Intro

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Week four of our "Divine Downloads" series and we're asking: what happens when "channeling" becomes a convenient shield for questionable authority?

Today KP and I are diving into Breath of Fire, the HBO docuseries about Guru Jagat and the Ra Ma Institute. The series, “chronicl[es] the shocking secret history of Kundalini yoga and the evolution of one of its most prominent leaders,” and is based on a 2021 Vanity Fair article by Hayley Phelan titled, The Second Coming of Guru Jagat. (I recommend at least reading the article before tuning into this ep.)

Kundalini is a tough topic to broach — there are so many well-meaning people who practice it and who’ve found it incredibly supportive who know close to nothing about founder Yogi Bhajan. (Who was problematic at best, allegedly criminal and abusive at worst.)

It’s hard to square how a “technology” that connects its practitioners to the otherwordly could come from such darkness.

Breath of Fire does a decent job at explaining the sordid background of Kundalini yoga and Yogi Bhajan while detailing the story of Guru Jagat, an equally complex figure. The Vanity Fair article doesn’t mince words: “Depending on whom you ask, Jagat was a bona fide spiritual leader—or a fraud; a controversial thought leader; a bigot; a feminist; a rape apologist.”

It’s tragic that Guru Jagat, neé Katie Griggs, passed away at such a young age under such strange circumstances. And this documentary series does an excellent job investigating some of the questions we’ve been asking about the role of channelling or “divine downloads” in illustrating spiritual authority.

On today’s episode, we're talking cults, frauds, the racism that built Western yoga, and why you might want to take a beat if your spiritual teacher is shooting fake money out of guns on Instagram.

In this episode we talk about...

We somehow connect startup culture to cult behavior, discuss why Venice Beach should come with a warning label, and explore the uncomfortable truth that you can have genuine spiritual experiences in fundamentally dishonest containers.

The perfect cult storm. Anti-structure times + low-boundary people + extreme charisma = Venice Beach spiritual empire. It's a formula, people!

Why breathwork actually works (and why maybe that's the problem). When the practices are genuinely helpful but the authority structure is complete b******t, what do you do with that?

The trickster necessity. Maybe we need spiritual frauds to keep us sane? This theory will hurt your brain in the best way.

Plus: why you should never give anyone your credit card information after breathwork.

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