ARD – Seelenfänger (Soul Catcher – Soul Hunter) Podcast – Toxic Tantra 24.04.2024
6. Initiation
https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/seelenfaenger/toxic-tantra-initiation-6/bayern-2/13338265/
filmmaker: An apartment, somewhere near Paris, in Gregorian Bivolaru's bedroom. Nathalie and Eva sit cross-legged in front of their guru on his bed. Nathalie in 2021, Eva in 2007.Eva remembers exactly how Bivolaru asked her this one question: Eva: "Would I like to experience spiritual expansion?" And I immediately knew what that meant, and then I asked very clearly: "Does this have to happen in order to progress spiritually?" director: Eva wants to say: "Does sex really have to happen now? With him?" She remembers that Bivolaru tried to convince her.
Eva: "Do you want to experiment? Want to get into it? Above all, relax and let go!
For now, let us meditate together.” filmmaker: And Nathalie remembers this situation.
Nathalie: This is when we basically ask God if the act is integrated. I didn't feel like I had a choice. I just knew that if I said "NO" now, he would have said, "What's wrong with you? Your demons and everything else and your ego” and blah blah blah. So I just didn't feel like I was safe and I could say "well, NO, the answer is NO!"
Eva: Then we sat facing each other, he took my hands and we meditated. And the strangest thing was that things happened again that I can't explain. There were indeed, clearly, some strange vibrations right then in the place. I noticed how a sexual desire was triggered, but I can't tell you what it was and how it happened. I do not know. Maybe because I thought it had to happen. Maybe there was something in the water after all.
I have no idea. Maybe my shallow breathing combined with the idea that it would happen then. I do not know.
Nathalie: I still remember the moment he took off his bathrobe. And I mean, he's just an old man.
And my reaction was that I realized that actually, wow, it's not working, but I pushed it aside because they were my demons, I couldn't listen to them.
Eva: Then, basically, it started with the transition to real intercourse. But then it started with all these chakra awakenings through intercourse. Yes, and that was the experience.
Filmmaker: Initiation is what the yoga movement calls an event that's supposed to change your life, but in reality it's really long-lasting sex with your guru.
This is Soul Catcher. Season 4, Toxic Tantra. A podcast by Christiane Havranek and me, Katja Peisen-Petersen.
Episode 6. The Initiation.
filmmaker: Nathalie and Eva both had sex with Gregorian Bivolaru, they say. Of course, we only know their accounts. We would have liked to hear Gregorian Bivolaru's version as well. We tried to contact him several times through his lawyer, but neither he nor Bivolaru answered us.
Eva: I don't really want to tell you in detail what exactly happened, what happened and when.
Filmmaker: We won't go into details either, but we will tell you how Nathalie and Eva felt about this tantric sex with their guru.
These descriptions can be disturbing. If it gets too much for you, it's best to skip to the next episode. Let's begin.
{Details not present in the podcast: Bivolaru doesn’t follow his own teachings. He manipulates his victims in many ways, also in paranormal ways, a bit like hypnotizing them. The girl first has to drink 2 litres of water to become more yin and receptive to him. They start with consecration of the ritual to God/Shiva/etc but the fact that many of his victims have bad experiences shows that the consecration is fake and God doesn’t answer it. Then there is no proper foreplay, just lousy oral sex. Bivolaru hasn’t been able to have a proper erection for a long time, still he manages to go through all the positions of the chakras for many hours. At the end of the ritual they pee in each other’s mouth and swallow, you have to drink your own urine then for 24 hours. There should be 2 hours of yoga for sublimation after this, but this is not happening.}
Nathalie: The first time it took a long time. Nine or ten hours, something like that. So it was long. I also remember counting the hours saying, ok, one more hour, one more hour. Can you handle this? An hour, an hour, an hour.
Eva: Actually, I've lost track of time. I had absolutely no idea how long I was there. I think I was there for a very, very long time. Quite a few hours.
Christiane: Did you also get something to drink and eat there, for example?
Eva: No, no. Well, I don't know if it was potable water, probably. Just the water I took in the car.
Nathalie: He's sleeping in the meantime. There are three positions in which he lies on his back. And yes, he just sleeps there. But right there, that's exactly it, but they (those from MISA, n.trans.) tell a kind of story again, like "yes, he's somewhere in the astral realm, so it's basically another reality", in that talk about him helping you somehow and so on. There is a justification for absolutely everything.
Eva: I remember, but he fell asleep a few times. And the strange thing is, of course, it's no wonder if you sleep with young women from morning to night.
Nathalie: Go on, go on, go on. I didn't know if I was there or somewhere else. So that was the thing.
Then, I remember crying a lot during that time. He told me afterwards: "Yes, you see, you have some problems here and there. And everything is better now, because yes, you just took them out and it's better now."
