342: She Became A Guru, Started A Yoga Cult & Took Advantage of Thousands
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Welcome back to Mile Higher. I'm your host, Josh. Episode 341, and I am your host, Kendall. We're so happy to have you all here today as we dive into a wild topic. We're going to be talking about Katie Griggs and Rama Yoga.

Now, Katie Griggs, is she a millennial girl boss scammer or the second coming of Yogi Bhajan? We will have to find out today. Join us as we take a journey here. And we thought we'd just start off by setting the scene, you know. With a candle. Exactly. With a tiny little candle. This is a sun tall candle. And this is a this is fancy. What's the name of this? La Labo. La Labo. La Labo. So this is big in L.A., right?

Yes, all the girl bosses. So this little thing, yeah, this is kind of girl boss vibes, right? This little candle is probably very expensive. It was sent to us by a company we work with. Thank you. So I can just kind of be here to set the mood for us.

Our production team, Janelle and Ian, and Alice are here as well. Hello. I think Alice deserves an official title, like as, I think she's like a junior producer. Chief Mindfulness Operative. Okay, she could be that. She could be that. Mm-hmm. And Charlie's, is Charlie here? Charlie's beneath my feet in his little bed. He needs some time off of camera. He has lots of camera time. It's a lot for him. He's exhausted. How about we take a deep breath? I love that.

Hold. Are you going to do triangle breathing or square breathing? Square breathing. Then you can do a little...

Remember I tried to do that when I was giving birth and they were like, no, stop doing that. She was like sucking up backwards. It is pretty incredible though. If you do, you know, if you really do breath work exercises, you definitely can feel lifted. Oh, for sure. Euphoric even. Or relaxed depending on your need. I have an app where there's different breathing exercises for different things. And I do one every night before bed. That's like a dream breathing exercise.

And I feel like I have nice dreams after that. I do believe in breath work and the power of meditation 100%. And I'm quite interested in yoga. But this shit is really off the wall, you guys, where all of this is going today. You're in for a journey. Let's say that.

It draws a lot of comparisons to televangelists, unfortunately. And a bit of Teal Swan. Yeah, definitely some Teal Swan energy there when talking about Katie or Guru Jagat is her spiritual name or was her spiritual name.

But we're going to be talking about Kundalini Yoga and Kundalini Awakening a little bit, just so you can understand. Because maybe some of you out there have never heard of Kundalini before. And you might be wondering, well, what that is? And what is Kundalini Yoga? Where did it come from? Who started it? How did Katie get the name Kundalini Kate? Yeah, Queen of Kundalini. Some even call her the Kardashian of Kundalini Yoga. I like that one.

For some reason, Kardashian always gets thrown out there whenever you're at the top of some field or activity. Very odd. You guys are the Kardashians of podcasting. Oh, my God. Take that back, please. I do not accept that title at all.

That's awesome. But yes, today is a very interesting episode. I think you will. I mean, I feel like most of us probably have never heard of this before, whether it be Kundalini Yoga, whether it be Guru Jagat and Yogi Bhajan who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West. But maybe some of you are sipping on some Yogi branded tea during this episode. Or maybe there's some in your cabinets. Yes, definitely.

Which after this episode, you will likely go and throw in the garbage. Nah, I'm still purchasing. I mean, it's good tea. I'm not going to lie. Well, once you find out who the man is behind that very, very well off company at this point, does very, very well.

And you start diving into the layers that make up Rama Yoga, as well as Yogi Bhajan and his following. It quickly gets very dark. Yes. In such a practice that's supposed to bring about positivity and spiritual enlightenment. And it starts out that way.

But then it quickly heads down a very dark path. And what is at the root of this, much like all of these other spiritual episodes we cover? Moolah, baby. Money. These people are dedicating their lives to a spiritual practice, to a philosophy, a religion. Really hijacking all of that.

Yeah, hijacking it. But I think at the very beginning, maybe there's some purity there and it was corrupted over time as they gain wealth, fame, a following. Yeah, that's fair statement. And they lose their way. And...

Money, man. Money does that. Money and fame. Yeah, it's very true. Now, when we get into this topic, well, when we started diving into it, we realized that this is very layered, and we could do several different episodes off of things that we're talking about, especially Yogi Bhajan. And I would really, really like to do a whole episode on Yogi Bhajan. So

Towards the end of this episode, if you find yourself interested in some of the things we talk about with him, let us know if you want a full deep dive because we can certainly do that. But there are many things. And there's other...

tea drama out there as well with other tea brands. Who knew? Who knew? The world of tea is a little twisted. Everything is not what it seems. No, it's not. But let's spill the tea today on Kundalini Kate. Let's do it. Let's give this kind of a soothing vibe. Let's not be so crash and let me hear your yoga voice.

So for many in the West, yoga's ancient roots have really been taken and twisted by scam artists and woo-woo girl bosses or woo girl bosses. This was a new term for me. And capitalist marketers who use spiritual liberation as a selling point. This is nothing new. I mean, I'm sure everyone's aware of people that do things like this. There are so many of them.

Every Woo Girl boss out there has a course. I swear to you. Oh, yeah. I've watched a lot of them. And not even just Woo Girl boss, but like just girl bosses have courses or MLMs. Same with men. Very true. Yes. The courses that men are selling. Gen Alpha. How to not be a beta. Start your day in an ice plunge. How to be a Sigma in 90 days. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Well, perhaps no one has been quite as successful in this line of work as Katie Griggs, who took the name Guru Juggett

from Yogi Bhajan, the original inventor of Kundalini Yoga and self-proclaimed leader of Sikhism in the United States and Canada. And just a quick note here, we were kind of confused about how to pronounce Sikhism. I've always heard them just pronounced as Sikh. That's how like 99% of people pronounce it, Sikh or Sikhism. However...

If you talk to somebody who's an actual Sikh, they say it's Sikh, not Sikh. Yeah. But even in documentaries and stuff, Sikh gets used. And people who claim to be Sikhs will still use the word Sikh, but keyword claim to be. But from our understanding, it's Sikh. It's Sikh. And Sikhism, yes. So we're going to be referring to it as Sikh. So quickly before we kind of jump into who is Katie Griggs, who is Yogi Bhajan,

and really dive into their lives. I wanted to just, I found this video from Christina Lopez on YouTube. She's a, you know, spiritual teacher and seems very knowledgeable in

Kundalini yoga, Kundalini awakenings, spiritual awakenings, things like this. And I thought her video really explained what Kundalini energy is, what a Kundalini awakening is for those out there who may have never heard of the term before. So let's just play this clip real quick. It'll help you give you a better idea, especially as we go forward and we start talking about Kundalini a whole bunch, especially Kundalini yoga. So here it is. A Kundalini awakening. We have to understand what Kundalini energy is.

Kundalini energy has been described since ancient times, especially in Hinduism, and is described in yogic texts as a coiled serpent that sits at the base of your spine in your sacrum. That's this bone right here. Kundalini energy is essentially your own evolutionary force and potential. My favorite way of defining kundalini energy is like this.

Kundalini energy is your own exponential biotechnology. I see Kundalini a lot like technology. Do you know that computer processing power doubles every two years? Remember how we used to use the floppy disks and our first computers took up entire buildings? And now our computers literally fit in our pockets? That's the power of technology. And that's exactly what Kundalini energy does to you.

It pushes you beyond anything you ever thought possible. It exponentially increases your consciousness, power, and gifts.

When you have a kundalini awakening, the energy is freed from the sacrum and it starts making its way up your spine, chakras, and your whole body until it eventually comes out the top of your head in the crown chakra. The energy then showers down your whole aura or electromagnetic field. So a kundalini awakening is simply the movement of your kundalini energy within your body.

Very interesting. Kundalini in general has always been something I've been curious about. I never really knew much about it. I had first heard about it from Jim Carrey talking about his Kundalini awakening. And I'm just fascinated by Jim Carrey in general. So I would love to explore that more because that sounds that sounds great. I would love for my so to be freed.

So couple. Yeah. I mean, it's it's something that she goes on to talk about how sometimes people have spontaneous Kundalini awakenings where it just happens. Like maybe you're just meditating and you're not necessarily following the practices of Kundalini and you're it just sort of happens. You physically feel the sensation like this is a physical sensation that happens in your body.

And some people have even attributed their Kundalini awakenings to

almost like a psychedelic trip. There was one, there was a, there's a friend of Joe Rogan's who was talking to him on a podcast about his awakening. And he said it, and he had done DMT before. He compared it to the same experience of, of using DMT during his Kundalini awakening, which is pretty, so it's very powerful. And I also was watching another, another very famous guru out there talk about Kundalini yoga specifically. And he said, this is the most dangerous form of yoga out there.

Like this is not something that should be taken lightly. This is something you should take very seriously and it takes to do it properly and do it in a safe way. It should, it should take a long period of time for you to kind of work up to that because if it happens too quickly or you're not prepared for your Kundalini awakening, then it could potentially be detrimental to your life because it's, as you just heard, it's going to completely, uh,

change who you are in a lot of different ways. And you want those to be positive and be good and be done over a spread of time so that it's kind of gradual changes as opposed to having this crazy transformative moment overnight. And then all of a sudden you feel like you're a stranger in your own home and people don't even know you anymore. That's really like a, you know, in a nutshell of what a Kundalini awakening is. And it's also very interesting because if you just YouTube it,

You can see a lot of people who are undergoing kundalini awakenings and there's maybe a spiritual teacher there, somebody who's kind of helping conduct the ceremony, I guess you would call it. And when this is activated, it almost looks like the person is, it's similar to what you would imagine an exorcism to look like. They're kind of writhing on the ground and kind of

making all these crazy erratic movements. And as they're feeling this, um, this energy move up from their sacrum up to their, um, crown chakra. So it's, it's very,

I don't know. It's very interesting. I've certainly never experienced that. She does also talk about spiritual awakenings in here, which I actually resonated with quite a bit. And I also really find it interesting, as we'll get into it with Katie Griggs, who grew up Christian, kind of how she fell into all this is very interesting to me as well. So I kind of relate with her in a lot of different ways when it comes to, you know, when you fall out of a religion and then you're kind of seeking and you're kind of looking for answers and

you know, you kind of come upon different ideas. And a lot of these new age spiritual ideas really, I find very interesting. I've never really took any of them that seriously. So I haven't gone down the road, but

Like dabbled. But this is something that I would be very interested in exploring more, quite honestly, because the idea of it, you know, if it's in fact real, you know, depending on who you are, obviously some people are like, there's a bunch of bullshit. But if it is real, that sounds like something very real.

that can be very transformative and healing. And that's the thing too. A lot of people seek out a kundalini awakening or kundalini yoga when they have gone through bouts of depression. That was Jim Carrey's case. He was very depressed for a long time and was really struggling mentally. And he said that kundalini yoga

uh, his kundalini awakening really helped kind of set him back on, on the right path and kind of changed him as a human being in the way that he views the world. And yeah, I remember he had said something along the lines of when you're depressed, you need deep rest. And that was wise man. I love Jim Carrey. I think, I think he there's, he's somebody who,

really has done a lot of work and has gained a lot of insight and wisdom from his, you know, various, and he's done a lot of different things, not just Kundalini. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe winning actor Jim Carrey because then I would be enough. It would finally be true and I could stop this terrible search.

for what I know ultimately won't fulfill me. But these are important, these awards. I don't want you to think that just because if you blew up our solar system alone, you wouldn't be able to find us or any of human history with the naked eye. But from our perspective, this is huge. It's a very interesting thing altogether. So keep all this in mind as we talk about Yogi Bhajan and Guru Jagat or Katie Briggs, because

What we're dealing with here is something that many hold very sacred and it's a very powerful thing. And so they're harnessing this, repackaging it, and then delivering it to people who are coming to them in good faith with like, I need help. I'm looking for answers. And they're claiming to be the experts and spiritual teachers in this field to provide them answers and be their guides.

And then things go very, very wrong. Yeah. So. Yeah. I have a Jim Carrey story. Well, I need to hear it. Yeah. I was, this was when I was still working in New York and I had to walk two miles from my apartment to work and I was walking back. And I think I was like very visibly depressed. And it was like a, you know, it was a street with an avenue, with an avenue like, and then turning right down. Okay. And an Escalade pulled alongside me.

