Ep. 1 Green Diamonds

Cult Podcast features adult themes and graphic descriptions of violence and it's not recommended for all audiences. Listen or discretion is advised, seriously. If you like our podcast, please follow us on Instagram @ColtPodcast or Twitter @ColtPodcastShow for show updates. And please rate and review the show on iTunes. If you've been into Cult and you want to tell us about it, email us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you and most importantly, enjoy the show. Don't drink the cool air. Thank you for tuning in. You're listening to Cult Podcast. I'm your host Paige Wesley, along with my lovely co-host. Marie Tabella. How are you guys doing today? I hope it's better than we are. Oh, I can almost guarantee it's better than we are. Neither of us are sound engineers and we just spent four hours. Four. Four complete hours trying to get this to work. That's two movies or one drive to Orange County. Yes, exactly. Yeah, any weekday that's like a four hour drive. Basically. Marie and I are both true crime nerds. Specifically, we love cults. As many people that we know do as well as we found out, we were trying to set this podcast up. Nearly everyone we talked to seemed to have either joined a cult at some point or had a weird cult story. We live in Los Angeles, so. It's cult mecca, for sure. cults are here. cults are here and they're not going to help. Alive and well. Yes, like they're not going away anytime soon. No. We figured we'd kick it off with a real fun first cult. The reason I picked the cult we're going to do today is because when I was in high school, my senior year, I had like a world religions class that I was totally blowing off and instead taking like four periods of art. And yet never learned how to use a recorder. So like it didn't pay off all that much. But we had to do a book report at one point in that class and they gave us a list of books to choose from and they all sounded boring as shit. Until I got to one that said evil demonic cults. Yes. I was like, you've got my number personally. I've read that a lot. And I remember it was one of the few times in school that I read an entire book for an assignment. Like covered to cover. Like I didn't skim a single chapter. I read the whole damn thing. I also re-read it this week and I have no idea how I read the whole thing in high school because God, that was a rippically bad book. But it covered one man's experience in the sati-sai-baba cults. Which is what we're going to be covering today. The tricky thing about the sati-sai-baba cult, if we're going to start from the beginning, there's not a ton known about sati-sai-baba as a kid. So pretty much everything available to us as far as his upbringing is from his own biography. Which think about. That's not biased at all. No, no, no, not at all. Not in the slightest. Not remotely biased. It's very biased. It's also super creative. We'll get into it. So what we do know about sati-sai-baba is that he was born November 23rd in 1926. At the time, India was still under British rule. Which is kind of interesting to note. He was one of five children, had an older brother, two older sisters and a younger brother. So I mean, this could all just be a middle child acting out. Like if we want to get into it. Yeah, mostly. Yeah, I would say so. Not many of his siblings seem to be religiously inclined. I think it's kind of interesting to note that they didn't really get very involved in his cults. Which I feel like if your brother was an actual successful cult leader, like you'd be on board with that. If your brother was really doing miracles, I feel like- Well, yeah, if they were legit. If they were legit, I think I'd be involved. Yeah, I'd sign up for that shit. Right. Any day of the week. Like if my sister suddenly was like, by the way, I can manifest shoes out of thin air. I'd be like, yeah, well, where's your church, Aaron? Yeah, also I'm 8 and a half. Right. Send some of those my way. According to his biography, and again, this is somebody he paid according to him. According to him, his birth was by miraculous conception and was foretold by miracles. As was mine, not impressed. Right. Exactly. There's no listing of what these miracles were. Right. Which is probably my favorite part of most of this cult is like their miracles. It's like, okay, what happened? And they're like, miracles. I'm like, that doesn't- that's not information. That helps an opening. As a child, he was described as being unusually intelligent, but like not academically intelligent. So what I would call like book smarts or street smarts. Okay. Right. Which is a thing. Not everybody is solid in school. Like, I am way better at remembering episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race than I ever was at math. So- I'm just below average on all fronts. There you go. I mean, I would say you're above average as a friend at the very least. Oh, I appreciate that. You were welcome. He was, they note however, uncommily talented in devotional music, dance and drama. So who's a theater kid? Okay. That's going to come back a lot. Good start. Good start. If you're going to con people, be a good actor. Like, it's- you'd