Of course it wasn't better.
Christiane: And now why do you think you had to cry?
Nathalie: Because I didn't listen to my body at all. I wasn't in my body at all, you know, so that was kind of the feeling I had. So I was always in my head, like, "Okay, you have to do this now, you have to do this now, you have to do this now." And I wasn't connected at all to what was going on there.
"Okay, now we just practice, just practice, just practice".
Eva: By the end, I was thinking something was wrong, something was wrong. Somehow I couldn't get out of it either. Apparently I was breathing so shallow that my hands and face were cramping, and I was cramping with the whole thing. And I remember thinking, "God, what's going on?" And then: "Don't worry, it's your Kundalini energy!" It's amazing, something happens that I've never experienced before during intercourse. My body tenses up, my face, therefore tenses up and "Yes, I have blocked my Kundalini energy, clearly!" Nathalie: After nine or ten hours, I let it be known that I was tired and he said, "Yeah, okay." Eva: I think at some point I made it clear that I was very exhausted and I would like to go back.
Nathalie: So when I came back to the room, I was very close to falling. I was shaking all over and completely exhausted. Then I slept a little and ate a little and then, a few hours later, I was allowed to go.
filmmaker: Nathalie is led back to the first apartment, the one with the other women still awaiting their initiation. She says she is led into a room.
Nathalie: First, you give your testimony, so you are filmed again, where you tell your experiences, how it was.
Then I remember exactly that I made something up, because I felt that I did not actually experience anything great. When you're being filmed, there's a girl in the room with you who's been there for a long time and all that. And then, of course, you don't sit there and say: "Yeah, that was really shit."
filmmaker: Eva is also brought back to the first apartment. But unlike Nathalie, no videos are made of her afterwards. Instead, she is asked by the other women in the apartment.
Eva: I remember when I came back, the girls had an excited reaction, one of them clung to me, smelled me, ah, Justina Larkin and wanted to know everything exactly, I was totally overwhelmed: "How can you how can you all want to do that? What is actually happening? You are all wonderful, beautiful and intelligent young women!” filmmaker: Eva spends the next night there.
Eva: The next day I was told I could come back again.
filmmaker: That is, to visit Gregorian Bivolaru again.
Eva: And I mean it's not rare.
filmmaker: Nathalie is also asked if she wants to meet her guru again two days later. Nathalie says yes, so she is taken to him again. Again, she is asked to put foil over her eyes, again given an aphrodisiac drink, she says. And with Bivolaru, everything is exactly the same as before, in exactly the same positions.
That's what Nathalie tells us. When everything is over, Bivolaru says goodbye to her: Nathalie: "You'll be back in a few months".
producer: Nathalie nods. The second visit to Bivolaru will not be the last. Later, her guru will show her another side of him and it will be quite disturbing for her.
But first, Nathalie signs a document that the people on the scene present. In it, she confirms that everything she did at Bivolaru was voluntary and without coercion. This document will give us work.
After that, Nathalie flies back to Romania, to her yoga school, to her friend Jasper. She doesn't tell him what happened in Paris, because everything is strictly secret.
Eva decides not to return to Bivolaru after their first meeting. She leaves the apartment and is taken to the train station to catch the train to Munich.
Eva: You can't just go home and swallow this, something's wrong.
filmmaker: Eva meditates for two days on what she experienced in Paris.
Eva: And then I quickly realized that I didn't want to continue, no and no. I said to myself: I'm leaving!
filmmaker: When Eva and I are sitting on the banks of the Isar River and she has finished speaking, silence falls between us for a while. What she obviously experienced seems so unreal here in Munich on the banks of the Isar.
Eva is our age. Like us, she has a family. She has a normal job. She laughs at the same things we laugh at. It could have been us in her place.
What Eva and Nathalie told us can be described as manipulation (in the original, "gaslighting"). https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
They were tricked into not trusting themselves, questioning their own judgment. And their inhibitions were gradually lowered. First tantric exercises, then bikini photos, later watching porn and finally sex with their guru.
Eva and Nathalie are not the only ones who told us this. I have spoken to over 20 people who have abandoned the movement. Some of them received an invitation from their guru. Eight of them traveled to Paris, to Bivolaru. Their experiences are similar. The blindfolded journey, waiting in the first apartment, the bedroom with the triple bunk bed, the many sheets on the wall, the cinnamon aphrodisiac, the Bivolaru in the purple robe and the initiation. Yes, even the sequence of positions is apparently the same.
The eight women come from Germany, Finland, Romania and Great Britain and attended courses there at DatY, MISA and NATHA, all schools organized under the umbrella of the Atman organization. Are the eight women I spoke to the only ones? How many more are there?
Christiane: I have one more question for you. I don't think you filed a complaint or anything like that.
