Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin - 3HO,Kundalini yoga, & Yogi Bhajan - Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight, or.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Showed us an email at trust Me pod at gmail
dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Trust me, trust me, trust me. I'm like a swat person.
I've never lied to you.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
I never live if you think that one person has
all the answers, don't.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
Welcome to trust Me.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
The podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two
Breaths of Fire who've actually experienced it.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
I am Lo Lablanc and I am Megan Elizabeth And.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Today our guests are historian Philip D. Slip and writer
Stacey Sutkin, who together have done investigative reporting on Threeho,
Kundalini yoga and Yogi budget. You can also see them
in the recent documentary on Threeho called Breath of Fire.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
They're going to tell us how they got started.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Writing about three Ho, both of them interacting with Kundalini
yoga in different ways. Who Yogi Budgeen was and whether
he had any credibility in the Sikh religion spoiler he didn't,
And how he began to get white Americans to believe
he was the ultimate spiritual authority, rapidly expanding and profiting
off of the money and property of his followers.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
They'll tell us about some of the many ways Yogi
Badgen exerted control over his followers' lives. The practice of
separating children from their parents and a practice called distance therapy,
and the boarding school's kids were sent to for years
that turned out to be neglectful and abusive, all within
full knowledge and approval of Yogi Budgeon.

Speaker 5 (01:37):
Plus the wave.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Of survivors that came forward to tell their stories of
his and the organization's abuse and how they were failed
by three H O's reparation program. And you can find
the three HO Breadth of Fire documentary on HBO, which
is funny.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Because there's three letters and there's an O at the end.

Speaker 5 (01:59):
Yep I.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Every time I heard three HO, there was part of
me that thought we were talking about four H the
program in school for children.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
I thought it was water. Every time I would see it,
I'd be like H two OHH two, like what it.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Is neither of those things.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
No, it's three HO and as we will talk about
in this episode, it is so much, so much deeper
than I than I knew. And I've had so many friends,
I've been to so many Cundolini classes. I've lived in
Los Angeles for like twenty years, So Kundlini has been
a part of my story and it's really interesting to
hear the true origins.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
And three h O stands for happy, Healthy, Holy Organization,
which kind of is it is not?

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Turns out it's.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Not any of those things. But before we get into
the full story of this group, Megan, what's your culties
thing on this in this harrowing week?

Speaker 1 (02:57):
So mine has to do with the group. I grew
up in the two by twos. After this insane.

Speaker 5 (03:03):
News that we've talked about, a lot that broke.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
In the group a couple of years ago happened known
as Brewer happened with this worker named Dean Brewer. One
of the workers was like, whoa this is and workers
and the two by twos are basically our homeless ministers
who stay with the families.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
He was like, WHOA, this is too much to take on.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm stepping away. I don't believe in this. This is wrong,
and he was very outspoken about it and continued staying
with families who had left the religion to kind of
speak out about it. Turns out he is a child
abuser who was hiding. His name is Doug.

Speaker 5 (03:45):
So disappointing.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
So it goes back so much to how we see
these vulnerable spaces of people finally coming together and having
a voice, and then a predator will leap into that
group with a perfect facade and start abuse them.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
It's just a playbook regular So that is so terrible.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Always nice to be aware of these things, but of
course you can't be until after it happens. So I'm
just so sorry for the people who were affected by
this man.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Well, that is a terrible update, but I'm glad that
it's come out.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah, that's always good.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, I feel really bad for the people affected. What
about you, what's your what's your cultiest thing of the week?

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Living in America?

Speaker 5 (04:27):
Living in America, I.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Know a lot of us are feeling a lot of
overwhelmed this week with the new billionaire run administration and
a lot of the fear mongering and it just you know,
dangerous rhetoric that's coming out of it. I've been unhappy
with most politicians lately, but it's it's a particularly scary
moment for me. And I think the thing that I think,

(04:53):
the thing that I am finding I know everyone isn't
going to agree with me politically, But the thing that
I'm finding that my brain is fixating on right now
that related to cults thinking is the billionaires who own
these social media companies that we all use to get
our information from being in the front row at the inauguration, Well,
could go wrong in front of the actual cabinet. You know,

(05:18):
we talk about social media platforms on.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
Here a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
We talk about how these algorithms kind of push us
all into more extreme thinking.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
And with Zuck being on some.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Weird bro kick now, I'm like, I'm just struggling to
see how we don't all become more entrenched in our
harmful beliefs and like break out of the cultic spheres
that we are all creating for ourselves.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
I just I'm not like.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
It's so helpless, it's a hope.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
I mean, my chat gipt has become so attuned to
me that I had to yell at it the other day.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
I was like why are you enabling me? Why are
you always coddling me? Like stop it?

Speaker 4 (06:01):
And you yelled at your and it was like.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
I'm sorry, would you like me to take a more
realistic approach with you?

Speaker 2 (06:08):
And I go, yeah, bro, that is the funniest thing,
Like I whatever you.

Speaker 5 (06:13):
Throw in there, it's like, I'm so sorry. You are right.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Everyone else is insane, Like it's just so silly.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
It's like two things at the same time, Like one,
algorithms are making us all more entrenched in our beliefs.
But two, also, the people who run the social media
companies do have the ability and willingness, it seems, especially
in the case of Elon Musk, to like have their
own views be what is the thing that influences what
should or be or not be on the platform? Sure?

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Sure, and I mean I have seen that the platform
is capable of saying both sides of things.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
Of which which on which one? Yeah, which one?

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Well, Well, it depends on how you word it. It
depends on what you want to hear.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
Well, that's not true my Twitter and my Twitter for oh.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
I'm sorry, I'm speaking of chaw Chebt, I'm talking about ai.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Oh, I'm talking about social media platforms I talk.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah, like on.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Twitter, I have never once ever indicated to it ever
that I want to see any Trump content at all,
and it basically only shows me Trump content. Yes, that
never happened before Elon Musk's takeover and now anyway, So,
like the my larger point is that these people who
are have so much power over our lives, so so

(07:26):
so so much power over our information, over what we
are able to access and understand, and the most powerful
people in the government being like best buds with the
people who control our information is just a scary prospect
for me right now in terms of how we are
all going to proceed as people on the internet, as

(07:47):
critical thinkers, which was all It's already been a problem,
and it just seems like it's going to get worse.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, we've we've never been critical thinkers the human race,
but it's it's not going to get any easier. Also, like,
forty drones just flew past my house and like shook.

Speaker 5 (08:03):
It to its core. So it's an exciting time.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
Why what's happening? No clue, they do it.

Speaker 5 (08:10):
All the time, but oh it just happened.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, okay, Well, anyway, I take care. We gotta you know,
we gotta get offline, touch drash of each other.

Speaker 5 (08:21):
Yeah, be in community.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
I never want to do it, but when I finally do,
like get out in the world and just talk to people,
I feel so much better.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Agreed and and la you know there people have really
shown up in droves to take care of each other
these past couple of weeks, and that, you know, it's
nice to see a community coming together when so much
of the time all were shown of humanity is that
we hate each other.

Speaker 5 (08:47):
So you know, it's a beautiful thing to see.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, at least tragedy can bring out the good parts
of us, I guess is my silver lining.

Speaker 5 (08:54):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Anyway, should we talk to Philip and Stacy Now, let's
do it. Welcome Philip and Stacy to trust me. Thank
you for joining us today.

Speaker 6 (09:10):
Thank you for having us.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
I was just saying before you were recording, there is
literally so much to talk about.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
We're going to try to get through all of it.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
But can you please start us at how you both
came to this story. Stacey, it sounds like you were
into yoga and Philip you actually joined Threehow is that right?

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yes, So I first started doing Kundalini yoga my very
first week as a college undergraduate, and so I was
involved in the yoga and Threeho for about a decade.
And then when I left, I started doing graduate work,
and then I started taking the skills that I learned

(09:46):
as an academic and started applying them to asking questions
about Threeho and where Kundalini yoga came from. And that
was back in twenty twelve, which I foolishly thought was
kind of the last that I would have to deal
with three Ho and Kundalini yoga. Very wrong.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Did you have any experiences that made you kind of
side eye the organization or was it just that you
were curious and you happened to discover some dark things?

Speaker 3 (10:12):
I think for myself, I think it was an experience
similar to several people, where you know, you felt good
doing the yoga, you liked a lot of the people
that you knew and were in community with, and some
things didn't add up, and you would hear rumors, but
you know, like we all do with many things, you
kind of put those to the side and you focus

(10:33):
on the.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Good and Stacey, what was the first thing you heard
about three h O? Like, how did you kind of
conceive of this group.

