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Twisted Yoga - Season 1 - Episode 02: Chapter Two: Initiation
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00:13I promise not to speak of going there or meeting him.
00:20The journeys, the houses, that was part of the vow.
00:27It was so beautiful to be part of the sisterhood, I promise not to, not to share any of it.
00:42Tous les gourous vous disent, mais les adeptes sont libres, ils n'ont pas de chaînes aux pieds, ils n
00:49'ont pas de chaînes aux mains.
01:09Cette absence de liberté, c'est parce qu'il y a des barreaux dans le cerveau, des barreaux
01:16qui ont été mis par le gourou dans la tête.
01:20French law is spécifique.
01:23If you are abusing people who are under influence, that's a big problem.
01:29I cannot sit on my hands and do nothing.
01:58I went on the train to Paris.
02:03The receptionist at Tara Yoga Centre in London, she sent me the number for a woman I'd never
02:09met.
02:10I think she was Romanian and I had to communicate with her via telegram, so via a secure messaging
02:16app.
02:17But she said, but I had to, there was an understanding I had to delete those messages as soon as
02:20she'd
02:21sent them.
02:24She was telling me that it was absolutely secret and I couldn't tell anyone where I was going.
02:32And I had to just tell my parents that I was going on a silent retreat in Denmark.
02:39It was easier to not question, just go with it and just trust, trust that I was where I
02:45was meant to be.
02:48That was how I got around the fact that I was going to be uncontactable.
02:59My invitation came after the end of the second year and said, we've been invited to meet
03:06Grieg.
03:06It's a spiritual retreat.
03:08It's going to be really beneficial for you.
03:10I flew there from Copenhagen to Paris.
03:18At the train station, a girl came to me and she said, are you Claire?
03:22Claire's my middle name.
03:23I don't know why they thought my name was Claire.
03:25She's like, are you Claire?
03:26I said, well, no, I'm Ashley.
03:28And she took me to a car.
03:34I had to give her my phone.
03:38She took the SIM card out of the phone and wrapped that in foil, wrapped the phone in
03:42foil.
03:43She said, oh, we're like the FBI, you know, or the CIA.
03:47And they said, for your protection, we need to, it's important you don't know where we're
03:53going.
03:53And so in order to do that, I need you to wear this hat and sunglasses that are blacked out.
04:01They said that Interpol have a warrant out for his arrest.
04:06The spiritual guide, he was a fugitive, but he was in hiding.
04:11And they said he was a victim of human rights violations.
04:17The corrupt Romanian police had been responsible for this.
04:24I was nervous, but there's this overall trust of the organization.
04:29Like, okay, there's a secret thing happening.
04:31They're trying to protect us.
04:33We need to not know where it is because he's in hiding because all of these things have
04:37happened to him, right?
04:43He wasn't really showcased all that much to the men in the school.
04:50So I was curious.
04:54I also asked whether my tantric partners had seen him as well or visited, when they quickly
05:01dismissed it and made it very clear to me that no, they've not seen him.
05:06I had no reason to not believe them.
05:09I just thought, oh, okay.
05:11But that was the sort of first time I actually did question, are there people going to see
05:17him that we're not really aware of?
05:19There are all these hidden camps and retreats that people just disappear for weeks on end.
05:25And you hadn't told Ziggy?
05:28No.
05:30Why?
05:32Because I couldn't.
05:33Like, I had made a vow.
05:34I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone.
05:36So I couldn't say to Ziggy.
05:38I was, like, under oath.
05:43There was some interesting pieces through the media back in Romania.
05:49All of these wacky stories, these constant scandals.
05:55Our teacher told us he was wrongly trialled and wrongly prosecuted back then.
06:01The same thing's happening now.
06:03And that was pretty much all we were told.
06:09I got the sense that we were driving pretty far away from the city into the suburbs.
06:15I was just telling myself, surrender.
06:19Just surrender.
06:21Surrender.
06:25Eventually we pulled up at this house and with the hat and glasses still on, I was taken inside.
06:35The house kind of confirmed for me that we were definitely in a suburban area.
06:39It was a three-story house.
