NZ Skeptics Articles

ISTA (International School of the Temple Arts) and Highden make actual headlines

Bronwyn Rideout - 3rd March 2025

I’m unreserved in my assessment that this has been one of the biggest weekends in ISTA/Highden history, just not for the reasons ISTA would have anticipated. Anya Kamenetz, writing for New York Magazine’s The Cut, has written a damning piece on ISTA, with the subtitle of: “Can a neo-Tantric sex group dedicated to exploring dark desires root out abuse?”

Following the ever-harrowing experience of “Lina”, the article outlines what happens during ISTA workshops. If you’ve listened to Season 1 of the Sex.Life podcast, much of this will sound familiar: the yoni-gazing, sacred spot massage, temple nights, and secrecy around Level 2. But Lina also recounts being raped in May 2022 during one of the temple nights. The article referred to the activity as a sacrifice ritual; students took turns being blindfolded, and in groups of three allowed others to touch them within the boundaries set by the student acting as the sacrifice. Due to how the activity was organised, participants remained anonymous, and attendees regrouped into new trios each time, making it impossible for Lina to know who raped her without someone telling her.

It will be surprising to no one who has followed the ISTA/Highden story updates from the NZ Skeptics that ISTA’s response to complaints that were made let down Lina and others who spoke to Kamenetz. Secrecy and shifting responsibility is a feature of the ISTA organism, not a bug. Now we have new pithy statements, used by ISTA organisers to bypass accountability, such as “your story, your projection”, and “we are all predators”, to add to our ISTA/Highden vocabulary, and sit alongside “you chose this”, “trauma triangle”, and “there are no abusers because there are no victims”. The article is revelatory in other ways. As we know, assistants pay a reduced fee to attend, not including accommodation; according to one of Kamenetz’s informants, paid faculty could earn as much as $20,000-$30,000 per training. ISTA is also not as sexually equitable as many may believe, with another of Kamenetz’s informants reported being told at a 2018 training that female students should be empty vessels and cater to the desires of the male attendees.

What would be most interesting to New Zealanders is the Bruce of it all. Kamenetz says little about Bruce Lyon, which is to be expected, but Highden is present at the margins. Highden is described both as Lyon’s “spiritual retreat centre”, and “ISTA on steroids”, which are fair assessments but exclude the unique nature (and unique problems) of Highden, as well as of Lyon’s interpretation of the works of Alice Bailey. Kamenetz’s framing of 3SC’s Incident of Harm report form findings is also raising eyebrows. 3SC had collected 51 reports of abusive incidents at ISTA and Highden events, across 18 countries, going back to 2008. Bruce Lyon was accused of more abuses than any other faculty member, but he was not included in the list of ISTA teachers who underwent the Safe Mediation process. ISTA and Bruce remained mum.

They are a little less tight-lipped about denying Nichols’s accusations about Bruce and Highden, made in an unpublished letter to the CORE ISTA group. Whether this was sent before or after their in-person gathering would be interesting to unpack, as the gathering was attended by Lyon, Nichols, and Ohad Ezrahi, an ISTA instructor named as the perpetrator in multiple sexual assaults.

So, “can a neo-Tantric sex group dedicated to exploring dark desires root out abuse?”

From what Kamenetz shares, the answer is a clear no, and you are left doubting whether that’s what ISTA even wants to do. Victims get offered a token refund in return for an NDA, while abusers get wrap-around support and a community to fall back on. It’s a head scratcher as to what ISTA thought it would achieve through engaging with the journalists writing this article, but it certainly isn’t what it got out of it:

NY Magazine Interview on ISTA’s Accountability Process: Kamela Love, Point Person of ISTA’s Accountability Process, was interviewed by a NY Magazine reporter who is writing a full length article on ISTA’s Accountability Process. The article’s angle is what authentic accountability and restorative justice look like within the context of a sex-positive spiritual community and why ISTA has chosen repair instead of canceling. ISTA Lead Facilitators, Raffaello Manacorda and KamalaDevi McClure, were also interviewed for the article, as well as Anaisa from Safe Mediation.

You’ve got to wonder how much accountability there was if Kamenetz could not pull together a full-length article on ISTA’s process.

So, what’s next? Can we afford to wait and see anymore?

The reality is that ISTA’s philosophy, harmful dimensions included, is already disseminating internationally, albeit under non-ISTA names. We’re familiar with the various temples that have landed worldwide that are associated with Highden, as well as the various Highden-type communities or developments that ISTA faculty are investing in internationally. Komala Lyra, Ohad, Nichols, and Dawn Cherie Ezrahi are involved with a development in Portugal called Monte California. However its current status is unclear, as the website hasn’t been updated since 2023. Former ISTA faculty member Frank Mondeose is developing a residential community in Costa Rica called TMPL MNTN. Amongst the goals Mondeose lists for the community in his sabbatical message on his website are integration of temple culture, and connection with the land through shamanism. Then there are the numerous individuals who proudly list ISTA as part of their training.

If New Zealand media and our own spiritual and sexual communities were to act, the time is now. The next ISTA training in New Zealand is rapidly approaching; registration is ongoing for a Level 1 training from March 24th-30th. The location is not listed, but it’s likely to be Highden, as it has been since 2017 - and there’s a small context clue about it being at Highden that the listing mentions the “manor ensuite” as an available option. But the very public fracture between Nichols and Lyon, and the possibly global level of scrutiny that will be on Highden and ISTA after the weekend, might necessitate a rethink.

Are you new to the whole ISTA/Highden debacle? Read our previous articles on ISTA, Highden, and the people who were associated with it:

And, maybe for a bit of levity, Youtuber MatPat (GameTheory/FilmTheory) visited Highden when they were transitioning from a BnB to a Mystery School: