Xin Si Xiang Yun Dong

New Thought is a spiritual and intellectual movement that treats mental and spiritual laws as active principles in human life. The book places it within a long historical lineage, presents thought as a force rather than a private abstraction, and connects its older writings to the contemporary teachings, films, websites, and communities surrounding The Secret. Its decisive significance is therefore both doctrinal and transmissive: it supplies a language for explaining how consciousness, attention, and gratitude are believed to participate in the creation of experience, while also providing a tradition through which that language can be carried from one generation of teachers to another.

Definition and Historical Lineage

New Thought appears in the book as a movement concerned with mental and spiritual laws. Prentice Mulford is identified as one of its earliest writers and founders, although he lived much of his life as a recluse. His work includes Thoughts Are Things and The White Cross Library, a collection of essays, and is described as dealing with the laws governing mind and spirit. The movement's central premise is compressed into the title Thoughts Are Things: thought is treated as consequential, capable of exerting an influence beyond the mind's private interior.

Wallace Wattles represents a later and particularly influential strand of this tradition. Born in the United States, he spent years studying religions and philosophies before writing about the practice of New Thought principles. His books significantly affected contemporary teachers of prosperity and success, and his best-known work, The Science of Getting Rich, was published in 1910. The book also emphasizes that gratitude occupies the longest chapter of Wattles's work, making gratitude not a decorative moral sentiment but a practical discipline within the movement's account of prosperity.

Core Principles and Practices

The wider teaching associated with New Thought is articulated through the law of attraction, which the book calls the most powerful law in the Universe according to the greatest teachers who have lived. The text traces related ideas through poetry by William Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and William Blake; music by Ludwig van Beethoven; paintings by Leonardo da Vinci; and the writings of Socrates, Plato, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pythagoras, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Victor Hugo. It further locates comparable teachings in Hinduism, Hermetic traditions, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as in the writings and stories of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians. The book says the principle was recorded in stone in 3000 BC, presenting New Thought less as an isolated invention than as a modern name for knowledge believed to have recurred across civilizations.

Within the book's practical program, gratitude is the clearest daily exercise. The author recounts adopting James Ray's gratitude process after filming him demonstrate it. Each morning, before leaving bed, the author feels gratitude for the new day and for the good already present in life. As one foot touches the floor, the practice begins with "Thank," followed by "you" when the second foot touches down; the words continue with each step toward the bathroom and during showering and preparation, until gratitude has been expressed hundreds of times. This routine is described as a way to set the day's frequency deliberately rather than allowing the day to take control.

The book presents this practice as consistent with the habits of the teachers featured in The Secret. It also describes Joe Sugarman, an entrepreneur who watched the film and regarded the gratitude process as his favorite part. He attributes much of what he achieved to gratitude and continues to use it for small occasions, including finding a parking space. In this account, gratitude becomes a way of life and the most powerful single application of the Secret's knowledge.

Teachers, Transmission, and Institutions

New Thought is transmitted through a chain of teachers rather than confined to a single author or organization. The book's author describes receiving a glimpse of the Secret in a hundred-year-old book given by her daughter, then tracing the idea backward through history and forward toward living practitioners. The search is narrated as a sequence in which one teacher leads to another, with apparent wrong turns and accidental internet links becoming routes to further information. This structure gives the tradition a sense of continuity while also portraying discovery itself as evidence of the law it teaches: attention draws the desired knowledge closer.

The movement's modern public form is assembled through many kinds of authority. The book acknowledges the featured co-authors of The Secret, including John Assaraf, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Lee Brower, Jack Canfield, John Demartini, Marie Diamond, Mike Dooley, Bob Doyle, Hale Dwoskin, Morris Goodman, John Gray, John Hagelin, Bill Harris, Ben Johnson, Loral Langemeier, Lisa Nichols, Bob Proctor, James Arthur Ray, David Schirmer, Marci Shimoff, Joe Vitale, Denis Waitley, Neale Donald Walsch, and Fred Alan Wolf. Their roles range across spiritual teaching, business advice, personal empowerment, science, and prosperity instruction, showing how the movement's claims are presented through a deliberately broad coalition.

The tradition is also given institutional and technological form. The Secret website team, including Dan Hollings and John Herren, is credited alongside Powerful Intentions, which manages and runs The Secret Forum. The forum and its participants extend the teaching beyond the book and film into an ongoing community. Publishers, editors, legal advisers, and international support teams likewise appear in the acknowledgments, indicating that New Thought's contemporary circulation depends not only on charismatic teachers but also on books, films, websites, forums, and coordinated production.

Representative Figures and Contemporary Reach

The biographies show how New Thought principles are adapted to different kinds of public work. John Assaraf is presented as a former street kid who became an international bestselling author, lecturer, and business adviser. He spent twenty-five years researching the human brain, quantum physics, and business strategies as they relate to success, then built four multimillion-dollar companies from scratch. His work carries the movement's mental-law vocabulary into entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

Lisa Nichols represents its empowerment and educational dimension. As founder and chief executive of Motivating the Masses and Motivating the Teen Spirit, she works with teenagers, women, entrepreneurs, schools, corporations, empowerment organizations, and faith-based programs. Loral Langemeier similarly applies the tradition to financial education through Live Out Loud, which helps people pursue monetary goals. She treats mindset as central to building wealth and has assisted people in becoming millionaires.

Fred Alan Wolf supplies a scientific and intellectual register. A physicist, writer, and lecturer with a doctorate in theoretical physics, he has taught at universities throughout the world and is known for work on quantum physics and consciousness. His twelve books include Taking the Quantum Leap, which won the National Book Award, and he continues to write, lecture, and research the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness. The inclusion of Wolf demonstrates the book's effort to place New Thought in conversation with scientific language, even though the movement also relies on spiritual testimony and practical success stories.

Thematic Significance

The movement's importance in The Secret lies in its ability to join historical authority, personal testimony, and repeatable practice. Ancient civilizations, religious traditions, poets, musicians, artists, philosophers, and modern business figures are arranged as witnesses to a recurring law. The result is an expansive genealogy in which New Thought functions as a bridge between older spiritual teachings and a contemporary culture of self-development.

Its strongest recurring image is the conversion of inward attention into outward consequence. Thought is described as a real force; gratitude is converted into a bodily morning ritual; business success and personal empowerment are interpreted through mindset; and the movement's message is reproduced through books, films, websites, forums, and teachers. The book consequently treats New Thought not merely as a historical school but as a living system of belief and practice whose central claim is that consciousness should be approached as an active participant in the shape of life.