0rdoTempliAurora (Please note: several of the links in this post may be inactive since Desteni-affiliated channels were terminated by YouTube Aug 2011 and Desteni deleted their previous co.za web forum.) [In July 2013, Desteni's promotion of its 'Equal
Money System' was discontinued and superseded by the Equal Life Foundation Living Income Guaranteed, which was said to pave the way for the eventual implementation of the Equal Money System, but was also abandoned in 2016.]
The Desteni group predict there will soon be a world-wide financial crash. Then their ‘Equal Life Party’ will be voted into power as a global administration. They will give everyone in the world the same amount of money from birth to death. They will introduce a four-year conscription period in which everyone will work on labour camps for an ‘Equality Corporation’ producing all necessary products and services. Work outside the conscription period will be on a voluntary basis. Activities of everyone on the planet will be tracked with micro chip implants. All people will have become millionaires.
‘Equal money system’ is not practiced anywhere by any group, community or state. It has not been recognised by political or economics experts, radical commentators, political activists or the media. It is not in Wikipedia. ‘Equal money system’ is not a theory. It is a fantasy and a scam, based not on political philosophy, or political facts, but occultism, conspiracism and pseudoscience. Bernard Poolman steals from, and at the same time, places the focus on demonising other theories or doctrines to win converts to Desteni. He takes conspiracy theories as a given device, uses them as promotional slogans and generalises about the conspiratorial forces of ‘the elite’ financial powers he sees as ‘the system’ standing in the way of his ‘Desteni’.
Ascended Masters: 'deleted' by Bernard Poolman
Poolman and his Desteni group’s obsessive condemnation of religious and occultic New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, the soul, the Law of Attraction, Ascended Masters and the White Light (in which these things are said to have been ‘deleted’) is supposed to show that the Desteni way of life is superior to spirituality because only Desteni facilitates a ‘process’ towards ‘heaven on earth’ with a global monetary system that will eliminate poverty. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that thousands of spiritual and religious movements the world over also claim to be facilitating a process towards heaven on earth and a global monetary system that will eliminate poverty.
Desteni’s anti-religious, anti-spiritual stance is pretense. The group members’ prophetic, messianic view of themselves is they have a predetermined future as major leaders in world politics. The Desteni ‘process’ involves ‘interdimensional portal’ videos, Bernard Poolman being a ‘self-realised’ hero, living the ‘message of Jesus’, ‘self-purification’, ‘life as breath’, ‘breath as awareness’, destruction of the ego, etc. It is focussed on pronouncements of metaphysical ‘beings from the Afterlife’, assertions pertaining to pseudo-scientific ‘mind consciousness systems’ and New Age self-help psychology where ‘self-honesty’, ‘self-forgiveness’ and ‘common sense’ are presented as so-called ‘tools’ for ‘self-realisation’. All of which notions are derived from religion and spiritual philosophies.
The group’s comments on news items to do with poverty, starvation, crime, capitalist corruption etc, are to promote themselves as the collective saviour of the world. Their v-logs and blogs repeat: ‘investigate equal money system’. When you ‘investigate equal money system’ you find that it is described using the same semi-literate catch phrases as in Desteni members’ videos and blogs and involves a Multi-Level Marketing pyramid scheme.
The Desteni I Process is currently the main method with which Desteni intends to finance their political party. They say it is a legitimate Multi-Level-Marketing business, but disregard the fact that Multi-Level-Marketing very often involves an illegal pyramid scheme. One of their members, supposedly specialising in the subject of the law and ‘equal money system’, Viktor Persson, compares the Desteni I Process to Herbalife. He seems to be unaware that Herbalife is one of the most well-known financial scams in the world. In surveys, it has been found that over ninety per cent of participants in all major Multi-Level-Marketing businesses have lost money. Participation in Multi-Level-Marketing and pyramid schemes is strongly advised against by financial experts and governments everywhere. Desteni claims to ‘stand as’ ‘equality’. The members say they are about ‘self-expression’ yet admit they are opposed to freedom of expression. They refuse to co-operate with other groups. They ban and block all opinions except their own, and refuse to engage in constructive discussion except amongst those who agree not to make any criticisms. They denounce the work of charities as ‘evil’ yet their business operates just like a charity complete with unpaid volunteers and requests for donations. They don't regard any kind of direct political action as valid, yet they say they are against capitalism. Their outlook is full of contradictions and rigidly authoritarian. Here's a recording of Poolman discussing 'what will happen to people that won't correct themselves' in an Equal Money System:
Run from a farm in South Africa, the core Desteni business group appears to have almost no outreach in the locality. The overwhelming majority of people in South Africa are black, yet local people in the group are whites. Desteni have practically nothing to say about equality as it pertains to real world issues of racism, cultural diversity or multiculturalism. They have made several statements condemning Jewish people.
