Mind, Inc.
The Key to Life.
1929--1939? Monthly
Camden, NJ (actually New York, NY). Editor: Robert Collier, editor; James E. Dodds, co-editor; D.C. Peck, associate editor.
Succeeds: How-7 (8 issues, 1928) Succeeded by: Mind Magazine (name change May 1932)
1/1, May 1929. 94 pp., $4.85 a year, or free with purchase (at $10.00) of a share of stock in Mind, Inc.

This was one of the more creative of the success/prosperity New Thought journals – not in its explanation of how to harness the "subconscious mind" to affect reality, which was common to all such, but in its financial structuring of the flow of money from the hopeful, aspiring student to the pockets of the master. The journal was simply an extended advertising brochure for the editor's lessons and "Mind, Inc. Centres," which was precisely what the Post Office's regulations had sought for half a century to ban, but the sales pitch was overlaid with extended articles and fiction reprinted (presumably cheaply or for free) from other journals and books. The Post Office's requirement of a bona fide subscription list, similarly, was circumvented by enticing readers to buy shares in Mind, Inc. ($10.00) which entitled them to a year's subscription ($4.85) in the journal and to discounts on the editor's lessons and books. If the journal is to be believed, more than 800 people became "Founders and Owners of this Magazine" and thus bona fide subscribers. In these halcyon days before the Securities Act of 1933, no mention was made of profit distribution, salaries of officers and employees, and the like, but at minimum the structure made the shareholders pay to receive Collier's promotional material.

The journal followed a set format in each issue: an article by Collier on how to achieve success and prosperity, complete with exercises for the reader to accomplish those goals, popular stories of the success of businessman (and -women) who had overcome adversity and poverty, testimonials from satisfied readers ("The first year after studying your books, I made over $2,000.00 in addition to my salary. Duplicated that the second year," etc.), "Reports from Mind, Inc. Centres" (of which there were more than 20) which recounted stories of success within the groups from following Collier's precepts, premiums and coupons that discounted the price of Collier's books and lessons, all offered "on approval" to allow readers to experience success without risk. In the early issues there were similar lessons by Richard Lynch, author of Mind Makes Men Giants and Man and His Powers. He had been a student of Myrtle and Charles Fillmore's Unity and founder of a Unity Society in New York, and seems initially to have been Collier's partner in the journal. The journal carried few advertisements other than ones for Lynch's and Collier's offerings, though at least one full-page advertisement for AMORC appeared. In addition to this, the journal carried lengthy reprints of stories and articles by Algernon Blackwood, Pelley, Georges Clemenceau, Frank R. Adams, Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey, Oscar Wilde, F. Marion Crawford, Arthur Conon Doyle, and the like.

Robert J. Collier (1885-1950) was a scion of the Collier's magazine family (he was a nephew of the founder) and there learned the book trade. His interest in the self-improvement side of New Thought is said (by Charles S. Braden in Spirits in Rebellion) to have come about when he sought to cure an attack of ptomaine poisoning with the nostrums of metaphysical literature although he had no association before or thereafter with New Thought. Whether or not the story is true, by 1922 Collier he was publishing (as Robert Collier Book Corp. of Ramsey, New Jersey) the 12 volumes of W.W. Atkinson's and Edward E. Beals' "Personal Power" books, and by 1925 was writing the first of the books and lesson series that made him rich, most importantly the seven volumes of The Secret of the Ages, published privately in 1926 (with a prominent disclaimer that it had "no connection with P. F. Collier & Son," the publisher of Colliers) and still in print. (Braden says that Collier received $1 million in orders in the first six months. By the time of his death in 1950 he had sold more than 300,000 copies of the book.) He soon realized the importance of internalizing his advertising costs and in January 1928 started How-7, a journal that followed the format later adopted for Mind, Inc., with the exception of rather lurid pulp-magazine covers. This venture was almost certainly the source of the subscribers / shareholders of his later venture. For a man who never openly associated with New Thought, his influence on it was substantial. In 1929 he first published in book format William Dudley Pelley's Seven Minutes in Eternity, and reprinted in this journal that and several other of Pelley's stories. Frank B. Robinson, publisher of Psychiana, in his Autobiography, noted that Secret of the Ages helped "open the way I was trying to tread," and Collier returned the favor by advertising in Robinson's journal.

Collier addressed the journal and his books to those experiencing a lack in their lives: "Then what did you come for? Shall I tell you? You came because you are not satisfied with the progress you have been making. You came because you want more of the good things of life -- more money, more opportunity for expression, more happiness. You came in the hope that some of the methods which have worked such wonders for others might open the way for you, too. . . . We can give you methods that have brought others success. . . . But to become a real success, you must know the reasons back of these methods. . . . You can do it. It takes only a fuller understanding of and working with the Law. The Lessons and Exercise which follow are the first step," etc. Everything depended on the universality and omnipotence of Mind and the control of the all-powerful Subconscious Mind by the properly instructed Reasoning Mind. The student was taught to determine what he really desired (money, success, health) and to create a powerful visualization of the desired object with the imagination. This then acted as a "Life Magnet" (the title of one of Collier's series of lessons), drawing to the student the desired object from the plenitude and benevolence of the Mind. "Tell the Man Inside You what you want, then let him bring it to you." Collier nowhere attributes his ideas to his New Thought predecessors, citing instead various contemporary psychologists, like William James, and rejected Christian Science as a source. "The books are not based on Christian Science, but upon the same source of instruction that Mrs. Eddy used -- the scriptural writings. As I read the scriptures I see them as a book of instruction, teaching us how to become sons of God; how to grasp the dominion He has given us, and that is what I've tried to bring out in ‘The Life Magnet' books."

Collier seems to have left the journal in 1932, when the editorship was taken over by James E. Dodds, and although it continued until 1939 at least no issues are known after 1933. INTA; LOC.

IAPSOP materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
IAPSOP respects people's privacy and personal data rights.