Full Transcript for S1E6: Journalist Anke Richter on ISTA and cultic patterns

because I'd done another workshop earlier in New Zealand which was called Awakening of Love, which was a of taster event for the Taste of Love, ⁓ week-long, OSHO-based trainings. And my entry into even doing some of these workshops was more around ⁓ dissatisfaction with some parts of my life, my sexuality, having some sort of midlife crisis, having themes to tackle, ⁓ lots of different things. But none of those that I then became really, really big later on when I got into it. So backtracking, went to this festival and ⁓ met a ⁓ woman there. Her name was Angie, is a, or was a former kid from Centerpoint, historic sex cult here in New Zealand where many, many kids had been harmed. And it was a sort of sex and therapy cult from the human potential movement. The founder had been to Bagua and Oshu Roshni Ashram and Pune and he'd also been to Ezelan in California. So there's a bit of crossover with your part of the world. And I was, I met this former teenager who said she'd been the commune concubine in there. And I was fascinated by this whole story. I didn't know anything about this cult and started researching it and got so deep into it. actually messed with me. I had to stop the first draft of that book about Centerpoint two years in, a whole big investigation, which is a massive project to stop. had a really good publisher, but I just couldn't go any further. were legal threats. There were all sorts of issues. And then years later, it all morphed into the current book. on a personal level, that festival where I met Angie was also where I had a sort of... an epiphany or I think a really a moment of where I thought this is a moment of no return. And it was when I was at an ecstatic dance session there. I think it was during the day, no drugs, alcohol. I was just high on life and on these bodily connections and on this freedom I was feeling and the... know, sensuality of this whole event and everything that's being discussed. And I just loved all these interactions. I didn't see anything dangerous, insidious, potentially harmful, manipulative in any of that because I was quite new to it. my, you know, the cults that had been on my radar previously, like Scientology or whatever, you I just didn't make that link at all. I was just... high on all these people. And I felt very free because I was away from New Zealand. Even though I ended up writing something under pseudonym Nata about this festival, I really was just there as a private person, exploring myself in ways that I hadn't before. And then this dance, ⁓ ecstatic dance, and I've been to ecstatic dances before, so I think it was a buildup of a lot that was in the mix, and eyes and bodies and just, woof. And then I stepped outside into... ⁓ on the balcony there, Byron Barrier is very subtropical and was just a rain was just, it just started a tropical shower coming down and I put my, I remember I my hands out into the rain from the balcony and these drops from my skin and I was so sensual and I felt so awake and there was this moment where I thought, this is how I always want to be. I can't go back to. how it was before and you might know this beautiful poem I think it's from David White where it says, don't go back to sleep. Can't recite the whole thing but I think it was something like this like, this is really me, there's so much of me that's coming alive here and this is who I need to be, who I want to be and now I found a community or something where they're offering things and courses and trainings and festivals where I can explore that and it felt really wholesome to me and also ethical in the sense that, you know, I'd explore other things in my sexuality around that time as well and they often didn't feel like me or like what I really was looking for or what was giving me what I was, you whether it's sort of, you know, yeah, don't have to go into the details, but you can tell me a virgin. you're a Jewish woman, of, on your quest for her, let's just name it for her orgasm, right? Very, very common problem, by the way, which, you know, but at the time I felt like I was a bit of a freak and what could I do to fix this? And then suddenly I entered this world where this is discussed and explored in such a different way. And it wasn't, it just all shifted from me that I thought, okay, let's ⁓ pop this whole ⁓ quest, but here is something that's so much better. I've been hunting for this plastic out there and here's the goal of more, you know, better, deeper connections and fun and all of that. long story short, sorry for making this too long, but it was really a crucial moment. And actually, fact, that whole festival made quite a few people there who I now see as highly problematic. There were some of the teachers there and offering sessions and hitting up women left and right. at the time, it was still all a big... Not a big joke, it was a few years, quite a few years before the Me Too movement. So was just it was just normal for me that this was happening and it kind of came with that territory. ⁓ Yeah, and then a year later, I did my first training with ISTA in Australia. And this is where that journey began while at the same time, I also started my research. ⁓ But they're Centerpoint victims and trying to find people in New Zealand and beyond who told me their stories. And so it's interesting how these two things happened parallel. And now looking back, I think that my interest in Centerpoint probably came from me being interested in people who... wanted to open up their relationships, who want to have some kind of healing with certain issues, who like going to workshops that are quite interactive or maybe, I know we don't want to use that word transformative anymore, know, air quotes, that are quite full on and have a high intensity and who want to live in communities and all of that stuff because I only got my first taste from it. Back then in 2000, what was it? 12, 13, I hadn't... I hadn't been part of the esoteric scene at

all. hadn't done all these other workshops before. I was a bit of a leaker and therefore at that time it really worked for me. And then also with the Centerpoint research, I came in with that maybe more open mind of actually these people went all wrong wanting to live together and explore these things. And I think that helped my research because I wasn't, you know, I didn't just have that sort of crime. lands on what have they all done? But also what did they want? And why did this sort of beautiful utopian dream then turn into something so awful because they had police raids and a dozen people also went to jail and there is a lot of unresolved trauma which I then found out. Right. Right. What really stands out is the whatever kind of synchronicity it was. that you didn't go to ISTA thinking there was anything problematic. It wasn't part of your journalist research. This was your own exploration while you're as a journalist working on the center-point story. And then at some point they converged down the line. But I think the other thing that you're expressing so well is... So many of us are attracted because we have a need for connection, healing, more pleasure, play, all these things, the movement together. Some might say ritual, it may not be a ritual, but there is something that we are yearning for that makes this so appealing. And I think it speaks to how different it is from our default world or our day to day. And so then it becomes