The first time I saw Vardankar’s language of sound-current and inner light, it felt like déjà vu. Eckankar taught me the architecture of mystical branding: the promise of “soul travel,” a living emissary of the divine, and a spiritual vocabulary that sounds ancient but is carefully engineered for modern seekers.

MasterPath echoed the same cadence with a new coat of paint. The Hare Krishna Movement, very different on its surface, converged on similar dynamics of devotion, hierarchy, and control. Vardankar is a small movement by comparison, but that obscurity is part of its spell: it claims rare access to something essential and secret.

The deeper I traced, the more familiar the mechanics became — not only the theology, but the psychology and the neurobiology that make such movements persuasive, sticky, and difficult to leave.

This is the story of how Vardankar constructs its world; how its leader consolidates authority; how initiations pace and ration belonging; how fear, exclusivity, and financial obligation are framed as spiritual necessity; and how the human brain, seeking meaning and coherence, becomes a collaborator. It is the story of people — earnest seekers who wanted the divine and were handed dependency, shame, and an ever-receding horizon of promised realization.

Borrowed Light and Branded Sound

Vardankar presents itself as a “spiritual science” centered on the VARDAN — the primal sound current that flows through all existence. The promise is old as mysticism: align with the divine vibration, ascend the planes, know God directly. The innovation is strategic: language, titles, and ritual choreography that establish scarcity and access.

If you’ve studied Eckankar’s ECK (its own sound-current of God), the parallels are immediate. Both systems map a cosmology of tiers and guardians; both elevate a living master as the necessary guide; both frame their terminology as uniquely potent — to be learned, guarded, and practiced correctly. MasterPath likewise positions its “Master” as sole navigator of Light and Sound, the hinge upon which safe passage turns. The differences matter less than the pattern: a proprietary lexicon that looks universal but functions like a trademark. It doesn’t only teach; it gates.

In this framing, truth is not just discovered; it is dispensed. The movement is the vessel, the maters is the spigot, and the current is the product. Scarcity drives value. Secrecy creates status. Access defines identity.

The Living Master and Architecture of Authority

At the core stands the Living VARDAN Master — an office, a persona, and a claim. The office asserts divine appointment; the persona performs certainty; the claim is simple and audacious: without me, the path is unsafe or incomplete.

Authority is built in layers. First, by inheritance — by referencing lineage that names prior masters and heavenly patrons. Second, by exclusivity — the master alone validates initiations, experiences, and doubts. Third, by intimacy — personalized communications, small-group calls, private letters, all framed as care. Fourth, by distance — sacred mystique, restricted access, and the suggestion that criticism equates to spiritual immaturity. The alternation of closeness and aloofness is not accidental; it engineers attachment.

In practical terms, the master becomes the interpreter of reality. Any experience can be reclassified: a “test,” a “karmic lesson,” a “negative force,” a “proof of progress.” Ambiguity — the native property of spiritual life — is captured and renamed. Over time, followers outsource epistemology. What is true becomes what the master recognizes. What is safe becomes what the master sanctions. What is holy becomes what the master provides.

The Living VARDAN Master was Sri Allen Feldman, also known as “The Margatma.” He was presented by VARDANKAR as the spiritual traveler guiding followers to Self-Realization and God-Realization through the practice of Tuza (Soul) Projection. In his teachings, Feldman emphasized active spiritual practice rather than passive meditation. Followers were encouraged to “become the captain of their ship” and consciously project Soul into higher spiritual words beyond matter, energy, space, and time. His talks often stressed overcoming skepticism and doubt, framing attitude as central to spiritual unfoldment. There are references that after Feldman’s passing in 2021, his wife Heather Giamboi was named the outer VARDAN spiritual teacher. This is how the group preserved continuity after Feldman’s death. They elevated Giamboi as the outer teacher while shifting emphasis to inner, mystical figures like Fubbi Quantz. Some VARDANKAR content still refers to Feldman as if he were alive, while other sources acknowledge his passing and highlight Heather Giamboi’s role. This inconsistency reflects the group’s attempt to maintain legitimacy despite the doctrinal gap.

