Episode 7

 ARD – Seelenfänger (Soul Catcher – Hunter of Souls) Podcast – Toxic Tantra 24.04.2024 

7. Expensive herbs

Narrator: An endless line of tombstones. Elena, Lucia, Michaela.
My colleague Christiane Havranek and I scour the graves for names and dates of death.
It's the fall of 2023 and the dropout, Nathalie, has taken us to a cemetery in Romania.
She wants to use Google Maps to guide us to a specific grave.
Christiane: Now let's listen to Nathalie again.
Nathalie: Well, that's the general direction. So if you stand in front of the chapel and walk towards the main road, it is on the left and not so far, but relatively close to the path that leads from the main road to the chapel.
narrator: Nathalie stood at this grave herself. A woman in the yoga movement was buried there, she says. A woman from Germany. Only Nathalie doesn't know her last name, because we need it to find the relatives. We are now looking for her grave.
Nathalie: Anyway, that's the area and I'm very sure of it.
Narrator: Nathalie was at least able to give us her first name and date of death.
Nathalie: I was there the day she passed away in our house and it was quite intense. In fact, it was the first time I had anything to do with a death.

This is Soul Catcher. Toxic Tantra.
A podcast made by Christiane Hawranek and myself, Katja Peisen-Petersen. Episode 7: Expensive Herbs.

Narrator: Why are we telling you about this woman? Because her death put us on the trail of what is thought about illness in the yoga movement. And about healing. And what terrible consequences such thinking can have.
Katja: Shall we go to the chapel and watch from the chapel on the left?
Christiane: No, actually, three.
Katja: Come on, let's go different.
narrator: The woman, Nathalie tells us, had cancer. It was 2021, the Corona pandemic, and she didn't want to go to the hospital. So Nathalie quickly vacated her room in a communal apartment, which she shared with other yogis, for herself. Nathalie was there the whole time, caring for the woman along with others from the yoga school, until her death.
Nathalie: What else should I have done? At the end she was in great pain and it wasn't really pleasant, it wasn't a cure, because everything in the school is demonized.
narrator: That's how Nathalie remembers it. Her feeling was that it was all mainly for spiritual reasons.
Nathalie: Because of the school and because she's brought up that way too, going to the hospital now to get radiation therapy and stuff, it's just not possible. It is not good for you in any way.
narrator: What does MISA say about this? Does it advise against medical treatment of serious illnesses?
We receive the answer in writing: "NO. The board of directors of the yoga school has never heard of such cases. Alternative healing methods, such as yoga techniques and herbs, should not replace treatment by a physician."
But it also says: "Many diseases can be cured only with the help of plants". Is this scientifically proven?
"Yes, in some cases herbal treatment is even superior to conventional medicine." We want to know more about this whole topic of health and healing and what MISA thinks about it.
Nathalie: Yes, it's just your karma. And you just have something inside of you that you're so attached to that you can't let go of and that's why it's the way it is now. And you could fix everything with herbs, somehow, and with enough yoga, you could save everything. She also believed that something was emotionally wrong and that she should have done more yoga.
narrator: Nathalie has never heard anyone tell this woman not to treat herself, not to go to the hospital, but to do more yoga. This seriously ill woman is said to have chosen this path voluntarily, as have many other people outside the yoga movement who reject cancer treatments.
But it seems some in the yoga movement believe the natural way is best.
Shortly before our cemetery tour, I found numerous health related articles on the MISA website.
One of them says that 75 percent of doctors reject chemotherapy for themselves. Also immediately below this article is a source, Natural News, a fake news, far-right conspiracy theory site.
I found even more articles on the pages of MISA. Studies are presented that would prove that certain plants, fruits or herbs are natural remedies against cancer and in some cases more effective than chemotherapy. We do not know if the woman whose grave we are looking for has read all these articles on the pages of MISA.
But Nathalie tells us...
Nathalie: She was in Bucharest when she was very sick and then she entered a rehab clinic at our school, so they really did it with crystals and other things.
narrator: The detox clinic is located just outside Bucharest. Officially, it has no connection with MISA, but I found several references to connections with the yoga school. And I talked to a naturopath who practiced there himself. He also says that MISA people come and go from there. "Therapies" include colored light therapy, hemispheric synchronization, forgiveness therapy, pulsating plasma, and ozone baths.
Nathalie says the seriously ill woman is being treated at this rehab clinic. Afterwards, she returns to Nathalie's old room.