Speaker 6 (10:39):
Well, I grew up in Los Angeles, so they were visible,
and they're all white, and I grew up not far
from where their headquarters were. I was also a long
time yoga practitioner, any yoga journalist, and I also did
the yoga, and I I interviewed Kundalini yoga teachers and

(11:02):
students and wrote about it for various publications, including mainstream
women's publications like Glamour and Marie Claire and Yoga Driven
as well. But I always was very curious about it,
and I always wanted to write a longer form piece
about it because it was this weird hybrid of a religion.

(11:25):
They had businesses, they practiced yoga, and they were also
I mean, the cult aspect was apparent to me. I
got you mentioned a little side eye. I had some
side eye thoughts, and I had also heard rumors for
many years. So I got an opportunity to delve into

(11:49):
that history when I wrote a piece in the during
the Pandemic about Kundalini Yoga three Aho and some of
the reckoning and revelations, which I'm sure we'll discuss as
we continue on.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Were you ever bamboostled by it at all. Did you
ever think, oh, this is great?

Speaker 5 (12:06):
Because I did.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
There was a moment and I don't know what exact
year it was, but it was like Wrestle brand and
all the celebrities and it's going to help you with addiction,
and all my girlfriends were doing it, and I just
remember it. I don't know why that, like all these
white people in turbans and all these grand claims didn't

(12:28):
weren't a glaring red flag to me.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
But I was like, oh, this seems like it's helping people.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yes.

Speaker 6 (12:33):
In fact, I had practiced yoga for many years and
I had taken and because I worked at Yoga Journal,
I had taken workshops from all the major teachers throughout
the country. And I never did do teacher training, but
I thought, if I do, it will be Kundalini, which
I thought, which was interesting. And actually, at one point

(12:55):
before I kind of stopped, I was getting like a
really hard sell to do the teacher training through through
Harjeevan and tej Core, who are highlighted in the documentary,
and I always found him unappealing and I also found
the hard sell stats back and I thought, what you know,

(13:18):
somebody's get calm, it is getting greased as this goes
up the chains.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Now, yeah, I mean I think I think there's there's
kind of two things at play at with condalina yoga.
I think kindalina yoga very can very quickly and easily
induce ecstatic experiences. You're doing a lot of breath work,
you're doing, you know, a lot of intense exercises. So

(13:43):
I did an article for a magazine, The Revealer, where
I talked about visual hallucinations that people doing condalin yoga
exercises experience. So you have a lot of seemingly inexplicable experiences.
On the other hand, there's a lot to kindlina yoga
that's really kind of like no shit, common sense stuff,

(14:04):
you know, eat better, exercise right, stuff with other people,
meditate right. So I think it's easy for a lot
of people to take this very basic stuff that you
could get by like joining a running club or you know,
cooking at home more and these unusual experiences, and then
you know, assuming, as so many teachers want you to assume,

(14:27):
Oh this must all be magical, this all must.

Speaker 5 (14:30):
Be all from the source.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
You just described that so well because I feel like
that's basically every cult. Like what they're taking things that
are kind of just one on one of how to
have a good life and repackaging them and sprinkling in
some like peak experiences that make people feel spiritually connected
in booms, like everything they say must be from beyond,

(14:53):
from beyond in some way.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
It's so easy with music to think, oh my gosh,
I'm so moved by this group, and then it's just like, oh,
you go a concert and it's also moving because people
are singing together. So yeah, I always think of that
they've done.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
They've done lab experiments where if people sing the Canadian
national anthem together or if they walk in rhythm with
each other, that you know, it does all kinds of
like pro social totally.

Speaker 5 (15:19):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
I'll see the army marching and it'll be like an
army that's going to probably kill us all, and I'm
like moved.

Speaker 5 (15:27):
To tears, they're.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Like wow, people coming together and you inison so amazing.

Speaker 6 (15:35):
Also to yoga, it's a little it's hippy dippy, it's
a little weird. You feel a little awkward, but you're like, oh,
all these other people are doing it too, so you know,
doing the strange, you know, hand movement, holding it for
eleven minutes and chanting such and such. There's a comfort

(15:56):
in that. Right. Yes, it's weird thing, but I'm going
to suspend the weirdness and join all these people.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
And I can imagine the novelty of it would contribute
to this feeling that like there must be something special
because this is such a unique thing that I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
It's the manic pixie dream girl of the yoga world.
It's like a yoga that you're like, wow, she must
be this yoga must be so interesting and artsy and unique.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
So can we just talk about how hard it is
that I would go with my girlfriends and I would
be like, I'm gonna die.

Speaker 5 (16:29):
You would just hold your hand.

Speaker 6 (16:30):
Out for like it was, And it's hard, But I'm
not sure it's physically effective at keeping you fit.

Speaker 5 (16:42):
No, because that's for sure.

Speaker 6 (16:44):
And if you look at a lot of the senior
Kundalini teachers, they're not looking so healthy.

Speaker 5 (16:51):
Right, and they all seem to die a bitter early.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
There's a great book by Mark Singleton called Yoga Body,
like the origins of yoga as we know it today.
When you go to the footnotes, and he describes the
people that he interviewed. They're all like a lot of
them are in their nineties or early hundreds, and they're
giving these like coherent, sharp interviews.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
And like wow.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Comparably, you don't see that in the hubs of a
lot of people who do Kindelini yoga in Los Angeles
and Espaniola. You're not finding, you know, a bunch of sharp,
sharp seniors who are still doing yoga every day. They're
aging just like everyone.

Speaker 6 (17:30):
Else, and the ones who maybe fit, they're generally doing
something else.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
I want to get into who Yogi budget was because
many listeners might not know what was his deal, Where
did he come from?

Speaker 4 (17:43):
How did he start start this?

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, the origins kind of kind of explain a lot.
He's a customs agent from the New Delhi Airport. You know,
when you talk to anyone who goes through the airport
or is familiar with India, this is, you know, kind
of a little bit of a sketchy, sketchy position to hold.
He leaves his position. He goes to Canada in nineteen

(18:07):
sixty eight. He gets a woman pregnant there, and then
he flees to Los Angeles for a few weeks, he
tries to kind of figure out what he's going to do.
He gets like a hot potato passed from host to host,
and then he starts teaching yoga. His yoga is really

(18:28):
a hodgepodge of different types of yoga that he studied
in India in his twenties, thirties, and forties, and I
think that's a hodgepodge. I think that's the most accurate
way to describe what it is. He's not teaching an
ancient lineage. He's mixing and matching from different things that
he knows. It's also worth saying that he had the

(18:52):
nickname Yoga Budgeon in India from one of these yoga teachers,
but it was a sarcastic nickname. It's kind of kind
of like how you know, you call a basketball player
shorty for your friend who's always problems called it lucky.
When he's called Yogi budget, it's like, yeah, yeah, the Yogi.

(19:15):
When you see early pictures of him in Los Angeles,
it's awkward. He he is not like a life, you know,
flexible yogi. He can like can't really sit in lotus
very well, which I think is one of the reasons
why you know, kwindeling yoga. The teacher doesn't demonstrate the pastors.
You just sit there and tell people what to do.

Speaker 5 (19:34):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
But he, yeah, he kind of cobbles this together. And
you know, it's it's really easy if you're you know, tall,
in a turbine and from India in nineteen sixty nine
in Los Angeles for people to assume you're a yoga master.

Speaker 6 (19:50):
But he also gives it a little bit of mistake
because he claims that it's you know, it was previously
secret and never talked before.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
What a convenient little story for something that doesn't have
an ancient lineage.

Speaker 6 (20:06):
And it's very appealing to you know, boomers, hippie who
you know, they're searching, they're actively searching for for a guru.
And he kind of lands in la and and and
here he.

Speaker 5 (20:20):
Is perfect storm.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Stacey.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Can you paint the context a little bit more for
us about this counter culture thing that was happening at
the time that he, you know, came up with us.

Speaker 6 (20:32):
Well, I mean, you know, we know that that time
was it was a tribulent time. There was a lot
of social change, unrest, assassinations, and people were searching outside
their family of origin religions towards the ease for spiritual
enlightenment and Yogi Budgeon arrived at a time when people

(20:57):
wanted to do yoga, and as he gave and more followers,
it became clear and Philip and I have you know,
through our research, interviewed a lot of people first generation
followers of Yogi budget and many of them came from
very conventional religious families, Jewish families, Catholic families. They came
from a religious home. So they were trying to be

(21:20):
counter culture, but in some ways they were turning back
to what was familiar to them, rituals around, you know, eating, prayer,
things that aligned with their American values, hard work, marriage,
raising children. But all the while, you know, it creates

(21:45):
a group of people that he can you know, abuse
and exploit.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
I think the customs agent thing, it's you know, it
really explains a lot if you think about going through
TSA and how an age and can look at you
and very quickly get a sense are you nervous, Like
kind of clothes are you wearing?