And the back passenger window rolled down and a guy stuck his head out and just smiled at me like this. And I was like, oh shit, that's Jim Carrey. Damn. And then as the car pulled right down the avenue, he kept his head stuck staring at me, smiling. So it looked like, wow. That's so wild. He's a goat. He's a goat. You think it's because maybe he was so in tuned because he's.

got his kundalini awakened uh-huh he could sense that you needed a smile i needed a smile i needed a smile and i needed to flex on my friends all day yeah hey guess who i just fucking saw and he smiled at me for a continuous period of time for way too long man way too long that's really cool the goat the goat jim carrey damn i need him to pull up on me i would be so excited yeah he's on my bucket list of people i'd love to to meet me too

He's said so many profound things that I just cherish and hold close to me. I love when he did that interview at the Icon Awards or some stupid thing and he went and trolled them. This is all meaningless. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. He's cool. He knows what's up. You know, there's no meaning to any of this. So I wanted to find the most meaningless thing that I could come to and join. And here I am.

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So when Budgen died, and we'll get into that later, Katie said that he had personally named her his successor and that it was her spiritual mission to open yoga studios in Los Angeles to continue his work. And after several celebrity endorsements, some from Alicia Keys, Kate Hudson, and Russell Brand, skyrocketed her to fame, it was revealed that Katie was engaged in activities not exactly associated with light and love.

scamming customers, verbally abusing her staff, and spreading far-right conspiracy theories. So what is the truth about Katie Griggs? Was she just an earnest guru who wanted to spread the teachings as a devoted disciple? Or was she a con artist who used yoga as a way to scam hundreds of people? You be the judge. So a background on Katie here. Katie was born

on August 30th, 1979, right here in Colorado, in Fort Collins, to her mother, Nancy Steinhorn Galloway. Katie often referenced being raised by a single mother on a rural farm, saying, quote, it was hard to make ends meet, and that she and her mother often struggled early on. And they later moved to the suburbs outside of D.C. While the truth of her early life is somewhat hard to discern, we do know that her mom was a therapeutic clown,

when she wasn't tending to their land. And this was a new term to me, therapeutic clown. So Janelle's going to explain. We were doing our read-through, which actually I wasn't even that familiar with this. I kind of forgot this was...

real thing, but we were all like, it's not what it makes it seem. It's not like a therapeutic joke. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Not some. Yeah. Which you could definitely take it as such. But there are therapeutic clowns running around, too. There's definitely people who are practicing therapeutic techniques that shouldn't be. But this is not the case. So therapeutic clowns are actually trained professionals who use different techniques like improv or physical comedy and

sometimes even magic, which I don't know, I guess use that term loosely. But anyways, the overall goal is to help patients in healthcare settings. And there's different ways to

that people that this kind of is incorporated. I'm sure you've seen or maybe maybe you haven't, but it's kind of common that in children's hospitals, people will come in like dressed as clowns or like in retirement homes. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's one way to look at it. But another way is actually

kind of similar to like drama therapy or play therapy in a sense where you're able to kind of like discover your inner child or your inner clown essentially and act out different scenarios or kind of be in touch with your goofier side of things and find joy in whatever challenge that you're facing in life at the moment. This was actually, Playing as a Clown was first presented by a practitioner named Cheryl Karp in 1998 and

Her insights were rooted in her own personal experience as a clown and clown instructor. And she says, quote,

So it's the idea of like, you know, leaning into the goofier side of you and being able to, I guess, act out.

different scenarios and in the goal of being able to work through different challenges or different traumas that you've experienced long ago and just encourages you to, I guess, not take yourself so seriously and allow yourself to, you know, become more goofy. And yeah, I mean, that's very beneficial. Obviously, play therapy is great for kids. It's kind of, I would argue, in the same

realm of things has the same goal. But yeah, I guess, you know, just a little tidbit on that. I feel like anyone at any age could really benefit from that. Like, I could do some clowning around. It'd be really good for me. Yeah, totally. And yeah, I think it's common for, you know, a use for all different ages. And especially people who I think have been taught or just have a really hard time with

Kind of letting out their goofier side, you know? And I think that by encouraging that, it allows for inner healing through your, you know, childhood self or whatever, so. Well, I love that about Nancy, that she was a therapeutic clown. And thank you for teaching me more about that. Clowning has really become a lost art. It's, you know, you never see clowns at kids' birthday parties anymore. Well, it's always like... It's become scary. Yeah, exactly. It has the negative connotation, which... Thanks to, like, Saw and Pennywise and... Mm-hmm.

I guess there's no clown in Saw. I don't know. I've never seen that. It's too scary for me. Oh, there is. Oh, there is? Jigsaw's a clown. Oh, Jigsaw's a clown. That's what I was referring to. Yeah, but it's creepy as hell. Yeah, and clowns just seem, clowns are scary. And even Holly, and she doesn't even know any of that, she doesn't like clowns.

Some people have such a fear. It freaks her out when there's a clown in a book. She gets like, I don't like that guy. Really? I don't like that guy. Yeah. Well, remember the whole clown sighting thing? Yes. We've talked about this on the show. Yep. That really hurt the clown business. Clowns need to make a resurgence. They're...

aiding and helping society in more ways, I think. Anyway, this is such a tangent. But anyway, that's what Katie's mom did. However, Katie was raised in a Christian household and attended private school for most of her primary education. And then Nancy met her husband, Rabbit Galloway, through new age circles and spent most of her early years traveling to different new age communities. Now, Nancy told Vanity Fair that Katie had a flair for the dramatic from a young age.

She said that she liked to dress up and be the center of attention and that she took in the New Age teachings very early on, which really adds up later on to what we're getting to. Nancy said that when Katie was seven or eight, she, quote, would have us all sit around the table and look at the flame of a candle and concentrate on the flame as an early act of meditation, which is pretty impressive for a seven, eight-year-old to already understand that because that is a common technique, I believe, that they use for teaching meditation. Yeah. Yeah.

is to look at the flame. I need to try that. There's really no right or wrong way to meditate. I'm going to do it right now. No, it's individual. You've got to find what works for you. Obviously, there's different methods that people would say are proven to get there, but it's a personal path. Meditation's hard, but it is very, very helpful. I have found a lot of

Well, a lot of people are meditation. A lot of people think it's like just we I know we've used this term earlier, but like the woo woo hippie dippy shit. But it's really not. No, it's scientifically proven. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And like I said, there's so many different ways to do it. And you don't have to just sit there and ohm like that's. Yeah. The, you know, I guess whatever. Yeah, the mantras and stuff is.

Not necessarily required. No, definitely not. You just sit in silence. It's really just being able to like focus on the exact present of what's going on, whether that's through your breathing or through looking at the candle. Or focus on nothing. Just be able to clear your mind. And they always describe it as like when a thought comes up, you don't ignore it. You're acknowledging like, oh, I have this thought, but then you're allowing it to just pass and then, you know, circle back into the present self. Like clouds moving across the sky. Yep.

Two Ships in the Night.

That's right. That is right. You remember when we made that pact with Austin to meditate at the beginning of the workday? Yeah, what happened to that? Yeah, Ian, when did we do that? At our camping trip this summer. Yeah, like a year ago. We pinky promised the three of us we were going to meditate every day at work in the morning. Were you guys sober during that? No. No. No. We were a few beers in, but it was like a good thought. I don't know. We could still do it. It's never too late. Yeah, we could. I'll hit up Austin on Slack and be like, hey, brother. You remember our pact? We should do it.

Anyways, back to Katie. So Katie didn't find her path immediately. She spent her early 20s drifting between schools and she definitely found the partying scene and did quite a bit of that.

Nancy said, quote, she was always trying to find herself, I guess. After being sexually assaulted at one of her schools, Katie took to drinking heavily and searching for new age teachings to try and ease the trauma. Nancy recalled when Katie called her out of the blue and said, quote, I need you to call me by another name, Athena Day, and that Katie's boyfriend at the time was to be referred to as Zeus. After their breakup, she ended up dropping the whole Athena thing, but then she started going by Katie Day.

Katie spent some time in the Osho cult of wild, wild country fame.

Osho, also known as Rajneesh, became famous when he and his cult members took over a tiny town in Oregon during the 1980s, which we should definitely do an episode on that whole thing at some point. God, we have so many episodes we have on our list right now that we want to do soon. While the cult had largely fallen from prominence by the time that Katie joined, its practices were still focused on free love and meditation and controlled entirely by the leaders. After that, Katie initially learned about yoga by living briefly with the Oshkonga community.

Eventually, Katie received a degree from Antioch University in Ohio. However, she still was drifting for quite a while, and instead of looking for salvation through school or religion, Katie had grown disillusioned with the Christianity she had been steeped in and wished to find a new age practice similar to when she was growing up. So that's when, in her mid-twenties, Katie found Kundalini Yoga and its charismatic leader, Yogi Bhajan.

Now, Mr. Yogi Bhajan, this is going to be a very quick overview of his life because I think we'll at some point do an in-depth episode on him because there's so much more to his story than what we have time for. He is way worse than Katie. I mean, he is such a bad person. Yogi Bhajan was born on August 26, 1929 and raised in a Sikh family in Pakistan. His father was a well-to-do doctor who served the British Rajah colonial government, and he was educated by nuns in a private Catholic school.

Now Bledgen learned some aspects of Sikhism from his paternal grandfather, but mainly focused on his secular education for most of his life.

His schooling was interrupted by the partition of India following its independence, and his family relocated to New Delhi, where he received his master's degree in economics from a college put together for thousands of refugees. Bhajan worked as a revenue agent before he was promoted to a customs inspector at the Delhi airport, where he worked for over a decade. So how did a government servant in a family of government servants go from working in the airport to leading the yoga movement in the West?

Well, according to Bhajan, he took a helicopter to a remote village in India and waited at the mouth of a cave for three days until a yogi master met with him and taught him the secrets of yoga. Other times he stated that he learned from Baba V. Singh, who, according to the Gobind Sadan Institute website, was a, quote, Now, regardless of the truth of his spiritual education,

Budgen moved to Canada in 1968 and was now referred to as Yogi Budgen and the teacher of Kundalini Yoga and spiritual leader of the Sikhs in the West. However, there were a few problems with this statement. For one, while Yogi Budgen claimed to be the leader of Sikhism in the West, the Sikhs in the East had never really heard of this guy at all, and they were offended, rightfully so, that he claimed to be their leader. And while Budgen claimed that Kundalini Yoga was, quote, ain't

ancient technology from the Sikh religion, in reality, it's mainly a combination of Hindu and Buddhist teachings that Bhajan himself invented. So while Bhajan claimed to be a well-known yogi in India, despite no one from his homeland seeming to know anything about this guy, he was speaking the truth for the white hippies that he found in the US and Canada.

So within a year of moving to Canada, Budgen founded the 3HO Foundation, which stands for Happy Healthy Holy Organization. Sounds kind of nice. The Happy Healthy Holy. 3HO would not only be the authoritative foundation for kundalini teachings, but would also go on to advise the UN and even work on projects with President Nixon and the war on drugs, believe it or not. So it's safe to say that Yogi Budgen had a lot of influence in the West once he established himself

and his yoga teachings. And that's not to say that kundalini was without merit. Of course, there's the breathwork, stretching, and mantras and chants associated with kundalini yoga, which have been shown to promote lower stress levels in those who practice it. The problem came with what Yogi Bhajan promoted outside of yoga. For one, he advised his followers to give up alcohol, drugs, and meat.

and expressed that Western medicine was the, quote, source of all evil. If an adherent fell ill, he told them that it was caused by a spiritual illness and the person just needed to meditate more. And while Yogi Bhajan told his followers they needed to follow a celibate lifestyle, he was married with children. More than that, Bhajan stated in a 1978 lecture as follows. This is pretty shocking. There's a last point which I want to discuss with you. It is about rape. I have heard a lot of different versions.