06:41It was quite big.
06:42It had lots of bedrooms.
06:44And the fence had this kind of, like, greenish sort of, like, almost like a tarp or like a netting.
07:01Green-Win de Velarroo is known since 2016 by the French authorities.
07:09But before that, we knew that it was not a yoga movement normal.
07:16the movement MISA had already been mentioned auprès of the local authorities
07:22because the activities generated a nuisance of the inquietude
07:26of the part of the voisinage. The investigation that we have done
07:31has allowed to identify a half dozen places with many participants,
07:37many victims, which potentially happen on a very long period of time.
07:45And the questions we have to ask at this moment are, first,
07:50is it an issue of organized criminalization, of proxenetism,
07:54of treatment of human beings, or is it an issue of sectarianism?
08:02We go into the house and
08:07there were these two girls just lying on the couch watching pornography,
08:11like hardcore porn, on the television.
08:14And they just sort of giggled and switched it off and scattered around,
08:18scattered off to another room.
08:21Then they settled me into my room.
08:28When I arrived, there were over 20 people, all women,
08:32and some of them were girls that were just in the process,
08:36the same as us, just visiting, and others were controlling the operation
08:41or in some position of authority.
08:45Those were the ones who received us and they're all Romanian,
08:49so anyone in any position of authority while I was in Paris is Romanian.
08:54And there's this feeling that you're inside this well-oiled machine.
09:01The first thing they did is they went through all of our bags
09:03and they looked for certain things, maybe an extra phone or some other paperwork,
09:08and they took anything, any identifying details and any electronic devices.
09:14And then they introduced the program and they said,
09:17you will eventually be taken to meet Greg, but before that happens,
09:21there's all of these other things you need to do.
09:26I had to do the vows, again, putting my hand on the Bible
09:31and taking those vows on my health and my spiritual evolution,
09:33that I would never speak of anything that happened there.
09:37And then I had to write these forms, write on these forms agreeing to punishments.
09:42One of the things I had to sign was agreeing to the punishment of shaving my head
09:45for five years immediately if I was caught trying to steal
09:50any of the secret teachings from the house.
09:55And knowing that in Tantra, sexual initiation was a thing,
10:00I had gathered this impression that it was likely that sexual initiations were happening
10:07and that the spiritual guide was probably engaging in them.
10:15I knew, I knew that it would be a sexual initiation.
10:20And here was this opportunity for beyond satisfaction,
10:29a kind of ultimate happiness and enlightenment.
10:32It was a promise.
10:33You will experience these things and everything will change.
10:45I grew up in Oxford.
10:49I had a privileged upbringing.
10:55I was a very sensitive child, very shy.
11:06I changed quite a lot as a teenager.
11:09You know, we started to go out drinking and, you know, smoking and having fun.
11:24I reached a point in my late 20s when I was partying a lot.
11:28I was in quite a difficult relationship.
11:31I noticed that there was a pattern in terms of the relationships I was in and the type of people
11:36I was being attracted to.
11:38And my answer would be to go out and get wasted.
11:41It numbed the feelings temporarily.
11:45When I was 29, I started going to 12 step groups.
11:50I really cut down on the partying.
11:53I started to look into yoga and meditation.
12:01So when I found Tara Yoga Center,
12:08there was a sense of like a click, an aha moment.
12:13I was completely intrigued by the possibility that I could have a deeply spiritual experience
12:21in lovemaking.
12:29For the first week in Paris,
12:32I was just focused on getting those tasks done, watching the films.
12:36We had to watch a series of porn films, write about how we felt about them and what kind of
12:42states
12:42we perceived that the women were having.
12:45It was like everything that had ever happened in the school had been leading up to this.
12:55Yeah, there was a woman there who'd been there for like two or three months.
12:58And I said, when are you leaving? And she's like, soon, I hope.
13:02But like you had to wait for his permission to leave. Like she couldn't, she didn't know when she was
13:06going.
13:06I remember walking out once and seeing the girl that won Miss Shakti back in August.
13:12She was there and her head had been shaved.
