With a good academic record behind him and a confidence gained by the standing he had achieved at his school (albeit a reign of fear rather than respect), Chizuo’s attention turned to his career. He again aimed high and declared his intention to become Prime Minister of Japan. To achieve this he planned to study at the prestigious Tokyo University, but he was dealt a crushing blow when his application was rejected. This affected him very badly, and he returned to his home town embittered and angry.
He did not stay down long though, and within a couple of months he made his way back to Tokyo. Here he settled down quite quickly. He met and married Tomoko, an intelligent college student and they began to have children together. She steadied the impulsive Chizuo, and together they began to plan a joint business – an acupuncture clinic to be run primarily by Chizuo. To help the young, newlywed couple achieve their goals, Tomoko’s family invested money in the venture.
THE CLINIC
An instant success, the clinic began to make money immediately. An average three-month course of herbal remedies and yoga techniques would set one of Chizuo’s clients back by around $7,000. And the reason the money rolled in so quickly? Chizuo was spending next to nothing on his ‘miracle cures’. Far from the expensive herbal remedies he claimed to be selling, his medicines were knocked up in minutes. One was proved to be nothing more than alcohol-soaked tangerine peel. The scam came to light eventually and a fine of $1,000 was imposed upon the clinic. Chizuo hardly noticed, having made almost $200,000 already.
So it seemed that Chizuo was on course to realize the dreams of wealth and prosperity that he was only able to imagine as a child. Yet, he was not entirely satisfied. He told Tomoko that his life needed meaning, and he began to study religion, fortune telling and meditation. After long periods of meditation, an enlightened Chizuo claimed that he had the gift to ‘see’ people’s auras and that he could identify evil. He decided that this new-found spirituality was the new course his life was going to take.
In this pursuit, he began to research both established faiths and unorthodox sects and cults. He encountered hundreds, but decided that an essentially Buddhist sect called Agonshu was most suited to his calling. In order to gain admission into the Agonshu, Chizuo enthusiastically began the 1,000-day training period of daily, lengthy meditation. However, it was a somewhat different and cynical Chizuo who completed this period of training, and he consequently turned away from Agonshu claiming that it had destroyed his peace of mind.
AUM ASSOCIATION OF MOUNTAIN WIZARDSV & SHOKO ASAHARA
After such disappointment, in spite of his extensive research into the many religions and sects of Japan, Chizuo decided that he would have to establish his own sect and subsequently founded the Aum Association of Mountain Wizards, officially Aum Incorporated. To finance this sect, Chizuo returned to making and selling his dubious herbal remedies.
A trickle of recruits initially registered for Aum yoga classes, but following a carefully placed advert in the Twilight Zone magazine which showed Chizuo levitating through meditation, members began to enrol in their hundreds. Soon Aum was receiving enough money to open schools nationwide, and Chizuo’s reputation as a caring and gentle spiritual leader was spreading.
Whilst on one of the spiritual retreats, which Chizuo found himself more and more at liberty to enjoy now that he could afford to leave the running of his schools in the capable hands of his deputies, he met a companion who informed him that Armageddon was imminent and that only a race pure in spirit could survive. As his friend spoke, Chizuo realized that this was the calling he had been waiting for. He was the chosen one, and he would lead this race to salvation. He returned back to his following, and declared that it was up to them to save the world. He also changed his name, to Shoko Asahara, as Chizuo Matsumoto was too plain a name for the saviour of their civilisation.
Shoko Asahara embraced this vocation with enormous energy and enthusiasm, travelling far and wide to spread his word and to meet other spiritual groups with whom he could ally. His followers were whole-heartedly supportive, and new recruits joined his school daily. An opportune photo with the Dalai Lama on a trip to India furthered his cause as he claimed that he had been selected by the Dalai Lama to reveal the true teachings of Buddha to the people of Japan. He was chosen in this mission, he said, as he had been given the mind of a Buddha.
Asahara came back and made personal appearances, wrote a book, and held classes in how to improve spiritual powers. Those who saw him came away convinced of the amazing results and talked wildly of how he had helped them to reveal their untapped potential. Realizing his own potential, Shoko Asahara soon declared that in fact he was closing down the Aum Association of Mountain Wizards, and opening instead the Aum Supreme Truth. What had begun as a simple yoga school which cultivated psychic ability was to become a global religion.
AUM SUPREME TRUTH
The most fundamental conviction of the Aum Supreme Truth, was its belief in the forthcoming Armageddon and the absolute certainty that only those who achieved spiritual enlightenment through the teachings of Shoko Asahara could survive the ever-nearing disaster. The payments flooded in from Japanese citizens who wanted to hear and learn from the teachings of Shoko Asahara and in so doing, safeguard their place when the day of reckoning came.
As Asahara’s power and influence spread even further, so his already-slipping grasp on reality began to fade into oblivion. He was no longer just taking money from those who came to hear him preach but, for extortionate sums, offering them the chance to partake in ceremonies such as drinking his blood, which had magical powers, and selling them vials of his used bath water, or clippings of his body hair.
The membership figures for Aum Supreme Truth in Japan had reached 1,500 by the end of 1987, and a new office was opening in America, entitled Aum USA. Joining fees, annual ‘course costs’, and all the additional donations offered by the faithful ensured that Shoko Asahara’s mission could keep on expanding. In 1988, in a location at the foot of Mount Fuji, the live-in headquarters of the Aum Supreme Truth was constructed. Here, for a fee of $2,000 per week, followers came to listen to Shoko Asahara, receive one meal a day, sleep on the floor, be encouraged to join Aum, and sever any contact with any non-members, be they friends or family. The ‘truly faithful’ even moved in permanently, offering up their savings, their estates, and all their material possessions to the greater good of Aum and Shoko Asahara.
REJECTION
The only disadvantage of Aum’s ever-increasing wealth was the taxation levied upon it, so Shoko Asahara tried to register Aum with official religious status which would mean that he would be awarded substantial tax relief. At first the application was rejected. The status was only granted to religious groups which were run according to certain guidelines and word had spread about Aum separating parents from their children and punishing rule-breaking with food and sleep deprivation. Under the Japanese Religious Corporation Law therefore, Aum was not worthy of the concessions. The rejection infuriated Shoko Asahara and he consequently set his followers the task of hounding government officials, making threatening phone calls and writing threatening letters. When Asahara involved lawyers, who claimed that the officials were in violation of the religious freedom laws, the application was finally accepted and the heavy taxes alleviated.