Articles from the Religious Research Journal
“The Secret” – Another Perspective
by Tom Hemphill
The book and the DVD of “The Secret” are making a huge splash in America and in the world. Those of us who have long sought spiritual understanding and a spiritual basis for living greet this news with mixed feelings. At the end of this letter I will tell you why I believe this is a good thing for America and the world in 2007. But first I need to be clear why and how I disagree with much that is being presented in “The Secret.”
First, a brief digression into astrology. When directly asked about astrology, Dr. John said that it was an imprecise science, generally not well understood by incarnate humans, and often given meaning or significance greater than it warranted. He said “The stars impel; they do not compel.” That is, the influences of the planets are real but comparatively weak. A far greater effect is created in human affairs not by the stars but by human choices. As Shakespeare wrote in “Julius Caesar,” “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.” Please do not misunderstand me. Dr. John did not pooh-pooh all of astrology. He only said that we tend to give it more credence than is warranted.
I was introduced to the field of metaphysics by Dr. Franklin Loehr of Religious Research in 1966. Metaphysics was hardly a hot topic in the 1960s. Like most people then, I had never heard of it. I was quite fascinated by it. Franklin cautioned me that metaphysics is rather like astrology – an imprecise science not well understood by incarnate beings. He did not question that metaphysics may contain deep truths, but he advised me not to take it all too seriously; doing so leads to false conclusions.
More about metaphysics and spiritual laws.
So that is my first observation about “The Secret.” The concept of the Law of Attraction has merit. However, metaphysics generally needs to be taken lightly.
In his book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra identifies spiritual laws or principles that impact human behavior. The introduction to the book is especially on-target:
You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.
One of the spiritual laws identified by Dr. Chopra is the Law of Detachment – the need to not become overly emotionally attached to any person or thing or experience on earth. Such attachments have the nature of addiction and are ultimately destructive. Yet, the message of “The Secret” is that if you have not yet evolved your dream of material wealth, desirable relationships or good health, it’s because you’re not trying hard enough. It would seem that the requirements of the Law of Attraction are at odds with the requirements of the Law of Detachment.
My biggest issue with the whole concept of “The Secret” is the assumption that there is nothing affecting our destiny but whatever we consciously think and feel. The message is clearly stated: “Thoughts become things. See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it. It always works – every time, with every person.” Frankly, that’s hogwash.
Conscious mind vs. Spirit – your thoughts and your Truth.
There are many factors that influence our lives. One might easily argue that whatever one thinks and feels in the conscious mind is the least of the influences on our lives. While I may indeed direct my life, as metaphysics teaches, who is the Tom Hemphill that is doing so? Is it my conscious mind? Only to a small degree, I would argue. As any psychologist or spiritual counselor can tell you, a far greater influence on your experience of life comes from elsewhere within you. Metaphysics itself teaches that your conscious thinking is a small piece of your greater Being: if you will tap into your deeper spirit - which is, of course, One with The Spirit – then you can know and act with the true power of Spirit and not merely with the weak energy of the conscious mind alone.
So what is directing your life then? Your conscious thoughts or the power of Spirit working through you (mostly in ways that you do not recognize)? And aren’t you grateful that Spirit (or God, or your Upstairs Team, or the Universe) works on your behalf in your best interest even when the consequence of that blessing does not fulfill your own short-term agenda or dream?
But what does that tell you about the dream or the goal that you are visioning vis-à-vis “The Secret”? Your mind is pulling one way but your deeper self is pulling another way. Guess which one the Universe is listening to?
What does psychology teach?
If this approach is too metaphysical for you, the same point is clearly made in traditional psychotherapy. Going back to the teachings of Freud, Jung and others, psychology teaches that we have not only a conscious mind, but also a subconscious (sometimes called the unconscious mind). The subconscious mind stores thoughts, feelings, memories, traumas, needs, fears, etc, from our past and brings them again and again into our present consciousness.
Robert Todd Carroll makes this distinction clear in The Skeptics Dictionary (underlining mine):
The unconscious or subconscious mind, according to classical Freudian psychoanalysis, is a "part" of the mind that stores repressed memories. The theory of repression maintains that some experiences are too painful to be reminded of, so the mind stuffs them in the cellar. These painful repressed memories manifest themselves in neurotic or psychotic behavior and in dreams. . . The unconscious mind is also thought by some, such as Jung and Tart, to be a reservoir of transcendent truths.
