Mind Power: A Manifesto

Why a PEN-Award Winning Historian is Dedicated to Positive-Mind Metaphysics

From time to time I hear from old friends, and sometimes from strangers, wondering why I occupy myself with what they regard as “woo-woo” stuff — that is, New Thought and positive-mind traditions.

They are right about my commitments. Since the 2014 publication of my One Simple Idea, a history and analysis of positive-mind metaphysics, I have grown more dedicated to exploring the use and viability of the core mind-power thesis, which is: thoughts are causative.

My aim is not to disembark from “serious” esoteric traditions (more on that in a moment); nor is it to discontinue my work as a historian. Rather, I am specifically interested in formulating a tough-minded, intellectually defensible, and useful distillation of New Thought ideas. I try to locate New Thought’s ancient antecedents in Hermeticism and a wide range of religious traditions, as well as in modern expressions such as Transcendentalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, Christian Science, and the work of nineteenth-century experimenters like Phineas Quimby, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Horatio Dresser, up through twentieth-century mystical voices such as Neville Goddard, Vernon Howard, and Ernest Holmes.