in its own way, you know, we keep chasing it because how do I have this in my day to day? How do I be so turned on or alive or whatever that is when that actually has ripples in my community? It's kind of weird. But when I'm with these people in this container, I can be all of that. yeah. You point this point at something, how can I have this in my everyday life? Because the irony, well, I think the sticky point here is that, yeah, I went in there to have it in my daily life and bring some of that energy back. of course, as you well know, you come out on this workshop high and you think, wow, this is amazing. You know, one of my friends should be doing this too and everyone who has any issues in their relationship, they should all be doing this too. My partner, my husband actually did it too before me actually. And we're both like, wow, this is amazing. And we slightly found this new sort of playground of self-development and we became workshop tourists for a while, right? So I think back of those years where I went for holidays because of the time I was... kids were already old enough to never spend it. They were not necessarily coming on holidays with us anymore. So a lot of our trips overseas then became sort of work workshop tourism trips. But it didn't necessarily really mean that it does filter back into everyday life. And I think this is really the sticky point or the pop-up with a lot of those kind of trainings, not just with ISTA. That ⁓ you actually, what actually happens is that I started, actually was leading a bit of a double life. had a second Facebook profile, I think it's Eva, whatever. Give it all away. And that way I could accept invitations to meetups and trainings or events where I just didn't want to be seen in my role as a journalist, obviously, but also with just a mum here in my community and a normal married person. I ⁓ did realize that this could look really weird at the same time. I wanted to be part of it. So I've almost created a, know, not a fake personality, but I did keep it hidden. And it was, and these two were my home life and especially my professional life didn't really merge with the other world. And a lot of my new friends were then all, you know, all these Esther people. And to be fair, not many of them. I still friends these days, can probably name a handful of those and they've probably, they've all stepped back as well for all their own reasons. So this whole, you know, these instant friendships, there's this intensity, you know, some of these beautiful connections that I've cherished and where I thought, oh, here's something that I cannot express with my normal sort of dinner party guests or school moms or what you sort of do when you, know, when you gather a music gig and have a few drinks and that's kind of your, you know, your big night out. It didn't compare those, the normal mundane stuff didn't, and my life certainly isn't boring and I have a lot of social, you know, a lot of social life going on anyway. I wasn't like I was lost and lonely and needed some excitement, but there was, it was like mundane life. Yeah, became mundane, couldn't really match that level of intensity anymore. And this is, and when it became so this this drug that always pulled me in again. Oh, when can I book the next thing? Where could I go? What's this teacher offering now? What's the next level? so on. And yeah, I'm not, I mean, it's embarrassing in some ways, owning that and admitting that. But I think I have to, because here I am in my role as a journalist and advocate. I have to also, you know, one of my main sort of missions is to... to lift the shame around that and to let people know that everyone's susceptible and people who join cults, join cults, air quotes here again, because no one as you know joins the cult, but a really good thing at first, are not stupid, are not uneducated, are not lost souls. And I'm the living proof, Maybe I'm stupid, I don't know, know, others might judge that. But I'm certainly an absolutely perfect example of even a cart journalist can fall into something that I now call a cart, which I didn't see at the time, of course. So I kind of have to walk my talk and conscious that I have the whatever expert journalists head on and talk about survivors. mean, I don't identify as a survivor because I have not been harmed in the way that others have in that time. I can look back and think, well, How much money have I spent? How much time have I spent? did I, actually I could talk about one thing

maybe later that was pretty often a dramatic and now looking back I think it is linked to my time in Easter. even, so the whole self image of, yeah, I talk about cults but I wasn't one of them. Well, you know. No, I'm not going to bullshit myself. I was one of them. I am one of them. We own this together, right? It actually brings up a really interesting nuance or question kind of of, know, when I sat down to confront or try to mediate with ISTA or as survivors have gathered. The question has been, you know, we were ISTA. We didn't join a thing, but we spent money, we kept going, we stayed in touch with people. So that makes you ISTA. ⁓ And when the people started speaking up about harms, all of a sudden we're not ISTA community. And yet we are a stochomunity because we went through the thing, but that kind of being rejected or like there's no tolerance, right, for that. that becomes very confusing. Like I think part of me going into mediation and things was about some of my confusion about what I was dealing with. So the same way that you were like, I'm doing all this stuff and it's not a cult, even though I'm researching cults. I was similarly like, I've done a couple of retreats that were cults, but somehow this isn't a cult until, yeah, it really Until it is. Right. Yeah. I mean, we could talk about this a little bit because we're both in these interesting roles, right? And I think especially for me because, I mean, it wasn't planned in any way that there would be a... Facebook group 2022, you know, you know it well and because you were involved with 3SC and I was sort of more and I was advising 3SC a little bit I mean it wasn't even 3SC at the time but there was a little chat group of some of us who were discussing this but you were definitely, you know, closer to it all and this Facebook group had started issues with Estonia Heiden temple and it was like a bomb had gone off at least and I guess in our world and And my book was about to come out the same year. I think at that stage it was already, it was written, it was edited. mean, HarperCollins is a very good publisher. takes a lot of time. There was legal, legalizing all of that. And I'm just trying to remember, I think I still managed to squeeze into some, something into the epilogue, just some of my things, right, with ISTA. And by the way, a Facebook group had started and it's being discussed. So, you know, that was the latest. Just then not knowing where any of that would go and how big it would get. And then fast forward a few months later in November here in New Zealand and then year later in the US, my book came out. And I wrote some stories around it because that's what you do as a journalist. You plug your book, you try and play some of your own articles related to the book. so it kind of went public for the first time in mainstream media saying, ⁓ yeah, this is all my research I did on these sex cults. And just to make it really clear, I was never a journalist researching ISTA.