Nathalie: I also know that she wrote him a letter afterwards.
narrator: So this letter reached Gregorian Bivolaru. She wanted to know from him, says Nathalie, if it can be treated conventionally, with an operation.
Nathalie: Well, he just didn't answer. And then she said "Yeah, so I can't do that. With such life threatening stories, I don't trust myself enough to make such a decision and then I wait for him to send me a reply. And if you don't send me anything, then I'd rather die." Narrator: This is Nathalie's memory. We can't verify it, we should find the grave and talk to the woman's family.
Christiane: Yes, it's not like we know from cemeteries, where there are alleys and you look left and right for the graves, but rather the graves are close together and you have to sneak between the headstones.
narrator: And so all we can do is look up the first name and the date of death. We go and research and research again. At some point, everything becomes blurred before our eyes.
Christiane: I spent, I think, three hours looking for this grave. My eyes sting, my legs hurt. I didn't succeed.
It's frustrating. Yes, but now my head is spinning, all I see are crosses, tombstones and numbers. And Maria and Elena and Luzia. So that's it. What a shame.
narrator: Let's try one more time. We ask another dropout, Liz, the woman we met on the blanket in the park. For all we know, Liz may have been at the yoga school in Germany at the same time as the woman who died.
Liz: Hello. Yes, I met her. She's been through a lot and found a lot of support in this community and it's given her a lot of support and hope to have this office as a contact and information and a person to trust.
I think she wrote to her a lot about all kinds of things, and she also got very attached to everything.
narrator: This is what Liz remembers. Sounds almost exactly like what Nathalie told us.
Liz: Towards the end, when I was about to leave, I somehow realized that she had died. The fact was presented thus: it was God's will, so to speak, that it was only His plan, that everything was good and right as it was, or that her very soul chose to die now.
Narrator: So, two witnesses who independently corroborated the story about the deceased woman.
We make a few more attempts, but that's all we know about the woman. But there are many other things that trouble us.
When we bring up the topic of health with Liz, she gets emotional.
She herself suffers from a chronic illness, which forces her to have regular check-ups.
Liz: The fact that the entire outside world is portrayed as evil is also important.
So really, all the institutions, the authorities and so on, everything that was outside was evil, it was satanic.
Then, I hadn't been to the doctor in a very long time.
narrator: Liz thought she could heal herself with yoga. But during her time at the yoga school, she says the disease spread.
Liz: In this context, you're often told that you should connect to what's higher and that your physical needs are really unimportant and that you need to learn to control and suppress them because those are your lower instincts , so the body is highly demonized. This rule, for example, was also considered a total taboo there. So the purpose of yoga with certain yoga asanas was to completely prevent menstruation from taking place, which would be very bad for a woman.
narrator: Nathalie also told us that she learned at Viluță that they say you can suppress your period, because it robs you of your energy. She dismissed this idea as crazy. Liz, on the other hand, took it very seriously.
Liz: I had just come out of the context of loving my body and finding peace with my period.
And it was really crazy how everything changed and became so negative, so dirty that you had to try to remove it, not think about it, not evoke it, remove it through yoga.
narrator: Liz thought she didn't need doctors anymore. After all, she had her guru and he was giving her very precise instructions. It all started during the coronavirus. Liz wanted to move to an ashram run by the German Academy of Traditional Yoga. It is officially described as a place for a short or long retreat from conventional life to deepen spiritual practice. Liz remembers what she had to do to get in there.
Liz: Then you must personally write a letter to Grieg. You have to give him all your data, date of birth, what is your zodiac sign and what time you were born. They can then draw up a natal chart, so to speak, an astrological chart, and then get a lot of information about you, where your nodes are and your planets.
narrator: Liz begins this letter with the words "dear G, G from Grieg". She writes to him about what concerns her, about her worries and desires. She doesn't mention her chronic illness, but she does mention mental issues.
She writes that she is grateful for all the healing, for all the energy from the yoga teachers at school and from him, that she is now ready to finally let go of her ego and if he thinks it was a good idea to move at the ashram.
Liz: I sent this letter and then you're waiting all this time like a little kid for Santa Claus. Either you get a response from Grieg or you don't. You're either chosen or you're not, because some people really never got an answer. They were not accepted.
Narrator: But Liz gets one. It is handed to her at the yoga school in a brown A4 envelope with two glittery heart stickers on it. On it, in capital letters, in Romanian, TREATMENT is written.
