Saturday 22 December 2012

The Best Cult EVER? - Desteni Doomed - 5

Ivan Rauscher

(continued from Desteni Doomed - 1: The Voice of a Sane Organization? / 2: Cult Awareness / 3: Cultish Behaviour Patterns / 4: Related Material Elsewhere)

Since 2007, the 'group of people exploring Equality & Oneness principles' known as Desteni, based on a remote farm in South Africa, has usually been described as a cult. Although many of the 'Destonians' have denied that they belong to a cult.

Their leader has contradicted them.

In his blog post of 20th Nov 2012 entitled, The Greatest Cult in History, Bernard Poolman writes: 'We at Desteni claim and ASSERT that we Are the BEST CULT ever'. He claims and asserts that he is the world's greatest cult leader, second only to God or Jesus.  

According to Poolman, all groups are cults, which is like saying a cult is a book club or a bunch of people standing in line waiting for a bus.

In terms of so-called cult 'greatness', the Unification Church AKA the Moonies, the Latter Day Saint movement AKA the Mormons, the Church of Scientology and the Jehovah's Witnesses are amongst 'the greatest', running vast corporate empires.

Desteni is just one of hundreds of obscure crackpot cults most people have never heard of.

Cult leaders: David Koresh, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhaite, Shoko Asahara

If Desteni has a place in history then it can only be because it is in past. However, Poolman could be a 'great' or even 'the BEST' cult leader of recent times if he followed the example of the infamous leaders of Heaven's Gate, the Manson Family, the Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo or the People's Temple, but we can only hope Destonians don't have it in them to take things that far.

Poolman claims Desteni is 'the BEST CULT ever' because according to him it is the only group in the world that stands for equality. But no actual cult can represent equality. By definition, any group that is a cult maintains inequality amongst its members and does not treat other people as equals. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a cult.

Poolman's claim that Desteni represents equality is false.

Desteni Doomed - 6: The Equality Lie

Thursday 13 December 2012

Related Material Elsewhere - Desteni Doomed - 4

Ivan Rauscher

(continued from Desteni Doomed - 1: The Voice of a Sane Organization? / 2: Cult Awareness / 3: Cultish Behaviour Patterns)


Under the heading, 'Related Material Elsewhere', at the Destonian Wiki there is a link to an article from the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, Why parapsychology is amongst the most important of the sciences. Yet the Desteni group have for several years condemned psychiatry.


Although some poor fools might regard the Sunette Spies 'portal' idiot test as a para-psychological phenomenon, Destonians are not involved in parapsychology but rather fixated on New Age self-help pop psychology: affirmations of self-forgiveness.

Screenshot of 'Derren Brown: Messiah'

Desteni founder, Bernard Poolman recommends a viewing of the Channel 4 TV programme, Derren Brown: Messiah because it shows how some people can be duped by parapsychology, Christianity, Spiritualism and the New Age. Yet at the same time, Poolman blatantly contradicts himself. He is always discussing silly stories about 'the opening of the portal', meeting demons in the afterlife, talking with the dead etc, as if they were factual or something other than a way to dupe his 'Destonians'.

By persuading them to accept his superstitious tales of the occult as the ultimate truth while he denounces other people's as fake, Poolman pushes his Destonians as far as possible to test their credulity to the limits. It's another idiot test.

They take the bait and demonstrate how gullible they are by regularly releasing their own videos and blogs criticising New Age spiritual teachers while promoting the Desteni version of New Age spirituality. For example, recent responses to a video from a self-appointed 'spiritual catalyst' (called Ask Teal, How to Raise Your Frequency), such as How to Raise your Frequency (Ask Teal Episode on Increasing your Vibration), or one of several on Eckhart Tolle, 2012 Debunking Eckhart Tolle.

They're hypocrites. Desteni and Destonians' attempt to criticise New Age spirituality is a sham.

Desteni promote the most stereotypical New Age doctrine: such as that there is no distinction between self and other, 'we are all one', what you think you create, the mind is an illusion, everything that happens to a person is a reflection of 'self', and so on. They say 'positive thinking' is useless and 'stopping the mind' is what's required. As most people are aware, stopping the mind is just as much a cliché of New Age cults as positive thinking.

Destonians talk a lot about breath, and breath and breathing exercises are of course integral to several different forms of spirituality. They often chat about how 'backchat' stops them from 'stopping the mind'. Their 'backchat' is just another version of what's known as 'mind chatter' (of the 'monkey mind') in Buddhism; as appropriated by New Age spirituality. 

Mother of the New Age Movement, Helena P. Blavatsky wrote back in the 19th Century: 'The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real. Let the Disciple Slay the Slayer' (The Voice of the Silence by H. P. Blavatsky Theosophical University Press, 1889).

The main concept of the New Age Movement is, like Desteni's Equal Money System (EMS), a proposed future transformation of the world in which all injustices are put right and world peace and 'heaven on earth' are the result of universal 'self-realisation'.  