I mean, I've since sort of I understand a lot more. I'm aware of all the research that's been going on, but I was never undercover in ISTA. I'm not a, and I'm also not the ISTA survivor in that sense. I haven't been part of any of these, I've never written a harm report. haven't been enough. So my role has been more trying to help people to come together as a networker to figure out what to do. And if there's a media opportunity, maybe, you know, check who, you know, is this journalist legit and who should talk to them, sort of be bit of a go-between behind the scenes. But I've never been an ISTA activist in the sense of, you know, some others who, you know, who've tried to stop certain things from happening online or offline. And I've since also been attacked by some ISTA fanatics on... online and that was quite confronting and I've also had a level of legal intimidation behind the scenes about from a well-known Israeli facilitator who had been at my house here with his wife many, years ago. were hosting them when I was still sitting with all of all these amazing people and I think, wow, how much my life has changed that these are now the people who were some of them are the worst perpetrators in that movement and And they still got some little hooks or they had some little hooks on their even most last years. And that's been a interesting process of first of all, putting some of my ISTA experience and my misgivings mainly and my change from, you know, my switch from a gradual procession from being this hooked and intoxicated, enthusiastic participant to being disillusioned and pulling back, which also had to do with, by the way, with my research about another cult. Namely, Agama Yoga in Thailand. I can come to that later. And then it's still an ongoing process. With every podcast I listen to, like yours, know, Kara, just a few weeks ago, and things I read and things I understand through the work I do with Decal, it always helps me also to unpack a little bit more about where I'm at with Esther and how I position myself, how I feel about them, because it has been really, it has been even, it has been quite hard, even though I was never, facilitator only and assistant-wise, wasn't as deeply in there as others. And also, as I said, I wasn't angry and harmed. It was more of a process of grief and disillusionment. think, oh, I'm leaving this Garden of Eden that was so amazing. then coming to terms with, well, that Garden of Eden, not sure how rotten everything there is, and seeing that. then also still realizing how much some of these leaders that I've looked up to, I especially one dude. who I always looked up to as, ⁓ I mean, I never had a spiritual leader in my life, but I thought, ⁓ he's a wise man and his opinion counts. And there was some hook he still had in me for a long time where I was maybe afraid to be seen to say something publicly in that way about him or about Haydn Temple here in New Zealand. I have friends who've been there and know

people in my community in Christchurch who still... go there and do training sets pretty close on some level and then also on a it's also moved away on another level and I found this distance and I found my place and this is what we're talking here today, Carl Reiner, might be my most frank interview ever about ISTA because this is where I'm at right now and a lot more has come to life and you know to life I mean to life and to light and you're in a new position too and I think it's really good to come some notes and yeah, take note of when we actually, what a journey it's been. think it's super important because like you, I consider myself a survivor though I wasn't sexually assaulted because I consider that my mind was fucked with, especially regarding the setup of the agreements and the impact of the agreements on inter-relational dynamics. So that most of the agreements are ways of folding us on ourselves and disconnecting us from others. And, you know, so I'm like, people get so much value, especially from level one, especially if you drop in once, especially if you have, I think, a lot of support in your life and good relationships, then I think a lot of the negative impact of that washes off your back like a duck. I can't argue with people that say they went and it really transformed their lives because it opened up new parts, they had less shame. you know, whether it's Centerpoint or ISTA, there is also this idea that by reducing sexual shame in the world, we will heal the world, we will, you know, free people. And I think some of us, have experiences of that. And then we're like, ⁓ this is what we can all, you know, do together. ⁓ Yeah, absolutely. mean, some of the ideas of what I thought ISTA stands for and maybe sort of on paper and its best possible version, that still holds true. I share some of those aspirations and those ideas. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been there in the beginning if I hadn't believed in this. This can help us, this can help the world. I it's a very grandiose thing. This can help a lot of people. And like you said, you know, I've noticed for myself and also a lot of others have thought, they did ISTA and they loved it and it was good for them. then, I mean, I didn't really check in with them years later. What has really come from that? also know people who didn't do so great, which I probably blocked out the time and still had that typical ISTA thinking of, ⁓ they're probably weren't the right kind of people or they're not quite there yet, or maybe they're... ⁓ They're too whatever, monogamous or stuck or too anxious or they have too much trauma and whatever. But at the time I did not have the language for that. I didn't understand how much, I didn't understand the inbuilt gas lighting. And you know what? Just as of today, I've actually become, I've actually had access to those, what is it called? It's almost like the assistant guidelines, the new assistant guidelines for ISTA. ⁓ And I read them, I think it's a leaked document or so, it's amazing what's come out of what the course materials and some stuff, that certainly wasn't available back then. And it really took me back to when I was an assistant and also my, which was my last ISTA training as well. And there was also that training, kind of... seal the deal a bit for me to step back afterwards. you want to hear about because I'm so curious about how, yeah, you were enjoying that, you're writing the book, and then something happened. What happened, right? So nothing dramatic, because I, I mean, I was obviously had skin in the game with the counter-sexuality field, and I also do yoga, and then was following B. Schofield, who you might know, the guru hunter, I had profiled her before, and then all of a sudden, Well, hell broke loose in the yoga world and the tantra world because the gamma yoga, all these reports fell into B. Schofield's hands about over 