The Magic of Believing

(This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the intersection of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience our natural impulse toward the Divine, which does not make others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)

Friday is Book Day on the blog, when we take a look at books – old and new -- that I highly recommend you not miss. This week’s recommended reading: The Magic of Believing, Claude M. Bristol, Prentice Hall, © 1948, twenty-eighth printing: May 1962.

Much ado is being made these days of the movie The Secret, which is all about the so-called Law of Attraction first made famous contemporarily in that particular terminology by spiritual teachers and authors Esther and Jerry Hicks.

There is, of course, no secret at all here, as (to its credit) the movie itself points out. The “law” to which the film refers has been known by many names, including The Power of Positive Thinking (Dr. Norman Vincent Peale) and The Magic of Believing (Claude M. Bristol), the subject of this review.

If you can find a copy of this gem in a used book store somewhere, or perhaps seek it out in one of the online book stores that sell out-or-print or used books, it would be well worth your effort.

This is the best known book to come from Claude Bristol (1891-1951), having sold well over a million copies. Considered a prosperity classic, the book was published just three year’s before Mr. Bristol’s death at age 60.

The Magic of Believing is about achieving goals through mental visualization, and using faith as a means of drawing the people, circumstances and opportunities together to make it happen. As with the recent movie, Mr. Bristol was careful to explain that he did not “invent” the “magic of believing,” but was merely reporting on it. (He was, in fact, a former newspaper reporter.) Many people, he said, had used the same principles throughout the course of history and have achieved much.

He referred a lot in his three books to what he called “the science of thought” and to “mind stuff.” He was also fond of quoting the famous Irish editor and poet George Russell, who famously said: “You become what you contemplate.”

Okay, there's nothing new here. All of this, and more, has been said in many of the "positive thinking" books of our time, as well as in The Secret. So why am I bothering to tell you about this nearly 60-year-old book? Because I have read many of the more contemporary texts on this subject, and, of course, I was in the movie, but nowhere have I found the basic teachings and the fundamental principles of what I call Thought Work presented more simply, more plainly, more clearly, more directly, more powerfully, or more of effectively than you will find them stated in The Magic of Believing.

The language used by Mr. Bristol is at once accessible and intelligent, easily readable and almost immediately inspiring. I am not surprised that the book has sold a million copies, because its ideas are stated simply and without ambiguity, burnishing, or exaggeration. The languaging is superb, and pulls one through the text with a growing sense of excitement.

All of the ideas in this book will have been heard by you before. No matter, expose yourself to them again. Allow your mind to revisit them, presented this time in verbiage that may feel simple and unsophisticated, but that drives to the heart of the matter and gets to every point it makes both quickly and effectively.

Mr. Bristol is fond of quoting others in his book, and I enjoyed the many references to the thoughts of people that he had come to know in his life, such as Charles P. Steinmetz, a famous engineer who worked with the general electric company and who predicted shortly before his death: "the most important advance in the next 50 years will be in the realm of the spiritual -- dealing with the spirit -- thought."

Added Dr. Robert Gault, while a professor of psychology at Northwestern University: "We are at the threshold of our knowledge of the latent psychic powers of man." I couldn't agree more. But mind you, these statements were made over a half-century ago!

Now you might wonder what's taking so much time! Yet in cosmic terms -- that is, on the time clock of the universe -- 50 years is but the blink of an eye. And so we are now very close to seeing these predictions come true.

So if there is any way that you can get your hands on this wonderful old volume from Prentice Hall, endeavor to do so, and add it to your reading collection. You'll be very glad that you did.