Sweat Lodges and Our Aching Need for Answers

That was not a bunch of snake-handling hillbillies in the sweat lodge in Sedona Arizona. That was a group of well-heeled business and professional people seeking spiritual rebirth from a charismatic new-age guru named James Arthur Ray. They had paid over $9,600 each to be packed into an unlit tent-like structure covered with blankets and plastic and heated with fiery rocks in the hot Arizona desert.

A spiritual ceremony was conducted. Ray sat by the tent-flap door, which remained sealed except for pauses when additional rocks, which had been heated in an outdoor fire, were brought in. The heat became overwhelming. About 90 minutes into the ceremony, someone yelled in the darkness that a woman had passed-out. Dr. Beverley Bunn, 43, an orthodontist from Texas, who struggled to remain conscious in the sweat lodge, said that “there were people throwing-up everywhere.” Some of the people throwing-up had just completed a 36-hour “vision quest” in which they fasted alone in the desert.

By the end of the ordeal, emergency crews had taken 21 people to hospitals. Three died.

Mr. Ray’s company, James Ray International, made $9.4 million in 2008 from weekend seminars, videos, and books, including the 2008 best-seller: “Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want.”

Participants at the sweat lodge retreats described a game in which Mr. Ray wore white robes and played God, ordering some participants to commit mock suicide. It reminded me of the late protestant minister Jim Jones who took his congregation to Guyana and had them commit mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.

What is it about these charismatic spiritual leaders that they are able to motivate people to acts of insanity? Marshall Applewhite was able to convince 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult to commit suicide in order to join-up with a spacecraft which he said was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. David Koresh suceeded in persuading members of the Branch Davidian sect that he was the Son of God and that they should allow their wives and daughters to have sex with him. What is it?

Many if not most people are fragile and insecure, seeking answers to the big questions about how to be happy, assertive, serene, and successful. They are easy prey for the brash, daring few people who attract followers through the strength of their magnetic personalities. I do not know what it is that makes so many people self-doubting while a small number of others are supremely self-assured.

It is likely that those highly attractive, self-confident people learn as they grow-up that they have the power to influence people. I have known a few such people in my life, and have seen that many of them use their powerful personalities to manipulate others. They are often good public speakers and are drawn to occupations such as religious leaders or self-help gurus. Their gift for oratory is mistaken as knowledge of the truth. Many televangelists are great speakers, but if you listen closely, much of what they say is gibberish.

These charismatic types also learn early-on that they can parlay their personalities into wealth and power. James Arthur Ray has been able to earn millions of dollars encouraging people to do bizarre acts like suffer in packed, unlit furnaces in the desert. Televangelists, whose sole claim to spiritual prominence is the ability to glibly string words and sentences together, are able to gain fabulous wealth by encouraging watchers to contribute “seed” money which they assure their sheep-like listeners will be repaid a hundredfold by God. You can be sure it never is.

We have an aching need for answers, but too often the people who are most willing to supply those answers are smooth-talking, charismatic, money-hungry con-men whose answers empty our wallets and our souls.