April 14, 2021 • 29 mins
The spiritual edge Charlie Marinelli chased in India the summer of 2019 forced his parents on a desperate race against the clock to try to rescue him.
Charlie Marinelli Show Notes:
Matthew Remski ~ Author, Journalist and Host of the podcast Conspirituality
Astray Production Team:
School of Humans // iHeartRadio
Caroline Slaughter ~ Host, Writer, Producer
Ankita Anand ~ Producer
Gabbie Watts ~ Supervising Producer
Jason Shannon ~ Composer
Harper Harris ~ Sound Design, Audio Mixer
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. It was easier to deal with poverty
and death in India than the lack of spirituality in America.
This is a quote from Albanian Indian Roman Catholic nun
and missionary mother Teresa, who spent most of her life
in India. In this quote, she points out why many Americans,
(00:32):
including myself, are drawn to India. It's deep religious roots
and sacred rights and rituals give India a spiritual relevance
that's lacking in the States, which, as an American, is
the only Western experience I can speak to firsthand. Like
I've said before, for spiritual seekers, India is what K
(00:53):
two is for extreme mountaineers. It's a place people go
when they want more spiritually, whether that's pushing some sort
of edge or finding and connecting to a deeper part
of themselves. It's the extreme. The disappearances covered in this
podcast could have happened anywhere. People going missing is not
(01:17):
an Eastern phenomenon. In America, and twenty twenty alone, five
hundred forty three eighteen people went missing, according to the
FBI's National Crime Information Center. So for me, it's not
about sensationalizing India as a place where people vanish, but
about examining stories allegedly tied to spiritual quests, so that
(01:40):
these personal stories shed light on the thin line between
healing and harm and spirituality, and more closely examine the
cost of enlightenment. These are all stories I chose to
live with for the past year because of my own
connection and curiosity around this thin line. So I didn't
choose India as a setting because I want to vilify it.
(02:03):
I chose it because as a spiritual seeker, I revere it.
In America, we don't possess India's spiritual depth and history,
but there are parallels between the four point five trillion
dollar New Age wellness spiritual industry in the States and
the influence gurus in their empires hold in India, which,
(02:23):
as we've reported, can be used to empower followers or
abuse them, which in some cases also happens in the
unregulated New Age wellness spiritual industry in the West. Matthew Remsky,
a journalist who's podcasts Conspirituality, a weekly study on converging
conspiracy theories with wellness utopianism, shared his thoughts on this
(02:45):
parallel with me Fi. Matthew uses the term charismatic leader,
which basically means someone or something like an organization that
attracts attention due to their charisma. Charisma being a quality
which sets an individual apart from the ordinary and endows
them with supernatural, superhuman, or at least exceptional powers or qualities.
(03:07):
In India, we have Ashram infrastructure and the capacity for
charismatic leaders to appeal to mainstream versions of you know,
existing institutional religions, so that can be very effective there.
But if we take the same model or the same
(03:28):
lens and look at organizations in North America, you know
somebody like Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is a motivational speaker
and self help guru, though he has a documentary titled
I Am Not Your Guru. As of twenty nineteen, Robbins
had seven point nine million followers across his five main
platforms and he allegedly makes nine million dollars a year
(03:51):
from those platforms and his seminars. Tony Robbins operates a
very charismatic organization and he's built an infrastructure to support it.
Based upon you twenty or thirty years on the workshop circuit,
there is an entire economic structure of content production that
(04:12):
backs up the self improvement, personal development and New Age
spheres that in a way is kind of its own
religious architecture and its sacred sites are the Esselent Institute
and the Omega Institute, and its publishing companies are Gaya
TV or hay House. Esselent Institute and Omega Institute are
(04:33):
nonprofit educational retreat centers focused on spirituality, consciousness, alternative medicine,
and more. Gaya TV and hay House published content on
these subjects. Now, it's a lot less old than the
religious infrastructure that might be supporting charismatic groups in India,
but it's no less powerful. The Guru empires of the
(04:55):
East and the New Age wellness spiritual industry of the
West are different in many ways, but they're similar in
one significant way, and that's in the power they both we.
But the East still has an infinite draw for spiritual
seekers in the West, which is something Ankita, Gabby and
I have become even more aware of after launching Astray.
(05:17):
We're recording this podcast in real time, so as you listen,
we read the reviews and it's had the effect i'd
hoped it would. It's igniting conversation and has opened the
door for people to reach out to me with more
personal stories that help us further examine the cost of enlightenment.
So a week ago I got an email from someone
who'd heard the podcast, and the email they shared a
(05:38):
story that sounded like the others we've reported on. So
I knew I had to share it. But what I
didn't know is how many questions Charlie Marinelli's story would
ultimately answer. It's July twenty nineteen, and Charlie, an American
born and raised in California, is ready for his solo
(06:00):
trip to India. Hell he was born ready. He believes
India is the next step for him as a seeker
and explorer hungry for more answers, connection experiences. After backpacking
through Thailand alone at eighteen, India feels like the optimal
solo adventure for Charlie at twenty four, especially after hearing
(06:21):
about his dad's epic travels there. But his dad, also
named Charlie, warned him he has to keep his head
on straight while he's in India. It's a different culture.
The key, according to his dad, is to navigate India
like bamboo, stay flexible, and go with the flow. His
Dad says the real beauty of India is that it
teaches you about patience and humanity. Charlie knows a little
(06:45):
something about humanity. He was in Saint Croix at a
plush job, living the life in the tropics with his
fiance Michelle, when he got a call from his mom
saying his grandfather at a stroke and was in hospice. Charlie,
who was extremely close to his grandfather, was devastated. He
flew home to be with him, and when he died.
It shook Charlie, but it also awakened something in him.
