Aum Shinrikyo

Shoko Asahara

Aum Shinrikyo, is a Japanese New Religious Movement|religious group founded by Japanese national Matsumoto Chizuo, later known to his followers as Master Shoko Asahara. The group gained international notoriety in 1995, when it carried out a Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in the Tokyo Rapid transit|subways. As the result of that attack, and the additional attempts to release deadly gas into the Tokyo subway system, the group was eventually labeled as a terrorist organization. Many of its members were subsequently arrested and convicted for various criminal acts, including Asahara, who was sentenced to death. In 2006, many of its remaining members left the group and formed their own organizaation, due to serious differences of opinion about taking responsibility for past actions and the need for reform.

Beginnings of the Movement

The beginnings of this movement appear to have taken place in approximately 1984. Asahara, who 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. Eventually Asahara studied acupunture and also developed an intense interest in religion. His interest in religion ultimately resulted in the starting of his own religioius movement. He started off as 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. It attracted such a considerable number of young graduates from Japan's elite universities that it was dubbed a "religion for the elite Some have called it a cult or sect. The movement's core beliefs are a combination of Buddhist teachings, such as Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Hindu beliefs and practices, such as adopting Shiva its primary diety, the god of destruction. 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. The goal of the religious group was for individuals to rid themselves of bad karma (Brackett 1996, pp. 69-75). Asahara Shōkō borrowed many practices from yoga, and he developed a sophisticated sequence of training and spiritual testing. The group from its beginning invoked millennialist themes, believing that if enough followers gathered together, their positive spiritual energy could overcome the negative forces in the world and save the Armageddon that was to come at the end of the twentieth century. However, Asahara later 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 a mass, indiscriminate death as the only way for the salvation of humanity. Through death, Asahara claimed, the soul could reincarnate at a superior spiritual level.

Asahara's group came to be known as Aum. It attracted attention in the late 1980s with accusations of deception of new members, holding members against their will, and forcing members to donate money. The group was said to be responsible for the murder of a member who tried to leave the group in February 1989. In October 1989, the group was involved in a negotiation with Tsutsumi Sakamoto, a lawyer who was threatening to bring a lawsuit against the group. In December, 1989, Sakamoto, his wife and his child were reported missing from their home in Yokohama. In 1995 Sakamoto and his family were found dead, the victims of murder. Eventually the murders were linked to Aum.

By the end of 1993 the group started secretly manufacturing the nerve agent sarin and later VX nerve agent gas. The group came to the attention of the public in 1995 when 12 people died and thousands were injured following the release of nerve gas into a Tokyo subway by members of the group. This action aroused extereme public disapproval of the group when it was eventually determined that Alph members carried out the attack.

Several hundred members were eventually arrested. Asahara was arrested for 23 counts of murder. In 2004, after an eight-year trial, he was convicted of masterminding the attack and was sentenced to death with several of his followers. As a result of the mass convictions of many of its members, the group was virtually decimated. Much of its property was seized by the Japanese government, and eventually the group was labeled as a terrorist group by the the Japanese government, the EU, the United States, and Canada.

Doctrine

Aum's spiritual doctrine are a combination of Buddhist scriptures, Hindu yogi sutras and Taoist writings. The name "Aum Shinrikyo" (Japanese language|Japanese]: オウム真理教 Ōmu Shinrikyō), sometimes written "Aum Shinrikiyo," derives from the Hindu syllable [Aum] (which represents the universe), followed by Shinrikyo written in kanji, roughly meaning "religion of Truth." In 2000 the organization changed its name to "Aleph (letter)|Aleph", the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet.

Basics

Some scholars of the new religious movements view Aum's doctrine as a combination of various traditions, citing various reasons to justify their viewpoints. Perhaps the most widespread argument is a notion that the primary deity revered by Aum followers is Shiva, the Hindu deity symbolizing the power of destruction. The Aleph's Lord Shiva (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, since it was mentioned in some of Asahara|Shoko Asahara's speeches and books. 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 believed that the 'true religion' should not only offer a path but it should also lead to a final destination by its own specific 'route' which may differ considerably due to differences in those who follow it (what the religion terms 'Final Realization'). This way, a religion for modern Japanese or Americans will be different from a religion for ancient Indians. The more custom-tailored to the audience the religion is, the more effective it becomes, according to Asahara. His other conviction was 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 of Aum members, the stage of Enlightenment.

