13 years after James Arthur Ray's deadly sweat lodge, cults are still a danger

Today, October 8, 2022, is the 13th anniversary of the day that sociopathic New-Wage/McSpirituality guru/cult leader James Arthur Ray killed two of his followers: Kirby Brown and James Shore, and set in motion the death, nine days later, of a third follower, Liz Neuman. The instrument of their deaths was a fake and utterly reckless "sweat lodge" ceremony in Sedona, Arizona, that also injured dozens of other participants. The phony sweat lodge was the "final challenge" at Ray's pricey "Spiritual Warrior" workshop.

Ray, who had shot to fame following his appearance in the simplistic and crassly materialistic New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, was convicted of negligent homicide for the three deaths in Sedona -- and consequently served less than two years in an Arizona state prison -- but he was never criminally charged in the death of yet another follower, Colleen Conaway, at a San Diego Ray event a couple of months before Sedona.

Every year since October 8, 2009, I've commemorated the horror in Sedona on this blog, and this year is no exception. But this year, I'm going to inject some politics into my annual observation, because, unfortunately, cults and cultishness have slithered their way into American (right-wing) politics, and I don't think the threat that they represent can be overstated.

In a way, this is a tale of two Virginias, and I only hope that the Virginia I greatly admire will not be insulted by appearing in the same blog post as the "other" Virginia, for whom I have nothing but contempt. Let's get that "other" V out of the way first.

Virginia Thomas: there and back again -- from cult member, to anti-cult crusader, back to cult member
Today Virginia "Ginni" Thomas is best known as the conspiracy-mongering -- and possibly seditious -- wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence "Long Dong Silver" Thomas. But not everyone is aware that Ginni was once a member of a cult, and at some point became aware that it was a cult, and underwent "deprogramming," after which she became an anti-cult crusader for years.

The cult with which Ginni, then known by her maiden name of Virginia Lamp, was involved was a Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT): the now-defunct Lifespring, a product of the "human potential movement" that began in the late 1960s and came to fruition in the 70s and 80s. Lifespring was founded by several colleagues of Werner Erhard, the perpetrator of the even more infamous Erhard Seminars Training, or est (which later became The Forum, which later became Landmark Forum, which later became Landmark Education, which is now Landmark Worldwide).

NBC News was one of several media outlets covering Ginni's journey there and back again. A June 14, 2022 article on the NBC News web site offers a brief summary of what Lifespring was and did (and in the process, I couldn't help but notice, mentions Ray's "sweat lodge").

Lifespring, like NXIVM and “Sweat Lodge Guru” James Arthur Ray’s course that led to three deaths in 2009, are what some experts call Large Group Awareness Trainings, New Age self-help programs that paradoxically promise to deliver almost superhuman mental abilities that can be achieved only through total submission.

Lifespring put inductees through grueling multiday “educational” sessions where they were psychologically broken down. In a 1987 Washington Post exposé of the group, Thomas gave an interview describing one session in which trainees were made to strip down to bathing suits and subjected to body shaming.

“The emphasis was upon abandonment to an undifferentiated, unknowable other,” psychologist Janice Haaken and sociologist Richard Adams wrote in an academic journal article on Lifespring. They participated in a 1981 training in Seattle where they witnessed a man have a psychotic break while organizers berated him, concluding that the impact of the training “was essentially pathological” for even the people who enjoyed the experience.

Several trainees died, including a 27-year-old model who was refused medical attention during an asthma attack, leading to a $450,000 settlement with her family, according to a 1987 article in The Washington Post. The group, which claimed to have trained hundreds of thousands, went defunct in the 1990s after a series of lawsuits.

Following Ginni Lamp's realization that Lifespring was a destructive cult, and her escape/deprogramming, she became a force for good -- for a while, anyway. From the NBC piece cited above:

“When you come away from a cult, you’ve got to find a balance in your life as far as getting involved with fighting the cult or exposing it,” Thomas told attendees at a 1986 Cult Awareness Network panel in Kansas City, Missouri. “And kind of the other angle is getting a sense of yourself and what was it that made you get into that group. And what open questions are there that still need to be answered.”

It’s difficult to reconcile Thomas then and now, four people who worked with her at the height of her anti-cult activism through the late 1980s said in interviews. After she spent years trying to expose cults, these people found Thomas’ efforts to promote outlandish plans to overturn the 2020 results, particularly the text messages and emails in which she referenced false election conspiracies that originated in QAnon circles on the internet, surprising. Democrats and Republicans alike have said QAnon supporters exhibit cult-like behavior.

“Ginni Thomas was out there active in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and then she really went a different path,” said Rick Ross, a prominent expert on cults and a former “deprogrammer” who knew Thomas through their anti-cult activism. “I admire the work she did back in the ‘80s. And she should be given credit for that.”

No disrespect intended to Rick Ross, whose work I've long supported, and I've always been willing to give credit where credit is due, but isn't there a point at which today's awful deeds cancel out yesterday's good ones? In any case, at the risk of overstating the obvious, Ginni Thomas née Lamp is in an even worse cult now -- not just QAnon in particular, as noted by various media outlets that have explored her curious journey, but the Trumpcult in general. Ginni loves her Trump, and apparently the love is returned.

While Ginni Thomas is a high-profile example, her story isn't all that unusual; for many folks, susceptibility to cults and manipulation is apparently a lifelong condition, somewhat like traditional recovery circles claim is the case with alcoholism and other drug addictions. In my previous post, and in a different though related context, I quoted myself quoting my pal Jason "Salty Droid" Jones, but I think another quotation of a quotation of a quotation is in order here.

...None of this is really surprising.... As my pal Salty Droid has both documented on his blog and has mentioned in private correspondence, quitting one manipulative scam or scammer doesn't cure one of the thinking pattern errors that got them sucked in in the first place. "Manipulation causes susceptibility to manipulation as a side effect," sez Salty.

Indeed. A July 24, 2022 piece on the Business Insider site not only suggests that Ginni Thomas has "fallen back into old habits" but also offers some insight from cult expert Steven Hassan, himself a former cult member who worked with Ginni back in her anti-cult activism days. Hassan said he actually wasn't surprised by Ginni's apparent infatuation with QAnon.

"Ginni Thomas was in a cult, and anyone who has ever been in a cult is vulnerable to another cult if they haven't properly counseled and done their homework," Hassan said...

..."I haven't called [Ginni Thomas] stupid or crazy, which the media does, because I know that she's been unduly influenced into these beliefs. She's a very intelligent, educated person, but her brain has been hacked," [Hassan] claimed. 

With all due respect to Steven Hassan, while Ginni is almost certainly not stupid, she is, in my unprofessional opinion, bat-crap crazy.

Unfortunately, she's far from the only American who believes in QAnon's batty conspiracy narratives. A PRRI Report from February of this year revealed that nearly one in five Americans in general, and one in four republicans in particular, still believe in QAnon conspiracy theories. And Americans who most trust far-right "news" are nearly five times more likely to be QAnon believers than those who lean towards mainstream news media. It would be all be merely humorous, were it not for the fact that this deep toxic ocean of irrationality threatens to drown American democracy.

So you really can't talk about cults in general without injecting a little bit of politix in the mix.

Virginia Brown: turning profound grief into a force for good
Now we come to the Virginia I admire: Virginia "Ginny" Brown, mother of one of James Arthur Ray's death lodge victims, Kirby Brown.

The families and friends of the four people killed by Ray have all learned to cope with their losses in their own ways. One of the ways that Kirby Brown's family chose was to found a nonprofit organization, SEEK Safely to help educate the public, hold self-help leaders accountable, and hopefully avoid more deaths and injuries at the hands of reckless gurus.

Given the context of this post, I should probably emphasize that SEEK Safely is not a partisan political organization, the only connection with politics being an ongoing campaign for responsible legislation to rein in the self-help industry. Nor, contrary to what some might expect, is the organization anti-self-help. Rather, its message and mission center around empowerment, in the best sense of that egregiously overused word, i.e., by helping people make informed decisions when choosing to go the self-help-seminar route. I urge you to visit the SEEK Safely site, which is continually expanding. You will find a wealth of useful information, as well as opportunities to get involved if you're so inclined.

Yet another way the Brown family found to come to terms with Kirby's death, while helping many other people who are dealing with profound loss and pain, was through the 2020 memoir, This Sweet Life: How We Lived After Kirby Died, by Ginny and her younger daughter Jean. It is truly a lovely and haunting book, which I read shortly after it came out and have yet to keep my commitment to fully review here -- but never mind my own negligence; I urge you to read the book.

Before I wrap this up I also want to make the distinction between self-help cults (or cultlike organizations) and the whole QAnon/Trumpcult phenomenon, particularly regarding their respective followers. I think that many if not most of the people who get sucked in, to the point of harm, by charismatic self-help gurus have good intentions themselves, despite the malevolent intentions of the "leaders" they look up to, and that their original motivation for becoming involved is simply to improve their lives in some way. (This of course applies to those who get involved voluntarily and not because they were required to do so by employers or coerced by loved ones.) Many LGAT attendees are highly educated, high-achieving, even adventurous souls who like to challenge themselves and be challenged. Even Ginni Lamp Thomas, who was highly educated when she got into Lifespring, was reportedly drawn to the LGAT by a desire to improve her life.

