The Secret Science of Mind: How Positive Thinking Became a Force in the Modern World

 If there is a central religious doctrine for the New Age, surely it is this – the belief that positive thoughts can bend reality to their own shape. It is an alluring concept. If it’s true, we don’t need to act or work or perform in the world. All we need to do is change our thinking. But is there anything to this idea?

To understand something about the doctrine of thought power, it’s helpful to look at its history. The father of the religion of positive thinking was an obscure New Englander named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–66).

Quimby, like many men of his time, was a jack of all trades. He started as a clockmaker, but eventually became fascinated with alternative methods of healing and learned the art of mesmerism or animal magnetism, a forerunner of hypnosis. Quimby found that if he put an assistant into a trance, the assistant could diagnose and prescribe a remedy for a patient’s disease (much like Edgar Cayce, the celebrated “sleeping prophet” who lived a couple of generations later)....<<<Read More>>>...