The New Thought Movement actually began in the middle of the 19th century in America but the concepts that it embraced had originated 5,000 years or more in Vedic India. Amongst those ideas is the "Over-soul" or unified consciousness which embraces all there is, the idea that material existence is an illusion and that the "Real" is in fact a Void from which all that is formed in a sort of Big Bang (Vedic Theory pre-dates Big Bang Theory by 5 millenia), the idea of Karma (an early formulation of "cause and effect" principle), and that the idea that the purpose of human life was to be re-absorbed into the Void from which the next cycle of material being emerges.
New Thought, Then and Now
The originators of New Thought in the USA included Prentice Mulford, Emma Wheeler Wilcox, Ralph Waldo Trine, and Florence Scovel Shinn amongst others. Ralph Waldo Trine examines these ideas in his book In Tune With The Infinite. This influential book was a firm favourite with - of all people ! - Henry Ford who claims the book was the catalyst for his successful manufacturing industry and an expression of his personal philosophy!
New Thought places a great deal of emphasis on the quality of our thoughts and the direct and indirect effect they have on us, our lives, and on those around us. A central insight of New Thought is the idea that "Thoughts are things", i.e., the act of thinking is creative in a literal sense: our thoughts can affect material reality. This point of view, although ancient in the Vedas, is only now being seriously studied in Consciousness Research and Quantum Physics.
Thoughts Are Things: How To Use Them
Our thoughts are a form of Energy and as with electrons and neutrons, they carry a "charge". If we accept the idea that energy creates the material universe, the importance of the ethical and constructive use of thought becomes clear. In an effort to explain this concept in practical terms, Florence Scovel Shinn wrote The Game of Life and How To Play It, a practical guide to New Thought and how it can change our lives. I have found her book to be one of the most succinct expressions of the principles of New Thought, easily accessible for the modern reader despite having been published over a hundred years ago. If one reads New Thought books carefully, it will be apparent that living by its principles is not a superficial exercise; it requires a complete re-thinking of our deepest assumptions about reality and our place in it. The mere repetition of "affirmations" or an enforced and phony "happy clappy" attitude is NOT what New Thought is about. Like the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and the Buddhist Mindfulness taught by the Dalai Lama, Sogyal Rinpoche, and Pema Chodron, New Thought is an attempt to move our thinking away from the illusion of the solidity and finitude of matter and focus it instead on the indestructibility of the energy that is the real essence of matter. At the molecular level of existence as pure energy, our thoughts can indeed influence material reality .
Resources:
The Field by Lynne McTaggart
Return of the Rishi by Dr. Deepak Chopra
The Reach of the Mind by Sir John Eccles
In Tune With The Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine
Collected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The resources cited in this post are available in Delia's Happiness Shop HERE.
http://www.psychic-delia.com
© Delia O' Riordan 2014
http://www.psychic-delia.com
© Delia O' Riordan 2014
