The Answer to Everything (22 page)

DREW WOOLLINGS’S MEMORY OF FEBRUARY 1 is disjointed and tinged with fresh grief. He lost loved ones that night, including the two women he likes to call his “brides”: Mindy Markovitz and Alexa Hjorngaard. Markovitz and Hjorngaard lived with Woollings in the pool house and were his regular partners in touch sessions. Woollings speaks slowly and haltingly from his hospital bed as he tries to sort out the details of what happened on the night of the ceremony. “We went out just before dark … I guess around 5:30 or so. It was snowing a bit, but nothing major. I remember everyone
was really hungry because all we had had was soup that day. But Peter [Scheibling] said we’d be very glad, and everyone was kind of laughing about that.” Ayahuasca is known to be a strong purgative. Those who ingest the brew will often experience violent bouts of vomiting or diarrhea. Scheibling had put participants on a strict diet to prepare for the event. He also erected a ceremonial tent under a large, mature oak tree at the edge of the ravine in Quan’s backyard. “First, he [Scheibling] blessed the tent with this special flower water that he sprinkled around, and then he cleansed it with tobacco smoke. Then we all took our spots and he blessed each of us with the water and the smoke. Oh, and he had music on … I can’t remember what he called it, some chanting music with a foreign name [icaros are the traditional songs sung by shamans during ayahuasca rituals]. And then he gave us the cups to drink.” Woollings closes his eyes and takes a few breaths before continuing. “I remember the first thing was just feeling really sick to my stomach, and then throwing up—we had these buckets to throw up in. And then I started to see, like, these weird kaleidoscopes of colour.” Woollings tells me that’s when he lost track of time. For at least the next couple of hours, he was entirely focused on the images appearing in his mind, and almost completely unaware of his fellow Seekers and what was going on around him. “I could hear things, I guess … laughing … people being sick … but my eyes were closed and I was just really concentrating on the stuff I could see and what it was trying to teach me. It was like …” He pauses, trying to find the correct words. “I don’t know … It wasn’t like mushrooms, where you’re interacting with people, or where real things just look kind of weird or exaggerated. This was, like, way more powerful. I literally saw and became part of a whole
new realm. One that’s always there, below the surface, but I didn’t know was there …”

Woollings can’t say for sure how long he was in this state. He tells me that when the drug’s effect started to wane, he opened his eyes and had a startling realization. “We were in the middle of this crazy storm and I didn’t even know it. The wind was nuts, and the snow was thick and wet and swirling … it was like a whiteout.” Woollings saw a peculiar sight then, coming through the snow. It was Becker, outside the tent, completely covered in mud. “He was shouting at us,” said Woollings. “Something about all of us having to plant ourselves in the earth …” Woollings pauses. “He said that the earth wanted to share its power, and God wanted us to become part of it, to absorb it. He told us to follow him.” Woollings and some others left the tent, trailing Becker into the heavily treed area just behind it. “I saw Mindy, Alexa, Tyson, Richard … I can’t remember if Wayne came. Anyway, he [Becker] said he’d felt the earth’s power and that we needed to feel it too. He told us to bury ourselves in the earth—so we could connect to the consciousness of all plants and living things, so we could receive the earth’s energy. He told us to dig deep.”

Woollings and the others started clawing in the wet, muddy soil, trying to emulate the trench that Becker had already made for himself. Woollings estimates that he dug in the ground for about ten minutes before lying down and covering his own body—including most of his face—with mud, dead leaves and snow. “I was really cold at first. And Tyson kept yelling, ‘The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground.’ But then he stopped and I forced myself to lie very still, and after a while I totally understood what he [Becker] was saying. I know what he wanted to give us … what
he
did
give us. It was a gift. I felt it. The vitality of the earth and all living things were flowing through me. I was connected to all of it … and I could feel myself getting stronger. I never felt stronger in my whole life.” Woollings smiles. “That power kept me here. It made me strong enough to survive.”

