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Stephen Irwinfacebook @ May 15, 2013, 3:59 pm
At last a balanced view on SW....... (taken from an article)
“Trick to Money” Author Stuart Wilde Dies Suddenly by Shaahin Cheyenne “Trick to Money” Author Stuart Wilde Dies Suddenly An Insider Tells the True Story About His Rise and Fall
It’s December 1978, and self styled guru, Osho Bhagwan Rajneesh, is sitting in a plush chair watching the fall of yet another cult and saying, “This could never happen here!”
Fast forward to 1985, after the fall of the Rajneesh movement, another self styled guru, Stuart Wilde, is similarly watching the fall of the Rajneesh movement and seeing no similarities to the one he is starting.
Like Rajneesh, Wilde was a rebel and a savvy entrepreneur. He warned against the dangers of organized religions and cautioned against gurus. Like Rajneesh, Wilde was also a contradiction. He cut his teeth in the designer t-shirt and jeans business in England and Ireland before he decided in the early 1980′s to follow a spiritual medium named Marshall Lever. Lever had a small following as a psychic and claimed to be “channeling” an entity he called “Old Chinese.” As time passed and Lever made the criteria for his followers, people began dropping out until there were only 2 left–Wilde was one of the two. Lever retired, and Wilde decided to start his own following by writing books and doing seminars.
It was the start of the New Age movement, and Wilde was on the forefront.
Wilde published his first book, Miracles, in 1983, and he began to amass a following. However, it wasn’t until 1998 that he wrote The Trick to Money Is Having Some that he began to see real commercial success as a writer. Wilde had managed to bridge the gap between the more lofty New Age crowd and the entrepreneurial-minded business crowd.
Here is where our story goes astray… With great power and fame come greater demands. Wilde, divorced his Australian wife, moved in with a supermodel, and began living a lavish lifestyle. As his lifestyle became more extravagant, so did his expenses.
In a brilliant ploy to keep up with the ever-increasing costs of being a New Age guru, Wilde began a series of seminars called “Warriors in the Mist.” Wilde would charge $5,000 per person and get crowds of up to 200 people per seminar. That added up to about a million dollars per seminar. Here is some rare footage from the promo for the “Warriors in the Mist” seminars:
It wasn’t until 1992 that I met and befriended Wilde. I was 17 and a multi-millionaire. ( You can read more about my story here and in my book here: Darkness The Power Of Illumination.)
I had read virtually every self-help book and business book out there. Wilde’s The Trick to Money Is Having Some was the first that really spoke to me. He had managed to encapsulate the spirit of guerrilla entrepreneurship and spirituality in one book. He was telling us that making money was not only okay, but it was next to godly.
I made it a point to fly out in a private jet to meet him at one of his seminars in the mountains of New Mexico. I gave him a bag filled with herbal ecstacy, ecstasy cigarettes, and about a dozen of my most successful products. We became fast friends for years to come.
I saw Stuart as a mentor, and I would consult him on many major decisions. He even agreed to a rare interview and endorsement when the London Observer was doing a feature on me and my companies. I was a fan and was honored to be around him. He was my hero. I watched, as so many other New Age gurus followed on the financial-abundance train. Most did consult with Wilde as they published their works. He had become a sort of “guru to the gurus.”
Wilde collected information and stories on many of the top figures in the industry. Drugs, prostitution, gambling and strange ceremonies were just the beginning. He would joke with me that one day he could publish the stories and expose them all. But it is exactly for that reason that I tended to overlook so much of what was happening at the time
. Like most gurus, power did get the best of Stuart often. He was clearly becoming the thing that he once campaigned so strongly against.
Stuart liked to drink, and by all ordinary standards, he was an alcoholic. Stuart also loved women–many, many women. His seminars were a combination of Stuart getting drunk and high and going on stage, only later to sleep with one of the many “broken birds” that attended his seminars.
But few got to see this side of Stuart. The view is very different when you are in the inner circle. Most just saw an eccentric English gentleman with some wild ideas. As Stuart’s alcoholism, drug use, and womanizing reached new heights, the seminar piggy bank began to run dry. On two occasions, he walked off stage after seminar promoters chided him for being drunk on stage. This left him with a substantial amount of debt.
By the mid 1990′s, Stuart decided to discontinue the seminars and focus on writing. I visited him in the late 1990′s and stayed in his home in a wealthy suburb of London. His girlfriend lived there also. I stayed in his meditation room, and I was most shocked when I visited his “office” and noticed a young woman who seemed to be writing while he directed her. I was perplexed. I assumed he had written all of his own books. “Everyone does it. You think Deepak and Wayne write all their own stuff? They got all their best stuff from me, and I had help too!” he said.
I guess I couldn’t blame him for outsourcing, but it definitely disappointed me.
Sometime thereafter, with “donations” from wealthy followers and some of his own, Stuart decided to build a “castle” in Milton, Australia. The “Tolemac Castle,” as Stuart would refer to it was as strange as could be. It was full of secret passageways, a tiny front door that you had to kneel to get into, a Japanese sauna, and a glass bottom swimming pool. I went there for a week of partying with Stuart.
Stuart wanted me to approach Author Carlos Casteneda about doing a seminar with him, but Castenda was reluctant. Stuart opted instead to start producing music with several burnt-out 80′s rock stars who liked to party almost as much as he did. Needless to say, it was an eventful weekend.
