Yoga Cults: Pervasive, Pernicious And Perpetual
By Stewart Lawrence
All cults share some important features in common. One of the most notable is the presence of a charismatic figure who rules over the cult with unquestioned authority. In many cults, this figure may be an ordinary person with an extraordinary ability to command the attention and obedience of a relatively small and obedient group of impressionable followers.
But some cult leaders enjoy an additional layer of legitimacy. They are ordained religious figures with a recognized mantle of spiritual leadership. In effect, they have a mandate to rule – in theory, benignly – over those in their charge. That official mandate may allow them to attract an unusually large flock of followers – many of them well-educated and socially influential – who are eager to receive spiritual guidance or merely bask in their leader’s presence.
Yoga cults tend to fit this pattern. Each has at its top a charismatic “guru” steeped in Eastern mysticism. Many – but not all – of these guru figures represent ancient and highly esoteric lineages of yoga practice rooted in different currents and interpretations of Hinduism (or in some cases, Buddhism). Many began their “ministry” with followers in their native land, typically India. However, once they began branching out to the Western worlds, their sphere of influence and star status, abetted by celebrity followers, widened considerably.
Indian sages first began arriving in the US in the late 19th and early 20th century but were initially treated as oddities, even appearing in the New York World’s Fair alongside exotic pets and circus acts. However, it wasn’t until the 1960s, with the explosion of the counterculture, that they attracted genuine mass followings, especially among disaffected youth. Many young people were dodging the draft, experimenting with sex and drugs, and turning away from establishment institutions, including organized religion. Under the pop culture sway of the Beatles, who extolled the virtues of Eastern religions, they began flocking to a succession of Indian gurus promising a release from the stress of 9-5 jobs and conventional marriage and the tenets and demands of Western materialism.
Yoga’s “Wild and Crazy” Buddhist
Chogyam Rinopche
The gurus that arrived on American shores, beginning with a young Tibetan Buddhist, Chogyam Rinpoche, were not so naive as their followers. The gurus were eager to share their sacred wisdom and to see it take root in the world’s most powerful nation. Most harbored doubts that Americans were psychologically or emotionally prepared to accept the sacrifices and rigors of Eastern mysticism, to forgo their sensual pleasures, and to surrender their strong will and egos to a Divine Force. But they, too, found themselves tempted by the unconditional devotion they soon received. Young women, many of them fatherless or from dysfunctional families, projected a host of unmet needs upon these new “Daddy” figures. Some gurus far too easily crossed their boundaries, creating veritable harems among their female followers; others, according to published testimonies from victims and survivors, imposed themselves by force on women they fancied, often portraying their conquest as a spiritual “test” of their disciple’s obedience and loyalty.
Not all of these gurus created mass cults, of course, but some clearly display the manipulative traits of cult leaders, particularly when it came using their status and mystic personas to coerce sex out of their followers. Rinpoche had taken a young British bride prior to his arrival in Colorado but still found time for “wenching,”as he called it. He also hosted orgiastic retreats that sometimes became abusive. Periodically, in a drunken haze, he would organize a bizarre hazing of invited guests for which he was later denounced, damaging his reputation. In a pattern often found in cults, Rinpoche would sometimes call upon followers to do his bidding; anxious to curry favor with their guru, they would agree to become, in effect, his henchmen.
In a story about Rinpoche for The Walrus a woman named Liz Craig who he hired as a nanny spoke out about the guru’s abuse. “What Chogyam did was create an environment for emotional and sexual harm in which nobody was accountable for their actions.” She also claims he was violent behind closed doors. “If he’d been publicly violent, it would have been easier to identify him as harmful and Shambhala as a cult.”
But Rinpoche’s reckless antics were tame compared to what was to come. A confessed alcoholic, he lacked the focus and discipline to establish and manage a large-scale organization. He enjoyed a “cult of personality” and a reputation that would allow him to attract a following among poets like Allen Ginsburg and Robert Bly and musicians such as Joni Mitchell (who even wrote a song about him). But he was also a Buddhist, with roots in Tibet not India. He was not a devotee of the physical practices associated with yoga, and though he was rooted in much the same traditions of Tantric mysticism, he was reluctant to impart his deeper spiritual wisdom to Westerners in ways that might have galvanized a mass following.
