Lauren Beukes

There are a lot of dodgy life guides out there that promise to solve all your problems. Take Scientology, a religion founded on a bet and bad science-fiction, or The Rules, that dating tract that advises women to play elaborate and conniving games that men are supposedly too stupid to see through. And then there’s The Secret, which is all the more terrifying because, unlike those other guides, on the surface, it seems reasonable, or at least harmless.

The DVD of The Secret kicks off like The Da Vinci Code, with about the same production values. It’s got all the marks of a romping historical conspiracy flick; Knights Templar and pyramids, a flash of the Rosetta Stone, and an ancient scroll discovered at great risk and buried, presumably for future generations to excavate, like the cunning Australian marketer who has spun practical common sense into magic and, purely coincidentally, a multi-million dollar empire.

I don’t have a problem with the fundamental premise of The Secret – that positive thinking is a good thing. Yes, I agree, we absolutely do determine our experience of reality by our state of mind. I’m much more likely to yell at other drivers if I’m already stressed out, only to cause more stress all round. If I’m in a good mood, it’s more probable that I may banter with random strangers, only to make useful connections. And there are always useful connections. The premise is laid out far more sensibly in Dr. Richard Wiseman’s The Luck Factor, which shows that the lucky ones are the open-minded opportunists.

The Secret, on the other hand, would have you believe that the universe is your catalogue. That it’s not just about being open-minded or maintaining a positive outlook, but that you can actually summon whatever you want into your life, just by thinking about it – like a luxury car for example, because The Secret is very hung up on middle-class materialism.

According to The Secret, it’s as easy as “ask, believe, receive.” And if you don’t receive, the reason is very simple. It’s not because the universe doesn’t work that way. God or Fate or Physics really, really, really does want you to have that convertible. You deserve it. You’re just not believing hard enough. Go buy the audio tapes to make up for it.

Worse than that, according to The Secret, if you suffer a tragedy, a car accident, say, or cancer or a genocide, it’s because you brought that energy into your life just by thinking about it. It’s your fault you got raped, that your child has leukaemia, that your cat got run over. You summoned that into your life, the same way you magicked up that new car.

And even worse than that – the best way to handle the ills of the world? Yup. Don’t think about them. The anti-war movement, is anti. Anti is bad. Anti only brings more anti energy into the world. Be pro-peace instead and stop going to all those violent demonstrations. Turn off the news. Stop feeling sorry for street kids – after all, they could just order up a new life from that magic catalogue, if only they knew how.

Throughout The Secret, the producers suggest that the reason you don’t know all this already is a grand conspiracy, that throughout history, powerful people have actively tried to keep this information from you – when actually it’s The Secret that is the conspiracy trying to keep you down.

And that’s the insiduousness of the thing. Follow Scientology and you’ll be waiting to be ascended with the aliens. Follow The Rules and you’ll end up in an untenable relationship built on make-believe and games. Follow The Secret and you’re doomed to remain sitting on your couch, wishing for the good stuff and hoping all the bad will just go away.

Originally published in The Big Issue