QAnon, on the other hand, attracts a wide range of fringe "thinkers" and nutcakes, many of whom aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, and it's also a convenient weapon wielded by power-hungry cynics who don't actually believe the wackadoodle conspiracy theories pushed by Q but are all too happy to exploit the gullibility of those who do believe. Unlike many LGATs, and for that matter the Trumpcult, QAnon doesn't have a single specific high-profile cult leader at the helm, but the conspiranoid narratives pushed by Q advocates are in many ways more destructive than anything any LGAT guru could wreak. And the Trumpcult, which is fed by and feeds into the Q cult, poses an even greater danger than Q alone.

That said, it would be a mistake to underestimate the danger of self-help cults led by malignant narcissists. Like James Arthur Ray, for instance.

For Ray, the daze of the four- and five-figure live events such as the Spiritual Warrior travesty that culminated in the death lodge would seem to be over, and that's a good thing. Though he has been struggling to make a comeback since his release from prison, framing the whole Sedona thing as a super-major trial and tribulation for him, his audience has shriveled like the balls of a long-time steroid user.

Today Ray merrily tweeted about something he calls "Steps to the Economy of Mind #5," which is apparently part of his "Modern Alchemy" shtick. He advises, "ONLY put things in your mind that cause YOU to improve." Spoken like a true narcissist. He didn't even mention the death lodge anniversary, not that I would expect him to, since putting that thought in his mind and out in the Twitterverse would most likely not cause him -- or his bottom line -- to improve, at least not by his definition of improvement. In any case, today's tweet, like most of his nuggets of wisdumb on Twitter, has earned very few likes, and zero responses so far. Even so, James Arthur Ray still has a fan base, and as long as he is in the business, he remains a danger, no matter how minor that danger may seem at the moment.

The takeaway: Whether it's a McSpirituality/selfish-help cult or a far-right political one, cults remain a threat. Do what you can to protect yourself and those you care about from their influence. (And make sure you're registered to vote, if you're eligible.)

And... never forget.

Related musings from the Whirled archives:

• March 2010: Self-help regulation: necessary safeguard, or Nanny-state nonsense?
  A long (and long-ago) post that explores questions raised in the wake of the death lodge debacle, regarding the need to regulate the self-help industry. Of particular interest for overall context of the "human potential movement": the segment under the subhead, "Going back in time: a little 'historical perspective." Several of the links are no longer active, but this is, after all, the Internet, and 2010 was a long time ago.
• October 2010: Musings on a tragedy and its meanings
  Another long post, published on the one-year anniversary of Sedona and doubling as a review of former James Ray follower Connie Joy's book, Tragedy in Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray's Inner Circle.

Tin Promises: How MLMs Can Tear Lives Apart, Part 2 of 2

This is the conclusion of "Roger Willco's" story about his life on the fringes of multi-level marketing (MLM) culture. If you haven't read Part 1 of this story, I suggest you do so first.

Sometimes, involvement with MLM -- and the self-help/motivational/LGAT (Large Group Awareness Training) culture that both supports and is supported by MLM -- can have tragic consequences. More than finances and relationships can be decimated; sometimes, on occasion, lives can be lost. In all fairness it is not a common occurrence, but it happens enough to be noteworthy...although even one occurrence would be too much.

We've seen tragic extremes in recent years with selfish-help guru and star of The Secret James Arthur Ray (who has been covered more than once on this blog and, in much more detail, on Salty Droid's blog). And tragedies have occurred with lesser-known gurus and LGATS as well, the link in this sentence being just one example.

Disastrous consequences have been a part of LGATs ever there have been LGATs. Group such as est (later The Forum, then Landmark Forum/Landmark Education, now Landmark Worldwide) have had their share of fatalities and injuries over the years, although one has to be careful how one frames these incidents, since Landmark, somewhat like Scientology, is notoriously litigious. The 70s-style "encounter groups" that were held in venues such as Esalen also spawned their share of tragic tales. One problem then as now has been that egregiously under-qualified "leaders" have been allowed to guide vulnerable participants through grueling emotional processes, sometimes leading to traumas or even psychotic episodes that the "leaders" have been utterly unequipped to handle.

Sadly, most people don't see or acknowledge the potentially dangerous side of LGAT culture or MLMs, any more than they see or acknowledge the cultish insidiousness that Roger documented so well in Part 1 of this narrative. When tragedy strikes, some will blame the victim, and others will rationalize the incident as an aberration, perhaps an unavoidable one.

I am impressed by Roger's even-handed treatment of the story below. He blames neither LGAT nor MLM, and certainly does not blame the victim or the victim's loved ones. He acknowledges the victim's mental illness and does not blame any external factors for that illness. At the same time he is forthright about what he sees as the roles that LGAT and MLM may have played in the tragedy.

It was difficult for Roger to write this story; he is still processing it, still trying to make sense of it. I am grateful to him for allowing me to share the story here.

I am also grateful to Roger for wrapping up his narrative by offering some solid pointers on how you can protect yourself from well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) people in your life who may be earnestly offering you the next great opportunity to finally live the life of your dreams. It is Roger's hope -- and mine as well -- that reading his story can help you see that those golden promises these people use to lure you are all too often forged of tin. And sometimes things made of tin have sharp edges and can hurt you.

One more point, since this has been a frequent topic on this Whirled of late: If you've recently been separated, either willingly or unwillingly, from serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's Global Information Network (GIN) MLM -- which was suspended on November 30, 2013 -- and you are now even remotely tempted by the siren song of ex-GIN principals who are offering you still more golden promises (in the form of, say, a chance to get in on a private phone call about The Next Big Thing), please make it a point to read this story, and Part 1, again. And then read it again, if you have to. It will be a far better use of your time than listening in on that phone call.

Epilogue: Tin Promises
Turn Deadly
by "Roger Willco"
© 2014, all rights reserved • Used by permission

The MLM culture I experienced included a symbiosis with self-help and prosperity cults, which seem to orbit its periphery in order to exploit a population made vulnerable by its already-suspended ability to think critically. The MLM events I attended often featured motivational speakers who encouraged listeners’ involvement in these cults. The pursuit of material wealth was central to MLM’s message; and high-level distributors pushed neophytes to read books and listen to audio programs authored by cult gurus. The relationship between MLM and cults seems to be a vicious circle. MLM promotes self-help and prosperity cults, which in turn, promote MLM. Some critics refer to this unholy syndicate as "The Big Sick Machine".

In our later years together, Danni had become so consumed by her appetite for self-help and prosperity-focused books and CDs that she accumulated sizable libraries of them. Always a student, Danni did her hour-long morning fitness workouts to the accompaniment of her CDs; and our hours on the road were serenaded by her chosen gurus’ voices droning nonstop over the car stereo. Danni called it our "university on wheels"; but for me, it was a disappointing change from her delightful and well-informed commentary about the natural and man-made wonders she noticed on our travels in happier times. I’d always been fascinated by Danni’s ability to identify any crop growing in a field a half mile away, describe its growing season and the weather conditions necessary for it to flourish. When it came to nature, she was a virtual encyclopedia.

Seminar madness
Four years into our relationship, Danni decided to participate in a "personal-growth" seminar offered in a distant city by an organization her MLM associates heartily endorsed. In late-night phone calls to me while she was away, she recounted a highly regimented schedule from early morning until at least nine o’clock at night and sometimes until eleven; and that regimentation extended to meals and bathroom breaks. Much of the curriculum Danni described made sense. However, I found the absence of trained and licensed psychological counselors at the exercises involving deep personal disclosure and other challenges to emotional vulnerability disturbing.

I was also concerned about the virtual deification of the program’s leader among his followers. It was the same sort of reverence MLM participants seemed to have for their companies’ founders. After her return home, Danni began to receive CDs from the seminar’s producers through the mail. They consisted of motivational messages from their guru and his inspirational interviews with various prosperity gurus and MLM leaders.

Danni went on to attend three more seminars in the next twelve months to complete the series. Again, she described legitimate fear challenges that made sense to me. However, the schedules were highly regimented from early morning until late at night, just as they were in the first seminar.

Shortly before she attended her final seminar, I went with Danni to one of the program’s half-day introductory workshops. Throughout the workshop, I recognized the same sort of psychosocial deprogramming I’d experienced twenty years earlier in basic training at the beginning of my hitch in the U.S. Army. I saw firsthand the indignity imposed on attendees by an authoritarian facilitator—a tall, fit and stern-faced young man I’ll call "Adolf". Wearing a well-tailored grey suit and marching purposefully up and down the center aisle, he barked orders to his assistants and to us. The only things missing were shades and a flat-brimmed campaign hat tilted forward atop his shock of blond hair. I can’t recall that he cracked a smile at any point in the workshop—all in all, not my idea of a fun time.