Influence of Buddhism and Emphasis on 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 shakyamuni Buddha 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 yogi asanas in order to keep a meditation posture. He also translated a considerable part of traditional Buddhist terminology into modern Japanese and then changed much of that terminology into a form that made it less confusing and easier to understand.

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 tantra|tantric] Vajrayana (the "diamond vehicle," which involves secret initiations, secret mantras, and advanced esotericism|esoteric meditations. In his own book Initiation (Aum Shinrikyo book)|Initiation Asahara compares the stages of enlightenment according to the famous Yoga Sutra by Patanjali with the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path. Asahara 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. Other sermons used more sophisticated language to discuss matters for the educated elite. To maintain and improve one's thinking abilities, Asahara suggested that his followers refrain from consuming 'low-quality' and 'degrading' magazines. He advised them to instead read scientific literature. This approach was labeled 'information intake control' and eventually became a source of media criticism.

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 the doctrine studies in accordance with a special learning system. A new stage is reached only after a follower successfully passed an examination. Meditation practice was combined with theoretic studies. Theoretical studies, Asahara maintained, served no purpose if 'practical experience' was not achieved. Assara advised his followers not 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 lead ascetic lifestyles, usually living in groups.

According to Aum a follower had to go through various strages in order to attain spiritual enlightment. It required rigorus religious training. 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 deserved the title and permission to teach others. Each stage has its own requirements.

Activities

Asahara traveled abroad on multiple occasions and met with various notable yogi and Buddhist religious teachers and figures, such as the Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th 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.

Aum Shinrikyo had started as a quiet group of people interested in Yoga meditation, but later it became transformed into a very different type of organization

Gradually Aum looked less like a small and elite meditation group and more like an organization that was attractive to the broader general population group. Public interviews, bold controversial statements, and vicious opposition to criticism were part of the groups style.

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. This was to be accomplished by practicing various ancient teachings. The extraordinary recruitment efforts resulted in Aum becoming one of the fastest-growing religious group in Japan's history.

Leading Up To the Gas Attack In 1995

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 Tokyo Broadcasting System|TBS, which was not broadcast following protests from the group. 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 of Japan|House of Representatives under the banner of Shinri-tō (Supreme Truth Party). From 1992 the attitude of group doctrine against society started to grow in hostility when 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 AK47's, a MIL Mi-17 military helicopter, and reportedly an attempt to acquire 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 the group 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 assassinations and attempted assassinations between 1994-1995. Then, on the night of June 27. 1994, the group is known to have 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 group 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.

1995 Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack And Related Incidents

File:Sarin Wanted Poster.jpg

A wanted poster in Japan. As of March 2006 three people are still wanted in connection with the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway: (left to right) Shin Hirata, Katsuya Takahashi, and Naoko Kikuchi.

On the morning of 20th March 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, one of the few senior leaders of the group under Asahara, became the official head of the organization in 1999. At the time of the gas attack at the Tokyo Subway station, in 1995, Joyua was living in Russia and was head of Aum's Russian branches. He was asked to return to Japan when many of Aum's senior members were arrested. Joyua became the official spokesman for Aum upon his return. He was eventualy arrested and convicted for inciting others to make false statements and had to serve 3 years in prison. After his release he became the head of Aum. One of the first things he did was to change the name of the organization from Aum to Aleph. He eventually admitted the responsibility of several former senior members of Aum for the Tokyo Subway gas attack and other incidents, and apologized to the victims. He established a special compensation fund and removed some of the controversial doctrines and texts that previously attracted criticism, such as the controversial Buddhist doctrine that claimed to justify murder. He was also against the displaying of any pictures of Shoko Asahara. Joyua wanted the group to re-integrate into Japanese society. However, a small but vocal group of members were opposed these changes. Finally, in 2006 Joyu and a his supporters decided to split from these members and form their own group. They believed that these other members were 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.

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://eur- ex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2005/l_340/l_34020051223en00640066.pdf].
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/837000.stm].

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