It would be absurd to reject the notion of the unconscious mind simply because we reject the Freudian notion of the unconscious as a reservoir of repressed memories of traumatic experiences. We should recognize that it was Freud more than anyone else who forced us to recognize unconscious factors as significant determinants of human behavior . . .
Consciousness or self-awareness is obviously the proverbial tip of the iceberg. But most interest in the unconscious mind has been restricted to potentially harmful memories that might be stored or stirring there, memories of bad experiences that influence our conscious behavior even though we are unaware of their impact. Others have shown interest in the unconscious mind as a reservoir of universal truths or a place where the "true self" dwells . . .
So it seems that to try to shape our future, as recommended in “The Secret,” all that we can really work with is our conscious mind. However, that conscious mind is “the proverbial tip of the iceberg” of our whole self. The subconscious mind is far more powerful than the conscious, and usually working on thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs quite different from the conscious mind.
It seems obvious that whatever thoughts or feelings are put out to the universe by our conscious mind are being over-ridden by beliefs, emotions and fears coming from the subconscious. Indeed, it appears that the universe consistently responds not to our conscious mind but to our subconscious mind - of which we have little awareness and even less control. For example, you may consciously seek to invite abundance and love into your life; but if your “inner child” carries memories and wounds of hurt, lack and fear, that version of your truth is what Spirit will hear and respond to.
Your inner child or subconscious mind overrules your conscious mind’s efforts. By omitting this fact, the proponents of “The Secret” do a great disservice to well-meaning people who assiduously use their conscious minds to try to change their fortunes, health and relationships.
What about the soul’s choices?
A similar factor is your soul purpose. Dr. John taught that the purpose of life is growth. We are always challenged and nurtured to grow more and more into Godlikeness. That is, as maturing souls we maintain our individual personalities and identity, but align our values and our choices and our actions more and more in line with God’s values and will and purpose. That is what growth means and that is why we are here on Earth.
Dr. John said that earthliving is like a laboratory for souls. Souls are taught many things in their excarnate or non-physical state; they then incarnate and live in a physical body to practice what they have learned. Each lifetime is an “expression point” – as when a chemistry student leaves the classroom and walks into the lab to demonstrate that she has learned the relevant lesson. Each lifetime is also an “experience point” – an opportunity to acquire more earthliving experiences for the soul’s growth.
Each soul plans each lifetime with specific purposes – new learnings, karmic lessons, relationships to be experienced, service to be given, etc. No two lives are the same. And, over the course of 60 to 100 physical lifetimes, a soul will experience all that earth life can teach, before moving on to higher spiritual realms of learning. This means that every soul will live some lifetimes in the opposite of abundance.
How is the soul to experience all of human living without choosing and living lifetimes of poverty, illness, unhappy relationships, etc.? Dr. John stated repeatedly that in some lifetimes a soul will choose to have a modest income or work in a difficult relationship or face a particular illness. Why? For the growth involved – for that soul and/or for others that she is serving.
Examples from the Loehr-Daniels Life Readings.
Marjorie came to Religious Research for a life reading and was told that she and her current husband had been together as husband and wife in a recent lifetime. They lived in Paris, had several children, and were quite caught up with the gaiety of the social life of the city. Consequently, they were weak parents who neglected their children.
In the current lifetime, the two souls are together again as husband and wife, with most of the same souls incarnate again as their children. They chose this time to live in a small farm town, far from the temptations of city life. They also chose to have a modest life so that they would be busy earning enough money to care for their family, and would not have the financial means to be tempted to repeat their previous lifestyle. They were not poverty-stricken, but they were relatively poor, and had to work very hard just to meet their family’s needs.
“The Secret” teaches that it is guaranteed that all who seek it will live in abundance. I would argue that for Marjorie and her husband – two souls working together to be excellent parents, an important lesson of earthliving – this does not work. No matter how much they might have focused on “abundance,” the commitment of their souls would not allow their financial circumstances to change.
Of course, you might argue that to be incarnate and carrying out the soul’s purpose for a lifetime is true abundance. But that is not the definition of abundance that “The Secret” proposes. Regarding wealth in physical terms, I believe “The Secret” totally ignores the fact that the real message that I send to the universe comes from my soul – not from the conscious mind of Tom Hemphill, the soul’s currently incarnate personality.
