The Secret can't get any hotter, no one's telling.

t's selling like an elixir that promises everything but eternal life. Rhonda Byrne's book tops USA TODAY's best-seller list for the seventh consecutive week, and the companion DVD is No. 1 on Amazon's sales chart. It has captured wallets and water coolers like nothing else since Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown suggested Jesus was a daddy.

Oprah dedicated two shows to The Secret; Australian video producer Byrne has a roundup on how the mind can deliver a laundry list of goodies, from health to a helicopter. Saturday Night Live was quick to lampoon the book, while Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist Maureen Dowd invoked it while wondering if wishful thinking could lead to a change in the White House.

But such pop culture fascination leaves actress and minister Della Reese Lett laughing. "Child, The Secret hasn't been a secret since the times of Moses, if not before," says the former Touched by an Angel star, founder and minister of the Understanding Principles of Better Living church in Los Angeles. "But every generation needs a new way to look at things that have been around a while. I suppose right now The Secret is it."
Lett's church is one of hundreds of loosely affiliated metaphysical churches that have been around for more than a century. Their guiding principles are anchored to self-fulfillment via the power of the mind.

The number of American followers of these so-called New Thought churches (don't call them New Age) hovers around 200,000, which includes 100,000 who regularly attend the nation's 700 Unity churches, says James Trapp, CEO of the Association of Unity Churches in Lee's Summit, Mo.

What's particularly interesting about The Secret phenomenon is that beyond finding its way into millions of homes, it is in some instances getting the curious to step out of those houses and seek like-minded fellowship.

"We've got more people coming on Sundays than ever," says the Rev. Temple Hayes of the First Unity Church of St. Petersburg, Fla., whose small bookshop has sold 860 copies of The Secret. The church holds regular workshops using the book as a teaching tool.

Overall, services at First Unity have decidedly Christian overtones, with regular readings from the Bible and references to God and Jesus, although the latter isn't viewed as the Son of God. Communion is reserved for holidays such as Easter. Sunday staples include sermons (the preferred term is "message") and a moment of silence, which can be filled with any form of meditation.