This teacher should NOT be teaching

The title takes a stand, and that is as emotional as I am going to get. It's hard though, I get very strong reactions to this story.

It goes like this:  self proclaimed guru who has difficulty articulating (I own the movie "The Secret" and he is in the bloopers) participates in the movie "The Secret", appears on Oprha, becomes very wealthy by using volunteers and charging copious amounts of money for self help seminars, and in one of them, specifically the one last October 9th 2009, 3 people end up dead.

On this retreat, he had his participants, who paid over 9K,  fast for a few days and then do an intense sweat lodge.  Most of them started to faint (reportedly they had organ failures) and he said to them that they needed to be stronger, to overcome the flesh.  I am paraphrasing, but that was the jest, you can see more in this CNN video where Melinda, an employee of A.Ray, tells the story.  

This report came later, when the third victim died, 19 were hospitalized.  There is plenty of material out there, including the family of the victims  on Larry King who are, understandable, very upset. This particular  clip is when the self claimed guru tried to solve everything by sending 5K to one of the families.



J.A. Ray went on scheduling people to his seminars, until sent to jail earlier this year.  He has now been released on bail awaiting trial which will start in August.

And so, now, with his new found freedom, he is in youtube,  telling us that he does not have a company anymore, but he still has a wealth of knowledge in him he wants to share.  It is a, get this, "gift".

One of his latest tweets reads: "Most people really don't think.  Ture thinking is instantaenous... all else is just running old programming and memories."

I have a feeling that the one who does not think is Mr Ray himself,  he seriously honors his spontaneity,  I mean, when someone teaches a workshop in which 3 people die, perhaps the wise thing to do is first not flee the scene, then wait until at least the charges are cleared before continue teaching.  Most importantly, perhaps even wonder weather teaching is what he needs to be doing.

This is his announcement and invitation to follow him on youtube.  It scares me, I believe Mr. Ray is a danger to people out there whom (in the comments already) are saying they don't care what happened but rather how he will handle this.  Using phrases like "this too shall pass" as if it was some kind of misadventure, as if he had been fired from a job or something. but  What happened IS IMPORTANT, 3 people died, 19 hospitalized, he flew the scene.