I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

After years of portraying his divine “Grace” as a protective force—and explicitly telling Kailash pilgrims, “I will not let you die”—Sadhguru now faces a devastating reality: 77 of his followers are missing after the Nepal disaster.

For decades, Sadhguru has portrayed himself as a divinely enlightened being with powers that border on the supernatural. These range from x-ray-like vision and accessing people’s minds through their spines to curing the sick. “Medically hopeless cases have been completely cured in his presence,” his website once stated. He’s convinced many that he is the incarnation of the god Shiva.

Perhaps one of his most consequential purported abilities is his protective “Grace”—a supernatural-like presence that he now explicitly links to a program requiring followers to contribute 7% of their income. Those who become “Ishanga 7% partners” are promised “Sadhguru’s grace as a support for their life’s endeavors” and the opportunity to experience his grace “as a living presence in all that you do.”

He advertises the program with extraordinary testimonials. “I feel there is a protective layer around me all the time, someone constantly watching over me,” one devotee says. Another describes an “unseen Presence” enabling him “at every step,” putting him in the right place at the right time after he became a 7% partner.

Sadhguru has also built a lucrative business around objects said to contain or transmit divine energy and grace. Isha sells “consecrated” jewelry, statues, yantras, and other spiritual objects for as high as tens of thousands of dollars. The objects are promoted as more than religious decorations: some are said to create powerful fields of energy, bring grace into the home, or shield their owners from negative forces.

Then there are the pilgrimages.

“The foundation also makes considerable sums selling ‘spiritual’ jaunts,” Newslaundry reported in a 2021 investigation. Some trips cost thousands of dollars. But the premium offering is a 13-day pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar through Tibet and Nepal with Sadhguru that cost ₹50 lakh per person—roughly $60,000, Newslaundry reports. Cheaper packages were available, but those pilgrims received only a single meeting, or “darshan,” with Sadhguru during the journey.

For years, Isha has portrayed Sadhguru’s grace as accompanying pilgrims on these dangerous Himalayan journeys even when he is not physically with them. “His grace accompanies each participant, lighting every step of the way,” Isha states. And Sadhguru himself has gone considerably further.

In 2024, Isha reposted Sadhguru’s 2017 address to pilgrims about his Kailash sojourn through Nepal in an article. “Everyone will come back. I will not let you die,” he says. “But you must go like you want to die into Kailash; nothing else matters.”

The article is titled “What a Pilgrimage to Kailash Really Means.” The promise was explicit: Sadhguru tells followers that he will not allow them to die. He also says that if they approach Kailash properly, they will return so profoundly transformed that others would want to touch their feet.

In a 2023 post, Isha boasted of Sadhguru safely bringing 500 people to Kailash in 2009. The article states, “On this remarkable happening, one medical expert commented that for anyone else, ‘taking this many people and bringing them back alive is just impossible—only Sadhguru can do that.’”

After explaining several people had suffered from altitude sickness, the post states, “Most of these people, including some respected doctors, could only identify Sadhguru as the reason for their otherwise unaccountably improved health.”

The mythology remained central to Isha’s promotion of the Kailash journey over the years.

In its 2025 pilgrimage film, devotees describe Sadhguru in openly supernatural terms. “He’s magic,” one participant says. Another calls him “an extension of Shiva.”
Most strikingly, another pilgrim describes experiencing Sadhguru as an invisible presence throughout the journey in Nepal: “Sadhguru’s presence was felt in every breath, and there’s nothing more needed.”

Isha also claimed divine protection in their 2019 promotional video. A participant during the trek states, “We felt that he’s carrying us in every way with every breath we’re taking at this moment.” Sadhguru told those making the journey, “If you just sit with me for one moment, you don’t need anything else.”

Their 2017 promotional video highlighted a man who says he is normally unable to walk on a treadmill for more than thirty minutes yet manages to make the trek to Nepal every year. “Probably it’s not me; it’s because of my master,” he states. Another says of Sadhguru, “He was just giving his life energy into every single one of us.”

Then, on August 26, 2026, one of Isha’s Kailash pilgrimages ended in catastrophe.

A massive glacier collapse triggered a devastating torrent of water, mud, and debris through the Nepal-Tibet border region. One Isha group was returning from Kailash and had reached the immigration center at Gyirong Port when the flood struck. The border complex was completely destroyed.

Seventy-seven Isha pilgrims remain unaccounted for.

Isha Foundation said the valley surrounding the immigration center was buried beneath an estimated 45 to 50 feet of silt and debris. As search operations resumed, the organization acknowledged there were “no encouraging indications” that members of the group had survived.

Nine years after Sadhguru told Kailash pilgrims, “Everyone will come back. I will not let you die,” 77 families are still waiting to learn what happened to them.

Isha continued promoting the mythology surrounding Sadhguru and Kailash even after the tragedy. On August 28—two days after the catastrophic flood—the organization published a new hour-long episode of Sadhguru 360 devoted to the “hidden dimensions” of Kailash. The episode had been recorded before the disaster, but its release afterward was striking and led to the organization shutting off comments on the video after negative backlash. “He now uses the Nepal tragedy to attract more followers,” one viewer complained.

In it, Sadhguru boasts of repeatedly defying severe medical warnings in order to reach Kailash. He describes once leaving a hospital after a doctor allegedly warned him, “You will not make it,” traveling to Kailash gravely ill, and then experiencing what he portrays as a miraculous recovery. “You won’t believe in 20 minutes I was a new man,” he says, claiming that hundreds witnessed him become “almost 10 years younger” and “perfectly fine.”

He tells a similar story in the video about returning to Kailash after emergency brain surgeries in 2024—a decision he acknowledges looked “like a death wish to the doctors.” Sadhguru says he nevertheless had “absolute trust” in what he calls a “miraculous process,” pointing to his recovery as evidence that his faith had been vindicated.

The post-tragedy release also showcases some of Sadhguru’s most bizarre supernatural claims about Kailash.

The lede image of the video reads, “Strange Life Forms in Manasarovar.” In the video, he states, “The beings or the life forms there are nothing like what we generally know as life.” He claims these entities understand the human body and describes once separating one from its group and taking it “into my system” until, he says, it began damaging him and he was forced to release it. Sadhguru also claims to perceive a subterranean space beneath Manasarovar populated by strange beings, partially formed human figures, and glowing blue objects.

Later he claims Kailash contains an actual repository of mystical knowledge: “Ask me any question about existence. If you give me enough time, I can glean it out of this mountain.”

Perhaps the most haunting statement in retrospect came from a segment in the video recorded just six days before the catastrophe. Reflecting on how modern infrastructure had eliminated many of the hardships that once defined the Kailash pilgrimage, Sadhguru said, “Most other challenges have been flattened out. Only altitude—that’s the only challenge.”

In the aftermath of the disaster, however, Sadhguru offered a strikingly different message about the limits of divine protection.

“Don’t try to find mystical solutions to this,” he told a solidarity gathering in Kathmandu. Physical bodies, he said, are governed by physical laws. “Because of who I am, you think the flood won’t hit me? It will.” He even lamented Isha’s strict practice of reaching immigration early: “I only wish we didn’t have so much discipline. I wish we had gone there half an hour later.”

For years, Isha credited Sadhguru’s divine “grace” when pilgrims returned safely or recovered from sickness on the mountain. But when they didn’t come back, Sadhguru invoked physical law instead. “We are not talking about God holding your hand,” he said.

READ THE SERIES:

• Part I: Inside Sadhguru’s Cult Empire

• Part II: Unmasking Sadhguru’s Legacy of Abuse

• What Happened to Sadhguru’s Wife? - Did Sadhguru’s wife die from enlightenment, as he claims, or was it foul play?

• Sadhguru Loses $10 Million Defamation Lawsuit Over Rape Allegations - A Tennessee judge dismissed Isha Foundation’s defamation claims, finding that it had “woefully under-supported” its case.

• Why Sadhguru Never Mentions His Yoga Teacher - Sadhguru studied with a yoga teacher for years in the 1980s, rebranded his system as his own, and never gave credit.

• Is Sadhguru’s Isha Yoga a Billion-Dollar Spiritual Empire? - Sadhguru’s Isha is sitting on over $100 million in cash—yet still wants 7% of his followers’ income.

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

A Tennessee judge has dismissed the central defamation claims in a lawsuit seeking $10 million that Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation filed against two former followers who had accused the organization and its leader of rape and sexual abuse, land grabbing, financial misconduct, and involvement in suspicious deaths.

In an order entered on Jan. 16, 2026 Judge Alexander K. McVeagh of Hamilton County Circuit Court dismissed the claims under the Tennessee Public Participation Act, the state’s anti-SLAPP law. He found that Jaikanthan Sankaradass and Neeta Jaikanthan had shown that the claims arose from their exercise of free speech on matters of public concern and that Isha had failed to meet the evidentiary burden that followed.

The organization had “woefully under-supported” its attempt to rebut the couple’s arguments and evidence, Judge McVeagh wrote. It failed to supply sufficient proof of defamation, presented no evidence that the couple had acted with actual malice, and provided insufficient evidence of damages. Isha also did not rebut most of the couple’s defenses, including their argument that many of the statements were substantially true.

The judge further questioned whether most of the statements cited in the lawsuit had been made about Isha Foundation, the corporate plaintiff, rather than about Sadhguru or other individuals associated with it. Statements concerning other people could not be used by the Foundation to recover damages, he wrote.

The ruling found that, after choosing to sue over their speech, Isha had failed to present sufficient evidence supporting the essential elements of its defamation claims.

Allegations of Rape and Sexual Misconduct

Among the statements cited in Isha’s lawsuit were Facebook posts in which Neeta referred to people associated with the organization as rapists. She also reposted Isha promotional materials that had been altered to read “Rally for Rapists.”

Her accusations were based in part on what she described as her own experience with Sadhguru.

In a sworn declaration, Neeta said that in 2012 she was taken around midnight to a private room at an Isha ashram for what she understood to be a personal spiritual process. She said she had been instructed to shower, leave her hair wet, wear a loose cloth, and undress after entering the room.

Neeta said she drank something from a copper tumbler and began to feel drugged. She recalled Sadhguru tying a red thread around her breast and hip while repeatedly telling her to say that she trusted him.

She then lost consciousness, according to her declaration. When she awoke in an adjoining room containing a bed, she said she felt that her body had been violated. She testified that she believed Sadhguru had raped her while she was unconscious.

Her account also contains details similar to allegations made by other women interviewed by Guru Magazine.

Rebecca, a former devotee, said Sadhguru asked her to remove her blouse and tie a sacred thread around her waist during what was presented as an energy transmission.

“Under the guise of it being a ‘sacred process,’ where the body is ‘simply a tool,’ I was asked to remove my blouse and given a sacred thread to tie around my waist,” she said. She said Sadhguru told her that being topless would allow her to connect with him more effectively.

Three other women alleged that Sadhguru required them to be topless during initiation ceremonies. One said he coerced her into sexual acts, including oral sex, by telling her that doing so would improve her “receptivity” and help enhance human consciousness. She described him as a “predator.”

A former senior staff member also recounted confronting Sadhguru about an allegation that he had pressured a female follower into sex.

“Samantha said you pushed her to have sex and she didn’t want to,” the former staff member recalled saying.

“What do you mean she didn’t want to?” Sadhguru replied, according to the former staff member. “They all want to.”

The former staff member also said they saw a woman wearing a string around her waist after she had been in Sadhguru’s bedroom.

The couple’s attorneys submitted additional reporting and declarations concerning sexual-abuse allegations associated with Isha, including cases involving school staff members in India and allegations examined by The Times of London.

Their lawyers also identified a notable omission in Isha’s complaint. Although the Foundation characterized one of Neeta’s statements referring to people associated with Isha as rapists as defamatory, the complaint did not expressly allege that the statement was false.

Under Tennessee’s anti-SLAPP statute, Isha was required to establish a prima facie case for every essential element of its defamation claims. Judge McVeagh found that the organization had failed to present any evidence of actual malice—the legal standard requiring proof that the defendants knew their statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for whether they were true.

Suspicious Deaths

Some of the couple’s most provocative statements concerned deaths and missing persons associated with Isha.

Isha alleged that Jai had said bodies were found at the Foundation’s facility and that the organization was “murdering people and hiding bodies.” The Foundation characterized those statements as false and damaging.

The couple responded by citing several incidents.

A body had been found on Isha’s Tennessee property. Law enforcement classified the death as a suicide, while the medical examiner listed the cause of death as undetermined. The couple’s lawyers argued that, whatever conclusions were drawn about the death, the existence of the body itself was not in dispute.

Jai also testified that his brother, Elango Sankaradass, died unexpectedly from a stroke in 2009 while participating in an Isha ritual. He was 26.

Their filings cited reports of missing people and unexplained deaths connected to Isha in India, as well as the 1997 death of Sadhguru’s wife, Vijaya Kumari.

Sadhguru has said that his wife entered mahasamadhi, a yogic form of conscious death. He burned her body within hours, before an autopsy could be performed. Her father subsequently filed a police complaint expressing suspicion about the circumstances and alleging that Sadhguru had abused her.

The couple presented these incidents to show that their concerns had not been fabricated and that they had a factual basis for raising questions about deaths and missing persons associated with Isha.

Other Claims Against Isha

The lawsuit also cited the couple’s use of the term “land grabber,” which arose from a series of property disputes near Isha’s Tennessee center.

Neeta said the Foundation pressured her to sell approximately 90 acres to Isha for $211,147.50 after she had received a private offer of $600,000. The couple also said that restrictions imposed by Isha forced them to sell a home appraised at $1.55 million for $960,000 because they were desperate to leave the community.

Isha disputed their account and accused the couple of violating contractual obligations and interfering with the foundation’s real estate interests.

The couple also accused Isha of financial impropriety, relying on offshore records, published investigations into the organization’s tax practices, and court proceedings involving its Cauvery Calling fundraising campaign.

Their allegations concerning Isha’s schools were supported, they argued, by their daughter’s account of being sexually abused by an instructor, internal communications describing severe schedules and extended periods of enforced silence, and Isha’s own published description of students’ daily routines.

Those accusations were among the statements covered by the defamation claims the judge dismissed after finding that Isha had failed to supply sufficient proof.

The order did not dispose of every claim in the lawsuit. Judge McVeagh allowed Isha’s breach-of-contract and business-interference claims to proceed, converted the couple’s motion to dismiss those claims into a motion for summary judgment, and permitted discovery. The dismissal of the defamation claims was certified as final and appealable.

Anti-SLAPP laws are intended to prevent individuals and organizations from using costly litigation to suppress protected speech on matters of public concern when they cannot produce evidence sufficient to support their claims.

In this case, the court decided that Isha had failed to present sufficient evidence that the statements were defamatory, made with actual malice, or responsible for recoverable damages.

By filing the lawsuit, Isha also placed the former devotees’ allegations and supporting materials into a public American court record. When the organization was then required to show that the couple’s speech amounted to actionable defamation, the judge found that its case had been “woefully under-supported.”

READ THE SERIES:

• Part I: Inside Sadhguru’s Cult Empire

• Part II: Unmasking Sadhguru’s Legacy of Abuse

• What Happened to Sadhguru’s Wife? - Did Sadhguru’s wife die from enlightenment, as he claims, or was it foul play?

• Why Sadhguru Never Mentions His Yoga Teacher - Sadhguru studied with a yoga teacher for years in the 1980s, rebranded his system as his own, and never gave credit.

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

At the end of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Matt Damon’s Odysseus returns to his own kingdom disguised as a beggar. Disheveled, with a scarf pulled over his head, he moves through the palace unrecognized. People soon mock and shove him while others insult him.

Odysseus is actually the rightful king—powerful, wise beyond measure, and finally home. The disguise serves as a test of character. How do people treat a stranger when they believe he has no status and no power?

It’s a powerful moral story, and it’s one found throughout Greek myth, known as theoxeny. It’s also the central story of Christianity.

Jesus is the rightful king “disguised” as an ordinary peasant from Galilee. He is repeatedly misunderstood by the villagers, his relatives and disciples, and religious authorities. Jesus is seen as a mere son of a carpenter, a troublemaking preacher, a wandering healer, and, finally, a condemned criminal. “King of the Jews,” the placard above his head on the cross says mockingly.

His journey is similar to Odysseus’s. Both move through the world in lowly disguise. They are mocked by those who fail to recognize them. They are both moving toward the throne that rightfully belongs to them.

While Nolan doesn’t use the trope elsewhere in the film, it appears repeatedly in Homer’s epic. Athena disguises herself as a young shepherd, a young girl, and Mentes, an old family friend of Odysseus. The god Hermes likewise appears as a young mortal man when he gives Odysseus the herb that protects him from Circe’s magic.

Elsewhere in Greek myth, we see the god Dionysus, son of Zeus, disguised in human form. He “changed in shape from God to man,” the text says. Demeter appears as the elderly nurse Doso serving in the household at Eleusis. Apollo and Poseidon disguise themselves as mortal laborers, secretly serving King Laomedon while building the walls of Troy.

Zeus and Hermes likewise wander through Phrygia disguised as poor travelers, knocking on doors and testing the hospitality of strangers. Everyone turns them away except the elderly couple Baucis and Philemon. The apparent beggars then reveal themselves as gods, reward their hosts, and destroy the surrounding community that rejected them. Dionysus likewise destroys those who refuse to recognize or honor him.

The Gospels use a similar storyline. Jesus sends his disciples out without money or provisions, making them dependent on strangers for food and shelter. Those who welcome them are promised divine reward; those that refuse them are warned that their judgment will be worse than Sodom’s.

The recurring pattern is easy to spot: the powerless stranger is secretly the divine judge. A god or rightful king appears in a lowly form, remains unrecognized, and allows people to expose their true character through how they treat him.

Circe’s Pigs

In Nolan’s film, the goddess Circe, played by Samantha Morton, entices Odysseus’s men with a feast. But the food does not satisfy them. Their hunger only intensifies until they are eating with a frantic, animal-like desperation.

The scene gradually takes on the atmosphere of a horror film. Circe then reveals her power and transforms the men into a herd of pigs.

Earlier, Odysseus and his crew sail across the sea and land in an unfamiliar foreign territory. He selects twelve men to explore the island, where they encounter the Cyclops: a savage, superhuman figure who lives outside civilization in a cave among his livestock.

Odysseus confronts the monster and asks him to respect the sacred laws of hospitality. The two exchange names, although Odysseus famously identifies himself as “Nobody.” After blinding the Cyclops, the men escape from his cave by hiding beneath his flock of sheep.

Scholar Dennis MacDonald argues that Mark’s story of the Gerasene demoniac draws upon both episodes, combining the terrifying outsider of the Cyclops story with Circe’s transformation of men into pigs. The parallels are striking.

Jesus, whose movement centers on twelve apostles, sails across the sea with his followers into foreign Gentile territory. There they encounter a savage, supernaturally powerful man who lives among burial caves, separated from society. Like the Cyclops, he is so dangerous that no one can restrain him.

Jesus demands his name. The man answers, “Legion, for we are many”—turning the exchange of names into a revelation of the many supernatural beings occupying his body.

Jesus casts the demons out, but he does not simply make them disappear. At their request, he allows them to enter a nearby herd of pigs. The animals then stampede down a steep bank and drown in the sea.

Mark’s story appears to recombine recognizable Homeric elements: a voyage across the sea, twelve companions, a savage figure living beyond civilization, an exchange of names, livestock used in the escape, and men transformed into pigs. MacDonald also sees wordplay in the names: Polyphemus can mean “many-voiced,” while Mark’s demon calls himself “Legion” because “we are many.”

Odysseus’s Scar

At the end of Nolan’s adaptation, we see Matt Damon as Odysseus abruptly pull his foot away when his nurse Eurycleia, played by Kate Fuglei, washes his feet. He’s still disguised as a beggar, but when she feels a scar on his leg from a boar attack in his youth, it instantly reveals he is her long-lost king.

This type of “recognition” scene was a common aspect of ancient drama. It’s called anagnorisis, or the dramatic moment when a character suddenly understands who the stranger really is—and everything in the story changes.

