N.B.: My dear friend Nilaufer was an avid reader of books on psychology and philosophy. She held Wayne Dyer’s earlier works in high esteem, and naturally read Manifest your destiny with as much expectation and anticipation – only to feel quite let down by the contents – thus her candid comments while reviewing the book. But this did not make her respect the renowned writer and his views any less. – Amita Sarwal)
While professing the nine principles, in the first sentence of the book the author states that Manifest Your Destiny “is unlike any book I have previously written.” No true. Not only has he incorporated ideas from his earlier works, but seems to have borrowed thoughts and notions from other thinkers and passed them off as his own.
Readers who have wandered through the minds of J. Krishnamurti, Carlos Castanedas and Gurdjieff, will recognise that these philosophers’ perceptions have been recycles and presented as Dyer originals. For those who haven’t, this is a useful primer since the author reiterates the canons of new age thinking in a simple, lucid style.
The first principle – ‘Becoming your highest self’ – states that adult life is divided into four stages through which the individual evolves, ultimately uniting the conscious with the inner self. It reads like the concise version of Dyer’s preceeding work: Your sacred self: making the decision to be free.
Principle number two, ‘Trusting yourself is trusting the wisdom that created you’, encompasses the tenets of prayer, trust and spiritual wisdom which is dotted with sample meditations and affirmations.
“You are not an organism in an environment, you are an environ-organism is the tongue-twisting third. In plain words, you are the environment and vice versa. The exercises have been used before by him, making it a dull read.
‘Visualisation’ would have been a neat, apt title for the fourth principle which is lengthened to ‘You can attract to yourself what you desire’. The advice and methods were skillfully covered much earlier by Shakti Gawain in Creative Visualisation and David Spangler in Everyday Miracles.
The fifth principle – ‘Honouring your worthiness to receive’ tackles aspects of low self-esteem, guilt and healing old wounds. The hackneyed prescription is Positive Thinking. One expects something a little more original from the good doctor.
Number six: ‘Connecting to the divine source with unconditional love.’ Detached observation is the basis of this principle. Dyer asks us to observe silence by transcending the noise, to be nonjudgmental, and to simply become ‘the noticer’. Krishnamurti, decades earlier, wrote in First and Last freedom, “Observe yourself without condemnation, without identification, therefore, in that observation the observer and the observed are in complete communion.” One cannot help but feel that Krishnamurti’s ‘observer’ has been substituted with Dyer’s ‘noticer’.
‘Meditating to sound of creation’ leads the reader through basic breathing techniques, chanting, the recitation and meaning of mantras. If you want a less boring, more enlightening version of this concept, Going within by Shirley Maclaine is better.
Rule number eight: ‘Patiently detach from the outcome’. This is a tricky one. It contravenes rule number four. If your (visualised) dreams come true, then that’s wonderful, but if they don’t, then rule number eight applies – detach yourself from your dream, and ‘let go of your mind’s preoccupation with those results’.
If you are confused with the contradictions, you are not alone.
Whether you win or lose, he is always right. Either way, Dyer wins.
The final principle is ‘Reacting to your manifestations with gratitude and generosity’. Summarised – the value of taming the ego, being thankful, and being in service to others. This is further explained by the author as “I have a motto that I have used for many years that is quite simple and effective in overcoming this obstacle to an attitude of gratitude: Don’t complain, don’t explain.” Ironically, both these virtues are glaringly absent here.
The motto is not his, it belongs to car-czar Henry Ford and it has been used without reference or attribution.
Gratitude = 0. Generosity = 0. This is not the only lapse. Old, well-known folk tales and parables have been adopted as his in earlier chapters. By doing this, the author has not only failed at taming his won ego – he has inflated it, and at the same time earnestly advises us to deflate ours. Now that is not fair!
His earlier works, Pulling your own strings and Your erroneous zones were honest and believable, endearing him to readers as a new age guru, and made him the best selling author he is today.
Unfortunately, this book reveals that Dyer is only human and has slipped into a pothole of self-infatuation.
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Wayne Dyer confesses to being inspired by Pittsburgh-based Sri Guruji Baskaran Pillai. A tribute reads: “Shri Guruji: Thank you for the inspiration to explore the world of manifesting. NAMASTE!”
Guruji has said about his association with the famed psychologist: “I do not believe in running from place to place, so I decided to give it to a man who has millions of followers. I said (to him) if you find it useful in your own life, take it to the world. He experimented with a close circle of friends who weren’t doing too well economically. They had great success and that’s when he came out and started teaching this in seminars.”
Manifest Your Destiny –
The Nine Spiritual Principles For Getting Everything You Want
By Wayne W. Dyer
Published by HarperCollins |
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