Lord of Lunacy: the strange world of David Avocado Wolfe

Remember the Rolls-Royce guru?

A very long time ago, the family went on a vacation trip to Washington State. I wanted to see where Tom Robbins lived (and did) and poke around the tourist sights. It turned out to be dizzyingly beautiful country.

I knew I had kept a scrapbook, and that there were some crazy things in it - some of the weirdest postcards I've ever seen, and great stuff from the local newspapers. I remembered something particularly weird that I'd read in the LaConner paper. The memory of it was recently dredged up by a book I'm reading for at least the fourth time.

The article in the Channel Town Press, which I initially tried to take seriously, is about a fictional guru trying to set up shop with his Rolls-Royces and harem of wives/kids in LaConner. After a while I realized it was satire. I thought it was funny, especially Bag One's drawn-on beard (this was long before photoshop) and the Bag Dad Middle School.

It was years later that I reviewed a book for the Vancouver paper called The Promise of Paradise - a woman's intimate story of the perils of life with Rajneesh. This is the one that I keep reading over and over again. The one I'm reading right now.

Rajneesh, as in Bhagwan, the "Rolls-Royce Guru", built an incredibly wealthy worldwide empire which embodied all that is wrong with mass religion. Bhagwan's devotees had taken over a piece of land called Big Muddy Ranch near the small town of Antelope, Oregon. By the time this grotesque empire collapsed in a state of near-terrorism, the newly-created city of Rajneeshpuram was in an armed standoff with the citizens of Antelope. The erstwhile leader of the cult, a demented demigod named Sheela, was eventually charged with election fraud (rounding up homeless people to vote for sympathetic representation in local elections), poisoning hundreds of citizens, and a host of other crimes. By this time, Rajneeshpuram was being patrolled by armed guards dressed in camouflage. The utopia had become a police state. 

Thousands of people drank this particular flavour of Koolaid, in particular the author of The Promise of Paradise, Satya Bharti Franklin (given a new name, as per usual, when she joined the cult). Even as chaos and violence and death swirled around her, she kept writing about "waves of bliss" washing over her, and about how, in spite of everything (even abandoning her kids), her fourteen years with this self-righteous fucked-up power-tripping bastard had all been worth it.

I think LaConner must have felt the shock waves from this bizarre episode of cult aggression. It had all come too close for comfort, but they still had the good grace to joke about it. The piece was written only a couple of years after the meltdown became public knowledge. To quote Wikipedia: "The subsequent criminal investigation, the largest in Oregon history, confirmed that a secretive group had, unbeknownst to both government officials and nearly all Rajneeshpuram residents, engaged in a variety of criminal activities, including the attempted murder of Rajneesh's physician, wiretapping and bugging within the commune and within Rajneesh's home, poisonings of two public officials, and arson."

To me, this smacks of the "but we didn't know what was going on" claim of the German population after World War II. According to her detailed account based on private journals, Satya Bharti Franklin knew what was going on, and did not walk away from it. By then she felt a kind of paralysis which was widespread. Did they know what was going on? They knew enough.

I'm not sure why I keep reading about cults - oh, of course I do, they are bloody fascinating! These people did not question Sheela or Rajneesh or any of it, no matter how nasty or ludicrous the edicts became, but kept on humbly obeying. If they didn't, they weren't "surrendered" enough. Imagine an environment, a community, in which the ultimate goal is to surrender. To give up: personal freedom, sanity, decision-making, life. 

Anyway, I kept the Bag One clipping even before I knew anything at all about Bhagwan or Sheela or Satya Bharti Franklin, because I loved it. It was all part of the Washingtonian nuttiness I had come to cherish. 

But what of those throngs in red skirts, the faithful sanyassins who had given years of their lives (not to mention all their worldly goods) to this crazy creep? Did they just go on to some other prophet, tin god, addiction? How many of them joined Scientology? There must be a cult mind, and I must figure out what it is, because in spite of everything I have seen, it makes no sense to me at all.

The worst kind of secret

The more I read this kind of stuff, the more I laugh, or groan. It's the kind of "meme" I see on Facebook all the time.

Look at it. I mean, line by line. "So strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind." A tornado wrecking your house? Losing your child in a car accident?

"To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person I meet." The thug down the street with the handgun? The rapist, or the terrorist disguised as a street punk?

"To look at the sunny side of everything, and make my optimism come true" - You're sure this isn't a 1930s production number by Busby Berkeley?

"To wear a cheerful expression at all times (as they did in Nazi Germany, no doubt, or Stepfordville) and give a smile to every living creature (squirrel? Earthworm?) I meet."

And etc,. etc., etc. After the post, there was the usual riot of gushing comments about how WONDERFUL this philosophy is, without anyone giving the first thought as to how impossible it may be to undertake, let alone how stupid it all is. It's doubtful that any one of them are practicing even the smallest part of it, nor will they in the future.

