New Age Sweat Lodge: 3 people die while training as ‘Spiritual Warriors’

There is an excellent post on Graham Strout’s blog here about the recent deaths in a sweat lodge at a new age spiritual retreat in the US. It covers the culmination of a new age retreat:

According to local police, at 3pm on Thursday 8 October – the final day of the retreat, and following a buffet meal to break their fast – more than 60 people crammed into a space measuring just 415 sq ft. An initial 12 hot rocks were thrown into the fire pit, then doused with water and sandalwood to create steam and a scent of incense. By the time the ceremony was halted two hours later, another 46 hot rocks had reportedly been added to the pyre, turning the enclosure into a human cooking pot. A 911 emergency call reported that two people had no pulse and were not breathing. (from The Guardian)

After the events, the ‘guru’ leading this retreat was quoted on his Facebook page as saying:

“despite considerable criticism, I have chosen to continue with my work. It’s too important not to. One of the lessons I teach is that you have to confront and embrace adversity and learn and grow from it. I promise you I am doing a lot of learning and growing”

Also, in the Guardian you can read the following gem:

“One of his staff members, called Barb, was quoted from the same call by Associated Press as saying that those who died “left their bodies during the ceremony and had so much fun they chose not to come back, and that was their choice that they made”

 The original Guardian article is here.

Mad Max: Ahead of its time?

Another excellent Guardian article here where it’s economics editor seems to have realised that Peak Oil is here, and it is going to impact dramatically on everything we do:

“It is 30 years since the film Mad Max was made, launching the career of Mel Gibson. The film made a big splash at the time for its terrifying view of a world without oil, where gangs of grisly looking people roam deserts in a post-apocalyptic world, killing each other to get their hands on the few drops of petrol that some have managed to produce in makeshift refineries. Social order has completely broken down.

Great film if you like that sort of thing but complete fiction, of course. Or is it? Three decades later, and I wonder if the film was, in fact, years ahead of its time.

Just think back to summer last year when oil prices spiked to $150 a barrel – 10 times the level of a decade earlier. In petrol stations in some European countries, people started to drive off without paying and drivers had to be banned from filling cars before they had paid up. In Britain, people stole heating oil out of the tanks that sit outside many houses in the country.

Imagine what would happen if prices rose, say, to $300 a barrel. Or higher. Not only would it become too expensive to drive unless absolutely necessary, but food would become prohibitively expensive to transport, goods from China would be too expensive to ship, and plastics, which come from oil, would be unaffordable. The cold turkey after more than a century of cheap oil would be painful indeed. For developing countries it would be fatal – many could not afford energy at those prices”.