Law of Attraction

What is the Law of Attraction?

The Law of Attraction is the New Thought§ principle that sustained thoughts and feelings attract corresponding outer circumstances. Treat a state as already real, the teaching goes, and external reality gradually conforms to it. The doctrine has roots in American metaphysical religion from the 1890s and was first stated in clear doctrinal form by Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich (1910).

Law of Attraction vs related ideas

Manifestation§ is the broader practice of intentionally bringing something into existence through inner states. The Law of Attraction is one explanatory framework for how manifestation is supposed to work. The terms are often used interchangeably, but manifestation includes techniques that make no reference to attraction as a principle. New Thought§ is the movement; the Law of Attraction is one of its doctrines. Positive thinking is a secular, self-help reduction: focus on good outcomes to improve confidence and motivation. It does not claim that thought literally attracts external events, which is the stronger claim the classical teachers made. Affirmations are a technique. The Law of Attraction is a cosmological claim about how reality responds to inner states.

The honest version

Strip away the marketing layer and the working claim is something like this: the felt internal state a person spends most of their attention in tends, over time, to bias their perceptions, decisions and actions in directions that produce more of the same state. That is empirically defensible. It is roughly what cognitive psychology calls the negativity bias and confirmation bias, rotated into spiritual vocabulary. The classical New Thought§ writers understood this. The popularisers often did not.

What it isn't

The dishonest version is the think it and the cheque arrives version. Serious teachers in the tradition have spent a hundred years pushing back against it. Neville Goddard§ insisted that the practice is feeling the desired state as accomplished, not visualising the object. Joseph Murphy§ warned against the autosuggestion as wishful thinking trap. Wattles built his case around aligned action, not magical bypass. Read the originals before reading anyone who came after them.

Where to encounter it

In the index, Bob Proctor's *The Law of Attraction Explained*↗ is the most direct short-form statement of the popular version, and his guided abundance meditation is the practice form. For depth, go upstream to the actual texts: Wattles's *Science of Getting Rich*§, Murphy's§ Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Goddard's§ Feeling is the Secret.