Why have the practices of visualization and manifestation become so popular, and why might they be dangerous?
Introduction
The English philosopher G.K. Chesterton once said that when a person stops believing in God, they will believe in anything (Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 2021). This same process seems to happen with many New Age or spiritual but not religious people. Visualization as a practice of contemplation has many different aspects to it. This essay will look at how visualization is used in the practice of manifestation and whether there is any truth to claims that a person can consciously create their reality through an invisible force of energy called the law of attraction. While some paranormal activities seem to have genuine effects without a scientific explanation, that does not mean we should accept all supernatural beliefs without applying a filter of critical thinking. Practices of visualization and manifestation have many components with verifiable benefits, but sprinkling in the extra layer of magical thinking does not hold up to scrutiny. In addition, we will discuss the coaches and wellness practitioners abusing this spiritual tradition for financial and egoic gain.
What Is Manifestation?
Practices of visualization have been around for centuries. They appear in Hinduism as bhavana, vikpala, and vibhuti pada. Patanjali, the author of these yoga sutras, has a stern warning for anyone who wants to harness these powers. If a person uses these powers to serve their ego, it will be an obstacle on the path to Kaivalya or final liberation (Yogapedia, 2021). We will discuss how egoic desires corrupt the visualization concept later.
The emergence of visualization manifestations in the West came in 1906 with William Walker Atkinson. His law of attraction work took significant aspects from Hindi spiritual teachings. Atkinson said, “All persons ought to practice their visualizing power. This will react upon perception and make it more definite. Visualizing will also form a brain habit of remembering things pictorially, and hence more exactly”(Miah, 2019). Napolean Hill’s 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich” on the subject has gone on to become one of the top ten best-selling books of all time. Hill was influenced less by Eastern spirituality and more by writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and the steel magnate Dale Carnegie.
Esther and Jerry Hicks were the next hugely successful authors to popularise the manifestation concept. The book ‘The Law of Attraction’ published in 1986, is a transcript of information that Esther Hicks allegedly channeled from another worldly group consciousness called Abraham. The basic concept of the law of attraction is that you will attract into your life the energetic frequency of that which you are feeling as a result of that which you are thinking. Hence, to change your life, you need to practice feeling and seeing the event as if it has already happened. (Hick & Hicks, 2006).
The next big splash was the release of the movie and book called ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne in 2006. This concept has seen massive success in the mainstream thanks to endorsements from the likes of Oprah and Gwyneth Paltrow. There was even a feature-length film starring Katie Holmes on Netflix released in 2020.
The law of attraction involves several components. One is the vision board, where a person creates a collage of pictures of what they want to attract into their lives. It can also involve meditation, breathwork, and visualizing scenes in the mind of what the person wants to manifest. The person is also encouraged to feel the emotions they want to feel during the visualization practice. Supposedly, the emotions send out a frequency that the universe recognizes. The universe then sends back things that match that frequency to the person. Finally, the person is encouraged to feel grateful for receiving these things. A classic example of this would be a person wanting a job promotion who would imagine themselves in the new role and feel the pride, joy, and satisfaction they would feel during the visualization practice.
With the COVID-19 pandemic causing people to feel more powerless, there is no surprise that people have turned to magical thinking and manifesting to cope with their anxiety. Google searches for manifesting have gone up 669% since the start of the pandemic (Jennings, 2020).
Why manifesting might work.
There is no research demonstrating the effectiveness of visualization manifestations. Nevertheless, plenty of people attribute their success to these practices. An initial argument would be that because there have not been any studies, we cannot know if these people would have achieved their results without the visualization. Since the analysis of this idea is beyond the scope of this paper, we will examine how these practices might be helping people.
Perhaps it is not an invisible law of attraction that enables success but the component parts of the practice that benefit the individual. Firstly, manifestation and visualization practices usually start with mindfulness meditation. Meditation has many verified benefits. Studies show that meditation reduces anxiety (Ohio State University, 2017) and increases neuroplasticity (Miller et al., 1995). Meditation can boost mental processing and empathy (Davidson & Lutz, 2008. Meditation can also boost focus (Hofmann et al., 2011). These types of benefits would make most people better at their jobs. Hence, if a person’s goal is to gain a promotion, these abilities will likely help their chances.