Love, marriage and/or sexual or romantic relationships in or outside of the group are not deemed acceptable, only so-called ‘agreements’ between paid-up members of the Desteni organisation are permitted. As regards equal rights of sexual minorities, again Desteni have no comment to make. They regard love as ‘the greatest evil that has ever existed’ and the family as the foundation of prostitution and a breeding ground for ‘demons’. They say that friendship is ‘evil’ and all friendships must be stopped.
They condemn masturbation, pornography and any form of sexual fantasy, as well as hair, cosmetics, jewellery and fashion. They disapprove of vegetarians and regard poetry as ‘disgusting’. They denounce anyone who drinks alcohol or takes other recreational drugs, yet they partake of MDMA (Ecstasy) in controlled situations. They freely admit they reject the creative imagination and the intellect. They have no respect for the scientific method or peer review.
Bernard Poolman and those who have been closely trained by him tell the other members of the group what to speak or write about. He has final say over everything the group does. Apart from their own websites, their only vehicle for ‘equal money system’ is another website called equalmoney.org which is just a promotional gimmick to advertise, amongst other things, Bernard Poolman’s fantasies about running a corporation. The only system involved in ‘equal money system’ is the Desteni belief system.
Bernard Poolman's inspiration, millionaire, Osho Rajneesh with one of his fleet of Rolls Royces
Desteni members say they have no beliefs. This idea is taken directly from Indian mystic, Osho Rajneesh, who was leader of the orange people cult and said as regards belief, things like, ‘anyone who gives you a belief system is your enemy’, ‘belief belongs to the mind’ and ‘I don’t want people to have any kind of belief system’. Osho's name is misused for several Desteni ‘interdimensional portal messages’. Bernard Poolman, who gives the Desteni group its belief system, regards Osho as one of his main sources of inspiration. There are more books by Osho than any other author on the Desteni recommended reading list.
Desteni members like to appear as if they are the ultimate authority to contest the failings of democracy, consumerism, capitalism, as if no-one else is doing such a thing or is incapable of it. They talk about it as though everyone not in Desteni is working to keep ‘the current system’ going. It’s as if Desteni members imagine they are the only ones forming an effective organisation to finally oppose and destroy capitalism.
However, Desteni is a grotesque parody of the consumerist ‘system’ it claims to despise. In their amateur attempts at branding, marketing, selling t-shirts and engaging in public relations, Desteni ends up mimicking the mores and language of the very authoritarian state powers and corporations it pretends to oppose. They make poorly constructed graphics copying the form and content of advertising billboards and slogans. They even go so far as to blatantly steal the logo design of the Apple AppStore, from one the most famous corporations in the world, Apple Inc, for the logo of their so-called ‘I Process’ (which in turn sounds suspiciously like ‘iPhone’, ‘iPod’ or iPad’).
‘Equal money system’ serves as a front for Bernard Poolman and the Desteni Structural Resonance Alignment trainers' destruction of other people’s personalities. Destroying personalities is something they admit they are setting out to do. They are very keen to get rid of people’s thoughts, feelings and emotions, and to remove consciousness and ‘the mind’ from existence. They see it as purifying the world of ‘demons’.
The way the Desteni group conducts itself it is precisely what academics, the media and the general public understand as a ‘cult’. The ‘equal money system’ slogan serves to appeal to idealistic, naïve, mainly disillusioned New Agers (this can be seen on their Introduction to Desteni forum where nearly all participants describe their former interest in New Ageism). It hoodwinks them into donating money to and working for free for the Desteni for-profit capitalist business, while participating in the Desteni I Process Multi-Level Marketing scheme, a so-called ‘educational’ course in ‘leadership’. It replaces their disillusionment with hackneyed New Age religious concepts with an apparently different, more radical or practical world-view. Yet everything on offer is only a re-working of standard New Age religious dogma and self-help psychology. Desteni is a heretical sect attempting to, but failing to break away from and re-define spirituality and New Age religion. ‘Equal money system’ is just one of its recruitment devices.