Eva: I wouldn't have known on what basis. What exactly should I have reported?
perpetrators: Sexual assault, sexual coercion, rape. According to Article 177 of the German Penal Code, these offenses would be given if the act is committed against the apparent will of another person.
Eva: It was quite clear to me that they would have simply said that "you took every step voluntarily, that you are mature and that no one forced you to do anything".
producer: That's why Eva doesn't file a complaint. This is why many other women do not file a complaint. Not even Nathalie. But she is thinking of doing it today.
Nathalie: He didn't physically force us to sleep with him in any way, so that wasn't the problem. But it means something to me if I can't really say "NO" because I know the consequences are huge and also this whole situation where you're alone somewhere, you don't know where you are, you don't have anything, so basically you don't not even clothes to wear - to say "NO" in this context, you really need manhood. Therefore, for me, it is not rape in the sense of physically forcing us, but in a certain way it is psychological pressure.
Eva: The shame was so great! How could something like this happen to me? How could I fall for something like this and agree to it? What nonsense, why? Why did I do this? Yeah, I'm not feeling great and it's been weighing heavily on me for a long time. I also remember how long it took me to tell my husband. It was really terrible to tell him.
filmmaker: For years, Eva lived with the thought that it was her fault. Until, one day, she confesses her story to a representative of the sect. She carefully mentions the word abuse.
Eva: But I wouldn't have told him that, because I've never said "NO" seriously, at one point.
And at the same time, I realize now how much manipulation was behind this situation, how they manipulate you in this direction. And the word fits very well. It's brainwashing, it doesn't kill you.
filmmaker: Eva really realizes this only in the conversation with the representative of the sect.
Eva: When that happened, it was a real release for me, because that's when I really started to cry. It was the first time anyone had ever said they had an intrinsic experience of abuse.
filmmaker: Of course, I asked DatY, the German Traditional Yoga Academy, what they knew about the fact that a student from one of their yoga schools had been taken to Paris by a DAtY yoga teacher.
And what do they say about the allegations of abuse? The answer comes just a day away.
"Manipulation? Brainwashing? Abuse? We don't know anything like that!", writes the president. Likewise regarding reports or witness statements with reference to DatY when it comes to an initiation with Gregorian Bivolaru.
"DAtY didn't recruit anyone to visit him." The president writes that, "if the testimony of that former student is true, which we cannot verify, we are expressly in favor of criminal prosecution," which is not enough for us.
We want to find out more about DatY's point of view and interview people from the school to discuss our research. However, we are delayed for now, for a few weeks.
The President writes to say that he has used the time to meditate and apologizes for the delay.
He has a few more questions for us and wants to see samples of our work first. We answer it and still hope that the interview will take place.
A few years after her initiation at Bivolaru, Eva gradually begins to be preoccupied with something completely different.
Eva: Then I started really documenting it and then I read more and more about what it is, but also what is actually being watched, with all this human trafficking.
filmmaker: You mentioned this in a dropout forum that is exclusively focused on the ATMAN yoga movement. Stories from women who have gone through experiences similar to hers and more.
Eva: Some stories about video chats and other inside weirdness, about women masturbating, then being filmed, then suddenly appearing in a porn movie.
Filmmaker: Well, stop. We know about sex talk on the internet. During our research, we learned that some women in the yoga movement masturbated live on the Internet, on various paid sites that only exist for a few months at a time. We have seen some sites and women ourselves. But porn movies?
Eva says she has read about women who ended up in porn films without their knowledge or consent, women who thought they were being filmed just for their guru, having sex.
Eva: I still had the horror in my head that everything that happened in his apartment was secretly filmed and that I would end up on profile sites at some point.
filmmaker: Is Eva's fear justified? Could there be recordings of her having sex with Bivolaru that she doesn't know about? Could it have ended up in a porn movie? And how great is the danger to the other women?
For Liz, who sent a bikini photo at yoga school, for Nathalie, who also filmed herself naked.
We meet with the only woman who can clarify such things for us, because she has been involved in the ATMAN movement for years. Her name is Cecilia Tiz. I came across her name again and again during our research. Cecilia is like the hero Spider-Women in the fight against the yoga movement.
Many threads lead to her.
We're sitting here with her, talking to her about our research so far, and scouring the internet for clues to the ATMAN. Cecilia knows exactly where to look.
filmmaker: And what motivates you? You certainly give it a lot of time, don't you?
Cecilia Tiz: Yes, of course. People need to know what is behind them.
filmmaker: Cecilia herself was involved in the yoga movement from a very young age. She comes from Romania and attended several MISA summer camps as a young student. She moved to Germany with her then-husband in 1989 and the two later even opened their own yoga center, a location of the German Traditional Yoga Academy in Essen. Cecilia stayed there for 14 years. Then, she says, she found out what the visits to Paris with Gregorian Bivolaru really meant. And she gave up.
