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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2010 12:49PM by Penelope.

"When the vision on the inside is more compelling and powerful than what you observe on the outside... The univese is at your command".

He may not believe this tripe but he's doing his damnedest to try to make it work--with willpower. I think its all he has left. It wont work, for the reasons Anticult stated, the 'Universe' is never at anyones command, but he has to try to believe it or his world and the JAR persona he has so carefully crafted, collapses.

The video view figures noted by a poster on the Droid site are telling, around 500 in a week. At least 5 of those were mine, so I'm guessing that the majority of the rest were not followers but the curious and those keen to see him held to account.
When the vision on the inside is more compelling and powerful than what you observe on the outside... you're well down the rabbit hole, matey, no matter what you 'believe'.

I have less of a problem with Ray than I do with his followers.

James Ray is a sociopath who's behaving sociopathically. He can't behave any other way; if sociopaths could act humanely, they wouldn't be sociopaths. It's like that old joke about the frog who carries the scorpion across the river. The frog has his doubts, but the scorpion swears he won't sting the frog; if he does, he points out, they both drown.

They get halfway across the river, the scorpion stings, dooming them both. The frog demands an explanation. The scorpion says, "Well, what did you expect? It's in my nature."

So Ray is just doing what's in his nature. Are his followers?

Here's a selection of comments from Ray's "I Still Have Something Inside Me" video. (Heh. Right now he has bullshit inside him. When he goes to jail Bubba will put something altogether different inside him.)

Of the 48 comments; 3 are negative, 2 are duplicates, 1 says"Confused," 2 are equivocal, and 3 defy categorization because they read like someone who's dropped way too much acid wrote them.

The rest are like the ones below. My comments are in [brackets]:

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jadezade what happened? why don't you have your company anymore? I am oblivious of all this, but anyway certainly looking fwd to your videos...Your book Harmonic Wealth is great...although I don't agree with all of it. By the way, I think u r hot :)

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liveschanged09 Blessing and Abundance to you James. What a powerful lesson b4 u. I want to affirm with you. That your good is here and now! you are whole and complete in spirits eyes. Anything that is not in Love will be transformed and released. It is done!

Thank you for being the blessing that you are

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netislander Hey James, keep on trucking. It was your words in the Secret that really helped me the most. Started me on my path. Yes what happened was sad and a tragedy and my heart, prayers, and blessings go to their love ones and they also go to you and yours. We still need people like you to help us. [No, we don't] "These things you will do and more".

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debbielasvegas1968 It is time to heal and continue your life's work. :-) [The dead can't heal. They won't be continuing their life's work.]

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lovefunbeer everyone makes mistakes bro your only human.

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Feelingbetterful Thank you Mr Ray. Much love to you. Look forward to your videos :)

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djmixmind Out of major challenges come great things.

Don't lose faith.

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mrmonaka Hi, dear James.
Whatever you experienced, it will be another chance to quantum leap. Please embrace both support and challenge and find out love again. I am with you, James!! 1 day ago [Whatever the people who died experienced, it was not a quantum leap.]

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yunkies Oh whao, I can see the pain in your expression. We're with you James, everybody makes mistakes. If you can look up, you can get up. [I guess the people who died couldn't look up. Also, "whao". This isn't the time for chan-speak.]

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akitajazz UP UP AND AWAY. Nothing can keep a good man down. Can't wait to see what I am going to learn from you now. Great Challenge = Great Victory.... We all win.. Love ya [The people who died did not win. Something kept them down. Are they therefore not good?]

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SILVIU19G long time no see James,I really missed your videos, I look forward to hearing more from you.

You're still "my hero", so keep doing what you're doing ;)

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changinlives101 Thanks James. You've been a great inspiration to me. I look forward to hearing more of that value you never fail to provide.
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These messages ignore the victims utterly and praise the victimizer. (One woman is blithely "oblivious"; should people really brag about living under rocks? Although I'm not surprised that's where some of the Harmonically Wealthy reside.) Only one comment might reflect the belief system of someone who recognizes that even the most evil people might have souls and need prayer ( I don't think it does, though.)

To support James Ray is to demean the memory of the people he killed. Is this what New Age beliefs do to believers? Make the murderer more valuable than the people he murdered?

The Ray killings have been less sensationalized than the Manson Family murders, but other than that the two crimes are pretty similar. Except Ray is tanned, rested, and ready, and Manson was a ratty-looking mole person-- who didn't steal his victims' money, set himself up as their teacher and trusted friend, and then, after he killed them, hire some fancy lawyer to write a white paper saying it was all a tragic accident. So while Manson killed (or caused to be killed, but it's the same thing) many more people, I think Ray is the more vicious, perverted killer. Who wishes he'd killed many more people.

