Have a Good NEWS

"Start living in harmony right now, and know that everything you want is within your reach."

"I knew I had some shortcomings in different areas of my life and I thought I needed something to give me a new perspective or put me on a different path," Bunn says. "From what I had read and heard, I felt that James Ray might be the one."

Ray was on the road for 200 days a year, preaching his very American gospel of success, of harmonic wealth. It wasn't just his message that resonated so powerfully; it was his charismatic presence and delivery. The goodlooking, athletic, 6ft tall Ray would roam the stages of large halls and convention centres, a new-age revivalist preacher, pumping rock music and precepts for positive living. He would reference apparently ancient wisdom from different spiritual traditions, throwing out homilies intended to make people challenge their beliefs and their ideas about themselves. Many people offered powerful testimonials about the transformative effect Ray had had on their lives.

Ray was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of a protestant minister at the Red Fork Church of God. He said he grew up in poverty, that his parents couldn't even afford to buy him a baseball glove or pay for his haircuts. "How could a loving God keep me from cub scouts on account of not being able to afford a uniform?" he later wrote, coming to the conclusion that wealth and spirituality were not mutually exclusive.

"This is where it all came together for me," he wrote, "where the final parts of the harmonic richness and the quantum physics stuff that I had studied for a decade began to take shape."

When Beverley Bunn arrived at Angel Valley to retire for the spiritual warrior, she was relieved she had a fellow traveler in Kirby Brown. But, as it was signed in Bunn made trouble by a member of Ray 's called "Dream Team" of helpers who welcomes a pair of scissors held. As a way of showing their commitment to transformation wanted to shave every Ray "Warrior" his hair. Bunn initially balked at this, as well as several others, including Brown, who has always been proud of her long brown hair.

The 56 people on the retreat spent the first 2 days to hear presentations by Ray. Ray made them watch clips from The Last Samurai, the Tom Cruise film about an American, the samurai culture in Japan has hug. On the third day was Ray playing everyone what he called the samurai game.

"James played God," says Bunn. "He had a white robe with a golden girdle. You couldn 't talk to God. If you talk to God, he killed you."

One of them, \ try "talking \ with God," Brown, who, if they could use the toilet was needed. Ray yelled, "Die! Die! 'An, until it fell to the ground not to move for hours. She was so desperate to urinate, she said later that she had to hold back vomit.

After the Samurai Game finished, around midnight, the Warriors were led out into the desert for what Ray called a Vision Quest, which he said was a Native American spiritual tradition. Each person had to stay in a 10ft circle, and was not allowed any food or drink for 36 hours. After two nights in the desert, they returned to Angel Valley for breakfast early in the morning of the final day of the retreat, 8 October.

"Once I was out, I saw a woman called Sidney on her side, barely breathing, not responding to anything, her eyes rolled back in her head, mucous coming out of her nose and mouth. A lot of other people couldn't walk or anything. Their motor skills were gone.

"I've taught that we're all going to have adversity and we can't run from it," Ray told followers at an event in Denver. "I've certainly learned a lot in the past 10 days."

About five days after Kirby Brown's death, Ray called her parents. "He said, 'This is the most awful thing that has ever happened to me in my life,' " Ginny Brown, Kirby's mother, recalled. He sent the family a cheque, marked "Honor of Kirby", for $5,000.

"As the horrific details of the three deaths emerged in this trial, we realised that the potential danger posed by 'self-help' gurus extends well beyond James Ray," say the Browns. "Since Kirby's voice has been for ever silenced, her family will now speak for her. We have launched a not-for-profit organisation, Seek (Self-help Empowerment through Education and Knowledge) to educate the public about the self-help industry. We will work to protect those desiring personal growth by exposing scam artists and frauds."