Initiations, Pacing, and the Scarcity of Belonging

Initiation systems are the heartbeat of groups like Vardankar. They ration belonging. Early stages entice with simple practices and promise; mid stages deepen commitments; upper stages dangle access to guarded teachings and rare experiences. Each level is milestone and mirage: an arrival that immediately reframes itself as a beginning.

The psychology is elegant and ruthless. The next level becomes near win — close enough to taste, far enough to chase. In behavioral terms, this is variable reinforcement: the most potent schedule for conditioning persistence. Every paid seminar, every special letter, every whispered teaching may deliver a mild reward — a sense of progress, a novel symbol, a private blessing. The bigger breakthrough always remains just beyond the horizon.

Secrecy amplifies the effect. Hidden teachings function like velvet ropes; members bond around what outsiders cannot know. The result is identity through exclusion, and loyalty through withheld revelation. Doubt becomes sacrilege not because questions are forbidden, but because questions are reclassified as proofs that one is “not ready.”

Tactics of Control Narrated Through Lived Experience

When you listen to survivors, a pattern emerges that is both intimate and predictable. It starts with an encounter — a text, a video, a meeting — that lands at exactly the right time. A longing, a loss, a search. The language of sound-current and light feels less like information and more like a homecoming. The master’s presence seems to resolve contradictions: devotion without dogma, science without skepticism, mysticism without chaos.

Then the requirements begin. At first, they look like care: study disciplines, donation “energy exchanges,” commitments to community. Next, they look like tests: are you willing to put God first? Are you able to silence “negative” influences? Are you strong enough to trust the path when it is hard? Finally, they look like debts: you were given so much — teachings, blessings, time — how can you withhold when asked?

As the years stretch, the promised eruptions of spiritual clarity often do not arrive. The group’s answer is consistent: wait, surrender, give more, trust more, cleanse more. If you question, that is your ego or karma resisting. If you leave, your decline validates the warning. Survivors recount this loop with pain and precision: the slow exchange of autonomy for certainty, and of money for meaning.

Why This Works on the Brain

Understanding why these systems “work” requires more than sociology. It requires a look at how the brain constructs reality.

  • Predictive processing and meaning-making: The brain is a prediction engine, constantly generating models of the world and updating them with sensory input. Mystical frameworks provide a high-level model that explains anomalies (visions, coincidences, intense emotions) as signs of progress. When a leader supplies a coherent narrative, prediction errors are resolved in favor of the model rather than against it. Over time, the model becomes resilient; contradictory data are reinterpreted as “tests.”
  • Dopamine and variable rewards: Practices and initiations deliver intermittent reinforcement — a powerful driver of motivation. Occasional “peak experiences” (vivid dreams, synchronistic events, group euphoria) spike dopaminergic pathways. The brain learns to associate cues (chants, meetings, the master’s image) with anticipated reward. The intermittent schedule (you never know when the next breakthrough will come) sustains effort more effectively than regular rewards.
  • Salience networks and sacred framing: Declaring certain stimuli sacred — words, chants, images — increases attentional salience. The anterior cingulate and insula mediate the sense that “this matters.” Ritual repetition strengthens these pathways. Elevated arousal in group settings, music, and focused gaze can tilt the system toward absorption and suggestibility, making ideas feel true because they feel intense.
  • Memory reconsolidation and reinterpretation: When memories are revisited during emotionally charged teachings, they can be reconsolidated with new meaning. Painful events are reframed as karmic lessons; doubts as attacks. This is not mind control; it is memory updated under narrative pressure. With repetition, reinterpretation feels original, and the group’s lens becomes the default.
  • Social bonding and oxytocin: Small-group rituals, shared vulnerability, and the master’s “care” release bonding hormones. Oxytocin does not discern truth; it strengthens trust. In contexts framed as spiritual family, betrayal detection is lowered, while in-group favoritism increases.
  • Cognitive dissonance and sunk cost: If you have paid, sacrificed, and isolated for years, the cost of admitting harm is immense. Dissonance is reduced by doubling down: the next level will justify the past. Leaders exploit this with “breakthrough” narratives timed to retain members at inflection points.