be amazed how many cult leaders were in the entertainment industry at some point. Again, why Los Angeles is so perfect. Yes. Well, and it's full of people who want to pretend to be other people. That's the whole reason they came here. Yeah. So, I mean, not surprising. He, according again, who's on a biography, was known to manifest small objects like food and sweets out of thin air. But they were always small objects, like things you could hold in your hand. Exactly. I was like, I got a bunch of homeschool Mormon kids who can also do this to try and make friends at parties. According to, again, his own biography, at 14 while he was living with his older brother, he was stung by a scorpion. He lost consciousness and then awoke, singing Sanskrit verses, a language that he allegedly did not speak. It's also a language he doesn't speak much later on either and no one around him spoke. So, it's one of those things where I'm like, so how do you know, though? I feel like that's just acid. Yes. I mean, it would almost be like, if I woke up one day, turned to my boyfriend and made weird noises and was like, that was Mandarin. And he'd be like, well, your guess is as good as mine. I don't speak Mandarin. Fuck sure. Why not? Of course it is. So, doctors allegedly diagnosed him with hysteria, which is weird, doesn't have a uterus. Typically, hysteria is a lady disease or a person with uterus disease if you want to go that way. But his parents didn't accept the answer. Okay. I mean, a core, again, this is according to him. They took him home where they had a local practitioner performing exorcism that didn't seem to work. So they actually had multiple exorcisms that bordered on torture. Again, this is still all according to him. So, grain of salt. A couple days later, he quote-unquote, "manifested" some religious food offerings. Again, small stuff fits in your hand and some flowers. And his father threatened to beat him if he didn't say who he really was. So, like, that's kind of like a kid learning close at magic and then his dad being like, your David Copperfield. Right. If you don't tell me that you are, I'm going to beat the crap. Sure. So, at that point, he claimed that he was "ci-baba," which is a reference to "ci-baba of shurdy." I'm going to guess that most people listening to this do not know who "ci-baba of shurdy" is. I did not. I was going to say, "I have no fucking idea." You know what? It's not going to make a difference after. I'm pretty sure you're going to go on the rest of your life the same way that you did. He was a well-known within India, a saint who had passed away about eight years before satis-ci-baba who we're talking about today was born. He's actually revered in multiple religions, not just Hinduism, but also Islam as well as Zura-Rastrianism. Okay. It's a fun one. Yeah. That's really good. His teachings are strangely monotheistic. So, for Hinduism, that's unusual for you. There is one God, but at the same time, he's kind of like, "There's one God. We're all God. God is everything that He can reverse." And so that's kind of how he gets around it. But his overall message basically was like, "Don't be a dick to people. Be peaceful. Don't be materialistic. Help the poor." He's like Mother Teresa. Oh, is that fair? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. At this point in history, at the time, he would have been a well-known figure, not necessarily to us, especially if you haven't studied Hinduism, but for this time in this crowd, he would have been well-known. Four years later, satis-ci-baba, so this teenager who is claiming to be imbued with the spirit of this old saint, at 18, he opened his first temple. I don't know about you, but I did some stupid shit at 18. Oh, for sure. Like, I don't know. Even a 14-year-old who's like, "I think that's. - That means at 18, he had enough people that wanted to come worship with him that he needed a temple. - Right. - I can't even get five people to go to a comedy show. - No. - Like this is kind of like three friends. - Yes, exactly. And I'm one of them. - You're right. - So there's just one other person. - Exactly. - That's right. - But I mean, at 18, what, you're drunk and crashing cars into things? - I would argue that I was more responsible at 14 than I was at 18. - That's the 18. - I'm gonna, I mean, maybe, I would say at 14, I was still very like, I'm gonna go to college. I'm gonna do this or that. And at 18, I had already gotten into college and was like, how many periods of art can I take? - Yeah, exactly. - I was actually 18 my first year of college too. - So was I, yeah. - So like, it was a lot of like, in and out and how many dresses can I buy to wear to survive for my formals? It's not someone I would be worshiping, I would say. - Oh no. - No. - I was like, considering that like, five years later, I was still doing dumb stuff. - Yeah. - Like, five years from then, a friend would carry me home to my own apartment and wake me up out of a blackout by throwing a phone at my face. So like-- - Yeah, exactly. - Don't worship those people. - No, no, no. - So what I'm saying, these people did. They worshiped an 18 year old. - That's just a shit