Elizabeth sought a life reading because she had a terribly difficult relationship with her mother. She was told that the soul of the mother was a young soul in its first lifetime of having a baby and raising a child. The Elizabeth soul volunteered to help this younger soul tackle this challenge by being her daughter in this lifetime. Might Elizabeth then, using the message of “The Secret” think or feel her way to a delightful relationship with her stressed, anxious, unhappy mother? I think not.
Relationships always have two (or more) people’s interests, needs and dreams being addressed. If you are my son or daughter, I may desire a wonderful parent-child relationship with you, but you may become angry with me or feel a betrayal or abandonment that I did not intend, and you may leave the relationship. If you cut off communication, I not only cannot work with you to heal what is broken, I also cannot create the kind of mutually loving, happy, blessing relationship that I might seek to have between us. Can I think or feel my way to a better relationship with you if you refuse to budge? Not likely.
Darrell came for a life reading, asking about a rare and horrible disease - a disease of the blood that caused him horrible pain throughout his body. Dr. John told him that in a previous life he was a soldier who used a flame thrower. He was just doing his job as a soldier. However, after that life his soul realized how horribly the people suffered when he used his weapon on them. The soul was so filled with remorse and a desire to right this wrong that it chose an unusual resolution. The soul chose in the Darrell lifetime to have the blood disease which, as Dr. John said, “was as though his own body were on fire on the inside.”
This is an unusual karmic resolution of a former life. However, the soul had chosen this extreme form of learning out of his horror at the pain and suffering that he had caused others. Given that background, is it likely that the Darrell personality could think or feel his way into good health? No.
Contrary to the message of “The Secret,” you – your conscious mind, the “you” who you think you are – is absolutely not in charge of this lifetime. Your soul literally created you – your gender, your race, your nationality, your gifts, your limitations, your relationships, your life challenges, etc. – in order to facilitate the soul’s learning and service in this lifetime. As you are, you are perfectly created to fulfill your soul’s agenda. And if (as is likely) that agenda includes something other than unlimited material wealth, wonderful relationships and perfect health, then that’s the agenda you have to work with. Your yearning for something better will not make it so. Nor should it.
You, as you are, are an instrument of the soul through which the soul acts and learns and grows towards accomplishment of the soul’s higher purpose. If we must yearn for something “better, ” we would be well advised to seek to better know and fulfill the soul’s purpose, so that our active, conscious choices can be in keeping with the soul’s deeper, more powerful and more important choices.
New Age heresy.
“The Secret” states: “What you think, what you feel, and what manifests is always a match. Every single time. No exceptions.” How can this be possible when there is so often a gap – typically far more gap than we are capable of recognizing – between our thinking minds and our feeling hearts? How does this approach correlate the well-documented dichotomy between the conscious and the subconscious mind? Can our thoughts and feelings negate the purpose of this incarnation? Can my ardent yearning for wealth or health overrule the soul’s agenda for growth in this lifetime? Can I create what I want if the soul is committed to something else? Hardly.
“The Secret” places high credence on our ability to improve our material wealth. I suspect that is key to why it is selling so well. But consider this: a middle-class American is in the wealthiest one to two percent of all humanity now living. Even allowing for the people of substantial wealth in other countries, middle-class Americans are still among the world’s most wealthy people. Does it make sense that Spirit should be greatly concerned to make us still more wealthy?
“The Secret” teaches that our thoughts and feelings and what manifests in our life is always a match. Always. That means that whatever we now have is the product of what we were seeking in the past. But that is just not so.
Tell that to the child living in terror in an American urban ghetto. Tell that to a child dying of starvation in Bangladesh. Tell that to a child forced into prostitution in the Philippines. Tell that to a child whose legs have been blown off in Iraq or Chechnya. Tell that to a child whose parents and grandparents have all died of AIDS, leaving him orphaned and totally alone in Uganda. Tell that to a child whose home is destroyed and whose family now subsists in a refugee camp in Darfur. Tell that to children in Israel and in Palestine who have seen friends and family killed by 60 years of warfare. While a soul may in fact incarnate to experience a horror such as these, it is far too glib for the rest of us to simply say, “he chose it,” and feel no compassion for the suffering of a human child.
