Underground (44 page)

MURAKAMI:
Maybe the plans were just sloppy to begin with
.

That might well be
[laughs]
. But what can you do? You just have to accept it. Businesses in Japan are more or less the same, aren’t they?

MURAKAMI:
But no business would build a dam only to turn around and destroy it
.

No, they probably wouldn’t go that far.

MURAKAMI:
Did anybody complain about these inefficient ways?

Some people spoke up, some didn’t.

For a time I worked in the Science Group under Murai on the development of the Cosmo cleaner. A giant air-cleaning machine, in other words.

In connection with Cosmo cleaners, I was transferred to the newly formed Defense Ministry in 1994. Really something, isn’t it? The name
[laughs]
. From construction to science to the Defense Ministry. I didn’t take it all that seriously. I never thought we were trying to create our own state or anything.

I worked in Cosmo-cleaner maintenance. We made about sixty giant cleaners you attached to the sides of buildings. These developed into indoor Cosmo cleaners and activated Cosmo cleaners. We were in charge of maintaining them all. Truth be told, maintaining them was harder than building them. There were always problems—fluids leaking, faulty motors.

MURAKAMI:
Cosmo cleaners were used at Satyam No. 7, weren’t they, where the sarin plant was located?

I wasn’t allowed in there. If I had been, I wouldn’t be sitting here today. On the day of the gas attack, I was at Satyam No. 2 in Kamikuishiki, waiting for the police raid. At that point we already knew they would be forcing their way in to investigate. A few media people were there, too, I think. But by 9
A.M.
the police still hadn’t come, so I thought, “Today’s not the day,” and went back to work. I turned on the radio and heard about something out of the ordinary happening in the Tokyo subway. We weren’t supposed to listen to the radio, but I did anyway
[laughs]
. I talked to the colleague next to me about it. “They’ll be blaming Aum, too,” we decided. The police raid burst into our place two days later.

MURAKAMI
:
Mr. Inaba, do you admit now that one faction of Aum did indeed carry out the gas attack?

I do. There are some parts I can’t fully fathom, but since the people involved have confessed and are on trial, I believe that’s what happened.

MURAKAMI:
What are your feelings about Asahara’s level of responsibility?

If he is responsible then he must be judged according to the law. But as I said before, there is such a huge gap between the Asahara I have in my mind and the Asahara I see on trial … As a guru, or religious figure, he had something very genuine. So I’m reserving judgment.

Inside me, also, are many wonderful things I received since entering Aum Shinrikyo. Putting those aside, though, what is bad must be clearly seen as such, and that’s what I’m trying to do now. Inside me. And, honestly, I don’t know how things will develop or what the future holds for me.

Generally people have the impression that Buddhism and
Aum are completely different. Some people just simply classify Aum as a kind of mind control, but that’s far too simplistic. For me, it’s something I staked my whole life on during my twenties and thirties.

MURAKAMI:
Esoteric Tibetan ascetic practice involves a one-to-one relationship between guru and disciple and aims at absolute devotion, doesn’t it? But what about this, for instance: what started out as a wonderful discipline somehow begins to get strange along the way—in computer terms it would be like a virus infects the computer and its functions, which are then out of kilter. There’s no third party to halt this process
.

I don’t know about that.

MURAKAMI:
So there is a danger inherent in this, because it involves absolute devotion. This time you just happened not to be involved in the incident, but if we pursue the logic here, if your guru orders you to commit
po-a,
it means you must do it, right?

But every religion gets implicated in that kind of thing. Even if, say, I was ordered to do that, I don’t think I could have. Hmm … which means, maybe I wasn’t devoted enough
[laughs]
. I hadn’t given over my entire self. Or to turn it around, you could say I was still weak. And I’m the type of person who has to be convinced of things before I can move on. Too commonsensical, I suppose.

MURAKAMI:
So if you had been convinced, you might have carried it out? If they had said: “Mr. Inaba, you see, things are like this, and that’s why we have to commit
po-a.”
If they’d persuaded you, then what?

Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t. Hmm … it’s, well, hard to say.

