Difference between revisions of "Aum Shinrikyo" - New World Encyclopedia
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After Asahyara's arrest and trial, the group underwent a number of transformations. [[Fumihiro Joyu]], who had headed Aum's Russian branches during the 1995 gas attacks, was asked to return to Japan when many of Aum's senior members were arrested. However, he was eventually arrested and convicted for inciting others to make false statements and served three years in prison. After his release he became the head of Aum. Joyu changed the name of the organization from '''Aum''' to '''Aleph''' and eventually admitted the responsibility of several former senior members of '''Aum''' for the Tokyo Subway gas attack and other incidents. He formally apologized to the victims and established a special compensation fund. Joyu also removed some of the controversial doctrines and texts that previously attracted criticism, such as a controversial Buddhist doctrine that supposedly justified murder. He also discouraged displaying of any pictures of Shoko Asahara. | After Asahyara's arrest and trial, the group underwent a number of transformations. [[Fumihiro Joyu]], who had headed Aum's Russian branches during the 1995 gas attacks, was asked to return to Japan when many of Aum's senior members were arrested. However, he was eventually arrested and convicted for inciting others to make false statements and served three years in prison. After his release he became the head of Aum. Joyu changed the name of the organization from '''Aum''' to '''Aleph''' and eventually admitted the responsibility of several former senior members of '''Aum''' for the Tokyo Subway gas attack and other incidents. He formally apologized to the victims and established a special compensation fund. Joyu also removed some of the controversial doctrines and texts that previously attracted criticism, such as a controversial Buddhist doctrine that supposedly justified murder. He also discouraged displaying of any pictures of Shoko Asahara. | ||
| − | Joyu hope to to re-integrate the group into Japanese society. However, a small but vocal group of members were opposed these changes. In 2006 Joyu and a his supporters decided to split from these members and form their own group, | + | Joyu hope to to re-integrate the group into Japanese society. However, a small but vocal group of members were opposed these changes. In 2006 Joyu and a his supporters decided to split from these members and form their own group, believing Aleph's other member to be too fundamentalist and unable to deal with the current reality in Japan. In March of 2007 Joyu made a formal announcement that he was forming a new group called '''Hikari no Wa''', or '''Ring of Light''', which was committed to uniting religion and science. |
==Further reading== | ==Further reading== | ||
Revision as of 10:54, 29 August 2007
Aum Shinrikyo, is a Japanese New Religious Movement founded by Matsumoto Chizuo, later known to his followers as Master Shoko Asahara. It gained international notoriety in 1995, when it carried out a lethalsarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.
Aum emerged in Japan in the mid-1980s and attracted growing numbers of young adherents from leading Japanese universities with its blend of Buddhist and Hindu teachings, yoga, and the promise of personal enlightenment together with a collective mission of saving mankind from destruction.
In the 1990s, after failing in an attempt to run several candidates for political office, the group began to turn increasingly hostile toward the outside world. It attempted to procure military weapons in Russia and engaged in several assassination attempts against its opponents. As the result of that 1995 sarin attack and additional attempts to release deadly gas into the Tokyo subway system, the group was determined to be a terrorist organization. Many of its members were subsequently arrested and convicted for various criminal acts. Asahara was sentenced to death.
In the aftermath of the sarin attacks, most members left the group, while others, still believing in its earlier teachings, stayed and attempted to change its image. The group changed its name to Aleph and apologized for its earlier behavior, establishing a fund to compenstate the victims.
In 1995 Aum Shinrikyo was reported to have 9,000 members in Japan and as many as to 40,000 worldwide. As of 2004, Aleph membership was estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 persons. In 2006, many of its remaining members, believing Aleph had not sufficiently distanced itself from Ashara and the gas attacks, left the group and formed a new organizaation, called Hikari no Wa, or Ring of Light.