In early 2000′s, Stuart came to visit me in Los Angeles–but something had changed. This was no longer the dynamic and charismatic personality I had known and loved. He was older, tired, in poor health, and no longer making much sense. He had begun to walk with a limp. He talked about UFOs and reptilians taking over the government. He had a beautiful but haggard transexual in tow as his partner, and he was trying to score some “Ekkie,” as he so elegantly requested from me. I advised him that I only ever sell Herbal Ecstasy and had no intention of fetching it for him.
That trip was a strange one. Stuart stayed at a high rise on Sunset Strip and outlined the work for another book in a drug fueled week that nearly landed him and his cohorts all in jail. It was all so very “Hunter S. Thompson Meets the New Age,” but stranger.
“Boy Wonder!” he called to me, “Have you heard of this Ayahuasca?”
“Yeah, Stu, I did it in the Amazon with the tribes. You have to be careful with that stuff. It can go either way if you are not careful and get the wrong medicine,” I told him.
Ayahuasca is a Amazonian concoction that many tribes and now tourists take for insight and sometimes for recreation. Ayahuasca is something of a hallucinogenic drug that can majorly alter the brain and body chemistry while you are on it. It is produced by boiling 2 or more ingredients together. In the mid 2000′s, with several followers in tow, Stuart made a beeline for the jungle where he found some Ayahuasca and began to take it regularly. The drug seemed to validate his metaphysical concepts.
His experiences seemed to be at par with mine, until he met what he called “a bent Shaman.” Apparently, the Shaman had spiked the potion with a poisonous Datura seed, or Jimsom weed, which often brings about permanent psychosis and paranoia.
After this, Stuart never recovered. His blog posts went from friendly to paranoid, and he began suspecting extraterrestrial and supernatural entities that were, according to him, and “controlling him and his followers.” The consummate entrepreneur, Stuart had a solution. He began to offer healings for several thousands of dollars a pop for a small, magical flashlight that could blast evil for a couple grand more, and holy water blessed by, none other than, himself. He also began to do smaller seminars in Italy, where starstruck followers would pay up to $20,000 to hang out with him for a week. He also started to solicit donations from loyal followers in exchange for hanging out with him.
Yes, things got weirder… Stuart cut his Facebook page and Twitter feed as angry followers became increasingly disenchanted with his newer teachings, and they started posting angry posts on his wall. As his health declined, he enlisted a gay couple to take over the reigns when his body would “dematerialize and leave the earth plane.” The couple, along with Stuart, would start to do seminars, again charging crazy amounts.
However, this time, it was different. They were now intent on “spiritual healings,” selling their holy water and magical items to save everyone from the “ghouls” and other supernatural beings. Long gone were the days of teaching about money mastery and personal development.
I was in Vegas on the date of one of his last public seminars there. I decided to drop by and visit him. The scene was thick. Thousands had attended, hoping to get some facetime with the “Trick to Money” guy. Instead, they got an older, limping, and partially-coherent salesman, peddling magic flashlights and holy water. As I went to the entrance, I noticed an angry mob. The mob was led by a middle-aged woman who Stuart had allegedly slept with during the seminar and, then, later ignored. I immediately went into defense mode. I don’t know why I did it, but I ran up to his hotel room to let him know.
“Stu, there is an angry mob outside!” I said, embarrassed.
“What do they want?” He asked,
“I don’t know? I think some want their money back, and others are just angry.”
I replied, “Tell the customers no refunds!”
He started laughing before he took a huge shot of whiskey and lit another cigarette.
Stuart went in from the back entrance, avoiding the crowd and getting right up on stage to announce that the healings were now over. Similarly, he escaped out the back entrance of the Las Vegas hotel. That was the last time I got to see Stuart.
We exchanged emails occasionally, but communication became difficult as his phone numbers and emails were always changing to “avoid government tracking of his work” and as the followers around him became more and more controlling of his empire. Stuart moved to Ireland where he had cultivated many friendships and contacts and began to complete 2 screenplays that he was in the process of writing.
Then, one day, Stuart took a scenic drive through the Irish countryside, and as quickly as he was born, he died. No magic. No “dematerialization.” No ghouls. No music. He was just a 66-year-old man in poor health, taking his last breath. The release by his spokesman read this: “Stuart Wilde dies at age 66, after suffering a fatal heart attack on a scenic drive through Ireland on Wednesday, May 1, 2013.” It was as simple as that.
Just like other gurus before him, the life of Stuart Wilde was a mixed bag. He managed to bring the philosophy of spiritual abundance to the mainstream over 20 years before the film, The Secret, but in the end, his hard-hitting lifestyle may have caused him to prematurely pass.
How I feel about Stuart is also a mixed bag. He was a friend and mentor, but he was also, in my opinion, a fraud and a snake-oil salesman. He did lead an extraordinary life and inspired millions of people. For that, I give him credit.
However, towards the end of his life, he became exactly the person he railed against all of his life and the epitome of everything he stood against.
Stuart once said, “Because there is so much lovelessness around us, we are like glow worms. We have to make do with our own light.” This last week, his light went out. Ironic as his life may have been, he will be missed…