Then I saw, at the top of the meme-y thing, a red seal with the words "The Secret" on it, and realized: hmmmm, this was something I'd seen before. On Dateline NBC, perhaps. There was a name associated with it, wasn't there? Some sort of . . . bizarre guru?



FELICIA FONSECA

updated 6/22/2011 11:40:32 PM ET CAMP VERDE, Ariz. —

A jury has convicted a self-help author who led a sweat lodge ceremony in Arizona that left three people dead.

Jurors in Camp Verde, Ariz., reached their verdict Wednesday after a four-month trial.

James Arthur Ray was found guilty of three counts of negligent homicide.

More than 50 people participated in the October 2009 sweat lodge that was meant to be the highlight of Ray's five-day "Spiritual Warrior" seminar near Sedona.

Three people died following the sauna-like ceremony meant to provide spiritual cleansing. Eighteen were hospitalized, while several others were given water to cool down at the scene. Prosecutors and defense attorneys disagreed over whether the deaths and illnesses were caused by heat or toxins.

Ray's attorneys have maintained the deaths were a tragic accident. Prosecutors argued Ray recklessly caused the fatalities.

Ray used the sweat lodge as a way for participants to break through whatever was holding them back in life. He warned participants in a recording of the event played during the trial that the sweat lodge would be "hellacious" and that participants were guaranteed to feel like they were dying but would do so only metaphorically.

"The true spiritual warrior has conquered death and therefore has no fear or enemies in this lifetime or the next, because the greatest fear you'll ever experience is the fear of what? Death," Ray said in the recording. "You will have to get a point to where you surrender and it's OK to die."

Witnesses have described the scene following the two-hour ceremony as alarming and chaotic, with people dragging "lifeless" and "barely breathing" participants outside and volunteers performing CPR.

Two participants — Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee — died upon arrival at a hospital. Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minn., slipped into a coma and died more than a week later at a Flagstaff hospital.

Ray's attorneys maintained the deaths were nothing but a tragic accident, and said Ray took all the necessary precautions to ensure participants' safety. They contend authorities botched the investigation and failed to consider that toxins or poisons contributed to the deaths and called two witnesses to support that argument.

Prosecutors relied heavily on Ray's own words to try to convince the jury that he was responsible for the deaths. They said a reasonable person would have stopped the "abomination of a sweat lodge" when participants began exhibiting signs of distress about halfway through the ceremony.

Sweat lodges typically are used by American Indians to rid the body of toxins by pouring water over heated rocks in the structure.

Ray became a self-help superstar by using his charismatic personality and convincing people his words would lead them to spiritual and financial wealth. He used free talks to recruit people to expensive seminars like the Sedona retreat that led to the sweat lodge tragedy. Participants paid up to $10,000 for the five-day program intended to push people beyond their physical and emotional limits.

Ray's popularity soared after appearing in the 2006 Rhonda Byrne documentary "The Secret," and Ray promoted it on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Larry King Live."

But his multimillion-dollar self-help empire was thrown into turmoil with the sweat lodge deaths. Ray ended his seminars shortly after but has continued to offer advice throughout his trial via the Internet and social networking sites.

(Emphasis mine.)

So I was right, this "secret" stuff is tied to some very dangerous and toxic events. But wait! There's more! Wikipedia tells me this whole mess started with a wildly popular self-help book called (what else?) The Secret. In a "nut"shell, here is its basic philosophy:

The Secret highlights gratitude and visualization as the two most powerful processes to help manifest one's desires. It asserts that being grateful both lifts your frequency higher and affirms that you believe you will receive your desire. Visualization is said to help focus the mind to send out the clearest message to the universe. Several techniques are given for the visualization process, as well as examples of people claimed to have used it successfully to manifest their dreams.

As an example, if a person wanted a new car, by thinking about the new car, having positive and thankful feelings about the car as if it were already attained and opening one's life in tangible ways for a new car to be acquired (for example, test driving the new car, or making sure no one parks in the space where the new car would arrive); the law of attraction would rearrange events to make it possible for the car to manifest in the person's life.

I haven't figured out yet how you can test drive a car that doesn't exist, but never mind. It's beyond silly: most of us outgrew this kind of magical thinking in the third grade. It places us at the centre of the universe, for one thing, and assumes we have some sort of mystical influence over events that are, at best, random. Perhaps this helps assuage people's powerlessness in the face of a reality that is pretty much oblivious to our existence.