Some visualization practices, like that of Joe Dispenza, utilize breath retention to get into states necessary for manifestation. Intermittent hypoxia has many benefits, like boosting memory and neuroplasticity and lowering inflammation (Navarrete-Opazo & Mitchell, 2014). Some of the benefits that people attribute to visualization could be coming from the breath holds. We will come on to controversies surrounding Dispenza later.
The visualization practice also requires that the person becomes thankful for all the support they will receive in obtaining their desire. Gratitude as a tool for better mental health has received significant attention in recent years. Harvard Health (2021) shares that “in positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.” Stronger relationships and a better ability to deal with adversity would benefit anyone who wants to attract a partner, heal from illness, or receive a job promotion.
There is some exciting research that suggests that superstitions improve performance. In Schidt’s (2012) study, experimenters told participants that they had a lucky golf ball. When they were using the lucky ball, participants made an extra two puts compared to when they were not using a lucky ball. There was no lucky ball, but the study holders gave confidence to the putters. This improvement should demonstrate the importance of confidence in achieving goals rather than the power of superstitious beliefs. However, when you take away the supernatural belief, that confidence vanishes. This study suggests that there is value in trusting in some sort of external force, whether real or not.
This study followed up by inviting participants to bring in a lucky charm and take a cognitive test. The participants performed better on the task when they had their charm present. The experimenters found that when the participants had their charms, they set higher goals for themselves and spent longer on each task. The conclusion was that having a lucky charm increases perseverance and feelings of self-efficacy, both crucial factors in achieving success.
Research on mathematics students’ shows how important confidence is to achieving goals (Stankov et al., 2014). The researchers found that the higher a student’s self-efficacy and the lower their anxiety about passing a test, the greater their level of achievement. Similarly, studies show that confidence improves persuasiveness (Sah et al., 2013).
While these studies prove that superstitions give people more confidence, persuasiveness, and perseverance, it does not necessarily disprove the presence of the supernatural. The participants could have been benefiting from both the improved perseverance in combination with supernatural support. Similarly, in all visualization manifestations, the person could benefit from the effects of breathwork and meditation and work with the law of attraction.
Visualization is a lot like praying. Praying can shift a person out of fear, tension, and anxiety into a place of trust. There are legitimate benefits to prayer. One study shows how praying can reduce feelings of anger and increase relaxation (Bushman et al., June 11). Another found that praying increases general life satisfaction, existential well-being, and happiness (Poloma & Pendleton, 1990). Haggerty’s (2009) study showed that prayer has tangible healing benefits for the body. This study showed that people who took up prayer increased antibodies to the flu virus.
Visualization has also been shown to speed up recovery from injuries. Study participants recovering from knee ligament surgery recovered faster when they visualized movements and strengthening exercises compared with a placebo group (Slimani et al., 2016). This healing effect might be why people who visualize recovering from illness swear that it was due to their manifestation practices.
Manifesting may be helpful as a mental health tool. It is possible to manifest a good mood at any moment. Visualizing oneself feeling joy or pride or love elicits feelings of joy, pride, and love. This effect could have genuine utility in the fight to stop the increase in cases of mental illnesses like anxiety and depression. Moreover, it can show people that they do not have to tie their happiness to external achievements as they can feel good without external variables.
Much of visualization manifestation practices appeal to people’s greed and ego, but there is evidence of how it can help those suffering from abuse and mental illness. A study was conducted with a group of high-risk youths who had suffered from physical and sexual abuse and poverty (Schussel & Miller, 2013). The experimenters led the participants through a ‘best self visualization’ practice. The practice involved conscious connected breathwork, loving-kindness mediation, and visualizing an idealized version of themselves. After a 16-week course of treatment, the case study showed a reduction in mental health symptoms from clinically significant to non-significant.
Mental rehearsals will also boost someone’s chances of success.
