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Wednesday 9 February 2011

Law of Attraction - Is all about u

The Law of Attraction is a metaphysical New Thought belief that "like attracts like”, that positive and negative thinking bring about positive and negative physical results, respectively. According to the Law of Attraction, the phrase "I need more money" allows the subject to continue to "need more money". If the subject wants to change this they would focus their thoughts on the goal (having more money) rather than the problem (needing more money). This might take the form of phrases such as "I will make more money" or "I will find a job that pays very well".

Skeptical Inquirer magazine criticized the lack of falsifiability and testability of these claims . Critics have asserted that the evidence provided is usually anecdotal and that, because of the self-selecting nature of the positive reports, as well as the subjective nature of any results, these reports are susceptible to confirmation bias and selection bias.
Physicist Ali Alousi, for instance, criticized it as unmeasurable and questioned the likelihood that thoughts can affect anything outside the head.
Writing for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Mary Carmichael and Ben Radford wrote that "neither the film nor the book has any basis in scientific reality" and that its premise contains "an ugly flipside: if you have an accident or disease, it’s your fault." They asked, "If an airplane crashes, does that mean that one or more of the passengers brought that on himself? Do soldiers killed in Iraq simply not think enough positive thoughts?"

As physical hypothesis
Others have questioned the references to modern scientific theory, and have maintained, for example, that the Law of Attraction misrepresents the electrical activity of brainwaves. Victor Stenger and Leon Lederman are critical of attempts to use quantum physics to bridge any unexplained or seemingly implausible effects, believing these to be traits of modern pseudoscience. Writing in the New York Times, Virginia Heffernan characterised The Secret as "a series of misquotations ... and fraudulent maxims" that nonetheless "takes [her] to a happy place."

In health science
Main article: Neural top down control of physiology
The principles of the law of attraction have also been interpreted in the realm of medicine and illness. The law of attraction has some parallels with the Placebo effect. In 1990, Bernie Siegel published a book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, which asserted that the threat of disease was related to a person's imagination, will, and belief.[improper synthesis?] Siegel primarily advocated "love" as the source of healing and longevity stating that "if you want to be immortal, love someone." Siegel's description has been rejected by some from within the medical community.

Personal responsibility
Robert Sapolsky, a professor and neuroendocrinologist, devoted a chapter in his book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, to Siegel. Sapolsky refers to Siegel's general idea as "benign gibberish" but is particularly critical of what he sees as blaming patients for their illness, based only on anecdotal evidence. Sapolsky sums up his primary criticism as follows:

*Where the problems become appallingly serious is when Siegel concentrates on the main point of his book. No matter how often he puts in the disclaimers saying that he's not trying to make people feel guilty, the book's premise is that (a) cancer can be caused by psychosocial factors in the person; (b) cancer (or any other disease, as far as I can tell) is curable if the patient has sufficient courage, love and spirit; (c) if the patient is not cured, it is because of the insufficient amounts of those admirable traits. As we have just seen, this is not how cancer works, and a physician simply should not go about telling seriously ill people otherwise.

History

An "occult law of attraction", 1879
In 1879, the New York Times was the first major newspaper to use the phrase "Law of Attraction", describing the wagon trains of the Colorado gold rush as "moving in obedience to some occult law of attraction that overcomes all obstacles in their progress to their destination".

A physical "energy of attraction", 1902
As early as 1902, references to something similar to the law of attraction can be seen particularly in discussion of matter formation. John Ambrose Fleming, an electrical engineer and turn-of-the-century physicist, described "every completed manifestation, of whatever kind and on whatever scale" as "an unquenchable energy of attraction" that causes objects to "steadily increase in power and definiteness of purpose, until the process of growth is completed and the matured form stands out as an accomplished fact".

