James Ray – The Prison Want Ads

James Arthur Ray, motivational speaker and star of The Secret, was found guilty of negligent homicide and sentenced to two years jail, after he cooked three people to death in a bogus sweatlodge in 2009. He is due for release on July 12 this year.

I have been wondering what James Ray will do upon his release. I’ve been expecting a slippery, slithery return to business, aimed at new customers and avoiding mention of what he’s been up to lately. Also, there are those who have clung onto him so far, hoping to grab a bargain business deal from a fallen dictator. They will be flooding the atmosphere with good vibes about Ray, and promoting exploitive “business opportunities” to the most vulnerable end of the market they can find.

That’s all still to come. But first up, the parole board requires Ray to remain in Arizona for 110 days after his release. That might pose some logistic difficulties for him I guess, but James Arthur Ray, author of Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want is an expert in using quantum physics and the Law of Attraction to get everything — yes everything — he wants… and you can too.

Or not.

Actually things don’t seem to be going so Harmonically well for Death Ray. He doesn’t know where he’s going to stay in Arizona for that time and has been reduced to getting his brother, Jon C Ray, to beg to other people for money, support and a couch to sleep on. An email which Jon Ray sent out privately has fallen into the hands of the activist blogger and kick ass fake robot the Salty Droid, who kindly featured it on his website:

Subliminal Advertising in The Secret (Part 4) — In Bed With Einstein

In the earlier posts (see Part 1), we saw how the advertisers who made The Secret used various standard advertising tricks to sell Rhonda Byrne’s story and turn her audience into active promoters as well as consumers of the product. In this post, as well as some more subliminal images and some good old-fashioned lying, we will notice the way discovering The Secret has been carefully constructed around the framework of a sexual encounter….

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The film makers face their most difficult challenge in this section of the film. They have built up an entirely bogus story linking “The Secret” with ancient mystical traditions, and upped its value by claiming that people were burned alive in order for you to see it; and that the content you are about to see is the first time these ancient life secrets have ever been revealed to a mass audience.

The stage will finally be set for the dramatic entrance of The Secret’s teachers with a triumphal sequence which reaches its climax with the entirely bogus claim that Albert Einstein “knew The Secret”….

….And then somehow they have to make the transition to Bob Proctor, a man who believes no one knows how electricity works, and that receiving social benefits will alter your DNA.

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But I want to back track slightly and pick up a sexually related image that I missed in the previous post.

I speculated about the possibility that the film makers used the only white sheet of paper in the entire film to present an image that looked like a child being tucked in to bed, thus reinforcing the association of The Secret with a child. The person in sequence who laid that sheet of paper over the Emerald Tablet was the young man with shoulder length hair. But in the actual sequence, Rhonda Byrne’s hair has been photoshopped over the man’s hair. (Not so clear in this still, but it’s carried through three frames. Click on the images to enlarge.)

 

Rhonda is making a bed and is about to lie on it. (Or lay in it, for US readers. Lying or laying, they both have appropriate double meanings.)

Rhonda Byrne, we shall see is going to need to go to bed with Albert Einstein in order for the film makers to ease the transition from the great men of history to a bunch of successful, fraudulent, backstabbing losers.

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Subliminal Advertising in The Secret (Part 3) — Be positive & get burned alive

My apologies for the rather ghoulish title, but that’s what The Secret is about. As we will see in this post, one of the strongest messages buried in this opening sequence is that people were burned so that YOU could have the product that Rhonda Byrne wants to sell you.

This message is left subtly implied rather than overtly stated, because you’re not supposed to be thinking “Well if The Secret will give me everything I want, then why did so many people who knew it previously get roasted?” Instead they want people to feel the intensity of the flames and feel the fear all at a subconscious level.

The Secret runs on subconscious fear just as much as it runs on appeals to hope and greed. The latter two are masked by claims that they are simply telling you the facts: The universe really IS a massive conspiracy to make you rich…. Or to break you. It all depends on how you use the Law of Attraction, and these mystical heroes are willing to sell you the secret key.

The parallel with the Dark Ages and Catholic Church selling indulgences to rescue people from the flames of hell, will become even clearer in this post.

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The use of subliminal images in the film (already explored in Part 1 and Part 2) not only reveals the film makers’ contempt for the audience; it also reveals the way in which they attempt to manipulate people into reacting in certain ways. Subliminal advertising seems to have only limited effects in very limited contexts, but following it frame by frame provides a glimpse in to the thoughts and intentions of the film makers. It shows the way they have stitched the whole fabric of lies, distortions, fear-mongering and emotional blackmail together.

