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.
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