What is truly known
What picturing and repeating can do, and what they cannot.
What can visualisation and affirmation truly do, and what can they not?
Mind
Imagination and intention
A clear picture and repeated words steady the attention and move a person to act. That is what is known; nothing shows that thought alone moves the world, and the house says so.
The law of attraction, honestly told
Ask the OracleHow do I use imagination, words and intention to manifest what I am working towards?
The art, in brief
The belief that a held thought draws its like into a life is about a hundred and fifty years old. It grew out of the American mental-healing movement called New Thought, was called the law of attraction from the 1880s and reached a book title in 1906, and has been retold for each generation since: by Napoleon Hill, by Neville Goddard and, in 2006, by Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. It is a religious and philosophical teaching, not a law of nature.
What can be shown is narrower and still worth having. Picturing the steps toward a goal helps a person to take them, and people who also picture the obstacle, and fix the moment at which they mean to act, do more of what they set out to do. Nothing shows that thought alone changes events, and nothing bad that happens to a person is caused by their thinking. The house keeps the practice and drops the promise.
The teaching
As the New Thought tradition in the light of the psychology of goals teaches it.
What is held in mind comes out in a life
Every teacher of this art begins from one idea: what a person holds steadily in mind, with feeling, tends to come out in their life. The New Thought writers put it in three words, thoughts are things. William Walker Atkinson teaches that like draws like in the world of thought; Neville Goddard, that an assumption persisted in hardens into fact; Émile Coué, that an idea which fills the mind tends to become true for the one who holds it and to turn itself into action. The words differ, and the idea beneath them is one.
The art reads that idea in two ways, and a student needs to know both. In the tradition's own reading, thought acts on the world directly: a picture impressed on the deeper mind, or on what Wallace Wattles calls the thinking stuff from which all things are made, draws its match out of events. In the reading of the psychology of goals, thought acts through the person who holds it: it steers what they notice, how long they keep going, what they dare and how others answer them. The first is a religious teaching and can be held as one. The second is what has been tested, and it is the reading taught here: a held aim moves its holder, and nothing shows that it moves events without them.
One thing the art keeps in view from the first page. Illness, loss and hardship are not brought on by what the people they befall have thought or feared: no illness comes from having feared it, and no hardship from having pictured the wrong thing. A teacher who says otherwise has turned the art into a reason for blame, and that part of the teaching is left aside here.
Two minds and the bridge between them
The art's picture of a person has two floors. Above is the conscious mind, which chooses, reasons and judges. Beneath it is the subconscious, which does not argue: it takes in whatever is impressed on it with feeling and works it out in mood, habit and act. Napoleon Hill calls the passage from one to the other autosuggestion. Goddard teaches that feeling is the only thing that crosses it, and that the mood in which a person falls asleep is what the deeper mind receives. Coué teaches that when the will and the imagination pull against each other, the imagination wins.
From this picture come the art's two rules of method. The first is repetition: a picture or a sentence returned to day after day sinks in where a single bright wish does not. The second is ease: the deeper mind is reached by rest and feeling and not by force, so every practice is done relaxed, and a belief that is strained after takes less hold, not more.
The psychology of goals draws the person differently and arrives at much the same practice. It speaks of attention, which an aim steers; of expectation, a judgement of what is likely, made from what has happened before; of self-efficacy, a person's belief that they can do a particular thing, which grows above all from doing it; and of habit, to which a plan made in advance can hand the start of an act. Where the tradition says that repetition impresses the subconscious, this psychology says that repetition keeps an aim in view and turns a chosen act into a habit.
The aim
Every method in the art begins with an aim, and the first discipline is to make it definite. Hill asks for one definite aim, written down, with a date set for it and a plain statement of what will be given in return, since nothing is had for nothing. Wattles asks for a clear and definite picture of what is wanted, since no one can pass on an idea they do not clearly have. The psychology of goals finds the same thing by its own road: an aim that is specific and hard, and that the person accepts and has the skill for, does more than an aim to do one's best.
The aim works best put as something the student will do, not only something they will have, and kept small enough to begin this week. A large wish can stand on the horizon. The aim the practices work on is the next stretch of road toward it, and when that stretch is walked, the next aim is set.
Picture, word and feeling
Three instruments carry the aim. The first is the picture, or visualisation: a scene imagined on purpose, seen through one's own eyes and at the speed of life. The art's two readings draw it differently. Goddard builds one short scene that could only happen after the wish has come true, such as a friend's handshake of congratulation, and plays it from the inside in the drowsy state before sleep. The psychology of rehearsal pictures the steps instead of the prize, the desk at seven and the dull chapter pushed through, because a picture of the work leads into the work, while a picture of the prize alone lets the mind feel it has already arrived.
The second is the word, or affirmation: a short sentence said on purpose at fixed times. Coué's is the best known, said twenty times each morning and night. A sentence that helps is one the speaker can believe today and one that names something they do; a sentence that rings false can leave a low mood lower.