Aristotle discussed this literary device in chapter 16 of Poetics. He defined recognition as the dramatic movement from ignorance to knowledge. He even singled out Odysseus’s scar as a classic example of a character’s hidden identity being revealed through a bodily mark.

John’s Gospel uses the same literary device after the resurrection. Thomas refuses to believe that Jesus has returned unless he can see the nail marks in his hands and place his hand into the wound in his side. When Jesus displays them, Thomas finally recognizes him: “My Lord and my God.”

In The Odyssey, the scar proves that the apparent beggar is really Odysseus. In John, the wounds prove that the mysterious risen figure is the same Jesus who was crucified. Both returning heroes are recognized through the marks violence has left on their bodies.

New Testament scholar Kasper Bro Larsen opens his book, Recognizing the Stranger, with a section titled “Odysseus’ Scar and Jesus’ Wound Marks.” He argues that recognition scenes are among the most important and frequently repeated literary patterns in John’s Gospel. While Jesus’s wounds provide the most striking example, Larsen shows that characters repeatedly misunderstand his identity before suddenly recognizing him.

Mary Magdalene mistakes the resurrected Jesus for a gardener until he speaks her name. The disciples fail to recognize the stranger standing on the shore until a miraculous catch of fish reveals him to be Jesus. Nathanael initially dismisses him as merely a man from Nazareth, while the Samaritan woman gradually recognizes an unknown Jewish traveler as a prophet and Messiah.

In both stories, the reader already knows who the hidden hero is. That is the source of the dramatic irony: the audience watches someone speak to a husband, stranger, king, relative, or god without realizing who is standing before them. It's one of antiquity's favorite literary devices.

Both theoxeny and anagnorisis come together in the story of the Road to Emmaus. After the resurrection, Jesus joins two disciples as an unrecognized traveler, and they invite the apparent stranger to stay and share a meal.

Only when he breaks the bread do they recognize who has been sitting with them. Jesus then vanishes—the ordinary guest suddenly revealed as the risen Lord.

Even his sudden disappearance is a literary trope found in Greek myth as a device to show divinity. In The Odyssey, Athena repeatedly appears as an ordinary stranger and then flies away like a bird, revealing that the visitor was actually a god.

Omens and Foolish Men

The literary and mythical patterns connecting the story of Jesus, The Odyssey, and surrounding Greek myths are striking.

Odysseus’s return is announced by gods, prophets, dreams, and omens long before it occurs. Other prophecies warn characters of approaching danger. Aegisthus is warned by Hermes that murdering Agamemnon will bring about his own destruction, but he proceeds anyway and is eventually killed by Orestes.

In the underworld, the prophet Tiresias warns Odysseus not to harm the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. If his men kill them, their ship will be destroyed and none of them will survive. Nolan includes this episode in his adaptation.

Christian tradition holds that Jesus descended into Hades between his crucifixion and resurrection, entering the realm of the dead before returning to life. Odysseus likewise journeys into the underworld, where he encounters Agamemnon—played by Benny Safdie—speaks with the departed, receives revelations, and then returns to the living world.

Odysseus returns to find his starving crew eating the cattle. Eurylochus, played by Himesh Patel, insists they had no other choice. By defying the prophecy, the men bring about the destruction they were warned would come.

The Gospels use prophecy in much the same way. Jesus repeatedly predicts his betrayal, death, and resurrection, but his disciples resist or fail to understand him. They continue moving toward the very events he has foretold, making their confusion and opposition part of the divine script.

In both stories, prophecy heightens the drama by telling the audience what is coming before the characters understand it. We watch in suspense as they ignore warnings, make disastrous choices, and stumble toward the tragedy already foretold.

This pattern of stumbling into catastrophe runs throughout both the Gospels and The Odyssey. Jesus and Odysseus are hero figures who lead bands of men through danger, confronting monsters, demons, hostile rulers, and other powerful forces determined to stop them.

Yet their followers repeatedly become part of the problem. Their failures supply both comedy and tragedy: they misunderstand warnings, panic under pressure, disobey instructions, and make disastrous choices. This heightens the suspense while making the hero appear wiser, more powerful—and increasingly alone.

Himesh Patel’s Eurylochus serves as Odysseus’s second-in-command. In Nolan’s adaptation, he and the crew force Odysseus to remain behind while they search for food. Without their leader, they walk straight into Circe’s trap and are transformed into pigs.

Eurylochus repeatedly fails to trust Odysseus, ignoring him near the whirlpool and helping lead the crew toward ill-fated decisions. By the time the starving men slaughter the sacred cattle, their recklessness has made catastrophe feel almost inevitable.

Jesus’s disciples are similarly clumsy and, at times, panicked. They misunderstand his parables, resist his predictions of death, and fall asleep when he needs them most. One betrays him, another denies him, and after his arrest, the rest abandon him.

Homer establishes this characteristic from the poem’s opening lines, calling Odysseus’s men nēpioi—childish fools whose recklessness brings about their own destruction.

The Gods

One of the central gods in The Odyssey is Zeus, son of Cronus and ruler of the Olympians. Nolan’s characters repeatedly invoke “Zeus’s law,” while thunder and lightning signal the presence of divine power.

Greek mythology was filled with divine sons. Dionysus was the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Semele. Heracles and Perseus were likewise sons of Zeus and human mothers, while Asclepius was born to Apollo and the mortal Coronis.

By the time Matthew and Luke portrayed Jesus as the child of a human mother and divine father, the basic concept was already familiar across the Mediterranean world. The title “Son of God” would not have sounded new—it also carried important Jewish meanings connected to Israel’s kings and Messiah.

Learn more in the new book from leading cult reporter Be Scofield, The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

Poseidon, god of the sea, also plays an important role in Nolan’s adaptation. As the father of the Cyclops Polyphemus, he curses Odysseus and turns the sea itself against him.

Here we find another striking parallel with Jesus. Poseidon gave his sons the unique gift of being able to walk on water. In Astronomy, an ancient poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod and often dated to around 700 BCE, the giant hunter Orion is given the power to “walk upon the waves as though upon land.” Another son of Poseidon, the Argonaut Euphemus, was given the power to run across the gray sea, only getting the tips of his toes wet.

By the time the Gospel writers had Jesus walk on water, citizens of the ancient world were familiar with the idea.

Dionysus is briefly mentioned twice in The Odyssey. Among the Greek gods, he perhaps most closely resembles Jesus. Both are gods disguised as human—divine sons born to mortal women. They each perform wonders involving wine and bring judgment upon those who refuse to recognize them. In pre-Christian Dionysian traditions extending back centuries before Christianity, Dionysus was said to have been violently dismembered and later restored to life or resurrected. Their opponents also call both figures fraudulent.

Godlike Men

Being a divine son had a political meaning as well. Coins with the face of Caesar Augustus identified him as a “Son of God.” Augustus was also praised as lord, savior, and benefactor. The term gospel, or “good news,” was used for imperial announcements concerning Augustus, including decrees celebrating his birth and rule. Scholars have noted that Paul and Jesus’s early followers explicitly borrowed these titles over and against the Roman Empire.

Real rulers like Augustus had superhero biographies—it wasn’t only mythical characters. Alexander the Great’s birth story included magi long before Matthew’s story of Jesus. Plutarch says that on the same night Alexander was born, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus burst into flames. By morning, the local Magi were running through the streets crying out that the destroyer of Asia had been born. The omen pointed to Alexander’s future invasion of Persia and his violent conquering of the East.

In Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, scholar Richard C. Miller points to a wider cluster of shared heroic motifs between Jesus and Alexander. Both biographies establish an exalted lineage. Plutarch begins by linking Alexander to mythic royalty: “As for the lineage of Alexander, on his father’s side he was a descendant of Heracles through Caranus, and on his mother’s side a descendant of Aeacus through Neoptolemus.” Alexander is placed into the family tree of the Greek world’s greatest legendary heroes.

Matthew uses the same narrative device to open his Gospel. Its first line reads: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” With one sentence, Matthew places Jesus inside the two most important ancestral lines in Jewish memory. He then uses a curated list of patriarchs and kings to prove that his hero has the right credentials.

Miller cites other examples of striking similarities: both biographies surround the hero’s birth with divine parentage, place the human father in crisis over a supernatural pregnancy, and resolve that crisis through dreams or omens. Both also use proskynesis—ritual bowing before a ruler—to announce the arrival of a world king.

Plutarch reports traditions portraying Alexander as divinely conceived and connected to Zeus. His body supposedly released a supernatural sweetness, while his famous “melting glance” contributed to his superhuman image. Other writers claimed that the sea itself withdrew so Alexander and his army could pass along the coast of Pamphylia.

After Augustus died in 14 CE, the Roman Senate declared him divine. A senator swore that he had actually witnessed Augustus ascending to the gods, which echoed the ancient story of Romulus. His cult—already flourishing in parts of the Greek East during his lifetime—was supported by temples and priests, with sacrifices, festivals, and rituals across much of the empire. He provided early Christians with a powerful model and rival: a divine world ruler credited with saving humanity and bringing peace. Before Jesus, Augustus was perhaps the most worshipped person in existence.

The process of a mortal human transforming into a divine being was known as apotheosis. Whether through official decree, public worship, heavenly ascent, or stories of their bodies vanishing, certain figures such as exceptional rulers and heroes could achieve this divine status. Romulus and Augustus were among the most famous examples.

The Ancient Literary World

The Odyssey is almost one giant experiment in hospitality—it is one of the tale’s defining themes. Nolan’s adaptation makes the motif feel immediate and dangerous: every time the crew reaches a new shore, the viewer waits anxiously to discover whether the strangers will be welcomed, deceived, or attacked.

The same is true of the Gospels, particularly Luke. People’s homes, roads, and dinner tables become moral testing grounds where people reveal themselves through how they receive Jesus and his emissaries. Those who offer hospitality are given blessings and salvation, while rejection brings judgment.

One poignant example comes when Jesus enters the home of Simon the Pharisee. Simon offers him no water for his feet, no welcoming kiss, and no oil for his head. An unnamed woman performs the neglected acts instead, turning Simon’s failed hospitality into a literary device that elevates the social outsider above one of Jesus’s religious rivals.

That resembles the hospitality scenes in The Odyssey, where the treatment of a vulnerable visitor exposes the host’s true character. Polyphemus and the suitors violate the sacred rules, while Eumaeus and the Phaeacians fulfill them.

In Nolan’s adaptation, Odysseus and his crew refer to this sacred obligation as “Zeus’s law.” It hangs over the entire story, shaping their choices and, at times, haunting their consciences.

Aristotle also identified another central device of ancient storytelling: the “scene of suffering,” or pathos. “The Scene of Suffering is a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like,” he writes in the Poetics. Such scenes filled Homeric epic and Greek tragedy, carefully arranged to evoke pity, fear, horror, and awe.

The educated, Greek-speaking Gospel writers belonged to a world steeped in these spectacles of suffering. Audiences knew Philoctetes crying out from the agony of his festering wound, Heracles writhing inside a poisoned robe, Pentheus being torn apart, and Prometheus chained and tormented for defying Zeus. They also knew of Oedipus blinding himself and emerging covered in blood, and Ajax falling upon his sword after humiliation and madness.

When constructing the execution of Jesus—what Christians call the Passion—the Gospel writers likely drew upon both this Greek dramatic world and Jewish traditions of righteous martyrs. They transformed a Roman execution into an extended spectacle of betrayal, abandonment, and mockery that contained whipping, bodily torment, lamentation, and death.

These were well-established literary tools for revealing a hero’s character and overwhelming the audience with things like pity and grief or fear and admiration. Through this lens, the Passion is a carefully staged “scene of suffering” designed to give his death its maximum emotional and theological force.

Aristotle placed the scene of suffering alongside another powerful literary device: peripeteia, or reversal. This is the moment when the action suddenly turns into its opposite—when apparent victory becomes defeat, or disgrace becomes triumph. He gives an example: “Lynceus is being led away to his death, and Danaus goes with him, meaning to slay him; but the outcome of the preceding incidents is that Danaus is killed and Lynceus saved.”

The Passion of the Christ features this dramatic reversal. Jesus is mocked as a king and condemned as a criminal. He is abandoned and crucified. Then he is killed. The resurrection overturns every apparent aspect of this scene: the criminal is revealed as the rightful ruler, defeat becomes a victory, shame is turned into glory, and death becomes the path to immortality. Those who thought they were judging Jesus are recast as the people who will one day be judged by him.

Imagine the emotional release: the reader is carried from a bloody, tortured body to a divine revelation. What looked like catastrophe is unveiled as spiritual triumph.

The Empty Tomb

In the story of Iphigenia, a young woman appears to be sacrificed but mysteriously vanishes from sight and is transported to another land. Aristotle summarizes the plot in the Poetics, saying that she “disappeared unseen” from those sacrificing her.

In a popular version of the story Iphigenia did not die but was transformed by Artemis into the goddess Hecate. Other Greek communities honored her as a heroine.

Iphigenia belongs to a recurring ancient pattern that scholar Richard C. Miller calls the “translation fable”—using translation in its older sense of being transferred or carried away. These stories often involve a body vanishing at the moment of death, an empty resting place or tomb, or the missing person later appearing alive. The missing body often functioned as evidence of apotheosis—the elevation of a mortal into divine status. The person had been removed from the human world and carried into the realm of the gods.

The Odyssey has no empty tomb, yet its entire plot begins with an absent body—a missing king. Odysseus has vanished without a corpse or a grave. There was no reliable account of his death. After twenty years away, he “miraculously” returns alive to a world that has begun treating him as dead.

Professor Robyn Faith Walsh notes that scholars have identified over one-hundred translation fables, many of which are documented in Miller’s Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity. These stories of missing bodies and divine figures vanishing were common literary conventions used to impart divine status on a character.

One of the most famous was the story of Romulus, Rome’s legendary founder. Born to the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia and supposedly fathered by the god Mars, Romulus later vanished during a violent storm. With no body recovered, the Romans were told that their king had been taken up among the gods.

Romulus then appeared to Julius Proculus as he traveled along a road. Proculus publicly swore a sacred oath that he had seen the missing king in shining armor and that Romulus had announced his return to heaven. The Romans accepted the testimony and worshipped Romulus as the god Quirinus.

The story of Aristeas, recorded by the fifth-century BCE historian Herodotus, substitutes an empty room for an empty tomb. Aristeas entered a textile shop in Proconnesus and suddenly died. The owner closed the shop and went to notify his relatives.

Yet a traveler insisted that he had just encountered Aristeas alive on the road and spoken with him. When the family arrived carrying everything needed for the burial and opened the shop, the body had completely vanished. Seven years later, Aristeas reportedly returned to the city, composed a poem, and disappeared again.

Another poignant example is that of Cleomedes of Astypalaea. He was a historical figure—an athlete who competed in the Olympic Games around 492 BCE. After killing an opponent during a boxing match, he was denied the victory and reportedly descended into madness. He later destroyed a school filled with children and fled from the enraged townspeople.

Cleomedes took refuge inside a large chest in a sanctuary of Athena and pulled the lid shut. When the townspeople finally smashed it open, they found no one inside—“neither alive nor dead.”

Confused by the vanished body, they consulted the Oracle of Delphi. The oracle declared Cleomedes the “last of the heroes” and ordered the people to honor him with sacrifices because he was “no longer mortal.” From then on, he was worshipped as a hero.

Another ancient missing-body story involves Alcmene, the mother of Heracles. Plutarch reports that as her body was being carried out for burial, it suddenly vanished. When the mourners examined the funeral platform, they found a heavy stone lying where her corpse had been.

One tradition says Zeus ordered Hermes to carry Alcmene to the Islands of the Blessed and replace her body with the stone. The missing corpse signaled that she had escaped ordinary death and been transported into a divine realm.

These are only a few examples. Ancient literature was filled with stories of vanished bodies, empty “tombs,” and missing corpses—narrative signs that the dead had become divine.

Writing Jesus

The Gospel writers crafted the story of Jesus within a world deeply shaped by epic works such as The Odyssey. As educated Greek writers, they would have learned the language through exercises that included copying, memorizing, and reciting Homer and other canonical authors. They wrote within a “cinematic universe” filled with hidden gods, dangerous voyages, divine sons, miraculous births, wonder-working heroes, and mortals carried into heaven. They also used the familiar dramatic machinery of ancient literature: recognition, reversal, prophecy, dramatic irony, and carefully staged scenes of suffering.

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey helps modern audiences see the literary and mythic world in which the Gospels were written. Once we recognize its patterns, the Gospels look like some of antiquity’s most ambitious narrative creations: polished, purposeful, and carefully constructed to reveal their hero as the divine ruler of the world.

Learn more in the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer by leading cult reporter Be Scofield.

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

Isha Foundation Inc., Sadhguru’s U.S. nonprofit branch, reported $190.6 million in assets at the end of 2024 — up from $57.5 million in 2020. If its recent growth continued, the American organization is now likely worth more than $200 million. It also held nearly $60 million in cash at the end of 2024—profiting $30 million that year alone. If that cash-growth pattern continues, its cash reserves could approach $120 million by the end of 2026.

And that is only the U.S.; the India branch dwarfs the American by three or four times.

Isha began in India in the early 1990s. Its Coimbatore headquarters, Isha Yoga Center, ashram, and Adiyogi complex have become major pilgrimage and tourism hubs. As many as 8 million people reportedly visit the center and Adiyogi complex each year—a number that drastically outsizes Isha’s U.S. activities. Its annual Mahashivratri celebration draws crowds in the hundreds of thousands, with official reserved seating tiers ranging from about $5 to $525.

Given the massive scale of Isha’s India operation, the U.S. branch may represent only a fraction of Sadhguru’s global enterprise. With dozens of Isha entities and centers around the world, paid programs, expensive spiritual merchandise, and Sadhguru’s personal wealth, the worldwide Isha ecosystem could plausibly be worth close to $1 billion.

But the public has no consolidated balance sheet for Sadhguru’s empire. In the United States, nonprofits like the Isha Foundation have to file public Form 990 tax returns—in India, such disclosure is not required. Sadhguru, widely marketed as a humanitarian and spiritual leader, has not publicly released the value of Isha worldwide or his personal net worth.

What we do know is how much of this empire was built by unpaid labor.

Sadhguru created Isha largely by convincing idealistic followers that working for him was service to the cosmic mission of “raising human consciousness.” Isha says it has 4,600 full-time volunteers, and its website has boasted of 18 million volunteers worldwide. “We worked for no money every single day,” a former staff member named Drew told me. Sadhguru had convinced his followers that if they worked for him, they were saving the world.

In 2024, only about 5 percent of Isha’s U.S. revenue was distributed as grants: $2.56 million in foreign grants and just $21,499 in domestic grants. And even “grants” is opaque. The filing does not clearly show whether that money went to direct charity, Isha-linked entities, or some other purpose. It is also unclear what percentage of Isha’s India-side or global revenue goes to conventional charitable aid.

And despite Isha’s immense reserves, Sadhguru continues to ask followers for more.

One of the clearest examples is Ishanga, Isha’s tithe-like program, where followers give 7 percent of their annual income to Isha. Sadhguru heavily pushes this initiative. In a remarkable video on the Ishanga page titled “Establish a Bond of Grace with Sadhguru,” he tells followers that living with 7 percent less income will actually help their spiritual growth.

“This is not about me taking your 7%,” he says. “Do I look so incompetent that I have to sit and collect 7% tax from you? I’m not made like that. If I want, I will make what I want.”

Then he explains the real purpose of the tithe: spiritual transformation.

“If you reduce it at least by 7%, we can do something else with you,” he says. “This is a simple device for you to breach the boundary of what is me and what is mine… to breach the boundaries of who you are so that something far bigger than you becomes a part of your life.”

This is a form of spiritualized extraction—give up your money, and the master’s grace enters your life. Keep it, and you remain trapped in the small world of “me” and “mine.”

The dynamic is reminiscent of the Mormon Church, which built vast wealth while requiring members to tithe 10 percent of their income. In 2023, the SEC fined the church and its investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisers, $5 million after finding that they used shell companies to obscure a stock portfolio that had grown to about $32 billion by 2018. Later reporting and whistleblower allegations suggested the church’s total reserves may exceed $100 billion.

For many former and questioning Mormons, the scandal was that everyday believers had been urged to sacrifice income and savings while leaders quietly accumulated vast tax-exempt wealth.