Speaker 4 (22:06):
Or at least they think they can.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
All the time, you know, he picks up what's important
to his students, and he mirrors it back. He's not
vegetarian when he arrives in the US, but he quickly
learns he can't be a spiritual teacher if you're eating meat.
So changels, he hears them saying, he mimics their slang
back at them. He calls things groovy far out, he

(22:32):
picks up on what they want. Oh, we want a community,
we want to live communally. So it's it's a it's
a it's a very kind of clever thing that he's doing.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
It's a really great time to decide you want to
be a guru.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
Oh yeah, that those were the days.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
The one thing that I noticed that is different from
a lot of other people is from the very beginning,
this was like not an LSD drug kind of dude.

Speaker 5 (23:09):
Am I correct in that assumption.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
Drug taking or drug smuggling?

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Okay, it just seems like the group was kind of
anti drug.

Speaker 5 (23:20):
I know it ended there, but did it begin there?

Speaker 6 (23:22):
Well? I think I think a big part of his
attraction was, you know, literally, I'm going to teach you
how to get high on your own bread. So this
was alternative to LSD. It was a more wholesome.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I'm going to get you off drugs,
but I'm still going to encourage you to like get
high and have trips, but through yoga and through meditation.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
Through hallucination.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
There were a good number of groups that were like
that in that era, I feel like where they were
fully tripping, yeah, they were just meditating the higher time
and yeah yeah. And what you said Stacy about how
there are these people who are super like, you know,
thinking they're being countercultural, but actually in a way just
going back to their religious roots. That is such an
interesting thing. We see that in so many groups from

(24:12):
that era, where they're like ostensibly this like sort of rebellious,
you know, rebelling against their parents, and then they do
end up in all these different religious organizations, many of
which didn't end up being like fundamentalist Christian It all
kind of comes full circle.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
It's just so interesting how that happens.

Speaker 6 (24:29):
But though they should know that they do not look
like ordinary people because they are of course white, they
are wearing turbans, They don't present as for sure.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
It's a marketing thing.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
It's a strange mixture because it's it's both you know,
very foreign to mainstream America, but also yui Vojenen's followers
espouse very traditional American values. It's a very weird mixture.
You know. They look very cultish and their thought of
is very cultish. But their public statements are very much like,

(25:06):
we believe, we're anti drug, we believe in the family,
we believe in hard work. You know, some of these
local communities are part of the rotary Club. Yogi Budchen
also gives lip service to countercultural values, but is deeply
conservative himself. You know, he'll say things like I'm here
to empower women, but when you actually read his lectures,

(25:29):
he's he's saying things that are very different. The only
thing of Valua a woman does is give birth to children.
Women are emotional and irrational. You know, if a wife
is out of control, the best thing the husband can
do is ignore her for three days.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
Oh my god, I would have feelings on that.

Speaker 6 (25:48):
So and this is you know, at the height of
you know, second wave feminism. Right. So you have these
women in these groups who are you know, there's a
whole woman's movement around them, but it doesn't affect them,
or they don't they don't participate.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, right, end of dissonance around that must have been
wild and he's I mean, I believe he's choosing who
they marry.

Speaker 6 (26:12):
Even yes, he's arranging marriages and sometimes very un well
matched people.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
How did it start to get to that point?

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Like how did the group expand he shows up, He's like,
I'm I'm the guy. I got the thing, Like, how
did it get to the point where there were like
yoga centers across the country.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
He does a smart kind of McDonald's franchise move in
nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy. So he's got all
these eager students and hippies around him, and he shoot
kind of shoos them away. You know. Sometimes after two
or three weeks of taking classes, they'll say, Lola, I

(26:56):
have a vision. You're a teacher. Go to you know,
Nashville and open a center. Megan, you have a destiny.
You marry this person, and like go to Chicago. So
he sends these people out very quickly. They teach the yoga,
They tell people how great the Yoe Bushen guy is,

(27:17):
so they create centers. Some of these people go to
Los Angeles. He sends those people out, so it's a
very quick kind of franchising out throughout the country. I mean, also,
you know how how stable or how you know how
stable is someone after like two or three weeks of
yoga classes to teach other people. But he does that

(27:38):
these people, you know, using the the energy of these
counterculture people. They set up aschroms and centers. And then
you know from the article that Stacy and I did
for boz News in twenty twenty two, the real the
real change is when he harnesses the power of being
a religious leader in the United States.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Get just so hung up on the business plan of
these guys or sometimes women. I'm like, how, but but
how did you expand can I apply those lessons to
my own career? How are you able to make it
so big so fast?

Speaker 3 (28:16):
That there is a marketing book. There is a marketing
book that says, like, you should market your product like
a cult. The best advertising comes from cults and cult members.

Speaker 6 (28:25):
So right, And he also used a philosophy called opm OPI,
which is other people's money and other people's intelligence. So
he had a real knack for harvesting, you know, the entrepreneurship,
the energy and enthusiasm of his followers to benefit himself.

Speaker 5 (28:46):
Right, that's so heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
So he starts expanding, and Philip, can you say more
about what you mentioned a minute ago about how it
became more of a religious leader.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
The lead into this is in late nineteen seventy he
takes a group of students to India and the trip
is a disaster. He has a falling out with one
of his original teachers. It's kind of chaotic. Yogi Budget
quickly repurposes this trip and he presents his students as
converts to the Sick religion. He dresses them up, he

(29:23):
tells them, you know, tell people you're six, and he
literally parades them around in a bus and has them
do like basic cureton.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
So this is a bunch of white people in turbans
pretending there's six.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
That's the appeal for a lot of rural people in
the Punjab. This is astounding. You know, a bunch of
American hippies have converted. And he rides this wave all
the way up to the harimunderside the Golden Temple, like
the kind of the center of the sick tradition, and
they kind of don't know what to do with him,
but he presents himself as a missionary. I'm converting all

(29:58):
these American hippies, and when he comes back to the
United States, I think he very clearly sees the utility
in not being another yoga teacher, not being another swami
or yogi, but being a leader of a religious faith.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Practically speaking, what does that mean? What's the difference if
you already have the ashrams and you have the yoga centers,
and you are the guy who started it all, like practically,
what is the difference?

Speaker 6 (30:26):
Well, I mean the real difference is that, as he
realizes he wants to make money off this right, he
has a lawyer around him who advises him that the
best way to do that is to create a corporation soul,
which essentially is a business entity that's like a business monarchy,
which puts him at the top.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
He's the queen.

Speaker 6 (30:46):
He's the queen.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Literally the other The best example of that kind of
corporation is the Queen of England. The British monarchy has
the same structure.

Speaker 6 (30:57):
So there's no board of directors, there are no showlders,
there's no concern for conflict of interest. He can accept donations,
he can create nonprofits, he can create new businesses, he
can hire, he can fire people, and he has complete
free range. So he has both temporal authority, spiritual authority,

(31:22):
and social authority over everything that they do.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yeah, I mean we had Stacy and I had a
big kind of light bulb go off when we were
doing our research and reporting, and we realized that right
after he creates the corporate structure that gives him this control,
this power, we look at his lectures, immediately there's this

(31:47):
dark turn. Immediately it's gloom and doom. Society is going
to fall apart, There's going to be chaos, there's going
to be terrifying, cataclysmic changes.

Speaker 5 (31:58):
They all Apockaleck cult leader.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Well with a purpose, because the solution to all this
is we need to band together. We're siblings of destiny.
And so in a wave across the country, people start
signing over their homes, their businesses, their inheritances to the religion.

(32:22):
And what few people except for the Inner Circle now
is that Yogi Budzen is the only person who has
control of the religion. All of the assets, all the
property is all under his singular control. So it's like
an incredible, an incredible move.

Speaker 6 (32:40):
And when we were reporting that story and interviewing people,
it was we were figuring it out as we went,
because it was this big labyrinth of information. But as
we were talking to people, one of the thing that
was amazing is we were literally experiencing them understanding how

(33:00):
it worked in real time.

Speaker 4 (33:02):
Oh wow, and you know.

Speaker 6 (33:04):
From all this work interviewing you know, survivors of this call,
understanding how it worked was such important information for that.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
I'm curious about, like the processes, kind of going into
what it would be like to be an individual in
the group at the time, because obviously there's a lot
that goes on between you go to some Kundalini yoga
and you are signing your house over to this corporation.

(33:43):
So what were some of the tactics that he used
to start to gain control over people.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
There's a there's a retired anthropology professor named Van Dusenberry.
He studied pre h O in the seventies and beyond.
I think it was his m A these on THREEHO
was titled straight Freak Yogi Seek. So he saw the
pattern as you have people who are in the straight

(34:11):
normal world, they get turned onto the counterculture, they experiment
with drugs, they drop out, and then they get into
yoga and then while doing yoga in three h O
they kind of convert to the three h O version
of Sikhism, And there was kind of a pipeline for

(34:33):
people who stayed this kind of expectation that like, well,
if you're doing the yoga, you should do it every day.
And if you're doing it every day, you should do
it in the Asherom. Why don't you live in the ashrum.
If you live in the ashram, why don't you take
sik vows? If you're a sekh and you live.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
With us, you should make like so over time, you
kind of people would just get deeper and deeper into
harmalize community this practice.

