Transcript: I Was Groomed & Traff*cked into a TANTRIC YOGA S*X CULT

 

By Cults to Consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n50bzbmqhmQ

 

Intro

These are spiritual people. You know, this is a yoga school and everyone's really lovely and happy and loving. And perhaps if I can overlook some of this kind of surprising, shocking material, I'll grow and have all of these amazing spiritual experiences that they claim to be having. We were encouraged to wear lingerie to the group supposedly to connect us with our femininity and our sensuality. They took a photo, a naked photo, which was then sent to the guru to read my aura um to decide if I was spiritual enough to be chosen for this uh this women's camp. Amazing news kind of, you know, really gushing. You've been chosen. It's a yes. Oh, we're going to have such a beautiful time together. And the camp in Romania, the summer camp, is where things really kind of started to deepen. The kind of rules and expectations that the retreat in Romania were preparing and grooming us to kind of normalize the things that would then happen um when we were travel to Paris. Phones were taken, the SIM cards were removed. We weren't allowed to use the phones at any point. And inside the seat pockets of the car were hats and sunglasses with tape on the inside. And we were only to take them off if we were stopped by the police. In which case, the story was that we were all there of our own free will and we were going to do a yoga holiday. Five to seven women in an average bedroom, so sleeping in double bunk beds. I I woke up and there was someone new who I'd never met in the bed next to me sleeping. That was the first time where I really heard of him being spoken about as beyond human. I wasn't connected to him at all. I didn't want to be intimate with him. As soon as he opened the door and I hugged him, I just thought, "Oh, this old guy in a bathrobe." Mine is the only voice. What have I been doing? Lay down my autonomy.

After that, it got very dark very quickly.

[Music] Hey guys, my name is Shalis Ansola and this is Cults to Consciousness where we discuss leaving high demand religions or organizations and finding healing and independence through awareness and true individual sovereignty. If you're only listening on those podcast platforms and you'd like to see our faces and interact with the post, you can go to YouTube at cults to consciousness. It is so helpful for you guys to interact with the post, watch the video over there. Interacting as far as liking, commenting, subscribing, boosts algorithm, helps more people find these videos and see our guest stories. Today's guest, she reached out to us through our jot form, which you can always do in our about section. There's a link there that you can fill out. And we are talking about the Tara Yoga Center, which the leader is currently awaiting trial for the crimes committed in this group. There was a BBC documentary. There's a whole thing. And basically it gets really dark with sexing and so many other things. So we have someone who is deeply involved in that group. Thank you so much for joining us Miranda Grace. Thank you Shalice. Yeah. So I'm happy to have you here. I know you've been telling your story for quite a while especially with this documentary. What has it been like just out the gate having gone public with this? I know I saw in one of your social media posts you were talking about Cerrito who we had also had on and how everyone reacted to her in disbelief or saying that she was lying when her book came out about the meditation group she was a part of and so I wanted to hear your perspective on how it happened with you coming out and telling your story. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I went public uh on this BBC podcast which came out Miranda's experience telling her story almost a year ago, but I began speaking out about the group within 6 months of leaving. So, in the summer of 2022, um I had already spoken one-to-one to some of the current members who I knew went too deep in and I thought would be open to hearing my story and to hearing the reality of what was going on because the nature of the organization keeps everything very secretive. Um many of these activities take place under a vow of secrecy. So, people within the organization don't share about it. They don't talk about it. So, in the summer of 2022, um a friend, another ex-member suggested that we hold a kind of group talk in a public location in a park in London and about 30 current members turned up. Um, and there was uh one of the teachers was also there walking around with a camera. Um, so he'd obviously been tipped off about the meeting and and that was hard. It was it was much harder actually than um telling my story to journalists since because you know I knew that although none of these people were deep in the organization, some of them were already indoctrinated, they had emotional ties to their teachers, they didn't know me, you know, I was just one voice and some of them were asking questions like why can't the teachers be here? And you know, I want them to know about this too. So, so it was challenging but it was kind of it was necessary. Um, and for me the process of going public, one of the one of the outcomes is that I no longer need to go through the energetic drain and kind of retraumatization of telling my story one-on-one which I was doing in the beginning and it was exhausting. Yeah. So the day after this meeting in in Hyde Park, uh I received a barrage of messages, a ton of emails, phone calls, missed calls from unknown numbers in Romania, and a message from Maria Porchfelt, who was the uh kind of manager of Tara Yoga Center in London at the time, I don't know if she still is, um saying, "I heard that you've been uh making ridiculous allegations about me to my students." And uh this kind of followed within about a week with an email from Tara Yoga Center sent to all of their students. So at least a couple of hundred students around the UK uh naming my full name inviting everyone to an open dialogue which they also invited me to um to come into the center and have a discussion with them where both sides of the story as if there were another side to my story uh being able to speak about what had happened. Obviously, I didn't attend the meeting. Also, under legal advice, which I was beginning to take at the time. Um, I didn't attend the meeting. I requested them to no longer contact me directly, via a lawyer, which I had found through the yoga teachers union, which was my only my only source of support at the time. And they held these meetings, which if you've listened to the BBC podcast, there are snippets, there are uh recordings of the meetings in the podcast. And uh I think they held at least three meetings where there were a bunch of allegations against me, character defamation, testimonies of various members who I thought were good friends who had, you know, told me that they cared about me and they loved me. Um then speaking about, you know, all of my supposed character flaws and uh how I'd fallen off the path. And uh they played without my consent a recording of my voice which was made under duress. um in uh in Paris when we were trafficked to Paris to be initiated by the guru who's now in prison. Yeah. That that period was particularly difficult.

Wow. What's so crazy about these groups that the members don't realize is that usually there's some sort of funnel that goes to the craziest stuff being at the top that the members at the bottom don't ever hear about, will never hear about, are never going to be a part of. And so when those members at the bottom hear about the things going on at the top, they're automatically in disbelief like that doesn't make any sense. I'm part of this group. I would know if something was going on. But the thing is, you don't know. And I swear it's almost every single group that we talk to, even within Mormonism, just the basis of once you get to the temple, there are things that the people who haven't been have no idea about. And when they get there, they're like, "What is this?" And it gets even higher when you go to the second anointing. And the stuff that is so behind the scenes and so secretive and so really secret society that people have no idea that it's going on. And so it makes it easy for them to discredit the people who have been through it. Just in terms as well as uh in terms of the kind of yoga meditation tradition and how certain aspects of that belief and doctrine are used to victim blame. Um I saw some like real parallels there between my experience and Cerritos you know in terms of um saying things like oh you know every ex you create your experiences with your mind is kind of aligned with a lot of self-help stuff as well and you know it's your perspective your perspective creates reality and uh they really focused on they admitted publicly for the first time that these sexual initiations do happen and they focused on all of the senior women giving positive to positive testimony um and speaking about, you know, how they'd had such a wonderful spiritual experience in order to kind of intimate that of course the problem the problem was with me and my attitude, my low vibrational attitude. That's insane to me that they're like, "Well, we do this, but it's not our fault. It's the person who didn't understand the initiation." But I mean, it's even just admitting something that big, saying we do have sex initiation rites. I mean, that's a whole thing. So, I want to get into more obviously about your story, how you got involved. But first, for people who aren't aware of this group or don't know what it is, can you give us an idea of how it started and how it is such a huge group that has thousands of members? Because it's such an international Group background group, it it's quite hard to summarize, but according to their own publicity, they have over 20,000 students around the world. According to their own publicity, they're the largest yoga school in Europe. So, uh on their website, they have schools in a variety of locations in Europe and around the world. I think over 30 um countries or locations. It originated in Romania in the 80s um which is where this uh guru Bivolaru is from. So it kind of originated towards the end of communism uh in in Romania when it was illegal to practice religion and kind of uh flourished as as a source of spiritual practice in that during that time. And then expanded um the Stoians uh Mihai and uh and Adina Stoian who are also in prison now in uh in France or awaiting trial. Um they kind of took the practice to Europe with their base being in Denmark uh and from there it spread through Europe and um around the world. They have locations under different names in Thailand called Mahasida uh in Chiang Mai. They under the same name they operate seasonally in Rishikesh in India. They have several branches uh in the US. As a side note, there's a guy who's really great in the US who's kind of be he was never in the group, but he's uh really um kind of doing a lot of activism to create awareness around them and their links to the to the wider organization and I'm trying to remember now what they're called, but they also have a large online operation uh called the online yoga academy which operates globally. Yeah. So, this is a huge organization.

