This article sums up distinct statements that Aisha/Pema said on various occasions to different students about her financial situation.
Her previous marriage that lasted a month, left her with a debt. She and her ex-husband took a loan to finance a ranch in Sweden where she had at least two horses. One of us remember she mentioned having a bed there that costed fifty thousand Danish krona (it sounded like a luxurious place). The divorce settlement ended with her having to pay half of the loan for the farm back. As she did not want to pay her part, she proclaimed to be bankrupt. So, ever since then – which dates quite a long way back (this marriage happened before her relationship with Mateo Tabatabai, so before 2015, so it could be 10 years ago) – whatever she owned was written down on her parents. This way she avoided debt collectors. And it includes her private house on Møn as well as her cars, all written down as a property of her parents.
She has mentioned she used to work as a career for a disabled person for at least half a year. We wonder if this was what she did after this divorce and before she retook the career as a spiritual facilitator once again. For a few years then, she used to do a week long or longer retreats twice a year, which costed from 900 EUR per person upwards. For these, one had to pay a non refundable deposit of up to 200 EUR through PayPal to reserve the spot, and the rest one then needed to bring in cash on the first day of the retreat. This we think helped her to finance her life without the debt collectors’ notice.
Aisha/Pema married her current husband in summer 2021, and she did not want to enter the marriage with the debt, so the debt was paid off. She mentioned the word “crumbles” when talking about it, meaning it was a small thing by then. We wondered who paid the debt as she was not supposed to have anything on her own accounts, due to the avoidance of the debt collectors.
In May 2019 Aisha/Pema published a call for investors to fund a Gateway place, a house to be bought for the community of the people that were part of her online teaching space, the Gateway. She specified that people can make ‘investor shares’ from 5500 eur. In the end the place was bought and it first held the name Nari Village and now is called Nari Sanctuary, but the investors in the end were nothing of how we understand the meaning of investors. They did not hold any shares or any possibility of making decisions about the property, they were donors. The amount of donations that came through was never published, never disclosed but kept unknown to anyone but Aisha/Pema, which is an unusual way of doing things for a foundation.
This Gateway place / Nari Village / Nari Sanctuary, is registered as owned by a religious group (Gateway Foundation) for religious purposes, so Aisha/Pema = Gateway Foundation does not pay taxes over it. Who is part of Gateway Foundation? As far as we know, it is Aisha/Pema, her Danish friend that has nothing to do with Gateway, and her British friend that has also nothing to do with the foundation, at least for the first 3 years of the property’s existence. None of her students were or are part of it, none of the investors / donors are part of it.
In 2020 AIsha/Pema decided she wanted a horse, and not any horse but the biggest horse there is. She mentioned to someone that it is like having a Ferary horse, that everything that comes with it is extra expensive because of the abnormal size. These horses are expensive to buy and expensive to keep. She obtained the horse in 2021. From where she received the money to do this, we do not know – as since the pandemic started, she has not organised any larger sized retreat and the numbers that were attending her online events have been in decline as well. (She organised a couple of retreats on Nari premises with around 5 and 8 participants.) Quite big chunks of the property of the Gateway place / Nari are now used as a ranch, a place to keep Aisha/Pema’s horses. And there are some students coming from abroad for longer stays to volunteer – to work on the farm, build and repair the property. As far as we know, most of these people also pay the rent from 200 to 300 EUR per week, but it is not many people that come.
To sum up: Aisha/Pema was not owning anything until 2021 when her debt to her former husband was repaid by unknown source. Since 2019 she, as the only decision maker in the Gateway Foundation, is collecting investments to buy and restore a community building for her students. No matter how high the investment, no one of the investors has any say in decision making, and people did try. Majority of the people who have been involved in donating and volunteering to create the Gateway community space were disappointed with her conduct and left. Nobody, except Aisha/Pema, knows how much money was collected and how it was spent. Gateway place / Nari turned into stables for Aisha’s horses and a way to make money for her. None of the promises that made people put money and energy into the community place, were actualised. How she paid the debt to her ex-husband and how she is financing the purchase and keeping of her expensive farm animals, is also unknown.
Her spiritual teachings on manifestation and abundance are in short about purification and about being open to receive the gifts of existence. If one is so pure that ‘existence’ gives them large funds for their foundation, why is it such a problem to publish how much money was collected in investments/donations and where it was spent? Most of us came to the conclusion that perhaps Aisha/Pema is not as pure as she claims. We see she has been lying and manipulating people that trusted her for her own benefit (and not for the benefit of them as she would claim). She claimed that to receive teaching from her ascendent master Padmasambhava, she needed to go through an extreme purification process. Her choice of actions on this plane, however, have not shown signs of purity. And the plane of this earthly existence needs to be linked to the other planes in some way, doesn’t it? If she was lying about the Gateway place / Nari and using the funds for her personal activities, how do we know she is not lying about other things? About her ascended masters for instance? What if the mastery she obtained does not come from a pure and true place? Can one then trust her teachings and be safe surrendering in her presence? We think not, no matter how intense or powerful it feels to be around her.