Review of the Danish and Swedish podcasts about Natha yoga center in Copenhagen and Malmo.

 

As previously published on Exmisa.

Simultaneously with the Swedish podcast " Secta Yoga ", the Danish podcast " The Road to Paradise" also appeared , which includes (for now) six episodes ( link ). These two productions, true journalistic investigations, appeared amid increased public interest regarding what happened inside the MISA/ATMAN organization, as a result of the investigation launched in France.

Obviously, this podcast deals with the NATHA branch in Denmark and the two Stoians, but there is a natural cooperation with the makers of the podcast about NATHA from Sweden, the two having a common root and being led by the same authority, despite the alleged independence displayed by the ATMAN federation. Some individuals appear in both podcasts. 

The story of NATHA in Denmark is the same as that of ATMAN branches everywhere, born from the same womb.

The Road to Paradise - 1. quote:

According to our information, thousands of people have been in contact with NATHA, as regular students, for decades. But I contacted about 30 people who were closer to the core of the organization and today they left the movement.

Several people will raise vehement criticism. Those we speak to have attended yoga schools in Denmark, some in Sweden, at different times between 1998 and 2022. They are all different and come with different stories and backgrounds. But what they have in common is that I find many of the same things at NATHA: friendship, acceptance, integration, openness, love, the path to becoming a better version of yourself. You have that feeling of an open heart. All those feelings when you enter such a loving environment, sensations and spiritual aspects or connecting with yourself on a physical, mental and spiritual level. In the midst of this upheaval in their lives, they find NATHA, who offers them the fulfilment of what they have been missing. 

"There was a nostalgia, which then becomes concrete in the form of the existence of a kind of adventure here called NATHA. That's exactly what I was looking for."

But, as has been said so many times here, outside is a painted fence, but inside is something completely different, and the organization has a great influence on its adherents and induces significant and visible changes in their mentality and behaviour.

The Road to Paradise - 1. quotes:

The friend knows that Sofie has started doing yoga. And she also notices that she is very concerned about it. But it will be a few months until she really sees a change in the friend she thought she knew inside out. She has a lot of rituals.

"Every time we have to eat, we don't eat right away, because you have to recite a ritual in your mind (consecration, na) I remember I had the chance and I asked them what they were saying. But I wasn't supposed to know, because I wasn't part of it. or I was going to divulge this ritual, I think.”

At some point, Sofie begins to change things more important than purification and rituals that bring good things:

"As it starts to affect my life a lot and I get completely absorbed in their perception of reality, I start to distance myself from most of my friends, I break up a lot of friendships and I start to look at people very critically. So what drew me here and from which I am a part of, it quickly becomes a distancing from everything, from the rest. Because it is so attractive, the rest - or what we have left behind - becomes suddenly a problem, because they are part of everything that tries to distance someone from spirituality. Because part of what you are taught is also conspiracy theories. This reality, the media, journalists and politicians are, in reality, part of such a satanic community that tries to make people spiritually degraded and not progress spiritually. So it quickly becomes a fight for survival, driven by fear.”

Sofie says she is starting to be afraid of everything that happens outside of school and is becoming increasingly incomprehensible towards people who are not on the same spiritual journey as her and the new self she is shaping.

One day, she makes an important decision. She finds her friend's number on her phone and calls her. That call still haunts her friend today.

"And actually, we just had a very brief conversation. That this is the thing about her really wanting to change. But I probably have different values ​​than her now and it's not necessarily a good idea for her to be with me. And then I remember her saying something about not wanting to see each other again, yeah, and I'm really shocked by that."

The phenomenon of alienation or alienation is one of the consequences of joining a sect.

The Road to Paradise - 2. quote:

Just before the dramatic arrest of the guru Bivolaru, something interesting happens to Mihai Stoian. A few days before French police to arrest the guru in France, in 2023, Mihai Stoian resigns from the federation's board of directors Atman International Yoga Association, of which NATHA is a member. Three months earlier, he had resigned from the board of directors of the foundation that owns several NATHA headquarters. And this is not the only change that is happening.

For many years, NATHA has diligently posted photos of Mihai Stoian and his wife, Adina, on social media. If you scroll through the posts, they almost look like rock stars taking over the stage and attracting a ton of followers. However, after Bivolaru's arrest, the number of posts in which you can see the white-haired man has decreased considerably. For almost a year, we had a hard time finding any trace of him in some places, until he shows up in Georgia and is arrested.

Comment : Rat instinct that abandons the ship before it sinks or well-oiled and well-informed mafia?

Did he realize that the victims' complaints were piling up and that legal action was imminent? If we assume that He had some information that something was being prepared, the question arises why he didn't warn Bivolaru as well? There are two possible answers: either he didn't have certain information and didn't risk an alarm that might turn out to be false, or he received a tip (from Secret Services?), but he didn't warn Bivolaru, having been dealing with him since 2005.

I remind you that Stoian is the one who arranged for Bivolaru to be handed over to Sweden to request political asylum there (and not in Denmark), being well informed that Sweden was much more permissive (and receiving all the leaks that ultimately turned the country upside down).

In gratitude for giving him the opportunity to roam freely through France, he saved him from extradition to Romania, where he would have been chopped to pieces by Năstase, Bivolaru repeatedly pulled it on Stoian, humiliating him in front of the entire federation, so Stoian

and his consort deleted it this time on their own, without warning Bivolaru, according to the saying in traditional wisdom saying that " whoever you don't let crack, won't let you live ." 

Stoian's timing is remarkable, the way he deleted it just before the raids in France began, as well as choosing Georgia as a place of escape, a country where Russia now rules the roost and which is lost to the European cause. It will be seen at the end of May if Stoian's bet was correct, because then the legal 9-month deadline will be met for the hearing of the extradition request, but the two still have a chance of not being sent to France.

Here is how the slippery Stoian is described by a former Danish student, close to him:

The Road to Paradise - 2. quote:

In the early 2000s, he and a few others from NATHA are called to a meeting. "And we are told before that meeting that now a very great yogi is coming. The great yogi, or what could also be called a kind of yoga master, is Mihai Stoian. In addition to being spiritually developed, they also learn that he is trained in quantum physics. This is already evident when he begins to speak that he has a way of telling stories a little different from the others. He is, one might say, very dualistic: he is always in the middle, as if between heaven and hell, good and bad, functional and non-functional and stuff like that. So he talks a lot about these contradictions (paradoxes) all the time. It's a completely different way of speaking than the one I had experienced at the time. He can talk about anything and, at the same time, it can be quite convincing.”

Comment : It is funny that, exactly the opposite of his dualistic style, Stoian received the initiatory name of Advaita which, in Sanskrit, means precisely "without the second", that is, "nondual"! Was Bivolaru making fun of "the Jesuit and Machiavellian Stoian? Maybe!

Then, the student recalls the moment in 2004, with some interesting and quite real and profound conclusions:

The Road to Paradise - 2. quote:

For him, there is one specific event that really changes the dynamics of the organization. In 2004, Gregorian Bivolaru was accused about the sexual exploitation of a student from Romania, who was a minor at the time, and a new chapter begins there.

"I remember the exact day. I call and talk to Mihai, and then he says something like: 'Didn't you hear what happened? Are you completely crazy or what?" And then everything changes. Now it suddenly becomes completely political. And then there are those theories of conspiracy, which used to be more of something you were just having fun with and thinking was really interesting and stuff like that.

Then it suddenly becomes very real that, wow, there's someone here who's being persecuted. Suddenly, the Freemasons thing starts and Mihai starts a story about how we are so monitored by the Freemasons that the situation is getting worse and worse. "I feel that Natha lost her innocence that day."

comment :

You can't lose something you didn't have!

The Road to Paradise - 2. quotes:

During the period when Bivolaru is accused and when conspiracy theories really take root, he begins to admire him more and more, Mihai Stoian and, at some point, copies some of his methods.

Karsten : "And I don't think I've always been a nice guy, to be completely honest."

Reporter : Why do you think that?

Karsten : Because I think I was harsh. I remember being harsh. Not that there's any excuse, but today I behaved like Mihai:

[...] An extremely arrogant way of being with someone else and a way of keeping them under control. But that's what he can do. So he knows all those games, even compared to the other schools. That's how he can position himself as the one at the top of the hierarchy, immediately below Grieg.

Reporter : What he says about Mihai and his role is supported by several of the sources we are talking about.

Former student : People treated him almost the same way they treated Grieg. His body language is mostly made of authority. He's a tall, imposing man with a lot of hair and he really has this energy. He has a huge role in the organization.

reporter : Those we speak to are very explicit about the role he played, both at the Danish school and in the movement International.

Former student : Especially in Grieg's absence, he's the one who took care of most of this. He really had a mentoring role. He is actually the second man under Grieg.

comment :

This is kind of the fairy tale with "ego transcendence" and "humility" at the MISA/ATMAN integral esoteric school! The more people talk about eradicating the ego, the more the ego swells, and Bivolaru occasionally turns a blind eye to the "apostles", so that they would not have the idea of ​​taking his place and not forget who their father is. And power at ATMAN is not just about position, authority and money, but also about women:

The Road to Paradise - 2. quotes:

So far, her experiences at school have been positive, expansive, and sometimes downright magical. But there's one thing about Mihai... that she has difficulty getting over: the way he sits on his back after a lecture and is surrounded by a group of women, who you quickly learn are having a sexual relationship with him. And so they're almost sitting on the floor around him. It becomes clear to Sofie that Mihai and his wife, Adina, live in an open relationship and that Mihai has a sexual relationship with many among  the school's often younger female students. But it's not just a choice the powerful couple made in their marriage. It's an idea that encompasses the entire school: the approach to open relationships that is based on mutual love, transfiguration, perfect sexual continence and lucidity.

"It was recommended to me by several people: I am in a monogamous relationship, I would like it to stay that way, but I feel very pressured to "open it". There is an astrologer at school who consults my horoscope and says it would have a big impact on "my spiritual development if I approached polyamory and that I have some kind of blockage there."

This puts Sofie in a dilemma. On the one hand, she doesn't want to be in an open relationship. But on the other hand, she's being told that, if she does not, this could negatively affect his spiritual development.
NATHA denies that it encourages couples to have a certain type of romantic relationship. They say it is a personal and free choice.

comment :

That's what they say all the time: everyone is free to do what they want, but if they don't address special practices , they will remain in mediocrity.

"At the same time, then, the couple is welded, the fidelity between the two lovers remains unaltered, even if they are engaged and in other parallel love relationships" (excerpt from the article "The Spiritual Couple" 🔗 ).

"It is obvious that, in this state of affairs that appears and persists in many couples within this school, the lack of ritual engagements like Maithuna, rejection of love games with the golden elixir that are performed as a couple, avoidance of performing love fusions when certain exemplifications are made that involve being engaged in unison, the rejection of these effective ways makes such couples not integrate such effective methods into their love games and, precisely for this reason, such couples remain in mediocrity.” ( source ).

The Road to Paradise - 2. quotes:

She says that Mihai urges her to open up sexually to have more partners so that she can develop spiritually. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not something she wants.

Reporter : How do you feel when someone tries to convince you to do something you don't really want to do?

Sofie : I'm starting to wonder why I don't want to join and if it's okay that I don't want to join and if it would be better to break that reluctance.

reporter : So you have some doubts about your own intuition and your own understanding?

Sofie : Yes, because my trust in my own intuition is gradually disappearing, as well as my ability to reflect on what I want to and who I am as a person. Like everyone else, I want to develop spiritually and I fear for myself.

Producer : She's not alone in this situation. Several sources say it's difficult to ask critical questions in school or say "no" certain things, events, or practices. If you try anyway, the answer is often that something in your ego is preventing you from doing so, you abandon the higher purpose.

Students : You are told that doubt in understanding certain things comes from your ego and that there is always this thing with your ego who wants to attach only to what you know. You will be surrounded by spiritual tests, and it is your ego that must be to overcome it on this spiritual journey. To break away from a part of my ego that holds me back.

Producer : Sofie says that today she considers the experience with Mihai Stoian to be manipulative. I introduced her description of the incident to Mihai Stoian's lawyer, but the lawyer did not return with a response. NATHA writes that she regrets that someone had unpleasant experiences talking about these things, but they do not believe this reflects a general pattern, because in many communities there are difficulties in expressing opinions.

comment :

It is true that "in many communities there are difficulties in expressing opinions", but only in fundamentalist-religious communities like sects, expressing "uncanonical" opinions is considered heresy (at MISA it is called "demonic doubt", so as not to sound like an inquisition (see the Swedish podcast, here ). Also, in the case of dictatorships, expressing opinions contrary to the "official" one is harshly repressed. MISA/ATMAN is a sect with a dictatorial mentality, in which the aim is that individual discernment is replaced with an ideology that is presented as the absolute truth, which cannot be contested.

The Road to Paradise - 2. quotes:

Several people at the school received a small booklet called Karma Yoga, written by Bivolaru. Here you can read that Karma Yoga means doing something without expecting anything in return and that it helps to support and accelerate spiritual development. But soon, many Natha members are discovering that there is also a very special form of Karma Yoga. Some even call it a fast path to spirituality. It is a path that passes through work in the erotic industry. 

Natha writes to us that, in 2023, they stopped the photo procedure (requesting photos in a swimsuit, no) in connection with withdrawals. They say they never used the images in a way that was not previously agreed upon with the participants and that they granted exemptions for people who either did not want their photos taken or wanted their photos taken while clothed.

comment :

"They say they never used the images in a way that was not agreed upon beforehand with the participants."
This is a lie thrown to the press. When was it agreed in advance with the students to collect photos in swimsuits for various activities? They were asked and that was it, the students had no say and were not asked if they liked it or not. They were even given the impression that it was a spiritual test, of disinhibition or even of trust in the master. The students were told that the swimsuit photos were either for "aura visualization" 🔗 🔗 or for the creation of a photo album capturing the effects of MISA's yoga practice on the participants' physical bodies. To the press, the justification for aura visualization was denied and it was said that it was for health assessment 🔗 . 

"... They granted exemptions to people who either did not want their photos taken." Not only were such cases unheard of, but refusing to take such photos may mean either "excessive modesty" (which would disqualify the practitioner in the eyes of the great tantric who preaches sexual disinhibition), or the manifestation of a suspicion regarding how they would follow to be used, i.e. a "demonic doubt", which would automatically exclude the person from receiving approval to participate.

"... They granted exemptions to people who either wanted to have their photos taken while clothed." This statement is not credible because, if it had been admitted by the MISA leaders that the aura could also be visualized in the case of clothed people, then why would they have requested that those photographed be naked? There would be only one plausible reason for such an exemption, namely for possible religious reasons, in the kind of prohibitions imposed on women by the Islamic religion, but, in such a hypothesis, it is hard to believe that such a very religious would attend ATMAN's yoga and tantra classes, where nudity and debauchery are basic attitudes and where, in addition, All kinds of Hindu deities are worshipped, which are pagan to such a person.

If NATHA has abandoned the practice of soliciting and collecting swimsuit photos despite the purported purpose for which If this were to happen, it would mean that they have come to the conclusion that it presents abusive aspects and that it harms the organization's image.

Then, why do these practices continue at MISA?

 

 

The Road to Paradise - 3. The Fast Path , quotes:

director : Sofie says that the sexual aspect is becoming more and more important, even though she has no desire to go in that direction, but the opposite. But because everything happens so slowly and always comes in small doses, she says she doesn't notice what's happening at the moment. She's far from alone in holding this opinion.

Former students : You won't notice if you just go to your daily yoga classes. It's only when you go deeper into the system discover  what goes on behind the scenes. They want you to have a foundation first. Many say they suddenly find themselves in a world where sexuality is being touted  as a quick path to spirituality. For some, it ends up having serious consequences.

Producer : Is tantric massage a sexual service disguised as something spiritual? Many people believe it is. A woman in a red dress sits by a flowing stream of water. She talks about tantric massage on a YouTube channel belonging to an organization called the Tantra Temple. Although it does not immediately seem to have any connection with the yoga school, we can see that in the temple people from NATHA work. The Tantric Temple is a massage clinic in Copenhagen and Aarhus, where anyone interested can  come and benefit from a 2-3 hour tantric massage. You can read about it on the Tantra Temple website ( link ). Here you can also read that you lie naked on a mattress, while the masseur wears boxers, if he is a man, or a thong, if she is a masseuse. 

Presenter :  So, what is the difference between sexual energy and erotic energy? Sexual energy is an instinctual energy. In Tantra, there is a distinction between sexual energy and erotic energy. Sexuality leads to immediate gratification. Eroticism leads to spiritual fulfilment. A basic principle is that you should not ejaculate, but maintain the energy.

comments :

First of all, sexual energy is an instinctual energy, which comes from the subconscious and controls the subject, who thus experiences certain UNCONTROLLED physiological reactions, such as erection, and is driven towards sexual intercourse. Instead, erotic energy arises from the attraction and interaction of polar opposite principles, masculine and feminine, and is of a superior sexual nature, spiritual and does not involve the gross physiological reactions mentioned nor sexual contact. Bivolaru has mixed the jars: he claims that suspending ejaculation through mental control of sexual energy or through physiological methods (contractions of the sexual muscles) automatically mean eroticism, even pure, "divine" eroticism. In reality, it is a PENDULUM between gross sexuality and eroticism that is achieved, through an effort of will and conscience, the practitioner who aspires to reach the stage of eroticism. Only when the instinctual sexual energy sublimates directly and spontaneously in higher energy WITHOUT the physiological reactions (erection) and desire for sexual contact appearing, only then can we talk really about eroticism. As long as even the desire for sexual contact (not to mention the achievement of the sexual act itself), it cannot be about pure eros, but about an effort to separate sexuality from eros.

The height of irony is that the average person, uninitiated in the tantric secrets of MISA, experiences a state of pure eros when they fall in love with someone at the beginning of the relationship. In contrast, at MISA, practitioners often no longer fall in love, nor do they allow themselves to fall in love, because they "risk" entering into a stable, long-term couple relationship, which is rejected at MISA as limiting and confining. At MISA, only sexual attraction remains, which is the basis of polyamory, because it cannot be about falling in love with all partners of the opposite sex, who must be at least one from each of the twelve zodiac signs.

Despite this state of affairs, those at MISA continue to despise ordinary people because they live only in sexuality, while they consider themselves superior just because they are sexually continent, when in fact they are scrambling to be superior continent. This spiritually flavoured pretence from MISA has reached embarrassing heights (video with Bivolaru 🔗 ).

But all this debate is only about the so-called initiated practitioner. But what about the uninitiated client?

Tantric Temple presenter : An authentic tantric massage is not a sexual service disguised as spiritualized. At the Tantric temple, we offer pure erotic experiences that will give you a taste of the heavenly freedom and bliss it brings pure eros.

comment :

How does the client know about pure divine eros, about the abundant assimilation of the energies of the pure hero attribute, blah, blah?

The uninitiated client feels a desire for more refined sensual and sexual sensations (not the kind that a banal prostitute gives you) and, having no one to get it with (because if he had a girlfriend, he wouldn't come to the salon anymore), he comes to the temple where the "initiated professionals" are.  They massage him sensually, they don't lead him to the completion with ejaculation, okay, but he's uninitiated, he doesn't know about these things about eros. He gets excited, accumulates sexual energy, but transmutes and sublimates it? No way! To the great initiates and gods of tantric eros from MISA, Bivolaru must repeat to them hundreds of times that “an hour of lovemaking with continence requires seven hours of Hatha Yoga techniques of the  most powerful and elevated meditation, to transmute and sublimate the awakened and accumulated sexual energy ", which is an acknowledgement that MISA practitioners do not practice pure eros, but a lot of sex mixed with a little eros, a ratio of 7/1. Is the client sublimating? No, he doesn't even know about it, but the people at the "temple" don't care, because it's none of their business anymore, they took their money!

I recall what is written in an article on this blog ( link ) about the Lucky Love massage parlour ( archive 1  or  archive 2 ):

@Real Terente:

"The problem with Lucky Love Massage is that most of the girls are MISA members...I tried three of them, hoping to find someone to make me finish, but I couldn't find anyone.. Once one of the girls managed to make me have an orgasm without ejaculation.. she was very proud...me, very stuck... and, when I got home, I had to play with my best friend, "I had a headache from all the transfiguration of sexual energy."  🔗

@Romantic :

"I also confirm that ALL the girls who work at the Lucky Love bar and massage parlour are yogis from the MISA sect. One of the masseuses is a good friend of mine and she told me about the atmosphere in the salon. The client is not "helped" to ejaculate at all, because it's not in accordance with MISA principles."  🔗

In reality, to excite someone to orgasm - especially without ejaculation! - and then leave them without helping them  "transmute and then to sublimate  the resulting energy into the higher levels of being"  is also completely inconsistent with the " principles of MISA "!

In the previous post there is a statement from a former student who says this:

"You can't even lie down and fall asleep cuddling. You should always do at least 2 hours of yoga after sex, Otherwise, something very bad will happen." 

In fact, the guru himself held a conference entitled :

"The obvious ravages that the absence of careful, conscious, systematic sublimation generates in the universe of human beings,  fruitful of the subtle global occult energy OJAS.”  Warning : 

" We advise you not to miss hearing these important conferences."

The subtle global occult energy OJAS not fully sublimated  in a conscious way is residual and then accumulates in the aura even after years, then unleashing  chaotic phenomena of manifestly strange, spontaneous sublimation."  🔗

MISA "initiators" on porn video chats or massage parlours claim to spread the teaching of sexual continence towards humanity, but in fact they trample on the principles of yoga with contempt and, all the while, do them a huge disservice, causing suffering to unfortunate subjects who have the bad karma of intersecting with the "nuns" from MISA:

@Nemo:

"I also crossed the threshold of this salon with the desire to experience the famous orgasm without completion. I was hoping that at least this way I would be able to feel good. It wasn't even meant to be that way. She began to explain her worldview to me as my headache continued to grow. It was the worst erotic massage I've ever had. It felt like I was in a bad movie with a naked nun who wanted to convert me.  I confidently recommend this salon to those who want to give up erotic massage forever.”

@So_77:

"When I first called, I felt something was wrong (he kept telling me it was a special massage - to come see, etc.) and I insisted on giving me details about the technique and whether it was finalized. After a pause and in a final voice, she told me that it's not final because they promote sexual continence, blah, blah... At the end, I took a shower and she talked to me about continence, aphrodisiacs, how to make love for dozens of hours without ejaculating and other wonders like that!?!?! I once again went to a girl with whom I didn't click and with whom the experience was slightly strange, "She almost didn't want to touch me in the intimate area, she insisted on giving me speeches about continence."

The wickedness of these ticks is evident, as they, while arousing their clients to their peak, tell them to refrain from ejaculating, without them even realizing it to be able to cancel the negative effects of this forced practice. And all in the name of money because, all the while, the meter is charging!

And the awkwardness mixes with the wickedness, as evidenced by the Danish podcast, from the account of a former student who worked in the "Tantra temple":

 

The Road to Paradise - 3. The Fast Path , quotes:

One of the Natha people who starts working in the Tantra Temple is Australian Ziggy. You heard about him in the previous episode. He moved to a spiritual collective, or ashram, and began practicing what is called karma yoga, which is a form of volunteer work. But after he got tired of working full-time as a craftsman, he was offered training as a tantra masseuse in 2017, he says. According to several sources, the work in the Tantra Temple is seen as karma yoga and is something in which particularly advanced students  can be initiated. The difference, however, is that men in the Tantra Temple receive a smaller portion from the clients' payments,  i.e. a form of salary. Ziggy starts accepting women who come for a tantra massage. The purpose of the massage is to awaken the true nature of the client, as it is written on the Tantra Temple website. It is also stated that women can order a so-called  yoni massage , i.e. a massage of the genitals, if they want, and that, of course, they have the option to stop the massage during the process.  The website states that men cannot order lingam or penis massages.  Ziggy doesn't describe what he does as prostitution. But he understands that someone might think he's in a gray area. For him, it is a beautiful activity, which means much more pleasure, but also getting to know the body in a new way. 

comment :

" Someone might think they are in a gray area ," for the simple reason that it's MONEY!

If the people at MISA/ATMAN would make FREE online pages of advice and assistance for love relationships, like they are telephone lines for lonely people (free hotlines for loneliness and isolation) or FREE massage courses and sessions, then it would be an activity for the good of others, without material benefits, hence volunteering.

But as long as you charge customers who only passively and most often unconsciously bear the effects of the activity, it cannot be about volunteering (because the organization that takes the initiative benefits materially) nor about a spiritual activity. What spiritual benefit does the client get? He leaves just as he came, only with less money! Then why not simply limit it to free sensual massages given to girlfriends/boyfriends?

