Some Truth About Jerry Hicks' Death

That what the Abraham Hicks marketing team would have you believe anyway.

After a number of comical missteps when they tried to palm off Jerry Hicks' illness as being caused by, of all things, a spider bite, even while he was already undergoing what they described as "heavy chemotherapy," they then resorted to upbeat releases that Jerry was enjoy online broadcasts of the workshops and making helpful suggestions.

These so-called "news bulletins" were always pivoted cynically to push for product and/or workshop sales.

While this was going on, they reduced their calendar of workshops by half and cancelled a springtime cruise.

These acts were important because they suggested a more grim concern than what was being pitched. But they had little choice. As everyone knows, Esther Hicks has always said we give ourselves illnesses with our thoughts (or vibrations, whatever she popped up with at the time), but more importantly, it made it seem obvious that a return to good health would be immediate.

So, what was Jerry doing hustling into conventional medicine and not simply practicing the teachings that made him and his wife rich? And why were workshops and cruises being cancelled when he should be able to get better immediately. In his "news bulletins," Jerry even said he was talking things over with Abraham. So, why did Jerry Hicks health good from bad to worse without an interruption?

The spiritual marketing machine made a switch, knocking Esther out of the "news bulletin" writing business. Although "Love, Esther and Jerry" continued to decorate every email blast, the writing was clearly by someone more polished and cool.

There is also a new tactic. Not a word suggesting Jerry Hicks' illness, the state of his health or recuperation appear. Instead, the cheery, ticket-selling blasts depict Esther and Jerry gaily riding in balloons with their family. The even attach photos.

The photos themselves, looked at closely, tell another story. In one, the two relax in a gondola, the image careful to obscure a detailed look at Jerry. (Professional photographers include or exclude detail for a reason, not by accident or because they don't know better.)

The second was worse. In a wide view of the gondola while it was still on the ground, Esther and Jerry's children and grandchildren cluster together with them, all smiling happily, even Jerry who, for reasons unexplained, is plunked down in the back like the family homunculus and, of course, obscure as possible.

On a lighter note, they used the crowding in this picture to pitch for ticket sales by saying their workshops are roomier.

In another "new bulletin," Esther and Jerry Hicks' ghost writer rhapsodizes in a familiar vein about how Abraham continues to sharpen and clarify the teachings. So delighted were Esther and Jerry that they sat in front of their computer screen and watched a video of the workshop twice. So, Esther did several hours of her Abraham shtick, and then, she watched herself. Twice.

And, yes, they used this as a hook to sell tickets, and, no, there was no mention of Jerry Hicks health.

Here's something new : Abraham Hicks On Death

In the most recent workshops, trying to reinvent Abraham, Esther has ditched the dowdy country preacher look Jerry always required in favor of a prettier, softer look, as you can see above. An interesting piece of information about this that came to light is that the apparel change came after Esther dressed more colorfully for a Skype beta test that evolved into a focus group on her apparel.

What makes people decline is that they start forking in the direction that doesn't allow them to be the receivers of this never-ending Stream of Well- Being. You don't have to decline... "Happy, healthy, happy, healthy, happy, healthy, happy, healthy, dead!" That's Esther's plan...

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in San Diego, CA on Saturday, August 13th, 2005

"Death is an inevitable cycle. But sickness before death is a symptom of resistance. Most people think they've got to get sick to die. But, you could be like the cat who chooses to get run over. Or, you could just lie down in your bed happily one night, so content and thoughtless, wanting nothing in this physical world; and just reemerge into Pure Positive Energy... You can play it out any way you choose."

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Sedona, AZ on Saturday, August 27th, 2005

And death itself:

"'...death' is a matter of closing one's eyes in this dimension and literally opening one's eyes in the other dimension. And that, truly, is how all death is, no matter how it looks, up to that point.. The re-emergence into Source Energy is always a delightful thing."

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Buffalo, NY on Tuesday, September 25th, 2001

Note: This claim, that death is always "delightful" was dished out two weeks after the World Trade Center Disaster. For pregnant women jumping to their deaths from eighty floors in the sky, for professionals supporting families, for the captured passengers on commercial flights, a few with infants in their laps, death was a "delightful" experience, according to Esther Hicks.

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Esther and Jerry Hicks kept the show on the road for decades, thrilling followers on stage, in books and on recordings. But in Esther Hicks's own words, "And that's one of the reasons that it's nice when the old ones croak and the new ones come in, because it sort of dilutes the resistance factor that's going on on this planet."

