Theory of The Secret

In the past six months, The Secret has taken the world by storm, selling millions of copies as a DVD and a book and jumping to the top of the best-sellers list. It has won acclaim from popular icons such as Larry King and Oprah Winfrey. It has been scorned by some scientists and psychologists as pseudo-science and psycho-babble and condemned by others for appealing to people’s materialistic aspirations. Those who dismiss it, do so with a vehemence reminiscent of the church’s response to Copernicus and Galileo. Everyone is talking and arguing about The Secret, but very little is being done to rationally examine and evaluate the methodology it advocates.

Human Science is based on the premise that there are universal laws and processes governing all fields of human activities. The objective of this project is to impartially examine the The Secret from the perspective of Human Science. This article seeks to show that the method presented in The Secret is one expression of a universal process of creation and accomplishment and that a fuller understanding of the principles governing that process can enable anyone to apply this method successfully in their lives and work. The clearer the understanding of the theory on which it is based, the greater is the power to apply it successfully.

The first section of this article presents and discusses the statements made in The Secret. The remaining sections examine the theory behind the method.

Message of The Secret

The author claims that the DVD and the book present knowledge that has been known through the ages, but is brought all together for the first time. That knowledge can be briefly summarized as follows: Human beings have the power to accomplish whatever they are seriously committed to accomplish provided they adhere to the method advocated. The method is valid for achieving personal wealth, improving personal relationships, curing illness or any other purpose including service to society. Rightly applied, the method is infallible.

Law of Attraction

Proponents state that The Secret is based on an unfailing universal law, the law of attraction. This law states that whatever people intensely aspire for with their thoughts and feelings is attracted to them and can be realized. They state that the law is infallible. They do not attempt to explain the theory or mechanism behind the law. They advise practitioners to concentrate on the result to be achieved, rather than on the process of how it is achieved.

Method

The essence of the method presented by proponents of The Secret can be summarized as follows:

• Ask: Intensely visualize and emotionalize the goal you want to achieve and continuously concentrate on the achievement of that goal. Avoid all negative thoughts that are contrary to the achievement of the goal. Especially avoid focusing attention on the problem or situation, which one wants to change, since according to the law of attraction, attention to the problem only reinforces the existing situation.
• Answer: Wait for the universe to respond. It is not necessary to know how your goal can be accomplished, so do not dwell on the how, only on the goal itself. Your task is only to intensely aspire and wait for circumstances to turn in your favor.
• Receive: Align and attune yourself to the universe. Put your thoughts and feelings in harmony with what you want to accomplish. Express only positive feelings. Feel cheerful and enthusiastic. Avoid all negative emotions of any description. Try to feel now as if you already have that which you aspire for. Feel gratitude for what you already have.

Historical Precedents

The film claims that fragments of The Secret can be found in earlier oral and written traditions, but that all the pieces of The Secret have been brought together for the first time. The first part of this statement is certainly true. This knowledge can be clearly documented from traditional sources of wisdom. Its essential message can be found in India’s great scripture the Bhagavad Gita, written some 2500 to 5000 years ago, which states that you can achieve anything which you aspire to achieve. The Gita goes even further to state that you can become whatever you aspire to become.

Concept of the Universe

The Concept of Universe is central to the approach advocated in The Secret but the nature of the concept is never described or explained. Many will dismiss this message simply because the concept of a universe that can respond to human aspirations is so foreign to modern scientific thinking. Western empiricism views Nature as simply a physical field in which sentient beings and inanimate matter interact with one another. According to this view, life and consciousness are properties of individual forms, not of a universal field. But there is no doubt that the same conception of the universe can be found in various Eastern traditions. India’s Vedic scriptures, which are far older than the Gita, describe the universe as an ocean of conscious creative energy, hydra samudram. Poets such as Wordsworth and Whitman have had unegoistic visions of this universal consciousness. Taoism advocates aligning one’s personal will with the harmony of life. While the approach and method advocated are different, it too is founded on the conception of a universal field or flow and states that the outcome of events depends on how each individual aligns with the flow. For a more detailed discussion of the concept of Life as a conscious universal plane, see articles in the Life Portal.

Relationship between the Individual and the Universe

In The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine, both written before 1920, the Indian philosopher-yogi Sri Aurobindo describes this universal plane of existence and explains how the human ego creates the sense of difference and separation between the individual and the universal. The individual consciousness appears to us as something completely separate from the world around us, but it is one in its essence with the universal consciousness, shares fully its creative powers and creates by the very same process of creation. Although the human ego feels dwarfed and insignificant in the face of the infinite universe, Sri Aurobindo states that this universal consciousness does not consider the individual as insignificant. To the universal, distinctions of size or quantity are not relevant. Rather it seeks to manifest its infinite powers in and through individual centers of consciousness and to fulfill the aspirations of those individual centers universally. That is its evolutionary objective. This is in consonance with the otherwise inexplicable fact that individuals do on occasion accomplish feats on a universal scale or with universal repercussions.

Originality of the Method

The film’s further claim that "for the first time all the pieces have come together" is more questionable. There is no doubt that these truths have now been presented in a manner that is more accessible and understandable by the general public, but all the elements of the formula have been brought together in writing long ago. In chapters 13 to 24 of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo not only describes in detail the conditions for a conscious mastery over life, but also explains the process by which that mastery is accomplished. There he presents the Process of Creation in detail. While Sri Aurobindo’s emphasis was on application of this process for self-perfection and spiritual evolution, since 1970 this process has been extensively studied, codified as a practical methodology and disseminated under the heading Life response.

Some critics discount the originality of The Secret’s message by citing other books, such as Norman Vincent Peale’s classic The Power of Positive Thinking, which advocate similar methods. The purpose of this project is not to argue about precedents. The author openly acknowledges that The Secret has been known and practiced by many people in the past and there is sufficient evidence to support that claim. The objective here is rather to examine the methodology to determine whether there is any possible theoretical basis for explaining and understanding both the results reported in The Secret and the process by which they are achieved.

Scientific Validation of The Secret

It is easy for people to dismiss the claims of The Secret as irrational and unscientific and to feel a sense of satisfaction in not falling prey to patent ‘non-sense’. But, in fact, that would neither be rational nor scientific. Those of the positivist school of science who are proud of their insistence on empiricism would argue that the very idea that the universe has the capacity to respond to conscious human intention or that human beings have the capacity to evoke that response is unscientific and must be rejected prima facie without further consideration. But that rejection would not be scientific either. Equally bizarre and more patently contradictory or inexplicable concepts have been embraced by physicists during the past century, including Relative Time, Curved Space, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Black Holes, and Dark Matter.

Science, according to the renowned scientific philosopher Karl Popper, is not concerned with the source or rationality of a hypothesis, only with its capacity for validation. “Every discovery contains an ‘irrational element’, or a ‘creative intuition’ in Bergson’s sense…Scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas which are of a purely speculative kind, and sometimes even quite hazy; a faith which is completely unwarranted from the point of view of science, and which, to that extent, is metaphysical.” Science is only concerned with the rationality of the methods used to test the hypothesis. It is not at all necessary that we understand ‘how’ The Secret works in order to evaluate its validity from a scientific perspective. It is enough that we determine whether or not it works, i.e. whether controlled application of the methodology advocated actually achieves the anticipated results. Testability, not plausibility, is the sole valid criteria for scientific investigation. “I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. ..I hold that scientific theories are never fully justifiable or verifiable, but they are nevertheless testable…The objectivity of scientific statements lies in the fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested.” Testability means inter-subject repeatability, i.e. the capacity of the same results to empirically validated by numerous independent scientists applying the same procedure.