13:16And there was this note about her, how she, her ego had gotten so big and she needed to kind
13:21of be put back in her place kind of thing.
13:22But she was sort of like cut off from everyone.
13:26I was like, that's what happens to Miss Shakti. That's what happens to the winner.
13:30Her head gets shaved.
13:35It was becoming clear that every single woman who was there had been initiated.
13:41They did say, no, sometimes he doesn't. But I didn't see anyone there who hadn't been initiated.
13:50So they kind of feed you through this thing for quite a few days. And it was about day five
13:56or six,
13:57where they said, okay, now that you've done all these things, we can tell you that the reason that
14:04you're here, when you meet with him, there'll be an opportunity to receive sexual initiation from him.
14:10And they framed it as if it was an option.
14:23As it happened, he decided that I should arrive to him on the day of my 30th birthday.
14:31I was taken by a driver again with the hat and the sunglasses.
14:39And this time it was to an apartment and I believe that he parked in a kind of underground parking
14:45garage.
14:48I was taken by a driver again with the hat.
14:49Most of my friends had been there already.
14:53I found it quite incredible that after so many years, none of the,
14:57none of the neighbors sensed that these guys were coming in and out of that house.
15:04Every day, all the time.
15:06At least three or four girls are there, for sure.
15:11Some girls would go every month.
15:14His favorites.
15:18And he knocked at the door and we had to wait for a minute before it was opened.
15:24Then it was Greg who opened the door and he welcomed me and gave a hug and said happy birthday.
15:31And, um, then he kind of sent me down the hall and went back into his room.
15:38Oh, well, okay, it's the real person that everyone's so obsessed with.
15:42It's this guy and he's really old.
15:46Looking into his eyes, it was almost like a, like an empty space.
15:55That pulls you in at the same time as being empty.
16:00I couldn't sense any emotions from him.
16:03Nothing.
16:13I'm in this weird, really tiny apartment.
16:16There's just books everywhere.
16:21There's bookshelves on each side of the hallway and his room and the other room.
16:31If you go down the hallway, there's the toilet and the bathroom.
16:40A tiny little corner where they have like a bar fridge, a really small fridge.
16:46And then there's the actual bedroom, which is just an average sized bedroom.
16:52And that is where the girls are kept, who are taken to him for sex.
17:00At any point, there's always a few girls there.
17:06Everyone's sweaty.
17:07They take your clothes.
17:08So you don't really have like, sometimes people are naked or you're just wearing something very minimal.
17:13So you don't really have your own clothes.
17:16The place is locked from the outside.
17:19So you can't open the door from the inside.
17:24And you're sleeping there.
17:25You're eating there.
17:26You're doing everything in that space.
17:30He had a team of girls who were cooking for him.
17:33So they would send it to him.
17:34He would eat a little bit and then he would give all the rest to the girls.
17:37They would store it in the fridge.
17:40But the rule was like, you couldn't throw anything on the garbage.
17:43So you would have to eat everything which was there before you could open a new one,
17:47a new batch of food.
17:48And it would be like, just like, girls just like eating this moldy food, like,
17:51because they had to.
17:53Otherwise, like, that was the rule.
17:54Otherwise, you would get like in trouble and stuff.
17:58Every so often, someone gets called in to meet with him.
18:02You hear them having sex for hours.
18:04You hear really loud music.
18:08She eventually comes out.
18:09And really soon after that, she's picked up and taken away to the third house.
18:13And then often not long after that, someone else turns up and takes her place.
18:19And there's people there saying, I've been here six times.
18:22I love it.
18:23It's the most amazing experience.
18:25It gives me so much.
18:27And they believe that.
18:32Maybe in some way.
18:35I still felt really uncertain.
18:37But I felt like I was open to see.
18:49I had a fantastic experience.
18:52We started the ritual.
18:56Going deeply into the transfiguration.
19:01Just as we were taught in the tantra classes.
19:08Of seeing ourselves and seeing each other as these deeply spiritual beings.
19:17It's the perfect union of the inner masculine, the inner feminine.
19:23The yin and the yang, Shiva and Shakti.
19:31I almost ceased to exist.