These mechanisms are not inherently bad; they are how human brains build meaning, remember, and bond. But in a high-control environment, they become the scaffolding for exploitation: biology enlisted into belief.

The Levers of Influence

The psychology of movements like Vardankar lives in the gaps between hope and fear.

  • Authority bias and sacred personhood: People over-weight claims from perceived authorities, especially when authority is sacralized. A master who speaks with divine certainty short-circuits ordinary evaluation. The aura of being chosen functions like an epistemic force field.
  • Parasocial attachment and transference: Followers form one-sided bonds with charismatic figures. Past needs for guidance or healing are projected onto the master, who receives devotion in exchange for certainty. The master’s curated warmth alternates with distance, maintaining pursuit.
  • Sacred values and moral immunity: When values are sanctified (“service to the VARDAN,” “protecting the teachings”), ordinary cost-benefit analysis recedes. Actions that would otherwise seem exploitative are reframed as holy necessity. Sacred values resist trade-offs — a powerful shield against financial and ethical scrutiny.
  • In group/out-group identity and purity narratives: Defining outsiders as “negative,” “ego-bound,” or “karmically dense” bolsters cohesion. Purity frameworks police thought and relationship boundaries, making dissent feel like cohesion. Purity frameworks police thought and relationship boundaries, making dissent feel like contamination rather than disagreement.
  • Learned helplessness and external locus of control: Over time, agency shifts to the master’s discretion. Success is credited to him; failure to your lack of surrender. This externalization erodes self-efficacy. People who once were capable become dependent, not because they lost skills, but because they lost permission.
  • Gaslighting and double binds: “If you question, you prove you’re not ready. If you obey, you prove you are ready — but must keep obeying.” Double binds trap members in no-win loops. Gaslighting reframes legitimate observations as spiritual pathology. The effect is destabilizing; the cure offered is more submission.
  • Trauma bonding: Intermittent validation paired with occasional shaming or withdrawal creates strong attachment. The nervous system learns that relief comes from appeasing the authority. This bond is not romantic; it is devotional — and it is potent.

Money, Time, and the Sanctification of Debt

In movements that claim to transcend materiality, money requires curious sanctity. “Energy exchange” becomes spiritualized economics. Donations are framed as karmic clearing; purchases as investments in eternity; fees as commitments that prove readiness. Scarcity narratives (“few will be offered the higher teachings”) prime urgency; limited-time opportunities accelerate decisions.

Financial strain blends with time debt — hours of study, meetings, service. Survivors describe calendars consumed by engagement and wallets thinned by devotion. The point is not the number; it is the framing: every cost is proof of value, every sacrifice proof of purity. Leaving becomes expensive twice — you lose the sunk costs and must face their reclassification from “holy” to “harmful.” That reckoning is often the hardest part.

Stories Synthesized from Survivor Testimony

Consider the arc reported by a longtime member: initiation brought tears and relief; the master’s first letter felt like being seen. Promises of inner sound grew into vigilant practice — night chants, daytime mantras, dream journaling. Months passed. Some nights produced strange rapture; many produced fatigue. Doubts were named “tests.” A relationship frayed under new priorities; the partner’s concern was labeled “negativity.” Money moved toward the path, quietly, repeatedly. Years later, the breakthrough remained tantalizingly close. A crisis came — illness, job loss, a family emergency — and the group’s counsel was consistent: surrender more, serve more, purge more. Leaving felt like betrayal of God. Staying felt like self-abandonment. The eventual exit was not triumph so much as a slow rehydration agency.

Another member, younger, bright, analytic, found solace in the system’s apparent “science.” Cosmology charts, precise planes, named guardians — all of it gave structure to a chaotic inner life. The master’s elegant certainty filled gaps. When a friend left and spiraled, the story cemented: the path protects; departure destroys. Only later did they learn the spiral preceded the exit. The narrative had been edited to serve cohesion.

These are composites, but the cadence is consistent across testimonies: an initial relief that the world makes sense; a widening circle of commitments; a shrinking circle of relationships; a deepening reliance on the master as interpreter of self and reality; a costly exit that requires new models of meaning.

