One Simple Idea

by Mitch Horowitz

  In documenting the career of Oral Roberts, enough cannot be said to the credit of journalist David Edwin Harrell Jr., author of Oral Roberts: An American Life (Harper & Row, 1985) and All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Indiana University Press, 1975). Harrell’s biography of Roberts, in particular, is a model of objective sympathy in mining the life story of the controversial (and often misunderstood) evangelical leader. Except where otherwise noted, quotes from Roberts are from Harrell’s volumes. Roberts’s remarks to Will Oursler are from Oursler’s The Healing Power of Faith: Exploring the World of Spiritual Healing (Hawthorn Books, 1957; Berkley, 1991). For a sampling of the positive-thinking phraseology found in Roberts’s work, see his books If You Need Healing—Do These Things! (Healing Waters Revival Ministry, 1947); Miracle of Seed Faith (Oral Roberts, 1970); The Miracle Book (Pinoak Publications, 1972); A Daily Guide to Miracles (Pinoak Publications, 1975); and Don’t Give Up! (Oral Roberts Evangelistic Assn., 1980). The Napoleon Hill quote (“what the mind of man can conceive”) is from Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone (Prentice-Hall, 1960, 1977).

  On Jim Bakker’s sentencing see the New York Times editorial “Jim Bakker’s Startling Sentence,” October 29, 1989. The appellate ruling is from “New Hearing for Jim Bakker Is Postponed” by Associated Press, New York Times, May 30, 1991. Also see “Jim Bakker Freed from Jail to Stay in a Halfway House,” New York Times, July 2, 1994. I have quoted Bakker and Star Scott, as well as Senate committee informants’ fears of “retaliation” by megachurches, from “Review of Media-Based Ministries,” a report prepared by Senate Finance Committee staff members Theresa Pattara and Sean Barnett, and presented to Iowa senator Charles Grassley, January 6, 2011. On the resolution of the civil suits against Eddie Long see “Sex Lawsuit Involving U.S. Pastor Resolved, Lawyer Says,” MSNBC. com, May 27, 2011. On Creflo Dollar’s arrest see “Police: Creflo Dollar Choked, Slapped Daughter,” by Christian Boone and Shelia M. Poole, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 9, 2012.

  The San Jose Mercury News covered the Robbins fire walk in “21 People Treated for Burns After Firewalk at Tony Robbins Appearance” by Eric Kurhi and Mark Gomez, July 20, 2012. On August 8, 2012, Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy made an on-air correction of the show’s July 23, 2012 depiction of the fire walk. An additional assessment of the fire walk appeared in “A Self-Improvement Quest That Led to Burned Feet” by Carol Pogash, New York Times, July 22, 2012, in which a fire department official reports several attendees seeking medical attention. The news coverage of the event is critiqued in “Tony Robbins Sets the Record Straight About Fire Walk ‘Controversy’ ” by Marianne Schnall, Huffington Post, July 31, 2012. For an example of Robbins’s program of success modeling, see his book Unlimited Power (Simon & Schuster, 1986).

  For background on James Ray, see “Sweat-Lodge Trial: James Arthur Ray Often Misused Teachings, Critics Say” by Bob Ortega, Arizona Republic, April 10, 2011; “At the Temple of James Arthur Ray” by Christopher Goodwin, The Guardian, July 8, 2011; “Suicide at James Ray Event Raises New Questions,” www.​ABC15.​com, March 18, 2010; “From Transcendence to Terror” by Tanya Castaneda, San Diego Union Tribune, October 22, 2009; “Families of Sweat Lodge Victims Detail Emotions,” Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2011; and my “When Spirituality Kills,” Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2011.

  Vernon Howard is quoted (“it’s not negative”) from his pamphlet Be Safe in a Dangerous World (New Life Foundation, 1981). Howard’s statement “I started realizing the uselessness” is from “He’s on the Highway to Higher Truths” by Anne LaRiviere, January 1978, Los Angeles Times. The observation about Boulder City is from “Not All Mystical Sages Are Big Stars” by Ed Vogel, July 21, 1979, Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is also the source for Howard’s quote “we send our message out.” Other helpful articles include “Searching for the Mystic Path with Boulder City’s Cosmic Master” by Eleanor Links Hoover, March 1979, Human Behavior Magazine; “New Age Prophet Offers Mystic Road Map to Inner Bliss” by Steve Chawkins, May 5, 1988, Los Angeles Times; and “New Life Foundation Founder Howard Dies of Natural Causes” by Carri Geer, September 3, 1992, Las Vegas Review-Journal. Howard’s statement “will you trust a religion” is from 1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle (New Life Foundation, 1978). Howard’s books, pamphlets, and audio and video recordings are published today by the New Life Foundation (www.​anewlife.​org), which puts out a regular newsletter, and by the Eagle Literary Foundation (www.​life​with​vernonhoward.​com), which maintains a helpful online archive of articles and printed material relating to Howard’s life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  DOES IT WORK?

  U. S. Andersen was the pen name of Uell Stanley Andersen, a retired pro football player, novelist, and metaphysical writer. Andersen’s Three Magic Words first appeared in 1954 under the title The Key to Power and Personal Peace, as published by Hermitage House (a New York press that had incidentally issued L. Ron Hubbard’s first edition of Dianetics four years prior). Andersen’s book was republished in 1956 under its current title by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and later by the Wilshire Book Company. In its retitled version, Three Magic Words gained wide popularity.

  Freeman Champney is quoted from his biography, Art and Glory: The Story of Elbert Hubbard (Crown, 1968). In fairness to Gina Cerminara, she also wrote critically of the excesses of New Thought in her Insights for the Age of Aquarius (Quest, 1973).

  The translation of Swedenborg from which Warren Felt Evans is quoting is The True Christian Religion (J. B. Lippincott, 1875). Prentice Mulford is quoted from his pamphlet “The Law of Success,” which he wrote in 1886; it later became one of the early chapters in his compilation Your Forces, And How to Use Them, vol. 1 (1890).

  Thomas Troward is quoted from his 1904 lectures, later expanded in 1909, and published as The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science; the edition I am using was published as The Edinburgh and Doré Letures on Mental Science (DeVorss, 1989).

  Rhonda Byrne is quoted from an interview with Associated Press reporter Tara Burghart, which AP published June 24, 2007. Krishnamurti’s statement “truth is a pathless land” was delivered in a talk of August 2, 1929, in which he dissolved the spiritual organization that had been organized around him. It is reprinted in Total Freedom (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).

  Carl Jung is quoted from his 1952 essay Synchronicity (Princeton University Press, 1960, 1969, 1973). J. B. Rhine’s 1934 Extra-Sensory Perception is published, with its English prefaces and appendices, by Branden Publishing Company (1997). A more recent assessment of Rhine’s experiments and career appear in Stacy Horn’s superb study, Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena, from the Duke Parapsycho-logical Laboratory (HarperCollins, 2009).

  C. S. Lewis is quoted from The Screwtape Letters (HarperOne, 1942, 1996). Leslie D. Weatherhead is quoted from Psychology, Religion, and Healing (Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951).

  For a summary of Charles Honorton’s ganzfeld experiments see An Introduction to Parapsychology, 5th edition, by Harvey J. Irwin and Caroline A. Watt (Garfield, 2007). Charles Honorton and Ray Hyman are quoted from “A Joint Communiqué: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy” by Ray Hyman and Charles Honorton, Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 50, December 1986. Honorton, who died in 1992, is separately quoted from his posthumously published article, “Rhetoric over Substance: The Impoverished State of Skepticism,” Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 57, June 1993. Hyman is quoted from his article, “Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena,” Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 10, no. 1, 1996. Also useful on the ganzfeld controversy is Jessica Utts’s 1991 article, “Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology,” as reprinted in The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research edited by Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., and Logan Yonavjak (Tarcher/Penguin, 2007). A volume that predates the ganzfeld debates but helpfully fram
es psychical questions is Arthur Koestler’s The Roots of Coincidence (Random House, 1972).

  Lois Wilson is quoted from Lois Remembers (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 1979). Jiddu Krishnamurti is quoted from Think on These Things (Harper & Row, 1964).

  David Hume is quoted from his 1758 “Of Miracles” from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Anthony Robbins is quoted from Unlimited Power (1986).

  Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics was published by Prentice-Hall in 1960, and reprinted that year by the enterprising publisher Melvin Powers at his Wilshire Book Company, where it found its major success. Powers, who also republished the work of U. S. Andersen, had an eagle eye for mind-power classics that had been neglected or overlooked in earlier editions.

  Bill Wilson is quoted from a 1958 talk reprinted in his pamphlet “Three Talks to Medical Societies.”

  Anthony Robbins is quoted from his 2010 primetime NBC television show, Breakthrough. While this self-help program lasted only two episodes on the air, it was a thoughtful and constructive standout in a television field crammed with situational shows. Breakthrough was the kind of reality programming that one hopes network television could sustain.

  The numbers of churches and congregants within the Holmes ministries are from “Taproots of the New: New Thought and the New Age” by Dell deChant, The Quest magazine, Winter 1991; “The American New Thought Movement” by Dell deChant from Introduction to New Alternative Religions in America edited by Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft (Greenwood Press, 2006); and “Religious Science” by Dell deChant from Religions of the World, vol. 3, edited by J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann (ABC-CLIO, 2002). The number of active churches counted in 2011 within the United Church of Religious Science is my personal estimate based on an assessment of congregations with regularly scheduled services and facility space, as listed in directories published in 2011 issues of Science of Mind and Creative Mind magazines, the respective organs of the United Church of Religious Science and Religious Science International, which have since merged into Centers for Spiritual Living.