(07:08):
He won it out of his lucrative job, hitting the
token life goals we're all told we should aspire to
in the West. So he put in his two weeks,
got a visa for India, and bought a one way
ticket to Delhi. Charlie left Saint Croix with Michelle and
moved back to California to prepare for his trip. He's
obviously going to India for the experience, but he also
(07:30):
believes the spiritual pulse of India will force him inward
to more deeply understand who he is, why he's here,
and why it all matters. The past four years he's
used psychedelics to help with this. Charlie doesn't abuse these drugs.
He sees them as a gateway to deeper self reflection,
(07:51):
and he's considering going back to school to learn how
to use psychedelics as a tool to heal and assist others.
And India will give him space and time from friends
and family to think about all of this on his own.
Charlie has no itinerary for his trip to India. The
only thing he's booked as a hostel in Delhi, so
he's somewhere to sleep off his jet lag. And though
his mom the Net is weary about him traveling alone
(08:12):
with no plan, he did it before in Thailand, so
she trusts this triple pan out the same way. On
July ninth, twenty nineteen, Charlie lands in Delhi, and just
as his dad said, as soon as the airport's glass
doors slide open, it's chaos. Pungent smells, frenzied foot traffic,
relentless car horns, taxi drivers yelling over each other at him.
(08:35):
He navigates his way back to his hostel, but after
a night in Delhi, decides to head to Bagsue, which
is supposed to be paradise in the Himalayas. A twelve
hour drive from Delhi on roads navigating steep cliffs, Bagsue
is near Darmshala, where his Holiness, the Dali Lama has
sought refuge for six decades. Unlike Delhi, Bagsue is quaint,
(08:58):
with cobblestone streets, meandering cows, vendors selling chai, cafes and
marketplaces with mountain view and because it's so far north,
a mix if Tibetan an Indian residence. Bagsue is where
Charlie finds community in India and the serenity and time
to meditate, hike and explore sacred temples dotting the Himalayas.
(09:21):
He also finds something in Bagsue. He didn't foresee a teacher,
someone to take him to that next spiritual level, the edge,
to find a deeper sense of self. But what Charlie
didn't expect was that he would completely lose himself. If
(09:44):
there was anything that could make me absolutely break in life,
it was that I was on the verge of collapsing.
It was terrifying oof it was a challenging time. These
are Charlie's parents, Nanette and Charlie. I'll call Charlie's dad,
Charlie Senior, for Clarity's sake. They're not married anymore. They
got divorced when Charlie was young. Charlie Senior lives in
(10:07):
Bali and the NEETs in California. He heard me talk
about India, and I think that it was the next
step for him to go challenge himself. I don't know
if you can learn it if you don't put yourself
in those positions that are going to test your edges.
India is a beautiful place to learn this. You're not
(10:29):
going to learn that in Suburbia America. I was less
nervous this time because he had done the Thailand trip.
He could do it, he knew what he was doing.
I still, you know, took photos of all of his
credit cards, front and back, his passport, his ID, and
you wanted him to stay in contact with me. I
would have preferred that he went with somebody else. But
(10:49):
I did tell him because he does smoke marijuana and
I knew that, and I said, you're going to India.
There's no tolerance there. Do not do not, do not
do drugs in that country. You can go to prison.
It is not like America and That's how I left
him at the airport. They gave him a huge hug
and I kind of broke down and said, whatever you do,
(11:11):
do not mess around in that country. Understand their laws
and take it seriously. So as you can tell, Nanat
and Charlie Senior had very different expectations for charlie solo
trip and what he should be prepared for in India.
Charlie Senior, who had traveled to India, wanted a son
to have a memorable experience like he did and find
(11:32):
that edge he was looking for. Nana just wanted her
son to play it safe in a country halfway around
the world that doesn't play by the same rules as
the States. But less than two months later, these two
were jolted in sync when they realized, in separate houses
and on separate FaceTime calls with Charlie that something wasn't
right with their son. I was immediately just shocked at
(11:57):
what I saw. It wasn't him. It was out of character.
As I said, He's pushed the edges in other ways
in the past before and never went to this edge.
Charlie had hit the edge of something, but it was
an edge he might not come back from. Most of
(12:18):
Charlie's time in Bagsue was spent meditating, exploring the Himalayas,
smoking chill him, and connecting and learning from others who
spoke a similar with spiritual language to him. But there
was a turning point in Charlie's trip where things got
scary for his parents, Nanett and Charlie Sior, and it
was unclear if their son was feeling the same way.
(12:39):
When I first realized that Charlie was in trouble, he
fell out of contact with me for about four or
five days. And he used to talk to me every day, always, always,
no matter where he was, he'd call me once a day,
just checking in hello. But I didn't talk to him
for about four or five days, and that worried me
a little bit. So I started sending him text. Just
send me a quick text. Are you okay? Is everything good?
(12:59):
He didn't reply for a little while. Then he finally
did reply and he said, I'm fine. I just want
to let you know that I'm not going to have
my cell phone on me for a while. And I said,
well why not? And he said, because I found my
teacher and Bob a Gee will be the person that
will contact you. Once in a while to let me
know how I am. And I said, Bob a g
(13:23):
is going to contact me. I said, and why can't
you have your phone? He said, Mom, because I'm going
through this process and I can't talk to any family
or friends. I can't have any contact with them. And
I said, well that doesn't sound right. Anybody who wants
to keep contact keep you away from your family and
friends is up to no good because they don't want
(13:45):
you to have anybody referencing and saying is that right?
Or why are you doing that? So I was pretty
worried about that, and I said, well, how long is
this going to be? And he said maybe a couple
of years. I said, are you kidding me? I'm not
going to have contact with you for a couple of years.
I said, what about Michelle, Oh, she's coming with me.
(14:05):
Nanette reached out to Charlie's fiance Michelle, who was in
Hawaii at the time, and she said she had no
plans of going to India, but she'd also noticed that
something was off with Charlie and who was this Baba Gee.