At the end of the workshop, Adolf gave a recruiting pitch for the first seminar, complete with the fee "discounting" that is so familiar to anyone who’s experienced similar workshops. I don’t remember the claimed dollar value of the seminar; but it was in the thousands. By the time Adolf finished his spiel—"This course is worth $xx,xxx. How many of you would sign up today if we offered you this outstanding opportunity for $x,xxx?" —the fee had "dropped" to $500. Were I to observe a similar workshop today, I would recognize many clues that would suggest the organization was a cult. However, I hadn’t yet learned enough to realize I had briefly stepped into the cult netherworld.

I understand that the necessary purpose of military training is to ultimately reprogram new soldiers to follow orders without question, to overcome fear, and to make it possible for them to participate in the horrors of combat without intolerable guilt. However, I wondered what reprogramming participants in this series of self-help seminars underwent. Aaaah . . . but that was a secret.

Danni came away happy with the overall experience and with noticeable changes in her attitude—some that seemed good and some not so good. She was more self-confident; but she had also become recalcitrant in her refusal to accept any information coming from outside her cultural bubble or which countered her MLM-prescribed biases. Danni’s ability to think critically about anything coming from inside her bubble seemed to be completely wiped out. One positive was her inclusion in an accountability group, established in the first seminar. The group initially conferred by phone every week. However, that fell apart after just a few conferences. Regrettably, Danni was also $12,000 poorer for her adventure.

Start them young...
A few months later, Danni’s 17-year old son, Ethan, signed up for the first in the cult’s series of seminars—this particular one tailored to adolescents. He too came away happy that he’d attended and convinced he’d gained a lot from it.

Fast-forward four years. Ethan was doing exceptionally well in college. He was brilliant, talented, athletic, highly motivated and self-directed—much like his mother. Amid all this good news, came one piece of bad news. Ethan had begun exhibiting episodes of bizarre behavior that prompted his dad to have a psychiatrist examine him. The doctor’s diagnosis was "high-functioning schizophrenia". Ethan was never able to accept his disease; and tragically, he declined treatment.

Note: I don’t for a moment think that his years-earlier encounter with the self-help cult was the cause of his illness. Schizophrenia is an organic disease of the physical brain, not an environmentally induced disease of the intangible mind.

It wasn’t long after Ethan’s struggles came to light that Danni and I terminated our relationship. We had stayed in touch; and a year later, we were working to salvage our long-standing friendship from the wreckage of our failed relationship. I had relocated to a nearby community where I was rebuilding my life. My anger had resolved into a determination to help others avoid the devastation I’d seen victims of that industry suffer; and my motivation had turned from vengeance to compassion.

One evening, while relaxing after a day of writing and online research, I received a call from Danni. In a trembling voice, barely understandable through her agonized sobs, she told me what she could of a story that broke my heart.

The prior weekend, Ethan had been invited to help staff an initial mini-seminar sponsored by the same cult he was confident had helped him so much in the past. It was held several hundred miles from where Ethan lived, so he stayed in the local sponsor’s home.

Sometime mid-seminar Ethan phoned Danni, upset that he’d violated his obligation to participants by sharing too much about his own personal struggles. In subsequent calls to her over the next several days, he told her that he was [obsessively] studying the cult-founder’s written manifesto. Apparently, no facilitator, seminar staffer or his host realized that Ethan was in emotional crisis. They simply didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to recognize it.

After the seminar, Ethan returned to his home near the university he attended. By midweek, his continuing bizarre behavior had alarmed his long-time girlfriend. She phoned her dad, who owned the house in which they were living; and he came over to tell Ethan he’d have to find someplace else to live until he got some psychiatric help.

Danni received another call from Ethan that morning in which he told her of his unraveling situation. She was out of town for the day; but she reassured him with an invitation to move in with her until his circumstances stabilized. That call would be Ethan’s final communication with anyone in his family.

An hour later, a friend of Danni’s, Joanne, arrived at Danni’s house to feed her menagerie of birds and cats. As she let herself into the house, she noticed Ethan sitting on the front room sofa, reading aloud from the cult guru’s manifesto as if delivering a sermon. As a puzzled Joanne wished him a good morning, Ethan, without acknowledging her greeting or saying another word, set his book on the coffee table, pulled a small-caliber revolver from his backpack and pressed its muzzle against the right side of his upper neck. Joanne, now panicked, ran back outside and to the house next door to call 9-1-1. At almost the same moment the spring-loaded screen door slammed shut with a bang behind her, she thought she also heard a second report that sounded to her like it could have been a gunshot.

Minutes later, police found Ethan, slumped onto his left side on his mother’s sofa, his legs askew and dangling to the floor. He wasn’t breathing. His book was open, face down on the coffee table—almost as if he had intended to pick it up again, and his handgun lay beside him on the sofa cushion near his empty right hand. The officers found a nearly bloodless gunshot wound just below and behind his right ear. His handgun’s deadly missile had obliterated his brainstem and Ethan had died instantly.

So ended the life of an amazing young man, full of promise, full of care for everyone whose life he touched, and loved by all who knew him. Hundreds attended Ethan’s memorial, listening to his grieving friends and brothers tearfully recount his delightful personality, his intellectual curiosity, his openness, his honesty and his ability to think outside the box.

Months later, Ethan’s closest friends and family gathered once more—this time aboard a borrowed yacht. They silently sailed on a gentle breeze into the deep waters of the ocean Ethan so loved. They ceremoniously scattered his ashes on the water’s surface, consigning his physical remains to the sea and locking their memories of him forever in their hearts.

Questions left unanswered
Ethan left no written communication explaining his decision to end his life. As is always the case, his family and friends sought some—any—explanation for his unexpected passing. Estranged from Ethan’s family and alone with my grief, I began my own analysis of what might have led to Ethan’s decision to leave a life that had become for him, too painful, for a more peaceful place.

My opinion is heavily colored by emotion and should by no means be considered anything more than that of an acknowledged layman. I’m just someone with a penchant for logic who loved Ethan and is trying to understand why he died. However the circumstances involved, from the beginning of my life with Danni to the end of Ethan’s life, lead me to conclusions which more than any other, make sense to me.

There’s no question that Ethan’s untreated psychosis was the ultimate cause of his suicide. That fact cannot be obscured by the other circumstances surrounding his death. There was nothing his family or friends could have done to prevent it. Ethan’s choice to refuse treatment was his alone. This written story is available to Danni; and if she ever reads it, I want her to understand that this reality is incontrovertible. No person on this planet—not even Danni—had the power to change Ethan’s tortured thought processes without his permission.

Beyond that all-important recognition, it seems apparent that Ethan’s final psychotic episode began while he was staffing a self-help seminar the weekend before his death. In my opinion, Ethan’s cult-related activities’ proximity in space and time to his suicide point to its contribution—at least as a triggering factor.

None of us who knew and loved Ethan could have predicted his life would end this way. Maybe he didn’t really have to die. Maybe Ethan died, in part, because of the dangerous mind-bending stress that self-help cults impose on their followers without appropriate knowledge and expertise.

The unacknowledged and deniable link between MLM and self-help cults isn’t intuitively recognizable . . . it all seemed harmless enough to me at the time. However, there’s an observable and documented connection.

MLM is allowed to flourish because agencies of our state and federal governments charged with protecting the public from fraud have abdicated their responsibility to understand and counter the economic and social tolls the MLM industry exacts from its victims. Because it flourishes, mind-control cults do as well.

Our government regulators fail to act because they are in reality us; and we as a nationwide community, choose to tolerate these predatory enterprises. Until we stop tolerating their malignant abuses, the MLM industry will continue to feed pernicious mind-control cults with ready victims. One thing is certain: The consequences of our tolerance reach far beyond the economic and social costs to victimized members of our community. The chain of contributing factors to Ethan’s suicide extends all the way to us—Americans whose love of freedom sometimes leads us to forget our responsibility to prevent exploitive abuses of our blood-bought liberty.

That is why I’m making this very private story public. It’s a story my conscience won’t permit me to leave untold. I’ve changed the names of victims, kept undisclosed the identity of perpetrators and altered details of Ethan’s suicide to protect the privacy of innocent people who’ve already suffered far too much.

However, this story couldn’t be more real. The tragedy of what happened to Ethan and Danni, and the pain Ethan’s family and friends suffered at having to tell him "goodbye" much too soon doesn’t have to be a complete and total waste. If their story can help persuade a reluctant public to put an end to the MLM deceptions that all too often entice our innocent neighbors onto a disastrous path, at least some good can come of it.

The path begins with glittering golden promises. However, it’s also a path which at least 99% of the time leads to financial loss . . . a path which if followed farther, leads to financial and social ruin, revealing the golden promises of MLM as counterfeits made of tin . . . and a path which can end in devastation. In Ethan’s case, those tin promises were ultimately deadly. Maybe Ethan didn’t have to die . . . but he did; and from where I stand, it looks very much like we, as an unenlightened community, let it happen.

Peace … Out [Ethan’s favorite sign-off]

"It’s not that we can’t do something about it . . . it’s just that we haven’t." — Salty Droid

Protect Yourself: How Being Tough
Can Keep You Out of Trouble

As long as "caveat emptor" remains the public’s only effective protection from business-opportunity fraud, there is one protective solution available to individual consumers. It’s amazingly simple and fair to all concerned, it’s perfectly legal and it’s part of the due diligence aspiring entrepreneurs in any other setting exercise when contemplating a business proposition.