30 women being sexually abused by teachers there and the guru. This is a international yoga school at the time, was still quite big on the island of Koh Phangan in Thailand. think it's, they barely, you know, managed to exist right now and I wish they would close down. Anyway, it was a big. story, the Guardian and actually me here for New Zealand and German media and we blew them out of the water with some big investigations and I actually flew there and was the only person on the ground after the guru they had fled and I spent quite a few weeks researching this and talking to victims and then ⁓ a Coppen guy was actually my stopover on my way to Europe. I go there usually every year because I'm from there and the same family. And as I said before, my workshop tourism, I combined it with another ISTA training in Gevin in the UK at the time. I was all part of that trip in 2018, summer 2018. So I did all my gamma research, flew to England then and went pretty much straight into the ISTA training. And what became, while I was on Kopangana, I also learned that, ⁓ what's his name? Ohad Pele, Ohad Ezraie, the main dude in Israel who's since come under massive scrutiny and actually has ⁓ rep allegations against him. As we, you know, we can say that now, it's been established in very credible media. And I also was in touch with one of the women who went to the police in Israel and I've seen the report of her filing a complaint about the rapes. So yeah, I'm the journalist also who has very direct sources of knowledge of that. Exactly. Well here anyway this guy who yeah had just bought or was going to buy land next to a gamma ⁓ He also on Cop and Garn, and others like Eugene from Estahed also run courses there or planning to, I might not get the time, that's quite right. Long story short, that's when the first time when it sort of dropped for me that one sex cult's being chased off the island is the other one moving in and the parallels suddenly became clearer. More parallels in the sense of... Because I was still enticed with Istha. still thought Istha, Istha

the good guys and Magama the bad guys. And it's again, very typical. I've seen this since we're always really good to spot the cult in the other cults. And very good because it was like, can't be the cult because it's so obviously others are. I've seen people doing it towards landmark when they're in something that's very similar, but maybe not quite as full on. So, ⁓ came to my training in Devon and I thought, I need to warn Esther here. I mean, this is straight from the horse's mouth. am, apart from the Guardian journalist, we are the two people who really researched this case and are blowing it out of the water. I'm not quite sure if the stories have already launched then, the international media stories. Mine was, I think, maybe still in the making. But I had all the knowledge, I had all the insight. And I tried to approach the two lead facilitators. One of them has since left Esther. and try to sort of bring this through as a friend, as someone who loves what they do and respected their work and said, hey, know, just so you know, think, you know, if you don't want to end up as the next gamma, some things in Eastern need to change, like teachers sleeping with students. And they just don't want to have a bar of it. It was basically like, uncle, just be a good assistant, fill up the water bottles, make sure, you know, everyone in your part does what they're supposed to do and don't come up, you know, there was just... the arrogance or maybe the, and again, the oblivion or the elitism that, and I've heard this again, I've heard this sense from other cultures too, where people try to raise awareness from within and because if people already think they're the best and they've got it right, this doesn't land. So it's nothing compared to the kind of intervention that you guys try and then over three you see, but. And in those days, just in a very, very small way, I did try to have some of these conversations. I said, look, you probably don't have that many journalists here during ISTA trainings and assisting with you. This is a real opportunity for you to understand how the outside world, especially in the media, could see this. And I ⁓ had the same thoughts when I ⁓ did one ISTA training at Haydn Temple in New Zealand as well. or DAS, and I was also assisting there, and I'll give you another background story to that soon as well. And at that time, also thought, oh my goodness, if my colleagues, and actually one really good friend of mine who was the investigator, we two journalists in New Zealand, and later, and she lives close by in Fielding, or lived there back then, I thought, oh my goodness, if any of my... would come here and see this and even just drive past and see this sort of this building that looks like tantric Hogwarts and see these people running around the garden screaming naked hugging each other. I could just see the headlines, ⁓ know, a tabloid-y headline and I wouldn't really blame any journalist for it. But at the time I thought,

but they would totally get the wrong end of the stick. And yes, they would, because unless you really understand the complexity and what it is, it's so easy to mock and shame it. And I was always that conflicted. thought, ⁓ god, I just don't want to be seen here. But I wasn't conflicted because I thought something bad's going on there and I shouldn't be there. I did not make that connection. OK, so back to 2018, the Gama Yoga. And then over to Devin and in that training. And now. Here's the how moment I had this morning when I read these assistant guidelines and we actually clearly said that if there's criticism in your pod and people might even want to leave and don't want to do something, it is basically your role as an assistant to squash that down and keep them on track and not amplify that and make sure it doesn't get shared in the wider circle and so on. And I thought, that's exactly what happened in my pod. I had all the naysayers. I had those who were going, yeah, but I'm not comfortable and I'll be really going to do that. And ⁓ I sympathize with them, maybe because I just come from Agama Yoga and I already had that lens on like, Esther needs to watch their, it's back, know, things are not going to look good for Esther if they just, if they have no self-awareness. So I could see where some of these people were coming from that found it just too full on or. came with this sort of outsider fresh perspective. And I thought these facilitators who I really respected and liked to women and a guy as a third one, I thought they are just so deep in this world that they don't realize what a, quote unquote, normal person from the outside, what they think and feel when they come into this environment. They need to be a bit more aware. So I try to bring that to the facilitators' leadings. You know, assistant with facilities. I