At a surface level, it's basically just people who are practicing yoga and then as you get further up into the ranks with the leaders and the gurus, that's where things got really dark, right, for you? Yes. So, they advertise themselves. They have a couple of different kind of crowd-facing courses. They have the yoga course, the tantra course, a few others, astrology, Kashmir shivaism. Um they do a lot of kind of courses around angels and archangels. So it's a real kind of mix of different um philosophies and doctrines um to appeal to a wide range of people. So the tantra course is a a mixture of theory and yoga practice but with a focus on the chakras. They market themselves as an esoteric yoga school. So not just focusing on the physical, focusing on the energetics and they market themselves as white tantra which is nonsexual. So, one of the reasons why when I Googled them, why I chose to go with them as opposed to the neotantra schools which are more have more explicitly sexual practices was that they painted themselves as uh being kind of from this very pure lineage and being a kind of genuine spiritual form of yoga. you know that they have this tantra they teach you the tantra practices which they also said in the first courses we'll teach you these practices but there's no obligation to practice them if you want to practice them at home with your partner you can and you know we encourage it we'll be here to support you but they never mentioned at any point that there would be the expectation or even possibility of any kind of sexual practices within the organization okay so this is a way where they drop a crumb of what it might be so that you're not totally shocked by the time it gets to that point but with the misinformation of or the misguidance of it's going to be this but it ended up going so much further. So let's talk about when you got involved and how old you were and kind of where you were in that place in that time of your life. So I was 30 and I just got back from a yoga How Miranda got involved teacher training course in India and spending some time traveling around India and Thailand. And I'd done a short course, a women's short course on tantra yoga at Agama in Thailand. This was before the um the accusations uh came out against the guru of Agama who was also a student of Bivolaru. So uh you know I found this women's tantra course really helpful. I was on a kind of spiritual quest at the time um to to really learn as much as I could about yoga and bring spirituality into my everyday life. I'd seen the benefits of yoga. I'd seen the benefits of meditation. I was, you know, happier and healthier than I had been at any point in my 20ies. Uh so I thought that you know this spiritual yoga and esoteric tantra course would be a good way for me to kind of deepen my spiritual knowledge and practice. Yeah, that makes sense. I've been there myself where it just feels right and you're thinking this is going to take me to the next level. For me it was well maybe I can find a partner through this more mystical thing. They're telling me that I need to change my energy vibration so I can attract the right mate. And so I'm just like, okay, whatever it takes. You know, this hopeless romantic, like I'm going to do whatever it takes to find a partner.

Meanwhile, getting dragged down this really dark path that I didn't anticipate. So for you, when you joined, how long before you realized you were in something that you hadn't initially signed up for?

When Miranda realized what she'd gotten into it gradual. And I think that's one of the ways that that they get you. Um because it's like building blocks. So the first semi kind of sexual um activity that we had was at the retreat. So they have a yearly retreat at Easter um in a lovely house, big house in in the English countryside. Um and we were told that we'd be in in groups separate men and women would be separated. We'd be doing kind of activities, yoga and various other activities as men and as women and we do a couple of joint activities but they didn't speak about the nature of these. They didn't mention that there would be any nudity or any kind of sexual content. Um and it emerged at the retreat that we were expected to do dances for the men. So on one of the first nights we surprised them with a kind of sexy dance and we were encouraged to dress up. Some of the teachers stripped and they were dancing completely naked. Uh I didn't I was wearing a kind of skirt and top. But I remember dancing and kind of dancing around, not in a particularly sexual way, but one of the teachers looking like staring directly at my crotch. And I was just kind of just completely surprised because I'd been told that, you know, these men were really respectful. They were tantric men. And they weren't, you know, like other guys who just wanted to have sex and, you know, that that they were kind of these spiritual men. And I was kind of shocked, but, you know, so many good things were happening at the same time that that I overlooked it to an extent. So, I was shocked by that. Um, I was shocked by other kind of aspects of the nudity and the avert sexuality um, in some of the dance practices or the film clips or the talks that they were giving when it was just the group of women. But we were also having some great meditations. We were learning a lot of great things and I was really getting love bombed retrospectively. All of the teachers were kind of being kind of extra affectionate towards me. One of the female teachers invited me to kind of sit. She was sat cross-legged.

She invited me to sit on her lap and was kind of cuddling me and they were giving me lots of compliments. They gave me and two of the other kind of young new women um the biggest room in the house, the nicest on suite room. So, you know, I didn't recognize it as love bombing at the time. I just thought these are spiritual people. You know, this is a yoga school and everyone's really lovely and happy and loving and you know, perhaps if I can overlook some of this kind of surprising, shocking sexual material, I can be like that, too. I can be as happy and shiny as they are and, you know, they'll continue to love me and I'll be one of them and I'll grow and have all of these amazing spiritual experiences that they claim they claim to be having thanks to the school and its practices. Yeah, absolutely. It makes sense that you would feel that way. And so, how does it work? Is it like a funnel? So, you said that you and one of the newer students, so that means other people had been going and maybe were exposed to that already. So, did they just kind of funnel you up the more that you were involved and the more retreats that you went on? Yeah, they definitely targeted young kind of attractive women and they definitely targeted women who seemed open. So whether that was open-minded, wanting kind of curious, wanting to learn new practices or whether it was open to having relationships with current members when they saw that, you know, there was any kind of weigh in um for their uh increased manipulation, they really went for it. So I at the end of that retreat I got into a relationship with one of the senior male teachers. From the point where we began a relationship I noticed that the attitude towards me changed. So the teachers who before had been a bit more cautious with me um were now kind of kissing me uh on the cheek or even coming to kiss me on the lips as a standard greeting as they kind of did in their inner circle. There were more sexual comments directed at me. Um, I was somehow viewed as having kind of risen a level or gone a level deeper into the organization through the fact that I was in a a relationship with one of the existing members. And I saw I saw the same happen happening with other new women who were clearly deliberately targeted by certain teachers um and also men. You know, the reverse also happens. So they were targeted by these teach these teachers and then kind of brought into the inner circle. So one of the next things that happened was I was invited by one of my friends, my close friend who was already volunteering on reception at the center in in central London. Um she invited me to an advanced women's group. So I was already attending a women's group as part of the tantra course. We had women's group and men's group meetings once a month. And I was invited to an advanced group and I remember thinking I'm not advanced. I've been in the school for like four or five months. What makes me advanced? But it was kind of by invitation. That was how it operated. Um and once I was in the, you know, a few months down the line, I remember the leader of the group saying, "Can you think of any other girls who would be good for this group who were kind of beautiful and open and, you know, would be good for this this group?" There was no apparently no criteria other than that. And uh in this group we were encouraged to wear lingerie to the group supposedly to connect us with our femininity and our sensuality um and we would do uh we were chosen at different points to do kind of sexy dances but for the group but it was in a it was in a kind of framework and guise of empowerment. So it was you know women are disconnected from their bodies from their sexuality uh or they are hypersexualized. This is tantra. This is sacred sexuality. This is your opportunity to love your body and connect to your sensuality without shame and also in a sacred way. For me and I think for a lot of women that was it was appealing. You know, they were offering a kind of an experience with a way of looking at my body and my sexuality that I hadn't encountered before and it felt healing at the time. But uh you know as things deepened with this group I was exposed to more testimony kind of hours of testimony of uh women speaking about their spiritual experiences in love making in quite a coded way without ever mentioning the name of the people who they were or the person who they were love who they were making love with. It it kind of uh leveled up in terms of the graphic the graphic nature of the testimony but they made it sound like you know like it was this really kind of amazing spiritual experience. So at the same time as being quite graphic, it from a spiritual perspective, they made it sound like, you know, it was a kind of spiritual state that I would want to attain as a yoga and meditation practitioner. And eventually when I'd been in for about 3 4 months, it was approaching the summer and they have a yearly uh summer holiday camp in Romania. And I was asked by the main instructor, are you going to the camp?