J. Z. Knight, New Age channeler of Ramtha's School of Quantum Flapdoodle

Like many proponents of New Age spirituality, from master of woo, Deepak Chopra to Judy Z. Knight's cult of Ramtha and the propaganda movie, 'What the Bleep Do We Know?!', Destonians' pseudoscientific use of the term, 'quantum' or 'quantum mind' is to make it sound like they know something about quantum mechanics and that their bogus research has scientific validity.

Poolman has said that the Galactic Federation of Light is controlled by reptilians when it is an absurd sci-fi myth concocted by UFO New Age religious cults. But in Poolman's bizarre, ripped-off mythology, David Icke's reptilians have become advocates of Desteni. Via 'the portal', Destonians regularly consult Anu, said to be lizard supremo, for advice on health or personal issues. 

When they criticise, mock or satirise New Agers it is never quite engaging in 'Internet Bullying, Propagation of Lies, Individual Harassment', scamming or hoaxing, which is how they have described their own critics' statements. It is proselytising to try to convert and recruit those few persons that might possibly take them seriously: politically ignorant, ill-informed and naive New Ager conspiracy theorists.

Desteni have stated that New Age spiritual groups always appeal to self-interest. Actually, many such cults, new religious movements or 'teachings' directly appeal to and promote self-abnegation for a fanciful cause which they always say is best for everyone and better than anything else; again just like Desteni.

A lot of these other groups have slick publicity and a smooth and co-ordinated, dynamic global outreach. Desteni material, however, is comprised of extraordinarily clumsy, amateurish, solely web-based audio-visual media and utterly inept written presentations. Their exercises in social engineering are confined to a remote farm in South Africa from where they spam the Internet to lure in people compliant enough to help them market the Desteni 'lifestyle'.

Eqafe 'Self-Perfection' Products: buy now while stocks last
 
Desteni state the obvious by pointing out that consumer capitalism involves brainwashing. Of course, ridding oneself of social and cultural influences and conditioning to attain 'self-realisation' has always been an integral part of New Age and Eastern spirituality and Western occultism. 


They suggest that to be free of brainwashing everyone should consume Desteni-branded products, buy into an online multi-level marketing scheme, 'master' themselves according to instructions of the Desteni I Process (DIP), become commodities and call themselves 'Destonians', publish confessional and testimonial blogs and v-logs and promote the sale of trash merchandise like hoodies, ringtones or baseball caps. In other words, become brainwashed by Desteni.


Their marketing techniques are unethical and worse than sub-standard. Desteni is a capitalist scam just like any other New Age commercial scam. The Desteni 'Best For All' brand is not an antidote to consumer capitalist brainwashing but a symptom of it.   

Desteni supporters fly across the globe and pay out for working holidays at the Desteni cult farm, yet none of Poolman's core group travel anywhere to spread the word. There have never been any Desteni meetings or talks open to the general public, not even in South Africa.

Apart from an offshoot business targeting children with over-priced software called Techno Tutor (which is apparently the same software Bernard Poolman allegedly stole from his brother), based in Houston, Texas, USA and possibly in Canada, Desteni have not established functioning centres anywhere outside South Africa. 

Desteni Wikipedia

Desteni are not in Wikipedia and neither is EMS. Desteni are deemed by Wikipedia to be non-notable.

Destonians have been spamming Reddit for several months but get almost no response from anyone else and not even from each other. Their presence on Facebook is that they are in danger of being banned for abusing the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

There are no Desteni paper books or audio-visual media in the physical shops. There is no such film with anything approaching the level of production of even the most basic independent low budget films; only crappy webcam or mobile phone YouTube promo videos.

They claim to be political and for world equality but there is no evidence for it whatsoever. EMS is a con designed to raise money to support the lifestyle of people at the Desteni farm. All they offer is a shoddily repackaged mish-mash of New Age spiritual/occult and conspiracy theory drivel which they pass off as 'equality'. The information supplied by Desteni is obviously a rip-off and can be found in more coherent forms elsewhere (even if fraudulent or delusional).  

Any potential recruit or 'Destonian' would have to be deeply mired in the most deranged New Age spiritual superstitions and paranoid conspiracy theories to want to join Desteni.

Only within the marginal context of the existing New Age cultural milieu in which aberrant fantasies about channeling, oneness, self-realisation, the 'new world order' and inter-dimensional lizards abound could anyone suppose that Bernard Poolman and his gang communicate a 'process' to bring about world 'equality'.

And even within that narrow context, the appeal of the Desteni material is limited still further. Most New Agers would be likely to regard Desteni as thoroughly immoral if not under the influence of demonic forces and conspiracy theorists would see them as mind-controlled dupes of the Illuminati...

Desteni Doomed - 5: The Best Cult EVER?