was like, ⁓ that old chestnut. Seriously, I remember that because it really stung. ⁓ that old chestnut. Just basically just to make sure that they get with the program and they don't cause trouble. And in fact, one person left for my part. She left halfway through. So I was the worst assistant, of course. I didn't know, you know, I didn't get the top bed, ever. ⁓ I failed as an assistant because I was too sympathetic towards them. I was kind of in the middle of, yeah, I get it that they are struggling, but how can I mediate here between them and the facilitators? That was not my role. My role was to bring them back on track. I literally actually left one evening. I actually went outside of the main hall because someone had left. And it was all too much for them and I was there to bring them back in. mean, safety reasons as well, so they didn't hurt themselves in the dark or something, but it was very much they should be here with us in the room and not you could go to them and go to their room with them. And again, at the time, all these things that we're now so aware of, the red flags and workshops and stuff, wasn't really public yet or clear yet or... there weren't enough materials. And I guess this is what I'm doing, what I'm doing now, holding events, holding workshops, talking about red flags. Because if I had known some of this earlier, if I'd had some cult education beyond investigating cults and the worst sort of case scenarios, like rape and child sexual abuse, if I had known some of the more subtle dynamics. It would have clicked earlier for me that that's actually not okay, that what I'm involved with, and I was bringing a lot of people at the time, interested as well, here in New Zealand. think every training someone was there because I said, ⁓ you should do that. And they trusted me. So, yeah, that weighs on me too. Yeah. Well, and I think that informs sometimes people are like, why do you speak out? Why do you care? And for me, it's the work I did in... Attempting mediation with ISTA of going them with to them with goodwill similar to you being like, ⁓ my gosh You guys are driving off a cliff and you don't see it and we want to help you because we love you we actually believe in this stuff and then Realizing ⁓ that's almost like me being as much as my bubble as they are in their bubble Because I'm not dealing with the reality of who they have been who they continue to be who they're determined to be. And yeah, just the goodwill of saying, ⁓ we can influence, don't sleep with students anymore. They said in level one, they won't sleep with students anymore. They've created an accountability system. They pulled teachers out of circulation, right? Like there's these little check boxes, and yet... when I step back and look at what actually happened was they didn't fundamentally change. They didn't become not occult and share power and take care of people and care about the larger community, not just who they're sucking in now and getting money from, but those of us that paid in the past and got hurt. ⁓ And I speak especially because the whole point of that had been about survivors. And then when we went into negotiations, it was this process of where you're like, well, what can we get now? How do we reduce harm now? And we said, okay, if we can reduce harm, more people aren't getting shoved out the back, damaged. And yet in that shuffle, the people who had already been harmed, they said they set up mediation services. They said they set up and then... I trusted that, I went through that, I have spoken with three, four, five, seven people who've been through that and it failed. It's failed survivors. And so I'm like, if I've spent two years trying to help them change and yet that actually bought them two years to like not do substantial change and then whitewash themselves, I'm like, I out of integrity am on the hook for at least two years. to explain what actually happened and to see if I can recenter survivors and say, ISTA has money in the bank, and we've got three survivors that you and I have both spoken and more who haven't worked. Like, I don't know

that people understand the impact. People have not worked for two or three years. People have been in psychiatric institutes. People are in active PTSD three years after. even though they're trying to get support, even though they're seeing a therapist and doing like, and so, you know, the two years it took me when the Facebook group started and I did mediation while I was a bloody mess, you know, and I laugh. I mean, I like that we're working with all the nuances of it, right? It's like there's nuances on both sides. There's complexities. ⁓ And you've been incredibly brave, honestly, can I just say? Sorry to cut in, but I just want to say how courageous you are and how much I admire watching your whole journey from starting that mediation. And I know you copped a lot of flack for that. And I wasn't always happy how some things were handled in the process. And I pulled back from it as your quote unquote media advisor at some point. And then much more from the sidelines and I'll just see you the integrity and also, like you said, the toll it takes and your integrity and finding yourself quite alone in some ways, because not everyone who started off with you has seen it through in the same ways. And maybe some people had their moment in the limelight, others were not worn out and burned out. mean, you know that better than me. But I just want to say, I'm really, really grateful, dear Kara, that you are here and that you're doing this. And then now you've... you're doing this in such a well-informed way from so many angles because not many people have been in the mediation room with Esther for so long and then came out saying... Fuck this shit. we've given them the benefit of the doubt. We really tried. We copped a lot of flak from the more hardcore activists for helping with the whitewashing. And actually now they're throwing us under the bus. I hope I'm getting this right. It's accurate. I think some of ironies are ⁓ of... Well, there's this process of A, kind of going back to the person that harmed you and continually trying to work it out. And when you're dealing with narcissistic traits or self-centered people, you're never going to get that satisfaction, right? And so there's that piece where I'm like, ⁓ on a personal level, I've done this in certain kind of relationships. Here it was on an organizational level. I got the same stuff. The other part is that it was about idealism as much as ISTA is about an ideal. Also, as 3SC, Safer Sex Positive and Spiritual Communities came together, there was an ideal that We stand for transformative justice. stand for the opportunities to do calling in. We stand for a non-punitive system. That's a beautiful ideological stance. And it doesn't hold water in certain conditions. Exactly. It depends on the conditions, It depends on the conditions. You can't do it with a psychopath, a narcissist. or a cult. And so it's funny because I look now and I'm like, oh, you're trying to reinvent the wheel. And there were