Still, Rinpoche set a dangerous precedent of tolerance for blind obedience and collective abuse that would set the stage for much larger and more abusive yoga cults in the years to come.
Osho the Great
Osho Members
One of the first – and worst - of these mass yoga cults was the one established in the late 1970s by an Indian-born guru, Bhagwan Rajneesh, who came to be known as the spiritual avatar “Osho.” Rajneesh set out to create an entire community of dedicated followers and used his mesmerizing collective meditations and unbridled sexual orgies to bind them to his directives. Former Osho disciple Roselyn Smith told The Print how Rajneesh’s teaching led to an environment where women lost agency over their sex lives. “The lingo at the ashram was ‘say yes’ and ‘say yes’ to life. One guy made an approach to me and I wasn’t the least bit interested but I felt guilty to refuse him because I wasn’t saying yes to life.”
When Osho and his followers eventually came under siege at home, they picked up and moved overseas to rural Oregon where they soon came into conflict with local residents. Osho’s followers, at his behest, began killing animals, conspired to murder a U.S. attorney, and even poisoned the local water supply. In the ensuing conflict, federal authorities moved in, disbanded the cult, and deported Osho back to India.
The Osho experience featured another key feature of modern yoga cults: the guru’s accumulation of personal wealth and a lifestyle of unbridled luxury. This pattern became even more visible in the case of Yogi Bhajan, who set up shop in the Los Angeles area beginning in the late 1960s. Over the next four decades, he established a spiritual empire that encompassed the world’s four continents. Like his contemporary Bikram Choudhury (founder of the Bikram “hot” yoga empire, who soon formed his own cult of followers) Bhajan attracted a following among Hollywood celebrities and amassed a personal fortune that included expensive jewelry, a fleet of luxury cars (like other Indian gurus, he fancied Rolls-Royces), a luxurious mansion in Beverly Hills, and desert ranches in New Mexico and southern California. He was also influential in politics, with close ties to New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. When Bhajan died in 2008 at the age of 75, Richardson even ordered state flags to be flown at half-mast in his honor.
Bhagwan Rajneesh
Bhajan’s cult also featured the creation of a personal harem and a cult-like following. His circle of influence was so vast and his travels so far-flung that he never appears to have led a particular group of followers to do his bidding or to serve him personally as less broadly influential gurus – like Amrit Desai, who ruled the roost at the Kripalu Institute, bedding down even his married followers – so often did. Rather, serving as the all-powerful CEO of a vast corporate entity – dubbed the 3HO Foundation – he often had dedicated lieutenants carry out his orders; they, in turn, established personal fiefdoms of their own. Yet, as we know from at least one personal memoir, Bhajan did take selected young Western women as veritable concubines, summoning them to his quarters for sex, which some accepted, not always freely, as part of the “gift” of his Divine presence.
The “Americanization” of Yoga Cults
John Friend
Yoga cults initially featured Indian gurus at their helm, but in more recent decades, some of their most charismatic American disciples were able to follow in their footsteps. In the late 1990s, John Friend, a one-time devotee of the legendary B.K.S. Iyengar established his own yoga “lineage” that he dubbed Anusara (translated roughly as “free-floating grace”). Friend, with his hip, easy-going style and sporting a goofy grin, quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of young Millennials, mostly women, who preferred a more down-to-earth Western guru with a “modern” sensibility. Friend’s rise was truly meteoric; by 2009, the industry trade magazine Yoga Journal had declared Anusara the “fastest growing yoga movement in the country.” But within three years, the burgeoning Friend empire – which included plans to build a yoga theme park in southern California – collapsed. Friend faced charges that he had engaged in ritual sex with married followers and had cooked the organization’s books. Several of his most prominent female lieutenants turned on him publicly and the Anusara corporate organization, which he ran but did not completely control, voted him out.