Of course, no advertiser would be worth his salt if he didn’t use plenty of sexual innuendo, and that is where we will start.

Remember, so far we are barely 40 seconds into the film, in this the third post in this series. The viewer has little idea how much information they have swallowed up to this point.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Subliminal Advertising in The Secret: (Part 2) — Frightened Eyes and a Dollar Bill

Welcome to the second installment of this in-depth look at subliminal advertising and manipulative persuasion techniques in the first few minutes of The Secret.

Part 1, which should be read first to understand what’s going on, got us about 35 seconds into the film. The focus in this post is on a short burst of images of less than two seconds’ duration.

But first, let’s back up half a second or so, and look at an image I left out from the end of the last post.

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It’s worth emphasizing that the film aims to make the viewer identify with Rhonda Byrne’s character. Later we will see Byrne wishing to “share this Secret with the world”. The viewer is tacitly instructed to do the same, and is immediately given an avenue to act this out: the complete film was initially released on You Tube, and viewers were invited to share it with their friends, “as a gift”. This concept is called viral marketing and the strategy for The Secret was developed by Dan Hollings. 

Anyway, that’s why I kept pointing out in the last post that they were careful to use visuals to get the viewer to see Byrne handling a what looks like a video as well as a book. (See above image.)

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I also emphasized the “OXOX” (hugs & kisses) on the note from Byrne’s child as a theme which will recur. Remember that Byrne has just told us her father died, and a male face appeared behind her as she finds the “gift”. Look what happens to that OXOX as she opens the book – it now appears to spell out DADX. (I might be writing a bit much into that, but we’ll see more on this father theme soon.)

This is all quite subtle. But more crass, blatant and brutal subliminals are about to come. (*NB the focus here is on what these methods reveal about the intentions of the film makers. There’s little evidence for the effectiveness of such techniques.)

Subliminal Advertising in The Secret: (Part 1)

So, who knew that the film The Secret uses a relentless barrage of subliminal images in the opening sequences, to achieve its extraordinarily high emotional impact?

Subliminal advertising is of course illegal in many countries, but the advertisers who made this film present it as a kind of artistic docu-drama, and not an advertisement. That legal loophole, however, doesn’t negate the ethical considerations involved in the use of such methods. It’s also important to note that the effectiveness of such methods seems to be grossly exaggerated and often misunderstood.

The fact that there is almost no empirical support for the usefulness of subliminal messaging has not prevented numerous industries from producing and marketing tapes which allegedly communicate directly with the unconscious mind… –Skeptic’s Dictionary

But I will lay that discussion aside, and ask both fans and critics of The Secret, if you were aware that in the first minutes of the film you saw images of Ku Klux Klan ceremonies, images of people being burned alive, single frame inserts of money, single frame inserts of the Secret logo, and even subliminal flashes of the teachers themselves before they “appear” properly in the film?

Nope?

Me neither, until I slowed it down and went through it frame by frame.

Subliminals are just one of a few dozen dirty tricks these advertising wizzkids pulled on their audience. I’ll try to note a few of these other ones too as they fly past at the speed of light.

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

Stealing Hope: James Ray’s Deadly Legacy

It’s exactly three years since The Secret star and motivational torturer, James Arthur Ray lied to police about the death of one of his customers.

Colleen Conaway was attending Ray’s Creating Absolute Wealth seminar in July 2009 when her life came to a horrible and untimely end.

Screen-shot from The Secret: “James Arthur Ray, Philosopher”

James Ray and his staff abandoned Colleen’s body in a shopping mall and managed to conceal her death from her fellow participants. Their crude and cynical cover up was also enough to convince the San Diego Police to simply declare Colleen’s death a suicide and close the case. Ray, a charismatic millionaire with his head office at nearby Carlsbad, was obviously impressive enough for the police not to have smelled a rat. (They may, however, have noticed a faint whiff of the high powered attorneys, who Ray would later pay $5 million to defend him from manslaughter charges.)

Colleen’s death only became “news” after three more people died at Ray’s next event in Arizona. But at first, no one apart from her family and friends knew of Colleen’s fate. And the role that the internationally recognized “philosopher” from The Secret had played in ending her life could only be guessed at by her family.

James Ray: Locked Up for 2 Years

Motivational torturer, James Arthur Ray, has been sentenced to two years in prison for three of the four lives he snuffed out. (Also, a wrongful death civil lawsuit is taking the place of charges which the San Diego Police Department didn’t bother laying in relation to the death of Colleen Conaway.)

