New Thought: Basic Teachings

introduction

Nowadays some of the most popular spiritual teachers are part of the New Thought tradition. These authors include Deepak Chopra, Terry Cole-Whittaker, Shakti Gawain, Wayne Dyer and Neale Donald Walsch. Other teachers that are heavily influenced by the ideas of New Thought include James Redfield, the writers of the Course in Miracles and their followers such as Marianne Williamson, and many popular Christian preachers such as Joel Osteen and Paul Yonggi Cho. Important New Thought proponents in the past were Emmet Fox, Ernest Holmes, Eric Butterworth, H. Emilie Cady and Warren Felt Evans. In other essays I discuss the origins of New Thought and the basic problems of New Thought.

Thoughts Create Reality

The most basic idea of New Thought is that our thoughts create reality. In The Secret, Rhonda Byrne says “your current thoughts are creating your future life. What you think about the most or focus on the most will appear as your life. Your thoughts become things.” [i]

A Responsive Universe or Oneness with God

There are two differing but related answers given by New Thought teachers on why our thoughts are so powerful. The first is that there is some substance in the world that God made to receive our thoughts and bring them into reality. This substance goes by different names but the important thing is it gives us what we want because, as Ernest Holmes says, it “is receptive, neutral, impersonal, always receiving the impress of our thought, and which has no alternative other than to operate directly upon it, thus creating the things which we think.”[ii]

The second answer why our thoughts are so powerful is that some part of us (often called the subconscious) is connected with God (often called the Universal Mind) and through this connection we access all God’s powers. Robert Collier, in his book Secret of the Ages, says, “the Universal Mind is omnipotent. And since the subconscious mind is part of the Universal Mind, there is no limit to the things, which it can do.”[iii] Collier continues by saying that since the Universal Mind and our subconscious mind is one, the only difference is one of degree: “if you take a drop of water from the ocean, you know that it has the same properties as all the rest of the water in the ocean, the same percentage of sodium chloride. The only difference between it and the ocean is in volume. If you take a spark of electricity, you know that it has the same properties as the thunderbolt, the same power that moves trains or runs giant machines in factories. Again the only difference is in volume. It is the same with your mind and Universal Mind. The only difference between them is in volume. Your mind has the same properties as the Universal Mind, the same creative genius, the same power all over the earth, same access to all knowledge. Know this, believe it, use it, and ‘yours is the earth and the fullness thereof.’ In the exact proportion that you believe yourself to be part of the Universal Mind, sharing in its all-power, in that proportion can you demonstrate the mastery over your own body and over the world about you.”[iv]

No Limits to Our Power

Because we have all God’s powers, there are no limits to what we can create. As Rhonda Byrnes states, “Are there any limits to this? Absolutely not. We are unlimited beings. We have no ceiling. The capabilities and the talents and the gifts and the power that is within every single individual that is on the planet, is unlimited.”[v] Or they say, “We could go anywhere. We could do anything. Achieve anything.”[vi] In case the reader missed the general idea of how powerful their thoughts were, the authors say, “You are the Master of the Universe,” and “You are God in a physical body…You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are all perfection.”[vii] One of the most basic facts of human life that shows our limitations is that we have to die. But Robert Collier has two chapters in Secret of the Ages about how we don’t have to grow old if we have the right thoughts. He says, “the fact is that there is no natural reason for man to grow old as soon as he does, no biological reason for him to grow old at all!”[viii] In the next chapter he says: “Universal Mind knows no imperfection – no decay – no death. It does not produce sickness and death. It is your conscious mind that has decreed these evils. Banish the thought – and you can banish the effect [death].”[ix] Another basic fact of life is that other animals get sick, and so it seems natural for us to get sick too. New Thought pioneer Nona Brooks says that is not natural for other animals to get sick, they get sick because of our thoughts: “The question may be asked, ‘If disease is a mental condition, why should animals be ill?’ It is a case of the higher influencing the lower; animals respond to the thoughts of men; they do not originate mental images of imperfection, but they follow ours.”[x] Many other authors in this tradition say similar things indicating that they mean, in a literal way, these statements about no limits to our powers.

