Original subtitles

[sirens blare]

[siren continues]

[woman] So, this is the first time that I've come back.

It's almost five years to the day, so…

It's a bit of an icky feeling actually. It's, yeah, kind of…

Yeah, just the thought of the fact that he's near,

he's… he's somewhere.

[bell tolls]

So I'm here because I have a hearing with the judge.

The school are going to say that no crime occurred

because you have consenting adults.

[female attorney] We refute all of these absurd allegations

which are made with no evidence.

The accusations currently being circulated include rape, grooming,

kidnapping, human trafficking, and the accusation of mind control.

[rhythmic drumming and chanting]

[woman 2] I devoted myself whole-heartedly to the teachings.

They worked. They really worked.

[woman 3] "You might feel scared. You might feel repulsed.

You might feel overwhelmed or like you wanna leave.

That's okay, that's just your ego."

[woman 4] This is going to change your life.

This is a tantric master. You are going to absorb his qualities.

[woman 5] He came in the middle of the night.

He touched, with his finger, the sole of my feet, while I was sleeping

and I woke up like that.

"It's your turn."

I kind of trusted that these people wouldn't let anything bad happen to me.

I trusted him.

He has been surveilled since 1971.

Young women were still being taken to Bivolaru.

[crowd shouting]

[man] The guy is a wanted fugitive on INTERPOL's red list.

[woman 6] Europe, Japan, all of Scandinavia.

Oh, my God. It's everywhere.

This person is working at the level of really black, dark magic.

He's very dark and he's very powerful.

Something snapped.

I need to go. I need to get out of here right now.

[microphone crackles]

[child] Okay, here we're in our holiday house

with all the old stuff from the…

It's a very nice house. Bit small, but very nice.

And we're going to…

the bedroom.

There's one bunk.

And up top, we have another bunk.

And there's Ashleigh up there.

[giggles]

[Ash] I was pretty lucky. I grew up in a stable home.

I had loving parents.

We grew up in a rural town.

A good three-hour drive from Melbourne.

[birds warbling]

[children singing]

[Ash] Went to school in town.

It was pretty uneventful.

[giggling]

[Ash] We grew up in a Catholic family.

Even though I didn't like going to church, I still had a strong faith.

Every night, I would say my prayers before I'd go to sleep.

And I would have conversations with my parents about ghosts

or supernatural phenomena that…

You know, we were all interested in those sorts of things

and we were very open.

[all cackle]

I started to get interested in…

astrology. It was just an interest, you know?

I didn't follow it intensely, but I was interested in astrology.

I was interested in numerology.

I was interested in tarot.

I was interested in palm readings, psychics.

As I got older and started to explore my identity

and try and figure out who I am and what I believe in,

I think that created fertile ground for me to be really open to, "Well, what next?"

[boing]

I had a boyfriend at the time and we clashed

because he didn't have any spiritual beliefs whatsoever.

I wanted to meet the right person,

have a family,

and live a fuller, more meaningful life.

[laughs wildly]

Hey, fam! Just in Piccadilly Circus. Miss you, guys.

[Ash] I always wanted to move to the UK.

And so then, in 2018…

Big Ben in the background.

…I arrived in London.

[Big Ben chimes]

It's a bit "roll-your-eyes", like, yeah, I was another Aussie in London.

And then I was newly single.

And I got a job working in the NHS.

I was excited at the prospect of dating again or meeting someone.

Take you on a little house tour.

This is the bedroom.

And this is the lounge room.

And this is the laundry.

And this is the kitchen.

[Ash] One morning, I was sitting with a client at work

and I looked at my phone and an old friend had popped up on the phone.

Him and Ziggy, these crazy friends who…

left the Army and became these hippies.

And they would sit on my brother's floor and make friendship bracelets and…

they would go to festivals

and they were just these kind of, like, bit of an enigma.

I'd heard this story about how they'd, like, run off overseas to Europe

and were devoting their lives to yoga and being in service of humanity.