That is precisely what advocates of The Secret claim. They claim that the method works, that it cannot fail to work when the required conditions are fulfilled and the method is followed precisely. They do not insist that practitioners must believe a priori in their explanation of how the method works, except in the sense that greater faith in the method enhances the intensity of the psychological effort taken to practice it. But by the same logic, strong disbelief in the method can prevent the method from working, precisely because the method is based on the power of mind to realize what it conceives to be possible and aspires to achieve. That position is internally consistent with the entire thesis and cannot be contested on rational grounds.

Scientifically, the issue reduces to a question of whether the method works. Advocates invite everyone to apply the method and test it for themselves. Therefore, it is neither necessary nor relevant to consider whether or not their explanation of how it works appeals to our common sense or is consistent with our view of the universe.

Nevertheless, it is only natural that those who apply the method, either for personal benefit or the pursuit of impersonal knowledge, would also like to understand the mechanism by which it works. This article presents an explanation for The Secret which is entirely consist with the knowledge that can be gained by an acute and objective study of the character of life in history, biography or literature or by direct empirical experience through psycho-spiritual methods of yoga. The explanations given here are based on the writings of Sri Aurobindo and on research conducted over the past three decades by | The Mother’s Service Society of Pondicherry, India.

Regardless of whether the objective is to personally benefit from The Secret or to impersonally test its validity, the first essential condition is to clearly understand the conditions and steps required to achieve results.

Step One: Visualize & Emotionalize

The power of mental concentration on a goal has been known for millennium. Concentration of the mind on God, a sound (mantra), an idea (koan or sloka), an image (yantra), a center of consciousness (chakra) or one’s breath is common to all spiritual disciplines. These methods are based on the principle that all power derives from Consciousness and mental energy is one expression of consciousness.

One of crucial insights presented by The Secret is the importance of avoiding negative thoughts. They rightly argue that many of us in the course of pursuing a goal – whether it is getting out of debt, losing weight, curing a disease, getting a job or getting married -- spend more time thinking about the condition we want to escape or the possibility of failure than we do envisioning the goal we want to achieve. In the name of working on a solution, we become even more preoccupied worrying and feeling sorry about our problem. Not dwelling on the negative, they advise, is as important as focusing on the positive. Consciousness is power. Attention is energy. Whatever gets attention is energized. Whatever you concentrate the power of your attention on tends to increase. Problems such as depression are negative formations of energy that grow and persist because of the attention people give to them. That explains why so many people find their problems increasing the more they try to solve them. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought." - Buddha

Mind is a subtle plane of existence. Things shape in our minds before they express in our physical acts. Before speaking we think. Before launching a project, we plan. The greater is the mental preparation, the greater is our accomplishment. The power of positive visualization need not be subject to debate. Thinkers, poets, composers, writers, scientists, business people, inventors and professional athletes all know the essential role that mental concentration plays in accomplishment. The only valid question that may be raised is whether mental concentration is sufficient to accomplish any goal we decide upon, i.e. whether it really has the power to evoke a positive response from life (the universe).

The Question of ‘How?’

Spiritually, Consciousness has two attributes – Knowledge and Will – which are united. Mental consciousness has the same two attributes – the power to understand and the power to will. In mind, the capacity to know and the will to act are separate and can work in isolation from each other. The Secret emphasizes the importance of mental will. It does not insist that we know how to achieve the goal we set for ourselves. It even suggests that we may be better off not exercising our minds on the question of ‘how can I accomplish it?’ But it does insist that we make a firm unshakeable decision of the will to achieve it.

Some critics object that people who accomplish do not simply wish for things. They argue that understanding how to accomplish is as important as willing to accomplish. Successful people formulate clear plans as to how they can achieve their goals. This is certainly most often the case and is a practice advocated by many self-help programs, such as The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, which urge practitioners to translate their goals into detailed plans of action.

Power of Imagination

How can we reconcile this view with what is spoken of The Secret? Is understanding a help or a bar to accomplishment? This dilemma can be resolved by the following principle: Wherever we have the capacity to mentally formulate a means of achieving the goal, visualizing the means adds conviction and power to the mental formation.

The experience of Jack Canfield cited in The Secret supports this view. Having decided that he wanted to raise his income from $8000 to $100,000, he tried to imagine some conceivable way in which that might be possible and came up with the idea that it could be achieved if his book were written about in National Enquirer. A month later a free-lance reporter who writes for the Enquirer approached him. Canfield used his mental imagination to supplement and reinforce his mental will. Einstein understood its power: "Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." The story of how Fred Smith created Federal Express and took it to the Fortune 500 in record time confirms this view. He started out with both a clear idea and a clear understanding of how he could achieve it. While doing his MBA, he conceived of the idea of establishing a courier business that would deliver packages across the USA overnight in comparison to the three to five day delivery offered by UPS and the US Postal Service. His strategy was to establish a hub system at Memphis so that flights coming from all major cities could reach the hub before 2 am, unload their parcels for resorting, reload with items bound for their return destination and land back home early morning in time for delivery during the day. His objective and his strategy were inseparable aspects of the plan he executed and the results he achieved.

Understanding can be a Bar

The only question is whether the visualization of ‘how’ is always essential and always beneficial. Experience confirms that it is not. Those in whom the physical mind is prominently developed, usually have difficulty imagining how to achieve a goal that is very far removed from present realities. There is a proverbial story of a man who got lost while driving in rural upstate New York and stopped to ask a farmer for directions to his destination. The farmer replied, “There is no way to get there from here!” That is often the understanding of the physical mind. If so, it is better not to listen to it!

A person earning $8000 a year may be able to realistically envision $18,000 but will feel the effort to formulate a means of earning $80,000 is pure fantasy. In such cases the inability to imagine realistic possibilities or the personal sense of smallness become a bar to higher accomplishment. Countless stories can be cited of people who fail to take advantage of magnificent opportunities that are offered to them, just because they cannot imagine themselves achieving at a much higher level.

There are also many stories of people who accomplished tremendous results because they were determined to achieve, even though they had no idea how it would be possible when they started out. Shabir Bhartia traveled from India to Silicon Valley in the mid 1990s as a young software engineer. After a few years working for others and hearing stories of so many people becoming millionaires in the computer industry, he decided that he must achieve that goal himself within a short time. He and a friend came up with the idea of Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft a few years later for $200 million. He knew what he wanted to achieve and willed it powerfully. Only later did he discover how to do it.

In 1961 when President Kennedy announced the goal of the US space program was to land a man on the moon and bring him back again by 1970, the technology had not yet been invented that could accomplish it. Reaching the moon was not an insurmountable object, but it was far from clear that returning from the moon’s surface was feasible. Yet America achieved that goal -- six months ahead of Kennedy’s deadline.

When France, Belgium and Netherlands collapsed under the onslaught of the German army in 1940, Britain was left virtually alone to fight the Axis powers. A month after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister the Germans commenced the intense day-light bombing of England in what became known as the Battle of Britain. Churchill delivered his stirring proclamation to the enemies of Britain and to the world: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…” Probably no one in Britain or anywhere else on earth could honestly say that they knew how Britain could stand up alone and survive the German blitzkrieg, let along win the war. Yet when Churchill spoke, few could doubt that he was absolutely determined to keep his word. He refused even to consider the possibility of any other outcome. He may not have known how, but he surely was determined to achieve at any cost. Churchill knew the essence of The Secret: "You create your own universe as you go along.”

There are other instances in which a person powerfully wills for a result but has absolutely no way of conceiving how to achieve it. A cancer patient who is told by his physician that the disease is incurable cannot be expected to work out a solution in his mind, but his mental will to be cured may nevertheless be very strong and effective, if it is not interfered with. In such instances, using the power of mental understanding to reinforce the mental will by trying to imagine the ‘how’ can limit the power of the mental will and reduce its effectiveness.

