Secret for sale

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Chicken Soup in a New Can

Tehelka Magazine

Dated Jan 19, 2008

 

Healthy Rhonda Byrne's self-help [book] sensation is

flying off the shelves in India. But [article author]

Nisha Susan is not sure how The Secret will help you

tackle real-life problems

 

When Rhonda Byrne, producer of indifferent reality shows

for Australian TV, created The Secret did she know what a

good thing she was on to? Both her film and book have cut

a wild swathe through the world since their release in early

2006, establishing her as the queen of positive thinkers. The

book has sold six million copies worldwide. India's thriving

market for spirituality and self-help books has not escaped

Byrne's husky whisper. The Crossword Bookstores chain

has sold over 10,000 copies in the last year, double the

number of any book in the non-fiction category. Priti Singh

who manages one of the Tekson book stores in Delhi says,

" The book has been selling better than any Mitch Albom

title. " Bangalore's near-legendary TS Shanbagh of Premier

Bookshop admits, with some embarrassment,

that the book is selling well.

 

While Byrne encourages the pursuit of instant gratification,

both film and book engage in an elaborate build-up that she

probably learnt while producing her reality show Sensing

Murder. For those who are not going to pay Rs 550 for the

book or Rs 2,000 for the DVD here are the basics. Byrne's

Great Secret of Life or Law of Attraction is that " like

attracts like " . So whatever is going on in your mind is what

you are attracting. Dozens of breezy assertions then support

this simplistic truism. (See box.) Metaphors are mixed with

bad science and fuzzy thinking ( " Even under a microscope

you are energy " ) to drive home the idea that positive

thoughts will give you all that you desire. The source of all

the abundance (necessary for spiritual growth) is the

Universe. A beloved metaphor is the idea of the universe as

a catalogue from which we can order anything. For most of

us, listening to that loud voice of inner doubt ( " You are

going to lose again. You will never do well " ) is a self-

fulfilling prophecy. Cognitive psychologists have

successfully experimented with changing negative thoughts

in an effort to change feelings and, hence, behaviour.

Byrne's book unfortunately does not operate in the world of

learning. It operates in the world of commodities where it

needs to be newer and shinier than the other processed

goods. (When Byrne was recently featured on TIME

magazine's annual list of 100 influential people, she was not

placed in the " Thinkers " category but in the " Builders and

Titans " category, sandwiched between the owner of a hedge

fund and the brain behind Nintendo.)

 

Byrne conflates the idea that you can be successful because

of hard work with the idea that you can be successful

because of thinking of success. As one critic, Ingrid Hansen

Smythe, said of Byrne's (and other self-help gurus') fusing

of these two ideas, " It seems to me that this is like a woman

using some form of birth control and then lying back and

affirming " I will not get pregnant! I will not get pregnant! "

Most readers with a modicum of common sense would see

that optimism accompanied by action would probably yield

results and that optimism, in itself, cannot replace action.

Even the relentlessly feel-good filmmaker Karan Johar says

" Nothing in the book is new. These are things that you

know if you are reasonably introspective and have had

sensible parenting. The basic idea that you need to be

positive and that success is in your head is fine. The book is

great because it breaks the idea down into simple steps. But

it is inspiration for a weekend. When you go back to the real

world on Monday morning, these noble intentions of

thinking positive thoughts disappear. I think self-awareness

is far more important. " Byrne's project is almost too easy a

target for laughter with its hushed, conspiratorial tones

revealing ancient wisdom and its softporn production

values.

 

While Byrne lists a phalanx of self-help gurus including

Jack Canfield (author of the Chicken Soup series) and John

Gray (author of Men are from Mars, Women are from

Venus) she is clearly channeling the spirit of Dan Brown in

her deployment of grand-sounding arcana. The epigraph of

the book quotes the Emerald Tablet, " As above, so below,

as within, so without " . What is the Emerald Tablet? A

thirteen-line text supposedly dating back to 3000 BC that

has intrigued many a bright mind with its elusive recipe for

both alchemic gold and spiritual growth. If this book is

different in any way from its predecessors it is because of

powerful patrons such as Oprah Winfrey who gushed about

it on her show.