There was a whole heap of messages from him like, "Hey."

I can't remember all the messages now,

but one of them said, "What's the meaning of life?"

And so immediately that piqued my interest.

[gasps] "Someone wants to have a philosophical

or a spiritual conversation."

And they were saying, "We've found this yoga school now.

You know, these days, yoga's become commercialized.

It's just hot pants and lycra."

"And what we've found is the real thing."

And he sent me, like, a link to Tara Yoga Centre,

which is the UK branch of the Atman Yoga Federation.

It had an authentic feel to it.

Quite polished-looking footage. To me, it looked legit.

Everyone's there to better themselves in some way.

It was exactly what I was looking for.

So I signed up to the classes.

And they warn you. They say, "This course will change you."

"You will change on this path.

That will happen. That's going to happen."

And I wanted what they had.

[pulsing drum beat]

The way that they teach it is for you to visualize

the activation of a chakra,

and the energizing of certain parts of your body.

I was so committed. Like, I would not miss a class.

They talk about the telluric energies coming up from the earth.

You imagine balancing happening in your body,

you imagine things becoming unstuck,

you imagine opening and expansion.

It's more than just stretching your muscles. [chuckles]

There's something spiritual going on in that process.

You go to a class and it's a two-hour class

and the first hour is a lecture.

First hour is pure theory and the second hour is practice.

And I loved that.

Because I was like, "Give me the theory, give me the knowledge."

And there would be associated handouts with every lesson.

And there's 20-plus years of courses and I was only in year one.

That was part of the appeal of the classes is that they just went into so much depth.

You've got a lot of information about diet and exercise,

and looking after yourself, and living well.

They got the different types of yoga.

Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Raja yoga, Laya yoga, Tantra yoga.

Tantra yoga they've described as,

"The yoga of extreme expansion of the field of consciousness

that includes a complex gamut of methods and techniques including, among others,

sexual activity for the purpose of accelerating spiritual evolution

by transmuting and sublimating

the creative sexual potential for both men and women."

And so then I'm jumping on Google. I'm like, "What is tantra?"

[laughing] And then… And then…

I sort of said, "Oh, look, I don't really know much about it."

But I think what most people think of when they hear the word tantra

is it's something to do with sex.

It's something to do with… couples

and… this kind of slowed-down version of sex.

It's kind of what we think of, isn't it?

I was like, "That sounds really mysterious."

I messaged Ziggy.

He told me that the teachings and the meditation

and the yoga practice really helped him.

[birds chirping]

[Ziggy] From a young age, I'm not saying it was like this,

but it certainly felt this way, that it was me against the world.

[camera clicks]

Coming from a broken childhood

the concept of love and receiving it was quite unfamiliar to me.

The foster system is there

and it functions to a capacity. It's not perfect,

but I'm still grateful that it existed.

When I joined the Army,

I was, um, trying to find a sense of belonging

in a place or a community,

but it just never sat well.

I didn't particularly agree with a lot of what we were doing,

what we were exposed to.

So it just led us to go and try and seek those answers elsewhere.

In 2016, I just packed up and left and came to Europe.

And this yoga school…

[digital pings]

…they were all around the world.

Everywhere.

I've joined that school in Denmark.

In the beginning, I was not a great yogi.

Put me on a mat and it was just,

"Wow… [laughing] that's not pretty."

But you really did feel like you were part of something

that was just so much grander.

And it just had this alluring element to it.

Possibly because of the way things unfolded

in my actual biological family,

motherless and fatherless,

relationships, they were always something that I struggled with.

I'm not one to say my past relationships were meaningless,

but it was clunky, it was full of mistakes.

It sort of put me in a space where,

"Right, I'm this wounded, closed-off individual

that's attempted to find love

and been chewed up and spat out as a result."

And that's what led to wanting to go into this yogi tantric world.

And what better place to learn and grow?

I was aware that it was probably gonna lead

into this tantric lovemaking ritual, but I had a lot to learn first.

