Book Review: Jesus and the Law of Attraction by Lochlainn Seabrook

Is Lochlainn Seabrook’s ‘Jesus and the Law of Attraction’ a good book for Christians or the general public?

Since I am very interested in the topic of religion and the Law of Attraction, and the idea of Jesus and the Law of Attraction in particular (see my article “Abraham-Hicks on Jesus Christ“), I was very curious about the book “Jesus and the Law of Attraction” by Lochlainn Seabrook.

What is Seabrook’s approach? Where does he get his teachings from? Is this book recommended to sincere seekers of authentic spirituality?

Before I try to answer those questions, please note that the following is, as usual, a non-sponsored review of a book that I have bought myself. I have no affiliation with the author or the publishing company. In other words, this is a fully independent book review.

PART 1: THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR

Jesus and the Law of Attraction was first introduced in 2013, as a paperback. A hardcover edition was published in 2016. Both editions were updated in August 2022, and it is the 2022 paperback edition that I am reviewing here in this article.

This book is published by a company called Sea Raven Press, which perhaps is Lochlainn Seabrook’s own company, judging by the following note on the copyright page: “The views on Jesus and the Bible documented in this book are those of the publisher.”

Front Matter, Main Text, End Matter

There are many pages of front matter: an overview (1 p.), a list of all of Seabrook’s books (1 p.), a title page, a copyright page, a Dedication (1 p.), an Epigraph (1 p.), a Contents list (1 p.), a List of Illustrations (1 p.), Notes to the Reader (3 pp.), To Skeptics & Nonbelievers (2 pp.), The Seabrook Trinity (1 p.), Psalms 91 (1 p.), a Foreword by Dannion Brinkley (2 pp.), and a Preface (3 pp.).

There are 25 chapters, and these make up the main text of the book (pp. 23-384).

There are also many pages of end matter: an “Academic Section” with a Glossary (pp. 387-402), Appendix A (“Past Well-known Teachers” and “The Christian Tetramorph; pp. 403-404), Appendix B (“How the Church Lost Jesus’ Teachings”; pp. 405-446), Notes (pp. 447-521), and Meet the Author (pp. 523-524).

Type of Content

This is a “scholarly” type of book with thousands of notes and explanations. Although the book has a fair number of illustrations (mostly photographs of paintings with Jesus or other biblical scenes), this is mostly to be considered a text-only book.

The book has a glossary and 3,000+ notes, but it does not have any type of index (no subject index, no name index, no Bible verse index).

The Author

Lochlainn Seabrook is described as follows in the “About the Author” area on the back cover of the book:

PART 2: SUMMARY OF THE BOOK

There are 25 chapters in this book.

This book essentially consists of three types of teachings: first, a presentation of the author’s own version of Law of Attraction (e.g., Chapter 3: “Defining the Law”); second, the reinterpretation of many Bible verses so that they instead sound as if they were teaching the Law of Attraction (usually advertised with the text “The inner meaning”, as on page 244); and third, various discussions about early Church history.

Also featured are discussions on certain concepts in the philosophy of religion, such as the idea of sin, etc.

PART 3: THE REVIEW

Physical Format

The book is 5.5 x 8.5 inches, and that is all right. But because the whole book has 526 pages, printed on nice paper, it is too heavy for comfortable reading.

Paper, Printing, and Binding Quality

The print quality of the book is excellent. Clear crisp type, nice paper, and a good binding.

Layout, Design, and Typography

Although the typography of the copyright page and the chapter headings look very amateurish, the body copy is nicely typeset. The quotes are, to my taste anyway, typeset in too small font size, and could have been made a point or two bigger.

The many depicted paintings of Bible scenes make the book better.

Basic Content

The basic content is Seabrook’s own modifications of hundreds of Bible verses, so that they can support his view of the Law of Attraction.

There are very few references to other authors, and, what I have found (did I miss any?), no references to any academic works that would support his far-fetched renditions.

Writing Style

The writing style is quite good, in terms of English grammar. He adopts mostly an unpretentious style and he writes in the active voice, in a relatively clear manner.

Nevertheless, since he apparently knows the Bible and its stories well, there are often long discussions about not only the historical aspects of the Bible, but also about various persons and what they did or did not do or say or think.

In other words, since the general idea of this book seems to be to “undo” the mainstream teachings of the Bible, and instead promote the “secret” teachings of Law of Attraction, the book quickly gets tiring to read, especially since he does not present any credible evidence for his statements.

Overall Impression

There are many good things about this book. The author is a learned man, and many of the “insights” presented in this book may help some Christians to understand the teachings of Jesus in another light.

For example, a good feature is the discussion made in the section “Churchianity vs. Christianity”, where Seabrook points out that “much of institutional Christianity has become little more than ‘Churchianity’, with all of the emphasis on traditionally accepted religious rules, regulations, formalities, ceremonies, pomp, instruction, rites, and customs (p. 200).”