Friend’s rapid rise and fall illustrates how difficult it may be for yoga cults to survive in today’s #MeToo world where standards of transparency and accountability are much higher than they once were. The same fate befell two other would-be American gurus, Michael Roach, a self-style Buddhist and Greg Gumucio, who split off from Bikram to form his own Yoga to the People sect. In 2012, Roche became implicated in the death of two of his most ardent followers whom he apparently convinced to go on a retreat in the Arizona desert where they died from exposure. Gumucio billed himself as a more democratic alternative to the notoriously tyrannical Bikram but turned out to be just as manipulative in his own cult-building endeavors. In 2018, he, too, was exposed and forced into exile. He was later sued by a handful of women for rape and sexual assault and stripped of his holdings.
Why do these yoga cults persist? Many young Americans, in their unbridled zeal for “transcendence,” may be engaged in a kind of materialism of the spirit, a self-centeredness masquerading as “devotion.” Rinpoche wrote an entire book on the topic of “spiritual materialism,” warning Americans that their deep-seated egocentrism and acquisitiveness would backfire in their quest for sacred wisdom and guidance. As noted, Rinpoche even refrained from revealing to his students some of the deeper secrets of Tantric mysticism for fear that unlocking these mysteries would allow them to exercise hidden powers to control and manipulate others.
Many Americans like Friend bypassed their imported gurus and went directly to India to study Tantric mysticism for themselves. His mentor Iyengar, like Rinpoche, wanted to see Hatha Yoga stripped of Tantric mysticism and reconfigured as a health and fitness practice accessible to mainstream Americans in a largely Christian culture. But Friend, like other ambitious American yogis, would have none of it. He understood the potential dangers but saw yoga’s esoteric mysticism as the “true” source of its transformative potential. Friend didn’t just want to heal people in the context of their everyday lives. He envisioned his Anusara movement as the vanguard of a spiritual revolution that would transform American society as a whole.
Such heady and grandiose visions are common to cults, and yoga cults are no exception. Once a cult movement is imbued with such a world-changing mission, the guru ceases to be a guide and healer; suddenly, he’s a prophet. He carries within him the promise of an end not just to his followers’ suffering but to all suffering. For his followers, being designated as part of a revolutionary vanguard is exciting, even intoxicating. They credit their leader with allowing them to recognize their own life-changing potential. Obeying their leader isn’t subservience to a man; it’s service to a cause greater than themselves. Once invested in the cause, abandoning their leader is viewed as a personal and collective betrayal.
Future of Yoga Cults
The public fall of a guru due to scandal may do little to alter this basic dynamic. Some members, even those who never felt abused, may fall away, but those that stay will likely retrench, and the reputation and “legacy” of the fallen guru may well endure. Even today, Osho, for example, is still widely quoted in the global yoga community as an authentic “sage.” So is Rinpoche. Desai, who confessed his sins, survived his scandal at Kripalu and went on a decade later to rebuild a loyal following at the “Yoga-Ville” center in Asheville, NC. These men are only human, their supporters say, and the extent of their abuse has been exaggerated. Besides, all of us have our “shadow” side. You have to take the bad with good, the human with the Divine. It’s all part of the inevitable karma we all carry as we pass through this phase of our earthly existence.
Of course, for those outside these movements, and for the many guru victims now starting to come forward, Hindu-inspired rationalizations for sexual, emotional and psychological abuse won’t do. Like many in the Catholic Church who have fought to see their priest abusers held to account – demanding and sometimes receiving apologies as well as financial settlements – those abused by their gurus expect better from those claiming to operate on such a high plane of existence. They want genuine admissions of guilt and expressions of contrition – not just from their gurus but from religious superiors and organizations that covered up and excused their abuse for so long.
Sadly, they may never get it. Many guru abusers have died or are still in denial about their abuse. And their surviving family members – some of them also documented sex abusers – jealously guard their legacy through control of the yoga organizations they inherited. In the case of John Friend, his own former lieutenants and acolytes – those that didn’t abandon him – are anxious to preserve as much of the original momentum of the movement he sparked. Anusara’s transformative potential survives, they insist, and should not be allowed to perish solely because of the faults of its founder.
In fact, while Friend has since resurfaced, claiming to helm a brand new but much smaller yoga movement, the remnants of Anusara have gone underground. Many of its 1,500 yoga teachers, now veterans, rarely proclaim their past association with it. This doesn’t mean that Anusara has disappeared. Anecdotal accounts suggest that if anything, its cult following is even stronger now. The difference? In place of a single Supreme male leader, a bevy of female chieftains, many who once eagerly promoted and bowed down to Friend, now rule the roost. This new yoga sisterhood can be just as cult-like as its predecessor. Female mentors may not sexually exploit their female underlings but the bonds of psychological and emotional dependency between them can be just as fierce and potentially debilitating.
