In the early 1990's I was taking some hatha yoga lessons. Yoga wasn't new to me. I liked this regimen, though. A 'friend' said that if my friends and I liked this, we should come to a retreat in the Catskill Mountains. Like fools, we did.

When we got there, in the middle of winter, we were completely isolated. They told us that we couldn't use the kitchen or the phone, and we weren't supposed to leave. We were stranded because we had been dropped off there by our 'friend'. I wanted to call my family. They said that they were my new family. Class was in the middle of the night.

Well, we didn't go there to get initiated into a new religion. That's what happened, though. My friends all went along with it. WHen they got back to their town, they continued to meet, etc. I left town and haven't been back.

I felt like I was psychologically raped.

I see on the internet that the Babaji cult is alive and well. I don't have a problem with Hinduism. My problem is with the tactics of this particular group. Initiation shouldn't be traumatic.

Does anyone else know about this group? Did anyone else on here go through that?