[Andrea] This was a global school and…

I was very much connected to the one in Sweden.

For me, it had a huge impact.

It changed me at a very fundamental level.

The teachings spoke for themselves.

I think it transformed my life.

It transformed the way I saw myself, the way I saw the world,

and part of the tantric teachings is to really wake up.

Tantra's maybe four, five thousand years old even.

Long before Christianity.

Yoga and tantra are sisters.

For example, a normal class would always start

with at least an hour of yoga.

And then if we marry the teachings of the chakras

with how energy works,

certain positions, certain, uh, sexual positions

are connected to certain chakras, certain energies.

One of the goals of tantra is to awaken this dormant energy.

They talk about the inner marriage between Shiva and Shakti within tantra.

Shiva is the masculine principle and Shakti is the feminine principle.

In the meeting with a lover, there would be a big charge of energy.

We use that energy as a vehicle towards spiritual growth.

I went in whole-hearted

and I dedicated all my time, all my energy, everything,

to the school, to the path.

Um…

It was my life.

Common saying they have is that the tantric path is like…

stepping off a country road onto an express freeway.

The lessons come fast, they come strong, and, you know, you… "Be prepared."

[Ash] Ziggy was really involved in the school by this point.

Someone said, "People think that tantra is about sex, but it's not.

It's about love. Tantra's about love." And it's intriguing, right?

Like, it is intriguing, especially when you're hearing

about it being about living from the heart.

And about being… And it being all about love.

You know, that's… Who doesn't wanna learn about love?

[pulsing drum beats]

I signed up for first-year tantra and second-year yoga.

[Andrea] The school, all the knowledge is not available to everybody.

You have the normal classes

and then some people are invited to take extracurricular classes.

Where you're invited to attend maybe a weekend workshop.

The teachers would choose the students

that were showing the most aspiration or the most potential.

Only people deemed…

I don't wanna say "worthy", but I'm going to say it.

So only people deemed worthy are allowed in.

[rhythmic whispering]

[Andrea] So a little bit like a secret society.

[producer] It must have also been quite compelling.

Very much so. Yeah, yeah. Very, um… seductive.

Somehow, being closer, being allowed to be closer

and have closer access to the source was… was really compelling.

[Ash] I don't recall when I first heard the word "guru".

[Ash] But then the school refers to him as the spiritual guide.

[indistinct chatter]

[producer] And they gave you his name?

Yeah, Gregorian Bivolaru.

And that he was Romanian.

[Ash] He was teaching yoga during the Communist regime.

[Ash] He was teaching in secret because yoga wasn't allowed

and these sorts of things were considered a threat to the state.

And they said he, you know, went out on a limb to teach yoga.

So he's a hero, you know, look what he did for the people.

[producer] And was there a concept of where he was?

I had no idea where he was. I knew that he was in hiding.

[Andrea] We'd spoken openly about this in class that he'd been to prison before.

And the greats like Mahatma Gandhi was, you know, persecuted.

And there were many people who fought for truth and for the light,

who've been persecuted over time.

[Ash] They kind of likened him to this metaphor of climbing a mountain.

You need the guide there who knows the landscape,

who knows what they're doing, to guide you there.

[Ash] A few weeks earlier

I was told there's a festival in Romania

for the entire month of August.

And they said you could write to the spiritual guide

and ask to go into The Villa.

It'd be a perfect opportunity for you

to learn new techniques that were specific for women.

And it'd be great for your transformation.

So I wrote to the guru.

"Dear Spiritual Guide Grieg, my name is Ashleigh

and I'm currently studying the first year of the intensive yoga course.

I've decided to visit Romania for the summer camp in Costinesti.

I'm writing to kindly ask if I may be accepted at The Villa.

The amazing opportunity would help me to awaken, explore

and understand my femininity."

I did that.

And there's…

the photos that you have to send of you in a bikini.

