Growing up, her friends knew her simply as Katie Griggs. An All-American face, a gregarious and performative personality, she was probably destined to become the leader of something.
She was a millennial YouTube astrologer who pretty quickly rose to fame as the face of Kundalini yoga, and opened the RA MA Institute in Los Angeles. Her hair up in a Sikh-style white turban, Griggs reinvented herself as Guru Jagat. Breath of Fire, a four-part docuseries delves into how she led what was undeniably a cult, and how almost all cults end in disaster.
Anyone who has seen documentaries about Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre or, more recently, The Vow, will see many common elements, including those involving forced labor, sexual abuse and total control over the followers.
The shocking secret history of Kundalini yoga, through its origins in the 1960s to its expansion in the United States and its presence in wellness circles today, has its own story but the same mind of origin and the inevitable harm, in many forms, inflicted on hundreds.
Based on the Vanity Fair story by Hayley Phelan, “The Second Coming of Guru Jagat,” the doc relates the culture of modern spirituality revealing “complicated themes of cultural appropriation” and the dangers of self-proclaimed gurus.
Claiming to be the anointed successor of the late Yogi Bhajan, a Punjabi Sikh who created and popularized a version of Kundalini in America in 1969, Guru Jagat (the real Katie Griggs) leveraged social media and her charismatic online presence to capitalize upon Kundalini’s multi-million-dollar spiritual empire.
Positioning herself as the embodiment of divine femininity and a sanctified seeker, she attracted a growing base of followers — including many celebrities and loyal, fee-paying devotees — with promises of prosperity, physical health, and spiritual fulfillment.
For me, the series is a little slow for bingeing, but HBO is going to release a new episode weekly, beginning Wednesday night, October 23rd with a new episode every subsequent Wednesday. That’s probably a better way to stay interested, as each episode ends on an effective teaser for the next one. It will also stream on Max.
Told through the people who went through the grift and lost their fortunes and families, the same sadness and self-shaming that we’ve seen so many times before in stories like these, draws one’s empathy and interest.
Don’t skip ahead to the last episode. Just take a deep breath…now let it out slowly…once again…now watch. 3 out of 4 Stars.