the hidden history new thought - science of...

18 Science of Mind SEPTEMBER 2015 ScienceOfMind.com ScienceOfMind.com SEPTEMBER 2015 Science of Mind 19

The pioneers of New Thought were the spiritual radicals of their time, but few realize they were often political activists as well. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the philosophy was populated by socialists who saw prosperity thinking as a path to economic justice, African-Americans in search of equality and women demanding the right to vote. That’s why creating a world that works for everyone has always been a part of these teachings, says historian and author Mitch Horowitz.

And it’s no wonder revolutionaries of that era were drawn to New Thought. Their quest for social justice was supported by New Thought’s core concepts: all religions contain important truths; all people and races are equal; all individuals are an aspect of God and therefore connected; and people are created to reach their highest potential.

These beliefs were introduced into the American spiritual landscape by New Thought and its occult predecessors, says Horowitz. The views were amplified by an empowering spirit of do-it-yourself spiritual exploration and experimentation. People learned they could make contact with God within, without a church or intermediary.

The possibility of freedom offered by financial independence through prosperity thinking also inspired both liberal and conservative New Thought leaders interested in social justice, Horowitz comments.

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NEWTHOUGHTPIONEERS

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF NEW THOUGHTCreating a world that works for everyone has been part of this philosophy from the beginning.

The movie "The Secret," which brought New Thought to millions, was inspired by the writings of an early 20th-century socialist. President Ronald Reagan won election by evoking ideas made popular by New Thought.These are just two of the intriguing revelations found in "One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life" by Mitch Horowitz.


Horowitz is editor-in-chief at Tarcher Penguin, a leading publisher of alternative spirituality books, and the author of “One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life.”

“In the late 19th and the early 20th century, there was a marriage between the movements of alternative spirituality and radical politics,” explains Horowitz. “A lot of the people who occupied those worlds overlapped among those two cultures, experimenting with new expressions in religion and politics.

“Within socialist circles,” Horowitz continues, “you would find people who were interested in the Social Gospel, which was a Christian-based form of economic justice.”

The Social Gospel challenged inequalities stemming from capitalism and competition. The movement is responsible for influencing New Thought writers such as Wallace Wattles, a 1908 Indiana socialist congressional candidate whose book, “The Science of Getting Rich” (shorn of its left-leaning ideals), inspired the hit movie “The Secret” and its companion book.

Few people associate early-20th century Civil Rights leader Marcus Garvey with New Thought, but when you look at his work from a New Thought perspective, you can see the influence, Horowitz says.

“Garvey is rarely seen as a figure with any kind of spiritual leanings. People think of him as a black nationalist, a

promoter of a certain sense of racial pride and individual esteem. But his writings and speeches were steeped in

New Thought language. He was drinking from those waters as well.”

Women were yearning to have a voice within the civic and political culture, he continues. “Naturally, they were also suffragists, part of the voting rights movement. You had a belief among people like pioneering feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Garvey and African-American leader and

educator Booker T. Washington that there were possibilities for the individual to improve his or her

circumstances in the culture both on a personal level and as part of a group constituency.

“They united these impulses and felt that you could advocate for an expansion of civil rights, economic justice and voting rights and you should aspire to personal economic freedom, whether that meant owning a business or becoming educated in a profession or a master tradesman or master craftsman.

“And many of these figures felt that religion, and New Thought in particular, could assist the individual in realizing his or her highest potential. For example, Wattles emphasized creativity over competition,” Horowitz says.

Wattles believed in individual excellence, but he believed that it could come through your own sense of self-development rather than besting your neighbor.

"That point of view may seem quaint today, but this was an era in which progressive politics and experimental religious possibilities and ideas about the potential of the individual, the uses of the mind, the ability of the subconscious mind and the possibility of psychical development all mixed together in one very hopeful vision.

“People like Wattles, Elizabeth Towne [feminist and pioneering New Thought publisher and author], Ralph Waldo Trine [like Wattles, a democratic socialist], and Christian Larson [author of “The Optimist Creed” and a major influence on Dr. Ernest Holmes] hoped that we could arrive at a radical new sense of personhood in which we develop at a higher level as individuals, but also reformulate society along better, more hopeful lines.”

This explosive intersection between New Thought and the liberal, progressive vision of social justice went underground in the 1930s and 1940s as New Thought began to be seen as a royal road for individuals to achieve mainstream economic success.

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF NEW THOUGHT (CONTINUED) THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF NEW THOUGHT (CONTINUED)

NEWTHOUGHTPIONEERS

FROM TOP: Ralph Waldo Trine, Elizabeth Towne and Christian Larson


A PHILOSOPHY FOR GO-GETTERS“By the time this country entered the 1930s and1940s, New Thought’s

most popular expressions like Napoleon Hill were seen as philosophies for go-getters, for the person who wanted to occupy the corner office,” Horowitz explains.

“Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ and other success literature became so popular it tended to overshadow the earlier expressions in which New Thought was committed to the betterment of the individual and also to the idea that we as a society could aspire to some kind of better organization,” he continues.

The shift in New Thought is seen in the odd-couple pairing of Trine, the one-time socialist, and Henry Ford, the industrialist who mass-produced cars. Trine authored the classic and still often-read 1897 book “In Tune With the Infinite,” which despite the author’s left-leaning politics, inspired the politically conservative Ford.

The 1928 book “The Power That Wins” was co-authored by Trine, who had championed egalitarianism and human solidarity, and Ford, the ultimate capitalist who published an anti-Semitic newspaper.

“You can see this tension between New Thought as a philosophy of individual excellence and a very individualistic worldview that discounts or ignores the question of social progress,” says Horowitz.

