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There was a cup of coffee on her desk, growing cold. There was her wallet and her cell phone, her purse and her winter coat, a framed picture of John. The face she had stared at for countless hours, light hair and clear blue eyes, a gaze that felt as though it could unlock the universe itself.

Anina had moved across the world to be close to John de Ruiter. Four times a week, she and hundreds of others filled the long rows of chairs at The Oasis Centre in west Edmonton, staring silently at him for hours as he sat beatifically under a beam of light, staring back.

He was their guru and teacher, to some even a saviour, a humble messiah they called simply "John." They left their lives and families to be with him, devoted themselves completely to him and his teachings.

He arranged their marriages and relationships, their jobs and homes, gave them counsel and made their decisions, their lives winding ever more tightly around him while he drew from them their time and their labour, their money and their love.

They were Johnites or Oasis, sometimes The College, or just "the group."
....

Anina had changed. How when she talked about him, she adopted his mannerisms and tone, her face becoming distant and her voice sleepy and soft, almost like an entirely different person than the one they had known.

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Dark Oasis: A Self-Made Messiah Unveiled documents how the sincere search for meaning can cause us to mistake the allure of a mirage for a genuine oasis. It reveals how the desire for deliverance can lead to psychic servitude, loss of autonomy, and cult-like dependency.

Inspired by the author's experiences with spiritual philosopher and self-proclaimed 'living embodiment of truth' John de Ruiter, Dark Oasis is an in-depth exploration of religious doctrine, language manipulation, and misplaced devotion. It provides informed inoculation against the many subtle forms of power abuse and exploitation found within the spiritual marketplace

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s anyone who has followed John for any time at all knows, John teaches his followers (maybe the correct term for them is “thralls”) to be unemotional. Suppressing emotions might bring some relief, but if so it is only at a high cost. Where do the emotions go when they are suppressed, ignored, disowned, unacknowledged? Into the body, as toxins.

It’s an ironic, even tragic, fact that people who leave John are still tied to him as long as they have unresolved feelings about him. And how can they not, when he never acknowledges their feelings as real? It’s a powerful, devilish trick for keeping people waiting on the line indefinitely. Whether they are incensed, outraged, confused, bitter, angry, resentful, sad, or grieving, such seemingly unresolvable emotions (unresolvable because John is emotionally out of reach) will cause them to seek refuge in John’s own advice not to listen to or take seriously their feelings. And so, the ex-Johnnie, having no way to resolve that tension, finds him or herself perennially placing themselves back under their Master’s influence.

This is the Oasis revolving door: even as we think we are leaving, we find ourselves back again. If we reject John, criticize or question him, most especially with strong feeling, that’s just the proof of his power and purity, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the impurity of our “patterns” and our inability to appreciate the goodness of John or the goodness within us that only John, in his supreme virtue, can appreciate. This sort of “thinking” is built into the group’s mindset—it’s foundational to John-think—and it is designed to ensure there is no escape for the Birds of Being from the Nest John built. How can you escape from a mirage when it appears wherever your eyes fall, inside the desert of John’s “teachings”?

I went through this horrendous process myself, and it took months, years even, to stop drinking sand and locate my own source of sustenance. Maybe I am still completing the process, and this is why I never released the book. In the worst of it, John seemed everywhere, like a parasitical organism that regenerated itself from a single cell whenever I thought I’d got it completely out of my system. But was it really John, or was it the internal image I had created that was endlessly regenerating?

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Jasun Horsley
APRIL 10, 2017 AT 1:54 PM REPLY

Critical faculties are, IMO, insufficient protection when it comes to charismatic leaders skilled in finding and pulling emotional/energetic triggers, patterns of abandonment and trauma and imprinting us with their own words and presence while in that raw state. It is like accelerated transference and there’s no rational protection against it if you are susceptible (a good match for the teacher) and unless you are forewarned.

cynicalseeker
APRIL 10, 2017 AT 7:06 PM
You may be right. I noticed in one of your articles about Leonard Cohen you said that you had come to the conclusion that you couldn’t any longer trust your gut feeling.

I agree with that.

And I can envision situations where I might make a wrong decision about a particular guru. But this guy? First of all claiming to be Christ would raise a huge red flag for me. And all the staring followed by platitudes? He sounds like the Barack Obama of gurus. Definitely hearing about and reading up on these people is a huge help. You’re doing a good service here. I probably would not have heard of him otherwise.

Jasun Horsley
APRIL 10, 2017 AT 7:13 PM
John doesn’t ever publicly claim to be Christ; he has let it be known among long-term followers and then continues to nurture that belief through hints and nods and innuendos. As Tim says in our talk, he rules through implication.

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Jasun Horsley
APRIL 2, 2017 AT 4:01 PM REPLY
yes well the same can be said of any horrendous experience, but it’s a mighty big IF and I’m more interested in the majority that are still trapped in that crystal maze.