This is one of the many gag-worthy quotes the Abraham-Hicks team now must contend with, now that Jerry's health is deteriorating. Here's another: "You can live comfortably and joyfully and resiliently and healthfully as long as you have desire that summons life through you. People don't die because they pass through time. They die because they don't allow this arena to stimulate decisions. The only reason people ever die is either because they have stopped making decisions about being here, or they have made decisions about being Nonphysical."

Followers have noted an increasingly haggard look on both Esther and Jerry, and Esther's recent mean-spiritedness may have been symptoms of denial just as the creation of Abraham LIVE may have been an initiative that would allow them to get off the road a bit and continue to rake in dough at the same pace.

What followers must begin to deal with is the fact that Jerry Hicks was and is Abraham-Hicks. He always has been. Esther Hicks has been his cheerful, convincing parrot, repeating again and again what she learned from him.

Jerry's study of the subjects that coalesced into the Law of Attraction and the Teachings of Abraham led him to techniques that made him a charismatic leader at Amway, accumulating a small fortune. The pair made it clear that she learned from him. Esther even reflected in an interview that, in their early days together, how Jerry tickled her feet while they read the Seth books together.

To sustain the innocence of Esther's Abraham act, it was necessary to make like she was a great innocent in this arena when she first channeled Abraham, but of course, that wasn't possible. Esther is even on record for her familiarity with the Seth material before she and Jerry first sat down with Theo.

When Seth's creator died shortly after, Esther and Jerry Hicks seized the opportunity. It's doubtful they realized how big the Abraham-Hicks phenomenon might become. Who could have predicted the wild success of the The Secret? And without that foresight, they couldn't prepare for the eventual public scrutiny which would expose their many contradictions and sometimes laughable ignorance about modern science.

The silence about Jerry Hicks cancer is broken. Check out: Jerry Hicks Cancer Update 10/31/2011)

My experience with Esther Hicks and Abraham started with Wayne Dyer. I'd read and admired many of Dr. Dyer's books and recorded lectures and considered him a great and gentle teacher and an inspiration. I used to wait eagerly for his annual summertime appearance on PBS during their fund-raising drives. If Abraham Hicks passed the test with Wayne Dyer, who called them the "greatest teachers," I had to know more.

Dyer even wrote the introduction to an early Abraham Hicks book, which Jerry Hicks read proudly on my audiobook. That, along with Dyer's advice "to be open to everything" had me exhilarated. I was open to discovery.

The first time I heard Abraham, I was stranded on a winter night in Buffalo's airport. I'd brought the recording along to occupy me on the flight, and when USAirways delayed, I started listening. I had chills up and down my body almost immediately, and it wasn't from Buffalo's legendary cold. It was from the voice I heard responding to Jerry Hicks's questions.

People introduced to Esther Hicks as Abraham in only the last few years, maybe since The Secret, might be surprised to learn that the voice was not originally the soft, unaccented voice we now hear. It was eerie and weirdly accented, completely unlike Esther's warm, gentle tone. It was, not surprisingly, very much like the voice of Theo, channeled through Sheila Gillette, still sounds. Sheila, by way of Theo, initially introduced Esther to the channeling process, according to the Hicks's standard version.

The standard version is contradicted by Jerry and Esther themselves in later conversations about their reading the Seth books. Both were very familiar with this probably best known channel to precede them. Seth's popularity was stunted by the complexity and esoteric detail of his teachings, an obstacle there is reason to believe Esther and Jerry averted by dumbing down the message for mass consumption.

I was listening to Abraham-Hicks Special Subjects Vol. 1, now sold for an astonishing $80 for ten short CD's, but then contained easily in a single Audible.com book. It laid down the basics, and I was slowly able to get passed the strange voice--these were nonphysical beings being channeled, after all. I heard a lot that made sense, confirming some things I already sensed and filling in the blanks on others.

It was honestly empowering. I felt, as did Wayne Dyer, that I'd found a wise teacher I could learn a great deal from that I'd never found available elsewhere.

It's worth noting here that, as these recordings, published independently by Jerry Hicks, were distributed long before Ask & It Is Given, the book Esther claims Abraham announced in their first writing experience that they would write together.