He points to Earl Nightingale, whose recording “The Strangest Secret” pioneered the self-help audio genre in the late 1940s. Nightingale distilled New Thought’s core message — what you think about you become — minus any religious or spiritual trappings.

“Nightingale extolls the idea of becoming an individual who is not financially dependent on anyone else,” says Horowitz. “But then in the next breath, he will clarify his definition of success by saying that anybody who is actively pursuing a predetermined goal can be successful. You don’t have to be a captain of industry to be a success. You can also be a school teacher. Bravo to that.

“But school teachers are not usually financially independent by the time they retire. They probably have some savings, but there are job benefits in the form of pensions and health benefits helped along by programs like Medicare that an average teacher is dependent upon. They are not financially independent in the way that Nightingale is describing. He kind of mixes up his own, more open definition of success.”

NEW THOUGHT CONSERVATIVES Horowitz cautions that New Thought should not only be seen as

promoting one vision of social justice. Conservatives have also been influenced by New Thought and its ideas. “Ronald Reagan’s writings and speeches were shot through with New Thought language, though he never precisely placed a label on himself. Sometimes, people who

are involved in progressive politics don’t pay sufficient attention to the quality of self-liberation, self-realization that a person feels when he or she develops a business. They can be filled with great ideals and hope. Sometimes, the individual business owner feels like he or she needs nothing more than to be left alone. They feel like they have burdens on them that they didn’t ask for, whether it be regulations that they feel are outdated or taxes that they feel are punitive.

“Progressives sometimes don’t realize that business owners saw in a figure like Ronald Reagan, and his New Thought language, a champion of their ideals. And their ideals were that economic independence, entrepreneurship, the development of a business was, for them, this enormously liberating, self-realizing act that had a spiritual quality of its own.”

Horowitz clarifies, “I don’t want to be overly narrow in speaking about social justice. Reagan had his own ideals of social justice that he buttressed with a New Thought vision. I think that Reagan and Nightingale could turn too blind an eye to the social and economic forces that weighed upon people.

“When Nightingale would champion the individual who wanted to found his or her own business, too often I think he was talking about people who looked and sounded like him. He grew up in very adverse circumstances, but he certainly did not grow up in racial or social or gender circumstances that made it impossible for him to go certain places or participate in certain things. I think there was a narrowness there, but nonetheless, I would encourage the progressive New Thought community to consider the ideals and the vision of social justice that comes from the more conservative figures who have embraced New Thought philosophies.”

NEWTHOUGHTPIONEERS

FROM TOP: 1940’s radio personality Earl Nightingale and U.S. President Ronald Reagan have also been analyzed by Horowitz.

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF NEW THOUGHT (CONTINUED) THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF NEW THOUGHT (CONTINUED)


THE POLITICAL LEFT AND RIGHT UNITE New Thought adherents from the political right and left unite

around the vision of individuals reaching their highest potential. Reaching that potential, Horowitz explains, means not being locked into conformity — a value that can serve finding acceptance as a member of the LGBTQ community or finding financial freedom. “I see New Thought congregations as being very diverse,” he says, “and there have always been people from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community involved in New Thought, even when those particular terms were not in use or had not attained popularity. This is an area where New Thought and alternative religious culture has always excelled.”

What New Thought values have supported diversity and people realizing their potential?

“Foremost, there is a sense of radical tolerance,” Horowitz reflects. “There is a belief that every individual is entitled to fulfill his or her highest potential on their own terms. Sometimes, I think back to what it must have been like to encounter these New Thought expressions in the early 20th century. Imagine growing up in a small town or in an agricultural community, feeling out of step with one’s neighbors, one’s families and finding a pamphlet by someone like Christian Larson. Larson repeatedly affirms the value of the individual. He tells you that the highest principle of life is your own self-development. He says that you don’t have to fit in with cultural, family or religious norms. He tells you that your job, and what God wants from you, is to become the most highly developed individual that you can possibly be, wherever that leads you.

“And Larson did it! He went from a wilderness childhood in Minnesota to living out much of his adult life in Los Angeles. He grew up in what we would regard as frontier circumstances. And he encouraged the individual to seek out that community, polity, area of life where you could express yourself to the fullest degree possible. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore [founders of the Unity movement] did the same thing. Ernest Holmes did the same thing.

“That seems somewhat ordinary to us today. We’re all told to shine. Most American schools will have up posters in the classroom or in the hallway telling you to be yourself. But this was a very radical and unheard of idea in the early 20th century. And [New Thought’s message] hit people who had grown up within punitive models of religion, within family structures that could feel deeply stifling, within communities that demanded that boys should hunt, trap, fish and play football and girls should bake, wear their dresses in such a way and prepare box lunches for churches on Sundays.”

“Just imagine,” Horowitz says, “how radical that must have sounded to somebody in 1920 who felt like they didn’t fit in.” z

NEXT MONTH IN GUIDE FOR SPIRITUAL LIVING

REAL POSITIVITY BY MITCH HOROWITZMEET OUR NEW COLUMNIST: The Tarcher Penguin

editor-in-chief will appear monthly starting this October.

How did Émile Coué, a French hypnotherapist and creator of the still-ubiquitous affirmation, “Day by day,

in every way, I am getting better and better,” inspire the Beatles? What recent Harvard study supports Coué’s

techniques for using the mind to heal the body?Find out next month as Mitch Horowitz begins his monthly

Science of Mind magazine column, “Real Positivity.” He will focus on breakthrough research and practical exercises

that readers can immediately apply in their own lives.New Thought “is a rich, formative, and continually relevant

aspect of contemporary spirituality and psychology,” he says.

OPENING MINDS IN THE 1920s: ÉMILE COUÉ

HATS OFF TO NEW THOUGHT HISTORY

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF NEW THOUGHT (CONTINUED)

the hidden history new thought - science of...

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