HBO's latest true-crime drama, Breath of Fire, is another story of a spiritual community accused of cultic practices. Based on Haley Phelan's Vanity Fair article “The Second Coming of Guru Jagat,” the four-part series will premiere on October 23, 2024, with new episodes airing every Wednesday throughout the 2010s. Jagat built her Los Angeles-based studio into an international empire, boasting multiple locations and adjacent e-commerce operations and a celebrity following that included Kate Hudson, Alicia Keys, Orlando Bloom, and Russell Brand. She is also credited with fostering a cult-like and abusive environment within the organization and platforming a right-wing, anti-wax, QAnon conspiracy that eventually led to the COVID epidemic.

This substantial cult documentary also explores the legacy of Jagat's controversial mentor Yogi Bhajan, the complex culture of contemporary spirituality, and the “dangers of self-appointed gurus.” At the center of it all is the charismatic and controversial leader Guru Jagat. Following her untimely death, her profile in the public eye has shifted from guru's female boss to alleged cult leader. Here is a brief overview of what you should know about Guru Jagat.

Guru Jagat, real name Katie Griggs, was born in Colorado in 1979. According to Vanity Fair magazine, Griggs dreamed of acting and performing on stage as a child, “partying and dropping out of school in her early 20s, eventually earning a degree from Antioch College in Ohio.” Eventually, the former YouTube astrologer founded the RA MA Institute for Applied Yogic Sciences and Technology and in 2013 established an L.A.-based studio focused on promoting the practice of Kundalini Yoga. According to the outlet, Kundalini is “characterized by intense breathing techniques, repetitive postures, and alternative lifestyle choices such as wearing white clothing and eating a mostly vegetarian diet.”

The first episode of the HBO documentary introduces several elements of the Jagat practice, including “fire breathing.” As noted in the documentary, Jagat ends his sessions with a 45-minute talk, which sometimes includes a “prosperity meditation,” where participants attribute successes such as getting their dream job or dream house to their yoga practice.

By the late 2010s, Jagat had become a popular yoga guru and business owner, thanks in part to an active Instagram presence. She hosted online classes through a subscription service, with 20,000 subscribers paying at least $19 per month. She also launched several ventures from RA MA, including two clothing lines: a streetwear brand and a line of “effortless white dresses. ”RA MA's studio expanded to multiple locations, including Venice (LA flagship store), New York City, Boulder, Colorado, and Mallorca, Spain. The company expanded to locations.

Rabbi Jagat was a self-proclaimed direct disciple of the controversial spiritual teacher Yogi Bhajan. She claimed to have been able to meet Yogi Bhajan in his later years and to have received her spiritual name from him. However, this claim has been questioned because Bhajan died in 2004 and Guru Jagat did not begin to take his name until 2013. Prior to that, she ran a website called Kundalini Katie, and at various points in her life she went by the names Athena Day and Katie Day.

Yogi Bhajan (real name Harbhajan Singh Khalsa) is a spiritual guru who is credited with popularizing Kundalini Yoga. A former customs inspector, he emigrated from India to the U.S. in the late 1960s, when, as Amanda Montell notes in Breath of Fire, “people were feeling an existential high and dry. He founded the 3HO Foundation in L.A., where he gathered hundreds of followers to practice his teachings. Critics have accused Bhajan of inventing kundalini from other spiritual practices and Sikh teachings.

Bhajan was also a businessman and owned several multi-million dollar businesses, including a yogi tea and a private security company. According to Doc, Bajan's teachings were similar to the prosperity gospel, the belief that a higher power would reward the faithful with financial wealth. Over the years, his followers established businesses such as “shoes, body scrubs, granola bars, and essential oils.” Cameron Healy, founder of Kettle Foods, reportedly became involved with Kundalini Yoga in the early 1970s, invested in a successful bakery called Golden Temple, and eventually founded the Kettle Chips brand in 1978.

Bhajan faced accusations of “rape, sexual misconduct, and financial irregularities” before and after his death, according to Vanity Fair magazine; in 2020, after his former employee and lover Pamela Dyson published a memoir containing several new allegations, Gul Jagat expressed and promoted a video that “attempted to discredit Dyson and defend Bajan. This stance provoked a backlash, prompting her downfall.

In mid-2020, former Jagat employees Becky Lovell and Nicole Norton set up an anonymous Instagram page @ramawrong to post evidence that Jagat was instilling a culture of abuse among its employees. According to Vanity Fair magazine, “Jagat was abusive, irrational, and prone to lying. She spent money like water and often came up short when it came to paying her employees. Many of the employees, despite being full-time staff with 'director' in their titles, were paid well below minimum wage, required to file as independent contractors, and deprived of health care and other benefits.” An anonymous employee also told Vanity Fair that Jagat allegedly supported QAnon's conspiracy theories, and some accused her husband Teg Nam (real name Austin Dunbar, a former student nearly 20 years her junior) of “radicalizing” her.

As Vanity Fair reported, Rev. Jagat died in August 2021 at the age of 41; the RA MA Institute said at the time that she died of a pulmonary embolism following ankle surgery. Although the cause of death was confirmed by the death certificate, several rumors were floating around at the time about what led to her death, including that she faced complications from COVID after refusing to be vaccinated and holding classes without a mask during the pandemic, or that she faked her death in response to growing criticism of her .