Inside is a nine-page, typed letter. It's not signed, but Liz is sure it's from Gregorian Bivolaru himself. He writes to her that in order to overcome her ego, Liz should strive to assimilate into her being various Divine Attributes: love, courage or perseverance. She is then advised to do a small bowel cleanse in addition to standing on her head for ten minutes. And it says in English that: "we will also send you a treatment with medicinal plants, which will help you enormously." But this is secret. She must swear on the Bible. Liz gets some kind of prescription.
Liz: It was really cute with so many stickers on it and it was weird, but he brought out the kid in me so I was totally hooked. Ah, I love stickers!
narrator: The names of the herbs and plants are listed in a multi-page table: 116 herbs for psychomental balance. Liz's list mentions rosemary, mint, and garnet, but she doesn't understand most of them because the names are only in Latin and Romanian, as is the dosage and contraindication information. Fortunately, a catalog of questions and answers is attached, in somewhat clumsy English.
Liz translates it herself.
- How long does the treatment normally last, unless otherwise specified?
"The treatment must be administered over a period of 7 years. This is true for serious illnesses.
In other cases, 3 years." - Are you breaking your oath if you forget to take the herbs 4 times a day?
"Not unless you do it consistently and intentionally." But where does Liz get all the plants now? Should she collect them all? She continues to look through the catalog of questions and answers. There's a name there: - Do you break your oath if you show the list of plants to the Divine Star, for example?” Because they accept the plant list.
"You go there and ask for these plants without telling anyone what you're buying."
narrator: Divine Star. We have come across the name of this company before. With Jasper, meaning Nathalie's Jasper.
He also received a list of herbs and then ordered the herbal preparations from the Divine Star.
Nathalie: They have a big spread at school. And actually you always get them if you have a health problem that you tell someone about. Or something, any other problem. So it's also very expensive, of course. And it is a Romanian company.
Narrator: And the yoga students at MISA work in this company, for their karma. I was already inside the Divine Star, by the way, almost by accident. In Bucharest, at the strange aura measurement conference, to enter the yoga room, we had to pass through another room first. It smelled like a health food store and there were jars of plants everywhere. We go through Liz and Jasper's lists with our translator, Anca.
Anca: Arm, this is fir. "The tail of the mouse"... The aerial part, what is the aerial part? Well, what can be seen.
Christiane: And what does it say here in the column?
Anca: Ah, how much do you have to take. And here are the contraindications, side effects, and when not to take it.
For example, in the first one, it says that you have to be careful if you are allergic, because it can cause irritating reactions such as hemorrhages, epistaxis, hemorrhoids, and that you should not take more than four grams a day.
narrator: Anca looks at the page of a large online store in Romania to see if the products are also available there.
Anca: Of course. And here the Divine Star is seen, 133, they say. Shilajit, 60 capsules, 58 capsules are just over 10 euros.
Katja: If you have to take them for seven years, of course, a full cycle.
Christiane: It has a list of 116 products. But the other one had over 300. 363 different herbal preparations.
Anca: I think you can really make a lot of money with this.
Katja: The Divine Star attracts its customers in this way.
Christiane: Exactly, what a business model! People go to yoga and then you have customers for plants.
Narrator: We decided to talk to the MISA officials about this while we are still in Bucharest. So far we have traveled undercover, but that will soon change. We go to the so-called MISA information center.
Christiane: After re-watching the allegations today in the hotel room, I have to say I felt an inner rage. I'm going there now with a big chest. I've completely ditched the mask now. Absolute.
narrator: The MISA information center is hidden in a block of flats, with no doorbell. When we enter, a woman, the secretary, comes to us. We tell her that we are journalists and that we want to know more about MISA.
She tells us to wait, as she needs to check with her press officer first. Then we have her on the phone.
Christiane: I asked again, isn't it an official information center? Then she said, no, not for journalists.
It is not specifically open to journalists.
Anca: It is a private place and journalists are not allowed to enter because they have had unpleasant experiences with them.
Narrator: We are asked to leave the information center and told to send an official email with questions.
Christiane: My favorite moment of the entire visit was when I asked for the press officer's name again. The secretary wrote it by hand on a piece of paper, then called the press spokeswoman again, and she said, "No, you can't give me my name." Then she ripped the ticket out of my hand, crumpled it up and threw it away. I've never seen anything like this before, a press spokesperson who doesn't want to give her name to journalists.
narrator: But the press spokeswoman told us her name: Cosmina Oprea.