Background
Asahara, whose legal name was Matsumoto Chizuo, was born with glaucoma. He was almost completely blind at birth, having only slight vision in one eye. In his early years he attended a school for the blind, and lived in a boarding school for almost 14 years. After graduating in 1977 he moved to Tokyo. Despite his intense efforts, Asahara failed to pass the entrance exam at Tokyo University. He then studied acupunture and also developed an intense interest in religion.
Ashahara's Aum movement got its start around 1984 when he initiated a yoga and meditation class known as Aum-no-kai ("Aum club") which steadily grew in the following years. It gained the official status as a religious organization in 1989. The group attracted such a considerable number of young graduates from Japan's elite universities that it was dubbed a "religion for the elite." The movement's core beliefs represent a combination of Buddhist teachings derived from yoga and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Hindu beliefs and practices. It adopted the Hindu god Shiva, the god of destruction, as its primary diety.
Asahara asserted that he had been given the divine mission of establishing the utopian Buddhist kingdom of Shambhala, and he proposed in 1988 to build communal “Lotus Villages” across Japan. Asahara borrowed many practices from yoga, and he developed a sophisticated sequence of training and spiritual testing, the goal of what was for individuals to rid themselves completely of bad karma. However, unlike traditional Buddhism, the group also aimed to save the world. From its beginning it invoked millennialist themes, believing that if enough followers gathered together, their positive spiritual energy could overcome the negative forces in the world and avoid the Armageddon that was to come at the end of the twentieth century.
However, Ashahara eventually came to believe that harnessing the spiritual energy of a large number of followers was not enough to save the world. He spoke about the need for mass, indiscriminate death as the only way save humanity.
Doctrine
Aum's spiritual doctrine are a combination of Buddhist scriptures, Hindu yogi sutras and Taoist writings. The name "Aum Shinrikyo" (Japanese: オウム真理教 Ōmu Shinrikyō) derives from the Hindu syllable Aum (which represents the universe), followed by Shinrikyo, roughly meaning "religion of Truth." In 2000 the organization changed its name to "Aleph (letter)|Aleph", the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet.
Scholars of the New Religious Movements view Aum's doctrine as a combination of various traditions. The primary deity revered by Aum followers is Shiva, traditionally identified as the Hindu deity symbolizing the power of destruction. However, some believe that Aum's version of the deity (also known as Samantabhadra, Kuntu-Zangpo, or Adi-Buddha) derives from Tibetan Vajrayana tradition and has no connection to the Hindu Shiva.
There is also controversy as to what role Christianity plays in Aleph's doctrine. Asahara himself referred to Aum's doctrine as "truth," arguing that while various Buddhist and yogi schools lead to the same goal by different routes, the goal remains the same, and insisting that the world's major religions are closely related to each other. Asahara taught that the true religion should not only offer a path but it should also lead to a final destination by its own specific route, termed "Final Realization." Thus, a religion for modern Japanese will be different from a religion for ancient Indians or contemporary Americans. The more custom-tailored to the audience the religion is, the more effective it becomes. Ashahara taught that once a disciple chose whom to learn from, he should maintain focus with that person so as to avoid any confusion that could arise from contradictions between different routes to the ultimate goal, the state of Enlightenment.
Buddhism and isolation
According to Aum, the ultimate and final realization of life is "the state where everything is achieved and there is nothing else worth achieving." It involves a multitude of small enlightenments each elevating the consciousness of a follower to a higher level, making him or her a more intelligent and better-developed person, by coming closer to his or her's "true self" (or atman). Asahara believed that the Buddhist path was the most effective way to achieve this goal. He therefore selected various traditional Buddhist sermons as the foundation for the Aum doctrine. He also added various elements from Chinese gymnastics, which were for the purpose of improving one's overall health, and yogic asanas in order to maintain a proper meditative posture.
