What is the Vedic perspective on the book “Secret”?

From: Jugal

The book, ‘Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne, explains the law of attraction. In short it says that our thoughts change to reality, that is if we want something we get it. Now i wanted to ask that what is the vedic understanding of this theory. Does it agree with it?

Transcript

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Question from Jugal Vaak Prabhu. The book Secret by Ronda Wayan explains the law of attraction. In short it says that our thoughts change to reality that is if we want something we get it.
Now I wanted to ask what is the Vedic understanding of this theory? Does it agree with it? Answer from the Vedic perspective this idea is a modernized materialized version of Mayavad. The essential idea of Mayavad is that we are God or we can become God. One of the characteristics of God is Satya Sankalpa.
Sankalpa is intention or desire and Satya is true. Whatever Krishna desires he has the capacity to fulfill it and his desires become fulfilled. So the conditioned soul who comes to this world desires to usurp the position of God because of envy and wants to be God.
So in material life we try to get all our desires fulfilled and generally material life frustrates us. Only very few of our desires are fulfilled and even those desires that are fulfilled they do not bring us the fulfillment that we had hoped and expected from the fulfilling of those desires. But nonetheless the soul does have this desire to get all the desires fulfilled.
So from the philosophical point of view this is just another version of Mayavad. It is modernized and materialized in the sense that rather than the soul claiming to be God directly basically this is talking about in more sophisticated language the law of attraction, the power of the mind. Now if whatever we want just by our thinking we could fulfill it then can the author of this book stop his or her own death? Can that person stop himself or herself from becoming old, deceased? No.
These are facts unchangeable. So obviously just by desiring something we cannot just achieve whatever we desire. There are things, there are unenviable facts of material existence which just cannot be changed no matter how much we change our thinking.
So old age, disease and death are among those facts. Having said that there is still no doubt room for acknowledging the power of the mind. Researchers from the turn of the last century have found that our attitudes do affect our actions and then they affect our results.
So that positive attitude leads to a better performance and eventually better results not just in terms of the material output that we get but even in terms of the maintaining of our physical health and vibrancy. This positive power of positive thinking is well noted and some people take this power of the mind and exaggerate it to the level where they say that our thoughts are omnipotent. So we have on one extreme materialist science, reductionist materialist science which thinks that thoughts which are just the epiphenomena of brain processes that actually all our feelings and emotions, our whole experience of being conscious, our conception of the self are just epiphenomena, products of the mind, products of the brain as such.
So basically if we imagine a pendulum then at the one extreme of the pendulum is reductionist science which practically denies our thoughts and emotions and consciousness any existence and obviously with no existence they have no power also. Now this is untenable because our thoughts have been demonstrated to have power. Researchers have found that when we think positively, when we have positive thoughts of love and trust and hope and joy and faith then that induces health enhancing hormones in our body.
So I have documented, talked about this in the first two chapters of my book Energy, The Sutra for Positive Thinking and researchers also documented that negative thoughts lead to various health complications. Psychosomatic diseases are those diseases that originate in the mind and then manifest in the body. There are a significant number of diseases which are psychosomatic in their origin.
So this one extreme of denying our thoughts any existence itself, what to speak of any potency, is untenable in the light of scientific evidence itself. So because the thoughts have been denied in a reality by mainstream science but now there is a persuasive body of evidence that indicate the thoughts do have significant power. So some people get overexcited and infatuated by the idea of the power of the thoughts and they swing the pendulum to the other extreme and they imagine that thoughts are omnipotent.
That means indirectly our thoughts are God and basically as our thoughts are ours so we are God. So Mayavad says that by doing some sort of sadhana and purification we will realize that we are God and these sort of thinkers say that by learning about the law of attraction and harmonizing the law of attraction we will basically become God. They may not use the word God but we will basically get one of the most attractive attributes of God, satya sankalpa, fulfilling all our desires.
So the steady state for understanding the mind is that the mind does play a role in our performance in our results. Krishna in the 18th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita in verse 14 talks about the five factors that determine the results of our action. So Krishna says over there Adishtanam refers to the body, Karta refers to the soul, Karanam refers to the senses and Kshishta which the Bhagavad Gita translates as endeavour.
So basically our endeavour depends on our state of mind. If a person is thinking that I can’t do a thing then he just cannot be wholehearted in his endeavour and therefore he doesn’t get the result. The other three factors, the soul, the body means we can talk about not just the body, the Adishtana refers to the place of action.
So if we talk about a cricket field, certain cricket fields are batsman friendly, some cricket fields are baller friendly and also the place of action can also refer to the body. The body may be tired, the body may be energetic, then the person is there, the cricketer has to be there, then Karanam refers to specific senses. So the body as a whole has to be energetic but for a person to perform an activity the specific senses have to be functional.
If a cricket player, his overall body may be healthy and energetic but suppose he has got a toe injury or a finger injury, the remaining body is healthy and energetic but just because of that damage to the sense, the person cannot do anything or if the person is a singer or a speaker and if his throat gets damaged, the remaining body is healthy but the specific sense required for that action is not functional. So we need the general field of action to be conducive for performance of that action. We need to have the soul present over there.
A dead corpse cannot perform the action even if that person before his death was a champion singer and the particular sense has to be competent to perform the action and beyond that there is endeavor that is required. Even if somebody is a champion batsman, still that person has to practice. Practice improves his performance and without practice even a very good performer can become rusty.
So therefore these are the factors that are significant and what the power of the mind indicates is that our cheshta does play a role. So productionistic science just considers the material, gross material factors and denies the mental factor any role which is wrong but the sort of self-help works, they consider this cheshta, cheshta refers not just to the physical endeavor but the mental endeavor, the endeavor to cultivate the right belief and positive expectation that cheshta is omnipotent but Lord Krishna explains in the same verse there is a fifth factor which ultimately is decisive, daivan chaivatra panchamam, pancham, the fifth factor is daiva, daiva is destiny, destiny is ultimately the will of God. So our actions produce the desired result when all these five factors work together properly.
In situations where even one of the factors is not there, the result may not come out but that doesn’t mean that just these other four factors are all that is involved in getting the result. The fifth factor, the will of the Lord is very important and books like these deny this fifth factor and assume the power of thoughts to be supreme and that is their mistake. As devotees if we cultivate the mood of goodness then naturally the mood of goodness will help us to become positive, it will help us to think optimistically and that will help us to tap the power of the mind better because we understand that when we are trying to serve Krishna, Krishna is always there with us to help us and that creates a sound foundation for positive thinking and that’s how we can also tap the power of the mind but ultimately when we are tapping the power of the mind by thinking positively we ultimately understand that our thoughts and our desires are not the final decisive factor.
The final decisive factor in gaining or not gaining a result is the will of the Lord. Thank you.