I discovered Three Magic Words by accident when trying to search for a different book titled Three Simple Steps.
Former professional football player and oil businessman Uell S. Andersen became a New Thought teacher and author back in the 1950s and 60s in Los Angeles. Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now, is a big fan of Andersen and re-published two of his books.
The more famous of these two books, Three Magic Words, is a metaphysical tome. I found the book to be very...woo, but here is my summary:
Everything is consciousness existing at different levels among everything (even rocks) and all consciousness is God, therefore "you are God" (the three magic words). Not a part of God, you ARE God. Everything is connected by a "universal subconscious mind." Everything that exists is a conception of this universal mind. And by focused meditation on this concept, you can manifest anything you desire (law of attraction) because it's your consciousness that produces changes in the universe.
There is no heaven and no hell. Evil is simply "error" and acting with lack of love. Darkness is the absence of light. You can't create darkness, and you can't create evil. Instead, by doing everything with "love" you are aligned with universal consciousness and are living the best way possible.
There is no personal karma, either. Andersen says you don't come back to work out karma like Hinduism believes. Instead, when you die, your ego dies forever and your consciousness falls back into the "universal subconscious mind" where you are then reincarnated into something else, whatever that may be.
By practicing daily meditation on these concepts, you will build an awareness and live a better and more fulfilled life. You can manifest your desires by meditating on them and trusting that the "universal subconscious mind" will make them appear at the proper point. "Thought plus faith creates". The USM is everywhere and infinite, therefore it exists at all points of time. This means your thoughts alone can impact both the past and the future because it’s all the same to USM.
And it discussed concepts about how everything is subatomic vibrations and how we match vibrations with objects, animals, and people. If you immediately like or dislike someone when you first meet them, it's about differing levels of vibrations and levels of consciousness. Something about how the higher your level of consciousness, the higher your level of vibration. It sounded pseudo-scientific.
I do question how a morality system exists in Andersen's world. If someone goes on a murder spree and commits suicide, then what? Everybody gets reincarnated and it's a reset? That sounds borderline nihilism. Calling yourself God sounds delusional narcissism, and calling everything God smacks of pantheism.
And there were a lot of New Testament quotes where Andersen attempts to connect Christ's teachings with his own ideas discussed in the book. I notice this same pattern in other spiritual books like Autobiography of a Yogi. I think it's a way these authors try to make their ideas more palatable or relatable to readers. Furthermore, I can imagine Christian theologians arguing that those interpretations are a context stretch at best and blasphemous at worst.
The rabbit hole can go even deeper. The book was dedicated to Sri Aurobindo who created "Integral Yoga" and was a potential influence on this book. I'm *almost* tempted to investigate it, but I feel like I already had enough of my fill of Yoga and Indian spiritual exploration after reading The Autobiography of a Yogi (see my review linked below).
Practically speaking, Andersen suggests meditating 20 minutes a day and then reading one of his 12 short excerpts at the end of each chapter to ponder. He also suggests taking a 30-day mental diet to avoid negative thinking, news, and sources and instead practice positive thinking.
If you strip out 300 pages of winding metaphysical talk, the advice boils down to:
Have a daily meditation practice of 10 to 20 minutes to calm your mind. Afterward, think for a few minutes about your desires in life and imagine them happening, and do your best to feel the experience and emotions in your mind.
Andersen doesn’t refer to mindfulness, but he talks about the same concepts. Mindfulness is the deliberate practice of noticing your “Self” from your “Thoughts”. The random ideas and thoughts that pop in your mind are not you. They’re by-products of your brain. Meditation teachers use all sorts of metaphors to view thoughts as someone observing passing clouds. Watch them come and go and don’t get attached.
Trust that things will come together. Focus on the what and let God guide on the how. “Thought plus faith creates”.
Practice for 30 days of removing toxic influences and people from your life and steer yourself to positive thinking, people, and resources.
You could make a simple tracker with 30 circles on a piece of scrap paper or the back of a store receipt. Fill in each circle with a pencil for each successful day. Here’s an example I made in the pic below.
Your practices (#1 above), belief (#2 above), and exposure (#3 above) influences your thinking which influences your decisions which in turn influences the quality of your life.
All those points above are more or less the same in Three Simple Steps, the book I mentioned above and wrote about in an earlier newsletter.
Which to read: Three Magic Words or Three Simple Steps? If you want a trippy metaphysical tour from the 1950s, go with Three Magic Words. If you want something more modern and business oriented, go with Three Simple Steps (my review is linked below).
An alternative and much shorter read is Joseph Murphy's How to Attract Money. Yeah, the title is corny, but it can be read in an hour or so. The advice in it is similar to points in Three Magic Words with the addition of making positive affirmations to yourself daily like "God supplies all my needs and there is always a Divine surplus". The purpose of those affirmations is to steer your subconscious mind away from negative “scarcity” thinking and into an abundance mindset where you truly believe there are always resources and opportunities around to fulfill your needs and desires.
"I told him whenever negative thoughts came to his mind, which would happen, not to fight them, quarrel with them in any way, but simply go back to the spiritual, mental formula, and repeat it quietly and lovingly to himself.
Negative thoughts came to him in avalanches at times in the form of a flood of negativity. Each time he met them with the positive, firm, loyal conviction: “God supplies all my needs; there is a Divine surplus in my life."
— Joseph Murphy
I can’t help but think of Stuart Smalley when I hear affirmations, but there is something to say about the benefits of positive self-talk.
Does this stuff work? I'm incredulous about the metaphysical aspects. I wouldn't go around telling people, "Hey man, we're all like God and stuff. Your suffering is because you willed it! Just like, change your consciousness because you are God!".
If you stay on the practical and psychological side of things of disciplining and focusing your mind, I don't think it hurts to try it out.
I somehow came across this song today from a 60s folk group which has 44 million views. It felt fitting to the hippie vibes I got from Three Magic Words. I dig it.