call. - Yeah, it's not good, you know what? And it's funny because there's, you know, as we get through more cults on this show, so many times people are like, this child knows what's up. Like, she knows the secrets to life and I'm like, he was in diapers, five years. - He literally just shot out of a womb. - Right, like, you know, show me an 80 year old woman and I'll listen to what her deal is because she has lived. - She, that bitch knows. - She, yeah, she, there's very few things that I have done that she has not. - Right. - But for like a 12 year old, like, I don't know if you remember that YouTube video of that kid that's like, he, you know, shun's traditional education and I'm like, I could drop kick him and also he probably still needs a car seat. Like knock it off. There's nothing special about this child. Like, one time I went to a grocery store and a kid in a cart yelled that she would eat rocks. - Good, do it. - Her mother, that was like, do it. - Yeah. - No one's stopping you. - No one is stopping you from eating rocks. Like, this is who we think has the answers. - Right. - Wrong. - No, unlikely. But a ton of people worship him. It's worth noting also that this is about 1944. - Oh, so you only lived to like 22 anyway. - We're, (laughs) (laughs) - I mean, only because World War II was happening. - Right, right. So about six years later in 1950, he actually built an even larger, like, temple and ashram which is now kind of their current home base for the cult. He also at the time established like a free clinic and a hospital in the early periods while he was still deceiving a lot of people for donations and manifesting tiny sweets and stuff. He's still also built a ton of hospitals that were, you know, doing good things and helping the poor. - Okay. - He also, they would adopt small villages and basically take over that village. But in doing so would kind of like revive the local economy of villages, actually. The only downside is if you take over a village as a cult, that means you also own the police force, you own authorities. And that's kind of what happens. So like, you know, he's financially supporting multiple cities. He's got his hands in all kinds of local government. And a lot of it is basically just from people following him, believing that he is this essentially God walking among us and just throwing money at him. So that's a big jump to go from like, here's a fucking mini donut. I manifest it to like here. I'm gonna take over your little goddamn city. - What? I mean, I don't know if somebody could just constantly manifest mini donuts. I at least want to be their best friend. - I would hang out with them for sure. - Sure. - Oh, here's the other thing. And we'll get to it a little bit more later on. It's very bad slide of hand magic. There's a ton, a ton of YouTube videos. Like so many YouTube videos of him allegedly manifesting things. And it's one of those things where I'm like, I have been to a magic show in Hawaii that puts this to shame. Like I worship that guy. Like I have seen Chris Angel, like, and I'm not gonna bow down for him. He is worse than Chris Angel. Like, like Chris Angel, David Blaine, all of them would put this guy to shame as far as the close of magic. It was, when I read the book, the first time in high school, YouTube wasn't a thing. And so there was no way to kind of check and watch it. So the way it's described in the book, it sounds very real as if he is really kind of like pulling off these amazing magic feats. But when you actually see it on YouTube, I was almost offended at how bad it was. Where I was so frustrated because there's a whole crowd of people following. And I never wanted this podcast to really poke fun at the people who are in cults because they are victims. I mean, they have been manipulated. Yeah. But damn, it was bad. Like, it was really bad, real bad close up magic. And seemingly obviously fake. But as we'll see kind of as we go through, a lot of his followers at a certain point did not care that it was fake. I mean, you believe what you want to believe is essentially what it is. So he would then go on a tour of some temples in Northern India and Northern Africa as well. But in 1963, he suffered a stroke and four severe heart attacks. Jesus. Yeah, which left him paralyzed on one side. And to give you an idea, the dude's only like 5.5. He's like my height. He's got a kick ass afro. Like, he looks like later years, Jackson, 5, Michael Jackson. Oh, OK. Like, when Michael Jackson was like in that awkward teen phase, but you're still black, that is what he looks like with like a Pimpass afro. Nice. It's like it would almost be cool if it didn't get so creepy. He allegedly, after suffering the stroke and the heart heart attacks, healed himself in front of thousands of people. But I'm going to put healed himself in quotes, because he still walked with a limp and a cane for the bulk of the rest of his life. OK. Like his entire leg. And I'm like, I wouldn't healing. No, not really. Was his face also drooping? Oh, no. So that's part of it where I'm like, maybe this face, I don't know. Can they prove that he had a stroke in four heart attacks? Or is that just