Placebo Effect

The New York Times carried a story on the power of placebos that clearly supports this view. In 1957 a patient named Wright was found to have orange-size tumors in his abdomen and was diagnosed with incurable cancer. Wright told his physician, Dr. West, about a horse serum named Krebiozen, which reportedly had been effective in treating serious cases of this type. The skeptical physician reluctantly agreed to administer the serum and was shocked to find three days later that Wright’s tumors had melted away. Two months later Wright read medical reports that Krebiozen was ineffective and he suffered an immediate relapse. Recognizing the power of the patient’s mental understanding, Dr. West told Wright he was going to administer a super version Krebiozen, but actually injected the patient with water. Again the tumors miraculously disappeared. Wright remained in perfect health until he read again that Krebiozen was ineffective. He died shortly thereafter.

This is a clear instance in which it would have been better for the patient to simply believe he can be cured and not activate his understanding to confirm what the medical tests already showed was true. The Times concludes: “Doctors who know this story dismiss it as one of those strange tales that medicine cannot explain. The idea that a patient's beliefs can make a fatal disease go away is too bizarre.” This is not exactly what can be termed a rational scientific response to empirical evidence!

Is it necessary to know how to accomplish something in order to accomplish it? There is a principle behind the The Secret’s ambivalence on this question. If you are capable of envisioning the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’, so much the better. If you are not, don’t let your lack of imagination dampen the height and intensity of your aspiration. There is always a way to achieve any goal. Even if we do not know how, the universe does.

Emotionalize

Having stressed the power of visualization, The Secret also makes it clear that mere mental visualization is not sufficient to move the universe. The mind’s decision to accomplish has to be back by a full emotional commitment. The mind has the power to decide. But the nervous and emotional part of our being, what Sri Aurobindo calls the ‘vital’, is the source of the psychological energy needed for any accomplishment. Mental thoughts carry clarity, not power. The body is the seat of power, but that power is locked in the physical form and inaccessible. When the vital accepts an idea from the mind, it has the capacity to release the power of the body to realize it. The vital is the live center of human existence and accomplishment.

Everyone can recall incidents in which they decided to do something – stop smoking, exercise more, go on a diet, work harder, spend less – but their decision did not lead to action or results, because the mind’s intention was not backed by a commitment of the vital. The Secret says that in order to accomplish, you should throw the full weight of your emotions behind the decision.

The English language is replete with synonyms to express different levels of human determination. Although precise definitions and distinctions are lacking, we can see a gradation in the following sequence of psychological steps: thought, understanding, interest, conviction, intention, resolution, decision, will, commitment, determination, enthusiasm, passion, urge. These words present a psychological movement from the mere idea of accomplishing something to the level of full, total passionate determination to accomplish. The further we move along that gradient from thought to urge, the faster will be the response and the greater the level of the accomplishment.

How do I know when my vital-emotional commitment is complete? The best sign is when the thought of the goal generates an intense, cheerful, eager enthusiasm for action. As long as we are merely interested, willing or decided, we can know that the direction is set for the journey, but we have not yet generated the fuel needed to get there.

Step Two: Universe Responds

Here is where the skeptics have a field day. Visualizing and emotionalizing is what people can do, but whoever heard of the universe responding? The fact is that every society has possessed knowledge of this fact in the past as reflected in their customs, stories, practices, values and in words such as luck, fortune, fate and destiny. All great literature and films – from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the Da Vinci Code -- depict this phenomenon. Most high achievers in business, politics and science are at least partly conscious of it in their own lives. And all of us have experienced this innumerable times, without perhaps understanding or even being conscious of what was happening. But we live in an age of scientific materialism in which an empirical and positivist mind-set has persuaded us that all such occurrences are simply strokes of chance.

Materialist’s View

Oddly enough, the greatest challenge to the materialist mindset has come unexpectedly from the where it might be least expected – from the masters of matter – the physicists. Quantum theorists have observed the relationship between matter and the consciousness of the observer. Field theorists have begun to think of reality in terms of interconnected elements of a single continuous whole, rather than as separate, discrete, isolated parts interacting with one another. This does not mean that the discoveries of physicists validate the concept of a universe presented in The Secret or that physicists will thrown less scorn on the notion than others, but their recent conceptual breakthroughs will ultimately lead to a rediscovery of an ancient truth known from before the beginnings of recorded history and only recently forgotten or abandoned in our effort to reduce all reality to the formula of the empiricists.

The materialist views the world as the creation out of inconscient, inanimate matter and energy through the interaction of random chance and fixed laws of nature. Out of this inconscient, inanimate world, animate life forms and conscious human beings have some how emerged due to a series of events which are so unlikely to occur on their own as to defy all the laws of probability. Clearly there is no room for the conception of a conscious or responsive universe in this worldview.

Alternative View

We are left with no alternative at present but to consult spiritual experience for an explanation of this phenomenon. A full theoretical discussion goes beyond the scope of this article and is explored in the portals on Spirituality and Life and in the projects on Theory of Creation and Pride & Prejudice. It is explained comprehensively by Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine. There he posits an alternative theory of creation, which rationally explains that on which empiricism can only speculate.

According to this alternative view, the primary stuff of creation is not inconscient matter but Conscious-Force, formless spirit. Sri Aurobindo explains the process by which that formless consciousness involved and manifested itself as apparently inconscient matter and has then progressively evolved life and mind from that involved status. Life and mind evolve outer of matter because they are already involved within it. Matter is only a form of this consciousness. Life is a limited expression of the force of Consciousness. Mind is a partial, divided expression of Consciousness. The starting point, according to this view, is not a world divided into an infinite number of infinitesimal, separate particles, but a unified universal field of consciousness that is both the source and the environment in which separate objects, life forms and conscious individuals live and interact. Science starts with infinite division. This view starts with infinite unity and oneness that persists as the ultimate reality and self of all apparently separate things and beings. Oneness is not just a state prior to creation of the world or outside it, but the underlying reality that supports it and unites it.

Analogy to Society

Society is a good analogy for this universe. On the surface, human society appears to consist of a large number of individual beings and activities, each freely pursuing its own objectives. In fact, members of society share a common set of ideas, thoughts, values, beliefs, psychological characteristics, attitudes, aspirations, behaviors, ambitions, manners, information, skills, preferences, etc. Surely this commonality is not the result of chance. It is the result of the fact that even when we are most conscious of our separateness and difference from each other, our lives are all connected and we are made of the same stuff. This society is not only the source of our sameness, but it is also a continuous source of support. It is continuously throwing up opportunities and continuously responding to what we do. If we are successful, it praises us. If we violate its norms, it reprimands us. It places the collective discoveries of the past at our service, so each of us need not reinvent the telephone, TV, airplane or computer in order to use them. In fact, we need not even know how they work. It is enough we take advantage of the powers they place at our disposal. Society takes note of the enterprising and the talented by presenting opportunities for them to excel. It takes note of the lazy and the unproductive by pressurizing them to change. This society has no conscious center and seems to function without conscious intention. It acts and reacts in highly predictable ways by means of gossip, rumor, popularity, status and countless other mechanisms, apparently without conscious intention or initiative.

Life Response

This universe The Secret refers to acts in a similar manner. It responds to our thoughts and aspirations, actually to the qualities of our psychological energies, by presenting that which is a complement to the vibrations we emit. The Secret refers to this mechanism as the law of attraction. Electricity and magnetism are among the many physical phenomena that exhibit properties of attraction. The fundamental truth behind this law is that since reality is an integrated whole, it seeks to express that wholeness in every action. Matter is rigid and fixed. Therefore, in the plane of matter the law of attraction expresses as the attraction of opposites, which complement one another like the physical complementarities of the sexes. Mind seeks knowledge of the whole, so in the plane the principle expresses in the form of complementary aspects that combine to form a greater whole, a more complete truth. Life is a plane of energy and will. The will is a vibration put out by the separate ego to the universe and the universe responds in kind with a similar vibration. The capacity of consciousness to attract, that which is in harmony with its vibrating frequency, is known as life response. At the very moment this paragraph was being written, a book entitled The Science of Oneness by Malcolm Hollick arrived from amazon.com, which also presents an alternative view of the universe based on consciousness. This is an example of life response. Consciousness has the power to attract that which it takes interest in, that which will complete it. The freelance reporter who approached Jack Canfield offering to write an article for National Enquirer was a precise life response to his thought and aspiration.

