One Simple Idea (16 page)

In its original form, the Law of Attraction possessed a vastly different meaning from the one later attached to it by mind-power acolytes. The phrase first arose in the mid-nineteenth-century work of upstate New York medium Andrew Jackson Davis, the “Poughkeepsie Seer.” Davis entered into medium trances from which he would dictate vast metaphysical lectures. Never being one to shy from loquaciousness, Davis in 1855 produced a six-volume treatise on metaphysical laws,
The Great Harmonia
. In volume 4, he described the Law of Attraction not as a principle of cause-and-effect thinking or as a method for using the mind to attract
wealth, but, rather, as a cosmic law governing where a person’s soul would dwell in the afterlife based on the affinities he had displayed on earth. In Davis’s view, the Law of Attraction also governed the types of spirits that would be drawn to séances based on the character and intention of the people seated around the table.

In the vision of positive-thinking impresarios, the Law of Attraction took on different more distinctly material possibilities. The popular remaking of Davis’s law began in 1892 in the final volume of Prentice Mulford’s
Your Forces, And How to Use Them
. Mulford, who died the previous year, had written: “Such a friend will come to you through the inevitable law of attraction if you desire him or her …” In 1897, Ralph Waldo Trine used the term in his popular
In Tune with the Infinite
, and in 1899, Helen Wilmans invoked the Law of Attraction in her
Conquest of Poverty
. In June of that year, the New Thought leader Charles Brodie Patterson showcased the phrase in his influential article “The Law of Attraction,” published in his journal,
Mind
. Patterson celebrated the Law of Attraction as a metaphysical super-law that dictated that everything around us is an out-picturing of what we dwell on most of the time in our thoughts. “Upon the recognition of this law depend health and happiness,” Patterson wrote, “because neither can ensue unless in our thought we give out both.”

No one on the early New Thought scene was more dramatic in illustrating the power of metaphysical laws than Chicago lawyer William Walker Atkinson. A student of Emma Curtis Hopkins and Helen Wilmans, Atkinson wrote dozens of books, which he published under his Yogi Publication Society. His 1902 book,
The Law of the New Thought
, devoted a chapter to the Law of Attraction. Atkinson often brought an exotic allure to his books by writing them under mysterious-sounding pseudonyms, such as Theron Q. Dumont and Yogi Ramacharaka. Writing in 1908 under the alias Three Initiates, Atkinson launched his most successful book,
The Kybalion. The Kybalion
, which seemed to be a Hellenic re-sounding of the term
Kabbalah
, presented itself as a modern commentary on an ancient work of lost Egypto-Greek esotericism by the mythical
sage Hermes Trismegistus.
The Kybalion
framed the Law of Attraction as a tenet of ancient esoteric wisdom.

Though written in faux-arcane language, this work of Pseudo-Hermeticism did contain passages of surprising depth and substance. Atkinson located legitimate correspondences between New Thought and certain Hermetic ideas. These two philosophies, Hermeticism and New Thought, shared no actual lineage; but each believed in a universal over-mind, and Atkinson deftly traced those areas where they intersected. With its Hermetic reframing of the Law of Attraction,
The Kybalion
became a sensation among New-Thoughters, occultists, and even some black nationalists and Afrocentrists, who considered it an authentic retention of ancient Egyptian wisdom.

While it was an underground work, never registering in mainstream culture,
The Kybalion
became probably the bestselling occult book of the twentieth century. In later years, its influence showed up in surprising places. In 1982,
TV Guide
presented a rare profile of television star Sherman Hemsley, famous as TV’s George Jefferson. Hemsley, who died in 2012, was intensely private and seldom gave interviews.
TV Guide
ran its piece under the headline “Don’t Ask How He Lives or What He Believes In: A Rare View of
The Jeffersons
Star Who Works Hard to Hide an Unorthodox Lifestyle.” The man who immortalized the cantankerous George obliquely credited a mysterious book and teacher with turning his life around as a young man. “Somewhere along the line,” went the profile, “he met ‘the man with the book’—although Sherman won’t say which one. ‘Don’t want to advertise any book,’ he grumbles. He is also very mysterious about exactly who the man was.”

Hemsley’s housemate, André Pavon, told
TV Guide
that the book was, in fact,
The Kybalion
. “He gave me that and others,” Pavon said, adding, “It changed my life. He told me, ‘You got to read it, man.’ ” Though sometimes depicted as a recluse, Hemsley simply lived by a different scale of values—those he derived from
The Kybalion
, as well as his interests in meditation and Kabbalah. Asked why he didn’t frequent Hollywood parties and restaurants, he replied: “Nothing goes on there. The most
exciting things happen in the mind.” Although
The Kybalion
remained just off mainstream radar, Hemsley’s comments exemplified the depth of dedication the occult work inspired among its fans.

In the years following
The Kybalion
, the Law of Attraction, whether seen as an ancient Hermetic idea or as a modern success formula, was embraced, extolled, and repeated as the keynote of mind-power spirituality. Its popularity brought the New Thought movement to a moral turning point: According to the logic of this super-law, the mind itself was an omnipotent force of attraction. A man’s thoughts could assemble, disassemble, build up, or destroy. In essence, man was the Godhead. God may have existed both within and beyond man, but God the Creator, in this new formulation, was synonymous with the human imagination. Subtly, New Thought redirected its focus away from
opening man to the blessings of God
(a remnant of Mary Baker Eddy’s theology), and toward
making man aware of this awesome, ever-operative inner power
that awaited his directions to bestow beauty, health, and plenty. Or to cause harm if one’s mind unconsciously drifted to thoughts of illness, hatred, or despair.