And I said, no, I don't think so. And she said, "Would you like to go for free if we take these photos and we send them to the spiritual guide? If he approves, then you can go to the camp for free.

You can stay in this house with uh just with other women and it will be like one long women's group, which was a very inaccurate description. And uh you know, you'll have access to the spiritual camp with all of these talks and workshops and meditations and you just need to pay for your flight. That's it." So I agreed. They took a photo to read my aura, a naked photo, which was then sent to the guru to read my aura um to decide if I was spiritual enough to be chosen for this uh this women's camp. And about a week later, I got the response from the coordinator saying, "Amazing news." Kind of, you know, really gushing.

You've been chosen. Um it's a yes. Oh, we're going to have such a beautiful time together.

Um, and the camp in Romania, the summer camp, is where things really kind of started to deepen.

Wow. So many things already. Since you've been talking, I've been clocking and checking off the list of the recruitment tactics that are often used with cults because if you get especially another woman to recruit another woman, it's easier because they seem to trust them more and you're earnest, right?

If you're the person recruiting, you're like, best of intentions. Yeah, it's going to be great. And so it really feels genuine and safe. That's a great way for cults to get people in by using the members or especially the women. And then you're talking about the slow boiling of the frog and also the empowerment like the seeds of truth, right? Where it does make sense that you would want to take back your sensuality because you felt exploited or you felt like you haven't been able to fully express it in a safe place. And so, of course, it would make sense to create a container to where you can fully embrace your divine feminine and be sensual without being sexualized, not knowing that you were being sexualized and that there was this devious plan going on underneath it the entire time. And so absolutely it makes sense the way that they were slowly prepping you for this experience which was highly exploitative but under the guise of you're going to level up. You're going to reach this new attainment that wouldn't be possible without this experience. So let's get into what it was like at this retreat.

What happened when you landed? Did it all did it seem to fall apart right away or was it again a slow build going up to it? The retreat was it again it was kind of level by level and I can see now how the Miranda's experience at the retreat the kind of rules and expectations at the retreat in Romania were preparing and grooming us to kind of normalize the things that would then happen um when we were trafficked to Paris. So, for example, on arrival in Romania, we needed to uh give them our passport and we could only take the passport when we when we left the building. Um, also our phone. Um, again, we could only use the phone outside the building supposedly to protect everyone from radiation. Um, but you know, just to begin to normalize your um ID and personal possessions being taken away from you. That was also one of the first times that I was required to swear on the Bible. So they again completely normalize it. You come into the office and they're like, "Oh, here's the Bible. Just put your hand there and read this piece of paper." And you put your hand on the Bible um and swear uh on your health and future spiritual evolution that you will never tell anyone about what happens uh in this in this camp or in this initiation. Um, and the swearing on the Bible is kind of funny because they're it's a yoga school, but you know, yeah, it creates um, yeah, it creates this sense of buy in and also of fear because you are, you know, in terms of the words you're speaking, you're making a promise on your health and future spiritual evolution. And they have all of these stories about people who broke their vows. and when they broke their vows, you know, they got cervical cancer or, you know, something awful happened to their family or they um became invaded by demons and just completely lost all spirituality. So, they tell a lot of these stories about the people who leave and I'm sure they tell them now about me. Um so yeah the swearing on the Bible and then uh you know they have a bunch of other things like you have to um be recorded turning naked in a circle again for the guru to somehow read different aspects of your aura and prescribe a spiritual practice for you. So just continually normalizing this this nudity kind of on demand. You have to go to certain lectures.

Uh they give you all of your food and water. Uh these kind of supplements and herbs which you're encouraged to take and a kind of normalization of sexualization. Uh you know, women making comments about your body or how beautiful you are or um the senior women kind of making these now quite sexualized um kind of love bombing comments. There was also a room we had to do a meditation of connection to the spiritual guide once a day. And there was a room where he had previously stayed when he wasn't in hiding when he was kind of living freely in Romania.

And they said that this was the room he'd stayed in. And it was it was his room and certain women were chosen um to sleep in the room for a couple of nights and then after a couple of nights another four or five women would be chosen by him. Um, and everyone was kind of very keen to go to this room to do the meditation because the energy was so strong in there. So, so there was a lot of kind of talk about our spiritual guide. I I'd never really heard about him before. I heard my teachers mention him maybe once or twice, but they have no pictures of him. You know, they try to kind of keep it quiet. I'm sure they do even more now. But, you know, even then he was in hiding in in France. So, you know, they really talk up the kind of the power of the spiritual guide and not just in the women's house, but in the whole holiday camp. So, you know, even if you're staying in a beachside hotel uh in this uh resort town in Romania and just attending the lectures, there's a lot of kind of gratitude to the spiritual guide and all of the meditations are supported by the spiritual guide and triple divine supported. So that was the first time where I really heard of him being spoken about as beyond human, as a kind of divine being with these superpowers who could really kind of supercharge your meditation or accelerate your spiritual development. Um and lots of the women were kind of beginning to talk about this as well and how much he um had had changed their lives. Okay. So you have people there who are returning members whose job is probably to speak their testimony to soften whatever is coming next for the newcomers. Yeah. Lots of women and you know lots of women whose job they weren't really enjoying the camp. Um their job was to basically just administrate the whole thing. We there was also a lot of requirements in the beginning in terms of brainwashing. We had to watch um at least an hour of video footage of him supposedly moving a compass with his hands with his energy field and we had to write about our spiritual experience about what we'd felt um when we were watching this. After a few days, we also had to watch video testimony um of women who were naked um and they divided us into rooms by language. So, you know, all of the Russians went into one room to listen to the Russian testimony and the Portuguese speakers in here and the English speakers in here and, you know, about 15 different rooms. And so, we watched these testimonies, including one by my then teacher, my tantra teacher in in my first year of study and she was naked giving this testimony about her experience with the initiation and she was crying like streaming tears and not kind of, you know, smiling at the same time. So not tears of happiness like just absolutely stream streaming tears speaking her words just were not coherent with the facial expressions and with the tears and with the energy I was getting. So there was kind of this sense of a lack of coherence and her speaking about how she'd had this very painful but very deep experience and he'd helped her to heal from you know all of these traumas and various things in her past and this appear quite confused but apparently positive testimony whilst just absolutely balling crying. I was really affected by this cuz that was my teacher. Kind of looked up to her and here she was naked crying talking in this kind of quite incoherent way. It was supposedly a positive testimony about her spiritual experiences. For me, that's one of the first markers of how the brainwashing was already working because I thought, and this was based on the way some of the other women had spoken about her as well, um that she was very emotional.