And some people have asked me a lot of questions and I never answered that. Today I want to talk to you, Gautam. First of all, nobody can be raped until you do not invite it. Rape is always invited, it never happens. A person who is raped is always providing subconsciously the environments and the arrangements. If you do not provide the circumstances and the arrangements, it is impossible.

He is such a sick fuck on so many levels. I can't believe he even still had any followers after that statement. But he did. There's just no basis in reality whatsoever with that. It's like beyond offensive. Talk about victim blaming. Yeah. It's always invited. God, how can you just how do you get to a point where you really believe that? It's mind blowing. Well, if you're somebody who's doing it.

Of course, you're going to explain it this way, right? It's going to help brainwash people into thinking that, oh, it's not the rapist's fault. Yeah. It's the victim's fault. And that's why we need to do a whole episode on him because there's a lot to get into and it's so disturbing.

This sentiment would not only be more important later on, but also it created a dangerous conception of Sikhism in the West. The faith, which is over 500 years old and barely understood by white Americans, was hijacked by Yogi Bhajan in order to enrich himself. According to queer Sikh activist Sandeep Morrison, he said, quote, Hearing our mantras and our prayers marketed as a millionaire's mantra or snake oil scheme is traumatizing. Very understandable.

And Yogi Bhajan was indeed a millionaire. Aside from the expensive yoga classes that he offered through 3HO, he founded the massive Yogi Tea brand in 1984, which is still in operation to this day with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, you've probably if you have never bought Yogi Tea, you've probably at least seen it. It says yellow. They're in all the major grocery store. Yeah, it's just go to the tea aisle the next time. Well, despite preaching about peace and love.

Budgen's most lucrative business venture was probably Akal Security. Since 2000, Akal has provided private security to U.S. military bases worldwide and has received over $3.5 billion in government contracts.

But during a DOJ investigation, it was found that Akal incorrectly billed the department several million dollars for providing security for justice buildings across the country. So big fuck up there. I also believe that Akal is currently providing security for ICE, ICE agents as well. Interesting. So there's still, like, it's still getting government contracts. Wow, you would think they'd never want to work with them again after that. Eh, you know. They're like, okay.

He's dead. But anyway, while Budgen really preached this ascetic lifestyle, he himself had a fleet of Rolls Royces, which he often drove from his luxury home in Beverly Hills to his compound in Espanola, New Mexico. And he also had some unique tastes. For one, his favorite restaurant was Taco Bell, which really makes a lot of sense with what he's preaching. But here's what makes it so interesting. This actually blew my mind. He

He was known for making his assistants mix all of the contents of his order. So we're talking his, you know, his bean and cheese burrito mixed with his cheesy gordita crunch, his Mexican pizza, whatever it was. They would mix it all up, mash it into a big bowl, and he would just eat it all together.

Which is fucking awesome. Which Taco Bell is like five ingredients just put together in different ways, you know? Yeah. And you know what? You can't knock it till you try it. I do love Taco Bell. Yeah. We were talking about if we do an episode on him, I want to do an experiment and taste it for ourselves. Yes, we should. No, thank you. You like Taco Bell. I do, but I'm not. I wouldn't mix. I don't want onions and fucking, you know. Well, we can get things without onions. Yeah.

Josh is like terrified of onions. I like to eat Taco Bell the way that's meant to be eaten. One item at a time. Under five minutes. Under five minutes. Slathered in mild and hot sauce all over it. No, it's really the red sauce.

That's where it's at. Order yourself a side of red sauce. I don't like how I feel though. Dip your burrito in it. After eight. Oh, see, that's a personal problem. I feel fucking. I always feel good after a taco. Oh, I feel. Spiritually and physically. I feel really bad too. Really? Oh. I feel like I need to go make myself a salad.

I like can't drink beer after I eat Taco Bell, which is, I mean, not a problem, but I like drinking beer. So it becomes an issue. Can you eat Taco Bell after drinking beer? For sure. That's a good point. So the order matters. I need to switch it up. Got it. And then we loved this quote. We just had to include...

Yogi Bhajan's take on having healthy bowel movements. Okay, so he said, if you go to the bathroom and your bowel doesn't come out like one cannon fire, you have five days of depression to follow. Kind of true. Wise words, Bhajan. I feel like this is not even true to himself, though. There's no fucking way with how much fast food this guy's eating that he's having one cannon fire bowel movements. He reminds me of so many people.

So many people have covered, but it really reminded me of the breatharian bullshit where they were, you know, preaching about just eating air. Yet they were snacking on like chicken pot pies and McDonald's. Oh, yeah. They were like McDonald's is fine. Diet Coke's fine. But he was like getting room service. Yeah. Uh huh. Uh huh. So the very common they don't practice what they preach. So they're preaching to other followers like eat clean, eat healthy, vegetarian. Yeah. Yeah. No, no proteins.

And meanwhile, when they're all sleeping, they're ordering DoorDash to the local fast food chains and scarfing it down. Well, he didn't have DoorDash back then, but yeah, he would have his assistants would go to Taco Bell. Yeah. I wonder if the assistants had to sign like NDAs or something because he probably did not want that getting out, especially about the mashed up bowl thing.

Now, well, granted, you can get vegan things at Taco Bell. That is true. So maybe he was getting vegan items. Huh. Didn't think about that. But he preached like eating clean. But it's eating clean. Yeah. They're like growing their own food and stuff. And he's over here eating processed fake vegetarian food. The beans that are like powdered and they rehydrate them. I love those powdered beans. I know. I just love beans in general. I know. I'm a bean girly.

Anyway, here's one of the best parts, though, about Yogi Bhajan is he was never once seen doing yoga.

You heard that right. Never once seen doing yoga. I think especially in his later years, there's some photos of him from his early days when he first got started of him and some yoga poses. But that could have just been posing. Attempting. There's no. Yeah. And then every other time that you see any footage of him, any pictures of him whatsoever in the 40 years plus whatever he was doing this. Yeah. He's just sitting, you know, sitting crisscross on a stage.

talking, you know, no yoga whatsoever. Yeah. The guy was full of shit. And that's the thing about it is like the yoga thing was really more in the, the Rama yoga studios and, and that was kind of,

you know towards the end of his life and post uh yogi bhajan's life when guru jagat katie as we'll get into kind of takes over kind of melding his teachings into like the popularity of you know yoga girlies and you know yoga guys that are you know going to the studios doing it as like a fitness sort of exercise and and combining you know sort of these yogic teachings with it um

I just want to make sure that was clear because it can be kind of confusing, but...

Yeah. No yoga going on. No exercise. It sounds like the guy barely moved. Yeah. And when we get to his death, that will make even more sense. Well, what about this compound? Well, it's still around. Those who live there are separated by sort of a spiritual class, which is really interesting. And those at the bottom live in these military style like bunks. And then those at the top live in these beautiful homes surrounding the property. Now, this is somewhere that

Ian has been to and we didn't even know when we chose this topic that you had experience there. Yeah, it was kind of serendipitous, but I've spent time at the compound. I have met one of the white six. How did you end up there? So this was years ago. My mom and I had met this woman who restored really old, like 300, 400 year old Pueblos in Espanola. I was just fascinated by this woman because I thought she was

sick. She's like in her 70s. She just goes around, fixes up Pueblos. If you ever see an Airbnb in Espanola that's being hosted by Catherine, stay there because that's her. And she's really sick. Shout out Catherine. Yeah, she's awesome. But so I just I wanted to do like an oral history about her, her life and then just the town Espanola because it's really old and it's a really crazy town as well. Like there's a community of the Penitas,

You know, the Christians who believe in whipping themselves? Oh, I've never heard of that. Mm-hmm. They live there in secret. It's a crazy-ass town, but that is also where Yogi Bhajan's compound is, and it's still around to this day. So it is literally set up where in the middle, there's like the main...

you know, like the hall basically, which has a gold dome top and is really, really beautiful, ornate. And then surrounding it, there's like barracks. And that's where all of the lower caste or class people live. Usually they're like new initiates or people who haven't given a lot of money. They stay there and they do all of the chores, all the housework, and they really aren't allowed to leave the compound. Meanwhile, on the outside, there are these beautiful, beautiful, beautiful homes

Like, this is the desert. They have green lawns. They have, like, it's, like, gorgeous. And I saw one guy outside, and he did not look like, you know, one of these white guys. He definitely, he was not white. So as Catherine explained to me, it was like the people who lived around the compound were more like Yogi Bhajan's, you know, the actual, like, business partners for 3HO. Oh.

But then it's right next to this Arroyo, which basically is just like, you know, a big sand mountain. It's not like a dune because it's still solid ground. It's still covered in sand. And we were walking and there's a lot of like the local kids who, again, most of the people who live in this area are either like indigenous Americans or they're like of Latino descent.

And a lot of local kids go to this Arroyo in particular to dirt bike after school. And it's like actually part of a program to like keep kids out of the street after school. They go and they ride these dirt bikes. And this white sick woman.

who was probably in her 70s or 80s, came up to us, turbaned up, robed up. And she was like, have you guys seen these horrible children and their dirt bikes? Oh, my God. And she was like, they are so loud and they ruined the peace on the compound. Oh. And she wanted us to like...

She was a straight up Karen. She wanted us to call the cops. And we were like, we're not going to do that. And then when she left, Catherine, who's also like 70 or 80, was like, I don't know why the fuck they think they can do that. But the other sad thing about it is Espanola is not given a lot of money by the state government. The roads are really bad. It's a really impoverished area. But if you drive on Yogi Bajan Highway-

That shit is beautiful. He has his own highway? He does. It's still to this day. What the? I think there's even a sign, too, that's like dedicated to Yogi Bhajan. Yep. Because he brought in so much money into the state of New Mexico. So it's really sad to see like the compound, which again, if you see the compound, you will never see someone outside, which is also very strange, except for the one guy I saw watering his lawn. But, you know, the compound, you can see how much money is not even just in the compound itself, but in

in the roads surrounding like the state is willing to put money towards there but meanwhile you go to the rest of the town and it's very impoverished very like just not cared for by the government so it is fucked up it's really sad it's really fucked what year what year did you go this was like 2023 2022 oh so fairly recently fairly before my mom moved out there i wanted to keep going back and interviewing but i was working at the board game shop

And I couldn't keep paying for trips to New Mexico. So yeah, this can't, unfortunately. But that makes sense. Well, maybe you'll revisit that one day. Maybe. Yeah. We'll all go together and make a documentary. Dude. Yeah. Let's chill. Let's chill. It's a weird town. There's a lot going on there. Sounds interesting.

I'd like to spend more time in New Mexico. And those who lived on the compound have reported a high level of control surrounding their personal lives, and that Budgen himself was abusive to those on the property, which is not totally surprising. An unnamed ex-assistant sued him in the early 2000s for sexual harassment. However, the matter wouldn't be known publicly until 2019. So keep all of this in mind. That's really as far as we're going to cover Yogi Budgen today.

But when we get into Katie Griggs and how she found 3HO and the teachings of Yogi Bhajan in the early 2000s. So this next section is a little cloudy because some of the stuff can't be confirmed by anybody. But this is kind of like what we've gathered from, you know, people, former members of 3HO and, you know, also things that Katie has said. But Katie took her first Kundalini class in the early 2000s and claimed she

She had her first awakening within the first 20 seconds, which I feel like this is like setting herself up for. I'm special. Right. Oh, yeah. In the first 20 seconds of just doing Kundalini yoga. Boom. Yeah. Activated. Right.

Because, yeah, it takes a lot of people years of practicing kundalini before they have their awakening. Not Katie. But Katie was like, no, this is a sign that I am special and I am clearly this is my destiny. This is my path. And I am uniquely attuned to this. Therefore, everybody should follow me and listen to me. We, of course, want to show you some clips of Katie or Guru Jagat.

So here's a clip.

Then I got into a kundalini yoga class and within 20 seconds had the kind of experience that I was hunting for, where all this energy kind of rushed and moved up my spine and opened up and all, you know, the kind of experience of kundalini rising that sometimes you hear about. However, I feel that kundalini rising or the experience of kundalini as I've gone and matured in my practice is really a very pragmatic experience because it's about learning

Hmm.