One need not endorse or practice the entire method of the theory in order to verify the reality of life response. A close observation of one’s thoughts, attitudes and feelings during the course of a single day is usually sufficient. All who tries to recollect key turning points in their lives will find critical events involving apparently chance or unbelievable coincidences. A book gifted by an acquaintance or falling off the shelf of its own accord becomes the occasion for a change of career or country. An accidental meeting brings you into contact with the future most important person in your life. A missed flight results in unexpected good fortune or a narrow escape from calamity. A full comprehension of the factors determining the nature of life response is a subject for a lifetime of study, but the fact that it exists can be ascertained by anyone willing for alert, unbiased observation of the events in their own life. For a full discussion of the theory and principles of life response, see the Life Portal. For a detailed illustration of it, see Pride & Prejudice project.

The Relationship between the Individual and the Universe

Proponents of The Secret characterize the universe as a genii waiting to fulfill our wishes. This is an oversimplification similar to saying that society exists only to fulfill the wishes of all its citizens. In fact, society has its own aims and objectives which are expressions of a subconscious social will. Society extends support to its individual members in the measure their aims and actions are in consonance with its own larger purpose. Today societies around the world aspire for the education of all their citizens, for better communication, transportation, greater freedom, prosperity, economic security, comforts of life. The aspirations of most individuals are an expression of the social aspiration and fully in harmony with it, so the society supports the pursuit of these aims by its members. But that was not always true. Not long ago, those who aspired for wealth, education, higher status or more freedom were frowned upon or rejected. Pride & Prejudice depicts a time 200 years ago when those of middle class origin were looked down upon for seeking to rise in society. Only landholding males could vote in England until after 1850 and English women did not win suffrage till 1920. Today, most modern societies extend a helping and protective hand to the poor, women, minorities, and even the physically impaired.

The individual is not merely a beneficiary of social largess. He is also an instrument for social progress. The individual is the instrument through which society introduces new ideas, attitudes and practices. The initiatives of pioneering individuals are mechanisms through which the collective fulfills its aspiration for change. The conscious thoughts and intentions of creative individuals give expression to new possibilities, which later spread from the individual to the collective. The conscious aspirations of dynamic individuals give expression to new impulses, which the collective wants to encourage. Successful entrepreneurs are heroes in most countries today, because they express the aspiration of society for greater individual initiative and accomplishment. The conscious will of the individual does matter, because it is an expression of and representative of the subconscious will of society. Society speaks to itself in and through its outspoken individuals and it responds to what they say. For a complete discussion of the role of the individual in social development, see Social Development.

The Aim of the Universe

What is true for society is also true for the wider life of the universe. As the society has a subconscious aspiration for its own development, which includes that of its individual members, the universal consciousness also has a subconscious aspiration for its own evolution, an evolution of consciousness, which includes the evolution of conscious human beings. The universe is working out this aim in and through the actions and lives of countless individual. For a fuller discussion, see spiritual evolution. The consciousness of the individual is an expression of that universal consciousness. The individual responds to its subconscious intention and gives conscious expression to it. As the power for accomplishment in society is the power of the society which it lends to the individual for use, so too the power for accomplishment in life is the power of the universal life which lends itself to the individual for use. Individual will is one expression of the will of life. So long as it is in harmony with that wider will, life responds to that individual will. The clearer the objective, the more intense the will, the more rapid and great is the response.

When the mind tries to conceive of the immensity of the universe, it expands and is lifted above the surface consciousness into the Timeless plane. The power of that conception, aided by the other parts of the method, supplies the energy needed for accomplishment.

Step Three: The Role of Effort and Action

The last step involves tuning in and aligning yourself with the universe, being alert and receptive to what comes, so that regardless of the form or the apparent hazards, you do not let the opening pass by. Your thoughts and feelings are in alignment with what you seek when they are entirely positive.

There appears to be a difference of opinion as to the importance of taking action to achieve the goal. Some emphasize the importance of attuning oneself and waiting for events to unfold. Others stress the importance of action. They insist that anything good comes by effort and once the opportunity shows itself, the rest is up to you. They affirm the most practical of all Western values, hard work. The success stories cited almost all involve a series of actions that led to the accomplishment.

The apparent contradiction between these positions is resolved when we recognize that there are various types and levels of personal effort. The essential truth of step three can be summarized by the principle: Make an exhaustive effort. The only question remains what type of effort. Those who have attempted mental concentration know that it is an extremely demanding discipline. Every person who has accomplished in life knows the effort required to take a decision. Making up your mind on important issues can absorb enormous energy and leave you exhausted. Once you know what to do, committing the will to that decision can consume even greater energy. Taking a decision, concentration on the goal, mustering all your energy and enthusiasm to pursue it, releasing enthusiasm for the pursuit are psychological forms of effort that require even more energy and effort than physically action to pursue the goal. Action requires effort. Waiting patiently and cheerfully, refusing to take initiative until conditions are ripe, refusing to be anxious or disturbed, irritated or annoyed are also acts – they are psychological actions of immense power. Either way, the key is to exhaust one’s effort – inwardly or outwardly, physically or psychologically.

The Secret places major emphasis on the psychological approach and suggests three powerful methods for creating harmonious alignment through an exhaustive inner effort to be at your best. These three methods are found at the heart of many spiritual disciplines – cheerfulness, faith and gratitude.

Cheerfulness

What could be so difficult about being cheerful? Its not difficult when we are in the mood. It is extremely difficult when we intensely aspire for something to happen and find people or circumstances obstructing our path or even opposing our progress. Cheerfulness becomes a powerful method when you make a firm commitment to maintain it regardless of what happens. The cheerfulness referred to here does not just mean a calm, friendly and smiling demeanor. It means an unshakeable positive inner attitude toward people and events that occur around you, an incapacity for reaction, anger, impatience, annoyance, resentment, jealousy, frustration, or discouragement. Such an inner attitude has the power to align you with the most positive movements of life around you and to attract those movements to fulfill your aspiration.

Faith

Faith is a predominant characteristic of everyone who achieves anything. That faith may be in God, another person, in life, in law, in one’s abilities or one’s destiny or anything else. In the words of the Gita, “As is a person’s faith, so is his life”.The Secret is not preaching any type of religious faith or even faith in oneself, though either or both of these can be powerful aids to accomplishment. It specifically advocates faith in achievement of the goal. From the very outset, you should try to acquire an absolute confidence and conviction that you will in fact achieve the goal, rejecting all doubts, hesitations or fears of disappointment. But they go even further. They say you should acquire such an intense faith in your ultimate accomplishment that you already feel now as you would feel when you achieve the goal. Entrepreneurs achieve because they believe in themselves and their capacities. Advocates of The Secret achieve because they believe in the method. The power in both cases issues from the belief.

This attitude of faith is illustrated by a story from India about two spiritual aspirants intensely seeking to realize god. One was seeking God through knowledge by concentrating all the energy of his mind on the thought of God. The other was seeking God through devotion, by concentrating all the energy of his heart on a passionate emotion for God. One day both seekers were informed by a wise man that they would realize God after 100,000 births. The mental seeker felt disillusioned and hopeless at the thought of having to wait and aspire so long to reach his ultimate goal. The God-loving devotee responded differently. He expanded in joy at the thought that he would at some time in future actually unite with God. The very next moment God realization came to him. That type of absolute faith has the power to bring the goal instantaneously.

