'There is Nothing You Cannot Be, Do, or Have'

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Wayne Dyer's "Power of Intention," the ordained Unity minister Marianne Williamson's "A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles," Deepak Chopra's many books on quantum healing and spiritual affluence, Gary Zukav's recondite explorations of quantum physics and practical exercises for "soul empowerment," Jerry and Esther Hicks' "Ask and It is Given" (the channeled wisdom of a spiritual entity named Abraham who reveals how you can become "vibrationally aligned" with your desires), not to mention the tapes, infomercials, and packed lectures by the motivational guru Tony Robbins and the first "New Thought" film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" about the invisible organization of energy-all offer variations on ideas that were first proclaimed by Quimby, Warren Felt Evans, the Dressers, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Mary Baker Eddy more than a century ago.

Clearly New Thought spawned an effective practical psychology-millions of Americans recite daily affirmations to encourage their positivity while they struggle up the career ladder and through the vagaries of toxic relationships. 12-Step programs have empowered countless addicts to reclaim their lives; support groups help the chronically ill maintain hope and according to some studies actually improve their longevity. And innumerable informal groups gather together to learn how to access Universal Spirit in order to "manifest" more good in their lives. But are these really religions?

Inside a New Thought Church
One Sunday morning, not too long ago, I ventured up to a mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where The Sacred Center For Spiritual Living (a member church of the New Thought Alliance) conducts its services. I got there a few minutes late; when I arrived, a gospel quartet was already in mid-song, accompanied by a jazz piano trio. The usher, a cheerful-looking young man with dreadlocks, offered me a program. There were no prayer books, no crosses in sight. The congregation was youngish and seemingly prosperous, artistic-looking and racially mixed.

When the music stopped, announcements were read-the workshop on "Mastering Your Fear" had been postponed until September ("You'll just have to live with your fear all summer," she quipped) but the invitation to "celebrate the joyful connection with the divine through ecstatic dance and music" later in the week still stood. A guided meditation followed. While the pianist tinkled a blandly hypnotic melody, a woman lit candles and intoned variations on the following phrases:

I am remembering who I am Into the presence would I enter now,
For I am surrounded by the love of God May every voice but God's be still in me

Then everyone stood and recited a prayer:

Peace in my heart brings peace to the family,
Peace in the family brings peace to the community.
Peace in the community brings peace to the nation.
Peace in the nation brings peace to the world.
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. I watched from the back of the congregation as a little red-haired boy, about seven years old, recited the words from memory. The gospel quartet returned to the stage and sang a rousing version of Wade in the Water. Then the Reverend August Gold came out and delivered a seemingly extemporaneous sermon. The texts she preached on were the novel "The Kite Runner," her own life, and the Tao of Lao Tzu.

It was an extraordinary and inspiring performance. She spoke of the moments of moral failure that seemingly have the power to define an entire life-and of the opportunities that life affords us to atone and to change. In the case of "The Kite Runner," it was the narrator's betrayal of his best friend. In her own case, it was when, as a naïve teenager, she'd allowed a married man, whose wife was a dear friend, to kiss her. No matter how irrevocable your error, no matter how blighted your life seems as a result, the Tao flows through everything and everyone. "The Tao is eternal," she said, "it does not favor one person over another, and it brings all things to completion." We can forgive others and we can forgive ourselves. We can overcome our shame; we can heal.

Understand, she said, that you are coming into consciousness of what it is to be human in a human world. I was reminded of a saying from AA-"We are not human beings having spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences." The point of her sermon wasn't that our moral lapses don't matter, that self-love trumps everything. It was that life affords us an opportunity to grow.

Looking at the faces of the congregants, listening to the Reverend Gold's creedless, therapeutic, but compassionate and profoundly moral sermon, I thought of William James, who concluded "The Varieties of Religious Experience" with the observation that the religious life could be defined by the following beliefs:

"The visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance"

"Union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end."

Through prayer or meditation "spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world."

Religious people, James added, enjoy "a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism" as well as "an assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections." Whether or not New Thought is truly "Christian" is a question that I'd prefer to leave for Christians to debate. That morning, I had no doubt that the worshippers at The Sacred Center for Spiritual Living were experiencing genuine religion.