I also noticed the way she speaks, like she doesn't ever stop her sentences. No, no. That just keeps flowing. She just keeps, yeah, literally flowing. It's like one long run on sentence. Yeah. And she's trying to do that to just sound like she knows what she's talking about, you know? For sure. But I think it comes across as she doesn't, you know, to the outside. At least for me, I'm like, it just kind of seems like not, she definitely doesn't have the sort of, the way that she speaks definitely doesn't,

sound very confident to me i don't know like it sounds kind of bullshitty you know it's like a little bit like kind of just because it is going on you know making up as you go along most of her compared to other you know self-proclaimed spiritual teachers that you listen to and you could say obama to to a certain extent i mean when you hear obama speak

the way he speaks is very confident, very, you know, it just flows and it just kind of sucks you in and you get, you know, kind of wrapped around everything that he's saying with her. I'm just kind of like,

I don't know about that. I don't know about that. Like, did you, is that, did you just kind of like make that like, or she seems almost like she's kind of struggling a little bit to get out the words that she's trying to say. Like the brain is firing real hard. Yeah. The thoughts, but trying to make it seem like it's just flowing out natural and that she's an expert. But after hearing about Yogi Bhajan and 3HO, Katie saw that he was offering an opportunity to learn from him personally for a few thousand dollars. Cause that's one of the things with these guys, including Guru,

guru jagat uh is that they have basically tiers at which you can gain access to them so there's like

for guru jagat or katie for like 150 bucks you can get on like a webinar with like a bunch of other people maybe get to have a question answered and then for a little bit more money it's like maybe a small group and then for thousands of dollars i think the tier is like called the graces um you can get you schedule one-on-one with her for you know so the more money you have the more access you have to your spiritual teacher and so she saw the opportunity whether she had the money or not she's like i'll pay

the thousands of dollars it requires to get my one-on-one time with Yogi Bhajan so that I can soak up all of his knowledge and become like him. Some have stated that this event took place in India, although it's more likely to have been held on the compound in New Mexico. So Katie claimed that she spent the next two years learning about Kundalini with Yogi Bhajan in person and even said that she spent three days straight in a tantric meditation with the man himself.

However, there haven't been reports from the so-called thousands of other event attendees and very few people learn from Yogi Bhajan in person altogether, especially for two years straight. So Katie must have been very special, which according to her, she was. Yogi Bhajan thought she was too, which becomes very evident. I think he definitely saw something in her and just her willingness to... As far as we know, that's like coming from her. Yeah, true. But I'm like...

She had to have pushed that relationship to some extent. Yes. To even because there's thousands of other women in this group. So why her?

You know what I mean? Unless she was really pursuing him the way that she claims. Well, maybe he saw through like, hmm, there's a little scam artist in you as well. Could be. Could be. So according to Katie, Yogi Bhajan instructed her to move to L.A. and spread the word of Kundalini out there. He also gave her the spiritual name Guru Jagat, although she said she was not ready to go by that new name yet. Because there's controversy about whether...

She actually got the name from him. Yeah. Or this was obtained some other way. It's very cloudy. That's one of the cloudy parts of it. Well, can't you just get one online, a guru name? Yeah, we talk about it later on. Yeah. Right. We'll get into that later. No.

But instead, Katie at this point started going by Kundalini Katie and moved to Los Angeles in 2003. And while this early portion of her career seems more innocent, as far as we know, than it would become, we don't know that much about it. However, we do know that only a year later, Yogi Bhajan died on October 6th, 2004, at the age of 75 in New Mexico. And the state of New Mexico renamed the state highway to the Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway and declared Yogi

October 23rd, Yogi Bhajan Memorial Day. But here's the thing is Bhajan was in pretty tough shape leading up to his death, which really doesn't add up with the lifestyle that he was preaching. And his followers had no idea that he was in rough shape. I mean, he had been suffering from diabetes and had multiple amputations to his feet.

So this is something that people have really noted that doesn't really line up with the healthy lifestyle he claimed to be living. But we know that that was not actually being lived considering there was not much yoga going on. He was eating Taco Bell. Yeah, it's the worst things to the Taco Bell lifestyle. Yeah, he was living Moss. Yeah, that's right. Ian, how long have you been sitting on that? So Katie claimed that she attended Budgen's funeral in person.

And it was there that he came to her in epiphany and told her that her, Katie Griggs from Fort Collins, Colorado, would be his successor to the Sikh religion and Kundalini Yoga in the West. And it was here after this point that the Kundalini Kate rebrand took hold. She stopped wearing yoga pants and opted for white flowing robes and turbans. And she started her first YouTube channel offering anti-anxiety chants,

detoxes and pregnancy meditations. I'm curious if any of you out there have ever stumbled upon one of her videos or meditations. Her channel is still out there. There's still a lot of videos. If you just search Guru Jagat, you can find most of her stuff out there. I wonder if I ever came across that because I was constantly looking up pregnancy meditations when I was pregnant. I don't remember seeing her though.

Anyway, so she started professing her girl boss capitalistic view of yoga, stating, quote, there's nothing wrong with being rich and hot. Amen, sister. Through Kundalini. Yep. That's what we all want, to be rich and hot. That's really the point, you know, of Kundalini and this lifestyle. Yep. Really aligns. So by 2013, Katie's classes were selling out at a studio called Yoga West.

and she began teaching full-time. However, she didn't have her dedicated studio, like Budgen said.

Lucky for her, though, she still had him on the horn because, according to Katie, Budgen came to her in another epiphany and stated that it was time for her to open her own studio with his previous business partner, Hari Jiwon. Now, Hari Jiwon is an interesting cat on his own. Yeah, another terrible person. I don't know if we could do, like, a whole episode on him. Probably not enough that it would be interesting. But who is he? Let's go over him a little bit. Josh, why don't you...

Explain. So Hari G. Wan was born Stephen Oxenhandler. I love that. Stephen. Born on September 29th, 1942 and raised in a reformed Jewish household in St. Louis. And he split time between Missouri and Palm Springs.

While it's unclear how Hari Jiwon first came in contact with Yogi Bhajan, it's safe to say he's one of the earliest followers in the United States and also one of his seediest business partners because the FTC first sued Hari Jiwon for a telemarketing scheme in which he and other associates lied about the value of gemstone investments. In 1998, he was banned from any business related to collectibles. Then in 2000, it didn't stop there. Hari Jiwon was sentenced to two years in federal prison for scamming businesses with fake printer toner invoices.

which earned Hari Jiwon the nickname the Toner Bandit. I love that. The Toner Bandit. Because they're under pressure to make money, right? And so they're like, well, and apparently this toner business started out like somewhat legit. And then they quickly realized that, oh, people just pay for all this toner up front and we invoice them. But then it's too much trouble to actually ship them the toner. So they just didn't ship toner.

And they just kept collecting money and never actually shipped product. You thought this was going to work out well. Yeah, I'm like, really? They didn't think that they were going to

figure this out and get in trouble for it. It's always amazing to me that people will do these things and not think they're eventually going to get caught. Well, it's, it's, yeah, it's interesting too, because they're also, you know, they're 3HO is a nonprofit, right? It's like a, you know, it's tax exempt, but then they're starting all these businesses around it to funnel money into it. Yeah. I wonder if they ever got paid a visit from the IRS. I'm sure they did.

But now with the blessing of the ghost of Yogi Bhajan and the help of convicted scam artist and spiritual leader Hari Jiwon, how did Katie go about opening her first solo studio? Well, she called her mom, of course. Nancy and Katie's stepfather, Rabbit, gave her the initial $20,000 she needed to open Rama Yoga Studio in Venice Beach. Nancy said, quote, We thought it was just a yoga studio. We were completely in the dark about all this other stuff.

Lucky for Katie, there is plenty of, quote unquote, other stuff. Aside from offering yoga classes and an online library that provided virtual lessons for $18 a pop, Katie also had business courses that she charged up to $499. And of course, numerous retreats around the world that would cost thousands of dollars. Very Teal Swan. Yes, it's very, yes, very same vein as Teal Swan. And then, you know, robes, turbans. Yeah.

She was selling the suit basically at a whole full blown store in the yoga studio that she would sell for 300 bucks a pop. But it's fucking horrible. But the one there's really this shift of we're making all this money and obviously the people at the top. So Hariji won Guru Jagat.

Or I guess she's still Katie Briggs at this point. They're getting all this money. And so they're starting to spend lots of money as well on themselves and, you know, on all this product to sell.

And so she has to, like, obviously from an optics point of view, that's not great for your followers and people coming in that are, they're coming and listening to your classes and you're preaching this, you know, you're, you're preaching one thing and then you're doing another lifestyle. So the, the evolution of the teachings then turn to really the prosperity gospel. And that's why I mentioned televangelists at the beginning, because it's very much the same, same vein and just in a new age sort of point of view. Yeah.

So here's Katie during a meditation focused on prosperity. I feel like she's got the white light on her. Very holy. Very pure. Good. Inhale. She need to be that high up. Exhale.

So we're going to do that every day until winter solstice. And we'll let's see what happens. I like how she's got a fan on her.

gave everything he had, including all of his life force to deliver these teachings as quickly as he could. 5,000 years of teachings in 30-some years. And so he did everything he could to deliver these teachings. And it's our job to activate them. It's our job to practice them. It's our job to apply them. It's our job to connect to them.

and embody them so that they can become the language of the Aquarian Age. So we'll be doing this every single day. I will, obviously, I have to, you know, go on my missionary journey

on my missionary trips. So I won't be here every single day, but... Missionary trips are her $1,000 retreats. Let's just make that clear. Yeah. Very the opposite of what a missionary trip is supposed to be. I just remembered who she reminds me of when she's talking. This is a really far back episode for Mile Higher. Stan Romanek.

Oh, really? You think she's like giving Stan vibes?

is so similar to Katie. It's kind of boggling my mind right now. It's the constant like, um, um, um. Oh, I can see. Yeah. Stan does that same shit. And if you remember Stan. That guy. Full of shit. Stan is like, you know. It's like the way you speak when you're full of shit. Alien Hoaxer. That was one of my favorite episodes. If you haven't seen our older episodes, that's one. But the delivery is like exactly the same. Yeah. And that's probably why I'm like, hmm.

Never get over the aliens peeping in the back door. Incredible work. Classic. That's awesome. But here's another quick little clip that references millennials are now monetizing. Nice alliteration there. This was on BBC, which I'm very proud of that she made it onto BBC Worldwide. I've been on BBC. It's not that big of an accomplishment. Lots of people go on BBC. Well, she thought it was such a...

Big deal. She recorded it on her phone or something and then uploaded it to her YouTube channel. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's where this clip from. I went on to talk about Logan Paul and the suicide. Oh, you went on BBC radio, though. Oh, yeah. True. You were on like. Yeah. Come on. I still was on BBC. My dad thought it was cool at the time.

Now the millennials are monetizing and I think it's very, this is, we've seen a huge jump just from the kind of past nine months when the millennials are now starting to become parents and monetizing in the digital space and consuming in different ways. She also talks like just...

I mean, we say it later on, but just all the tech guys. Yeah. It's very, it's that same sort of Silicon Valley speak where the human body is a computer, basically. Yes, yes. That's very on point.

So this is also when Katie Griggs officially started going by Guru Jagat. And this was, like we said earlier, the name allegedly given to her by Yogi Bhajan himself a decade previously. And here's Katie in Hari G1 at the opening for Rama. A lot of people love her to do this, but Guru Jagat actually did it. She's gone out and found a yoga center for me at home.

And she's rented this space and it's called Rama and it's on Lincoln by Whole Foods. Nice. Excellent placement, Katie. Lisa's been signed that construction people are there and hopefully within three or four weeks we'll start classes there. And start making money. Katie has her people looking for something on the east side of town.

And that is, we need help with that because we haven't found a place yet. The tent at the studio is going to last another six, eight weeks, something like that. So we're looking on that side of town, but on this side of town we do have a place now.

