Buying the ashram
In October 2000 Kim Schmock put forth the initial down payment necessary to buy Bhoga, signed the ownership contract and started renovating the wrecked old farm together with his new friends and colleagues of the community who decided to move there immediately, determined to realize their common dream. It was clear for everybody within the community that the place was going to belong to the community, even though the first primary payment and the loan for buying the place were established by Kim Schmock. Kim repeatedly said that he did want his initial down payment back, and as soon as possible we should sort out how to move the name of the contract (the ownership) to Natha. The whole project and the renovation of the place was based on the common spiritual idea of creating a community based on the teachings of Natha Yogacenter, and furthermore to offer the place once it had been built up as a cultural house organised by Natha Yogacenter full of creative and spiritual activities for the local society.
The clear agreement within the community and confirmed in the protocols of many house meetings was therefore that Bhoga belonged to the community of Natha Yogacenter and that Kim Schmock was only the generous cashier for managing the financial fuel for starting up the project. Already in November 2000 all the present members of the Bhoga community signed an Intention Declaration including Kim Schmock. The original and signed declaration was archived in Kim Schmocks personal papers and was not available for our investigation, but an electronic copy of the intention declaration remained in Natha Yogacenters electronic archive dated and last modified on 15th of November 2000. It goes as follows:
Ådyssegård Asram CommunityIn the house meeting 3rd of April 2001 Kim Schmock officially announced that:
Declaration of intent of 15. november 2000
This declaration is binding
The signers of this declaration form the Ådyssegård Asramcommunity, which, until further notice, takes responsability for building the asram. At decisions related to the building, NATHAs or MISAs leader has right to veto.
The signers bind themselves to the following:
1. To transform Ådyssegården Møngevej 11, Vejby, into a spiritual development- and course-center, with ecologically sustainable facilities.
2. To leave the leading and the economical responsability concerning Ådysse-gården to NATHA or its mother-organisation MISA, after the Ådyssegård is free of debt.
3. That Ådyssegården pays back it present owner, Kim Schmock, his expense for the downpayment at the purchase of the property (kr. 130.000,-), which has to be payed back before the leaving over to NATHA/ MISA. That all economical duties and obligations are removed from Kim Schmock and Helle Grønhøj
4. To facilitate these transactions through the formal forming of a self-owning trust (”fond”) under the official leadership of NATHA or MISA, as soon as possible.
The signers understand, acknowledge and bind themselves to the following:
5. To adopt the spiritual lifestyle according to NATHAs system, and to practice yoga in the measure given in the house rules.
6. To contribute to the building of the development- and course-center with labour or amounts that equals the value of the labour, in the measure given in the house rules.
7. That an individuals moving in or out can be decided by NATHAs or finally by MISAs leader.
8. At moving in, to contribute to the centre by giving it first priority in the daily life.
9. At moving in, to pay the settled rent for the next 6 months. After this there is a 3 months time limit.
Kim and Helle already now want to begin the make over of the farm, so Kim no longer is registered as owner and guarantor, but is free from this. Kim, Christine Maria and other interested and relevant persons will form a committee, where we investigate the possibilities.
The spiritual and physical building of an ashram
Many people who either studied or sympathized with the teachings of Natha Yogacenter gathered in the weekends to help their friends to give birth to this wonderful initiative.
I was part of a men’s group in Natha Yogacenter and every Saturday morning we went to Bhoga to help the initiating renovation project. It was an amazing atmosphere of doing something together and it seemed just like what the school needed in order to create a physical location where we together could develop projects connected to the school. For example yoga camps, silent retreats, music festivals et cetera. Of course I never doubted that the place belonged to Natha Yogacenter, since it was publicly expressed among all the ones in charge in that time, including Kim Schmock. (Martin Svensson)People came far and wide to participate in the yearly summer camps and in the necessary preparations:
I came together with two of my friends from Israel for the camp. We worked here for more than one month 8-10 hours per day even with hard physical work. I was sure this placed belonged to Natha Yogacenter already, and even though I am a little naive, in this case I heard Kim express it clearly like that. Now I really don’t know what to say, but I am surprised how anyone can be so blinded by money or whatever might be his motivation for trying to destroy our wonderful community. (Veredit Zeithun a former Bhoga resident)It did not take long before the community on the farm together decided to host the first big yoga camp held by Natha Yogacenter. In the beginning of 2001 before the first camp the community met their first big challenge – Organizing a summer camp for 200 people on Ådyssegaard was definitely not an easy task considering the conditions.