“The Secret” fails to mention two obvious exceptions to this. (These were, in fact, later brought out by the proponents of “the Secret” in their interview on “Larry King Live” on CNN.) Somebody wins the lottery who never dreamed they would do so. Somebody else finds a wonderful husband after she had given up on men. Luck happens. Similarly, the workers in the World Trade Center did not necessarily invite their offices to be struck by airplanes and destroyed on 9/11. The people of New Orleans did not collectively seek for the levees to fail when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Just as luck happens, so also hardship happens – not because it is willed to happen but because some things are beyond our control.
By ignoring all of the above, the message of “The Secret” does a disservice. It expresses a portion of the truth as though it were the whole truth. Speaking of traditional Christianity, Lord Chesterton stated: “Heresy is not so much the advocating of an untruth as it is the advocating of a portion of the truth as though it were the whole truth.” In this light, the assumptions and beliefs taught by “The Secret" are New Age heresy – spiritual heresy.
I blew it. I’m not good enough.
My greatest frustration with the practice of the Law of Attraction - which “The Secret” would have us believe is simple, perfectly predictable and guaranteed to give us the results we seek – is that it is not simple, not predictable and not guaranteed.
If you try to make the principle of the Law of Attraction work for you – do it earnestly with mind and heart and soul and sincerity – and absolutely nothing changes, how do you feel? What conclusion can you reach? You can’t blame Spirit. You can’t fault God. You must conclude that there is only one answer: I failed. I blew it. I’m not good enough. I can’t make it work. It works for everyone else (or so I'm told) but I’m apparently doing it all wrong because my finances and/or my relationships and/or my health are still a mess. I’m a failure.
If you are assured that success is guaranteed always, and you do the necessary work as well as you possibly can, and nothing happens, all that is really guaranteed to you is an overwhelming sense of guilt and failure. Most of my exposure to the Law of Attraction over the past 40 years has been conversations with people who felt guilty and ashamed, and devalued themselves in light of their apparent failure to “make it work.”
The teaching of “The Secret” has produced a huge amount of self-defeating guilt and failure and discouragement in spiritual seekers precisely because it does not present a whole Truth. As proposed in the book and the DVD, “The Secret” is spiritually shallow and blatantly misleading. When people feel guilty for “failing” to make the Law of Attraction work, they then find themselves even deeper in psychological depression and spiritual angst.
Our world needs spiritual teaching that helps people grow spiritually – not set them emotionally back even farther than they were before.
So the bright side is . . . ?
I began this article by stating that while I disagree with much that is presented in “The Secret,” I still feel it is a good thing for America and the world in 2007. There is certainly a bright side to all this.
When I first began working with Religious Research in 1966 a popular Broadway play had just been made into a movie: “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.” The fascinating storyline was about a young woman (played by Barbra Streisand) with exceptional ESP abilities. In the 1960s, this was radical stuff! ESP was barely spoken of. Clairaudience and clairvoyance and prescience were largely unknown and generally distrusted or dismissed. Yet, here was a popular, frothy, funny musical that treated these things as not only OK, but non-threatening and even endearing.
Dr. Franklin Loehr, based on his best-seller, The Power of Prayer on Plants, served as a technical consultant to the movie. Franklin told me that this movie, and more to follow, was a means of getting “the word” out to the general public. Religion had done what it could to bring our society to this point, but the future of spiritual awareness would come not from old texts and traditional beliefs, but from opening to the truth within each of us. In order for this to happen, society needed to have such things presented or “suggested” in non-threatening ways. Secular books, plays, movies and television became excellent media for introducing spiritual concepts into mainstream American life.
You can easily think of many more examples of this. The musical “Hair” included a musical number that became a popular song: “This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” The Star Wars trilogy presented the universe as an energy force which can be tapped into and used – with a light side and a dark side competing for control. The movie “Ghost” portrayed an active relationship between life in the physical and life in the astral. The book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, documented a multitude of new groups springing up with radically unconventional ideas about life and reality. Franklin Loehr wrote a script (which was never aired) for an episode of the TV show “The Love Boat,” based on reincarnation, in which the Love Boat’s captain and a passenger discover they had previous lives together.
All of this, according to Dr. John, is in keeping with an “Upstairs” agenda to introduce a more enlightened understanding of Spirit to humanity. If we can picture Spirit or the totality of spiritual reality as a vast gemstone, then each of these presentations of Spirit or Truth can be seen as a single facet of the great gem. No facet presents all of the Truth; each presents a partial but useful (and at least partially accurate) picture of Spirit.