The Road to Paradise - 3. quotes:

Former student : One of the most difficult experiences was when I was very new to the school. I didn't know exactly what would happen at the retreat, and when I arrived, I was told there would be massage sessions. Tantric massage. This was very little preparation. I understood right away that we were going to get a partner, get undressed, and start massaging each other, naked. First I gave this man a massage and it was easier for me, because then I was in control. But when we have to change, I start to feel my whole body contracting and my mind simply tells me to stop. I just can't handle it mentally. I'm starting to feel anxious and I can't feel my own boundaries. And it had nothing to do with this man. He was probably a very good man and did the best he could and there was nothing wrong with the way he gave the massage.

The whole situation was designed to make me feel unsafe. I didn't feel the need, I wasn't ready to open up like that. You have the opportunity to say  "no, thank you, I don't want to do this exercise"? There is a possibility to stop, but the supervisors are not very open and benevolent about it. It's more like, if you don't want to get involved, then that's fine, you can leave. But then you're not allowed to be here. There was actually a woman walking and everyone knew she was leaving. Everyone was talking about her and had different stories about why she didn't want to get involved and all those stories presented her in a negative light. Of course, I didn't want to be talked about like that. I had heard people talking about it, so I felt it was better for me to just go with that option.

reporter : Several sources tell us that, in fact, it is regularly suggested that one can opt out of participating, but in a way that doesn't feel authentic. That's why many people are afraid of being rejected at a practice, an event or an invitation. Finally, he will say goodbye to school. Finally, I got dressed and went back to my room. I just wasn't feeling well.

comment :

In all the materials and presentation conferences at MISA it is said loudly and clearly that the fundamental and indispensable condition to achieve a loving fusion is intense and deep love. How does this fit with choosing a partner from among the remaining (available) and have sexual interactions with them? To overcome sexual blockages or boundaries here means to disregard the essential condition for the existence of love, because it is not certain that within those couples formed by the remaining ones there is deep love, especially if it's people who don't know each other. Even in the situation of a couples retreat, that is, in which couples participate formed in advance based on love, the question arises: why is the retreat done in a group, in the presence of others? 

It is obviously about overcoming sexual boundaries, instilling a behaviour in which students are willing to to do anything,  including being active on porn video chat, in erotic massage parlours, in porn movies or, in the case of female students, to accept sex  with cult leaders, even when they are put in this situation without knowing in advance what will follow.

In achieving this abandonment of sexual limits, an important role is played, as can be seen from the present account, by collective pressure from others, because direct coercive methods cannot be used. In this sense, they are inoculating students the idea that overcoming sexual boundaries (cleverly called “closing blocks”) automatically means obtaining a overwhelming spiritual leap  , which is completely false because prostitutes have no limits in their sexual behaviours, but this  does not make them more spiritually evolved, but on the contrary , as shown in all social or religious moral codes. In fact , the courses, retreats, and MISA ideology in general mean preparation for prostitution.

A Swedish researcher of religions, Tova Olsson, closely researched the NATHA school. 

The Road to Paradise - 3. quotes:

Producer : She also gained access to some of their teaching materials and also published an academic article about the yoga movement. One thing she notices is the very strong gender divide in the yoga movement. What a man and a woman should do. According to her, women are encouraged to develop femininity, which means discovering and living their erotic potential. It also involves learning how to please men: how to dress, put on makeup, dance in a way that... specifically and, overall, how to be more sensual than intellectually provocative. The researcher also notices a recurring pattern or technique: go to a retreat or other activity at school, without knowing in advance what was going to happen. And there they agreed to do things that normally no one would have done.

"And suddenly you have exceeded your own limits, because you were promised that everything is beneficial for your spiritual development, just because the promise was made that if you transcend this aspect of yourself, you will find great relaxation or great liberation. You will become a new person. And that means people have crossed their boundaries. It's also about group dynamics and if others in the room, maybe even someone you admire, do the same,” says Tove Olsson.

Producer : Of course, I presented the criticisms, as well as the experiences of the trainees, to NATHA. They respond that they find it strange when sources claim they didn't know what they were getting into. According to NATHA, they use descriptions of courses, information letters and consent forms precisely to ensure that participants know what they are committing to.

"Participants could have left the retreat at any time ," they write.

comments :

This is a blatant lie because, BEFORE applicants are admitted to secret (so-called "initiative") activities, they are forced to swear that they will not reveal anything in which they will take part or of which they will become aware, which means that they DO NOT KNOW IN ADVANCE what they will participate in. Furthermore, the fact that there are participants who leave the activity even  before it actually begins  , just  when what is to come is revealed to them,  is proof that that person  does not agree to participate, so they did not know in advance what they were going to participate in.  Why would someone drop out, right before starting an activity in which he requested to participate and for which he often made efforts and sacrifices?

It should also be noted that the obligation to take an oath of silence and secrecy for the applicant to receive approval, an oath taken BEFORE receiving this approval, has precisely the purpose of determining  the one who  chose to leave the activity before its actual start (precisely because then they find out for the first time) what the activity consists of and does not agree to continue), lest he disclose even the purpose of the activity, even if he didn't actually participate!

The Road to Paradise - 3. quotes:

Producer : Shortly before Sofie left for the retreat at the Paradis Development Center and received the massage without limits, a difficult question is asked. It comes from Adina Stoian 

Sofie : In an empty classroom, we sit at one end of the room on some yoga mats, quite close to each other. She has something to tell me, which will remain between the two of us, but which must not be told to others, because it has special value. It's quite an important thing. Adina Stoian has a Bible in her hand. In any case, I need to get my hands on the Bible and repeat something. Something about me, that what he's about to tell me will stay between the two of us. And so I do. The Bible is put back in its place, and Adina Stoian starts talking. What she wants to tell me is that Grieg would really like to invite me to visit him. She can't tell me where it is, but he would like to anyway. And then I tell her I need to think about it.

director : For months after Sofie swears on the Bible, she's not sure what to do. While she's in this process, she goes to the Paradis Personal Development Center, where she experiences massage that exceeds her sexual limits and where she feels very bad. That experience stirs up a lot of thoughts that have been lurking beneath the surface for some time.

Sofie : This is how the work of taking stock and reflecting on the time spent in yoga school begins, what I want to do about it and what to choose.

Director : It's a difficult choice she faces. Should she continue her spiritual journey, her journey to paradise? Or turn her backs on it, stray from the sacred path, and eventually end up in a very dark, directionless place? Should she leave school, the environment in which she has been so involved in recent years? 

Sofie : Can I choose something from a period of several years, which is quite difficult? I'm afraid of making the wrong choice.  How much truth was there in some of the things I don't feel like doing? I'm really afraid to say no to what I don't want because, for several years, we were told it was the right thing to do.

comment :

Giving up so many years of their lives, in which they have invested so much, and the community that has become everything to them, is very difficult for students who end up having "demonic doubts". Added to this is the fear of "permanently losing the only chance of spiritual evolution", a fear that has been deeply ingrained all these years. ( Bivolaru message , YE archive ) A battle rages inside them between "demonic doubts" and self-doubt.

The Road to Paradise - 3. The Fast Path , quotes:

director : While Sofie is moving further and further away from yoga school, others feel they are being drawn more and more towards their essence. Australian Ashley, a friend of Ziggy's, also receives an invitation to meet the guru. It comes from a woman at school from London, she says. For Ashley, she feels she has no choice. She is told she has received a special invitation and that the meeting with the guru is part of her spiritual path. She immediately feels a sense of unease in her body. So what exactly is the meeting about? She doesn't get to find out, but she knows it's a huge thing to be allowed to meet the highest spiritual authority in the movement. So, instead of giving way to fear, she tries to stifle her doubts.

comment :

MISA attracts students because it promises them that they will discover truth and freedom, which they will experience fully and directly in their own being. Bivolaru preaches "Godheadism", the discovery and experience of God without intermediaries (except him alone!)

At MISA, the universal spirituality dictum “Know thyself” is constantly repeated. At the same time, at MISA you are taught to doubt yourself, because your ego deceives you, which contradicts the idea of ​​direct spiritual knowledge. As a solution to this contradiction, MISA promotes absolute trust in the master, which in turn contradicts the idea of ​​self-realization through self-knowledge. Thus, the vile manipulation that underlies the functioning of this sect is revealed.

The Road to Paradise - 3. quotes:

Producer : In total, we spoke to nine women who say they received an invitation to meet with the guru at an unknown location. Five of them say they were invited by Adina Stoian from Denmark. This also applies to the Danish woman Amanda.

Amanda :  Then she says that if I wanted to meet Grieg, that might be a possibility.

Producer : The rest say they were invited to schools in Sweden or London. In the end, neither Sofie nor Amanda go to meet the guru. But Ashley does.

Producer :  I contacted Adina Stoian's lawyer in Georgia, and presented her with the accounts of the former students. But the lawyer did not respond. NATHA will not participate in interviews and does not wish to comment on the opinions of individuals, but they write that they did not help organize meetings with Bivolaru. The people at the yoga school in London, which Ashley is talking about, write to us that they were advised not to comment until a decision is made in this case. However, they write that they condemn any form of abuse. 

The Road to Paradise - 4. Initiation , quotes:

filmmaker : There are several bedrooms, each housing two women. She doesn't have a complete overview of the number of women, but estimates that there are between 15 and 20 women from different countries in the house.

Ashleigh :  I think there could have been two or three Norwegians, a few from Hungary, a lot more from Romania, one from England, one from Lithuania and at least one from Scandinavia. Some are waiting to see it, others have already seen it and are waiting to be asked  to go in again. Some have been there for months, some for weeks, some for days. The house  Ashleigh is in calls the Waiting House.

Producer : When the guru is ready, the woman is notified and taken to another unknown address, she says. It can happen  at any time of the day and there is no advance notice. But until then, they are waiting here. However, nothing is left to  chance. There are rules about when you can sleep...

Ashleigh : ...about when you should meditate. Then, there are rules about what to read and watch while you're stuck at home.

filmmakers : According to Ashleigh, some of the films that women watch are pornographic films, such as that the other women were watching in the house when she arrived. Some of the other videos are footage of women who already visited, a kind of testimony in which naked women tell of their spiritual experiences. When Ashleigh sees them she has difficulty deciphering what women are saying. How sincere is what they are saying? Have they had an experience of spiritual evolution? Or were they forced to say these things? At home, she is told that the guru will never ask her to do anything she does not want to do.  He only knows love, he's one of the genuine ones. He'll never let her do anything she doesn't want to do. But the longer she lives  in the French house, the more she begins to believe that there is only one reason she is here.

Ashleigh : And I have a very strong feeling that there was only one reason I was there. And that was to sleep with him.

Director : Ashley knows one thing, she doesn't want to sleep with the guru. But she's starting to worry that she won't be able to talk if she finds out face to face with him, because of what she herself calls indoctrination. Like many others in the yoga movement, she has followed numerous courses  and attended retreats, where she was told over and over again that she had to destroy her ego. She had to abandon herself in the face of something bigger. So, now she's confused. What should she do? What's the right thing to do? According to Ashleigh, if you want to communicate with the guru, you have to write a letter that one of the people in the house will deliver to the other secret address. She writes that she regrets not feeling prepared for the initiation ritual that awaits her. She does not receive the letter the same day, but she does receive a reply from the guru, in which he scolds her like a spoiled child. This is the last piece in the ever-growing puzzle that allows her to see clearly. So now she makes a drastic choice. It becomes clear to Ashleigh that they won't just let her go. At this point, she has nothing on her. She doesn't have her phone or passport. She has no idea where she actually is. So, the only solution she sees is to cooperate with them. For the rest of the night  and the next morning, Ashley tries to stay as lucid as possible. She tries to remember who she is and that she wants to go out.  It takes about a day from the moment she says she wants to go out until something happens. She is told that there is a car ready  for her. She is asked where she wants to go. A little suspicious, she tells the driver that she just wants to be taken to the cheapest hotel.  She gets her passport and the rest of her things back. The car starts and to Ashleigh's surprise, she moves away from the home and heads to a hotel. Ashleigh is one of the many women who we are talking to and who was in Paris, but she is the only one who manages to escape the house before she has to visit Bivolaru. 

comment :

Here Ashleigh finally reveals, with names and dates, who are the people who tried to abuse her. Initially, she told her story in the world media, without naming those she accuses. The people at Tara Yoga in the UK felt the sting on the hat and posted a pathetic reply, which they quickly deleted, because they were exposing themselves by responding to accusations in which they had not been nominated ( details ). It is noteworthy that, all this time, MISA's reaction towards her has been one of ignoring her, while to other women who have made accusations they dedicated entire series of shows and articles to them. You would think that since she left before they had sex with gurus, MISA should always refer to it as a significant case that would prove the untruth of the accusations of abuse, like "see, whoever wanted to refuse, was able to do so and was let go!" But that's not the case, because she is a "dangerous" witness because it proves the trafficking of women, because she was brought clandestinely and, more seriously, by her refusal on the spot, proves that she did not know in advance what was going to happen in Paris, although she was made to swear to secrecy and was put to sign consent and disclaimer statements. It is likely that Ashleigh's coming out in the global media triggered and encouraged the avalanche of accusatory testimonies against ATMAN and her guru.
It is also worth noting the military-style regulations that the women who were held were forced to follow in the House of Waiting. This aspect is in addition to other such aspects of strictness, such as the vows of keeping secrecy or body control at the entrance to the rooms where the "secret initiations" of the Movement are exhibited and confers a shocking image of the physical and mental control exercised within Bivolaru's sect, which preaches "liberation"!

The Road to Paradise - 4. Initiation , quotes:

filmmaker : We also talk to a woman who ends up visiting the guru twice, Andrea, who is turning 43 and was a NATHA student from 2014 to 2017. Since she has been a part of NATHA for a year, she receives an invitation to visit the guru. The invitation comes from a teacher and close friend in Sweden, Andrea says. Unlike Ashleigh, Andrea says she is meticulously informed about what will happen. She has her friend (instructor) with her all the way to Paris.
My friend is also in the first house, the Waiting House. Therefore, her experience is different from what I have heard from other sources. For example, she is not required to watch pornography or hear testimonies from other women. After a few days, she receives a notification that the time has come. She says she is being taken to the guru's apartment. Andrea is greeted by the guru in a long, slightly dirty robe. He has hollow cheeks and wears a pair of huge metal glasses. She immediately feels disgusted at the sight of him. But at the same time, she tells herself not to be superficial. After all, he is a good person. After all, he is the biggest spiritual authority in the movement and the one who can raise it to a higher spiritual level. The apartment is small and dark. Andrea says she is there with six other women who have to be in one room, while Bivolaru has his own room. In turn, they are called to him to complete what is called initiation. You could also call it an initiation ritual. Now it's Andreea's turn to enter the guru's room and she will have sex with the guru, more precisely she has to go through seven sexual positions different ones that symbolize the seven chakras, she says. 

Andrea : When I start, when I let it start, I don't focus on it and what's happening. My focus goes to inward and I experience many of the things that are happening inside me. I feel the energies starting to move through me, through my body in ways I'm not familiar with. I'm in this state of joy and I notice how my body responds to all of these energies.  An important experience in my life.

director : Andrea returns to Sweden and Denmark. Suddenly, the other members of NATHA look at her with different eyes.

Andrea : Women I didn't even know existed would approach me with beautiful smiles, ask me questions, and they shared stories with me, there was a communion of sisters and the fact that I was part of something great and special.

filmmaker : Six months after her first visit to the abuser, she is invited back, she says. What do you think about that?

Andrea : I don't want to go anymore. Why? I feel like I'm done and I feel fulfilled. I feel like this experience was a once in a lifetime experience and I don't have to do it again.

director :  The others in NATHA insist, she explains. So, finally, she leaves. This time, Bivolaru receives her in a completely different way.

Andrea : The difference is that it's not a complete "YES" from me. I go with some resistance and when I enter the apartment, to be greeted by him, I also feel the resistance in him. So he greets me in a completely different way, almost ignoring me. He expresses his frustration with me, that I am very different from last time. He tells me that I am a hypocrite, so I chose to get the job done, because I felt it was somehow my duty. I don't experience anything like I experienced the first time and then he tells me that I have a resistance to masculinity. I don't say anything and I don't think I have a resistance to masculinity, but I have a problem with coming here and being here right now. It's a problem right now.

Comments : When Andrea approaches Bivolaru with reluctance, and he responds coldly, it should not be understood that Bivolaru detected her condition through "clairvoyance" and "mirrored it", as the MISA myths say about him. Bivolaru had simply been informed in advance by the instructors who carried out "clarification work" with her. And this effort of convincing and persuading on the part of her instructors proves that the initiative of these visits was with the guru together with his henchmen and not to the victims, as the perpetrators try to present, falsely. The visits were for Bivolaru's satisfaction and not for that of the women brought to him, who could very well have carried out these sexual practices with their lovers, as was actually normal. In fact, Bivolaru personally revealed the seven sexual positions to many female students and urged them to practice them with their lovers, without initiating them sexually himself. He could have easily done this in the case of the female students he invited to his place. But it becomes clear that he only intended to have sexual contact with them using this purpose of the servility of the instructors, who should in turn be the subject of a criminal investigation.

However, despite the mutual coldness, as is evident from the Swedish podcast ( details ), Bivolaru maintains sexual relations with the woman, in the form of sexual positions for the 7 centers of force, so Bivolaru violated three fundamental principles that he preached over and over again, which were a facade, as can be seen:

➢ the principle of full aspiration and justified merit on the part of the spiritual aspirant, in granting a spiritual initiation

➢ the principle of intense and deep mutual love as a first indispensable condition for achieving amorous fusion

➢ the principle of consecrating the fruits to God and of confirmation by Him through an affirmative answer

 

This fragment also shows the total complicity of some of the MISA/ATMAN instructors in sexual abuse committed by the sect leader. It is significant that, in the case of student Andrea, she was not subjected to the full preparation before the "sexual initiation" because, coming accompanied by her instructor herself who thus "guaranteed" for her, which demonstrates that the student in question knew exactly what was coming and was fully in agreement with the "initiation". But at the same time, this further highlights the indoctrination to which the women were subjected, who did not know in advance why they had been invited. This fact of hiding the real purpose of the invitation from the invited students is what totally and definitively disqualifies Bivolaru as an "authentic spiritual master" and makes the intervention of earthly justice upon the guru justified and necessary.

No matter how bizarre the practices are and no matter how aberrant the ideas that Bivolaru spreads and applies, as long as everything is kept within the limits of the prior consent of the followers, there may be moral criticism from those from outside the sect, but justifications can also be found from the guru and his acolytes, such as "spiritual tests" of "trust and abandonment to the master." But when women are deceived and lied to reach Bivolaru's bed, this fact cannot be justified by any spiritual doctrine and, not coincidentally, Bivolaru endures now the action of justice. He is not being tried for the aberrations he preaches, but precisely for the violation of the free will of the followers, through deception and psychological and even physical coercion.

The Road to Paradise - 4. Initiation , quotes:

filmmaker : We spoke to seven women who were in France at different times, between 2013 and 2019. The other women who arrive  at the guru's apartment were unable to give an interview about their experiences while they were being recorded. It's too hard to talk about. Several women say they have to go through the same so-called initiation that Andrea describes it. Several say they are unable to speak out against Bivolaru and feel deeply manipulated. And they're not alone. Stories of this yoga movement are emerging all over the world. Women in Germany and the UK, among others, have come forward and told stories about their encounters with gurus. Some of these women that we or other journalists talk to, are part of the base case in France. This is also true for Ashleigh, for example. Others are not part. We contacted Bivolaru's lawyer. The lawyer wrote to us that it was not possible to obtain a comment.

filmmaker : In addition to Bivolaru, Mihai and Adina Stoian are charged with human trafficking and kidnapping in the French court. In the arrest warrant, we can read that several women say that Adina and Mihai Stoian were the ones who invited them to meet with the guru and helped them organize trips to Paris. The arrest warrant also states that the international yoga movement is suspected of using manipulation techniques against its members. We don't know how many women went to Paris to meet the guru in the hope of achieving spiritual development, but sources tell us that this has been happening for at least two decades. Carsten is a sociologist and was part of NATHA when the guru's right-hand man, Mihai Stoian, came to Denmark in 2002. He says he heard already in 2005 that Bivolaru was in Paris. No one was allowed to know where he was, so only a few privileged people had access to this information. There were summer vacations and things like that, where I go and Adina especially and sometimes Mihai. Carsten has entered the small circle of friends and is close to Mihai and Adina Stoian. And he even accompanies her on trips to France. At this point, he even became lovers with Adina, he says. The school encourages the existence of multiple partners, so many of them have cross-relationships. On one of the trips, he realizes that there are women from the yoga movement who come to France to meet the guru. There is an apartment where those girls are, where they have a man who takes care of them. Carsten says that at one point, he and Adina Stoian were in that apartment.

Carsten : As far as I remember, they were eating chocolate because it was supposed to arouse sexual energy. And then they sat and watched a lot of porn movies. Another part was that, in the apartment they lived in, there was no handle inside. Notice! That handle was in the pocket of the one who was taking care of the girls. So you could say, no matter how you interpret it, it's a kind of probationary period. It was a place they couldn't just escape from, because they don't even know if they had their phones or if they were confiscated. So if they wanted to leave there, it's hard for me to imagine they could.

reporter : When I talk to Carsten about Paris, it's clear that for him there are two ways of looking at things. This is how he saw things back then, and how he did it, rightly so, for himself. And then there's how he sees things today: "What's this, you see there's no handle on the inside of the door of the apartment where these women live? Yes. Do you think that we should talk about this? Are you drawing attention to this? What do you tell them?”

Carsten : Well, at least I remember paying a lot of attention to it. And I don't remember if I said anything to Adina about it. I don't remember exactly what I was doing. I just remember noticing it often. And again, that's all. I didn't see one who didn't want to be there. I talked to them, I can say yes. Are you wondering if I should have done something or what?

reporter : No, I'm just thinking, can you assess whether they wanted to be there?

Carsten : I can only judge based on what I observed there. You might say: why didn't I do something? Because I don't see anything to to be alarmed. It was long before MeToo and things like that. So all those norms out there, they're not at all like now. It was basically fine. But when you look at it today, at everything that was happening in Paris... Yeah, it's crazy. So you know today there are a lot of women who are in line. So now I'm telling you in the present tense, as I have told myself in the present tense, about how I once experienced this. When I look at what happened in Paris today, I see that all those things, with a hat pulled over your head and a door you couldn't go out of, all those things were part of an ultimate choice. Whether you know it or not, you can meet your lover now, but you have to sacrifice everything. It was such a total choice, it shouldn't have to be at all. That's one thing. The second thing was that you erase the person in all those little rituals that you do all the time and with it the person's judgment and, therefore, the person's belief that they can speak.

Reporter : And what do you think about all these accusations related to human trafficking?

Carsten : It's an organization that walks a very thin line and goes beyond it, because how do you know if this is what people want? How can you be sure they're actually giving permission for this, when you're working hard to push boundaries? And that's why I can easily understand that there are women who later came forward and said, "well, I wasn't myself at all."

reporter : Carsten says that at the time he was so involved in the organization that he didn't realize that something was wrong, because, like everyone else who says they're slowly pushing their limits, their perception of the moment was that something  went too far, the same goes for him. But today he sees things completely differently.

comments : 

This detail of the missing doorknob on the inside of the door at the entrance to the apartment where they were kept the women brought to Bivolaru means that those women were sequestered there because they could not leave the house without the consent of Bivolaru  or the man who guarded the house and who kept the doorknob in his possession .

Former instructor Carsten reveals that he kept quiet about this significant detail and did not take a stand, Although he did not agree with such a thing, he then declares that, recalling these facts in the present, he does not feel that he could have changed anything.

In reality, according to Bivolaru's own sermons, he showed cowardice! Bivolaru pompously declaimed, repeatedly, the dictum "To know and not act is the ultimate cowardice!" Seeing the lack of that doorknob on the inside of the front door, he understood that this was about deprivation of liberty, even though women did not seem to suffer from it. But this is not just about consent of women, but about the intention with which Bivolaru and his acolytes removed the possibility that those women to leave whenever they wanted. This meant that the sect leaders were violating the free will of the women (detained) there and, thus, were seriously violating both the social law and the Moral Code of the spiritual path, therefore Bivolaru is not a spiritual master, but a sexual abuser, and his organization is not a spiritual school, but a dangerous sect.

Women were prevented from going out at any time for the protection of Bivolaru who, although he had political asylum on behalf of Sweden, he was wanted by Romania and could be extradited by other countries, which happened after many years. This fact further disqualifies Bivolaru as an "authentic and divinely supported spiritual master."

Former instructor Carsten believes that if he had made that remark to management then, he would have been marginalized, the subject would have been hidden and things would have continued the same, meaning nothing would have changed. In fact, if he were a sincere spiritual seeker, he should have understood that he was facing a dangerous and malicious group, they should have gone to the police and revealed everything to them. The media scandal that would have arisen then would have at least drawn attention to the criminal group and perhaps the suffering many women would have been avoided since then. Instead, the evil actions of this demented organization could continued unhindered for so many years, precisely because those who saw it, cowardly kept silent and sought all kinds of justifications, against the Moral Code of the true spiritual aspirant, gradually sinking into the mire of spiritual misery.