At this time the community also decided in a house meeting – with the support of all community members, to become an official ashram aligned with the spiritual teachings of Natha Yoga center, and thus it was decided to change the name of the farm to ‘Bhoga Ashram.’
Amrita Hansen the first ashram leader in Bhoga wrote in her deposition about the Bhoga Case:
When we had working weekends I helped where it was needed. Often I cooked food for all the people who came. Sometimes more than 20 people came. Mikael Eriksson instructed in how to build […] Kim borrowed us all his tools and he also had his own work team fixing all the things, which he would not let anybody borrow his special tools to fix. None of us, none of all those people coming and working voluntary in their weekends and long afternoons, ever doubted that the farm belonged to ‘us’, meaning the group of people, who were practicing yoga according to the teachings of the same spiritual school, Natha Yogacenter. None of us doubted that Natha Yogacenter was going to own the place, when the time was ripe for this – and that was why all these people came and helped with voluntary work. I would never have called all these people, or worked that hard for the place, if I have had the slightest suspicion that Kim one day would declare it all to be his private property. I would have been embarrassed to ask my friends to work for free, so that a private person could take economical advantage of it.The people living in Bhoga Ashram were all in their first years of yoga, Amrita Hansen moved in, to help the community move in the right direction and more urgently to help organize the upcoming summer camp;
I moved into Bhoga Ashram, Møngevej 11, 3210 Vejby on the 1st of April 2000 after agreement with the people living there, among them Kim Schmock. I moved in as ‘ashram leader’ first having secured myself, that everybody for sure wanted the place to become a real ashram.Just before that on the 26th of March 2001 Kim Schmock had signed a contract, declaring that in case he resigns from the Bhoga project, he will pass over the farm to the community living there:
The undersigned hereby guarantees, that if I do not wish to live an ashram life and hand over the leadership of the ashram, to the leader chosen by Grieg (right now Christine Maria Hansen), then I will hand over the farm to the people in the Ashram (Natha) and move out in the best possible harmonious way.
Signed by Kim Schmock 26/03/01
A Sacred Space
When the Problems Started?
It began with a minor conflict between Kim Schmock, and the community living there. The conflict escalated resulting in the case going to court. “Suddenly Kim Schmock - who left the community - claimed the right to throw out the rest of us and sell the farm to a third party, because ‘it was his name on the deed’, as he said. He wanted to forget about all our agreements – written and orally - settled in so many meetings: That actually the farm belongs to Natha and it is just a matter of proceeding with the agreed legal transfer of the ownership”, says one of the inhabitants of the Bhoga Community
Kim Schmock wants it to look like he is the rightful owner and initiator of Bhoga, who was unfairly treated by the community and who is now claiming his justice. A crusade against “injustice” caused towards him.
However the community itself and the people connected here know that this is not true and give quite a different story of harassment, manipulation and violence damaging the future of a genuine spiritual initiative.
As the different chapters of the Bhoga Case unfold, it turns out to be the story about a community where heartfelt trust and team spirit is the fundamental level of communication and co-operation, and how one member of the community suddenly turned his back and went from loyal and trusted to suspicious greedy, manipulative and irresponsible.
The ownership, Kims proposed donation
Beside the verbal confirmations I was amazed as a reporter to see a written contract in such a dispute, and I had to ask myself: What makes a single member of a community suddenly claim the rights for a place which he 5 years before obviously resigned all ownership from in a written piece of paper handed over to the official protocol of the community?
As if this should not be evidence enough to confirm the original intention of Kim Schmock, as a loyal, trustworthy and responsible member of the community, whose only official and well-known idea about the place was, that it belonged to the community and was dedicated to integrate the teachings of Natha Yogacenter in a living spiritual community. Only 2 months later immediately after a successful summer camp Kim according to several witnesses publicly announced his gratitude for the teachings of the school and his intentions even ‘to donate’ his down payment for buying the farm to Natha. The entire community managed to transform an abandoned farm into a quiet well functioning and well-facilitated camp-site, Kim Schmock sent a signed letter to Gregorian Bivolaru, the founder of Natha Yogacenter and the spiritual mentor of many of the students there, explaining certain aspects about the economy of Bhoga Ashram. Again in this letter he declares that his ownership of the place is pure formality and indeed the place belongs to the community: “I am not able to finance further development of Bhoga, but I got an idea. If I received the 160.000 kr back now, I will donate the whole amount to Bhoga Ashram as a start capital for making the facilities needed.”
