It just occurred to me how all this stuff ties together.
Its basically all just a form of hypnotic and Trance autosuggestion.
The primary thing all these things are, is the Conformation Bias.
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www.skepdic.com]
We remember things that seem to work, and forget those that don't.
but in addition, New Thought is basically pure self-hypnosis, or autosuggestion, or Autogenic training, etc.
Its putting yourself into a suggestible altered state, a Trance, and then implanting powerful verbal-visual suggestions.
For example, Quimby did straight up Mind Cure hypnotic stuff taken right from Mesmer.
Christian Science took over, and she made it Christian. So they believe that Jesus Christ is literally going to cure them, so that is a powerful Suggestion. Suggestion can work in certain instances, but not all. (that is why Christian Scientists have poor health, no doctors).
Emma Curtis Hopkins made it more about alleged mystical Mind Science Principles...
Then guys like Wattle came along, and took the same tools, but talked mostly about money. Now of course, if you TRULY believe the Universe wants you to get rich quick, and you REALLY believe it, like some of them did, then are you not going to work harder? Also, they get the idea to sell a bunch of books about How To Get Rich and get rich!
sweet.
Then you move right up to The Secret, which is the exact same thing, with a New Age Jesus.
Then you have Byron Katie, who is doing Advanced Techniques, and negative commands...and all that stuff, but its still just Suggestion in the end.
Verbal and Visual Suggestion.
And Oprah with Tolle is doing a version of the same thing.
So basically, New Thought, Self-Hypnosis, Autosuggestion, Autogenic Training, Trance, The Secret, Prosperity Prayers, Byron Katie cult, EFT, TFT, Tolle, etc, are all the exact same thing, just in different varied formats.
Suggestion, Visual and Verbal.
Those who gets some results do so due to how much they "believe" in it, as Suggestion can be powerful.
But it has limits, of course, and that is where it fails, and people wrongly blame themselves.
So basically all of this is a subset of Cognitive Science, and Cognitive Therapy, which is about "Information Processing" in the human brain and nervous system, which includes automatic processing.
The cool thing is you can use some of the Autosuggestion and Visualization techniques without all of the nonsense, and get even better results, as its more connected to factual reality.
hmm... cult persuasion, LGAT hypnosis, auto-suggestion, and New Thought, its clear they are really all just varied forms of the same thing.
Information Processing in the brain-mind, using Suggestions (verbal-visual) and belief in those suggestions.