Cecilia Tiz: Years later, I realized that MISA itself and the whole story is much worse than I ever thought, and I'm sure it's only the tip of the iceberg, even with the things I know now.
Filmmaker: We want to hear from her about the porn movies that Eva told us about, where the women from the yoga school are everywhere, with photos and videos.
Cecilia places a magazine on the table in front of us.
Cecilia Tiz: This is a yoga brochure published by MISA in 2007.
artist: The cover features a woman with long brown hair in a yoga pose. She wears a bikini that covers almost everything and has very large breasts like the models. On the left it says: "Tantra, from Super Orgasm to ecstasy".
Everything oozes yoga and sex.
Cecilia Tiz: You received them as a participant in courses, as an instructor, as a yoga teacher, at camps or I don't know what else.
There were 7,000 copies back then. They were then distributed to people and sold at kiosks in Romania.
filmmakers: Magazines are still sold online today. We also received one as a gift during the test session in Bucharest. Cecilia flips through the magazine, to page 27.
Cecilia Tiz: And there's something about Miss Shakti.
filmmaker: Now I have to look.
Cecilia Tiz: Yes, exactly.
filmmaker: There is a Miss Shakti contest at MISA. It is legendary at school and took place in summer camps until before the Corona pandemic, in Costinești. Yogis choose their Miss Shakti in this contest.
The most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most sensual woman.
Cecilia Tiz: And this is Miss Shakti Costinești 2006.
Filmmaker: We see a photo report from the contest. It takes place outside in a field under a large tarp.
Cecilia Tiz: It is a large area. You can see the banks.
filmmakers: Ordinary banks?
Cecilia Tiz: Yes, without a table.
filmmaker: Men and women are standing there and looking at a large stage. In another photo, the contestants are lined up there. They are all young women.
Cecilia Tiz: Here you can see that they are still dressed. Then here this woman is almost naked.
filmmaker: Cecilia tells us that there are different stages in which women have different tests. After each stage, they are eliminated until, at the end, only one Miss Shakti remains.
Cecilia Tiz: In the first phase, they introduce themselves and tell us something about themselves. Then they are given different samples that they have to somehow embody on stage. One of them gets two apples and a banana and has to embody something. Or she's the secretary and she has to do something too. And always something erotic. So everything is going in this direction.
filmmaker: That sounds a bit like soft porn, like scenarios that the contestants have to think of and then perform on stage. Here's what Cecilia tells us: Cecilia Tiz: Seasoned with meditation. Here they do a meditation with the great cosmic power Matanji.
filmmaker: So this is Tantra. Something higher, something sacred. "Express your femininity!" Two dropout students I spoke with also wanted to express their femininity in such a contest. One of them says she had to dance on stage wearing only a bra.
She also talks about secret tasks without an audience as part of the pageant.
She says she saw women masturbating and urinating and there were people with video cameras filming them.
We don't take great pleasure in telling you this in so much detail, but urine is central to the teachings of yoga movement. It is considered an elixir of life and a magical potion.
Urine is drunk as an aid against pain, inhibitions, stress and psychological trauma. Urinary orgasm brings exquisite bliss, energy and aura expansion. And that brings us back to pornographic films.
There are some movies that seem to have something to do with the yoga movement.
Cecilia Tiz: Exaltation of Pee, Kingdom of Golden Pee, Shiny Pee Sea. These films here, the first five, are created from scenes that took place in various Miss Shakti pageants.
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/701867-to-pee-or-not-to-pee-for-ecstasy https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/702312-exaltation-of-pee https: //www.themoviedb.org/movie/702329-shiny-pee-sea
producer: Exaltation of Pee, porn movie where people pee. So it seems that this is where women who thought they were simply being filmed for the pageant as part of secret rehearsals ended up. That's what Cecilia tells us and we read about it in a press report as well. The students who dropped out made this public. The films, Cecilia says, were made before 2003 and then sold on DVD and later online.
Eva feared that she was being secretly filmed during the initiation. Fortunately, during our investigations we found no evidence of secret filming at Bivolaru. Therefore, Eva and Nathalie should be safe in this regard. But there are also photographs of them that they gave to yoga teachers before their visit to Paris so that their guru could read their aura, it is said. Photos in underwear, bikini and a film of naked Nathalie. What happens to these records? What are they really for?
We need to finally talk to MISA about these questions, formally. We need to arrange an interview with them. Our catalog of questions is long.
We will ask them about initiations at Bivolaru, about sex work, about striptease, about tantric massages, about sex chats and porn movies, about bikini photos for aura reading, about negative tests for HIV and syphilis as a prerequisite for participation in camps. And for Vilută.
And we have to talk about a completely different topic because during our research we come across another important point. It has nothing to do with sex. It is about life and death and takes us to a cemetery in Romania.