The Comparative Lens

If Eckankar pioneered an accessible American mysticism of sound-and-light with centralized authority, MasterPath refined the intimacy of master-centric devotion, and Vardankar leaned into exclusivity and scarcity. All three share:

  • A proprietary cosmology mapped through evocative terminology.
  • A living master who arbitrates truth and safety.
  • Initiations that ration access and identity.
  • Secrecy that dignifies belonging and deflects scrutiny.
  • Narratives that recast doubt as ego, criticism as negativity, departure as spiritual failure.

The differences are tactical. Ecakankar’s public-facing materials are broader and often more institutional; MasterPath’s tone can be more confessional and psychospiritual; Vardankar’s scarcity framing makes the offering feel rarer, the consequences of leaving heavier, the master’s role more singular. The same engine runs under each hood: hope harnessed to hierarchy.

The Neuropsychology of Recovery

Exiting a high-control spiritual system is both logistical and neurological. The nervous system, conditioned by intermittent reinforcement and anxiety relief through obedience, needs time to desensitize. The brain’s predictive model, once organized around the group’s cosmology, must be rebuilt — not necessarily with new doctrines, but with tolerance for ambiguity. Recovery often involves:

  • Reclaiming agency: shifting locus of control back to personal judgment, naming preferences without fear of spiritual consequence.
  • Relearning trust: distinguishing warmth from manipulation, care from control, community from conditionality.
  • Memory repair: allowing old events to be reinterpreted without shame, resisting the reflex to code doubts as defects.
  • Value clarification: pulling sacred values back into the human realm where trade-offs are permitted and ethics can be examined.
  • Gradual exposure: revisiting rituals and triggers in safe contexts, noticing arousal without assigning meaning, letting biology settle.

None of this is instant, and none of it is linear. But the brain is plastic, and the psyche resilient. What was once felt as divine necessity can be re-seen as human design. The master shrinks; the world widens.

Beyond One Group…

It would be easy to dismiss Vardankar as a fringe curiosity, too small to warrant attention. That misses the point. The mechanisms it employs are not fringe; they are mainstream features of how influence works, dressed in spiritual clothes. People attracted to such movements are not gullible; they are often perceptive, imaginative, and sincere — the very qualities that make them susceptible to narratives that promise coherence and transcendence.

Documenting these dynamics is not only about critique; it’s about respect. Respect for the seekers who gave their best. Respect for the survivors who speak at personal cost. Respect for our shared neurobiology, which can be recruited into beauty or into bondage depending on who holds the story. The path to protection is not cynicism; it is literacy — knowing how authority is built, how belonging is rationed, how our brains cooperate, and how to walk away when devotion becomes debt.

Naming Things as They Are

Vardankar speaks in the vocabulary of light and sound. So do many beautiful traditions. The difference is not the lexicon; it is the power dynamic beneath it. When a human claims exclusive custody of the divine and builds a system that funnels meaning, money, and identity through their hand, we should name it clearly. The story told here is not anti-spiritual; it is pro-agency, pro-truth, and pro-community that does not demand harm for belonging.

If the divine is real, it does not require secrecy to be known, nor hierarchy to be felt, nor debt to be loved. The courage is in the questioning, the transparency, and the listening — especially to those who have walked away and lived to tell it.

By Beth Gibbons (Queen of Karma)

Beth Gibbons, known publicly as Queen of Karma, is a whistleblower and anti-MLM advocate who shares her personal experiences of being manipulated and financially harmed by multi-level marketing schemes. She writes and speaks candidly about the emotional and psychological toll these so-called “business opportunities” take on vulnerable individuals, especially women. Beth positions herself as a survivor-turned-activist, exposing MLMs as commercial cults and highlighting the cult-like tactics used to recruit, control, and silence members.

She has contributed blogs and participated in video interviews under the name Queen of Karma, often blending personal storytelling with direct confrontation of scammy business models. Her work aligns closely with scam awareness efforts, and she’s part of a growing community of voices pushing back against MLM exploitation, gaslighting, and financial abuse.