Lately a lot of people have been asking my opinion about The Secret. In case you’ve been buried in an eight foot deep hole with just a straw sticking out through which you receive air and occasionally soup for the past year or so, The Secret is the latest fad in vaguely Eastern spirituality to hit the stands. It’s selling by the truckload everywhere from new age bookstores to supermarkets.

Generally I’m not interested in things like this. I mean, I leafed through the book at my local Ralph’s grocery store and I could tell within a sentence that it was pure bollocks. But it seems like I can’t go more than three or four days without someone either in an e-mail or at a talk asking to hear what I think of The Secret. So the other day when my friend Svetlana told me that a friend of hers was so into The Secret that she gave her a copy I asked her if she’d bring it over so I could watch it.

Good lord in Heaven what a steaming pile of reeking poo! I mean, with all the hype this thing has gotten I had hoped there would be at least a teeny little wee bit of substance to it. But it’s a fucking infomercial for God’s sake. OK, the budget’s a tad higher than the Ginsu knife or Abdominizer ads. But it’s exactly the same formula. Every single person who appears on screen is so obviously intent upon selling me something that I began to spontaneously get that feeling you get when you’re waiting through the Kool Aid and Pop Tart ads for the Three Stooges to come back on.

The producers of this trash would have us believe that all the great ancient traditions have taught The Secret down through the ages. We are told that a host of dead geniuses including Lincoln, Emerson, Einstein, Plato and Beethoven, all knew of its power. Buddha gets trotted out several times during the production and, like those other guys, gets misquoted out of context to appear to support the dopey philosophy of The Secret. So I guess Buddhism and The Secret are pretty much the same deal. These dudes are then compared to the “greatest teachers on the planet today” — in other words the guys who speak on camera on behalf of The Secret. Evidently the greatest teachers on the planet today are a bunch of excitable Malibu tanned goofballs with $400 haircuts who look like they ought to be sipping martinis and playing golf at a country club in Brentwood (and probably are right now as you read this). I don’t know about you, but people like that have always made me feel very, very icky.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the great teachings as laid out in one of the DVD’s extra bonus tracks by some stiff necked jittery coked-up looking guy named Bob Proctor who calls himself a philosopher. Everyone on the video has the manic look and mile-a-minute delivery of a religious fanatic on crank. At least they avoided the dredlocked psychopath who gets labeled in the interviews as a “visionary.” I think the next time I revise my resume on Monster I’m gonna put down “visionary” as my desired position. Anyway, here’s a little of what Bob has to say.

Bob says he’s not really Bob. “I am a soul, a non-physical being living in this body.” Well Bob, if you believe that and you want to connect your nonsense with Buddhism you better go back and look at a few books on the subject since Buddha repudiated this idea. But I digress.

He goes on to say that, “I have the ability to dictate the vibrations that will be attracted to me. We choose our thoughts. I can attract anything I want,” he says. To do this, “I take the idea and impress it upon my subconscious mind which in turn affects the entire universe.” This is because, “thought waves are cosmic waves that affect all time and space. If I want greater wealth I just have to see it coming into my life! I can see myself in beautiful relationships. I can see money coming to me. We become what we think about,” he tells us. “Do you want prosperity? Abundance is your birthright! If you want more, if you want greater wealth, build the image and hold on to that image!”

Getting a new car is as simple as sitting on your easy chair picturing yourself behind the wheel. Want a new house? Just imagine yourself living in it! Simple as that! The new house vibrations will be attracted to you and — voila! it’s yours! Mortgage? Schmortgage! It's all due to the Law of Attraction, the most powerful force in the Universe! Just attract what you want and it's yours!

And just in case you aren't quite greedy enough to be lured in by the promise of riches and abundance for just thinking about them, they throw in the threat that the Law of Attraction can't distinguish between good and bad thoughts. So if you think about car crashes and cancer you might just get car crashes and cancer. Quick, don't think about a furry pink elephant! You get how this works, kids?

You may be saying to yourself, “I want to get a lot of money just by sitting around wishing I had a lot of money! Plus I'm scared of car crashes, cancer and furry pink elephants!” So you’re probably going to ask, how do we get what we want and avoid what we don't want from the Law of Attraction, Bob? Bob kindly tells us to, “watch the film The Secret over and over. Go to the website. All of the products that they are offering you will help you change your habitual way of thinking.” Oh! I see! I buy lots of stuff from you and then I’ll get rich! That makes sense. Then Bob says, “I look forward to meeting you on another series of meetings this company is offering.” Oh! More meetings I can buy! And when I buy more meetings with you I get richer!

