He Helped Kids with Autism—Now He’s Helping Build a Divine Just State

As part of our Professional Profiles series, we highlight members of AROPL with accomplished careers and expertise, showing how their professional paths led them to join the community of Abdullah Hashem.

Arnaud Balet didn’t just study therapy — he went through one of Switzerland’s top schools, trained in psychomotor therapy, and built a career helping children with autism, cerebral palsy, and Down syndrome. But even while practicing state-of-the-art methods, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. His search for truth took him far from the Alps: building schools in West Africa, meditating in Indian ashrams, and backpacking across the Middle East. The deeper he went, the more one question haunted him: what’s the point of helping people adapt to a world that is itself sick? That question eventually led him to a different kind of solution — the faith of Aba Al-Sadiq and a movement that aims not just to heal individuals, but to heal the system itself.

You are the Outreach messenger to Switzerland but before you joined the community around Aba Al-Sadiq, you used to work as a professional therapist in Switzerland.

My name is Arnaud Balet. I was born and raised in Valais, Switzerland. We lived in a small village of 3,000 inhabitants on one side of the valley, about 10 minutes from the district capital. I come from a Catholic family: my mother was a primary school teacher and my father a former professional footballer who also ran his own car business. We were a family of four, living in a nice villa. We never moved. Every summer we enjoyed wonderful holidays and traveling abroad.

I had a happy childhood, never lacked anything, played lots of sports, and had many friends. From the age of 12 until 19, I was part of an elite football program with the goal of becoming a professional player. At 16, spirituality entered my life after the death of my best friend. Since then, I have carried a deep thirst to seek answers about life and death, God, and His creation.

During school holidays, I always worked small jobs for pocket money (maintenance work, supermarket shifts, French tutoring), but I never had a permanent job before leaving high school. When I graduated at 19, I took a gap year during which I served in the army but later became a conscientious objector and entered the national civil service program. There, I had the opportunity to work with migrants as a teacher and helper.

In that same year, I also set foot in West Africa (Benin) for the first time. I returned with a humanitarian project to build and sustain a nursery/preschool in a remote area, collaborating closely with local Catholic sisters. That year opened many horizons for me and convinced me to explore a path in social work and human relations.

During this period, I met someone who was a psychomotor therapist. He had a major impact on my life, especially in my search for truth, self-inquiry, and my desire to grow into a better human being and draw closer to God. He became a role model, teaching me meditation, Chinese medicine, and Tai Chi. I realized that his profession was something I would love to do. I therefore registered for the entrance exams to the Geneva School of Psychomotor Therapy, passed them, and was accepted.

It was a wonderful school that encouraged profound personal transformation while training us to understand ourselves and others. The profession integrates body and spirit, inner and outer experience, and the unity of thinking, feeling, and action. The approach was highly practical, exposing us to real-life situations. By the third year, students were already gaining hands-on experience working two days a week as interns in institutions (in my case, a home for elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease) while continuing their classes and therapy training.

After passing my final exams, I still had to complete research work to earn my degree. This took me another year and a half, during which I worked with children (orphans, children with disabilities, those in need of major surgery, etc.) in a humanitarian organization called Terre des Hommes Valais. Once I obtained my certificate, I left for a one-year trip around the world with my backpack — traveling to Greece, Israel, Palestine, Italy, Turkey, India, and Nepal. Shortly after, I moved to Portugal, where the spiritual teacher I had met in India had established an ashram. I lived there on and off for two years, traveling to India several more times.

Upon returning to Switzerland, I worked again as a psychomotor therapist in a school — this time with children with severe disabilities, including cerebral palsy, severe autism, and Down syndrome. I also ran a small private practice, offering sessions for adults focused on personal development, as well as workshops on meditation and energy healing.

The most rewarding moments in my job are when clients or children transform, overcome their difficulties, find peace and happiness, and connect with their truest selves — moments when I see that my work is truly useful to others.

How did you hear about this religion? And why did you decide to join?

I first heard about this religion from my brother Guillaume. As always, we were having a deep spiritual conversation, and that night he began to speak about Ahmed Al-Hasan, the Mahdi, the white banners, and related topics. Similar exchanges continued for a few years whenever we met.

In 2015, I had my first revelation: a direct, empirical experience of Ahmed Al-Hasan’s presence — something nearly impossible to put into words. A year and a half later, I had another profound experience in which I naturally prostrated in front of his invisible yet palpable presence.

In 2018, I visited my brother in Germany, where he had been living for a year within the community. During that visit, I had a life-changing dream in which God answered my prayer, showing me whether this call was the truth. God confirmed it unmistakably in a vivid dream, more real than waking life. A few months later, I joined the community.

How can you use the skills you learned in your job in this religion?

I use my professional skills when speaking to new believers as a member of the French Outreach Team. Much of this work involves psychology, active listening, and engaging with diverse human characters, cultures, and personality types.

As a therapist, my role was to help people reach inner peace and create their own environment in which they could feel whole, complete, and attuned to their innermost core. The same principle applies when I speak on shows, on TikTok, or when I receive calls from believers or prospective believers.

As an editor, I engage in the creative side of communication, using artistic approaches to present the message of Aba Al-Sadiq. In psychomotor therapy, art and creativity are essential tools to reach people, convey a message, and help them connect with their true selves, their life purpose, and their deepest core.

What would you like to tell other people who are still working in your profession today?

Firstly I would like to tell them that as therapists, we should help people find their own path towards becoming the best version of themselves. But how can one be whole, at peace, and fully themselves while excluding the most important component — God? God is the source of peace, happiness, completeness, and wholeness.

Secondly, it became clear to me that there is no purpose in a therapist’s work if it is only to help people adapt to a world that is itself sick and makes people sick. If people — adults or children — are unhappy, misbehave, or suffer from their body-mind situations, it is often because the world around them is senseless, godless, and makes them more unfit, unhappy, and broken. Someone with a disability can be very happy and have a fulfilled life in a place where the environment is supporting and fit for them.

In psychomotor therapy, we pay great attention to the environment — both the therapy setting and the person’s natural surroundings. Today’s world is organized in such a way that people cannot be truly happy or fulfilled. Working to “fix” people while leaving them in a dysfunctional environment is meaningless. We must change the system in which we live, and we must find a just ruler who can establish a fair, sane, and balanced order in which human beings can truly flourish.