James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Death Count Rises

By on October 18, 2009 in News 2

I posted a story earlier this week about new age guru James Arthur Ray’s culpability in the Arizona sweat lodge deaths. Now a third victim has died, as reported by the BBC:

A woman taken to hospital with multiple organ failure after attending a spiritual retreat in Arizona has died.

Forty-nine-year-old Liz Neuman was one of 21 people taken to hospital after the sauna-like experience on 9 October.

It brings the total number of deaths from the event, run by self-help expert James Ray, to three.
The deaths at the Angel Valley Retreat Center, 115 miles north of Phoenix, are being treated as homicides, but no charges have been laid.

Emergency services were called to the sweat lodge after some of the 50 people at the event reported they were having difficulty breathing.

Those taken to hospital were said to have illnesses ranging from dehydration to kidney failure.

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  • Anonymous

    This tragedy has caused a media pigpile on James Ray and a sad spillover effect on the law of attraction in general.
    The focus should be the dangers of attempting altered states thru such a harsh environment not a general condemnation of the many excellent mentors explaining the loa to enthusiastic learners.
    I would like to know how many of the commenters who rush to judgement know anything about loa at all before making their pronouncements.
    The law of attraction’s basic concepts go back 1000’s of years and came from people like Christ, Buddha and Krishna.
    I learned all I could from a CD which cost under $100 and contained several extensive interviews covering every aspect of loa. It has made a profound impact on my life.
    In the early 1900’s a man named Charles Haanel taught it and called it the masterkey system. Businessmen who took the course felt it was so valuable they tried to buy it so it could no longer be distributed.
    If you listen to Joel Osteen on cable, you are listening to the same thing.
    Read an interview with any successful person and you will hear the same basic tenets.
    Aside from this terrible tragedy which should never have happened, there seem to be many, many people who are determined the loa is a hoax, and all around them people are happily applying it and succeeding.

  • loafan

    This tragedy has caused a media pigpile on James Ray and a sad spillover effect on the law of attraction in general.
    The focus should be the dangers of attempting altered states thru such a harsh environment not a general condemnation of the many excellent mentors explaining the loa to enthusiastic learners.
    I would like to know how many of the commenters who rush to judgement know anything about loa at all before making their pronouncements.
    The law of attraction’s basic concepts go back 1000’s of years and came from people like Christ, Buddha and Krishna.
    I learned all I could from a CD which cost under $100 and contained several extensive interviews covering every aspect of loa. It has made a profound impact on my life.
    In the early 1900’s a man named Charles Haanel taught it and called it the masterkey system. Businessmen who took the course felt it was so valuable they tried to buy it so it could no longer be distributed.
    If you listen to Joel Osteen on cable, you are listening to the same thing.
    Read an interview with any successful person and you will hear the same basic tenets.
    Aside from this terrible tragedy which should never have happened, there seem to be many, many people who are determined the loa is a hoax, and all around them people are happily applying it and succeeding.