we are entitled to Abundance and Wealth

God is not a detached being who judges us and needs us to please Him before He will give us things. Instead the universe was made in such a way that abundance is natural. As Genevieve Behrend says “dominion is your charter right. Your are an Heir of First Cause, endowed with all the power He has. God has given you everything. All is yours, and you know that all you have to do is to reach out your mental hand and take it.”[xi]

Center on the Spiritual Level, Not the Physical Level

Many people do not comprehend their oneness with God and instead only focus on the outer physical level. On that level, there is disease, poverty and other dangers. But if we stay focused on the inner spiritual level, what we really are in reality, these outer things cannot touch us as they do not actually exist. The solution to all our problems is to focus our attention on the inner spiritual level where we are one with God. H. Emilie Cady says that “Every man believes himself to be in bondage to the flesh and to the things of the flesh. All suffering is the result of this belief…Man, who is at first living in the selfish animal part of himself, will grow up through various stages and by various processes to the divine or spiritual understanding wherein he knows that he is one with the Father and wherein he is free from all suffering, because he has conscious dominion over all things. Somewhere on this journey the human consciousness, or intellect, comes to a place where it gladly bows to its spiritual Self and confesses that this spiritual Self, its Christ, is highest and is Lord.”[xii]

Fear pulls us out of connection with the deep spiritual level, so it is seen as very negative and we should never allow ourselves to fall into it. On the other hand, love connects us with the deep spiritual level so it is seen as extremely positive.

Need to Give to Others

We are connected into deeper oneness with God and the universe, so we cannot just think of ourselves and try to get things for ourselves. New Thought teachers continually emphasize giving out to others and often say it is counter-productive for a person to focus on what she gets for herself. Wayne Dyer says that “what goes around truly does come around. The more you give away and do everything that you do in the service of others, the more that seems to come back.”[xiii]

What You Resist, Persists

Our thoughts create our reality, and our attention on something makes it much more likely that event will happen. For this reason, it is not wise to fight against a negative situation. As Terry Cole-Whittaker says, “When you fight something, you give it power; it flourishes as a result of your attention.”[xiv] Many New Thought teachers care about social justice and are concerned for the disadvantaged in society. But because of their basic ideas, they have a particular way of being concerned. They say do not fight against something (like hunger) but instead fight for something (like enough food for everyone). Wayne Dyer says that “fighting starvation only weakens the fighter and makes him angry and frustrated, while working for a well-fed populace is empowering.”[xv]

Copyrighted 2009

FOOTNOTES

[i] Rhonda Byrne, The Secret, (New York: Atria Books, 2006), p. 25.

[ii] Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, (Radford, VA.: Wilder Publications, 2008) p. 129-130.

[iii] Robert Collier, Secret of the Ages: The Master Key to Success and Fulfillment, (Radford, VA; Wilder Publications, 2007), p. 21.

[iv] Collier, p. 35.

[v] Rhonda Byrne, p. 170.

[vi] Rhonda Byrne, p. 181.

[vii] Rhonda Byrne, p. 46 & 164.

[viii] Collier, p. 133.

[ix] Collier, p. 137.

[x] Nona Brooks, Mysteries, (Denver, n.p., 1924), p. 44-45. The book is online at the New Thought Library and they say their version has the original pagination.)

[xi] Genevieve Behrend, Your Invisible Power, (Radford, Va.: Wilder Publications, 2008), p. 55.

[xii] H. Emilie Cady, Lessons in Truth in The Complete Works of H. Emilie Cady (Unity Village, Mo: Unity House, 2009), p. 19-21.

[xiii] Wayne Dyer, Real Magic: Creating Miracles in Everyday Life (New York, HarperCollins: 1992), p. 154.

[xiv] Terry Cole-Whittaker, How to Have More in a Have-Not World, (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1983), p. 224.

[xv] Dyer, p. 42.