Regarding this gradual and unconscious degradation, Bivolaru gave a series of lectures entitled "The boiled frog syndrome", in which the idea is that spiritual decline towards hellish regions occurs gradually, so that the human being does not realize his slow sinking. But there he refers to others, not to the aspirants from MISA which, on the contrary, ascends to God, but it seems that it is still gradual, so that not even those from MISA, but even those around them don't realize the "spiritual evolution" that would take place in the great school...

And the proof that former student Carsten should have acted when he discovered the missing door handle detail is that here, at present, the situation has reached exactly the point where Bivolaru and his acolytes are being tried for indoctrination, deprivation of liberty and sexual abuse, but very late. If every student who found a violation of social laws or morals would have acted when they found out and not have remained cowardly silent, this sect would not have reached such dimensions of organized crime and moral filth. This sect has perpetuated itself precisely because many have known, but they did not act, against what - the height of irony - Bivolaru himself asked his followers to do!

 

The Road to Paradise - 4. Initiation , quotes:

Producer : NATHA from Denmark does not want to participate in the interview and does not want to comment on individual opinions about the school, but they write that they did not participate in organizing meetings with Bivolaru. NATHA from Sweden writes that it is an independent yoga school, without any legal, administrative or financial involvement with Bivolaru and that it strongly distances itself from any form of abuse, abuse of power and manipulation. The Swedish teacher, who Andrea says was the one who invited her, denies having invited her to meet with Bivolaru. NATHA's sister school in Romania, which Bivolaru founded, writes to us that it denies all the accusations against Bivolaru and calls them absurd. They believe that the accusations are based on statements by, I quote,

"to a handful of people who are probably motivated by personal reasons or a need for attention." They also write that the position that the yoga movement is suspected of using manipulative techniques against its members is, I quote, " ridiculous " and that they place a lot of emphasis on respecting people's free will. DR contacted Mihai's lawyer and Adina's and presented our information about them, but we received no response.

comment : when all the facts are against them and if they open their mouths, they only speak lies or betray themselves, it's easier for them to deny and not comment. Only those in Romania, raised in the spirit of the bi-polar Mărlănești audacity, they apply the "don't worry about it" tactic, throwing their shit at those who accuse them, saying it's none of their business...

After the "initiatory adventure" in Paris, recounted in part 3 of this post, it took Ashleigh a year to recover and called Ziggy, her Australian friend from the NATHA schools in Denmark and Sweden, the one who had convinced her to enrol in the UK branch of TARA Yoga. Ziggy listens in amazement to his girlfriend's ramblings, then begins to question the school leaders.

The Road to Paradise - 5. The Conspiracy , quotes:

reporter : Ziggy doesn't doubt for a second that what she's telling him is true. The only question is where that puts him. What should he do now? What is he doing with the last years of his life, when he became more and more involved in the yoga school? He moved to Sweden to attend NATHA and is in full swing with his future plans.

Ziggy : The shame I felt was so... Why wouldn't I just come out? This has been my family for the last five years. I invested every penny, and a great amount of energy and time into this context, and I was very committed.

reporter : Ziggy is still so involved in the yoga movement at this point that his first thought is that he needs to use this as an opportunity to get out of any association with this.

Ziggy : I still have the crazy belief that we can get enough critical mass from the school's followers to present it to the leader and institute a change. This is the biggest opportunity to achieve this solution. Open the door and make the change.

reporter : But it quickly becomes clear to Ziggy that this fight is not easy. And Natha's reaction to the criticism opens up a new aspect a completely new twist to this story, namely the fusion of spirituality and conspiracy theory.  He contacts some of the professors who  have been at school the longest, also with Adina Stoian,  "to make them aware that there is a problem." and get some answers.

Ziggy : "How can you really believe these stories, after hearing all the amazing accounts?" This is usually a good explanation for ignoring the other cases.

NATHA Denmark :  These accusations are nothing but lies. Malicious accusations are by no means new. Despite negative press, psychological warfare, and several attempts to physically escape him, the teacher's teachings of yoga still live on in thousands of people today. He deserves blessings for the great gifts he bestowed upon us all. I think it would take a little humility before making such a criticism. Do you really think that Grieg, who gave 28 lectures about the sublime divine eros and hundreds of other lectures and conferences about the sublime elevated eroticism, would he have any desire demonstrate  the opposite of what we are taught and what we all follow? We are sorry to say it, but the attitude that The one you display is marked  by cowardice and double standards.

Comments : The response from NATHA is the reaction of some who want to divert attention from the accusations that concern them, while also trying to counterbalance these accusations and annihilate them.

The natural timeline of reactions of someone who is unjustly accused of facts of which they have no knowledge is as follows:

➢ first, the surprise at learning of the accusations, as they refer to unknown facts 

➢ then requesting evidence

➢ finally, the urge to investigate the facts and the willingness to cooperate with investigators  in finding the truth.

The natural timeline of reactions of someone who is  unjustly accused of acts they did not commit is as follows:

➢ first of all, denying the accusations , because he knows for sure that they did not happen as they say

➢ then, requesting confrontation with the accusers , with their arguments or "evidence" from a position of trust, knowing that these cannot exist and are unfounded or even false

➢ finally, the call to investigate the facts and the expression of willingness to cooperate with investigators in order to find out the truth

It is noted that the innocent or those who sincerely want the truth to be known will not oppose an objective investigation , detailed and profound but on the contrary, they will encourage it, insist on it and offer their cooperation, precisely because it is It is in their interest that the truth be found  and their innocence proven.

On the other hand, someone who is aware of the commission of illicit acts or is even the author of them and seeks to hide, will have the following reactions:

➢ denying the accusations , in an attempt to stop them , to prevent the presentation of possible arguments or evidence and to annihilate them ; Denial also has the role of preventing the spread of accusations , so that they do not become public and thus lead to focusing attention on the accused and the alleged acts

➢ diverting attention from oneself, from those responsible and from the suspicions that hang over them

➢ directing accusations and attention towards others ; it is most effective to throw accusations and suspicions at the very on  those who accuse, aiming to weaken the accusations and the credibility of the accusers. Another option is to throw blame  on an invented enemy, "from the shadows" who, because he does not exist or is invisible, cannot retaliate

The reactions of NATHA leaders, like those of ATMAN and MISA, fall most clearly into the latter category, of those who know their stuff. It's a standard response in a wooden language, which shows that it was designed in advance to combat such accusations, which shows that those who designed it know the real situation and that the facts were committed in reality. It is noteworthy how NATHA seeks to combat Ziggy's tendency to give credence to the accusations from women, appealing to his trust in the "spiritual master" ("double standards": "you believe them, but not Grieg, right?" ) and even trying to train him in their fight against those who accuse ( "coward, why didn't you fight back,  why didn't you stop the accusations instead of taking them and spreading them,  thus becoming a tool of hateful enemies and demons?” )

Another student had an even harsher contact, felt on his own skin, with the true, villainous face of the NATHA leaders. Suddenly, NATHA leaders demonize the one they considered part of their caste a few days before,  "the elite of initiates":

The Road to Paradise - 5. The Conspiracy , quotes:

After Carsten and others sparked criticism in the press, Mihai Stoian gives a lecture about Carsten. 

Mihai Stoian : Carsten is a notorious liar. Moreover, he is ready to lie to his best friends to cover up his mistakes. During all this time, Carsten was very close to me and Adina, being with us on many vacations and also being introduced to our families. [Carsten was one of Adina Stoian's lovers, n/a] He started a crusade against everything that came before. This is his only way to come out with a good image.

Carsten : And he uses this pretext to say everything and only under the pretext that I am demonic and things like that.

comment :

When he was their friend, he was divine. Now he began to demand explanations, now suddenly he became demonic! But if he was demonic, then why did they still welcome him with them? Bivolaru had the same attitude towards Claudiu Trandafir.  When he was in school, "Wow, Claudiu revealed his Self! Wow, Claudiu connected with Shambala!" When the "prodigal son" expressed his doubts about the "daddy", how suddenly " How, the demonic ! 🔗 How, the caster! 🔗 "

"Claudius is spiritually collapsed!" ( archive ) "Claudius failed the spiritual tests! ( archive ) But before he wasn't all "a swindler, demonic" and collapsed"? Well no, it was very evolved, a "proof of the value and authenticity of the spiritual school"! Then how is it that at the great school, all those who - according to the statements of the guru himself - reach a high spiritual level as a result of his teaching, they collapse just when they reach this level? This is proof of the real "value" of the school, the guru and his teachings!

The Road to Paradise - 5. The Conspiracy , quotes:
reporter : Ziggy also says that other women have started contacting him about their experiences in Paris.

Ziggy : I'm getting more and more testimonials and more and more women are coming to me. 

reporter : In NATHA, there is a group on a messaging service where members can communicate with each other. One day, Ziggy writes that he needs to share something that has been bothering him for a long time. He describes how a close friend recently had an violent experience while going to the guru. "This is also true for other women," he writes, adding that he would like to speak about  these things in a more private forum, if anyone wants. Ziggy's hope that the teachers at NATHA will listen, becomes smaller and smaller. Instead, he begins to believe that they live in their own reality.

Comment : The matter is much more serious. If ATMAN leaders only lived in their bubble, they would simply reject  with contempt the accusations  in their minds would be opposed by their blind trust in the guru, acquired as a result of their indoctrination, and that's about it. But they try to block the emergence of accusations and their spread among others , manipulating them and directing them towards a direction that suits them, according to a pre-established tactic. So they don't just limit themselves to living in their bubble, but seek to put others in that bubble , which shows that  they  see beyond their bubble , they are aware of what is happening in the real world and the reactions of others. This shows not only obtuseness, but also meanness:

Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.

(John 9:41)

The Road to Paradise - 5. The Conspiracy , quotes:

Reporter : Andrea calls it a culture of cowardice. Instead of receiving support, her impression is that women are being disregarded if they had an unpleasant experience in Paris. Over time, several articles have appeared in the press in which former NATHA  members have brought various criticisms to the yoga school. Several of the sources that my colleagues and I speak with, they were part of NATHA  when these criticisms were raised, so they also saw from the inside how NATHA reacted.

source : The school's reaction, the teachers' reaction, is that society is mocking us. It's another way they fulfil their hidden agenda to bring us down, because they know very well that we help people. It's a witch hunt. There's absolutely nothing in those accusations.

reporter : Several people say that conspiracy theories play an important role, especially when it comes to criticism of the external world to the yoga movement.

source : It could be related to the media and the government knowingly harming us. It's a hoax, a paranoia so big,  it's very unpleasant to live in. They consider everyone their enemy.

reporter : It's not just former NATHA members talking about conspiracy theories. I found several videos in which Mihai Stoian speaks directly about the society run by secret societies, such as the Freemasons.

Stoian : From time to time, we are aware that we are a conspiracy theory sect, because it is said that we believe that Freemasonry controls the world. But we are not the only ones who say this. We are the only ones who encounter the factor in the most direct way. There are thousands of well-documented materials and books, everyone experiences this reality. [...] The next step in this argument is to also say that we must be constantly on guard and cautious, because the dominant society manipulates, deliberately hides, and does everything possible to prevent people to reach the ability to think for themselves and step into such spiritual development. That is why you must be very, very suspicious of anything that comes from outside the movement.

comment: 

There is indeed a culture of cowardice at MISA, just as there is a culture of lying. Bivolaru frequently appeals to the following aphorism:

" To know and not act is the ultimate cowardice ," after which they make followers swear that they will not divulge anything they see or they will find out. When followers see something that goes against the Moral Code, instead of taking a stand, they remain silent or even worse, they find justifications! Then they blame those on the outside for being “full of evil and seeing only spots on the Sun.” This is the attitude of “spiritual heroism (VIRA)" from MISA, which could be called "throwing the dead cat in the neighbour’s yard".

In contrast to the cowardice shown by most of the MISA/ATMAN leaders, the attitude of some of the students appears who, when confronted with the hidden misery within the organization, decide to leave it, although they often feel a heartbreaking struggle, because they leave behind a community that, for most of them, is their only family and the embodiment of their most ardent ideals.

The Road to Paradise - 5. The Conspiracy , quotes:

reporter :  Ziggy says he's been trying to speak up and create change within NATHA for a year. He's talking to another woman  from the yoga school, with whom he had a good relationship. Suddenly, to Ziggy's great surprise, she tells him that she was in Paris  and that, according to her, the guru raped her.

Ziggy : It shocked me. I just said to myself: that woman was sexually assaulted and abused by this man.  After all these testimonies and events I just went through, the pressure, the burden, and the impact they had on me, I started to realize that I had to get out of here and that I needed help, because my mental state was starting to to be quite affected. I had never experienced these states of panic or fear, these irrational crises.

reporter : Because he describes the experience at the Paradis Personal Development Center as a borderline experience, after many and long reflections, interrupts their involvement in school. Others say they left school after talking to women who told stories about the abuse they were subjected to by the guru in Paris.

Ziggy : I had a complete picture and was completely shocked. NATHA is not at all the innocent yoga center they say they claim to be, but in reality, it's a sect.

reporter :  But even though Karsten and Ziggy feel embarrassed, that's not actually the worst thing, they say. Because then when they and other members of the movement, after careful consideration, choose to leave school, they also leave what for many was their whole life for many years. They gave up their social position, cut off their ties with social life, and some remain without a home, without an income. And suddenly they are left without the most essential thing for them: their faith, their spiritual path.

Some former students have been affected by their experiences at ATMAN, and for many, this is compounded by the shock, detachment from the organization. Some even turned to priests for psychological or religious help:

The Road to Paradise - 6. The Spiritual Assault , quotes:

reporter : I'm visiting the home of pastor Niels Underbjerg, who retired a few years ago. He knows a lot about the new religious organizations  and, in particular, about NATHA. In the course of his work, he spoke to a large number of former NATHA members. As a result, he gained a unique perspective.

Pastor Niels :  The people I talk to have had some problems with NATHA. I don't mean the ones who are still in there, but those who have contacts. They had all gone through such a slow process, from a lot of golden promises that now they could be helped  up to the seventh level to fulfill their dream goal of having a heavenly state. And then, suddenly, they hit that wall  of unfulfilled emptiness where, every time they thought they had achieved a goal, they were constantly being added to another layer . When I asked  what mechanisms were used, several people expressed that there was an alternation between the praise of the  incredible potential of the individual, that special universal calling to achieve and accomplish something, and, at the same time, a heavy expectation  that rapid progress would be made, that something had to happen . And then there was also a... at least that's what I experience,  maybe it's more my interpretation, but there was also a shift from the freedom to develop at your own pace, to a requirement  for much, much greater dedication, both in terms of the relationship and in terms of the time commitment  that could be offered in relation to NATHA. So if you were to draw a conclusion from some of the the things they said,  I think you could put it as them experiencing a shift from self-development to self-dissolution. So this means losing one's own integrity. So, from self-development to self-destruction. That means, in fact,  that they have simply experienced that they had lost themselves, that they had lost their soul somewhere, their own understanding of who they truly were. And if you can make a person doubt themselves and doubt their own authority, what's best for them and what she feels is best for her, then you can pretty much take people wherever you want. And all of this, simply happens over time. So many people don't realize it's happening. They say they don't understand how it got there: "I can't believe I didn't notice this!"

comments :

The aspects highlighted in the excerpt above are demonstrated primarily by the unlimited duration of MISA courses. The fact that a lesson lasts until the end of life, given that the length of life differs greatly from one person to another, means first of all that it is not enough to achieve its goals. If Bivolaru had been honest, he would have planned a teaching that fits into the existence of all people, within a reasonable time frame, so as to also leave time for fruition. That is, if there is such a path that would allow anyone to achieve spiritual realization in the current life. And if it doesn't exist, hiding this fact is another vile lie.

Then, there is another deception. Instead of presenting this planning from the beginning along with the stages of evolution that need to be reached by the spiritual aspirant, "revelations" are presented at MISA - some for the first time on the planet - which are said to that they are very effective and quickly lead to the achievement of the final goal. But after a time of vain waiting, when followers notice the lack of results and discouragement begins to set in, a new "revelation" appears which is said to be and more effective, truly "salvific", and the old saving revelation is abandoned and forgotten, although it should have been that that alone would be sufficient. But it is obvious that Bivolaru could not simply say from the beginning "you know, at the current level of evolution of humanity, X decades of practice structured into stages of evolution are necessary, which allows the evolutionary leap from step to step, from the plane of existence to the one immediately above it."

And then he adopted this tactic of giving sugar in portions. But that also means that Bivolaru had premeditated from the beginning that the duration of the courses will be unlimited, although he fooled those in the first years of the course that the duration will be a maximum of 4 years (to make them think of the length of a college course), then 7 years (referring to their 7 years at home), then he said nothing more. What is difficult to understand, however, is why current new students, who are already warned, are taking these courses that none of the series started reached the end, that there is no one who has completed the entire course or even there is no such thing. It is probably the very great aspiration of some spiritual seekers, seduced by the fact that it seems to them that they found everything they needed in one place, that they found the answer to all their questions, but then later, after they had dedicated some time and effort, they no longer have the courage to break away from this thread of lies, because they lose everything they invested. Here we see the absolute wickedness of Bivolaru, who conceived an almost perfect system of indefinite chaining:

➢ the promise of effective practice, which leads to rapid evolution and salvation even in the present life

➢ limiting to the community of learners, as the only community compatible with the goal of handling, presenting those outside the "school" as being anti-spiritual and factors that divert from the spiritual path (accentuated limitation through unique practices, some of them generating intense pleasure, which are no longer found in people from the rest of society)

➢ keeping followers' attention focused strictly within the MISA community, by recommending not to have followers who to distract them, which in addition makes them dependent on the "yogic" community in old age

➢ maintaining the mobilization of followers and a permanent degree of alert by agitating the danger represented by an alleged "shadow enemy" (equivalent to "class enemy")

➢ the fear of the appearance of "demonic doubts"

➢ the fear that, once you enter, if you leave, you lose any chance of salvation and end up in eternal hell

This is the true planning that Bivolaru conceived from the beginning and which now appears, at a glance, as truly diabolical. But even here it cannot say that it has primacy at the planetary level, because it had models of action like Scientology or Osho's group.

Pastor Niels : But then NATHA probably want to say something like they didn't force anyone to do anything. Their answer will  usually be that "we are a yoga school where there are these offers that you can choose to accept or not". They don't have to, but they do it anyway, because of the psychological mechanisms that exist. When you play with people's hopes and dreams, we're talking about something with a spiritual component, when you play with people's hopes and dreams, and at the same time, from my point of view, the goal is to convert these hopes and dreams into the hopes and dreams of the movement, then it becomes a form of manipulation. Then it is not about the personal development of the individual, with rather exotic tools, but about the consolidation of a collective that already exists. And that movement from changing the emphasis from the individual to the group, is itself manipulation.

reporter : And Niels Underbjerg has a word for it. Former NATA members say they were subjected to spiritual assault.

Pastor Niels : When I call this a spiritual assault on people, it is precisely because we are touching on something very, very deep within  a person. A person's self-understanding, a person's integrity, self-understanding in relation to the outside world.  And if you are captivated by the spirituality of others, you may be even more vulnerable to others, they have the advantage in this regard.

Comment : In 2005, Karl-Erik Nylund, "doctor of theology, priest and perhaps Sweden's greatest expert on cults" , produced a report based on "three interviews with Gregorian Bivolaru conducted during the period in which he was in police custody from Malmö, interviews with Mihai Stoian and six MISA students. Three of the six are from Romania.

In addition, contact was made with other Romanians living in exile who are not members of this yoga school. He concluded, among other things, that "in the case of MISA we find none of the criteria that define manipulative sects. Gregorian Bivolaru does NOT claim to have an undisputed monopoly on truth. He is a spiritual guide alongside others and he is convinced that he has a mission in society. On the other hand, he has not had and does not have any political aspirations. Bivolaru's power lies precisely in his humility. If MISA is not a manipulative and dangerous sect, then what is it? I could say about MISA that it is a movement supporting an alternative way of life, alternative therapies,  with strong features of gnostic syncretism. The basic ideas are reincarnation and self-transformation (the ability to transform  yourself).” ( archive )

MISA leaders and students lied to Swedish "experts" and judges 🔗 (as, years later, they would perjury) and lie in court in Romania in the lawsuits filed against this blog). This is what the "truth" that comes out of the mouths of false statements of those from MISA/ATMAN and are not based on objective evidence. Following this report, the Supreme Court Sweden granted Bivolaru political asylum, which helped him to plan the operation to bring the women in France and video chats everywhere. After 20 years, the French justice system accuses the same Bivolaru and Stoian of sexual abuse and human trafficking, and Sweden withdrew his protection. Contacted by reporters, "expert" Nylund washed his hands  🔗 .

Another priest, Niels from Denmark, found the exact opposite of what Nylund found, who was fooled by the lamentations of MISA. Self-victimization is one of the tactics constantly used by those in MISA/ATMAN and has proven very effective. The "expert"'s conclusion that Bivolaru is modest and humble and does NOT claim to have an undisputed monopoly on the truth, perhaps be included in the anthology of cosmic stupidity. It is true that Nylund did not have Bivolaru's megalomaniacal statements at his disposal  which he did only in the years that followed (Good News 🔗 , New Planetary Religion 🔗 , New Eras - "Before Attributes" and "After Attributes" or BB - Before Bivolaru and AB - After Bivolaru 🔗 ), but with well-designed questions, they could have figured it out.

The Road to Paradise - 6. The Spiritual Assault , quotes:

Reporter : I'm presenting the priest's idea of ​​spiritual assault to Ashleigh.

Ashleigh : When he told me, it was the first time I'd ever heard that from him. And I said in a whisper, yes, that was it. The priest just said a few words about what I experienced. I think that's a very accurate and precise way to describe most experiences. It's not just the moment when the moment came when I had to get out. It was all a spiritual assault, because the beginning, indoctrination and slow process, which takes away your autonomy and ability to accurately describe and make decisions in your own best interest, it is an attack on the spirit.

Reporter :  When Ashley returns to Australia and what she experienced in France becomes clear to her, she decides she has to do something. In total, there are seven women who are giving their testimony. This is confirmed by the lawyer in France who represents Ashleigh and the other women. And one day in 2023, everything will reach its peak. Guru Gregorian Bivolaru was arrested and imprisoned.  In the French press, you can read that the police have been monitoring the guru's apartment near Paris for about a year.

comment:

Here, the Australian did not show cowardice and put into practice Bivolaru's aforementioned aphorism. In Paris, it was  the guru who  characterized her as cowardly, stupid, changeable, because she refused "initiation" ( source ), but instead the former student sent the police after him, who jumped straight from the eggs onto the great spiritual rooster ( source ).

The Road to Paradise - 6. The Spiritual Assault , quotes:

About a year later, Mihai and Adina Stoian were arrested in Georgia. According to French police, they played a key role  in inviting the women to Paris to meet the guru. The charges against them include kidnapping and human trafficking. In the fall of 2024, the Central and West Jutland police will travel at the request of the French police,  they are investigating two of the NATHA addresses, where the Paradis Development Center is located They will not reveal exactly  what the police discovered. When my colleagues and I contacted the Swedish authorities, some 20 years later and after the guru's last arrest,  they informs us  that something new has happened in this case. They have now revoked Bivolaru's permanent residence permit in Sweden.

After the "divine protection" supported by vows of silence and covered eyes, Bivolaru also lost his Swedish protection, which automatically leaves him exposed to the French and Finnish justice. Very recently, the two acolytes from Denmark, the Stoian family, the coordinators and also the "fish" of ATMAN, were extradited to French justice.

https://bitterwinter.org/the-misa-case-georgia-bows-to-french-pressures-and-extradites-the-stoians/ ).

The Law of Karma ("according to the deed, so is the reward") proves to be implacable, as these people have repeatedly warned, the leaders of the lie sold as spirituality, only they never believed it applied to them.

What is left behind? The followers receives the firm promises that they will reach Paradise, but in the end who ends up in Paradise? Followers simply exchange one illusion for another. Real liberation happens when you stop believing the lies and start listening to the voice within, that’s where the paradise is.

 

Georgia extradited Mihai and Adina Stoian

"Just days before the maximum term allowed by the Georgian law to keep them in jail had expired", Georgia extradited the two Stoians. So neither the laments of the two ("save us, they are killing us!") nor even the appeal of the "researchers" who are friends of MISA/ATMAN mattered. And because the appeal of the "researchers" was ignored by the Georgian court, Introvigne quickly came out with an article in which he seeks to justify the decision, obviously blaming France!

In fact, as it turned out, the appeal of the "esoteric intellectuals" had no real legal basis, but was ultimately a simple appeal on "humanitarian grounds", as if the two were seriously ill, although when they were sending women to Paris to Bivolaru, they were perfectly healthy!