A Harvard study on piano players showed how powerful mental rehearsals are on performance (Begley, 2007). In the first part of this study, the participants had to practice playing the piano for two hours a day. Brain scans showed that the areas of the participants’ brains involved in these finger movements, called the motor cortex, took over surrounding areas “like dandelions on a suburban field.” This was a revolutionary study at the time, as the prevailing belief was that the human brain was effectively fixed and unable to change after childhood. The experimenters then went on to find an even more exciting occurrence. The researchers repeated the study, only this time, the piano players were only visualizing playing the piano. The brain scans showed the same growth in neural real estate with the visualizers and those who played the piano.
People often dismiss the effects of medications as just the placebo effect. The placebo effect is not simply the mind deceiving itself; it has measurable effects on the body.
A study by Levine et al. (1978) was one of the most famous for showing the power of a placebo. Patients recovering from a dental procedure were given morphine or a saline IV. In this trial, two-thirds of the patients who received the saline had as profound a reduction in pain as those receiving morphine. While this study is impressive, a follow-up study surpassed this regarding how surprising the placebo effect is.
The experimenter gave the patients a placebo pain killer plus naloxone in this subsequent study. Naloxone is used in hospitals when a person has overdosed on heroin. The naloxone makes the patient stone-cold sober in minutes. Naloxone is an opiate antagonist, and hence it blocks opiates from reaching their receptors. The human body also creates its own endogenous opiates called endorphins. Hence this study demonstrated that the placebo effect is causing the body to create its own opiates to reduce pain. This demonstration of the mind’s power over the body leaves the door open to many questions about what is possible through visualization. Rather than dismissing the placebo, perhaps we should be trying to work out how to maximize this effect.
An interesting area for future research would be to analyze what types of goals visualization manifestations work for. Perhaps, given all the benefits of the components parts, visualization manifestations can help someone recover from an illness, gain financial success or attract a partner. However, perhaps they cannot help with things outside a person’s sphere of control, like manifesting the end of a pandemic or war.
Much like many New Age beliefs, the law of attraction is a bit like 1 plus 1, equalling 3. I.e., visualization practices make someone more focused, confident, and persuasive, which leads to the person achieving their goal. Then the mistake is to attribute this success to the law of attraction rather than the person’s enhanced skillset. We can see the mind can affect the body in immensely beneficial ways from all this research. This should be enough. Unfortunately, there are people out there who tend to exaggerate these effects for personal gain.
Concerns about manifesting
As with many practices of contemplation, there is a dark side that can be harnessed for nefarious purposes. What if a person wants to manifest bad things happening to others? Contemplative traditions like visualization can alleviate suffering. This, at first glance, is a good thing. However, what if bad actors use it to make you tolerate their abuse? What if, rather than fighting against a dictator, you spend your time in a visualization practice, imagining yourself feeling blissful while increasing your tolerance of abuse?
Aldous Huxley (1932) expands upon this concept in his book “Brave New World”. In this futuristic society, the government provides the people with a drug called Soma that makes them feel good without any adverse side effects. However, what it is doing is taking away people’s motivation to fight against injustice. While negative feelings are uncomfortable, they are needed. Without anger, a person will not stand up for themselves or others. Guilt protects us against anti-social behavior. If a person can magic away their feelings by simply manifesting joy without an action anchored to it, then the individual and the society may suffer. This is one of the reasons social media feeds are so problematic. They give a person a dopamine reward without having to do anything productive.
The idea that we know what is best for us is also debatable. One might question where the object of one’s desire is coming from. Is this an egoic or narcissistic desire? Rather than asking the universe to have your desires manifest, some spiritual traditions would suggest that you ask what you should be desiring or how best to be of service.
In his book on contemplative traditions, Komjathy (2018, p170) echoes Patanjeli’s warning about the ego in visualizations. Komjathy derides the “selfie and GoPro generation” and “the epidemic of excessive ‘self-concern.’” While contemplative practices like visualization have real utility to people suffering, it brings us to the question of the purpose of contemplative practice in modern society.
