Introducing: Guru

Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment

Wondery

Documentary, Society & Culture, Exhibit C, True Crime

3.8 • 7.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2020

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A search for spiritual guidance leads a group of strangers to seek help from a self-help guru. He’s part of a growing number of entrepreneurs giving workshops and seminars all over the US in the 2000s. His unorthodox methods and blend of self-improvement philosophies and economic advice have won praise from Oprah and others. His career seems to be taking off, but his ever more extreme methods push his pupils to their limits. What are they seeking? What does he offer? And what happens when it all goes too far, and people die. Listen on Apple Podcasts starting July 1st.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Imagine you're in a tent.
0:09.4	In the desert, with dozens of other people.
0:12.9	It's dark, it's pitch black.
0:15.3	Like there's no light coming through.
0:17.8	You're all pressed up close together beneath layers of tarps.
0:21.8	And there's these weird branches very creepily kind of holding the top up.
0:29.1	You've been warned what's about to happen will be intense.
0:33.4	He was touting that he was awesome because this was the hottest sweatludge possible.
0:40.8	The steam just starts full, fills the whole space.
0:45.6	And I could feel it going in my nose and down my throat,
0:51.0	actually physically burning the inside of my body as it was going in.
0:56.3	It's like just breathe, just breathe, just breathe.
0:59.2	But you're here to push yourself to your limits.
1:03.2	And you're here for James.
1:07.5	You must have a passion for growth because there's a long
1:10.3	your universe of states.
1:11.2	If you're not growing, you are dying.
1:14.2	Please remember that.
1:15.2	James Arthur Ray was an Oprah endorsed guru.
1:18.4	OK, James, I just love what you just said during the commercial break.
1:20.9	I hadn't heard that before.
1:22.5	Turned self-help superstar.
	...

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