Oprah-supporting motivational speaker James Arthur served two years in prison for manslaughter after killing three people in a sweat lodge that was the culmination of a three-day spiritual program in the Arizona desert in 2009.・Ray passed away on January 21st. 3 in Henderson, Nevada. He was 67 years old.
His brother John Ray announced his death on social media. He did not say where in Henderson Ray died or the cause of death, but said the death was unexpected.
Mr Ray was struggling to find success as a motivational speaker when he appeared in the 2006 documentary The Secret, produced by Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne. The “secret” espoused by Ray and others was the idea that positive thinking can literally change the world in your favor.
Things started moving quickly for Mr. Ray. He appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show, where she lavished him with praise. Within a few months, he was standing in front of sold-out crowds of hundreds, then thousands. In 2008, he co-authored Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want with Linda Sivertsen, which ranked on the New York Times bestseller list.
In 2008, Fortune magazine declared him “the next big thing in the competitive world of motivational gurus.”
Mr. Ray mixes self-help and professional development with a dash of mysticism, a powerful combination of Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, and Deepak Chopra. He was tall and charismatic, with a friendly smile and just the right amount of self-deprecation to win over the crowd.
He offered a more expensive tiered course than last time, culminating in a $10,000 retreat called Spiritual Warrior near Sedona, Arizona. After a series of endurance training sessions that included long periods of fasting, participants spent hours in a warm sweat lodge. The temperature rose to over 150 degrees.
Mr. Ray has presented “Spiritual Warrior” several times, but some past participants have questioned whether Mr. Ray and his staff have sufficient training to run a sweat lodge. Some people presented.
Still, no one was prepared for what happened on October 8, 2009. Ray packed about 50 people into a temporary structure made of round wooden frames covered with tarpaulin, about 25 feet in diameter and just 5 feet in the center. . He poured gallons of water onto the rocks heated by the fire, filling the lodge with hot steam.
He told participants they could leave at any time, but many later said they felt pressured by him to stay. Eventually the situation inside became untenable and the crowd spilled out. Many people fell to the ground.
Someone called 911. One of the first responders later said the scene appeared to be the scene of a mass suicide. 21 people were taken to the hospital.
Three of them died: James Shore and Kirby Brown were pronounced dead on arrival, and Liz Newman died nine days later. Mr. Ray was arrested shortly thereafter on suspicion of manslaughter.
In scandal season, the story made national news. This article covers the “Balloon Boy” hoax in which Colorado parents falsely claimed their son was trapped inside a large helium balloon, and American student Amanda Knox convicted in Italian court of murdering roommate. shared the headline with the trial. (Her conviction was overturned in 2015.)
Ray's trial began in the spring of 2010 and ended with a conviction on three counts of manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to two years in prison.
James Arthur Ray was born on November 22, 1957 in Honolulu, where his father, Gordon Ray, was serving in the Navy. The family then moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his father became a preacher and his mother, Joyce (Schott) Ray, ran the family.
Ray said his family was so poor that they lived in an office attached to his father's church. However, he also said that his father's talent as a pastor influenced his later career.
“He was very charismatic,” Mr. Ray said in an interview for the CNN documentary “Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall of James Arthur Ray” (2016), directed by Jenny Kirchman. “He was able to really impress the congregation. He was my first surprise.”
Mr. Ray attended Tulsa Community College but dropped out before completing his degree. He joined AT&T, starting as a telemarketer and working his way up to training and junior management positions.
Some of the company's training programs rely on the work of Mr. Covey, a professional development expert, speaker, and author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). I did. Ray decided he could do something similar, so he left AT&T and founded a company called Quantum Consulting.
Motivational speaking is often hard, thankless work, and most practitioners work hard in front of lunchtime crowds in Holiday Inn conference rooms. That too was Mr. Ray for more than a decade, until Ms. Burns put him in “The Secret.”
By then, he had moved beyond self-help talk to include New Age philosophy and mysticism. He talked about lessons he learned from a Peruvian shaman and a Hawaiian spiritual guide. Audiences paid thousands of dollars to hear him speak, often over several days in vast conference halls.
Those willing to pay more were taken to retreats far away from the conference center, involving intense physical and psychological training that led to “spiritual warriorhood.”
In addition to his brother, Ray's survivors include his wife, Bersabe. Information about other survivors was not immediately available.
Ray was released from prison in 2013 and was speaking professionally again by the following year.
He spoke candidly with viewers about the events of October 2009. And he agreed to be interviewed at length by Ms. Kirchman for “Enlighten Us.”
“I'm responsible,” he said of the sweat lodge disaster.
At the end of the film, he added: Are you drinking the Kool-Aid? Probably, but the Kool-Aid works for me. ”
