Originally appeared in the Boston Book Review
(Date Approximate)
Robert J. Lifton's new book, "Destroying the World to
Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global
Terrorism," is a study of the Japanese group that attacked the Tokyo
subway system with poison gas in 1995. Previous books include "Thought
Reform and the Psychology of Totalism; A Study of Brainwashing in China,"
"Death In Life: Survivors of Hiroshima" and "The Nazi Doctors:
Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide."
Altered states resulted from intense forms of religious
practice -- especially from the oxygen deprivation bought about by yogic
rapid-breathing exercises -- and, later on, from the use of drugs like LSD. But
they were all attributed to the guru's unique spiritual power and so were considered
indicators of one's own spiritual progress. There was nothing more important to
disciples than to hold on to those mystical experiences, for which purpose they
could numb themselves to immediate evidence of violence around them -- or join in
that violence.
"Destroying
the World to Save It"
HB: "Destroying the World to Save It" seems to be
a kind of culminating work for you. It brings together so many of your
concerns.
RJL: It isn't that I decided that now I'll do a culminating
work; it was rather my encountering Aum Shinrikyo and sensing very quickly it
seemed to live out all the horrors that I've been studying in one way or
another.
HB: How well-known in Japan was Aum Shinrikyo prior to the
poison gas?
RJL: It was very visible and, at the same time, not
well-known at all. It was visible in that it was aggressive and dramatic, and
Asahara was a television personality who had various brushes with the law. On
the other hand, when the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway took place, Japanese
scholars were inundated with phone calls and requests for information and very
few them knew much about the group.