19:38Somehow, I traveled outside of my body.
19:44And he guided me through every single little step.
19:53For me, it was a spectacular, really beautiful meeting.
19:58And after that, I was complete.
20:05Like, I wanted to believe that it was going to be like a milestone for me in my spiritual path.
20:15I wanted it to be, of course.
20:21It was always difficult for me.
20:23I never felt that I was, you know, voluptuous, full of vitality.
20:29I never felt that I fell into the category of, you know, this kind of awakened Shakti woman.
20:38I am from the south of Argentina, a city called Bariloche.
20:44It's in the mountains, in the limit with Chile.
20:47When I turned 18, I decided to move to Buenos Aires on my own.
20:54Back then, I was taking drugs on the weekends.
20:59And then, when I found Atman at the time, of course, it came with all of these nice people that
21:05cared for me.
21:06They were much more focused on spiritual things.
21:11And it was just like such an upgrade.
21:15And I could see how much trauma and how much pain I had inside of me from my childhood that
21:23I had never really addressed.
21:28I wanted to be more involved in the school.
21:32So I moved to Denmark.
21:35I lived in the ashram.
21:36I ate there.
21:37I did everything there.
21:37I barely went outside.
21:41I really thought that to have an initiation with him, that it would help me.
21:46I thought it was like the next step I had to take in order to evolve.
21:58Before you go there, basically, you will drink water, like two liters of water or like a lot of water.
22:07You also need to bless the water with a special formula that you are given by Greek.
22:15And then you need to shower before and shave.
22:19You have to shave completely.
22:22They say that if you do enough yoga and meditation so that you're in a really good spiritual state
22:29to prepare yourself sexually in some way, to be centered and grounded and focused and ready to meet him.
22:43He came in the middle of the night.
22:45I was sleeping.
22:47He touched with his finger the sole of my feet while I was sleeping.
22:50And I woke up like that.
22:52Then like, it's your turn.
22:57Everything had been leading up to this as this monumental event.
23:05But this repeated thought just kept coming into my head.
23:10You're going up a mountain and Shiva's at the top.
23:14You're going up a mountain and Shiva's at the top.
23:20I don't remember much about the sex.
23:22I was very out of my body, very disorientated and frozen.
23:28And even in the memory, I blocked a lot of it out, which is convenient.
23:34But yeah, it was a long process.
23:38Could have been two hours in total.
23:43You start doing one of the positions, which I think they come from Kamasutra.
23:48So besides learning the postures, you also learn how to move from one to another
23:52in a graceful way so that you will still remain, you know, in penetration somehow.
24:05I felt it just came in.
24:07I don't want to do this.
24:11And then almost immediately another voice came in.
24:17You're being superficial.
24:18You're being shallow.
24:20You need to transfigure him.
24:24Transfiguration.
24:25The doctrine of the school.
24:28They say with the tantricles.
24:31Don't focus on the physical.
24:33Don't be superficial.
24:35It's not a spiritual attitude.
24:38And did you transfigure him?
24:41Yes.
24:59The idea is that you could look at a person and really, genuinely,
25:06the shape of their body would start to change and would look different.
25:21When you're transfiguring your lover into the Shiva and the great man that he can be,
25:28he will become that.
25:34So you have to have a lot of transfiguration, be able to see beyond what's there.
25:41Because otherwise, yeah, as an old man, like, why would you want to be with him, you know?
25:46Yeah.
25:49But if you can see it, that's Shiva, the spiritual master that's going to help you evolve spiritually,
25:56then okay, that's a different thing.
26:01I just knew I really, really, really didn't want to go through with the initiation.
26:05And then they said, you need to write to him and tell him.
26:09And I said that I needed to work through my own demons.
26:12But I really hoped that he could support me if he was my master through the yoga practices and the
26:20meditations.
26:21And he wrote back to me full of, it was like he was yelling on the page.
26:26You could feel the anger and the heat and the rage through the pen.
26:29It was just capital letters in this, like, red fountain pen.
26:33And he said, you lie.
26:36And then I was like, but how am I lying?
26:39Like, that's my feeling.