Ray’s million dollar law team based their defense on attempting to cast doubt on the cause of death, and openly and cynically attempting to get Ray off on a technicality. After the judge ruled the state had technically committed “Brady violation” (failure to disclose evidence), which could have led to a mistrial, Ray tweeted:

Judge ruled it was Brady… That’s in our favor. Now he needs to decide what to do. Woohooo!! (13 April 2011)

At the sentencing, however he was suddenly blubbering apologies to the bereaved and claiming he

didn’t know anyone was dying or in serious distress

– A statement he chose not to make during the trial. He also didn’t say anything like that when the event occurred, preferring to tell police that the firekeeper was in charge of his fake sweat lodge. And although his defense attorneys also claimed before the trial that he didn’t know anyone was in distress, they also decided not to expose that claim to cross examination. Luis Li certainly made no mention of such an idea during his seven hour closing statement.

Ray’s tears, however sounded genuine, as did his statement that “If there was anything I could do to turn back the clock I would do it.” But that comes more than two and a half years too late, and only with a jail term staring him in the face. Check out Ray’s twitter account, if you think he feels any more remorse for these lives than he did for Colleen Conaway. All four of his victims were admitted to hospital or the morgue labeled Jane or John Doe because Ray valued PR damage control more highly than human life.

The legal justice system has been kind to James Ray.

James Ray Trial: Pre-sentence Hearing Nov 2011

Update: This post covers the last part of the pre-sentence hearing. For some extra details on his two year sentence, follow this link.

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The sentencing hearing for James Ray, the “broke” wealth teacher who managed to kill four people at his “motivational” events, is finally underway.

Those following this case will recall that Ray managed to avoid a police investigation into the death of Colleen Conaway during a seminar, when he and his staff lied to police and fabricated evidence. He never bothered calling Colleen’s family, but swiftly called his lawyers instead. Two and a half months later Ray had to call his lawyers again during an event, after cooking several people to death in a bogus sweat lodge ceremony. He told police that the fire keeper was in charge of the lodge, a ruse which failed to shake investigators, but which set the tone for his subsequent defense.

Ray’s attorneys have attempted to pull every trick in the book to help Ray avoid justice, and while they managed to get enough evidence excluded from trial to save Ray from being convicted of manslaughter, he is still facing a maximum sentence of nine years for three counts of negligent homicide. He may also be let off with probation.

Scroll down for updates.

James Ray Trial: Pre-sentencing Mitigation Hearing Sept 2011

James Ray, “philosopher”, motivational torturer, “practical guru” and negligently homicidal manslaughterer, will be sentenced at the end of September (probably) for the three counts of negligent homicide he was convicted of. Judge Darrow denied the defense’s motion for a retrial, without further comment. The mitigation hearing will begin on September 19 and the defense will call 19 witnesses to explain why when James is really not such a bad fellow after all, despite the fatherless children and lives destroyed through his idiotic and sadistic negligence.

I will post updates below, but for now here is a list of the witnesses who will be hoping to gain something from appearing for their demented colleague.

David McCall, Kathy Fleig, Robert Procter, Dr Matt Bynum, Amy Grothe, Genpo Roshi, Jeff Asshead – sorry, Adshead, Dr Tony Allessandra, Alex Smyth, Wayne Parker Donneta Parker, Ward Smith, Jason Tabeu, John Watkin John Ferriter, Tony Parinello, Jon Ray, Joyce Ray.

I will post more about some of these people.

James Ray Guilty of Negligent Homicide x3

James Arthur Ray, motivational torturer and “philosopher” from the film The Secret has been found guilty of three counts of negligent homicide.

Ray has so avoided being investigated by police in San Diego in relation to the death of his first victim, Colleen Conaway who died in one of his seminars barely two months before he negligently caused three further deaths at a further seminar. Colleen’s death was inadequately investigated by police after Ray and some members of staff lied to police about the circumstances of Colleen’s death, after they had abandoned her body in a shopping plaza in San Diego.

James Ray and some members of his staff told carefully co-ordinated lies to the San Diego police and to participants (who only learned one of the death through the media). They also lied to some concerned staff members about it, instructing them to inform any inquirers that “We’ve found Colleen, she’s fine and decided not to return to the group”. That was after discussing the situation with his attorneys.

The cover up has been covered extensively on this site (see previous link), and a more complete description of events can be found here in a comment posted by a member of Colleen’s family.