Another good feature is that the author is well informed about the history of early Christianity, where so-called Christians came in almost any shape or form, as so many academic scholars have previously pointed out (cf. Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, etc.). Thus Seabrook’s mentioning of, say, the Gnostic teachings is highly relevant.

Yet another good feature is that the author’s interpretations of the scriptures (whether these correlate to Jesus’s actual intention or not), on average, probably serves the reader better than the original standard KJV version anyway. For if the reader only follows Seabrook’s advice, then, according to the Law of Attraction, he or she would be more inclined to “succeed” in terms of his or her manifestations.

Nevertheless, I have quite a number of reservations. For there are several aspects of this book that simply feels strange (or “off”) to me. So I am going to try to communicate what those aspects are, and how they affect the bigger picture.

Too Many Notes

One of the major flaws of this book is that it tries to do too much in terms of “proofs” and “quotations” and “textual references”, while not caring too much about usability.

Seabrook presents 3,130 notes at the end of the book (pp. 447-521) to supplement the main text. This outrageous number of notes is not only intimidating for most readers, but it also makes the main text uglier and harder to read, since most notes have 3 and 4 digits each (note 702 and note 3012, etc.), and they therefore “break up” the flow of the main text.

A further consequence of this huge number of notes is that the book is heavier than it could have been. An alternative would have been to print the notes in a two-column format, so that the page count could have been reduced somewhat.

The Bible Verse References

Another point about these notes is that many of them are unnecessary and only make the reader’s task more difficult. The most obvious editorial decision would be to not use notes for any Bible verses, if those notes only contain the name of the book and its verse number. This is especially relevant in those circumstances where a quote is immediately preceded by a text that mentions the particular book by name.

So for instance, note 520 (“Jeremiah 33:3”) could have been deleted, and instead a direct reference to the verse could have been put in the main text, as is so often seen in scholarly Christian books.

Thus, in the main text, instead of the introductory sentence “In Jeremiah we find this wonderful passage:” (p. 91), the verse reference could have been added in this way: “In Jeremiah we find this wonderful passage (33:3):”, or, better, in this way: “In Jeremiah 33:3 we find this wonderful passage:”.

Admittedly, some references to Bible verses are not as simple as the one I mentioned above. Sometimes one note may refer to many Bible verses, and sometimes also additional information is given. Nevertheless, a quick estimation is that, say, 90% of the 3,130 notes are simple references to a single passage, and, as such, its reference could have been inserted into the main text itself (e.g. “Luke 2:49”), instead of being a note.

Is It a Quotation?

Another problem related to the notes is that all quotations are not actually quotations. The “interpretations” or “inner meanings” that Seabrook’s speculations have resulted in are also presented with quotation marks and note numbers. But when the reader consults such notes, they only say “My paraphrasal” (e.g., p. 330, note 1906). This is confusing for the reader.

This could have easily been avoided with an editorial decision to not use quotation marks around such “inner meanings”, since the indentation of that paragraph still makes it readable.

In other words, since Seabrook typically introduces these “inner meanings” in a consistent manner by using a short sentence such as “The inner meaning:” just prior, it is obvious to the reader that the following passage must be one of Seabrook’s own speculations. Thus, no note number is required.

Such editing would not only have made the main text typographically cleaner and the page count smaller, but it would also have made the book easier and less confusing to read.

No Real Textual Analysis

Yet another effect of this astronomical number of notes is that it really feels as if the author is “trying too hard”. So the question is: Why is he trying so hard?

One answer might be that Seabrook simply wanted this to be a very scholarly work. For in order to “sell in” the non-orthodox idea that Jesus was promoting Law of Attraction and not a Christian (or Jewish) worldview, then one must have a really good argument. And thus, perhaps, the idea of 3,000+ notes might have been born.

The trouble with such a scenario, however, is that most of the notes seemingly does not work as proofs in any major way, in terms of proving that Jesus was a follower of the Law of Attraction philosophy.

Why? Because there is no real textual analysis of the original texts done by Seabrook. Whether this is due to a lack of knowledge in ancient Greek (whether Koine or Attic variant) or Hebrew, or any other relevant language (Coptic, etc.) on his part, I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that if one were to rigorously prove that the statements made by Jesus were not what the KJV tells us they were, then one must provide a new translation, based on the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, and provide good arguments for a revised interpretation of the text.

In other words, one cannot just, as Seabrook does, say that “Jesus actually meant this instead”, without supplying a scholarly textual analysis based on the text in the original manuscript.

And it is my hunch that Seabrook knows this. So that might be the reason why he, in order to compensate for a REAL textual analysis, uses a “shotgun” argument approach instead; for that is one of the methods to use for philosophers who don’t have a good argument. So if that is what is going on, then the idea is that by supplying quantity, one may overwhelm the reader into thinking that one has a good argument.