Charlie Senior has spent time with Bob as in India, who,
as you know, are also called sadu's. He had met
the ones that were the real deal, who transcend the
(14:27):
material world with the wisdom and spiritual insights they teach followers,
but he'd also run into what he calls bogey yogie
or fake baba's. The challenges is, if you're a little
bit vulnerable, you can end up with these babas. And
I think that my son, he's a good person and
(14:49):
he tends to be trusting, and that can get people
in trouble. Charlie Senior knew his son was in trouble
when he got a call from Michelle saying that something
was definitely wrong with Charlie and he had to get
a hold of him. Now. I got him on on
a video call and I went, oh, this isn't Charlie.
(15:10):
Something's going on. He had something wrapped around his head
and he had no shirt on, and he was in
a cafe. And Dad looked at my new house. I
just this is where I live. And look at the
paintings on the wall and look at the whatever, and
I went, oh. Nanette also had a bizarre FaceTime call
with Charlie, but on her call, Charlie wasn't alone. There
(15:32):
was someone else listening in. The next time I talked
to him, he facetimed me, and I was immediately just
shocked at what I saw. He was in the dark,
he had huge earrings on, a shawl wrapped around him,
and he just looked gaunt. He looked hollow in his eyes.
(15:53):
He looked so thin, he looked like he was starving.
He just looked so unhealthy. And he said, Mom, I
want you to charter a plane and get to Hawaii.
I'm like, what are you talking about? And I knew
him and his fiance I wanted to get married in Hawaii.
I said, did you guys make a date? Are you
getting married? And he goes, no, you'll see you'll see
(16:14):
charter a plane and bring the whole family. I said,
charter a plane. He goes, Mom, quit your job. You
don't have to work anymore. And I said, Charlie, you're
losing it. I don't even know what you're saying it
and I was just talking about did you win the
lottery or something? What's going on. He goes, well, it's
something like that. And he kept looking up in the
corner someplace at somebody. His eyes kept averting and he
(16:36):
would make a little nod, and I said, who are
you looking at? And he goes, nobody, nobody, it's nothing,
and he just keep looking up like somebody was directing him.
In a text exchange with Charlie that followed the initial
call they had about the Baba, Nanat asked what Charlie
(16:56):
was studying with him. Charlie responded, I don't know, spiritual things.
This response sounds eerily similar to the other stories we've
shared of men who had cryptic sign offs before disappearing.
But at this point, Nanette, who was still on FaceTime
with Charlie, had eyes on her son and I said, Charlie,
(17:17):
why are you wearing this shawl all around you? You
look strange to me? And he said because it's getting
cold and the Himalayas, mom, it's cold. And I said okay.
And with the earrings, he goes, do you like that?
I did it myself. I said, I don't know. That's unusual.
It doesn't look like you. So he said, So here's
what I want to do is I'm going to send
you some money. I'm going to send it to Andrew's bank,
Andrews's brother, my other son, and I want you to
(17:41):
charter plan and just get over to Hawaii. And I said, Charlie,
you're not making any sense to me. Just hold on
just a moment. So I went in my daughter's room.
I wanted to verify am I hearing this correctly? What
he's saying to me? That he's this off? And so
she verified the same thing. And then my son Andrew
came in the room and he looked at him and
(18:02):
he said, Mom, there's something wrong. He's on drugs. So
then of course my alert goes into, you know, high
gear as a mom. You know, hey, who is he
looking at. He's in the dark, he's on drug someplace.
While my other kids were talking to him on FaceTime,
I called his fiance really quick and I said, have
you talked to Charlie lately? And she said, yeah, I
(18:24):
talked to him last night. And I said, how did
he sound to you? And she said, he told me
that he was scared and he thought somebody was drugging
him and he didn't know how to get out of there.
So I went back and I wanted to get on
the phone with him, and he said and then he
was walking someplace in the dark. He had no shoes on.
(18:46):
I said, Charlie, where are you going. I said, I'm
going to go get on a bus and I'm going
to get out of here. And I said what bus?
He goes, Mom, don't worry about it. I'm gonna get
on a bus. And my phone's about to die. And
his phone died, and then I was unable to get
a hold of him. Ninette knew she had to act fast,
(19:09):
so I called the embassy right away and I said,
you know, this is the situation, and explained exactly what happened,
and they said, get on a plane as fast as
you can and get to India. When Ninette and Charlie
(19:30):
Senior realized something was off with their son and he
might be an immediate danger, they wanted to rescue Mode.
I immediately found I stoked his friends on Facebook, or
I think I found someone on Instagram who I had
seen in a picture or one of his friends he
mentioned or something. And I got this guy and I went,
(19:51):
you got to go back up to Bagsue. You got
to go back up there, and you got to go
get Charlie. He's in a bad state. This friend in
the picture was Rennick, who Charlie had met in Delhi
when he first landed in India and he's like, oh, well,
you know, I don't know if I get up there,
and I don't have money in this and that. So
Guy Western unioned him some money and had him go
back up there. Having Rennick tracked down Charlie and Bagsue
(20:15):
was the first step. The next step was for Nanette
and Charlie Senior to get to India and fast. We
both applied for visas and we got him really quick.
We got them the next morning. I don't know, if
you know, somebody at the embassy made a phone call.
I don't know, but we got really lucky. We got
them fast. The embassy got in contact with the local
police and they gave all of Charlie's information and she
(20:37):
said they're going to be looking for him, and that's it.
We packed a bag and got on a plane. While
in the Neet and Charlie Senior were on their seventeen
hour flight to India. Rennick was navigating the winding twelve
hour route from Delhi to Bagsue. By the time we
were in our layover in Istanbul, I got a phone
(20:57):
call from Rennick and also from the embassy that the
police had found him, but they let him go. They
said he's fine, and I said, he's not fine. They
don't know him. So however he was talking, they might
have interpreted as he's okay, but I'm telling you that
he's not okay. He's in some sort of psychotic state.
So she called the police back and you put them
(21:19):
back on the alert to go find him again. And
Rennick got up there to the cafes and he found Charlie.