 The San Diego police did not investigate the death and Ray went on to cause three more deaths, for which he has just been convicted. The jury never got to hear about Colleen Conaway as the defense was successful in having mention of it excluded. A document from the Arizona prosecutors:

[The] Defendant also tries to disclaim any responsibility for the suicide of Colleen Conaway. However the significance [for the current trial] of the suicide is not in the tragedy itself; instead it is in the reaction of the JRI staff to the event. Participants report that they were never informed that one of the seminar participants had died and the seminar continued through the end without mention of this tragedy, including Defendant making sales pitches for future events.

Hearing for sentencing Tuesday June 29. [UPDATE Scroll down for coverage of sentencing]

Disowning James Ray, Defending the LoA

Meryl Davids Landau has written an article titled

Does the James Ray Trial Mean There’s No Law of Attraction?

Well, here are some quick answers: Yes, the James Ray trial, along with every other phenomenon in the known universe means that the LoA does not exist. Or, No, the trial itself has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of any proposition, but even if Ray had not been brought to trial there would still be no LoA.

The question Davids Landau really wanted to ask is

What should I think when I see a grand master of the LoA suddenly clapped in leg irons and led off by the police?

Did mysterious cosmic forces have a hand in it, or did everything happen for the more prosaic reasons that the prosecution outlined?

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 James Ray & Det. Ross Diskin: not much attraction, plenty of law

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By my reading, the evidence assembled by the state prosecutors sounded like a pretty complete account of events. If I was looking for evidence of mystical occurrences, the James Ray trial is not somewhere I’d go to look. 

Meryl Davids Landau does though, because…..well she’s not interested any mystic experiences anyway.

The LoA isn’t a mystical concept from the realm of subjective experience. It’s not even a theological idea from the realm of revelation. No, in Ms Davids Landau’s world, the LoA is science, which is woo-shorthand for you’re not allowed to question it.

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There are three main problems with the Law of Attraction:

1. It’s not true 

2. It’s dangerous 

3. Its “blame the victim” approach is utterly immoral

I will deal with each of these problems as revealed in Ms Davids Landau’s article. Blaming the victims, she says is a misconception about the LoA. She titles one paragraph:

There’s no blaming the victim involved.

Mysteriously however, the explanation that follows contains nothing at all to explain why victims are not to blame. She says the LoA can “empower” victims, but then actually affirms that the victim is in fact to blame:

It’s not that someone expects to get cancer; it’s that they spend much of their time feeling angry or disempowered about life, which attracts other, similarly low-vibration creations, including diseases.

So the heading should be:

Blaming the victim is involved, but I hope no one else will notice it, if I also decide not to notice it.

James Ray Trial Updates: Final Phase

See previous trial updates here.

There is excellent detailed coverage of the James Ray trial in Celestial Reflections blog (daily updates) and Salty Droid. I haven’t attempted to duplicate that here, but have been indicating a few of the salient points to come up on particular days and link to more detailed material.

Scroll down for earliest entries.

UPDATE: RAY HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY OF 3 COUNTS OF NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE.

Further updates here.

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June 21 Salty Droid has edited a video of defense attorney Luis Li’s closing statement. For a sympathetic view of Li’s argument, see this post from CNN’s In Session. They saw it as “one of the most impassioned closing arguments you are ever likely to hear”. It lasted more than 7 hours, and parts of it were indeed impassioned, especially the bits about his father, his mountain climbing experiences, the birth of his first son (which was the best day of his life)….The only thing Li did not mention was why the hell his client acted the way he did. The central strategy from the defense during the entire process has been to attempt to hide as many details of Ray’s behavior before, during and after his deadly fake sweat lodge. The strongest parts of Li’s argument are that Ray did not think people would die, and that participants were “free to leave at any time”.

For a more balanced account of Li’s closing statement than In Session’s breathless fawning one, see the video below, and read LaVaughn’s three posts on it (one, two, three). Much of the media coverage of this trial has been skewed in favor of Ray, and/or limited to reporting when someone in the courtroom cries. LaVaughn has covered it way better than any professional news source, in far greater detail, and despite having a clearly stated set of judgments as to Ray’s guilt, her analyses have been far more astute than any of the journalists present at the trial. Salty Droid’s coverage is of a somewhat different nature, being more focused on his up to the moment tweets and video highlights. The video below gives a fair impression of the degree of lunacy that the defense has been pushed by the absence of any plausible explanations for Ray’s behavior, other than that he is culpable and guilty as charged.

State prosecutor Sheila Polk will make a rebuttal before the the jury retires. (Her closing statement was last week, see below.)

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