  For the 2007 Chicago doctors survey, see “Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why” by Steve Silber-man, Wired Magazine, August 24, 2009. D’Eslon is quoted from Doctors of the Mind: The Story of Psychiatry by Marie Beynon Ray (Little, Brown, 1942). The protest from Mesmer’s patient is from Helmut Hirsch’s “Mesmerism and Revolutionary America” (1943). For Harvard’s “honest placebo” study see “Placebos Without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome” by Ted J. Kaptchuk et al., PLoS One (www.​plosone.​com), December 2010. Also see “Fake Pills Can Work, Even If Patients Know It,” by Richard Knox, www.​npr.​org, December 23, 2010; “The Power of Nothing: Could Studying the Placebo Effect Change the Way We Think About Medicine?” by Michael Specter, The New Yorker, December 12, 2011; “Putting the Placebo Effect to Work,” Harvard Health Letter, April 2012; and “The Silent Healer: The Role of Communication in Placebo Effects” by Jozien M. Bensing and William Verheul, Patient Education and Counseling, vol. 80, no. 3, 2010. For an example of peer support in Alcoholics Anonymous, see “Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works” by Brendan I. Koerner, Wired Magazine, June 23, 2010. John Sarno, M.D., is quoted from his Mind over Back Pain (William Morrow, 1982, 1984).

  On the quantum measurement problem I am indebted to discussions with Dean Radin; any errors in the section are my own. A distinctly helpful source on the topic is Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner (Oxford University Press, 2006). On the topic of “information leakage” see “Living in a Quantum World” by Vlatko Vedral, Scientific American, July 2011. I also benefited from the paper “Quantum Mechanical Interaction-Free Measurements” by Avshalom C. Elitzur and Lev Vaidman, Foundations of Physics, vol. 23, no. 7, 1993.

  On neuroplasticity, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., is quoted from his book The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force coauthored by Sharon Begley (Harper, 2002). Also helpful is Schwartz’s book Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior coauthored with Beverly Beyette (HarperCollins, 1996). Few writers have been as illuminative of the issues and possibilities of neuroplasticity as Norman Doidge, M.D., in his book The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, 2007), to which I owe my note on Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

  Dean Radin is quoted (“small but measurable ways”) from an e-mail of May 28, 2009. Krishnamurti is quoted from Think on These Things (1964).

  Acknowledgments

  In writing this book I have been blessed to work with Gary Jansen of Crown—an editor, writer, and seeker of uncommon insight, intellect, and integrity. “A true friend,” Emmet Fox wrote, “is someone who can help us be our best.” Gary has been this, and much more.

  Paul M. Barrett has, as always, been a great friend, supporter, and source of guidance and advice.

  I am grateful to my agent, Laurie Fox, who provided crucially important encouragement during the formative stages of this book.

  My appreciation goes to Molly Stern, the publisher of Crown, for her support of this work.

  My interest in these topics never would have taken flight without the influence and friendship of Joel Fotinos, who first introduced me to many of the figures in these pages.

  Thanks to Amanda Pisani, under whose editorship at Science of Mind magazine I began writing about these topics. Amanda opened the right door at the right moment.

  Personal thanks go to Keith McNeil, an indefatigable researcher and historian who provided me with several key historical documents. Keith shared his insights with sensitivity and balance.

  I am grateful to those whose ideas, support, and assistance with source materials aided this work: Dell deChant, Gabrielle Moss, Dean Radin, Christy Croft, Ptolemy Tompkins, Mark Gilbert, Theresa Orr, Ronni Thomas, James Porter, Pam Grossman, Emily Grossman (nam myoho renge kyo), Sami Laitinen, Nick Viorst, Philip Deslippe, Russ Gerber, Michael R. Davis, Sally Ulrich, Judith A. Huenneke, Linda Rosenberg, Susan Freeman, and Sally Rhine Feather.

  My wife, Allison Orr, provided constant good sense, always reminding me that the point of positive thinking is not just to write about it.

  About the Author

  Mitch Horowitz is vice president and editor in chief at Tarcher/Penguin, the division of Penguin USA dedicated to metaphysical literature. He is the author of Occult America (Bantam), which received the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence. Horowitz frequently writes about and discusses alternative spirituality in the national media, including CBS Sunday Morning, Dateline NBC, All Things Considered, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and CNN.com. He and his wife raise two sons in New York City. He is online at: www.MitchHorowitz.com.