The official process for handing over the legal property papers of Bhoga to Natha unfortunately did never happen. Because in fact Kim was himself in charged of the economy of both Bhoga and Natha and for some reason he never started this process.
What the others did not know…
According to Amrita Hansen, ashram leader in Bhoga at that time there was already a split in the mind of Kim Schmock from the beginning:
Kim was in this way ‘depending’ on that people from Natha Yogacenter were interested in the project for two obvious reasons: The first was that he and Helle obviously could not create a spiritual community by themselves. They needed somebody to move in and to do it together with, somebody who had more experience than them. The other reason was that Kim could not afford to pay for all the expenses for maintaining the place. He was all the time very careful to secure himself: To make sure enough people would move in and to make them oblige for a long enough period, in order to make sure he would not suddenly risk his initiative and go bankrupt. As a matter of fact Kim all the time showed himself as a person with a good sense for his own economy.
So Kim Schmock not only wanted a spiritual community, but also a “place with horses for him and his girlfriend Helle”, as Amrita Hansen writes in her witness deposition about Bhoga. But what was most important: The community or his own romantic dream? In fact maybe Kim just wanted “a place with horses” where he and his girlfriend could enjoy their - according to Amrita Hansen - quite expensive lifestyle. But is it morally correct to pretend in front of a community of around 10 people and not to mention in front of a whole school of hundreds of people, contributing for 6 years with free labour, that you are working for their project, when in fact you are only dreaming about horses? Nonetheless many facts are showing us that this is the reality.
The Economical Set Up
Already from the beginning Kim declared in several house meetings – as it is found in the house meeting summaries – and confirmed by the ashram leader at that time Amrita Hansen, that the economical responsibility belonged to the community and the members of Natha Yogacenter and not to him personally. After one year delay from the first initiative the community decided in the spring 2002 to make an Aps (Anpartsselskab) which should function as a link in the passing over of the property from Kim to Natha Yogacenter. Again Kim took the task on behalf of the community, since he was the most experienced in financial matters, to make an aps with himself as the director, in order to make the agreed transaction with monthly shares handing over the property to the members of Natha Yogacenter.
A lease was therefore signed by Kim Schmock as the owner of Bhoga Aps and Mihai Stoian as the newly chosen coordinator of Natha Yogacenter. In “The true face of Natha” published on Kim Schmocks homepage, it is mentioned that Kim did not like Mihai Stoian very much. However the facts suggest to us that they in fact had a very close connection and friendship for many years: In the same period as Mihai Stoian started the coordination of Natha Yogacenters teaching department Kim Schmock became an important character in the administration and economy of Natha Yogacenter taking many important tasks and new initiatives having consulted the board, where Mihai Stoian also was present as manager of the yoga teachers.
According to Amrita Hansen and Celestine Andersen, Kim was member of the board of Natha Yogacenter, who was administrating all the agreed decisions on the general assemblies of Natha Yogacenter.
“Kim was for a period of 8 months accountant for both Natha Yogacenter and Bhoga Ashram. After a while we trusted his reliability so much, that only later we discovered that he had made several huge transactions of many thousand kroner from the account of Natha Yogacenter to cover the expenses of Bhoga Ashram, who seemed to had run out of hand“, said Celestine Andersen, who kept the protocols of the board meetings.
Taking Personal Advantage
A lease between Bhoga Aps and Natha was made as an intermediary step to the complete legal transfer of the property which had been agreed. Kim tried to take advantage of it to claim the property for himself and to throw out Natha in a later bailiff court. A trusted man indeed, Kim Schmock, so trustworthy that the board of Natha Yogacenter kept their hands on the heart for almost 8 months while Kim constantly was talking about a new amazing payment system he was claiming to set up for Natha Yogacenter, while in fact instead of transferring the promised shares of Bhoga Aps to Natha Yogacenter, he was paying all the bills for maintaining and improving the facilities of the farm by drying out Natha Yogacenter’s account.