Despite all of my objections to the “The Secret,” as it is presented in the book and the DVD, it too is one more facet – one more nudge for humankind to set down our attachment to overly-masculine, linear, rational, materialistic, logical, self-satisfied beliefs, and become more open to our spiritual reality, which includes all that we have known and believed but also goes far beyond.
The Hundredth Monkey – It’s Happening Now.
In a recent issue of the Religious Research Journal, I wrote an article based on the story of the “hundredth monkey.”* A group of monkeys on a Japanese island learned a new skill. After a long, slow process of each monkey learning the new skill, one monkey at a time, suddenly all the monkeys knew and practiced the same skill. Moreover, even monkeys of the same type but living on a different island also knew and practiced the new skill. The researchers referred to the moment when the new knowledge became common to all as the “hundredth monkey” – meaning that when enough members of a species acquire new knowledge, then all members of that species somehow posses the knowledge..
I believe that spiritual awareness is now being brought to humankind in a myriad of ways, in preparation for the coming of the New Paradigm. (I believe the New Paradigm is anticipated in religion as the return of the triumphant savior – referred to in Shi’a Islam as the Coming of the Imam Mahdi, in traditional Judaism as the Coming of the Messiah, and in traditional Christianity as the Second Coming of the Christ).
It is obvious to me that our spiritual “Elder Brothers and Sisters” are doing all that they can to give humanity a wake-up call as we prepare for a radical transformation in our very existence. I believe they are working toward that point where enough humans have increased their awareness and openness adequately so that the collective “lift” in human spirituality is the equivalent of “the hundredth monkey.”
Already, “The Secret” is a best-seller. Its proponents have been on mainline television – on "Oprah" and "Larry King Live.” TIME and People magazines have run special features on “The Secret.” The DVD has sold more than one million copies and the book is selling so fast the printers cannot keep up with demand.
Had this idea, this spiritual Law of Attraction (which is as ancient as humanity itself) been introduced to America 40 years ago or 20 years ago or even five years ago, I believe there would have been little or no response. Today, the response is so great as to be almost unbelievable.
This tells me that far more of us are already spiritually open enough to be curious and to seek still more knowledge. It also says that, from this day on, the over-all awareness of our society about spirituality – non-material reality – will be far higher than before.
The publication of “The Secret” and the attention-getting format of the DVD (styled after the popular movie, “What the Bleep Do We Know?”) is timely. It is meant to assist humanity precisely now. I believe that its popularity, especially with people with fairly little previous exposure to greater spiritual understanding, is a major step forward in the lifting of spiritual awareness, the developing of spiritual openness, and the teaching of spiritual values to humanity.
Although I still contend that metaphysics is, like astrology, an imprecise science as it is currently understood and practiced, I believe the commotion that “The Secret” is creating in American consciousness now is potentially quite helpful. Despite my misgivings about its over-simplification of a complex truth, I welcome “The Secret.” I invite you to “see it for yourself” and to recommend it to anyone who might find it interesting. I encourage the uplifting of human consciousness and spiritual awareness by all available means.
It’s time to be free.
I am hungry for the day when the hundredth human monkey “gets it” - catches on - and we leave behind the illusion of the earth-bound caterpillars we’ve always believed ourselves to be, and become transformed into the butterflies that we were always potentialled to become.
I believe there is a vast array of ascended and spiritual beings eagerly awaiting our “graduation” from the illusion of materialism. They are doing all they can to help us. They have been aiding us for thousands of years. They long to celebrate our transformation into fully spiritual beings, and to welcome us as colleagues in spirit.
However, as with the hatching of a chick, the actual breaking out of the shell – that is, the limitations of the physical world – must be done by the chick itself. We humans must find our way to our spiritual truth, and to do so, we must be open, aware and certain that a greater truth than we have known is just beyond our collective fingertips.
We must believe it, hunger for it, create it and embrace it. We must strive to break free of our long-accepted physical boundaries. It is time to ascend, time to grow, time to be fully alive. It is time to be free.
The public response to “The Secret” helps humanity move closer to that moment of transformation. So I welcome it and encourage you to spread it cheerfully.
__________________
*The article based on the story of the “Hundredth Monkey” can be found in the article “It’s Happening Now.”