The inner life
The Secret
Direct answer
The Secret is a 2006 film and book by the Australian producer Rhonda Byrne which presents the law of attraction as a hidden law known to great figures of the past.
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At a glance
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Law of Attraction, New Thought, Think and Grow Rich, Vision Board
The Secret is a 2006 film and book by the Australian producer Rhonda Byrne which presents the law of attraction as a hidden law known to great figures of the past.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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What is The Secret about?
The Secret began as a documentary-style film released in 2006 and became a book later the same year. In both, a series of teachers and authors explain a single idea: thoughts send out a frequency, the universe answers in kind, and a person receives whatever they hold in mind. The method is given in three steps taken from a Gospel verse: ask, believe, receive.
The work retells New Thought for a new audience, and Byrne names Wallace Wattles's The Science of Getting Rich (1910) as the book that set her on the path. Its framing, that the teaching was suppressed and was known to Plato, Newton and Einstein, has no historical support. Critics objected most to its implication that the victims of illness and disaster drew their fate by their thinking, which the house rejects.
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What sets The Secret apart
Its distinguishing move is the frame of concealment. Earlier New Thought books sold a method openly; this one tells the same method as a discovery kept from the public and held by a line of famous names, none of whom is shown to have taught it. The second mark is its vocabulary of frequency and magnetism, offered as physics, which is not how physics uses those words. The third is format: a film of short interviews, made for sharing, which is how it travelled before the book existed.
- Author: Rhonda Byrne, Australian television producer
- Film: released online and on DVD, March 2006
- Book: published November 2006
- Three steps: ask, believe, receive
- Named source: Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich, 1910
- Reported sales: more than thirty million copies, by the publisher's count
Often mistaken for something else: The Science of Getting Rich tells its reader to think in a certain way and also to work in a certain way; The Secret keeps the thinking and says far less about the work.
The story behind The Secret
Byrne, a television producer in Melbourne, made the film with her company Prime Time Productions and released it online and on DVD in March 2006; the book followed in November. Two episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show in February 2007 sent it to the top of the bestseller lists, and its publisher reports sales of more than thirty million copies. Sequels include The Power (2010) and The Magic (2012), and a feature film, The Secret: Dare to Dream, appeared in 2020.
Why The Secret matters
The Secret turned a century-old teaching into the common language of manifestation, so most present advice can be traced through it.
How to read The Secret
The title serves as a marker of period and source: readers cite it to date an idea to 2006 and to follow that idea back to the books it retells.
The Secret in practice: an example
A reader who meets the phrase 'ask, believe, receive' in a video is hearing the three steps of The Secret, whether or not the book is named.
Where readings of The Secret go wrong
The idea that people draw illness and misfortune by their thoughts has no evidence behind it and can wound, and the work is no guide to medical or money decisions.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- the secret book, the secret rhonda byrne, the secret film 2006, the secret law of attraction, the secret meaning
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is The Secret about?
It teaches the law of attraction: that a person's thoughts and feelings draw matching events, and that anything can be had by asking, believing and receiving. It presents this as a law hidden through history.
Who wrote The Secret?
Rhonda Byrne, an Australian television producer. She made the film in 2006 with a cast of self-help teachers and authors, and wrote the book that followed it the same year.
Is The Secret based on older books?
Yes. Its ideas come from the New Thought movement. Byrne names The Science of Getting Rich (1910) by Wallace Wattles as her starting point, and the book also quotes Charles Haanel and Prentice Mulford.
