The Secret

The Secret is Rhonda Byrne’s compilation of two dozen contributors restating the Law of Attraction as a single secret suppressed throughout history and rediscovered in the present. The book follows a 2006 documentary of the same name — itself inspired by Wallace Wattles’s 1910 The Science of Getting Rich, which Byrne’s daughter gave her during a period of personal crisis — and is structured as edited contributor essays rather than a single argument. Chapters move from the basic mechanism (thoughts emit a frequency that attracts matching circumstance) to applications: money, relationships, health, and the self.

The contributor list (Bob Proctor, John Assaraf, Joe Vitale, Jack Canfield, Lisa Nichols, Esther and Jerry Hicks until they withdrew, and others) draws almost entirely from the New Thought lineage that runs through Joseph Murphy, Napoleon Hill, and the Religious Science movement. The Secret is the most-circulated single-volume statement of that lineage; for many readers it is the first exposure to manifestation as a category. Read it as a popular synthesis rather than a primary source — and read Wattles, Murphy, and Hill if you want to follow the argument back to where it was first made.

Contents

Reception

A cultural phenomenon — over 30 million copies sold, translated into 50+ languages, anchored Oprah Winfrey’s 2007 promotion cycle, and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 190 weeks. The same scale produced an equally large critical backlash: physicists rejected the science framing of the Law of Attraction; ethicists argued the book’s logic implicates victims in their own misfortune, including children and the dead; and several contributors — most notably Esther and Jerry Hicks, whose Abraham material is widely understood to be a primary source for the project — later distanced themselves over royalty disputes. Within New Thought circles, longer-standing writers (Bob Proctor, Joe Vitale) defended the synthesis; critics inside the lineage argued the book stripped the practical instruction down past the point of usefulness. Few self-help books of the 2000s have aged as polarisingly.

Frequently asked

What is The Secret about?

It is Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 compilation restating the Law of Attraction — the claim that thoughts emit a frequency that attracts matching circumstance — as a single secret rediscovered across history. Two dozen contributors apply the same mechanism to money, relationships, health and the self.

How does The Secret relate to The Science of Getting Rich?

Byrne has said Wallace Wattles’s 1910 The Science of Getting Rich was the trigger: her daughter gave her a copy during a period of personal crisis and Byrne built the documentary and book around its premise. Most of The Secret’s contributors come from the same New Thought lineage that Wattles, Joseph Murphy and Napoleon Hill wrote inside.

Why is The Secret criticised?

Physicists rejected the science framing of the Law of Attraction; ethicists argued the book’s logic implicates victims — including children and the dead — in their own misfortune; and within the source lineage, Esther and Jerry Hicks (whose Abraham material is widely understood to be a primary source) later distanced themselves over royalty disputes.