This is Guru Jagat. So Guru Jagat, explain, you have this whole vision, you know, trip. Tell them what happened. Okay, so first day of Tantric, summer solstice 2012, it's kind of like a Lollapalooza mosh pit when everybody's coming into the tent and trying to find their place. And some of you have been there, some of you haven't, but you'll come this year. So we're scrambling, we're late.

and you know everything the most important thing is the outfit looks good and you have a cute partner and that kind of stuff and we sit down and we begin this the first 11 minute Gurduram Das meditation

And I'm sitting there singing, and I hear Yogi Bhajan very clearly say, like the Thunderdome in my head, "Rama Institute for Applied Yogic Science and Technology." These aren't, I mean, "Rama" I've heard before, it's our mantra, but I've never heard those other words put together with it.

And I was like, okay. And, you know, it was said a couple of times, a little louder each time. So got that very clearly and, you know, did the days of tantric and was sitting in Hari Chidan's post-tantric class where we were moving into the Mahan tantric field.

And we did this meditation where we held Yogi Bhajan's hand and walked up the mountain with him. And during that walk, there was a huge transmission of exactly how this was supposed to activate in the timeline. And it was kind of like the meeting the alien because he was transmitting to me, but it wasn't necessarily verbal. But the clear message was, we build this

spaceship let's call it this place for this lineage of yoga science and technology that is streaming for us and that is incredibly important on the planet right now yeah just if you didn't catch that it's rama yoga institute in applied technology sciences blah blah blah

But they wanted to make sure that when they opened the studios up, that it was not in the same realm as like every other just, you know, fitness yoga studio. They wanted to make sure that it was special in that way, that it was an institute, you know, a school, a place to come and learn more than just, you know, yoga poses.

Um, and, and then you hear her talk about, you know, hearing things in her head and hearing him say things. And that's where the name came from. Um, the other thing that's interesting too, that a lot of, especially followers that have, you know, left, uh, left the group now is,

The delivery, especially of Hariju on the end, especially Guru Jagat, is the way that they speak. I think the reason they were able to get a lot of followers and people kind of especially gravitated towards Katie is just she's very just candid in the way she speaks. You know, she doesn't try to speak from, you know, this higher, I don't know, elevated perspective.

point of view it's very easy to understand easy to digest which is something she talks about and is like proud of yeah and i guess a lot of people really just felt like oh she's she's like us yeah you got resonated with people you know she's farther along in her spiritual journey therefore she's a great spiritual teacher and didn't really question it even when she's saying there's voices in her head they're all like oh it's interesting

So according to a Vice article from 2021, every morning at roughly 8.30 a.m. onward, a parade of mostly white women would stream into the studio on Lincoln Avenue, often with reishi cappuccinos from Air One in tow.

And at their teachers' urgings, the students wore all-white outfits with head wraps or turbans. Excellent. And it wasn't just the Los Angeles moms who attended Katie's classes. It was also people like we mentioned earlier, Alicia Keys, Kate Hudson, and soon-to-be convicted rapist Russell Brand, who were all flocking to her daily sessions. And Alicia Keys even had a private session with Katie before she hosted the Grammys in 2019. We have a clip.

I'm actually going to be doing Kundalini Yoga next week. I've never done it before. I wanted to talk to you about it. Are you doing it at Rama? Yes. Yes. Any words of wisdom for me? She's like going wide open. See some turbans in there? Some people have only committed with just the headbands. So we've been doing that mantra every day since the...

Chinese New Year last year. So we're almost up on a year. It just makes you rich and beautiful and stuff. I think it's working. Rich and beautiful and stuff. So first of all, tell me about the differences between Kundalini yoga and the yoga vinyasa that people are used to.

Kundalini Yoga is a science and not that vinyasa isn't in a certain way but it's very much kind of a pure science. We're working on prescriptive things and you can do them in very short amounts of time so you don't have to commit to like an hour, an hour and a half. I think that Yogi Bhajan knew that we were going to be in the technological age, the teacher who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West and that people don't have the time and they need results and they need results fast.

So Kundalini Yoga is very fast. You can get a nice little workout. You can get a nice little kind of mind clearing in 10 minutes. Drive-thru yoga. Drive-thru yoga. 10 minutes. Damn. Okay. It's just such a marketing speech there. It's for the busy moms, the busy LA folk. Pop in on your lunch break. You don't need an hour and a half to...

do do yoga god i would love to hear alicia keys because i really like alicia keys personally and i'm curious to see what her take is now on katie if she like knows all of this she has remained very very quiet ah she remained very very quiet i wouldn't want alicia you know like a lot of these i know laura dern was also involved at rama and

You know, I think a lot of them still do practice Kundalini, like regardless of all this other crap. They're like, it helps me personally. And so I think they just kind of with the with the Katie stuff kind of going where it goes. I think a lot of them were a little less vocal about their support, but I'm pretty sure they still practice in some ways. Yeah, which there's nothing wrong with that, you know.

Also, something to notice is that she's wearing her turban with her hair out, which is actually very disrespectful to Sikhism. And, you know, many, many Sikhs have spoke out about how just like it's like really spitting on their culture to to make it like a fashion accessory by having your hair flowing outside. And sometimes she just has it in the turban. But, yeah, she's certainly taken an L.A. spin.

Yeah. Talk about cultural appropriation. Yes. From Fort Collins of all places. I mean, we know firsthand it's Fort Collins is very white. Well, especially since they they literally describe themselves as a religion, like they're a religious group. They are a sick religious, you know, group. They attach themselves to that and they do that on purpose, obviously, for the

You know, tax exempt status and also so that they don't get called a cult because that's always her whenever she she gets asked the question, like, are you guys a cult? She's like, no, we're a religion. You know, we're based on the Sikh religion. We are not a cult. And she kind of laughs at that that question every time it gets posed to her. As they always do in a cult.

And she would also repeat Bhajan's idea that kundalini yoga was a, quote, ancient technology and her lessons and epiphanies were, quote, downloads. So very, yeah.

Along the lines of the tech weirdos out there. But Katie's personality wasn't just the peace and chanting of Budgen before her. Katie publicly stated that she was the CEO of seven businesses and that spending money and living in luxury was good for your spiritual journey. Okay, Katie.

It's like God wants me to fly in a private jet. Yes, exactly. Like embrace the prosperity gospel. No tubes full of demons around here. That's right. So she said to Vanity Fair in 2021, quote, I am not love and light. I'm very direct. And I talk about shit people won't talk about. She's just not like the rest. She's a she's, you know, not your typical girly. Which I believe it was a.

a vanity fair writer who really kind of blew this, this whole, the whole controversy up. Yeah. This is from, uh, you know, this might take us a little bit ahead, but this whole, that vanity fair article was the last interview that Katie ever gave. Um, and she, the, the, the interviewer, the writer of the article sought out Katie because of the mounting controversies. And she was like, what the fuck is right. Yeah. Um, but it,

The article was timed very... She did not expect to be the last interview that Katie ever gave. I'll just put it that way. Yeah. A little spoiler alert there. But anyway, so with high-profile guests at her studio and nearly daily sold-out classes, to which Katie made a habit of running late to...

She also published a book called Invincible Living and seemed to really, you know, be this beacon of success, motivational person for so many. And it wasn't just Katie who's living in success and living lavishly. Hari Jiwon, who Katie spoke to almost every day, had won a Grammy in 2013 when his group White Sun was up for nomination.

their debut album, which is pretty wild, honestly, that they won a Grammy. But Hari Jiwon seemed to be Katie's only other true business partner at this point. White Sun had been signed to Rama Records, which was one of Katie's seven businesses. But then Rama Studios opened up in Boulder, Colorado and New York, and another was planned for Mallorca, Spain. However, it was there that the enlightened Guru Jagat started to experience some problems.

At its height, Rama's website offered 300 events, four retreats, a festival, and over 2 million unique visits. And this was also when Katie started putting out her podcast, Reality Riffing. Reality Riffing started as a way for Katie to expand on her business lectures and yogic teachings. She had numerous speaking engagements throughout the country and overseas, including at the Harvard Divinity School. But Katie's teachings began to look a little stranger.

For one, her detoxes seemed arbitrary, telling her followers only to eat fruits that start with the letter P for weeks at a time. Which I was trying to think because the only thing that came to my mind was like pears and papayas, but I wanted to look it up. Oh, pineapples, parsnips, peanuts. Curious. Are peanuts a fruit? No.

No, I think they were parsnips. She also, she... It says, oh, it's fruits and veggies. Okay, wait. No, fruits. I know, the article I found was fruits and veggies. So, yeah. She also had a weird thing. Oh, yeah, peaches, peaches. She said, like, depending on what language you speak, this can be different. So it's like, it's just completely arbitrary. She's just completely making it up as she goes. Just completely making it up. So she never really had an explanation for why the pea fruits were the best fruits. Okay. I do like peaches.

You almost wonder if this is just a troll or something. You know, she's just trolling her followers by doing this. Yeah, like she thinks it's like, can I get them to do something stupid like that? How devoted are these people to me? Let's try this. Then she goes on to tell her followers that it's bad for people to spend more than 72 hours under the same roof as their parents. Which when she said this, this was around Thanksgiving. Which is very clandestine.

clanned doesn't it just seem kind of what why would that be bad because they could possibly talk you out of not coming back yeah maybe that's probably why they're like what the hell honey why are you dressed in all white and wearing a turban well it's the same thing the same reason why cult leaders often tell you to like disconnect from your family and if you do spend time with them don't take it too seriously don't like going back to even the 7 7m cult the way that they

forced the members to not spend time with their families. They weren't even allowed to contact them. Yeah. So yeah, it is probably something like, she's like, Thanksgiving's coming up. Some interesting conversations could happen there that I could lose customers. I could lose followers. I mean, it's still 72 hours though. A lot can be said in 72 hours. So what's the fucking point of that? Yeah.

I don't know. You're missing class. Like you got to get back. You can't take extended leave. What is this? And it's like not even just your family, your parents. Yeah. Wouldn't it be better to spend more time with your parents, help them understand and teach them the yoga teachings and bring them in? Or maybe your parents are very supportive of whatever you're doing and there's no reason. It's just such a toxic message to get away from your parents. You know, a lot of people have great relationships with their parents. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's talk about the 3HO and all the 3HO businesses employees and how they were treated because most of their employees, if not all of them, were her followers. So what a horrible working dynamic that would be. Your spiritual teacher is also your boss. So you can only imagine what that would have been like. But her employees were under even stricter guidelines.

Namely, they weren't allowed protein in any of their diets. They were told when to wash and were woken up as early as 3.30 a.m. to begin meditation. This combination made many of her closest practitioners who had spent thousands of dollars at Katie's classes only to become her employees feel, quote, high after sessions and easy to manipulate. Because that's the thing with, as I mentioned at the beginning,

And this is just reported amongst, I think, everybody who does kundalini yoga. And if you really are doing it seriously, is that you do feel high. Like you feel almost like kind of tripping out a little bit afterwards. You feel like in a different headspace, which could make it easier for somebody to manipulate you because you are feeling so good. You are feeling, you know, a certain type of way and.

Like imagine if someone like Katie started speaking all these things to you while you were on like mushrooms or acid or something, how you'd be more vulnerable to, to in those moments, focus in on that and take it more seriously. So it's kind of like that. Yeah. And if she's, you know, you're feeling you're, you know, you're kind of chasing this rush and you're getting, you know, you're also by doing this, you're attaining spiritual enlightenment. You're growing as a person. Your gifts are again,

Again, going back to the whole prosperity message, that the more you do this, the better your life will be, the richer you'll be, the hotter you'll be, the better everything gets for you.

people are just going to chase this. They're going to be stuck in this cycle. Meanwhile, she's totally manipulating you and taking advantage of you because she's basically making you work for free or for very little money because most of their employees, if not all of them, had second jobs. So they worked basically a full-time job for 3HO's businesses, but they would have to go work side gigs

To just make ends meet. Yeah, because they were paid under minimum wage. Yeah, some of them were saying six to eight hundred bucks a month. And they were forced to file as independent contractors. Yeah, so there's no benefits. There's no you're paying taxes out the wazoo. I mean, it's just a bad gig all the way around. But because it's your spiritual teacher and you feel like this practice is changing your life.

