The Ultimate Out-Of-Body State

Sweat lodges are wonderful ways to get in touch with your holistic inner self. Native Americans had a way of knowing that was more holistic than Western systems of knowledge. Natural healing energies are more potent than drugs and modern hospitals. The body's own innate healing ability is more powerful when unhindered by Big Pharma poison pills.

Meanwhile, back in the real world where the rest of us are forced to live, the South Australian coroner is hearing a case in to the death of a man who collapsed in a sweat lodge ceremony conducted by a "new age healer", David Jarvis (as reported by Adelaide Now).

Other people with the dead man, Rowan Douglas Cooke, 37, failed to seek assistance for him because they believed he was on astral travelling.

The South Australian Coroner's Court today heard Mr Cooke was undertaking a ritual called a pipe ceremony, where participants sweat out toxins and spirits to enter an out-of-body state. [...] The campers dragged the two men out of the lodge and attempted to revive them by performing a series of spiritual rituals including chanting and drumming, she said. They also massaged their hands and feet, buried their feet in the soil and smashed sacred ceramic pipes over them to set their spirits free. "They believed they had been astral travelling or were in a deep meditation space," Ms Davis told the court. Mr Asfar later regained conscious but Mr Cooke did not. At daybreak, two of the campers left the isolated camp to seek help from a homestead, but an ambulance did not arrive to treat Mr Cooke until after 8am. He was pronounced dead at Leigh Creek Hospital at 11.30am after resuscitation efforts failed.

Mr Cooke's partner is, understandably, upset at the moronic treatment the man received.

The partner of a man who died while on a native American purification ritual in the South Australian outback has described the people who played drums and chanted as he lay unconscious as poison. [...] "I feel those people are a poison beyond comprehension and my hope is that no one else is unfortunate enough to encounter them," she wrote in a statement to the media. Theare said she was angered at the failure of the campers to seek immediate medical help and their ritual antics were laughable. "What I think about what happened that day goes beyond anger," she said. "If I could direct what I feel at those close 'friends', they would incinerate from the inside out.

Nonetheless, that report concludes with a bizarrely delusional statement from a clinical psychotherapist explaining the benefits of a sweat lodge vision.

"People do not hallucinate per se, it is the small things of nature that talk to people and everything around you. You can look at a rock and it might communicate with you about the hardness of life or you might observe a grub walking around a leaf and it might turn into a butterfly."

Talking rocks! If that isn't hallucinating "per se" EoR doesn't know what is. Wrapping a dehydrated man in blankets and chanting for spirits to heal him comes pretty close, though.

Theage.com.au reports Mr Jarvis as saying:

"Not long after, I noticed a particular energy coming out of the lodge, it was quite strong in nature," he told police. "I noted two people were having an out-of-body experience."

The newage: killing believers one at a time.