And you have to be standing there holding this…

piece of paper that has your name,

your star sign…

where you're from, which school you attend.

And that gets sent away

to the spiritual guide

in order to attend the camp.

Now, I did think it was odd 'cause it's like,

"Why can't you read my aura through my clothes?" [chuckles]

I sent the photos and then the guru wrote back to me

and it was like, "Yes! We welcome you to The Villa, come immediately."

[announcer] …platform 6.

[Ash] Costinesti.

It's on the coast of Romania.

The town in August gets swamped with yogis,

but also with Romanians on holidays.

[pumping electronic music playing]

You've got this kinda of juxtaposition of all these unaware, unconscious people

drinking, dancing,

and then you have all these awakened yogis

trying to open their hearts and raise their consciousness

and benefit humanity.

[indistinct voice over speaker]

[Ash] And I was gonna spend a month there and I was gonna do yoga.

I was excited.

I hadn't been told much.

I knew the school originated in Romania, the guru was Romanian,

and that most of the students were Romanian.

And so that was where they hosted the main summer camp

that everyone came to from all over the world.

In Denmark, we had quite a strong school there.

A really big school, it was quite established.

I was a massive high-achiever.

I was a total nerd. I got bullied at school.

Um, I would hide in the library a lot and I would obsessively read.

I had been living in Sydney.

Uh, each time I would meet a new partner, I would say,

"Don't even bother trying to give me pleasure.

It's not gonna happen. My body's broken.

But I'm just happy to be here with you and I want you to feel good."

So I was a real people-pleaser in that way.

But then at 26, I met a partner who introduced me to this whole other way

of relating to sexuality and pleasure.

And I started to feel sensations I didn't know were possible.

He told me that it was connected

to this, um, yoga and meditation tradition that he'd been practicing.

He was really wanting to explore more and go deeper with this.

That's when he decided he wanted to go to Denmark

to do the teacher training and he invited me to go with him

and said I would be able to live there and do voluntary work for the school.

I was there in Denmark for nearly three years

when they said, "You've been invited

on a special women's retreat which is happening within the camp.

It's part of this, um, thing called The Villa.

You'll be part of a community of women.

We'll see you there."

[Ash] The Villa.

I didn't… Yeah, I didn't know what to expect.

To me, it looked tacky.

Like it just wasn't my vibe.

[dog barks]

It's got tall fences.

You're not allowed in unless you have your pass.

They took my passport.

They get a Bible out,

and you have to say,

"I swear on my health and my spiritual evolution

that I will not reveal any of the secrets or anything that goes on here."

There was pages and pages of rules.

They said, "You need to go to the other room

and read these rules three times.

It might take you about an hour or so."

And then, like, "Okay, now we do your photos."

And…

they said, "You need to strip off. Naked."

Like, take all your clothes off.

So they can check your aura to make sure that your energies are…

balanced enough to participate.

And so I took my clothes off and they take photos front-on

and side profile.

[producer] And did you have any kind of doubts in the back of your mind

at that point, that it was strange?

I certainly thought it was strange, but I don't really know…

if I questioned it that much.

I think I was like, "Yeah, this is just…

This is just how it is."

And also, I guess it was kind of empowering to think,

"Yeah, I'm gonna take my clothes off. I don't have a problem with my body.

Sure."

And then I had to sit down naked in front of the camera with a microphone

and answer these questions.

And they also said, "Oh, if we… if we ask you about, like, 'him',

we're talking about the master.

We will refer to him as 'him' on the camera.

We won't use his name. It's just 'him.'"

They said, "And if you had the opportunity to meet him, how would you feel?

What would you say?"

Or something to that effect.

And I'm sitting there cross-legged, completely naked, with a camera on me,

holding a microphone, and I'm asked that.

And I said, "Yeah, I…

I would be extremely nervous at the thought of that.

Very intimidated at the thought of that, but of course I would say yes."

Women would walk around, like, naked all the time and I loved that.

Like, you felt really open and safe.