There are people who have subtle faith in their health. Often it is a subconscious faith. When the doctor finds his efforts to cure them are in vain, a smile lights up their faces and they decline further medical help. When the medical help is removed, the innate health of the body asserts itself because of their subconscious faith. A middle aged woman with severe asthma suffered such a serious attack that her physician gave up hope of saving her life and withdrew. The patient removed the tubes providing her oxygen and quietly went to sleep. On waking, she found she had recovered, to the utter amazement of her physician. For the next 20 years she never suffered another serious attack. Something in her told her, “I know I will be all right at the end, medicine or no medicine.” If fully accepted and followed, the method advocated by The Secret has the power to yield results, whatever the present position.

When Churchill delivered his stirring speech in June of 1940, he was so determined to win the war that he literally felt as if he had already won it. That sensation was communicated to those who listened to him on the radio and they felt exhilarated. Churchill was a born hero, descendent of the First Duke of Marlborough who led the British forces in their historic victory over the French in the Battle of Blenheim. During his life he constantly sought out dangerous adventures without the slightest concern for his own safety. When confronted by the Nazi invasion, he did not think about the outcome. To him surrender was inconceivable. His intense aspiration and faith created the result in the subtle plane and it later became a reality.

Gratitude

The Secret says be happy regardless of what happens and maintain an unshakeable faith in your achievement. Then they add a third psychological method – feel grateful for what you already have. Gratitude is something we all learn to express in words, but to feel a real inner sense of mental and emotional gratitude is extremely rare. The author of a book was nearly overcome with disappointment when the initial promise of success seemed to vanish in thin air. Late one night, on the suggestion of his spiritual mentor, he tried to offer intense gratitude to those who had been responsible for helping him write and publish the book. When he awoke the following morning, he was offered an unprecedented life-changing opportunity that became the start of a whole new career. That is the power of genuine, intense gratitude.

Testing the Method

Here ends the lesson of The Secret. It presents a method, provides a modicum of explanation, and then invites you to apply the method in your own life. It does not insist you believe in the explanations provided. It only insists that you complete the three steps and confidently asserts the method is infallible and unfailing. Those who would like to understand more about how or why The Secret words are invited to refer to the principles of life presented and discussed in Human Science. Those who only care for the result or the proof of the method are invited to make the experiment for themselves.

Unanswered Questions

Since the release of The Secret its author and proponents have been asked a wide range of questions that go beyond the immediate scope of the method. How does The Secret explain tragedies like September 11th and Katrina? Can you use the power of The Secret to harm someone? Do luck and chance exist? What happens when two people both apply The Secret to achieve the same goal, such as the same elected office? Can you prolong life by means of the law of attraction? If the law of attraction is so important, why are so many people attracted to other people that are their opposites? On these and similar points The Secret is either silent or ambiguous. The remainder of this article discusses these and other questions in an effort to present a complete and comprehensive knowledge of how and why the method advocated by The Secret works and can be made to work faster and better.

Process of Creation

The Secret is a method for accomplishment. It has not been invented by anyone. It is only one way of describing and consciously applying a universal process that is the basis for all human accomplishment and, in fact, the basis for all creation in the universe. We refer to this process here and elsewhere on the site as the process of creation. We stated earlier the view that all power is derived from Consciousness. This process is the means by which infinite Consciousness manifests itself as finite material and living forms in the universe. The project Theory of Creation explores the metaphysical and spiritual basis for this process.

Consciousness, not mechanical laws or random chance, is the true creator of the universe. All creation in the universe is by a process of Self-conception. Human beings create and accomplish by the same process. The first crucial step in that process is to conceive of something we want to achieve or become.

How long will it take to achieve?

No clear explanation was given in The Secret regarding the time required to accomplish the goal. The answer depends on what you aspire for, how intensely you aspire, and how completely you fulfill the other conditions. Time is an extension of mind. It is the seriousness of the mind that determines the duration taken. Each person achieves according to strength of his or her personality.

This does not mean that very great achievements necessarily take many times longer to be fulfilled. The time which the mind thinks necessary to achieve the goal is clearly an important determinant factor. The sooner a person believes he can achieve, the faster he will achieve. Great things take longer because we think they should or feel that they must. When I apply The Secret for a small gain, I believe it can be immediately achieved, so it is. When I apply it for something great, I expect that it must take much longer and so it does.

Aspiration vs. Expectation

Consciousness is power. The time taken for accomplishment depends on the strength of our aspiration and the intensity with which we apply it. Sometimes we confuse aspiration with wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is a dream of achieving something without the intense will to achieve it. It is passive and satisfied, a pleasant thought. Aspiration is active and intense, a determined will.

Aspiration is also confused with expectation. Both express a will for accomplishment, one strong and the other weak. When we aspire, we send forth energy to bring a result. When we expect, we wait for something to come. Aspiration is active. Expectation is passive. In aspiration, we feel can determine the results. In expectation, we depend on others or circumstances to accomplish it. The more intensely we aspire, the faster and greater the result that comes. Whereas expectation has the power to postpone the result until we stop consciously looking for it to appear.

Conscious vs. Subconscious

If there is only one fundamental process of creation, then all the events and results that occur in our lives must in some way be expressions or results of that process. Yet it is evident that we do not consciously will and seek all that occurs in our lives. In fact, there are many times when most of us do not consciously seek anything. But still events occur all the time. How or what determines these results?

The simple answer is that the process of creation is occurring all the time, whether we know it or not, whether we are conscious or not. The Secret advocates consciously utilizing this process to achieve what you aspire for. It also cautions that the same process – the same law of attraction -- is active every time you think about something you do not want or do not like as well, so be careful what you focus your attention on – consciousness is power.

Still most of us would respond that many things occur which we did not think about consciously at all. Here lies the other side of the truth. Our conscious attention is only one aspect of our consciousness. A large part, indeed the major part, of our consciousness is subconscious – meaning lies below the field of our surface awareness. Skills are examples of this. Whether you type on the computer or write with a pen, a subconscious knowledge and will guided each movement and enable you to correctly put down your thoughts. Physical skills belong to the subconscious of the body, the subconscious physical. Similarly, we all possess subconscious attitudes, aspirations, thoughts, conceptions, desires, preferences, fears and impulses which are casting out their vibrations just as inevitably as the habits which guide the body when we walk, eat or breathe. The process of creation applies to these as well. Fear of failure attracts the failure one fears. Doubts and suspicion about the trustworthiness of other people attracts to us untrustworthy people. They too are elements of consciousness that have the power of attraction. Observant people can often trace the sources of their own illnesses, accidents, disturbances and failures to this source.

Proponents of The Secret acknowledge but seek to downplay this fact because it raises concerns that are not easily resolved. They advise us to focus on the positive powers of The Secret, rather than dwell on the natural consequences arising from subconscious action of the law of attraction. In practice, the more we try to consciously utilize the law of attraction, the more we become aware in ourselves of those very subconscious elements that stand in the way of our accomplishment. Success is most readily achieved by reversing or removing these negative elements. For if consciousness has power, that power can be consciously exercised by us over our own subconscious formations.

Only a highly realized yogi can possess sufficient power of consciousness to fully expose and illumine all the dark corners of the subconscious. But all of us have the power to direct whatever consciousness we do possess positively. That is why The Secret advocates three powerful strategies – cheerfulness, faith and gratitude – to utilize the consciousness we have in the most positive and constructive way possible for us.

