A Levitating Monk Told me the US Apocalypse will be in 2014

Up to this point, my blog posts have been primarily centered around partying and hangovers, but today I’d like to dive into something with a little more substance.  The town in Thailand which I lived and taught English was called Lampang in the Northwest mountain region. On my days off from school my favorite activity was to choose a random road and venture out with my motorbike in search of nothing in particular. One Friday, Jessy (a fellow American teacher at my school) and I set off on one of these motorbike wanderings. Cruising some random dirt roads around the outskirts of our town we noticed a massive white Buddha statue halfway up a mountain in the distance. We made it our mission to find it. After being lost for quite some time, we eventually came to an uphill road that led right to the Buddha. It was an extremely steep incline and Jessy was on the back of my motorbike, so when I downshifted to get some more power the bike popped into a massive wheelie for nearly 5 seconds going up the hill. Luckily the bike didn’t flip over backward as she could have been very hurt! After the wheelie, she opted to walk the rest of the way to the statue… The Buddha was about 2-3 stories high consisting of Siddhartha in a Samadhi meditation pose, sitting on top of a 7-headed snake which formed a throne for him. An amazing view back on our city from the statue, we both felt the very positive energy coming from the area. As you can imagine our wheelie incident was rather loud so we felt bad when we saw a group of monks and students meditating under the statue. As the class slowly departed, a monk in brown robes, as well as a woman and man in all white, remained. They approached us and in broken English asked “Where are you from?” They all spoke a very limited amount of English, but we managed to communicate using the minimal Thai I knew combined with pigeon English and hand gestures. He started trying to discuss Buddhism with me, which I had recently become interested in as I found the religion too closely resemble my own personal philosophies. The monk’s name was Jo and he had been a monk for one year, studying in Burma. The following conversation with Jo and the other Buddhist teachers was very difficult due to the language barrier so it’s somewhat my personal interpretation of what they tried to teach me.
The man in white was 40 years old and said he had been practicing Buddhism for 6 years. He claimed he was able to levitate and that he had successfully opened his 3rd eye through deep meditation. He said he was able to communicate psychically with the other monk and possessed the ability to visualize an aerial view of anywhere on earth during meditation. His example was that he could see what someone was doing in Washington D.C. at anytime. He also said that he recently was able to see into the future during a deep meditation session and wanted to provide me with some insight on the future of my homeland. In 2014, he could see a massive meteor shower “like the Deep Impact movie” destroying the US and actually sinking the country under water. He keptreferring to Citi Group, GE and the NYSE acting out them all going down. I’m not sure if he was symbolizing a stock market crash or an actual physical destruction of those headquarters from the meteors. He said these events will render the US dollar worthless so money will no longer be important to us. The surviving Americans will be forced to relocate to other lands and 20% would come to SE Asia. The other monk showed me this ancient looking tapestry depicting all the world’s religions. Not really sure what he was explaining with this, but he kept emphasizing the importance of the 3rd eye and the unimportance of money. He pulled a US $1 bill out of his robe and pointed to the pyramid symbolizing the 3rdeye on the back, saying most Americans don’t even know what this is. He gave me a book written in Thai showing the best positions in which to meditate and although I tried to explain I couldn’t read it he insisted I keep it. On the cover was an extremely old and skinny monk who had apparently achieved such a high level of meditation he was once able to transform his body into protons and neutrons and teleport from Thailand to an area near the border of France and Switzerland. He then started ranting about how violent America was and how we are killing and destroying ourselves. I began to take offense to the harsh negative attitude towards my country, however he did make a good point that Thailand focuses on peace and the US seems to invite war. Jo took interest in me
and told me to return to the statue if I wanted to learn more about meditation.

I am quite skeptical over the world ending predication as well as human’s ability to levitate, teleport and communicate psychically. However, I do think that meditation opens new pathways of thought and most of us in Western countries have no conception of enlightenment or its value. Considering most humans only use 30% of their brains, maybe through deep meditation we can start to access these other parts, and perhaps some of these “miracles” monks proclaim they can do may be more plausible then we think… If you are interested in this type of stuff do some research on the Buddha Boy. A 15-year-old kid who meditated for 11 months without moving, no food or water. A large portion of this he was being recorded for a Discovery documentary. Some say he’s the next Buddha some say it’s all an elaborate hoax, read up and decide for yourself….

Leave you with a Quote: “Never think too much about where you want to be and forget where you are.”

2 Comments

  1. Alex, I’m impressed with how much detail you remember about what he said. I still plan on being out of the country in 2014, just in case.

    Here’s a few more things about how I remember it:
    I had noticed a white dot on the mountain in the distance outside my window. I had no idea what it was, so when Alex wanted to go on an adventure I reluctantly (because I liked taking naps after school) suggested trying to find it. So it wasn’t that we randomly noticed it on the way, it was a destination from the start. Much more complicated than we thought. There was no path directly there, and you couldn’t see it the whole way, so it was hard to find. I think we stopped to ask some people, something we did often on our motorbike adventures, and got the standard response of hand gestures, broken English, and Thai. I think there was a train track in the way at some point, and we had to figure out how to get around it. Anyway, it finally started getting closer, the white dot was getting bigger and eventually we could make out that it was a huge statue of the Buddha. Of course it was! We knew we were going in the right direction if we were going up-hill. When Alex popped the wheelie I sort of just slid off the back. It scared the hell out of me though. We entered the site really loudly, and were embarrassed when we realized it’s a quiet worshipping spot where people like to meditate. I agree, lots of positive energy.

    Our longggg discussion with the monk, which included lotssss of drawings, ended with a parting gift. He gave Alex what seemed like a special rope bracelet, along with that book in Thai. Greeeat, sooo special. Then he looked at me and I would guess he was thinking something like “oh yea, her, I should probably find something for her too….” I was annoyed at the whole thing because this (Buddhism, meditation, spirituality) is the stuff I’m into, but he didn’t pay too much attention to me and focused mostly on Alex. I like to think the reason for this had to do with gender, or the fact that Alex is more outgoing than me, rather than it being something personal, but I was still annoyed.

    • Thanks for writing this it’s really awesome to here what you were thinking and how you perceived everything! I think the bracelet the monk gave you in the end was cooler than mine though haha…

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