The police asked Rennick to come to the police station
and sign off a piece of paper that says I've
got Charlie, I'm in charge of him. Rennick went and
(21:40):
did that, but by the time he got back up
to the cafe, Charlie was gone. Charlie performed a vanishing act,
and it wasn't the last time he was following him,
and what all of a sudden, Charlie would disappear. He
would be on the phone with me, I'm like, you
got eyes on him, and all of a sudden, he's like,
you're not gonna believe it. He just disappeared. I don't
(22:01):
know where he went. So after a couple of incidents,
for Nick would find Charlie and Charlie would suddenly just disappear.
There came a point where Rennick couldn't find Charlie at all,
so Charlie went missing. Rennick started the search party and
got everybody to go looking for him. Finally, some tourists
found him and they said he looked really confused. So
(22:26):
I said, Rennick, get him to a hospital. Take him
to a hospital. Just do what you gotta do to
get him to a hospital. Whatever you have to do.
I'll make it up to you. Just please get him
to a hospital. But Charlie didn't want to go anywhere.
He was acting erratic and was unstable. Eventually, Rennick was
able to force Charlie into a car with the help
(22:48):
of Indian police that were sent by the US embassy.
He sent me a picture of them in the car
with Charlie in the middle, and they had two guys
on the side because I guess apparently he tried to
escape out of the car again, so they blocked him
in the car. First hospital they got to, I think
they were full. They couldn't take him. They went to
a second hospital. They wouldn't take anybody with any type
(23:10):
of psychiatric events happening. So they got to a hospital
in Darmschala. Charlie was refusing to go in at that point.
He wouldn't go into the hospital. So Rennick facetimed me
and he said, can you talk to him? He looked
nothing like himself. He was so thin, He looked like
(23:31):
he was starving. He had two holes in his hands
and he held them up seeing and he said, do
you know what that means? I said, no, Charlie, what
happened to you? He said, Mom, I don't need water
or medicine or food. Do you know what this means?
And he kept pointing to the palms of his hands.
(23:53):
There were holes and both the palms of Charlie's hands.
Nanette couldn't tell from FaceTime if these were actual puncture wounds,
or if he had burnt something into his hand, or
if it was just ash, but she did know what
Charlie meant by it. He thought he was the Messiah Jesus,
the chosen One that didn't need anything in the world
to survive because he wasn't of this world. He believed
(24:17):
he had transcended. Journalist Jessica Ravitt spoke about Jerusalem syndrome
in episode one, which is defined as a psychosis where
people become so overwhelmed by the Holy City of Jerusalem,
that they believed they're the Messiah. I had put this
in the same category as India syndrome, something to debunk.
But Charlie's behavior is proof that people can arrive at
(24:37):
a state where they believe they're the Messiah. I asked
his parents if he had exhibited this sort of behavior before.
He never had those tendencies. He had been on other
journeys before. He had pushed the envelope in the name
of self discovery and really taking it on a journey
(24:58):
that never happened to him before. So my only conclusion
was somebody drugged him. I think somebody kept him on
some think for a long period of time, good intentions
or bad intentions. I have no idea, but they want
a stray. That's what happened. When Charlie Senior references Charlie's
other journeys, he means psychedelic journeys that at the longest
(25:20):
would last twelve hours tops, not two weeks like the
psychotic state his son was in. Now standing with Rennick
outside a hospital in Darmshalla, refusing to go in. So
he said, no, Mom, I'm fine, I'm not going into
any hospital. And he saw me cry. And then the
phone went dead and then Rennick called me back and
(25:42):
he said, ma'am, I have to let him go. He
just hit me in the face. And Charlie's not violent.
I've never seen Charlie hit anybody in his life. Never.
And I said, Rennick, why did he hit you? And
he said because he said, I made you cry. So
I said, Rennick, you have to get him into the hospital.
(26:02):
He said, ma'am, I can't do what people are looking
at me. You can't do this. He's white, we're Indian,
we're so round. There's people around, there's police officers here.
I said, ask them to put some handcuffs on him,
even if it's against his will, and get him into
a hospital, please. And he said, it doesn't work like
that here. You can't do that. If somebody doesn't want
to go to a hospital. In India, you can't force
(26:22):
him to go to a hospital. And I said, Rennick,
if you let him go, I'm never going to see
him again. Hey, Charlie, can you hear me? Can you
(26:49):
hear me? Yeah? I can into Southern room. My service
isn't the best in my apartment, Okay, I'm just like nearing. Yeah,
this is Charlie Marinelli, Nanette and Charlie Senior did see
him again, though at times it took force, antipsychotics and
a lot of patients to get them home. They know
(27:09):
they're the lucky ones they found their son and are
eternally grateful to the generous community of doctors at East
West Medical Center in New Delhi for helping Charlie get
to a state where you could function enough to get
onto a plane back to the States. Charlie is the
one who wrote me that email saying you'd heard the
podcast and the stories we covered were so similar to
(27:30):
his own that at one point he thought I was
talking about him, and I went and listened to it,
and it was even more weird because up until now
is like I'm working with an alternative therapist, like psychedelic
therapy and stuff like that, and I mean, they never
brought up the term India syndrome. They've never brought anything
(27:53):
around that up. So like hearing that parallel story, he's
speaking about Ryan Chambers story that we shared in episodes
one and two. Charlie related to Ryan's story. There are
some parallels with his own. But however, I came back
it was really really intense. What I've realized from doing
(28:15):
this podcast and speaking to experts, specifically doctor Rochett, who
was an episode two, is that the labeling of it
as India syndrome is wrong, but the psychosis is real.
What happens to people, Oh yeah, it's very, very real.