him saying they can't? Oh, yeah. OK. OK. Yeah. I mean, he said, well, and I would suspect, I mean, I think you have a very good point. I think it's very possible that he didn't, considering that he lived another 50 years afterwards. Like, I don't know about you, but everyone I know that has had heart attacks. No, yeah. Like you have another heart attack later. It's not something that you just bounced back from. No. No. So three to four years after that, Talbrook arrived in India. So Talbrook is the guy who wrote one of the many sources that we're using. His book, "Lord of the Air" came out in 1980. It's very dated. I will give it that. He also went on to be a very hardcore fundamentalist Christian. So again, grain of salt. You know, this is-- he definitely has a point of view. He's definitely trying to get it across. There's also a lot of bullshit mumbo jumbo in it. We're like, I don't know how many people you've talked to who think they know the answers about everything in the universe. Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah, several. Yeah, where it's a lot of big words that mean nothing. Yes. And Sai Baba, in a lot of ways, is the same way I listened to a ton of speeches where I'm like, this means this is not a thing. He's just-- He said the cosmos four times. So then that's like-- I don't-- it's nothing. It's kind of like when a guy hits on you and claims to be an entrepreneur. Oh, God. A.K.A. Unfucking employee. Oh, see, I usually am like entrepreneur. Oh, now I know you're a drug dealer. Well, also that. Nothing legitimate in any-- Oh, never possible way. Never once. My sister one time, a guy hit on her and said he was an entrepreneur. And she said, oh, what do you want her per new? And he just like stopped him in his tracks. It's been my favorite. But it's a lot of that. So tell-- decided to go to India after taking the largest available dose of LSD. I don't know how many people you've hung out with on LSD. People don't make great decisions. No, I feel like they don't. No. The last time I hung out with somebody who was on LSD, she was eating-- they're like these curly honey chipotle fritos. OK. And she'd had like four bags of them. Sure. And she was like, they hurt my mouth, but they taste like good. And then ate like two more bags, and then couldn't talk for like two days. Because she had like shredded the inside of her mouth with weird curly fritos. So I don't even know where to find LSD. I feel like that left. You know, it's somewhere in the 60s and the 70s just hanging out. Yeah, being a stand-up comic, I'm sure I could find it, but I wouldn't enjoy the search. I feel like I'd have to talk to the person and I'm like, "Oh God, that guy, he's always doing weird songs at the open mic." And I'm just not excited about it. I want to be able to locate it just so I can know the process, but I don't want to take it. Yeah, no, I have no desire. I am not super onboard with hallucinogens. I feel like they make a lot of people think that they know secrets about the universe. Oh, for sure. Or scoop out, who fuck what, rapper was that? He scooped out his eyeballs and jumped out the window in his hotel. Oh, no, that guy that was part of the Wu-Tang clan. I thought it was someone else. I thought it was bath salts. Maybe I'm wrong. Oh, well, that's a whole other fucked up thing. I mean, that's like Florida, Ellen. Yeah, Florida. The Homeless Man's face guy did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, clearly I don't do a lot of drugs. No. But I also have a joint occult, so. Hey. Hey. So he took a ton of LSD, attacked a bunch of trees on his LSD trip. Fuck those trees. Fuck that. And he began studying Hinduism following his LSD trip. He was very immersed in it. The book is very dense. And it refers to like, integral parts of Hinduism as if the reader would automatically know what that means. OK. It's-- there's a glossary in the back that you're going to need to use. So he immersed himself in meditation, traveled around, met multiple gurus, and didn't really feel anything. So clearly, I mean, in reading this book, I look at it as, this is somebody who is actively seeking out what I would define as the cult experience, if that makes sense. Yes. So he, as kind of a last ditch resort, traveled specifically to see Sai Baba, because he had heard about these miracles or whatever. And he watched him produce holy ash. So that was Baba's big thing. Like, he does it at every single meeting or any speech is he waves his hand around like three or four times and then produces like a handful of ash. And then-- The fuck are you going to do with that? Well, you're supposed to eat it. Which I saw-- It sounds like the sim and challenge. I saw no one win in that. And she's coughing like, who's ash was that? Yeah. I saw a my stringed addiction with a girl who ate her boyfriend's ashes. Oh, I think I might have seen that. Yeah, where she just like could not stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That ash. And so-- Yes, I saw that. It must be palatable at least. No, because the same people on that show will eat your fucking cow. It's not palatable. That's true. Or like nail polish. Yeah. That's the one