The Bizarre Asceticism of Aum Shinrikyo

” Do your training, Do your training, Do your training, Do your training, Do your training, Do your training, Do your training …”

Why is asceticism such an optimal tenet for cultic groups? To begin with, it establishes a series of challenges the follower must overcome. For every test passed, a deeper devotion to the ideology is invested. Also, and this may sound counter-intuitive, but asceticism feels good. The pain and suffering one experiences through severe self discipline often produces more acute feelings of pride, accomplishment and virtue.

I’ve heard asceticism referred to as a “Salvation Ethic”, something perfectly primed to be plugged into the Salvation Initiation of the perverse and highly dangerous doomsday group, Aum Shinrikyo.

Not unlike America’s “Gen X”, Japan’s youth that came into adulthood in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were brought up in relative financial security and stability. Despite such an upbringing (or because of it) this generation ultimately felt aimless, discontent, and disenchanted with modern society. This generational ennui led many to search for something more certain, more fulfilling, and more radical.

In Aum ideology, rigid discipline (a much ingrained and lauded Japanese cultural value) and fervent self denial paved the pathway for the deletion of your bad karma (sins committed both in this life and in past lives) freeing you to some day achieve enlightenment and reach salvation. It was a path of clarity that promised personal and spiritual fulfillment- even in some cases, supernatural powers.

When an Aum disciple chose to become a shukke (renunciate/monk/nun), he or she was immediately put into a strict regimine of physical and spiritual conditioning. Interestingly, the proverbial frog in the pot was not gifted a “slow boil” in Aum Shinrikyo. The fervid indoctrination began quickly and aggressively.

Armageddon, according to Shoko Asahara would transpire in 1997 when the US (which he identified as “The Beast” from Revelations) invaded Japan and ushered in a nuclear third world war. This only added haste and fever for shukke to complete their training as quickly as possible.

THE AUM CLASSROOM

Each Aum Center contained a “Classroom” or a communal meditation room.
At the front of each room is a shrine with a photo of Asahara along with an altar decorated with idols, flowers, and of course a donation box. These rooms were open 24/7 and is where most members did their training.

What is interesting to me is that each member had their own ascetic routine to practice. Many wore headphones while they read, self flagellated, or watched Aum videos and lectures. Sometimes trainees would do all at once (including wearing the PSI), constructing an experience of total Aum sensory overload.

Most commonly, students would listen to a recording of Asahara’s most direct mantra; a hypnotic, never ending command repeating over and over for hours: “do your training, do your training, do your training, do your training, do your training…”

MAGICAL SCIENCE RITUALS

• Astral Teleporters were mats on which devotees would spend hours meditating, these were electrically wired to create sound vibrations of the mantra to flow into the body.
• The PSI or Perfect Salvation Initiation is perhaps on the most strange widely photographed Aum device. These were electrode caps worn to bring brain activity to the same vibration as Asahara.  These caps were able to produce dangerously high levels of voltage leading to long term brain trauma. Ironically, the cap was also referred to as “The Hat of Happiness”.
• Members would bind their limbs in unnatural and painful positions. The more suffering, the closer to salvation.
• Members would self flagellate with kendo sticks or rods for hours on end while chanting. Self harm was common, as was head shaving, and doing the opposite of anything that might bring one pleasure or comfort.
• Intense physical exercises like shouting mantras while jumping up and down, then to the floor, and up again hundreds of times. Endurance tests like holding your breath or maintaining difficult yoga poses were typical. These could go on for several hours at a time.
• Aum’s “Ministry of Health” experimented on the rank and file with a wide variety of drug combinations. Hallucinogens (most notably LSD, but also Mescaline, PCP, and 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate/BZ), stimulants like meth, opiates, anesthetics, and sedatives. Leadership would commonly tell a member to “drink this” and proceed to study their behavior while they hallucinated.

Children as young as infants were forced to wear the PSI cap, a battery powered device which would repeatedly send 6 volt shocks of electricity to the brain. Aum scientists would sometimes attach the electrode cap to an EEG machine in order to monitor brainwaves of individuals under various drug induced states.

CLEANSING RITUALS

• Threading a string through the nostrils into and out of the mouth.
• Rapid breathing exercises to induce hyperventilation. This produces feelings of euphoria and sometimes lead to black outs from oxygen deprivation (We see this in the Rajneeshees as well).
• “Gaja karani” involved intentional and controlled vomiting, usually induced by drinking huge amounts of salt water in a very short period of time.
• Exhaustive hours of Rāja yoga, Kundalini Yoga and Chakra work.
• Bathing, pampering, or any basic self care was considered bad karma.  Ultimately, there was nothing hygienic about Aum‘s “cleansing”.

Notice the buckets or plastic bag-lined boxes near the shukke who are in training. The photo on the right pictures a student who has shaved her head and is eating a protein block while surrounded by Aum’s instruments of self-indoctrination. This completely immersive training experience could go on for hours, even days.