Here’s the technique: Simply state to the seller at the outset of their pitch that as a condition of doing business with them, you need to see a true copy of their most recent income tax filing for the business into which they’re inviting your participation. If their tax form—usually an IRS schedule C—showing their net (taxable) profit—line 31on Schedule C—is positive, the proposition may merit further investigation, although you’re not necessarily safe. If on the other hand, line 31 indicates a net loss, you’d be wise to assume that you too would sustain net losses in the same business.

Unquestionably, this is a difficult demand to make on a friend or family member—the persons most likely to offer you a home-based business opportunity. They will probably tell you in all honesty that they haven’t been in business long enough to make a profit. That’s OK. Just ask to see the same documentation from the person directly above them in their upline. Keep going until someone up the line is able to produce a qualified document. Only three in every thousand MLM distributors make a net profit; and chances are, you’ll get a flat refusal before you get to someone who can show bona fide proof of profitability.

Deceptive business-opportunity sellers will make up all kinds of excuses for refusing to cooperate. Nevertheless, if you are persistent in your demand for valid proof of profitability, their excuses won’t sway you; and malevolent sellers will look for another mark somewhere else.

Cautions:

1. Don’t accept substitute documentation. The penalties for filing fraudulent income tax returns are sufficient to give you some assurance of a filed IRS document’s legitimacy.
2. If at any point you’re told that having a home-based business allows them (and you) a way to write off ANY non-business related expenses, walk away. The person who’s giving you that information is committing tax fraud. Would you really want to be in business with someone of that ilk?
3. Don’t allow yourself to be drawn into a conversation with anyone in your prospector’s upline until your demand is met and you’ve actually seen the document. Most often, that third person has specific expertise in deceptive tactics that will dissuade you from true due diligence so they can close the sale. Don’t allow it under any circumstances!
4. Before you sign anything, require your prospector to provide you with a certified photocopy of the IRS document they show you as proof of their business’ profitability that you can retain for your records. This gives you written documentation of fraud if it turns out your prospector sold you a bill of goods.
5. Finally, don’t be drawn into ANY proposition that promises quick or easy material wealth, a fast track to emotional health or to success in any aspect of life. It’s safest to assume those propositions are fraudulent and predatory. I can’t say there are no exceptions. However, I can honestly say that I’ve never encountered one.

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Self-help regulation: necessary safeguard, or Nanny-state nonsense?

Here's another post I've had in the hopper for a few months. It's one of those more "serious" pieces. Frankly, I'd rather be snarking, but once in a while I have to shed the snark-skin and join the larger conversation. So on a whim, I dragged this thing out of the archives, shook the dust off of it, threw in a few updates... and, well, here it is. The focus of this post is not on "new news"; rather, it is a summary of various perspectives on the James Arthur Ray sweat-lodge tragedy and the self-help industry at large. The big issue it addresses, in an admittedly circuitous fashion, is one that won't go away: whether or not the self-help biz should be regulated.

As I've done with previous lengthy offerings, I'll warn you right off that, well, this is long. Painfully long, maybe, almost like an LGAT session (except free, and you can leave whenever you want). I know that the sensible thing to do would be to break it into two or more parts, but I wanted to publish it all at once, since it is, in a sense, paving the way to a multi-part post I will be publishing soon. But hey, at least I divided it into sub-headed sections. You can just read it in bits and pieces if you want. Feel free to skip over the stuff you already know (but at least read the "'historical' perspective" section. You might find it interesting.).
And remember, if screen fatigue threatens to make you as blind as a Russian wish dolly, you can always draw an extra pair of eyeballs on your lids, or, better yet, print this thing out. Just circle the links that look interesting to you and follow 'em later.
~CC

In the wake of the infamous incident that has alternately been called Death Lodge, Sweatgate, and the beginning of the end of the self-help industry as we know it, there's a big question being bandied about: Should the self-help industry in the U.S. be regulated? If you have Libertarian or pro-business leanings you might frame the question like this: Is throwing more legislation at the problems going to fix them, or will more stringent oversight simply strangle the industry? In lieu of government regulations, should there simply be more self-policing? 

These issues have been discussed in various ways on numerous other blogs and, increasingly, in the mainstream media, such as ABC's Nightline. CNN has tackled the matter too, one example being the link below regarding Deepak Chopra.

For a few who are involved in the industry – specifically, those who have engaged in online marketing scams – the question is moot because the party is pretty much over. The Federal Trade Commission's new disclosure requirements, implemented on December 1, 2009, have put a bit of a damper on deceptive online marketing, which, of course, has significant overlap into the self-help world, and not simply because most of the self-help gurus market their stuff online. There's also a "cultural overlap," if you will, as well, mostly in the form of some incestuous joint-venturing and cross-promoting. Also affecting some businesses were new credit card policies that became effective earlier this year. Thanks to those new regs, a few online scammers have had their merchant accounts canceled.

However, those new laws and policies were targeted to Internet marketing, not the stuff that goes on at week-long "spiritual" retreats. More than likely, none of the new initiatives would have prevented the tragedy at Sedona in October of 2009, the one in San Diego in July 2009, or any number of other deaths and injuries related to self-help events over the years.

In other parts of the world – Australia, for instance – there's a movement afoot to exert tighter controls on the multi-billion dollar self-help industry. If you've been hanging around some of the "critical" blogs for any length of time, you're probably familiar with the sad case of Rebekah Lawrence, whom I wrote about in September of 2009. Rebekah was a young Australian woman whose psychosis and resulting suicide in December 2005 have been linked to a Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT)/self-help program called The Turning Point. A couple of other suicides have also been linked to the same program. "Turning Point" seems an apt name, as the Rebekah Lawrence case, and the spotlight on those other tragedies, did indeed seem to mark a turning point in the way Australia deals with the self-help industry.

Even before Sweatgate made world news, there was considerable buzz in Oz about stricter regulations and licensing requirements. (On the other hand, the Aussies are apparently not having a lot of luck pursuing a formal parliamentary inquiry into the Church of Scientology. The stumbling block is that CoS is an organized religion, and Australia has much the same reluctance as the US when it comes to the state interfering with religion.)

So what about the good old U.S. of A., the epicenter of selfish-help/New-Wage/McSpirituality?

Right off the bat, I know a few folks who will say, "Hell, yeah, Cosmic Connie, the self-help industry should be regulated! Where have you been for the past few months?" Well, I've been right here in front of my computer, and I know that many have spoken out for more controls. One of the most vocal is Terry Hall at the Bizsayer blog. Terry and his wife Amy, a former employee of James Ray International, arguably have more inside information on which to base their opinion than do many of the rest of us. Helping to put the reins on the dangerous aspects of the industry has pretty much become the Halls' mission in life. In a December 2009 post Terry makes a case for regulation, framing it in a discussion of the retrospectively disturbing "waiver" form that participants in the fatal Sedona event had to sign. He notes that such waiver forms are common in the industry.

Terry further explains his position in a sidebar on his Bizsayer blog:

I am typically dead set against regulation of any kind. But, after the deaths caused by James Ray in Sedona I am changing my position for Seminars and Coaching Reform.

I want to see seminar companies licensed & regulated.

I want to see "coaches" licensed.

I want to see accurate results reflected in seminar advertising.

I want to see "fair business practices" defined for the seminar industry.

I want full disclosure of credentials, certificates, licenses and methods used during seminar programs.

(Here, by the way, is Terry's response to a detractor who apparently thinks Terry is just going to go away if James Ray is cleared.)

I think that at one point I may have exasperated Terry and perhaps some of my other allies by consistently expressing the opinion that the last thing we need are a bunch more rules, regulations, licensing requirements, and whatnot. Believe me, this opinion doesn't come from any lack of sympathy for the victims of self-help gurus, and certainly not from any sympathy for the victimizers. At any rate, in a comment he made this past January to my long James Ray post (comment #240, which may not show up on the initial screen), Terry wrote:

Connie,

It's interesting to see your shift about seminar regulation. The seminar/self-help industry is already subject to FTC guidelines and it has not prevented financial, emotional and physical harm to their customers.

The Real Estate, Financial Services, Insurance, Contracting, Massage Industries have been licensed due to their propensity toward unethical business practices and behaviors which have caused harm to consumers and the general public.

While licensing does NOT ensure the public is protected, it does provide a "code of ethics", "business standards & practices", "a barrier to entry", "a grievance process" and "stipulated recourse for violations" which serves to protect consumers from charlatans.

The $11,000,000,000 self-help & personal growth industry, in my mind has proven that it will not "self-regulate" and continue to take everything it can, including human life from their customers.

I replied:

Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Terry. Actually I haven't shifted on my position (not yet, anyway); being the quasi-Libertarian I am, my first tendency is to advocate freedom of information rather than more laws and restrictions.

Am I being too idealistic? Maybe. It is one of the questions I've been weighing since long before the James Ray debacle came to light. On the one hand, there is the prospect of a "Nanny State," which I find a bit unsettling. How far are we prepared to go to protect people from their own choices?