 

When a viewer wrote in saying that she had decided to

adopt The Secret's teachings to heal her breast cancer,

Winfrey had to organise an episode urging people not to

abandon medical science. It is this sort of astoundingly

gullible viewer that whips most editorial writers into a froth.

But Byrne's work is problematic in other ways. Byrne

preaches relentless self-interest and the pursuit of middle-

class El Dorados with a blade so keen you feel no pain. For

instance, Bob Proctor (one of Byrne's 'Secret teachers'

quoted in the book) asks an ill person to " See yourself living

in a perfectly healthy body. Let the doctor look after the

disease. " Byrne's riff on this is that you are inviting illness

if you listen to people talking about their illness. Therefore,

if your 22-yearold cousin is dying and wants to discuss her

issues of mortality, change the subject. You are making her

more ill and may kill yourself in the bargain. Byrne equates

her Law of Attraction with the law of gravity. She says once

she understood " The Secret " , she could understand quantum

physics despite never having studied physics in school. She

would have you understand that there are similar

quantifiable explanations for all that befalls you. Did you

think you were definitely going to get a raise and then fail

to? Ah. That is because you must have had a moment of

doubt. In fact, thoughts of anything other than sunshine and

kittens are likely to have nuclear fallout. " Unfortunately

Western society has become fixated on age, and in reality

there is no such thing. " This is how Byrne describes

Western civilisation's deplorable tendency to grow old.

 

The pursuit of complex thought in itself becomes very

tricky. For instance The Secret says anti-war campaigners

cause war and anti-drug movements have created more

drugs. It carefully avoids mentioning the victims of rapes or

car accidents. However the book is very clear that people

are poor because they are thinking of poverty and the

wealthy are those that have wisely channeled their thoughts.

Byrne's inspiration was the 1910 exponent of New Thought,

The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. Many

readers eager for answers in a difficult world choose to look

past the trappings and say that the book's basic suggestions

such as positive visualision are effective. Sachin and

Prerana Thombare, a young couple from Mumbai, who

watched the DVD, explained what they gleaned from it this

way. Prerana, a marketing consultant, said " We do think

that people will be better off if they are positive and the

universe will create situations for them to get what they

want. My brother has been practicing the teachings of The

Secret. He asked for a job in the US and it happened. "

Sachin, who has been keenly interested in the teachings of

Osho and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for a decade, says, " I

watched the video and did not get any impression of it

offering any pursuit of higher spiritual goals. The video

teaches the pursuit of desire. I have no issues with that. "

 

Others are more critical. Arunima Shankar, a translator,

says, " Of course there are things in the book that struck a

chord. But I wonder whether I would have enjoyed the book

so much without its expensive paper, its fancy lettering. One

is not expecting the author of a self-help book to be

altruistic but there is a sense of being manipulated. It seems

to say: Here is this amazing gift that you can have for

$12.99! " Delhi-based hypnotherapist Sudha Shankar

regularly buys and reads books that fall in the broad

category of spirituality. Soon after reading The Secret,

which she liked, she stumbled upon Shakti Gawain's

Creative Visualisation. " It is the same thing! Except that it

was written in the 1970s and Gawain did not have such

marketing skills. Gawain's book has more meat, " she said.

 

If you went to school in the 80s [in India] you will recall

fervently collecting pencil shavings with the firm belief that

a critical mass of shavings with the application of water

would turn into an eraser. While it would have been more

efficient for even thrifty six-year-olds to simply buy an

eraser, the satisfaction was in getting something out of

nothing. Byrne's book may appeal to those who still retain

the six-year-olds within them. But what can she offer those

with grown-up problems?

 

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