Law of Attraction (New Thought). Podcast By Law of Attraction-New Thought. cover art

Law of Attraction (New Thought).

Law of Attraction (New Thought).

By: Law of Attraction-New Thought.
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Law of Attraction (New Thought).
The law of attraction is the New Thought spiritual belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life. The belief is based on the idea that people and their thoughts are made from "pure energy" and that like energy can attract like energy, thereby allowing people to improve their health, wealth, or personal relationships. There is no empirical scientific evidence supporting the law of attraction, and it is widely considered to be pseudoscience or religion couched in scientific language. This belief has alternative names that have varied in popularity over time, including manifestation.
Advocates generally combine cognitive reframing techniques with affirmations and creative visualization to replace limiting or self-destructive ("negative") thoughts with more empowered, adaptive ("positive") thoughts. A key component of the philosophy is the idea that in order to effectively change one's negative thinking patterns, one must also "feel" (through creative visualization) that the desired changes have already occurred. This combination of positive thought and positive emotion is believed to allow one to attract positive experiences and opportunities by achieving resonance with the proposed energetic law.
Copyright Law of Attraction-New Thought. Philosophy Social Sciences Spirituality
Episodes
  • 10 - Beliefs.

    10 - Beliefs.
    Apr 4 2026
    Beliefs.
    The chief tenets of New Thought are:
    - Infinite Intelligence or God is omnipotent and omnipresent.
    - Spirit is the ultimate reality.
    - True human self-hood is divine.
    - Divinely attuned thought is a positive force for good.
    - All disease is mental in origin.
    - Right thinking has a healing effect.

    Evolution of thought.
    Adherents also generally believe that as humankind gains greater understanding of the world, New Thought itself will evolve to assimilate new knowledge. Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse have described New Thought as a "process" in which each individual and even the New Thought Movement itself is "new every moment". Thomas McFaul has claimed "continuous revelation", with new insights being received by individuals continuously over time. Jean Houston has spoken of the "possible human", or what we are capable of becoming.

    Theological inclusionism.
    The Home of Truth has, from its inception as the Pacific Coast Metaphysical Bureau in the 1880s, under the leadership of Annie Rix Militz, disseminated the teachings of the Hindu teacher Swami Vivekananda. It is one of the more outspokenly interfaith of New Thought organizations, stating adherence to "the principle that Truth is Truth where ever it is found and who ever is sharing it". Joel S. Goldsmith's The Infinite Way incorporates teaching from Christian Science, as well.

    Therapeutic ideas.
    Divine Science, Unity Church, and Religious Science are organizations that developed from the New Thought movement. Each teaches that Infinite Intelligence, or God, is the sole reality. New Thought adherents believe that sickness is the result of the failure to realize this truth. In this line of thinking, healing is accomplished by the affirmation of oneness with the Infinite Intelligence or God.
    John Bovee Dods (1795–1862), an early practitioner of New Thought, wrote several books on the idea that disease originates in the electrical impulses of the nervous system and is therefore curable by a change of belief.[citation needed] Later New Thought teachers, such as the early-20th-century author, editor, and publisher William Walker Atkinson, accepted this premise. He connected his idea of mental states of being with his understanding of the new scientific discoveries in electromagnetism and neural processes.

    Criticism.
    The New Thought movement has been criticized as a "get-rich-quick scheme" as much of its literature contains esoteric advice to make money.
    Although the movement began with roots in feminism and socialism, it increasingly attached itself to far right and racist ideology, arguing that poverty was a sign of spiritual weakness, and that "for the sake of race improvement... poverty and suffering must not be alleviated by the state."

    Movement.
    New Thought publishing and educational activities reach approximately 2.5 million people annually. The largest New Thought-oriented denomination is Seicho-No-Ie, which was founded by Masaharu Taniguchi in Japan. Other belief systems within the New Thought movement include Jewish Science, Religious Science/Centers for Spiritual Living and Unity. Past denominations have included Psychiana and Father Divine.
    Religious Science operates under three main organizations: the Centers for Spiritual Living; the Affiliated New Thought Network; and Global Religious Science Ministries. Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science, stated that Religious Science is not based on any "authority" of established beliefs, but rather on "what it can accomplish" for the people who practice it. The Science of Mind, authored by Ernest Holmes, while based on a philosophy of being "open at the top", focuses extensively on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Unity, founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, identifies itself as "Christian New Thought", focused on "Christian idealism", with the Bible as one of its main texts, although not interpreted literally. The other core text is Lessons in Truth by H. Emilie Cady. The Universal Foundation for Better Living, or UFBL, was founded in 1974 by Johnnie Colemon in Chicago, Illinois, after breaking away from the Unity Church for "blatant racism".