Isha now faces the same question.

Sadhguru’s organization has over $100 million in cash and may be worth $1 billion in total, but he really needs 7% of the incomes of his ordinary followers. What is all this money being used for? And do the followers know?

He tells a group of followers that with 7% less income, they will be better able to achieve spiritual growth.

Isha highlights charitable projects it has started or inspired—rural schools, tree planting, soil campaigns, river campaigns, and rural health care. But these projects appear to operate through their own ecosystems: separate entities, staff, budgets, donation portals, corporate sponsors, government partnerships, and volunteer networks. Isha’s rural healthcare or mobile health clinic page thanks corporate donors including Hero FinCorp, New India Assurance, and CG Power and Industrial Solutions Limited.

As noted, Isha U.S. alone profited $30 million in 2024, with only $2.56 million given in the opaque category of “grants.” That’s only 5%—and it’s unclear if these are even charitable givings.

A guru-led organization can receive the reputational benefits of charity without funding those projects from its own reserves. Sadhguru can point to schools and trees or soil campaigns as proof of Isha’s public service, while the funding comes from separate donors, corporations, or even government programs. It doesn’t mean that Sadhguru or Isha funds these charitable operations.

Selling the Divine

Donations and tithing are a significant percentage of Isha’s millions—but Sadhguru also sells divine merchandise.

He sells access to the divine feminine in the form of the Bhairavi Mukha, a 20-inch copper plate for $3,333. It is “an overpowering presence of the divine feminine,” the sales page states. “It’s an opportunity for every devotee to connect with Devi through this powerful form and experience her Grace.”

Former followers of Sadhguru report buying $18,000 yantras sold by Sadhguru. They supposedly act “like antennas to the main source of energy, which is the main temple in the India ashram,” a former monk told me. “The Sannidhi has a miraculous impact on the internal and external well-being of all who come within its sphere,” Sadhguru claims.

The special Avingha Yantra pricing is $1,100 when you sign up for the Avingha Yantra Sadhana weekend for $8,600. “The Avighna Yantra creates a powerful presence of Devi and consecrates the home or office, enabling all to bask in her Grace,” his site states. “The [Avingha] sadhana helps to lubricate your actions with Devi’s Grace, so that you can enhance your business and personal or spiritual life to its full potential.”

The real sales gimmick is “consecrated” products—things that either Sadhguru or the gods bless.

A small consecrated gold pendant costs $1,777. Other consecrated pendants range from $199 to $1,555. He also sells a consecrated Rudraksha bead for $395. You can purchase them elsewhere for $1 to $50. A gold snake ring will set you back as much as $1,900. “This consecrated gold snake ring brings stability to the body and foundational support for your sadhana,” the page states. “Simple yet profoundly effective, it’s your companion for opening to higher possibilities.” The “Ambiance of Grace” gift set, consisting of a small oil lamp and a mini Dhyanalinga Yantra, costs $444.

Sadhguru also sells a 2.5 ft tall “consecrated” aluminum statue of Adiyogi for $10,000. “Each statue is consecrated to create a certain reverberation in your home or office,” the sales page states. “The statue will be a powerful reminder of the higher possibilities within a human being and orient oneself towards that goal.”

He also sells shampoo, incense, herbal jams, skincare products, backpacks, bangles, and bracelets.

There’s more. Sadhguru also sells photos of his feet.

In October 2024, Sadhguru attracted criticism for selling photos of his feet for $100. The sales page says the photo is “a powerful medium to strengthen your connection with Sadhguru.” He also sells impressions of his feet for $1000. "Bring Sadhguru’s presence home with a Sadhguru Sannidhi pada yantra," Isha Foundation stated in an Instagram post. The 2 ft x 2 ft yantras are crafted from stone, brass, or mercury and have impressions of his feet on them. The yantra "creates a powerful energy within one’s home that significantly enhances one’s progress on the spiritual path," according to Sadhguru.

To travel with him on the 13-day Kailash sojourn to the Himalayas, it costs $58,000 US dollars. Other trips range from $3,000 to $7,000 but only include a one-time meeting with Sadhguru. Isha's annual Mahashivratri festival brings in tens of millions of dollars. Some spend thousands on tickets to the 4-day festival, which sees an in-person attendance of hundreds of thousands. Millions tune into the livestream.

A Religious “Nonprofit”

Public tax records show Sadhguru has built a massive spiritual empire through tax-exempt donations, paid programs, expensive spiritual merchandise, and millions of hours of unpaid labor. The U.S. wing alone reported nearly $100 million in land, buildings, and equipment—up from about $22 million in 2020. Globally, Isha and Sadhguru’s ecosystem could plausibly be worth close to $1 billion when its Indian ashram, Adiyogi complex, real estate, international centers, his net worth, and related entities are taken into account.

With this amount of wealth, why are the people running Isha still working for free? And why is Sadhguru still asking ordinary followers to give 7 percent of their income?

Despite being lauded as a humanitarian leader, Sadhguru has never publicly released a consolidated accounting of how much Isha is worth worldwide or how much of its wealth actually funds charity. Isha points to charitable programs, but separate donors fund them. While Isha enjoys a humanitarian halo, the public remains in the dark about the full checkbook.

What the filings do show is that Sadhguru appears far more invested in building a “yogic” city in Tennessee than in operating a conventional charity. For years, Isha has been expanding its McMinnville center with new buildings, apartments, studios, retreat infrastructure, and land. He envisions tens of thousands living there. It’s clear he’s interested in building institutional power—not proper charity.

If Sadhguru avoided heavily pushing a 7 percent tithe, soliciting donations worldwide, relying on unpaid labor, and marketing himself as a humanitarian, perhaps there would be less reason for scrutiny. But when a guru-led nonprofit accumulates hundreds of millions in visible and probable assets while asking followers to surrender income and labor in the name of grace, scrutiny is warranted. The valid question is who funds Isha’s charitable projects and how much do they contribute to them? How much have they profited while still asking followers for significant contributions and basking in the public perception of being humanitarian?

What this investigation reveals is a troubling loophole in the nonprofit world: a religious or spiritual organization can raise enormous sums in the name of public charity while retaining most of the money for its own power and expansion.

READ THE SERIES:

• Part I: Inside Sadhguru’s Cult Empire

• Part II: Unmasking Sadhguru’s Legacy of Abuse

• What Happened to Sadhguru’s Wife? - Did Sadhguru’s wife die from enlightenment, as he claims, or was it foul play?

• Why Sadhguru Never Mentions His Yoga Teacher - Sadhguru studied with a yoga teacher for years in the 1980s, rebranded his system as his own, and never gave credit.

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer. I have a Master of Divinity from the Graduate Theological Union, and I’m a relative of C.I. Scofield, author of the Scofield Bible. CONTACT: bescofieldreporter @ gmail.com

Imagine trying to study David Koresh critically, only to discover that most of the leading experts on him were believers, ministers and bishops in his movement, or people still “wrestling” with their faith. Imagine trying to sort fact from fiction when so many of the authority figures remain committed to rescuing the “real Koresh” from the abuses of the Branch Davidians. Or when they have deconstructed nearly everything about his movement yet still speak of his unique spiritual greatness. You would reasonably wonder whether the field had ever achieved enough distance from its subject to evaluate him with the same moral scrutiny applied to other charismatic leaders.

This is what it often feels like trying to study Jesus objectively. The field is dominated by “cheerleaders” for Jesus. Discourse is shaped by people who love him or, in the very least, admire him. “Modern scholarship teaches that Jesus was all good,” notes Professor Hector Avalos. Most New Testament scholarship comes from seminaries, divinity schools, denominational universities, and theological faculties—and some academic institutions still require confessional statements of faith. And the supposedly critical historical scholars? Nearly all of them have been Christian.

Take Elaine Pagels, for example—author of the bestselling alternative classic The Gnostic Gospels. She attends church and serves on the vestry—the governing board—of an Episcopal parish. “This church is increasing in membership…there is a lot of activity,” she states excitedly. Consider just ten of the most influential New Testament or Christian scholars of the modern era. Most are celebrated as liberal or critical voices, yet nearly all were ordained ministers, priests, bishops, or lifelong Christians.

• Dale C. Allison Jr. → Ordained Presbyterian minister.

• John Dominic Crossan → Former Catholic priest.

• Raymond E. Brown → Catholic priest.

• John Shelby Spong → Episcopal bishop.

• Marcus Borg → Canon Theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

• Albert Schweitzer → Ordained Lutheran minister.

• N. T. Wright → Ordained Church of England priest and former Bishop of Durham.

• Rudolf Bultmann → Lutheran theologian.

• Walter Brueggemann → Ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

• James D. G. Dunn → Ordained Methodist minister

The same pattern extends beyond academia. The majority of the most prominent deconstructionist expert influencers online, such as Dan McClellan, April Ajoy, Kevin Carnahan, and John Fugelsang, identify as Christian. The love for Jesus also extends into the New Age world, where he is routinely defended as an ascended master, awakened sage, or spiritual prophet.

This is all happening inside a country still saturated with Christianity: most Americans identify as Christian, Christians make up 87 percent of the current Congress, and nearly every U.S. president has been affiliated with Christianity.

Enter Bart Ehrman—the famous atheist critical scholar of Jesus and Christianity and a best-selling author. Certainly he can save us from this debacle.

“I sometimes call myself a Christian atheist,” Ehrman recently told Sojourners in an interview titled “Bart Ehrman on Following Jesus as an Atheist.”

Drat.

“I do try to follow the teachings of Jesus,” Ehrman said. He told skeptic Michael Shermer something similar: “I resonate closely with the Christian tradition I was raised in. There are moral values that Christianity preaches that I subscribe to.”

Like most Jesus scholars, that tradition has shaped him deeply. Ehrman’s intellectual path ran through Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton College, and Princeton Theological Seminary. He has written openly about his years as a committed Christian, his ministerial training, preaching, and his later loss of faith.

I haven’t personally explored mythicism, the field that questions the evidence for Jesus’s existence, in any great depth, such as Richard Carrier has. But it’s painfully obvious he’s doing the equivalent of questioning the integrity of David Koresh in a field full of his ministers, bishops, believers, and admirers. It’s impossible for him to operate on anything like neutral ground when the very people adjudicating the debate have spent their lives protecting the sacred aura of the figure under investigation.

Ehrman “resonating closely” with Christianity and referring to himself as a “Christian atheist” who follows Jesus can’t be separated from his wildly exaggerated claims: “We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period” or that the evidence is “astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.” Pick three figures—Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Herod the Great—and you’ll quickly see how inflated the claim is. For all three we have coins, inscriptions, monuments, hostile and friendly literary sources, geopolitical consequences, named successors, administrative traces, and material evidence tied to cities, wars, dynasties, and state power. Jesus left none of this.

The field of “Jesus studies” is filled with apologists of all theological stripes who share the same goal: protecting and embellishing Jesus. I can’t think of any major critical scholar—from James Tabor and Elaine Pagels to Marcus Borg and Dale Allison—who has ever criticized Jesus despite him running a controversial and destructive cult-like movement. Even the feminist theologians I studied with during my Master of Divinity could analyze the church, doctrine, and the Bible through a lens of coercive power, but Jesus remained sacrosanct.

A comment left for me by a spiritual new-age Christian accurately describes the state of the field at large: “I can critique David, Abraham, and Moses, but Jesus? What is there to critique about HIM? You’re teetering on some dangerous ground.” This perspective serves as the de facto background for most anyone in the field.

“It has been a relatively recent development that people were motivated to go into the field or welcomed into the field if they weren’t themselves practicing,” notes scholar Robyn Faith Walsh regarding the inclusion of nonbelievers in New Testament studies. For most of its history, the field developed within institutions shaped by the church, where theological commitments often influenced who could teach and publish.

David Friedrich Strauss learned this lesson when his critical nineteenth-century Life of Jesus scandalized Protestant Germany and cost him his university appointment. Just imagine Life of Koresh causing scandal and mayhem. More recently, New Testament scholar Mike Licona was forced out of his teaching position after suggesting that Matthew’s account of the resurrected saints may have been apocalyptic symbolism rather than literal history. Even today, crossing certain theological lines can carry professional consequences.

It seems no one in the field wants to engage the fully human Jesus—which is, after all, half of the orthodox view. Yet that figure—the flawed, unstable, complex, troubled, and perhaps mentally ill man beneath the theology—is far more interesting than the polished icon scholars keep rescuing.

When you get beyond the embellishment, the neat story of an impoverished wandering saint dispensing universal love falls away. What emerges instead is a portrait of a charismatic guru strategically connected to wealth, patrons, and elite figures; a man who exploited people’s labor, imposed draconian ethics, threatened catastrophic judgment, and often showed reckless disregard for those in his orbit.

Inventing Jesus’s Ethics

This brings us to Bart Ehrman’s new book Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West. It is a deeply generous portrait of Jesus—one best understood through Ehrman’s lens that he “resonates closely with the Christian tradition.”

It is clear that Ehrman’s lifelong attachment to Jesus has not disappeared. His redeemer has evolved, but Jesus remains a kind of savior. No longer the divine figure who rescues humanity from sin, Jesus becomes the secular figure who rescues the West from moral darkness. “Jesus, in the end, transformed the moral conscience of the West,” Ehrman concludes. It is difficult to imagine a grander historical compliment. Jesus is credited not merely with influencing society but also with reshaping the ethical conscience of Western civilization. He remains humanity’s great moral benefactor.

Ehrman, like the Christian tradition he inherited, fails to consider whether Jesus’s actions and words or lack of words may have had damaging consequences for the West—something explored below. Nor does he offer an interrogation of Jesus’s ethics, conduct, or character. Instead, the book reads as a kind of secular devotional: a way to celebrate his savior in new language.

This tendency extends well beyond Ehrman. Christians and Christian-trained scholars often inherit interpretive habits they no longer recognize as assumptions. Certain readings of Jesus become so familiar that they cease to feel like interpretations at all. A particularly revealing example is Ehrman’s treatment of the two passages most often presented as the foundation of Jesus’s ethics: the Sermon on the Mount and the Sheep and the Goats. Reading them through the inherited Christian lens, he bypasses the immediate narrative and historical context—a context that fundamentally changes what Jesus is doing in both passages.

Sheep and the Goats

In Love Thy Stranger, Ehrman cites the well-known Sheep and the Goats passage in Matthew 25 to illustrate Jesus’s loving ethics. He describes how Jesus says that people of all nations will be judged by whether they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the foreigner, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, and visited those in prison. In interviews he’s called these ideas central to Jesus’s message. The righteous “sheep” inherit the kingdom because they cared for people in need; the unrighteous “goats” are condemned to hell because they failed to do so.

Ehrman, like the Christian tradition he still reveres, misreads this passage by wrongly assuming Jesus was referring to the hungry and sick within society at large. This interpretation portrays the passage as being widely applicable and illuminates Jesus as morally exemplary. But Jesus was actually saying that those who help his disciples will inherit the kingdom, even using a term he specifically reserved for them.

The list Jesus provides maps seamlessly onto the vulnerabilities of his itinerant missionaries as they traveled. Every item Jesus mentions corresponds to a danger or deprivation that his own emissaries were explicitly told to expect.

• Hungry and thirsty → disciples sent out without provisions, dependent on others for food and drink.

• Stranger → traveling emissaries needing hospitality and lodging.

• Naked → men sent without an extra tunic or adequate clothing.

• Sick → exposed and exhausted followers traveling without stable support.

• Imprisoned → Jesus told his men they’d be jailed because of the mission.

Jesus actually uses a term that he reserved for his followers: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” As Professor Denny Burk notes, the term “my brothers” appears elsewhere in Matthew, and in each case it refers specifically to Jesus’s disciples sent into the world to preach the gospel. In Matthew 12:50, Jesus points to his disciples and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers.” In Matthew 28:10, after the resurrection, he tells the women, “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee.”

The phrase “least of these” also has a precedent of referring to disciples in Matthew. Jesus uses a similar phrase, “these little ones,” and promises reward to anyone who gives them even a cup of cold water “because he is a disciple.”

A plain reading of the text, stripped of any “Jesus glow,” reveals a straightforward explanation. “I was a stranger and you invited me in” is a statement about his own representatives—not humanity at large. How you treat my emissaries is how you treat me. He told the public that if they fed his guys, he’d let them into the kingdom. If the public ignored them, he’d send them to hell. Those who mistreated them “will go away into eternal punishment,” he said, but the “righteous ones will go into eternal life.”

Jesus’s earlier use of the same type of hellish threats to protect his disciples provides further evidence that he was referring to them in the Sheep and the Goats passage. In Matthew 18:6, Jesus states, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Jesus’s “judgment ethic” overwhelmingly focuses on those who reject him, his message, or his disciples. He was not in the business of issuing sweeping moral judgments on humanity as such; his threats of punishment were aimed at people who refused the apocalyptic movement he represented.

Why would Ehrman—and others who, like him, “resonate closely with the Christian tradition”—ever feel the need to question the foundational passages behind Jesus’s ethical reputation? These are the passages that tradition has proclaimed to be true for centuries.

Sermon on the Mount

Read within the flow of Matthew’s narrative, the Sermon on the Mount exposes another remarkable blind spot in Ehrman’s interpretation. In Love Thy Stranger, he cites the sermon as the clearest expression of Jesus’s ethic of love. But the context points somewhere very different.

Jesus is speaking to his own disciples—men he has called to an exhausting and dangerous mission. They have abandoned their livelihoods and will soon be sent throughout Galilee without provisions, dependent on strangers for food, shelter, and protection. As we have just seen, the Sheep and the Goats passage functions as a promise of reward for those who care for these vulnerable emissaries who were at risk of being hungry, thirsty, sick, naked, strangers, and imprisoned. And it was a warning of judgment for those who refuse them.

The Sermon on the Mount comes earlier in Matthew, yet it maps just as naturally onto the same mission. What the Christian tradition has celebrated for centuries as history’s greatest ethical discourse reads instead like a field manual for an itinerant apocalyptic movement. Ehrman, following the inherited interpretation, never seriously considers that possibility.

The “brilliant” ethical teachings found in the sermon lose their shine when exposed as instructions to address specific hazards and dangers his disciples would encounter as they traversed a hostile and hierarchical, Roman-occupied world. “Turn the other cheek” was not some uniquely profound ethic for humanity; it was advice to survive hostile encounters with people who could hurt you. “If anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, give your cloak as well” was not universal ethical wisdom; it was advice to avoid extended conflict over property. “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” reflected the reality that Roman soldiers could conscript civilians to carry military equipment. “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” was not societal economic advice; it was a warning not to escalate dangerous demands over money or possessions.

Just read the notorious “Eye for Eye” sequence in Matthew 7:38-42 that contains the famous “turn the other cheek.” It is a series of real-world concerns: being slapped, being sued for your tunic, being demanded money, and being forced to walk a mile. Later in the sermon, Jesus tells them, “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court.” The burden is on Ehrman to show how these were meant beyond the immediate needs of Jesus’s men.

To a neutral outsider reading the sermon, these are evidently benign instructions, but Ehrman describes them as an “amazing collection of Jesus’ teachings.” It’s clear the Christian tradition has trained him to see a moral radiance for what amounts to tactical advice.

Jesus warns his men just a few chapters later of these dangers that the sermon is preparing them for: “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves… Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me.”

“Turn the other cheek and live to see another day” is the practical message behind Jesus’s instructions. He’s telling them to not resist the powerful in ways that could get you beaten, arrested, sued, or killed. He’s giving strategies to a band of itinerant men—not delivering an ethical treatise for all of humanity.

The rest of the sermon fits the same pattern. “Do not store up treasures” makes sense for men embracing the simplicity of an itinerant mission. Commands about lust, adultery, anger, and reconciliation help regulate conduct and preserve order within the movement. “Love your enemies” and blessings on those persecuted “on my account” are explicitly addressed to followers who would face hostility because of Jesus.