In Asahara's view, Aum's doctrine encompassed all three major Buddhist schools: Theravada (aimed at personal enlightenment), Mahayana (the "great vehicle," aimed at helping others), and tantric Vajrayana (the "diamond vehicle," which involves secret initiations, mantras, and advanced esoteric meditations. In his book Initiation Asahara compares the stages of enlightenment, according to the famous Yoga Sutra with the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path. He asserted that these two traditions discuss the same experiences but in different words.
Asahara also authored a number of other books. The best known are Beyond Life and Death and Mahayana-Sutra. These books explain the process of attaining various stages of enlightenment provided in ancient scriptures, and compares it with the experiences of Asahara and his followers. Asahara also published commentaries on ancient scriptures. He dedicated his sermons to specific themes (such as how to keep the proper meditation posture, methods of raising a healthy child) that were studied by Aum followers. These sermons dealt with everyday matters, such as how to overcome the unhappiness that many people experience in human relationships.
Aum also inherited the Indian esoteric yoga tradition of Shaktipat, also mentioned in Mahayana Buddhist texts. The Shaktipat, which is believed to allow a direct transmission of spiritual energy from a teacher to a disciple, was practiced by Asahara and several of his top disciples, including Fumihiro Joyu, who took over the leadership of the group in 1999.
Asahara stressed isolation from the outside world because the outside world was impure and would contaminate his followers. He convinced his followers that isolation from the outside world was for their own benefit. He allegedly distributed drugs to his members in order to keep them docile.
Organizational structure
Aum applied specific methodologies and arranged doctrinal studies in accordance with a specialized learning system. A new stage would be reached only after a follower successfully passed an examination. Meditation practice was combined with theoretical studies. Asahara maintained that such studies served no purpose if "practical experience" was not achieved. He advised his followers not to attempt to explain anything if it was not actually experienced.
Followers were divided into two groups: lay practitioners who lived with their families and another group that led an ascetic lifestyle, usually living in groups.
For a follower to be considered an attainer, specific conditions had to be met before he became recognized by senior members as ataining a higher spritual state. For instance, the "Kundalini Yoga" stage required a demonstration of being able to show a reduced consumption of oxygen, changes in electromagnetic brain activity, and reduction of heart rate (measured by corresponding equipment). A follower who demonstrated such changes was considered to have entered what was called the samadhi state, and received permission to teach others.
Activities
Asahara traveled abroad on multiple occasions and met with various notable yogis and Buddhist religious teachers, such as the Tenzin Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Kalu Rinpoche (a patriarch of the Tibetan Kagyupa school) and Khamtrul Jamyang Dondrup Rinpoche (former General Secretary of the Council for Cultural and Religious Affairs in Tibetan Government in Exile). Aum's activities aimed at the popularization of Buddhist texts and were recognized by the governments of Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Intense advertising and recruitment activities included claims of being able to cure physical illnesses with yoga health improvement techniques, realizing life goals by improving intelligence and positive thinking, and concentrating on what was important at the expense of leisure and spiritual advancement. The extraordinary recruitment efforts resulted in Aum becoming one of the fastest-growing religious group in Japan's history, also resulting in its being labeled a "cult."
Background of the gas attack
The group started attracting controversy in the late 1980s with accusations of deception, of holding members against their will and forcing members to donate money. A murder of a group member who tried to leave is alleged to have taken place in February 1989.
In October 1989, the group's negotiations with Tsutsumi Sakamoto, an anti-cult lawyer threatening a lawsuit against them which could potentially bankrupt the group, failed. In the same month, Sakamoto recorded an interview for a talk show on the Japanese TV station TBS, which was not broadcast following protests from Aum members. The following month Sakamoto, his wife and his child went missing from their home in Yokohama. The police were unable to resolve the case at the time, although some of his colleagues publicly voiced their suspicions of the group. It was not until 1995 that they were known to have been murdered and their bodies dumped by cult members.