    Wikipedia: Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

    This episode includes AI-generated content.
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    4 mins
  • 09 - Origins.

    09 - Origins.
    Apr 4 2026
    Origins. The New Thought movement was based on the teachings of Phineas Quimby (1802–1866), an American mesmerist and healer. Quimby had developed a belief system that included the tenet that illness originated in the mind as a consequence of erroneous beliefs and that a mind open to God's wisdom could overcome any illness.[10] His basic premise was: The trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in [...] Therefore, if your mind had been deceived by some invisible enemy into a belief, you have put it into the form of a disease, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth, I come in contact with your enemy, and restore you to health and happiness. This I do partly mentally, and partly by talking till I correct the wrong impression and establish the Truth, and the Truth is the cure. During the late 19th century, the metaphysical healing practices of Quimby mingled with the "Mental Science" of Warren Felt Evans, a Swedenborgian minister. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, has sometimes been cited as having used Quimby as inspiration for theology. Eddy was a patient of Quimby's and shared his view that disease is rooted in a mental cause. Because of its theism, Christian Science differs from the teachings of Quimby. In the late 19th century, New Thought was propelled by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a variety of religious denominations and churches, particularly the Unity Church and Church of Divine Science (established in 1889 and 1888, respectively), followed by Religious Science (the Institute of Religious Science and Philosophy was established in 1927). Many of its early teachers and students were women; notable among the founders of the movement were Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the "teacher of teachers", Myrtle Fillmore, Malinda Cramer, and Nona L. Brooks; with many of its churches and community centers led by women, from the 1880s to today. Alongside these ecclesiastical developments, others like Henry Wood in Boston, provided some of the movement’s most systematic literary foundations. In works such as The Symphony of Life, and New Thought Simplified, Wood articulated a structured philosophy of mental causation grounded in disciplined thought and constructive affirmation. His writings presented New Thought not merely as devotional religion but as a practical mental science, emphasizing inner law, character formation, and the deliberate direction of consciousness. Through these works the principles of mental discipline and self-transformation became central to the movement’s broader development. Suggestive Therapeutics and Auto-Suggestion. The psychological framework that later entered New Thought through the language of affirmation, mental discipline, and self-transformation can be traced to the clinical work of the nineteenth century Nancy School in France. Physicians such as Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim advanced the position that hypnosis was a normal psychological state governed by suggestion rather than by occult force. In the United States, these clinical principles were first institutionalized at the Chicago School of Psychology, founded in 1896 by Herbert A. Parkyn. At a time when much of New Thought operated through churches and independent lecturers, the Chicago School framed mental influence in clinical and instructional terms, using the language of scientific psychology rather than theology. Its teaching emphasized that suggestion operated according to fixed mental laws that were termed the Law of Suggestion. Emerging from the Chicago School of Psychology were figures who carried its teachings far beyond the clinic and classroom. Among the most prominent was William Walker Atkinson, who translated the school’s clinical principles of suggestive therapeutics into broader concepts of thought force, personal magnetism, and will development, presenting them as practical methods for everyday life rather than techniques confined to therapeutic treatment. Atkinson also joined with another of the school’s leading protégés, Sydney B. Flower, to establish New Thought magazine, which became the most influential journal of the movement. In 1905, Parkyn’s Auto-Suggestion set out the first sustained, systematic presentation of self-directed suggestion in American mental science. Building on the mental science formulations advanced by his close family friend Henry Wood in Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography (1893), Parkyn framed repeated affirmation and disciplined thought as a deliberate method for reshaping character, health, and circumstance, supplying what became the practical backbone of New Thought’s self-empowerment ethos. Growth. New Thought is also largely a movement of the printed word. Prentice Mulford, through writing Your Forces and How to Use Them, a series of essays published during 1886–1892, was pivotal in the ...
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    7 mins
  • 08 - Twentieth century.

