The demons are out of the bottle
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It’s June 2016, and once again, I wearily opened my ‘Pandora’s box’ to see a bogus invitation to book massively discounted flights; yet another incomprehensible electric bill; a claim for an accident I never had; an incredible win in an unheard of competition; an ad assuming I want to turbocharge my manhood; a notification that someone I hardly know has changed their status or posted a photo; an urgent warning that I need to contact my bank – only it isn’t my bank; and a medley of virus software ads saying,‘buy me now or your computer will be destroyed’. All I wanted, in this sea of junk, was to find more words to marvel over and tweak, in a world that I was to discover a treason to reason, which made it finally worth being engaged in ‘the box’.But this day, like a gift from heaven, one shines out at me in a genuine and exciting new light. It’s the first chapter of a story I know is going to be a ground breaker, and from a man, who like myself, is accustomed to literally breaking the earth open to plant new seeds. I read his bestseller The Suicide Club over a year ago and being a planter of crops myself, I found it a great yarn, full of wonderful stories about rising through the ranks of the tea industry and the various human capers and dastardly deeds that Herman came across in his amazing journey to being a grandmaster of the tea world. It is also a great and informative account of wider cultural issues in Sri Lanka.
As a struggling Christian, bent double under the weight of Western cynicism and creeping atheism that have slowly dispirited the lives of millions and brought many systems to a grinding halt in pursuit of a dull eternity of safe living in boxes – actual and virtual – on this otherwise wonderful planet, I was particularly grabbed by a reference to the power of Christ, written on the back of one incident involving the effective use of a witch doctor, to change the course of mundane events. I intended to buy this imminent book as soon as it was published. Little did I realise that, a year later, I would have the honour of being the first one, besides Herman, to read about these extraordinary adventures and adapt the writing a little for a Western audience; not that it needed much, given the talent Herman has for learning other languages – once passing for a Tamil at a critical moment in enemy-held territory during the civil war, in the company of the Tamil Tigers’ (LTTE) top hit-list target and later also negotiating the release of a key prisoner.
I found myself eagerly awaiting the next instalment like the best film sequels or prequels, and I was never disappointed, as the stories built an extraordinary overall picture, until the end, when faced with a twist most will find hard to swallow but very powerful indeed, and a message to all that we can never rest on our laurels as even the greatest among us will always be subject to human fallibility whilst on this planet. God truly moves in mysterious ways, while we humans battle with our primitive instincts or should I say primitive demons or gods.
Herman cites Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, ‘If’, when talking of his grandfather, who gambled his fortune on ‘one turn of pitch-and-toss’ and lost and apparently lived up to his manhood, by breathing not a word about his loss. This is, perhaps, the only part of the poem that Herman cannot yet lay claim to himself as he has built upon humble beginnings. But I suspect, by publishing this book, he risks the same to his excellent reputation. However, if you have read The Suicide Club you will know that Herman took many bold, potentially career-breaking gambles to make his way to the top of the tea world and to unveiling his Great White Queen (actually called Virgin White Tea), available on his estate or to top connoisseurs visiting Mariage Frères in central Paris. God’s Secret Agent is a unique book about Herman’s bizarre and inexplicable experiences – going back nearly forty years – with a humble, fellow Buddhist/Christian exorcist.
However, his timing, regarding publishing it, is near perfect, given that the parts of the world that are governed by a terrible mixture of the gods, reason and mammon, are electing to do what most rationalists regard as utter madness; Herman’s book is part of a new genre that may have the answers.
Initially, Herman talks of himself as ‘a doubting Thomas’ in the early chapters of his book, and surely there is a Thomas to some degree in nearly all of us, but none more so than Thomas Paine, a man who was hugely influential in the pursuit of US independence and the US constitution; wrote ‘The Age of Reason’; and remained anti-Christian to his death. There is, no doubt, much more to say on the subject and, of course, we are all bound by reason to some extent, but Herman’s story is so refreshing in that it conforms so little to man’s conceit and is totally convincing.
Another relevant text is ‘The Testament of Solomon’, omitted from the Bible owing to its authorship being in question. It is concerned with the subjugation of demons and human fallibility and is very relevant to Herman’s story and, after reading Herman’s account, you will find it has a certain ring to it. It is an extraordinary account of the building of Solomon’s famous temple, around 1,000BC, and the whole host of demons he had to subdue and then actually employ to complete it. What is staggering is that, after accomplishing such an incredible feat to the glory of God, he succumbs, as predicted by a demon he formerly subdues, to the temptation of a strange and beautiful woman for whom he performs an act of crushing grasshoppers in the name of her god, Moloch, to convince her to sleep with him, after which his power is utterly taken away: “I then, wretch that I am, followed her advice, and the glory of God quite departed from me; and my spirit was darkened, and I became the sport of idols and demons. Wherefore I wrote out this Testament, that ye who get possession of it may pity, and attend to the last things, and not to the first. So that ye may find grace forever and ever. Amen.” It is sobering to think that a king who is given dominion over a whole host of demons, by God, to build a temple of world renown, then abandons God to bed a woman he doesn’t know. What hope is there for mankind? The answer is simple; it can only be hope in God, and in Herman’s story we learn how many evil deeds are carried out in total ignorance of the victim, who might suffer for decades as a result.
Since reading ‘God’s Secret Agent – A Battle against Dark Forces’, I have researched the exorcisms carried out en masse in Kudagama by Fr. Jayamanne, mentioned in a very interesting chapter about a transport magnate who tests exorcism in a cunning way. An internet search on Fr. Jayamanne reveals a very interesting academic book on the subject by a Western scholar, whose studies reveal some extraordinary things about exorcism and power in Sri Lanka and Kudagama where Fr. Jayamanne performed his mass exorcisms.
The exorcist of the story can be found on Wikipedia as a musician with a biomedical engineering background but no reference to his devotion or supernatural abilities – these will, no doubt, need to be added. He kept his powers well hidden and knew very well from whence they came. So too, does Herman understand the importance of humility, and that his successes in life are not his alone but as a result of his strong belief in Buddhism, the power of Jesus Christ and acts performed in the name of God.
Don’t be fooled, though, this is not your run-of-the-mill evangelical offering; it is more like a rip-roaring adventure story in the mould of the Blues Brothers with their famous line, “Hit it. We’re on a mission from God.” In this case the car is a Singer Gazelle and it’s the Buddhist Brothers, though there are actually five core members of the exorcist’s team not all Buddhists by birth. Along the way Herman, the tea maestro, sees the most extraordinary things in what is really a parallel universe (the exorcists and witch doctors being the ones with the power to jump between them), in his secret life as the exorcist’s friend. Truth truly is stranger than fiction.
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