18 December 2010

When you wish upon a $tar

From Mark Vernon's review of Rhonda Byrne's The Power, her 'law of attraction' tract, with Vernon echoing William James in noting that "a positive attitude is important, but it is not going to protect you from actual evil". (A less indulgent review was noted here.)
The law of attraction is likened to magnetism. "Everything in the universe is magnetic and everything has a magnetic frequency," Byrne explains in The Power. Thoughts and feelings have magnetic frequencies too. Hence, what you feel sets your frequency, and so what you will magnetically attract — be that money or poverty, health or illness, good relationships or disasters, and so on.

She describes a methodology. First, imagine yourself having it. Second, feel yourself with it. Third, receive it — for by then the magnetic force of the cosmos will be working through you. If you don't receive it, that must be because you messed up steps one and two.

Take money. "If you don't have enough money, naturally you don't feel good", Byrne says. But you won't have money if you keep feeling that way; you'll only attract more bills and expenses. So feel easy, at peace, and relaxed about money: "that feeling is magnetically sticky". And that means cash will stick to you too. "One man wrote a check for $100 to a charity", she cites in a brief case study. "Within ten hours he'd closed his biggest sale."
Apart from recognition that The Power is an exercise in victim-blaming, let's not worry about Byrne's willingness to conflate causation, coincidence and correlation.

Vernon goes on to comment that
Alongside such 'evidence', pseudo-science is rallied to the cause too. For example, Byrne latches onto the 'tipping point' phenomenon, interpreting it to mean that if 51% of your thoughts are positive, you'll attract more and more in an exponential curve — what people colloquially refer to as a lucky streak. There are nods to quantum physics and Werner Heisenberg's description of the universe as a sea of 'potentialities'. No notice, of course, is taken of the massive destructiveness of the quantum world, which is the source of energy for nuclear weapons, and which Heisenberg was also referring to.
From there it's just a hop, skip and very small jump to nonsense about "quantum healing" or the precognition, remote viewing, dowsing, 'quantum holism' and reincarnation featured in World Futures journal, edited by Ervin Laszlo and with each issue typically featuring at least one effusive reference to the founder.

A contact has pointed me to the latest reincarnation of Laszlo's GlobalShift University. Having morphed from WorldShift U to GlobalShift U it appears to have been rebadged as the Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University (GBGU). Given my wariness about repackaging theosophical claptrap I won't be rushing to enrol.

The institution indicates that -
The Club of Budapest International and The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University reciprocally participate in the board of academic counselors of our respective institutions, with the intention that the Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University will incorporate the educational framework of reference of The Club of Budapest International as the philosophical essence of its academic and curricular programs, and The Club of Budapest International will recognize the Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University as its educational and pedagogical arm in extending its fundamental mission to the youth of all countries in the world.
The Club of Budapest is another entity under the aegis of Laszlo. Its local arm is apparently comatose after the "3rd Timely Transformation Event of The Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day leading up to 2012" -
On this day, hundreds of thousands of people resonated in high consciousness and sent powerful bright thoughts to humanity and to our beautiful Planet Earth from five continents, from Australia and Uzbekistan to the United States, from Italy and Uganda to Costa Rica. Participants from 45 countries registered with us and we imagine there were more countries involved.
Can't have too much resonating, although some TM-style levitation would have been cute.

Who would have guessed it: Laszlo is the GBGU Chancellor. The University - not, apparently, a body recognised by Australia's national Education Department - features a Center for Advanced Study. Sign up (and presumably hand over your loot) and you can apparently enjoy a course on 'Social, Economic, Cultural and Consciousness Evolution: Trends, Prospects and Possibilities' -
World III will provide an initial concept or vision of a sustainable and humane civilization, and the social, economic, cultural, and psychological paths and processes that could lead to it.

When students have completed the introduction to World I (fostering a better understanding of the origins and evolution of humanity and human consciousness) and World II (re-examining the psychological and cultural basis of today’s one-dimensional identities and hierarchical social structures), they will have the critical and independent "nonsubordinate" spirit to envisage new paths for the evolution of today’s social, economic, and cultural structures and processes.

Due to the multiple crises that destabilize the contemporary world, today’s young generation will witness a radical rupture with the dominant civilization. Thanks to emerging revolutionary information technologies, young people have a unique opportunity to move towards a conscious humanism — to produce a "globalshift" leading to a world of embracing solidarity, ecological responsibility, and transnational ethics and communities.
The University is also offering a PhD in Consciousness Studies, which of course emphasises quantum consciousness. Sounds very impressive, albeit concerns might be raised if readers recall Laszlo's enthusiastic endorsement of communication with the dead (or is it the undead) via a valve radio, Mayan Calendar 2012 endism, Akashic Field healing, the brain shifting "from being an EM-wave and photon-wave receiver to operating as a quantum-field transceiver" and so forth. It might have been simpler to just call the institution Blavatsky U, issue applicants with a ouija board or the collected works of Edgar Cayce and collect the money.