She wasn't um kind of managing her emotional energies as women should. And I can remember feeling the dissonance of looking at her and feeling sad and feeling upset, but also hearing this kind of tape play in my mind saying, "Oh, this is her deficiency. It's because she's too emotional. It's because she doesn't practice enough yoga headstands, sublimate the energies, and um she gets she gets too emotional, and the problem is her. That's why she's crying." Yeah. So then what how long was this retreat? This was two weeks. So they the camp is for a month and they divide in the women's villa. They have some women come for the first two weeks and some women come for the second two weeks. Um and you stay kind of all in a small room together. I was staying with about four other women. Um, an Australian, uh, a Spanish woman, a German woman, a Dutch woman. Um, you know, kind of all in the small room and we were going to meditations. As we were watching the Miss Shakti pageant, which they have as kind of the highlight of the um the spiritual holiday, the spiritual camp, which is kind of a type of beauty contest, sensuality contest supposedly showing how much these women can embody the goddess, can embody the Shakti goddess as they call it in in Hinduism. And it again it kind of levels up. So the first the first few weeks, first few days and shows that you know everyone's kind of wearing nice sparkly kind of goddessy Indian style costumes and doing nice choreographed dances and then it kind of progressively gets more sexual to uh the end goal when most women have been eliminated and then there are 10 who are chosen as the embodiment of the mahavidyas of the 10 centric kind of faces of the goddess and they parade naked around the stage and one of them, you know, the kind of winner um one of her prizes is to have a kind of very special spiritual uh relationship and support from the spiritual guide for one year. So, it really was a beauty pageant to select his victims in ways. Yeah. framed as a kind of a chance for women to not compete but to collaborate and to not be in their egos but to think about how they can channel and embody the divine goddess and you know let go of shame around their nudity and their sensuality and just embody the goddess. Um but yes ultimately it was it was kind of choosing the kind of 10 uh kind of ideal victims and also a way to promote him that you know he was ultimately the one who could see how much they were embodying the goddess. He was the one who decided um and the ultimate prize was a close relationship with him.

So when did you first meet him or did you meet him at this retreat? No. So the retreat was in Romania and by Meeting the "spiritual guide" this time he was living in hiding in Paris. Okay. Okay. One of the questionnaires that we had to fill out was about going to meet him. There was no mention of sexual initiation, but it's the questionnaire said um you know if you would like to go and meet the spiritual guide, please write down some dates when you could travel to do so. There were a bunch of questioners speaking about our where we had to write about what we thought about the spiritual guide and did he have any special powers and if we had the opportunity would we meet him and we were also filmed answering these questions and if there was any disparity between the answers.

Um the women would kind of get really angry at us and some of the guests of the female guests were even kind of thrown out at this point. Um, and it was framed as, oh, you know, they're um superficial. They're fluctuating women. They don't know what they want, and you know, they're kind of they're out. They're not consistent. Um, and then based on this questionnaire, I gave some dates. Um, and I was then invited, I received a couple of text messages from the kind of the recruiters, the trafficking representatives. They have people who within the school who manage this in all the different locations. So I was contacted by the two recruiters uh in the UK in the spring of 2019 and I was given dates to um go for the initiation uh in Paris. I was told to buy a ticket that the ticket would re be reimbursed but that I wasn't to tell anyone the location that I was traveling to. And uh when I when I was about to go, I should tell people that I'm going on a yoga retreat and I won't be able to communicate during this time. It's a silent retreat and I can't say where I'm going. So in the end because I was living in Hungary at the time with one of the kind of satellite organizations of the school, they have also several sat satellite organizations which have different kind of roles. This one is uh an artistic satellite organization. So they create kind of pure erotic art literature and films. So when I was staying there, I was mostly writing magazine articles about things like Ana Nin and you know um nudity and art and it was it was quite interesting. Um they were also filming erotic films and taking photos but it was all presented kind of uh this organization articasia kind of spiritual um mission and it was a spiritual mission to awaken people's souls through art and to awaken them to this pure eros because the school differentiates very clearly between sex and pure eros. They say everyone else in the world has sex, but we have the pure eros and we're the only people who really understand and have access to this energy. So whenever you are making love with someone in the school and you're doing it in the right way like our master teaches us, you're not having sex. You are you are in the pure erotic energy and that that's kind of a direct link to to God and to sacred sexuality. Um and it's this kind of sacred spiritual practice. So this artistic group, their mission was through pure eros and art to awaken the souls of people who wouldn't be interested in yoga and meditation, but they would like to watch a film or a movie and that this somehow would would awaken their soul to the possibility of sex being about more than just carnal pleasure. So you know, I believed I believed in the mission. the people who were there really believed in it and uh it's run by this woman Agora Vidia who also made the early films that were made uh in Romania in the uh '9s predominantly early 2000s. One of the money-making streams for the organization is and was uh this porn um content. So that's one of the main money-making um tools of the organization is is these both the cam girl work which I was later recruited to to do and also these um films and there are several films made entirely with uh actors you know students from the school um and Agora Vidia was the one who directed these um in its original kind of uh films made in Romania although they're now made uh in predominantly in Hungary and um Portugal, but with students from all around the world. These films, they're being made with students and they're not being paid for this. They're just being told its part of their spiritual experience. Correct. Yeah. And so they have this concept that they teach from the beginning of the first year called karma yoga, which is it's it is a concept in in Hinduism, but they so it's this idea of kind of spiritual volunteering. So you are you are working and you're giving your time for free but you're doing it to burn negative karma from this or past lives and they taught us that the best karma yoga is the one that you're doing for the organization. I remember someone asking about volunteering in a soup kitchen and they were like, "Yeah, you know, that would be okay." But uh the best way to work to Ben Karma is to volunteer for a spirit for a genuine spiritual school. And then to the women as time progressed they said well an even better way to burn karma is to um do a sexual uh karma yoga whether it's um tantric massage or whether it's something else that burns even more karma um and also helps the organization even more. So the women who are recruited either to work in the films or the cam girl operations or in the strip club, they have a strip club in Romania um called Lucky Love which is entirely staffed by women from the organization. They're all working for free and being told that this is kind of the ultimate volunteering. This is the ultimate way to burn karma. Okay. So what happened when you first got to France? So uh I was trafficked to France. In the end we went by car. So we went with uh in the car of a Russian woman who wasn't yet in the organization. She was just beginning to she was doing a kind of holiday in Hungary and receiving tantric massage and you know starting to learn about yoga but she wasn't in the organization yet but nonetheless she was recruited to be traffic to the guru. Two other women in addition to myself both who whom had been before. Um and we went in the car.

We um were told that we could only use our phones up until the point where we kind of entered into um Paris. So at that point, I sent the last text messages. I sent the last WhatsApp messages to my parents saying, "Oh, you know, I'm going on retreat now. You won't hear from me for a couple of weeks. Um I'm going on a silent retreat. I might be able to call you once a week, but you know, kind of that's it. Um, and I had to lie and say I was in somewhere else. Um, I think I said I was in Romania. So, we arrived at a gas station on the outskirts of Paris and we got out of the Russian woman's car and a people mover kind of mini bus I suppose with um pulled up next to us. Two Romanian men got out. One of them took the woman's car keys and said that he'd be taking her car to a location for safekeeping. And the rest of us were to get into the back of the people mover. And when we got into the back of the car, they loaded in our bags. And inside the seat pockets of the car were hats and sunglasses with tape on the inside. And we were told to put them over our eyes and pull the hats down. And we were only to take them off if we were stopped by the police. Um, in which case the story was that we were all there of our own free will and we were going to do a yoga holiday and uh otherwise we were to keep them on. So we couldn't see where we were going for the protection of the spiritual guide. So we arrived after about 40 minutes um at a house, a kind of suburban detached house, three stories in somewhere in Paris. And we got out of the car, went inside. Our bags were searched. Any electronic items were removed. We could only use them under supervision. Um, again to do with frequency supposedly and electromagnetic frequencies disturbing the high spiritual vibration in the house. Our passports were taken and wrapped in aluminium foil and again we could only take them when we left the house. We were allowed to go on weekly trips into Paris and then we could take our documents again. Phones were taken. The SIM cards were removed. We weren't allowed to use the phones at any point until we left Paris. Bank cards were also taken. Then the process which took several days of reading and signing documents, signing contracts began. Um, again more kind of naked filming, turning in circles to read our auras, being weighed, which again had happened in Costa to so that you would be told whether you needed to put on or lose weight, um whether you need to take any supplements. And uh this program of um of grooming began where we had to read a long book which was just a kind of chaotic collection on a PDF of different extracts um about this technique of the golden elixir to kind of technique of immortality um which was one of the practices of the cult of the guru as his kind of kink I suppose but framed as kind of the ultimate tantric spiritual sexual practice. Um, so it was in this PDF there was some writing by him, some extracts supposedly from ancient texts which uh I'm not sure exists um about the same practices and a bunch of pseudocience which I'd already been exposed to about the benefits of drinking um small amounts of your pee in the morning. So we had to read all of that um to kind of prepare us for the technique and the expectations of around the technique that would happen in the initiation.