On the other hand, I realize that consumers aren't necessarily making *informed* choices when they sign up for an event and aren't told ahead of time exactly what will occur during that event. (The waivers that participants are made to sign don't count.)

I also realize that businesses have a tendency to try to get away with anything they can get away with in order to make a profit. Sometimes it does seem that it takes a heavy hand to keep this impulse in check, to prevent people from being scammed or physically harmed, and to give victims some recourse. 

So I can certainly understand why many people think there should be more regulation of the self-help industry. I'm just not prepared at this point to say the government should put a stranglehold on the industry.
I think the issue is further complicated by the fact that so many of the gurus deal in the realm of the spiritual as well as more mundane areas such as, say, finances and fitness. So I wonder if freedom-of-religion issues would come into play. [Kind of like the problems that Australia is currently facing with the Church of Scientology. ~CC]

The issues are complex and I am open to more discussions about this. And I want you to know, Terry, that I respect what you and Amy are trying to accomplish, and it looks to me as if you are both motivated by a desire to help people. 

On the other hand, another vocal advocate of regulating the self-help industry is the (in)famous Deepak Chopra, who seems to be more interested in protecting his turf than in protecting consumers. That's how it looks to me, anyway. My sense is that he feels that because he is an M.D., he would be insulated from any attempts to clip *his* wings. Never mind that in the opinion of many other M.D.s (and other folks as well), he is pushing an insidious form of pseudoscience...
Anyway, thanks for weighing in on this important issue.

Regarding Chopra's stated opinions on the matter, here is a transcript of his December 8, 2009 interview on Anderson Cooper 360. He seems to think the regulation needs to come from "within the healing professions: from psychotherapists, from spiritual pastors, from people who are offering these therapies; I think this needs to be done." Could this mean that he assumes that he would have a hand in those regulations for the entire industry? Shudder. Whatever you think about Chopra, however, he did tell Anderson Cooper that the Chopra Center performs a thorough psychological screening of clients, adding, "...suicides occur in hospitals; suicides occur even in intensive psychiatric therapy treatments and in facilities. So when people can escape the vigilance of such professional institutions, it's a bit foolish for people to think that they can take vulnerable people and subject them to intensive therapies without knowing their psychological status or their psychiatric background."

Moreover, there does seem to be a problem with certain types of "life coaches" practicing therapy or even medicine without a license, as writers such as SHAMblog's Steve Salerno have discussed extensively (and I've even touched on the topic myself). I realize there are many good, sincere, and qualified people in the life-coaching industry. Responsible coaches know when to refer their clients to therapists, and do so. It's the irresponsible ones we need to worry about.

But how do we determine what is "therapy" and what isn't? And do we really want the likes of Chopra deciding who can practice in the self-help industry?

When thinking about Chopra and other industry insiders who might possibly be in favor of more regulation, I wondered if more regulations might possibly have some unintended consequences for consumers as well as speakers or workshop leaders who might not have the "proper" credentials, licenses, or whatever (or, more realistically, the money or desire to join all of the "proper" organizations). Although the analogy is far from perfect, I couldn't help thinking of the recent discussion over IRS plans to regulate and control tax preparers in the U.S. Of that issue one blogger wrote:

Unsurprisingly, major industry incumbents have voiced their support for the new policy, because it will mean that they “won't be competing against people who aren't regulated”. Caught between increasingly burdensome taxes and IRS prohibitions on alternative services, taxpayers will have little choice but to do business with them.

Ah, the Iron Triangle between regulators, established interests, and consumers. Guess who gets the pointy end?

As I said, the analogy isn't perfect, but it's something to think about.

Another long-time advocate for more oversight of the self-help industry is John Curtis, Ph.D., founder of Americans Against Self-Help Fraud (and originator of the annual Scammy Awards, which, I imagine, will have some entirely new categories this year, thanks to Sweatgate). In the discussions on several blogs, including that of a pharmacology/toxicology expert who goes by the name of Abel Pharmboy, Dr. Curtis wrote:

It's easy to vilify Mr. Ray, however, the consequences of his actions are now in the hands of the judicial system... but what of the REST of the self-help "industrial complex?" I respectfully submit that we (consumers and producers of self-help) establish the Association of Self-Help Professionals or whatever name seems most appropriate to elevate the professional and protect the public. All that is lacking now is the motivation and leadership. If you consider yourself a self-help expert OR if you are a consumer of self-help products, I urge you to consider working together to turn the Sedona Sweat Lodge deaths into a legacy that salutes the work of the earliest self-help experts like Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, honors the efforts of well-intentioned, self-help professionals of today and turns the deaths of those who died in the Sweat Lodge... Liz Neuman, Kirby Brown and James Shore into a legacy for the betterment of the self-help profession and society.

On the discussion on Abel Pharmboy's blog, Salty Droid responded:

@DrCurtis :: I echo your cry that this incident be used to cast a harsh light on the "self help" "industry" as a whole. But I wonder if the underlying science is objective enough to keep an association from becoming a part of the problem over time. Bernie Madoff as the head of NASDAQ comes to mind. Associations have a dangerous tendency to become cartels.

On a discussion on his own blog (here's the link to the post, and you seriously need to check out his video on that post, if you haven't already), the Droid responded to an "absolutely nameless" detractor who seemed to be the same one who had made some snide and nebulously threatening comments on the blog previously. "Nameless" told Droid to "show some 'nads" and either come out and say James Ray is guilty of first-degree murder, or shut the f--k up. (This discussion took place before James was officially charged and arrested.) Droid responded that it is clear that James will not be prosecuted of first-degree murder, so that point is moot, and he is not going to shut up, because...

I’m much more interested in showing how this was a long term pattern of abuse :: how it was just business as usual. The public deaths were an above average mistake :: but they only serve to illustrate how dangerous and horrible the situation with ConMen has become.

Of course, showing “nads” on that subject will be super bad for all the other “gurus” :: because they would like nothing more than to label Death Ray [an] aberrant bad apple. But that’s not the case. He’s just one of many cogs in a sick machine.

And Droid is busily and happily attempting to deconstruct that machine even as I write this. It is a rare and wondrous thing to see a blogger who loves his work as much as the Droid does.

Defending the faith
Everybody and his or her dog knows by now that James Ray's defense team has been very busy, as evidenced by these "white papers" that were released to the public earlier this year. In case you and your dog missed it, here's the link to White Paper No. 1 and here's the link to No. 2. From the beginning it all sounded like "number two" to most of us. Nevertheless the legal eagles did their job with great care, meticulously painting James as a hero of personal growth and all of his followers as strong, educated, capable people who knew exactly what they were getting into and willingly did so. If anyone was to blame for the terrible accident, it was those awful folks who built that darn sweat lodge. Of course, as we now know, the whitewash papers didn't prevent James from being charged on three counts of reckless manslaughter for the Sedona tragedy.

While James Ray's defense and PR teams are doing their lawyer-ly and spinny stuff, and James himself continues his own bizarre nattering on Twitter, his colleagues in the self-help biz are still, for the most part, reticent. Although a few of his close associates and fans have steadfastly defended him and continue to do so, and beleaguered Aussie Secret star David Schirmer said early on that he is in James' corner, the silence among most of his colleagues has been deafening. With the exception of Deepak Chopra, who made the dubious claim that he'd never really, truly heard of James Ray before Sweatgate, very few in the top tier of the New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality industry have made any public statements about the matter. Most who have made public utterances have been as neutral (and yawn-inducing) as possible. Bob Proctor, for example, who was one of James' earlier mentors, said James is basically a good person who is dedicated to helping people, adding that he, Bob, hopes James will learn from the experience. (See what I mean? Yawn. Here's the link to the article quoting Scientist Bob.)

Several people have mentioned that so far there seems to be no official statement from the gurus' secret society, the Transformational Leadership Council (TLC), of which James Ray was a founding member. (I briefly visited the TLC when they were in Bermuda in July 2009, and mentioned them again in January of 2009 when discussing the New-Wage kinky-sex experiments of one of their esteemed members.) While there may be no public statement from the TLC, though, James Ray's name is no longer listed on the appropriate "Members in Good Standing" page. 

The discretion among the gurus is understandable, of course. While I'm sure that most of them would say they simply have better things to do with their time than focus on negative stuff, my take on it is that it's good old professional courtesy, and it's good business too. They want to keep all of their options open. If James is completely cleared of any wrongdoing, those who have any sort of joint-venture deals or cross-promotional schemes with him will want to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible. Should a genuine backlash against the current wave of self-help criticism arise as a result of James being cleared, he could end up being the poster martyr – a true hero in gurudom – and they'll all want a piece of that.

I know many of y'all think such a scenario is unlikely, and you may be right, but I'm not ruling out any possibility at this point. If he is convicted, then the gurus can officially cut all of their ties with him and either denounce him or just pretend he never existed. If he isn't convicted of criminal charges but has to spend the rest of his life and all of his resources defending civil suits, and is no longer a "player" in the New-Wage biz, they can still turn the page on him and forget he ever happened. For now, it's really better for them all around if they just sit on the fence.