ways I couldn't receive the feedback to say, honey, you're trying to reinvent the wheel. And I'm like, no, I have to prove it. I have to do it for myself. And you have the proof now because of how it is still a lecture. It's almost a proof. So right how they've come back from the New York Magazine article. from interacting ⁓ with you guys at the end, you from the little, I know, but you know that better, of course. I think it's almost like now, if there's any doubt before that they're very culty, or that they are a cult, however, know, wherever you want to draw the line, it's not about just putting a seed word on someone, right? But they're not dealing in the ethical way that they claim that they're dealing, or with the accountability level they claim they're having. Well, you clearly have that. No, and I hope in some ways, even though it's frustrating to think how many years you've actually spent trying to make them better, at least you know, you come on the right, you know that you've really tried and now you have the proof. And I have news for you, because with Agama Yoga, instance, and I've since learned this from many cults, we often only sort of see the tip of the iceberg when things go really bad. and abusers end up being caught up publicly or end up being arrested, unfortunately not often enough, but at least there's some kind of shit storm. But what we often don't see is the years, usually years, sometimes decades that ⁓ have been going on in the background, pretty much, I mean, with a lot of organizations where people are aware of the harm. And some people are really trying to change the organization from within because they love the community. They've built a life there. They've raised their kids there. That's where they make their money. So many different scenarios of why you're there and you actually believe in the good stuff that the school could still be teaching, but you just see how awful the leader has become when you want to save people from raping another woman or damaging the reputation of the school. this has been... happening again and again and again in so many organizations and I followed this really closely in my research with the Karma Yoga when people had meetings and town hall meetings and wrote letters and had talks and tried all sorts of things to change things from then and again and again they were fobbed off and there were false promises and nothing really happened and that really wears people out as well and then they leave and that's insidious. And we often don't know how much goes on within cults. So again, this whole old stereotype of, why don't people just leave? Why don't they just speak up? And if it's so clear, well, first of all, it's not always that clear. And then secondly, people often do speak up from within and then they give up and then they're defeated and they leave with nothing. And they know they can't really go to the police for half of the stuff that 90 % of the stuff that we know is wrong in

those groups. I've just... I'm just observing this firsthand with a rape victim, alleged rape victim from ISTA, who was in the New York Magazine article, and her attempts to find justice even for a rape case where you're dealing on the outside with authorities and levels of complications and international law and whatnot. I mean, even if you have something as awful and as kind of clear cut as a rape, it is still really, really difficult to take that somewhere to set some kind of legal process in motion. yeah, I think this whole topic of how can you change the cuts from within, I would say you can't. If it's a cut, you can't. If it's not a cut, yeah, try. But it will be the lack-miss test. it is. I mean, I think Carol Murchison and... I, when I met with her, the lawyer, the cult ninja, and I, you know, I was kind of hanging my head. Carol, I spent two years trying to change it. I feel like such a fool. And she was like, ⁓ honey, I spent four years trying to change the first one I ran into. She was like, there you go. And so that, and so that's also the network of having these conversations and reducing the shame so we can suffer less because when we're together, we do alleviate each other's. suffering, right? Because the shame is such a heavy blanket and cults prey on shame and or leverage shame. And then the whole misogynistic system or patriarchal system we're in has had the victim carry the shame, right? So we're in this whole flipping of that to be like, no, no, no, no, we need to put the shame where it belongs on the racist system, the misogynistics of the patriarchal system, and not on individual survivors and victims. but there's a catch 22, with all this because our society is not exactly healthy or as evolved as probably you and would like it to be in terms of sexuality, right? There's work to do. ⁓ Obviously, obviously, mean, where do we even start, right? Because of these levels of patriarchy, of misogyny, of sexism, of poor culture, of lack of communication, all of that. This is why people go into their sacred sexuality space. Absolutely. they want to find something better. And when they're being harmed in their sacred sexuality spaces, but because of this not so perfect system on the outside, which we all want to change, especially as feminists and so on, and sex positive people, because of the problems that still prevail on the outside, they can't address the harm or find the justice. They've suffered because there is no language, there's no understanding, there's mocking and shaming and laughing even with police officers when they go and they say, ⁓ I booked myself onto this week long conscious sexual, what course and what did you do? And you took your clothes off and there were group rituals where you did what? With a carrot? Where do we even begin? Even if you overcome your shame and embarrassment, but just the lack of understanding. in a legal and professional sense of it. And this is why, you know, just also bring it back to what I'm doing now, the cult education is so important. The public awareness, not just that, yeah, there are cults out there and they're bad. I think most people kind of clocking that by now, but it was so, you and me and everyone could already be in one without knowing. And also what are the complexities? What are the nuances? How do we actually help people who've been harmed to come out and find healing and justice and yeah, to do this work that you and I are currently doing, unpaid, yes. Right. I do think about, for example, ISTA having their scholarship fund for younger people, 19 to 24. Maybe they've changed it 21 now. I think they might've gotten out of the teens, but I could go check. Um, and you know, I'm 52, you're in