Ego vs. Non-ego

Some object to The Secret on moralistic grounds that it caters to narrow, selfish materialistic motives. Surely this cannot be the aim of the universe. Why should the universal force lend itself to such petty purposes? There is a truth in this view, but it is a partial truth. The truth is that the universe can act to fulfill our aspirations only in the measure we open ourselves to the power of the universe. That is what The Secret means by alignment. The ego acts like a straight-jacket imprisoning us within our small personal existence cut off from the world around us. The universe is an infinite energy. But it can enter our lives only in the measure we relate to something beyond our narrow boundaries. All of the methods advocated by The Secret are intended to help us escape from the confines of ego, even if it is done for a selfish personal motive. When a person earning $8000 a year conceives and aspires to earn $100,000, he is overcoming the narrow boundaries of his present existence, expanding beyond his limiting ego, even if he appears to be acting purely for personal, selfish motives. Therefore, the universe responds.

In common parlance we use the term ego to refer to someone who is self-centered, ambitious and self-important. But the ego is present in all of us, even those whose behavior exhibits the very opposite of these characteristics. A person who doubts their own capacity or self-worth, who feels it is wrong to aspire or assert, who feels other people are far more important and deserving is also living well within the bounds of the ego. Only in this case the ego feels weak, helpless and insignificant instead of strong, capable and important.

In order for universe to act in our lives, we have to rise above the constraints placed on us by the ego sense and realize in one way or another that we are much greater than our present being – in fact, our true Self is infinite and one with all – and we have much greater potential than what we have achieved till now. The aggressive entrepreneur who seeks to earn more and more money is really trying to exceed the limiting boundaries of his ego, albeit for selfish purposes, just the way the star athlete aspires to break new records and reach the top spot. Striving for higher accomplishment that far exceeds our present level of achievement is an expansive movement.

Ego has played a very important role in the evolution of humanity from the physically unconscious animal to the mentally self-conscious individual. Now humanity is at the stage where it becomes a bar for further progress. The methods of cheerfulness, faith and gratitude advocated in The Secret are all methods designed to help us shift away from the ego. It is very difficult for the ego to remain always cheerful, because so many things happen in and around us that are not to our liking. To remain always cheerful is to shift away from the surface ego to a deeper center of consciousness inside which is in harmony with the universe around. To generate such a powerful faith that we feel now how we would feel after achieving the goal we aspire for is also a means to move away from the ego. The ego is full of desire, impatience and discontent. To feel fulfilled now means to reject these disturbing influences of the ego. Gratitude is very powerful because it makes us stop thinking about ourselves and what we want and concentrate instead on what life and other people have already given us. The advocacy of these three spiritual methods shows that The Secret is really founded on a deeper wisdom.

Goodwill and Self-giving

The best way to escape and transcend the limits of ego is to feel genuine, intense good will for others and to practice total self-giving. To feel the joy in the joy of another is Good Will. The ego is highly competitive. It judges its own importance and success relative to the achievements of other people. When others accomplish more, it feels smaller and as if it had less than before. Therefore, to generate intense goodwill that takes joy in the accomplishments of other people is a powerful means for transcending the ego. Those who can ardently aspire for others to succeed and prosper generate the maximum receptivity for success and prosperity in their own lives.

Self-giving is even more powerful than goodwill. To grow by giving is Self-giving. Moving from selfishness to selflessness helps the being expand and increases the energy of the personality. To give oneself without thought or motive of return in thought, feeling and act is an ultimate spiritual discipline and path to higher accomplishment. That giving may be to a person, an ideal, an organization or to God. It is powerful when there is no thought or expectation or demand for recognition or return, only the joy of giving oneself.

Not everyone can practice self-giving. But everyone can raise their level of personal efficiency. This is a less powerful method that has a similar result because it gathers and concentrates one’s available energy so it can be more effectively utilized. Efficiency is a laborious physical method. Self-giving is an enjoyable spiritual method.

Rising above the ego though goodwill and self-giving can invoke the highest powers in the universe to act in our lives. When we do this, the universe invariably responds, bringing what we aspire for. But since our aspiration is not selfish, the benefit comes to everyone, not merely the one who aspires.

Does The Secret work for everyone?

What happens when two people both aspire intensely for the same goal, such as the same elected office? Someone called in this question during a discussion of The Secret on Larry King live, but the reply given was vague. The law of attraction works equally for all. But not everyone applies The Secret equally. The result depends on the intensity of our aspiration and our application. Rarely will too people be evenly matched in these areas. There is an actual case in which two distinguished politicians vied for the Presidency of India in the early 1970s and both sought the support of a higher power to fulfill their aspirations. One of them was immediately elected. The second one was elected the next time around.

Silent Will

Several important issues are not mentioned in The Secret. We learn as children that when you make a wish, it is better not to speak about it to other people. That modern folklore is based on a profound truth of life. Speech is an act that consumes energy in the process of giving expression to a thought. Each time we speak about our goal to others, we are throwing out energy that can be better conserved as fuel for accomplishment. Silence is powerful. Silent will is more powerful than will expressed in words. This is especially true when we speak about our aspirations to others who may feel jealous or threatened by our accomplishment. In addition, when we speak about our intention of a great accomplishment, it is very difficult to prevent the ego from deriving from pleasure or sense of importance from the communication. When we take pleasure merely in talking about an accomplishment, that sense of satisfaction saps our energy for accomplishment and we end up only talking about it, never doing it. Pride, satisfaction and contentment with what we have or are is the enemy of higher accomplishment. Of course, there are times and people to whom speaking of our goal is appropriate or even essential. Speaking to those who have intense goodwill for us will magnify the power of aspiration. Speaking to those whose consent or cooperation is essential is necessary to avoid conflicts later on. Therefore, most spiritual disciplines advise practitioners not to speak about their experiences to other people, except to the guru whose guidance and support is essential for accomplishment.

Perfection in detail

Another secret that is not mentioned is the importance of the Infinitesimal. When we seek a great goal, we often disregard the small details as insignificant and unimportant. In fact, the very opposite is true. The best way to progress toward a great accomplishment is to make every small act as perfect as possible. To us the infinitesimal and the Infinite seem like opposites. But spiritually, the Infinitesimal is a manifestation of the Infinite. That is why it is very difficult to perform even the simplest act perfectly. If you try to keep a room perfectly clear, you will constantly discover areas that have been missed or that cannot be maintained in that condition. If you try to make everything you write – even the most casual message -- error-free, you discover that it requires enormous attention and effort. Avoid clumsy movements, loud noises, spilling, breaking, tearing and every other form of disharmony with the environment. When your goal is high accomplishment, the very best method is to make ever small act as perfect as possible. It is a method that brings a much greater result, much sooner.

Power of Non-initiative

The ego is an organization of consciousness that enables the individual to gather personal experience and organize knowledge from it. It creates a center of concentration with sufficient intensity for the universe to evolve through it. That which is greater than the ego sense is referred to by The Secret as the universe. In the measure the individual suspends the action of his ego, the universe is able to act. When the individual takes external initiative to accomplish, the response of the universal is minimal. When the individual refuses to take initiative and invokes the universal consciousness to act, the response is maximum. A Dutch youth on a spiritual quest realized the value of education and took a degree at the age of 40. Many years later he went on to take an M.B.A. Out of idealism, he offered voluntary service to a distinguished international academic organization. After about ten years of such service, he was made an Associate Fellow, a goal he never dreamt of. He was devoid of ambition and only wanted to give. His mentor proposed that he take a Ph.D. so that he might eventually qualify to become a full Fellow in the organization. As a person who does not know his own inner potential, he found the proposal intimidating. After hesitating for years, he finally consented to register for Ph.D. and spent over a year preparing his proposal. Before he even submitted the proposal, he was unexpectedly elected as a Fellow of the organization. His emotional willingness brought the result even before he began to act.