But not everyone has been silent or even particularly discreet. A few apologists have shifted out of neutral, declaring that both the mainstream media and blogopshere critics have seriously overreacted to the tragedies. Sweatgate, some of these apologists claim, was just one isolated example in a basically benign industry. Well, okay, it was one of two examples, if you count the Colleen Conaway suicide at a James Ray wealth event in San Diego in July of 2009. Or...well, all right... it was one of maybe a few examples, if you count the broken bones and other injuries suffered by others during exercises at various James Ray events. (Naturally, all of those unfortunate events are neatly 'splained away in the aforementioned "white papers," and I'm sure the defense team is honing their 'splanations as I write this.)

I admit to a certain annoyance myself at some of the mainstream media for hammering away at this matter. But that's mainly because some of the same media outlets that expressed such shock and outrage over Sweatgate were the very same ones who provided a platform – essentially, free publicity – for James Ray and his colleagues for years, particularly after The Secret became such a hit. But I suppose I should keep in mind that the news divisions are more about ratings than about taking a stand, to say nothing of a consistent stand. ("Just like you, you incoherent, illogical little mosquito," I hear at least one of you muttering to me.)

Some defenders of the self-help industry claim that the critics are illogically arguing that because people died at James Ray events, all self-help is dangerous or destructive, and therefore the entire industry needs to be eradicated. Although in my opinion such an argument would indeed be illogical, the truth is that very few if any critics are actually saying they think we should do away with the industry entirely, and throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were. That is simply a straw man that enables some self-help apologists to more easily dismiss or demonize the critics.

As for the notion that the James Ray-induced tragedy is an aberration, well, see Droid's "sick machine" quotation above.

Going back in time: a little "historical" perspective
I think it's important to remember that at least some of those who have staunchly refused to criticize James Ray, or have even halfway defended him, are veterans of the untamed era of the early human potential movement. Long ago, though not so very far away, before the Internet and smart phones (yes, before cell phones, even!), some really crazy stuff was going on. Those were the days before est became The Forum and then the Landmark Forum, and the anything-goes formats of various encounter groups were shocking the buttoned-down world. 

Although numerous bloggers and mainstream journalists have written about the casualties of those early encounter-group days (particularly those associated with the ever-controversial est), I have a feeling that some people, particularly younger ones, still fail to realize how jaded these experiences might have made some of today's defenders of the faith. To some who lived through those wild times and participated in their share of wacko workshops, the techniques and exercises utilized by James Ray and others like him can be summarized in three words: No. Big. Deal.

But it's not just a generational thing; the same NBD attitude seems to exist among some younger participants in "experiential" workshops and other events that have sprung up in more recent years. To those who are into "extreme" activities, a New-Wage retreat utilizing potentially hazardous techniques is nothing to get hysterical about. And although I would like to believe that none of the older encounter-group veterans or younger workshop participants dismiss the Sedona or San Diego deaths as NBD, I suspect some of them think that participant injuries at an LGAT event aren't all that extraordinary. It's all simply part of experiencing life "full-on," as James Ray himself (in)famously liked to say. Yes, you might break your arm or shatter your skull or accidentally end your life. But if you survive, you just might have a breakthrough.

A couple of months ago I was re-reading a story that reminded me of all this stuff. Although I've snarked many times about Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale, I have enjoyed several of his books, including Adventures Within: Confessions Of An Inner-World Journalist, which he self-published through the print-on-demand company AuthorHouse in 2003. Adventures Within is sort of a spiritual autobiography, and I find it noteworthy for Joe's frankness about his early life as well as his personal insights into various LGAT and cultish organizations. To me it seems a far more honest work than some of his later books and many of his current writings.

In a chapter titled, "The Orange Blossom Train Ride (and Crash) of Rajneesh," Joe writes about his experiences as a disciple of the late guru, Bhaghwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as "Osho"). As you're no doubt aware, to call Rajneesh controversial would be erring very much on the side of understatement. A flamboyant Indian (of the Eastern variety) who owned not one, not two, but one-hundred Rolls-Royces, give or take a few, Rajneesh was easily one of the most notorious spiritual leaders of the 1980s. Even today, twenty years after his death, he has a worldwide following. As a matter of fact, one of the most vocal relatives of one of James Ray's Sedona victims has been known to quote from "Osho" on his Twitter page.

During the more than seven years that Joe Vitale followed Bhagwan, he ran Bhagwan's Houston meditation center, visited Bhagwan twice when the guru was in Oregon, attended some of his discourses, and arranged major publicity events for him in Texas. He writes that he became interested in Bhagwan's work while he was living in Houston and working as a truck driver in the late 1970s. (Yes, I know he says he was homeless on the streets of Dallas in the late 1970s, but perhaps that was the earlier late 1970s. On some of his sites he says he was homeless on the streets of Houston. I have just plain given up on trying to keep all of the stories straight. But that doesn't matter for the purposes of this story.) Joe writes that he received his official welcome-to-the-fold letter from Bhagwan, along with his new disciple name, Swami Anand Manjushri, in September of 1979. He used his disciple name in various capacities for years, even publishing his first book, Zen and the Art of Writing, under the name Manjushri Joseph Vitale.

Like most chapters in Adventures Within, the Rajneesh chapter is divided into sub-headed sections. In the section titled, "Broken Arms, Bloody Noses," Joe describes some of the intensive and extreme experiences to which Bhagwan's followers were subjected. There was, for example, the extraordinarily strenuous hour-long "Dynamic Meditation" that included a lot of maniacal jumping around, screaming, and the like. The days-long "encounter" groups were even more grueling, and offered a hefty dose of what most of us would view as extreme physical and psychological abuse. Joe writes:

Bhagwan's groups became known for their no-holds approach to growth. He attracted some of the most respected therapists in the world, people from Esalen and England, Switzerland and Germany, and Bhagwan gave these leaders freedom. The encounter groups were often so intense that arms were broken. Yet no one -- that I know of -- ever complained. They willingly signed up for the groups and, scared as they might be, willingly went through them.

Emotional and even sexual abuse were not uncommon either in the land of the Rajneeshees. Joe goes on to describe an "intensive" he attended at the Rajneesh meditation center in Austin. He didn't get any broken bones but did suffer a bad nosebleed while watching a new disciple be humiliated in front of the attendees by the group's facilitator.

The new guy was on all fours in front of the room, bare-chested, and two big men physically restrained him while the leader taunted him. The leader said, "Your wife slept with two other men last night. How does that make you feel?" (Rajneesh's groups were infamous for encouraging promiscuous sex, which was one reason Rajneesh was sometimes called "the sex guru.") As the hapless man struggled to free himself, the leader called for the two men who had allegedly slept with the disciple's wife to come up to the front of the room. They did, and the leader continued to taunt the man, asking him, "What do you want to do?" The disciple answered, "I want to f----g kill YOU!" and he lunged at the leader, but his captors held him firmly in place. The leader encouraged him to "feel the anger" and let it go through him. The man groaned and screamed and howled like a wolf, and finally he collapsed. "My nose was bleeding now," Joe writes. "We all watched as the disciple cried and cried. It was pitiful." 

Yet he adds that as tragic and insane as it sounded, the guy was transformed, "feeling better and looking happier" after the incident. Joe writes that the disciple needed to "dump his pain about his wife's infidelity before he could relax." (All of which just raises the question of whether there would have been any infidelity in the first place were it not for the sexually-charged environment of Rajneeshee culture.) 

Joe describes other incidents as well, such as watching while the meditation center's leader masturbated an attractive female disciple as about thirty other disciples sat in a circle around her. Since the female disciple was fully clothed, Joe at first thought the leader was doing some kind of "energy work" on her. Turns out he was right. He says that Bhagwan and his group leaders encouraged people to act on their impulses, whatever those might be. Joe writes, "This sort of freedom of expression, as you can imagine, got a lot of disciples in trouble." But he adds, "Despite the insanity in these groups, sanity was usually the result of them. In a paradoxical way the madness led to peace."

He explains that encounter groups "were popular in the sixties and are still done today," adding, "But none of them gave such complete freedom – nearly a license to kill – as did the groups sanctioned by Bhagwan." Joe wrote that despite his flaws Bhagwan was a "super-psychologist" and that there was "an overall divine purpose for going through such intense encounter groups." He adds, "After all, Hemingway said a broken arm is stronger after it's healed. And lord knows I was able to breathe better after the blood came out of my nose." No word on what the long-term effects were for that hapless disciple, though. One wonders if this man or his marriage became stronger as a result of his being cuckolded by his wife and then humiliated in a room full of people by the leader of the Bhagwan group. 

Of course, all of this took place a very long time ago, perhaps before some of the people reading this blog post were even born. Joe is no longer a Rajneeshee and has not been one for many years. He had been out of the group a few years at the time I met him. In Adventures Within, Joe writes that although he maintained his love for his guru even during the time Rajneesh's organization was being accused of embezzlement, sexual misconduct, political misdeeds, and even bioterrorism, he did eventually become disillusioned. He thinks Rajneesh was a genuine teacher with a sincere desire to serve, but let his ego get the better of him. "He put himself in a dangerous position – many would hate him, many would love him – but his life would never be ignored. Or forgotten," Joe writes. He says he is grateful that he wasn’t more involved with him; many folks left their families and work, sold all their possessions, and completely redirected their lives in order to be with Bhagwan.