So the two Stoians did not succeed with the "trip to Georgia” (link) and with the lawyer's tricks (link), so that in the end they ended up where they feared, that is, in prison and, from there, in front of the court. It's very interesting that the authors of the Danish podcast "The Road to Paradise" noted how the two Stoians discreetly withdrew and then completely disappeared from the landscape even a few months BEFORE the guru was arrested, as if they had information about what was to come.

The Road to Paradise - 2. The Right Hand (transcription link), quote:

Just before the dramatic arrest of guru Bivolaru, something interesting happens to Mihai Stoian. A few days before French officers in 2023 arrest the guru in France, Mihai Stoian resigns from a central board, the board of Directors of the International Yoga Organization The Atman Federation, which NATHA is also a part of. Three months earlier, he had resigned from the board of directors of the foundation that owns several of NATHA'S premises. And that's not the only change happening. For many years, NATHA has been diligently posting pictures of Mihai Stoian and his wife Adina on social media. If you scroll through the posts, they almost look like rock stars that takes over scenes and attracts lots of followers. But after the arrest of Bivolaru, it thins out considerably with posts where you can see the white-haired man. For almost a year, we have had difficulty to find posts where you can see the white-haired man. For almost a year, it's hard for us to find any trace of him anywhere. Until one day he shows up in Georgia and gets arrested.

Instinct, premonition, rumors, protectors who warned him in advance? Then why wasn't Bivolaru warned too? Maybe we'll find out someday!

Since their appeal for the release and protection of the two Stoians was not heeded, "master" Introvigne wrote an article "exposing and denouncing the abuses", which was immediately taken over and translated by MISA, because they have nothing else anyway. An analysis of what is written in that article follows, with the mention that all the conclusions equally concern those at MISA, because they take it over in its entirety, without commenting or making observations, therefore they assume it in its entirety.

The article starts with a lie, which is normal, because the rest of it is just a series of lies. I quote:

The MISA Case: Georgia Bows to French Pressures and Extradites the Stoians

What pressures? France made a normal extradition request, as is usually the case. How should the request have been formulated:

"We kindly ask you to excuse us and not to be angry, but be nice and let the two Stoians go to France for a while, because we have something to ask them, then we will let them continue their tourist stay in your beautiful country"?

The funny thing is that "master" Introvigne calls the whole thing what it actually is - "the MISA case" - even though the two Stoians were coordinators in NATHA Denmark and in the ATMAN federation, and both MISA and ATMAN vehemently replied that they had nothing to do with the case in France, because each school is independent and individually legally responsible, and NATHA Denmark even declared that the two were only "part-time teachers" (archived).

One lie leads to another, which is the subtitle of the article: ”The two yoga teachers are accused of the imaginary crime of brainwashing for having taught students the movement’s sacred eroticism theories.”. Bullshit!

The two are accused not because they "presented sacred eroticism" - something that, by the way, they have been doing for over 30 years, without anyone asking them for an explanation until now - but because complaints have now appeared against them, because they allegedly took part in sending women to Paris to Bivolaru, who sexually abused some of them. Neotantra everywhere means "sacred eroticism", but the police do not go after all these organizations and courses. Bivolaru's former disciples, Claudiu and Simona Trandafir, have a branch in France (link), where they even teach the doctrine of MISA, which they also wrote for the most part when they were part of the great school, and the police have nothing to do with them.

This nonsense about "sacred eroticism allegedly persecuted on a planetary level" is a fixation of Introvigne, who also found a niche of his own in which to proclaim himself a great world-renowned specialist - the so-called "sacred eroticism" -  and now he always talks about it. Introvigne is like the hen in the Romanian story "The Bag with Two Penny", who laid a bead that she had previously swallowed and now clucks all day, so that the whole chicken coop will know what wonder she has laid. In other words, "The Gag of Two Penny".

Introvigne writes:

Modern democratic societies have a large tolerance of unconventional sexual practices. France, for example, is the country that originally invented the “clubs échangistes,” or “swingers clubs”. Couples go there and exchange partners with others in the club, unknown to them (and sometimes masked), so that both men and women have sexual encounters with persons they did not know before and do not expect to meet again. “Swingers clubs” are not regarded as illegal in France (nor in several other countries). Of course, forcing a person to participate in the “swingers club” evenings would be a crime, but the participation of consenting adults is not. Women, in particular, who go through erotic rituals with Tantric masters who are not their usual partners tend not to be believed when they say they made this choice for spiritual reasons and freely, and understand what sacred eroticism is all about. They would perhaps be believed if they claimed they went to a swingers club freely for excitement and fun.

Swinger couples go to the club specifically for this "activity", so they know in advance and fully assume what is happening there. And the expert Introvigne deliberately confuses matters, to divert attention in a different direction than the real one. In the case of Bivolaru, it is not about women who were found by the police in his bed during a raid and who declare that they were there because they were eager to have tantric sex with him, and the police did not believe them and decreed that they were abused, as MISA and its friends falsely claim that it happened.

On the contrary, the raids took place precisely because there were women who had complained to the police that they were brought to Bivolaru under various pretexts and ended up having sex with the guru, although they did not want to.

Introvigne continues his miserable tactic of distorting the facts:

I am aware that rituals entering the sphere of eroticism are at risk of abuse. It is false, however, to argue that any erotic ritual is by definition abusive. The key legal question is not whether the purpose of the experience is recreational or religious. The criterion distinguishing a free erotic encounter, whatever its purpose, from sexual abuse is, as usual, consent. [...] French authorities believe that, while the decision to visit a swingers club may be somewhat understandable, submitting to a ritual of sacred eroticism with a “guru” (a word that indicates a respected master in India but is derogatory in France) can never be a free decision.  

Bivolaru was not accused by the police of bringing women to him for sex, nor by the women who agreed to have sex with him as part of a tantric initiation, knowing in advance what the purpose of the sexual encounter was.

Bivolaru was accused of sexual abuse by women who did NOT go to meet him for the purpose of being sexually initiated into tantrism, but were made to understand that it was a meeting intended for spiritual guidance. In fact, Bivolaru himself contradicts Introvigne's manipulative claims, in statements given to investigators:

"They [the female students] came to talk about yoga, and for some the desire to make love arose, and so we made love, obviously when the love was mutual," he assures. (source)

As it turns out, Bivolaru claims that, on the contrary, contrary to what Introvigne claims, the students did not come for a tantric initiation, but came to discuss yoga (because supposedly they could not simply discuss through text messages and at MISA only women are interested in yoga...) Two stubborn mules, who fight each other with their lies. But it is not only the two mules who contradict each other. According to Introvigne, the stallion Bivolaru is contradicted even by the women found by the police during the raids on the group's homes:

quoted from Introvigne's article:

On November 28, 2023, the French police raided several premises of MISA and arrested Gregorian Bivolaru and others. They then told the media that they had “liberated” dozens of women (none of them French) who were “kept prisoners” and would be “raped.” Soon, however, the problem emerged that not even oneof the women, although submitted by the police to what they described as abusive treatments and pressures, agreed to file charges against Bivolaru and MISA. As some of them confirmed to international scholars who interviewed them, they claimed they went to France freely and knew precisely what MISA was about. Some (not all) intended to participate in sacred eroticism rituals, but said they were familiar with the MISA literature describing them and had freely chosen this admittedly unconventional spiritual path. They asked that their choices be respected.

If the women went to France willingly, why were they forced to watch the "mobilizing" video statements of women who had already been to Bivolaru for the "initiation"? These recordings were also intended to protect Bivolaru against claims of abuse, as TARA Yoga UK did in the case of the complainant Miranda, whose audio statement reached the BBC and was also leaked by MisaTV in one of their shows.

In fact, both the "international researchers" who interviewed the women and MISA pointed out that, on the contrary, those women stated that they were in France for ”meditation retreats” (link), ”to combine the pleasant with the useful” (link), but they did not declare that they were going to meet with Bivolaru, because that would have indirectly accused  their beloved spiritual guide.

So these cases have no legal connection to Bivolaru and do not represent an exoneration of him. It is clear that Introvigne did not read the articles of his "colleagues" carefully, because he does not care about the other "colleagues", that he believes himself to be the only planetary expert, the only holder of absolute truth, a kind of Bivolaru of the study of religions! And now those from MISA come and take over this guy's nonsense and present it as "evidence of innocence", without realizing that he is undermining them. Moreover, Introvigne has reportedly expressed  is willingness to participate as a witness in the defense of those accused from MISA! Good luck to the accused and have a smooth detention, with Introvigne in the witness box!

The fact that there are cases in which women brought to Paris and hosted in the Waiting House refused to go to Bivolaru's  home when they realized, at the last moment, that they had been brought for sexual initiation, proves that there was not always prior consent. This fact contradicts Introvigne who, as shown in the aforementioned Danish podcast, stubbornly insists that all women who enroll in MISA courses know exactly what to expect:

The Road to Paradise - 5. Conspiracy (min23:sec06 or page 46 link)

reporter: He believes that everyone who becomes part of the yoga movement knows exactly what they're getting into.

Introvigne: What we try to contribute to all this debate is if you join the neotantric sacred eroticism group, you understand what it's all about when you go to the first course and read the first internal pamphlet.

And if everything is understood from the first course and everyone knows what it's about, why are there mandatory oaths of silence, on health and spiritual evolution, that what is seen and heard will not be divulged?

The Swedish podcast "Secta Yoga" includes another statement from the "father of scientific impartiality and objectivity":

”Secta Yoga”, partea a 4-a: Retragerea (link pag. 5-6):

When you join such movements, you know they teach that the valid path to certain spiritual benefits is an erotic initiation. I mean, it's a neotantric sacred eroticism sexual initiation group. Why do you join Misa? (source)

They went to France of their own will. And then they realized, but only sometimes after they had this experience of an erotic initiation, that they had been manipulated psychologically by a chain of persons in the movement.. (source)

quoted from Introvigne's article:

Deprived of the testimony of the “liberated” women, the French case against Bivolaru and the derivative one against the Stoians rests on the complaints filed by seven “apostate” ex-members who have left MISA and the ATMAN schools, in some cases several years ago. [...] We do not deny that the discomfort of some ex-members may be very real.

They need to be understood and helped. It is, however, an entirely different matter when it is dogmatically affirmed that in all cases, countries, and groups, only the women who report these were bogus rituals devised to abuse them “tell the truth,”while those who offer a different interpretation are either lying or under “brainwashing.” 

"Uuh, oh my, poor apostates, we understand their discomfort"... For this devil's advocate, defender of sexual abusers and exploiters, abuse or rape just means "discomfort", as if he were talking about a pain in the ass.

quoted from Introvigne's article:

The Stoians are accused of aiding and abetting Bivolaru in committing the crime of “trafficking” by organizing the transport of female students from other countries to France, where the MISA leader abused them. The Stoians denied they ever “organized” such trips. [...] Although there is no denying that the Stoians are regarded as authoritative and beloved teachers in the movement, similar accusations could easily target hundreds of MISA and ATMAN instructors worldwide.

Not only it ”could target hundreds of instructors", but it really should, for the following reasons: If Stoians or other instructors did not organize the trips, then how did the women get to Bivolaru, the one wanted by Interpol, who was hiding like a rat? First of all, the women cannot even have the initiative to meet Bivolaru, because they have no way of knowing about this possibility, believing that he is in Sweden, under asylum protection, hiding so as not to be assassinated. In fact, if a woman, burning with the desire to be initiated tantrically by Bivolaru himself, were to take this initiative, she would immediately be suspected by the MISA leaders of being an agent of the secret services and trying to track down the guru!

The initiative could always come only from Bivolaru, and the invitations could only come through people whom the invited women knew well. Not only would these women not have felt safe receiving invitations from unknown addresses or people, but they are also advised not to discuss with strangers events that occur at MISA courses.

Furthermore, before the invitation is communicated to them, the women must swear to maintain secrecy. It now becomes clear, beyond any doubt, that only very well-known people, instructors or coordinators of women's groups (Shakti), could hand the female students the invitation to meet with Bivolaru in Paris and only they could receive the oath of secrecy from the students. Then, given the clandestine way in which everything happened: the blindfolds, the phones and cards, the confidentiality statements, the invited women could not accept all this unless they had maximum trust in those who determined them to accept all this, that is, instructors and coordinators, who abused the students' trust.

The scoundrel Introvigne thinks these are all "cape-and-sword stories, Sherlock Holmes-type actions (source), but he never bothered to explain how the women "with initiative" reached the fugitive Bivolaru, who had been hiding for years.

quoted from Introvigne's article:

Whatever the role of the Stoians in facilitating the trips to France, it is clear that they are accused of exercising their freedom of thought and freedom of religion or belief by teaching certain principles to students. They are not charged with having personally raped or abused anybody.

No, Smart of the Earth, they are accused of having participated in the recruitment, convincing of women to accept the invitation and "integrating" them into the system that led them to Bivolaru Paris, in short, their trafficking.

Then, by organizing and coordinating those tantric retreats with practices of overcoming personal boundaries, they indoctrinated and psychologically prepared the women to accept surprise sexual encounters with anyone, especially with the decrepit and decayed Bivolaru.

quoted from Introvigne's article:

If women went to France freely to attend spiritual retreats or other religious activities, there is, of course, no “trafficking.”

On the contrary, there is trafficking because, even in the case of consent, as is the case with migrant trafficking, in which the trafficked person gives their consent and even pays to be taken where they want, it is still human trafficking!

“If they went to France voluntarily to participate in spiritual retreats or other religious activities”, why did some women refuse to participate on the spot, after so much effort? That means they were deceived, right?

quoted from Introvigne's article:

These of the seven “apostates” are ex post factoaccusations. At the time, they did not feel “trafficked,” but now they have changed their mind or have been taught to reconstruct their experience as “trafficking.”

Blatant lie! Ashleigh Freckleton realized right there in Paris that she had been deceived and brought to Bivolaru, refusing to go to his home. Another student, Eva, who is mentioned in the German podcast "Toxic Tantra" and whose case is, in the opinion of those at MISA, an example of respect for free will within the school, had the following experience:

 

A person named Eva had a shorter story, about an experience in 2007 and the fact that she later decided to give up the spiritual path. Eva admits that her 2007 experience was voluntary, and when she asked to go home, she was elegantly driven to the train station. But her perception changed after a few years. (archived)

"Eva" felt horrible right from the first initiation, she refused to go to Bivolaru the next day, she asked to leave and, when she got home, she gave up on the "spiritual path", that is, the crap called "yoga school" that led her to the bed of the libidinous and disgusting guru. So her perception didn't change after a few years, but right then. (source)

It is worth noting that Introvigne approaches the issue from a quantitative point of view, weighing dozens of positive accounts after sexual initiation with Bivolaru (if they are honest!) against the claims of seven “apostate” victims.

But he does not know or pretends not to see that, if he puts the word of the victims against the word of those “delighted” by the guru, the word of the victims is credible because the police verified on the spot many of the things reported by the victims in their statements, which were given to the authorities BEFORE the police began their surveillance of the MISA locations, an operation that lasted over a year.

If even a single case of abuse by Bivolaru is confirmed, this would be enough to convict him, because in any case of sexual abuse, the one found guilty is convicted for the concrete act of abuse despite the possible existence of other cases in which no abuse is claimed, just as a thief is convicted for the situation in which he stole and is not acquitted because there were other situations in which he could have committed theft but did not.

In conclusion, not only are Introvigne's "arguments" ridiculous, but he manifests a clear biased attitude in favor of the accused, simply starting from his belief that all the women at MISA know what to expect if they receive an invitation to meet with Bivolaru. The legal essence of the sexual abuse case involving Bivolaru is that some of the women brought to him did not know that they were going to have sexual relations, which caused them psychological shock because they found the abuser disgusting, to which must be added the actions of mentally preparing and convincing the female students to accept sex with anyone, despite the disgust felt ("overcoming individual limits"), as well as the clandestine bringing of the women to the guru, hiding from them the real purpose of their journey.

If the trial in France ends with the conviction of Bivolaru and his MISA/ATMAN acolytes, then there will also have to be a moral trial of the so-called expert researchers who supported them and who knew what was happening, but who acted contrary to the truth, just because they put on some horse blinders and considered that defending the rights of new religious groups is above the rights of those who are part of these groups, for which the "experts" consider from the start that they are the only ones responsible because, since they join these groups, they know exactly what they are getting into. But how can the new followers know what they are getting into, if the great "experts" themselves, who research these so-called religious groups, although they know what is happening inside them, interpret reality upside down and paint a false picture of them?

They, the "experts" who should be the first to inform the public about these organizations, are the ones who defend them, just because this is the "professional career" they have chosen, thus having a direct interest and being thus devoid of scientific, legal and moral objectivity! It's as if they were saying: if these new religious-inspired groups are disbanded by the authorities, what will we do, that we will be left without a job?

 

Commentary on the Swedish podcast: Newly revealed secrets of the yoga sect



There is a word whose mere utterance gives shivers to those in MISA, but not shivers of pleasure.  The magic word is PODCAST! 

We have recently witnessed a veritable avalanche of podcasts that have revealed  the misery that is  happening inside MISA/ATMAN. And once a few women started speaking, others started doing  the same, breaking the barrier of fear  and silence, sealed with heavy oaths on health (real self-curses like "let me die").

The trumpets of lies from MISA began to scream: "they are taking over one after another, they all repeat the same lie!" And MISA supporters also screamed:  "cape  and sword stories, actions from Sherlock Holmes novels" ! I quote:

They contacted women who were not French and who told the story of how they were brainwashed in their countries where they attended MISA courses, they were invited to go to Paris, they were waited for by drivers in Paris, blindfolded and taken to locations in France where they were forced to have sex with Bivolaru. While the readers of the French press are made to believe that this was the result of a Sherlock Holmes-type action organized by the anti-cult group GéPS, these stories they were known for years . (article misa.yoga  🔗 )

Their problem is that the French police, who have been monitoring the locations where the MISA rats were hiding for over a year, found exactly the facts narrated by all the women. What do you mean, the people at MISA were "inspired" by the victims' accounts? Or, as is logical, were the victims reporting real situations they had personally experienced?

The most recent podcast appeared in Sweden ( link ), and its transcript can be read at this address .

Some sound sequences were secretly recorded by a reporter who attended Natha's classes for several weeks undercover. What is told is, in part, the same eternal stories so familiar to those who follow the MISA phenomenon with sincere spiritual seekers and aspirants attracted by MISA/ATMAN advertisements that promise everything ("integral esoteric yoga"), but which offers something completely different behind closed doors, locked with oaths of secrecy. I quote from the podcast:

"They make it seem like it's something really special, like it's the hidden secrets of the universe."

Everyone is shocked by the contrast between the pure divine love promoted by the facade and the pornographic debauchery displayed on the face, by the sexuality suffocating, ostentatiously displayed with the alleged purpose of leading to disinhibition and abandonment of ego limitations, but which hides preparation for activation in the sex industry and especially for satisfying the sexual obsessions of the deranged guru. It also describes immense collective pressure exerted by instructors on simple students, but also by simple students on each other, in a psychological control mechanism seen only in Bolshevik re-education camps.

But, in addition to these well-known and ubiquitous details, information is also revealed to us in a "planetary premiere"!

➤ MISA was the subject of a criminal case in Romania in which, among other things, it was accused of exploiting students through unpaid labor, under the label of "volunteering" (karma yoga). MISA has been screaming for years that these are lies invented by the enemies of the organization that were used by prosecutors against it. Witnesses and injured parties did not come to court, so the trial ended with an acquittal on the merits and a statute of limitations on appeal. But here's what former students in Sweden have to say:

Yoga Sect part 1 - The Spiritual Path , quote:

It's early in the morning. Kristoffer forces himself out of bed. "Meditation starts at five. If you haven't woken up on time and are with your eyes closed at five o'clock, you are scolded:  "What the hell is on your mind... but how the hell can you look yourself in the eye, you are... pathetic.

"Don't you want to grow up for once?  What the hell is wrong with you?" "From the second you set foot here, you are subordinate to the great  wisdom and knowledge  of what is good and evil and you will be disciplined,” says Kristoffer.  “Often something would come up very suddenly,  related to something what wasn't done right. Then there was planning and the atmosphere got really bad  and then you felt something  like "shame on you!" 

"I specifically remember being scolded for removing moss from a stone, and I said to myself:

"Your place is in the kitchen, if you're up to it,"  says Emma.

This is what "voluntary work" looks like at MISA, this "spiritual school" with a cazon flavor! Only instead of "Righteous, lie down!", they scream "Righteous, arise!"

➤ After the mouths at MisaTV admitted that Bivolaru invited female students to him for the purpose of their sexual initiation ( source ), Here is a student from Sweden who says she was invited for this purpose and knew from the beginning that this was what it was about:

Yoga Sect Part 2 - Sacred Eroticism , quote:

Andrea is a student at the school in Malmö: I felt euphoria that I had found the right school: the esoteric part, the self-development and spiritual growth, which was fantastic. And then I ended up with people who had  the same aspiration and ambition like me, to really develop myself. It was like winning the lottery, wasn't it? After a short time at school, she learns that the guru wants to meet her.

" One of my teachers sat down with me and explained that I had been invited and that there was a chance to go  and receive an initiation. So, I was ready .”

This is after decades of the pathological bipolar liar vehemently denying that he gives sexual initiations to female students ( source ), Now a student from abroad admits this, and even hits the instructor on the head! (not that we didn't know).  The instructor's participation may be considered complicity in the crime of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

"Uu, ATMAN has nothing to do with the accusations in Paris, on the contrary, it condemns the abuses." ( official statement ) By virtue of justice and divine justice, we hope that the Paris investigation will also "integrate" the complicit instructors!

➤ Then comes the trial at the Supreme Court of Sweden in 2005, when Bivolaru received political asylum in Sweden:

Yoga Sect Part 2 - Sacred Eroticism , quote:

Romanian authorities are requesting Bivolaru's extradition, a case that is pending before the Supreme Court.

"He didn't want to be extradited, but they insisted."

One of the judges who will rule on the guru's future is Johan Munck.

"And when there are slightly confusing decisions, we have oral hearings. That was the case in the particular case involving Bivolaru."

Guru accused of sexually abusing 17-year-old yoga student. Evidence comes from girl's diary entries and the intercepted conversations between her and the guru. She herself denies that the guru had sexual relations with her and is in court Supreme to testify in his favour. "She was there as his witness and she firmly denied it, saying it was just a fabrication."

One person present in the courtroom is Karsten who, at this point, is part of the inner circle of the movement in Denmark. "We know very well that she is in a relationship with him ." According to him, it was common knowledge within the movement that the girl and the guru were in a relationship.

"And it's also in the context of the fact that the most beautiful thing you can do here on earth is to have a relationship with Grieg."

At this point, it is completely unthinkable for Karsten that the girl should suffer because of the relationship,  because the best thing that you can have is a relationship with the guru. " And she didn't feel like a victim either ."

This fragment reveals how Bivolaru evaded justice: a combination of the complicit wickedness of the followers who, knowing full well what was actually the reality, they swore perjury and lied in court, and the complicit incompetence of the "expert" on cults Nylund, who wrote a favorable report on MISA, based only on their false statements ( link ):

Yoga Sect Part 2 - Sacred Eroticism , quote:

Bivolaru's defenders call a priest who, in the Swedish press, is called the most important expert on sects  in Sweden. His name is Karl-Erik Nylund, and he writes a report on the yoga movement, in which he states that it is not a  manipulative cult. His statement was that Bivolaru was a highly respected yoga teacher. He questioned  the allegations made against Bivolaru.  This report will weigh heavily in the Supreme Court's conclusion that Gregorian Bivolaru risks persecution in Romania.

"In conclusion, our assessment was that we did not believe we could overturn the detention order, but that we refused  extradition, because there was a risk of being persecuted for almost religious reasons."

Therefore, the report is based on interviews. It was the yoga movement itself that produced lists of possible  interviewees.  The report contains no criticism of NATHA.  Karl-Erik Nylund actually seems to think that Grieg was an interesting person. One of the people to be interviewed calls Karsten to ask for advice:

"The researchers there want to talk to me, what should I tell them?" I said,  "You'll say it's damn good." and stuff like that.  "Well, it's okay, I just wanted to check."

[answering machine message: "Hello and welcome, this is the answering machine..."]

"Hello, I'm Karl-Erik Nylund and I'm calling from Stockholm. I received your letter."

Karl-Erik Nylund does not want to be interviewed on this topic today.

"I gave up on sexology a long time ago. Sorry. Thank you. Bye."

But the movement still uses its report today to convey its message: "We are not a sect."