You're just going to do it, you know. And it's interesting, too, because, as I said, they were not offered health care, which I think, in my personal opinion, was probably more about just finances behind that. But the way she explained it was because Western medicine from Yogi Bhajan was just completely forbidden. They didn't believe in it at all.

And she also forced many of her employees to divulge their deepest secrets to her. You know, obviously she's gaining more power against them. She's able to use it against them. And she kind of like confession at Catholic Church. She sort of stepped into that role, you know? Yeah. It's, again, very Teal Swan-like. Yes. You're having these deep talks. You're divulging very, very sensitive information, which is then being used against you when you aren't.

doing the things that they want you to do she's blackmailing them yeah in essence yeah emotionally at least

But furthermore, around 2016, many of Katie's employees began to notice that their checks regularly bounced, leaving them unpaid for weeks or sometimes even months. And in the same year, Katie was sued by the investors of Rama Boulder. Katie was initially given $200,000 in seed money to open the studio under the agreement that 40% of the profits would go to the investors. While Katie earned thousands of dollars from her classes and retreats,

and also her Harvard speaking engagements, those investors saw no cash flow. So during the few months that Rama Boulder was in operation, Katie was not only caught wiring money from Rama Boulder into her personal account, but she had also been using the Boulder credit card to pay off debts. Personal debts. So she's using company money to pay for all of her personal expenses and personal debts, which is an absolute no-no. Mm-hmm.

And basically defrauding her investors. So as you can imagine, these investors who are outside of this group, and I'd be curious to know more of what that relationship was like and how that came about. But

They're like, what the hell's going on here? You know, because they got pitched this great thing. I'm sure she was like, look at the numbers we did in Venice Beach and, you know, these other places. This is going to Boulder. What better place to have Rama Yoga Institute than Boulder, Colorado? This is going to be a moneymaker. And they're not seeing any return. No. Because she's just wiring money. She's like, oh, company credit card, my credit card, one in the same. She's got to afford all the luxuries.

She loves the air on smooth. She wants she wants that drip. She'll be dripped out. Plus, she had also missed rent payments for her original studio back in Venice Beach, which had a ten thousand dollar a month rent.

Yeah, she really... And this next little clip that we took is... Yeah, I actually just recorded this on my phone off the TV because I'm pretty sure it's copyrighted. But you guys have to hear this. Like when her financial trouble was really starting to spiral and she had CPAs looking into it, she starts talking about it to people. And this is what she has to say about CPAs. This is gold. She decided to play a little fast and loose with...

the company money we've been doing a lot of cbs i have a major problem with these people they have no idea how numbers work that's right it started to like spiral after that they're putting numbers in a formula that nobody understands including that

And nobody understands them, including them. And it's such a heavy mind control. QuickBooks itself is just a mind control program. Dude, that's so sick. I'm serious. QuickBooks is a mind control program. Oh, God. You wonder how many people that were still listening to her at this point were starting to be like...

What the fuck? Like, were people questioning it? There had to have been an accountant or bookkeeper in her class that was like, wait a second now. Should I quit my job? People have no idea what they're doing. Am I being mind controlled by my QuickBooks software? QuickBooks is taking over. That is so fucking awesome. I'm going to go to my accountant next time I meet with him and be like,

You guys don't know anything. I told John, I'm like, dude, your job is fucking worthless. You do know that, right? None of you even know what you're talking about. These formulas, you don't even understand how they work. Absolutely. Meanwhile, CPAs have like one of the most stringent, exhaustive exam processes ever. No, she just didn't like what they had to say.

Yeah, because she's like, we went through a lot of CPAs, probably because they all told you you are going to get in trouble. The IRS is going to audit your ass and you're going to go to prison. He's like, nah, bring in the next one.

There's got to be a CPA that knows what the hell that what I want to hear. That's right. That knows what they're doing. Yeah, because the CPAs are doing the books in there. My CPA tells me all the time whenever we accidentally use a company credit card for personal expense, they're like, Josh, what is this? And I'm like, sorry, Kendall used the company credit card for the nail salon. I didn't mean to. Not for the nail salon. It's just sometimes I have it like put into see for like for Sesh. Sometimes we order stuff from TikTok shop.

And I have it like in the TikTok shop account and then I've used it for things that weren't for the show. I'm not going to lie. When I worked at the board game shop, I had the company credit card on my Apple wallet and they were like, so Ian, why is there a $78 charge at Texas Roadhouse? It was a business meeting. I was selling board games. Me and my ex-girlfriend were fucking talking shop, man.

The company card and my credit card look really alike. And so I keep them in different parts of my wallet. But I have definitely actually pulled out the company card. But the company card's like a lot heavier.

And I'm like, oh, shit. And then I have to put it back. That's the wrong one. Yeah, I don't even carry the company card. I think it's Janelle's company card that I put into my TikTok account and my shop account. Yeah, it is. And I've used it accidentally multiple times. It's very confusing. I'm glad that you're not coming to me, Josh, being like, Janelle, what the fuck is this? No, because I know now I'm like... Well, weren't there a few times you asked Janelle? Yeah, I would ask Janelle. I'm like, what is this? Yeah, you have been like, hey, what's this? And I'm like...

I don't know. Ask Kendall. It was like baby gear being purchased. And I was like, who? Do you know what? Are you purchasing baby gear for my child on the company credit card? Because CPAs, that's their whole job is to reconcile the bank accounts, reconcile your financial statements so that you don't get fucked by the IRS when they audit you. And so what's happening is she doesn't like what they're telling her because she's doing everything wrong.

And so she just fires CPA after CPA and they're all going to tell you the same thing. There's no CPAs. Yeah, you're probably fine. Yeah. Yeah. Wire that money to your personal account and don't track it and don't specify what it's for. Katie, Katie. Because in her mind, there's a lot of people that just also don't understand. She probably thinks from her perspective, like, well, I am the face of Rama Yoga Institute and I need money.

all these clothes and jewelry for my job. And so therefore it's a write-off. No, that's not how it works. Do you know how many people though think

You can just write off everything. Oh, yeah. I mean, we've had like people that we know in the industry over the years that told Josh and I that. They're like, put everything you buy, like connect it to your Amazon account and all your pet food and everything. Everything's a write off. And we were like, what? Really? Yeah. You cannot do that. And anything that is a quote unquote write off has to you have to show proof of receipt. Yeah. So that if you get audited, you can back up what the fuck this is.

and you don't get in trouble. It's like the Schitt's Creek scene where he's like, it's a write-off. He's paying for it. No one. That's why it's a write-off. It's a write-off. He just write it off. That's what I love. That's one of the best scenes. Schitt's Creek is amazing. So her level of understanding around business just period is very low and she doesn't understand because I'm curious to know how Rama Yoga Institute was set up. Was she a

owner in that? Is she an employee? Is she a contractor? I assume she owns equity in that. So she's an equity owner. So she has to pay herself some way. So probably some of wiring the money was

payment for like called an owner's draw. So you can just draw money from it. But I don't know, like I'd have to go look up the company, see if it's an LLC, is it a corporation? What is it? Because you do everything different. And that's what the CPA's job is to make sure that you're based on how your business is set up, that you are appropriately following, you know, the different guidelines and rules around how you're dispersing money and all of these things. And then also it's even more complicated when you have other ownership groups, especially an investing group

As a part of your business, because they're also owed if there's a 40% profit written into the contract and you're not giving them anything, that's a big problem. They're going to get very, very upset very quickly and probably sue your fucking ass. Yep. And yeah.

Just fire the CPA, though. It's the CPA's fault. Poor CPAs. They're crazy. They don't understand anything. They get it. They get it. They get the short end of the stick too much. I feel like when they're just trying to help, they're just there to help you. Mm-hmm.

Well, back to the Katie timeline. Okay, so just a year later, Katie contacted Philippa Hughes, who is a follower who lived in Mallorca, Spain, and was eager to help Katie open a new studio there. So Philippa spent months, unpaid months, preparing arrangements for Mallorca and even rented out the building where the studio was planning to operate out of.

Philippa and her son lived in the single-bedroom apartment above it while they waited for Katie to arrive towards the end of the preparations. When Katie did arrive, she requested that Philippa and her son move into the living room so that she could stay in the unit's single bedroom. Mm-hmm. Off you go. Excuse me. Thanks for all that unpaid work, but bye-bye. I need the bed. You guys go to the couch.

Philippa disagreed, and the next day she was accosted by numerous followers who found her in person and told her, quote, How could you betray our leader? You wouldn't sacrifice your bed for her? How could you?

which just aligns with how Katie treated many of those who worked closest to her. According to her ex-assistant, Nicole Norton, Katie refused to fly anything besides first or business class and lived out of followers home for several years in Los Angeles. And she traveled like 300 days a year. So we're talking first class business class international flights, which are a whole other level of expensive. Yeah. God, that's just like for being this, this Yogi and, you know,

You know, what that's all really about. To think so highly of yourself that I can only fly first class. I mean, just for her image alone, you would think that she wouldn't

want that. I don't know. I think she does because it makes her like, well, that's what she's promoting. Prosperity. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's just like the televangelist, I guess. Well, she's selling backwards. Yeah. Well, she's selling this false idea that if you just do what I do, you'll become me. You'll get what I have. And so she set it up that way so that it doesn't look that bad to her. Because once people start looking into what she's actually teaching, they're like,

Like, oh, so she got it because she did all of this. So if I just do this, then I will have the same prosperity. I'll be flying business class to Spain in no time. And she's got to sell to people like, look, it's worth investing because look at the life I have. And I'm very important and very successful now. So, you know, if I if I just looked like the average Joe Blow flying and fucking.

30 C in the back. Spirit Airlines. Yeah. Spirit Airlines. Then people aren't going to, you know, want to buy what I'm selling because I have nothing to prove it, you know? Yeah. This could be you one day. Well, and it's just the reality. Everybody wants that. People who are in economy want to be in business class, right? Of course. People want to have that luxury and comfort. So if you are in, if you're attaching spirituality to it, that

this is the way then it's much more appealing to people yeah but i agree with you i mean it goes back to the whole what would jesus do right would jesus be in business class or jesus be back in the back of the plane by the bathrooms i think jesus would be back of the plane by the bathrooms evangelizing to people and spreading his message of hope and peace and love and yeah i think i think depending on who you are and your perspective you you could see that as

It's a little slimy, you know, it's like very slimy. It's a little inauthentic of of what the whole real message is behind, you know, the spiritual teachings. But I mean, to clarify, obviously, she wasn't following the messages of Jesus. But, you know, those those before her in this world, you know.

Yeah, well, I was just using it as like an analogy. No, I'm with you. But anyway. Not only that, she refused to wear the same outfit twice, which is interesting considering she just wore like flowy robes and a turban. Yeah.

you know, half a turban. It seemed like with her hair hanging out. Yeah. Most days. Full, full turban. Yeah. Didn't want to be an outfit repeater. Again, it's, she also, her Instagram was very, very active. I think they had to post at least three times a day to her Instagram. And it's all her too. It's just like image after image of her. She can't be in repeating outfits on Instagram. That's just a no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

But not only that, you know, along with those business class flights, she's not checking into the Econo Lodge. She is checking into the Four Seasons at her destination and all other five-star hotels, resorts, got to stay in luxury, which this is just following. She's also, to be fair, she's also following what Yogi Bhajan did. This is what Yogi Bhajan, Harry G won as well. Same type of thing. These guys all live like this. Total luxury buying Rolls Royces, you know, fancied.

Fancy cars, fancy clothes, fancy meals, all that. So she is benefiting from what's been laid before her by her teachers and her leaders. So this isn't just something she decided to do. This was already something she had seen happening. It's kind of a roadmap that so many people with any type of following follow. When you even think about

People that like work in the self-help world and like public speaking, motivational speaking, a lot of them, you know, portray this fancy lifestyle and like only wear suits and drive in nice cars. And it's kind of just selling the whole lifestyle. You could be like me.

I think it's hard because I think from another perspective, if you become successful as a self-help person or even a spiritual teacher, just because people resonate with your audience and you're selling a service, I think, is that inherently a bad thing? No, I'm just saying it's part of the model. It's not always a bad thing. But is it always a part of the model or is it just the byproduct of our capitalistic society and the way that it's set up? Yeah. Because...

