On Oct. 8, a self-styled spiritual leader named James Arthur Ray led participants through a two-hour sweat-lodge ceremony in Sedona, CA, a ceremony which was supposed to be a rebirthing exercise. Many began vomiting or passing out during the ordeal, and by the end of the ceremony, twenty-one people had to be taken to hospitals by emergency crews, and three died. (NY Times, 10/22/09, pp. 1 and A4)
The sweat-lodge ceremony was part of a five-day “Spiritual Warrior” event. Participants were required to spend 36 hours in the desert without food or water, on a “vision quest,” followed by a light breakfast and then the sweat-lodge ceremony. According to one participant, Ted Schmidt, some people left and others wanted to leave, but Ray “was very intimidating” and discouraged people from leaving. Ray told participants, “Play full on, you have to go through this barrier.”
Who is James Arthur Ray, anyway? Based in Carlsbad, CA, Ray is a new-age guru with a company called James Ray International, which made $9.4 million in 2008 from various seminars, videos, and books. Ray drew a lot of attention from his appearance in the popular film “The Secret,” which focused on reaching goals, both personal and financial. The Spiritual Warrior event cost participants $9,695.
Seemingly undaunted by the deaths in Sedona, Ray continued to provide spiritual leadership at events. At a seminar in Denver this past Tuesday, he was interrupted by two men who shouted, “Tell them the truth!” and “You control poeple! You stood in front of the door and refused to let people leave!” Ray responded by saying, “I, too, want answers and am cooperating with authorities.” He then asked for a moment of silent prayer for those who had died.
That such an tragedy should have happened is reprehensible. Ray is responsible for these deaths, and I feel certain that he will be charged with some variation or other of homicide. But the larger question that remains with me is, why did so many people ever allow this travesty to occur? To answer this question, we must explore the present state of the human psyche, and try to understand why so many people are rendered so vulnerable so much of the time.
There is not space in this weekly reflection to go into the depth needed to properly explore the answer to my question, of course, but given such a restriction, I want to suggest some ways of thinking about this phenomenon that has occurred:
(1) People in contemporary time have lost their god, and they suffer from the fear and emptiness of that loss. They have substituted bread and circuses, but have found these lacking, ultimately.
(2) Many people are desperately looking for answers to their emptiness and the lack of meaning in their lives, and they will follow almost anyone who promises to give them answers. They fail to look for something as simple as credentials.
(3) People are social creatures who will “follow the crowd” in spite of the evidence of their own flesh to the contrary. (Contrary to Ray, vomiting and fainting are not signs of spiritual healing.) And they will follow the authority figure.
(4) Many people believe that if you pay a lot of money for something, it will be worth a lot, failing to evaluate an experience for its intrinsic worth. One of the first signs of corruption in a spiritual leader is the high price (money and sometimes sex, always strict obedience) they require from their followers.
(5) It is easier for people to project wisdom and goodness upon a leader than to find it within themselves.
(6) It is easy for any spiritual leader who gains a following to begin to believe his own PR–and that is a spiritual dead-end. It’s fine to seek help from a spiritual leader, but try to recognize one when you see one. They should manifest the qualities of humility, peace, compassion, and justice-seeking instead of self-seeking. They should be reality-based, living on this good, green earth and not in some imagined realm someplace else.
This incident makes me so sad for all of us, for our longing to be whole, for our wish to give ourselves to something greater than ourselves, for our genuine need for rebirth. Makes me feel like the Catcher in the Rye.