that I-- she's like, I use the brush. And I'm like, just pour it into your mouth. Yeah, there's no-- You don't need a utensil. Yeah, or paint pens? No. Like, how do you figure that out? That that's the thing that you want to eat. Anyway, so you're supposed to eat the holy ash, which he does. And he kind of continued to interact with Si Baba over the next couple of weeks. And Baba seemed to know his whole life story. Now, he says that, and he lists out the things that Si Baba allegedly knew about him is very basic. It's like, you had a tough time in school, and you've come here to find yourself. Yeah. I was like, oh, throw a stone. Yeah, no shit. No shit. Everyone around-- Welcome to everyone you've ever met. Welcome to every single person in a cult. Yeah. This is like, you've had a rough time. You're trying to figure shit out. Right. Everybody. Literally everybody. It's interesting to note, though, because in his book, he specifically describes Baba's English as being almost childlike, like very rudimentary English, while Baba's document-- his own biographies and documentaries claim that he can speak every language fluently. Just because you know six words and like 12 languages does not make you-- Thank you. No. That's also not every language. Right. Yeah. He joined the Ashram with a group of other Americans. So Baba kind of collected Americans at the time. So this is around 1969. It's a good time to do it. It's a huge cult time. Yeah. I mean, you've got Manson right around the same time. You've got Jim Jones not far behind. It's the end of the hippies. It's when this stuff was big. People were really kind of looking for answers. It seemed as if Baba would kind of use the Americans, or essentially Europeans or Canadians just white people. We kind of use them to show off, in a way, where he would kind of-- anytime they would meet with dignitaries, he would bring out the Americans. And I think he was kind of in a way using them to try and attract other Americans. Yeah, of course. To really kind of bring it around. So they all joined the Ashram. They live a very regimented lifestyle in the Ashram, where you're cooking food in the morning, and then you've got worship, and then you've got songs. And then you meet with Baba for a couple of minutes, and then you go through and do more cooking. You're taking care of the Ashram, all those things. It sounds like rehab. It's a lot like rehab. It's very interesting. The more-- as it gets kind of more into modern day, it becomes a lot more rehab-like, which is something very interesting to note. It's kind of the modern day version of this cult is alarmingly benign. Is Cliff's side Malibu? It basically is, actually. He listed out Talbrook lists out in his book Miracles that he witnessed, Baba Doe. Now, again, I've seen the videos. It's some bad slide of hand magic. But he insists in his book that the Miracles are real. I'm going to chalk it up to the LSD. Yeah, of course. And that maybe close up magic wasn't as popular in the '60s, who knows. So holy ash and sweets was pretty common. But then Siva Linga. So that, if you've ever seen Indiana Jones on the Temple of Doom, they're holy stones. So he was kind of materializing those. They would be about egg-sized. And he would pull them from his mouth allegedly from his stomach. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen somebody who's pretty good at slide of hand look like they're pulling multiple eggs or ping pong balls out of their mouth. Yeah, it bothers me. It's pretty common, though. Like, it's not a difficult thing to do. That's basically what's going on. He would also recite prayers that were allegedly from back in the 11th century. But again, no Google. No one can confirm that. No one can confirm. Nobody. And then one time he spasmed and then coughed up a jeweled egg. Now, at this point, I would like to tell you, he was constantly coughing up jewels. And they were not jewels. Because another man who was in the ashram around the same time who has an insane website, like the most insane website, I can't even cite it as normal sources, because it's so bonkers. He received one of these jewels and took it back to the UK with him. It was, quote unquote, a green diamond. Yes, I see the skepticism on your face. OK. Yeah. No one else can. So-- Well, because part of me was like, does he mean emerald? No. Right. So he took it back to the UK and had it appraised-- Parkall. Yeah, yeah, not good. And I have never wanted something so badly as I want to see the look on that appraiser's face. Yes. As he had to inform this gentleman that it was a rhinestone, like plastic with foil on the back of it. Did he explain to the jeweler how he obtained said green diamonds? He did. Well, and apparently had a gold egg as well. That it-- OK. You know, same kind of thing. But part of me is like, OK, so it's a plastic gold egg, and you're that appraiser. How do you sell the intrinsic value of it? How are you like, OK, so you said it's $12. Did I mention it was in some guy's mouth? Yeah. Because does that $14? Yeah. I don't know. But literally a plastic rhinestone. And he's so angry about it on his website. I like-- I didn't want to mock him because