She wrote that the MISA board should agree to an interview with us. At first I didn't have much hope, but then I actually got a video interview with her. She has one condition: she doesn't want us to superimpose an audio translation over her answers.
Our list of questions and accusations from school dropouts about MISA is so long that we fear we won't be able to go through them all, but she has plenty of time for us. Three hours.
At the end, she will say that she has never given such a long interview before. And there will be some surprising answers for us.
Christiane: Okay, so if you're ready, let's get started.
Cosmina Oprea: Good.
Narrator: We're asking about the Divine Star plants, of course.
Christiane: What is the connection between the Divine Star and Misa?
Cosmina Oprea: So Steaua Divina is a company, you know, a commercial company that was founded, many years ago, by some doctors who are also students of the school, and as far as I know, some of them are still students of the school, but that is their private business.
narrator: A private business that has nothing to do with MISA, except that it was founded by former and current students. We know. It was the same with Lucky Love Club: a private matter of some students and teachers. As an organization, MISA is not allowed to enter schools. She is not even allowed to do business. We also ask what the yoga school thinks about yoga healing.
Cosmina Oprea: Practicing yoga would have a very obvious and immediate effect on improving health.
There are some exercises you can do to improve your eyesight, vision, but they do not claim to be treatments or cures, they are just complementary to any other treatment your doctors recommend.
Narrator: So improving eyesight through yoga is supposed to be possible.
But all these exercises are not labeled as treatments or cures, they are only in addition to what doctors recommend. We must remember the herbal letters and Gregorian Bivolaru.
Cosmina Oprea: He was, is and will always be an important person for us, he is the one who started everything, but since 1995 he no longer teaches in the school.
narrator: He doesn't teach school anymore. It seems that his role is now quite small. We had a different experience during our trial lecture in Bucharest, where he moved the compass needle in a video.
Narrator: So he wrote books and gave conferences in the MISA camps. And?
Cosmina Oprea: We never use the word guru, we sometimes refer to him as a spiritual guide.
narrator: The same thing happens at the German Academy of Traditional Yoga. He is a spiritual master for some participants. That's what it says on the website. But nothing more. He is not a guru. We ask Cosmina Oprea if the yoga teachers at MISA are in contact with Bivolaru, if they forward letters from students to him, as we were told.
Cosmina Oprea: I don't know who said that and they should explain a little bit more because otherwise I honestly don't have an answer to that.
Christiane: So you would say he didn't communicate directly with the yogis?
Cosmina Oprea: No, no, I say that I don't know, maybe there were cases - of which I am not aware - and I also say that not everyone who says this should be taken as such.
narrator: You shouldn't believe everything you're told.
Christiane: Could they ask him questions, for example, that they had mental health problems or health problems and get answers?
Cosmina Oprea: Yes, let me tell you something. You said mental health issues. Everyone was accepted in our school; the only requirement, the only special condition so to speak is that he doesn't have mental health problems, so I seriously doubt that people with mental health problems, mental health problems, would be in school and then ask for advice, I mean he's not , you know, Dr. Psychiatrist, because that certainly didn't happen.
narrator: She is sure that no one has written to Bivolaru about mental health issues. Ultimately, anyone with such problems is not even accepted into yoga school.
Keyword: conditions of participation. Of course, we also ask about bikini photos for camps.
Christiane: I read online that yogis must submit pictures in a bikini or swimsuit to participate.
Why?
Cosmina Oprea: Well, because... So... it's clear that she's not in a bikini, yes, I know, we're not talking about pornographic pictures or other things that I've read in the press. Because by looking at the person's body, you can kind of see if they have some potential, I don't know, like issues, physical issues that would prevent them from doing yoga, or some indication that the person wouldn't be a good fit for a camp.
narrator: Bikini photos as a health check. That's right, so many dropouts have claimed to have been told that Bivolaru can read your aura based on photos.
Christiane: Is that right?
Cosmina Oprea: No!
Christiane: Huh?
Cosmina Oprea: Maybe someone told them, I can't say that they weren't told, maybe someone said because maybe they believed that, but no, that's not the case.
narrator: Well, she says, "maybe some people have been told that, but it's not," that's her message.
Christiane: So he doesn't get these pictures.