And we had to watch several films um which were supposedly somehow demonstrating a very high state of shakti as they called it or like a connection to the goddess. So supposedly these women in these like really mainstream kind of films were somehow unconsciously embodying this amazing kind of goddess state, tantric goddess state. And we were supposed to write after each film how we felt about it. Um what states do we think she was embodying? We had to do a quiz about what kind of orgasms we'd had. And there was a whole list of orgasms which we had to tick whether we'd had or not. We had to copy out long documents. Usually happened at night. I noticed when everyone was kind of tired and you kind of you were invariably asked to do them more than once. You had to copy word for word documents about, you know, how special it was to be there and how if you ever changed your mind about this, this would mean that, you know, you'd come, your spirituality had completely fallen and you were plagued by demons and you're awful and kind of copy it out word for word. And if they then perceived that your handwriting had changed or you misspelled something, you had to start over again. And it was a whole operation there. So, you know, this is in this kind of suburban house with blacked out windows or not blacked out but kind of clouded over windows. You weren't allowed to open up the windows. You weren't allowed to look outside and you've got women kind of five to seven women in an average bedroom. So, sleeping in double bunk beds. Every day women would come and go.

So, someone would be called to go to the initiation, someone would leave, and someone new would come. Um, sometimes I I woke up and there was someone new who I'd never met in the bed next to me sleeping. One time I got up to pee at these full-time staff in the house in Paris of full-time volunteers, karma yogis. Gosh, maybe about 10 women who were living there? They had different duties. One of a couple of them were the kind of hardcore administrators. And honestly, I never saw them leave their bedrooms. They were just there like, you know, on the laptops administrating the whole thing seemingly just 24/7. Wow.

This is really intense. It's It feels far more intense than just regular grooming. It's like complete mind control tactics that seem almost militaristic in a sense or I don't know if the right word is medicinal but like how they used to do conversion therapy by putting people in front of films and getting their brain to be wired a certain way towards them that what was going through your mind at this time? Did it feel like I've made it this far, I can't go back or this is amazing. I'm one step closer to enlightenment or receiving this spiritual attainment. What was going through your mind? Yeah. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right about this kind of very intense um conditioning. You know, these people are they're evil geniuses and they, you know, masquerading as the light, as the ultimate light. Um and they know they really know what they're doing and they know how to get people. And you know at the time I was thinking so what was very fresh in my mind was a conversation I'd had with my then one of my then boyfriends in the organization and a few other people who were talking about a woman who had failed the initiation and about how sad it was that she had failed the initiation. She hadn't gone through with it. Um and all these kind of spiritual pitfalls that had happened.

She had so much promise. She was such a great yogi, such an amazing woman and then she failed the initiation and it just all went downhill from there and they spoke about her in very kind of sad and disparaging terms. So I did have this sense that this was what everyone did. Every woman I knew in the organization, every woman senior to me, all of my teachers, they'd all done it. And any of them who had spoken in very kind of roundabout veiled terms because they were under vow but who any of them who had spoken in these kind of roundabout terms to me um about the initiation uh were saying you know how much it had changed their life and how it was such like a vital step on the spiritual path and it would really take me to the next level. There were also times in Paris when I felt trapped and on one level I recognized that I felt trapped. I was in a house that I couldn't leave. I didn't even know where I was. No one knew where I was. I didn't have my documents. I didn't have my phone. And they had prepared us for this through kind of spiritual retreats and emphasizing the importance of retreating from the world and of silence and you know contemplation. And this was another retreat, but I could feel at times how I was really starting to get out. And I think if I hadn't seen it as such an important spiritual step, I would have felt like I was beginning to go crazy.

And this is the way that um Ashley, who's one of the survivors who left before me, who didn't go through with the initiation, the way she describes it is that she felt that she was beginning to go crazy and there were she was kind of having the split between rational Ashley and brainwashed Ashley and she could see it. I think I was already too invested in the idea of this and the community and the spiritual practice and you know this idea that this would somehow really take me to the next level of my spirituality and also cement my place within the community because it was just what everyone did.

Mhm. Um so you know there were moments when I felt trapped but I thought okay I just have to go through this. I just have to watch the next film. I just have to, you know, do the next video recording, next positive testimony, and then I just have to read the next thing and then, you know, the initiation will happen and then I'll be this new person and everything will be great and I'll be able to leave this place. And so, yeah, I think I was just kind of I just felt that I had to get through it. Were you noticing the demeanor of the women who had done the initiation and were leaving? Did they seem okay? So the Noticing red flags the women I don't think I spoke to anyone back in the house who' done the initiation because they usually moved that through pretty quickly. So once someone had done the initiation they would come back they would get their bags and usually within an hour they were gone. So you didn't really speak to them much. But what did happen was when I arrived at Bivolaru's apartment uh former apartment which is in another location um in Paris. When I arrived there, there was a woman there who I'd met previously in the house. Um, a young uh Swedish woman. And in the house, she'd been kind of quite closed, as we would have called it. Um, you know, kind of quite normal and kind of a bit closed about her body and, you know, not super kind of expressive spiritually and physically in the way that people who were deep in the organization were. So, you know, I'd seen her as like a bit of a square before, and now here she was in the women's bedroom in GB in Bivolaru's apartment naked and kind of walking around in circles. And she looked really, as I perceived it, she looked really high, like really energized, and really this kind of spiritual euphoria.

And she just looked like a different person. Like even the look in her eyes was like she was gone and something else was there. And now the way that I see it also because I know this woman's story what happened to her after she left. She left the organization. She became very depressed.

She had suicidal thoughts. Um she spoke out in Sweden but since then she's you know kind of taken a break from everything. But so I know what happened to her, right? But at the time with my indoctrination, the indoctrination of the way they fuck up everything and kind of promoted this experience, I interpreted in it in my head that kind of trauma reaction. I was interpreting it in my head as, oh, she's euphoric. She's had this amazing spiritual experience. She's totally changed. Okay. So, you know, maybe the same thing is going to happen to me. Yeah, that makes sense. Did you want to talk about your meeting with him or the initiation whatever level you're comfortable with?

You know, I think that the end goal for him is the technique. So the technique is where the theory behind it is that after at least 45 minutes of tantric love making with this energy of pure eros of mutual love and respect of sacred sexuality in their specific way. The fluids inside your body become transformed and they turn into light and turn into a kind of blueprint of your highest essence and that includes your urine. So they say that your urine after these 45 minutes is transformed into an elixir and um I was reading a Taoist book recently where they talk about this elixir of immortality and I was like that's where he got it from. That's where he you know found this word and was like yeah to you know that sounds like a great way to promote my uh my weird practice. But yeah this was kind of the ultimate goal of him of uh of the initiation. So even if you didn't finish the initiation, which we didn't, we didn't go through all of the seven postures which supposedly reflect opening the seven chakras. And we didn't do all the postures, but he stopped at one point and he said, "Oh, you've lost your energy. We're going to do the technique." I wasn't connected to him at all. I didn't want to be intimate with him. As soon as he opened the door and I hugged him, I just thought, "Oh, this old guy in a bathrobe, like I do not want to have sex with this person. I would not choose to have sex with this person." But then the conditioning came in straight away telling me, "Don't be superficial. This is an enlightened master like don't be shallow, you know, see him for his not for his physicality, but for his true essence as a tantric master." And you know, come on. So I had that in the back of my mind. Um this kind of self- judgment around superficiality coming from the group's doctrine and uh but you know I felt I felt no connection to him. Um and I just thought okay I have to I have to go through with this. This is the initiation I need to do it or basically I'll be I'll be a pariah. I'll be an outcast within the organization. I will have failed the initiation. I can't fail the initiation. I'll, you know, I'll lose everything. I have um my relationships, everything, my spiritual path. Yeah. So, you know, I kind of went with it and I was definitely dissociating at certain points and uh and then Yeah. So, he said, "Okay, we're going to stop now and we're going to do the technique." And um we did it. So, it involves the woman going first and urinating, peeing into the mouth. He drinks it and then you do a certain posture for him to supposedly absorb your essence as it is conveyed through this elixia through the kind of uh the liquid uh the liquid like essence in in your body and they like from the first year again they kind of create conditioning around this by speaking about um water and how you can charge water with different frequencies and there's this experiment by Misaroto where he spoke different frequencies, different emotions into different water molecules and the crystals were very beautiful for love and very ugly for I hate you. So, you know, they have all this kind of pseudocience and supposed spirituality to back it up and yeah and then you know and then I drank his uh elixir and it wasn't the first time I'd done it. had done it with other lovers but in the organization but these were people I was in a relationship with I was attracted to um I loved uh had connection to and with him there was none of that um and I can remember thinking afterwards he said okay uh choose a present there was kind of present giving at various different points throughout this whole thing and he put a bag of scarves in front of me and I just thought I don't want another [ __ ] cheap market scarf or pair of panties like you're supposed to be my spiritual guide. I want to have a conversation with you. Um and I said, you know, can I ask you a question about my spiritual past? He was like, oh, there's no time. Next time. So, by the time I left, um I left with one other woman. Um it was maybe 6 or 7 a.m.