I'm sure Manson had a few followers outside of his close circle. But most of his support came from the mind-controlled runaways, castaways, and criminals who lived with him. Ray's supporters are not in that situation; they're not all heavily mind-controlled, and they can't all be sociopaths (can they?) so they have a choice about how to behave and whom to support.

They have a choice. Ray doesn't; that's why jails exist. All society can do is lock him up and prevent him from doing what's in his nature and harming people. But what do we do about his followers?

Death Ray has had many, many choices, he's not an automaton. If he can discipline his behaviour enough to pass as a walking, talking adult then he can discipline it enough to put in health and safety procedures and ensure that they are followed.
He might be many things but choiceless isn't one of them.
And his followers will learn through experience, or not.

I want to know how you accessed the comments on the JRI video page, I keep looking in the hope that I can respond in a suitably freakish manner, but cannot find the links.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2010 10:13PM by Stoic.

Ah, got it. The comments are on You Tube, not the JRI page.

Quote
Christa
Is this what New Age beliefs do to believers? Make the murderer more valuable than the people he murdered?

Oh Yes. New Age beliefs can turn people into callous, indifferent monsters. I was once of part of a women's spirituality group and there was a woman who shared a horrible story of being sexually assaulted and beaten within an inch of her life by her ex-boyfriend. Someone in the group told her she needed to take a hard look at herself and her beliefs to see why she 'caused' this to happen to her. This poor lady had just shared something extremely personal and traumatic with us, looking for comfort and support, and the new ager had NO compassion at all. I got into a very heated argument with her, but she would not back down. She was so unbelievably smug and almost gloating over this woman's anguish and the disbelief of the majority of the group, as if we were just a bunch of unenlightened morons.

I think a lot of the stuff bandied about as new age beliefs originated in New Thought, which grew out of the industrial changes--when a lot of people moved into cities from small communities to find work in factories.
The emphasis on positive thinking was a way for reformers of the time to imbue people, cut off from their traditions, with some hope in what was an alien and quite hostile environment.

I think that a lot of people overemphasise the positive to their own detriment. The need to see everything in a positive light can soon lead to a willful blindness towards anything that contradicts the relentess positivity. Thus the ignoring or blaming of victims, which conveniently allows the ignorer or blamer to continue in the relentless positivity instead of questioning that view.

I think the majority of positive commentors on JAR's YouTube fall into that category, they are desperate to see him as some kind of maligned guru because they cannot see him as a fallible person. So desperate are they to believe that what he is selling them is true that they cannot allow for the possibility that he is a conman.
If they saw him as a fallible person then logically that would undermine their hopes that they too could reach the perfection that he pretends to.

I think that this is deluded but it comes from desperation, ignorance and wishful thinking not a conscious will to con people. That accolade belongs to James Ray himself and he gets no easy let off from me. He knew exactly what he was doing, he's trying to continue doing it. He will continue until he is stopped.

The only way for James Ray to be stopped is for the families to get justice and for him to go to jail for a long time. As he said so many times in his events "Pay attention or pay with pain". Well, he didn't pay attention and so now he must pay with pain. His own.

I like the frog and scorpion story but don't think it applicable here. Human beings are considerably more removed from their basic natures than either frogs or scorpions, they are socialised from birth to rise above the instinct to kill for pleasure or gain or simply because of a whim of the moment.

Whatever James Ray learned from his own early socialisation process, he has also spent a lifetime immersed in a culture with a very heavy taboo against killing that is constantly reinforced from all sides. It takes a willful disrespect of that taboo, exercised over a very long time, to allow the disregard of the lives of his fellows that JAR has shown.

Willful disrespect of such a universal taboo involves many, many small choices that JAR consciously made and acted upon. He may wish us to accept that he had no choice in the matter but that isn't true. He had a cornucopia of other options at every step, other ways to think, other ways to behave, he chose not to take them.
He chose not to take them in exactly the same way that he chose what suit he put on each day, this one, not that one.
The choice not taken is still a choice.

I suspect that all this inane twittering and video-ing that Ray is doing is, among other things, a part of his defense strategy. He wants to present himself as a sincere spiritual teacher whose only motivation is to spread the word of his divinely inspired (and "quantum mechanically" inspired) teachings for the good of humanity.

I suspect his lawyers are encouraging him, although they would probably like it if he was capable of doing it in a less inflammatory and stupid manner. I suspect also that from the lawyers' perspective, if Ray shows himself to be a bit delusional and poorly educated, that is also not such a bad thing for the defense, as long as he persists with it and doesn't do anything that is obviously dangerous or fraudulent.

If he proves a degree of mental incompetence, that may help them position for a guilty plea to negligent manslaughter, if the worst comes to the worst. "He was just really dumb, not consciously evil or deliberately taking risks with peoples lives and wellbeing for financial gain." Sounds much better.

(Those who are publically ridiculing him are doing a great job. It's also notable that some of them are ex-fans who have woken up.)