I'm like, he is a victim. But at the same time, he's furious. He's like, they're widely available on the internet. That was like, no, she doesn't. No, press. Have you been to Michaels? I'm about to blow your mouth. Yes. Let's go to Joanne's and make a day of it. I can manifest a ton of crystals. Let's do it. Watch me shit out of Ruby. Watch me. Oh, what if I give you this glitter capsule? And then we just see what happens in a week. But yes, he also has a very, very in-depth YouTube channel of him badly playing Sitar music. Oh, god. Like, really badly? We're like, I have heard good Sitar music. And I'm like, all right, man, this is beautiful. His is not. This is very-- No, no, it's very bad. But he has dedicated his life to both a discrediting side Baba after spending like 18 years in his ass ram. And he's being making-- or Brexit happens. - Socks. - Great of socks. - Two solid causes. - I was just like damn bro. - Yeah. - You know, 'cause for being someone open minded enough to join an at-stram. - Right. - But clothes minded enough that you're like, Polish people get out. - Right, exactly. - Exactly. - Yeah. - It's a weird one. But so many of the things that Baba was manifesting for people are plastic trinkets, essentially. - So you know he just stockpiled that shit. - Oh, I will get to it. - My bad. - Spother a lot. - No, no, that's okay. It's, I see that was the first thing I thought too. So Talbrook, the man who wrote the book that we've been pulling from, he started taking private meetings with Baba to kind of like, I guess, further his spiritual journey, if we'll say it that way, which is when Baba started molesting him. - Oh. - Yeah. - And he goes into a lot of detail about it. Kind of manual stimulation. Tal was straight, so nothing really, you know, never finished. Let's show it with that one. - But he, so that he basically allowed the abuse and didn't tell anybody for a long time, because he was so conditioned to believe that Baba was essentially above human things and human emotions. And so he was like, well, clearly this is a test. Like this is somehow to further my spiritual journey. - Oh, that makes me sad. - Yes, and I was just like, oh no. So he would never really enjoy the encounters. Baba, I guess, would routinely finish. (sighs) Yeah. So. - He's come back. - I know, it's really gross. He noticed that Baba also started to ignore the couples that would come to the ashram, specifically he would ignore women. So even though there were a group of women along with their American crowd, they would routinely like sleep outside on the porch while the men would sleep inside and crawl back. - Yeah, that was like, oh fuck you, man. - Yeah. - Hell no. - Yeah. So that was a kind of, he clearly was not investing this amount of time in the women as he was the men. - Yeah. - And he was very kind of hot and cold with the men where if he suspected any of the men pulling away, he would kind of gaslight people and be like, well, I'm not talking to you this week 'cause your spiritual journey is below me or whatever. And so it would create this kind of, you know, like when a parent ignores a child and then the child really kind of acts out to try to get their parents' attention, it's a lot of that same relationship in a way where they're now kind of jockeying and battling for Bob's attention. In the midst of all this, he filed residence permits for them on their behalf. - Oh my God. - Which you can't do now. But in the late '60s, early '70s, you could. So essentially filing them as residents of India, which they all planned to stay at the Ashrams. They didn't really care. They were like, yeah, go ahead and do that. But we'll see later as people tried to leave the Ashram. - They couldn't. - They couldn't leave. So and not necessarily from any overt, like I'm keeping you here, as much as the paperwork to get back was so difficult and required money and tickets and these are people who've essentially been living in an Indian village for two years. - Yeah, they don't have that. - They don't have any money. They don't really even have skills at this point and they don't have the ability to get tickets. So, you, I mean, as kind of he lived in the Ashram, he would see people, you know, get fed up and try to leave or Bobba would kick people out sometimes and then he would just find them begging on street corners in the village. - And they can't sell their weird and testin' diamonds. - So, because they're plastic, right? - Yeah, it's just nothing. And so, they're people in his book that it's kind of alarming. They're just never heard from again. - Oh, that's sad. - Yeah, and not even necessarily because they were, you know, murdered, they're just abandoned and lost to, you know, the Indian countryside in a way. So, he continued to move with Bobba from Ashram to Ashram, touring around the country until about 1971, at which point, another one of the Americans essentially kind of pulled him aside and was like, "Hey, I don't really know who else to tell, but Bobba's been molesting me for years." And he was like, "Oh God, Bobba's been molesting me too." And then someone else was like, "Me too." At this point, there's a ton of