The New Thought Movement, 1904–1910
Thomas Troward, who was a strong influence in the New Thought Movement, claimed that thought precedes physical form and that "the action of Mind plants that nucleus which, if allowed to grow undisturbed, will eventually attract to itself all the conditions necessary for its manifestation in outward visible form."
In 1906, William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932) used the phrase in his New Thought Movement book Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, stating that "like attracts like."[19] The following year, Elizabeth Towne, the editor of The Nautilus Magazine, a Journal of New Thought, published Bruce MacLelland's book Prosperity Through Thought Force, in which he summarized the principle, stating: "You are what you think, not what you think you are." 
The book "The Science of Getting Rich" by Wallace D. Wattles espouses similar principles[improper synthesis?]—that truly believing in the object of your desire and focusing onto it will lead to that object or goal being realized on the material plane (Wattles indicates in the Preface and later chapters of this book that his premise stems from the monistic Hindu view that God pervades everything and can deliver that which we focus on). In addition, the book also indicates that negative thinking will manifest negative results.
Richard Weiss explains in his book The American Myth of Success that during the New Thought movement, the "principle of "non-resistance" was a popular concept taught in conjunction with the Law of Attraction.

The "law of attraction" in Theosophy, 1915–1919
The phrase "Law of Attraction" appeared in the writings of the Theosophical authors William Quan Judge in 1915,and Annie Besant in 1919.

The Law of Success in 16 Lessons
Before the release of Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill released The Law of Success in 16 Lessons (1928) which directly references the Law of Attraction, by name, repeatedly.

"Think and Grow Rich", 1937
In 1937, author Napoleon Hill published his book Think and Grow Rich which went on to become one of the best selling books of all time, selling over 60 million copies. In this book, he discusses the importance of controlling your own thoughts in order to achieve success, as well as the energy that thoughts have and their ability to attract other thoughts. In the beginning of the book, Napoleon Hill mentions a "secret" to success, and promises to indirectly describe it at least once in every chapter of the book. It is never named directly for he says that discovering it on one's own is far more beneficial. Many people have argued over what the secret actually is, with some arguing that it was the Law of Attraction. Hill states the "secret" to which he refers is mentioned no fewer than a hundred times, yet reference to "attract" is used less than 30 times in the text. Most students of the book claim the secret is hidden in its title: THINK (i.e., thoughts)

Mid-1900s–2000
By the mid 1900s, various authors addressed the topic and related ideas[improper synthesis?] under a range of religious and secular terms, such as "positive thinking", "mental science", "pragmatic Christianity", "New Thought", "practical metaphysics", "Science of Mind" / "Religious Science", and "Divine Science". Among the mid 20th century authors who used the term were Florence Scovel Shinn (1925), Sri K. Parvathi Kumar (1942), Alice Bailey (1, and Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1968). Author Louise Hay in 1976 released a pamphlet in which she links various diseases and disorders to certain thoughts and states of minds. This list was included in her 1984 best-seller book You Can Heal Your Life, in which she promotes positive thinking as a healing method.Other proponents of the Law of Attraction included Wallace Wattles, Ernest Holmes, Charles Fillmore, Robert Collier, Helen Wilmans, Charles Brodie Patterson, and Helena Blavatsky, who all published books in the early 1900s.

21st century
In 2006, a film entitled The Secret (2006) based on the "Law of Attraction" was released and then developed into a book of the same title in 2007. The movie and book gained widespread attention in the media fromSaturday Night Live to The Oprah Winfrey Show in the United States. The same year Esther and Jerry Hicks (who provided much of the original source material for The Secret) released The Law of Attraction, which was on the New York Times best seller list.
The Law of Attraction's modern interpretation, as presented in The Secret, is that physical reality is a reflection of inner (subjective) reality, summarized in the quote from The Secret, "your thoughts and your feelings create your life."
The success of the film and various books led to increased media coverage, both positive and negative. Oprah Winfrey devoted two episodes of her show to discuss the film and the law of attraction. Talk show host Larry King also discussed it on his show with Bob Solis but criticized it for several reasons. He pointed to the sufferings in the world and asked: "If the Universe manifests abundance at a mere thought, why is there so much poverty, starvation, and death?"[citation needed] A common response to this question from those who subscribe to the Law of Attraction's philosophy is that one's unconscious thoughts (which are more difficult to control) are attracting as well as one's conscious thoughts.
King's remark is similar[improper synthesis?] to a criticism that the law of attraction only works because most of the anecdotes cited in books and movies are about people who live in a culture that has paths to allow people to overcome adversity, while this is not true for much of the world.
In August 2008, Esther and Jerry Hicks's book Money and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Health, Wealth & Happiness appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list.

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