So so we'll hear about how real it is on
(28:35):
the next episode of Astray. Astray is a production of
School of Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode of Astray, Charlie Marinelli,
was produced, written, and narrated by me. Caroline Slaughter and
Kita Nanda is my co producer, and Gaby Wants is
our supervising producer. Astray was sound produced by Tune Welders,
(28:59):
with score and sound designed by Jason Shannon and mixed
by HARPERA. Harris. Executive producers are Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley,
and Brandon Barr. Thanks for listening School of Humans.
School of Humans. It was easier to deal with poverty
and death in India than the lack of spirituality in America.
This is a quote from Albanian Indian Roman Catholic nun
and missionary mother Teresa, who spent most of her life
in India. In this quote, she points out why many Americans,
(00:32):
including myself, are drawn to India. It's deep religious roots
and sacred rights and rituals give India a spiritual relevance
that's lacking in the States, which, as an American, is
the only Western experience I can speak to firsthand. Like
I've said before, for spiritual seekers, India is what K
(00:53):
two is for extreme mountaineers. It's a place people go
when they want more spiritually, whether that's pushing some sort
of edge or finding and connecting to a deeper part
of themselves. It's the extreme. The disappearances covered in this
podcast could have happened anywhere. People going missing is not
(01:17):
an Eastern phenomenon. In America, and twenty twenty alone, five
hundred forty three eighteen people went missing, according to the
FBI's National Crime Information Center. So for me, it's not
about sensationalizing India as a place where people vanish, but
about examining stories allegedly tied to spiritual quests, so that
(01:40):
these personal stories shed light on the thin line between
healing and harm and spirituality, and more closely examine the
cost of enlightenment. These are all stories I chose to
live with for the past year because of my own
connection and curiosity around this thin line. So I didn't
choose India as a setting because I want to vilify it.
(02:03):
I chose it because as a spiritual seeker, I revere it.
In America, we don't possess India's spiritual depth and history,
but there are parallels between the four point five trillion
dollar New Age wellness spiritual industry in the States and
the influence gurus in their empires hold in India, which,
(02:23):
as we've reported, can be used to empower followers or
abuse them, which in some cases also happens in the
unregulated New Age wellness spiritual industry in the West. Matthew Remsky,
a journalist who's podcasts Conspirituality, a weekly study on converging
conspiracy theories with wellness utopianism, shared his thoughts on this
(02:45):
parallel with me Fi. Matthew uses the term charismatic leader,
which basically means someone or something like an organization that
attracts attention due to their charisma. Charisma being a quality
which sets an individual apart from the ordinary and endows
them with supernatural, superhuman, or at least exceptional powers or qualities.
(03:07):
In India, we have Ashram infrastructure and the capacity for
charismatic leaders to appeal to mainstream versions of you know,
existing institutional religions, so that can be very effective there.
But if we take the same model or the same
(03:28):
lens and look at organizations in North America, you know
somebody like Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is a motivational speaker
and self help guru, though he has a documentary titled
I Am Not Your Guru. As of twenty nineteen, Robbins
had seven point nine million followers across his five main
platforms and he allegedly makes nine million dollars a year
(03:51):
from those platforms and his seminars. Tony Robbins operates a
very charismatic organization and he's built an infrastructure to support it.
Based upon you twenty or thirty years on the workshop circuit,
there is an entire economic structure of content production that
(04:12):
backs up the self improvement, personal development and New Age
spheres that in a way is kind of its own
religious architecture and its sacred sites are the Esselent Institute
and the Omega Institute, and its publishing companies are Gaya
TV or hay House. Esselent Institute and Omega Institute are
(04:33):
nonprofit educational retreat centers focused on spirituality, consciousness, alternative medicine,
and more. Gaya TV and hay House published content on
these subjects. Now, it's a lot less old than the
religious infrastructure that might be supporting charismatic groups in India,
but it's no less powerful. The Guru empires of the
(04:55):
East and the New Age wellness spiritual industry of the
West are different in many ways, but they're similar in
one significant way, and that's in the power they both we.
But the East still has an infinite draw for spiritual
seekers in the West, which is something Ankita, Gabby and
I have become even more aware of after launching Astray.
(05:17):
We're recording this podcast in real time, so as you listen,
we read the reviews and it's had the effect i'd
hoped it would. It's igniting conversation and has opened the
door for people to reach out to me with more
personal stories that help us further examine the cost of enlightenment.
So a week ago I got an email from someone
who'd heard the podcast, and the email they shared a
(05:38):
story that sounded like the others we've reported on. So
I knew I had to share it. But what I
didn't know is how many questions Charlie Marinelli's story would
ultimately answer. It's July twenty nineteen, and Charlie, an American
born and raised in California, is ready for his solo
(06:00):
trip to India. Hell he was born ready. He believes
India is the next step for him as a seeker
and explorer hungry for more answers, connection experiences. After backpacking
through Thailand alone at eighteen, India feels like the optimal
solo adventure for Charlie at twenty four, especially after hearing
(06:21):
about his dad's epic travels there. But his dad, also
named Charlie, warned him he has to keep his head
on straight while he's in India. It's a different culture.
The key, according to his dad, is to navigate India
like bamboo, stay flexible, and go with the flow. His
Dad says the real beauty of India is that it
teaches you about patience and humanity. Charlie knows a little
(06:45):
something about humanity. He was in Saint Croix at a
plush job, living the life in the tropics with his
fiance Michelle, when he got a call from his mom
saying his grandfather at a stroke and was in hospice. Charlie,
who was extremely close to his grandfather, was devastated. He
flew home to be with him, and when he died.
It shook Charlie, but it also awakened something in him.
(07:08):
He won it out of his lucrative job, hitting the
token life goals we're all told we should aspire to
in the West. So he put in his two weeks,
got a visa for India, and bought a one way
ticket to Delhi. Charlie left Saint Croix with Michelle and
moved back to California to prepare for his trip. He's
obviously going to India for the experience, but he also
(07:30):
believes the spiritual pulse of India will force him inward
to more deeply understand who he is, why he's here,
and why it all matters. The past four years he's
used psychedelics to help with this. Charlie doesn't abuse these drugs.
