A leaked police report has revealed the horrifying final moments of participants in a new age retreat where a “sweat lodge” session killed three and injured 20. The spiritual retreat, whose wealthy participants paid thousands of dollars for five days of motivational talks and physical tasks, was led by James Arthur Ray, one of the US’ best known spiritual gurus.
The retreat’s Arizona sweat lodge ended up steaming people to death in October. The tragedy was at first thought to be a terrible accident, but Ray is now the subject of a murder investigation.
The report showed that participants in a sweat lodge ceremony vomited, passed out and screamed for help. Ray told them not to leave. He was outside the only entrance into the lodge, controlling the flap that let people in and out. One witness, Theodore Mercer, who helped run the sweat lodge, said Ray told scared participants three times: “You are not going to die. You might think you are, but you are not going to die.”
The two-hour ceremony, which saw red-hot rocks passed into the lodge every 15 minutes, came after two days of fasting and not drinking water. After an hour, two people were dragged out, one saying: “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.”
Ray allegedly responded: “It’s a good day to die.”
Almost at the end of the ceremony, with just one more round of rocks to be put in, it emerged that two people had passed out. They were kept inside. When the ceremony was finally over and people were trying to get the victims out, Ray called attempts to remove blankets from the walls “sacrilegious”. One of the victims had been subjected to such intense heat that his lungs were scorched.
Ray has so far not been charged with any crime, although he has been sued by some of the victims.
“The tragedy was a terrible accident that no one, including James Ray, could have seen coming,” Ray’s lawyer, Brad Brian, said in a statement.
But the leaked report does reveal previous incidents when problems arose at Ray’s sweat lodge and other strange ceremonies. One man described Ray telling him to shatter bricks with his bare hands, which he did, breaking bones in his hand in the process.
Critics say that such tasks are a sort of confidence trick that exists at the extreme end of the US’ US$11.5 billion self-help industry. Ray, who was born into poverty in Oklahoma, recently bought a luxury home in Beverly Hills. There is little doubt that he exercised a powerful psychological hold over many of those who took his courses. The man who broke his hand shattering a brick described the experience to police as “amazing.” The same man was at the fatal sweat lodge ceremony. He staggered out halfway through, severely burned by the hot rocks, yet went back in for the last round.
The report concluded: “Participants thought highly of James Ray and didn’t want to let him down by leaving the sweat lodge.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of