It began with a question: 'What is the meaning of life?'

Mike Green was sitting alone in a café in Harvard Square - the epitome of American academic elite - when a middle-aged woman approached his table. 

Despite stumbling over his words and muttering something about finding fulfilment in his career, the woman seemed satisfied and gave him her number. 

Approaching 40 and at a crossroads in his life, Green had only recently arrived in Boston and was short of friendly faces. 

He called that evening.

Their next meeting turned philosophical - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Then came the pitch.

The woman said she belonged to a secretive esoteric 'school' that met twice a week to share spiritual knowledge and guide members toward enlightenment. She believed Green - an educated single man with a high-flying job at a large tech company - would be a good fit.

What she failed to mention was that the very same group had, for decades, been accused of being a cult that preyed on the East Coast elite, using a series of abusive techniques to seize total control of its members' lives. 

The disturbing accusations, as told to the Daily Mail by ex-members, include physical abuse, psychological torment, arranged marriages, financial fraud and forced labor.

But Green would remain in the dark for a while still. 

Before he could join the Odyssey Study Group, or OSG, Green said he was required to meet the group's leader, 'Paul' - and in February 2024, he was accepted. 

'I thought I'd try it for a month and see what it was like,' Green, speaking under a pseudonym, told the Daily Mail. 'I felt I was guarded because I was worried I was going to get scammed or something.'

Membership cost $250 a month - cash only. On his first day, the woman who recruited him drove him to a shopping center outside Boston, where he was led into a rented room with 15 to 20 people.

The group struck him as polished on the surface - doctors, tech executives, professors and psychologists, mostly in their mid-20s to early 40s - but the rules were immediate and rigid.

Members were barred from discussing 'school' with anyone, including family, discouraged from interacting outside class or sharing their full names and told not to research the group online.

The twice-weekly sessions featured meditation, body and breath work, philosophical debate and always ended with personal disclosures, in which members would share their own problems and apply OSG's teachings to try and solve them.

Each member was assigned a mentor and expected to speak with them between sessions.

'We were told the conversations were confidential,' Green said. 'But I later learned that information was being passed up to leadership and used to manipulate people.'

Green's doubts began to build with small inconsistencies.

During a dinner with his mentor, Green noticed the man's surname on his bank card. A quick search online later revealed something that had never been disclosed: the mentor was married to another teacher in the group.

'I couldn't understand the secrecy,' he said. 'If they're hiding that, what else are they hiding?'

Digging further, Green came across a whistleblower website linking the 'school' to something far more disturbing: OSG was an alleged cult that had operated for decades in Boston and New York.

The website detailed dozens of accusations of sex scandals, forced marriages and divorces, child abuse, unpaid labor, fraud and rampant racism and homophobia. OSG has never made a public statement addressing the allegations.

OSG was founded in the 1970s in San Francisco by actress Sharon Gans and her husband Alex Horn under the name The Theatre of All Possibilities.

It shut down abruptly after the San Francisco Chronicle published an exposé alleging physical and psychological abuse. The couple resurfaced in New York in the early 1980s, continuing under the name Odyssey Study Group.

They taught a doctrine influenced by Russian philosophers George Gurdjieff and Piotr Ouspensky, who advocated intentional suffering and hard labor as a path to self-improvement.

The group primarily targeted educated singles earning more than $100,000 a year, who were white and heterosexual. 

In interviews with the Daily Mail, as well as in blog posts, books and lawsuits, former followers of Gans have openly accused OSG of being a cult that abuses its members and takes total control of their lives.

That control, ex-members claim, extended to relationships, careers and even sex.

Members were allegedly told who they could date, marry or divorce. They were encouraged to date those of an equal or greater social, economic and intellectual standing - and sometimes directed by Gans to date or marry within OSG.  

Some former followers claim pregnancies were discouraged or directed, and abortions discussed or pressured.

Ex-members also allege that minorities and gay people were openly discriminated against because Gans believed they had a 'chip on their shoulder.'

Prospective gay members would only be permitted to join if they were open to being 'converted' by marrying someone of the opposite sex within OSG. 

Anyone with a disability was automatically disqualified because Gans viewed them to be 'damaged goods,' ex-members alleged.

Spencer Schneider - who spent 24 years in the group - alleged in a 2022 lawsuit and in a book published the same year, Manhattan Cult Story, that members were subjected to years of psychological, verbal and physical abuse at the hands of Gans.

Gans would frequently lead classes and lectures at OSG, dispensing what she claimed was ancient wisdom, likening herself to Christ and Buddha, while positioning herself as the ultimate authority.