Ehrman’s reliance on the Good Samaritan also does less work than he thinks, even though he places the story near the center of the Western urge toward modern humanitarianism. The parable functions largely as a polemic against religious authority: the priest and Levite are made to look morally bankrupt for ignoring a wounded man, while the despised Samaritan does what they refuse to do. Jesus is staging a status reversal and shaming rival religious figures, not developing a systematic ethic of “love thy stranger.” Overall, the evidence that Jesus universalized neighbor love beyond Jews is thinner than Ehrman admits, yet his thesis depends heavily on that claim. As Hector Avalos has pointed out, enemy-love traditions also existed in other ancient cultures, including Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources, long before Jesus.

Creating the Ethical Superhero

What I’m claiming is quite extraordinary: Jesus’s most famous ethical teachings became “ethical teachings” through the creative work of the Christian tradition. The Church took practical field instructions for Jesus’s disciples, along with mafia-like threats against those who refused to feed, clothe, shelter, or visit his emissaries, and transformed them into the centerpiece of Western moral philosophy.

There is a precedent for this kind of theological expansion. Christianity has a long history of developing ideas far beyond their original textual setting.

• Doctrine of the Trinity → emerged through centuries of theological reflection and doctrinal conflict.

• Original sin → developed most fully through Augustine after centuries of earlier evolution.

• Messianic prophecy → reread Israel’s scriptures as if they were secretly pointing to Jesus all along.

• Atonement → developed multiple theories to explain how Jesus’s death “saves” humanity.

• Hell → expanded scattered biblical images into a full doctrine of eternal punishment.

• Satan → transformed a sparse biblical figure into the cosmic enemy of God.

• The Church → turned a small apocalyptic Jesus movement into a universal institution claiming divine authority.

• Mary → elevated from Jesus’s mother to Theotokos, perpetual virgin, sinless intercessor, and Queen of Heaven.

We even have the story of Junia, the woman Paul appears to identify as “prominent among the apostles.” Later Christian tradition, uncomfortable with a female apostle, gradually masculinized her into “Junias”—changing her name and gender to male. The Church could not tolerate a woman occupying that level of authority.

The Messianic Secret functions in a similar way. Christians offer a generous interpretation: Jesus knows he is the messiah but hides it until the proper time. A neutral outsider, however, would see this as Mediterranean storytelling. As scholar Robyn Faith Walsh notes, it resembles the heroic hiddenness found in literature like Homer, where identity is concealed, staged, misunderstood, and finally revealed at the right dramatic moment. While the Church called it a divine mystery, it’s best described as a plot function.

The Christian tradition has repeatedly taken localized texts and isolated passages, then elevated them into sweeping theological and philosophical systems. In this context, turning Jesus’s field instructions into timeless ethical philosophy fits the pattern. It is one more example of a familiar Christian instinct to turn the particular into the universal.

Ehrman can see through many of these other Christian constructions, but when the same process applies to Jesus’s ethical reputation, he loses his critical lens. The one thing Jesus apologists cannot do is subject Jesus himself—his character, conduct, motives, and moral legacy—to the same deconstructive scrutiny they apply everywhere else. The inherited script about Jesus’s exemplary moral character remains intact.

So where does the thesis of Love Thy Stranger stand if its source for Jesus’s ethics has been compromised? Ehrman says the Sheep and Goats passage is “central” to Jesus’s message. He expands, “You have a passage where Jesus promotes the idea that salvation comes to those who feed the hungry, who visit the lonely, who take care of those in need; that’s what brings them into the Kingdom.”

Jesus, however, said salvation came to those who fed his own disciples—not to those who fed the hungry in general. This realization shatters any sort of morally luminous ethical teaching Ehrman hopes to draw from this passage. The Church lifted this and the sermon out of their original context and repackaged them as timeless humanitarian wisdom.

Elite Networks

The interpretive habits that the Christian tradition instills in scholars like Ehrman create walls around what they can examine. The “Jesus ate with sinners” trope has become so morally polished that it blocks further inquiry into his associations. Ehrman treats these scenes as self-evident proof of compassion: Jesus crossed boundaries, welcomed the excluded, and loved those rejected by respectable society. “Jesus’s goal is to lead sinners to repent and return to God,” he writes.

But removed from the “Jesus glow,” these associations may have served strategic functions for the movement—not unlike cult leaders such as Jim Jones or Keith Raniere recruiting powerful and wealthy people. Ehrman’s inherited tradition would never seek to uncover such motives.

Consider the network around Jesus. Matthew, a tax collector, immediately hosts a dinner with other tax collectors—a major networking opportunity inside a despised but financially connected class. This group had access to things like money, intel, homes, and other people with resources. The apologist reading is that Jesus was comforting the marginalized. Yet he was also moving through a world of useful contacts.

Joanna, one of Jesus’s female patrons, was married to Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household, placing the movement near political power and elite information. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were both connected to the Jewish ruling council, bringing Jesus near the Sanhedrin’s world of legal and religious authority. Zacchaeus was a wealthy chief tax collector. Even the centurion whose servant Jesus heals represents contact with Roman military power.

Jesus also had a close relationship with Mary of Bethany, Lazarus, and Martha—a household that repeatedly hosted him. Mary possessed a jar of perfume worth about a year’s wages or tens of thousands in today’s dollars, and she poured it on Jesus. When the disciples object that they could have sold it and given the money to the poor, Jesus defends the extravagance. He tells them, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

• Matthew/Levi → tax collector with access to other tax collectors and financially connected networks.

• Zacchaeus → wealthy chief tax collector.

• Joanna → financial patron married to Chuza, manager of Herod’s household.

• Nicodemus → Pharisee and Jewish ruling-council figure.

• Joseph of Arimathea → wealthy council member with access to a private tomb.

• Centurion → Roman military officer whose servant Jesus heals.

• Mary, Martha, and Lazarus → Bethany household that repeatedly hosts Jesus.

• Mary of Bethany → possesses perfume worth about a year’s wages and pours it on Jesus.

• Unnamed disciple “known to the high priest” → connected enough to enter the priestly courtyard.

• Upper-room owner in Jerusalem → property-owning supporter with a furnished room available for Passover.

Don’t these elite associations seem odd for a supposed peasant spiritual revolutionary?

Luke tells us that women such as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and “many others” supported Jesus and his followers financially out of their own resources. These stories reveal a movement with access to substantial wealth, patronage, and material support. Rather than redirecting these resources toward the poor, Jesus accepts them in service of himself and his “ministry.”

Other Gospel details point in the same direction. Jesus somehow secures a furnished upper room in Jerusalem for Passover, suggesting access to a property-owning supporter in the city. He sends disciples to retrieve a colt, as if he had already made arrangements. At the end, Nicodemus appears with costly burial spices, while Joseph supplies not merely sympathy but a private tomb. John even says that one unnamed disciple was “known to the high priest,” giving him access to the priestly courtyard during Jesus’s arrest.

The Gospels also describe Jesus’s movement as maintaining a common money bag. According to John, Judas Iscariot served as its keeper and was known to steal from it. The very existence of a communal fund suggests the movement handled enough money to require someone to manage it.

Jesus relied on a network of homes such as Peter’s house in Capernaum, which appears to function as an early ministry base. Matthew/Levi, a tax collector, hosts Jesus at a dinner with other tax collectors and sinners. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus repeatedly receive him in Bethany, and Simon the leper’s house becomes the site of an anointing meal. As mentioned, in Jerusalem, Jesus even secures a furnished upper room for Passover through an unnamed property-owning supporter.

Ehrman says that, according to Jesus, the disciples were to “sell all they had and give to the poor.” But if that is the case, why do Peter and Matthew still have homes during the ministry? Why do so many people in Jesus’s orbit retain wealth and property? The Gospels actually don’t portray a movement that liquidated everything for the poor. They reveal something more complicated: exposed disciples sent onto a grueling missionary path—to perhaps break them down—while the movement continued to rely on a network of homes, benefactors, money, and elite connections.

We should also note that Jesus never held to an ideal of socialism or egalitarianism. His ideal society was not based on equality. It had a hierarchy; it was just violently reversed—something Ehrman fails to address.

This is the logic beneath so many of his sayings about wealth and status. “Woe to you who are rich.” “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.” “The first will be last,” and “the last will be first.” The people on top will be at the bottom, and those loyal to Jesus (who have become poor and outcast) will be raised. This is not a prophetic teaching on wealth—it is a delusional fantasy of class reversal.

Jesus envisioned himself on top with his disciples ruling politically alongside him. “At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel,” he states in Matthew 19:28. Luke’s version is even more explicit: “I confer on you a kingdom.”

Get the new book from leading cult reporter Be Scofield, “The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.”

Despite emphasizing Jesus’s habit of eating with tax collectors and sinners, Ehrman never pauses to investigate the social and economic world surrounding the movement. He never asks how wealthy Jesus’s associates were, how much money flowed through the group, or what role these elite networks played in sustaining the mission. Those questions are relevant because, despite access to patrons and financial networks, the Gospels never actually depict Jesus or his disciples carrying out a charitable mission.

Do What I Say, Not What I Do

In Love Thy Stranger, Ehrman writes that those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven according to Jesus are people who have performed a series of charitable acts: “people who have done good things for those in need,” people who have “fed the hungry, given something to drink to the thirsty, who’ve clothed the naked, and who’ve visited the lonely.” Elsewhere, he says Jesus’s followers “were to visit those in prison,” “provide essentials to the impoverished around them,” and “help the oppressed and outcast.” He continues: “Banquets should be held for those who normally could not even get a decent meal, let alone give a return invitation. Excess money—or rather, all the money—was to be given to the poor.”

Ehrman makes a major oversight here: the Gospels never depict Jesus or his disciples doing any of these charitable acts. By Jesus’s own logic, they would not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

There are no scenes in the Gospels in which Jesus or his disciples feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the lonely in prison, give money to a poor person, or organize banquets for the hungry. Nor do they leave behind any lasting system of health care for the sick in the towns they visited.

The miraculous feeding stories do not count. The two crowds fed with a few loaves and fish are not described as poor; they are simply crowds who stayed late and became hungry. Nor do historians treat these stories as plausible records of actual mass feedings. They are miracle traditions—literary and theological scenes meant to display Jesus’s power—not evidence that Jesus or his movement fed the poor.

The miracle-healing stories do not solve the problem either. Historians do not treat these accounts as straightforward records of actual events; otherwise, we would have to accept every miracle-healing claim made by gurus, cult leaders, revivalists, and televangelists, from Amma to Jim Jones to modern faith healers. Ehrman rejects the miracle claims too. So these scenes are either fictional accounts, theological legends, or staged performances. In none of these cases do they amount to actual care for the sick.

This revelation is astonishing: the one thing Jesus is world-famous for, providing charity to the needy, is absent from the historical record. Yet Ehrman and other scholars formed by the tradition simply grant Jesus an extraordinary ethical status the Gospels themselves do not substantiate.

For anyone experienced in identifying red flags in high-control groups, the gap between Jesus’s rhetoric and actions is glaring. Flowery jargon, fiery rants, and pompous preaching do not easily sway cult experts. We ignore the manifesto and check the bank statements, i.e., we focus on what they did, not what they said.

The crux of the issue is that modern Jesus scholars are not trained to see the dark side of benevolence—love can be a dangerous weapon, compassion can be a recruitment tool, justice can be wielded to provide cover, and one’s “charitable” associations can be strategically chosen to portray an image or for advantageous reasons.

Simply put, we cannot identify a movement’s nature by its rhetoric or its charitable involvement. Taking in social outcasts, preaching against empire, condemning the rich, healing people, attacking religious hypocrisy, promising a new world, feeding the poor, and presenting oneself as a messianic figure—these are all things Jim Jones did.

On the surface Jim Jones’s movement appeared morally admirable—and he strategically used this image to build a network of powerful and influential political and civic leaders. Yet beneath this image was a profoundly high-control, destructive system. This is the relevant metric—and one that appears in Jesus’s movement as well.

“Jesus picks up on it from Judaism and develops it into a major, major ethical focus of his,” Ehrman says, referring to Jesus’s emphasis on the poor. If this was such a “major” part of his movement, why didn’t he actually organize to help the needy?

Of course, Jesus could not have set up a highly visible soup kitchen in Galilee. Large crowds already made the authorities nervous; an organized public relief operation could easily have looked like a political mobilization and drawn Roman suspicion.

Here’s what actual low-profile, decentralized systems of relief could have looked like:

• Common purse relief -> Since the group had a money bag, they could have used part of it as a regular alms fund for the poor rather than only for travel and movement expenses.

• Food deliveries -> Jesus and his followers could have regularly brought bread, grain, oil, or fish to known households of widows, the sick, day laborers, single mothers, and the disabled.

• Prepaid vendor aid -> They could have prepaid bakers, grain sellers, or market vendors and given tokens to needy people so they could collect food discreetly.

• Clothing collection -> They could have gathered spare tunics, cloaks, sandals, and blankets from wealthier supporters and distributed them to the poor.

• Hospitality rotations -> Followers with homes could have hosted the hungry, sick, travelers, or displaced people on a rotating basis.

• Care teams for the sick -> Without relying on miracle claims, followers could have brought water, food, bedding, washing, companionship, and practical support to sick households.

• Debt and rent relief -> Wealthier sympathizers could have funded small pools of money to help peasants pay off their debts, rent, taxes, or emergency obligations.

• Local care cells -> In each town, Jesus could have left behind small circles of followers tasked with continuing relief after he moved on.

When you consider what a movement genuinely concerned with the needy could have done, the contrast with Jesus’s “ministry” is disappointing.

We are seeing the glistening mirage of this movement quickly dissolve: Jesus’s “profound” ethics were sectarian field instructions and protection for his disciples; he was not the impoverished, unnetworked saint of Christian imagination; and he never practiced the charity later projected onto him.

The Road Show

If Jesus was not organizing charity, then what exactly was he doing while roaming the countryside with an entourage of men? What did this movement actually accomplish? Ehrman and the Christian interpretive framework he inherits never seriously interrogates the structure of Jesus’s “ministry”—its goals, methods, costs, or even its justification for existing. The project is simply granted benevolence and importance in advance because Jesus is the one running it.

The movement looks like an apocalyptic road show—a spectacle designed to entertain and impress with the goal of getting new converts.

• healings

• exorcisms

• staged confrontations

• symbolic stunts and miracles

• crowd scenes

• secrecy and riddles

• loyalty tests

• public demonstrations of power

Scene after scene, one thing is missing: sustained care for the vulnerable. Instead, the stories are structured so that everyone is pushed toward the same revelation of who Jesus is.

The entire ministry revolves around Jesus: his power, authority, specialness, and eventually his divinity—not around the poor or needy. Every character seems perfectly positioned in relation to him—groveling at his feet, misunderstanding him, opposing him, serving him, or becoming a demonstration prop for his greatness. The stories are structured around his revelation.

Ehrman and other Jesus apologists overlook the fact that Jesus condemned both the rich and the poor. If a peasant listened to Jesus and accepted the movement, that person was blessed. But if a peasant shrugged or ignored the message, the consequences became dire. Jesus did not simply allow people to reject him. He condemned entire towns of people that did not accept his mission.

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!” he says, because they witnessed his “mighty works” and still did not repent. He then compares them unfavorably to pagan cities, claiming that Tyre, Sidon, and even Sodom would have repented if they had seen the same miracles. The implication is brutal: these Jewish towns will face harsher judgment than despised outsider cities because they failed to properly respond to Jesus’s performances of power.

Despite having initial success in Capernaum, Jesus rebuked the city when it failed to undergo the radical repentance his movement demanded. “And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades,” he declares.

He also threatened towns that rejected his disciples. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” In other words, failing to receive Jesus’s messengers becomes worse than the sins of the Bible’s most infamous destroyed cities.

This threat strengthens the disciple-centered reading of Sheep and Goats. Jesus had already taught that towns would face catastrophic judgment for refusing his emissaries. Matthew 25 follows the same logic: the hungry, thirsty, strange, exposed, sick, and imprisoned figures are not generic humanity but vulnerable representatives of Jesus’s movement.

Thus, we have an established record of Jesus threatening those who reject his disciples. As mentioned, he did not issue sweeping moral judgments on humanity; his threats focused specifically on his movement.

A healthy spiritual teacher should frame rejection as a personal, neutral choice—something Ehrman fails to understand. People are allowed to listen and disagree. They can walk away or remain unconvinced. Jesus threatens judgment upon those who fail to accept his message. His outbursts resemble the narcissistic rage of an apocalyptic leader who didn’t get his way.

Power

“Following Jesus meant not asserting power over others, not compelling them to do your will,” Ehrman states. This is a remarkable claim from a leading Jesus scholar when his entire ministry was about asserting power over others and compelling them to do his will. We have already seen his condemnation of entire towns that refused to do his will and entire nations that refused to take care of his men.

To make his roadshow happen, Jesus broke down his disciples by stripping away the things that made independent life possible. He removed them from their families—wives, children, parents. They abandoned their jobs and livelihoods. Jesus goes further, stating the split must be psychological as well: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” When a would-be follower asks for permission to bury his father, Jesus refuses the most basic filial obligation and replies, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

Jesus places his followers inside a new interpretive world where his mission becomes the only reality that matters. The ordinary supports of life such as love, work, family, and community are recoded as spiritual distractions or signs of insufficient faith.

Ehrman does question this familial dispossession briefly in Love Thy Stranger and has stated in interviews that he “doesn’t like it.” But he doesn’t understand how this mechanism functions as a central tool of control in Jesus’s movement. It’s classic cult technique.

After isolating his followers from their lives and family, the guru wears them down physically and psychologically. In modern high-demand groups, such abuse can happen through sleep deprivation, intense manual labor, emotional coercion, food restriction, relationship tampering, confession sessions, public rebuke, and the steady collapse of private space.

We can see these dynamics in Jesus’s movement. He created an exhausting road show that functioned as a way to keep his followers dependent and exhausted. His men walked many miles per day. When he’d send them out, he wouldn’t allow them the most basic supports like money or food.

It’s common for new believers to become lost in the zeal of the mission and do whatever it takes. If it means working 18-hour days at the demand of the divinely led guru and getting a few hours of sleep, it doesn’t look like a manufactured system of control. It’s just the mission unfolding in real time.

The disciples’ days were consumed by the demands of the mission: walking hungry from village to village, searching for hosts, generating crowds, managing conflict, watching healings and exorcisms, hearing apocalyptic threats, and then sitting through private debriefings where Jesus reinforced the “secret” insider worldview. They slept wherever they could, often in fields or donors’ homes without privacy or stability.

The whole thing resembled a traveling circus where the disciples prepped each town for the next show—identifying the right people to preach to and then orchestrating the performance.

Ehrman continues, completely oblivious to the disempowerment at play. “Jesus, however, repeatedly insisted that to be his follower required becoming as powerless and insignificant as a child, serving others instead of being served by them; becoming a slave to others; and taking up the cross and giving one’s entire life for others,” he writes. Ehrman doesn’t connect the dots: Jesus has spiritualized infantilization, servitude, and self-erasure. Becoming “like a child,” becoming a “slave,” taking up the cross, and giving one’s life are presented as holy ideals, but within the movement they function as tools of submission. The disciples are trained to become smaller, poorer, more obedient, and more dependent.

Jesus remains powerful and the center of worship and focus—he is the glaring exception to his own teaching. The situation is more ironic and disappointing considering that the ministry wasn’t actually being used to feed or clothe the poor or for any real charitable efforts. All of this control and dispossession wasn’t used for a good cause.

In cult studies we’ve seen this scenario time and again: a charismatic man convinces idealistic seekers to give up their lives and serve him under the guise of a world-changing mission. He convinces them that “service” is sacred; meanwhile, the core of the group’s effort is to highlight the guru’s own specialness. There may be a charitable front—rhetoric or occasional good works—but when you check the receipts, the central operation often serves the leader’s status and myth.

A charismatic guru leads people away from themselves (and their lives) while convincing them he is leading them toward their true selves, sacred service, God, or divine truth.

Money

You can see the same dispossession rhetoric at play in how Jesus treats money. To illustrate Jesus’s radical views on wealth, Ehrman quotes him saying, “Do not acquire treasures for yourself on earth…but acquire treasures for yourself in heaven.” But this is another way of keeping followers disempowered and dependent while promising them compensation in a future world.

Ehrman also cites Jesus saying, “You cannot serve God and Mammon [wealth].” The issue here is that Jesus already convinced his followers that he is God’s representative on earth. In Luke Jesus tells his followers, “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” His chain of authority goes straight to God.