THERE IS A RARE AND LITTLE-KNOWN WEATHER EVENT that occurs perhaps once or twice each year in Canada (on average, according to meteorologist Randy Maxwell). It requires specific elements coming together to make it happen, elements that are common in summer but extremely unusual in winter, even in the Great Lakes region, where it’s most likely to occur. Thundersnow. Essentially, it’s a thunderstorm with snow instead of rain—an electrical blizzard. It’s the kind of weather system that can wreak havoc with its tropical-storm-force winds, ice pellets, heavy dumps of rapidly falling snow and unexpected electrical strikes. The mix of components required for thundersnow are extremely uncommon, so uncommon in fact that Maxwell estimates that fewer than 0.01 percent of snowstorms are concurrent with thunder. But on February 1, 2013, all the unlikely conditions necessary for this rare weather phenomenon came together in Toronto. It began with a low-pressure system that swept in from the Prairies, picking up speed and power on its way. When this trough of air arrived in Toronto, it surged skyward at thirty-five to forty-five kilometres per hour. The updraft met the city’s unseasonably warm atmosphere (three degrees Celsius) and caused a powerful lift of warm, moist air. The combination of warm air hitting cooler temperatures higher up resulted in the freak weather system that slammed Toronto with heavy snowfall and gusts of up to ninety-kilometre-per-hour
winds that felled trees and hydro lines and left twenty-seven thousand residences without power. But it was the storm’s lightning that caused the most serious harm—three separate house fires in the city’s north end, and the death of nine individuals who, under the circumstances, had gathered in one of the worst places possible: around the base of a giant oak tree.

BEWARE OF AN OAK
,
it draws
the stroke
. Like many old proverbs, this happens to be true. Oaks are more likely to attract lightning than other trees because of their high water content and deep central root, which make them more conductive and better grounded. Of course, nobody at the Institute was expecting thunder and lightning in the middle of winter. Certainly, nobody was expecting three hundred kilovolts of electricity to literally explode the tree under which they had set up their ceremonial tent. “There was this boom,” said Woollings. “The loudest sound I ever heard … then pain—like my whole body was on fire—and everything went white.” What Woollings heard was the nearby oak being been split from crown to root as the water content in the tree boiled. Those who had remained in the tent, directly under the tree’s branches, were killed instantly. Those who had followed Becker into the woods to dig in the soil received the somewhat less lethal current that passed down through the tree and radiated outward along the wet ground—still volatile enough to cause severe burns or cardiopulmonary arrest. In fact, Woollings—who dug the farthest from the source—was the only survivor of those who remained near the ceremonial site (Becker left the scene; McCullough and Mitchell sought shelter at various points during the storm). When I interviewed Eldrich Becker in his apartment, he told me that God had summoned him
away from the area. “It wasn’t a verbal command,” he explained. “It was a pull … like there was a magnet in my belly and I was being drawn by force along a specific path through the woods.” While Becker’s disciples followed his directive to bury themselves in the earth, he meandered off through the ravine, eventually making his way to the Sunnybrook Stables in Wilket Creek Park, where he was discovered early the following morning, asleep in the stall of a chestnut gelding named Billy.

Woollings, meanwhile, lay among the dead, unconscious in the snow—his boots blown off his feet, his clothes singed and shredded—until McCullough found him. Today, he is deaf in his left ear, his legs are paralyzed (doctors say this will likely be temporary), he experiences weakness and tingling in both arms and hands and he has burns to 40 percent of his body, severe headaches, dizziness, arrhythmia and significant problems with short-term memory. His recovery, if successful, will be lengthy and arduous. Still, Woollings insists he has no regrets and in fact would happily do it all over again. He continues to revere and respect Becker, whom he credits with helping him achieve a new level of awareness on February 1, 2013. He believes that God spared his life so he could continue to work for the Institute. “I can’t wait until it [the Institute] is up and running again, until I’m strong enough to help Eldrich [Becker] spread the truth to more Seekers.” He smiles, but his eyes fill with tears. “I just wish I could see him,” Woollings says. “I just wish he could visit.”