Cosmina Oprea: Well, these pictures are, they said, with the camp organizers, so as long as he is not here, I don't see how he could get these pictures, honestly.
Narrator: As long as Bivolaru is not in the camps himself, he doesn't know how he would get the photos.
"And if you have a problem with the photos, you don't have to come to the camp," she says.
Cosmina Oprea: Now, if you have a problem sending pictures, don't send pictures, you don't have to come to the camp.
Narrator: By the way, the same is true for HIV and syphilis tests. Cosmina Oprea confirms that these are also prerequisites for participating in the camps. MISA wants to protect itself legally in this way.
We arrive at Vilută, the house that Nathalie told us is a kind of sexual training camp. House rules: nude photos.
Cosmina Oprea: I can't talk about it because I've never lived there.
So in all other places this doesn't happen, why would it happen there?
narrator: Why would it happen there if it doesn't happen anywhere else? Maybe because Viluta is surrounded by an opaque fence. MISA's press officer can obviously only give information about things she has witnessed herself. We hope she was at least present at the Miss Shakti pageant. Was pornography filmed there?
Cosmina Oprea: We're against pornography, so pornography is something really, you know, inferior, degrading, you know, it's a lower energy, low level show, you know, it's not a high perspective on
love relationships between men and women, so I can tell you for sure that pornography does not exist. Now, there has been a scandal about so-called porn movies that are actually erotic movies.
Narrator: They are against pornography, but there are erotic films made by some Tantra teachers and their students. But this is something separate, independent from the Miss Shakti pageant. As far as he heard, there were no erotic film shoots there. Next point. Karma yoga: Christiane: And erotic video chat activities?
Cosmina Oprea: It is an activity that surely exists everywhere in Romania, just as well, and it may happen that some of the people are involved in this kind of activity, it is not an activity that is done or managed in any way by school; if some people do it, they do it individually.
Narrator: And again, if a yoga student works on erotic video chat, then that's a purely private matter. School has nothing to do with it.
We begin to wonder what MISA is up to. Of course, I also asked Cosmina Oprea about the allegations of human trafficking, about the initiation with Bivolaru in Paris and about his arrest.
We will tell you about this in the next episode. But let's take a break here at the cemetery. The yoga student who died of cancer. We still want to know how MISA rates Gregorian Bivolaru's abilities when it comes to illness. I also read about very special meditation events. They are said to facilitate miraculous healings and confer divine grace on all whom God the Father and his archangels have chosen.
Christiane: Is it some kind of healer?
Cosmina Oprea: No, he is not a healer. Under no circumstances have I heard him or in a lecture or anything say that he is a healer. I have never heard him say that he is a healer.
Narrator: We've never heard them say he's a healer either. But some followers obviously believe this and post this on the MISA website.
"Miraculous healing, my spirit guide removed a huge tumor," it says. And that Bivolaru saved someone from shingles.
Liz felt the same. When Liz receives this letter with a list of over 100 herbs that she should take for 7 years, she quickly feels lost.
Liz: They have their own plants. Somewhere in Romania, I think they have a school or built something there, they grow them themselves and then you can contact them and call them and buy them, for a lot of money.
It was definitely about money, and as always, we didn't have any money at the time.
narrator: And what should she do now? The herbal letter helps here as well: "If you don't have enough money to buy all the herbs in the treatment plan, or if at some point you don't have enough money to continue the treatment, then you break your oath." This highlights their lack of will and determination and then they break their oath.
But Liz is ready and she's determined. She just needs to get the plants.
Liz: I was really stressed that I had to buy these plants now so I wouldn't get kicked out. So it was like I was under the influence of drugs, constantly watching the videos, constantly doing all kinds of meditations, and constantly with this fear of doing something wrong on a divine test.
So every day was like a divine test. And yes, it was very stressful for me because I never had any money anyway, I had nothing to eat and I also got a lot of food from the ashram.
So, on this existential level, I was also a bit dependent on them. And so it was kind of doubly stressful that now I had to somehow find money for some plants and that this was proof of my loyalty to this group. Because it also meant that if you didn't find that money, it meant that you didn't really want it and you hadn't really made an effort. So it's against you again.
Christiane: It's your fault.
Liz: It's your fault, exactly.
Narrator: But as much as Liz gives up everything else, as much as she tries to raise this money, she just can't, and she feels terrible about it. Inferior, failed in her path to enlightenment.
And that's why she's taking a radical step.