I don't know that you could fault every single person who is... No, I'm not faulting them. I just, I think it works as a business strategy too. It does work as a business strategy, but it's not necessarily they're a bad person because they live... No, and I didn't say that. No, I'm not saying that, but I feel like some people might...

I think some motivational speakers fall into that category, but there's a lot of good ones too. It's where I have the problem is when you are, if you're living that way, at least just be honest about it. I think most people would prefer just honesty around and transparency around. Yes, I do well because a lot of people show up to my seminars and buy my books and things like that. I don't think really most people have an issue with that. It's the

you can also have this, the prosperity gospel of if you follow what I'm telling you, you can have the same thing to a certain extent. Cause there's a lot of, I mean, there's tons of business leaders out there who do this all the time, all day, every day where they're like, you can start a business, you can do this. And

It feels a little slimy at times, but at the same token, I'm like, well, what they're actually teaching is what they did. And if you did do that and you were successful at that, yes, you could end up in the same financial situation. Yeah. But when you're making it sort of a conversation. Yeah. But when you're sort of making it, you know, inherently that the likelihood that somebody is going to be able to end up in the same place that you are. Right. Yeah.

As a part of your teachings, especially when you connect it to spirituality, I think that's where it's very questionable. Right. I also think with Katie in particular, it's like her wealth. I guess it was because her classes and everything were very popular, but it's also because she wasn't paying her employees. And yes, exactly. Right. I think like regardless of how other motivational speakers, self-help people, whatever, Katie's wealth came from the fact that she scammed people.

You know, and I think that's that's really where the problem lies. Absolutely. Yeah. And her followers were like, yeah, we suffered because she got to live this way. Right. The wealth was not shared. We were not all equal. There are self-help people out there who have done similar things. That's like a whole different conversation. Also, I really like your Sharpie over there. You're using to prove points. It's like really hitting home. Come to one of my seminars and I'll teach you a few things.

So while her followers ate their rabbit food, you know, that yummy, yummy, yummy lettuce, kale, and fruits, cilantro, pineapple, which isn't bad food. I mean, it's good stuff, but every day, Katie's on a door dash, baby. She's, uh, she's ripping up that door dash pass. And, uh,

She's got people coming day and night, bringing her all the good food up to five times a day. That's so crazy. Five times a day door dashing. Well, if you think about it, you got breakfast, you got coffee, you got snack, you've got lunch, you've got afternoon tea, coffee, you've got evening dessert. Yeah. I mean, you want some late night crumble. Maybe you need a quick little door dash to Walgreens for some Advil. Then maybe you need, you know, a little 7-Eleven stop. No,

No, but specifically she was ordering food up to five times a day for herself. I don't want to have a weekend of doing that for myself. Do it. Treat yourself. That would add up so... Oh my God. Can you imagine five DoorDash orders a day? That would be crazy. The total. Oh my God. Hundreds of dollars. If you do it, make sure you tip your dashers. Yes. Yeah. Of course. Don't skimp on the dashers then. You know, she probably wasn't tipping them.

The CPAs aren't going to like that. Well, I think she probably did because she's like, company card. She had the company card linked up to it. Maybe. She's like, and kind of technically, if she's on a business trip, yeah, DoorDash would be a write-off because it's meals and entertainment. Which again, that caps out. It caps out. You can't just do unlimited. The IRS is like, eh, that's not reasonable. Okay. Let's be reasonable here.

So not only that, there was one time a follower forgot to put sour cream in her burrito bowl from Whole Foods. Katie was not happy. She's fucking pissed. Where's my sour cream? Which I agree, man. If you forget the sour cream. That's like the key ingredient. Kendall snapped at me a few times for forgetting the sour cream at Chipotle.

Well, Chipotle sour cream is special. She's like, you expect me to eat this dry motherfucker? Yeah, I just am not going to eat it. Drive back to Chipotle. Call them. I've never spoken to you that way. Call them. No, I'm just kidding. She does get kind of grumpy if she doesn't have sour cream on. I do. I will admit. Just sauces in general. I always need a sauce. Agreed. Extra sauce on everything. Girly.

But Katie said this enough with this. I'm mad at mommy BS. Please don't take it out on me because you're mad that your mom used to fuck right in front of you. So fucked up. So that's an example of, you know, ways that she would ask people to divulge their secrets to her and then use it against them.

That, you know, whoever this person's mom would have sex in front of her, it sounds like. And Katie would use that situation in her trauma to say, yeah, stop, take, stop taking it out on me by forgetting my sour cream because your mom used to fuck right in front. It's it's really, really horrific. Yeah. Nicole also stated that, quote, there was a lot of screaming, blaming and a lot of pitting people against each other within the company.

and lots of all-caps messages at all hours of the day, often threatening people's jobs and livelihood. Yeah, there was one time that Katie messaged her team, quote, I will ring your figurative necks if not every photo you've taken up until now isn't in the Dropbox, and quote, I can't do fucking everything. Fuck you all!

That's a great way to get your employees to work harder. Yeah, sometimes I just hop that into the Slack channel. Yeah, I'm going to do it right now. I'm going to say, hey, guys, I can't do fucking everything. Fuck you all. I'm sure that's a great way to motivate people. Talk about morale. Company morale. Especially when she's going around this spiritual home.

Fuck you! This is so insane. Now, going back to Philippa, she was now facing the abuse herself, face to face. And she thought it would be kind of worth it when the studio did finally open and she saw some return on her investments. However, Katie informed her that she would not be credited for the work on the Majorca studio. Instead, Ari G. Wan would fly out and the studio would be credited in his honor, of course.

And Philippa wasn't even invited to the opening ceremony. What a fucking slap in the face. Instead, she received a bill in the mail for over $1,000 to pay Hari G. Won for his speaking appearance. Isn't that insane? And you're not even allowed to come and watch him speak, but you got to pay for it. And after a few weeks, Katie ended her business relationship with Philippa and moved to another studio in Mallorca just a few blocks away.

And Philippa said that it was the worst decision and year of her life and that she lost over $20,000. Just terrible.

And she was just, you know, one of the many victims of Katie. However, things would only worsen for this girl boss yogi. 2019 started with a speaking event in which Katie participated in a panel discussion with Samia Khan-Bambra on intersectional feminism. Samia said that there was a distinct disparity between ethnic Sikhs in America and white people who wore traditional clothing as a fashion statement.

And Katie was accused of whitesplaining sickism after she dismissed Samia's claims and even went on to say that the term yoga came from the Bible. Nice one.

Is yoga in the Bible? I don't think so. No, man. Yeah, I read that. I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right? I would be shocked. No, there's no way. No, the word yoga is not mentioned in the Bible. I was going to say. The fuck? Then in early 2020, Pamela Dyson, who's the ex-assistant to Yogi Bhajan, published her memoir, Premka, White Bird in a Golden Cage. And in the memoir, she accused Yogi Bhajan of rape, battery, and imprisonment, which

Again, and if we do a whole episode on Yogi Bhajan, we can go into much more detail around her memoir because there's a lot more in there. But in the wake of her accusations, more than 30 members of Yogi Bhajan's 3HO group alleged that Yogi Bhajan had committed sexual assault, rape, and child abuse. While 3HO hired an outside firm to investigate, they found the claims to have, quote,

More than likely occurred, and Katie and Hari Jiwon came to his defense. Hari Jiwon released a 52-minute documentary bashing Pamela and would go on Katie's podcast to dismiss her claims. Katie even made an Instagram post stating that, quote, This tale is no truer than any other tale. The truth, as always, lies in the eye of the beholder. That's always a nice way to put it. Yeah.

What a terrible statement. An Instagram account called Rama Wrong, created by Nicole Norton and other employees at Rama, shared a clip of Harijuan in a session stating, quote, I don't believe the victims. This is our simple position. Simple position. Don't believe victims. Katie would later say that she was attacked by, quote, robots for defending her teacher.

However, Katie also revealed that she had never even met Yogi Bhajan. Instead, her name came from a 3HO name generator, which you can still, I believe, go get your spiritual name for 40 bucks, which gives you an official sick name. In reality, the idea of starting Rama had come from Hari Jeevan, who believed he needed a younger face to sell Kunalini. We're talking day in and day out. I mean, Yogi Bhajan had a 24-hour household.

So for the people who were there, it's very... It's, you know, any of the people... And Honey Jim and Tasia are not the only people, but they're the most outspoken people because most of these other people are behind-the-scenes types or people who are not really on social media. Do you know what I'm saying? So it's like this is where the historic context is very important because there were people who were there, not just there once a week. They were there every day, day in, day out, and they just...

They've been through these allegations, they've been through these takedowns, they've been through the CIA deprogramming that went on in the 70s and the 80s. They've been through these rich Sikh rightist groups that never liked Yogi Bhajan and tried to take him down forever. And also, you know, we have the inside, you know, we have a lot of inside intel. Again, if I was to come forward with my opinion on it, I don't think that's fair to people. People should have whatever opinion they want.

Because I have a very inside kind of view on what's going on, who got paid, what happened, how these things go on. And then I'm being attacked by robots.

So you tell me if we're just dealing with a sex survivor situation. What was this obsession with Hari Jiwon? According to Rabbit, Katie's stepfather, the daddy issue thing allowed Hari Jiwon to infiltrate more into her psyche. If you know somebody who has trauma around a subject like daddy, you can use that to exploit that person. And I think that's what took place. Very odd way of going about saying that, but I think there could be some truth there to that statement.

That she clearly saw Harijuan as some sort of not only spiritual teacher and figure, but a father figure in a bizarre way. Yeah, certainly could have. But things really, really just...

go off the deep end from here on out. Yeah, when the COVID pandemic hit, it seemed like Katie, yeah, really took a turn for the worst, if she wasn't already on that path already. For one, she married a follower named Austin Dunbar, aka Tegnam, and he was 16 years younger than her, and he believed that the pandemic was organized by the Jews and wholly fabricated.

Amazing. In response, Katie made all of her employees watch the documentary Plandemic. Remember that? Oh, yeah.

And continue to hold sessions in the Venice Beach studio during the lockdown and also banned masks from any lesson. Not just like they're not required, but you cannot fucking wear them. And reality riffing even took a more intense change at this point. Now she was inviting QAnon conspiracy theorists on and notable Holocaust denier David Icke onto the show to discuss Pizzagate, a Gina Chrome episode.

and lizard people. And she even started marketing a new clothing line called hashtag cancel cancel culture. I'm sure that went very well. It's such a sign of the times too that it was like a hashtag was on the

the clothing line. And yeah, she was continuously blaming victims of sexual assault for their own trauma. On top of that, it gets even worse. She called BLM protesters, quote, cockroaches in a leaked company WhatsApp message that was posted to Rom of Wrong. However, despite all of this, Katie was still doing speaking engagements. During a stay in Germany, though, she had slipped in the shower. It sounds her parents were

or her mother and her stepfather, Rabbit, were talking about it. She, like, had tried to step on the lip of the shower and slipped and broke her ankle pretty bad. And she called her mom and said, quote, Mom, I'm scared. Now, German doctors advised Katie not to travel until she had received surgery. But we all know how Katie feels about modern medicine. So she refused and she boarded a plane only a few days later. And then on August 1st,

2021, during a surgery in Venice Beach, Katie died of a pulmonary embolism that had likely developed during that flight back from Germany. So she really should have listened to those doctors. And she was 41 years old.

Now, this was really shocking for people. There was a lot of theories about what actually happened. And a lot of people just flat out refused to believe. Well, and it wasn't helped by her own husband, Austin, you know, who's clearly a conspiracy theorist. So, you know, he's now the effective new leader at Rama. And he claimed that Katie was killed for trying to spread the truth about COVID-19, which...

Not a good idea at all. Others said that she had died of COVID-19 itself and the embolism was a lie to cover up the truth. That is an interesting theory to me. I will say quickly that Vanity Fair writer, again, she had interviewed Katie like a few months before she had passed. And then her article, the point of the article really was being like a lot of people are saying like all these conspiracy theories surrounding her death.

