Historical Precedents
The film claims that fragments of the Great Secret can be found in earlier oral and written traditions, but that all the pieces of the Secret have been brought together for the first time. The first part of this statement is certainly true. For example, the essential message of The Secret can be found in India’s great scripture the Bhagavad Gita where it states that the soul in man becomes whatever it wills to be and believes itself and its existence to be. The Gita goes further to present a complete psycho-spiritual methodology for applying this knowledge. The film’s further claims that “for the first time all the pieces have come together” is more questionable. The film may have made these ideas more accessible and easy to understand by the modern Western mind, but all the elements of the formula have been brought together in writing long ago. The Indian philosopher-yogi Sri Aurobindo recorded all these ideas in The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine, both written before 1920, where he not only presents the conditions for conscious mastery over life but also explains the process by which it is accomplished.
Scientific Inaccuracy
The film’s assertions that science supports the “Law of Attraction” are without merit. String theory - cited as supporting the “Law of Attraction” - is still deeply theoretical and no scientific evidence exists to suggest that our thoughts affect the “frequencies that we radiate into the world” or that “thoughts become things” by attracting “things radiating the same frequencies”.
Editorial Coverage
Karin Klein, editorial writer for The LA Times, called The Secret “just a new spin on the very old (and decidedly not secret) The Power of Positive Thinking wedded to ‘ask and you shall receive’”. The editorial pointed out a few of the common criticisms of The Secret, characterizing the film as “another get rich quick chimera” and a recycling of “well-worn ideas of some self-help gurus” customized for “the profoundly lazy” and repackaged with “a veneer of mysticism.” The editorial also gives published recognition to the much-discussed criticism that the film provides a dubious recipe for material greed, social apathy, and blaming the victim.
Journalist Jeffrey Ressner, reporting in Time Magazine, writes that some critics are concerned with the film’s attitude towards “using ancient wisdom to acquire material goods”. In one example in the film, “a kid who wants a red BMX bicycle cuts out a picture in a catalog, concentrates real hard, and is rewarded with the spiffy two-wheeler.”
Jerry Adler of Newsweek notes that despite the film’s allusions to conspiratorially suppressed ancient wisdom, the notions presented by the motivational speakers who make up the film’s cast have been commonplace for decades. Adler notes that the film is ethically “deplorable,” fixating on “a narrow range of middle-class concerns - houses, cars, vacations, followed by health and relationships, with the rest of humanity a very distant sixth.” Noting that the scientific foundations of the movie are clearly dubious, the Newsweek article quotes psychologist, John Norcross, characterizing it as “pseudoscientific, psychospiritual babble.” msnbc.msn.com/id/17314883/si … k/from/ET/
Aggressive Marketing
Since the first release of the DVD, Esther Hicks declined to continue with the project, mentioning contractual issues in a letter to friends. While continuing to speak highly of the film, she acknowledges that “we have been very well paid for our participation with this project… which has amounted to a staggering amount of money”. She goes on to say “Jerry and I were uncomfortable with what felt to us like a rather aggressive marketing campaign (just not our style, nothing wrong with it)… allowing them to edit us out was the path of least resistance.” As a result of this, scenes which Esther Hicks originally narrated are instead narrated by Lisa Nichols.
Unverifiable and Unsubstantiated Health Claims
ABC news referred to claims that the mind has power over our health as “perhaps the most controversial” in The Secret. They quote Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center, as saying: “I’ve seen kidneys regenerated. I’ve seen cancer dissolved,”
