A Death on Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to Enlightenment

Scott Carney

Mar 2015 · Penguin

About this ebook

An investigative reporter explores an infamous case where an obsessive and unorthodox search for enlightenment went terribly wrong.
 
When thirty-eight-year-old Ian Thorson died from dehydration and dysentery on a remote Arizona mountaintop in 2012, The New York Times reported the story under the headline: "Mysterious Buddhist Retreat in the Desert Ends in a Grisly Death." Scott Carney, a journalist and anthropologist who lived in India for six years, was struck by how Thorson’s death echoed other incidents that reflected the little-talked-about connection between intensive meditation and mental instability.
 
Using these tragedies as a springboard, Carney explores how those who go to extremes to achieve divine revelations—and undertake it in illusory ways—can tangle with madness. He also delves into the unorthodox interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism that attracted Thorson and the bizarre teachings of its chief evangelists: Thorson’s wife, Lama Christie McNally, and her previous husband, Geshe Michael Roach, the supreme spiritual leader of Diamond Mountain University, where Thorson died.
 
Carney unravels how the cultlike practices of McNally and Roach and the questionable circumstances surrounding Thorson’s death illuminate a uniquely American tendency to mix and match eastern religious traditions like LEGO pieces in a quest to reach an enlightened, perfected state, no matter the cost.
 
Aided by Thorson’s private papers, along with cutting-edge neurological research that reveals the profound impact of intensive meditation on the brain and stories of miracles and black magic, sexualized rituals, and tantric rites from former Diamond Mountain acolytes, A Death on Diamond Mountain is a gripping work of investigative journalism that reveals how the path to enlightenment can be riddled with danger.

Ratings and reviews

Carney's *Death on Diamond Mountain* far more ground simply than the tragic death of Ian Thorson; it's a sweeping look at Western adoption of extreme Eastern spiritual practices, and how the dangers of those practices are often ignored. Scott Carney has done a fine job of researching and telling the story of a spiritual quest gone bad. In many ways, this story has the feel of Krakauer's *Into the Wild* -- a book about Christopher McCandless' naive (and ultimately fatal) pursuit of wilderness. In this case, 38 year-old Ian Thorson retreats to a cave, and in the presence of his wife (who was declared a Goddess by her former husband), essentially meditates himself to death. Carney's to be congratulated for penning a relatively fully fleshed story -- with the exception of Ian Thorson's mother, almost no one involved in Thorson's death wanted to speak publicly about it. The book winds through a narrative that sometimes reads like fiction. The organization at the center of Thorson's death -- Diamond Mountain University -- offers up a laundry list of misconduct and suspect behavior, and while Carney never goes so far to label the organization a "cult," I'd have little hesitation l

Obviously an experienced and thorough writer, although a bit redundant and tending to veer off topic- other than that, I was surprised to learn so much about Buddhism. If only we were told as much about ian and christies relationship.

About the author

Scott Carney speaks Hindi and has spent six years living in India. He is a contributing editor at WIRED, and his work has also appeared in Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Details, Discover, Outside, Fast Company, and Foreign Policy. His first book, The Red Market, won the 2012 Clarion Award for best nonfiction book. He currently lives in Los Angeles.