Uh I'd been awake for probably about 24 hours. It was hard to tell because uh in the apartment there was no natural light. All of the windows were blacked out. There were no clocks. You just had to eat food out of taper wares. You were also given expired food to eat and told that it was bad karma to waste food to not eat it. So yeah, I I'd been awake for probably about 24 hours. Um and also I had we were supposed to as part of the doctrine practice yoga after sex in order to sublimate the energies to bring the energies to the higher chakras. Um and no one was giving me any time for this. There was not even a suggestion that I would have time to do this. And I can remember thinking you know what about this practice? How is this just completely gone out the window? Um and I think I was I was totally in shock. Um we were transported then from Bivolaru's apartment to a third property another apartment where um the women were held after the initiation and where again more swearing on the Bible.

They filmed a naked closeup of your vagina supposedly to read all of the amazing spiritual energies that were now present in your body. You had to speak positively. You were told to speak about all the beautiful things you'd experienced in the initiation um naked looking into the camera. I yeah I hadn't slept for 24 hours. I was completely shocked by the reality of who this person was that he wasn't this you know amazing enlightened spiritual being that it hadn't been this incredible spiritual uh sacred sexual experience. You know, people had been telling me that uh it was just all an utter disappointment. I was in total shock and I was exhausted. And I just thought I my sense of self was totally broken down at that point. My sense of self, my sense of what my life was, even where I would go next, what I would do, I just felt like in this nothingness. And I just listened to them tell me what I needed to do next. How long did they keep you in that next uh in that in that apartment? Um we stayed there for maybe 2 or 3 hours and then um we went back to the original house. So when you leave for the initiation, you have to pack up all your things in a suitcase. You no longer have a bed. So I couldn't sleep. I maybe had a nap on the sofa. And then that evening um I went with one of the senior women who'd recruited me about a week ago to go to an integration. They call them women's integrations. Um they were framed as kind of other retreats where you did spiritual work and it was like a real honor to be invited to one. This woman was very senior. She was one of the four women who could come and go as they pleased um from the house. and uh she had recruited me to come to this integration. She had received the approval from him from Bivolaru that it was good for me to go. Um and she told me, "Okay, you know, this evening we're going to go on the bus um to my place." I didn't know I didn't know where I was going. I just knew that one of my friends had already gone. Um another one was coming after the initiation. And um I'd been told that this place is called the garden of miracles. That Bivolaru had called it the garden of miracles because so many amazing transformations and spiritual progresses um happened to women in this place. Wow. I just have to say first before we continue, thank you for sharing all of that. I can't imagine what you went through and how empty and confused you must have been feeling after such a big build up and after all the indoctrination and the brainwashing and even then knowing that something fell off and then being processed essentially to double down on everything that you went through as a positive experience versus what it really was, which was this weird kink with this old man and just shipping you off from one place to another to continue this facade of what's supposed to be a next step in your spiritual evolution. In reality, you're just completely dissociating. Yeah, absolutely. And in reality, you're just being trafficked from one place to another. You are meeting all the criteria of being trafficked other than your personal belief about it, which is being very efficiently replaced by a spiritual belief telling you that this is a choice you are making for your highest good. So, what happened at the next place? Was it just more brainwashing? Was there anything actually substantial about it that made you feel good, like you were doing the right thing? The next place, it was interesting because it was the first time where the idea crossed my mind that this might possibly be a cult.

Um, but of course at the time I thought, oh, this so I was taken to um to Prague. Um, we got a bus from Paris to Prague, me and this senior Romanian woman, Alina. Um, and then we went by car to another suburban house on the outskirts. Big house. Again, very secretive. They had kind of coverings on all of the fences. You weren't really allowed to go outside. You know, arrived there under trafficking circumstances except without the blindfold. Again, passport, phone, everything taken from me. Um, again, I wasn't allowed to tell anyone where I was. So, a repetition like the circumstances that I'd already been accustomed to, but here the two women who opened the door um to me were wearing kind of floaty summery dresses and they both looked so sparkly and smiley but in the same way, in the slightly vacant way. And that's the first time when I looked at them and I thought, my god, maybe this is a cult. But I was thinking about this specific house. My mind couldn't allow the possibility that the whole organization was a cult. Um but it was a it was a momentary thought. It came and it went and uh you know I went inside I got to know the women who were managing it. So they had um an Australian woman and a Swiss South African woman who were kind of managing the English-speaking or non-Romanian speaking girls. And then they had uh the three coordinators who were three Romanian women kind of very strict kind of emulating the behavior of Bivolaru. Um this kind of strict but it's for your own good. I'm your spiritual master, you know. Um kind of the smack on your head that wakes you up. Um they weren't physically they didn't physically hit just to be clear in the figure of speech. Um but uh emotionally um and spiritually highly manipulative and kind of the sense that you could you wanted to make them happy but you whatever you did was never really never really enough for them. But they were quite absent. They were in their room most of the day. Um, and the Australian woman was the coordinator of the site and the South African woman was the photographer, professional photographer who took kind of head shot um and uh essentially head shot of us in in lingerie for the site. And at this point, I didn't know what the site was. I didn't know what I was there for other than it was a spiritual integration called the Garden of Miracles. And it was highly recommended by everyone including the guru for me to be there. Um, and then I was told, so here we'll be doing rituals, a group rituals in the morning, and then throughout the rest of the day, you'll have a 4-hour shift on the site. Um, and it's karma yoga. Um, they had a very volunteering. They had a very complicated financial system, which I never really understood. It wasn't transparent at all where what you made on the site was your food and board was deducted from that and also the fines. They had a fine system. If you had received any fines that that month, it was deducted.

And at the end of each month, you would either be in minus. You would either be in debt or you would break even or in rare cases, you would make some money. So, the few women who made money each month, they received their money in an envelope. It was maybe about €200 in cash. And these were women who'd been there for years and were making a lot of money on the site. They were popular.

They had calls practically the whole shift, but most people either broke even or ended up in debt each month. They had a fine system um according to associated with different rules. Um the rules weren't publicly displayed. They the coordinator of the rules showed you the rules and you had to memorize them and if you wanted to see them again, you had to ask her directly to make time to show you the rules. Um, and they included things like leaving a plate unwashed. I don't remember most of the exact amounts um for specific offenses, but leaving a plate unwashed was one of the lower ones. So, it was maybe €20 fine. Um, leaving a light on when you left the room was a worse offense, €100 fine. And being late to the site was even by 1 minute, €500 fine. And we were told that all of this was to increase our ajna, our third eye, so that we would have amazing memories and be really disciplined and it was for our own spiritual benefit. And then uh on the site, so 6 days a week, we had 4-hour shifts um on a camgirl site. And we were told that if we decided we didn't want to work on the cam girls site that we would have to pay for our passage and we would have to pay a certain amount every day for our food and board and just stay for the rituals. And we were told that if we just left then we'd failed. We'd failed the spirit. They call it a tapas which is like an extended spiritual practice which I'd heard previously only um being used to refer to actual spiritual practices like you know a daily meditation for 28 days but they use this to now refer to remaining in this integration for full period uh which they told me was 3 months it ended up being six um including a one month break for the summer holiday. Six months you were forced to do this. Otherwise, owe them who knows how much money.