More significantly, also preceding it was A New Beginning I: Handbook for Joyous Survival --1988 publication, published a decade earlier, in 1988 and now suppressed by the Abraham-Hicks operation with good reason.

A New Beginning, the first Abraham-Hicks book, is filled with end of the world prophecies, promises of massive earthquakes and social collapse. In the kind of foreboding that cultists use to control followers, the speaker recommends that we all buy gas masks. The predictions about cataclysmic conditions on the planet, all made by Abraham (who apparently forgot them when he took up the positive messages ten years later), were preposterous.

Yes, Esther Hicks projects a loving, inclusive message that, at one time, seemed insightful, but these earlier publications show that she and Jerry are not telling the truth about their origins.

This is not what I wanted to hear when I was first learning from Esther Hicks's presentations. I'm not even sure I'd have listened or been willing to consider it helpful.

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My excitement was high and my judgment suspended. I went after every bit of information I could fined about Esther Hicks and Abraham.

My timing was good. This was the period immediately following the release of The Secret, which I also read, and interest in the Law of Attraction, invented as a concept by Jerry and Esther Hicks, was high. It was almost as if a paradigm shift was nudging into public view, hard work and effort being displaced by vibrations and deliberate intending.

Then, the teachings Esther and Jerry had arrived at--or Abraham, if they are to be believed--were remarkably simple. First, you ask. The "Universe" always answers your asking immediately and fully. "No exceptions," as Esther enjoyed declaring. Step three was where things go hung up. Although the "Universe" or "Source" delivered ("It is law!" Esther proclaimed.), you still had to allow.

Guess what? If step one and step two took place, and they must because "It is law! No Exceptions," then the problem was you.

"You're not letting it in," Esther explained.

Books with exercises, workshops, seminars and online discussions flourished to help us get over that hump. The Abraham-Hicks Forum, set up by David and Jodi, a pair of Abraham-Hicks operatives, offered a clean, responsible, heavily monitored experience for seekers. It's membership grew rapidly, and the last time I checked, it continued going strong, repeating essentially the same issues for the thousandth time for a new group.



By heavily monitored, I mean that the Abraham-Hicks Forum, in direct contradiction of Abraham's teachings, controlled the subjects and kept it G-rated. Monitors jumped in and cut off threads at their whim when they went wherever Jerry Hicks rules said they couldn't, even if Jerry kept a safe distance--for a while. Among forbidden topics: open discussions of sex and other channels, such as Theo, Chief Joseph and Seth. Not on Jerry's dime, thank you. But by that, I'm understating the controls. Almost anything could be suddenly declared "off topic," i.e. not about Abraham-Hicks, and some of the monitors were notoriously nasty about it. One night, during the playoffs, a friend and I made off the cuff remarks about our teams, who were competing. Thread closed.

Chaffing at the restrictions, a pair of young guys launched Abe Talk, an alternate platform for discussion with no restrictions whatsoever but with no sponsorship or approval from the A-H headquarters. Jerry Hicks went ballistic. Well, rumor has it, he did. What actually occurred is that operatives associated with Abraham-Hicks began harassing the Abe Talk's managers, calling the middle of the night, threatening lawsuits, basically the sort of thing Abraham consistently advised against.

In the end, Abe Talk backed off and moved certain conversations into a protected area, not easily accessed by the public. Disappointed and disillusioned with what I understood to be Jerry Hicks's questionable conduct, got out of the forums for a while. I continued reading and listening to podcasts, but I got out of the mix.

When I felt comfortable returning, I heard about recent battles on Abe Talk in which a powerful individual who claimed to have worked for Esther and Jerry on their seminars leveled raw claims of fraud. If Abraham had once been real, a group of teachers who made their presence known with no intention other than "physical beings" rediscover their eternal roots and soar into joy, they had left the building.

Esther Hicks, he argued, wanted out of the deal, preferring to stay home with the grandchildren, but Jerry insisted she continue the act. More importantly, in the seminars where the most credible instantaneous teachings take place, he wrote that participants allowed to interact directly with Esther as Abraham were plants, placed in the crowd with planned questions that Esther was prepared to answer.

He'd left the forum before I returned but the residue was interesting. There were a contingent of doubters who continued questioning, although virtually everyone trusted Esther while consolidating their doubts on Jerry. This had the effect of leaving "Abraham" clean and free. No one at all seemed ready to consider them a put up job. Their credibility was that high.