Jesus didn’t need to directly claim to be God in the later doctrinal sense. Cult leaders will often hide their claims of divinity in clever language to avoid criticisms. They can imply that they are God until loyalty to God and loyalty to the leader become functionally inseparable. From a cult-studies perspective, the endless debates over whether Jesus directly claimed to be God miss the functional issue. A leader does not have to say “I am God” for loyalty to God and loyalty to the leader to become indistinguishable.

We see this when Jesus heals the ten lepers. Only one returns, praises God, and falls at Jesus’s feet. Jesus then asks, “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” In other words, Jesus treats submission to himself as the proper form of praise to God.

Thus, when Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and Mammon,” his followers are trained to hear it as “you cannot serve me and Mammon.” Wealth is dangerous to Jesus’s movement because it gives followers options.

This is perhaps the reason Jesus sought to dispossess the rich man in the famous camel-and-needle story.

In Mark 10, a wealthy man approaches Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus gives him the full movement ultimatum: sell everything you own, give the money away to the poor, and follow me.

The man refuses. He likes his life and doesn’t want to liquidate it for Jesus.

Only then does Jesus turn to his disciples and declare, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” Then comes the famous line: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

The quickest and easiest way to get a new recruit is to convince them to give up their money, which represents status, options, and autonomy.

The important point here is that Jesus was stressing how money makes it so hard to join his movement, which was the unfolding kingdom on earth. Even Ehrman sees the group was referred to this way: “The kingdom started with Jesus’s tiny band of followers, but it began to grow and spread.”

Here we have another narcissistic outburst after a rejection. Jesus’s movement was the Kingdom of God unfolding on earth. The “follow me” is the giveaway—he’s asking the man to follow him into the kingdom of God. When the man says no thanks, Jesus rants about how hard it is to get into the kingdom i.e. his own movement, with money.

The Christian tradition later turns this scene into sweeping moral wisdom about the spiritual dangers of wealth. But in its immediate narrative context, the issue is much more concrete: Jesus tries to recruit a rich man, demands total liquidation, and watches him walk away. The man’s wealth protects him from capture by the movement. That is what makes money so dangerous. It allows a potential recruit to refuse the call and keep his life.

Jesus’s system is not difficult to see once the glow is removed: I speak for God. Give up your possessions. Follow me. Poverty is holy. Service is sacred. Suffer and depend on me and the movement. And when the kingdom arrives, you will sit on political thrones. “At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel,” Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 19:28.

Promising followers a role in a utopian paradise is highly common for cult leaders—it’s the fuel that drives their zealous activities. Jesus’s disciples clearly found the idea enticing. In fact, Judas’s betrayal is perhaps best explained by him snapping out of his cult indoctrination when he realizes the promised political thrones were not going to happen and that Jesus was taking the ship down.

The foundation of Jesus’s ministry was undoubtedly exploitative: years of unpaid labor, dangerous traveling, exhausting conditions, family destruction, economic dispossession, and total subordination to the apocalyptic mission. However, Ehrman never examines the morality of exposing innocent, idealistic followers to such risky conditions. Nor does he question why Jesus needed an entourage to follow him around the desert. What were they doing and why was it so necessary?

Subscribe now

By the end of this roadshow, the disciples’ old lives were gone, their social ties were dismantled, and their sense of self was married to Jesus’s mission. So when Jesus says he is the way to life, it does not merely sound theologically exclusive. It feels practically true. Where else could they go?

When an authoritarian leader builds a movement around keeping followers poor, lowly, dependent, and future-oriented, we should scrutinize his promises that the poor will be blessed and rewarded with thrones in the coming kingdom. Poverty is being produced. Jesus dispossesses people while persuading them that their dispossession is spiritually valuable.

Ehrman mistakes Jesus’s anti-domination rhetoric for liberation, but inside the movement it functioned as a tool of control—something most scholars are not capable of recognizing.

Reckless Disregard

The “Jesus glow” is especially visible in Ehrman’s inability to critically analyze Jesus’s impact on the communities he entered. He can see the moral contributions, but he does not seriously ask what Jesus’s actions cost the ordinary people around him. The presumption of Jesus’s benevolence conditions scholars like Ehrman to only read his actions through a specific lens.

Take the story of the Gerasene demoniac. In Mark 5, Jesus crosses into a non-Jewish region and encounters a man who is said to be possessed by demons. Jesus casts the demons out, but instead of simply expelling them, he allows them to enter a herd of about two thousand pigs. The animals then rush down a steep bank into the sea and drown.

The story is usually told as a miracle of compassion with Jesus liberating a tormented man from demonic bondage. But if we remove the “Jesus glow,” it also looks like a reckless destruction of local property. A herd of two thousand pigs represented significant value in the form of food and wealth for the people in the surrounding economy. Even conservatively, such a herd could represent hundreds of thousands of meals and many months of food.

The locals’ response reveals how destructive Jesus’s actions are. He’s not celebrated as a liberator as he would have hoped—they beg him to leave. Jesus has arrived as a disruptive religious outsider to a foreign community, destroyed a major source of local wealth, and left the people to absorb the cost of his “miracle.”

The Gerasene pigs story is an excellent example of the broader ethical problem with Jesus’s actions. Again and again, the Gospels present scenes where ordinary people absorb the cost of his divine performances. The human fallout of his miracles and actions is rarely examined by Jesus apologists like Ehrman. The point is almost always his authority: bolstering his status and forcing the surrounding world to recognize his power.

Jesus’s “care” often comes with conditions. Women, ill people, the disabled, the demonized, and the dispossessed are repeatedly shown groveling at his feet, trembling before him, begging for mercy, giving public testimony, or submitting to his authority before relief arrives. At other times, their suffering becomes useful because it enables Jesus to stage a conflict with religious rivals and demonstrate that he outranks them.

Instead of making Jesus the center, we should center the women, the poor, the sick, the outcasts, and the religious outsiders who move through his orbit. What did it feel like in their bodies to encounter him? What did it mean to be turned into evidence for someone else’s power?

Take the story of the bleeding woman in Mark 5. She has been hemorrhaging for twelve years, and no doctor has been able to help her. When she reaches Jesus, she touches his cloak quietly, trying to avoid a spectacle. But Jesus stops the crowd and turns her private suffering into a public scene. The text says she comes forward “in fear and trembling,” falls down before him, and tells him “the whole truth.” This would have been frightening for her: as a bleeding woman, she was considered unclean, and she likely had to press through and touch others just to reach him. What could have remained a private act of desperate healing becomes a public testimonial. Her suffering is converted into evidence of Jesus’s power.

Jesus is on his way to heal the dying daughter of Jairus when he stops to stage the encounter with the bleeding woman. He delays reaching the girl in order to extract another public testimony. Messengers then arrive and tell Jairus that his daughter has died. Her death becomes the setup for an even greater display of power. Jesus tells Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe,” removes the mourners, enters the room, and raises the girl. The child’s body becomes the stage for a revelation scene: proof that Jesus commands life and death.

One of the clearest examples is the Syrophoenician woman. Her daughter is suffering, and she comes to Jesus begging for help. Jesus initially refuses and compares her people to dogs. Only after she accepts the insult and grovels at his feet does he agree to heal her child. Ehrman conveniently dismisses the story in a footnote, noting that some scholars doubt it goes back to the historical Jesus. But even if the scene is literary, it still fits the Gospel pattern perfectly. A desperate woman becomes a prop in a revelation scene, forced to absorb humiliation so Jesus can display power and test faith. It’s another example of him dramatizing the superiority of his mission.

The story of the “sinful woman” in Luke 7 is another example of Jesus encouraging women to grovel at his feet. She weeps over them, kisses them, wipes them with her hair, and anoints them. Jesus allows the abasement to continue, then turns it into a scene to shame Simon for failing to offer the hospitality she provides.

In the Mary and Martha story, Jesus elevates female devotion to himself above the general labor needed to sustain the household. Martha is busy serving the household, while Mary sits at Jesus’s feet, absorbed in his teaching. When Martha asks for help, Jesus refuses and praises Mary’s posture of devotion as the “better portion.” The woman doing the actual work is made to look spiritually less evolved, while the woman positioned at Jesus’s feet is held up as the ideal.

The Samaritan woman at the well is another example of Jesus turning a vulnerable outsider into a recruitment tool. He names the most stigmatizing part of her life, exposing her history of five husbands and the man she is currently with who is not her husband. In the story, this proves his prophetic insight, but it also turns her private life into the hook for a revelation scene. She then runs back to her village and funnels people toward him, becoming a lead generator for the movement.

The story of the ten lepers in Luke 17 offers another glimpse into Jesus’s priorities. Ten men are cleansed, but only one returns, falls at Jesus’s feet, and praises God. Instead of simply celebrating the healing, Jesus focuses on the absence of the other nine: “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” The point of the miracle becomes more about his own proper recognition than healing. Jesus expects the healed to come back, bow down, and turn their recovery into testimony.

It is clear that Jesus apologists like Ehrman have little interest in examining these stories neutrally. Everything Jesus does is presumed benevolent before the analysis even begins. In cult studies, we approach charismatic gurus who claim to speak for God, demand worship, and gather followers through the same critical lens—whether the figure is David Koresh, Jim Jones, Keith Raniere, or anyone else. Jesus apologists can spot the problematic behavior in other leaders because there is no sacred glow predetermining the conclusion.

Slavery

Ehrman completely omits any discussion of slavery in Love Thy Stranger, yet Jesus moved through a world structured by slave labor. He spent time in the homes of supporters and social elites, including Pharisees, where household servants or slaves would have prepared meals, served guests, washed people’s feet, and maintained order. The Gospels also depict Jesus directly encountering enslaved people, including the centurion’s slave and the slave of the high priest. Yet he never once condemns the practice or the institution. He never tells a host or any character in his stories to free their slaves.

The institution of slavery is so normal in Jesus’s moral imagination that he uses it casually as a teaching device. He actually repeatedly invokes slavery in his stories in graphic and violent ways. Jesus describes slaves being denied a seat at the table, beaten with “many blows,” sold along with their wives and children to repay debt, and even “cut to pieces” when the master returns unexpectedly. These examples are used normatively to make points about obedience to God.

In Luke 17:7–10, Jesus asks his followers whether any master would say to a slave coming in from the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table.” Jesus’s answer is no. He says the master would instead tell the slave to prepare his dinner, serve him first, and only afterward eat and drink. Jesus then applies the lesson to his own disciples: “So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.’”

Jesus applying the adjective “worthless” to slaves is highly significant. It reveals how he perceived them—and it certainly wasn’t an enlightened perspective.

In Matthew 18:23–35 Jesus tells his disciples that God is like a slave master who has a slave tortured. “In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Luke 12:47 is another example where Jesus casually uses violence against slaves to illustrate a point. “That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required,” Jesus said.

Jesus has no problem repeatedly referencing violence against slaves and calling them worthless without ever once condemning the practice. Does this reflect the morality of a divine being? An ethical genius?

This is directly relevant to Ehrman’s thesis. If Jesus’s ethics helped “transform the conscience of the West,” then his silence on slavery—and his repeated use of slavery as a morally acceptable metaphor—also transformed that conscience but in the opposite direction. Imagine if Jesus had given one clear statement opposing the ownership of human beings. Imagine if he had refused to use master-slave violence as a spiritual analogy. Think of how many lives might have been spared if the central moral figure of Christianity had said, plainly, “No person may own another.” Instead, for nearly two millennia, Christian slaveholders could read the Gospels and find no direct condemnation from Jesus. Worse, they could find him using slavery as part of the moral architecture of his teaching.

The same problem applies to Jesus’s silence on patriarchy, infanticide, and other draconian laws inherited from his tradition. Imagine if Jesus had given one clear statement rejecting the laws that punish male same-sex acts with death. Imagine if he had said women were not property, children could not be discarded, slaves must be freed, and no person should be killed for sexual impurity. Instead, we are given these one-sided presentations of Jesus as a moral genius by apologists like Ehrman. The reality is that Jesus either said nothing or left the existing hierarchy intact. Scholar Amy Jill Levine states that if Jesus didn’t speak of it or critique it, he was ok with it.

Furthermore, according to Christian tradition, Jesus is the same God as in the Old Testament—thus, Jesus was responsible for permitting and regulating chattel slavery laws and the other horrifying draconian commands.

If Jesus is going to scold others for neglecting justice, condemn religious rivals for hypocrisy, and present himself as the true voice of God, then his own moral omissions are fair game. You do not get to denounce others for failing to embody justice while ignoring slavery and casually turning enslaved people into sermon illustrations. The problem becomes obvious if we update the setting: imagine a Southern preacher in the 1820s using plantation slavery to describe humanity’s proper relationship to God. Imagine the preacher sharing stories in the pulpit about slaves being beaten and tortured. Despite the stories being relevant to the context of the time, we would immediately recognize the moral horror of the analogy. That is precisely the kind of contradiction Ehrman should have interrogated.

Normally we would explain this ethical lapse by describing Jesus as a “man of his time.” Yet, according to Christian tradition, he was God and should have possessed timeless divine wisdom. Under that standard, his silence on slavery and casual use of it in stories is devastating. Even under a secular standard, Jesus was supposedly one of the greatest ethical teachers of all time—a pure moral genius. But a moral genius who failed to recognize the evil of owning human beings is, by definition, morally limited.

The Gospels celebrate Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners, but they never show him eating with “worthless” slaves, the very people his own parables imagine as beaten, tortured, neglected, and ordered to serve.

Conclusion

In Love Thy Stranger, Ehrman highlights the radical ethical ideal of Jesus’s teachings on love. But as we have seen, love was not the center of the movement. Jesus was. The miracles, conflicts, and revelation scenes all work to present Jesus as a powerful, divinely authorized figure. Women, the sick, the poor, and social outsiders often appear not as the center of his concern but as instruments in his road show. His most famous ethical teachings look like field instructions and threats designed to protect his men. He was connected to elite figures and wealth, yet the Gospels do not show him organizing the charitable activities he supposedly made central to Western moral life.

We can also see that Jesus used conflict and fear to sustain the movement. He demonized critics, staged public confrontations with religious authorities, and threatened catastrophe for those who rejected him or his messengers. He invoked outer darkness, Gehenna, weeping and gnashing of teeth, severe beatings, and apocalyptic judgment. Love may have drawn followers in, but fear helped keep them there.

This is classic cultic behavior: love is used to recruit, while terror is used to control. Jesus offered feel-good comforts like belonging and meaning. He offered healing and future reward, but he also surrounded the movement with threats. The result was a high-demand apocalyptic movement built around loyalty to Jesus—one that Jesus apologists like Ehrman are incapable of unpacking.

We see the same dynamics in Jesus’s movement that we see in many cultic groups: women trembling, weeping, and groveling at the guru’s feet; late-night spectacles that stretch into exhaustion; crowds chasing miracles; followers leaving families and livelihoods behind; believers’ labor being exploited; insiders being taught secret meanings; critics being demonized as blind, wicked, or aligned with Satan; and doubt being recoded as betrayal.

Imagine what this high-demand environment would have felt like in the bodies of his disciples: urgency, exhaustion, dependency, fear, and the constant pressure to interpret every hardship as proof of faith. And the fruits of such conditions were not even being used in the service of a charitable enterprise. It was an apocalyptic drama with Jesus at the center. The movement offered love, belonging, healing, and cosmic significance—but always under the shadow of judgment. That is what Ehrman misses: Jesus’s “love” did not operate in isolation. It was embedded inside a system of fear, dependency, spectacle, and submission.

This is what makes Jesus so difficult to read critically: the destructive mechanics of his movement are wrapped in feel-good, world-saving ideology. From the inside—and to many Jesus scholars—it does not look exploitative. Abandoning family becomes choosing God. Losing autonomy becomes gaining eternal life. Giving up possessions becomes storing treasure in heaven. Becoming dependent becomes becoming faithful. Read through the most favorable Jesus-apologist lens, the very mechanisms that dispossess people are recoded as love and spiritual freedom.

Imagine if scholars interpreted Jesus with the same clarity and distance they would bring to a cult leader. There are so many stories and parables that display the coercive or exploitative side of Jesus. Imagine how different Jesus studies would look if the field were not dominated by his biggest admirers.

Ehrman says Jesus transformed the moral conscience of the West. But the Gospels show something more troubling: a leader who spiritualized dispossession, demanded loyalty, threatened those who rejected him, used suffering bodies as revelation scenes, left slavery untouched, and turned love into a mechanism of attachment. These are the dynamics of high-control groups. Jesus resembles a charismatic apocalyptic guru more than a timeless moral genius—which perfectly explains why, during the Waco crisis, authorities recruited Jesus scholar James Tabor to help understand David Koresh.

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

SEE ALSO:

• READ THE ORIGINAL REPORTING ON THIS CULT (8 ARTICLES)

On April 29, 2026, one of the largest cult raids in history unfolded in Crewe, England. At 9 a.m., more than 500 officers descended on the compound of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. A helicopter circled above as drones hovered overhead. Dozens of police vans rolled through the breached front gate. Chaos followed as members scrambled and cried out for Abdullah Hashem, the man they call “Father.”

Video captures the dramatic moment Hashem was arrested. He is surrounded by dozens of followers, almost all dressed in black. Then police move in and nearly 100 officers close around him. A struggle breaks out, and Hashem is pulled away from the crowd.

You can almost feel the panic of the devotees. These are people who have been conditioned to see Hashem as more than a man. He is God on earth and their divine guide. He is the one who will lead them through the end times. And suddenly, in front of them, he is stripped of control. He and six other leaders are arrested. Their messianic leader is outnumbered, grabbed, and dragged away while they can do nothing but scream.

Cheshire Police said they were investigating allegations of serious sexual offenses, modern slavery, and forced marriage. Hashem was later released on bail, but with conditions: he was not allowed back to the compound or even to Crewe. All at once, his kingdom was crumbling.

How did two American men end up running a doomsday cult out of a former orphanage in an obscure town in central England? And how did men who once made documentaries exposing cults end up building one of their own?

It’s April 17, 2025, and I’m in Mooresville, Indiana, twenty miles southwest of Indianapolis, trying to understand how this story began. As I walk past the downtown storefronts, Mooresville feels like a familiar slice of small-town Indiana: quaint shops, friendly greetings, churches, American flags, and farmland just beyond the edge of town.

I had spent the previous four months digging into one of the most significant and personal stories of my career: how a man who once had a passion for exposing cults through documentaries could end up running an international doomsday cult. As a prominent cult reporter, I found myself hooked.

Walking around town, I start looking for a newspaper to pitch, hoping to drum up coverage in Hashem's and McGowen’s hometown. To my dismay, the local paper had been bought by a corporate chain—an issue plaguing towns across the country. There was very little on-the-ground reporting left.

A business owner tells me that only one local paper remains: the Morgan County Correspondent in nearby Martinsville.

I make the 20-minute drive, hoping to find a real journalist to share this once-in-a-lifetime scoop with. When I walk into the office, it feels historic and charming, with aging hardwood floors and the unmistakable vibe of a place still trying to keep local journalism alive. A man in his early forties is standing there. Nearby is a young guy who looks fresh out of college. An older woman with white hair greets me.

“You guys want the craziest story you’ve ever heard?” I blurt out.

To make a long story short, I spend the next few hours breaking down the ins and outs of how two local guys, Abdullah Hashem and Joseph McGowen, ended up running an international doomsday cult. They were enthralled, to say the least.

I sent them my nearly completed expose of Hashem and his movement. Despite threats of a lawsuit, the young college grad Jared Quigg managed to publish an excellent story just a few weeks later called ”Homebrewed ‘Kool-Aid:’ From Exposing Cults to Leading One.” He even managed to speak with a former high school teacher and assistant principal of Hashem’s, providing some insight into his early days.

Hashem and McGowen started as filmmakers. Nearby was the Regal Cinema, where Hashem first debuted his short comedy film Apache Tears in 2003. One of the stars was a 22-year-old Abbi Crutchfield, who is now a well-known comedian and TV personality, appearing on Hulu and NBC, among others. She told a local reporter the film “has a lot of twists and turns...and deals with dark matters in a light way.”