Either way, they're making money off of you. And then if you leave, you're stuck with this guilt and shame that you have failed. Oh my gosh, there's just so many levels of manipulation and coercion and abuse. It's really, it's astounding. I mean, what were you thinking when you finally left? Were you relieved? Did you feel like you accomplished something? Is this when you started to recognize the abuse that had been going on for what it was? I recognized that the women who ran How Miranda felt after leaving it were manipulative that they had like at one point I contested the fact that they thought I'd broken one of the rules and from my perspective I hadn't. and they sat me down um kind of three on one and just like really went for me about how this was my fault and you know I didn't have the spiritual awareness to see that but this was my fault and within about half an hour they had changed my mind and after that happened I looked back on that and I thought wow okay that wasn't good but I could see that I I thought it was them I thought that they were these women who are running the operation were manipulative and you know that that didn't necessarily reflect on the wider group and I felt a sense of accomplishment about the fact that I'd finished this to pass um you know other women one other woman had been kicked out. I felt that I'd done something good for the organization. We were told that all of the profit was going directly to help him to help Bivolaru and it's one of the best things we can do as a member of the organization and also that we were saving people's souls that the men who were coming to us were burning karma by paying money to the organization and that we were also opening their eyes to sacred sexuality. That they would then go out into the world or go home to their wives and girlfriends and treat them better than they had done before, treat them more as goddesses in a more sacred way. And that, you know, maybe one day through our efforts, there'd be no need for porn anymore and all of the abuse that goes on in porn and, you know, it would all be done through this kind of sacred lens of embodying the goddess and sacred tantric sexuality. So I at that point I still believed I still believed in the mission and I think that that belief is so powerful because when you're totally invested in that as your belief system and as your spiritual calling in life. So, you know, life purpose is an incredibly powerful tool. And this idea that this is not just the spirit, my spiritual belief and the belief of the group that I'm part of, but this is a life purpose and it's something bigger than myself. And my whole adult life, I'd you know, I've been interested in something bigger than myself. I wanted to help people. I wanted to make the world better, a better place than I'd found it. And I really was invested and believed at that point that, you know, this was my spiritual purpose and this was the way to do it. That I was leaving the world a better place than I'd found it. And not everyone would understand it because they told us, you know, not everyone's going to get this. People are going to judge you. People who are not spiritual enough, they don't have the spiritual awareness we do, they won't understand it. They'll view it, you know, from their own low consciousness. But from our elevated consciousness, you're doing this amazing, beautiful, selfless, sacred thing. And I believe that I would love to get into how you deconstructed and then also how the hammer came down on these people on these leaders. Yeah. So um so in terms of waking up, it Miranda's deconstruction did happen gradually. The lockdowns were a start because I was faced with the decision when the border started closing. I was faced I was on holiday in the UK at the time and I was faced with the decision do I fly back to Hungary before the borders closed or do I stay here and I decided to stay and that was kind of the beginning of the end certainly in terms of living with the organization full-time or in these integrations but then throughout lockdown I remained a part of the organization I was still doing part-time volunteering for them but I did start to go back to work part-time um And I started to gradually do spiritual activities that were outside the organization and began to realize how extremist the organization was and their views were. Um, also they had a very extremist rhetoric around COVID. Um, you were advised not to hug your parents if they'd had a vaccine. You were advised not to share glasses with anyone. People were told to break up with their boyfriends, their spouses if they'd had the vaccine. Um, so there was a lot of kind of conspiratorial COVID rhetoric and my boyfriend at the time who was in the organization, but he's one of those that you spoke about earlier that he was just going to the yoga classes. He didn't really know about the deeper [ __ ] He took the first vaccine. And I had this moment when I was terrified and I thought, okay, do I just leave him or do I do this and see what happens for myself? And I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna" I was crying. I was so scared. And I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna do this for myself and I'm gonna have sex with him and I'm gonna see what happens. And if I'm okay, then I'll know that they're lying at least about that." And uh and I did it and I was so scared and I was okay. And I was like, you know, so they're not right about that.

I'm not fundamentally altered by this. I'm still I'm still me. Yeah. Then uh the real kind of uh final aha moment was on New Year's Eve um 2021 to 22 and I saw a video of Ashley um the Australian survivor who was one of the first to speak out in English possibly the first to speak out in English and uh she was speaking about her experiences and the letter that Bivolaru had written her when she had said she didn't want to go through with the initiation and it was like a a spoiled petulant child who hadn't got what he wanted, just abusing her. And I was completely shocked. And I was also completely shocked that the organization Tara at that point had um a section of their website saying that anyone who speaks out about us or says we're a cult is lying. Um you know, they're liars and we will sue them. Uh and I thought, well, she's not. She's not a liar. I know this woman. Um, so if Bivolaru is truly like this and if they are saying that she's a liar when she's not, then they are the liars. And this whole organization, no matter how much I've invested, no matter how much I love the people, I thought I love the people in it. No matter how much I want to still learn from them, uh, you know, all of these meditation and yoga techniques, um, no matter how much I still want that, if this is all based on a foundation of lies and deceit, and if that foundation is ultimately rotten, then this is not true spirituality. It doesn't matter what they think they can offer me. This is not genuine spirituality. And then I knew that, you know, just the whole basis of what they were practicing was just not true spirituality. And I decided to leave. I had to stay in for a month because I had to finish some commitments to teaching in Venus, which was one of the satellite organizations for women outside of the group. And that was the hardest month, the hardest month between knowing that I had to leave and actually leaving. And when I actually left, I was very cautious with uh who I told in terms of the current members. I didn't tell them my real reasons. Partly because I was scared, but partly because I understood that I was still vulnerable and there was a chance they could convince me to stay. And I told my parents, which was, you know, extremely vulnerable, you know, to admit that this thing that you've raved about for years of being the solution to all life's problems is actually built on lies and is a cult and a sex trafficking operation. and this is what happened to me and you know there's a lot of kind of vulnerability and shame and admitting that to friends and loved ones and yeah I knew that I had to leave and I knew that I had to speak out that I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't not it was like the first time in my life when I I genuinely felt that there was no decision to be made here. I just had to do what I could to make sure that this doesn't continue happening because it's not right. It's not spiritual and it's not even basic in keeping with basic morality. It's wrong.

Right. Oh man, talking to friends and family, I know that feeling of, "Oh man, you're going to think I'm so dumb for believing this or going along with this or because you have to it's so nuanced, right? When people look at the end result, it's easy for them to be like, "How could you fall for that?" But when you look at the whole story, which is why we have people come on and tell their whole story because it's so complicated and it's so nuanced and it's so gradual and it really truly makes sense when you understand the whole scope of the situation. So, when was he actually prosecuted or questioned or taken in by law enforcement?