Speaker 5 (34:55):
And he changed his name.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Correct people change their names when they joined THREEHO the Seiki,
they changed their names, I think that's.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
And he changed his own name though, to mean like basically,
I am the lord.

Speaker 5 (35:09):
Am I remembering this correctly?

Speaker 4 (35:11):
You mean the serious the serious things.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, it seemed like that was kind of it brought
people in deeper to me.

Speaker 6 (35:18):
Well, it did among his followers, because you know, they
kind of called him the pope of the Sikhs right
to lam. It gave it gave him some credibility. But
within Siki itself and Philip can speak more accurately do this,
it kind of was baloney for technical term.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
He does this kind of slick move where he too
the vast majority of Six are in the Punjab region
of India. When he's there, he says, you know, I'm
in charge of these American converts, and people are like,
it's such a weird thing. Sure, okay, yeah, be their teacher.
But when he is with his students, he kind of

(36:01):
lets them assume that he was made the authority for
all seeks in the Western hemisphere. It's kind of like
a clever bait and switch. And you know, he he
goes to great lengths to kind of keep a division
between his followers and the vast majority of six throughout

(36:22):
the world. You know, there are separate gudwara, separate centers.
You know, he never really lets the two mix too
freely because I think if there was that mixture, his
students would realize that something is not quite right. He's
not who he appears to be or claims to be.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
And what were the types of control that were happening
in these ashroms and yoga centers, like we know, you
know you just said that they would have people change
their names, which of course can strip away one's individual
identity and make, you know, make your identity more fused
with the group. But what about like sleep, diet, like

(37:03):
control over you know, your life decisions.

Speaker 4 (37:05):
What did that look like.

Speaker 6 (37:06):
Well, he had a tendency to sometimes put people on
mono diets.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Right, so you're only going to.

Speaker 6 (37:13):
Drink milk, You've got the celery juice diet. Ah, you know,
you had to wake up at the ambrosial hours and meditate,
and this included the children, you know. So you're waking
up at three or four in the morning, meditating a
couple hours, and then you're starting your day. You're wearing
all white, you're eating vegetarian, you're being told when to

(37:36):
have sex with your spouse, you're being told who to marry. So,
you know, as Philip and I like to call it,
it's an all encompassing, prescriptive lifestyle with.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
Him as the spoken or unspoken presence throughout everything. You know,
you talk to people who grew up in three h
O and the constumer brain is the serious sink, SOB
says the sirius sing.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Sab says, well, what is that serious sink, sub What
does that translate to.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Get a little little bit technical. So in the Sick religion,
there are five kind of seats of authority tuckets, and
the people who are pointed to run those tuckets are
called singh sobs. You know, it means sword, but it
would kind of be like someone in British Parliament is

(38:30):
called a whip. You know, they're called like a sword.
So by saying Sirius singh sob, he's claiming that, like,
you know, of these five kind of seats of authority
that have singh soobs, I'm I'm actually above that.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
So he's like God essentially, you.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Know, to his students, you know, he takes he makes
all these claims that he's a yoga master, that he's
the Mahan Tantrick, he's the singular person who can control
tantra energy on the earth, that he's a sekh religious authority.
He has all these grandiose, overlapping claims of authority. But

(39:09):
as Stacey and I discovered in are reporting for bos News,
on top of that, there is so much actual control.
You know, your job it's a three h O company,
your spouse it's arranged marriage by him. Yeah, your house
it's owned by the religion. Your kid is in a

(39:31):
boarding school half a worldway, So there's so many different
forms of control. And also there's like the physical kind
of intimidating stuff. You know, he's a large man who
is infamously known in threeho for like screaming at people.
He's always got security with him, so you know there's

(39:52):
you know, someone with a gun.

Speaker 5 (39:53):
And he starts a huge security company that's like a
billion dollar government American company.

Speaker 6 (40:00):
Well he then started when of his students start, right,
and he takes it.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, it's important to note that, like even if he
didn't have that, even if he wasn't physically like yelling
at people or having this intimidating security thing.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
He's still to his followers.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
He has convinced them that he is the ultimate spiritual
authority on all things. So if the ultimate spiritual authority
on all things, the one who knows who's like I
don't know exactly what the belief system is, but the
equivalent of it, you know, in Mormonism would be like
the prophet who literally like talks to God and translates
to you what God said, Like you're not gonna not

(40:40):
listen to that person. Once you believe it that's who
he is, then then there is so much room for
that person to control your life, because who's going to
go against the ultimate authority?

Speaker 4 (40:51):
I mean no.

Speaker 6 (40:53):
And I have heard, particularly among those in the second
generation born into three Ahl, they were raised to view
him as not only kind of like a grandfather, but
as a god. Literally they used that word. That word.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
And he is there in the middle of so many
of our normal natural bonds that we have with other people.
You know, he's arranged your marriage. He's arranged your marriage,
and your spouse is constantly deferring to Well serious SINKSOB
says we should only have sex once a month. Well
serious SINKSOP says we should do this. You know, there's

(41:33):
the separation of children from their parents, there's the alienation
of his followers from their own birth families.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
And what that does is prevent people from having a
safe system that they can doubt with right and which
can help shut off the critical thinking and the questioning
of that leader, and a.

Speaker 5 (41:52):
Safe place to run away to if you decide this
is all bunk. It's it's just a perfect circle.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
I'm forgetting. The name was an academic who wrote an
article about people who leave cults, and his comparison was,
it's like when people leave a relationship, this kind of
like disenchantment, disaffiliation. And he said, you know, when people leave,
often one of the biggest factors is, you know, do
I have a college degree, Do I have money saved?

(42:20):
Do I have a family who will support me? Do
I have marketable skills? Can I get a job? When
he has inserted himself into people's lives in so many ways,
it makes it a lot harder to leave. If you leave,
you can't leave with your spouse or your kids.

Speaker 6 (42:38):
Yeah, And I mean that's a real thing, especially you know,
if you have children and one of the one person
in the couple wants to leave, that pretty much means
giving up your kids, right because the organization is going
to circle thround wagons around the one that's staying, and.

Speaker 5 (42:55):
They have all the power. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
I mean.

Speaker 6 (42:58):
The other thing is that the actual structure of three
h O is very hierarchical. You know, everybody has a
weird title, So there's this, you know, assumption that people
have some kind of control or power, but in reality,
these titles really mean nothing.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
You guys mentioned something about like they created a fake
democracy almost, so it looks like all of these different
people have titles and power, but they're just talking into
the wind. It's really it's his decision that's actually going
to go.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
In addition to the fake titles, you know, where there
is kind of hierarchy, it's all about loyalty to him.
You know, you're not going to send the ranks of
three ho by being disloyal, by being your own person.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
You know, most cults have like sort of an ever
moving goalpost of like enlightenment or whatever the spiritual goal is,
Like there's always something that you're you're just not quite
good enough yet, so it always keeps on your toes.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
Was there an element of that happening.

Speaker 6 (44:04):
I don't think that as much as there was a
meditation for everything, okay, okay. I think that any issues
that you had in your life, you either consulted the
serious thing sub or you had to meditate on it
and you would get prescriptions to do that for forty
days this meditation and that problem will go away.

Speaker 4 (44:28):
Right right, right right.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
I mean they're early on Yogi Vision made some hints
of like you know I've got you know, I'm going
to teach you the real good stuff down the road
when you're ready for it. But you know, there's always this,
like so many groups, there's always this projection that like
bad stuff's going to happen in the future or great
stuff is going to happen to us in the future,

(44:50):
and by the time you get to that future, there's
something else down the road, right, you know, you're never
looking back, you're never doing like the post game review.

Speaker 6 (44:58):
And they were also, you know, very concerned with making money.

Speaker 5 (45:02):
And a lot of money they did make.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, it sounds like they had a ton of businesses.

Speaker 5 (45:16):
What is distance therapy?

Speaker 6 (45:18):
So you know, distance therapy was a philosophy whereby when
Yoei Budgen's followers started having children, of course, he told
them they were too neurotic and screwed up to properly
care for them, and he literally mothers were kind of
suppressing their maternal instincts and doing things like sending their

(45:42):
children away to live with other families, for example. But
simultaneously it was so confusing because they were also told
that these children were saints, sages and heroes and they
were here to like, you know, improve humanity, and so
it was essentially you know, a way to further allow

(46:08):
yo you budget to be in control of the children
and disenfranchising parents from being involved in their lives.

