Subject: Cult "mind-control" and U.S. plots
Date: 22 Apr 1995 16:39:19 -0400

Subject: Cult "mind control" and U.S. plots...   
         (Al Bielek...phone Japan.)    
         Reuter news wire: 3/7/95 

By Eugene Moosa 

TOKYO, April 7 (Reuter) - Not everyone might believe in a guru 
who says he time-travelled to the year 2006, but his followers 
in Japan pay $116,000 for "telepathy head gear" just to share 
visions he says he has experienced.

The estimated 10,000 members of Japan's Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme 
Truth Sect) say they even drink tea made from locks of hair of 
guru Shoko Asahara to enhance such abilities. 

The cult is now the target of daily police raids following the 
March 20 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway which killed 11 
people and injured thousands.  The cult denies any connection to 
the attacks. 

Despite the raids, which have turned up hundreds of tonnes of 
chemicals, laboratories and secret plants, no formal charges 
have been made against the sect.  Nor have there been any 
arrests directly linked to the attack. 

But what the raids have revealed is that the cult was obsessed 
with things more dangerous than time-travelling. 

Investigators rummaging through the labyrinthine building of the 
sect's complex at Kamiku Isshiki, at the foot of Mt Fuji west of 
Tokyo, were silent on exact details of what they found. 

But most agreed on one thing. "This is no police matter.  This 
is a national security issue," as one put it. 

Day after day, the Japanese public have been fed hours of 
television footage and newspaper coverage of the details of the 
bizarre world of the Aum sect. 

Some aspects, like its pyramid structure resembling a national 
government, was straight out of pulp fiction.  Its "defence 
ministry" guarded the premises and kept an eye on would-be 
escapees.  Its "science ministry" ran chemical plants. 

Other aspects bordered on the incredible.  It repeatedly accused 
the U.S.military of spraying nerve gas on the cult complex from 
airplanes.  It said cellular phones were actually devices used 
in a government plot to control people's minds. 

Religious commentators said Asahara attracted his following from 
Japan's youth by appealing to their interest in the supernatural 
and the occult. 

His key prediction is that the world as we know it would end in 
1997 in an "Armageddon" of nerve gas and biological wars. 

In 1992, he predicted a nuclear war would break out and forced 
his followers to move to Okinawa.  Nothing happened. 

In last December's issue of the sect's monthly magazine entitled 
"Great Prophecy: the Shuddering End of the Century," Asahara 
said he travelled to the world in the year 2006 and talked to 
residents who said World War Three was over. 

"I asked the people around me what year it was," Asahara wrote 
in the magazine.  "They said it was the year 2006. Mankind had 
already experienced World War Three." 

In a strange contrast to such far-fetched claims, the sect has 
displayed an extremely realistic attitude over money. 

It demands that a devoted follower wishing to live in its 
ascetic community give every penny he or she has to the sect, 
including house, land and life savings.  The sect wants 
everything, and that includes stamps in desk drawers and 
telephone cards. 

REUTER 

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