It's obvious that Ray took this all a little bit beyond the new car phase and into self-proclaimed Godhood, where he finally ran aground. According to Dateline, however, and even in spite of his having killed three people and maimed and burned over a dozen others, he still has his loyal followers. My impression is that Ray is a reptile with no higher brain function than a crocodile, though with somewhat less insight and compassion. But there are ALWAYS followers for such demons in human skin, people who sit with fixed smiles on their faces, sopping up all the evil swill their leader bilges out at them. It's Third Reich syndrome all over again. Any leader is better than no leader, right? Am I making sense?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Eat Pray Love God Food: And Oprah Created Women

Is it my imagination, or does Oprah regularly decide to Change her Life by slavishly following a new guru, then replacing him/her once she gets tired of them and the bloom is off?

I just remember people like Sarah Ban Breathnach (who?), a lifestyle coach who used to come on regularly (but, unlike the male gurus, didn't get her own show). I wonder if she's still around, coasting on all that former glory, or languishing in remainder bins next to John Bradshaw.

OK, so this time Oprah tells us she has Found the Secret to weight loss and "food issues". And this time, boy, she really means it! I mean, really really really. It's all in this book by Geneen Roth, a formerly fat self-help/bestseller writer who has revealed an astounding fact: overeating, and food/weight problems in general, are often connected to larger emotional and spiritual issues.

Never having heard it before, Oprah was all over this idea like a mess of mashed potatoes with sausage gravy. In fact, during her "interview" with Geneen Roth yesterday, she monologued for 15 or 20 minutes about her own food problems, while Roth sat there nodding and saying "yes. . . yes. . . yes. . . ", her face arranged in what she hoped was a compassionate expression.

Food is tied to emotional issues? Ack! Oprah isn't the only one drooling over this thing, which is selling wildly, much as Women who Run with the Wolves did about a decade ago. (Take another look at that one and see if if it doesn't embarrass you.) Someone has been paying well-known self-help authors to salivate all over this book, or they wouldn't be praising a rival like this:

"Geneen Roth does it again! Women Food and God is absolutely mesmerizing. And loaded with insights which can change your life." - Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of The Wisdom of Menopause

"This is a hugely important work, a life-changer, one that will free untold women from the tyranny of fear and hopelessness around their bodies." - Anne Lamott, professional confessor/so-called counsellor/recovering sitdown comedienne.

OK, so obviously I don't feel very good about this book. Actually, it's not the book, and it's not even Oprah telling us the book has led her to "epiphany after epiphany" about making the connection between eating and emotional stress.

It's the fact that we've heard it all before, ad nauseam. All the elements get scrambled around, and the face of the author (usually compassionate and spiritual - and by the way, none of them are fat) changes with the seasons. Oprah leads the parade, beating her vast drum and insisting that this book, this author is the one who represents the one true religion about fat.

I feel sorry for Oprah, I really do. I think she is a sad woman who lost touch with herself long ago, and is now trapped in a kind of bizarre media godhood (goddess-hood?). What she says, goes. My prediction is that she will soon enter politics, and if a B-movie actor or a peanut farmer can make it to the Presidency, so can she.

I've been rather guiltily reading another best-seller, the Kitty Kelley tell-all bio, Oprah. It's not particularly charitable, but at the same time it's believable: the Big O has become a media behemoth, her ambition fuelled by a desperate attempt to outrun her traumatized past.

Much has been made of the fact that O has never had therapy, insisting that public confession is enough to heal her wounds. Her Kirstie-Alley-esque weight-bounces are beside the fact. But then again. . . Why this thundering response to a book that seems so self-evident? The Oprah who used to preach sermons when she was three (oh, maybe five) has stepped up to the pulpit again, insisting that THIS TIME we have found the answer. Not by dieting, not by agonizing or weighing, not even by joining Jenny Craig (like a lot of her "successful" guests). But by becoming spiritually aware. By realizing that we need to embrace the things we hate and fear the most.

OK: I have a few things that are hard to embrace.

Environmental meltdown. Oil spills. Random, vicious violence. All those little school children hacked to death in China. Drugs. Waste. The capricious, often horrendous turns of fate that can derail a human being for life. Cancer. Suffering. Pain of all kinds.

Global warming? You get the idea.

Even the things that lurk in my own psyche (jealousy, lust, anger, violent mood swings, loneliness, despair) are pretty gol-dern hard to embrace. I can't really see how embracing them will help. But then, I don't have a book on the bestseller list.

I predict that within one year, or maybe two, Oprah's miraculous weight loss under the Roth banner will have bounced again. And she will once again be fishing for people who insist they have discovered The Secret.

Speaking of, wasn't there a book by exactly that name that Oprah touted not so long ago? Its main premise was that you can get anything you want - anything - just by wanting it badly enough. A woman wrote in to Oprah claming that she had cured her breast cancer this way (prompting the producers to send her a frantic note).

Then came the news headline: this particular guru, James Ray (no relation to James Earl Ray) had been performing endurance tests on his disciples, including an extremely hot sweat-lodge that caught fire, killing several people.

The answer? I'm not even sure I know the question yet.