    08 - Twentieth century.
    Apr 4 2026
    Twentieth century. After the philosophy of New Thought was established, several individuals and organizations rose to prominence to promote the beliefs. However, there is no consensus on who founded the New Thought movement. Charles Brodie Patterson has been credited. Patterson, a Canadian expatriate who lived in New York City, was labelled the movement's leader when he died in the early 20th century. One of Eddy's early Christian Science students, Ursula Gestefeld, created a philosophy called the "Science of Being" after Eddy kicked her out of her church. Science of Being groups eventually formed the Church of New Thought in 1904, which was the first group to refer itself as such. While Julius Dresser, and later his son Horatio, are sometimes credited as founders of New Thought as a named movement, others share this title. Horatio wrote A History of the New Thought Movement, which was published in 1919, and named his father an essential figure in founding the movement. Emma Curtis Hopkins is also considered a founder. Hopkins, called the "Teacher of Teachers", was a former student of Mary Baker Eddy. Because of her role in teaching several influential leaders who emerge later in New Thought movement history, she is also given credit as a mother of the movement. Inspired by medieval mystic Joachim of Fiore, Hopkins viewed the Christian Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Mother-Spirit. She wrote High Mysticism and Scientific Christian Mental Practice and founded the Emma Hopkins College of Metaphysical Science, which graduated a large number of women. Numerous churches and groups developed within the New Thought movement. Emma Curtis Hopkins is called the "Teacher of Teachers" because of the number of people she taught who went on to found groups within the New Thought movement. After learning from Hopkins, Annie Rix Militz went on to found the Home of Truth. Another student, Malinda E. Cramer became a co-founder of Divine Science, along with Mrs. Bingham, who later taught Nona L. Brooks, who co-founded Divine Science with Cramer. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who went to Hopkins together, went on to found the Unity School of Christianity afterwards. Authors learned from Hopkins, too, including Dr. H. Emilie Cady, writer of the Unity textbook Lessons in Truth; Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought poet; and Elizabeth Towne. Considerably later, Ernest Holmes, who established Religious Science and founded the United Centers for Spiritual Living. The Unity Church is the largest New Thought church today, with thousands of members around the world. It was formed by the Fillmores in 1891. Divine Science was also founded in the late 19th century by Melinda Cramer and Nona Brooks. The United Centers for Spiritual Living was founded by Ernest Holmes in 1927. A similar organization, the Society for Jewish Science, originally conceived by Rabbi Alfred G. Moses in the early 1900s, the movement was institutionalized in 1922 with Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein's. The New Thought movement extends around the world. The largest denomination outside the U.S., Seicho-no-Ie, was founded in 1930 by Masaharu Taniguchi in Japan. Today, it has missions around the world, including the U.S. Smaller churches, including the Home of Truth founded in 1899 in Alameda, California continue successfully,[24] as does the Agape International Spiritual Center, a megachurch led by Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith in the Los Angeles-area. Alongside these church-based developments, a parallel stream of New Thought took shape through the systematization of mental suggestion and psychological discipline. Henry Wood contributed significantly to this strand in works such as Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography (1893) and later New Thought Simplified, in which he articulated a structured philosophy of mental causation grounded in disciplined thought and constructive affirmation. Wood’s writings presented New Thought not only as a devotional system but as a practical mental science centered on the deliberate direction of consciousness. This movement toward a disciplined and systematized mental science within New Thought found institutional expression in the Chicago School of Psychology, founded by Herbert A. Parkyn in 1896. It was the first American institution devoted specifically to the systematic teaching of hypnotism, suggestion, and auto-suggestion. The school framed mind cure as operating according to the Law of Suggestion, rather than supernatural power. Its development of auto-suggestion as a system of self-directed affirmations aimed at reshaping character and circumstance helped define the practical core of New Thought’s self-empowerment emphasis. Among the Chicago School’s most prominent graduates was William Walker Atkinson, who worked as associate editor with Parkyn's Suggestion magazine in translating clinical suggestive principles into broader concepts of thought force, personal magnetism, and will development...
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    6 mins
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