stories, one of which even has Bobba being intersex, which is a little interesting. Another person claims to have had penetrative sex with him, but is not sure how it happened. - How penetrated who? - He penetrated Bobba. - Was it dark? - Yes. - But I think I have an answer. - But I'm so, but face to face. - And standing. Right? - I have questions. - Me too? Who I have so many. That person was never heard from again. - Oh wow. - So who knows? There are some people that have debated that account and been like, "It's not a real person." Like we, you know, there's no record of him. And it's just this one guy trying to make it sound even more salacious, which is entirely possible. - Yeah. - But I feel like it's worth noting. So as this is all kind of coming out and multiple of these guys who've been essentially molested have also reported that Bobba was keeping their ejaculates. - Like in jars? - Yes. - Like you would collect it. - Why? - Well, that's an interesting thing. So in many, both nature-based and occult religions, body fluids are a huge deal. You use them in, you know, ceremonies. Hinduism doesn't really have any ceremonies for it. So at that point-- - Yeah, 'cause it's fucking gross. - Yeah, it's pretty gross. But at that point, they kind of suspected that maybe there were things going on that they didn't know about, which they found troubling. He full-blown Z's believes that A. Bobba's miracles were all real. B, he was worshiping Satan. - Okay. - So again, like I said, grain of salt. I don't believe Bobba's miracles are real. - No. - I think he was a con artist. - Yes. - I feel like we can dial it back. I don't know why he was hanging on to people's jizz. But you know what? People have had weirder fetishes. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That's not even that weird of one. Like I know it's more just like gross. - It's really gross. - I don't like body fluids. - I mean, who does? - Apparently him. - I mean, yeah, I mean, I enough to collect him. - Yeah. - So yeah. - For multiple people. At that point, Talbrook essentially escaped the cults with the help of two missionaries and tried to leave India. At that point, that's when he found out that he wasn't able to leave, not easily. So he had to essentially bribe officials, schedule flights, people had to wire him money to finally get him out of the country. And he's one of the few that made it out. So him and another girl made it out. And then I believe two other guys. Most of the other people either their visas expired early and instead of having Bobba do a residence permit, they just went home or they're either still there on the county for. Yeah, it's a little bleak. - Oh my God. - It's pretty sad. Or they stayed in long enough for laws to have changed so that they could go home easier. - Yeah, but by then they're so brainwashed and fucked up. - That's the guy, well, like the English guy who had the jewel appraised, he was in for like 18 years. - Yeah, it's a lifetime. - It's a lifetime. It is a lifetime. So it's troubling. So the CIA was actually keeping tabs on Bobba this whole time and part because people were going missing and B because there had been so many allegations of molesting both in the schools that he was founding and the Ashrams. So he founded a number of schools in kind of the Philippines and those were mostly young boys. - Oh my God. - Huge amounts of molestation accusations, the problem being. He also owned all of the authorities locally. So any claims were immediately dismissed. So there are a lot of people that were victimized that will pretty much never get justice because he essentially owned the police and still does in some parts of India today. So even though he passed away in 2011, there are still people that are loyal to basically keeping those accusations under wraps. So he died in 2011 and they rated his houses, multiple houses and what they found was exactly what you said. A stockpile of plastic crap, but also millions of dollars. And his whole thing had always been like, I never ask for money for myself. It's just to help the hospitals and the schools and the Ashrams or whatever, but clearly he was hoarding money. At that point, the cult splintered. As happens with many, many cults, I mean, as soon as a leader dies, it doesn't mean the cult ends. No, it lingers. And those are the scariest people. That's exactly what we're gonna get into. Again, you're killing it. I'm on it. Yes. So it is splintered into multiple cults. The main cult still remains very similar to an original sidebomb a cult where it's just, you know, hospitals helping the poor. You can live on the ashram, give up your belongings, and help the poor. So it's fairly benign. Yeah, that's fine. That's all fine. That's fine. But many people have broken off into other things. So there's actually an account of another British woman who joined what she thought was the main sidebomb a cult. And they were charging her 1500 pounds, 200 pounds, 500 pounds for retreats and like bottled juices and stuff that she was drinking until she was like 20,000 pounds in. And they basically, she was on a retreat and they locked the door. And we're like, we'll unlock it in the