ISTA, Highden and the NZ Skeptics

The International School of the Temple Arts (ISTA) is an international and decentralised group that offers multi-day training courses or workshops that meld shamanism with sacred sexuality. The school “teaches” its students many ideas that are both unproven and unlikely to be true. The reach of ISTA is worldwide, and New Zealand plays a major role in the ISTA story due to the involvement of Bruce Lyon, who operates his own “mystery school” north of Palmerston North, called Highden Temple. Highden itself is the first in a global group of associated temples/mystery schools inspired by the work of new age figure Alice Bailey.  The extent of the symbiotic relationship between ISTA and Highden groups is not fully known; Highden has served as the setting for many ISTA trainings for the last several years, and some senior members of ISTA’s faculty, including founder Robert ‘Baba Dez’ Nichols, had money in the property at one point.

The NZ Skeptics wish to make it clear that criticisms of ISTA and Highden are in no way an indictment of the sexual activities of consenting adults, or a casting of aspersions or judgement on sex work. Instead, the purpose of our articles is to understand current controversies and developments in the context of these groups’ respective histories. We wonder whether the absence of effective mechanisms to address abuse accusations levelled at ISTA and Highden is something that is embedded in their foundations.

We’ve written a few articles over the last three years about ISTA, which you can read in our past newsletter issues: