James Arthur Ray, an Oprah-endorsed motivational speaker who spent two years in prison for manslaughter after the 2009 deaths of three people in a sweat lodge, the culmination of a three-day spiritual program he led in the Arizona desert, died on January 1, 2009. 3 in Henderson, Nev. He was 67.
His brother, Jon Ray, announced the death on social media. He did not say where in Henderson Mr. Ray died or give a cause, but he did say the death was unexpected.
Mr. Ray was struggling to succeed as a motivational speaker when he appeared in “The Secret,” a 2006 documentary made by Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne. The “secret” that Mr. Ray and others embraced was the idea that positive thinking can literally change the world in your favor.
Things started to happen quickly for Mr. Ray. He appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show, where she praised him effusively. Within months he was in front of a sold-out crowd of hundreds, then thousands. In 2008, he published 'Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want' with Linda Sivertsen, which ended up on the New York Times bestseller list.
He was, Fortune magazine declared in 2008, “the next big thing in the ultra-competitive world of motivational gurus.”
Mr. Ray combined self-help and professional development with a touch of mysticism – a powerful mix of Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey and Deepak Chopra. He was tall and charismatic, with an easy smile and just the right amount of self-deprecating humor to win over a crowd.
He offered a hierarchy of courses, some more expensive than others, culminating in “Spiritual Warrior,” a $10,000 retreat near Sedona, Arizona. After a series of endurance exercises, including prolonged fasting, the participants spent hours in a sweat lodge, where the temperature was high. rose above 150 degrees.
Mr. Ray hosted “Spiritual Warrior” several times, and some past participants had raised questions about whether he or his staffers had enough training to run a sweat lodge.
Yet no one was prepared for what happened on October 8, 2009. Mr. Ray packed about 50 people into a temporary structure made of a circular wooden frame covered with tarpaulin, about 23 feet in diameter and only five feet in the middle. . He poured gallons of water over fire-heated rocks and filled the hut with hot steam.
Although he told participants they could leave at any time, many later said they felt pressured by him to stay. Eventually, conditions inside became unbearable and the crowd poured outside; many people fell to the ground.
Someone called 911; a first responder later said the scene resembled the site of a mass suicide. Twenty-one people were taken to hospital.
Three of them died: James Shore and Kirby Brown were pronounced dead on arrival, while Liz Neumann died nine days later. Mr Ray was arrested shortly afterwards on charges of manslaughter.
The story became national news in a season of scandal; it shared headlines with the “balloon boy” hoax, in which Colorado parents falsely claimed their son was trapped in a large helium balloon, and the trial of Amanda Knox, an American student found guilty of murder by an Italian court on her roommate. (Her conviction was overturned in 2015.)
Ray's trial took place in the spring of 2010 and ended with his conviction on three counts of negligent homicide. 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, served in the Navy. The family later moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his father became a pastor and his mother, Joyce (Schott) Ray, managed the home.
Mr. Ray said the family was so poor that they lived in an office next to his father's church. But he also said his father's skill as a preacher inspired 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 Carchman. “He could really touch his community. He was my first wow.”
Mr. Ray attended Tulsa Community College but left before completing his degree. He went to work at AT&T, where he started as a telemarketer and advanced into training and junior management.
Part of the company's training program was based on the work of Mr. Covey, a professional development expert and speaker and author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (1989). Mr. Ray decided he could do something similar and left AT&T to start a company called Quantum Consulting.
Motivational speaking is tough and often thankless work, with most practitioners standing in front of the lunch crowd in Holiday Inn conference rooms. For more than a decade, so was Mr. Ray — until Ms. Byrnes included him in “The Secret.”
By then he had moved beyond self-help talk to include New Age philosophy and mysticism. He spoke about the lessons he learned from a Peruvian shaman and a Hawaiian spirit guide. Spectators paid thousands of dollars to hear him, often over several long days in large conference halls.
Those willing to pay even more were taken far beyond the conference center, on retreats that often involved intense physical and psychological exercises – leading to “Spiritual Warrior.”
Mr Ray's survivors include, along with his brother, his wife Bersabeh. Information about other survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. Ray was released from prison in 2013 and spoke professionally again the following year.
He was candid in discussing the events of October 2009 with his audience. And he agreed to be interviewed at length by Ms. Carchman for “Enlighten Us.”
“I am responsible,” he said of the sweat lodge disaster.
At the end of the film, he added: “It had to be done because it was the only way I could explore, learn and grow from the things I've done. Do I drink the Kool-Aid? Maybe, but the Kool-Aid works for me.”