Speaker 4 (46:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
I mean some children are a year and a half
two years old when they're sent to live in other ashroms.
And this is early on, like early mid nineteen seventies.
There's also a lot of you see this with other groups.
There's a lot of like bo family rhetoric. You know,
we're the spiritual family, We're all siblings of destiny. So

(46:39):
that's kind of part of it too, Like you're you're
distancing yourself from your child, but your child is still
within this kind of three ho family. When you look
at Yogi Budgen's lectures, I mean, like so much of
his lectures they're crazy, you know, the idea that like
you're going to ruin your child by like showing them
too much affection, by feeding them too much. You know,

(47:04):
they're not your pets, you know, stop treating your child
like a dog. And could you imagine any pediatrician saying, like,
don't snuggle the baby, don't show too much time.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yeah, and he really leaned into that neurosis thing that
was so hot at the time.

Speaker 5 (47:18):
Like, you're gonna just give them your neurosis.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
You're gonna like get them away from you so they
don't get this neurosis. And it's like, damn, that's smart
but evil because he's sending these kids to an ashram
in India where, I mean, what happened to them is
just unbelievable. I don't know if you guys can say
a bit about that, but it's beyond abusive.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Yeah, I mean, like, so, so he's basically marketing distance,
being separated from children, being separated from their parents as
being good for the kids and also good for the parents.
And it was also like you'll be spiritually more pure,
like what was in it for the parents anything?

Speaker 4 (47:58):
According to his marketing, you won't screw up.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
The leaders of tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
I think that's the bigg That's the main thing.

Speaker 7 (48:05):
Jeez.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Okay, And so tell us where the kids would go.

Speaker 6 (48:10):
Well, before they went to boarding schools in India, they
would go to other members of the organization, but then
at a certain point they start sending their children to
India to boarding schools, existing boarding schools, they're not three
h O boarding schools.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
And so you both conducted a whole bunch of interviews
with people who had attended these boarding schools. Right, but
you said not three Ho's boarding schools or Skarry, Can
you clarify that.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
They would send There were a series of boarding schools,
and initially the boarding schools were already existing, and so
they started sending their their children there. So you kind
of had this wave of children who were kind of separate,
kind of doing their own thing, attending these larger boarding schools.
But you know, if you if you watch Breadth of Fire,

(49:00):
you see footage of this, you hear people talking about it.
You know, these are these are you know, kind of
poorly run and managed boarding schools. You know, there's you know,
a lack of essentials all all across the board. So
they are sent to these schools, often at a huge
cost to the parents, but they're not fed well, they

(49:23):
don't have medical care. They often don't have clean clothes,
there's no toilet paper, the teaching is you know poor,
The conditions are are dangerous.

Speaker 6 (49:36):
It's yeah, I mean, you know, people you know, the
minute they get there, there's medical neglect. You know, they
may get injured, they're not taken to get proper medical care.
They come home, their parents see, they've lost weight, they
have lies, parasites, parasites, their personalities may have changed. So

(50:00):
the thing that was really heartbreaking about reporting that story
is to realize that the suffering and abuse these kids
went through was a parent.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
With three ho and especially the first generation. There's a
lot of kind of changing the past. In hindsight, we
couldn't have known. This is a surprise when you look
at Yogi Buchen's lectures, when you look at the justifications
he's giving these parents to send their kids to these schools.

(50:30):
He's explicit he is saying, this will be a living hell.
This is to toughen them up, This is to give
them grit, This is to you know, give them some
awful experience that will make them, you know, leaders of tomorrow.
So it's very difficult to take these claims that we
didn't know and fully accept them. I mean, in many cases,

(50:53):
as Stacy mentioned, you know, the evidence for how bad
these schools were was literally fa parents when they picked
up their child at the airport. Right now, their children
had lost weight, They're dirty, their clothes aren't washed.

Speaker 4 (51:07):
How old were the kids that were being sent to
these schools.

Speaker 5 (51:10):
I'm as young as five Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
I remember reading in one of the articles y'all wrote
that they were so hungry, one of the most eating
rose pedals. If somebody had a piece of food, they
would it would just a big fight over it, fight club.
And I can see how much parents had to override
their own instincts and how sucked into this group and

(51:34):
to this man as quote unquote god that they were
to see their children in these states and to still
send them back. And you know what we talk a
lot about on this podcast is Lola and I were
both I was raised in the high control group.

Speaker 5 (51:47):
Lola was in a high control group.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
And it's like, your parents sometimes just don't have.

Speaker 5 (51:53):
Their But what would you say, Lola, how do you
put that?

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Like, because so many people would be like these peopleeople
are abusive. They sent their kids back, and it is abusive,
but in a way their minds are so hijacked that
it's just so complicated.

Speaker 6 (52:09):
Well it's complic It is complicated because like things would
happen there, there were some parents that were kind of
doing things behind the scenes, like let's check the water.
The water is really bad. Okay, we're going to pay
for some water filters at the school, right right, you know,

(52:30):
so that so that that's kind of both acknowledging there's
a problem but then fixing it at the same time
to make it better. Oh there's raw sewage running through
the school, while nobody really fixed that. But you know,
it's it's it is a cognitive dissonance and I think

(52:51):
a lot of parents there had been a reckoning and
there was there have been very difficult conversation between families,
between parents and children. And the other thing is when
there was a problem of abuse, it was it was
handled internally. And so when we handled it internally, there

(53:11):
was no third party accountability. There was just we go
to Yogi budget.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
You know, in our reporting we named two of them.
There were at least five pedophiles in three h O,
you know, repeat serial abusers of children, and they're all
known within the organization. But it gets handled internally. You know,
you don't take our problems to the outside world. You

(53:38):
don't call the police. You know, people on the local level,
or people like Yogi Budgeon, three HO ministers, people who
are licensed therapists, they know, they don't go to police,
you know, you know, just well you know, send them
to India or send them away from India. It's also

(53:59):
important to know that there are are people who do leave.
It's easy to overlook them because you know, once you
leave the group, you no longer exist and people aren't
in contact with you. But it is important to say
there are people who leave. There are people who see
evidence of their children being abused and that's the breaking
point and they leave often, you know, at great loss

(54:22):
to themselves. But it's not impossible. People did did leave.

Speaker 6 (54:27):
Right And another point about the kids, and this is
another kind of heartbreaking reality. You know, they were gale
to go to India. It was something that they wanted
to do, you know, without really realizing the consequences their
little kids. But it's you know, it was like this privilege.

(54:47):
We're going to be in the heart of Sicky, you know,
by the Golden Temple, right, and.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
All your friends are going there. And there's peer pressure
on mothers. You know, when is your child going? Why
aren't they going? Uh?

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I don't know how to pronounce this word, Seva. Can
you explain that was that an element in this idea
of like suffering or discomfort or anything like that?

Speaker 3 (55:11):
I mean, I think you know, there's that question too,
of like, how is the three h O version of
sicky comparable to the siky that's practiced by six around
the world. I think save is one of those one
of the one of the examples of how concepts were
twisted in uni ussions version. So, you know, Seva is

(55:32):
traditionally thought of by seeks as selfless service, you know,
feeding the hungry, building a gudwara, helping people who need help.
In three h oh seva is working for the organization.
For most six there's a concept known as dust fund.
You donate part of your income to charity to help

(55:54):
build gudwaras in three hh dust fund is money that
you send to Yogi Budgeen, that you send to the organization.
So there's you know, I think that's kind of one
of the great pieces of evidence that maybe three h
O Sicki wasn't exactly sicky is instead of the traditional

(56:15):
center of the Sikh faith, it's Yogi Budgen. Yogi Buzgen
is naming people. Yogi Budgen is where donations go to
your service goes to Yogi Budhen. It really is kind
of a twisting of so much of Sicki to.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Him, and so that was more about like getting people
to work and give him money. I come from, you know,
my background is Mormonism, and one of the although interestingly
it's actually a Bible story that I think gets used
so much by Mormon cult leaders, which is this idea
that like, you know, if you must be willing to

(56:53):
sacrifice anything.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
For you know, God, and including in.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
You know, and it's it's the height of the abuse
of this idea, like including your own children, you know,
like Abraham and Isaac, like you. So it's like it
can get perverted into this like suffering is good at all,
that feels bad is actually good because you're you're doing
this for the Lord. Is there any any element of

(57:20):
that or is that really just more sort of about
the labor and the money.

Speaker 6 (57:26):
I would think it's more about the labor and the money.
I mean, I think the businesses we're able to flourish
rapidly and profitably because people were working for substandard wages.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
And there's always there's always some new Age concept that
can be unfolded in to make sense of something. Right, right,
you're burning off karma, like you're you know, you're cleansing
your Yeah, I mean, fun fact Lola three h O
and the LDS Church both corporate.

Speaker 4 (58:00):
Mmm, of course they are.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
One of the things that it's just so scary to
me is that he really was so you guys can
correct me if I'm morning this wrong, but almost antisocial,
like he had no plan. The plan was not for
this to be a generational thing, Like he wasn't educating
these children, he wasn't taking care of them. It was

(58:33):
almost just like, get as much money from their parents,
start all these businesses, get rid of the kids, and
they can come back and maybe start some businesses. But
from the articles that I was reading that y'all wrote,
it almost sounds like he was just like, well, when
I die, who cares about what happens with this?