Prosecution so, it was a gradual process. I wrote an initial um testimony which I sent via one of the other survivors to a French um uh kind of anti-cult um organization who then passed our testimonies on to the police and apparently they had been aware of it there. A report had been made by some neighbors several years ago but they hadn't acted on it. Um but now with enough testimonies they did begin to act on it. Um, I was interviewed via Zoom about two full days, uh, at least kind of 20 hours including translation of interviewing with the French police, they have a specialist unit for cults, um, which was good. Their questioning compared with the UK police who don't have a specialist unit, um, was just it was like worlds apart. They their questioning was so much better. They had a better understanding. I did report to the UK police um and a few other people uh did as well, but it hasn't been taken any further. I haven't even been given a crime reference number. There are uh active criminal cases in in Finland where the original Interpol um warrant was issued and in a few other countries um with the idea of them all being tried in France. So, uh they, uh, Bivolaru and others have been, uh, in police custody since November of actually found out from a journalist, uh, who had interviewed me and he was the one who contacted me first and said, "Look, the police have done a raid this morning." Um, and you know, they raided all of the apartments in Paris. They raided like this big house in the south of France, found hundreds of thousands of euros in cash. And yeah, you know, I get actually emotional um now speaking about it because I do have this sense of like we did something big, you know, we stopped an abuse and a crime from happening. And you know, it wasn't it wasn't easy. We had to put in a lot of like our own time, our own efforts, and our own money. We don't know if we'll ever get reimbursed. You know, I had to travel twice to France to testify. Um staying in, you know, staying there under my own money. Women were traveling also from Australia to France. You know, again on their own, uh again, bankrolling it. We don't know if we'll ever see that money. Um yeah, you know, a lot of time and a lot of energy and effort. Um but I feel I feel proud of us that after, you know, 30 years of that organization doing what they're doing that, you know, they're not doing it. I mean, they're doing a bunch of other stuff. They're still going. I don't know if any of the branches are closed. None of the ones in the UK have. They're still rebranding.

They're still advertising. I still have to walk past the school. Um you know the branch that they have here in Oxford most days. So you know they're still going they're still holding the polarity camp they're still holding the retreats in Romania. They're still you know giving these talks talking you know slandering me and others and saying that we're attention seekers and you know all of the standard slander and devaluation um and you know kind of do tactics. But uh yeah, it does feel amazing sometimes to reflect back and think that we don't know what the outcome is going to be. Um you know, this will likely go to trial next year or the year after. We don't receive regular updates or or any kind of information, but you know, they some of them not as many as should be, but some of them are behind bars and some of them are beginning to be held accountable. And you know, I still have this hope that accountability and justice will happen, that new legislation could be created and that, you know, that some kind of new model of spiritual schools and spiritual yoga that is actually genuine might emerge from this. And it's certainly the ones who use this like kind of false light as a as a way of getting power and control and sex and money and whatever else they want that yoga and spirituality won't be such an easy vehicle to hide behind anymore. If uh you know if this case goes through and if new legislation comes in to protect the many good-hearted, vulnerable, well-intentioned seekers who go to these, you know, spiritual organizations um for support in their lives. Yeah, that's amazing that you had such a huge part in this in putting him in prison and getting this trial going and at least at least you cut the head off the monster. I mean, the seems like the body and the legs are still flailing around trying to do their thing, but at least you've got those people at the top and hopefully put a huge stop to a majority of the trafficking and the illegal things that they were doing to these vulnerable women. And just like you said, these are people who want the best for their life, who want the best for humanity, who really just have this idea that they can be better, they can help others be better. And that's who cults pray on. The ones who are the most hopeful for the world because you can you can really pray on someone's vulnerability of genuine just having a genuine heart I think. So how are you doing now through all of this? It's been a year since the documentary. What are you doing now that brings you peace and happiness and true joy? Um, so, so just to be clear, like I have what brings Miranda joy now reason to believe because I know the organization that many of the trafficking operations are still happening because they need money now more than ever. So being trafficked to Paris, uh, I guess that stopped, but in terms of the cam girl work, in terms of the massage temples, the tantra temple, tantra massage temples are all still open around the world. Um, you know, the strip club is still open. The cam girl operations, I know that they're still happening. So, you know, this stuff is still it's still going on. Um, and yeah, I don't know whether a guilty verdict will help to stop that or what, but uh yeah. Um, so, you know, in in terms of my life and things that help me now, um, you know, I think the promise, the potential for justice and accountability is a big one. I find that very healing and restorative. Also something that that they kind of disconnected me from is dancing. You know, I was always interested in in uh spirituality and yoga, but I was also I also always love dancing and socializing and partying, kind of finding joy through that. Um so I've reconnected to that over the past few years. Um I run um coffee raves uh in in my city, kind of all age coffee raves. I do a few dance therapy things. Um I've learned belly dancing and I've just trained in Egypt in um this modality called awaken belly dance. Um and I found that like really listening to my body and the intuition and wisdom of my body has helped a lot and connecting to that through dance. I can't practice yoga for now anymore. It reminds me too much of the brainwashing and the trauma. It's like it almost comes straight back into my body through the yoga. But yeah, connecting to my dance and my joy. I went to aa for the first time uh in my life, you know, in 2023 and um yeah, you know, just reconnecting to myself and kind of my whole self, you know, not compartmentalizing and judging things and aspects of myself the way that I did I did when I was in um you know, reconnecting with family and old friends and experiencing as well the kind of the genuine love and friendship ship cuz in the organization they talked so much about spiritual brothers and sisters and we have this unconditional love but it was so conditional because soon as I left and as soon as I spoke out for sure no one loved me. I was you know I was the worst person ever. Um whereas you know my family and my friends even when I was in a cult they still loved me. Even when I was you know being super probably obnoxious and you know um telling them all they should be vegetarian do yoga you know they still loved me. Um, so it's been really healing to connect to what like true love and true friendship is and to experience spirituality in daily life.

So, you know, that it doesn't have to be this big practice. You don't have to make these huge life changes. You can have a spiritual interaction, you know, and w with someone at the shop, um, you know, at the corner store. And um you know that these momentary kind of human interactions and the way that I carry myself and kind of genuinely embody my values and my beliefs every day in my life like that that for me is the real spiritual practice and the real healing. not just talking about it and just practicing it, you know, on a on a Sunday at a church or, you know, during my daily yoga, but really making sure that I'm walking my talk and embodying what I my values every day. Um, and just connecting to people as well, you know, people in the community instead of again judging and thinking that, oh, they're low vibrational and they're not spiritual, they these worldly people, they're not at my level. Um, instead being able to recognize like the beauty and the compassion and the authenticity and the like little bits of amazingly spiritual advice that is given from this place of no ego at all and just really receiving that.

Yeah, that's so beautiful. I love that that you found something that works for you, that's resonant, that helps you feel healed and also just whole because I think that's what all of us want in the end, right? That's why we seek out these things, these groups that tell us that they have the secret when really we just want to feel complete and feel at peace and feel like our own sovereign being. And now you have that and at least working toward it and that's amazing. So I just need your Linda listen moment.

Linda, Listen Um okay. So I might do two. So like the first one is about their defense their main their main defense which is around religious freedom. Linda listen uh religious freedom and sex trafficking do not need to go hand in hand. And the other one Linda listen you don't need to look outside yourself for the answers. You've already got it all. Amazing. I agree with both of those. I love it. Tell everybody where they can find you and support you on social media. Um, so on social media I'm graceful awakenings with two L's. Um, and a really good resource that I also want to promote um for people around the world is atman cultallert.org. It's a resource where there's a compilation of um existing media around the branches of the cult all around the world. Um and where you can also see if there's a branch in your local town, which is highly likely. Yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I really appreciate you being so vulnerable and open with your story and I'm sure it's going to help a lot of people and resonate with a lot of people. Any final thoughts before we go? Thanks, Shalis.

Um, yeah, you know, I really think that justice is is an important part of this. It's not it's not part of everyone's process, but for me, it's been a real part of healing to be able to speak to a variety of people and professionals. And um you know, I'm sure many people have similar experiences in different areas of justice, but I think we really need more laws and protection um to to protect vulnerable people from these groups. And I think that's globally. We need that. You know, it's like psychotherapy only became regulated relatively recently. Um and I think the same thing needs to happen in yoga and spirituality. We need to have these regulations, these laws, and these parameters to make sure that these abuses don't so easily happen. Um, and that's, you know, these kind of narcissistic people aren't so attracted to um to spirituality because it's basically a free pass. There's no regulation. There's a lot of vulnerable women and people. Um, so yeah, you know, I think that's something that that needs to kind of happen on a on a global scale to protect people going forward.

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