It may be a long while before the Institute is up and running again. And it may be never. In addition to ayahuasca (and its separate botanical components), when the police raided 81 Elderbrook, they found more than a kilo of marijuana in the back
of the freezer. They also seized a number of jars and containers that were allegedly used to cultivate psychoactive psilocybin mushrooms. Eldrich Becker and Amy McCullough were arrested and charged with possession of an illegal substance for the purpose of trafficking, production of an illegal substance and administering a noxious substance. The crown also brought charges of criminal negligence causing death against Becker and McCullough. John Aarons, who moved out of 81 Elderbrook in early January but continued to collect a salary as the Institute’s chief executive officer, has been named, along with McCullough and Becker, in a class-action wrongful-death civil suit launched by relatives of the nine Seekers who died on the night of February 1. The house at 81 Elderbrook, which was left (provisionally) to Eldrich Becker and John Aarons by Chen Xi Quan in his will, is also part of a separate legal battle. Quan’s estranged husband, Mat Faisal, who has been alternately travelling and living with friends in the US for the past several years, returned to Toronto to challenge Quan’s will and pursue marital rights to the estate. As a result, all of the activities and assets of the Institute have now been frozen. As a condition of bail, McCullough and Becker cannot communicate or be in contact with each other or with any former member of the Institute. Woollings, it seems, will not get his wish to be visited in hospital by Becker.

When I point out that his next face-to-face meeting with his spiritual guide may have to take place at the Toronto South Detention Centre, Woollings gives me a knowing look. “There was another son of God arrested and put on trial,” he says, smiling. “And we haven’t stopped loving him.”

5 Comments                 T.O. Magazine

SCULLY M (posted 4 days ago)

Am I to understand that this guy is seriously comparing his cult leader to the Lord? Looks like his brain got scrambled AND fried in that storm
.

2-small 2-fail (posted 4 days ago)

Hilarious. Even the cults
T.O. Magazine
writes about have to be on the Bridle Path
.

marsha c (posted 3 days ago)

What a terribly sad story, and what a shocking waste of lives. I read recently that only 21 percent of us attend a weekly religious service (down from 30 percent in 1985). It’s clear that the waning of religion in our daily lives has led to a spiritual void, one that allows charlatans such as Eldrich Becker to thrive
.

annon (posted 3 days ago)

I don’t care if it’s summer, fall, winter or spring. You hear thunder, you get out from under the tree. Sad they died, but c’mon! How stupid!

MOINA Q (posted 2 days ago)

My husband and I are members of the Answer Institute, I was quoted in the above article, and I can assure you that the writer, Griffin Hill, has either completely misunderstood or else wilfully misrepresented what our organization is all about. The Answer Institute is not a cult. Nobody took our money or fed us hallucinogens.
It was entirely up to us whether or not we paid for seminars, or whether or not we chose to ingest various sacramental substances. Many of us, in fact, chose not to. We were never isolated from family or friends or deprived of food or sleep. Nobody ever told us how to think or behave. We were always free to come and go as we pleased. Only a total outsider, one who perhaps set out to write a shocking, salacious story, would regard us as a cult or represent our practice of therapeutic healing touch as fondling or “orgies.” Countless people, me and my husband included, have learned a lot and profited emotionally, physically and spiritually from the warm, inclusive community of the Answer Institute. As Griffin Hill himself points out, Phil was in remission from cancer. His healing sessions at the Institute worked! I can tell you that John Aarons and Amy McCullough are both kind and caring individuals. And I’ve never met a more loving or truer soul than Eldrich Becker. Griffin Hill, in short, does not know what he’s talking about. He has warped the facts in order to provide a titillating tale to readers. We are extremely disappointed in
T.O. Magazine
and will be cancelling our long-standing, thirty-one-year subscription forthwith
.