In 1990 Asahara and 24 other members stood unsuccessfully for the General Elections for the House of Representatives under the banner of Shinri-tō (Supreme Truth Party). From 1992 Aum began evidence an increasingly hostile attitude toward the larger society. One of Aum's senior members, Kiyohide Hayakawa, published a treatise called Principles of a Citizen's Utopia which has been described as a "declaration of war" against Japan's constitution and civil institutions. At the same time, Hayakawa started to make frequent visits to Russia to acquire military hardware, including AK-47's, a MIL Mi-17 military helicopter, and reportedly even components for a nuclear bomb.
The group is said to have considered the assassinations of several individuals who were critical of Aum, such as the leader of a Buddhist sect Soka Gakkai, and the controversial cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi.
At the end of 1993 Aum started to secretly manufacture the nerve agent sarin and VX nerve gas. It also attempted to manufacture automatic rifles and allegedly tested the sarin on sheep at a remote ranch in western Australia, killing 29 sheep. Both sarin and VX were then used in several alleged assassinations and attempted assassinations between 1994-1995.
On the night of June 27, 1994, Aum carried out the world's first use of chemical weapons in a terrorist attack against civilians when it released sarin in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto. This incident resulted in the deaths of several people and the injury to 200 other people. In February 1995 several Aum members kidnapped Kiyoshi Kariya, a 69-year old brother of a member who had left the group. Kariya was taken to one of the Aumr compounds at Kamikuishiki, near Mount Fuji, where he was killed with a drug overdose.
Sarin gas attack
On the morning of March 20 1995, Aum members released sarin in an attack on five trains in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 commuters, seriously harming 54 and affecting 980 more. Some estimates claim as many as 5000 people were injured by the sarin.
On March 22, in a massive police raid involving 2500 police officers, the police seized two tons of chloroform and ethane, and fifteen bottles of ethylene, basic materials used to produce 5.6 tons of the sarin gas, a quantity sufficient to kill ten million people. The police also seized equipment used to manufacture the sarin, as well as sizable quantities of raw materials for producing dynamite. In Asahara safe they found ten kilograms of gold ingots and 700 million yen in cash, which was equivalent to 7 million dollars. The police also found approximately fifty emaciated individuals who had been locked up in cells, and who were suffering from malnutrition and possibly due to the use drugs. At the groups nearby heliport, firemen discovered an unauthorized storage facility containing more than 2,000 liters of fuel, along with a Soviet-manufactured Mi-17 helicopter. There were stockpiles of chemicals that could be used for producing enough sarin to kill four million people. Police also found laboratories to manufacture drugs such as LSD, methamphetamines, and a crude form of truth serum. During the raids, Aum issued statements claiming that the chemicals were for fertilizers. Over the next 6 weeks, over 150 group members were arrested for a variety of offenses.
During this time Asahara was on the run from the authorities. He issued several statements. One claimed that the Tokyo attacks were a ploy by the US military to implicate the group. Another claimed another threatening a disaster that "would make the Kobe earthquake seem as minor as a fly landing on one's cheek." The police took these threats seriously and declared a state of emergency. Hospitals made sure they had enough stockpiles of antidotes to the sarin gas. Chemical warfare specialists military were put on standby alert status.
On 30th March, Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency, was shot four times near his house in Tokyo, seriously wounding him. Many suspect Aum involvement in the shooting, but no one was ever prosecuted.
On the evening of 5 May a burning paper bag was discovered at one of the busiest subway stations in Tokyo. It turned out to be a hydrogen cyanide device which which could have released enough gas to kill 20,000 commuters. Additional cyanide devices were found in other subway stations.
Shoko Asahara was finally found hiding within a wall in a building in the Kamikuishiki complex and was arrested. On that same day, the group mailed a parcel bomb to the office of Yukio Aoshima, the governor of Tokyo, blowing the fingers off his secretary's hand.
Asahara was initially charged with 23 counts of murder as well as 16 other offenses. The court found Asahara guilty of masterminding the attack on the subway system and sentenced him to death. The indictment was appealed unsuccessfully. A number of senior members of the group also received death sentences. On September 15 2006, Shoko Asahara lost his final appeal.