your 50s, like, why? You were in your 50s. My sense of... outrage or part of my passion is that nobody was able to help me navigate that or safeguard that. And I get it. If I had been attracted as a 19-year-old, I probably would have done all the things and rose all the ranks based on my psychology, my idealism, all the reasons. And, you know, these are vulnerable people. in particular, and then to target them and that kind of, you know, grooming or indoctrination process that happens, come be an assistant, the assistants are the culture of Ishta, the assistants are the fluffers of the temple, the assistants, right, are, and that's actually where it becomes particularly, I would say, where the cultiness begins. If you just come as a participant, there are implications. But when you pay bonus to be a worker bee, and that, I think that's where the hooks actually start coming because you see those internal dynamics. so between the survivors that contact me who don't have the capacity to be a public voice, many of them suffered much more physical and emotional harm than I did. And so I'm like, I can be that icebreaker or that voice by staying in touch with you and re-centering. And for then these young women and young men, these beautiful, vulnerable, big hearted, curious, ⁓ know, so many beautiful people come, they're attracted. And so I'm like, how? Can I help you avoid this? But then also, where do you go? Right? That ends up being the question is, where can we do this? And so I think that's part of the education too is like, are you looking for smaller groups? Are you avoiding some formats of the large group awareness training that are going to entrench or entrain your system a certain way? Yeah, and then just this education that you're doing, like literally for a whole region of the world with DECOLT and then that reaches internationally as well. And so yeah, your passion around education. I think it's really interesting how I can now pull a few things together, just a little bit really, because this year... I've also done an in-depth interview with a survivor, former teenager from Roshni Shpura. Everyone was watched Wild Wild Country in Oregon, the crazy Bhagwan Osho, know, they'd have rebranded themselves as Osho,

Bhagwan Roshni Shpura, his commune in Oregon, where a lot of stuff went down. like Centerpoint, and I didn't really... I wasn't able really to put those dots together before. It was very similar to Centerpoint in terms of the early sexualization of kids and girls, 13, 12 years old, who sleeping with guys much much older. And it was not just accepted. It was, you know, they were cool because of that. They climbed the ranks, the hierarchy. And gave them more status, exactly. And of course, as in... A lot of those cults, ⁓ no parents, parents have red legs, the community raises the child. In fact, the family bonds need to be broken because it holds you back from your spiritual development and all these compounding factors that enable the abuse, even if it's not ⁓ part of the doctrine to sleep with underage kids and minors and teenagers, but it kind of comes. with the territory and it's all in the mix and goes unchecked. And pulling all this together, so the historical sex cult research that I've done for many years and also how it affected me, you because I'm in that trauma, it's so big that's still out there. And it was shocking, shocking to hear what some of these former teenagers suffered. And then I see that replicated in the Osha movement and then the same silencing that's still happening. years, decades later when they finally speak up because some of them are now mums themselves and wondering, hang on, know, this happened to me when I was 12. And the silencing that's still there and the spiritual bypassing and this old, you know, the old chestnut, which you've run away off of, oh, it's always on you. It's always on you if something happens. They're no victims. Don't be in the victim consciousness. Don't be stuck in that. Yeah. See it as a gift. Here's a way to grow. But you were so happy, but this was just done with love. And it's just the same old, same old toxic bullshit that we see in all these spaces. And it does worry me in terms of ISTA, to be honest, ⁓ when they start having youth trainings now and whatever, know, some branching out and families coming together and especially when it's live in communities with their kids as well. So what does that mean if you, let's say, And I'm actually quoting a real live example here that I know from Haydn temple in New Zealand. What have you as a participant who's really loving everything there and wants to fit in and thinks this is the thing, you observe something that is completely off in some, or for you feels off, a parent and a child in a ⁓ sexual setting, maybe let's put it just like that. ⁓ that to you would feel inappropriate or at least weird and instead of going actually maybe I should talk to them about that or hmm what was that and you question yourself because you had an a contraction as they call it and a contraction and the teachings of Haydn and so many of these other know mystery schools and Neotantra schools it means that you have a blockage that needs to be over come and you have

to work, you basically have to work harder so you don't feel appalled or disturbed or disgusted by what you just observed. And this is ⁓ a key thing to understand because if you look at so much of the the cult carnage, even from Johnstown to the Manson family, the extremes to all the very common child sexual abuse. and from Christian cults to everywhere, but especially in those new agey ones. If this is how you're being brainwashed and taught that a resistance to what your intuition or your moral compass teaches you needs to be overcome, then what does that lead to? And my conclusion is a lot of good people at Central Point, for instance, did some pretty awful things. and had some kind of sexual interactions with kids probably more because they thought they should do or because what would normally help them hold them back wasn't holding them back anymore because they could just put it aside ⁓ and they could just go for what they had the hots for, whether it's legal or morally right or not. or ethical, all of that. that's for me is really what I wanted to talk to you about. We can really, let's identify that thing as a pretty bad thing. how to, especially if you're in a somatic sort of, know, a school where it's all about embodiment and feeling the stuff in your body. So yeah, you're actually feeling something that's great. But then the brain fuckery of, excuse my language, but of being at the same time having learned and being taught and being modeled that. ⁓ but that's a contraction means that can't be good and you need to move off. You overcome that. I hope my point is clear and why there's really, really concerns. is. And it comes up with one taste