Speaker 6 (58:49):
I mean, yes, And now Philip and I were talking
about this actually this morning as I was revisiting the
serious and sub piece and some of the things we
discussed on a podcast Philip and I did called Temple
of Steel. I think in some ways he was learning

(59:10):
along the way and was very astutent in figuring out
how to manipulate and devise his structures to benefit him financially.
But in other ways, as time went on, I think
it was very directed methodical and kind of evil.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Kind of reminds me of like like a terminator too abusive,
of like he's abusive from the beginning, but he's very
adept at kind of leveling up, you know. In our
piece for Bosniws, we talked about how in the nineties
there's like this corporatization of the corruption in THREEHO. In

(59:54):
the eighties, I mean, we got to at least mention
the crime and three HHO there are all sorts of
criminal schemes in the a ees, you know, telemarketing, fraud, drug smuggling,
art scams. A lot of that money was used to
not just go to Yogi Bushen, but to like pay
for his harem of secretaries that were around him. In

(01:00:15):
the nineties, as the companies get bigger, he just makes
it corporate. He realizes, like, you know, I don't have
to have this operation where we're like cashing checks from
fake sales and using the cash. I can just give
them jobs. I can just put them, you know, on
the board, give them a salary. So there's this very

(01:00:36):
kind of frighteningly savvy predatorial mindset, and as you know
station I discussed on our podcast, in many cases there
is abuse that is planned out like five or ten
years in advance. There are children who are kind of
like singled out who are later abused by him once

(01:00:57):
they become the legal age of consent. Isn't like someone
who can't control their impulses. This is like someone who's
methodically planning to of use and exploit people.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
That's terrifying.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
He was like kind of meeting with the Dalai, lama
and popes, and like, how did he get to? What
level of fame did he achieve?

Speaker 6 (01:01:21):
Well, early on, for example, there was a piece in
Time magazine that kind of tried to call him out.
He was very slippery. He's a bit teflon. He kind
of just kind of floated through and particularly as a
security company grew. You know, he had some political capital.
He had political capital in the state of New Mexico.

(01:01:44):
You're in Los Angeles. So, and he was known as
the Pope of the Sikhs. He was the serious sing Zob.
He had his own religion. So Americans who didn't know
a lot about sick culture or sicky took it at
base value that he was somebody who was who one

(01:02:08):
should revere as an important religious and business leader.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
Yeah, and Also, SICKI is a congregational religion. It's not
a hierarchical religion. So if you know, if I claim
to be a Catholic bishop, you can very easily go
to the Roman Catholic Church and check out through their hierarchy.
You know, there isn't that kind of hierarchy in the

(01:02:32):
sick tradition, and I think Yogi Budgen exploits that and
the confusion that Stacey said that Americans don't really know
who seeks are. So it probably wasn't that difficult to,
you know, call up the Vatican and say, you know,
we have we have the leader of the Sikhs who
would like to meet with Pope.

Speaker 5 (01:02:48):
John for right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
He's like that Leonardo DiCaprio movie where he Catch Me
if you can. He's like, he's a con man. He's
a con.

Speaker 5 (01:02:57):
Man, and he is good at it. It is wild.

Speaker 6 (01:03:01):
Take it till you make it, Yeah, bake it till
you make it. But also there is you know, one
of the other things is, you know, often people try
to lay all the blame at the feet of Yogi Badgeon,
but along the way there are so many people that
are complicit and so much.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
True and you're speaking of like helping to cover things
up or just.

Speaker 5 (01:03:27):
That that realm or A.

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
Lot of members describe the rank and file people as
the worker bees, you know, people who you know are
just running like a landscaping business and sending their monthly checks.
In surrounding him in his inner circle, you have lawyers,
medical doctors, people who have therapist licenses. You know, one

(01:03:54):
of his right hands is in the attorney General's office
in the state of New Mexico. My god, So there
are people with serious qualifications who and he also uses
people to do like pr for him. So whenever there
is a pushback, whenever there is a scandal, he has
powerful people around him to protect him and to keep

(01:04:16):
him from experiencing consequences. You know, when you go to
newspaper accounts, there are you know, there's an immediate pushback.
He's a religious leader. He would never do this. An
attorney speaks on his behalf. He has a medical doctor
to get him out of court appearances in the eighties.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Yeah, a whole system of people upholding all of the
bad behavior basically and including after he died. Just for
people who don't know, Yogi T, can you tell us
what the connection to Yogi T the company that has
the one that I have had a lot is stomach ease,
immune support, bedtime.

Speaker 5 (01:04:54):
Oh yeah, I have some upstairs right now. I need
to flush it down the toilet.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Yeah, what is It's a little descriptive lifestyle in several boxes. Yeah,
for everything.

Speaker 6 (01:05:05):
It's still it's still owned by the serious sub corporation,
so it is still funding the cult.

Speaker 5 (01:05:12):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Basically, I say that to say there were very successful
businesses that were being kettleships to all of this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Yeah, well, kettle Chips was a person under who ended
up leaving, but they were he was involved with kettle
Chips for a moment.

Speaker 5 (01:05:28):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
No, No, that was the one that that I can
keep eating them.

Speaker 6 (01:05:33):
Yes, yes, and that has since been sold. Okay, great,
But the owner of it created it, and he had
learned his lessons because two of the other businesses that
he created he gave over and he decided that he
was going to keep this one for.

Speaker 5 (01:05:51):
Himself, so he gave over his other two.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Think.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Wow, I mean, it's really one of those amazing examples
of OPPI I mean, you know you have students who,
I mean, how how insanely brilliant is it when you
can just, you know, over the course of a decade,
build and give away one successful business after another. Oh Okay,

(01:06:19):
I'll just do another one. Okay, I'll start a yogurt company. Okay,
we'll do potato chips. And it shows how powerful how
Yogi budget became so powerful. It's not through his own creativity,
but just by stealing and pilfering the creativity of all
these people around him.

Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:06:36):
And it was also the times too. I mean, this
was kind of the ascension of wellness culture both you know,
the yoga industry, the food industry, so and kind of
in typical boomer fashion, they were able to ride that
wave and do really well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Well, I want to hear a little bit more about
his secretaries and then the book that was released by
one of them, Whitebirden a Golden Cage.

Speaker 6 (01:07:04):
Yeah, White Bird in a Golden Cage.

Speaker 5 (01:07:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
I want to hear about the secretary of that book
and how it brought people together.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
Well.

Speaker 6 (01:07:10):
The book came out in January of twenty twenty decent
late December January of twenty twenty, and it was written
by Premka, who was a former high ranking member of
Yogi budget's staff and of the organization, and it's this
very readable memoir of kind of like a failed love affair.

(01:07:34):
He is abusive to her, But I think because she
had such standing in the community, it inspired people to
come forward and tell their stories. But what Philip and
I have often talked about is what she didn't include
in the memoir. She didn't include her lawsuit in nineteen

(01:07:57):
eighty six with another former secretary alleging alleging sexual assault, battery,
you know, control, financial malfeasans. She didn't mention what had
happened to the second generation. But all that said, it

(01:08:18):
did enable a public airing and gave people permission during
the pandemic to tell their stories.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I've said the memoir is
perhaps most most most important about the memoirs. What doesn't
go in there. You know, she's, you know, the secretary
general of three h She recounts this kind of failed
love affair, his kind of abusive nature, but she leaves
out the abuse of the children and the abuse of

(01:08:47):
other secretaries, and she doesn't mention, like Stacy noted, the lawsuit,
she doesn't mentioned that she returns to Yogi Budgeon in
the late early nineties, that she kind of publicly recants
the lawsuit against him. That you know, that kind of
recanting is taken in the community in Espanola as proof that,

(01:09:12):
you know, these women are just lying. See she she apologized,
she's back. It's a very it's a very interesting and
unusual memoir. In some ways, I kind of read it
as almost like an alibi, almost like as a way
to kind of put a certain story out there. But
it happens right before the pandemic, when everyone's online. For

(01:09:35):
many people still in three h O, it's her claims
are just small enough that they can accept it, Well,
he had a sexual relationship with this one woman. For
other people, the second gen, people who know how horrific
three HO actually was, this is kind of this is

(01:09:55):
something that they push back against. Yeah, you know, we're
not We're not going to let this scandal be about
this one person and not about the horrific things that
he did, all the abuse that happened to hundreds and
hundreds of men and women who are raised in the group.
So in some ways, it's kind of like a weird

(01:10:17):
catalyst that inspires people to come forward, and once stories
start coming forward, they just keep coming one right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
After them, and they're talking about obviously there's the abuse
that children experienced, but also sexual abuse by him by
Yogi Budgeon.