And you’re my friend Bob. I can touch you just by touching your image on the TV screen. And I’m sure that if I saw you shopping for $800 underwear on Beverly Drive and came up and told you all about how much The Secret meant to me, you’d invite me up to your house in Bel Air and we’d sit around drinking champagne and chatting away like old buddies! You’re such a super guy, Bob! I know you’re super because you’re talking right to me! And I know you’re talking to me because you call me “you” right on camera a whole bunch of times!

I don’t think I will ever understand why people fall for pitches that are this obvious. To me that’s a great secret. The real big secret of The Secret is that it's a group of crappola New Age nonsense slingers who figured out a way to join all their brain-dead philosophies together and sell them out of one on-line shop. D'uh! Are we really so retarded that nobody can see this?

I mean, I don’t consider myself any kind of a genius, but this stuff is just way too ridiculous for me to even stop and ponder for twenty seconds let alone spend my hard earned cash on. I guess people love the idea that they can get something for nothing. It won’t happen. Sorry, Bob. It didn’t even happen to you or to any of the other swindlers on the video. You worked your asses off to become rich charlatans who dupe people out of their cash for silly bullshit like this. I thought “greed is good” went out with Kajagoogoo and A Flock of Seagulls. Guess I was wrong. You knew that, Bob, and made a bundle. That’s the only secret I can see at work here.

So what about the supposedly “deeper” teachings of The Secret? I mean, that whole “mind is the universe” thing they trot out a couple times sounds a little like Buddhism. Sure it does. Because they ripped it off it from Buddhism. Just like Hitler ripped off the Swastika and the word “Aryan” from Buddhism. And just like Hitler, all these guys know about Buddhism is which of its ideas sound wicked cool. They don’t have the first clue in the world what they mean. Please show me where Buddha said the idea that the mind is the universe leads to the idea that if you imagine yourself living in a chateau on the Riviera you’ll magically end up in one. I think I missed that particular Sutra. Mind is the universe doesn’t mean we’re living in a universe dictated by our imaginations. I’m not gonna try and go into what it does mean here. But, taking a hint form The Secret’s bag of dirty tricks, I can tell you that I do talk about this in my new book! And it’s a lot funnier of a book than The Sceret!

So if you want my opinion on The Secret, there it is. I, for one, will not be spending my money on the products they have to offer. And Bob, sorry to disappoint you, but if you were looking forward to meeting me again you’re gonna be waiting for a long time.

Here’s a list of places I’ll be, though:

I’m in the current ish of Cleveland’s Scene magazine.

I'll be in the June issue of LA YOGA magazine.

An excerpt from my new book SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP! will appear in WHOLE LIFE TIMES magazine in June as well as in CONSCIOUS CHOICE magazine in Chicago and Seattle, and COMMON GROUND magazine in San Francisco.

Saturday June 2nd, 2007 at 7 PM I'll be in Phoenix at the ARIZONA ZEN BUDDHIST SOCIETY.

On Sunday June 3, 2007 at 1 pm Barnes & Noble Desert Ridge - 21001 N. Tatum Blvd. - Phoenix, AZ
On Monday June 4, 2007 at 7 pm Changing Hands Bookstore - 6428 South McClintock Dr. - Tempe, AZ

Tuesday June 12th at 6PM at the VIRGIN MEGASTORE in San Francisco
Thursday June 14th, 7PM at GATEWAYS in Santa Cruz
Friday June 15th After Dinner Talk at the SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER
Saturday June 16th 7 PM at COPPERFIELD'S BOOKS 140 Kentucky St., Petaluma, CA 94952
Sunday June 17th at San Quentin Prison (this isn't open to the public, but all inmates reading this are invited!)

AND on Wednesday July 25th, 2007, my movie CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING! will have its world premier at the EGYPTIAN THEATER in Hollywood. So mark your calendars!

Plus, the very first record by my old hardcore band 0DFx (Zero Defex) has just been released by Get Revenge Records. This 7 inch vinyl record contains our 1983 demo tape full of thrashin’ Minor Threat/Negative approach style hardcore with a drop of psychedelia thrown in for good measure. Get yours today!

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.