The third is the feeling, which the tradition calls assumption: taking up, for a few minutes, the mood of the wish fulfilled. Wattles adds gratitude, steady and continual, and The Secret makes feeling the signal by which a person knows what they are drawing. Read through what has been tested, feeling gives a picture its force and shows a student whether they truly want what they picture; it is a guide for the one who feels it, not a message sent out to the world.
Each instrument has its own page. The scene from inside is taught on Neville Goddard's method, the sentence on The words you repeat, and the rehearsal of the steps on What is truly known.
The act and the obstacle
No teacher of the art, read whole, leaves out the act. Wattles tells his reader to do, every day, all that can be done that day, each act done well, while holding the picture. Hill's steps include a plan begun at once, ready or not. Even Goddard, who teaches that the end wills the means, speaks of a bridge of incidents leading to the wish, which the student crosses when it appears.
The psychology of goals adds the obstacle. A wish pictured alone relaxes the one who pictures it, as though it were already had. Pictured and then set at once against the main obstacle within, a habit, a fear, an excuse, it calls up effort when the wish is within reach and frees the person to let it go when it is not. A sentence in the form if this happens, then I do that hands the first step to a cue in the day. Joined, these are the method of wish, outcome, obstacle and plan, taught on From wish to plan.
The edges of the day
The art is practised at the edges of the day. Hill has his statement read aloud on rising and before sleep; Coué has his sentence said before getting up and again on getting into bed; Goddard works in the drowsy state as sleep comes on; a plan of wish and obstacle is made in the morning for the day ahead, or at night for the next. The tradition's reason is that the deeper mind lies nearest the surface between waking and sleeping. The plainer reason is that these are quiet minutes that come every day.
They are ordinary minutes, taken in the ordinary course of waking and going to sleep. The drowsy state is reached by resting, never by cutting sleep short or lying awake to find it, and a practice that begins to cost sleep, or to fill the night with worry about whether it is working, is set aside for a time.
A first week
A student begins with one aim that matters to them and can be done, or clearly begun, within a week: finish the first chapter, call a sister, walk before work on two mornings. They write it in one line, as something they will do.
Each morning they take five minutes. They rehearse, in the first person and at the speed of life, the next real occasion of working toward the aim: the room, the hour, the first movement, and the moment where it gets hard and they carry on. They say one sentence they can believe that points at the act. They name the obstacle within and write one line for meeting it: if it comes, then I do this. Through the day, they do the act.
At night, if they wish, they may run a short scene from the end in Goddard's way, lightly and without strain, and fall asleep as they would. At the end of the week they read the line again and ask three things: was the act done, what stood in the way, and does the aim still matter? The answers shape the next aim. That is how the art is learned, by small aims made true one after another, so that belief comes to rest on things done.
Two limits hold from the first day. The art is used beside a doctor, paid work and the help of others, and never in place of them. And it is used on the student's own life: a reader may picture good for someone else, but never another person choosing what they have not chosen.
How the branches stand
The branches of this art stand in a plain order. Where it comes from gives the tradition in its own teachers' words: Quimby's healing by explanation, Atkinson's law of attraction, the thinking stuff of Wattles, Hill's steps and the ask, believe, receive of The Secret. What is truly known gives the tested ground beneath them: rehearsal in the mind, clear and hard goals, belief that is earned, the prophecy that fulfils itself, and the tuning of attention by an aim.
Three methods follow. Neville Goddard's method is the art's fullest school of imagination: the scene that implies fulfilment, and living in the end. The words you repeat is the oldest of the three, from Coué's formula to the affirming of a value. From wish to plan is its best tested method. A student new to the art does well to read What is truly known first and Where it comes from second, then to choose one of the three methods and practise it for a month before taking up another.
Before you practise
A clear picture and repeated words steady your attention and move you to act; nothing shows that thought alone changes events. Nothing bad that happened to you was caused by your thinking. This never replaces medical care or practical steps.
Its branches
Each one is a question you can ask.
Where it comes from
New Thought, a book of 1906, Goddard, Hill, and The Secret.
Where does the law of attraction come from, and who taught it?
Neville Goddard’s method
Living from the wish fulfilled, in imagination, before sleep.
What was Neville Goddard’s method of visualisation, living from the wish fulfilled?
From wish to plan
Picture the obstacle too, then the next step.
How do I manifest what I want by turning it into a plan I will act on?
The words you repeat
An affirmation that helps rather than pretends.
How do I write an affirmation that helps rather than pretends?
Its words
Each opens its page in the dictionary.
- Manifestation
- The modern word for bringing a wished-for thing into a life by intention, belief and imagination. What can be shown is that a clear aim moves a person to act.