 

"I have no more business with this, bye!" said priest Nylund, washing his hands like Pontius Pilate. Nylund's report, which practically ate from Bivolaru's hands, slapped the Romanian authorities in the face for linking it to the photos. in a swimsuit requested everywhere by ATMAN to students for approval to participate in its "extracurricular" actions:

Participants in the symposium are admitted with an ID card, for which they must send photos, sometimes in a swimsuit, the MISA co-leader. This is to “read” the aura of those who want to participate, in order to be able to determine if they have any problems health.  To select participants, a large number of photographs are collected  at these international symposia  . These were confiscated by the Romanian authorities and classified as  pornographic pictures,  obviously because they don't want to understand what the photos contain (i.e. a single person in a swimsuit)  and what  their purpose is.  ( archive )

After MISA followers told the "expert" that the swimsuit photos were for "aura reading," the spokesperson MISA told the producers of the German podcast "Toxic Tantra" that this was not the purpose of these photos ( source ), which is real, they serve to select the guests for sexual "initiation". This means that the MISA followers lied to the "expert". But at the same time, MISA leaders constantly lied to students about the alleged purpose of requesting swimsuit photos, namely aura reading" as can be seen several times in the Swedish podcast analyzed here:

Yoga Sect part 1 - The Spiritual Path , quote:

There was also a woman there, from the organization, who was giving a seminar on a specific topic. And so, at some point we, the ones who were there at the time, we were invited to take a picture, preferably in underwear or a bikini and send it to Grieg. Because apparently he was absolutely amazing at reading someone's aura or spiritual purpose, or something like that. And then I felt something like, "What? Are you kidding? Why would you be asked to wear less clothes to do that?" [...] And students are encouraged to send scantily clad photos to the guru so that he can read their aura.

Yoga Sect Part 2 - Sacred Eroticism , quote:

To be accepted into the Tantra teacher training program, they went through a  special admissions process. "You have to send photos. A photo of you in... yes, in underwear, to get approved." Also in Malmö, students were encouraged to send photos to the movement's leader, Gregorian Bivolaru.

"You can ask him for advice on different things, about relationships. And then the idea was that he needed to read someone's aura. And every time  you asked him for advice, you sent him pictures: for men, in underwear, and for women, in bikinis. And because everyone else  was doing it... I didn't think much of it. Some of the students get letters from Grieg, with good advice and answers  to their questions. For some women, something much grander comes in return: an invitation from to the spiritual leader:  "I simply went and waited for the invitation, because I knew it would come at some point."

So this is how these lies of MISA leaders come to light after decades of being hidden, under oath of keeping the "initiatory secret". Ultimately, time reveals the truth, and "the truth will set you free". I quote:

"The movement still uses its report today to convey its message: 'We are not a sect.'"

The fact that Bivolaru receives refugee status in Sweden, of course, helps the organization enormously and is an aspect to which I return. "Constant in their narrative that Bivolaru is a vulnerable, persecuted person who is  practically a saint." 

➤ The lie that guru worship is not encouraged in MISA/ATMAN courses is also dispelled ( source ). I quote:

Yoga Sect Part 2 - Sacred Eroticism , quote:

He finds it hard to believe everything the movement teaches, especially the personality cult around Gregorian Bivolaru, or Grieg,  as he is known he is also called the guru. Once, he sleeps overnight with others from the movement. The room he will sleep in is filled with paintings by Grieg.

"I stayed there for a few nights and had to turn these things upside down, just everywhere you looked, he was looking at you."

On another day, the altar outside the yoga room is decorated with candles and pictures of the guru.

"And then I realized, 'Oh, they're really trying to force this down my throat.'"

➤ The podcast clearly reveals what has been stated on this blog regarding the perverse mechanism behind the unlimited duration of MISA/ATMAN courses, which keeps followers trapped in the sect's web forever:

Yoga Sect Part 2 - Sacred Eroticism , quote:

Religion researcher Tova Olsson begins to notice a pattern:

"They always promise that there will come, right around the corner, a new secret technique will appear, that now you can only have access to small things just because you're not ready for more, probably, and you need to reach a certain type of spiritual maturity to be able to moves to the next step. It is of course also a very smart way to gradually invite people to exceed their limits, to agree with different types of things that they probably wouldn't have agreed with if they had seen this material or received it that information from day one.”

➤ In part 3, another aspect of "volunteering" at MISA (karma yoga) is revealed, that of sanction:

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

But karma yoga can also be a way to punish those who violate any of the many rules that apply.

"So, if you are caught doing something that is considered unconscious, then your penalty will be a certain number of hours of karma yoga."

The one who reports this is Ashleigh, the Australian who refused sexual initiation in Paris ( link ). In her public testimonies on the internet, as well as in this podcast, she recounts being introduced to ATMAN by a friend.

➤ When he found out what happened to his friend in Paris, at first he finds it hard to believe, then he starts asking questions ATMAN leaders, believing, in his naivety, that they would shed light on this case:

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote: "When you're in that bubble, they have an explanation for everything." "Naively and foolishly, I honestly believed that it could happen like this."

He writes an open message in an internal chat group for NATHA members, stating that his friend  Ashleigh and a few other women were injured. "And that was it. Things went from bad to worse from that point on. We spent the night from just being a completely trusted and respected member of the community, to being the black sheep.”

The teachers write that he tells lies, the same lies that have haunted the school for decades.

"And obviously it had enough impact, because those messages reached Grieg."

Shortly thereafter, he learns that he has received a letter from the guru himself.

"He contacted me: 'I received these messages from you-know-who and you need to come receive them in person.'"

A teacher asks him to come to the office to get them.

"He gives me this letter as if I was going to be amazed by how profound his letter is."

The letters state that Ashleigh's claims are malicious fabrications and that there are documents and audio recordings which  she herself signed and recorded, which prove she is lying.

"And I just think I'm in a cult. There's no other way to describe it."

He is offered a bet of 500,000 euros that nothing Ashleigh says now is true.

"And I'm reading this thinking, 'This can't be true! This is... I'm supposed to think this is an enlightened master!"

He says he has demonic tendencies, that his questions resemble a Stalinist trial, and that he is influenced by propaganda from Romanian security services.

"And then I'm in this whole duel with the mind of a madman, thinking, 'What am I going to achieve from this?' Everything these people are going to do now it is to reveal its madness.”

Caught between his girlfriend's chilling revelations and denial from those at the top of MISA, Ashleigh's friend Ziggy, an aspirant dedicated to the organization has a moment of complete enlightenment and realizes that he is in a demented sect and the madness of its leader, precisely from the reaction of the sect's guru, hallucinatory compared to objective reality which he, Ziggy, experiences directly and which he relies on in sound judgment.

To the clichéd characterization that he has "demonic tendencies", which Bivolaru throws at all those who doubt him. Added to this are the cliché accusations of Stalinist and Securitist thinking (!) that the student born and living in the West has no way of understanding, to know them, much less to manifest them. How could any Western student be manipulated by the services of Romanian security services? What does this have to do with the aforementioned services? But for Bivolaru's mind, stuck somewhere through the years of Stalinism, obsessed with demons and the Illuminati, this seems to be part of his reality.

Added to this is the fixation with evidentiary bets, which Bivolaru invokes whenever he is suspected of something! This passage is truly illuminating for anyone who understands what it describes: a maniac obsessed with mental fixations, as well as perverse sexual fixations. His robot mind has no connection to reality, it is a sum of clichés that he manifests them whenever he is put into certain situations. Everything in this specimen's mind is a collection of hallucinations and paranoid obsessions: mania of the persecuted, mania of grandeur, mania of the messianic saviour, against the backdrop of sexual obsessions. For him, the woman is a good doll just to satisfy his perverse obsessions, and if she hesitates or refuses, she suddenly becomes a stupid, superficial and fickle woman or, worse, a "demonic cow". I quote from the podcast:

"If a woman has the opportunity to meet him and says 'no', then she is stupid, superficial and fickle and is destined for a lifetimes  of suffering and negative karma, and her soul will regress. But if she says "yes," she will basically have the whole world at her feet."

Here, Ashleigh immediately noticed these fixations in the minds of the guru and his acolytes!

Okay, this guy is sick and deranged, but how can those around him endlessly swallow the plate of demonic doubts, with illuminations, with changeable women, but especially with bets? The reaction of invoking huge bets in support of innocence, besides being an automatism, an obvious mental fixation, it is the clearest alarm signal because it is the most aberrant of all the products of Bivolaru's sick mind. The persecution mania following the terrible experiences can be understood of torture in the security prisons that he endured or the megalomania, developed as a result of an obsessive identification with the ultimate goal of spiritual pursuits, but this betting thing is the most bizarre of all, it really doesn't make any sense!

This explains why some students had the impression that they were receiving robot responses to their messages, a fact vehemently denied by Bivolaru. In their case, they actually received the answer from a real robot!

We've heard of a lot of individuals suffering from persecution mania or grandiosity mania, but where has it ever been heard of about an individual who, feeling suspected or accused of something, retaliates by invoking huge bets? "On a bet, isn't it?"

It's a mental template imprinted and developed, most likely from the childhood of an individual stuck at the level of a retarded child. Therefore, his henchmen who do his bidding have no excuse for not realizing who they are dealing with. They are simply unscrupulous human scum, vile by their persistence in selfishness and lies.

➤ This podcast offers the first opportunity to hear the story of a student who knew from the beginning why is she invited by the guru to Paris:

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

Andrea, who was invited to the guru from the school in Sweden, unlike Ashleigh, knows from the beginning what will happen.

"I felt well prepared. So I knew exactly what I was going to do... what I was getting myself into."

The teacher who invited her accompanies her on the journey and guides Andrea: "We went together and were practically together the whole time."

She is now waiting in the guru's apartment, along with several other women. During this time, they must be naked or wear just underwear.

"If you understand the attitude I went with, really wanting to experience everything fully, as it was, without wanting to do something different or to have it in a different way. So, for me, the point of the trip was to experience it exactly as it was.”

They wait a few days to be called in. Then, finally, it's Andrea's turn.

"When we started, he explained that different positions are connected to different chakras. 'Do you feel the energy here? Do you feel  this? Do you experience this?'"

"Are you aware of this?" So he really guided me through all of this.

She will have sex with him in seven different positions, which symbolize seven different energy centers in the body, the chakras.

"It wasn't a sexual encounter based on desire and attraction, but the focus was on activating the energy in the body and  how this was moving, more than in any kind of romantic relationship like this. For me, it  was an experience that It changed my  life quite a bit. I experienced a strong energetic activation throughout  my body and, as if my consciousness... It was a truly magical experience to experience states of  consciousness far beyond what I was used to.”

"It wasn't a sexual encounter based on desire and attraction, but the focus was on activating the energy in the body and how this was moving, more than in any kind of romantic relationship like this."

Not only is it an acknowledgement of "sexual initiation", but it emphasizes that the sexual act was not based on "endless love" or at least the "strong sexual attraction of polar opposite principles", which Bivolaru always invoked as absolutely necessary conditions necessary and indispensable for any tantric sexual act!

As previously shown, in this trafficking carried out to provide female students to the sexually obsessed Bivolaru, instructors also participated who mediated communication between the guru and the victims, carried out persuasion work with them and, in some cases, they accompanied the victims to the lair of the great tantric.

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

Andrea returns home to Sweden and notices that something has changed.

"There were a lot of women around me who had been there. So everyone came forward when I got home and... 'revealed.'" So, suddenly, we had a huge network of women who had also been there and where it was perfectly okay to talk to each other.

Here is a testimony about the trafficking of women organized and carried out at MISA/ATMAN: "a huge network of women who had also been there"!

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

Some time later, she is invited to the guru's house again. But this time she doesn't want to.

"I felt basically done. I don't think I felt a real need to go there again."

But she feels she has to do this so she can continue to be involved in school.

"And I agreed, because I thought it might not be a good idea to say 'no.' I wanted to continue  in school. "

and I felt like that was part of the package, to do well in school, it was something I had to do.  Because if I say "No, it could affect my future."  So she goes again:

"I choose to do this, even though I don't really want to. That was the general attitude, I guess. Just because  I'm afraid of something."

or I have resistance to something, it doesn't mean I shouldn't do that thing. Maybe  there's something else there to be gained."

This is how women are attracted and kept in Bivolaru's harem: at first, with the promise of spiritual fulfillment, but when this does not come anymore, for fear of losing a possible future chance! But this passage shows that it is not just an "initiation", but about a repeated use of these women for the pleasures of the guru, for an initiation is not repeated ( initio = beginning, Latin).

This misery is masked at MASS under the pompous name of "ritual." Ritual is something that is repeated according to a pattern, so it's not about love or spontaneity.

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

This time, the guru feels cold and critical and experiences none of the things he achieved the first time.

"I was about to get dressed and walk out the door when he said, 'You know, this is the last time we'll see each other.'" We'll never see each other again." I think that was the beginning of the end in a way. Now I'm really aware that "not everyone was as lucky as me."

"Disappointment is the exit from a delusion ," Bivolaru said, but he didn't think that this was true for him! Yes, the woman is lucky, because she has experienced the disappointment, the contradiction between imagination and reality, the only chance to escape from Bivolaru and MISA's paradise!

This passage also shows that Bivolaru always violates the principle that a tantric love fusion should not be performed if there is no intense love between the two lovers. For him, "transfiguring love" is just a routine, an automatism in which he consumes women on a conveyor belt. If Jesus had told the prostitute "you will be forgiven because you loved much," Bivolaru, on the other hand, doesn't even have this excuse.

➤ A student hears a story from a colleague that reveals that she went to Bivolaru without knowing what awaited her.

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

In Malmö, another young woman does something forbidden. She starts telling some of her closest friends.

"And then I heard that she was sent without knowing beforehand."

"Wait a minute, is that true? Someone who teaches beautiful things, who has written books about beautiful things, about how "That's what meetings between men and women should  be. How can he cross someone's boundaries?"

The Swede tells how, like Ashleigh, she has to put on a blindfold, hand over her passport and mobile phone. "Any communication with the outside world was completely cut off." It was then and there that she first learned that she would pass through a sexual initiation. She tells that she is convinced to have sex with the guru and that afterwards she must stand naked a room  and testify that it was voluntary.

"After all the initiation, in which she had exceeded her limits for several hours and cried... after all this, she wants to go home and sleep, she is told that it is needed to be filmed naked, in front of a camera and read some  testimonies about "how well  he did it. He was so manipulative, I was... I was disgusted."

 

➤ When news spreads in a Swedish school that some female students have been sexually abused by the guru, the jerks of instructors trying to quell the scandal and clean up the mess:

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

In October 2021, the school calls a general assembly in Malmö after Ziggy starts talking to more and more people  about what happened. He himself is escorted to the entrance.

"It's starting to get more and more stormy because the criticism is coming more and more openly."  Jörgen is one of the students there:

"Actually, I only went there because I wanted to talk about what happened to this woman in my class."

A teacher says there are women in Sweden who have gone through the ritual, who can testify that it is all voluntary.

"Many have had wonderful experiences, but very few have had an unpleasant experience." "The procedure is not always perfect."

Another teacher says that the ritual may not always be perfect.

"Even if you give your consent at every step, it won't be an easy thing to go through," she says.

"It doesn't make the procedure any easier, because it's an absolutely delicate, sensitive thing." It's an intense experience.

"There's no way to put it in a nice way. It's an intense experience." But, she says, she wouldn't be here if  she thought there was any abuse. "I know I wouldn't be here if I thought there was any abuse going on."

One participant says the women could have ended up in a chaotic state because meeting the guru is an strong experience.  Maybe the experience they went through isn't so bad after all?  Jörgen leaves the meeting in the middle.

"They simply made these women and their experiences seem suspect and minimized their immense suffering in this regard in various ways.” He has no intention of ever going back after what happened.

"The whole NATHA approach is about manipulating people to push them beyond their limits. You have no idea what's behind it, beneath  the surface of all this and how evil it is.”

"Come on, it wasn't that bad! It was actually good, there are thousands of testimonies to this effect, but didn't you feel that you are an egotist, "You're stupid and fickle, you're inhibited, you have a lot of blockages and you have demons! It's all your fault!" Where have I heard that before?

In an article on the official MISA website:

Two German journalists narrate for eight episodes and a bonus the story of self-proclaimed "victims" who participated at yoga classes organized within the Atman Federation and later "discovered", "in retrospect", that they had been involved "in a network of manipulation and abuse of power", that they would have even faced "psychological terror", and in the end, oh and alas, they had part of a "tantric initiation" (as if he had caught some deadly virus). Drama and suspense, hold on tight. ( archive )

Here too, a behavioural pattern is observed, manifested by different people from different countries and backgrounds, which shows that it is actually a tactic learned in meetings with instructors. Not only the guru gives clichéd lines, but also the instructors, even the spokespersons of MISA. The same school of lying, manipulation, hiding or avoiding the truth. The devil should take notes from MISA classes! A demented man who inoculated his dementia into hundreds of instructors, this is the true spiritual school of Bivolaru!

There could not have been a more fitting ending than the revelation of another student from Sweden:

Yoga Sect part 3 -  The Ritual , quote:

Emma was Ragnar's student and at the same time had a sexual relationship with him. One day, she goes to town.

"It was a summer day, I chose to go to a musical event. People from many different categories and backgrounds, singing together. And then it was like an awakening: "Exactly, this is how I should feel. It should be warmth. Exactly!" 

I let myself be manipulated into something that is not true for me, but is claimed to be the truth.

"Wait a minute, what the hell is going on? Why am I involved in this? I'm just leaving. I don't want  anything to do with this anymore."

I knew it was over. I needed to get back to a place where I could recover.

If you are in MISA, you must cut the knot of the bond in one fell swoop. If you hesitate and postpone, looking for justifications, you have no escape!

 Episode 4 of the Swedish podcast "Secta Yoga" has been released ( link ). The transcript can be read at this address . If previous episodes included accounts of the experiences of former students from the previous period of the arrest of ATMAN leaders, this episode contains the account of a reporter who was undercover at a tantric retreat in Sweden, as well as its interviews with current instructors as well as former students.

Obviously, the participants did not know in advance about everything that was going to happen, as it was a retreat in which overcoming limits and abandoning new experiences, and especially love, would be tested.

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Reporter : We don't know what will happen during the retreat. No program was sent in advance, just a theme:

"The courage to love". And then a packing list....

– ... With things we should take with us, which reveal something.

Yoga clothes, party clothes and especially for women:

– Sexy lingerie. A red dress for a ceremony and a white dress for a white ceremony.

But before everything starts, she has to sign a paper:

– A kind of contract by which we ourselves assume responsibility for our limits. This contract stipulates, also, that we can undress in certain contexts, that there can be nudity. So basically, it's a contract whereby  they waive all responsibility. Although no one has told us exactly what will happen in the coming days, the message is clear:

– Let's unite everyone in the belief that there really are no boundaries. That the personal limits you have are those of fear.

comment :

Have foreign branches abandoned the practice of requiring participants to take mandatory oaths of preservationof secrecy BEFORE their admission to some activities? It seems like a facade manoeuvre because, in certain situations where they are  "special" IDs are required, the practice of requesting photos in a swimsuit (conspiratorially called "swimsuit photos") continues.

"camp-type photos", which are taken in "working points on site", archive ),  after they had specified in a previous announcement that, for registration in the spring camp, such documents were not required  of photos ( archived ad ). 

This is while, for registration in the same camp, Romanians are still required to take the traditional mandatory photos in a swimsuit ( archive ) for the entire camp, not just for "special initiations".

The special HAM-SAH method in the summer camp is presented as secret ( archive ) and, although notes are allowed, it is forbidden access by electronic means of registration ( announcement ), so according to tradition, an oath of secrecy is taken. Conclusion: dust in the eyes!

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Reporter : At the tantric retreat in the forest, there is a session on the topic of "tantric wisdom".

"We don't want to emphasize this kind of consent stuff all the time, because sometimes that tendency is created, I know there's a tendency in society to always look at what's problematic and everyone is like a predator..."

A professor explains that today's great focus on everything that happens with consent may lie on the path  to what the soul longs for. 

"If we make everything very safe, very politically correct, it wouldn't necessarily be what your soul desires."

comment :

"Uu, consent is a fixation of modern society, ever since MeeToo. If we ask for consent every time, at every step, for any nothing, then where is the surprise, what is the salt and pepper of Tantra? How do they overcome then the limits of the damn ego, which stands in the way of your happiness? Maybe your little soul wants you to be a little abused, slapped, humiliated, trampled on, done in all sorts of ways, have dirty talk, be a little kinky yourself!”

If everything isn't done "very safely, very politically correct", then the police will catch you and you'll go to jail for a well-deserved time! Those at MISA/ATMAN don't give a damn about the consent of others, while they still scream that their rights are being violated!

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat The retreat will last a few more days. The teachers haven't told them what will happen, only that their limits will be tested.

Our reporter is with us:

– At first they said: “Now are a few friendly days” and “then you will see”, roughly, what things will happen, says reporter Carmen Dickson. They are divided into groups, men separately, women separately.

– One of the women on the team showed us how to move sexy, then we practiced in pairs of women and we danced laps, for each other, you could say... it was a strange context, but boundaries are always pushed forward  to what is strange and I found myself in this situation quite quickly, but I felt safe that there were  only women there.

It's a preparation for what will happen later in the evening...

– For women to dance for men and act like they're kings, to sexy music, you could say. 

In the evening there was a romantic dinner. We decided that our reporter would not participate in the dance that would take place after dinner.

–  Then everyone would have dressed a little more elegantly; we women would have worn colourful dresses.

"The Walk of Angels"

The women have now also received information about what will happen the next day. Then they will dance again for the men, but  this time in underwear and then the men will get another surprise.

– Then the plan is for a woman to lie naked in front of everyone, with fruit on her body, and we, the other women, We need   to take a fruit and give it to the men in the room. 

We decided that our reporter would stop here, go to her room, and go home the next morning.

But during dinner there will be more surprises...

– It was time for something they call “the angel walk.” All the men stood in two rows, and the women walked among men. The women simply closed their eyes and were sent between the men who touched them, so they had to to walk by, close their eyes and feel the hands on their bodies. Somewhere around here I started to feel uncomfortable.

comment :

As you can see, MISA is the school where women are taught to please men, who are "kings". Their ideal in life is how to please men, to be "initiators", to arouse them from an "erotic" point of view. Intellectual awakening is not desirable, as one may begin to think and some demonic doubts may arise. But for women to be "initiators", they must first be, in turn, "initiated by a competent tantric guide".

The goal is obvious: for women with "shakti potential" to end up in Bivolaru's bed! The rest is just the setting for the play. This is evident from the fact that at MISA only women have to overcome their sexual limits, men only have to push the limits on karma yoga construction sites...

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Reporter : This was my chance to get out of dinner, so in the morning I packed my bags and went looking for one of the teachers,  to talk to.

"I think your soul came here because it's 'ready for the challenge,'" the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.  The teacher explains that it would have been better if she had stayed.

"Sometimes something strange can happen, but you feel like the intention is for men who want to give you love." 

"You also have to learn to accept that ," the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.

– "You have to turn difficult things into something good. And that's exactly why we do some 'surprise moments',  so we have a chance to practice these things ," the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.

– And have the courage to dare to be in it. And the courage to love. “Be brave, accept and dare to feel trust” ,  the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.

– And that my courage would then be to find myself in this difficult situation and to overcome my limits.

comment :

Who determines how far the limits can be pushed and when it is permissible to do so? What is the point of free will anyway in this case? What does love have to do with crossing sexual boundaries, that is, debauchery? Let us not be surprised that, in MISA, free will is confused with the ego, since consent is considered to be a fixation of limited modern society.

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Religion researcher Tova Olsson describes how the purpose of retreats is often to challenge yourself, and that makes it  difficult to say "NO". 

– Your participation there depends to some extent on what others are doing in this social context, simply put. Then you might be disappointed in yourself if you can't do these things that others in the room can do and they seem to feel so good about it, or something like that, because if you don't have the experience that others have had, it's because you're a loser or you're stuck. 

  comment :

The researcher correctly understands:

if exceeding the limits of some violates the limits of others, then it violates their free will. 

The solution: exceeding one's own limits must primarily take into account one's own free will, not others. 

Self-improvement must come from within, harmoniously, at the right time and place. But overcoming one's own limits cannot be done just like that, but only those limits that oppose it must be overcome for spiritual evolution. A prostitute exceeds all limits, but that does not mean spiritual evolution!

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

We have decided that our reporter will no longer take Tantra classes. Before leaving, she asks her teachers about  the accusations against Bivolaru.

"Why would these women have experienced something that would make them say these things?" asks reporter Carmen Dickson.

She has a special meeting with two of them.

– Is there a more special sexual practice, like the one they experienced? I know, they talked about something like initiations and stuff  like that?, asks reporter Carmen Dickson.

– He's a tantric master, so I hope he does more than just meditation , says one of the teachers.

comment :

"I hope he's giving them a good beating, just don't call them all the way to Paris for nothing!" But what about those who didn't want to take the Tantra course, but only the yoga one (like Ashleigh)? There is a statement given to investigators even by the guru, who cancels the pathetic attempt at exculpation on the part of the instructor, I quote:

"They came to talk about yoga, and for some the desire to make love arose, and so we made love." ( source )

So Bivolaru himself claims that the purpose of the visit to Paris was "to talk about yoga"! Only women?! When the bastard instructors seek justifications for the "Guide"'s behavior and erect a statue of him as a great hero of tantric masculinity, we should not be surprised that they sent the female students to the guru as if to the communal bull, to be bred!

