"The Secret" Is Out

The secret is out. "The Secret," the book that purports to reveal the secret of happiness, is dominating the best seller list.

DVDs are flying off store shelves, CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports.

"We have people come in and buy 20 to 50 copies at a time," says Harmony Rose Allor of the Bodhi Tree Bookstore.

The sales aren't the only thing out of this world. "The Secret," as revealed – rather, hyped – by Australian TV producer Rhonda Byrne makes an astonishing claim.

"You can have, do, or be anything," Byrne claims.

Want that necklace, a big house, a cancer cure? Focus on it, feel it, and the universe will deliver.

"I have seen many miracles take place in people's lives," Michael Beckwith says in "The Secret."

"It sounds kind of materialistic, but that's not what's really going on. It's simply what you think about, you bring about," Beckwith adds.

Actor Hal Sparks gave "The Secret" to his girlfriend Samantha Humphreys.

"And it worked," Sparks says. "It always does." "Like a charm," Humphreys adds.

Now she's in a loving relationship and visualizes her other desires. Things come to you when the universe decides, Humphrey says.

Extreme? No, mainstream. Even Oprah says she believes it.

And in Dallas, true believers gather openly for "Secret" meetings.

"The things that I truly want, they show up," Robyn Short says.

As New Agey as it seems, it's not new. In the 50's it was "The Power Of Positive Thinking." In the 60's, there was "Good Vibrations."

"This is old hot air in a new balloon," says psychologist Jerald Jellison of the University of South California. He says it offers seductively easy answers in hard times.

"I don't want to teach my child that they can just wish for a good grade and they're going to get it," Jellison says. "We all understand it takes work."

Samantha Humphreys will keep telling her friends "The Secret." No one says to her that it's ridiculous "because you have nothing to lose," she says.

And that could be the secret to its unbelievable success.