A little more than two weeks ago, I clicked on the website of self-help guru James Arthur Ray and saw that tickets to his next “Harmonic Wealth” weekend, planned for April 12-13, were being heavily discounted for a price of $197, down from a regular price of $697. I had not thought of Ray for years, but for some reason he popped into my mind. As a Fortune writer back in 2008, I had profiled him as an up-and-coming star in the burgeoning self-help industry—“The Man Who Would be Robbins, Covey and Chopra” (a nod to industry goliaths Tony Robbins, Steven Covey, and Deepak Chopra). As it happened, a few days after I started following him again on social media, a new post appeared: “With extreme disbelief and unfathomable pain,” it announced that James Ray had died, “suddenly and unexpectedly.” He was 67, and the cause was not disclosed.
A few brief obituaries followed focused on Ray’s main claim to infamy—as a convicted felon. The year after my article had appeared in Fortune, his story took a tragic turn when three of his clients died and 18 more were hospitalized after participating in a sweat lodge ceremony led by him at a retreat in Arizona. Ray was found guilty of three counts of negligent homicide, serving nearly two years in state prison before being released in July 2013. I had last seen him in person in 2016, when he was out of prison and trying to rehabilitate himself and salvage his career. It appeared that Ray had doggedly kept at it until his death, though he had added the descriptors “minister” and “philosopher” to his bio, and had married a woman, Bersabeh, and they produced podcasts as a duo. I couldn’t help note that the upcoming Harmonic Wealth weekend had been safely planned as a Zoom event (“in the comfort of your own home”).
It was a far cry from the Ray-fest weekend I had attended in an auditorium in Arlington, Texas, in better times for him. In the mid-aughts, I had moved from cynical New York to touch-feely SoCal, and Ray was an irresistible subject through which to examine the American obsession with wellness and personal growth that continues today. California was the epicenter and launching pad for this industry, whether through the controversial EST movement of the 1970s, the advent of holistic medicine, or various forms of yoga and meditation in the 1990s—up to more recent trends like cryotherapy, micro-dosing, and ayahuasca retreats. (One recent study estimates the size of the wellness business in the U.S. alone at $1.8 trillion.)
When I met him, Ray was then living in Carlsbad, outside of San Diego, a Gatsby-esque green light away from the estates of Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. He was nowhere near their stature, but his fame and career were on the upswing after he was interviewed and featured in The Secret, the documentary and subsequent bestselling book. A cultural phenomenon championed by Oprah Winfrey herself when it came out in 2006, The Secret professed to share insights into the pseudoscientific notion of “the law of attraction”—basically a fresh take on the time-worn power of positive thinking popularized by Norman Vincent Peale in the 1950s.
Oprah had invited Ray on her massive daytime show, and he had landed himself a seven-figure book deal with the publishing arm of Walt Disney Co. Ray’s differentiation in the marketplace—the “harmonic” in Harmonic Wealth—was how he combined multiple elements of self-help into one indispensable package. Some motivational gurus focused on financial success, some on spiritual growth, others on physical and mental wellbeing—only he proposed to bring them all together in one bubbling cosmic stew.
Over that weekend in Arlington, I milled among several hundred attendees who had paid more than $1,200 each to be there. Over the course of two days, the program ran nonstop from the early morning till late in the evening. Ray held forth and confidently paced the stage like a caged leopard, wearing a headset microphone and an amply unbuttoned shirt. Ray said useful things that I still think of today (“make calendars, not lists”), interspersed with teachings of various monks and shamans he claimed to know and some blatant quackery (Rolling Stones music emitted negative radiation vs. The Beatles’ positive energy?). Intrigued to see what connected with his audience, I had genuinely touching interactions with attendees who bore their personal challenges to him in the earnest hope that he would provide solutions. Called onstage, some karate-chopped through boards of wood on which they had written their “limiting beliefs” with markers.
There was also a constant drumbeat of upsell—to the next conference, the books, the higher level of membership, the personal coaching, and of course the ultra-exclusive “Spiritual Warrior” weekend retreat. In our interviews for my article, Ray was transparent and candid about his own struggles to seize the moment, scale his business to bigger venues and audiences, and achieve the levels of dream-living success for himself that he promised others. Was there an element of charlatanism to it all? Sure, but his audiences willingly ate it up. And some swore by Ray and his wisdom, no matter how out there.
Ray’s story took its dark turn when 55 people paid $10,000 apiece to attend the Spiritual Warrior retreat in Sedona, Ariz., in October 2009. “You’re not going to die,” Ray had told the group before going into the sweat lodge, insisting they endure the heat and smoke no matter how unbearable. “You might think you are, but you’re not going to die.”
At trial, Ray was acquitted of more serious manslaughter charges before his conviction on negligent homicide. The relatively short incarceration incensed the victims’ families, who felt it did not fit the severity of his crime—made even worse by the idea that these people had entrusted Ray to turn their lives around, not destroy them. In interviews I sensed Ray had genuine remorse for what had happened, though at times he could seem defensive. He contended it was a horrible, unfortunate accident versus personal wrongdoing. I couldn’t help wondering whether his own hubris and corner-cutting, as he raced toward the next rung of stardom, had played a role.
The sister of Kirby Brown, one of the sweat lodge victims, founded a not-for-profit, Seek Safely, which to this day aims to protect consumers of the largely unregulated self-help industry. In a statement after Ray’s death, Jean Brown offered her condolences to Ray’s family but added, “while there could be some small measure of relief in knowing that Ray will no longer be able to harm anyone, it is, truly, very little comfort.” Ray’s younger brother Jon, meanwhile, wrote in the death announcement that James’ “passion in life was always to make others’ lives better and more fulfilled. I’m happy to say he accomplished that thousands of times over.” To the end, James Ray stayed on mission and on brand. One of his last posts, on New Year’s Day, read: “Let’s be factual. The ‘year’ won’t change anything, nor will anything outside of you….YOU must change. Happy New You! God grant you the strength, wisdom, and discipline.”
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