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

She says that some women met the guru and made love to him.

- In love it's also difficult, and sometimes, you know, you get really angry, one of the teachers answers. And, as in any love relationship, you can get angry, she says.

- And then, of course, everything can turn around, it can turn upside down, and then you can get very upset, one of the teachers answers.

Today, she says, the social climate is allergic to everything.

- The social environment is so allergic to everything. And there's a whole machine that sets itself in motion, supports and creates drama.

"I mean, as soon as someone feels angry about something, there's a whole mechanism that supports them, just for turning the situation into a drama ," one of the teachers replies.

comment :

If there had only been women who were initially eager to make love to the guru and who were later disappointed, then there would have been the image of Bivolaru the God of Sex, with little failures here and there, openly hated by the society jealous of him, envied by the same company secretly, but this was not a reason to take the policy, but at most a reason to break up! 

How many cases have you heard of where women sexually disappointed by men go to the police?

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

The other professor says that the women accusing Bivolaru had sexual relations with him voluntarily, but then  they realized they could gain something by accusing him of abuse.

- And then they make money, promote their own pages, use the courses, talk seriously about their own businesses, one of the teachers replies. "You can become an influencer and open your own yoga studio ," she says.

- You can become an influencer. You know, you get a lot of support and then you think, actually, "I can teach this too."  So you'd say,   "Look, come to my yoga, it's safe, these guys are the bad guys." Because every one of those girls "Those who testify did so,"   one of the teachers replies.

- Okay. So you're saying it was consensual?  asks the reporter.

– Yes, totally consensual!  one of the teachers answers.

comment :

False and aberrant motivations and gibberish, like MISA, that are at odds with each other! You can open your own yoga studio without suing Bivolaru, as so many women who left from MISA did and teach exactly according to the courses stolen by Bivolaru from the specialized literature. If you sue Bivolaru and you say, "he's the bad one, I'm the good one, come to me!", the clients will understand that you are teaching Bivolaru's yoga, that is, the one whom you accuse and they will ask "how good is your yoga, if the same yoga turned the guru into an abuser?"  Or they will ask "how is it possible that a sexual abuser and obsessive person could have created such good yoga, as you say?"

On the other hand, the shocking experience shared may be useful to other women who have also gone through something similar, which is why for which some victims, even from the trial against Bivolaru (Ashleigh, Bec Sonkkila), became personal development counsellors and therapists in the field of psychology.

Ashleigh Frecklton has had an account  https://www.instagram.com/cultawareness_/  since September 2020, in which she offers information and advice to victims of sects, and only in 2022 did she file complaints against Bivolaru (details here ). Bec Sonkkila was expelled from the school in 2016 after reporting to its leaders about reports of female students abused by Bivolaru in Paris. It was not until 2022 that she filed complaints with the French police.

And the reports about Bivolaru's abuses have been around since 2012 in Italy ( video ) and 2013 in Finland ( video ), so It cannot be said that these women in the trial in France are the ones who triggered the "persecution" against Bivolaru.

And the statement that "the relations were completely consensual" completely nullifies the credibility of this instructor, because he was not a witness at the scene and had no way of knowing how it all happened, so his statement is biased.

The following passage reinforces this finding:

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

During the time our reporter was involved in the movement, one thing struck us: no one mentions Bivolaru by name. There are no pictures of him.

- It's not like we're hiding anything, as you can see, we talk when you ask, but it's a little difficult to bring it up, one of the teachers answers.

The professor says that Bivolaru is the most incredible, remarkable and humble person he has ever met.

- Well, to me, he's the most incredible, remarkable, and humble person I've ever met in my life, one of the teachers answers.  At the same time, they don't tell the students that they are being taught his teachings.

- For me, I recognize him as a spiritual guide, but it's not something we teach, what we tell students, a teacher answers.

comment :

"He is the humblest, the best, the most remarkable, but we hide that from the students and the public."  If everything is so good and beautiful, why hide? You only hide when you are ashamed of something bad.

The podcast touches on the issue of the defence of sects and neo-tantric groups by some organizations, under the pretext of that their rights must be protected from societal reactions and even from former members.

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Tova Olsson believes, like many of her research colleagues, that it is good to provide a more nuanced picture of new religious movements, those that mainstream society often calls sects.

– They somehow wanted to portray them in a very sensationalist way and that's where religious researchers wanted to intervene and simply to provide a more balanced perspective. 

But when it comes to MISA, she believes the problem is that researchers don't listen to those who have left the movement and testify about abuses.

– What is perhaps a little worrying when it comes to MISA is that there are not so many different perspectives, but that all existing research on MISA is quite permissive and that there are very few critical perspectives.

comment :

Defenders of cults believe that society has a narrow view of cults because it lacks an insider's perspective. But the worst part is, at the same time, they blame those who left the sects, because their perspective would only be negative!

But how should it be, since they left? If the outlook was only positive, they wouldn't have left! Unlike society, current cult members, and their defenders, those who left cults have both perspectives and are the only ones who have both an inside and an outside perspective. Moreover, the outside perspective: It has two aspects: BEFORE ENTERING the sect and AFTER EXITING the sect.

Of course, this does not mean that those who have left the sect automatically hold the absolute perspective. But the reasons why some people left the sect should be investigated on a case-by-case basis. The same is true in this case: some praise MISA and its leader and consider them "divine", others have left the group due to various dissatisfactions, but there are also some former students who consider themselves victims and have filed complaints with the authorities.

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

The researcher who has the greatest influence on Bivolaru's yoga movement is Massimo Introvigne, who heads the private research institute CESNUR in Italy. At the same time, he has openly taken a stand for the organization and made it clear that she was suffering from unjust persecution.

Introvigne : If we talk about Bivolaru's accusations, that is, the fact that he convinced people to sleep with him,  there are countless ways that men and women convince the opposite sex to sleep with them. So, of course, Influence is a fact of life.

comment :

Not all women were convinced by Bivolaru to sleep with him. The women who claimed him, at first, did not want to do it sex with him, but were "convinced" to give in to him through fear and collective pressure. In situations where there were women who wanted to go through the "initiation", but were disappointed, as sometimes happens in life, "a fact of life" (the case of the student named Andrea, who reported in previous episodes  🔗 ), they did not file a complaint with the police! 

On the other hand, let's not forget that there are cases of marital rape in the courts. Women convinced to marry but who, at certain times, they were not "convinced" to fulfil their "marital duty"!

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Introvigne :  I'm pretty sure it's a witch hunt based on their opinions rather than any crime that he could   have committed and I think what is at issue here is sacred eroticism.

He is also sceptical about the accusations against the guru. He believes that even when a student starts a yoga school  , knows that erotic initiations are part of the teachings.

- When you join such movements, you know that they preach that the valid path to certain spiritual benefits is an  erotic initiation. I mean, it's a sexual initiation group in sacred, neotantric eroticism. Why are you joining MISA?

comments :

"When you enter MISA, you know it's a Tantra school, that's why you join!" Nonsense! MISA/ATMAN presents itself as an esoteric integral yoga school and only some enrol directly in Tantra courses without having gone through the "yoga department". 

Not even the page presenting the Tantra course on the ATMAN federation website shows that it is about sexuality ( link ).  Tantra is presented as "a science that transforms all life experiences into spirituality "  into spiritual realizations ”), and the two postures performed by couples dressed in loose but fairly long clothes,  I don't understand "what Tantra is about".

Only at advanced levels, it says "Secrets of Tantric Touch and Massage", "Esoteric Tantric Eroticism" and "Secrets of Relationships" within the tantric couple", followed by "the tantric principles of conscious life", hence the word "sexual"  it's not even mentioned, just "eroticism". In short, the fence is painted on the outside, only after you enter do you find out what you've gotten yourself into!

And sometimes, it's only when you get to Paris... The podcast says, and I quote: 

"The former members I spoke to previously had a different picture. They didn't know what awaited them further in their spiritual education."  when they started yoga or tantra in school. Instead, they say the secrets permeate the entire movement.”

That's right: if everything is out in the open and everyone knows in advance what they're getting into, why so much secrecy?

 

As for the "witch hunt", there are lots of Tantra and "sacred eroticism" courses everywhere, but only some groups are accused of abuses. Why aren't they all accused? That defeats Introvigne's argument that Sacred eros is the reason for rejection by society and persecution. We are no longer in the Middle Ages!

Introvigne's so-called "arguments", which place the blame exclusively on "disgruntled apostates" are of the same level with the prejudices that claim that "the victims are guilty of rape, because they wanted it and provoked it."

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Introvigne disputes the human trafficking charges because he claims he knows the women went there willingly.

- They went to France willingly. And then they realized, but sometimes only after they had this experience of a erotic initiations, that they had been psychologically manipulated by a chain of people in the movement.

reporter : We spoke to women who told us they travelled to meet the guru and ended up in an compromised situation of their own free will. They were brought to him blindfolded, not knowing where they were, not allowed to leave, and their passports were taken away, wallets and phones. Not everyone knew that the meeting was about having sex with the guru.

comment :

Even those situations in which some women refused on the spot to have sex with Bivolaru demonstrate that they did not know why they were invited and taken to Paris. Why take so many days off, make such a long journey to Paris (significantly, no local women were invited!), then to stay crammed for so many days in that Waiting House, to refuse the "big chance" of spiritual evolution, the supreme initiation, even at the last moment?

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

Introvigne and several other researchers reject the testimonies of women who were trafficked to the guru, calling them apostates. Introvigne's conclusions are used by the yoga school as evidence that they are subject to slander and defamation. He has promised to serve as an expert witness for several of the accused yoga teachers, both in Finland and France.

Speaking of "apostates", those at MISA are not being judged because of the grievances of those who left it, but because of the complaints of some of the women who consider themselves abused. In the files of the French prosecutors there is no articles from ExMisa, but complaints of abuse, rape and exploitation from women, with evidence gathered from research and surveillance for over a year. Obviously, not all the women who left MISA were abused or consider themselves so.

Yoga Sect - Part 4: The Retreat

While new student enrol in classes at Natha schools, others are relieved to be on the other side.

– There are so many incredibly beautiful things and also so much abuse of power.

"They completely avoided me from simply asking questions," says Andrea, a former Natha student.

As for those remaining in the sect, I quote:

–  I can perfectly understand why they are doing what they are doing now, that is, denying that certain things happened. We are talking about people who "They've been there half their lives. We're talking about people's dreams and that their lives depend on it ," says Meng, a former student.

 

Translated transcript from Swedish to English

https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/har-kan-du-lasa-programmet-yogasekten-den-andliga-vagen-del-1

The Yoga Sect – The Spiritual Path | Part 1

– We're sitting in this room, just us women. And we're going to talk about the little dance performance we're going to have for the men. Act like they're kings, we're going to do it.

It is November 2024. A tantric retreat is taking place in the forest next to a lake.

– One of the women who is on the team there showed us how to move. A lap dance, you could say.

A week full of surprises.

– Then the teachers tell us that first we have to come in red dresses and dance. Then we have to take them off. And underneath we have to wear sexy underwear.

The teachers belong to an international yoga movement, which here in the Nordic countries calls itself Natha. The movement's followers feel misunderstood. Vulnerable.

There is a story that they are persecuted by evil forces because of their teachings about spirituality and eroticism.

And now some of their top leaders have been arrested by police.

But the yoga school is trying to continue its operations as usual, like here at the tantra retreat in the forest.

– And no one knows it, but I'm there as a reporter.

Our reporter has been a student of the yoga movement for more than six months to find out as much as possible - from the inside.

– How it really works within Natha.

But this story actually begins much earlier, in 2005, in Stockholm, in the white stone building of the Supreme Court.

– So it was a case where Romania had requested the extradition of a Romanian who was residing in Sweden.

Johan Munck and his fellow judges take their seats in the courtroom.

– He looked a bit original. Pretty wild hair and beard.

They've got an odd case on their desk.

– This much is clear that he was a yoga teacher and yoga leader. He had many important assignments within the yoga movement. He led courses with thousands of people.

 The bearded yoga guru's name is Gregorian Bivolaru, known as Grieg – and he has a strange story. He is on the run from the authorities in his native Romania.

– He had witnesses with him who testified that according to the witnesses, he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

The Supreme Court concludes that the guru needs Sweden's protection.

– You can't extradite a person if there is a risk of persecution. A certain amount of opinion had been whipped up against him in Romania.

Romania claims he sexually abused a 17-year-old yoga student and used the power he has over his followers in other ways.

– They said he had committed human trafficking.

By the sea

It's 2018. Gregorian Bivolaru has had asylum in Sweden for over ten years. And his yoga movement, which in the Nordic countries calls itself Natha, is attracting more and more people who are looking for alternative ways of looking at reality.

– It's a place near the sea. There are animals, there are beautiful pine trees.

His teachings are being spread at several schools in Sweden, including here, on a farm by the sea.

– There are a few small cabins, there is a larger house, there are single beds.

In the yoga room, a fire crackles in the fireplace.

– Not so much decoration. The focus is on it being stripped back and minimalist. And a place for inner exploration, or calm. Or something like that.

Emma is here for the first time. There will be a silent retreat. A weekend in total silence.

– It was very nice. It was the first time I was on something like this. It was such a wonderful mix of being alone in silence, in beautiful nature. A little yoga. Quite a lot of meditation. So the meditation retreat itself, I thought it was good.

She has had a turbulent year when she ends up here. She has resigned from her job as an engineer and is looking for something else in life.

– A huge change in my life, from having studied at a technical university, being very much like this…”how does the world work, how do things work?”. Being quite mathematical, rational. And then it was just like it didn't work. Performance anxiety that had kind of run amok. And then I started looking for other things.

At the Natha yoga school, Emma learns about yoga and tantra, and finds a different kind of community than she is used to.

– So this is very seductive, in a way. Because…I also came from a place where life didn't really work.

The teacher is older and has many years of experience in yoga and tantra. We will call him Ragnar. He has been trained by one of Natha's highest leaders.

– I had a feeling during some of the meditations that the person holding it had been watching. It felt like there was a contact search. To which I was like, “Oh.” I meditate on that a little bit, “why do I think like that, that the teacher would kind of have an extra eye on me?”, like.

– I wanted to take charge of my life.

As usual, musician Kristoffer started the day with a coffee and a cigarette.

– I wanted to do something serious. Understand how things work.

He too feels that he has finally found a place where he feels at home.

– I was so ecstatic when I got there. Just smelling of my own happiness, as it were. The love, the appreciation for the other, for oneself. In combination with just the simple fact that you do it and get to do it with others. That's what I've always sought.

Kristoffer understands that what Natha teaches is something completely different from the yoga accounts he has followed on social media.

– If you learn a lot on Facebook, Youtube, this is like suddenly being at one of the highest universities, as well. To listen and learn from people who have spent 20-25 years in these concepts and who have gone deep into the original writings.

The Guru on the Wall

In the yoga room there is a picture of the movement's founder, Gregorian Bivolaru.

– “Huh? Is he..? Yes, but that's what a guru looks like then”, like this. But that, well… I don't know.

The yoga guru is protected by his Swedish residence permit, but other countries want to put him on trial.

 Teacher Ragnar is deeply involved in his case. And he has written a study of what he calls persecution and slander by the school's spiritual leader.

The guru has taken a Swedish name, Magnus Aurolsson, and is registered at an address in Karlskrona. But despite this, none of the students here have met him. They are told that he is in hiding.

– They talked about Grieg. They also had a picture of him in the meditation hall as the guru, like in this organization, and they talked about him as if he was, well, kind of an enlightened man, that he had special spiritual abilities, that he wasn't a person who could just show up or something, because there was some kind of search for him. And that you couldn't talk about where he was, and stuff like that. Which was very special.

But they learn that there is a way to connect with the guru.

– There was a woman there too who was from the organization, who had a workshop on something. And so at some point so…we who were there then, were invited to take a picture, preferably in underwear or a bikini, and send it to this Grieg. Because apparently he was absolutely fantastic at reading your aura…like. Or your spiritual path, or something like that. And then I felt that but…”huh? Are you kidding?” Why do you have to wear less clothes for him to do that? No…no…I’m absolutely not interested in this. Where I was then I felt a bit that…”well, it seems like this with all these traditions that there’s a crazy guru somewhere who kind of teaches good things but is also crazy”, like.

Emma feels that there are many good things about the school.

– It was a whole new world that had opened up to me. A kind of inner, searching world.

The school claims to teach authentic yoga and tantra, ancient traditions with roots in India.

– This is big. And it is beautiful. And it is love. And it is awareness. And it is the encounter and the beautiful and divine in it.

Yoga with physical exercises and breathing techniques. Tantra with rituals, meditation and energy exercises with the aim of embracing life fully, where every experience, every feeling and every relationship is seen as an opportunity for spiritual development.

– I buy everything straight away and just…this is kind of the truth and these guys and the old men and the “old women” have it in their heads. All that really became that. A fucking yardstick for what I should be, how you should be and what was true.

A secret doctrine

The school has a system where students gradually learn more and more of the teachings. The techniques that are at a higher level are kept secret until they reach that level in their education.

– There are very clear hierarchies and some kind of spiritual development ladder. “I have reached this point and therefore I can talk to you about this.”

The teachings of Gregorian Bivolaru are written down. But the students are not allowed to see the entire writing.

– I thought that was a bit strange. What is so strange about this that I can't get my hands on a whole book?

They receive a few copied pages at each lesson.

– There was a lot of talk about feminine and masculine, that these are energies that all people have within themselves. But there were also...there were also parts that were like...women should inspire men and you do that by being sensual and soft. In a lot of this material, there was text and then there were also pictures. And there were pictures of...a lot of naked women...a lot of pictures of breasts, a lot of pictures of very large breasts. And this was kind of motivated by the idea of ​​awakening some kind of eros, or some kind of sexual energy.

That the course material is partly about sexuality is not surprising to Emma. Sexual practices are part of many branches of contemporary tantra.

– But there was something about this that just “ooph, this feels like it’s coming from the wrong place. What the hell is going on here? There’s something fishy about it.”

"I met an extraordinary man, that managed to trigger my curiosity about what we can do more in our life, our boundaries, how can we push these limits further and further in our life?"

In a YouTube video, a man close to the guru speaks.

"And this man, by his name Gregorian Bivolaru, Grieg as I use to call him, everything he told me makes perfect sense".

His name is Mihai Stoian and he has been involved in creating the teaching material with the naked women.

"And under the attentive guidance of our teacher Grieg, we started to write what today is known as the esoteric integral tantra course. A course that now is the widest and most complex system of learning tantra in our modern time."

He is known as one of the highest-ranking teachers in the school.

"Tantra is very bold system, of going beyond any preconceived idea and know yourself for what you truly are."

Mihai Stoian spends a lot of time on a farm in Denmark, where he trains new yoga and tantra teachers.

"To bring this amazing, genuine spiritual science into the world, which is tantra."

One of those he has trained is the Swedish teacher Ragnar.

In Malmö, Stockholm and Copenhagen, and in countries such as Uruguay, Japan, Germany and the USA, the ideas of the yoga movement are spreading.

"By hundreds of highly specialized teachers."

Sexual practices are seen as a way to reach higher spiritual states.

"The challenge to the ego is great, when meeting the tantric system for what it is."

And students are encouraged to send scantily clad pictures to the guru so he can read their aura.

Ashleigh sends pictures

– They're making it seem like it's really special, almost like it's kind of the hidden secrets of the universe.

Ashleigh attends the yoga school in London. She is new to the movement, but she is dedicated and has absorbed the most important message.

- The whole point is to crush the ego, destroy the ego.

She has to crush her ego. And every time something at school feels wrong, that's what she tells herself.

- You are sort of taught that your doubts, or resistance to certain things, is your ego.

 That's how she reasons when she allows herself to be photographed in lingerie to participate in a tantric retreat.

- It´s never a nice feeling having to strip down to your underwear. And stand there, having your mugshot taken. It doesn´t feel right. But that's my ego, so just ignore it. Just squash it.

One day, a woman within the movement calls Ashleigh.

- And, you know, in quiet, whispery tones, she's saying "you've been invited".

She has been invited to meet the spiritual leader, Grieg. Ashleigh doesn't know what the meeting is about. Only that she will be allowed to travel to the guru's hideout - and that she is not allowed to tell anyone else about it.

- And you don't have to go, but it's integrated for you.

The woman says she doesn't have to go, but at the same time makes it clear that it's part of her spiritual path.

- I didn't really feel a choice. When the spiritual guide says it's integrated for you, then you should do it.

Karma Yoga

– I just felt, “wow, what cutting-edge knowledge, and like expertise.”

After attending yoga for a while, Kristoffer is invited to move into the school by the sea.

– Live there, live there. Up at five, every morning. Two hours of meditation, two hours of yoga then.

Then it's time for physical labor. Working for free, karma yoga, is an important part of the movement's ideology.

– We build a shed, build fences, haul logs, lumber. We carry branches, saw and fell trees, work in flowerbeds sometimes, take care of the garden sometimes. Cut the grass. Clean. Just regular work.

Emma is tasked with helping with the retreats that the school holds. It is often through them that new people find their way to the school.

– So, it's an entrance into the school, these silent retreats. There are always a lot of new people at them. Because people are looking for this. And that's a good thing. But it's also an entrance to an organization. Which I've felt in retrospect that I want to warn about.

 The insults

It's early morning. Kristoffer forces himself out of bed.

– The meditation starts at five o'clock. If you haven't gotten up and are kind of done and are basically sitting with your eyes closed at five o'clock, you get scolded. "How the hell are you thinking... but how the hell can you even look yourself in the eye, you are... it's pathetic. Don't you want to be adults? Don't you want this? What the hell is wrong with you?" From the second you set foot here, you are subordinate to the great wisdom and knowledge of what is right and wrong and you are now going to be chastised, says Kristoffer.

– It often came very suddenly. It was connected to something that you didn't do right, like. Then there was a reprimand and it became a really bad atmosphere. And then you would stand there and feel ashamed, like. I specifically remember getting a real reprimand for picking moss off a stone and like this... "your place is in the kitchen, if only that", like that. And then we sat and took care of each other afterwards. There was a strange sense of community in that, says Emma.

Pictures for the guru

– You have to give yourself up to something higher. The fire. Wake the fire, wake the fire, wake the fire, wake the fire, wake the fire, wake the fire, wake the fire…it's like a sword you drive into yourself. I have to "purge" myself, I have to purify myself, I have to become holier if you say, I have to kind of fight this. The meditation. The yoga. The karma. Everything was almost a torment. But it was right.

Kristoffer looks at the portrait of the guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, standing by the fireplace.  
The man they have never met – but who nevertheless dominates their lives.

– This thing about how you should be, what you learn, all that... it probably comes from him. Because he is the one who created everything.

In 2019, Grieg, the guru, has had Sweden's protection for over 14 years.

At the same time, a photo of him is being circulated around the world. He is wearing an orange shirt, a white beard and wispy bangs. Through his aviator glasses, he looks straight into the camera with a serious look.

Gregorian Bivolaru has been placed on Interpol's wanted list.

He is again accused of human trafficking.

Abducted in Paris

While police in several countries are searching for the yoga guru, Ashleigh from Australia steps off the train in springtime Paris.

- I arrive at Gare du Nord. Walking through the station.

She has been instructed to travel here to meet the guru. She does not know what the meeting is about, only that it is part of her spiritual path.

- There's a car parked on the street. There'sa girls standing next to the car. And there´sa male driver.

Outside, a woman is waiting by a car. She opens the trunk.

- The girl reaches into the boot of the car and brings out a rose and some chocolates and she says "these are from him".

The flowers and chocolates are from him.

Ashleigh gets in the car. The man at the wheel drives out of the city center.

The woman asks for Ashleigh's passport and phone. She takes out the SIM card and wraps everything in foil.

Ashley gets to put on a hat and a pair of sunglasses, with electrical tape on the inside.

She can't see anything. She doesn't know where she's going. And now she's starting to have doubts.

- This just doesn't feel right.

Emma, ​​Kristoffer and Ragnar are actually named something else.

Ragnar writes to us that he is well aware that he has been inconsiderate, has behaved harshly and heartlessly, and that he regrets it.

We have reached out to Gregorian Bivolaru through his lawyer, who declined to comment on our information. Bivolaru has never been convicted of human trafficking and denies sexually abusing the underage yoga student. She testified in his favor in the Supreme Court, and as an adult has continued to deny that the guru had sex with her.

Natha's schools in Sweden write to us, among other things, that they strongly distance themselves from all forms of abuse, abuse of power and manipulation. That everything takes place within the framework of safe and consent-based education, where there is no explicit sexual activity. And that they have no legal, administrative or financial connection to Gregorian Bivolaru. They also write that it is always free to end your participation.

 

 

The Yoga Sect – Sacred Eroticism | Part 2

– It was very deep theories. It wasn't just a yoga class where you kind of did physical exercises. And that inspired me.

