James Arthur Ray, the Oprah-backed motivational speaker who spent two years in prison after three people died in 2009 at the end of a three-day retreat in the Arizona desert, died Jan. 3. Henderson, Nev. He was 67 years old.
His brother John Ray announced the death on social media. Henderson did not say where Mr Ray died or why, but said the death was unexpected.
Mr. Ray was struggling to find success as a motivational speaker when he appeared in the 2006 documentary “The Secret” by Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne. The “secret,” espoused by Mr. Ray and others, was the idea that positive thinking can literally change the world in your favor.
Things began to move quickly for Mr. Ray. He appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show, where she praised him. Within months he was standing in front of sold-out crowds of hundreds, then thousands. In 2008 he published “Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Structuring the Life You Want,” co-authored with Linda Sivertson, which reached the New York Times bestseller list.
He was, Fortune magazine declared in 2008, “the next big thing in the highly competitive world of movement gurus.”
Mr. Ray combines self-help and professional development with a dollop of mysticism – a potent blend of Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey And Deepak Chopra. He was tall and charismatic, with an easy smile and just the right amount of self-deprecation to win over a crowd.
He offered an assortment of courses, each more expensive than the last, culminating in “Spiritual Warrior,” a $10,000 retreat near Sedona, Ariz. After a series of endurance exercises, including prolonged fasting, participants spent several hours in a sweat lodge, where temperatures rose above 150 degrees.
Mr. Ray has performed “Spiritual Warrior” several times, and some past attendees have raised questions about whether he or his staff members have enough training to run a sweat lodge.
Still, no one was prepared for what happened on October 8, 2009. Mr. Ray packed about 50 people into a makeshift structure made of a circular wooden frame, about 25 feet in diameter and only five feet in the center. . He poured gallons of water over the rocks heated by the fire, filling the lodge with hot steam.
Although he told participants they could leave at any time, many later said they felt pressured to stay. What did Eventually the conditions inside became intolerable, and the crowd poured out. Many fell to the ground.
Someone called 911. A first responder later said the scene appeared to be the site of a mass suicide. Twenty-one people were taken to hospital.
Three of them died—James Shore and Kirby Brown were pronounced dead on arrival, while Liz Newman died nine days later. Mr. Ray was soon arrested for manslaughter.
The story became national news in a season of scandals. shared the headlines with “Twelve Boy” Deceptionin which Colorado parents falsely claimed their son was trapped in a giant helium balloon, and his ordeal Amanda KnoxAn American student who was found guilty in an Italian court of murdering his roommate. (His conviction was overturned in 2015.)
Mr. Ray’s trial began in the spring of 2010 and ended with a conviction on three counts of negligent homicide. The judge sentenced him to two years in prison.
James Arthur Ray was born on November 22, 1957, in Honolulu, where his father, Gordon Ray, was serving in the Navy. The family later moved to Tulsa, Okla., where his father became a preacher and his mother, Joyce (Scott) Ray, managed the household.
Mr. Ray said the family was so poor that he lived in an office attached to his father’s church. But he also said that his father’s skills as a minister influenced his later career.
“He was very charismatic,” Mr. Ray said in an interview for the CNN documentary “Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall of James Arthur Ray” (2016), directed by Jenny Karchman. “He could really touch his congregation. That was my first wow.”
Mr. Ray attended Tulsa Community College but left before completing his degree. He went to work for AT&T, starting as a telemarketer and moving up to training and junior management.
Part of the company’s training program relies on the work of Mr. Covey, a professional development expert and speaker and author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (1989). Mr. Ray decided he could do something similar, and he left AT&T to found a company called Quantum Consulting.
Motivational speaking is a difficult, often thankless task, with most practitioners scrambling in front of lunch crowds in Holiday Inn conference rooms. For more than a decade, he was also Mr. Ray — until Ms. Byrnes cast him in “The Secret.”
By this time he had moved beyond his self-help discourse to include New Age philosophy and mysticism. He spoke about lessons he learned from a Peruvian shaman and a Hawaiian spiritual leader. Audience members paid thousands of dollars to hear him, often for several long days in vast conference halls.
Those willing to pay even more were taken far beyond the conference center, on retreats that often included intense physical and psychological exercises – leading to a “spiritual warrior.”
Along with his brother, Mr. Ray is survived by his wife, Bersaba; Information on other survivors was not immediately available.
Mr Ray was released from prison in 2013, and by the following year was speaking professionally again.
He was proactive in discussing the events of October 2009 with his audience. And he agreed to a lengthy interview with Ms. Karchman for “Enlighten Us.”
“I’m responsible,” he said of the sweat lodge’s destruction.
At the end of the film, he added: “It had to be, because it was the only way I could explore and learn and grow through the things I did. Drinking Ed? Maybe, but Kool-Aid works for me.