morning. And so she thankfully, they did unlock it. She went home from that retreat and just changed her phone number, changed her email, changed everything. Good. And wrote kind of a tell-all. And basically was like, it was the satya-sai-baba cult. And then the main cult has been like, that's not us. We don't know who that was. So there are people kind of masquerading under the name of this cult doing weird shit. The main one, the one that's been in the news the most currently, is a branch of the cult called sacred. It's an acronym. It's an acronym of nonsense. So I won't bore you. It's pretty ridiculous. But it's run by a German national named Raman Andreas. So he runs it out of the island of Copenhagen in Thailand. So Copenhagen is actually one of two islands. There's Copenhagen and Kotau. Kotau is known as the Murder Island. Fun. Yeah. The Murder Island because in the last three years, seven American or European tourists have turned up dead mysteriously. Why would you willingly go somewhere called Murder Island? You know what? Like hindsight's 2020. I can't even know that's right fucking in front of you. Like there's no way to miss that. Yeah. So but the biggest case of all of them is tied to Raman Andreas and this cult. So in 2016, Elise Delman, who I'm guessing is pronounced Delman because she's Belgian, she was a essentially like 25 year old traveler. She was kind of backpacking through Asia. She'd been traveling from New Zealand all the way through Thailand for many, many years. And she'd been living on Copenhagen with Raman Andreas according to her mother. That was her mother's understanding of her living situation. Raman Andreas denies that. He's like, oh, I barely knew her. I was like, yes, sure. Of course. So she was living with him on Copenhagen. She decided that she wanted to come home. And so she had scheduled a trip to come home. The ferry stopped in Kotau, Murder Island. Okay. She got off the ferry, rented a bungalow, and it burned down that night. She escaped. Oh, ran three miles through the forest to another resort. And I say forest. I mean jungle, but wait, to another resort reserved a room there stayed for another couple days booked a return trip and never made it on the return trip. But her luggage did. Right. No. Yes. Her luggage made it. So there's some debate. Some people say that her luggage never left the ferry. That she left the ferry with like a small overnight bag. And then her luggage just continued on with the ferry. The problem I have with that is A, she stayed two other places. Right. So she would have needed more than a handful of things. And B, she didn't book her return trip until she was staying at the second hotel. Oh, then yeah, that's not it. So there's no way her luggage was there the next whole time. She allegedly according to the local police who are again friends at the point. Right. According to the local police, she was hung. She hung herself in the jungle. There's no photos of the crime scene. None. No photos. They said they found her body wrapped in t-shirts and half eaten by lizards. Oh my god. Now, I don't know how you wrap yourself in t-shirts. You don't. You don't. I would say you don't. But allegedly, that's what happened. There's no way to be sure because they immediately cremated the body. Her mother has been asking for autopsy results for the last year and they haven't produced them. That? Yeah. Also, the cult leader immediately left the island after. Oh, god. Suspicious as hell. Right. Yes. So the investigation proceeds to this day. So if someone invites you to a yoga retreat on murder island, don't go. Yeah, don't ever go anywhere on murder islands. Right. Right. I mean, I would hope that'd be kind of a, you know, no brainer. Yeah. If that's not enough. Right. Let us just tell you don't do it. Don't do it anywhere on murder island. And I'm going to say don't be fooled by people who do close-up magic. But yeah, also that. Don't go worshiping Chris Angel. No, don't do it. Guys. Guys. So many other things you can worship. There's better ways. Way better ones are at least to make sure that it's actual rubies and not a rhinestone. Right. Unless you're a drag queen, in which case, feel free to get those free rhinestones. Yeah. Get out. Please do. All right. And that is currently the end because the investigation is still pending. Oh, thank you. Well, we'll keep you updated if you have our cars. Yeah. Let us know. And as always, well, I say as always, it's our first episode, but it's always to us. If you think you're in a cult, call a friend or family member who's not in the cult and ask them for help or call 911 unless you live on murder island and all the police are ran by the cult leader. In which case, you're just fucked. I'm sorry. In which case, watch out for lizards. Yeah. Don't and t-shirts and t-shirts. Yeah. They're like, I'm watch out for t-shirt cannons. Right. Watch out for t-shirts and shops. I don't like those anyway. I don't want anything launched at my face. Because anybody investigated the local sports mascot. I'm sorry. We shouldn't laugh. A girl is dead. That's terrible. But I want to remind everyone, don't drink the cool aid. Yeah. Don't do it.