Mainstream popular culture has hijacked the concept of “self-care” to promote narcissistic, self-serving tendencies. This is most evident in a song called ‘Vitamins’ by Qveen Herby (Noonan & Noonan, 2020). In Qveen Herby’s song, she uses self-care to increase her influence and gain power. This song epitomizes the attitude of the Instagram Wellness influencers selling their self-care routines, affiliate links, and coaching programs. Quite contrary to the origins of the Buddhist goals of letting go of materialistic desires. Some of Herby’s most troublesome lyrics state how the singer has been “working out, sleeping in, taking vitamins…now they’re callin’ me your highness…I found peace, now my influence is catastrophic…meditating in my sauna… it’s a full-time job, self-care.” As the song suggests, the influence of the narcissistic wellness influencers might well be catastrophic.
The singer’s statement that self-care is a full-time job exemplifies where self-care has become excessive. Of course, self-care is an essential part of everyone’s life, and it should be encouraged in people who neglect their needs. However, self-care for self-care’s sake is missing the point. Ancient traditions emphasize how activities such as meditation should be something that supports someone in their contribution to others, not a way to empower a person’s greed. This might be seen as an example of neo-colonialism where Herby is extracting the resource of meditation to further her capitalist objective.
Manifesting Trouble
For people who suffer from intrusive thoughts, the concept of manifestation can be dangerous. There is a slippery slope down into Obsessive-compulsive disorder. An extreme example of this is the person who must turn the lights off and on three times because they believe that if they do not, their family will die. This type of thinking is usually found in people struggling to cope with the uncertainty that life inevitably brings. Magical thinking can be used to avoid an internal confrontation with the reality that much of life is out of our control.
If one believes that their thoughts cause the good things in their life, then they must also be responsible for the bad things. Difficult questions must then be asked: Does a child manifest sexual abuse from a family member? Did the 9/11 terrorist attack victims manifest their death as Rhonda Burne suggested (Burgh, 2007)? For the question of abused children, another example of unempathetic magical thinking is often used as a response; ‘well, the child must have manifested it in a past life’. John Welwood’s concept of spiritual bypassing is also used by people who struggle with empathy. Rather than sitting with a friend’s pain, the person can bypass their emotions by blaming the victim for manifesting their tragedies.
Excessive positive thinking harms chances of success.
Some research shows that positive thinking is harmful to one’s chances of achieving their goals. Gabriele Oettingen, a psychology professor at New York University, has spent decades studying the effects of positive thinking. Though it may seem counterintuitive, she says, such thoughts are often a hindrance because they lead to complacency (Haupt, 2021). Experts say one fundamental problem with manifesting is that it focuses more on the power of thoughts than on the actions needed to fulfill desires.
In Oettingen’s research on dieters, she found that the more positively dieters fantasized about weight loss, the less likely they were to shed any pounds. Similarly, the more people fantasized about recovering from hip-replacement surgery, the less well they could move their joints post-op (Zeidan et al., 2010). Furthermore, the more students fantasized about getting a good exam grade, the less well they scored. (Oettingen & Mayer, 2002). This is because the more time people spend fantasizing and daydreaming, the less effort they put in.
Oettingen believes that mental rehearsals are important, but the action steps are the key to achieving goals. Oettingen makes a case for a technique she calls mental contrasting, where in addition to focusing on a desire, you focus equally on the obstacles in your way. One of her studies involved a group of third-graders who received a candy prize if they completed a language assignment. Some were told to interrogate the behaviors that might prevent them from finishing the task, while others were told only to fantasize about the prize. The children who interrogated their behaviors performed better in the assignment (Friedman, 2014).
Concerns about the Manifesting Industry
As with much of the health-coaching industry, no official training or certification is required to become a manifestation coach. Instead, followers are free to interpret the trend however they would like and take advice from anyone labeling themselves experts. One example of this is the ‘Manifestation Babe.’ She is a young woman who dropped out of medical school to become a life coach. Now she charges $100,000 per year to work with her (Zenkina, 2020). A big problem with the life coaching industry is that it is not regulated. There is nowhere to turn to report abuse. Anyone can call themselves a life coach, a mindset coach, a health coach, or an addiction coach. Similarly, as Mark Manson (2016) highlights, the coaching industry is like a giant pyramid scheme with the end goal of most coaches is getting their clients to sign up for their next training package to become a coach.
