I read a book about Aum Shinrikyo, the religion responsible for the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway a decade ago, for my New Religions class this weekend. It's helped my motivation immensely; this religion and the concepts surrounding it are pretty much the reason I took the class to begin with. I don't want to make light of a group who killed about a hundred people, injured a thousand more and, well, engaged in some serious domestic terrorism, but these guys are unreal. Here's a sample of what they're all about:
According to Aum Shinrikyo, the world is a corrupt, evil place and just living in the world causes you to absorb all sorts of bad "data" that will cause you to go to hell when you die.
Yes, data.
To avoid going to hell, Aum Shinrikyo members tried to purify themselves through ascetic practices like fasting, meditation and mortification. Which included being buried alive for days on end. They called these practices "cloning the guru," because they were trying to reprogram their minds by erasing their normal, bad thoughts and replacing them with the thought patterns of the guru, their leader.
Yes, cloning.
To purge bad data Aum Shinrikyo members also wore some electronic headgear called PSI ("Perfect Salvation Initiation") units, which Aum Shinrikyo's technicians had developed, and drank down parts of their leader, like his blood or his bath water or a liquid that those technicians made that they claimed replicated his DNA structure.
Yes, electronic headgear. Yes, religious technicians (who also made the sarin gas they used in the subway). Yes, blood drinking.
Aum Shinrikyo was a millenial cult, meaning that they believed the world would end soon. But they weren't talking nuclear war. That was too pedestrian for them. The guru was preaching more about plasma canons and lasers and kilometer-long mirrors in orbit around the earth that could reflect and focus the rays of the sun to incinerate everything beneath it.
All of which is freaky enough, but remember that these dudes went out and killed people, too. Why? Well, there were a lot of factors that lead up to the actual attack, but the reasons that an attack like that is valid within the belief structure to begin with run a little something like this: You can't help but being infected by corrupted data so long as you live in the world. The guru and other high ranking members of the religion, however, were advanced spiritual beings and could perform prayer rituals for the dead that would purge them of the bad data. See the connection? Killing you is actually saving you from falling into hell. They're doing it for your own good.
They read like a freaky bit of fiction. Which makes their reality all the more freaky.
Comments (10)
Gleaming the Cube II: Cloning the Guru
I hate to be glib about it, since organized religious fundamentalism is a serious problem all over the world and these particular folk seem distinctly unhinged - but this mythos seems uniquely Japanese. Like the guru has a fiber-optic spinal tap feeding the Akira director's cut directly into his nervous system. Corrupt world, thoughts/soul-as-data, ritual cleansings, plasma cannons, religious pseudo science.
How does this motivate you to study, by the way? Just echoes of fables?
Posted by Erik | April 25, 2005 6:17 AM
Posted on April 25, 2005 06:17
It's like if a priest after absolving you of your sins decided to kill you because that way you would go to heaven.
Posted by gus | April 25, 2005 8:05 AM
Posted on April 25, 2005 08:05
I don't know about it's unique Japaneseness. They use a lot of Buddhist imagery, which I left out of my description, but I could see a lot of the stuff I described showing up in the US. I mean, look at the Heaven's Gate folks, who equated heaven with alien planets and thought they were going to be bodily assumed into heaven by a UFO...
As for motivation to study, it's just Aum Shinrikyo itself. What little I knew about this particular religion sounded so weird that I pretty much just had to learn more.
It is informing some of my fiction, but it's not Fables stuff - it's the urban fantasy stuff that keeps showing up in my short stories and I'm sketching out novels for.
Hhm. Also, a lot of it's going into my comic project.
Posted by Jason | April 25, 2005 11:04 AM
Posted on April 25, 2005 11:04
Jason, wasn't there an issue of Ellis' run on StormWatch about the Aum?
Also, can you point me towards a good information site on them? Something like these guys is DEFINITLY going into PB's Tokyo arc.
Posted by Bard | April 25, 2005 12:10 PM
Posted on April 25, 2005 12:10
Not unless I've missed a StormWatch collection somewhere. Which I haven't. You're probably thinking of the Island Zero issue of Planterary; the local office punk makes a quick (and, honestly, inaccurate) comparisson between the group on the island and Aum Shinrikyo.
All of the websites the book I read lists as resources are in Japanese or are defunct. If you google them, though, the first 6 hits (which includes their wikipedia entry) are decent overviews of their actions and history, but don't go into a lot of depth on doctrine (not that you necessarily need it). For that you'd have to pick up the book (Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan by Ian Reader - still very much in print).
Anyway, I'm sure they'll be a great starting point for you - as they are for me - but keep in mind that Aum has been effectively defunct since a little less than a year after the subway attack (1995). Their leader was arrested and resigned as leader (he's currently appealing a sentence of death-by-hanging). The group lost something over half of its already small membership, renamed itself "Aleph" and is (ostensibly) trying to start over as a peaceful movement and get back to their ascetic, Buddhist roots. They haven't rejected their leader, per se, and still use a lot of his early (non-violent) sermons as scripture, but it doesn't seem as if they're at all likely to engage in any more terrorism. They're also, unsurprisingly, extremely prejudiced against in Japan.
Of course, their ascetic roots involved the belief in developing psychic powers, which I sort of forgot to mention in my original post, so...
Posted by Jason | April 25, 2005 1:14 PM
Posted on April 25, 2005 13:14
i don't know if it wa son the history channel or on the discovery channel but they made a report about it.
Maybe searching in their pages will yield more information.
Posted by gus | April 25, 2005 3:30 PM
Posted on April 25, 2005 15:30
Addendum:
I had my New Religions class today and we discussed Aum therein. A few things I forgot:
Asahara, the guru, claimed that one of the psychic powers he had developed was the ability to see the future, which he phrased as the ability to "see through a curve in space and time." Also, he said he could levitate.
I mentioned Aum's millenarianism in my initial post. Part of that is the belief that the faithful would survive the global apocalypse and emerge into a paradise thereafter. How would they survive? They were going to build enclosed underwater habitats, of course.
Anyway, I'll probably be writing my research paper for this class on Aleph and what's happened to Aum since 1995. If I can come up with anything solid, I'll share my research.
Posted by Jason | April 25, 2005 5:56 PM
Posted on April 25, 2005 17:56
on other stuff since i know you are a fan of kim possible i found this link and i thought of sharing it with you
http://www.waterbead.net/portfolio/char/kimpossible.jpg
Posted by gus | April 26, 2005 4:17 PM
Posted on April 26, 2005 16:17
Cool. Thanks, Gus!
Actually, I'm looking at the whole site - this chick's art is awesome!
Posted by Jason | April 26, 2005 4:49 PM
Posted on April 26, 2005 16:49
yep i have lots of links like that since im a big fan of fantasy art :)
perhaps i'll add all of my links in a future blog.
Posted by gus | April 27, 2005 5:58 AM
Posted on April 27, 2005 05:58