Japan Sect Uses Pain to Impel Faith

They sleep as little as three hours a night, eat boiled tubers and thread strings through their noses as cleansing rituals. They pay for the privilege of drinking their guru’s bathwater; a bit of his blood costs $10,000.

They work long hours free and are badgered to sign over their possessions. If they try to leave, they have been confined in cargo containers, sometimes handcuffed, to atone for their sin.

This all may sound like hell. But to followers of the Aum Supreme Truth in Japan and Russia--the target of a huge Japanese probe into links with deadly nerve gas attacks in Tokyo’s subways--it is the road to salvation and sainthood.

Life inside the highly secretive sect--as described by former followers, religion experts and the group’s own newsletters--is one of physical hardship, painful religious rituals, mystical practices and a bombardment of teachings of Shoko Asahara, the sect’s 40-year-old bearded and partially blind guru.

Yet few of the estimated 10,000 members in Japan or 30,000 in Russia appear to have defected. Members say it is because the sect, based on Buddhist and yogic practices, brought them improved health and spiritual enlightenment.

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One member, identified only by his Buddhist name of Vajira Tiku Shuna, said Japan’s fierce competition and pressure to succeed depressed him so much he contemplated suicide, even though he successfully entered the physics department of the most elite school in Japan, Tokyo University.

But through Asahara’s teachings on the oneness of all, “I felt relieved from the pain by changing my perspective on life,” he wrote in a sect publication.

Former members paint a chilling picture of psychological indoctrination instilled through poor nutrition, sleep deprivation, mind-control techniques and enforced isolation from the outside world. Access to family and friends--even newspapers and TV--is prohibited.

“Change of diet, deprivation of sleep, subjection to physical and psychic strain put a person in a hypnotic state,” wrote Yuri Polishchuk, a professor with the Psychiatry Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. At a seminar on “Totalitarian Sects in Russia” last year, he said the growing influence of such groups is “a sign of society’s illness.”

Irina Tarasova, a 27-year-old kindergarten teacher, says she “lost” her husband, Vladimir, to the Moscow sect a year ago. The former wrestler and radio engineer calls her from time to time--including a 3 a.m. call Thursday--usually to solicit money.

“I can’t speak with him anymore because he uses the language of a 5-year-old, and if you contradict anything he says, he hangs up,” the distraught wife said.

Her husband tells her he feels no desire to come back home, but holds out that prospect if she will sign over all their possessions to the sect. Before he left, Tarasova’s husband forced them into debt by giving all their income to the sect and making purchases of necessities on credit. He quit his job to spend more time with other followers, then left home when the sect members demanded that he spend all his time with them.

In Japan--where the sect has come under suspicion of releasing sarin nerve gas in Tokyo’s subways Monday, an incident that killed 10 and afflicted more than 5,000 commuters--members tend to be in their 20s and 30s and range from people looking for ways to cure medical problems to brilliant scientists from the nation’s best universities. Among other things, the sect recruits by passing out flyers to join yoga clubs, learn the Chinese breathing method of chi gong or develop supernatural powers--all of which are attracting increasing interest here.

The sect’s name is often omitted from the innocuous-looking flyers. One of them, offering to improve powers of concentration through chi gong and yoga, says: “Won’t you come once and try it? It’s absolutely fun.”

One woman said her son began his association through his university’s yoga club--an activity she thought perfectly normal. But he began to spend more time with the group, and when she and her husband went to consult with police, he left the house and moved to a Supreme Truth compound.

In Russia, followers get “merit points” for bringing prospective members to the sect’s apartment-temples for proselytizing sessions. They go to subway stations and press people to come and listen to discussions.

Tarasova’s husband last year registered their 6-year-old daughter.

Once recruits join, they begin a grueling regime.

Yoshihiro Ito, an attorney for former members and families in Japan trying to get relatives to leave the group, said followers are commonly awakened at 6:30 a.m. after three to five hours of sleep.

The day’s first task is a cleansing technique similar to those used in some forms of Indian yoga. They flush their noses with warm water, often threading a string from one nostril through their mouths, or sometimes from their mouths to their stomachs. Some former members say they were told to drink five liters of water and vomit it up. The process is painful, even by otherwise rapturous accounts of the group in its newsletter.

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In one article, Hiroaki Fujiwara, a Kyoto construction employee, said he suffered from allergies, was overweight and weak. He joined the group, began the string routine and drank a mixture of warm saltwater and lemon that was so vile he initially could not hold it down.

Other rituals left him temporarily unconscious, with a high fever and near paralysis.

“It was so painful, but I told myself this was happening because I had so much bad karma and I have to get rid of this by feeling the pain,” he said. “But after four weeks, my body became very flexible, my apathy is gone and I feel more stable mentally. Before, I had to go to the doctor every two months, but since I started this practice two years ago, I haven’t gone once.”

Members eat only once or twice a day, meager meals of root vegetables and unprocessed rice. A 23-year-old woman rescued this week when police staged a massive raid on Supreme Truth’s compound in Yamanashi prefecture said she was given only one banana and a health drink every day. Ito said they also are made to eat spoiled food because of the sect’s frugality--one reason so many seem physically weak.

Only top sect officials are allowed to eat meat or fish, and the fare seems to have gotten even more meager the last few years, Ito said.

By day, members engage in yogic training and listen to lectures and tapes by Asahara. They engage in construction work around the compound.

Ito said Asahara’s preoccupation with money seems to have escalated in the last year. Members are told certain “sacred goods” will help them reach enlightenment--and are charged huge amounts of money for them. Bathwater and blood specimens, supposedly from the Venerated Master, are sold. An electrode cap said to heighten concentration by rendering brain waves flat rents for $10,000 and sells for $100,000. But many members buy the goods to aid them in a fierce competition up the Supreme Truth hierarchy, Ito said.

The abduction of Kitoshi Kariya, the notary public whose disappearance triggered the raids on Supreme Truth facilities this week, was connected to money. His sister, a member, was being pressured to sign over her brother’s land and assets. But when he confronted the group about it he was dragged into a van and carried away, witnesses said. He is still missing.

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In recent years, the sect has also begun to use medicines and drugs, Ito said. Former members describe being forced to ingest hallucinogens or powerful laxatives.

Ito said Asahara’s religious preaching, or the various yogic methods used, were not the problem. “The problem is that people who try to leave are coerced into coming back,” he said.

According to Japanese press accounts, a 29-year-old nurse tried unsuccessfully to leave the Yamanashi compound twice. The first time she was confined in a cargo container with no fan and nearly suffocated, she said. The second time she was handcuffed in the container.

In Russia, Irina Tarasova has begun to doubt whether she will ever get back the husband she once knew.

“Hope dies last, but I have very little hope left,” she said.

Watanabe reported from Tokyo and Williams from Moscow. Megumi Shimizu and Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau and Emily Harris of The Times’ Moscow Bureau also contributed to this report.