When the results we seek are far beyond our present capacities and resources, but the intensity of our aspiration is sufficiently great, life waits for us to give up striving for the result and then suddenly presents us with all the necessary conditions for accomplishment. This process is dramatically illustrated by events in a sequel to from Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. After the execution of the English king Charles I by Cromwell, his son escapes to Holland where he lives in exile, impoverished and without a following. Ten years later Cromwell dies and there is a fight for succession. Young Charles II sees his last hope at regaining the throne. He travels to France incognito to seek money or troops from young Louis XIV with which he can attempt to regain power. When Louis refuses him, he falls in despair and abandons any hope of restoring the monarchy in England. Within a few hours of his meeting with Louis, he has a chance encounter with a French courtier from whom he learns that the money he sought was hidden by Charles I before his death and is now available for his son. Within a month of these events, Charles II ascended the throne without even having to expend that money. When the last hope is lost, one exhausts his efforts and forgets it. Forgetting the goal is to withdraw one’s own mental influence, allowing the universe to accomplish in one’s life as it chooses without the limitations of our egoistic understanding.

Can the Secret be used for harm?

Intentional evil is a fact of life. No one can deny the fact that bad people often succeed, at least temporarily, in achieving what they aim for, even if it is at the expense of other people or directed to harm other people. Some people do actively wish for and act to harm other people. The results they achieve are also the results of a process. It is the same process of creation. The only difference is that they consciously direct the power they possess for wrong purposes.

However, there is one difference. Those that apply the process positively by concentrating only on positive results and positive feelings, attract more and more of those positive vibrations into their own lives. Their lives continue to expand and flourish as a result. Those who apply the process for negative purposes attract more and more negative vibrations into their own lives and ultimately lead to their own self-destruction.

What does The Secret tell us about the nature of the Universe?

The Secret portrays the universe as a helpful, benevolent force for good. Our conclusion in the previous section suggests that the universe is also capable of delivering harmful results. Which is it? The answer is that it depends very much which aspect of the universe you relate to.

This is most easily understood if you think about how society is organized. Society is a multi-layered universe consisting of many different types and levels. At the highest level are ideas and forces of idealism working to create a better world – principles, organization and individuals dedicated to promoting peace, freedom, prosperity, equality, knowledge and well-being for all humanity. At the other end of the spectrum are forces working for selfish aggrandizement regardless of the impact on other people – criminal forces, violent destructive elements driven by hatred and seeking revenge. Naturally, we seek to relate to that aspect of society which is most supportive and conducive for our fulfillment and avoid that part which is dangerous and threatening to our very survival.

The universe is organized in a similar manner as a hierarchy of levels of consciousness. The highest levels are above our normal consciousness – superconscient to us. They represent benevolent forces working for our upliftment and future evolution. The lowest levels represent forces lodged deep in the collective subconscious – relics of our animal and primitive past – working in the very opposite direction. These are the forces unleashed by war, genocide, hatred, and brutality. In between are forces that represent the current social consciousness of society in general, which work to fulfill the current aspirations and values of society.

In the past society was repressive and tried to keep each individual in his pre-assigned place. Today society supports and even encourages people to rise up. It ensures fundamental rights, provides opportunities for education and training, encourages people to start new ventures and celebrates their success when they rise. It protects minorities and aids the disabled. The ‘universe’ that many people appeal to when they invoke the method of The Secret is the consciousness of this supportive social environment which is a very real and tangible power answering to human aspirations. In other words, when our goals and are motives lie within the framework of current society, society is a collective force that can respond consciously or subconsciously – through its laws, institutions and programs or through what appears as chance or coincidence – to aid us in our endeavor.

But that is not the highest or most powerful level of the universe that can respond to human aspiration. Above the social plane are universal powers that work for the future evolution of society, for an evolution of human consciousness into something higher. Those with faith in a higher power and a greater good can invoke it to act in their lives for personal benefit or for the common benefit of humanity. In the measure their personal aspiration is in line with the conscious progress of humanity, these higher forces can and do respond even to very personal aspirations. When an individual aspires for extraordinary individual achievement, that too is a contribution to wider human development because it makes other people aware of the unlimited potential of the human spirit and the unlimited capacity of the universe to support higher accomplishment.

At the very highest levels, the universe responds most powerfully to aspirations, which are unselfish and impersonal, rather than targeted for immediate personal gain. This is the spiritual plane where the original and final intention of the Infinite Consciousness is revealed. The universe itself is evolving spiritually and becoming more conscious of its source and true nature. The aim of this highest level is nothing less than the spiritual evolution of humanity and the entire manifest universe. Whereas in the past it was very difficult for human beings to invoke the power of this highest plane, the descent of what Sri Aurobindo calls the supramental force has now brought that highest power within reach of humanity where it is actively working behind appearances to accelerate the evolution.

The Complete Act

Every successful act is an act of accomplishment that applies the process of creation. Whether we walk, talk, write, read, compose, invent or play, we are directing our consciousness to achieve certain results. There are three essential ingredients in every successful act.
1.Self-conception: A clear mental conception of the goal to be achieved.
2.Emotional endorsement: Release of emotional energy to achieve the goal.
3.Skilled execution: Action that expresses all the skills required for completion of the act. When the action is be physical and external, we rely on our own capacities to achieve the result. When it is inner and psychological, as The Secret advocates, we rely on the universe to act on our behalf.

Romance

The passionate quest for romantic fulfillment is the most universal and intense of human aspirations. When it reaches its acme, the attraction to another person totally occupies the thought and will, the emotions and sensations. Yet for story of romantic love successfully fulfilled, there are countless tales of lovers who are ignored, scorned or rejected. What can The Secret tell us about romantic accomplishment? It tells us that success in the quest for romantic love can, like every other human aspiration, be assured, provided we abide by the requisite method and conditions.

For many people it is easier to conceive that The Secret can be utilized to earn millions than to win the heart of another person. But the principles and the process are the same. An analysis of successful and unsuccessful romantic pursuits will quickly reveal the extent to which they conform to or violate the method of The Secret.

Great writers have studied the phenomena of romance with scientific depth and precision, noting the correspondence between thought, emotion, action and result. Great literature reveals the process in its entirety. The successful union of Rosalind and Orlando in the face of enormous odds in Shakespeare’s As You Like It and the final victory of Darcy’s impassioned pursuit of Elizabeth in Austen’s Pride & Prejudice illustrate the process. The universe responds to Orlando’s all-consuming love for Rosalind by bringing her to the forest where he is wandering in exile. It responds to Darcy’s aspiration by bringing Elizabeth to Pemberley just at the moment when he arrives unexpectedly and by providing the occasion of Lydia’s elopement for him to prove to Elizabeth the depth of his feeling and reconciliation to her social origins.

What then of the universal experience of lovers who fail? The Secret tells us why.
§ In almost all cases, lovers violate the very first principle laid down in The Secret. They doubt their capacity to win the heart of the beloved. Unwavering confidence, conviction, concentration, will, determination and emotionally enthusiasm are the conditions for assured success in love as in every other life pursuit. Self-doubt, fear of rejection, a sense of unworthiness, constant imagining of being spurned and rejected are negative mental formations that bring about the very result we most dread.
§ Rarely do lovers place their total reliance on the universe to bring them the object of their love. Most people feel compelled by passion to act, even when the circumstances are unprepared or inappropriate, to speak words before they are appropriate, to seek or even demand a response before the other person is ready to give it. The Secret tells us to act inwardly, aspire intensely, and then wait for external circumstances to ripen. After Darcy’s failed proposal to Elizabeth at Rosings, he does just that. He aspires and waits until the universe delivers her to his very door in circumstances far more propitious for success.
§ The Secret advises us to entertain only positive thoughts and feelings, an unshakeable cheerfulness, a faith that is so strong that if feels as if it has already accomplished, gratitude for all we have and will receive in future. These are the attitudes that align us with universal life and attract the object of our seeking.
§ Above all, The Secret tells us that the greatest accomplishment comes by moving away from our own egos and expanding out being to embrace the world around us. Most lovers are so preoccupied with their own thoughts, feelings and needs that they have little real consideration for those of the person they pursue. Love responds irresistible to a vibration of happy, expansive self-giving, not to one of morose, selfish longing or self-pity.

