James Arthur Ray, an Oprah-endorsed motivational speaker who spent two years in prison on murder charges after the deaths of three people in a sweat lodge in 2009, was the culmination of a three-day spiritual program he led in the Arizona desert, He died in January. Henderson, 3 in Nevs. He was 67 years old.
His brother, John Ray, announced his 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 espoused was the idea that positive thinking can literally tilt the world in your favor.
Things began to move quickly for Mr. Ray. He appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show, where she praised him highly. Within a few months he was standing in front of a crowd of hundreds, then thousands. In 2008 he published “Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want”, written with Linda Sivertson, which reached the New York Times best-seller list.
Fortune magazine declared in 2008 that he was “the next big thing in the highly competitive world of motivational gurus.”
Mr. Ray blends self-help and business development with a blend of mysticism – a powerful blend of Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, and Deepak Chopra. He was tall and charismatic, had an easy smile and enough self-deprecation to win over a crowd.
He offered a hierarchy of courses, each more expensive than the last, culminating in the “Spiritual Warrior”, a $10,000 retreat near Sedona, Ariz. After a series of endurance exercises, including extended fasting, participants spent hours in a sweat lodge, where temperatures climbed above 150 degrees.
Mr. Ray presented “Spiritual Warrior” several times, and some past participants had questioned whether he or his staff members had adequate training to run a sweat lodge.
Still, no one was prepared for what happened on October 8, 2009. Mr. Ray packed about 50 people into a makeshift structure made of a round wooden frame covered with tarpaulin, about 25 feet in diameter and only five feet on center. , He poured gallons of water on the hot rocks from the fire, filling the lodge with hot steam.
Although they told participants they could leave at any time, many later said they felt pressured to stay. Eventually the conditions inside became unbearable, and the crowd poured out; Many people fell on the ground.
Someone called 911; A first responder later said that the scene looked like a mass suicide site. Twenty-one people were taken to hospital.
Three of them died – James Shore and Kirby Brown were declared dead on arrival, while Liz Newman died nine days later. Shortly afterwards Mr Ray was arrested for murder.
The story became national news in a season of scandals; It shared headlines with the “Balloon Boy” rumor, in which Colorado parents falsely claimed that their son was trapped in a large helium balloon, and the trial of Amanda Knox, an American student charged with murder for her roommate. Was found guilty in Italian court. (His conviction was overturned in 2015.)
Mr. Ray’s trial began 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, Okla., where his father became a preacher and his mother, Joyce (Shott) Ray, managed the household.
Mr Ray said the family was so poor that they lived in an office attached to his father’s church. But he also said that his father’s skills as a minister 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 Karchman. “He could really touch his congregation. That was my first wow.”
Mr. Ray attended Tulsa Community College but left before completing his degree. He went to work for AT&T, starting as a telemarketer and moving up to training and junior management.
Part of the company’s training program relied 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 found a company called Quantum Consulting.
Motivational speaking is difficult, often thankless work, with most practitioners speaking in front of lunchtime crowds in Holiday Inn conference rooms. For more than a decade, he was also Mr. Ray — until Ms. Byrnes joined him in “The Secret.”
By then he had moved beyond self-help talk to include New Age philosophy and mysticism. He talked about the lessons he learned from a Peruvian shaman and a Hawaiian spiritual guide. Audiences paid thousands of dollars to hear him, often over several long days in huge conference halls.
Those willing to pay even more were taken far beyond the conference center, on retreats that often included intense physical and psychological exercises – leading to “spiritual warriors”.
Along with his brother, Mr. Ray’s survivors include his wife, Bersbeh. Information about other survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. Ray was released from prison in 2013, and by the following year he was once again speaking professionally.
He was forthcoming in discussing the events of October 2009 with his audience. And he agreed to be interviewed extensively by Ms. Karchman for “Enlighten Us.”
“I am responsible,” he said of the sweat-lodge disaster.
At the end of the film, he said: “It had to be, because it was the only way I could discover, learn and grow through the things I did. Am I drinking the Kool-Aid? Maybe, but Kool-Aid works for me.”