After 1995
On October 10, 1995, Aum Shinrikyo was stripped of its official status as a "religious legal entity" and was declared bankrupt in early 1996. However the group continued to operate under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, funded by a successful computer business and donations, and is under strict surveillance by the police. Attempts to ban the group altogether under the 1952 Subversive Activities Prevention Law were rejected by the Public Security Examination Commission in January 1997.
After Asahyara's arrest and trial, the group underwent a number of transformations. Fumihiro Joyu, who had headed Aum's Russian branches during the 1995 gas attacks, was asked to return to Japan when many of Aum's senior members were arrested. However, he was eventually arrested and convicted for inciting others to make false statements and served three years in prison. After his release he became the head of Aum. Joyu changed the name of the organization from Aum to Aleph and eventually admitted the responsibility of several former senior members of Aum for the Tokyo Subway gas attack and other incidents. He formally apologized to the victims and established a special compensation fund. Joyu also removed some of the controversial doctrines and texts that previously attracted criticism, such as a controversial Buddhist doctrine that supposedly justified murder. He also discouraged displaying of any pictures of Shoko Asahara.
Joyu hope to to re-integrate the group into Japanese society. However, a small but vocal group of members were opposed these changes. In 2006 Joyu and a his supporters decided to split from these members and form their own group, believing Aleph's other member to be too fundamentalist and unable to deal with the current reality in Japan. In March of 2007 Joyu made a formal announcement that he was forming a new group called Hikari no Wa, or Ring of Light, which was committed to uniting religion and science.
Further reading
- Shoko Asahara, Supreme Initiation: An Empirical Spiritual Science for the Supreme Truth, 1988, AUM USA Inc, ISBN 0-945638-00-0. Highlights the main stages of Yogic and Buddhist practice, comparing Yoga-sutra system by Patanjali and the Eightfold Noble Path from Buddhist tradition.
- ---- Life and Death, (Shizuoka: Aum, 1993). Focuses on the process of Kundalini-Yoga, one of the stages in Aum's practice.
- ---- Disaster Approaches the Land of the Rising Sun: Shoko Asahara's Apocalyptic Predictions, (Shizuoka: Aum, 1995). A controversial book, later removed by Aum leadership, speaks about possible destruction of Japan.
- Hall, John, "Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan" Routledge, London, 2000 ISBN 0-415-19276-5
- Ikuo Hayashi, Aum to Watakushi (Aum and I), Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1998. Book about personal experiences by former Aum member.
- Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Henry Holt, ISBN 0-8050-6511-3,
- Haruki Murakami, Underground (stories)|Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, Vintage, ISBN 0-375-72580-6
- Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Case Study on the Aum Shinrikyo, [USA] Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, October 31, 1995. online
- David Kaplan (author)|David E. Kaplan, and Andrew Marshall, The Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult, from the Subways of Tokyo to the Nuclear Arsenals of Russia, 1996, Random House, ISBN 0-517-70543-5.
- Ian Reader, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo, 2000, Curzon Press
External links
- Aleph: the organization's official website, with an English section
- Aum Shinrikyo News Tracker/Archive Aum Shinrikyo news tracker/news archive. Up-to-the-minute.
- a Japan Times article about two documentary films on Aleph. In English.
- The 'De-nationalization' of AUM Followers: Its Hidden Political Purpose' ('Tsukuru', November 1999 - in English)
- David Kaplan explains his theory of connection between Al Quaeda, Aum Shinrikyo and Foundation sci-fi series by Isaac Asimov
- PSIA (Japan's Public Security Investigative Agency), report
- Midnight Eye: A. A review of Tatsuya Mori's first documentary on Aleph.
- Blockbuster.com: A(1998) and A2 (2001)by Tatsuya Mori
- http://www.religionnewsblog.com/17668/joyu-fumihori-group-leaves-aum-shinrikyo]
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/837000.stm].
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