Universal Medicine is a cult operating out of Goonellebah in Northern New South Wales, Australia. The Group is headed by the self-anointed leader Serge Benhayon who claims to be a 5th level master and the re-incarnation of Leonardo da Vinci, Pythagoras and Imhotep, to name a few. They claim to be a simple alternative medicine outfit and run (predominantly) woman’s workshops in the art of ‘gentle’ living and how to ‘claim’ oneself.
The students, presumably under the watch of the leader, run a series of moderated web sites promoting Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. These blogs are not open to public comment or criticism and abound with glowing comments from members using the same lexicon. While the members are incredulous that Universal Medicine has been labelled a cult by leading experts such as the Reverend David Millikan, and Raphael Aron, they see no paradox in flocking to sites about Serge Benhayon to defend him from the charge of being a cult leader. One of the definitions of a cult is of course that the movement revolves around a central figure. Their blogs for example, are called ‘the truth about Serge Benhayon’ and ‘Serge Benhayon and Medicine”.
The doctrine of the group is hidden from the general public, and much of it is contained within these posts. Our mission has been to reveal the true nature of Universal Medicine, which we believe is a pernicious cult bent on destroying families and raising funds for its leader; and to forewarn would-be members of its true nature which is hidden behind its benign and flowery seeming facade of ‘self-nurturing, gentleness, healthy choices and feminine empowerment’.
You will find detailed information within posts in this blog. Here’s the highlights.
- The world is either Pranic (evil) or Fiery (good, close to god)
- Serge Benhayon knows the ‘energetic integrity’ of everything. This included music, food, art, people, literature, cars, banks, relationships, medicine and so forth.
- The followers abide by Serge’s edicts on energetic integrity.
- He claims they too can have the same sense, if they follow his system of ‘livingness’
- Livingness is a nonsense term for attempting to catatonicise oneself into having no intellectual life or emotions.
- He calls emotions ‘evil’ and toxic and the root of disease
- He calls the intellect the lower mind, which is controlled by “entities” from other planes.
- He claims that to know the truth the followers have to listen to their ‘inner-heart’- as no one is capable of using a non-existent sense, this keeps the follower inert and dependent on Serge.
- He encourages followers to leave ‘pranic’ relationships, resulting in family breakdowns. We have documented dozens to date.
- He encourages followers not to eat ‘pranic’ food, which seems to be resulting in undernourished followers displaying a range of health issues.
- While claiming not to enforce his doctrine, he sets up a false choice scenario where the follower (aka Student) either abides by his edicts or faces bad Karma and bad future incarnations.
- He encourages followers to attend his expensive, cash only courses. Many attend all and spend upwards of $10,000 AUD per year.
- He encourages followers to donate to his charity “Universal Medicine College” while calling charity the greatest evil to exist.
- He calls all sport and competition ‘evil’ and alleges it is the reason for many female gynecological issues. He ran a sports company which failed and led to his bankruptcy.
- He discourages fitness activities that raise a sweat as evil. Consequently many of his followers perceptibly lose muscle tone and mass. This will of course lead to other health issues.
- And the list goes on.
Being a member of Universal Medicine has many stages. For a new comer it is love and light, and typical of a cult, the greatest bunch of people you will ever meet. Serge comes across as a thoughtful, gentle person with your interests at heart. He uses well known cold reading and suggestion methods to win trust. He appears benign and very sincere.
The first meetings will be held by himself or his daughter or sons where they will speak about making better health choices, listening to your body, the roles imposed on woman (and men) and so forth. Much of this is common sense and will resonate with the attendee. As many committed students will also attend, you will be surrounded by ‘lovely’ people. This is known as love bombing. You may hear something you don’t agree with but you will be given the logical fallacy of “If there is something today that pushes your buttons, it is because you are resisting the truth of what you have heard”- This is a device used to undermine your sense of intellectual certainty.
Many of these customers will have healings directly with Serge or one of his family members, and will probably not sense anything untoward, unless perhaps they pick up one of his blue, self published books. You will be encouraged to attend a workshop, such as Heart Chakra 1. At this workshop Serge will commence a series of well known thought-reform techniques. This is achieved by relaxing the student via massage or meditations to quieten the ‘critical mind’ and then talking in soft tones about subjects designed to shift paradigms. Serge will work to undermine the attendees understanding of the world, and in fact, their ability to understand it. He will claim that their thinking has led them to a wrong perception. He will claim that disease and calamities are the result of wrong thinking, arrogance, emotions and the so called higher mind. This is a typical deanchoring method designed to leave the attendee unsure of their reality and questioning their own ability to self direct. His lectures are full of “what if?” statements, calls to question what has been learned, felt and thought personally and as a race.
At one workshop Serge can successfully shift a persons paradigm significantly. No one is immune to the apparent catharsis of this. The powerful feeling of catharsis acts as a binder to the group and the doctrine as the student wrongly attributes that feeling to the group, not understanding that catharsis is self generated.
Combined with ‘confession’ (telling your neighboring student personal details), meditation (switching off the critical mind. The only defence against thought-reform) and mass mild-hypnosis (quite easy to achieve through relaxation techniques and socialization effects) Serge is able to migrate his students (followers) thoughts to his doctrine.
We outside of the cult have witnessed the changes in loved ones from happy, loyal and loving to selfish, frightened, neurotic group-think shells of their former selves. We have witnessed Serge hold meetings to denounce others only to hear the same denouncements coming from the mouths and pens of the followers without any apparent awareness that they are parroting Serge. Such is the power of his methodology.
My own personal experience is to see a dear friend of many years waste away and withdraw from her larger group of friends, her loving husband and children, while fading away through poor nutrition and lack of decent exercise. In the course of the last 12 months I have spoken with scores of family members who are concerned about their loved one, husbands and partners who have been cast aside in the name of Universal Medicine, children who have been traumatized, parents that are sick with worry.
There are thankfully many people who have left the cult. A number of those are receiving cult exit counseling in Australia and the UK. It is however somewhat bemusing and concerning that despite ex members being counseled as such, experts declaring UniMed a cult, and the members themselves being aware of the radical doctrine that requires life-denying loyalty and the sacrifice of family, friends and funds, that the group continues blithely, recently setting up a lobbying front, Real Media Real change, and running a series of workshops under the auspices of International Womans day, without any real connection to it.
Our hope is that we assist those in doubt to make an informed decision to leave, and those contemplating the group, to give it a wide berth.
The group has recently succeeded in taking down this and a sister blog from Google blogger. Cults hate free speech and criticism. But rest assured we will continue until Universal Medicine is called to account and ceases to do damage to individuals and families in the UK, Australia, Germany, the US, NZ or where ever the tendrils of UM makes its way.
The Universal Medicine cult 