According to interviews with students, and based on calculations of publicly available costs of programmes, it appears that many students spend at least $20,000 (£14,345) to reach the school’s upper ranks. This kind of knowledge comes at a considerable cost. The curriculum blends mysticism with personal development, claiming to offer students the tools to “work with energy to manifest the life you truly want to live”. With a major presence in the UK, Canada, the USA, Japan, South Africa and Brazil, the school claims students in up to 60 countries and describes its mission as creating “peace on this planet by uplifting the hearts and minds of humanity”. The school website promises “a transformational journey that will definitely change your life, and that just might change the world”.
At times it has billed itself as “the Harvard of metaphysics”. Over the last two decades, the Modern Mystery School has welcomed thousands of students like Van Eck. If all that hadn’t been enough, the last 72 hours had surely proved her dedication beyond doubt. When things got tough out on the mountain, she reminded herself of the work and sacrifice it had taken to get this far: the hours spent in meditation and study, the tens of thousands of dollars spent, the humiliations and hardships endured. The sense of purpose and acceptance she felt then would be tested repeatedly in the years that followed, as Van Eck was forced again and again to prove her commitment to the school. “I’d always felt different my whole life,” she told me recently. She consulted a medium, who referred her to the Modern Mystery School, where Van Eck discovered a community of people who shared her spiritual convictions. In 2006, she began being troubled by dreams that seemed to be originating from the spirit world. A white South African with blonde hair and a broad, confident smile, Van Eck had come to understand at a young age that she possessed psychic abilities. Van Eck was 33 years old and working as a fashion consultant in Cape Town when she discovered the school. Her journey to the mountain had taken eight years. By the time she saw the sun dawn for the third time, Van Eck’s mind had begun to deceive her: she found herself haunted by shapes, shadows and faces swirling in the surrounding mist. It was late September 2014, a typically warm time of year in Japan, but when darkness fell it had grown unusually cold on the mountainside.
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