What is she doing that makes normal intelligent successful educated conscious and rational people end up believing that she is incarnating Tibetan deity and receives teachings from Tibetan spirit masters, has supernatural powers, makes these people devote their energy and time to do endless unpaid labor for her business, to pay multiple times 200 EUR per hour for a private session or donate 50 000 EUR to her foundation? Here we will describe her strategy and stages of one’s involvement.

Getting to know her

Lots of us had our first contact with her through youtube, or spiritual conference or gathering – interested in meditation and Eastern Spirituality we were looking for answers and people knowledgeable in that field. And Aisha/Pema popped up. She is very sure of herself, sort of intrusive and seems without a doubt; and like someone who can explain a lot of things regarding these interests. We would then check her out online or in person, meeting her on her satsang. Other maybe more common way one gets to the same place is through one’s friend, yoga or meditation teacher, who also is her current student. Lots of us students would tell about her to our friends that seem interested in the subject. 

Once a person gets to be for the first time on her satsang, she showers them with love and specialness. We saw the same patterns over and over: “you are so beautiful” she would say staring intrusively without any facial expression to a new woman that would show up at her gatherings. The same applies to men, she would say how powerful, how developed on our evolutionary journey we are. One feels very special, even has a need to feel grateful and sort of indebted to be in the presence of such a powerful master. Suddenly one has access to a secret special knowledge, and the whole thing is a very intense experience.

The meetings she organises have the same or a similar structure: the first 40 to 45 minutes is a meditation where one sits quietly on the floor or a pillow while she is guiding people into a form of hypnosis. Usually it is about taking deep breaths and relaxing the whole body or a part of it, and feeling or accepting something supernatural happening in there. Her sure of herself strong voice can do wonders and one really could relax profoundly. It could be a relatively peaceful experience or a disturbing one where something, a memory from the past or the unconscious pops up into the awareness. Either way, one is very open for suggestions in that state, so whatever she says, could land very deeply and could be unconscious later on. Then follows a short bathroom break where people still keep the silence mostly, and straight after, there is a space either for her speech about what is up with the field or evolution of the planet, or more often, Q&A session on the matters of spirituality. Students are encouraged to ask what has come up for them during the meditation. These things are usually very personal which leaves the student vulnerable to further suggestions. One describes a new experience in their body or awareness and she explains what it is. So it is an authoritarian structure where one subdues themselves and their experience of their body and reality, to a higher power. One ends up accepting the explanation from one who knows it all – Aisha/Pema. The student is left covertly accepting that they cannot understand their own reality by themselves, and take on the worldview (or psychosis) of Aisha/Pema. To remind, one is in a very vulnerable and suggestible place after the meditation and their critical thinking part of the brain is not fully online.

The hook

When somebody just does not walk away or make a reality check afterwards, one stays curious. After such a powerful and intense experience one is curious for more. Everyday people are not usually familiar with the signs or effects hypnosis and Neurolinguistic Programming. Also, others on the satsang seem to have a deep appreciation for Aisha/Pema and most of us did not read much of social psychology and are not conscious how greatly we are influenced by groups we find ourselves in. Too, the space somehow feels more alive than everyday reality. People that attend the satsang go through strong emotions and something that looks like eureka moments. Something reveals to them they were not fully aware of before. (As it happens with any deep relaxation or a type of hypnosis.) They are grateful, they share things they would not do at a work space or in a cafeteria, it feels intimate and at the same time really special. One submits unconsciously to the group dynamic, the hype being grateful, touched and thrilled. One continues to join more meetings.

Then something unexpected or unknown happens, perhaps a strong emotion comes up or through the hypnosis one is led to a new state of consciousness. The newcomer shares the experience with the group. She or he can speak of a particular fear (the new experience could be scary), to which Aisha/Pema depending on the personality and how deep they are engulfed in her teachings, responds in some of these ways: if one is not so engulfed, the experience shows how developed and ready they are and what a powerful teacher she is that she can open these corridors in them. If one is more engulfed, she can react by shaming – for instance saying how that -whatever came up- is a sign of how not surrendered to the truth they are, and how they need to let go of their ego harder. So, we have here somebody in a vulnerable state sharing something deep and personal, and her as an all powerful authority accepted by the group, shaming or validating it (validating it only in the same paradigm where she is the ultimate powerful one). A strong trauma bond is constructed this way. A bond that is not equal and where the power is not in balance.

The only possible way to relate to Aisha/Pema in order to receive this sacred wisdom and validation  is by accepting her as ultimate authority over oneself or their experience. For instance, one cannot tell her that what she told them turned out to be wrong or something that she said sounds stupid and improbable. To express this, one is out and shamed, gets silent treatment or is said to be in some form not ready or developed for hearing ‘the truth’. Actually, this also depends – if one is an asset for her, meaning he or she can afford many private sessions or donate large sums of money to the foundation; or, has some valuable skill set, she does the love bombing strategy instead. She keeps these people in the fort by any means.

Enmeshment of Identity

We feel that it is a part of human psyche to want to have a purpose – to help greater good or in some way influence the world and our surroundings for the better. After forming a trauma bond with Aisha/Pema, she suggests what one can do to help the world or their consciousness to become a better person. Donating money or working for her is the best way to purify and alleviate one’s consciousness as well as help the world as a whole. Once a person is hooked, there is a constant pressure, things will not wait, the time is always now – it can feel exciting to be always on the edge of ‘human potential’, but it is also very very exhausting. To be hooked into Aisha/Pema is like being in a whirl, an always moving vortex. She changes her mind constantly, she changes her emotions constantly – one is off the ground and finds themselves running and being on the edge all the time. It is destabilising, one does not have time for themselves in her presence and as one is tired, the critical faculty of the brain turns off and one accepts more and more of Aisha/Pema’s way of seeing the world and themselves. Some of us went deeper than others, but the strategy is the same: she creates doubt inside a person and of their perception of reality, and claims to have the answer to that doubt. ‘Surrender to truth’ is the core of her teaching, and how do we know what is true? Aisha/Pema is the only source of knowing what is true and false. The ego does not cease to exist as she would claim but it is replaced by Aisha/Pema’s and her indoctrination, the individual is codependent without realising.

The whole teaching is built on the premise to enable Aisha/Pema to commit abuse on her students. The main theme is surrender. The feelings of anger and doubt, she says, are preventing a person from achieving higher states of consciousness. They are the signs that one is avoiding the truth and does not surrender their ego, self centeredness to the greater reality or higher frequency. Again, how convenient – if one feels doubt about what Aisha/Pema is telling them, it is not a sign to re-examine the direction further, but a proof that one is sliding away from the truth. The same with the feeling of anger. If somebody has a feeling of anger because of an unjust conduct by Aisha/Pema, it is not a healthy sign of integrity and that a boundary has been crossed, but that one is impure and in a state of avoidance to the greater truth. She claims this is all in order to surrender to the truth, but in reality one needs to surrender to her whims.

Also, according to her, anger is a part of the buddhist five or six poisons. The poisons include anxiety, fear, jealousy, desire and depression. According to her interpretation, to keep these within oneself is a destructive behavior – they are not ‘just emotions’, but have a subtle life force of their own and always have a manipulative destructive foundation beneath them. So she scares the students that if one is feeling one of these, they are being destructive and manipulative. She says there is no shame in feeling these, but it is shameful when one is not dealing with these feelings when in contact with another person. So, if one is scared, anxious or depressed in front of another, it is shameful because then the ‘other has to deal with it for you’. So she wants people to be isolated, and not help one another within the community. As isolation is the easiest way for her to control the people of the community. She also says that if one hits the other with anger, desire or fear (or any of these poisons), it is ‘MEANT and bound to cause a rejection if the receiver has any integrity’. So again, she wants people to isolate, not have desires for each other, deal with their fear alone by themselves, and never ever be angry, even when one is overstepping their boundaries. She creates a dogma where she is right to reject people when they come to talk to her because of healthy disagreement.

So, her teaching is built in order to abuse, it is a self serving loop and the only one it serves is Aisha/Pema herself.