From his parents’ house in a middle-class suburb outside Amsterdam, he began recording spiritual sermons and uploading them to YouTube. There, in an abandoned ashram on the outskirts of Rishikesh, he experienced what he would later refer to as an “awakening”, a spiritual experience where the duality between the self and the universe dissolves into cosmic oneness.Ĭonvinced he could guide others towards this euphoria, Bentinho was overcome by an evangelical impulse. The fresh-faced 21-year-old had recently returned to his native Holland after a half-year “spiritual voyage” in India. Was it possible, some of his most loyal followers began to ask, that Bentinho was the digital incarnation of the manipulative guru, his powers amplified by the vortex-like suck of social media? * * * *īentinho’s ascent as an online spiritual teacher began in 2010. A suicide note was found in his Toyota, parked 225ft above, beside an overhanging bridge.Īs news spread, Bentinho’s well-crafted online image began to unravel.
A longtime devotee was found in a river at the bottom of a ravine, a few miles from where the retreat was taking place. The 12-day Sedona retreat started on 4 December 2017. He was their spiritual influencer and they were his devotional fandom. Though most had never met Bentinho in person, he became a daily, intimate presence in their lives. But for the most part, his followers consumed his content with relish. And he did peddle some fringe ideas, like his plan to build a fully enlightened society by 2035, or his belief that he vibrated at a higher frequency than other humans. Some detractors occasionally accused him of using his platforms to hook vulnerable seekers into endless engagement and blind support. This was not the first time Bentinho had come under scrutiny. His content, she alleged, encouraged devotees to abandon critical thinking and embrace Bentinho as a God-like figure. But a few days before the retreat started, an independent journalist named Be Scofield self-published an article on Medium claiming that Bentinho was using his social media nous to foster a cult-like following. The Sedona Experiment II, as the retreat was called, was set to be an intense distillation of Bentinho’s most profound teachings.
His Instagram feed (32,000 followers) rendered a “super accelerated” lifestyle of adventure sports, international travel and cigar smoking.
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On Facebook (300,000 followers), he offered advice on how to maintain intimate and empowering relationships. On YouTube (86,000 subscribers), he uploaded lengthy “third eye power” meditations to help followers “activate their pineal gland”. Over the preceding seven years, Bentinho had built a near half-million-strong following on the internet.
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