He sees them as a gateway to deeper self reflection,
(07:51):
and he's considering going back to school to learn how
to use psychedelics as a tool to heal and assist others.
And India will give him space and time from friends
and family to think about all of this on his own.
Charlie has no itinerary for his trip to India. The
only thing he's booked as a hostel in Delhi, so
he's somewhere to sleep off his jet lag. And though
his mom the Net is weary about him traveling alone
(08:12):
with no plan, he did it before in Thailand, so
she trusts this triple pan out the same way. On
July ninth, twenty nineteen, Charlie lands in Delhi, and just
as his dad said, as soon as the airport's glass
doors slide open, it's chaos. Pungent smells, frenzied foot traffic,
relentless car horns, taxi drivers yelling over each other at him.
(08:35):
He navigates his way back to his hostel, but after
a night in Delhi, decides to head to Bagsue, which
is supposed to be paradise in the Himalayas. A twelve
hour drive from Delhi on roads navigating steep cliffs, Bagsue
is near Darmshala, where his Holiness, the Dali Lama has
sought refuge for six decades. Unlike Delhi, Bagsue is quaint,
(08:58):
with cobblestone streets, meandering cows, vendors selling chai, cafes and
marketplaces with mountain view and because it's so far north,
a mix if Tibetan an Indian residence. Bagsue is where
Charlie finds community in India and the serenity and time
to meditate, hike and explore sacred temples dotting the Himalayas.
(09:21):
He also finds something in Bagsue. He didn't foresee a teacher,
someone to take him to that next spiritual level, the edge,
to find a deeper sense of self. But what Charlie
didn't expect was that he would completely lose himself. If
(09:44):
there was anything that could make me absolutely break in life,
it was that I was on the verge of collapsing.
It was terrifying oof it was a challenging time. These
are Charlie's parents, Nanette and Charlie. I'll call Charlie's dad,
Charlie Senior, for Clarity's sake. They're not married anymore. They
got divorced when Charlie was young. Charlie Senior lives in
(10:07):
Bali and the NEETs in California. He heard me talk
about India, and I think that it was the next
step for him to go challenge himself. I don't know
if you can learn it if you don't put yourself
in those positions that are going to test your edges.
India is a beautiful place to learn this. You're not
(10:29):
going to learn that in Suburbia America. I was less
nervous this time because he had done the Thailand trip.
He could do it, he knew what he was doing.
I still, you know, took photos of all of his
credit cards, front and back, his passport, his ID, and
you wanted him to stay in contact with me. I
would have preferred that he went with somebody else. But
(10:49):
I did tell him because he does smoke marijuana and
I knew that, and I said, you're going to India.
There's no tolerance there. Do not do not, do not
do drugs in that country. You can go to prison.
It is not like America and That's how I left
him at the airport. They gave him a huge hug
and I kind of broke down and said, whatever you do,
(11:11):
do not mess around in that country. Understand their laws
and take it seriously. So as you can tell, Nanat
and Charlie Senior had very different expectations for charlie solo
trip and what he should be prepared for in India.
Charlie Senior, who had traveled to India, wanted a son
to have a memorable experience like he did and find
(11:32):
that edge he was looking for. Nana just wanted her
son to play it safe in a country halfway around
the world that doesn't play by the same rules as
the States. But less than two months later, these two
were jolted in sync when they realized, in separate houses
and on separate FaceTime calls with Charlie that something wasn't
right with their son. I was immediately just shocked at
(11:57):
what I saw. It wasn't him. It was out of character.
As I said, He's pushed the edges in other ways
in the past before and never went to this edge.
Charlie had hit the edge of something, but it was
an edge he might not come back from. Most of
(12:18):
Charlie's time in Bagsue was spent meditating, exploring the Himalayas,
smoking chill him, and connecting and learning from others who
spoke a similar with spiritual language to him. But there
was a turning point in Charlie's trip where things got
scary for his parents, Nanett and Charlie Sior, and it
was unclear if their son was feeling the same way.
(12:39):
When I first realized that Charlie was in trouble, he
fell out of contact with me for about four or
five days. And he used to talk to me every day, always, always,
no matter where he was, he'd call me once a day,
just checking in hello. But I didn't talk to him
for about four or five days, and that worried me
a little bit. So I started sending him text. Just
send me a quick text. Are you okay? Is everything good?
(12:59):
He didn't reply for a little while. Then he finally
did reply and he said, I'm fine. I just want
to let you know that I'm not going to have
my cell phone on me for a while. And I said,
well why not? And he said, because I found my
teacher and Bob a Gee will be the person that
will contact you. Once in a while to let me
know how I am. And I said, Bob a g
(13:23):
is going to contact me. I said, and why can't
you have your phone? He said, Mom, because I'm going
through this process and I can't talk to any family
or friends. I can't have any contact with them. And
I said, well that doesn't sound right. Anybody who wants
to keep contact keep you away from your family and
friends is up to no good because they don't want
(13:45):
you to have anybody referencing and saying is that right?
Or why are you doing that? So I was pretty
worried about that, and I said, well, how long is
this going to be? And he said maybe a couple
of years. I said, are you kidding me? I'm not
going to have contact with you for a couple of years.
I said, what about Michelle, Oh, she's coming with me.
(14:05):
Nanette reached out to Charlie's fiance Michelle, who was in
Hawaii at the time, and she said she had no
plans of going to India, but she'd also noticed that
something was off with Charlie and who was this Baba Gee.
Charlie Senior has spent time with Bob as in India, who,
as you know, are also called sadu's. He had met
the ones that were the real deal, who transcend the
(14:27):
material world with the wisdom and spiritual insights they teach followers,
but he'd also run into what he calls bogey yogie
or fake baba's. The challenges is, if you're a little
bit vulnerable, you can end up with these babas. And
I think that my son, he's a good person and
(14:49):
he tends to be trusting, and that can get people
in trouble. Charlie Senior knew his son was in trouble
when he got a call from Michelle saying that something
was definitely wrong with Charlie and he had to get
a hold of him. Now. I got him on on
a video call and I went, oh, this isn't Charlie.