Their documentary on the Raelian UFO cult, Little Claudy, premiered in November 2006 at Indiana University, where Hashem was attending. “The duo carried digital recorders and posed as hopeful inductees making a student film,” Wired magazine reported. “What they really wanted was to tape incriminating activities of a group they suspected was coercing people to join the organization to get their money.”

Infiltrating a cult? That’s right up my alley. I spent a month inside Bentinho Massaro’s cult in Sedona in November of 2017. Since then I’ve exposed dozens of cults around the world.

As I continue researching in Mooresville, I learn that in 2007 the local Indianapolis arts-and-entertainment paper Nuvo ran a piece on Hashem. The Raelians were suing him and his university over the documentary.

I’m delighted to discover that Nuvo is still operating—although it’s a shell of what it was in its heyday. I meet with two women who write for the paper at an eclectic bar in southwest Indianapolis. I explain the story in depth, and they are also blown away by the fact that a local kid grew up to run one of the largest doomsday cults in the world.

A few weeks later, Nuvo publishes a piece on Hashem and the movement. But it is short-lived. McGowen is incensed at the local coverage and sends them a threatening email saying they will sue. Not wanting the drama, the editor pulls the piece.

I published “Meet the Doomsday Cult Taking Over the World” on April 21st, a few weeks before Nuvo and the Morgan County Correspondent dropped theirs. I published from Hashem's and McGowen’s hometown—the cherry on top of the story.

The following day something extraordinary happened—just days after the pope died, Abdullah Hashem claimed he was the new pope. The rightful pope. In a remarkable video released on his YouTube channel directed at Christians, he proclaimed, “The earth swallowed the false pope.” Hashem continued, “He was killed by the breath of the mere believers chanting,” he stated, referring to his own Ahmadi followers in Rome who had been chanting his name in front of the Vatican.

Within just a few days, the Christian influencer world had exploded with podcasts racking up millions of views covering his proclamation. Many declared Hashem the Antichrist. It was yet another example of my stories being propelled further into the headlines by bizarre circumstances.

Within three days of publishing the piece, I had two offers from major production companies to option it for a docuseries. I chose a company with a stellar track record of shows on Netflix and major streamers.

But a few months prior to this, I had been working with an HBO director—we were trying to develop the project.

Then something crazy and unexpected happened.

Hashem stayed one step ahead of me—and it nearly got this director killed.

In December 2024, I had stumbled upon the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light through researching Massimo Introvigne—a sort of arch enemy of cult experts. He and other “cult apologists” have spent decades defending the worst cults in the name of religious freedom.

Introvigne’s support of the group made me suspicious. He had previously written an entire book and published numerous blog posts defending Gregorian Bivolaru, who was raided and arrested by hundreds of police in France. Bivolaru is now the subject of a riveting cult docuseries on Apple called Twisted Yoga.

If Introvigne was backing this group, I knew they could be trouble.

My suspicions only deepened during one of the panels at Introvigne’s annual CESNUR conference on religion. That’s where I heard an Ahmadi member say something deeply cultish.

“We believe you have to believe in him to attain salvation, but you also have to have obedience to him so we can create a utopian society for everyone on earth,” Caroline Hoeren, the group’s head of legal, said.

Whoa.

Whenever someone’s salvation depends on obedience to a charismatic figure, it’s a red flag. Creating a utopian society for everyone on earth? Major alarm bells.

I spent weeks following this seed. Sure enough, I uncovered a flood of cult-like statements, bizarre claims, and Hashem’s terrifying doomsday prophecies. I spent countless hours mining his videos for material.

One video I found showed a Muslim man named Syed debating an Ahmadi religion member on the group’s theology and claims. I reached out to him, and I learned he had been looking into the group for some time. He proved a crucial link as he connected me with ex-members.

I spent the next month deeply researching Hashem, interviewing people and digging into his previous life as an anti-cult documentary filmmaker.

By the end of January, I had pitched the story to an HBO filmmaker with a 13-minute sizzle reel I had developed. She was blown away but encouraged me to keep digging.

For the next six weeks we developed the story pitch deck and logged contacts, sources, and archival material. I uncovered the suspicious disappearance of a follower named Lisa Wiese. She had fallen out with Hashem and the group, but he told her before she left that she needed to do one more thing: travel to India and help open a new center. Hashem sent her with his right-hand henchman, Ali Muhammad. Five days later he returned from India. Wiese was never seen again.

The concern became more real when former members told me Hashem had asked them about killing people for him. I was even given a screenshot of a message conversation where Hashem told a follower, "Or you will kill her,” referring to a different woman in the group.

The HBO director had managed to make contact with Joseph McGowen early on. Over the weeks, she had befriended him, saying she was interested in learning more about the group. She posed as a neutral observer, wanting to explore the movement. He agreed to allow her to come and film them in Crewe.

In March she made the trek to Hashem’s illustrious cult compound in central England. But things didn’t go as planned.

After entering the gated community and walking into the compound, she and her film crew were asked to sit down. Hashem opened a laptop and hit play. It was an audio recording of me speaking to sources.

“There’s an HBO director exploring developing this story,” I say on the recording. “Would any of you be interested in participating?”

Hashem had a spy on one of my calls where I interviewed sources—probably the one with four people, including someone’s friend and a translator.

I can imagine the director’s terror: trapped inside the gated compound while discovering, in real time, that the cult knew she was colluding with me. Things could have become very dangerous quickly.

I learned all of this through a series of chaotic middle-of-the-night messages from her. She told me she had fled the compound, said the group was scary, and was flying back to the States. Filming Hashem and McGowen was essential for her to move forward with the project. When that fell apart, I published my story and moved forward.

Things would soon take another dramatic turn.

I hatched a plan to rival Hashem’s spy: I’d send a spy of my own into his cult.

A month after I published, I was contacted by a journalist named Maeve McClenaghan with The Guardian’s investigations unit. She was interested in the story and asked to connect with ex-members.

The production team I was working with was cautious, as newspapers often have their own documentary wings and often look for ways to steal story IP. But I went ahead and collaborated, providing my research and access to sources so as to shine as much light on this story as possible.

On July 1st, McClenaghan published her piece, “‘Dad, Imam, God’: Children Living with Self-Declared Pope in Former UK Orphanage.” It mostly rehashed my original reporting.

The next day a front-page story on Vice followed. I had also spent weeks assisting the reporter with my research and sources. On July 4th, The Telegraph published a story followed by The Daily Mail, which published a story soon after.

Getting a story that I broke covered by The Guardian, Vice, The Telegraph, and the Daily Mail was a huge victory for cult awareness.

Enter the burger.

Just a few weeks after the mainstream news coverage, the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light organized a now-infamous “Beanies and Burgers” event on their front lawn. They hired a food truck to pass out free burgers to locals and extend an olive branch—perhaps to counter the bad press.

Despite locals having mixed feelings about the group, one local left, feeling they were great. He made a post on Facebook praising the group. Members of the cult quickly seized on the opportunity, and hundreds liked and shared the post.

“Were you paid to go to the event and post positively about it?” I messaged him.

He explained he wasn’t, stating that he wanted to form his own opinion rather than rely on what was being said online. “It seems harmless enough,” he told me.

I spent the next few days convincing him the group wasn’t what he thought. I sent him my article, which he digested. “Absolutely bonkers,” he replied. He could see it was like another Waco-type cult.

At first I wanted him to delete his post so it wouldn’t encourage people to join. But then I had a better idea.

I said he should infiltrate the cult.

“I could never,” he said, claiming his wife wouldn’t allow it. “I couldn’t do a video pledging allegiance. How embarrasing.”

I told him that since the cult already liked him, he could put out some feelers to attend a meeting or two.

“And report back to you as a secret informant?” he asked.

I told him yes. He said he’d send a TikTok message to the co-leader Joseph McGowen, whom he had met at the Beanie and Burgers event.

“I feel like James Bond now. I’m excited for this little undercover mission,” he told me.

Over the coming months I worked with him closely, guiding and advising him as he eased into the group. He played the part well, making a genuine-looking pledge video and reading the group’s “holy” book, The Goal of the Wise. He offered a testimonial saying how the book has “profoundly impacted” his life and how grateful he was to be in the group. The Ahmadi religion shared his quote and photos of him with other believers on their social media.

Soon my spy was regularly hanging out with members and eating meals with the group in the compound. He described to me the internal landscape of the giant orphanage. He even sent me a photo of him with Abdullah Hashem and shared personal messages he exchanged with him. My source addressed him as “Father”—and Hashem would reply, saying, “I love you,” with some words of encouragement. “Don’t let anyone or anything bring you down. Dedicated your life to the cause.”

One morning I got a message from him where he alerted me to a secret event that would be coming up called the “Supremacy of God” conference. He sent me a photo of his golden ticket to the event. Only a highly select group would be allowed to attend—Ahmadi religion members, some local politicians, including the mayor of Crewe, and a few media organizations. But otherwise, it was top secret.

When I learned who the key speaker at the conference was, I was stunned. It was none other than the arch-enemy of cult experts, Massimo Introvigne.

If the Beanies and Burgers event was an attempt to counter the negative press coverage, the “Supremacy of God” conference was also an effort to improve their image and to attack their critics, with me as the main target. A major “new religious movement” was under heavy scrutiny, and the troops quickly assembled to defend it.

The event took place Aug. 20 and 21 behind closed doors at the University of Buckingham's Crewe campus. Among the participants were some of the most divisive and infamous cult apologists: Massimo Introvigne, Holly Folk, Gordon Melton, Susan Palmer, and Eileen Barker. Watchdog groups and cult survivors have long criticized them for downplaying abuses in groups like Scientology, Aum Shinrikyo, Jonestown, and the Children of God, the latter of which faced widespread allegations of child sexual abuse. These scholars deny the existence of cults and say there was no brainwashing in places like Jonestown.

This wasn’t their first collaboration with the Ahmadi religion. In March 2024, many of the same scholars led by Massimo Introvigne appeared inside the sect's gated compound to speak at their event. Videos depict Hashem leading them through the highly secure facility, their eyes wide with awe at their surroundings. Members of the cult also spoke at Introvigne’s yearly CESNUR conference.

These cult apologists have an absurd fascination with “new religious movements”—regardless of how destructive or dangerous they are. Introvigne and his fellow cult defenders push an extremist form of religious libertarianism.

Given how secluded the event was, I could only get small updates from my source, and he could only attend the last few hours after work. He informed me the conference featured talks on a range of subjects about the groups’ beliefs, their persecution, and media coverage.

Just before the conference, Introvigne published around six hit pieces against me, by himself, his wife and Susan Palmer. They attacked me as “delusional,” “ignorant,” and “bigoted.” The smear pieces claim I “experience psychotic episodes” and rely on extraterrestrials as my “primary sources” for reporting. They also say I “take credit” for violence against cults I’ve reported on and allege I’ve lied in my reporting.

These attacks extended into a presentation at the Supremacy of God conference by Introvigne’s wife—she attacked me and my reporting and another journalist who had been covering the cult.

Everything comes full circle, I suppose.

I had first stumbled upon the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light through Introvigne’s promotion of them—now his wife and his cronies were writing hit pieces against me and attacking me in public conferences.

I was dumbfounded by the whole ordeal. To see third-party academics, who are supposedly neutral scholars of religion, engaging in a coordinated smear campaign on behalf of a cult is unique and beyond bizarre.

On August 24th, I published a devastating response to these cult apologists doing the dirty work for Abdullah Hashem called “Meet the Shadowy Scholars Supporting England’s Doomsday Cult.” I revealed the extent of their support for dangerous cults in their past—it was an abysmal track record.

In the first four months this story I had stumbled upon had already experienced wild twists and turns—international media coverage, beanies and burgers, my spy infiltrating the group, the Supremacy of God conference, and a number of hit pieces from cult apologist scholars. Through it all, I kept researching the group and developed a more intricate understanding of them.

I had hoped that if the media and public still had any doubts about the grandiose claims Abdullah Hashem makes, my next piece would address them. I continued poring through video content, their written articles, and Hashem’s holy text, The Goal of the Wise.

On September 8th, I published “17 Shocking Beliefs of England’s Doomsday Cult.” It described a litany of bizarre claims by Hashem: he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, America is the Antichrist, democracy is evil, extraterrestrials control U.S. presidents, Donald Trump is the reincarnation of Nero, Vladimir Putin is Julius Caesar, and Pope Francis is the apostle Paul. He also claimed he is the only one on the planet that can interpret religious texts. His sacred text also describes bear-sized alien rabbits who rule a distant planet and speak English, heroin as a gateway to other worlds, magical animal cures, and a disturbing sexual theology around the Last Supper.

I had been working on a second article as well that I published a few days later. I had noticed there was only one “news” site that was covering Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, and it was doing so favorably. I uncovered that the site called EU Reporter was essentially a pay-to-play outlet—in 2021, Politico exposed EU Reporter for running undisclosed paid campaigns on behalf of powerful companies. I also uncovered they were publishing identical articles from the Ahmadi cult’s blog but claiming they were written by EU Reporter to project independence.

So the cult paid a fake news website for favorable news coverage that the cult wrote, which the EU Reporter portrayed as independent and neutral reporting. Absolutely wild.

The bizarre revelations continued. I was soon onto another story about how the group had allegedly planted one of its own inside Crewe’s local government. According to former members, longtime follower Zafer Faqir had taken a job in the council’s planning enforcement department, giving the cult advance warning of inspections and a way to prepare the compound before authorities arrived. The former members also told me that Hashem had planned this move from the beginning.

The next story blew everything out of the water.

On September 22, I published “Inside an Assassination Plot of England’s Doomsday Cult.” A former member named Yasir told me a man in Dubai warned him that someone had been hired to attack or kill him. The hitman told me he had been offered escalating payments: one amount to slap Yasir, more to break his legs, and roughly $82,000 to kill him. He said he had been given photos of Yasir’s apartment building, car, license plate, and personal images that appeared to come from inside the group—all of which he forwarded to me.

Another source who used to live in the compound soon came forward to me and provided in-depth insights. I was able to map out the entire compound—publishing an image that detailed where everything was inside. The source described a tightly controlled world of surveillance cameras, confiscated phones, children’s dorms, unpaid labor, and a basilica where Hashem preached beneath portraits and statues. Even more disturbing were the allegations of so-called “poison tests” of loyalty, sexual abuse, and a system designed to break followers psychologically and keep them obedient.

By December, the story had become even more urgent. I published “‘Ready to Die’: England’s Doomsday Cult Prepares for the End” after finding internal talks where senior members openly praised obedience, sacrifice, and dying for the cause. Followers were told to prepare for “moments of sacrifice,” to give their lives for God, and to see the group as the only ark of salvation before a coming “flood of blood.” It was no longer just weird theology or online prophecy. The rhetoric had turned darker, more militant, and more dangerous.

Between April 21 and December 11, 2025, I published eight stories on Abdullah Hashem’s doomsday cult. I began in his hometown, worked with local media outlets, and helped journalists internationally bring the story to a much larger audience. Each investigation uncovered another layer: grandiose messianic claims, alleged abuse, alleged infiltration of local government, paid propaganda, threats, surveillance, and increasingly violent end-times rhetoric. In return, I was harassed, smeared, and accused of lying. Then, a year after I first published, more than 500 police officers breached the gates.

On May 20, 2026, Connor Naismith, the Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, stood during Prime Minister’s Questions and told Keir Starmer that his community had been left in “deep shock and concern” following allegations of serious sexual offenses, forced marriage, and modern slavery against members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. He asked the prime minister to join him in thanking Cheshire Constabulary, Cheshire East Council, and other agencies for their response. These were the same kinds of allegations I had first reported in April 2025.

It was a remarkable moment, especially given how hard the group had worked to present itself as a persecuted minority religion and a misunderstood part of Crewe’s civic life. Local officials had attended its events, anti-racist activists had stood beside its members, and academics had defended it in the language of religious freedom. Hashem’s movement had learned one of the oldest tricks of public legitimacy: stand near respectable people and let the association do the work.

Then, just as I was writing this piece, The Guardian published a major story on Lisa Wiese—the missing German member whose disappearance and suspected murder I had first reported on months earlier. Wiese vanished in Kerala, India, in March 2019, after traveling there with Hashem’s right-hand henchman on his instructions. Seven years later, her family still has no answers. Her ex-husband now hopes the raid in Crewe will force authorities to look harder at what happened to her.

By late May, the story had reached the floor of Parliament. The former orphanage had been raided, Hashem was barred from returning to Crewe, and the allegations former members had been trying to tell the world about could no longer be dismissed. After a year of warnings, threats, smear campaigns, and denials, Britain was finally being forced to look behind the gates.

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

In 1984, Sadhguru traveled just outside of Mysore and enrolled in a yoga teacher training with a guru named Rishi Prabhakar. He spent the next five years traveling around India teaching Prabhakar’s SSY yoga system under his mentor. He even opened centers for him.

Newslaundry's reporting confirms Sadhguru’s connection. We also have photos of Sadhguru with Prabhakar in trainings. One student who was in the trainings told them Sadhguru had “no previous association” with yoga, despite his claims to have learned at a young age from Malladihalli Swami. Another said, “Jaggi and I learned Siddha Samadhi Yoga (SSY) from Rishi Prabhakar together...in 1984.” Regarding their relationship, another student told the news site that Sadhguru was “close” to Prabhakar.

Sadhguru has never mentioned his mentor’s name. It’s completely absent from the record: it doesn’t appear in his biography, teaching, blogs, or public talks.

There is a good reason.

Sadhguru took Prabhakar’s entire yoga system without crediting him and built an empire worth over a hundred million dollars.

Taking Over the Empire

In 1989, five years after first training together, Rishi Prabhakar sent Sadhguru to open a yoga studio in Coimbitore.

Sadhguru had other plans. "He suddenly broke off with him and started teaching yoga in Coimbatore," a student who had also trained with Prabhakar and Sadhguru told Newslaundry. He hijacked the franchise, taking Prabhakar’s well-established Siddha Samadhi Yoga (SSY) and turning it into Sahaja Stithi Yoga (SSY).

Within a short time, Sadhguru had rebranded Prabhakar’s courses and trainings as his own. But he kept the names the same or similar.

“Whatever Sadhguru teaches has been taken from Rishi Prabhakar’s courses,” a man who did the training with them told Newslaundry. “The same program content of Rishi Prabhakar is today printed in Jaggi’s so-called bestselling book, Inner Engineering for Wellbeing, with some changes,” says a former Isha Yoga monk.

SEE ALSO: What Happened to Sadhguru’s Wife?

The Course Details

When you compare the structure and layout of Prabhakar and Sadhguru’s trainings, they are nearly identical. Each has a 4-day meditation course. Prabhakar’s was called Bhava Samadhi Training (BST), while Sadhguru’s is called Bhava Spandana (BSP). Both are large group awareness trainings (LGATs) based on EST designed to evoke intense emotional releases.

Those who have attended Sadhguru’s BSP call it a “controlled breakdown wrapped in spiritual packaging.” Others say it is “emotional theater” that puts people in a high-demand environment to foster dependency on Sadhguru and upsell them on more programs. Many say the volunteers running the events staged “screaming, crying, and dramatic catharsis” to elicit strong reactions from participants.

Prabhakar’s Advanced Meditation Course (AMC) is also nearly identical to Sadhguru’s Samyama course. Both programs, known as “silence” programs, span approximately the same number of days. And Sadhguru’s core teachings from Inner Engineering stem from Prabhakar’s “14 Sessions of Sidha Samadhi Yoga,” such as rules, responsibility, and happiness.

Sadhguru’s Shakti Chalana Kriya was taken from Prabhakar’s Pranayama. Sadhguru also called it Pranayama for the first 15 years he used it. His shoonya meditation was also borrowed from Prabhakar, who took it from Transcendental Meditation.

Imitation is Flattery

Sadhguru also took his brand and style from Prabhakar, following in his footsteps and also opening his own charitable organizations, schools, and ashrams. Sadhguru named his school for kids “Samskriti,” which just so happens to be the same name as Rishi Prabhakar’s school. Prabhakar started the “Clean India Campaign,” whereas Sadhguru started the “Save Soil Campaign,” both of which were large-scale environmental causes.