They are a chosen few, those who step through the gates of a farm in the Danish countryside.

– I was looking for deeper theories, deeper knowledge.

Meng has been part of the Natha yoga movement for a few years when he decides to take the next step – he will become a tantra teacher. The Danish farm where the training is held is called Paradiset.

– And then the idea was that you would go on stage and talk a little about yourself. Who you were, and your interests. And why you were there, for example.

The students come from many different countries. Some from the movement's country of origin, Romania.

– And then it was a bit of a…culture shock for me to see that some women from Romania, for example, included a striptease. For them it was kind of very natural. Yeah, so I was a little, maybe a little shocked by it. But then you get used to it eventually.

But there are things that Meng doesn't yet know. About the yoga movement and its guru.

– I didn't understand then, like it was...that women were sent to him.

The curious yoga teacher

– I came across people in my yoga circle who belonged to this organization. I became a little curious.

Tova Olsson has been practicing yoga her entire adult life.

– I practice different body positions every day. So I meditate every day, chant mantras every day and I also teach yoga and what we might call classical tantra, more philosophy and meditation-based, using different meditation techniques and using mantras and so on. So that's a big part of my private life.

Tova is not only a yoga teacher. She is also a doctoral student in religious studies.

– There are many different yoga traditions, there are many different tantra traditions. These are collective terms.

She is particularly interested in how these concepts from ancient Indian philosophy have taken on completely new meanings in our time. And she begins researching Gregorian Bivolaru's yoga movement, which claims to teach profound traditional and authentic tantra – but which focuses heavily on sex.

– Historically, that's not what tantra has been about. And then I started poking around a bit and talking to people. Where do these ideas come from? How do they spread? Where do I find them? Where do they originate? What kind of school is this?

The Journey to Paradise

At the Danish farm Paradiset, training for new tantra teachers is underway. The students have gathered in the old barn that has been converted into a yoga room.

– One of the teachings in school is to find harmony between men and women. And I could experience that, in the first years, that it did me good.

Meng from Malmö has had a bumpy journey here. After being skeptical of spirituality earlier in life, he has found home in the school's teachings and community.

– I was a seeker, you could say. Dissatisfied with life. Like with work, with relationships. All of this was very closed in my perspective. So I got to experience that there is a greater meaning to life.

In Natha, he doesn't just learn yoga poses and meditation. He forms close bonds with people. It's almost like he becomes a new version of himself.

– More confident. I had better self-esteem. And I could talk to women without feeling any kind of anxiety.

To be accepted into the tantra teacher training program, Meng and the others have gone through a special admissions process.

– You would send pictures. Of yourself in...yes. In your underwear. And they would approve.

This is nothing new for Meng. Even back home in Malmö, students have been encouraged to send pictures to the movement's leader, Gregorian Bivolaru.

– You could ask him for advice, about different things. About relationships. And then the idea was that he needed to read your aura. And every time you would ask for advice, you would send him pictures. For men, it was like, standing in your underwear. And for women, it's like, bikini clothes. And...because everyone else was doing it...I didn't think much of it.

Some of the students receive letters from Grieg, with good advice and answers to their questions. Some women receive something much greater - an invitation from the spiritual leader.

– I just went and waited for the invitation. Because I knew it would come at some point.

Andrea is a student at the school in Malmö at the same time as Meng.

– I felt almost euphoric, that I had found the right one. The esoteric part, the development, the self-development and the spiritual development, which was fantastic. And then to end up with people who had the same aspiration and ambition as me, to really develop. It was like winning the lottery, right.

After a short time at school, she learns that the guru wants to meet her.

– One of my teachers sat down with me and explained that I had been invited. And that there was an opportunity to go and receive this initiation. So, I was ready.

Tova dives deeper

– It took me a little while to understand all these different levels of the organization.

Religious scholar and yoga teacher Tova Olsson continues her work with the yoga school Natha.

– This is not just a local school, but a transnational yoga school.

The school differs from other yoga movements with theoretical lessons and practical exercises according to a fixed curriculum, which advances year by year.

– This is a yoga and tantra school that has existed for a relatively long time compared to many other schools, and has a relatively stable organization. Here there is a clear main teacher, a guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, and then there are teachers under him who have been his students for a relatively long time.

She gets access to some of the yoga school's teaching materials - and is shocked by what she sees.

– The way the women are portrayed in this... these are pictures that are taken straight from pornographic magazines from the 80s.

Yoga exercises, philosophy, moral precepts – and naked women.

– In challenging positions, maybe lying on a bed or covered in oil. As you go through the material, it becomes more and more like this.

She reads about how Gregorian Bivolaru begins teaching in Romania, while the country is ruled by the brutal communist dictator Ceaușescu.

– Who did not look kindly on the teaching of yoga and where yoga was later also banned. So he was absolutely persecuted. He was arrested several times, among other things, for possession of pornography, but also for possession of yoga literature.

But even after the fall of the communist regime, the school attracted the interest of the authorities.

– Romania is of the opinion that there are things going on in this organization that should not be going on there.

In 2004, Romanian police cracked down on the yoga movement in Bucharest.

– And when this raid happens, Bivolaru flees abroad. He flees to Sweden.

Sweden's protection

The authorities in Romania are requesting Bivolaru's extradition – a case that is going to the Supreme Court.

– He didn't want to be extradited, but they insisted.

One of the justices who will rule on the guru's future is Johan Munck.

– And when there are somewhat confusing decisions, we have oral hearings. We had that in this particular case involving Bivolaru.

The guru is accused of sexually abusing a 17-year-old yoga student. The evidence consists of the girl's diary entries and intercepted conversations between her and the guru. She herself denies that the guru had sex with her - and she is in the Supreme Court to testify in his favor.

– She was there as his witness and firmly denied it and said it was just made up.

Another person present in the courtroom is Karsten, who at this time is part of the movement's inner circle in Denmark.

- We know very well that she has a relationship with him.

According to him, it was common knowledge within the movement that the girl and the guru were in a relationship.

- And it is also in the context of the fact that the finest thing you can do here on earth is to have a relationship with Grieg.

At this time, it is completely unthinkable for Karsten that the girl would be harmed by the relationship – because the best thing you can have is a relationship with the guru.

- And she didn't feel like a victim either.

Romanian authorities also accuse Bivolaru of human trafficking – that he set up a system to punish people through unpaid labor. There are also reports that members were exploited for prostitution. And that Bivolaru, in his yoga classes, advocated that girls perform sexual acts with him in order to achieve spiritual liberation.

Here, Bivolaru's defenders call in a priest, who in the Swedish media is called Sweden's foremost cult expert. His name is Karl-Erik Nylund, and he writes a report on the yoga movement, in which he states that it is not a manipulative cult.

– His statement was that Bivolaru was a well-respected yoga teacher. He was very skeptical of the accusations against Bivolaru.

This report will be weighed in the Supreme Court's conclusion: that Gregorian Bivolaru risks persecution in Romania.

– The end of our assessment was that we did not consider that we could overturn the detention order. But that we refused extradition. Because there was a risk that he would be persecuted. Because of some kind, close to religious reasons.

The report is therefore based on interviews. It was the yoga movement itself that produced lists of possible interviewees. The report does not contain any criticism of Natha.

- Karl-Erik Nylund really seems that Grieg was an exciting person.

One of those who are to be interviewed calls Karsten to ask for advice.

- "Those researchers there, they want to talk to me, what should I say?" I just said, "You're going to say that it's piss good" and stuff like that. "Well, well, that's fine, I was just going to check."

[answering machine message: “Hello and welcome to the answering machine”]

"Hello, this is Karl-Erik Nylund calling from Stockholm. I have received your letter."

Karl-Erik Nylund does not want to be interviewed about this today.

“I quit sectology a long time ago. Sorry. Thank you. Bye.”

But the movement still uses his report to this day to convey its message - we are not a cult.

– This fact that Bivolaru is granted refugee status in Sweden, of course, helps the organization immensely, and it is something that they keep coming back to in their narrative that Bivolaru is a vulnerable, persecuted person, who is basically a saint. And that all the new accusations that come against Bivolaru, they come from the same foundation, which is this fundamental hatred of yoga and the values ​​that he stands for.

Several years later, Bivolaru was convicted in absentia, against his denials, in a Romanian court for sexually abusing the underage girl - who, as an adult, continued to deny that the guru had abused her.

– The others told one that the guru has been persecuted politically or religiously. And not everything in the media is quite true and you shouldn't trust the media either. Somewhere it left a mark that you shouldn't read so much in the media.

Tantra teacher training continues at Paradiset Farm. Long lectures are interspersed with exercises.

– One of the things they promoted is that you shouldn't feel ashamed, and all that. Nudity is part of it. Especially if you're going to be a teacher, a tantra teacher. So that it becomes part of your test, in a way. That you can surrender to it, as well.

Meng is open to the fact that this is a place where boundaries should be tested.

– Nudity can symbolize purity and vulnerability.

The students will go through an exercise, a kind of ritual, and let their clothes fall to the floor.

– There was also peer pressure. What made me uncomfortable was perhaps the fact that there was a camera in the room.

He assumes that there is a good reason for them to be filmed. So that the instructors can assess how well they have done the exercise. Later, an unpleasant feeling comes that won't let go.

– All this nudity. Maybe there's an ulterior motive there.

Sexual learning

– There were nice things there. And there were a lot of nice experiences. But overall, it was also very degrading and destructive.

At the school by the sea, Emma starts to feel worse and worse. And she sees that others are also feeling bad.

– Young, searching people like me, like. Like this, wanting to explore stillness. Wanting to try to understand how your own mind works, and that it often comes from such beautiful places, and then you end up in a context where you also get broken down. Because everyone who was there was broken down in one way or another. Even like on some kind of intimate level, there were things that had to be done in a certain way in order to serve something higher.

She has a sexual relationship with the much older teacher Ragnar.

– It was still a teacher-student relationship. So he really stepped in and thought with his experience, and where he was, that he could understand where I was and tell me how I felt about things, or what I should and shouldn't do and...

An important part of Natha's teachings is called sexual continence. And it is based on the idea that a man should not ejaculate during intercourse. And a woman should not have an explosive orgasm. Instead, the energy from the sexual fluids should be retained in the body, and converted into creative energy.

– Like purely intimately, he could motivate things like, "Then we can reach God, because it's tantra. And if you have sex for a long time, you can achieve this high state". Don't give a damn about how it feels, because this is a spiritual experience. More than a physical experience. There are some things that I've done that have been after a lot of nagging. And in that, I just feel like this... why did I agree to it? I don't like to say that I've been manipulated. Or that I've been gaslighted, or something like that. But I've allowed myself to be. In some way, it feels like. I've been open to being deeply questioned. And told what I am and am not, what I feel and what I don't feel. And I thought it was reasonable. I've periodically felt extremely disgusted with myself. That I ended up in that, says Emma.

We have spoken to several women who were students of Ragnar. Who also had sexual relationships with him. Ragnar writes to us that he has failed to show consideration, and behaved harshly and heartlessly, which he regrets. He states that these have been completely private relationships that have nothing to do with the school. The women instead talk about a teacher-student relationship, where he also sexually instructed them. And that they went badly.

– It so happened that some women came to me to tell me about their experiences. And the more I heard, the more I felt that this is something that I can't really let go of.

Religious researcher Tova Olsson is starting to see a pattern.

– That they always promise that it will come, right around the corner there will be a new secret technology. That you can only access this little bit now because you are not ready for more, probably. And you have to reach a certain type of spiritual maturity in order for you to be able to access the next step. It is also of course a very skillful way to gradually invite people to exceed their limits, to agree to different types of things that they would not have agreed to if they had seen this material or received that information from day one, probably.

Andrea arrives in Paris

Natha's spiritual leader Gregorian Bivolaru is suspected of human trafficking. But his followers say he is being innocently persecuted.

And women within the movement are invited to meet him at his hideout in Paris.

– I was extremely curious about the whole thing.

Now it's Andreas' turn to travel from Malmö and meet him.

– I had had quite a few dreams just before that I had gone there. And met him, then…my dreams and reality were two different worlds.

Like the other women who travel here, she is blindfolded during the car ride to the guru's hideout. Now she stands in front of the door of the apartment where he is supposed to be.

– They opened the door. It was a tiny corridor, crammed with stuff. Books and presents and gifts and food, all sorts of stuff. And then another door opened, and then he came. And met us.

He welcomes her in a bathrobe, with open arms and a big smile.

– I had probably painted him as some kind of Jesus figure. And I thought I would probably feel a lot when I met him. Feel in some way…something special, or some power, or some power and…well…I was a little surprised that…he was wearing a bathrobe. I wasn't sure when he had showered, or had a haircut, or cut his nails, like this…

But she is determined.

– I really just want to give myself to this without judgment. Without my ego kind of stepping in and judging the situation, but…I chose to put it, like, a little to the side.

Emma and Ragnar are actually called something else.

We have reached out to Gregorian Bivolaru through his lawyer, who declined to comment on our information. Bivolaru has never been convicted of human trafficking and denies sexually abusing the underage yoga student. She testified in his favor in the Supreme Court, and as an adult has continued to deny that the guru had sex with her.

Natha's schools in Sweden write to us, among other things, that they strongly distance themselves from all forms of abuse, abuse of power and manipulation. That everything takes place within the framework of safe and consent-based education, where there is no explicit sexual activity. And that they have no legal, administrative or financial connection to Gregorian Bivolaru. They also write that it is always free to end your participation.

 

 

The Yoga Sect - The Ritual Part 3

- The fence is all covered. We can't really see outside. We don't know where we are in the street.

Ashleigh has traveled to Paris to meet yoga guru Gregorian Bivolaru. The guru is an international wanted man – according to his followers, he is being persecuted.

That's the explanation for why Ashleigh wore taped-up sunglasses during the car ride to the guru's hideout, and why she had to hand over her passport and cell phone. Ashleigh tells herself that it's true.

- Okay, well if he is a wanted fugitive...maybe it's a good thing that I don't know where he is.

She's here now, at a three-story building and has to take off her glasses.

- We go in at the first floor.

They enter and go up a spiral staircase.

– It's like this purple carpeted spiral staircase.

Ashleigh has to give up her things.

– And they go through every single thing that I own. Every single pocket.

There are bunk beds to sleep in, porn movies on TV.

- There's these two girls just cuddling on the couch watching hardcore pornography.

Before Ashleigh left, she was only told that she had been invited to meet the guru – not what the meeting would be about.

But now it is clear.

- And I´m just getting a very strong impression that there was only one reason that we were there, and that it was to sleep with him.

Karmayoga and punishment

– I'm just in this constant state of suppressing my thoughts, suppressing my emotions, shaming myself, telling myself it's my ego and telling myself not to question and not to doubt and just to follow it.

Ashleigh is relatively new to the movement. But she lives and breathes their ideas, constantly thinking about fighting her ego – not questioning, not standing in the way of her spiritual development.

– Just keep going and just focus on the goal of just like evolving and becoming a more kind and loving and spiritually evolved person.

That's why she and many other women travel to Paris to meet the guru Gregorian Bivolaru.

- Some have been there for months. Some have been there for weeks. Some have been there for days. Some of them are the leaders of the house or the women who seem to be running the show.

Some women from Romania are in charge. They tell us who will come and go, and assign tasks, such as cleaning and cooking.

- A lot of things happening around the concept of karma yoga. So doing the cooking and stuff is part of karma yoga. Cleaning is part of karma yoga.

They call it karma yoga.

- But karma yoga is also a punishment.

But karma yoga can also be a way to punish those who violate any of the many rules that apply.

- So if you're caught doing something that's considered unconscious, then your punishment will be a certain number of hours of karma yoga.

They are not allowed to lie down during certain hours of the day.

- You're not allowed to be horizontal.

Others are not allowed to stand or sit – but must remain in bed.

– Once you're meant to be in bed, you're not allowed to be up.

Asleigh is assigned to watch videos in preparation for her meeting with the guru.

- So I was given a list of videos that I had to kind of check off, you know, make sure I'd seen them all.

Videos of naked women testifying to their amazing encounters with the guru.

- I don't want this. This is not what I want. This isn't for me. This isn't right for me.

Ziggy's doubts

This is far from what Ashleigh imagined when she started taking yoga classes. She found the school through a friend from Australia, Ziggy, who tells her about the power of the teaching, about the community.

- It becomes addictive, you really do just get drawn into this sense of calm and total acceptance with who you are. It's powerful.

Ziggy doesn't know that Ashleigh has now traveled to Paris to meet the guru. He himself is at Natha's farm in Denmark, which is called Paradise.

- The house is right by the street, which is very European. And then...just two big gates that swing open into a big courtyard and then it's this old farmhouse with a big barn.

Within the movement, he works for free as a carpenter – the volunteer work known as karma yoga.

But he also has a life besides Natha.

- I have one foot in, one foot out. Even though this is coming from a place where I'm quite committed.

But Ziggy has a hard time believing everything the movement teaches – especially the personality cult surrounding Gregorian Bivolaru, or Grieg, as the guru is also called.

Once he sleeps over with some others in the movement. The room he is going to sleep in is full of pictures of Grieg.

- I stayed there several nights where I was just using the space and I had to flip these things down, it was just everywhere you looked, he's looking at you.

On another day, the altar outside the yoga room is decorated with candles and pictures of the guru.

– And then I realized that "oh this is where they are really trying to shove this one down my throat".

The meditation is dedicated to Grieg. Everyone gets a picture of him to hold in their lap. But Ziggy thinks mostly about why he has such a hard time accepting the idea of ​​a spiritual leader.

– Why can't I accept this notion of a spiritual mentor, or a guru? Like, I don't understand why I'm having these issues.

He asks the teachers if it would be possible to go and meet him.

- But it seemed like that wasn't a possibility.

Ziggy doesn't know that people close to him have met the guru - but have sworn to keep quiet about it.

– There are so many secrets. Some things you simply can't talk about. Initiations, rituals. You had to swear not to tell others.

Meng has been a part of Natha for several years now, and the yoga movement is almost his entire world. But he begins to feel a distance from the others. He will soon understand that many around him have been carrying secrets.

– You can be friends for over ten years, but still not know certain things, what the other person has been through. It's a built-in mechanism within the organization to control people.

Ashleigh and Andrea in the apartment in Paris

- So you take vows on the bible on your health and your spiritual evolution.

In the apartment in Paris, Ashleigh is made to sign a non-disclosure agreement and place her hand on a Bible, swearing on her health and spiritual development that she agrees to be punished if she ever tells anyone about what she is going through.

– What's going to happen to me if I break it? What's going to happen to my health if I break this vow? My fears are based in life and death.

The women who rule the apartment say that the guru only feels love and would never do anything against a woman's will.

- "He would never ever make you do anything that you don't want to do. He only knows love. There are so few spiritual guides left in the world. You know, he's one of the real ones".

At the same time, Ashleigh gets to read some of his texts, which describe what happens to women who say no.

- If a woman has the opportunity to meet him and she says no, then she's stupid and superficial and fluctuating and destined for a life of suffering and negative karma and her soul will regress.

Such a woman is stupid, superficial and unstable and is doomed to a life of suffering and negative karma, and her soul will go backward in its development.

- And she will go crazy and end up in a mental hospital, and all sorts of horrible things will happen to her. But if she says yes, basically she'll have the whole world at her feet.

Andrea, who was invited to the guru from the school in Sweden, unlike Ashleigh, knows from the beginning what is going to happen.

– I felt well prepared. So I knew exactly what I was going to do...what I was getting myself into.

The teacher who invited her accompanies her on the journey, and she guides Andrea.

– We went together, and we were basically together the whole time.

She is now waiting in the guru's apartment with several other women. In the meantime, they are to be naked or wearing only underwear.

– If you understand the attitude I went with, really wanting to experience it fully, as it was, without wanting to do anything different, or have it any other way. So for me, the whole point of the trip was to experience it exactly as it was.

They wait for several days to be called. Then it's finally Andrea's turn.

– When we started, he explained that, okay, the different positions connected to different chakras. “Do you feel the energy here?” “Do you feel this?” “Do you experience this.?” “Can you be aware of this?” So he really guided me through it all.

She will have sex with him in seven different positions, which symbolize seven different energy centers in the body, chakras.

– It wasn't a sexual encounter with desire and attraction, but the focus was on the activation of energy in the body, and how it moved. More than it being some kind of romantic relationship. For me, it was a pretty life-changing experience. I experienced a strong energy activation in my entire body and as if my consciousness...it really felt like a magical experience. To experience states of consciousness far beyond what I was used to.

Andrea goes back home to Sweden and notices that something has changed.

– There were a lot of women around me who had been there. So that everyone came forward when I got home and…“revealed”. So that suddenly I had a gigantic network of women who had also been there. And where we…it was completely okay for us to talk to each other.

Some time later she is invited to the guru again. But this time she doesn't want to.

– I felt pretty much done. I didn't really feel the need to go there again.

But it feels like something she should do, to be able to continue to be involved in school.

– And I agreed to it, because I thought...it might not be a good idea to say no. I wanted to continue in school, and I felt that this was part of the package, in order to progress in school, this is something I need to do. Because if I say no to this, it might affect my future.

So she goes again.

– I choose to do this. Even though I don't really want to. That was the general attitude. Just because I'm afraid of something, or have resistance to something, doesn't mean I shouldn't do it. But maybe...there's something there for me to get.

This time the guru feels cold and critical, and she experiences none of the things she did the first time.

– I was about to get dressed and walk out the door, and he said to me, “You know, this is the last time you and I will see each other. We will never see each other again.” I think in a way it was the beginning of the end. And I am very aware that not everyone has been as lucky as I have.

Ashleigh wants to leave.

- And I was kind of losing control of my own mind.

Ashleigh has been in the apartment for several days.

- I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to say no and that I wouldn't be able to resist.

She talks to two women who are returning from the guru. She gets the impression that they tried to say no, but were still persuaded to agree to the sexual ritual.

- The impression I got from both of them was that they had resisted and they had tried to say no and had been worn down.

A young Swedish woman, Ashleigh tells us, returns to her apartment shaky, sad and evasive. Yet she records a video naked in which she recounts her amazing experience – not because it is true, but because she wants to go home.

- I knew that her testimonial was not authentic, I knew that the video that she had given them, and what she had said in it was just telling them what they wanted to hear. Because I was there when she was recording it, and that is what she told me, she sort of said "I'm just telling them what they want to hear so I can go home".

Ashleigh is afraid that she won't be able to say no either. But she doesn't know how to escape. She doesn't know where she is, and she doesn't have her phone, wallet or passport.

And now she learns that she is called to him.

Meng hears about allegations against Bivolaru

What's happening in Paris is one of the movement's biggest secrets. But in Malmö, another young woman is doing something forbidden. She starts telling some of her closest friends.

– And then I heard that she was sent without knowing.

Meng is one of those who listens.

– Wait a minute, can this be true? Someone who teaches beautiful things, who has written books about beautiful things, about what meetings between men and women should be like. How can he cross someone's boundary?

The Swedish woman tells how she, just like Ashleigh, has to put on a blindfold, hand over her passport and mobile phone.

– All that communication with the outside world was completely cut off. And then and there she first found out that she was going to go through a sex initiation.

She tells him that she is being persuaded to have sex with the guru, and that afterwards she needs to sit naked in front of a camera and testify that it was voluntary.

– After all the initiation, where she had been pushing her limits for hours, and crying...after all that, she was like, in order to go home and sleep, she needed to be filmed naked, in front of a camera. And read some testament to how good she had it. It was so manipulative, I was... I was disgusted.

 Ashleigh's escape

- I was just really afraid that they would somehow steal my mind away from me, that they would get back in my head and convince me to stay. And I said "I want to leave right now, immediately."

Ashleigh says she wants to leave, now – but is told she can't leave the apartment without the guru's permission.

– They just kind of threw up their hands to say, like, "we can't. You have to ask, you have to write to him".

Several hours pass, it becomes night and Ashleigh begins to feel more and more desperate to get out.

At the same time, she is full of doubts, is it actually her ego that has taken over?

- I still wondered if maybe it was my ego and I was going to come running back to them saying, "I'm so sorry, I've made a mistake".

Finally, she receives the news that she can leave the house.

Get into a car that drives out through the gates.

Get dropped off at a cheap hotel.

– As I closed the door, I sort of like just kind of buckled onto the bag and just kind of started hyperventilating and panicking and crying.

When the door closes behind her, she breaks down.

- It was, it's just a state of breakdown.

Has she just escaped from a cult, or left an enlightened spiritual leader?

- I don't know what the reality of this situation is, whether I'm in a cult and I've just run away from a cult, or whether I'm confused and I've just run away from a spiritual guide.

We spoke to a total of seven women who were in Paris to meet the guru. Ashleigh is the only one of the women who left the apartment without having had sex with him.

Several say that they go through a sexual ritual with the guru, where each position symbolizes one of the seven chakras.

Several say they are unable to say no in the situation.

Even though several years have passed for some of them, they still feel very bad about what happened.

