New Thought, sometimes known as Higher Thought  promotes the idea that Infinite Intelligence is everywhere, spirit is the totality of real things, sickness originates in the mind, and “right thinking” has a healing effect.  The New Thought Movement, which had it’s heyday the late nineteenth and early-mid twentieth centuries…it’s ideas, concepts, and practical applications, have been, still are, and always will be, the basis of ALL programs, constructs, seminars, trainings, and philosophies having anything to do with self-help, personal development, wealth attainment, achieving abundance, prosperity, happiness, and success!

It’s main thesis states that our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living.  Where have you heard that before?  I’ll tell you.  Everywhere, especially after “The Secret” came on the scene several year ago.

The concept of the doorway to success through thinking, or rather, right thinking, has never been a secret.

The earliest identifiable proponent of what came to be known as New Thought was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–66), an American philosopher, mesmerist, healer, and inventor. Quimby developed a belief in a system that included the tenet that illness originated in the mind as a consequence of erroneous beliefs and that a mind open to true wisdom, the wisdom of the self that is connected to some concept of a higher source, could overcome any illness, and by extension, achieve success. His basic premise was “The trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in. Therefore, if your mind had been deceived by some ‘invisible enemy’ into a belief, you have put it into the form of a disease, or any form of dis-ease, or lack, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth, I come in contact with your enemy, and restore you to health and happiness. This I do partly mentally, and partly by talking till I correct the wrong impression and establish the Truth, and the Truth is the cure.”

During the late 19th century the ‘metaphysical’ healing practices of Quimby mingled with the “Mental Science” of  Warren Felt Evans.

The 1890s and the first decades of the 20th century saw many New Thought books published on the topics of self-help, financial success, and will-training.  The works of New Thought authors such as of Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles and Thomas Troward continue to be cherished by those whose lives have been enriched by their timeless teachings.

List of New Thought writers

Click here for a pictorial gallery of New Thought writers.

In 1906, William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932) wrote and published Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World.  Atkinson was the editor of New Thought magazine and the author of more than 100 books.  The following year, Elizabeth Towne, the editor of The Nautilus Magazine, a Journal of New Thought, published Bruce MacLelland’s book Prosperity Through Thought Force, in which he summarized the “Law of Attraction” as a New Thought principle, stating “You are what you think, not what you think you are.”

Chief among the tenets of New Thought are:

• Infinite Intelligence or God is omnipotent and omnipresent.
• Spirit is the ultimate reality.
• True human self-hood is divine.
• Divinely attuned thought is a positive force for good.
• All disease is mental in origin.
• Right thinking has a healing effect.

Adherents also generally believe that as humankind gains greater understanding of the world, New Thought itself will evolve to assimilate new knowledge. Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse have described New Thought as a “process” in which each individual and even the New Thought Movement itself is “new every moment”, a process Thomas McFaul has hypothesized as “continuous revelation”.

One of the most wonderful websites I’ve found is http://newthoughtlibrary.com/.  It is an incredible resource for information as well as scanned copies and pdf files of classic New Though literature.  Highly recommended!