You could go to each other for advice and hold each other and hug each other

and cook each other food and it was a community.

They'd often been in the school for a few years or at least two years

before they went into The Villa. People were surprised,

"Oh, how long have you been in the school?"

"A few months." "Oh, and you're in The Villa?"

Like, it was a bit…

[Miranda] I met women from America, Germany,

Portugal, Brazil, Greece, Thailand,

they come from all over the world.

I was a first-year student and I went weekly to the classes

and, you know, I already saw a difference in myself

and my life, compared with a year, certainly two years, previously.

My relationships were improving,

my sense of self had just completely changed

and that felt really exciting.

I decided that I should quit my job

and dedicate myself to this full time.

And so you have all of these women there that seem to be running the show.

They're sort of, I think, sort of almost mother figures.

They're running around. They're organizing things.

And almost all of the women in The Villa would be like,

first question, "What's your star sign?"

Second or third question, "Are you doing Miss Shakti?"

[Ash] Miss Universe-type style pageants.

And they created these videos of them for the guru.

And I have to say, I was pretty surprised.

Women dancing, quite seductively.

They're all kind of adorned with jewels and headdresses.

With, like, the whole camp, you know, watching.

Miss Shakti is another level, really.

It's kind of the basis of the whole camp.

They teach this idea

that when you empty yourself of your person,

you are channeling and you are asking that other character, or entity,

or energy, or goddess, to come into you.

And you become them for that period in time.

Transfiguration, as they call it.

I'm inviting in the spirit of…

the goddess Kali.

It feels real.

And I don't know…

how to explain why, in a rational way.

It's a contest and there's a winner. [laughs]

And a first, second and third place.

But ultimately, you're not competing against the other people,

it's about competing, you know,

against yourself or becoming a better version of you.

[Miranda] For a woman who's grown up having shame

and judgement around your body,

thinking that I was fat.

In the school, there's this idea that your body is sacred

and it's not some kind of object.

[Ash] Sitting and watching this,

you see this really quiet, reserved, shy person

and then through Miss Shakti, all of a sudden,

they're in a micro-bikini on stage like a sex bomb.

I was like, "A micro-bikini?" [laughs]

[Ash] And so many women, I can't tell you how many there were.

And I knew that some of the higher, like, the later stages,

there's a few secret stages.

[Miranda] I got kicked out after the first round.

At the time, I was devastated.

And I thought, "Okay, was it because I'm too much in my ego?

Was it because, you know, I had the wrong energy during the performance?

I… You know, why?

What was it about me meant that I was kicked out at this stage?

What's my spiritual guide trying to show me here?"

Like, some things I felt were a bit weird.

There was a…

I remember there was an exercise once that was on conscious touch

and I think you just kind of closed your eyes

and then everybody had their hands on you.

But then there was this other one they did right at the end of the month.

It was called an integration.

And almost all of the women in The Villa were planning to participate.

You had to put your name down if you were going to participate in the integration.

And if you weren't going to participate, you had to leave the building

for the duration of the few hours that it was going on.

And then they started talking about, um, the technique

which is using the urine.

Which they called the Golden Elixir.

Which is where you're exchanging… the Golden Elixir.

[laughing] You're exchanging the urine.

After at least 45 minutes of lovemaking or "charging",

so that it's then "charged."

And that's how you supposedly integrate the qualities of the partner.

It's like the ultimate kind of connection and closeness

because you are then drinking and embodying

these qualities of your partner.

I…

I don't… I didn't want to. I wasn't… I didn't want to.

So, I…

I sat in the room for it. And we went into the room,

they had all, like, the… It was all kind of ritualized.

And then it was just an orgy.

It was just a massive orgy of all these women.

No men.

And I just sat there, watching, in a kind of a meditative posture.

And just kind of… just observed.

And then they start passing a bowl around

and they're all collectively peeing into the bowl.

And then they're bottling it afterwards

into these little vials so that they can put a couple of drops in their water

so that they can keep embodying the qualities.