26:40You lie because you have a big ego and a great bad will.
26:44And he said on this note that only you have this response because you are manipulated by demons who
26:53don't want you to receive divine power.
26:55And for all the love that I manifest towards you, your reaction is bizarre, morbid, sickly, perverted,
27:04completely lacking any goodwill or any aspiration to know God.
27:09Do you feel empathy now?
27:11Answer me.
27:12Like, it was like he was, like, yelling at me.
27:14He said, the initiation will exorcise your demons, as in, like, exorcism.
27:24And they said, you've been summoned to see him tonight when they gave me this letter.
27:28Like, he wants to see you tonight.
27:29You've been summoned to him.
27:31And I went down to the meditation room.
27:33There's a meditation room in the basement where it's silent.
27:35And I went and sat in there because I knew that no one could talk to me in there.
27:38And I prayed.
27:42Um, I prayed to my Nana.
27:44I said, Nana, just please, just give me a sign of what I should do.
27:50Just give me a sign.
27:52And that was when I first had the thought, like, maybe I could leave.
27:57That was, but before that, like, that thought was too crazy.
27:59Like, I wouldn't, wouldn't have thought to do that.
28:04I mean, there was a big fence with a locked gate.
28:07They had all of my belongings.
28:08They had my phone.
28:11They had my wallet.
28:12I had no way of speaking the language.
28:15I didn't know where I was.
28:20Nothing felt real anymore.
28:21And I actually thought I was going crazy.
28:23I thought maybe I was in a state of psychosis.
28:28I didn't know what world I lived in.
28:31I couldn't trust myself.
28:33But I also couldn't trust them.
28:36No, this is wrong.
28:38This is wrong.
28:39That, in that moment, something snapped.
28:42I need to go.
28:43I need to get out of here right now.
28:50Before I was allowed to leave,
28:52they made me write this multi-page statement
28:57that you have to copy out in your own handwriting, word for word.
29:02And then you have to submit it to them to cross-check it,
29:05to make sure that you've included everything in it
29:07and that it's correct.
29:08And then they said, oh, yeah, we need to get a video of you
29:13reading out this statement.
29:14And I wasn't about to resist or object
29:16to any instructions at this point.
29:17I just wanted to get out.
29:20During my meeting with Grieg, everything went on normally,
29:24naturally, and with much common sense,
29:27so that I cannot complain of anything
29:30that throughout the meeting with Grieg may have traumatised me.
29:33It was like a legal document.
29:35I specify the fact that...
29:36I had to read it on camera and I remember just thinking in my head,
29:40they're going to try and use this against me one day.
29:42I specify the fact that there was nothing that happened against my will
29:47and I have not been raped, neither forced, nor aggressed,
29:52or blackmailed, or hypnotised, or beaten,
29:57or cursed, or humiliated, or tortured, or offended, or locked up.
30:02Something really legal sounding to say that nothing happened to me here,
30:08and if I say anything to the contrary, this proves that I'm lying.
30:12This final declaration of mine has been signed by me personally
30:16in the presence of two witnesses that guarantee that I was in a normal state of mind
30:21when I finalised and signed it.
30:24Doing that gave them permission to let me go.
30:27Signed, Ashley Freckleton.
30:35And the driver said, where do you want to be taken to?
30:37And I said, just take me to the cheapest hotel you can find in the city.
30:42This can't be real, it has to be a nightmare.
30:44And I said, how do I wake up from this?
30:53In France, we have a specialized device to fight against
30:58the violations that are committed to the sectaires.
31:03And in fact, this notion of mental exploitation
31:05that we developed in the case of sectaires,
31:09I know that this device is very particular in France.
31:14It's an abuse of weakness, so we're going to abuse the weakness of someone.
31:18And it's not a person who is in a bad condition because she is aged or sick,
31:22but because she has been placed in a psychological situation.
31:28Progressivement, by techniques,
31:29the mental exploitation will be put in place
31:31and will allow her to annihilate the victims of the victim.
31:39A person will lose her free-arbitre
31:41and will accept to suffer things that she has never accepted otherwise.