Sadhguru lifted the yoga system, style, brand and template from his secret mentor, Rishi Prabhakar. He then used this foundational platform to establish himself as a global celebrity yoga guru.

Rishi Prabhakar is the guru behind Sadhguru’s empire. He came first and paved the way, but you would never know it.

READ THE SERIES:

• Part I: Inside Sadhguru’s Cult Empire

• Part II: Unmasking Sadhguru’s Legacy of Abuse

See also:

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

There’s an upcoming virtual conference called “The Architecture of Silence in Spiritual Culture” by Science and Nonduality. The aim is to “reflect on the conditions—not just the men, not just the crimes, but the architecture of silence that held it all in place,” referring to spiritual abuse.

There is a huge problem.

Every speaker on the panel is published by a book publisher or media company that has either played a significant role in propping up a spiritual abuser (and never taken accountability) or is actively doing it now.

Gabor Maté and V (Eve Ensler) have books with both Macmillan and Penguin Random House; Tara Brach is published by Penguin Random House. These publishers currently publish and sell books by Sogyal Rinpoche, Bikram Choudhury and Osho—three of the most widely known spiritual abusers.

Bikram has been accused by dozens of people of abuse, including at least five women of rape and sexual assault. In 2019 Netflix released a documentary called Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator.

You can purchase his book Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class right now from Penguin Random House’s imprint Tarcher.

The hit Netflix series Wild, Wild, Country about Osho was shocking by itself—but it left out the worst allegations against Osho. Former female devotees have accused Osho of using his unquestioned authority to sexually exploit them. Many women were coerced into abortions and into sterilization—some as young as 14. His “free love” teachings created an environment of sexual abuse and child sexual abuse.

You can purchase his autobiography right now from Macmillan publishing house St. Martin’s Press.

Sogyal Rinpoche was one of the most influential Tibetan Buddhists in the world. He was accused of widespread physical and sexual abuse by numerous women and faced an international scandal.

Penguin currently sells his book in the UK, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, promoting it as “one of the international bestselling Buddhism books of all time.”

Let’s turn to North Atlantic Books, where three of the panelists have books published: Gabor Mate, Matthew Remski, and Bayo Akomolafe.

Between 2005 and 2007, North Atlantic Books decided to publish the books of Adi Da—the controversial spiritual teacher who was widely known at the time as a predatory and sexually abusive guru. Numerous articles and sites had outed him, including a 2005 Washington Post story. The article detailed Adi Da's history, the allegations of abuse at his Fiji compound, and how the organization aggressively silenced defectors.

Despite this readily available evidence, North Atlantic Books chose to partner with him precisely during this window of renewed scrutiny. This pulled him out of his isolated, cult-operated imprint and placed him into the progressive mainstream. As far as I’m aware, the publisher has never issued a statement about their role in propping up Adi Da.

An imprint of Macmillan, North Point Press, continues to publish and sell Pattabhi Jois’s foundational book Yoga Mala. He’s been exposed for sexually groping many women during yoga sessions.

All of the panelists, except Matthew Remski, speaking in the Architecture of Silence in Spiritual Culture virtual event are deeply tied to the audiobook publisher Sounds True. They each sell online courses and programs, some high-ticket, with Tami Simon’s Sounds True—which has published many controversial authors, some of whom have been accused of cultic abuses.

Just like North Atlantic Books quietly stopped publishing Adi Da’s books after 2008, Sounds True quietly dropped Mooji after he was exposed for running a cult in Portugal. Mooji is now distributed by New Harbinger Publications and Hachette UK.

The panelists may not know their publishers are still publishing books by Bikram, Osho, or Sogyal Rinpoche or that they played a pivotal role in propping up Adi Da.

This is not to blame them or even call them out. I’m simply pointing out how deeply systemic the issue of spiritual abuse is. And for a conference that is trying to examine the architecture that holds spiritual abuse in place, this aspect seems relevant.

We can look beyond the specific book publishers among the panelists.

HarperCollins still publishes and sells Guru Jagat’s book Invincible Living. She was the subject of a 2023 HBO docuseries, Breath of Fire, that exposed her cultic abuses within the Kundalini organization.

Chogyam Trungpa is still widely published by Shambhala Publications—one of the most influential spiritual book publishers. His sexual, emotional, and physical abuses have long been known.

These are only a few examples of book publishers actively profiting from known spiritual abusers. I can’t imagine what an exhaustive search through problematic spiritual gurus or wellness influencers and their publishers would reveal.

What does a panel that’s about the silence of spiritual abuse look like when all the panelists are published by book publishers or media companies that have or still do profit from spiritual abusers?

This is precisely what makes it so difficult to tackle the issue of spiritual abuse—many people—even those trying to help—may be unknowingly tied to the financial mechanisms that benefit from the abusers. What would happen if Tara Brach publicly critiqued her publishers for still financially benefitting from Bikram, Osho, and Sogyal Rinpoche? What would happen if she called out a fellow teacher accused of abuse?

There is a cost to pay for standing up to power—which is why so many spiritual teachers remain silent.

I don’t blame them. Many of us on the frontlines have been sued, harassed, smeared, hacked, lost friendships, faced death threats or severe financial hardship, or have been forced into hiding. The spiritual abuse crisis has destroyed the lives of the victims and often those trying to shed light on it.

As far as I’m aware, Matthew Remski is the only panelist in the virtual conference who has actually exposed and condemned dangerous spiritual gurus. He’s a heavyweight in the field with two decades of experience analyzing these systems of protection.

Despite my skepticism, I hope the panel is fruitful—at the very least, it’s a step in the right direction.

It’s not necessary that mainstream book publishers publish or distribute the books of abusive gurus. They can self-publish them on their own imprints. Otherwise, books go out of print all the time—and are still widely available in used format.

Perhaps the book publishers who have profited and continue to profit from abusive spiritual gurus can set up a fund for the victims of spiritual abuses. It could cover therapy, legal expenses, mentoring, escaping abusive gurus, and more. Any spiritual influencer who has profited from this industry and wants to contribute is welcome to do so.

I can be contacted at bescofieldreporter(at)gmail.com.

See also: Deepak Chopra, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Spiritual Abuse Crisis

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

SEE ALSO: Meet the Doomsday Cult Taking Over the World

Several anti-racist groups in Crewe, England, are fracturing over their decision to attend a protest in support of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light—widely reported as a destructive doomsday cult. A few dozen members have dissented, with over ten resigning from the incident.

Members of the groups have revealed to me that after the protest, the Ahmadi cult handed each anti-racist group £2,000 in cash. Messages shown to me from inside the SCAR steering committee group chat confirm the receipt of the funds.

Due to the backlash from some members, two of three groups (SCAR and NorSCARF) have decided to return the funds. But some remain adamant that they will continue to protest in support of the Ahmadi group—seeing them as a persecuted religion consisting of mostly immigrants. They’ve said the allegations against the cult are just speculation.

The Protest

The incident unfolded over an anti-immigrant protest last Saturday, organized by a local named Dave Price, in front of the cult’s compound in Crewe. According to the video of the event, there were often fewer than ten people protesting the cult at any given time.

The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light orchestrated a counterprotest, going so far as to have contacted Manchester Stand Up Against Racism. Internal messages from SCAR confirm the cult hired a bus to bring in the protesters from Manchester—a £1,000 cost.

“They told us they were terrified, and they needed protection,” an insider revealed to me.

This type of overdramatizing and staging events for publicity is commonplace for the cult. The leader, Abdullah Hashem, has made naive followers in Muslim countries repeatedly violate laws (like holding up pro-LGBTQ signs in Malaysia) to be arrested. While his followers languish in jail, Hashem and the group spin their arrests as “persecution” and exploit leftist sympathies.

Government Officials in Attendance

Several local government officials attended the counterprotest in support of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. Those included Mayor Sally Graham and councilors Ben Wye and Marilyn Houston. The mayor has participated in several events with the cult.

Both Marilyn Houston and Ben Wye are also members of one of the anti-racist groups in question, SCAR. Wye attended the group meeting prior to the rally and shared his views on the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light.

“Ben said it was most definitely a cult,” a SCAR member who was in the meeting told me. “He said he had visited them plenty of times and that the leader is a bit of a nasty piece of work. He talked about how the leader Abdullah used to investigate cults, and now he runs one.”

Three people who attended the SCAR meeting independently confirmed that Councilor Wye referred to the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light as a cult.

Wye also told the SCAR members he would not be attending the rally on Saturday.

Despite his critical statements, he showed up in support of the cult, as demonstrated by a video of the event.

In an internal SCAR group chat shared with me, councilor Marilyn Houston tells the fellow members she was “pleased to support” the rally and said there was a lot of “positive solidarity.”

Mistaken for Islam

The protesters, counterprotesters, and government officials in attendance mistakenly referred to the Ahmadi cult as Muslim.

The leader of the cult, Abdullah Hashem, says, “Islam is 99% wrong” and calls scholars of Islam the “worst creatures under the sky.” This is a classic cult leader move—discredit the authorities who have the ability to undermine your self-serving distortion of a religion.

The perception of Islam has served as a shield for the group, which continually exploits leftist sympathies by portraying themselves as victims of discrimination while engaging in harmful practices.

Inside Abdullah Hashem’s Cult

Standing with the Ahmadi cult means supporting a white American man from Indianapolis, IN, who has been accused of sexually abusing and exploiting immigrants.

The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light is a personality cult built by Abdullah Hashem. He claims to be the reincarnation of Christ, the new Pope, God, and the Islamic savior called the Mahdi. He also claims to be the only person on the planet capable of interpreting all religious texts, including the Bible and the Quran.

This element distinguishes the group from a monastery or intentional community—which lacks the authoritarian leader who dictates people’s lives.

“We’re looking for people that are willing to sell their homes, come be a part of the community, and follow me,” Hashem states in a video. He requires his followers to pledge loyalty oaths in videos online. “Upon this I shall live. Upon this I shall die. And upon this I shall be resurrected again,” the oath concludes.

“There is no other way to support God than to come here and support you,” a staff member tells him in a video, her eyes filled with zeal. “Abdullah Hashem is here to save the world,” a devotee says in one video. “He is the most important person in the world,” says another.

He has convinced his followers that only those who support him will be spared from a violent “flood of blood” that will destroy much of the planet. “We believe you have to believe in him to be saved,” a key staff member states.

He also claims to have performed miracles such as making the moon disappear, resurrecting the dead, turning a leaf into a person, curing cancer, and more.

This is not Islam. It’s a destructive new age doomsday cult. Muslims have been trying to expose Hashem and his group for years.

Sexual Abuse and an Assassination Plot

I’ve now written ten stories on the Ahmadi cult. Ex-followers have reported a range of abuses by Hashem. The Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail, and VICE have all published stories after my original reporting.

The reason Hashem fled Germany was because some women followers filed complaints of sexual exploitation with the police. The group was then kicked out of Sweden for orchestrating illegal work visa schemes.

A former member described sexual rituals Hashem would engage in. “One of his ‘teachings’ was that, during sexual rituals, the Imam [Abdullah] must penetrate both the man and the woman in order to ‘cleanse them of sins,’” a man I call “Evan” explained. In another case, a female devotee very close to Hashem was allegedly sexually abused in front of her husband while Hashem watched—and a similar incident occurred when a former male member was sexually abused as part of a ‘test of faith’ by one of Hashem’s closest Iranian followers, again with Hashem observing.

In September I uncovered the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light’s plot to assassinate one of my key sources, Yasir. The man hired to kill my source ended up getting cold feet and revealed everything to Yasir.

I then interviewed the assassin, whom I called “Ibrahim” in my reporting. He told me longtime Ahmadi cult member Sajid Ali Khokhar had organized the plot. Ibrahim was given photos of my source, Yasir, as well as pictures of his car, license plate, and apartment building in Dubai—which he sent to me. He had even received Sajid’s passport.

Yasir lived in the Crewe compound for over a year before fleeing. He told me that Hashem once asked him and another member to kill a man who had an affair with the wife of a follower. “I’ll show you a way to kill him with no one knowing about it,” Hashem told them over a chat. When they refused to participate, Hashem said to them, “You have no faith.”

We even have a screenshot of a group chat where Hashem tells a husband, “Or you will kill her,” referring to the man’s own wife. Hashem is grilling him on what sexual activities his wife partook in. The husband responds using the term “master” for Hashem, which is common for his followers.

Yasir said there was another disturbing incident, which other former members have confirmed to me. “He sent his believers in Turkey to use knives to kill an Iraqi guy who had left and was making videos exposing Hashem.”

Hashem has an army of dozens of men who can be seen marching in military style in their compound. They have pledged to kill and die for Hashem.

“Abdullah claimed to have put poison in glasses to see if his followers would be willing to die for him,” a former member told me.

Most disturbing, Hashem’s “holy text,” called the Goal of the Wise, states boys are “also for sex” for both “men and the women.”

It’s clear the groups and individuals supporting the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light have failed to do even a basic level of due diligence on the allegations. They haven’t read the investigations or articles. Instead, they’ve accepted a simple binary that immigrants and religious minorities can do no wrong. Yet, when you reduce marginalized people into a benevolent monolith, you make them not human, and that is racist.

Read the investigations into the Ahmadi cult:

• Meet the Doomsday Cult Taking Over the World

• Dark Secrets: Life Inside England’s Doomsday Cult

• Inside an Assassination Plot of England’s Doomsday Cult

• 17 Shocking Beliefs of England’s Doomsday Cult

Mainstream news:

• ‘Dad, imam, God’: children living with self-declared pope in former UK orphanage

• This man claims to be the ‘saviour of mankind’. And he lives in Crewe

• In England, Parents Are Moving Their Children Into a Doomsday Cult—With a Man Calling Himself ‘the New Pope’

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

READ THE SERIES:

• Part I: Inside Sadhguru’s Cult Empire

• Part II: Unmasking Sadhguru’s Legacy of Abuse

Imagine you’re at home meditating with your wife. She suddenly collapses. You don’t call an ambulance. You don’t take her to a hospital. You don’t bring in a doctor. She dies.

Less than 12 hours later you burn your wife’s body despite knowing her family is on their way and has asked you not to touch her. When they arrive, it’s an hour too late—their daughter’s body is a charred corpse.

Then you proclaim your wife attained a form of enlightenment and say she’d been “wanting to die” for a while. You publicly state that 13 people witnessed her "enlightenment," only to later inflate the number and say that “hundreds” were present.

This is Sadhguru’s story.

For decades he’s explained the suspicious death of his wife in this manner, claiming she had “wanted to die” through mahasamadhi. At the same time, many have wondered for years whether he was responsible for her death.

Now, he’s reinforced the story in a dramatic 2.5-hour documentary about his wife, Vijji, where he repeats the same claims.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept his version of events.

Why is Sadhguru so certain about his wife’s cause of death? If she had truly passed out and died while meditating, it could have been a heart attack, stroke, aneurysm, or several other things.

There was no medical examination or autopsy—he burned the body too quickly for there to be one. We can’t know. Thus, Sadhguru’s aggressive attempt to control the narrative is suspicious.

And if this was truly ‘mahasamadhi,’ Hindu traditions treat that kind of death differently. It’s a burial or entombment rather than ordinary cremation. The rush to burn her body raises even more questions.

If there was no foul play, it’s anyone’s guess what her cause of death was. But in Sadhguru’s story, there is total certainty, and he wants total control over how the public is allowed to interpret what happened.

Analyzing Sadhguru’s Story

One of the strangest details is that the documentary (and his biography) tries to have it both ways.

In the film, a senior staff member says Sadhguru “was trying to do something to revive her.” His biography echoes the same idea, claiming he worked “ceaselessly” on her chakras.

Pause there.

If he recognized a deliberate yogic “exit,” why attempt revival?

But if he believed it was a medical crisis—why no outside medical intervention? Why no doctor? Why no ambulance? And why, afterward, the absolute certainty that it was mahasamadhi and that she left through a specific chakra?

The documentary also shows the emotional choreography that follows. A woman in the documentary recalls Sadhguru telling everyone, “Please don’t cry. It is not a sad matter. It is a proud moment for every spiritual seeker that she has attained mahasamadhi on her own.”

Is this how you talk during an emergency and tragedy? It sounds more like coaching.

The documentary can’t decide whether this was a medical emergency or a planned (and proud) spiritual act. In one breath he tries to revive her. In the next, he says, it was mahasamadhi, and she left her body through her heart chakra.

Sadhguru’s story continues to fall apart upon examination.

I interviewed one of Vijji and Sadhguru’s close friends and fellow disciples, “Karishma” (alias). She arrived on the scene just a few hours after Vijji died.

Karishma told me the “group meditation” story was invented by Sadhguru and the team right after the death. She said he was actually home alone with Vijji when she died.

“This is what we are going to say so there won’t be any problems,” Karishma told me they said. “Say we were all meditating, and that’s how she died.”

The original claim that Vijji was meditating with 13 people morphed into “Vijayakumari attained Mahasamadhi in the presence of hundreds of people,” as reflected by Sadhguru’s website.

This is clearly an embellishment to shape public perception.

The Cover Story

Is it more plausible that a healthy 33-year-old mother of a young daughter was "determined" to die through enlightenment, or is Sadhguru promoting this narrative for his own benefit?

After his wife's suspicious death and quick disposal of the body, he claims she had frequently talked about dying. How convenient.

Karishma told me she had dinner with Vijji the night before she died. She said Vijji had asked her to keep her schedule free in two days so they could shop. Vijji never mentioned anything about attaining mahasamadhi in the coming days.

Sadhguru’s cover story is that they had made several visits to an ascetic guru named Swami Nirmalananda, who was going to die by mahasamadhi. He says Vijji just “cried and cried” upon hearing of the swami’s story.

He claims that on the way home from a visit, Vijji expressed her desire to attain mahasamadhi. “I want to leave like he is,” he claims she told him. “I am really serious. You must help me.”

“You must help me.”

Really?

Sadhguru then says Vijji would “often” raise the subject of killing herself through enlightenment. What was her rush to leave this world? Why would he allow his wife to die and their young daughter to lose her mother?

There is a massive, glaring problem with Sadhguru’s story.

Vijji’s supposed “inspiration” for mahasamadhi did not even attempt such a thing. Everyone at the time knew the swami was dying of fasting, not mahasamadhi.

After his death in 1997, Hinduism Today reported that a letter he wrote had “calmly announced the 73-year-old swami’s intent to undergo prayopavesha, self-willed death by fasting.” They continued by stating, “Swami’s intent had been known for some time, and the local authorities had even posted police at the ashram to prevent what they regarded as an unlawful act of suicide.”

The article reports that a “steady stream of visitors came to dissuade swami” from his fast to the death. In Mysore and Bangalore, critics even called his action a publicity stunt. “A year earlier a Calcutta journalist wrote about Swamiji’s intent,” Hinduism Today reported.

The key point is that the police had originally planned to take him to the hospital and force-feed him.

Dying from starvation is vastly different than dying by attaining spiritual mastery over your soul and willingly exiting.

There was no basis for Vijji to have learned about mahasamadhi from Swami Nirmalananda. It’s merely a cover story Sadhguru invented to push his narrative.

We can clearly see how he utilized this fabricated story to suit his purpose.

The swami died on January 10th, 1997. Vijji died just two weeks later on January 23rd.

This was the perfect timing for Sadhguru to manufacture a story about the swami being Vijji’s secret source of inspiration to die. The swami was gone and couldn’t challenge his claims, and neither could Vijji.

Sadhguru’s Domestic Abuse

“We knew there were many strifes and disagreements,” Karishma told me of the relationship between Sadhguru and Vijji. The autobiography also describes quarrels between Sadhguru and Vijji over his close connections to other women.

A former colleague of Sadhguru alleges he physically abused her.

“I remember once around 1996 when one of the hosts with whom they were staying approaching me in a very concerned, worried manner,” he writes. “[Vijji] was found bruised with strangle marks and cried for hours loudly, saying she did not want to take sleeping pills and she didn’t want to die. I consoled the host, saying it is their private matter and not to interfere, and I confronted him directly instead. He brushed the matter aside, and we had a really rough conversation that day.”

