REAL MAGIC

Dyer (You'll See It When You Believe It, 1989, etc.) recaps the major tenets of New Age thinking—power meditation, unified field theory, mind-body healing, and prosperity consciousness, to name a few. ``Real magic,'' according to Dyer, is the seemingly miraculous response of the environment to a unity of purpose and belief in the individual. Whatever you believe, he says, you will create both within and outside yourself. Your present circumstances have also been created by you in the past—and this is not blaming the victim, Dyer insists in the face of criticism that it is cruel to hold the poor and ill responsible for their misfortune; rather, he claims, it is an empowering of the victim by offering the promise of self-created change. Health, prosperity, a more pleasing and successful personality, fulfilling relationships—all are within our power to bring into being. How? By becoming more spiritual beings; by being open to divine guidance; by meditating daily; by being willing to believe in a reality beyond that verifiable by the five senses; by developing a loving, accepting attitude. The power of real magic also radiates beyond the individual, Dyer maintains, so that a person who has gotten ``to purpose'' can change the world just by being. All this is more or less familiar to readers of Deepak Chopra, Jose Silva, Krishnamurti, and others. Dyer's strength is in popularizing these thinkers and their ideas for the mainstream; his weakness is in a certain whiff of infatuation with his own celebrity that now and then wafts up from his pages.