James Ray Defends Himself in Sweat Lodge Deaths

A telling article in the New York magazine where James Ray and his lawyer sit down to answer questions for the first time. Some shocking items- On the conference call with the survivors of the Sweat Lodge New Age Massacre, the dead bodies were explained by saying that they merely experienced “astral projection” and their spirits didn’t want to return. And James Ray thought that when everyone was vomiting and gasping for air that it was okay because an Indian dude told him that people purge during Sweat Lodge ceremonies.

From the NYmag here:

Q- Did you tell sweat-lodge participants that vomiting was good for them, that the body was purging what it doesn’t want?
Jame Ray- I may have mentioned that I had been told by many shamans that the body purges and there’s only certain ways that it can purge.

Q- In a conference call after Sedona, a woman who was identified as speaking on behalf of James Ray International and who was identified as a kind of medium or channeler, said that the victims had been having out-of-body experiences and were having so much fun that they chose not to return to their bodies.
James Ray- Well first of all, that’s not absolutely correct. The person you’re speaking of was a volunteer at the event. She was not a representative of JRI and she was not a channeler. She said that Angel Valley Ranch had brought a channeler into that meeting and that’s what that person had told her. She was just relaying the message.

Q- So it (the claims about out of body experiences caused the deaths) might be true and it might not be true: You don’t have any sense either way?
James Ray- I really don’t, no. I think that’s up to an interpretation of each individual.

Q- Do you think in some divinely or cosmically ordained way this was the victims’ time to die?
James Ray- I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that. I think that’s something that everyone would have to come to their own conclusions about.

James Ray has a penchant for avoiding responsibility for what he says and does by merely deflecting his answers by saying he heard someone else say something, or saying that “others believe such and such.” He preaches that bad things only happen to people because they weren’t having positive thoughts. When someone asked him if the 6 million jews who died in the holocaust died because they weren’t thinking positively, he said that some jewish friends think good things resulted from the holocaust. And now he says that “many shamans said the body purges.”

So its always someone else’s fault. I do think everyone has come to their own conclusions that this liar and charlatan needs some serious jailtime. Some jewish shamans said so.