Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Hugo, Beethoven, Lincoln, Emerson, Edison, Einstein - all these men knew the secret. Presumably women were too busy not being allowed to vote to find out the secret.

We continue the journey by finding other people alive today who know the secret. Oddly enough, all the people who knew the secret before this DVD was released were kind of suspicious looking. They're all saying words, but somehow the words aren't getting through to the linguistics section of my brain. I could go back, but I don't think the've said anything important yet. Then they pull out a creationist move and quote mine Emerson:

I can't find a reference to Emerson ever having said this, but if he did, I doubt he was referring to the same secret. Naturally, they don't say when or where he was supposed to have said this either. Ok, so they're going to be making stuff up. Fun.

Finally we get to what the secret is: "We all work with one infinite power. We all guide ourselves by exactly the same laws. I don't care if you're an Indian, if you're in Australia, New Zealand, Stockholm or London, or Toronto in Montreal [I think that's what he said...] or New York - we're all working with one power. One law. It's attraction."

More flashy bits. If you suffer from epilepsy, avoid this movie.

"The secret is the law of attraction."

Never heard of it. Must be all that science nonsense I tend to read. They have lots of laws, but no secret ones.

Oh dear. Mr Philosopher, Bob Proctor, explains that everything that is coming into my life, I am attracting into my life. Somehow, I don't think he's given this a lot of thought. Bad things happen. Good things happen. They tend to happen more or less the same for everyone. This indicates that good and bad events are due to chance. We can certainly live in such a way that we increase our chances for certain things to happen. I am unlikely to find a boyfriend if I never leave my house. But according to this "law", I can sit in my house and just think about getting a boyfriend and it will happen. Maybe it'll be the pizza delivery guy.

"And it's attracted to you by virtue of the images you're holding in your mind."

I have to call bull on this one. I have been reading Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" and can heartily recommend it to you and Bob. The "images we're holding in our minds" have no power over anything outside our minds. This seems to imply that there is some sort of force all around us (let's call it the ether, shall we?) and wispy and mysterious things are happening inside the ether. Our thoughts exert a force on the ether and can affect change in the ether's behaviour. The ether is in fact responsible for everything happening to us and if only we can somehow harness its power, we can become successful. Luckily, we have our magical mental images. They're just the ticket.

What utter idiocy.

I sense that this DVD will be like attending a creationist seminar - so many fallacies uttered in such rapid succession that I won't be able to keep up. And I have a pause button. Bob just asked us why we think 1% of the population earn 96% of all the money being earned? He says that it is no accident, it is "designed that way, they understand something, they understand the secret". Ok, I don't know whether this statistic is correct. Googling for it gives me one hit - and it's about the secret and making money. So I'll call bull again, until they can come up with some sources. I won't even address the "it's not accident" line, except to say it isn't an accident that the rich are getting richer and the poor are having more children. But it's not by design either.

Next, the secret concept is being compared to a magnet by an entrepreneur, but the next man (an author) states that "very basically put, the law of attraction states that like attracts like". And we all know that magnets don't quite work that way. More crap, then, and we're only 5 minutes and 36 seconds in.

Here are some of the creepy looking people sharing their take on the secret with you:


The purpose of humanity is quickly defined as "our job as humans is to hold on to the thoughts of what we want, make it absolute [sic] clear in our minds what we want and from then [that?] we start to invoke one of the greatest laws of the universe, that's the law of attraction.

Bob points to his noggin and tells us that if we "see it in here", we're going to "hold it in here" [here he clenches his fist]. Mike Dooley sums the whole principle up for us in three. Simple. Words. No, he really said it like that. "Thoughts. Become. Things." I nearly laughed out loud at the simplicity and naivety, but it's late and people are sleeping.

Now we're treated to some images of a man hooked up to a machine interpreting the frequencies of his thoughts, I guess. Because yes, we can "measure a thought". Ok, now they're making me swear. If we think about what we want (that car, that job, that girl), we are emitting a certain frequency. A "magnetic signal" according to the metaphysician, Joe Vitale. What a load of utter crap! He continues to spout more crap, oh man, I can't watch this.

They're talking about wishful thinking - "see yourself living in abundance, then you will attract it." "It always works, it works everytime, with every person." I doubt that very much. Now we're treated to the problem. "Most people are thinking about what they don't want, then they wonder why it shows up over and over and over again." U-huh. We're all constantly walking around, thinking about what we don't want, right? Well guess what. Right now, I'm emitting the magnetic frequency "I really don't want Godzilla to flatten my house" out into the universe. Let's see the universe screw me over by giving me what I don't want! I'll let you know how it turns out. If Godzilla is a bit too large for the universe to handle, I'll also add this thought: "I really don't want ugly orange shoes." Let's see if the universe gives me what I don't want. Let's see if ugly orange shoes will show up. I'm attracting it! Right now!

The universe doesn't care about good, or bad, or what we want and don't want. It is only concerned with the signals we are sending out. So if we are thinking about "a mountain of debt", the universe will read this signal and return to us a mountain of debt. Because you know, that's the way the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space works!

I admit that I've read about the secret and the crap in it before, but if I hadn't, now would be the point at which I'd be betting money that they're going to mention "quantum" something later on. Quantum mechanics, or quantum physics or quantum something.

If we are "looking at that thing we want and we are saying yes to it, we are activating a thought." Whoosh, a shockwave bursts forth from a lady's mind. Out into the jewellery store. She wants that necklace. The law of attraction will respond to that thought. That is why the lady is now being presented with that necklace she wanted. It's not that her partner is thoughtful - it's the universe again.

I'm at the point now where the law of attraction is to blame for long queues. By saying "no" to long queues in our minds, we're really causing the universe to cause the long queues. So it's not the slow cashier or the broken cash register. It's my mind. It's powerful. It controls the universe.

Right, this ends my first post. I'm at 07:59 of The Secret. I know, it's sad. I can't help they put so much crap in so little time. I even skipped over some of it.

Thus far, I'm not impressed at all. I knew it would suck, but I at least expected the graphics to be a little bit better. This was laughable. If you're watching it, look out for the first character grabbing that lamp, the way she reads everything with a magnifying glass, and how frantic everyone throughout The Secret's history was.

We'll continue the megalomania trip another day.

No Godzilla yet, and no orange shoes either.