“At first he was kind, a good guy, we even went out to dinner with him, but he became more demanding when he dominated us.” Ana, 55 years old, tells how she went from dedicating herself to building a spiritual community in a desert area of Abanilla (Murcia, 6,000 inhabitants), where she practiced yoga and helping people in need, to living dominated by the fear of being isolated or expelled. During that stage, which lasted ten years and ended seven years ago, she feels that she lost her mind. “You lived 24-7 so he could have money. I don’t know how he did it. If someone talked about other things, you weren’t interested, you turned your head off. It was just talking about him, living for him, what we could improve, how we could achieve things,” she says. “If there were things you didn’t like, they made you see that he was on your mind. They told us ‘don’t think it’s in the way’ or ‘when you think, the lama’s activity is being interrupted.’
Ana (fictitious name, like that of the rest of the affected people who appear in this report) belonged to the rockiest core of followers of the Mahasandhi association, a spiritual community led by José Manuel C., 50 years old, and gathered on an isolated farm in 10 hectares. The guru was arrested in November after an investigation coordinated by the group of destructive sects of the General Information Commissariat of the National Police and a judge from Cieza. The leader, calling himself Total Transcendence and whom the press has dubbed the lama of Murcia, got into the police car wearing an orange tunic and a blue jacket. In his hand he carried a blackboard to communicate, since he had taken a vow of silence. Left behind him was his small community, made up of a dozen followers. This operation has been one of the most striking in recent times involving a sect in Spain, where, according to the estimates of Luis Santamaría, theologian and expert of the Ibero-American network that studies the advance of these phenomena, there are 400,000 followers of various types of spiritual communities.
On the farm, the Police found 180 kilos of mercury, a highly neurotoxic heavy metal; and cinnabar, a mineral composed of mercury. According to the complainants, the guru presided over ceremonies with drugs such as peyote and ayahuasca and wanted to produce “purified mercury,” to which he attributed energizing and vitalizing effects. “In the ceremonies they put a crown of mercury on our heads, they hung mercury on us and that’s when your mind completely went away,” says Ana. Mercury can damage the ability to hear, speak, see, walk, feel and think. According to her story, for nine months he participated in work to “purify” that liquid metal by “filtering it with a lot of water,” with the idea of making a kind of “giant egg.” “He wanted a very big one so that people would be attracted like bees to honey or like zombies. “That’s what he said.” Finally, after many of the participants became ill, they abandoned the plan. During the searches, the police also found 19 kilos of marijuana, a revolver and 90,000 euros.
The community leader was provisionally released in January. The investigation has found “founded and clear indications” about environmental crime and the unlicensed manufacturing of health products, such as elixirs. Other charges, such as illicit association, depend on upcoming reports. Forensic investigations of the people who lived in the community, statements taking, or analysis of the substances seized are pending. Examination of septic tanks in the area has not detected hazardous waste.
Ana and Óscar, another person who was part of the José Manuel C. nucleus, denounced what was happening within that complex made up of a main house and a series of cave houses, as well as temples, a hostel, warehouses, bunkers and a laboratory . They will testify as witnesses in the Cieza courts. But they feel like victims and not just witnesses. They want the use of mercury and other drugs to be studied, because they lower volitional and cognitive capacity, explains their lawyer, Carlos Bardavío. “It is a group of domination with a certain subtlety and certain mistreatment, where if you did not follow the orders they could expel you from your own home,” explains the lawyer.
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In recent weeks they have filed a complaint against the leader of the group and his trusted person for fraud, physical and mental injuries, coercion, threats and labor exploitation. The judge did not want to add it to the first case and has asked that it be distributed to the corresponding court. Criminal lawyer Pablo Martínez, defender of the Mahasandhi leader, believes that there is a “business background” to these complaints and relates it to disputes over downtown businesses, including a company that manufactures and sells elixirs.
