Quote

A BIZARRE tragedy at a spiritual retreat in the Arizona desert has caused new embarrassment for Oprah Winfrey, the American television titan whose enthusiasm for alternative health and lifestyle choices has drawn mounting criticism this year.


The deaths of two participants at a Native American-style “cleansing” ceremony in a sauna-like “sweat lodge” earlier this month are being treated by police as possible homicides. The victims were attending a “spiritual warrior” retreat organised by James Arthur Ray, a motivational speaker and author who has appeared at least twice on Winfrey’s hugely popular chat show.

Winfrey had no connection with the retreat — from which 19 other participants were taken to hospital — but the billionaire entertainer has been fighting off persistent allegations this year that her media empire provides a platform to questionable self-help gurus who promote ideas that many experts consider dangerous.

The tragedy at Angel Valley, a new age retreat near the resort town of Sedona, has ignited a debate about claims made by self-proclaimed mystics, healers, vision quest guides, sacred therapists, spiritual mediums and guardians of all manner of metaphysical secrets that supposedly possess the power to unleash the inner you.

It has also outraged many Native Americans, who complained last week that tribal traditions were being hijacked by quacks, charlatans and what one tribal leader described as “imitation Indians”.

Participants in the programme paid almost $10,000 (£6,100) each to join what Ray had promised would be a “heroic quest for higher consciousness”. According to police reports, up to 60 people attended the five-day retreat, the culmination of which was a 36-hour fast followed by the sweat lodge ceremony.

Exactly what went wrong is unclear. The “lodge” was in reality a makeshift wood and plastic tarpaulin tent. Less than 5ft tall, the structure may have become intolerably hot once all the participants were crouching inside.

Police are also investigating reports that they may have been stretched beyond reasonable endurance. In a series of posts to his Twitter account before and during the retreat, Ray referred to “conquering death” and declared: “The Toltecs practise an ‘awareness of impending death’. Makes every moment precious when you know it could be your last.”

Sedona police said the deaths of Kirby Brown, a 38-year-old painter from New York, and James Shore, 40, an internet marketing executive from Milwaukee, were being treated as possible homicides, “although whether or not we can prove a criminal case has yet to be determined”.

Ray declined to be interviewed by police immediately after the tragedy. His spokesman said last week: “We have one goal and that is to find out what happened so it never happens again.”

Ray first came to public attention espousing a theory he called “harmonic wealth” — a feelgood philosophy that emphasises the power of positive thinking in achieving success. His website boasts of his appearances with Winfrey, who first invited him to discuss The Secret, a bestselling 2007 self-help book by Rhonda Byrne that critics warned might discourage readers from seeking professional assistance for their problems.

Professor John Norcross, a psychologist, said The Secret’s assertions “go beyond the ordinary over-promises of most self-help books into a danger realm”. That did not stop Winfrey praising it on a second programme and inviting Ray back for more chat about “accelerating the release of your limitations”.

Nor was Winfrey contrite when Newsweek magazine published a cover story this year accusing several of her guests of peddling bad medical advice. “Some of the many experts who cross her stage offer interesting and useful information,” said Newsweek. “Others gush nonsense. Oprah, who holds her guests up as prophets, can’t seem to tell the difference.”

Among Winfrey favourites who have been heavily criticised are Suzanne Somers, a 62-year-old actress whose quest for eternal youth involves daily injections of oestrogen into her vagina. “Many people write Suzanne off as a quackadoo,” said Winfrey, “but she might just be a pioneer.”

Doctors were also infuriated when Jenny McCarthy, a former Playboy model and the girlfriend of actor Jim Carrey appeared to warn against the MMR vaccination for measles, mumps and rubella. Convinced that her son’s autism was caused by MMR, McCarthy referred to “the autism shot” and dismissed a statement from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that scientists have found no connection. “My science is named Evan [her son],” she said.

Winfrey was further embarrassed when a series of memoirs she had promoted turned out to have been bogus. James Frey admitted to fabricating portions of A Million Little Pieces, his account of recovery from supposed drug addiction; Angel at the Fence, an account of Holocaust survival — described by Winfrey as “the greatest single love story we’ve ever told on the air” — also proved to be fiction.

Winfrey had no comment on the spiritual warrior case last week. In response to Newsweek’s criticisms last summer she had said: “I trust the viewers and I know they are smart and discerning enough to seek out medical opinions to determine what may be best for them.”

Quote

Oprah Guru's Deadly Sweat Lodge Involved Induced Vomiting, 'Vomit Everywhere'

So, that horrifying sweat lodge where Oprah-endorsed guru James Arthur Ray may or may not have inadvertently killed three people? NYT has some new eye witness reports, and they're as scary, icky, and infuriatingly New-Agey as you thought.

Texas orthodontist Beverley Bunn told The New York Times that the sweat ceremony was the rebirth phase of a "vision quest." Much like an actual birth, disgusting things spewed from everyone's orifices and a lot of pain was involved: "There were people throwing up everywhere" based on the kinda-bulimic advice that vomiting "was good for you, that you are purging what your body doesn't want, what it doesn't need." Apparently the body doesn't need consciousness, either, because at least three vision quest-ers passed out during the session, Bunn and others claim. When horrified participants yelled for help, Ray said he would "deal" with it later.

The experience cost $9,695. And, as if paying money to be trapped in a coal-heated, plastic-wrapped, life-threatening wigwam in the middle of the desert with 50 fellow "spiritual warriors," then watching them die before your very eyes, weren't bad enough, James Arthur Ray is apparently not letting up on his New Age bullshit: He brought a "channeler" into a conference call with the likely PTSD-ridden sweat lodge participants. She explained that the spiritual warriors' deceased peers were not, in fact, the victims of homicide—rather, they had powerful out-of-body experiences and it was "so much fun" that they decided not to come back. Seriously, could you even invent a more tasteless line of reasoning for the future Law & Order episode this is clearly about to become?

Local police are investigating the deaths as homicides, but despite the surviving warriors' most obvious wishes, James Arthur Ray has not been charged.

Quote

Oprah, Lupus and Carol Myss

[tiptoethruthemindfield.blogspot.com]

and

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]

Quote

Campbell's main contention that the cultic milieu is oppositional by nature. It comprises "a zone in which proscribed and/or forbidden knowledge is the coin of the realm, a place in which ideas, theories and speculations are to be found, exchanged, modified and eventually, adopted or rejected by adherents of countless, primarily ephemeral groups whose leaders come and go and whose membership constitute a permanent class of seekers whose adherence to any particular or organization tends to be fleeting at best." (p. 3)

The authors aver that in this oppositional milieu ideas are often interchangeable, "fungible," that there is a cross pollination of ideas in this milieu.

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]