Are Yoga Cults Unique?
Bikram Yoga
Many of the characteristics of yoga cults are common to all cults, but yoga cults are also unique in some respects. Their wide societal acceptance, even after a scandal is somewhat unique in the world of cults. The combination of exercise and mysticism is rarely seen, though there are also martial arts cults. Another factor is their disparate scale under the umbrella of wellness. Some that grow up around a single site – for example an ashram, a meditation center or a neighborhood yoga studio or studio chain, may have a dozen or more members. Others, like Osho’s cult in Oregon, may grow to several thousand. The cult may also be more of an elite rather than a mass phenomenon. Yoga “lineages” rooted in Hinduism with strong ancestral ties to India – like Jivamukti or Ashtanga or even Bikram– tend to feature smaller clans of followers with close ties to the founding guru and his family. In a strict sense, they form the yoga cult that often serves the guru. Those devoted veteran followers in turn, may set themselves up - and be treated – by younger novices – as mini-gurus with their own cultic following. The overall structure is akin to a social and spiritual “pyramid” that newcomers may spend years trying to climb. Competition can be fierce, even ruthless. Some may be willing to compromise themselves – even sexually – with the founding guru and his clan simply to secure greater recognition and status.
Despite this fierce, often aggressive internal environment, yoga cults are generally “non-violent” in nature. Osho aside, members of these cults generally extol the virtues of peace and harmony in human relations – and pacifism in national governmental policy. Members generally do not arm themselves and are not prepared for battle with a world that they deem hostile to their very existence. When leaders are threatened with exposure, they may close ranks and try to convince their accusers to seek reconciliation rather than attack the guru or the cult publicly. In the end, facing lawsuits or possible prosecution, they may flee and drop out of sight.
Paradoxically, yoga cults are also decidedly “mainstream.” While extremist cults may draw in many marginalized even criminal elements and other societal dropouts, yoga cult members are often middle-class college students or newly trained professionals. In addition, their membership in a tight-knit guru-worshipping community may not require them to sever ties to friends or family or to society at large. Quite the contrary. Today, thanks to mass marketing, yoga cults exist within a $30 billion dollar yoga fitness industry with more than 30 million “consumers.” Many of these yoga practitioners freely interact with those whose lives are more deeply interwoven with the esoteric yoga lineages. They may well practice the same form or style of yoga. Yoga cult members exist at one end of a yoga membership spectrum that ranges from casual and periodic yoga studio practice to deep immersion in a local yoga community to formal and ongoing yoga dues-paying membership, to more exclusive kinship and friendship ties and blind faith and obedience to a yoga guru/mentor and his clan.
The recent “mainstreaming” of yoga includes another unique feature: the rise of a semi-professional yoga teacher corps, about 60,000 strong, spread out across yoga lineages and studios nationwide. “Certified” yoga teachers have mortgaged their adult professional lives to the survival of a commercial industry in which they have invested considerable time as well as treasure. Most cannot, or will not, simply walk away. That’s one reason so many one-time followers of Anusara and Bikram – in the latter case, many of them business franchise owners – are so desperate to preserve their “brand.” Their very livelihood depends upon it. Some newbies might be able to transition to new careers, but long-time veterans are committed to yoga teaching as their lifelong vocation. Their attachment to yoga is more than just a matter of spiritual affinity; it’s also their job.
For all of these reasons, yoga cults are highly pervasive and potentially more enduring than other cults. Typically, small extremist cults that live in geographic isolation will reach a crisis, flame out and then die. As noted with Anusara, when yoga cults are threatened with collapse, they often just mutate and morph into another version of themselves. And as their founding members marry, have children, and pass their experience on to their progeny, some yoga cults, especially those wedded to long-established Indian “lineages,” could well survive, in one form or another, in virtual perpetuity. The base of the various yoga power pyramids will continue to expand, increasing the number and types of unequal exchange relationships between guru mentors and their eager students and expanding the competition for status and influence and positions of charismatic leaderships within local and national yoga organizations.