(15:10):
Something's going on. He had something wrapped around his head
and he had no shirt on, and he was in
a cafe. And Dad looked at my new house. I
just this is where I live. And look at the
paintings on the wall and look at the whatever, and
I went, oh. Nanette also had a bizarre FaceTime call
with Charlie, but on her call, Charlie wasn't alone. There
(15:32):
was someone else listening in. The next time I talked
to him, he facetimed me, and I was immediately just
shocked at what I saw. He was in the dark,
he had huge earrings on, a shawl wrapped around him,
and he just looked gaunt. He looked hollow in his eyes.
(15:53):
He looked so thin, he looked like he was starving.
He just looked so unhealthy. And he said, Mom, I
want you to charter a plane and get to Hawaii.
I'm like, what are you talking about? And I knew
him and his fiance I wanted to get married in Hawaii.
I said, did you guys make a date? Are you
getting married? And he goes, no, you'll see you'll see
(16:14):
charter a plane and bring the whole family. I said,
charter a plane. He goes, Mom, quit your job. You
don't have to work anymore. And I said, Charlie, you're
losing it. I don't even know what you're saying it
and I was just talking about did you win the
lottery or something? What's going on. He goes, well, it's
something like that. And he kept looking up in the
corner someplace at somebody. His eyes kept averting and he
(16:36):
would make a little nod, and I said, who are
you looking at? And he goes, nobody, nobody, it's nothing,
and he just keep looking up like somebody was directing him.
In a text exchange with Charlie that followed the initial
call they had about the Baba, Nanat asked what Charlie
(16:56):
was studying with him. Charlie responded, I don't know, spiritual things.
This response sounds eerily similar to the other stories we've
shared of men who had cryptic sign offs before disappearing.
But at this point, Nanette, who was still on FaceTime
with Charlie, had eyes on her son and I said, Charlie,
(17:17):
why are you wearing this shawl all around you? You
look strange to me? And he said because it's getting
cold and the Himalayas, mom, it's cold. And I said okay.
And with the earrings, he goes, do you like that?
I did it myself. I said, I don't know. That's unusual.
It doesn't look like you. So he said, So here's
what I want to do is I'm going to send
you some money. I'm going to send it to Andrew's bank,
Andrews's brother, my other son, and I want you to
(17:41):
charter plan and just get over to Hawaii. And I said, Charlie,
you're not making any sense to me. Just hold on
just a moment. So I went in my daughter's room.
I wanted to verify am I hearing this correctly? What
he's saying to me? That he's this off? And so
she verified the same thing. And then my son Andrew
came in the room and he looked at him and
(18:02):
he said, Mom, there's something wrong. He's on drugs. So
then of course my alert goes into, you know, high
gear as a mom. You know, hey, who is he
looking at. He's in the dark, he's on drug someplace.
While my other kids were talking to him on FaceTime,
I called his fiance really quick and I said, have
you talked to Charlie lately? And she said, yeah, I
(18:24):
talked to him last night. And I said, how did
he sound to you? And she said, he told me
that he was scared and he thought somebody was drugging
him and he didn't know how to get out of there.
So I went back and I wanted to get on
the phone with him, and he said and then he
was walking someplace in the dark. He had no shoes on.
(18:46):
I said, Charlie, where are you going. I said, I'm
going to go get on a bus and I'm going
to get out of here. And I said what bus?
He goes, Mom, don't worry about it. I'm gonna get
on a bus. And my phone's about to die. And
his phone died, and then I was unable to get
a hold of him. Ninette knew she had to act fast,
(19:09):
so I called the embassy right away and I said,
you know, this is the situation, and explained exactly what happened,
and they said, get on a plane as fast as
you can and get to India. When Ninette and Charlie
(19:30):
Senior realized something was off with their son and he
might be an immediate danger, they wanted to rescue Mode.
I immediately found I stoked his friends on Facebook, or
I think I found someone on Instagram who I had
seen in a picture or one of his friends he
mentioned or something. And I got this guy and I went,
(19:51):
you got to go back up to Bagsue. You got
to go back up there, and you got to go
get Charlie. He's in a bad state. This friend in
the picture was Rennick, who Charlie had met in Delhi
when he first landed in India and he's like, oh, well,
you know, I don't know if I get up there,
and I don't have money in this and that. So
Guy Western unioned him some money and had him go
back up there. Having Rennick tracked down Charlie and Bagsue
(20:15):
was the first step. The next step was for Nanette
and Charlie Senior to get to India and fast. We
both applied for visas and we got him really quick.
We got them the next morning. I don't know, if
you know, somebody at the embassy made a phone call.
I don't know, but we got really lucky. We got
them fast. The embassy got in contact with the local
police and they gave all of Charlie's information and she
(20:37):
said they're going to be looking for him, and that's it.
We packed a bag and got on a plane. While
in the Neet and Charlie Senior were on their seventeen
hour flight to India. Rennick was navigating the winding twelve
hour route from Delhi to Bagsue. By the time we
were in our layover in Istanbul, I got a phone
(20:57):
call from Rennick and also from the embassy that the
police had found him, but they let him go. They
said he's fine, and I said, he's not fine. They
don't know him. So however he was talking, they might
have interpreted as he's okay, but I'm telling you that
he's not okay. He's in some sort of psychotic state.
So she called the police back and you put them
(21:19):
back on the alert to go find him again. And
Rennick got up there to the cafes and he found Charlie.