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It was then, after disputes that led to Esther Hicks participation in The Secret Movie being pulled out and threats from competing forums erupted, that Abraham-Hicks adopted a new, defensive position with an increased focus on expanded marketing.

On YouTube and elsewhere, Jerry and Esther stepped out attack the impression that their pulling out of the movie project was an effort to get more money. It was the purity of the message, instead, they were protecting.

In The Astonishing Power of Emotions: Let Your Feelings Be Your Guide, the next book published, Jerry Hicks used the introduction to launch a defense of their behaviors and, startlingly, to announce the discovery of an unexpurgated copy of his bible, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, which contained that forbidden word: vibrations!

This he used as a touchstone for justifying his own commanding control of the Abraham message. You might say, Jerry was so out of touch with reality that he didn't know that vibrations is not a forbidden word to anyone, and he apparently had never heard of The Beach Boys.

While announcing a series of books to come, conveniently released at one-year intervals, Abraham-Hicks changed the message also. Maybe, the "You're not letting it in" mantra was getting a little thin.

Now, they launched the "vibrational escrow," a versatile gimmick that got them off the hook for not delivering. Followers who believed they were in fact "letting it in" were told that they requests had been answered. The lottery winnings, in other words, were being held "in escrow" in wait of just the right moment to be released. Don't think your requests haven't been answered or that, in some way, you weren't allowing, it's just that the time isn't right. Calm down.

Some friends began dropping out of the forums, moving on or simply bored with the repetition. Nothing cutting edge about it anymore. Law of Attraction had become a cliche. Creative souls were coming up with new laws. Law of Insertion was one that just sounded funny. Others were inventing new twist on it for weight loss strategies and get rich quick schemes. Unfortunately, Esther and Jerry Hicks joined in the the hucksters.

Whether to try to maintain the purity of the message or simply to make the financial best of the moment, the Abraham-Hicks machine began churning out book after book, recording after records, grabbing any and every niche that made sense for them. While I still enjoyed listening to and finding new truths in the old podcasts still on my iPod, the newer produced material became a struggle.

To anyone who'd been following the Hicks trail for a while, the new books were dull and pedantic, clearly not written or even inspired by whatever Abraham is or was. Abraham, for example, was not a thudding bore as much of the books were. Since Jerry Hicks did all the reading and had something of a reputation for greed, I assumed him to be the primary culprit. But I couldn't be sure.

What I was sure of was that Esther and Jerry convened regular meetings among their inner circle to discuss new projects. One they endorsed was making new books by taking the recorded Abraham material and recycling it. They claim not to have changed the message, but you can't take extemporaneous commentary completely out of context and have it mean the same thing.

Moreover, puritanical, judgmental, didactic preachiness began to influence the tone of the books. The plodding commentaries were often indecipherable and much more complexly twisted than the direct statements previously attributed to Abraham. Remember, "You've gotta let it in," and "It is law. No exceptions." Then try to wrestle through this more current writing:

"I Can Attract Relationships That Agree with My Desires... People are not finding it difficult to find the mate of their dreams because that person is not out there, but because of their own contradiction to their own desire in the thoughts they offer about the subject every day.

When you consistently offer thoughts about your future relationship that feel good while you think them, that means you are consistently matching the desires that you have discovered as you have lived life. And under those conditions, only someone in agreement with your desires could come to you. Under those conditions, no need for control is necessary.

Through each exposure to interacting with others, you launch continuous rockets of desires of what you prefer. And only when you are a Vibrational Match to the culmination of those desires will you allow your rendezvous with someone who matches those intentions that you have gathered along your physical trail."

Boring, yes? Inspiring? Doubtful.

What finally tipped me into the doubter category was an accumulation of evidence I wrote about in Ten Reasons I No Longer Trust Esther Hicks and Abraham. (See link below.) What I then found repulsive was a new uptick in the Abraham-Hicks marketing apparatus.

In December, conveniently in time for Christmas, Esther and Jerry violated the trust of subscribers to their daily "Law of Attraction Quotes" by inserting, instead of quotes, marketing material for their new guided meditation recordings. The capper in this barrage was the day when Jerry actually claimed to quote Abraham thus: "These will get you in the Vortex." The "vortex" is the newest revision of vibration escrow, by the way, a more flexible concept and the source material for new books and recordings.

The nonphysical beings, once so respected for their wisdom and willingness to teach, were now shilling for Jerry's new products.