People like Joe Dispenza use complex techniques to confuse people into buying their training courses and retreats. Dispenza, who refers to himself in the third person as Doctor Joe, is a Chiropractor who claims his meditations can cure cancer and that his visualizations are more effective against COVID-19 than vaccines (Remski, 2022). Although he is a Chiropractic Doctor, he veers wildly into medical territory with his claims. Incidentally, the school where Dispenza received his Chiropractic training has since lost its accreditation.
Dispenza uses mental ‘slight of hand’ to deceive people. One example is how he wows people by showing research that his meditations increase a person’s Gamma brain waves. He then declares that this means they are having a mystical experience and thus able to manifest their dreams. What it actually shows is simply that his meditations increase gamma brain waves. This type of trick is known as “connecting the undeniable to the unbelievable” and is common in the conspiracy industry (Harambam & Aupers, 2019).
Dispenza uses other techniques known as ‘quantum woo’ and ‘word salad.’ The first phrase refers to people who misappropriate quantum physics to support dubious spiritual claims. People in the wellness industry will dismiss Western Science as limited, biased, and untrustworthy but then immediately jump back into using quantum physics when it suits their agendas, which is a form of science. Word salad is an overly complicated way of explaining things that start to make no sense. Some people claim they have received incredible benefits from Dispenza’s work, and perhaps they have. However, there is a real danger that a person needing chemotherapy will choose to rely on visualizations, forgo this treatment and die.
Some argue that they do not need scientific proof as they can feel the visualizations working. While this might be okay, research shows that people who trust their gut are more likely to fall for fake news and conspiracy theories and join dangerous cults (Ohio State University, 2017). There are now real-world consequences to these beliefs. Examples include the rise of groups like Q Anon, whose followers have done shocking things like the woman who murdered her three children to protect them from sex trafficking (Hamilton, 2021). As well as the woman who rammed a car full of innocent people because she falsely believed pedophiles drove it, as well as the January 6th Capital riots.
Scientism
A counterargument to the dismissal of visualization manifestations might be that the criticisms in this essay are a form of scientism. One might say that it is not that the law of attraction is fake; it is the scientific method that is too limited to measure its effects. While this is a fair argument against scientism, it still does not prove the existence of a supernatural law of attraction. There are some useful heuristics in situations like this for examining these types of claims. The first is to be aware of ‘Thought Terminating Cliches.’ Robert Jay Lifton coined this term to describe phrases that cult leaders and abusers often use to shut down questioning and continue abusing. Examples of this would be things like ‘do not let yourself be ruled by fear, ‘I am only hard on you because you can take it,’ and ‘it’s all in god’s plan.’ Another heuristic would be Carl Sagan’s famous statement that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (as cited in Tressoldi, 2011). This statement is also reminiscent of Ockham’s Razor, suggesting that the simplest explanation is usually correct. In the case of visualization manifestation, the simplest explanation is that the component parts like breathwork and mental rehearsals are what benefits the individual.
Conclusion
What seems reasonably clear is that visualization manifestations can have immense benefits to a person’s well-being and chances of success. However, there is no evidence to suggest that a supernatural law of attraction exists. The benefits people attribute to the law of attraction likely come from the verified effects of meditation, breathwork, prayer, and rehearsal. However, it is also possible that it is a combination of these tangible benefits in addition to the law of attraction. In the most extensive investigation into paranormal activity, the US government concluded that paranormal activity was a threat to national defense (Radin, 2018). Additionally, the research discussed on superstitions shows genuine benefits to believing in the supernatural regardless of whether they exist. This subject would benefit from further research into whether or not visualization manifestations help a person achieve their goals and, if so, what type of goals it is most useful for. There are also concerns that the unregulated coaching industry will exploit this vacuum of plausible deniability for their profit. One might argue that gullible people deserve to be swindled out of their money by modern-day snake oil sellers. However, the author believes that desperate and vulnerable people deserve protection from the wellness industry’s most predatory actors.
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