The bills from Bhoga added a deficit to Natha Yogacenter of approximately 100.000 kroner in the first 6 months of 2004. It was difficult for Natha Yogacenter to pay the house rent and since Kim did not make any budgets for Bhoga, but only passed on bills, a majority of the committee decided to renounce the engagement, and also the lease. (Amrita Hansen)The cancellation of the lease was done verbally at the small assembly there, since as Amrita Hansen underlines:
Verbal agreements are like written agreements. The atmosphere between us was very friendly and nobody would believe that anybody would try to take advantage of a silly contract which was only a formality to help Kim. Now we know that we were a little naïve and that one wrong signature risks destroying 6 years of efforts and great achievements, because of an irresponsible and corrupted economical set up of one man.Now Kim abused the contract to claim that Natha was only a tenant in Bhoga and even bad tenants not paying their rent! In fact he was hiding that Natha was paying all the costs including the monthly mortgage and also veiled the official agreement about transferring the formal papers for the property to Natha. Mihai Stoian explains that the real reason for the verbal cancellation of the lease was to make Bhoga Ashram become an economical independent branch of Natha Yogacenter:
We made it clear that together with the cancellation of the contract, the members of community living there now had to administrate the place themselves financially and practically. This procedure was agreed in order to make the people there more responsible for the place and not just depend on constant economical support from the main center in Copenhagen and donations of private people.” (And in fact Kim – who was at that time the ashram leader – together with the small ashram community - agreed to this, in the house meetings summaries from that time Kim states: “our goal should be to pay off all the debts in the farm and then hand over the key to Natha”, in this way all the ashramists worked as much as they could for this purpose with supplying the place with money in the bed & breakfast they started to offer for tourists.Well if they did not do all this extra effort for paying off Bhoga and with the ultimate purpose of handing it over to Natha. Then Kim had black work done for himself back then (of course without the people knowing it).)
But this did not solve all the problems for the committee of Natha Yogacenter. In fact Kim Schmock had just postponed the attainment of a proper overview of the economy and at the same time the board member who partly took over Kims tasks, discovered something even more alarming: “After looking through the papers I discovered that the promised transfer of Bhoga Aps to the members of Natha Yogacenter, which Kim was responsible for he had not even begun!”
Mihai Stoian underlines the fact that Bhoga Ashram was “even supported by Natha Yogacenter by letting all the income for the yoga courses and the economical successful yoga camps kept there, contribute to the further development of the facilities there.”
Opposing the Community
After a while another sign occurred showing Kim Schmocks inner dilemma between supporting and being loyal to the initial foundation of Bhoga Ashram, as a spiritual community, and fulfilling his personal dreams and desires. He started to show an opposing attitude to the spiritual program of the ashram, consisting in daily common meditations. Instead talking or loud movie watching could be heard from his room.
Kim would do a lot of things for Helle and sometimes I felt, that it was mostly for the sake of Helle, he had bought the farm and to create the community she had always dreamt about. He started to be not so happy to oblige himself for practicing yoga and meditation or participating in the common activities, which was the main purpose of the community. I have had long discussions with him about the lack of realism in his idea about taking partial responsibility for such a big project, when he did not really want to be part of it himself.(Amrita Hansen)
Kim also started to oppose against the future plans of Bhoga Ashram as a place for a spiritual community, wanting to lead things in his own direction, which was clearly not the initial agreement nor the present opinion by the majority of the people in the community, who were tired of spiritual compromises from Kim.” [Note: According to Stine Andersen, Mihai Stoian had announced the community some suggestions for turning the place into a more harmonious ashram.] (Stine Andersen)Let’s sum up the situation from here: Did Kim really plan all this beforehand and it was a pretence that he would hand over the farm later, so that a large community of people were working for him? Taking the responsibility of the economy of Natha Yogacenter and financing his ’own place’ with the funds of a spiritual school, keeping all the involved parts in the dark and blocking the agreed transfer of the shares of Bhoga Aps to the community? What would make a man do something like that: Was he just extremely clever and foresighted calculating all to his own economical interest as a cold hearted businessman or did it happen gradually a long the way? At least one thing is clear: While the rest of the community were arranging summer camps and renovating the facilities, Kim was keeping meetings with clever lawyers and his accountant securing his personal interest in the property.
Renouncing Further Engagements
After several disagreements where Kim was in conflict with the board decisions the final break came in July 2005. After the board had cancelled one of his personal projects in Bhoga, Kim himself realized that it could not continue like this. On the 26th of July 2005 Kim writes a letter to the people in the community announcing his resignation: “Dear Bhogaists, after considering the consequences for me accepting Mihai´s suggestion “how to turn Bhoga into an Ashram”, I have decided it is time for me to leave Bhoga.” In the same letter he also mentions a reason: That he does not feel competent enough to go through with the project: “[…] I have to move from this position, not to be an obstacle for further development of Bhoga – I would only be able to keep it ‘as a nice place to be’.“ Kim even specifies the economical conditions for the make over in the letter: “The basic fact is that someone else must take the financial responsibility for Bhoga. The “price of Bhoga” will be what I have invested in Bhoga. This I think is very fair, considering the price of Bhoga has increased since I bought it. I have asked my accountant to a make a statement. […] May God and all his angels be with you for now and eternity.”
