My wife Alexandra and I are currently writing a book entitled Yogic New Thought. New Thought is a largely American “metaphysical religion” that began in the second half of the nineteenth century and that continues, mainly in pop cultural form, today.

To simplify to an extreme: the basic tenet of New Thought is a thought has the power to shape the relevant things that we care about. However, once this thesis gets concretized into “thoughts make the character” or “thoughts manifest themselves as material objects” that matters get, at best, hazy and, at worst, fishy.

In this post, I’d like to set out four problems with New Thought, problems that we believe can be rectified by appealing to classical Advaita Vedanta as well as to Raja Yoga.

1. The metaphysics, in New Thought, is a supreme failure. In its attempt to partially re-enchant the world, it couldn’t get past Cartesian dualism: mind and body, though separate substances, somehow interact in New Thought. The result is a bunch of handwaving through its unjustified statements–most especially, the Law of Attraction (“Like attracts like”). In our view, a strict Vedantic idealist ontology which reduces all phenomena to “thought-forms” or “thought-vibrations” can overcome these impasses.

2. Extroversion > Introversion: Most New Thoughters couldn’t get over the idea that humans were like the creator God. Consequently, they keep trying to get creative outflow–in the forms of abundance (wealth), physical health, success, and so on. This is a mistake since thought power, as we’ll seek to show, actually is about turning inward (“introversion”). Hence, we reverse the inequality sign such that it reads, “Introversion > Extroversion.”

3. Target: Mind Training: Our central thesis is that New Thought works when it’s restricted to the training of the mind. When, to speak Kantianly, it strays beyond the bounds of mind training, it gets its trouble. It overpromises wealth (you get stuff, you get lots of money, etc.) when, in our view, it works properly when abundance = the idea that there’s always more than enough to go around. In other words, Yogic mind training is not about getting what you want, or about being a success, or about “winning friends and influencing people”; no, it’s about letting go of your sticky concepts. Do you really want lots of money, or do you yearn to get beyond the idea that you’ll never have enough? Mind training, then, is another word for inner purification.

4. Yogic Unfolding Of Practice: Two points must be underscored here. First, because New Thoughters really had no understanding of practices, they’d tell one to just visualize or offer a suggestion now and again. That ain’t gonna cut it: the practice, carried out daily, needs to be persisted in over a long period of time. Second, they didn’t grasp that what one wants actually changes as the mind is purified. I might begin by thinking that I want a $5 million house. If I keep at that visualization, perhaps I then discover that I, actually, want to think positively. And if I go beyond “just thinking positively,” then I’ll ultimately learn that I wish to go beyond all of my suffering.

Mind training, propounding entry-level practices in thought power, is a step in the direction of wanting to go further into Yoga and Advaita Vedanta proper.