In other words, if one can just find hundreds or thousands of quotes from the Bible and “adjust them” a little bit (to show that they all are really about the Law of Attraction), then the reader might accept that this huge conglomeration of “evidence” all point in the same direction. But, of course, this converging effect would only be seen BECAUSE the verses were “adjusted” in the first place. So nothing is really proven, after all.

Metaphysical Pseudoscience

As is so common in books on the Law of Attraction that are authored by human authors (i.e. books not representing the authorized version of Law of Attraction), there are often lots of references to “science” in various forms, in order to “prove” that the Law of Attraction is real.

Thus, in a section called “The Law on the Physical Plane”, Seabrook starts talking about Law of Attraction as a “scientific rule”, and continues to claim that “this fundamental material-spiritual truth has been repeatedly demonstrated by scientists for hundreds of years” (p. 58). And one such example, he claims, is Ampere’s research on parallel currents: attraction if same direction, repulsion if opposite direction (p. 58).

I am certainly not denying that Ampere’s research (or any other scientific studies) was important. But what does this have to do with the Law of Attraction, exactly? What has “parallel currents” to do with our thought processes, beliefs, emotions, and the universe? Does Law of Attraction only work when we are “parallel” to the universe, somehow?

In other words, it is easy to find scientific research that loosely has to do with the idea of “like attracts like”. But when it comes to a more detailed formulation of Law of Attraction, it is much less easy. In fact, it is more or less impossible to prove the Law of Attraction in a scientific way, since the Law of Attraction works in all physical and nonphysical universes, according to ALA.

Therefore, science cannot, neither in principle nor in practice, ever validate the Law of Attraction entirely, since it has no access to the spiritual realm. So supplying such loose analogies only serves to put off intelligent people, and to further “cement” their impression that Law of Attraction is nothing but metaphysical pseudoscience.

As if that wasn’t enough, Seabrook then, in another “shotgun” argument approach, continues to endlessly make the point that Law of Attraction is everywhere in the universe, in atoms and galaxy clusters and all places in between. So here he spends more than a page dishing out various scientific facts about atoms, electrons, elementary particles, fundamental forces, gravitational pull, galaxies and superclusters, and the like (pp. 59-61).

Even if all the details themselves may be scientifically correct, and even if science and the Law of Attraction really are compatible, it still transmits the same air of “trying too hard” that I previously talked about. Unless the argument is really solid and comprehensive (which it is not), no amount of such scattered scientific details or loose analogies will satisfy a truly intelligent reader.

So the fact that there is, say, gravitation, does not in itself prove the existence of the Law of Attraction. It is therefore not surprising to see that extremely few reputable scientists have any regard for Law of Attraction. For the existence of Law of Attraction simply doesn’t follow automatically from such scientific observations.

Is It a Freemason Book?

There is a certain strange “pompous” feeling about this book. And that is probably because it is written by a person (highly) initiated into freemasonry or some other such secret order of “Brotherhood”.

I base this on several observations. First of all, the “About the Author” blurb on the back cover and the “Meet the Author” section at the end of the book clearly indicate the role of “blood lineage” that is so prevalent among those who are part of secret societies. They are very proud of their biological heritage: “a cousin of King James”; “Grail King Merovech”, “Tiberius Caesar”, etc.

Another hint is the usual secret society idea to display various symbols. In Seabrook’s book, the most visible one is the coat of arms that is displayed on page 524, which houses all the typical secret society icons: the compass and the ruler, the triangle, and the four-triangle cross symbol of the Knights Templar.

Also, when doing a simple search for the texts “in hoc signo vinces” and “be thou faithful unto death” (both of which are found on that coat of arms), Google mostly lists pages and websites that have to do with secret societies: “The Crown and The Cross (Bricks Masons), “Sigma Chi – Initiation Ritual” (Stichting Argus), “Morris 1: The Masonry of Christian Knighthood” (mpoets.org), “Knights Templar, Lodge No 28, 1877 – Valparaiso, Indiana” (Flickr), etc.

And when we switch the Google mode to “images”, we then immediately see, as the first result that Google presents to us, a Facebook page with that very same coat of arms. Its Facebook name is “Southeastern Michigan Battalion” and on that Facebook page they then directly refer to the “Grand Commandery of Knights Templar of Michigan” as its corresponding website.

So this book is most probably written by a Knight’s Templar, who, presumably, wants to present a Knight’s Templar perspective on things.

RATINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This is not a book that represents the authorized version of the Law of Attraction. Rather, it is one of the many non-authorized versions.

However, it is still fair to say that many of its philosophical points do coincide with the authorized version. But there are nevertheless many reasons to stay away from Seabrook’s book.