The police asked Rennick to come to the police station
and sign off a piece of paper that says I've
got Charlie, I'm in charge of him. Rennick went and
(21:40):
did that, but by the time he got back up
to the cafe, Charlie was gone. Charlie performed a vanishing act,
and it wasn't the last time he was following him,
and what all of a sudden, Charlie would disappear. He
would be on the phone with me, I'm like, you
got eyes on him, and all of a sudden, he's like,
you're not gonna believe it. He just disappeared. I don't
(22:01):
know where he went. So after a couple of incidents,
for Nick would find Charlie and Charlie would suddenly just disappear.
There came a point where Rennick couldn't find Charlie at all,
so Charlie went missing. Rennick started the search party and
got everybody to go looking for him. Finally, some tourists
found him and they said he looked really confused. So
(22:26):
I said, Rennick, get him to a hospital. Take him
to a hospital. Just do what you gotta do to
get him to a hospital. Whatever you have to do.
I'll make it up to you. Just please get him
to a hospital. But Charlie didn't want to go anywhere.
He was acting erratic and was unstable. Eventually, Rennick was
able to force Charlie into a car with the help
(22:48):
of Indian police that were sent by the US embassy.
He sent me a picture of them in the car
with Charlie in the middle, and they had two guys
on the side because I guess apparently he tried to
escape out of the car again, so they blocked him
in the car. First hospital they got to, I think
they were full. They couldn't take him. They went to
a second hospital. They wouldn't take anybody with any type
(23:10):
of psychiatric events happening. So they got to a hospital
in Darmschala. Charlie was refusing to go in at that point.
He wouldn't go into the hospital. So Rennick facetimed me
and he said, can you talk to him? He looked
nothing like himself. He was so thin, He looked like
(23:31):
he was starving. He had two holes in his hands
and he held them up seeing and he said, do
you know what that means? I said, no, Charlie, what
happened to you? He said, Mom, I don't need water
or medicine or food. Do you know what this means?
And he kept pointing to the palms of his hands.
(23:53):
There were holes and both the palms of Charlie's hands.
Nanette couldn't tell from FaceTime if these were actual puncture wounds,
or if he had burnt something into his hand, or
if it was just ash, but she did know what
Charlie meant by it. He thought he was the Messiah Jesus,
the chosen One that didn't need anything in the world
to survive because he wasn't of this world. He believed
(24:17):
he had transcended. Journalist Jessica Ravitt spoke about Jerusalem syndrome
in episode one, which is defined as a psychosis where
people become so overwhelmed by the Holy City of Jerusalem,
that they believed they're the Messiah. I had put this
in the same category as India syndrome, something to debunk.
But Charlie's behavior is proof that people can arrive at
(24:37):
a state where they believe they're the Messiah. I asked
his parents if he had exhibited this sort of behavior before.
He never had those tendencies. He had been on other
journeys before. He had pushed the envelope in the name
of self discovery and really taking it on a journey
(24:58):
that never happened to him before. So my only conclusion
was somebody drugged him. I think somebody kept him on
some think for a long period of time, good intentions
or bad intentions. I have no idea, but they want
a stray. That's what happened. When Charlie Senior references Charlie's
other journeys, he means psychedelic journeys that at the longest
(25:20):
would last twelve hours tops, not two weeks like the
psychotic state his son was in. Now standing with Rennick
outside a hospital in Darmshalla, refusing to go in. So
he said, no, Mom, I'm fine, I'm not going into
any hospital. And he saw me cry. And then the
phone went dead and then Rennick called me back and
(25:42):
he said, ma'am, I have to let him go. He
just hit me in the face. And Charlie's not violent.
I've never seen Charlie hit anybody in his life. Never.
And I said, Rennick, why did he hit you? And
he said because he said, I made you cry. So
I said, Rennick, you have to get him into the hospital.
(26:02):
He said, ma'am, I can't do what people are looking
at me. You can't do this. He's white, we're Indian,
we're so round. There's people around, there's police officers here.
I said, ask them to put some handcuffs on him,
even if it's against his will, and get him into
a hospital, please. And he said, it doesn't work like
that here. You can't do that. If somebody doesn't want
to go to a hospital. In India, you can't force
(26:22):
him to go to a hospital. And I said, Rennick,
if you let him go, I'm never going to see
him again. Hey, Charlie, can you hear me? Can you
(26:49):
hear me? Yeah? I can into Southern room. My service
isn't the best in my apartment, Okay, I'm just like nearing. Yeah,
this is Charlie Marinelli, Nanette and Charlie Senior did see
him again, though at times it took force, antipsychotics and
a lot of patients to get them home. They know
(27:09):
they're the lucky ones they found their son and are
eternally grateful to the generous community of doctors at East
West Medical Center in New Delhi for helping Charlie get
to a state where you could function enough to get
onto a plane back to the States. Charlie is the
one who wrote me that email saying you'd heard the
podcast and the stories we covered were so similar to
(27:30):
his own that at one point he thought I was
talking about him, and I went and listened to it,
and it was even more weird because up until now
is like I'm working with an alternative therapist, like psychedelic
therapy and stuff like that, and I mean, they never
brought up the term India syndrome. They've never brought anything
(27:53):
around that up. So like hearing that parallel story, he's
speaking about Ryan Chambers story that we shared in episodes
one and two. Charlie related to Ryan's story. There are
some parallels with his own. But however, I came back
it was really really intense. What I've realized from doing
(28:15):
this podcast and speaking to experts, specifically doctor Rochett, who
was an episode two, is that the labeling of it
as India syndrome is wrong, but the psychosis is real.
What happens to people, Oh yeah, it's very, very real.
So so we'll hear about how real it is on
(28:35):
the next episode of Astray. Astray is a production of
School of Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode of Astray, Charlie Marinelli,
was produced, written, and narrated by me. Caroline Slaughter and
Kita Nanda is my co producer, and Gaby Wants is
our supervising producer. Astray was sound produced by Tune Welders,
(28:59):
with score and sound designed by Jason Shannon and mixed
by HARPERA. Harris. Executive producers are Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley,
and Brandon Barr. Thanks for listening School of Humans.
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