![Several of the cave houses on the grounds of the Mahasandhi Foundation, among almond trees.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/CUCDUNDSLFAAHLDBBLHM6B6CR4.jpg?auth=e3470599ddcd5a6773e9db9569f6de440c19234bc30561a155dff45ad06a2e4b&width=414)
“It’s a kind of Andalusian farmhouse and then there’s the swarm of little bees,” describes another person who lived in the center four years ago, and who asks not to be identified by her gender. In that main house resided the master, his consort and the dakinis, the women chosen to serve the master. The members of the community worked, attended the ceremonies that marked them, and there was the figure of the “renouncer,” who submitted to the whims of the leader. He assures that he did not witness the supposed rituals to which “only the closest core” of the guru attended, but that they did tell him during his stay about the drug consumption. “Everything is changing, one day the instruction may be to wear white, another day it may be to shave one’s head,” explains this person. He highlights the mixture of rites from different religions, “neither Buddhist nor Hindu,” and the “sense of fear” that was felt. In other Buddhist centers, he explains, there are no limits to talking to the teacher or entering his house. “There were all the limits here,” he says.
Ana met the spiritual leader about 17 years ago. With a group of people, many of them couples, she was part of the seed of the Mahasandhi association. After a while, the retreats began, “more and more intense,” in which she “slept very little,” and they became more demanding. “She proposes to us to do ayuahuasca and peyote ceremonies to see the things that we are not able to see for ourselves. He was already beginning to make us feel inferior.” From being a close friend, they went to not being able to touch him and not being able to look at him. “He created a legend, an idea of deity around himself,” they explain in the complaint. The name was changed to Total Transcendence and they were asked to address him as “teacher” or guru.” “When he appeared to give the teachings, everyone prostrated three times, as in Buddhism, he was treated as a lama, if you didn’t it was frowned upon,” the text adds.
In the complaint they claim that both underwent rituals, such as cutting the frenulum of the tongue with a scalpel, or ceremonies in which they drank a “nectar” that made them enter a trance. “Suddenly our energy was heightened, it gave us tachycardia. We felt a lot of love, a lot of joy and we thought that it was due to the effect of her energy, her work, and that this is produced by certain substances like LSD. I understood that a very short time ago, while researching,” says Ana.
The teacher told them to build cave houses on land he owned and that he would give it to them for 25 years, although they agreed to live according to the guidelines he set for them. Ana claims that she invested between 40,000 and 50,000 euros between a cave house and other expenses, and Óscar, who also participated in the elixir sales business, bought his own neighboring land, where he made his home, and spent about 200,000 euros. for different purposes. They describe a life in which requests for money were frequent, until the time came when Óscar refused to continue paying. “When he stood up, they kicked him out of his house because they had previously forced him to put the deed in his name in a strange ceremony, under pressure.” The spiritual guide’s wealth increased “in a relatively short time,” according to the researchers.
Currently there is no type of crime defined in the Penal Code that can be applied to the submission to which members of sects may be subjected. The Network Association for the Prevention of Sectarianism and the Abuse of Weakness (RedUNE) is trying to have “coercive persuasion”, a circumstance alleged by the complainants, be considered a crime. Coercive groups, including destructive sects, are characterized by resorting to these techniques. The profile of the victims is usually that of people with uncertainty, who seek personal well-being, an immediate professional outlet or suffer from an illness. “People think that it is easy to report, but there is a significant fear, as if they were in a mafia,” emphasizes Juantxo Domínguez, president of RedUNE.
“I think that seeing the video of how the Police went there to collect that amount of drugs, of money, should have been enough for people to say ‘damn, they tricked me.’ But we are talking about a high level of mental absorption,” considers the person who lived in the center. “You can’t trivialize this,” she asks.
“We abandoned everything to support this man’s project. This is a wake-up call so that people know that it can happen to anyone,” warns Ana. At the center, she has left one of her daughters. “I can’t turn back time, but I can report it so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she adds.
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