Leah
APRIL 3, 2017 AT 2:05 AM REPLY
Very fair point….. that was a flippant comment at the end I made. Sorry…. I think it’s a way I use to make myself feel safe. I was very lucky and had family taking care of me,,, I was totally shunned by the people who introduced me to him…….. it was a terrifying and most isolating experience and very lucky to be here today…

Jasun Horsley
APRIL 4, 2017 AT 3:55 PM REPLY
Glad someone with direct experience made it over here to the comments section. So many have been rendered speechless and timid by their run in with the 4 X 4 of Truth.

sarah490
APRIL 3, 2017 AT 2:51 PM REPLY
Jasun, please publish your book! I agree with your take on Nicholas. It does sound like he’s still enthralled. His cult-lingo defense of his father made me queasy, as I grew up with that type of gas-lighting. I know the damage it can do. In addition to psychological programming, perhaps, Nicholas now has a vested interest in his father’s busine$$, making it imperative for NDR to keep the show going?

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Gaslighting is often misunderstood as simply trying to make someone believe something isn’t true. What it really entails is breaking down a person’s trust in their own mind – something so damaging it can take years to recover from. It’s a daily form of coercive manipulation designed to make someone so vulnerable and confused that they rely more on their abuser than on themselves.

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Danger Danger
I have an employee that is ever on the brink of dismissal due to a large part in how his following of JDR's 'teachings' affect negatively on his work performance, interpersonal relationships, and inability to follow sensible and logical directions at the workplace. He is now attending his first trip to the 'Institute' in Edmonton, and we hope he returns with his sensibility intact and feet firmly re-planted on ground....or he will be the mastermind of his own demise (aka. terminated).

JDR is unequivocally DANGEROUS because his synergy of delusion and charisma is the perfect feast for weakened, confused, or damaged souls.

The danger lies in how he is able to cause these individuals to lose friends, strain relationships, or even to lose their jobs, for the sake of seeking the 'truth' at all costs.

I live this everyday and have done all I can to help my employee, short of organizing an intervention. You can not help those that won't help themselves, especially if they insist that they have no problem. This almost sounds like someone with a substance dependency, but in this case, it is a 'spiritual' dependency.

While JDR enjoys the high life and the trappings of being worshipped, he leaves a path of further-broken individuals, lost even deeper than they once were.....alone, without meaningful attachments, and rejecting all that is spiritually good that is around them.

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Isayah | Fri, 04/06/2012 - 07:58
Isayah's picture
Epilogue
....this employee is lost to JDR.

Upon returning from Edmonton, he resigned. The only thing 'spiritual' about this entire 3 year ordeal, was that 'it was meant to be' for him to eventually either quit or be terminated.

The 'safety' of a hundred like-minded strangers, was more of a draw than the 'threat' of cautions from all those close to him who were looking out for his best interests. Shame.

Just like clock-work, he has managed to repeat history yet again: by self-sabotaging potentially good friendships, a place of employment that he loves, never resolving critical family issues that are the crux of his needy 'searching'.....all the while, declaring to himself that his sad failures are a victory, essentially wearing scars as trophies.

Sadly, this sums up this individual:

"A fool despises good counsel, but a wise man takes it to heart". - Confucious

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he following story appeared in Canada's National Post on Wednesday, May
16, 2000:

"I WAS GOD'S WIFE"
Joyce de Ruiter had accepted the fact that her husband saw himself as
the Messiah. Then he introduced his two new 'wives'

Scott McKeen
The Edmonton Journal

A silent John de Ruiter sat on the stage that December evening,
surrounded by scores of his worshippers, as his wife took the microphone
to speak. Joyce, mother of John's three children, unfolded the letter
she'd prepared for the meeting.

"Dear John, my dear John," she began. "I am the only one who loves John
the man. Everyone else loves John the god."

For almost two decades, Joyce de Ruiter had watched her husband take a
magic carpet ride from humble shoemaker to this -- a god figure in a
burgeoning new religion, worshipped by hundreds in Edmonton and around
the world.

A book carries his byline; videos and cassettes his voice and image.
There's a Web site -- www.johnderuiter.com -- and a schedule of where
he's speaking each week, be it in Toronto or India. Upwards of 300 flock
to weekly Edmonton meetings, many of them newcomers who moved to Alberta
from other parts of the country or the world to be near John.

But late last year, Joyce discovered a side to her husband she'd never
suspected. It had prompted her to intervene, in front of his followers,
with this written plea.

"My sweetie. You are not god, you are not deity," Joyce said that
evening. "You are a normal man who has been seduced by power and adoring
women."

Devotees shifted quietly in their chairs as John stared gently at his
wife.

"You are sleeping with two of your disciples," said Joyce, "and you
can't recognize how far off you've gone. Sex with Benita and Katrina is
not truth."

John's face betrayed nothing, Joyce says. The audience was like
flat-calm water.

When Joyce finished her plea, John spoke a few soft words about truth
and ended the meeting. Inside, Joyce mourned, as a few of her husband's
disciples came up to hug her and tell her they admired her honesty. She
watched him leave, without her.

"I was God's wife," Joyce says sardonically, looking back on that day.
"The Messiah Chick."