Desteni’s New Age Guru

Ivan Rauscher 

In a thread entitled ‘Symbolic Representations of Self’ at the Desteni Subscription Forum, a post regarding Bernard Poolman’s witchdoctor monster avatar, and written by Darryl Thomas was leaked by a renegade Desteni member to the Cult Education Forum last year. In it, Mr. Thomas explains that the "Beast" is Bernard.

According to Mr. Thomas, Bernard has ‘gotten out’ of ‘the mind’. He ‘stands as’ and ‘speaks for’ beasts – ‘in fact’. It’s as though he has no way of thinking a thought any more, but something far more important: a unique magical connection with the animal kingdom, and that's why in the ‘totality of his being’ he’s The Beast God of the Tribe of Desteni.

Desteni try to distinguish themselves apart from, or opposed to, any New Age or spiritual group, but nearly all spiritual gurus or New Age leaders are depicted as having transcended or ‘gotten out’ of ‘the mind’. Many of these frauds who say they're from a shamanic tradition are also said to have a special relationship with animals.

In another post to the Desteni open forum by Mr. Thomas, called The Portal Placement (where thanks is given to martial artist, Bruce Lee and occultist, Alice Bailey) Poolman is again described in the same way as almost any so-called ‘enlightened’ New Age guru or spiritual master. 

That someone is ‘not an individual’ but ‘equal and one with existence’, ‘able to be in both ‘the dimensions’ and ‘the physical plane’ and is ‘self-realised as who we really are’ is exactly what New Age disciples, spiritual and cult devotees the world over say about their leaders, gurus or masters. 

It’s no different in Desteni. Poolman is their herald of a new age of ‘heaven on earth’. He’s the only one in the group allowed to symbolically represent himself with just a Halloween comic book picture and no real images or videos. He dictates to the rest of them what they should blog or v-log about. He’s the author and/or originator of the Desteni material, and to the members of his tribe, whatever he says cannot ever be questioned because he speaks as ‘equality’ itself. 

He makes a very direct dictator point when he says that Desteni is defined specifically by him and can only ever be whatever he says it is, or what his ‘portal’, his medium, Sunette Spies, says it is. Maybe the Desteni group ‘stand for’ being ‘equal and one’ with Poolman, but then he has stated that there is no such thing as anyone being equal to him.   

Everything Desteni ‘stand for’ is focussed on what Poolman stands for, and is merely to support his narcissistic notion that he’s ‘self-realised’ above and beyond anyone and anything else and has the monopoly on ‘equality’. 

In fact, he’s their new age guru and Desteni’s just the cult of Bernard Poolman. 

The New Beast of Revelation?

The founder and central figure of the thought reform cult known as ‘Desteni’, based on a farm near Durban, South Africa, depicts himself like arch-occultist, magician of the Black Arts, Aleister Crowley, as a ‘Great Beast’.

Everything in Bernard Poolman’s Desteni is occult. It’s in reverse. It involves magical thinking. It’s the wrong way round. Fiction is presented as fact. The same as a lie. A big, diabolical lie.

Since the Desteni organisation began in 2007 (see original desteni-universe website), its founder has preferred to remain mysteriously hidden – occulted – with the only image of him being a cartoon of a monstrous figure with ram’s horns, the tail of a crocodile, the face of a lion, arms of a bear, wings and the legs of an elephant. It’s a new hybrid breed of the Beast of Revelation, another babbling Baphomet, Devil of the Tarot cards.

(See: Interviews from the Farm 30: The Beast is Here, 1 The Beast Is Here - Real or Parody?, 2 The Beast Is Here - Real or Parody?, 3 The Beast Is Here - Real or Parody?, The Gospel of the Beast etc)

Perhaps Poolman in his self-appointed role as notorious cult leader wants to be another Aleister Crowley, ‘the wickedest man alive’?

Poolman rails against God and other human beings as he projects the illusion of himself to his admirers as a self-perfected man of ‘common sense’, a master of ‘equality’.

The cult that surrounds him campaigns for a theocratic totalitarian global government under the banner of the ‘Equal Life Party’. The policies of the ‘Equal Life Party’ describe the political structure of Poolman's empire, his ‘nation of Desteni’. Beyond that limited territory, ‘Equal Life’ policies have no meaning or relevance. The Desteni cult is a business run according to a doctrine of emotional, mental and physical domination by the fascist dictator of an ideology rooted in occultism.

Poolman says he has no personality and no mind. He represents himself and his organisation as having the monopoly on ‘actual reality’. His version of ‘actual reality’ is based on elaborate fictions about how he managed to help facilitate the ‘deletion’ of occult or esoteric concepts such as ‘the White Light’, the ‘Akashic Records’, ‘Ascended Masters’ ‘the dimensions’, ‘the Soul Construct’ and so on.

He claims that they were at one time real, but because of his efforts they have now been removed. He fails to mention that such things were fictions to begin with. In Poolman’s world-view almost everyone outside of his ‘Desteni’ group he portrays as conditioned by religious fanaticism or the New Age Movement.

His ‘removal’ of these formerly real ‘constructs’ he describes as having occurred in relation to his communications with a young woman barely out of her teens, Sunette Spies. He depicts her as, not a person, but an ‘interdimensional portal’ or ‘the resonances’. Sunette has surpassed her personality and her own mind, say the followers of Poolman’s ‘Desteni’.

(See: Desteni Background - 1, 2, 3 Portal Secrets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjvudqjlvXg 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2SU73W9CDo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFLZQib_NUw)

Poolman defines the aims of the Desteni ideology by condemning God, religion and the New Age Movement. Every element of a self-mythologised, assumed authority and the invention of the Desteni ‘process’ is fabricated out of truths, half-truths, lies, fictions and sheer gobbledegook derived from the very same sources Poolman tries to prove are inferior to his theories: Christianity, Satanism, Theosophy, the occult, esotericism, Eastern mysticism and the New Age Movement.

He’s mashed up that source material, squandered it, ripped it to pieces and put it back together again. His denunciation of ideas found in all manner of religious esoterica as ‘evil’ is used as the basis for Poolman’s bizarre argument that he is the man of ‘common sense’, a ‘life instructor’ with no personality and no mind. The only thing in the world that is actually real and can bring about ‘heaven on earth’, Poolman says, is world revolution instigated by his ‘Desteni’.

The influence of occult or mystical philosophies of the Religion of Eckankar, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, J.Z. Knight, Baird T. Spalding, Swami Muktananda, ‘A Course in Miracles’, Lee Carroll, ‘The Pleiadian Agenda’, Osho and Alice A. Bailey, and direct references to them can be found throughout the Desteni material, as can numerous other similar sources. 

(For example: I was So Pissed Off with Osho where Poolman discusses his former attachment to Indian cult leader, Osho Rajneesh, World Teachers Called to Prepare Themselves and Economic Considerations where he recommends Alice A. Bailey and also A Course in Miracles ACIM)

Poolman’s irrational speculations and incoherent theorising about concepts which can be found in these philosophies appear to serve to re-frame, recycle and ultimately usurp them. He dictates their plausibility or lack of it as the imperial lord and master of the religious, occult, mystical philosophies he so despises.