The Vanity Fair writer did look at the death certificate and confirm it was a pulmonary embolism. Okay. So that's what it was. Yeah.

Probably just due to flying. Exactly. Yeah. But could that death certificate have been faked, Ian? This is always a good point. Somebody could have faked that. Somebody could have paid somebody to make that. Who knows? Others said she faked her death due to all the controversy and to avoid accountability. I mean, it was just going crazy. I mean, tons of people were... A lot of people, I think, thought she faked her death to just disappear. And...

Create an exit for herself. Yeah, of course. There's always those theories. It was interesting to her. Nancy and Rabbit in the in the doc. What is the documentary called? There's a multi part of fire. Breath of Fire. Very interesting. I recommend watching it if you're interested. But they were sort of talking about how her like she had become really unhealthy.

at this point in her life. I believe they said that she was 250 pounds and they believed that that, you know, they were hinting that that may have contributed to the fall and just the overall ability to heal. Well, and is also just the travel, the lack of sleep, the constant. I mean, again, like I said, she traveled 300 days a year. Yeah. The constant jet lag. And I mean, it's it's a

As you can imagine, it's very hard on the body. Just traveling itself takes it out of you. And just all the stress that she was carrying from all of her scamming and the CPAs were causing hell of stress, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure she was starting to worry, like, what if? What if this all goes down? What will I do after this? Yeah. A lot of thoughts going through her head. Yeah.

But regardless of what Katie did in life, Hari Jiwon still profits from Rama's locations in Venice, New York, and Mallorca. It was later revealed that Katie regularly paid him in increments of the angel number $3,333. Other times she wired him tens of thousands of dollars in a single transaction.

Hari Jiwon's first wife, Tej Kaur, recalled Katie telling her she had to open a studio with Hari Jiwon. According to her, Katie said, quote, I have to start Rama for Hari Jiwon, but I don't even like Hari Jiwon. That's conflicting. Yeah, there's just so much conflict. There's so much murkiness to this because...

Again, most of what we know is from ex-followers who, which a lot of them actually have, there's a great, there's one of her followers has a great channel called Colts to Consciousness on YouTube, where she talks extensively about her time underneath Guru Jagat, but also she dives into other, other similar groups. But a lot of them also, Yogi Bhajan's longtime security guard or bodyguard also has a YouTube channel.

talking about how... And just so many ex-members talked about how they didn't even know where to start with their life after they left. They had nothing. They had spent all this time, money, energy on Yogi Bhajan. And then she was just gone. And Guru Jagat. And then it was just all gone. And then there's...

There's still Harajuan who's still running 3HO. This is still an ongoing thing. See, that's why I'm curious and potentially doing an episode on him, too. I don't know how much. I feel like unfortunately with him because like I think the reason we know so much about Katie is because she died. And same goes for Yogi Bhajan because he died. More people felt empowered to come out, whereas with Harajuan, all we really know.

is the fact that Katie gave him a shit ton of money and he went to jail for the toner bandit. Yeah. So I think

You know, they're just... I bet there's a lot more scams out there that we won't know about until he either passes or he gets put away. So you're saying that when he dies, we can cover it. Yes, and I'll be counting down the days. Don't you worry. Okay. Well, that's all we have for you guys today on Katie and Guru Juggett, really. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one. It was very interesting. You know, I really feel...

that as much as Katie was trying to find herself during her life, that she ultimately was just very lost and potentially becoming Guru Jagat made finding herself even harder because then she assumed this role of the spiritual leader, which is a heavy, heavy burden to carry. I mean, it's definitely a lot of responsibility, a lot of attentions on you. You have to have the answers. You have to have

have to lead people and develop them. And that's a lot of pressure. And I think she still had so much internal work that needed to be done before she assumed this role that it never happened. And so all of these deep-rooted traumas and all these deep-rooted issues that she had with herself were always there and always coming up, as you could see through the different outbursts and the different experiences people had with her, that this idea that she was chasing

She never even got close to it. She never got to that level of peace and tranquility and spiritual enlightenment that she wanted to get to. I think she said what she had to say. You know, she said whatever she felt like she needed to say to keep up the character that she was playing. Yeah. And...

I wonder if in her last days, if she ever had moments of regret and remorse of, am I really doing the right thing here? Am I being the person that I truly want to be? Or have I just fallen into this trap? And especially, you know, she knew what Yogi Bhajan was up to if she felt really horrible about where her life had led. Yeah. And she's become... That's an interesting thought. She's become...

similar to yogi bhajan in a lot of ways obviously as far as you know there's you know without the sexual assault and all the other horrible things that yogi bhajan did but just from a pure point of misleading people that you're not you're lying to people you're not actually being authentic and genuine and you're not these people are basically trusting you with your their souls and developing their souls and awakening uh their kundalini and all these very deep personal

the deepest essences of who we are as human beings. And she's spiritually abusing them. Yeah. And you're taking people who are likely already been either spiritually abused or physically abused, mentally abused in other ways, and just furthering that abuse. Yeah. Well, you wonder with anyone who does something like this, I tend to believe that deep down they all must know that what they're doing is wrong. But they know that if they were to admit that and change it,

That they would lose all the luxuries and success and, you know, everything that they have built their life into and everything would have to change. So there. But maybe that but maybe that's a good thing. Of course, it's a good thing, but it's hard of it. It would be hard for them. And it's I think to a lot of these people, that's not worth it. And they would rather just continue on, even though they deep down know what they're doing is wrong. Which makes me highly question how awakened they really were.

I don't think she was awakened at all. How enlightened were these people at all? I think if you speak to people the way that you did, scammed people the way that you did, felt the need to fly first class and have all these fancy things and Rolls Royces, then you don't get the point at all. I don't think you're enlightened. Anyone who's truly enlightened is able to separate themselves from those things and genuinely wants to help others. Yeah. Well, to circle back to the great, you know, to the great

Jim Carrey, he has in one of the many speeches he's given, he's talked about how on reflecting on his life that he feels like his whole journey as a human, part of it was he had to attain all of the riches and success and fame.

In order to get rid of his attachment to those things. To realize that it's not fulfilling him truly. Right. He had to go through that to obtain those things as a part of his spiritual journey to realize that those things don't matter. Those things weren't important at all. And it's like Katie was only 41 when she died. Was there still time for her to have that awakening too? I think unfortunately she fell down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Yeah. That leads to nowhere good.

Unfortunately, like it's just and when I hear her talk and I shit, you know, some of the things that she's questioning and things are definitely thoughts I've had at times over the years. And I think it's a it's a trap that is very easy to.

never get out of if you if you really let your mind go there and you start really thinking everything is a conspiracy and everything is out to get you yeah uh you it creates a very scary world for you yes there were times where we were really looking i mean we used to cover a bunch of conspiracies and to be clear i mean there are still several government conspiracies that i believe in and i mean none of the things that were mentioned today but there are things that i think have been you know there's government cover-ups i think that most people um can agree with

that. I mean, there's a huge percentage of people that believe in like the JFK conspiracy and Martin Luther King. I mean, there's evidence, there's court. But there was a time when we were looking into some of those things and they lead to other things and you start going down those rabbit holes and then you can you could completely lose yourself. I mean, there were times where I was so my anxiety got really high. I started thinking everything was fake. And yeah, if you really fall deep into that, it's so dangerous. Well, it's one of those things where

David Icke, for example, I mean, I've definitely I've watched a fair amount of David Icke content over the years as part of research and just, you know, being in the conspiracy world. And when you don't know some of his takes and I mean, the same could be said for Alex Jones as well. Right. When you don't know everything about that individual or what stances they have on everything, you might come across something that they say that resonates with you and you're like, oh,

That's kind of interesting. I didn't think of it that way. Or there's things that David Icke has predicted that people would say have come true in some way or another. Like there's bits of truth along this world, the conspiracy road. But then what becomes difficult is if you grasp onto those nuggets of truth and you all of a sudden, that becomes your whole complete truth for reality, then it becomes very dangerous because then you get introduced to all of the more, because that's the thing too is,

they kind of rope you in with some of these sort of surface level truths that are, that are interesting. And I think most of us would agree would be like, yeah, maybe, yeah, that's, that's pretty reasonable, honestly, when you think about it. But then once they hook you with those and you get in deeper, then in the next layer is a little bit crazier. And then by the time you're, you, you believe in though that level, you go on to the next level where it's just batshit fucking crazy, where,

react you're looking at every fucking human wondering if they're a reptilian overlord or not and when you get to that point that's a very scary place to be where you have zero trust in anybody and anything and everything is a lie yeah and that's where unfortunately katie got to it seems and i think her husband to some extent led her down that path

And encouraged her to vocalize these things online, which obviously, especially during 2020, you know, 2020 to 2022 was a very problematic time to be saying any of the things that they were saying. And ultimately the public backlash that she received from that, the,

they're like what the fuck what are you doing I mean we all remember it was a wild time and if you were on you was like you're on this side and the whole QAnon thing was a whole fucking another now proven to be it's another fucking yeah but at the time because of the state of the world it was prime time for conspiracy theorists it was it was like that is a time to hook as many people as possible because of the state of the world the turmoil and everything so I think unfortunately she got

caught up in that trap and in the, you know, in that swamp and just couldn't, couldn't. And also just caught up in the light, the life of luxury too. I really think that was a big part of it. Well, when you get used to that, it's very hard to come back. You don't want to, you know, you don't want to return to what you had before. Right. So I think there's so many different facets to this and so many things that were troubling her and

I don't know who, you know, I went a lot of my sort of points of view come from the way that her parents speak about her and who she may have been at one point in her life. And I think at one point in her life.

She was no different than any of us. And in a lot of ways, I connect with her because that, you know, when you leave, especially Christianity, and you're kind of looking for answers and looking for a path, this could be, you know, an interesting path to go down. And then she went down it and then saw the opportunity to exploit it and exploited it.

And it didn't end well. You know, it just didn't turn out the way I think she thought it would. And so. And a lot of people got hurt in the process. Yeah. It's really just a tragic story all around. Do you guys have any final thoughts? I have a much less charitable view of her. I think.

You know, early on, certainly, I think it was an innocent, earnest, like, she was like, oh, this stuff is really helping me. I want to teach yoga. I want this to be my life. I think the moment she realized she could scam people. Mm-hmm.

Because from the moment she opened Rama, she was telling that lie. Oh, I hung out with Yogi Bhajan and da-da-da. She was making that active choice to scam people. And then when the money stopped coming in that crazy, she realized, oh, who's another group of people I can scam? Far-right lunatics who believe in QAnon and all this other crap. So I personally believe that she did the same trajectory as a lot of these people, the same trajectory as Alex Jones and all these other people where it's like,

They realized they went from scamming, or at least in Katie's case, went from scamming rich moms in L.A. to scamming, you know, the far right conspiracy people. Yeah. And I think if she were still alive today, she would be on the Maha Trump train 100% because she realized, oh, I can scam these people too. Yeah. Well, and paranoia is such a like, if you're paranoid, you're so easily...

Well, I would say more easily susceptible to believing these crazy theories because you're trying, you're, you're freaked out. And like Josh was saying, you think every, everyone's out to get you or what you see isn't really what's going on. And so you start to cling to any sort of answer that you can get or any real truth. Like I know the truth and where this person knows the truth. And so, yeah, I figured it out. She probably wouldn't be a Maha follower. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. I fall somewhere in the middle. I definitely had like no sympathy for her when we first after we had done all the research for this and we were talking earlier today and I can see where you're coming from, Josh. I fall somewhere in between. Like, I think for the most part, I really don't have much sympathy for Katie. I have sympathy for the younger Katie and what she went through.

In her college days and, you know, the abuse that she endured. But obviously that doesn't justify the toxic behavior that she, you know, displayed later on in her life. So, no, it never excuses, you know, then hurting others. No, she made a conscious choice to deceive people. She's a grown ass woman. So.

Yeah, I'm curious what all of you think. That's going to be it for us today. It's time to blow this candle out. So leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. And we'll be back next week. But until then, keep on taking your mind a mile higher.