In Adventures Within, Joe also has an interesting chapter about his experience with The Forum, the kinder, gentler version of est. As in the Bhagwan chapter, he describes intensive encounters during the long weekends of the course. At the end of the chapter he says he's glad he took The Forum but would not recommend it to his readers, for several reasons. He explains that too much time and energy were devoted to aggressive upselling and warns that you should "be prepared for a snow job" if you go to one of their introductory sessions. (I know: the grousing about upselling is a bit ironic coming from one of the reigning princes of upselling, but there you are.) He says that the whole thing seemed too random and wasn't all that effective (pp. 115-117 in Adventures Within). Keep in mind that he wrote this in the early 1990s. I believe that was before Landmark bought out the company and Erhard pretended to go away entirely (yes, I'm one of many who believe Erhard still has a few fingers in the pie, particularly since his little brother, Harry Rosenberg, heads up Landmark Forum these days).

As for Joe, his more recent opinions of The Forum seem to be on the positive side. On the promo page for his republished edition of a 1970s work, The Book of est, Joe writes, "I did The Forum and endorse it today. But it's no est." The implication is that it isn't as effective as est, but I'll leave it to you to figure out exactly what he means. Or he can write a comment here and explain it himself. Maybe he does endorse the Landmark version of The Forum today, which seems determined to distance itself from the icky side of Erhard (though the Landmark folks are not above giving some credit to him for setting the foundation so many years ago). Maybe the caveats Joe wrote in Adventures Within only apply to the version of The Forum that he took nearly twenty years ago. However, that version was closer in spirit to Erhard's est than is the modern incarnation, and Joe wrote that he didn't particularly like it...and yet he now seems to be praising est and Erhard on the sales page for The Book of est... and oh, goodness, my brain is hurting again.

Flashing forward to much more recent events, Joe hasn't gone out of his way to publicly defend James Ray, whom he has referred to as a friend on numerous occasions on his blog (mainly by virtue of their being in The Secret together), but he has not publicly spoken out against him either. And he has been a bit snippy on his blog at the mention of Sweatgate. Like most of his colleagues in the top tiers of the industry, he seems to be taking the "let's reserve judgment" tack.

All appearances to the contrary, the point of telling those stories isn't to pick on Joe. I've picked on him plenty on this blog, some say unfairly, but that's not the purpose here. Joe's experience with Bhagwan, and for that matter with The Forum, are but two examples of many similar tales of long-time seekers. And that's my point: After hundreds and hundreds of hours of workshops and seminars, of trying one breakthrough technique or spiritual path or LGAT training after another after another, many people do have a tendency to accept as normal what many other folks would think of as pretty disturbing. Crazy becomes the new normal. 

This is not to excuse anyone who uses LGAT techniques or any kind of persuasion or manipulation to harm others, of course; it is merely an attempt to explain how some people's attitudes may have been formed. And I think it only fair for me to add that many long-time observers/critics have also developed a certain nonchalance about the wackiness that prevails in the New-Wage world. This is particularly true of those of us who have participated in LGATs ourselves at some time in the past.

In fact, I'll even go so far as to say that before Sweatgate, I was pretty complacent regarding what I thought I knew about what really goes on in these events. (I won't presume to analyze other critics' complacency/jadedness or lack thereof; I can only speak for myself.) As I've discussed here before, I've always more or less had the attitude that most of the self-help stuff is more silly or annoying than harmful. That's why Sweatgate took me somewhat by surprise.

And that's why I'm always interested in the perspectives of those who, viewing these issues with fresh eyes, are utterly appalled by some of the things that even I took for granted. Cassandra Yorgey, for example, got a bit of flak for expressing shock about the detailed and intimate questionnaires that James Ray's Spiritual Warrior participants had to answer. She wrote about it on October 29 and October 30, 2009. I'm sure that many people who have participated in or have any extensive knowledge of LGATs might think there's nothing terribly out of the ordinary about this or similar questionnaires. (I still intend to write a post about my own LGAT experiences, but the passing mention in this 1996 piece (under "What I did with a bunch of strangers in a hotel") will have to do for now.)

But really, the sex questionnaires do seem pretty smarmy, particularly in light of what apparently goes on behind the scenes with some of these New-Wage gurus. Even some people who are veterans of the self-help industry agreed with Cassandra, e.g., Andrea de Michaelis, publisher of the Florida New-Age magazine Horizons. In response to Cassandra's October 29 post (October 31, 9:45 AM) Andrea wrote, "No responsible teacher brings up anyone's shame-based, especially sexual issues in an unprotected setting, period."

Given that criterion, it seems there have been an awful lot of irresponsible "teachers" in the business over the years. Here's an example of James Ray being irresponsible with a Harmonic Wealth Weekend participant who had money and grief issues. This seems wrong on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin. But it does remind me of how much has not changed since my own LGAT days.

And yet much has changed over the years. We live in a culture that is more sensitive to things that were more or less taken for granted not so long ago, and our laws and policies reflect this. For example, it almost used to be a rite of passage for young guys to have a fling with an older woman, even — gasp! – a hot young teacher. Today that teacher would be hauled up on charges of sexual abuse of a minor. It would be the top story on the local or even the national news, and the teacher would almost certainly lose her job.

More relevant to this post: although encounter groups were certainly controversial in the 1960s and '70s, there was still a certain degree of acceptance of them in the larger society. Maybe it's more accurate to say they were ignored, for the most part, or not taken all that seriously, since they were so non-mainstream at the time. Human potential/self-help hadn't reached a critical mass in our culture. Today, if something bad happens at a seminar and it gets publicized, it's more likely to get lots of negative attention from the media.

Of course, cooking people to death in a sweat lodge, or watching an event participant jump off a balcony and then trying to cover it up, are pretty awful things by yesterday's and today's standards.

Caught between two worlds...
Despite the silence among most of the upper-tier self-help gurus, there are a few people – I guess you could call them the working grunts of the self-help industry – who cut James Ray no slack, such as Michael Port, author of the Think Big blog. In a January post he wrote, "This is not the first time a narcissistic sociopath with a god-complex has lead people to their deaths and unfortunately it won't be the last time." He also writes about how he sometimes feels caught between two worlds....

...the world of traditional, time-honored medical and psychological practices and the world of ontology or the study of being, existence, from a philosophical and personal development perspective. At times these worlds are at odds and at other times they are aligned. I grew up in a psychologically-minded home. As I mentioned above, my father is a Psychiatrist. My mother is also a mental health professional, a Clinical Social Worker, who specializes in early childhood development with almost as many years experience working with psychologically, physically and sexually abused children. My parents operate with a degree of integrity I rarely see displayed elsewhere. I imagine, it's one of the reasons that I'm so upset by what happened in Sedona.

Maybe a lot of it comes back down to the question of whether or not self-help gurus are practicing therapy – or even medicine, in some cases – without a proper license. Michael Port points out that the mental-health professions are regulated because they mess with people's minds. Since so many of the self-help gurus do the same, shouldn't they be subject to stricter oversight?

Much more in-your-face than Michael Port is motivational/sales expert and author Grant Cardone, who threw some potshots at James Ray on the Huffington Post web site a few weeks after the sweat lodge tragedy took place. He wrote that he'd met James at his (Grant's) home in San Diego seven years ago when James was still trying to break into the seminar bidness. According to Grant, he warned James...

"Don't confuse me with some of the guys out there. I teach valid measurable business skills that can be transferred. We teach companies sales skills and best practices and implement measurable processes for the company. We don't do fire walks, board breaking, trust walks, or use tricks to sign people up...Guys that do these things are not experts at anything and harm people by giving them illusions of power with no valid improvement in skills."

Now, I sort of have to take this tale with a grain of salt, especially since Grant seems a bit on the hustledorky side, and I am being kind here. Of course, his area of expertise is sales of high-end items such as cars, so hustledorkiness kind of comes with the territory. He certainly doesn't seem to be above performing fear-conquering gimmicks himself, such as eating fire, but apparently he doesn't make his seminar participants do it (though he does seem to love "Eat the fire!" as a metaphor). And it appears that he is a Scientologist, which is a whole other level of evil, beyond the scope of this blog post. Still, I have to agree with his conclusion about James Ray and his ilk.

What these individuals [such as James Ray] provide is certainly impressionable, but not transferable. Experiential and memorable, absolutely, but unusable[.] [O]n Monday when the seminar is over, if you live through it, it's gone. These guys aren't gurus, but frauds who are short on valid teachable material that is applicable in the real world and will resort to anything and everything to electrify the audience, creating a false sense of power and making it easier to sign them up for future events.