Speaker 5 (01:10:36):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:10:36):
Yeah, So after the memoir comes out and these stories
come forward of abuse at the hands of Yogi Budgeon
and the organization three Ho hires a third party to
do an investigation and they produce something. They produce a report.

(01:10:58):
The organization is called an Olive brand, so it's known
as the Enoli Branch Report, and it documents dozens of
women who claim sexual abuse, battery, rate assault, all at
the hands of Yoga Budget. But the thing that's unusual
about this document is not only does it catalog the abuse,

(01:11:21):
it also catalogs defense by his supporters, and they use
very interesting language. They say he was like Christ or
the Buddha. He couldn't possibly do these things. So they
use his kind of divine place in their life as
a defense against the fact that this could not possibly happen.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
And there's a great undercurrent of just good old boomer
mail excuse him. You know, well, these women probably enjoyed it.
They're making up these lies so that they can make.

Speaker 6 (01:11:58):
Money, and they threw that back in panel in space too,
because you know, she did file a lawsuit. It was
not successful in that she had to settle. She did
receive money, but from what we understand, it was not
a lot of money. And so you know, their thinking

(01:12:19):
was the double downers, the ones that are still supporting
yoga budget and the organization was that, you know, this
was all just another ruse to get more money and
more attention.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):
Right and yeah, and it's it's sobering to think, you know,
when we're talking about Male of Branch, it's sobering to
think that like that can be your niche as a business.
We only specialize in damage control for religious organizations as
they go through revelations of abuse.

Speaker 4 (01:12:47):
That's crazy that that exists.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
And it's it's interesting because it uses all this kind
of like feel good new age social justice language, but
at the end of the day, it's damage control. They
explicitly state on their way web site we are here
to lead organizations through points of crisis and keep them intact.

Speaker 4 (01:13:06):
What's the name of it again, an Olive Branch, An
Olive Branch.

Speaker 6 (01:13:11):
Yeah, it's based out of Philadelphia, and I believe it's
a Buddhist based organization.

Speaker 3 (01:13:16):
Wild wild and then that leads to the reparations program,
which is kind of the follow up third the follow
up kind of organizationally led bit of damage control done
by three HO. So after the Olive Branch report comes
out and you know, they're further revelations, so yeah, three

(01:13:39):
HO institutes what they call a healing and reparations program
and this ends up being, as a lawyer described to us,
a bait and switch. So with all of these this
kind of flowery language and these promises, three HO launches
this program where they say, you know, we're going to

(01:13:59):
heal the community. We're to provide reparations for people who
are harmed by three HO, harmed in three HO institutions
by Yogi Buzzhen, and it promises to be a trauma
informed process. There is a lot of lip service that's
given to not just monetary reparations financial settlements, but also

(01:14:23):
non monetary reparations, ranging from you know, apologies, returning of items,
institutional safeguarding.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
Really really reasonable baseline requests, yes, karmic apologies. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:14:37):
Yeah, it's so bizarre.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
One would think, But in time, the reparations program turns
out to be something very different.

Speaker 6 (01:14:48):
Another thing to note about the reparations program. You know,
we're talking about an organization that, as far as we know,
is pretty financially solvent. And part of the stipulation was
to be that there would be no apps on the
amount of claims paid out, that there was a group
of independent experts to assess what one might get, who,

(01:15:13):
by the way, were hired by the organization's lawyers. And
then when it came down to it, it became very
clear that there was a finite amount of money and
they had you know, allocated enough money for maybe one
hundred claims, and they ended up getting six hundred. So
people walked away not only going through a very traumatizing
process that gave little satisfaction emotionally, but it was financially

(01:15:39):
not very rewarding either for people who sometimes had no
opportunity to go to college, you know, pursue.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
Careers because their lives were completely given to this.

Speaker 5 (01:15:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:53):
I think the most important thing about the reparations program
is the condition to receiving a financial settlement is you
had to sign away your ability to sue the organization
in the future. Gross, right, And some of these payouts
are incredibly small, you know, and.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
Even aside from the money because like whatever, that sounds
like it's probably it was probably complicated in whatever. But
the fact that there were also these non monetary requests
that were not honored is like, then, what what are
you for?

Speaker 4 (01:16:26):
What are you actually doing?

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
The big winner in the reparations program, by far is
the organization itself. You know, a lot of people were
re traumatized and abused and let down, but the organization
came out of this process as like clear winners. So
you know, if you have a pool of as we

(01:16:49):
saw from the claims, you have a pool of six
hundred probably more people who could sue the organization, and
we've seen in various states when they rolled back their
statutes of limitation, those lawsuits could happen. You take this
number and for a very relatively small amount of money,
I think was like at the end of the day,

(01:17:10):
was what twenty seven million something like that, you get
the vast majority of these people to sign away their
right to sue in the future. You don't have a
day in court. No one's compelled to give testimony in
a stand. There's no you know, compulsion to like give evidence.
Everything stays secret. That's six hundred people is whittled down,

(01:17:33):
and then you have people who didn't sign sign away
their right to sue. They're exhausted, they never want to
go through it again. You've effectively gone past that moment
of crisis. You know, for a relatively small amount of money.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
You're not bankrupt compared to how much money they're making,
you mean, because that's very successful.

Speaker 4 (01:17:53):
The ventures are very successful.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
And according to who to some recent lawsuits, they didn't
even want to pay that. They tried to pass it
off through an insurance company.

Speaker 6 (01:18:04):
There are what is it five or six individuals. One
isot filing a suit on her own that has been
going on for many years now, since twenty twenty, and
just after reparations, four women file lawsuits, all former staff
members of Yogi Budget and those cases are currently making

(01:18:28):
their way through the Elat County court system.

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
And there's also the insurance company, So three HO changed
their insurance policy in December of twenty nineteen, and conveniently
forgot to tick the box of you know, are you
aware of any previous you know, major sexual harassment reviews? Wow,
And that was right in advance of the memoir coming out.

(01:18:52):
And then when they tried to get the insurance company
to pay the bill for reparations. Then the insurance company
push back, and so that's another lawsuit that's going. But
you know, it really is kind of the insult to injury.
You know, you have this organization, you have this group
of first generation members. You know, maybe many of them

(01:19:13):
wanted to do right by their children and their community,
but you know they didn't. There wasn't any kind of
truth and reconciliation. There was no kind of public fact
finding report. There was no real compensation or making whole
of children who suffered horrific abuse.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
They did a bad job, and they obviously were just
trying to cover their asses.

Speaker 4 (01:19:33):
But many organizations don't.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Even get that far, you know what I mean, Like
most cults, most people are getting no acknowledgement and no money.
It would be so great if so if more of
these organizations would have some kind of reparations program that
actually was successful and that actually you know, went on

(01:19:56):
fact finding missions from objective parties and like a co
dominated requests for change. I mean, because yeah, like a lot,
there are so many organizations like this that still exist,
and they're not going to just immediately dissolve when they're there.
These like widespread networks of people in communities. So how
do you then what do you then do when when

(01:20:17):
it comes out that there has been widespread abuse? You know,
and it sounds like if they had done what they
were marketing themselves as doing. I always use the word marketing,
I need a better word, but that they're presenting themselves
as doing. Do you think that that would have helped
ameliorate some of that harm?

Speaker 4 (01:20:33):
Like, would that be a thing that would be good
for cults who used to be abusive to do?

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (01:20:39):
I think if they did do the right thing and
did do what they said they intended to do, I
think it would it would make a huge difference. It
would have made a huge difference, particularly among for those
born into three HHO who just wanted some acknowledgment and
from their parents' generation that they were harmed. And yes,

(01:21:03):
we are acknowledging it. We're being accountable. You know, we
will go to law enforcement, we will do the mandatory reporting. Right,
but none of that happened.

Speaker 3 (01:21:15):
Right, Yeah, And ins said it's it's is the opposite.
You know, they are they are still as you know.
One of our sources told to Stacey in an interview
that we mentioned in one of our pieces, they're still
protecting abusers of children. They're still covering stuff up. It's
it's assaushing and I think that's I think that's I
think the reason why organizations like three HHO do their

(01:21:38):
best to play defense and ignore and suppress and get
out of avoid court is when you look at what
actually happened in three hhow you can't like any organization
when you see the abuse clearly, you can't see the
organization in the same way. Again, you can't you can't
buy into the ideas that they put forward when you

(01:22:00):
when you know in detail what Yogi Budgeon did to women,
when you know what happened at the boarding schools, when
you know how senior three HO leaders and doctors and
therapists what they did when they found out about people
of using children.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
Which brings me to my next question, which is how
do you both I mean, you know three h O
obviously abusive, like the abuse of history, sounds like it's
too much for you to respect the organization at all anymore,
which makes total sense. What about just like a Kundalini
yoga class, like, how do you guys view this culture?

Speaker 4 (01:22:36):
Now?