According to Schneider and others, she demanded students reveal their deepest insecurities in front of their peers - only to use those admissions against them and openly berate and abuse them.

In one instance detailed in his lawsuit, Schneider said he disclosed he was sexually abused as a child. Rather than responding with empathy, Gans allegedly dismissed the abuse as 'experimentation' and blamed him for what happened.

She repeatedly questioned his sexuality in subsequent sessions, he said in the lawsuit.

Former members claim such tactics were used to maintain control and discourage dissent.

Sue Adams (a pseudonym), who briefly joined in the early 1990s, told the Daily Mail that Gans played a direct role in arranging relationships between members and senior teachers forced her to go on multiple dates per month.

Schneider alleged that Gans 'arranged' his marriage to a fellow OSG member in the 1990s. 

'I was single, she knew I wanted to get married,' he said in a 2023 interview.

'She knew someone else who wanted the same, and within nine months we were husband and wife.'

Schneider's ex-wife was Cynthia May, court records show. 

May's daughter, Joanne Tucker, is married to Hollywood actor Adam Driver. Neither Driver nor Tucker has been accused of any involvement with OSG.

May was herself a teacher within the group, Schneider claimed in 2023, though her current involvement is unclear. A request for comment went unanswered.

It was after receiving a phone call from Gans in 1998 that Schneider, who was 37 at the time, first began questioning his involvement in OSG.

In his book, he claimed Gans called him to express concern at the prospect of May, then 42, falling pregnant again.

'I don't like the idea of Cynthia getting pregnant, at her age, it's potentially dangerous,' Gans allegedly told him, as detailed in Manhattan Cult Story. 'The child could have down syndrome, and you would have to put it up for adoption.'

While Schneider attempted to allay her concerns, Gans allegedly advised him to have sex with his 19-year-old stepdaughter instead.

Schneider said he was sickened by the remark, did not act on it, and Gans never mentioned it again.

He and May naturally conceived a child the following year and divorced a decade later under Gans' instructions, he claimed. 

Schneider's lawsuit also detailed allegations of forced labor. In the filing, he described being sent on so-called 'retreats' where members performed grueling physical tasks for no pay.

Students stripped logs, demolished walls and installed plumbing and electrical systems at properties owned by Gans, according to the suit.

The work was framed as spiritual development but allegedly served to renovate homes later sold for profit.

Participants paid up to $1,200 to attend the retreats, Schneider claimed, in addition to thousands in annual fees. During his time in OSG, he estimates he gave Gans more than $100,000. 

Green said he attended one such retreat in 2024, where he and others were tasked with landscaping at what they were told was a Girl Scouts campground.

By the time Green pieced together the group's alleged history, he believed he had seen enough.

'I spoke to a former member who told me the first two years are about love bombing - drawing you in,' he said. 'After that, it becomes more intense. More money, more rules, more control.'

'I realized I was in the very early stages of a cult. There was no abuse then, but after a few years, that could change - they may be slowly boiling the frog. I knew I had to get out.'

Green left the group in 2025 and Schneider in 2013.

Gans died in 2021, alone in her $8 million Plaza Hotel apartment, from Covid-19. The apartment was mostly paid for by generous devotees, including a $3.2 million donation from a hedge fund executive, public records show.

She left her $3.28 million estate to a handful of members who now allegedly oversee the group.

Recent legal filings name Paul Nickelsburg as the registered agent of an LLC associated with OSG. Nickelsburg is the CEO of an engineering and technology consulting firm. 

Green claims Nickelsburg was the leader of OSG's Boston branch when he left in 2025. Nickelsburg has been contacted for comment.

Whether OSG still follows Gans's teachings is unclear.

Rick Ross, one of the country's leading cult experts, publicly designated OSG a cult in 2002. 

He later told the NY Post in 2019: 'In my 30 years of working in this field, this is one of the most secretive groups I've encountered. After San Francisco, everything was hush-hush.'

OSG sued Schneider over the release of his book in 2023, accusing him of defamation. In the filing, they denied OSG was a cult and refuted Schneider's accusations. A judge later dismissed the case but OSG appealed. The matter remains ongoing.

It's believed the group still has more than 250 members in Boston and New York.

Posts shared in a Reddit thread indicate the group has been actively recruiting in Boston in the last 12 months, approaching people alone in restaurants, book stores and supermarkets in Cambridge and Brookline.

For those who have left, the warning is simple.

'Stay away from these people,' Sue Adams urged.