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:

A Short Note on the Politics of the Law of Attraction

Over at the “Post-Abe” blog, Mariah (who sometimes comments here) has an interesting post about yet another way that the Law of Attraction disempowers its believers — this time in the realm of politics. Here’s a link to it.

The “Abe” referred to in the blog name, by the way, is “Abraham”, a spiritual entity made famous by the channeler (i.e. liar), Esther Hicks. Curiously (i.e. stupidly), the term “Abraham” is not singular, but plural. It refers to a curious collection of disembodied and diffuse invertebrates which at different times includes Buddha, Jesus and Mohamed (as well as others).

One might expect such a diverse group of critters like these to have trouble finding any common ground. At times they certainly do appear to be rather ignorant and undecided about their own teachings — in fact, it’s almost as if it’s being made up on the spot by a poorly educated and hucksterish ex-Mormon who’s being promoted by her Amway trained husband — but as it happens, there is one thing they always agree on: the Law of Attraction. I guess they only discovered it after they died. But the important thing is Buddha, Jesus and Mohamed got to lend their prestigious names to the “Abraham” label, even if their previous knowledge and talents have been completely subsumed by this corporate giant.

Anyway, before I go too far off topic, I wanted to highlight a point that Mariah made about the LoA and the current US presidential election. She noted that followers of Abraham (which she has cutely dubbed “Hicksians”) have been lately telling her that there’s no need to vote. Instead she should get into the “vortex” (this is another Abe teaching) and use the LoA to create the reality she wants.

Mariah answers them:

While you’re out there ignoring what you don’t like and pretending you’re in the {imaginary} vortex and not caring about politics, the ones who are paying attention are the ones making things happen. There’s irony there.

People believing they create their own reality, but not actually doing so… while their world is created around them by the people who are paying attention. Dang, these are disempowering teachings! 

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If the overwhelming majority of LoA fans were potential Republican voters, then keeping them away from the polling booths would probably be the only good thing that has EVER come from the stupid and ugly Law of Attraction. Certainly the LoA is much closer to the immoral and stupid Republican platform on issues like rape, birth control, health insurance, global warming, environmental protection and foreign aid. The more I think about it, the more I feel like saying to LoA fanatics, “Okay guys, right! Don’t vote, don’t insure yourselves, and above all don’t open your stupid mouth in public ever again either. Got it?”

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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.

Blogging “The Power”: A critique of Rhonda Byrne – Part 5: Masuro Emoto

The in depth look at Rhonda Byrne’s Secret follow up, The Power continues….

The brain, Rhonda Byrne tells us, is 80% water. In Ms Byrne’s case this is extremely easy to believe.

She continues:

Researchers in Japan, Russia, Europe, and the United States have discovered that when water is exposed to positive words and feelings such as love and gratitude, the energy level of the water not only increases, but the structure of the water changes, making it perfectly harmonious.

The higher the positive feeling, the more beautiful and harmonious the water becomes. When water is exposed to negative emotions, such as hate, the energy level of the water decreases, and chaotic changes occur, negatively affecting the structure of the water.

So, if water is affected by our thoughts and emotions, we can turn our brains into big slush puddles of positivity, just by controlling our thoughts. We can use this positively magnetized pot of gruel to attract equally positively magnetized objects and events to ourselves, through the “scientifically proven” Law of Attraction!!!

But before we get too carried away, let’s look at some of the fascinating “research” that Byrne is referring to. (I’ve dealt in previous posts with Byrne’s failure to realize that magnets attract their opposite pole, and the narcissistic stupidity of trying to attribute “positive” and “negative” charges to events and objects; and the stubborn refusal of human flesh to behave like a magnet, whether positive or negative.)

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One of Byrne’s heroes, Masuro Emoto, is probably already known to her readers, as he was featured in the smash hit pseudo-science-fiction movie What the Bleep. Emoto’s work certainly demonstrates the extraordinary power of classical pseudo-scientific method:

1. Rig up an experiment to produce the effects you desire

2. Carefully record the results

3. Run with them to the PR department as quickly as possible

Emoto’s experiments were simple and elegant: he put water in scientific looking vials and taped words to the outside, or played music, or prayed. He froze the water and photographed the crystals that formed with a powerful microscope. Without fail, the photographs reflected his hypothesis: the vials that had words like “love” taped to them formed nice crystals; those with words like “hate” or “scamming shit-weasel” taped to them produced ugly ones.

 ”Love” 

 “You make me sick”

As chemist Stephen Lower points out, ice crystals form differently according to the rate of freezing and other conditions. Furthermore, the different crystal formations don’t mean that the water’s chemical structure is changed as Byrne claims. It just means that the water formed different shaped crystals.

Blogging “The Power”: A Critique of Rhonda Byrne – Part 4: Dollars Want You

Here we are again, bogging our way through Rhonda Byrne’s new book, The Power.

The previous post covered Ms Byrne’s claim that her “like attracts like” principle governs not only the supposed Law of Attraction, but also governs everything in the entire universe and all the laws of science.

This of course is pure bullshit.

In fact, I would argue this is probably the most spectacularly wrong notion ever to find its way into print. Byrne went into considerable detail, explaining how everything from plant nutrition to cell biology, to astrophysics is governed by this singular notion.  If this were true, the consequences would be way beyond anything I could conceive, let alone write about in a few short sentences.

But here’s a start. If electrons started attracting instead of repelling each other, we would instantly and permanently meld with everything we touch. Light would disappear entirely from the universe, and in fact there probably wouldn’t even be a universe. Rarely is an an idea so immediately and obviously demonstrably wrong. You don’t even need to read a science text. Just the fact that you can open your eyes is already enough.

Unfortunately Ms Byrne’s book centers on using this extraordinarily stupid idea as the launching pad for her great conception of the the Law of Attraction. The fact that this book even got published is a testament to the general lack of standards in Byrne’s appallingly slack profession.

This also makes it a bit tricky to review. I didn’t have high hopes for this book anyway. I was expecting lots of hollow assertions and empty rhetoric mixed in with some specious, self-serving lies; I was hoping to deftly show how people have been seduced into believing something that might initially appear plausible, but disintegrates on closer examination.  Instead, Rhonda Byrne herself has completely demolished her own ideas without any help from me at all. Should I even continue?

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.

David Schirmer, Squirmin’ in the USA

Hey Secret fans, lost one guru? Get one for free, for only $97.

David Squirmer, the only — that’s right, the ONLY Australian to appear in The Secret will be in the USA in March.