The Secret Society Connection

The first is the observation that it is presumably written by a person in a secret society. How can that be? Why would a sincere Law of Attraction student need to be part of a Brotherhood? Or is he himself not a student of Law of Attraction, but is simply writing about Law of Attraction?

The whole point of the authentic version of the Law of Attraction is that it gives the individual the power to create his or her own world, without being part of various influential organizations (whether they are “brotherhoods” or not). For there is no real spiritual power in numbers (i.e. “connections”), although they, for material gain and societal recognition, naturally may be very lucrative.

The authentic student of the Law of Attraction do not need any affiliation with any “brotherhoods” or any other professional organizations. His or her goal is not to, at any price (or perhaps at all), become famous or rich or influential, or to “please others” or “be well respected”. So being part of some secretive, organized “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” scheme seems much too involved for such a student.

Rather, the authentic student realizes that the true task is an internal one: to become really happy and joyful first, on his or her own, WITHOUT anyone else being involved. And when happiness and joy is firmly established by the individual, then everything else will later be realized as well. It is Law.

Other Reasons

Other reasons to avoid Seabrook’s book are these. First, because it is written in a very dry style. Second, because it is too heavy. Third, because it is too expensive ($34.99). Fourth, because there is no bibliography, or subject index, or index of verses, or index of persons. And, most importantly, because it re-makes the traditional Bible into something else, without any comprehensive textual evidence to accompany it.

In other words, I find it hard to imagine that any reasonably intelligent Christian (or Jew!), including an emotionally intelligent one, would accept that everything, or almost everything, in the Bible is about Law of Attraction, as a result of reading this book.

Since mastering the Law of Attraction doesn’t just boil down to reinterpreting some 2000 year old texts, but is about the daily (every second of the day) management of one’s thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, this book does not really have much to offer, in terms of establishing a secure platform for spiritual development.

However, Jesus and the Law of Attraction might work as an introduction to the idea of Law of Attraction, after which the reader himself can graduate to the authentic works on the Law of Attraction, namely the many authoritative books and recordings by Seth and Abraham-Hicks, transmitted directly to us by our eternal friends in the spiritual world.

Rating: 50%

Chris Bocay

EPILOGUE

It is important for the sincere student of Law of Attraction to understand what I am proposing here. I am not suggesting that the student should start investigating or start protesting against secret societies or other such organizations that may be related to various conspiracy theories (some of which very well may be true).

On the contrary, I propose that the student should stay as far away from such topics and organizations as he or she can. For according to the authorized version of Law of Attraction any further attention to such topics may very well result in unwanted manifestations, especially when strong (negative) emotions are also offered at the same time.

The authentic practitioner of Law of Attraction should always remember that he is a child of Source, and that he or she is created by the same energy that effortlessly creates unlimited numbers of stars, planets and galaxies. We, as individuals, are therefore not powerless beings whimsically floating about in a universe created by “chance processes”. And we are definitely not at the mercy of any so-called “ruling elites” (whether they have any connections with secret societies or not). Rather, we are extremely powerful beings who all have the innate potential to create a wonderful life for ourselves, regardless of external circumstances.

But in order to do so we need to focus very carefully. For our goal here is only to learn the art of manifestation with our psychic powers (and not by hard work, or brute force, or any secret handshakes, etc.). And that is only truly possible if we learn to relax, let go, and become more and more care-free, so that we gradually can abandon concepts such as “responsibility” and “solidarity” and “justice”, etc.

So our job here is not to save the world, or save the girl. Our job is rather to stay as free, independent, and happy as possible, so that we can work less and play much more, since, as Abraham-Hicks usually say, “there is nothing serious going on” anyway.

As authentic students of Law of Attraction we also simultaneously need to learn to abandon any desires of being “well-respected” or “popular”, and in general learn to become less interested in what other people think, say, and do. The goal is not to be loved, but to learn to love. It’s the expression of love and the expression of appreciation that is the main thing. When we can love and like and appreciate 99% of the day, then we know that we are on the right track.

EDITION DETAILS

Title: Jesus and the Law of Attraction
Author: Lochlainn Seabrook
Publisher: Sea Raven Press, Nashville, TN
Year: 2022 [2013]
Edition: Updated version [original version]
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 526
ISBN-10 (a): 0-9858632-5-0
ISBN-10 (b): 0985863250
ISBN-13 (a): 978-0-9858632-5-8
ISBN-13 (b): 9780985863258

Note especially that the publisher has decided NOT to give the updated 2022 version its own ISBN number. This means that if the reader wants to order a paperback copy online, he or she will always be informed that the ISBN number is of the original 2013 edition. Whether or not the ordered book actually turns out to be the 2022 edition seems therefore hard to predict.

LINKS TO THE 2013 EDITION

NOTE: All links are clean (i.e. NOT affiliate links).

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