Throughout this time, teaching continues as usual at the schools, and the guru is protected as a refugee by the Swedish state.

General meeting

- When you're in that bubble, they've got an explanation for everything

Ziggy, Ashleigh's friend from Australia, knows nothing about this. He enjoys Natha, and from the Danish school he has moved on to Sweden.

It's early summer in Stockholm, and he's sitting on a roof looking out over the rooftops and drinking a non-alcoholic beer when the phone rings.

It's Ashley.

– And so I'm hearing all of this sitting on the roof, drinking a beer in Stockholm, just thinking, excuse my language, but "what the fuck am I involved in"?

Ashleigh has left Natha, gone home to Australia – and now tells what she experienced in Paris.

– Everything that I've known has just crumbled beneath me and I'm in this position where I'm, what do I do with this?

Ashleigh hears on the other end that Ziggy is upset, that he wants to get to the bottom of what's going on at school.

- And he went into a very active state of trying to get to the bottom of it, says Ashleigh.

- We can fix this from the inside out, says Ziggy.

He believes he can change things from within, only if the truth about what's happening in Paris comes out.

– Naively and stupidly, that's what I honestly thought could happen.

Ziggy writes an open message in an internal chat group for Natha members, stating that his friend Ashleigh and several other women have been harmed.

- And that was it. Things went from bad to worse from that moment on. I went from just a very well-rounded, trusted and respected member of the community to being the black sheep overnight.

Teachers write that Ziggy is telling lies – the same lies that have followed the school for decades.

- And it obviously made enough of an impact because those messages got to Grieg.

Shortly afterwards, Ziggy learns that he has received a letter from the guru himself.

– He reached out to me, "I've got these messages from you know who, and you need to come and receive them in person".

A teacher asks him to come to the office to pick them up.

- Gives me this letter as if like I'm going to be blown away by how profound his writing is.

The letters state that Ashleigh's claims are malicious fabrications, and that there are documents and audio recordings that she herself signed and recorded, which prove that she is lying.

- And I'm just thinking, I'm in a cult. There's no other way to describe it.

Ziggy is offered a bet of 500,000 euros that none of what Ashleigh is now saying is true.

– And I'm reading this thinking, "you can't be serious". This is... I'm supposed to believe that this is an enlightened master.

It says that Ziggy has demonic tendencies, that his questions resemble a Stalinist trial, and that he is influenced by the propaganda of the Romanian security service.

– And then I'm in this back and forth with a lunatic thinking, "what am I going to achieve out of this"? It's all these people are going to do now is just expose the madness.

In October 2021, the school calls a general meeting in Malmö, after Ziggy starts talking to more and more people about what happened. He himself is locked out.

– It's starting to get more and more stormy because the criticism is coming more and more openly.

Jörgen is one of the students there.

– Actually, I went there just because I wanted to talk about what had happened to this woman in my class.

Someone is recording the meeting.

"I mean, there are some people in Sweden if you want to talk privately..."

A teacher says that there are women in Sweden who have gone through the ritual, who can testify that everything is voluntary.

"You can do whatever you want, you're free."

 They switch between English and Swedish.

"Many have had great experiences, but very few have had a bad experience."

“The procedure is not always perfect.”

Another teacher says that the ritual may not always be perfect.

Even if you give your consent at every step, it won't be an easy thing to go through, she says.

“It does not make the procedure easier in any way, because it's absolutely delicate, sensitive thing”

It is an intense experience.

"There's no way to put this in a nice way. It's an intense experience."

But, she says, she wouldn't be here if she had thought there was any abuse.

"I know that I would not be standing here if I thought there was any abuse going on."

A male participant says that the women may have ended up in a chaotic state because meeting the guru is such a powerful experience.

Maybe what they've been through isn't so dangerous?

Jörgen leaves the meeting in the middle.

– It was just that they made these women and their experiences suspicious and reduced their immense suffering in this in various ways.

He never plans to come back after what just happened.

– Natha's whole approach is about manipulating people to push their boundaries. You have no idea what's underneath the surface of this and that it's so evil.

The meeting continues, one of those speaking is a long-time teacher within the movement, who has personally met Bivolaru and who has been taught by one of the movement's most central figures, Mihai Stoian.

"Since then there have been rumors and rumors abound about abuse in connection with erotic initiations, and around erotic initiations. Just the basics, what is it?"

It is the teacher we have chosen to call Ragnar.

“There are initiations that are not given in classes but are given between lovers.”

We have replaced his voice.

"And the lovers in our school are often student and student, it can be teacher and teacher. It's something that happens between parties who want to."

Emma has been a student of Ragnar and at the same time had a sexual relationship with him. One day she goes into town.

– It was a summer day, I chose to go to some kind of music event. People from all over the world singing together. And then it was like I woke up: “That's it, that's how it's supposed to feel”. It's supposed to be warm. "That's it". I've let myself be manipulated into something that's not true for me, but is claimed to be the truth. "Wait a minute, what the hell is going on? Why am I in this?" Just walk away. I don't want to have any contact with this anymore.

- I was realizing, I'm done. I got to get back to a place where I can put myself together.

Ziggy also leaves the movement and moves back home to Australia. One evening in November 2023, his phone starts to ring incessantly.

- My phone just started going mental.

(News sound):
 "And now to France...the police there have today arrested a Swedish-Romanian leader of a controversial international yoga sect."

The police have raided Bivolaru's hideout in Paris.

"This 71-year-old man is suspected of kidnapping and rape, among other things"

Ragnar and Emma are actually called something else.

Gregorian Bivolaru remains in custody and has not been convicted of any of the crimes he is now accused of in France. We have reached out to him through his lawyer, who declined to comment.

Ragnar writes to us that he attended the meeting in Malmö as a private person and not as a teacher at Natha. He describes the relationship with Emma as a private relationship that has nothing to do with the school. He also writes that he is well aware that both as a teacher and in relationships he has shown a lack of consideration, behaved harshly and heartlessly and that he regrets it.

Natha's schools in Sweden write that their teaching is safe and consent-based, that there is no explicit sexual activity there - and that they have no legal, administrative or financial connection to Gregorian Bivolaru. Both they and Natha Denmark also write, among other things, that they strongly distance themselves from all forms of abuse, abuse of power and manipulation. Natha Denmark writes that it has not participated in organizing meetings with Gregorian Bivolaru. The Swedish Natha teacher who, according to our information, has invited women from Sweden also denies this.

The Atman Federation – the international body for schools that spread Bivolaru's teachings – writes that what happened in France is part of a long series of attacks against the movement, that the accusations against the guru are just allegations – and that he should be considered innocent until proven otherwise.

The Yoga Sect – The Retreat | Part 4/4
 

– I'm sitting there in the taxi. It's a dark November evening. It's raining. We're going deeper into the forest.

The yoga movement is trying to continue its activities as usual, despite the arrest of some of its top leaders, suspected of exposing students to serious crimes.

We know that the Natha yoga school has many secrets and we have made an unusual decision – to let our reporter join us to find out from the inside how it works. She has been with us for a couple of months now, and is on her way to a tantra retreat.

– The taxi driver asks if he should continue. And then I just get that feeling. “What is it, where am I going, like?”. So I arrived at this cottage village as it is. Which is located by a lake. And it felt quite safe and nice. I get a room. In a cottage. They have written my name on the door and a message for me. "Let love in. Let love awaken you."

A contract

– There are all sorts of people there, you could say. The vast majority are Swedes. Some Danes, and some have traveled from this school in Berlin as well. 

Our reporter Carmen Dickson sits down on the floor with the other participants.

– We start with a simple round, everyone sits in a circle and we tell our names and why we are there.

"My name is Carmen"

– I'll say something that I think sounds good.

"I'm here to connect with my inner self and with others."

We don't know what will happen during the retreat. No program has been sent out in advance, just a theme: "Courage to Love". Courage to love. And then a packing list.

– With things we should bring with us, which reveal a little bit.

Yoga clothes, party clothes, and specifically for women:

– Sexy lingerie. A red dress for a ceremony. And a white dress for a white ceremony.

But before everything gets started, they have to sign a piece of paper.

– A kind of contract that we ourselves take responsibility for our boundaries. This contract also states that we may undress in certain contexts. That nudity may occur. So, really, it is a contract where they renounce all responsibility.

Although no one has told us exactly what will happen in the coming days, the message is clear.

– To bring everyone together in this belief that there really are no limits. That the personal limits that you have are fear.

A Swedish teacher is identified as an intermediary

 In November 2023, French police raided several addresses. 175 police officers participated in the operation, which resulted in a series of arrests. Yoga movement guru Gregorian Bivolaru is now in custody on suspicion of human trafficking, kidnapping and rape.

Women tell stories of how they traveled to Paris to meet him – and were expected to go through an erotic ritual with him to further their spiritual development.

They have been locked in an apartment with no contact with the outside world. The movement has taken their mobile phones, passports and other belongings.

In Finland, too, police have been investigating allegations against the guru for several years. He is also suspected of human trafficking there – along with a female yoga teacher, who is said to have recruited women to travel to him.

 We have been told that this is how it worked in Sweden as well.

A female teacher within Swedish Natha is said to have acted as an intermediary when women traveled to the guru in Paris, according to several sources.

It's a woman that our reporter soon meets during her time in the yoga movement.

"Go beyond your limits"

– You think that you should be able to overcome the ego, then, by going beyond your own limits.

Tova Olsson, a doctoral student in religious studies, has spent several years researching contemporary tantra.

– And that you will then have an experience of liberation, that you are no longer limited by what you thought you were limited by, by doing this thing that you were perhaps afraid of, or that which was forbidden, or something that you were perhaps disgusted by.

Followers of Gregorian Bivolaru call themselves Natha in the Nordic countries – but internationally the movement often goes by the original name Misa. A movement that, according to Tova Olsson, is much more hierarchical than other similar movements.

– It's like a tighter organization, that you have a fixed doctrine that has developed over the years and where I think you can really hear when you talk to teachers that they have a similar use of language, that they have received the same type of teaching.

Researchers defend the guru and the movement

"Okay, welcome everybody. Thank you for having the patience to come at this early moment in this session, panel session."

 In 2024, an international conference for religious studies will take place at the University of Gothenburg.

One of the panel discussions is about Bivolaru's movement.

“The name of it is Sacred Eroticism or Sexual Magic.”

Several foreign guests are here to discuss the yoga movement's teachings on sacred eroticism.

– I'm going there because I've done this research, I'm interested in Misa as an organization, and I'm interested in how they will talk about this.

"When you teach the sacred eroticism, and enter into the sphere...."

The man leading the panel is called Massimo Introvigne and is a sociologist of religion.

"...of what Misa refers to call eroticism, others would call sexuality, mix it with religion, you make a number of enemies."

He is something of a celebrity in this context, has researched the yoga movement for many years and runs a private research center in Italy.

"When somebody not in secret, but very publicly..."

Introvigne says that religious groups that incorporate sexuality into their teachings always make enemies. It is not accepted by the majority society.

"Mainline churches, by media and sometimes even by secular journalists..."

 He is skeptical that women who have gone through sexual rituals have been manipulated.

"There is no deception, those who go to a Misa or Natha center, they know it is part of Misa and the teacher is Gregorian Bivolaru..."

Tova Olsson sits at a bench far back in the room and listens. She is surprised by what is being said during the panel discussion.

– And I think it gets even a little weirder the more I listen to it, because it really feels like it's maybe not such a nuanced picture, there's no critical portrayal of Misa.

The leader of the yoga movement, Gregorian Bivolaru, has been in custody for over eight months at this point. He is suspected of human trafficking, kidnapping and rape. But no speaker here at the seminar at the University of Gothenburg seems to even consider the possibility that the accusations could be true.

"The violence of the media and legal campaigns against the Misa Yoga School and Gregorian Bivolaru are disproportionate somewhat unprecedented, and truly international in scale..."

Also on the panel is an active member of the yoga school, who gives a talk about the school being persecuted because it combines eroticism and spirituality.

"Our societies do not tolerate the combination of eroticism, with religion or spirituality..."

– I wonder if it is common for different religious organizations to come and defend themselves within an academic environment, says Tova Olsson.

"...spiritual movements were targeted because of their unconventional practices..." 

– I don't feel that as a doctoral student I can be the one to start that conversation, but I'm sitting around waiting for another academic to ask a critical question about this organization.

"perceived by authorities without any reasonable basis as antisocial and criminal..."

–  So I'm a little stunned afterwards, quite simply, says Tova Olsson.

Henrik Bogdan is a professor of religious studies at the University of Gothenburg and chairman of the committee that decided which program items would be approved at the conference.

– Now in retrospect, one can certainly think that, but it would have been good perhaps with a different perspective as well, of course, in this particular panel, based on the fact that this legal process was going on. Something that I was not aware of going on at the time. I don't think anyone else in this academic committee knew about this, so there are hundreds of new religious movements, and keeping track of everything is completely impossible, says Henrik Bogdan.

Strip clubs and cam girls

Bivolaru has his Swedish residence permit revoked. And in France, the investigation against him continues.

At the same time, several European media outlets are publishing testimonies from within the yoga movement, about women working for free with online porn or at strip clubs, and that it has been called karma yoga.

Two German reporters visit a strip club in Romania that is supposedly connected to the yoga school. There they meet a young woman from Sweden, who is a stripper, a woman we know has been a student of Natha. We contact her, but she does not want to be interviewed.

Women who appear in pictures from the tantra teacher training at Paradiset in Denmark, we ourselves can identify in pictures from sex cam sites.

Tantric wisdom

At the tantra retreat in the forest, a session on the theme "tantric wisdom" is underway.

"We don't want to underline all the time this kind of consent-y things as there it sometimes creates this tendency which I know this is a trend in society to look at all the time, at what is problematic and everyone is like a predator..."

A teacher explains that today's great focus on everything happening with consent can stand in the way of what the soul longs for.

"If we make it very safe, everything very politically correct. It wouldn't necessarily be what your soul signed up for."

The retreat will last for several more days. The teachers haven't said what will happen - only that their limits will be tested. Our reporter is with us.

– At the beginning they said, "Now it's a few friendly days" and "then you'll see", roughly, that things will happen, says reporter Carmen Dickson.

They are divided into groups, the men separately, the women separately.

– One of the women who is on the team there showed us how to move sexy, and then we got to practice it in pairs, women, and do a lap dance for each other, you could say...it was a strange context but the boundaries are also pushed forward there all the time for what is strange, and I found myself in it pretty quickly anyway, and I felt safe that it was only women there.

It is a preparation for what will happen later in the evening.

– That the women would dance for the men, and... behave as if they were kings, we would do. To a pretty sexy song, you could say. During the evening there was a romantic dinner.

We have decided that our reporter will not participate in the dance that will take place after dinner.

– And then everyone would have dressed up a bit, we women would have worn colorful dresses.

"Angel's Walk"

The women have now also received information about what will happen the next day. Then they will dance for the men again, but this time in their underwear. And then the men will get another surprise.

– Then the plan is for a woman to lie naked in front of everyone. With fruit on her body. And for the rest of us women to take this fruit and feed it to the men in the room.

We've decided that our reporter will stop here. Go to his room, and go home the next morning. But during dinner there will be more surprises.

– It was time for something they call "angels walk". Then all the men stood in two lines, and the women would walk between the men. The women would close their eyes and be sent in between the men who would touch the women, simply put. So they had to walk through there, close their eyes, and feel hands on their bodies. Somewhere here it started to feel uncomfortable for me. This was my chance to leave the dinner. So in the morning I packed my bag and went to find one of the teachers to talk to.

"I think your soul came here because it's 'ready for the challenge'," the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.

The teacher explains that it would have been good if she stayed.

"Sometimes something awkward might happen, but you feel like the intention is...men who want to...offer me love. You also have to learn to embrace that," the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.

– You have to turn the hard things into something good.

"And that's exactly why we also do some 'surprise moments', so that we have a chance to practice these things," the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.

– And have the courage to dare to be in it. And the courage to love.

"Be courageous and kind of accept and dare to feel trust," the teacher tells reporter Carmen Dickson.

– And that my courage would then be to...be in this difficult situation. And push my limits.

"Very few critical perspectives"

– Your participation there depends to some extent on you doing what the others do in this social context, quite simply.

Religious scholar Tova Olsson describes how the point of retreats is often to challenge yourself. And that can make it difficult to say no.

– You might be disappointed in yourself, then. If you can't do these things that the others in the room can do, and they seem to feel so good about it, or something like that. That if you don't have the experience that others have had, it's because you're a failure, or you're blocked.

 Tova Olsson thinks – just like many of her research colleagues – that it is good to provide a more nuanced picture of new religious movements – those that the majority society often calls sects.

– They have kind of wanted to present them in a very sensationalist way. And where religious scholars have wanted to come in and simply provide a more balanced perspective.

But when it comes to Misa, she thinks the problem is that researchers do not listen to those who have left the movement and testify about abuse.

– What is a bit worrying when it comes to Misa, perhaps, is that there are not that many different perspectives, but that all the research that exists about Misa is quite forgiving research and that there are very few critical perspectives.

 
"Witchhunt"

The researcher who is most influential regarding Gregorian Bivolaru's yoga movement is Massimo Introvigne, who runs the private research institute Cesnur in Italy.

At the same time, he has openly taken a stand for the organization – and made it clear that they are suffering from unfair persecution.

- If we talk of what Bivolaru is accused of, persuading people to sleep with a man, there are countless ways men and women use to persuade people of the other sex to sleep with them. So, of course, influence is a fact of life.

He believes that the accusations against the guru and the school follow a pattern – which is actually about the majority society's harsh view of those who mix religion and eroticism.

- We cannot assume if a teaching is strange, or we are very unfamiliar with it, it's just a cover for abuse.

Just because something is strange or different, he says, doesn't mean it's a cover for abuse.

In August 2024, police in Georgia arrested two other teachers in the yoga movement. They are Mihai Stoian and his wife, a couple described as some of the organization's most powerful people, close to guru Gregorian Bivolaru, and who are active in Denmark. Their lawyer states that they both deny any wrongdoing and believes that the yoga movement is subject to religious persecution.

- So now the main legal theater for Misa is Georgia.

Massimo Introvigne – together with other researchers and the same member of the yoga movement who spoke at the conference in Gothenburg – is writing a call to release the couple.

- What are they accused of, is to prepare these women to accept Bivolaru's proposals.

They are also suspected of human trafficking - for convincing women to travel to Bivolaru.

– Through their courses on sacred eroticism.

Introvigne thinks this comes dangerously close to prosecuting them for their teachings and opinions.

- I'm fairly persuaded it's a witch hunt based on their opinions rather than on any crime they may have committed. And I believe what is on trial here, is sacred eroticism.

He is also skeptical of the accusations leveled against the guru.

He believes that even when a student starts a yoga school, they know that erotic initiations are part of the teachings.

- When you join such movements, you know they teach that the valid path to certain spiritual benefits is an erotic initiation.

He asks himself: why then do people join the movement?

– I mean, it's a neotantric, sacred eroticism sexual initiation group. Why do you join Misa?

Former members we spoke to have a different picture. They didn't know what awaited them further in their spiritual education when they started yoga or tantra in school. Instead, they say that secrets permeate the entire movement.

We have spoken to women who have told us that they travelled to meet the guru and found themselves in a situation beyond their control. They were taken to him blindfolded, not knowing where they were, not allowed to leave, and had their passports, wallets and phones taken away. Not all of them knew that the meeting was about having sex with the guru.

But Massimo Introvigne is challenging the accusations of human trafficking because he claims to know that the women went there of their own free will.

- They went to France of their own will. And then they realized, but only sometimes after they had this experience of an erotic initiation, that they had been manipulated psychologically by a chain of persons in the movement.

Massimo Introvigne and several other researchers dismiss the testimonies of women who were channeled to the guru, calling them apostates. They believe that the women traveled to the guru voluntarily and only afterwards claim to have been manipulated. Introvigne's conclusions are used by the yoga school as evidence that they are being slandered and smeared. He has promised to stand as an expert witness for several of the accused yoga teachers, in both Finland and France.

– As soon as they find themselves in any kind of storm again, they can always refer to these academics who are immediately there to defend them.

Religious scholar Tova Olsson.

– Which means that students who might be a little hesitant about joining the organization or are hesitant about leaving, rely on these academics.

 
"Not something we tell the students"

It is spring 2025. Vï has decided that our reporter will stop her tantra classes. Before she leaves, she will ask her teachers about the allegations against Bivolaru.

- Why would these women, like, did they experience anything that would make them claim these things?, asks reporter Carmen Dickson.

She gets a special meeting with two of them.

– Is there, like, a sexual practice further on, like they experienced? I don't know, they talked about, like, initiations and stuff?, asks reporter Carmen Dickson.

– I mean, he's a tantric master, so hopefully he is doing more than just the meditation, says one of the teachers.

He is a tantric master, so hopefully he does more than meditate, says one of the teachers. She says that some women have met the guru and made love to him.

- In love, it's also difficult, and sometimes, you know, you get very upset, answers one of the teachers.

And just like in any love relationship, you can get upset, she says.

- And then, of course, it can turn, it can flip around, and then you can get super upset, answers one of the teachers.

Today, she says, the social climate is allergic to everything.

- The social setting is somehow so allergic, you know, to anything.

And there is a whole machinery that sets in motion and supports and creates a drama.

- Meaning that as soon as somebody feels upset about something, there is like a whole machinery supporting, just to make a drama out of it, answers one of the teachers.

The other teacher says that the women accusing Bivolaru had sex with him voluntarily, but then realized that they could gain something by accusing him of abuse.

- And then they get money, they promote their own pages, like they use the courses, they mean their own things, answers one of the teachers.

You can become an influencer and open your own yoga studio, she says.

- You can become an influencer. You know, you get a lot of support, and then you're like, actually, "I can also teach this". So you would say, "look, come to my yoga, Carmen's yoga is the safe yoga, these guys are the bad ones". Because every single of those girls who testify, they were doing like this, answers one of the teachers.

- Okay. So you mean they were like, consensual relationships?, asks reporter Carmen Dickson.

– Yeah, totally consensual, one of the teachers replies.

During our reporter's time in the movement, one thing has struck us. No one mentions Bivolaru by name. There are no pictures of him.

- It's not like we hide anything, as you see, like we talk, when you ask, but it's, it's a bit hard to bring it up, answers one of the teachers.

The teacher says that Bivolaru is the most incredible, remarkable and humble person she has ever met.

- Well for me, it the most incredible, remarkable, humble person I ever met in my whole life, answers one of the teachers.

At the same time, they do not talk to the students about the fact that it is his teachings that they are being taught.

- For me, I recognize him as my spiritual guide and, but it's not something that we teach, like say to the students, answers one of the teachers.

Those who left 

While new students are enrolling in courses at Natha's schools, others are relieved to be out on the other side.

– So the period after was very tough..., says "Emma", a former student at Natha.

“Somewhere a fog had disappeared, a clarity came to me,” says Meng, a former student of Natha.

– Why do I choose to be in contexts that are destructive to me?, says "Emma", a former student at Natha.

– There is so much incredibly beautiful. And also so much abuse of power. Just asking questions has been a big "no", says Andrea, a former student at Natha.

– I can completely understand why they are doing what they are doing now, like, denying that certain things have happened. We are talking about people who have been there for half their lives. We are talking about people's dreams. And that their lives depend on it, says Meng, a former student at Natha.

– How can I continue some kind of search, in a safe way? How can I dare to explore, dare to be curious and open and at the same time trust that I will walk away if there are things that don't feel right?, says "Emma, ​​a former student at Natha.

 Emma is actually called something else.

Gregorian Bivolaru remains in custody and has not been convicted of any of the crimes he is now accused of in France. We have reached out to him through his lawyer, who declined to comment. Bivolaru has previously denied allegations of human trafficking.

The Atman Federation – the international body for schools that spread Bivolaru’s teachings – writes that what happened in France is part of a long series of attacks on the movement, that the accusations against the guru are just allegations – and that he should be considered innocent until proven otherwise. They also distance themselves from all forms of abuse.

Natha's schools in Sweden write that their teaching is safe and consent-based, that there is no explicit sexual activity there - and that they have no legal, administrative or financial connection to Gregorian Bivolaru. Both they and Natha Denmark also write, among other things, that they strongly distance themselves from all forms of abuse, abuse of power and manipulation. Natha Denmark writes that it has not participated in organizing meetings with Gregorian Bivolaru. The Swedish Natha teacher who, according to our information, has invited women from Sweden also denies this.

Natha Sweden also writes that it is always free to end one's participation.

The news clips in the episode come from French RFI, Radio France, BBC and German BR. Misa stated to German media that if individual students strip or work as camgirls, they do so voluntarily and as private individuals, it is not organized by Misa.

Reporters: Markus Alfredsson, Ida Nordén and Carmen Dickson

Producer: Johan Sundström

Final mix: Thobias Sandin

The series is a collaboration with Danish Radio and reporters Merle Baeré and Thomas Prakash and producer Anne Skjerning.