He even alleged Sadhguru kept her forcibly locked away. “A few months later [Vijji] was placed in house arrest by him in the ashram, with nobody allowed to meet her,” he writes. At one point she even “ran away” and was “seeking refuge” away from Sadhguru.

This man mentioned Vijji having been left physically bruised.

Karishma also noticed a bruise the night Vijji died. “One of the ladies who wrapped the sari was suspicious that he beat her up,” Karishma told me. “There was a large black bruise on Vijji’s abdomen above the belly button where the ribs meet.”

Even the documentary acknowledges the existence of the mark. “We did notice that there was like a burn mark on her Anahata [chest],'“ a woman states in the film.

Sadhguru’s “brilliant” pivot was to claim that the mark is the chakra point where she left her body. “She left through her anahata," he stated, according to his biography.

How would he know?

Vijji’s father filed a police report in which he alleged Sadhguru was having affairs with other women in the ashram.

“My daughter used to say quite repeatedly about the illicit relationship of [Sadhguru] with other women,” he writes. “Also in 1995, some 4 persons from Coimbatore took my daughter to Bangalore in an unconscious state (suspected drugs injected) to our house. When asked, no explanation was given to me. When we asked our daughter, she complained that she was given sleeping pills forcibly, and they left her during the night.”

Both the father and Sadhguru’s colleague mention sleeping pills.

He concludes the report with his view on her death. “We believe that my daughter had been killed and then burnt in pretext of some benefit or reason.”

Several former members also accuse Sadhguru of sexual misconduct, verbal abuse, cultic indoctrination, and narcissistic exploitation. Two former staff members allege he asked them to help him kill rival guru Nithyananda. And there are other suspicious deaths.

A Master Yogi?

One of the most dubious aspects of this whole story is that mahasamadhi is only attainable by highly advanced yogis. A well-known example is Paramahansa Yogananda, supposedly one of the most accomplished yogis of the 20th century. The ability to leave your body at will is no easy task and requires many years of training.

Vijji was a young householder with a job and a child—not a renunciant saint with decades of public yogic training. How on earth would she have attained this ability?

At the end of the day, the story doesn’t pass the smell test:

• A healthy, 33-year-old woman with a young daughter was “determined to die,” according to Sadhguru.

• He went along with it, despite knowing it’d deprive their daughter of a mother and that she was his wife of many years.

• There was no swami attaining mahasamadhi for Vijji to be inspired by.

• Numerous witnesses and Sadhguru’s documentary acknowledge the existence of a black bruise on Vijji’s chest.

• There are allegations of domestic abuse and affairs.

• Mahasamadhi is reserved for master yogis, and Vijji was not one.

What do you think is a more plausible explanation for Vijji’s death? Mystical enlightenment or foul play? Let me know in the comments below.

SEE ALSO:

I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.

Please donate to support this independent reporting: VENMO: @be-scofield PAYPAL: mettaversity@gmail.com or www.gurumag.com/donate

The Deepak Chopra–Epstein scandal is cracking open something the spirituality industry has kept hidden for years. People are waking up to the abuse, manipulation, and cover-ups that hide inside “love and light” culture, protected by fame, charisma, and the language of enlightenment.

I’ve spent a decade reporting inside this ecosystem. I’m here to say it’s way worse than you think. Many of the most famous names in the industry are implicated—by what they did, what they enabled, or what they helped cover up.

To be frank, I’ve never seen so many industry insiders call out a spiritual guru as they are with Chopra. My response: Welcome to the club. If you are serious, and this isn’t just an easy dunk for cred or views, then please find the courage to speak about the “beloved” gurus mentioned below. Stop idolizing them and actually be willing to challenge the status quo.

Modern spirituality has a significant “protection” problem. The biggest teachers share the same conferences, publishers, podcasts, donors, and groupies. So when abuse happens, they either ignore it or manage and minimize it. Calling out a famous guru when it’s not “cool” to do so yet can jeopardize their own power and influence.

Maybe this sudden flux of attention around spiritual abuse will finally make people willing to really look at the long-standing allegations surrounding some of the biggest names in the field. I hope so. But I’m skeptical, because there’s too much money and opportunity at stake—book deals, speaking fees, retreats, courses, and a whole economy built to keep the brand clean.

Below are “Guru Files” on three of the most influential names in modern spirituality. In each one, there are whistleblowers, specific allegations backed by documents or firsthand accounts, and victims whose stories were ignored—or actively managed—so the brand could keep selling books, programs, and “healing.” I’ve spent years deeply reporting stories like these.

The Guru Files will be a section on this site, so be sure to sign up to receive the next installments. And don’t skip the conclusion because I lay out just how much of a hot mess the industry is.

Guru File #1: Chogyam Trungpa

Let’s start with Chogyam Trungpa, founder of Shambhala Buddhism, who is still revered as one of the most influential spiritual figures of our time. He’s sold millions of books and founded Naropa University in Boulder, CO.

He was a known pedophile.

Trungpa infamously made out with a 13-year old girl in front of his staff and students. Una Morera witnessed it and shared her firsthand account in a podcast. “I realized I was now watching Trungpa passionately kissing Sarah, like tongue deep kissing her,” she says of the 13-yr-old girl. “Then I looked up at the adults who were standing up and surrounding us...I saw them watching Trungpa kissing Sarah too, where there was no concern for her. Amongst the other teenagers, I found alarm in their faces. Their eyes were zigzagging all over the place, searching for one another’s, but as the kiss continued, they didn’t make a move or do anything.”

One of his seven ex-wives recalls Trungpa “demanding women and girls at all hours of the day and night, some of them teenagers.”

If you have a problem with Deepak Chopra’s ties to Epstein, then Trungpa should outrage you.

Enter Pema Chodron.

She’s one of the most famous spiritual teachers in the world. The frequent Oprah guest is a best-selling author of popular books like When Things Fall Apart.

Chodron is a lifelong devotee of Chogyam Trungpa and one of his principal defenders.

She revealed to a staff member named Fred Coulson the extent of her devotion. “She then told me that if she were shown photos of her guru Chogyam Trungpa molesting children her devotion would be the same,” Coulson states.

What?

I got an email this morning from Sounds True, the largest online spiritual publisher, selling me on a Pema Chodron course called “The Freedom to Love.”

For her guru, Chogyam Trungpa, the freedom to love meant something much more sinister.

Chodron was forced to apologize on Oprah for her role in enabling sexual abuse within Shambhala.

A female student went to Chodron and told her she had been raped and impregnated by her Shambhala center’s leader. She dismissed her claims. “I don’t believe you,” Chodron scoffed. Later, she told her, “If it’s true, I suspect you were into it.”

There are others too. “She basically ripped me apart and said I wasn’t being compassionate enough toward my abuser, and if I didn’t like it I should leave Buddhism,” a student of Chodron stated. “There are a number of people (I’m one) she retraumatized with her responses to requests for help,” writes Fionna Bright. “What she did to me was devastating. Her approach has been to deny and scold, to blame the victim.”

When asked about women who come to her with issues with male teachers, Chodron replied, “Blaming others never heals anything.”

To this day Chodron stands by Chogyam Trungpa—despite his known sexual exploits with teens and women, a widely known cocaine habit, alcoholism, having a couple forcibly stripped naked in public, and various other abuses.

Walk into the Boulder Bookstore (run by a devotee) and turn right after the counter. You’ll find an entire section dedicated to Trungpa’s lineage, including books by his son Mipham who was ousted for a serious sexual abuse scandal. Many Shambhala devotees remained loyal to him, hoping he’d return as the leader.

As long as child abusers and their defenders continue to be revered in modern spirituality, our task is far from over.

You can read the three-part series I’ve done on Shambhala here. It covers Trungpa and the aftermath of his legacy and abuses by his students, including Pema Chodron, Reggie Ray of Dharma Ocean, and Tslutrim Allione of Tara Mandala.

Guru File #2: Sadhguru

Let’s pivot to the most famous celebrity guru in the world: Sadhguru.

He required young girls to be topless in their ceremonies. A former staff member named Chandra was there. She witnessed it. I interviewed her. “He comes up to them and runs his hand up and down their spine and touches them on the back,” Chandra told me. “He says it does things to their consciousness.”

We also have email proof of Sadhguru acknowledging this.

Here a staff member writes to another staff member, “I was not aware at all that the young adolescent girls are asked to go in to the shrine for their Bala bhramachari initiation bare-chested. This is unacceptable. I am glad you prevailed upon the master and stopped it.”

This email from a staff member to Sadhguru is remarkably revealing. She warns him that requiring girls to be nude from the waist up is “very dangerous” and could be misunderstood:

During initiation, the girls are asked to removed the upper cloth so the spine is fully exposed. As i have expressed earlier, I have some reservations about this and feel this needs to be revisited keeping in mind that they are minor girls and however overwhelmed and obedient they may be at that time, we cannot expect all of them to keep it confidential or not to discuss it at all. Girls being girls will have the tendency to either share if not now, sometime later with their parents or some teacher who is close to them. Also they are here not out of their own choice but because of their parents and the parents are unaware of this. This is very dangerous as it can be perceived in a completely different way both by adults and maybe by the child as well. Also we have seen that their face changes when we tell them to do this before initiation.”

She continues, “Also there is a huge risk factor involved for the institution in case it goes negative...So from now it’s better to initiate the girls with their upper body properly covered. Request if we can go ahead.”

Sadhguru replies, “Yes to both.”

I interviewed several of Sadhguru’s former senior staff and devotees, who reported an array of abuses, including being coerced into sexual acts.

“Under the guise of it being a ‘sacred process,’ where the body is ‘simply a tool,’ I was asked to remove my blouse and given a sacred thread to tie around my waist to help facilitate an energy transmission,” a woman named “Rebecca” told me. She was topless in front of him as part of the energetic ritual. “He said it allows you to connect up with him better.”

She also told me he “is a predator” and that he groomed women with “well-established patterns.”

“Once that trust and connection was established, it was exploited to perform various tantric processes, including performing oral sex. All of this was done so I could ‘improve my receptivity’ and help enhance human consciousness.”

Several women told me Sadhguru required them to be topless in ceremonies as well, and he ran his hand up and down their spines. In some initiation ceremonies, both men and women were required to be fully nude.

For decades Sadhguru systematically employed cult-like tactics to break down his followers and exploit them for money. After reading my series a psychologist with training in cult dynamics concluded, “It’s a full-blown authoritarian structure…every red flag is there psychologically, legally, ethically.”

Sadhguru sells $100 photos of his feet, $800–$3,333 “consecrated” devices, workshops that run $5,750 to $8,600, and even pushes a tithe. He tells his followers “they will be better able to achieve spiritual growth” with 7% less income.

You can read my series on Sadhguru here: Part 1 and Part 2. I cover many more allegations, including sexual misconduct, verbal abuse, the suspicious case of his wife’s death, and other deaths under questionable circumstances.

SEE ALSO: What Happened to Sadhguru’s Wife? Did Sadhguru’s wife die from enlightenment, as he claims, or was it foul play?

Please donate to support this independent reporting: VENMO: @be-scofield PAYPAL: mettaversity@gmail.com or www.gurumag.com/donate

Guru File #3: Amma

Perhaps the second-most famous spiritual guru in the world is Amma, the hugging saint. She built her brand as a divine, godlike being who is celibate.

It’s not true.

Jacques Albohair was her personal translator for 13 years. He was with her from the beginning in the early 1980s.

He wrote a book that included details about sexual encounters with Amma. I also interviewed him. You can watch the video here. In his book, he describes the sexual encounters:

Often, I would massage her feet or legs and then she would eventually invite me to lie down next to her. Then she would take my hand and put it on her breasts. Often, she would pull out one of her breasts and give me her nipple to suck. Sometimes she would remove her bra and present me her full bare chest. Several times she lifted her petticoat, spread her thighs, and invited me to put my penis on her pubis, then on her outer lips. I held on to what I knew of neo tantra and felt this was the right moment to practice. It was important to me to stay as tantric as possible, to control my pleasure and my excitement and not to slip into basic sexuality. Then she invited me to rock my hips and so I ended up rubbing my erect penis over the whole height of her vulva. It could continue for quite some time. It was erotic, exciting, and serene at the same time. From her bed, I saw the starry sky through the window, sometimes the light of the moon. We had developed this practice which we used several times. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, I was willing.

One of the many sexual encounters happened while they were traveling in Italy.

During one of the late-night meetings, I had with her in Italy, in a small room where Gail was already sleeping, she got off her bed, put a blanket on the floor and offered me to join her. This time we were lying on our side. We got into the scissors position and she invited me again to resume our practice. I do not know how much time had passed and I think she was half asleep. She must have started to lubricate abundantly because after a while the glans of my penis slipped and nested between her lips against the wet opening of her vagina. Despite the intense excitement and pleasure, once tucked in this spot, I froze. I tried to stay still in this position.

Allegations that Amma is sexual also come from her former personal attendant of 20 years, Gail Tredwell. She too was with Amma from the beginning in the early 1980s. Tredwell also published a book detailing an array of abuses by Amma, including physical and verbal abuse, stealing donations, and fraud.

Tredwell writes:

I witnessed with my own eyes Amma and Balu having sex. We had just arrived on the Big Island of Hawaii, and Balu was alone with Amma in her room. I stepped onto the verandah of the house and, as I turned, I could see them through the open windows of her room. In a glimpse I saw the two of them in bed together. Amma’s legs were spread. Naked from the waist down, Balu was moving on top of her. They had forgotten to close the windows, perhaps not realizing that their room overlooked the adjacent verandah. I gasped and swiftly ducked so that they wouldn’t see me. I was livid.

In Part 1 of my expose, I detail Tredwell’s further accounts of witnessing Amma being sexual with male followers.

Amma also claims to be God. The biographies and books about her that she sells claim she is “omniscient” and “omnipresent.” One states, “Amma is a fully God-realized Master who has no karma Herself.” Regarding her initial divine incarnation, she says, “I was able to know everything about everyone...I was fully aware that I myself was Krishna.”

The biographies she sells also claim she does spectacular miracles like resurrecting children from the dead, healing paralyzed people, curing cancer, shooting fireballs out of her hands, feeding the masses with little food, and more.

But, wait, there’s more.

Jacques Albohair, Gail Tredwell, and at least two other women witnessed or experienced Amma’s physical and verbal abuses.

“She became extremely ill-tempered and would hit, kick, slap, punch, rip me by the hair for the slightest mistake and sometimes for no reason at all,” Tredwell writes in her book. “Towards the end, her signature move became to grab me by the throat with one hand, dig her nails in and claw towards the center. I was left with scratch marks and sometimes blood.”

A few years ago I interviewed Tredwell in person and heard firsthand her accounts of being abused by Amma.

“Amma snatched the steel tumbler from her hand,” Albohair writes in his book. “Gail turned to rush back upstairs to finish making the tea but when Amma saw the contents of the cup, she exclaimed: ‘Since when have I drunk milk!’ and hurled the full tumbler across the room. Gail stood, frozen in amazement. In an explosion of rage Amma then grabbed Gail’s sari and began to tear it apart with her teeth.” Albohair said Tredwell returned a few minutes later with a cup of tea. Amma then said to her, “If you come near me, I will stab you to death. I am actually dreaming about it!” Amma then hit herself three times in the head. Gail hesitated to leave, and Amma added, “If you do not leave the room right away, I’ll chop off my hands and feet!”

Tredwell describes an incident where Amma violently raged at her.

Amma entered her room, grabbed hold of the door, and slammed it shut with such thunderous might that the entire brick wall shook. Immediately she rushed over to Vidya and rammed her up against the panel of switches by the door. Then she turned and came charging at me like a raging bull. Grabbing a fist full of my hair, she flung me to the ground and spun me around over the smoothly polished linoleum floor as she kicked me a few times.

“How many times have I told you to check on the kitchen? You lazy, good for nothing bitch, just sitting around in my room like a queen.”

Releasing me from her grip, she turned and charged toward Vidya again. After I stood up and regained my senses, I had to laugh. Instead of standing like a helpless rag doll and meekly accepting another pounding, Vidya had a better idea. She ran for her life up the stairs with Amma hot on her heels. I followed, thinking that once it was all over, we could make an easy exit through the upper level across the bridge to the temple building. Now Vidya was trapped in the corner of the upstairs room in the process of receiving a couple of slaps. Running out of steam, Amma turned to me and said, “Piss off. Piss off, the both of you.” Then she stormed back to her room.

A woman named “Ritika” (alias) told me during an interview that she was physically abused by Amma and witnessed her hitting others. She lived at the ashram for 17 years. “She took a stick and started beating me,” Ritika told me of one incident. “She jumped at me and and slapped my face,” she says of another occasion that Amma hit her.

Ritika told me she witnessed Amma hit Gail Tredwell and Lakshmi “many times.” Small things like a slight change in the flavor of her curry or the whiteness of her dress would lead Amma to hit. Ritika said she yelled and cursed at anyone who was close to her many times. “She will throw anything that’s in her hands,” she told me. “We would be trembling. We were all afraid of her when she’s in a bad mood.”

In 2012 Rolling Stone did a story Amma where they interviewed Tredwell about the abuse. The reporter also spoke to a former devotee who claimed to have been slapped by Amma and witnessed similar abusive treatment of others at the India ashram.

Like Sadhguru, Amma also sells “devotion” in the form of $200 dolls of herself, $250–$300 “blessed and worn” jewelry, and other objects imbued with her “energy.”

You can read Part 1 and Part 2 of my series on Amma. In the second part, I explain how she built her cult-like following and ashram from the early days.

The Implosion

To put it bluntly: modern spirituality is a hot mess. And the rot isn’t just “out there” at the margins—it’s protected from the top down. The biggest gurus, spiritual publishing houses, podcasters, and organizations preserve the status quo because the status quo pays. Anyone who has watched this world for more than five minutes knows it.

I’m not being overly dramatic. I’m describing a pattern.

Over the last few decades, allegations of abuse have touched nearly every major modern yoga lineage—physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual misconduct, financial exploitation, and systemic cover-ups. Many of the world’s most prominent Buddhist teachers and institutions have been rocked by scandals. The same is true in the non-dual and Hindu “teacher” circuit, where self-proclaimed masters have repeatedly been exposed running coercive, abusive cults. The list is too long to do justice here—and in some cases it includes allegations of child sexual abuse.

Even the “legendary” figures are implicated. Take Swami Satchidananda, the so-called “Woodstock guru” associated with Integral Yoga: a 2024 lawsuit alleges he sexually abused multiple female students over decades, and that the institution failed to investigate and enabled the abuse. Another titan, Muktananda of Siddha Yoga, was the subject of a 2023 lawsuit that alleges widespread sexual abuse, including of women and girls, and claims that leadership—including Gurumayi—helped facilitate access to victims. And if you can stomach it, the allegations surrounding Yogi Bhajan and Kundalini Yoga are among the most disturbing in the modern spiritual canon.

So yes—the list goes on and on. But the bottom line is simple: many of the most prominent, influential spiritual teachers of the last 75 years, and the organizations built around them, have been compromised at the core.

And we’re watching the same dynamics play out in real time with the modern celebrity gurus who dominate the spiritual airwaves today—Amma and Sadhguru included.

To undo this, we have to cut the bullshit. Not “everyone has a shadow.” Not “imperfect teachers.” Not “we’re all human.” Those phrases excuse systems of coercion.

Newsflash: it’s not “human” to build destructive cults, foster dependency, and systematically abuse and rape followers.

We’re dealing with a power structure—one that has shaped the spiritual imagination of millions. Toxic gurus teach toxic ideologies, build toxic institutions, and then call the fallout “healing.” Publishers and podcasters then regurgitate these toxic ideas helping to normalize them.

If there’s any way out of this, it starts with brutal honesty: naming what’s happening, refusing the spiritual spin, and holding these figures to the same basic standards we expect everywhere else.

If you’re tired of gurus telling you to shut off your mind while they keep theirs active to control you, then you are ready. If you are tired of gurus telling you to not have sex while they secretly have sex with followers, then you are ready. If you are tired of being told abusive behaviors are beneficial for your spiritual growth, then you are ready.

I’m here for it. Please follow The Savior Complex to join me.

Please donate to support this independent reporting: VENMO: @be-scofield PAYPAL: mettaversity@gmail.com or www.gurumag.com/donate