In generations ahead, this radical metaphysic simultaneously popularized and burdened the positive-thinking movement. The Law of Attraction, however appealingly it promised material gain, dictated that man alone, through his thoughts, bore ultimate responsibility for everything that happened to him, whether good or bad. This was an ethical claim that future generations of positive thinkers weren’t fully prepared to shoulder or defend.

The rising tremors of the Great Depression did nothing to stem the progress of the positive-thinking movement. In times of economic calamity, mind-power philosophy not only continued to function as a source of innovation on the American scene but effectively issued a challenge to mainline religion that is still being felt today. The challenge was for churches to provide practical inspiration, usable advice, and psychological insights for dealing with the difficulties of daily life—or to risk irrelevance.

While most American churchgoers retained their ties to mainline congregations, worshippers from across the religious spectrum were increasingly
familiar with New Thought’s messages of spiritual self-help. They knew about books such as
As a Man Thinketh
and
In Tune with the Infinite
. Many people had taken the kinds of mail-order courses offered by Helen Wilmans or Elizabeth Towne, or knew someone who had. Christian Science churches sprouted up in some of the more affluent neighborhoods of New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. And mental healing was written about, sometimes critically but just as often approvingly, in national magazines. The message emerging from all these sources was that
religion could be useful
. Congregants from mainline churches increasingly demanded that problems with money, alcohol, marital relations, and self-image be addressed from the pulpit and in church programs. Otherwise, attendance would dwindle, as it did in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The formula that revitalized the Protestant churches grew from the precedent laid down by New Thought—namely, that
faith ought to serve as a source of self-improvement
. This principle inspired mainstream spiritual programs in addiction recovery (such as Alcoholics Anonymous), physical healing (such as the Episcopal-based Emmanuel Movement), youth development (such as the Presbyterian Church’s Camps Farthest Out), and an array of church-based support groups in marriage, grief, and career counseling.

Jewish congregations were touched as well. In the 1920s members of the Reform rabbinate made insistent pleas that rabbis be trained in mental therapeutics and taught to guide Jewish congregations in the use of healing prayers and inspirational religious readings. This resulted in the first pastoral counseling classes at rabbinical seminaries, a trend that quickly expanded to other denominations.

New Thought’s most dynamic voices had long promoted a vision of therapeutic spirituality, and their efforts altered America’s religious landscape—to the point where churches had to become forces not only for salvation but also for healing.

Americans of the early twentieth century were primed for this project—this quest to remake religion as
useful
—by their fascination with ideas and protocols that were deemed “scientific.” For many people, the scientific method—by which a hypothesis could be tested through a set of repeated steps and empirical results—held out the hope of identifying the inner workings of life, and improving on them.

The Victorian age and the generation after were electrified by scientific advances. Louis Pasteur identified germs as the root cause of many diseases. Charles Darwin postulated the orderly development of biologic life. Albert Einstein probed the hidden mechanics behind energy, matter, and time. Sigmund Freud identified childhood traumas as the roots of adult neuroses. Even in politics, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that the hidden dynamics of life could be traced to economic exploitation, which resulted in inevitable patterns of class conflict.

All of these theories and outlooks shaped the central idea of modernity: That outer events possessed unseen yet knowable antecedents. Many social scientists, academics, and everyday people believed that through a proper grasp of natural laws—whether physical, social, or political—life’s secrets could be unlocked and daily existence improved.

The modern faith in science and utility was felt in the realm of the spirit, too. In the years immediately following World War I, religious scholar Horatio Dresser wrote: “Our thought of God has become practical, concrete. This newer conception of God also belongs with the desire of modern man to test everything for himself, to feel in his own life whatever man claims to have felt in the past that exalted him.”

Dresser, William James, and others wondered if certain spiritual practices could be shaped into a regimen that would produce observable, repeatable benefits. James had used the term “Gospel of Relaxation” to describe “certain psychological doctrines and show their practical applications to mental hygiene.” He presented a set of mostly New Thought practices (“act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there”), which
he believed could improve confidence, help deter illness, and create more easy-going relationships. Could this be the start of a modern, rationalist program for psychological and spiritual health?

Among New-Thoughters, the language for this project had long been in place. “We must deal scientifically with our faults,” Emma Curtis Hopkins had written. Phineas Quimby had foretold a “science of health and happiness.” Poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote of “The Science of Right Thinking” and Wallace D. Wattles of “The Science of Being Great.” By the early decades of the twentieth century, mind-cure and New Thought acolytes were eager to prove the efficacy of spiritual practice.

At the forefront of this mission stood a group of “happy warriors”—a dynamic set of writers, teachers, and innovators who created the New Thought renaissance of the first half of the twentieth century. These impresarios shaped positive thinking as it is understood today: as a program to successful living. In most cases, they are little known; but these men and women articulated their ideals with such persuasiveness that their books, sermons, and spiritual regimens reshaped mainstream religion—and, eventually, much of modern life.

The happy warriors who ignited this revolution in practical spirituality had few ties to institutional faith. They were charismatic, independent teachers—many with their own original take on the positive-thinking creed. They had heartland names such as Frank B. Robinson, Glenn Clark, Ernest Holmes, and Roy Jarrett. In many cases, they were part of no historical religious tradition, although they repeatedly proved their ability to reach mainstream worshippers. They were often self-educated, with reading tastes that ran to Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg, Mary Baker Eddy, and Warren Felt Evans, as well as works of Theosophy and occultism, and the religious scriptures of the East. Indeed, these figures were probably the last leg of the positive-thinking
tradition that had clearly imbibed the work of American metaphysicians such as Evans and Andrew Jackson Davis, whose names soon slipped into obscurity.