One obvious point here is that people such as Michael Port and Grant Cardone are not in the top echelon of the self-help/motivational industry, and arguably don't have nearly as much to lose by throwing James Ray under the bus as, say, Bob Proctor or Joe Vitale. But it is precisely for that reason that they have more license, if you will, to speak their minds. (Again, notwithstanding the Scientology connection where Grant is concerned.) So I think they're worth listening to, even if in some cases their own agenda to promote their products and services is...well...searingly obvious. 

"Outsiders" with "inside" information
For those who don't want to listen to someone who has a dog in the self-help hunt, there are journalists and commentators who, though on the critical side of the fence, have some interesting things to say about the industry. Start with the aforementioned Steve Salerno, author of SHAM: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless. (And by the way, Steve just completed a three-part piece on SHAMblog about The Landmark Forum. Here's the link to Part 1. I think that the discussions following the posts are as interesting in their own way as the posts themselves.) Or try Barbara Ehrenreich, who tackles the positive-thinking movement in her book, Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Both Steve and Barbara tend to take a more serious view than I do about the insidiousness of the self-help/positive-thinking culture.

If you want the perspective of someone who is more spiritually oriented than many of the critics but still has no patience for hustledorks, my own Rev Ron (who, by the way, coined the word "hustledork") has published a blog post about James Ray's possible pathology. Ron doesn't think that more regulations are necessarily the answer, and here's his reason:

I don't propose establishing a system of strict regulation to oversee the self-help industry, mostly because it wouldn't work. Remember: You can't idiot-proof the system; they'll just come up with better idiots! The scammers would simply find ways to work around the rules, and their marks would just rationalize that some malevolent "they" are trying to deny humanity of its birthright. If you doubt the second statement, just go to your favorite "guru's" website and compare the bold-headline promises with the fine-print (and frequently difficult to find) disclaimer statement. What you'll find is a deft volley, in response to the FTC's latest serve. And if you're willing to lend as much credence to the former as you are willing to put "faith" in the latter, there's little chance you'll be hoodwinked, wounded, or even killed.

Above it all? 
Since we've been discussing the various attitudes that may ultimately help determine future policy or legislation, no discussion would be complete without a nod to those who scoff at the selfish-help/New-Wage industry but also look down their noses at the victims for being weak or stupid or gullible. The categorically unsympathetic seem to be in the minority, but were quite assertive in the time immediately following the breaking of Sweatgate. There are a few October 2009 posts on the Belch.com site that, out of respect for the victims and their families, I'm not going to link to here. You can look them up.

Blogger/law professor Ann Althouse is another person who wrote that she just couldn't understand how people could be so "stupid" as to stay in the sweat lodge when things were clearly going wrong. In a post written two weeks after the tragedy happened, she wrote, "...50 people can push one man out of the way. As they should have done, after the first hurl." 

While I admit I have gotten a chuckle at some of the Belch.com blogger's other posts that so clearly portray his impatience with the human species in general, I have to say I wasn't amused at all by the James Ray posts. As for Ann Althouse, I can only hope she's modified her views somewhat since more information has come to light, but, judging from a more recent and very succinct post, I tend to think that neither she nor most of her readers have wasted much energy on compassion for anyone involved in this tragedy.

People who lack sympathy for victims of New-Wage gurus or other 
persuasive leaders overlook the fact that any one of us could be susceptible to coercive persuasion techniques under the right circumstances. I think Cassandra Yorgey did a fine job of summarizing this topic as it relates to the James Ray tragedies. It has also been discussed at length on the James Ray thread on the Rick Ross forum. That thread is nearly 80 pages long as I write this, but if you haven't been following it, here's a pretty good place to start, and then you can go forward or backward as you wish. 

Those with a really personal stake
However you may feel about the wisdom – or folly – of more oversight of the self-help industry, it's difficult to ignore the pleas of the families of James Ray's victims. The family of Kirby Brown, one of the first two who died from the Sedona sweat lodge, has created a foundation in her name to explore regulation of the self-help industry. The site presents a pretty balanced view, all things considered:

There is value in this industry, and experts in it who genuinely have something to offer in a safe and responsible way. However, there are others in the industry who abuse the platform they have created, simply for their own gain. In seeking their own ends, they exploit their customers and even put these customers in danger, using psychological techniques they are not certified in, therapeutic treatments they are not trained in, and orchestrating dangerous physical challenges without proper safeguards in place.

Some claim that the victims of self-help fraud are weak. But anyone who knows Kirby knows she was far from weak. Many experts on the issue note that it is not just "weak" people who can become victims of this type of fraud. All types of people from all different backgrounds are susceptible. The issue is complicated, too, by the fact that the mainstream media can legitimize these fraudulent members of the self-help industry, simply by giving them the opportunity to promote themselves.

There is a great need for far more scrutiny on this industry, by both the public and the government. These people are breaking laws that already exist. It is very likely, though that there is also a gap in public policy to adequately regulate this industry. Our goal now is to bring attention to this issue, and call for some action--both in applying existing legal protections to the industry and developing new ways to help protect people from this type of fraud and recklessness.

Others who were deeply affected have spoken out in their own way. Among the most recent to raise his voice is Bryan Neuman, the son of one of the Sweatgate victims, Liz Neuman. He has been a participant on Salty Droid's blog for a while, and more recently has made some poignant and pointed remarks on Twitter, mostly in response to James Ray's own seemingly insensitive tweets. James is getting a lot of angry responses to those tweets, by the way, and seems to be responding to some of them in a rather passive-aggressive manner. (I know: big surprise that a New-Wage guru would be passive aggressive.)

Friends and family of James Shore, the other person who died after Sweatgate, and the family of Colleen Conaway, have also spoken out.

Back to the issue at hand...
Since this post has gone on more than long enough, I'll just bring it back to the original question (I warned you it might be circuitous): Should the self-help industry be regulated more than it is under existing laws? If you think it should be, what does "regulation" mean? Many people agree that there should be more safeguards in place, but exactly what are proper safeguards?

On the other hand, do you think that we might be opening up another can of worms, and running some genuinely good and well-meaning folks out of business (or preventing some from even going into business in the first place), by trying to impose new rules and regulations on yet another industry? Is calling for more regulations on the self-help biz paving the way to more government control of everything that every one of us does, says, or publishes?

Arizona blogger Trudy W. Schuett, publisher of the AZ Rural Times blog, summed up the quandary pretty well in a January 2010 post:

I think what would be called for if this industry were to be regulated in any way would require, ironically enough, not only the wisdom of Solomon but also a crystal ball to identify potential difficulties, while not impinging on the autonomy of the individual’s right to his or her beliefs. [Yep, there's that freedom-of-religion issue again. ~CC] There will always be people who are looking for shortcuts to wealth or spiritual growth, and unscrupulous providers of same. It may not even be possible to determine who those unscrupulous individuals and groups are before they cross the line into causing harm and breaking laws.

I still lean towards Libertarian-ish views myself (I'm stubborn that way). I think Ron's quotation above pretty much summarizes how I feel. But I can definitely see Terry and Amy Hall's points about some issues, particularly the need for full advance disclosure about events, so people can know ahead of time what they're getting themselves into. (Actually, even Terry says he is pretty much Libertarian-ish for the most part.)

On the issue of transparency and disclosure, Salty Droid, in his usual "fabulously hilarious" manner, gets right to the point on his March 9, 2010 post. He contrasts what the Spiritual Warrior participant guide – sent out by James Ray in July 2009 – actually said about the event...

Keep in mind that we will be working diligently to make this event memorable. For this reason, it is important that we do not disclose any further information regarding the event schedule or planned activities. However, we will tell you that it is going to be an exciting, unforgettable, and transformational week!

...with what it perhaps should have said:

Keep in mind that previous iterations of this event led to dreadful calamity and serious injury. Broken bones, broken bank accounts, brain damage, and long term health problems are all previously encountered outcomes. It is also important to note that nothing new will be learned, and that your guru for this event has not been trained in ANYTHING … EVER. He’s just a douche bag salesman with his own serious mental health issues. However, we will tell you that some people are going to die during this event … and it just doesn’t get any more transformational than that!

There's a lively discussion on that one, too. Naturally.

Even absent licensing requirements for anything marginally related to the personal growth industry, it seems clear that at the very least, consumers would benefit from more transparency regarding gurus' and coaches' credentials and qualifications, and certainly from more transparency about what to expect during a workshop or retreat. As a guest blogger on Terry Hall's Bizsayer blog wrote in February of this year:

Every professional field has the burden of being marred by idiots within that field....Hence: licensure. Even so, there are licensed idiots out there causing havoc in people’s lives. So I wonder sometimes if it is really possible to fully regulate any field that claims to help others. Ultimately, people will have to regulate themselves when they sign up for an experience (whether it is free or they are paying an obscene $9000+). But how can they do that without FULL DISCLOSURE? Doesn’t seem the attendees of JRI have full disclosure, nor did they receive their “waiver” in a timely manner!

Amen. I'm just not so sure we should get the government deeply involved. In any case, I really am interested in all opinions about this issue.

Meanwhile, I wish peace and healing – and justice – for the families of Kirby Brown, James Shore, Liz Neuman, Colleen Conaway... and anyone else whose lives have been torn by the actions of James Ray or any other selfish-help gurus.

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