What would you do for spiritual enlightenment and personal success? Would you agree to spend 36 hours alone in the desert without food or water to clear your mind and find your true potential? Would you follow a trusted leader into a dark, hot tent to experience a version of a centuries-old Native American sweat lodge ritual? In the name of self-help, many people will do just that -- and more.

Three people died and more than a dozen others were injured as a result of an Oct. 8 retreat in Sedona, Ariz., led by James Arthur Ray, a nationally known self-help guru. According to interviews with participants and their relatives, within hours of returning from a desert "vision quest," and dehydrated from lack of food and water in the previous 1 1/2 days, more than 50 people followed Ray into a 20-by-20-foot makeshift sweat lodge of wood, plastic tarps and blankets. It was the surprise culmination of his "Spiritual Warrior" event, for which participants had paid as much as $9,695 per person.

For nearly two hours, Ray sat at the lodge's only exit, encouraging them to "push past your self-imposed and conditioned borders." Periodically, he brought in glowing red rocks to intensify the heat inside the dark structure. At the conclusion, seemingly unaware of the bodies of the unconscious lying around him, Ray emerged triumphantly, witnesses said, pumping his fist because he had passed his own endurance test.

What happened in Sedona is not a crazy, fringe event. America has a long history of self-help, and to properly comprehend the horror of these deaths, we must first understand the inspiration and guidance that Ray offered. Such gurus motivate thousands of smart, accomplished adults by borrowing from two very powerful thought traditions -- modern psychology and esoteric spirituality -- creating a one-two punch that's nearly impossible to resist. If you had been there, you might be dead, too.

Sedona police are investigating the deaths as homicides, while Ray continues to run his workshops. His company, James Ray International, made $9.4 million in 2008 from motivational videos, books and seminars, and he has appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and other shows. In an e-mail to his newsletter subscribers sent Wednesday, Ray said he had hired his own investigators to look into the tragedy. "I have chosen to continue with my work. It's too important not to," he wrote.

I've studied the self-help business for nearly a decade, curious about the sociological and psychological impact of this $11-billion-plus-per-year industry. I've read hundreds of American self-help texts -- by authors from Benjamin Franklin to Napoleon Hill to Deepak Chopra -- and interviewed writers, editors and group participants. Notions of self-help are part of the fabric of our independent, self-reliant culture.

The most popular of these leaders offer intense, "life-altering experiences," participants say, creating new ways of thinking that may have a lasting impact. "James challenged us to live an honorable and impeccable life," said a friend of mine who was injured in Sedona. She had attended several of Ray's events and does not want to use her name on the advice of her attorney.

"James had put us through so many challenging and wonderful experiences that we'd built up a great deal of trust in him," she said. Among her concerns about the sweat lodge were "the lack of emergency back-up, the intensity of the heat, and not monitoring participants during the sweat, which all led to negligent behavior that is disturbing."

As the sweat lodge got hotter and hotter, the underlying psychological message was quite clear: If you leave, you'll be a failure, not just in this ceremony but forever.

"As we entered the lodge, the heat was breathtaking," my friend said. "But I trusted that as our challenges increased, James would have increased his protection of us." The last thought she remembers was that it was time to leave; she passed out and was dragged to safety.

While Ray told participants that he had received training in proper sweat lodge rituals, he also bragged that his lodges were much hotter than those used in traditional Native American gatherings.

But Joseph Bruchac, author of "The Native American Sweat Lodge," said that a proper sweat lodge is a purification ritual, not a physical endurance test. He has received dozens of e-mails from Native American elders expressing how upset -- but unsurprised -- they were at the tragedy.

"This is the stealing of the traditional, spiritual ways," Bruchac said, "and to me, that's a very sad thing, but it's been going on for years."

Bruchac said there were critical problems with the sweat lodge built for Ray, and without proper ventilation, hydration and respect for tradition, it became extremely dangerous. That the ritual was conducted during an event for which people paid money disturbed Bruchac.

In 2005, at the same retreat venue, an unconcious woman was removed from the event. A relative of one retreat participant said Ray had warned his young volunteer staff -- untrained as medical professionals -- that while some people might exit the lodge vomiting and dizzy, that was not cause for concern.

There was a quite a bit more cause for concern than Ray anticipated. "Several men and women were foaming at the mouth and having seizures as they were dragged, unconscious, from the steaming tent," a survivor's relative told me in a phone interview. Volunteers spent 30 to 40 minutes doing CPR on the victims, and emergency teams intubated and evacuated at least one woman by helicopter.

There was no locked door trapping people inside that lodge, but Ray used something equally powerful: He tapped into persuasive psychological and spiritual traditions, and in doing so with apparent recklessness, he reaped a deadly result.

Whelan is a visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University of Iowa.

(Oct. 29, 2009)