Visiting a religious sect in Bangkok
One morning in Bangkok I decided to walk to the market to buy some fresh fruit. When I had been walking for some time and still saw no sign of a market, I asked several people for directions. But none of them spoke English. I wandered back and forth several times, tried a few side streets and soon realized I was lost in a strange, bustling city.
Suddenly a ghostly man appeared beside me. He had long ash-blonde hair, side-winding eyes, scaly translucent skin and spoke in a voice as ethereal and empty as air.
“You look lost,” he whispered. “Are you searching for Jesus?”
“Actually, I’m searching for Chatuchak market.”
He looked at me with vacant eyes.
He said, “We can help you find Him,”
“Only if he’s at the market…’cause that’s where I’m headed.”
“We can give you what you’re looking for…inner peace, detachment from distractions in this world of illusion.”
“Look, I just want to find the market, okay? If you’re a member of some cult, I’m really not interested.”
“Sure, if you want to use the word organized religion uses, then I do belong to a ‘cult’…but what is religion, anyway? Just a cult that succeeded. Ever heard of the Sect of the Nazarene?”
“Nope.”
“They went on to become Christianity.”
The mysterious man said he was with the Church of the New Messiah. Many young people today, he told me, had become disillusioned with the shallow hedonism of the drug culture and were looking for a new, more spiritual high. They felt uncomfortable returning to the outdated, conventional religions of their parents and needed a religion they could relate to…helped them fill that spiritual void.
A tuk-tuk pulled up in a cloud of exhaust fumes and I stepped inside.
He quickly slipped me a pamphlet. “We’re having a vegetarian love fest at our compound tomorrow. We’d love you to come.”
Next day my curiosity brought me to the address the mysterious young man had given me. Walls eroded by humidity surrounded a whitewashed building stained with lichen. The two-story house stood in a neglected garden overrun by weeds and vines. I rang the bell at the gate and was greeted by the young man I’d met the day before.
“Hi. Glad you could come,” he said cheerfully. “Never had time to introduce ourselves yesterday. My name is Zuar.”
“Good to see you again,” I said.
He was dressed in a loosely hanging hemp shirt and trousers and his long blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. He showed me into a large room with high ceilings, furnished mostly with floor cushions and tie-dye cloth hanging from the ceiling.
A large group of smiling children and adults sat on the cushions, clapping their hands and singing ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’ Their eyes were shining but had a distant, empty look. Zuar walked me around the room and introduced me to people in the group.
“This is Autumn Rain,” he said.
She was a happy, moon-faced girl sprinkled with freckles. Long auburn hair refined the roundness of her face and flowed over the curve of her shoulders. She was barefoot and her ankle-length dress, with small floral patterns, fell loosely over her breasts.
“This is Hezekiah,” Zuar said, introducing me to a tall, slender man draped in a blue tunic.
“You here to learn about the New Messiah?” Hezekiah asked me.
He had the sadness of death in his eyes. They seemed canceled, like a heroin addict’s, like a developing negative immersed in solution in a red darkroom.
“Your group got many followers?” I asked Zuar
“We have colonies in Madras, Bombay, Delhi, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Manila and here. As it is written in Revelations, we have ‘seven churches which are in Asia.’”
Zuar struck me as a very strange guy. Something about him made me feel somewhat uncomfortable but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I looked around the room and heard several groups of smiling people, speaking English.
“Most your members sound American,” I said.
“They are. But we have some Canadians and Europeans as well.”
I asked how they were able to get resident permits for so many foreign members.
“I’m on a three month tourist visa,” Zuar explained. “When it expires, you do a visa run, take the train to Malaysia, stay a few nights, then head back into Thailand with a new visa.”
We sat on the floor with the others and Zuar sat beside Autumn Rain to examine the handicrafts she was making. She had a plastic bag filled with multicolored beads and was making bracelets and necklaces to sell at the next Rainbow Festival.
“Pretty necklace,” Zuar said.
“Like it? Here, it’s for you!”
She placed a garland of bright beads around his neck and brushed an affectionate kiss across his forehead. He leaned over and picked up a guitar decorated in psychedelic colors.
He sat down beside her and began strumming his guitar. Everyone started singing except me.
