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“The Secret“,is a movie, is a book. It is the #1 bestseller in New York Times. Recently, I heard it over, and over, and over again. Out of curiosity, I checked out what it was. The book is about the law of attraction. In a sentence, the book describes the phenomenon of “you get what you want”. If you want something, you just need to think think think think about it.. think really really hard, and you will get it. Either you will try very hard to get it yourself, or something miraculously will happen. If you think it positively, you will get it positively. If you think it negatively, you will get it negatively. If you don’t want something, however, you still get that thing you want to avoid. It is the power of your mind.

My first impression was… gosh, they stole my idea… I didn’t form the exact “law”, but I had something quite similar… I didn’t think it original or novel however. To me, this theory is not well crafted. It tries to describe some observations with some fragmented, superficial reasoning. Actually, the phenomena have been observed for thousands of years and were theorized by many religions. For the religions I studied, Christianity and Buddhism, both have their own explanations. Christians attribute it to the power of God. Christians pray, trying to make a connection with the God, wishing something to happen. Sometimes God will indeed show His power. On the other hand, Buddhists attribute it to the power of Karma. Depending on the Karma you accrued in your this life and previous lives, you will or will not get what you want.

I, on the other hand, have my own theory. I have a theory, or more precisely, a hypothesis, on the formation of the universe. It tries to make connections among different religions and make them compatible. To me, different religions are just different views of the same “reality” from different angels. I always want to write my theory down. Actually, I have finished part of it and sent to a few friends to review…. but because of my recent interests in my new business, it is virtually put on hold now.

Of course, “the secret” is superstitious. It cannot be fully explained by the current scientific means, and thus, is not qualified as a “law”. However, even for believers of strong atheism (naturalism), this book may have some enlightening effect: think positively, focus on your dreams. After all, everything has two sides. It depends on what you take on. I like what Lu Xun said almost a century ago: You shouldn’t refuse something without even looking into it. You don’t know what you are refusing. What you can do instead, is to take it, study it, absorb what you consider beneficial, and discard what you consider not.