Buying a Farm
For sure the community needed a blessing to resist what Kim was going to pull them all through the next year. From the 26th of July 2005 starts a long series of changing offers for the passing over of Bhoga Aps officially owned by Kim Schmock to Natha Yogacenter alias the community in Bhoga Ashram. Kim simply seemed to be taken by one clever idea after the other completely forgetting his initial verbally and signed promises to a whole community, thus leading himself astray both juridical and morally. From the initial agreed 160.000 kr in 2001 which was his actual down payment and contribution to the place, Kim Schmock consulted by his (for many years) accountant Leif Munck on the 26th of July comes up with 426.000 kr being “how much money I had invested in Bhoga.”, writes Kim in an email to Mihai Stoian, adding maybe with slightly bad conscience that, “I don’t think this is correct, it must be much less”, and “you pay me back my investment, and you can sell it afterwards if you want to take the profit, or you continue the development of Bhoga.” If the situation for the community so far had been tolerable and acceptable, from now on it turned absurd: “The same day as the deadline for the down payment of 426.000 kr to Kim, he cancelled the offer exactly as we were on the way to the bank to transfer the money.” Says Stine Andersen, ashram leader in Bhoga, and adds with a smile “At least he started to be honest about his real intentions.” During the next 3 months Kim Schmock advised by his accountant Leif Munck and his lawyer Henrik Hornslet is constantly changing the consistency of the offer for the make over. The 10th of January 2006 the community Bhoga Ashram on Møngevej 11 receives a final sales offer which “is not subject for further negotiation” on 3000.000 kroner. The community of course did not agree to buy their own farm, once again, and this time for a price which was even higher because of the increased market prices and the many improvements of the facilities on the farm, which they had made themselves and which Natha Yogacenter had paid for.
Actually Kim was asking them to pay a second time for their hard efforts to build up the place, since the only reduction made in the sale-offer was for some of the materials used for the renovation-project (around 600.000 kr).
Harassments
Instead of moving out within 3 months as he promised in the signed letter, Kim at the same time started a serious harassment of the community there. “He tried to throw us out several times. Putting notes on the doors and ridiculous house rules like ‘no access to the public areas after 22.00’. He put locks on our rooms and made threats of physical violence and about going to the newspapers with the story, which was even more absurd, since we were the ones being harassed! He even stole the common moneybox with 50.000 kr from the summer camps in it,” says Stine Andersen ashram leader and spokesman of Bhoga Ashram.
Also the members of the board in Natha Yogacenter was shocked by the situation: “Theoretically we have worked for Natha Yogacenter and the promotion of a genuine spiritual school. In reality it looks like all our effort will end up in the pocket of a single person with a very immoral and even criminal attitude. Considering official sale numbers plus the enormous tax advantages, which he put at his own disposition for his other company KSED, it is clear that for him this project ended up being a very good business. I still hope and believe that he got tempted along the way; but its very hard to see a person you trusted with all you stand for going so corrupted and stabbing all his old friends and colleagues in the back,” says a concerned member of the board.
The Bhoga Case Continues in Court
The case continues and Kim apparently does not stop the harassment of the community: “Three times he called the fire department and another official faculty of Helsinge Kommune in order to stop the annual summer camps, which are going on at the moment. Thank God that the chief of the fire department recognized what this guy is really up to. Last night he came again and cut our big street sign for the second time. He is without any common sense and obviously considers us as his enemy number one. What can we do, now we are guarding the new sign every night hoping that he will not go into more damaging harassments,” Andronicus Torp, an the organizer of one of the summer camps in Bhoga. This is the background of the Bhoga case.
It is a matter of principle for us not to let a cynical businessman get away with such a damaging attack on a spiritual school and its visions. We are responsible for many hundreds of students all over the country and we have a lot to live up to. (Amrita Hansen, who is administrating the case for the community and the members of Natha Yogacenter)This article was originally written in 2006, the case continues, see here for updated information, links to other Bhoga articles!
