In an email to a friend, a student of Universal Medicine reported: "Serge revealed he was the one sent from Shamballa to awaken us all and he alluded to the fact that [his daughter] Simone was Winston Churchill in a past life."
The email last year demonstrated not a skerrick of doubt that Serge Benhayon, healer-in-chief at Universal Medicine, was speaking the truth.
For some time, Benhayon had been telling his students - more than 80 per cent of whom are women - that "The One" would be sent to usher in the new era. He chose Shamballa, the mythical kingdom associated with the Buddha, as his origin on the path to healing.
The reality, as most people interpret it, is a bit different. Benhayon, according to publicly available records, was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on March 26, 1964. He grew up in Maroubra where his first job was as a paperboy, going on to work as a tennis coach around Byron Bay and Brisbane. Advertisement
He has claimed to be Leonardo da Vinci and Pythagoras reincarnate but he backtracked during an interview with The Sun-Herald at his home on Friday. "I don't believe it. Not for one minute do I believe it," he said. "What I present is part of a whole and if you take one piece outside the whole it sounds absurd. I agree, it sounds ludicrous."
That will come as a shock to some. A patient at the healing centre said she believed Benhayon was da Vinci returned to earth. A student described Benhayon claiming to enter the "fifth dimension" on stage. "He closed his eyes for 10 seconds and said, 'OK, I'm there now, I can't see anything but I can feel.'"
Feeling is a recurrent theme in Benhayon's "esoteric" philosophy. The mind plays tricks, so we should use the body to think, he teaches.
Detractors say relationships become impossible when everything from music to sex must be "Serge-approved". Benhayon said he had never told a student to leave a relationship - or stay in one.
"Some of the people saying things about me are not very nice people in their own households. Having spoken to some of these women, I'm in a difficult position. Some women may hide behind 'Serge said' when they are trying to improve their relationships at home and fear expressing themselves."