Challenging Yoga Cults
Matthew Remski is Fighting Yoga Cults
What recourse do yoga cult members and survivors have to protect themselves from abuse in these environments? Other than gambling with the courts, very little. Bikram’s accusers, mostly women who operated within his inner circle, hired high-powered lawyers and won an enormous settlement. The same occurred in the case of Dahn Yoga, a Korean organization that came under fire for fleecing its members and their families of their sizable savings through mandatory tithing and voluntary “donations.” Currently, there is no body, governmental, or non-governmental, that oversees and monitors much less formally regulates the yoga industry. Even efforts by state governments to impose restrictions on teacher training programs, a source of substantial income for local yoga studios, have been rebuffed by yoga “lobbyists” eager to protect the industry from serious scrutiny. Lawsuits make news – but they’re rare, in fact. As noted, cult victims that dare to speak up are co-opted (with special privileges), ignored, or worse, attacked for their “betrayal” – and then shunned. Many and perhaps most abuse victims slink away, hoping just to move on with their lives.
There are hopeful signs. More victims are coming forth – however belatedly – and publishing detailed accounts of their abuse. Two important new books – one from an abuse survivor from the Sivananda school, another from a former top consort to Yoga Bhajan – were published in just the past year. In addition, Matthew Remski, a former cult member, journalist, and author, has begun a series of investigations publicizing the problems of yoga cults more broadly. In the dawning #MeToo era, mainstream society’s awareness of guru abuse in yoga – and its effect on women, especially – is spreading. Calls for women especially to become more aware of inappropriate behavior and to denounce abusive teachers are getting louder.
But deeper awareness of the challenge posed by yoga cultism has yet to surface. There is still a naive tendency to treat esoteric Eastern religions and Tantric mysticism as a benign form of open-ended spiritual exploration without potentially serious risks or side effects. As the history of yoga in America demonstrates, the quest for complete self-transcendence too often leads earnest spiritual seekers down a dark hole of self-abandonment. Yet each new generation, whether aware of past abuse experiences or not, seems to repeat the same karmic cycle over and over.
Cults, to a certain degree, may be endemic to the yoga experience. Some regulatory and self-regulatory measures – including the adoption of rigorous background checks, a formal licensing system for teachers, and the appointment of an ombudsman to receive complaints of abuse, might help. Ultimately, though, cult-prevention requires a higher state of awareness among yoga students. The self-styled prophets and “goddesses” in your midst can inspire you with their teachings. They can gather you into groups for ritual worship and meditation and asana practice. However, they are mere mortals; they cannot endow you with higher consciousness or lead you to spiritual freedom. Only you can.
YOGA GURUS AND THEIR CULTS
Chogyam Rinpoche
Matthew Remski, “Survivors of an International Buddhist Cult Share Their Stories,” The Walrus. November-December 2020. https://thewalrus.ca/survivors-of-an-international-buddhist-cult-share-their-stories/.
Bhagwan Rajneesh (Osho)
Les Zaitz, “25 years after Rajneeshee commune collapsed, truth spills out -- Part 1 of 5.” The Oregonian, April 14, 2011.
https://www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/2011/04/part_one_it_was_worse_than_we.html.
John Friend
Vanessa Grigorisadis, “Karma Crash.” New York Magazine, April 13, 2012
https://nymag.com/news/features/john-friend-yoga-2012-4/.
Yoga Bhajan
Stacie Stukie, “Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse.” LA Magazine, July 15, 2020. https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/yogi-bhajan/
Bikram Choudhury
Richard Godwin, “‘He said he could do what he wanted’: The scandal that rocked Bikram yoga,” The Guardian, February 18, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/18/bikram-hot-yoga-scandal-choudhury-what-he-wanted.
Greg Gumucio
Laura Wagner. “'He Knew Everything': Fear, Control, and Manipulation at Yoga to the People,” VICE, July 24, 2020.
Matthew Remski
Author of Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond.
http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/
Catherine Elton, "The Scary Yoga Obsession," Glamour, December 7, 2009.
https://www.glamour.com/story/the-scary-yoga-obsessionMatthew Remski – Yoga, Writing & Inquiry