- Law of Attraction
- The teaching that like draws like, so that a person's habitual thoughts bring matching events. A belief of the New Thought movement, not a law of nature.
- New Thought
- The American movement of the later nineteenth century which taught that mind comes first and that right thinking heals and prospers.
- Affirmation
- A short sentence repeated to oneself to fix an aim or a view of oneself. Research finds it helps when it is believable and tied to what a person values.
- Visualisation
- Picturing a scene in the mind on purpose. Picturing the steps of a task helps performance; picturing only the prize can sap effort.
- Living in the End
- Neville Goddard's phrase for imagining from inside the wish already fulfilled, as a short scene replayed on the edge of sleep.
- Mental Contrasting
- Gabriele Oettingen's method: picture the wished-for outcome, then at once picture the obstacle in oneself that stands in the way.
- Implementation Intention
- Peter Gollwitzer's name for a plan in the form 'if this situation comes, then I do that', which hands the start of an act to a cue.
More of its words 10
- Vision Board
- A board of pictures standing for what a person wants, hung where it is seen each day. It serves as a reminder, and helps most when it also shows the work.
- Scripting
- Writing a diary page about a wish in the past or present tense, as if it had happened. The writing sharpens an aim and draws nothing by itself.
- 369 Method
- A routine of writing one wish three times in the morning, six in the afternoon and nine at night. The Tesla saying quoted with it has no known source.
- The Secret
- Rhonda Byrne's film and book of 2006, which retold the law of attraction as a hidden law in three steps: ask, believe, receive.
- Think and Grow Rich
- Napoleon Hill's book of 1937: thirteen steps from a definite desire to wealth. Its tale of a commission from Andrew Carnegie rests on Hill's word alone.
- Autosuggestion
- Émile Coué's practice of repeating a general phrase of improvement quietly and without strain, on waking and before sleep, so that it is taken in unresisted.
- Positive Thinking
- The habit of holding hopeful thoughts on purpose, named by Norman Vincent Peale's book of 1952. General optimism helps people persist; fantasy of success alone does not.
- Prosperity Gospel
- Preaching, mostly Pentecostal and charismatic, that faith, spoken confession and giving are answered with health and wealth. Many churches reject it.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Robert Merton's term of 1948 for a false belief that comes true because people act on it, as a rumour of failure can empty a sound bank.
- Frequency Illusion
- The sense that a thing just noticed is suddenly everywhere, when only attention has changed. Named by Arnold Zwicky in 2005; also called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
Its history, in dates
- Phineas Quimby, a clockmaker in Maine, treats the sick by talking them out of the beliefs he holds to be the root of their illness.
- Emma Curtis Hopkins teaches in Chicago; her students go on to found Unity, Divine Science and, later, Religious Science.
- William James describes the 'mind-cure movement' in The Varieties of Religious Experience and treats it as a religion in earnest.
- William Walker Atkinson publishes Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World.
- Wallace Wattles publishes The Science of Getting Rich, the book Rhonda Byrne later named as the spark for The Secret.
- Napoleon Hill publishes Think and Grow Rich, which carries the teaching into business and self-help.
- Neville Goddard publishes Feeling Is the Secret, the shortest statement of his method.
- Peter Gollwitzer sums up the research on implementation intentions, plans of the form 'if this happens, then I do that'.
- The Secret, a film and then a book by Rhonda Byrne, makes the law of attraction a household phrase.
Books to read
- Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought WorldWilliam Walker Atkinson, 1906The book that put the phrase in a title. It argues that thoughts are vibrations and that like draws like.
- Think and Grow RichNapoleon Hill, 1937The bestseller that turned the teaching into thirteen steps to wealth, built on desire, faith and a definite plan.
- Feeling Is the SecretNeville Goddard, 1944A pamphlet of four short chapters on impressing a wish on the mind before sleep; Goddard at his plainest.
- Rethinking Positive ThinkingGabriele Oettingen, 2014Twenty years of experiments on why dreaming of success is not enough, and the four-step exercise that came of them.
- One Simple IdeaMitch Horowitz, 2014A history of positive thinking from Quimby to the present, sympathetic and candid about where it fails.
- Bright-SidedBarbara Ehrenreich, 2009The sharpest modern critique: how the demand to think positively can blame people for illness and hardship.
Its roots: the lives to read with it
- Neville Goddard1905 to 1972
Barbados-born lecturer who taught in New York and Los Angeles from the 1930s to his death. His one idea, “the law of assumption”: imagination is God in man, and to assume the feeling of a wish fulfilled is to bring it about. He read the Bible as psychology, not as history. Much of today’s teaching on manifestation repeats him.
- Napoleon Hill1883 to 1970
American author of Think and Grow Rich (1937), among the best-selling self-help books ever printed: a definite aim, belief, autosuggestion, and the “master mind” of allied people. Its method is repetition and persistence, presented as a secret.
- Joe Dispenzaborn 1962