Speaker 6 (01:22:37):
I think that that's going to be my next comment
that you know, I look at social media and see
the proliferation of Kundulini yoga, whether it purports itself to
be Kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Budgeon or something else,
but it is Kundalini yoga and it makes me really upset. Yeah,

(01:23:00):
it's kind of constant churn, and it's also international.

Speaker 3 (01:23:06):
At this point, it really says a lot I think
about New Age culture and the yoga world that you know,
when we think about disgrace celebrities, people that we know
abused a sexually assaulted women, Like, no one is playing
r Kelly at the party anymore. No one is going

(01:23:26):
to say yeah, but you know, Harvey Weinstein, can you
produce some great movies? Can we talk about that? No,
we can't. But somehow in the yoga world, there are
so many excuses where people still feel comfortable justifying the
made up yoga of a serial rapist.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
It's like separating are from the artists, but separating yoga
from the yogi.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
And I think that's really my last question is did
he make most of this completely up?

Speaker 6 (01:23:56):
Like?

Speaker 5 (01:23:57):
Is this mostly bullshit?

Speaker 6 (01:23:59):
I mean all yoga. Let's just talk about modern yoga
in general. Is and Philip uses this word in his
paper that he published in twenty twelve, is a break
olage of different things. It's calisthenics, it's you know, martial arts.
It does have some kernel too, perhaps ancient Hindu postures,

(01:24:26):
but in general, it's all kind of made up, right.

Speaker 3 (01:24:29):
Yeah, But it's also it's also not to not to
let it off the hook, because that's the thing of
Like when Yogi Bushen taught it, he didn't say I'm
making this up. He didn't say like I dabbled and
I'm taking taking the best of different things. He made
very specific claims. And it's we see that with so
many yoga teachers now and people in the organization now,

(01:24:51):
they're in hindsight, they're conveniently changing how they view things
or changing the past. Few people took accountability. It's now,
it's now. It's well, you know, I was never really
a follower of him. I was always kind of doing
my own thing.

Speaker 5 (01:25:11):
Just like him. Yeah yeah, wow.

Speaker 3 (01:25:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean they're you kind of make a
You make a great point, Megan, It's it's not that
dissimilar from Yogi budge and changing his lineage, covering things up,
changing things in hindsight to to look at a lot
of the Kundalini yoga teachers today who you know will pivot,
will reinvent themselves, will change the past in order to

(01:25:36):
keep selling teacher trainings and and retreats. Damn, my favorite
is Kundalini without the cult ha or trauma informed Kundalini yoga,
which is out there.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
I mean, it's like you said earlier, like there's going
to be benefits of physical movements, and like I can
see how yeah, like cold, I can see how it
would be easy to if you've had like your peak
experiences doing that thing.

Speaker 4 (01:26:05):
You're like, but but it was good for me, so
so there must be something. It must be.

Speaker 3 (01:26:09):
Yeah, And if you take.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
An hour out of your day to focus on yourself
and your intentions, you're probably going to grow them.

Speaker 5 (01:26:15):
Like and it does seem like something magical happened.

Speaker 6 (01:26:18):
The key phrase there, it's good for me.

Speaker 4 (01:26:21):
Right right right, right right totally and.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
In the world. It's really the world. You know, me,
me is king, Me is king and queen. Yes, you
know it, you know, however much you dress it up
in language of like growth and evolution, and like the
cosmos and the world and the planet. At the end
of the day, for so many of them, it's what

(01:26:47):
I get out.

Speaker 5 (01:26:47):
Of it, what I want, absolutely, you know what.

Speaker 6 (01:26:51):
I have a certain amount of empathy for first generation
members who may be in their you know, late sixties,
early seventies. You know, this is all they've ever known.
They really committed all in, right, But when I see
younger Kundalini teachers, you know, who could easily pivot, do

(01:27:15):
a different school, find a different way forward, but they
just can't see that, you know, they're they're continuing to
prop up a corrupt, abusive institution.

Speaker 5 (01:27:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:27:29):
Wow, Well, thank you both so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 (01:27:32):
Is there a particular article or website or project you'd
like to direct people towards.

Speaker 6 (01:27:39):
I think to our unofficial Companion podcast, to the Breath
of Fire documentary.

Speaker 3 (01:27:47):
It's a couple of steel, but the steel is spelled
st e A L. Nice because.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
Amazing, amazing, all right, Well, big thanks to them for
coming on and giving us so much interesting information. I
was saying to them when we stopped recording that I feel,
like so many cultural institutions and phenomenon and like organizations
and people that we love as a society so much

(01:28:15):
at the time, when you look at the origins or
the history, it's like, ah, why that too.

Speaker 4 (01:28:21):
Them too.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
Too cynical this podcast I was already cynical person. This
podcast has made me one hundred times more cynical. Megan,
I want to I want to revisit our old format here.
I want to ask you do you think that you
would join three h.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
O Absolutely and the way that Kundalini was presented to
me out here.

Speaker 5 (01:28:48):
I think I mentioned in the episode, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
When it was Russell Brand was not a canceled psychopath
at that point. He was just like kind of I
don't know, I don't know what you would call him.

Speaker 5 (01:29:00):
So it was, it was in the zeitgeist. It was cool.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
I wanted to not party as much. I wanted to
get high on my own breath. There was a studio
right by my house. My roommate, who was one of
my best friends, went every single day, and I felt
really guilty for not going as much as she did.

Speaker 5 (01:29:19):
Or not at all.

Speaker 1 (01:29:20):
And that's just another case of my type B personality
saving me so much money and time and energy from
these cycles of what turned out to be very high
control groups.

Speaker 4 (01:29:35):
Do you know anyone who.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
Got who engaged with it more, got deeper into it
than just like going to the classes?

Speaker 5 (01:29:41):
Yeah, I know several people who became teachers.

Speaker 4 (01:29:44):
Did they like, were they in a live in community
of any kind or they.

Speaker 1 (01:29:47):
Nobody was living But yeah, yeah, teacher training was very
pushed down your throat. And there was a woman named
Gabby Bernstein that anyone in the girly new Age community
is very familiar with.

Speaker 4 (01:30:00):
She got it.

Speaker 5 (01:30:01):
I'm very curious on what her stance is now.

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
Because with all of this coming to light, But the
way that they put it makes it sound like it's
not canceled. You know, people are still doing it. I
don't think people are as outfacing about it anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:30:17):
But it doesn't sound I mean, it sounds like.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
I hate go take a Kundalini class right down the
street in any different direction.

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
I mean, And it does raise an interesting question because like,
obviously the history and the organization are there is this
extremely harmful history, but like is doing a series of
movements like right, what's wrong with doing a series of movements?

Speaker 4 (01:30:39):
Inherently? You know that?

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
Because I'm sure there will be people who hear this
and they're like, well, I'm not going to like join it,
but like I like the movements, you.

Speaker 5 (01:30:47):
Know, yeah, it's like beaker yoga.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
It's like just start calling out hot yoga and don't
say that it's magic that he right, right, I don't know,
you know, like, but that has to be some sol.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
But I also understand like if it is going to
contribute financially to the larger organization, then of course you
don't want to monetarily support them. So yeah, so I
don't know, Like I'm curious people's takes on if it's
something like a yoga practice or you know, like if
there's how much people think you can separate, Like it's
the same as you know, can you separate the r

(01:31:21):
from the artists? Can you separate the practice from the
from the founder? It's I don't have the answer, but
like I'm sure there are myriad perspectives on it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:31):
So yeah, just interesting to think about.

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
The Breath of Fire documentary on HBO, which I highly recommend,
kind of talks more about Gurushaga, this woman who took
over the lineage from Yogi Buzzian and delves a little
bit deeper into this different that's a whole another episode
that I would love to do, but uh yeah, the
whole thing's.

Speaker 7 (01:31:54):
A confusing mess, which is what cults do. It creates
cognitive de dissonance, even for the people trying to expose it. Yeah,
and on that note, who thanks for joining us, you guys,
We can't wait to see you again next week. Leave
us a five story review if you feel so inclined
to help us. If you're gonna leave less than a

(01:32:15):
five star review, then just don't do it.

Speaker 4 (01:32:17):
Don't do it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:18):
Why would you do that?

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
And as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out
for red flags.

Speaker 4 (01:32:25):
And never ever trust me. Bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
Trust Me is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and
Steve Delamater.

Speaker 5 (01:32:37):
With special thanks to Stacy Para and.

Speaker 4 (01:32:39):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,
Twitter at trust Me Cult Pod, or on TikTok at
trust Me Cult Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:32:50):
I'm Ula Lola on Instagram and Ola Lola on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Babraham
Hits on Twitter.

Speaker 4 (01:32:58):
Remember to rate and review and spread the word

Speaker 7 (01:33:06):
M

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Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin - 3HO,Kundalini yoga, & Yogi Bhajan

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin - 3HO,Kundalini yoga, & Yogi Bhajan