INITIATION RITUALS

• Members were encouraged to purchase and ingest a wide variety of Aum produced snake oil tonics, including potions of water mixed with Asahara’s blood or hair. The Initiation of Love involved (for a hefty sum) drinking the leader’s DNA (blood). The leader’s bath water was also in high demand and considered exceptionally sacred.
• For the Christ Initiation the shukke was made to watch hours of ghastly footage of violence, torture, and images of heaven and hell. Afterwards, they would be dosed with large quantities of Sodium Thiopental. Under the influence of the hypnotic, the devotee would lay around intensely tripping while wearing a diaper.
• The Candle Initiation involved being doped with LSD (possibly mixed with other substances, sometimes stimulants) and made to sit around a giant candle chanting zealously. Aum experimented with various rituals, exposing members to various stimulus (light/sound/touch) while he/she was under the influence of drugs. This hack to Fast track mystical experiences is a cult classic seen in The Family Australia and the Manson Group.
• Meditation of Completion was a sleep deprivation process where, instead of achieving REM sleep, members would sit in blankets while listening to Asahara’s repeated mantras. One Aum facilitator remarked “It’s supposed to be different from sleep. They’re all still sleeping though”.
• Thermotherapy Initiation: followers were bound and thrown into scalding hot water, often under the influence of drugs. Initiations/Experiments involving prolonged submersion in water tanks were also conducted.

Aum’s pseudo science obsession led to an alarming amount of bizarre experiments on their own members.

• The highly disturbing Bardo Initiation was a carefully crafted experience where the follower (after being heavily dosed with hallucinogens) was led through a rebirth experience. This one is going to be lengthy, because I think it’s important to describe how immersive and calculating the indoctrination became. It seems like this ritual was mostly used on those with doubts or for members who had been recaptured after fleeing. This was the Aum reindoctrination terror ceremony.
  
  After being locked in a small room, the horror show begins when a small TV suddenly powers on, playing and replaying horrifically grisly and deeply disturbing footage of violence and death. A voice in the speaker would begin a guided meditation where the shukke would die and be taken to hell where they were tortured, burned, and attacked by demons. After around six hours of this, they would be blindfolded and taken to a different location where an actor would pretend to be the “Judge of Hell” and a bizarre soul trial would take place concluding that salvation is only attainable by fully submitting to Asahara and Aum forever.
  
  The Bardo Initiation would last well over 24 hours. Eventually, after a sufficient amount of  verbal and psychological trauma was unleashed, the shukke would be left alone, bound in the lotus position, exposed to constant drumming, screaming, and Asahara’s voice booming over and over on the loud speaker “I will be a monk, I will be a monk, I will be a monk“.
  
  These rituals would be repeated.

The image to the left depicts the Meditation of Completion, where members, in a state of waking sleep are further barraged with Aum dogma.

SEX, SLEEP, AND FOOD RITUALS

• When joining, husbands and wives were immediately separated and instructed to destroy their sex drive by “erasing” sexual data from their minds. For not remaining celibate members were sometimes forced to act like dogs, complete with wearing a collar, crawling on all fours, and eating scraps.
• Wet dreams were seen as failures and that more data needed to deleted and replaced with Aum mantras. Confessing to masturbation might lead to a solitary week long stay in an re-indoctrination room.
• Cubicle sized sleeping centers, many members were allowed only 3-4 hours of sleep. Going without sleep was seen as having self control and fortitude.
• Only two meals daily. No meat. Usually just rice and reconstituted veggies shaped into what looked like meat patties. Large protein blocks resembling bricks were sometimes your only sustenance during your hours of training. Various fasting routines were practices and food restriction was common and considered an admirable penance.
• When cooking, or preparing meals, members were not allowed to touch the food with their hands and would thank Asahara several times while eating. Since Aum supposedly did not believe in killing, rats and roaches were common pests in the cult’s communes.
• Shukke drank only special blessed water, which was stored in tanks outside their residences or dormitories. These vessels turned out to be excellent incubators for mosquito larvae.

Restrictive eating and sleeping severely impairs brain function. Aum used this to effectuate a personality that is docile and unable to think critically. With the inclusion repetitive exercises meant to terminate independent thought, shukke experienced full immersion in the group’s ideology. The ascetic exercises would dually deprogram and reprogram the initiate. Perfidiously, the system set up a pattern of complete self indoctrination.

Some time ago, for a study I interviewed several individuals with severe restrictive eating disorders. One of the patterns that emerged was an obsession with purity and cleanness of spirit. This feeling could only be achieved by complete rejection and suppression of natural human needs and impulses. Somehow, through self restraint you are able to transcend the messiness, uncertainty, and confusion of everyday life.

This same conviction can be found in ascetic cults. When your life becomes a constant test of your ability to ignore and reject your humanity, you will perpetually be anticipating more challenges. In this state, the shukke becomes vulnerable (if not highly receptive) to the next instructions or directives from leadership. The shukke also takes on the role of a soldier complete with the ability to take orders and a willingness to accept corporal punishment.

Shukke attempt to achieve Asahara’s famous ability to levitate. The group sold this lie, complete with misleading and doctored photos, to the media and public as an early advertising recruitment campaign.

We’ve seen asceticism in the ideologies of groups like Heaven’s Gate and NXIVM, but there’s something about Aum‘s practices that seem specifically insidious. All of the training is self regulated and self imposed. It effects not only the body but the mind as well. It is a reiterative process, where hard work produces nothing but the hazy and desperate need to do more hard work.

While the training may give some modicum of personal pride to the shukke due to their endurance and willpower; that feeling is rarely ever kept for themselves. The thanks is instead given to the leader which create a very typical cult dynamic. The result is quite simple: “No matter what I achieve, it is due to the leader. No matter how or why I fail is due to me”. Through this kind of manipulation, the cult metaphorically closes and locks all the exits. The only way out, or the only door that is open (to continue my metaphor) is one that leads even deeper into the group.