The methods of The Secret are infallible, even in love. In cases of romance, the aspiration comes from the deepest of emotional centers, therefore it can never fail. If it does not succeed for any reason, one of the essential requirements will be lacking. Where the flaw is not apparent, an analysis of the situation according to the four-quadrant model of decision-making described below will reveal the missing ingredient.

Decision-making

The methodology of The Secret presupposes that you have already decided what it is you want to accomplish. But in practice, it does not usually work that way. Our decision as to what we want to accomplish is strongly influenced by what we believe we can accomplish and what we are ready to commit our energies to seriously pursue. The Secret works in instances in which your decision – the choice of the goal – fulfills all the essential conditions.

There are four types of decisions:
1.Decisions that are directly fulfilled.
2.Decisions that get off to a good start, but ultimately fail to achieve.
3.Decisions that are difficult to begin acting upon, but are ultimately accomplished.
4.Decisions that are a failure from start to finish.

These four situations can be graphically represented by the four quadrants below:
I
+ inside
+ outside

II
+ inside
- outside

III
- inside
+ outside

IV
- inside
- outside

Quadrant I: This quadrant applies to instances in which all the essential requirements for fulfillment of the decision are met. These requirements consist of external conditions as well as inner psychological conditions. If you decide to climb Mt. Everest, learning the essential skills of mountain-climbing is an external requirement. Having the inner courage, fortitude and determination to face the challenge and persevere are internal requirements. Where both inner and outer conditions are fulfilled, success is assured and it will come readily.

Quadrant II: This quadrant applies to instances in which all the essential inner requirements are met, but the outer requirements are lacking. Such decisions get off to a slow start, encounter many obstacles on the way, but ultimately end in success. This is in consonance with the teaching of The Secret that psychological conditions are of paramount importance, not external realities. When you chose a goal for which you are not outwardly prepared and qualified, it takes time for the inner aspiration to bring about the necessary conditions.

Quadrant III: This quadrant applies to instances in which all the essential external requirements are met, but the inner requirements are lacking. Such decisions usually get off to a good start, but ultimately end in failure. A person with sufficient knowledge, skill and experience in mountain-climbing, connections with people who organize treks and sufficient funds to outfit themselves properly may find it relatively easy to commence preparations for the conquest of Mt. Everest. But if they do not also fulfill the inner conditions – if they lack the emotional fortitude, the self-confidence, the faith in other people, the patience to wait for suitable conditions, etc. – their enterprise is likely to stall even in the formative stage and even the attempt may never be made.

Quadrant IV: This quadrant applies to instances in which both the essential inner and outer requirements are lacking. There are situations where neither the outer nor the inner is ready. It is like the longing of one for a house who is intimidated inwardly by that suggestion and outwardly can never complete all the requirements.

When The Secret says that anyone can achieve anything, it only means that wherever a person’s decision falls in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th quadrants, following the methodology of The Secret will enable the person to move into the first quadrant, where failure is unknown. Mental concentration on the goal, releasing one’s emotional energy to achieve it, attuning oneself to the external environment, feeling cheerful, having faith and expressing gratitude are powerful methods for advancing from any of the lower quadrants by moving inwardly to make life respond.

Understanding History

The Secret is a method based on the universal process of creation. The same process applies to the accomplishments of individuals, organizations and countries. It can be used not only to achieve results in future but also to better understand results that have been achieved in the past. For in all cases, the final outcome is determined by inner psychological conditions that cannot be discerned from a study of the external facts alone.

The Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 was one of Napoleon's greatest victories, effectively destroying the Third Coalition against the French Empire and giving France domination over Europe for nearly a decade. Although the armies were equal in size, Napoleon’s superior strategy and planning led to a rout in which 37% of the enemy forces and most of their artillery were captured or destroyed.

Historians who try to explain the outcome of the battle, war or other significant event in retrospect in terms of external facts and events forget that there were hundreds of factor that could have resulted in a different outcome. The inner process is the determinant of how those factors develop and interact and the outcome they produce.

For the first time in history Mahatma Gandhi conceived of non-violence, Satyagraha, as a method to achieve India’s independence from British rule. His faith in his method won freedom for India in 1947 and for 45 other Asian and African nations. In 1942 Gandhiji launched the Quit India movement. In response, the British arrested Gandhi and about 10,000 leaders of the Indian National Congress Party. The movement lost momentum and quickly died down. The British rebuffed all efforts to get Gandhi released from prison. But Gandhi’s faith in his method and his determination to accomplish were unshaken. While in jail, Gandhi became very serious ill with malaria, but he refused to take the medicine offered to him. The British became deeply concerned that a violent revolution might break out were he to die in prison, so they promptly released him. What could not be achieved by the pressure of hundreds of millions of people, was achieved by the bite of a mosquito! That is why The Secret counsels us not to be concerned with how the result will be achieved. There are innumerable and unimaginable ways for life to accomplish any goal.

Savtri

Savitri is an epic poem written by Sri Aurobindo in 1950. It is based on a tale from the ancient epic, about a princess named Savitri who marries Satyavan, a prince living in exile. One year after their marriage, Satyavan dies. Savitri confronts the Lord of Death and by the power of chastity and will wins back the life of her Satyavan.

Sri Aurobindo took this story and converted it into a spiritual parable. In his version, Savitri, the daughter of the Sun, she pursued the Lord of Death and transformed him from a being of Darkness into a being of Light. The Message of this epic is that an individual has the power to abolish death, suffering and evil by transcending the limits of ego. The essence of The Secret is expressed in the following lines from the poem: A Prayer, a Master act, a King Idea Can link man’s strength to a Transcendent Force. Then miracle is made the common rule. The Secret cites actual instances in which such a link between the individual and the Transcendent leading to results that appear miraculous.

Why Now?

Why has The Secret become popular now? If The Secret has always been known to humanity, then why only now has it come to public attention? The Secret has been revealed by many teachers in the past. Now more people are ready to listen. In the past, society has been organized to preserve the status quo and keep each person in his or her original place. Even spiritual knowledge was preserved for the few and concealed from the public-at-large. Today humanity has advanced to the point were it seeks the development and flowering of each person as an individual. It has replaced insistence on personal status with a more impersonal attitude applicable to all. The knowledge offered by The Secret may be applied personally, but it is essentially an impersonal knowledge meant to benefit all equally. It can flower only in a social climate that supports the welfare of all. Because society has become more impersonal in its motives, those who offer that knowledge receive greater support and encouragement. At the same time, society has now developed instruments for disseminating knowledge to everyone.

We live in an age where individuality is emerging. The individual does not want to learn from another person. He wants to discover knowledge by his own effort. The publication of The Secret as a DVD and a book enables each person to acquire and master the knowledge for himself. The strategy for communication is well suited to the values of our time.

Finally, The Secret is being heard today because the people who speak about it are those who have applied it successfully in their own lives. It is not merely a philosophy or belief system for them. It is a lived reality. Therefore, it carries conviction.

Summary of Strategy

The following are the conditions by which we can attune ourselves with the creative universal energy to accomplish in our lives:

1. Intensely aspire for what you want until the aspiration becomes a physical sensation.
2. Try to convert the aspiration into gratitude.
3. Generate intense, happy inner emotions in support of your aspiration.
4. Ensure that your decisions are in the 1st quadrant of the decision-making matrix or take steps to move to the first quadrant as soon as possible.
5. Your aspiration should reach the height of intensity and saturate your emotional being. The indication of that is one feels as if he has already achieved.
6. Be entirely positive and patient.
7. Shift entirely to reliance on the inner consciousness or the universal forces rather than dependence on external circumstances and events.
8. Shift away from the ego as far as possible.
9. Instead of seeking a personal goal, leave the goal to the universe.

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