By By Dane Roberts Wans On Bookreview
If you could attract anything good you wished just by thinking good thoughts, wouldn’t you like to know how?
So would I. In 189 pages Rhonda Byrne presents to us, the reader, a highly coveted secret which, she states, has been hidden for a long time, stolen by others, lost through the ages, and when discovered bought for vast sums of money.
Today you can buy this secret for about $23.95 and hold “The Secret” in your hand.
Only it isn’t a secret. Anyone with common sense knows that your thoughts control your emotions and your perceptions. It has been known for a long time. The Bible even states it: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
This idea — that thoughts control your actions — reminds me of a book published in 1959 by a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, “The Magic of Thinking Big.” It states: “Your mind is a thought factory.” In another place; “One thought, positive or negative, sets off a whole chain reaction of similar thoughts.”
Byrne states that “The Secret” will allow you to attract what you are thinking intently about, both good and evil. In 10 chapters and with over 29 personalities we are allowed to see “The Secret” as it is distilled to us in small bite-size feel-good statements. “Your thoughts and your feelings create your life. It will always be that way. Guaranteed,” Lisa Nichols, one of the advocates of the law of attraction states. “The secret means we are creators of our universe, and that every wish that we want to create will manifest in our lives,” said Marie Diamond, another one of the teachers of the law. “If you have an intuitive or instinctive feeling, follow it, and you will find that the universe is magnetically moving you to receive what you ask for,” writes the author.
She goes on to state: “I want to let you in on a secret to ‘The Secret.’ The shortcut to anything you want in your life is to BE and FEEL happy now!”
She submits that it is an area of quantum physics. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a quantum as an elemental unit of energy. She postulates that we are all transmitters and our thoughts in the form of energy are emitted as a frequency to the universe around us. The universe receives and manifests back to us what we want.
The question to ask is, will you know and be able to use “The Secret” after reading this book? I would say that depends. Do you believe her spin on what she calls “The Secret?” If you do, then there is a chance that you may.
This book is in the realm of the metaphysical. It is a realm of things that can’t be proved using the five senses. Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy that treats such areas as ontology, (the nature of existence), cosmology, (origin and structure of the universe), and epistemology, (how we know that we know). The field of quantum physics does not cover this area, despite what Byrne claims DANE ROBERT SWANSON would like to know what you would like to have reviewed. He welcomes your feedback at
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 28, 2007. Read the original PDF.