with Nicole Day-Done on her way to her prison term. ⁓ Aversion, aversion. It's not aversion therapy, but they use an aversion practice to say, ooh, you should be turned on all the time. You should get off on any stroke. And that means if you feel repulsed by this person that we've asked you to go do a thing with, you should lean into that. That is a problem of yours. And I feel ISTA does the same thing, like with level two and the spread your legs like a temple whore. Cosmic whore. this idea. People with a nature. ⁓ sorry, no, you go. Well, and just this idea that when you get into transpersonal or you get into the void, you have no discernment because you are not your personality. You are now the essence of love or the archetype of the divine feminine. so if you, know, my adoption or performance or accessing this idea of the divine temple priestess, like, yeah, I was emitting love everywhere. Did that mean that I wanted to have physical interactions with anybody who approached me? No. But am I shamed for that? Because what's my problem if I'm all love and, right? And that the growing edge, that's the other piece they'll use is like, well, of course, growing means being uncomfortable. And so if you're defaulting for comfort, then you're not really in it and you're not really growing. ⁓ yeah, they even tell you that story. I'm sure you've heard it. It's a classic and most Eastern courses. going to hear the story of the cafe on the edge of the cliff. If I get it right, it's like the spiritual seekers, they all meet there. It's this lovely little parable and they, to really be... Enlighten, evolve, take the risk, which of course risk taking and being edgy, all of that is a big Esther thing and that gives you more status because Esther already is edgy and risky and you do stuff that other tantric schools wouldn't do like throwing sex in the mix and all that. And if you hang around too long at the edge and you just have another coffee at the cafe at the edge of the cliff, you're never going to make that jump. And what they're basically telling you, you're a loser if you don't jump. So, mean, it's so insidious. I just remember one little example here too from my very, very first Easter course. So here I am, arrived at the Yarra Valley outside of Melbourne, I think it was 2012, 13 maybe. Never done anything like this before. I mean, was like, ⁓ I'm going on this week long course with all these strangers and they're probably gonna take a close off on something. some things might happen. My husband had already done the course. So I actually knew a few things. was like, oh God, I'm gonna do that with people I don't know. And I remember we all arrived where they were taking us, picking us up for the bus or shuttle at a bus stop. And there were some people who had just arrived from somewhere else in Australia. And there was this guy, I think he owned a fish and chip shop. he had, think he spent the night on the park bench. He kinda looked. The part he was quite, you know, quite a big belly and he quite a bit greasy and he was the sweetest guy, don't get me wrong, but just sort of his physicality at the time was, ⁓ God, I'm going to do something maybe naked into it with this. ⁓ God, yeah, please no, please, please don't. And guess what? Because of the nature selection, you know what I mean? our way, when you do this, the first ritual a few days later and you have the nature selection where basically you can't choose the partner. and how you're doing something super intimate with mainly a, you know, so-called sacred spot massage. You can't choose them. being, you you allocated a person just by selecting a little thing out of a hat or, ⁓ yeah, whether it was a leave or whatever. We know the process. I guess most of your listeners would know as well. And it was that guy who was doing this ritual with, for me. Yeah, I was the receiver. And I thought, no. And then you know what? What I could do then, I just project it because he was so not the Adonis I was hoping for too. Back then, was still more in that mindset of I was so conditioned to any sort of physical intimacy like that, which had only really happened in my marriage between me and my husband. It was kind hard to separate us from, this is not a hookup, this is just an exercise. So I had, of course, hoped for someone not as a hookup, but more like someone I would actually feel attracted to so that it would make me feel better during this. But then I kind of switched around and thought, okay, I can project all my anger or frustration or whatever I have on my yuck, disgust on this poor guy's big belly and let it all out and scream it out. So in that sense, it was almost a bit therapeutic. But looking back, I also think it's kind of messed up because I was trying to condition myself also away from something I wouldn't have chosen and I didn't like and where I had a physical repulsion. I had to somehow find a way mentally to get around that big obstacle of I really physically don't like this guy and he would be in the last one I would have chosen. Do you what mean? Absolutely. There's a problem right there from the start. Absolutely. fantastic. We're gonna wrap up for today. I could talk to you for so long. There's so much more to explore. ⁓ Are there any last thoughts, things you want to share with folks before we wrap up for this round? I mean, of course I would here. I'm just going to hold up my book. It's not my first book. It's actually my last book I've written for. This one is my book in English and it came out a few years ago and I think it's still making the rounds in lots of ways. It's called Kaltrip. came out at HarperCollins. You can also listen to it on Audible. It's very personal, it's my very personal story. It's kind of like gone to journalism. You're watching me as I do all this, all this research and all. and it's pretty confronting at times. So yeah, I just put that out there that there is a book ⁓ about all this too. And then of course there's my little organization called Decart to find online, decart.net. And we're running another Carta awareness conference next year, which ⁓ anyone can watch on live stream and also live on Zoom in your time zones in the States and in Europe. So it's gonna be... incredible event with speakers from all around the world. And my own website is anchorichter.net. yeah, please get in touch through my website or so if you have any questions or if you'd like me to talk more about this. It is a big topic and I'm really glad we did it. Thank you. Thank you, Anka. ⁓ Thank you to everybody who's been listening to us. Would love to hear if you have thoughts, questions, ideas, reflections, and that you'll join us next time for the next episode of Fool's Gold. Bye. This episode was recorded at Access Humboldt and produced by Paxton Scarberry, Shanti Shaka Varti, and John Friedman. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.