About the Guru Magazine
Dubbed the "anti-cult hero of the digital age" founder Be Scofield has broken some of the biggest cult stories of the last seven years. She's the journalist behind the hit HBO series Love Has Won and her reporting on Agama Yoga was turned into an episode of Netflix's series Unwell. Her stories have been turned into the season premiere of the Dr. Phil show, VICE, a short Jezebel documentary and countless podcasts. Her reporting is cited by the New York Times, People, Washington Post, CNN, Yahoo, Daily Mail, Playboy, The Guardian, Daily Beast and hundreds of other news outlets. She was recently interviewed in Rolling Stone magazine for a story about Bentinho Massaro. In 2019 she was profiled in a front-page feature story by Anke Richter for Fair Observer.
Scofield first exposed the glamorous guru Teal Swan in 2018 which led to front page coverage on the Daily Mail, a podcast and a Hulu series. She was the first journalist to report on Yogi Bhajan and the abuses within Kundalini Yoga. The story was later covered by VICE and HBO. Her latest series Cult Rock explores the intersection of cults and music in the 1960s and 1970s.
Scofield's new book is Hunting Lucifer: One Reporter's Search for Cults and Demons and it captures her journey traveling as a nomad hunting cults.
It Began in the Desert...
In December 2017 Be Scofield infiltrated Bentinho Massaro’s cult and published an article that went viral called “Tech Bro Guru: Inside the Sedona Cult of Bentinho Massaro.” In two weeks it got 200,000 views and 18 days after it was published the guru fled Sedona and went into hiding. One of his followers committed suicide 9 days after the story was published while he was on Bentinho’s week-long retreat. After breaking the story Barcroft TV and VICE each produced short documentaries about Bentinho. Playboy magazine also ran an article about him.
In July 2018 Scofield exposed a rape and sexual abuse scandal at Agama Yoga in Thailand, which led to international press coverage and most recently a segment on Netflix’s series (Un)Well. Before Agama Yoga collapsed it was the largest yoga and tantra training center in the world. Four days after the original expose was published the founder, Swami Vivekananda Saraswati, and the other three accused teachers fled Thailand and went into hiding.
Her pivotal reporting on global spiritual teacher Mooji has over 200,000 views and was the first to cover the cult leader. Scofield’s expose on Yogi Bhajan, founder of Kundalini Yoga, helped usher in an era of recognition and awareness about his abuses. Her critiques of modern spiritual teachers Byron Katie and Abraham Hicks have had widespread reach.
Scofield’s articles exposing sexual abuse in the modern tantra scene have reached global audiences and put several prominent teachers into retirement. Her in-depth reporting on a tantric sex cult in Europe called The New Tantra led to prominent Dutch Magazine De Volkskrant running a front-page feature and recently a doc series in Europe. Scofield has also exposed tantra teachers Andrew Barnes, TJ Bartel, Charles Muir and Shantam Nityama for sexual assault and misconduct.
In June 2020 Scofield traveled to Crestone, Colorado and stumbled upon a cult called Love Has Won. Her subsequent expose led to the group fleeing Crestone for Kauai, only to be heavily protested and kicked off the island. In September Scofield’s reporting on the cult became the season premiere of the Dr. Phil show in a special two-episode launch.
In 2024 Be Scofield published two powerful series on Chogyam Trungpa's Shambhala Buddhism and the world-famous hugging saint Amma. Both were highly praised for shifting the conversation around the subjects.