I seemed like I was the only one that didn't want to. Like it was…

But I rationalized it as, "Well, I'm not evolved enough.

Maybe one day, I'll be more evolved. I'm just not there."

[Miranda] When I first did it myself,

it grossed me out.

And I had a moment of being like, "What… What am I doing?"

You know, it felt weird, but there was also this sense of…

like, love and acceptance at a very deep level.

It was certainly intriguing.

But I think I was also just nursing or holding onto all the shame

that I couldn't bring myself to be involved.

And…

[producer] So you would've liked to have been able to?

I would've liked to have wanted to.

I wanted to want to.

Arriving back in the UK, I was just confused and disorientated.

"I need to get past my blockages.

All these fears and anxieties coming up just represent the ego.

And, of course the ego's gonna try and stop you and block you

at every twist and turn along your spiritual path.

And your job is to keep destroying the ego.

Keep quelling the ego.

Keep surrendering and moving past the ego."

Ziggy's influence was pretty significant.

I talked to him at length.

[Ziggy] Everything up until that point for herself

had seemed just a little bit off-color

for her to want to engage with it any further.

She certainly struggled with a lot of the practices.

Her hearing how I've integrated a lot of the teachings

certainly made her feel more comfortable,

or at least reassured that you can live a somewhat normal life

surrounding the school.

In Denmark, I was getting brought closer into the core of the community.

And I had the opportunity to be initiated into the art of tantric lovemaking.

Paula had been at the school maybe three years before I'd gotten there.

I knew there'd be a series of postures within lovemaking.

She guided me through that in the most loving and caring way.

And it really did feel like a… a de-arming of the chest and of the heart.

I can feel and relate to myself again.

You know, this has been absent for so long.

Paula had been in several relationships by this stage.

She did receive those initiation techniques so…

I was just having it handed on to me.

Mmm.

[Andrea] The tantric tradition

has always been very much that it's by initiation only.

Because it's not enough to just tell somebody who's struggling,

"Yeah, just go and do some more practice."

The… We need to do deeper work than that

and we need to look at ourselves much deeper than that.

Some things, I can learn from lecturers.

Some things I can learn from yoga, meditation, whatever.

But there are some experiences that are only possible

through the direct contact with the teacher.

There are certain things that he has to take me through himself.

This was not possible through anybody else.

That it was really an initiation from, like, the master to the student.

- [children playing] - [birds chirping]

[Ash] The receptionist at Tara Yoga, she messaged me saying,

"Hey, sweetie, are you coming into the center today?

I wanna talk to you about something."

And she was looking for a private room and she couldn't find one

because a lot of the studios were being used.

So she ended up taking me into, like, this cupboard.

It was like a storage… It was like a storage room.

And she said, "Oh, do you remember

when we, um, were in The Villa and we had to put down dates

that we might be available to visit the guru?"

And she said, "Well, he's… He's invited you.

You've been invited to go and meet him.

It's integrated for you on these dates.

But it's all secret. You know, you can't tell anyone else.

You need to book your transport and we'll pay you back for it.

And the location where you need to go, where you need to book to, is Paris."

[man in French] I am head of the Central Office

for Combating Violence against People,

fighting against the most serious attacks.

We operate at a national level and handle investigations across France

and we also collaborate with foreign forces.

[both speaking French]

[Dannerolle] Caimades is a special unit for investigating cult crimes.

It's important to specify that Caimades

does not police beliefs or thoughts.

That's not our role. People are free to believe what they want.

However, if an offense is taking place in a cult,

then our role is to intervene.

This case was really massive for us

in terms of scale of investigation.

It is an international movement.

The charges against the members of this movement

were as follows:

human trafficking,

rape,

exploitation of vulnerable individuals in states of psychological influence.

[Ash] What's that saying? "When the…

When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

So, clearly I was ready.

The student was ready, I was ripe. I was ready and the teacher appeared.