31:55after the initiation with the spiritual guide i was exhausted disoriented i felt really shaky
32:04and i think i was even physically shaking but then one of the coordinator women
32:11she approached me she said i'm part of a very special women's integration it's all women
32:19but it's in a different location we've got a swimming pool it's near a really nice city
32:26and people call it the garden of miracles
32:32and then she said now that you know these things that most people don't know you have a responsibility
32:41it's your responsibility to not lower your consciousness and go back to doing things the
32:49way that you did them when you didn't know
32:53she asked me if i was interested and i said yes
33:00and so we went together to the bus stop in paris
33:07it was my first chance to sleep for like almost 42 hours probably
33:14then when we got to prague we were taken to a suburban house on the main line heading out of
33:23prague
33:27they sat me down and they explained to me what would be happening in the house
33:34we would do erotic rituals in the morning
33:41and then after that you had to do a four-hour shift six days a week on camgirl site
33:56the way that they spoke about it is that because we were doing the rituals in the morning
34:01that energy from the rituals was going to amplify our power and our magnetism in karma yoga and on the
34:12site and we were going to be able to transmit that energy to the people watching us and to the
34:20pain
34:20clients so that then these men could hopefully start to connect to an energy beyond the base sexual energy
34:30the idea of karma yoga is that it's selfless service and you're you're offering for a greater purpose
34:41we were going to be saving their souls in a way
34:53so you walked down the stairs to the basement and if you went round to the right there was the
35:01hot and
35:01wet channel room tiny room airless hot no windows
35:11so you logged on and then you had your page and your chat up where you saw the image of
35:18yourself being streamed
35:22sometimes the guys would ask you you know what did you do yesterday evening and we were told pretend
35:28that you have a normal life tell them that you went out for drinks with your friends you went home
35:33and
35:33cooked pasta we were told to be careful we got told that there were people who were spying on us
35:41who
35:41would try and trip us up they'll ask oh you know would you practice yoga and we're out to blow
35:49our cover
35:52in those six months i was never paid for any of the work i did
36:00there was this notion that when i looked at myself on the camera i was seeing past the cheap outfits
36:11and as i had done many times before over the past few years looking at my body and seeing something
36:19divine
36:26so much is at stake if the answer to the question which has always been yes yes yes i believe
36:32i trust
36:34and then you get to a point where it's a maybe or a no
36:39there's so much of your life your internal belief system your relationships
36:46it's just everything you stand to lose as far as you can perceive everything including your your own
36:55spiritual future or salvation
37:15i booked the next flight that i could get back to australia
37:20i just wanted to be at home with my dad i just wanted to catch my breath
37:25i didn't work for about a month and i just tried to
37:28figure out what happened just try to unpack it i just was so confused
37:35maybe a few months after i got home i got really drunk at a party like really drunk and i
37:43think i just
37:43word vomited to a friend i ended up just telling him when i was telling him about what had happened
37:50i just saw the look on his face of just shock and just he's like this is really bad like
37:57this is
37:57really really bad that was when i sort of started i think to talk more about it i get a
38:05call from ashley
38:07basically explaining why she left i felt such shame and guilt
38:18because immediately i'm thinking to myself here's ashley barely involved with the school
38:24if a woman with that level of commitment to the school is getting proteins that meet the spiritual
38:31guide then obviously you know my partners practically all the women of the school have
38:38probably gone and had this experience too this is so sick these poor women
38:47who on earth is this guy
38:48who on earth is this guy
39:19i was a student in university when the scandal broke back in 2004
39:27i remember seeing all those images on tv about gregoryambi volaru
39:35more recently i became a investigative reporter
39:41i started looking more into this group
39:50this newspapers cover a very large period of time starting from the early 90s until 2004 when the scandal
40:00really broke
40:03i really was surprised that this was still going on
40:09because this is an old story in romania it has been a story for 30 years now
40:29it has been a story for 30 years now
40:30everybody in romania knows who the grand people are was he was basically a household name
40:46so
40:46it has been a year
40:47and i think and i think it's a lot of them
40:56i think that this is a young man
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