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National Book Award winner and renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton reveals a world at risk from millennial cults intent on ending it all. Since the earliest moments of recorded history, prophets and gurus have foretold the world's end, but only in the nuclear age has it been possible for a megalomaniac guru with a world-ending vision to bring his prophecy to pass. Now Robert Jay Lifton offers a vivid and disturbing case in point in this chilling exploration of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subways. With unprecedented access to former Aum members, Lifton has produced a pathbreaking study of the inner life of a modern millennial cult. He shows how Aum's guru Shoko Asahara (charismatic spiritual leader, con man, madman) created a religion from a global stew of New Age thinking, ancient rituals, and apocalyptic science fiction, then recruited scientists as disciples and set them to producing weapons of mass destruction. Taking stock as well of Charles Manson, Heaven's Gate, and the OklahomaCity bombers, Lifton confronts the frightening possibility of a twenty-first century in which cults and terrorists may be able to bring about their own holocausts. Bold and compelling, Destroying the World to Save It charts the emergence of a new global threat of urgent concern to us all.… (more)
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I, however, was more interested in Lifton's analysis of the group, especially vis-a-vis his work with
The footnotes are less than comprehensive and there is no bibliography.
Lifton goes through quite carefully the various dimensions of the Aum Shinrikyo phenomenon. I should say, I practice Vajrayana Buddhism, which seems to be the main foundation of Aum Shinrikyo. There is a classical perversion of Vajrayana, where emptiness and compassion, the absolute cornerstones of Buddhism, are forgotten, and the visionary outrageousness of Vajrayana is acted out literally. Aum Shinrikyo was a textbook example, with the further extensions into modern weapons of mass destruction, science fiction imagery, etc. But still, to see how the tools of Vajrayana Buddhism can be so misused... actually, there are plenty of warnings in Vajrayana about the potential for misuse, but it is easy not to take those too seriously.... kind of like reading the pages of possible side effects when you pick up some pills from the pharmacy. Whew, that horrible stuff really can happen!
It's a bit like George W. Bush's call for a war against evil... something like that. Lifton I think makes the crucial point, though he doesn't elaborate it. The real value of a book like this is that it can alert us to what is possible. Lifton does a good job of showing how this kind of thing could happen anywhere, it's not just some strange Japanese one-off. The real way to fight evil is to start with the awareness that the potential for evil exists in all of us. Real evil starts with the assumption that I myself am inherently not evil. That opens the door to every evil.
It is so utterly sad to reflect on how the horrible predictions suggested by this book have been fulfilled. These are not any sort of unique special events, but just instances of a general pattern. Whew, what a dark place we have gotten to! Yeah, okay, to see that darkness is itself a glimmer of light. I sure wouldn't mind a bit more than a glimmer!