THE month-long stand-off between Federal agents and armed cult members barricaded in their compound near Waco, Texas, reminds me of the night, more than a decade ago, when I received a frantic phone call from a friend's mother.
''You've got to help me,'' she pleaded, her voice taut with anxiety. ''Peter has joined a religious sect.'' She choked back the tears. ''I don't know him anymore. When I look into his eyes, I'm terrified.'' I hadn't talked to Peter - an old high school chum - for a couple of years, though we had been quite close at school. Somehow the news didn't surprise me. Even as a teenager, Peter had been an intense, spiritually restless young man in search of big answers to big questions.
I was astounded, however, by the transformation when I saw him the next day. The edgy, brooding expression that had always hung over his face like a dark cloud was gone. In its place was a spooky radiance, an almost feverish glow.
He had obviously found some answers.
That evening, it turned out, the religious sect he had joined - I think it was called the Church of God - was holding their annual national gathering at the Los Angeles Convention Centre. Peter was eager for me to come along because he was confident that I, too, would see the light. Praise the Lord.
What I did see was one of the most chilling examples of mass hypnosis I have ever witnessed. (But not the only one - I have attended qigong meetings in China every bit as possessed as the gathering.) By the time we arrived, the auditorium, which seats several thousand, was almost full. I felt like a spy. No, I felt like an infidel among the born-again believers, because that was exactly what I was. Somehow, others sensed that I did not belong, that I was not one of the flock. I didn't have that beatific smile, and I couldn't bring myself to greet everyone as my brother and sister.
The main event of the evening was a long, spell-binding sermon by a Korean minister (not Reverend Moon). His words bonded the group together like wet leather thongs dried under a scorching sun. I watched Peter, at my side, slip into the powerful communal current carrying the faithful into a trance.