“I think you’re holding back,” Autumn Rain said to me. “Let yourself go. Be free. Be like the wind. Raise your voice to the Lord.”
“I only sing in the shower,” I whispered. “Besides I don’t know the words.”
After the sing-along, we gathered in the garden to play badminton while Zuar and a few others organized wheelbarrow and three-legged races for the children. After the races and games, we went back into the house and a group of us sat on the cushions playing charades and Autumn Rain read the story of Noah’s arc to the smaller children.
In the evening, we lay on mats and cushions, bathed in candlelight, singing softly as Zuar strummed his guitar. While members of the Church drifted off to sleep, I lay on a mat next to Autumn Rain, gazing up at the shadows cast across the ceiling by candlelight. The day had been full of activities and I felt tired but happy.
Next morning after breakfast and a prayer meeting, Hezekiah set up a volleyball net in the garden and everyone joined in for a game. We were divided into three groups; one cheered on the sidelines while the other two played an energetic game. When we collapsed exhausted on the lawn after losing a close game, the third group took our place at the net and our group sat on the sidelines, to encourage and cheer on the players.
“Go, go, team!”
“Great spike, Joshua!”
When the volleyball game was over, Autumn Rain laid out a pitcher of Koolaid, bowls of vegetarian pasta and salad on a picnic table. We sat around the table and Zuar poured the Koolaid into plastic cups.
“Take this all of you and drink from it,” he said, holding up his cup. “The New Messiah has made it known that when he dies…we must cremate him, put his ashes in a pitcher of grape Koolaid, add many hits of acid…and drink in memory of him.”
We all took a sip. I had been kept so busy, so I had forgotten hunger and ate my food quickly.
After lunch, I was asked to join the others in the community room for a group hug.
“We love you Autumn Rain!”
“We love you Zuar!”
The purpose of their love-bombing was to smother each other with affection and praise and bond all their members in a greater spiritual love. The group bonding was so important that a monitor was delegated on a weekly basis to assure all movements and decisions benefited the group and provided them with a permanent source of reassurance, love and companionship.
“The love we share here is so strong!” Autumn Rain chirped. “I’m a vessel overflowing with joy!” She smiled at me. “Don’t you want to be part of this?”
Zuar walked to the corner of the room to get his guitar for the next sing-along, I walked out to the garden, pretending that I was looking for someone. A few minutes later, Autumn Rain joined me outside.
“We’ve been looking all over for you,” she said. “You shouldn’t wander off like that. It diminishes the love given to you by the unity of the group.”
I took her hand. “If there’s so much love here, why is Zuar so strange and Hezekiah always so sad?”
“I don’t know about Zuar,” she said, looking rather unsettled, “but Hezekiah used to be very happy…until recently. The change came last summer, when we were handing out pamphlets in Koh Phangan.” She looked around to be sure we were alone before she continued. “One day, while walking in the hills, we took some sacred mushrooms, and then later, from the highest point on a hill where we stood, we saw a vision so terrible that neither of us has spoken of it since.”
She paused as if frightened and her eyes misted. “We saw the world burst into flames and the sun turn to blood. Everywhere, mountains, trees and grass were ablaze. Parts of our mountain crumbled into the sea, turning it to blood and destroyed all the sea creatures. Then just as suddenly, the burning skies turned black as if the smoke of a great furnace had darkened the sun.
Out of the smoke, locusts and scorpions swarmed, attacking and killing all those who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. After the horror of the massacre, the sky receded and the heavens opened up. We saw vivid colors, brilliant flashes of light and we heard the singing of angels. Everything was revealed to us in that instant. Hezekiah discovered the equation that could unlock the secrets of the universe.
I begged him to explain it to me, but he couldn’t…he couldn’t utter a single word. Now he rarely ever speaks and refuses to reveal the equation to anyone.”
Autumn Rain was quivering like a frightened deer. “I’ve never talked about this to anyone,” she said, sobbing quietly, “to protect Hezekiah.” I held her gently and stroked her hair till she was calm again. Her eyes looked pleadingly at me. “You mustn’t tell a soul. Promise me! If the New Messiah ever found out…he would force Hezekiah to reveal the equation.”
I promised.