MURAKAMI:
What I’m trying to understand is what place is given to the Self in Aum Shinrikyo doctrine. In your training, how much do you leave up to your guru, and how much do you decide for yourself? I’m still not clear on this, even after listening to you
.

In reality the Self can never be totally independent. There will always be some kind of intervention from outside. It’s affected by environmental factors, experiences, patterns of thought. So it’s not clear how far the pure Self extends. Buddhism begins with the realization that the Self that you believe is your Self is not the true Self. So Buddhism is perhaps the furthest you can get from mind control. It’s closer to Socrates’ idea that the wisest man knows he lacks wisdom.

MURAKAMI:
It’s possible to view the Self as divided into surface and depth—an unconscious, something like a black box. Some people feel it’s their mission to pry open that black box in search of the truth. This might be something close to the astral you discussed
.

Meditation is a method to reach the deepest part of your self. From a Buddhist perspective, deep within the subconscious lies each person’s essential sort of distortion. And that’s what it cures.

MURAKAMI
: I
think human beings should both open that black box and accept it as it is, otherwise it may turn dangerous. When I hear the statements of those who were arrested, though, it seems they couldn’t do this. They only analyzed things and left the intuitive part to someone else. Their way of looking at life became extremely static. So, when someone with great dynamism—an Asahara, for instance—tells them to do something, they can’t refuse
.

I’m not exactly sure I can grasp what you’re saying, but I think I know what yoy’re getting at. It’s essentially the difference between wisdom and knowledge.

But you have to understand that there are people who have nothing to do with this incident who are working as hard as they can for their personal growth, to reach salvation. Of course Aum did some terrible things, that’s undeniable, but there are people being arrested for minor offenses and being intimidated who don’t deserve that. For example, if I go out for a walk, the police will follow me. If I try to get a job, I’ll be harrassed. People who’ve left Aum facilities can’t even find places to live. The media just puts out its one-sided view. No wonder we find it harder and harder to trust the secular world.

They tell us if we abandon our beliefs they’ll accept us, but people who have taken vows have pure motives, they are, in a sense, emotionally weak. If they could stay at home, work as usual, and train to improve themselves, no one would say anything. But they can’t, and that’s why they enter the temporary, isolated state called renunciation. People like that have a resistance to the obstacles of the worldly life, to those problems.

The structure of Aum has changed quite a lot, in very basic ways. It might look like nothing’s changed, but there’s been an internal transformation. There’s a move to return to the way it was at the
beginning, where it began at the level of yoga. Having made the Founder’s child the new Leader, though, people might call that inexcusable and say we haven’t learned a thing.

MURAKAMI:
I’m not saying that, but if you don’t publicly reflect on what happened and show remorse, if you just continue as if nothing has happened, no one is going to believe you. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying: “That’s something other people did. The basic teachings of Aum are correct. We’re victims too.” There are dangerous elements within the essence of Aum, within the structure of your doctrine. Aum has the duty to say all this in a public statement. Do that, and no one would mind if you continued your own style of religious activities
.

Ever so slowly, incompletely, we’re trying to come up with a kind of interim report. It doesn’t completely sum up everything, but the media will never publish it anyway. If we made mistakes, well, we want people to point these out. But the Buddhist establishment won’t have anything to do with us, and remains silent.

MURAKAMI:
Isn’t that because you always stick to your own vocabulary and way of phrasing things? You have to speak in ordinary terms, ordinary logic, like you’re holding a normal conversation. If you make it sound like you’re talking down to people, nobody’s going to listen
.

Yes, it’s very difficult. But what would happen if we did speak in an ordinary way?
[laughs]
Since the media has made these one-sided attacks on us, no one would believe us, or they would just react in disgust. No matter what we say, when it appears in the media it’s always distorted. There’s not a single media outlet that would transmit our true feelings. No one comes like you have to really listen to us.

If you boil it all down, though, you arrive at the question of how critical the Founder
[Asahara]
is to this, and his real motives haven’t been revealed. As far as the gas attack goes, I think everything leads back to that. It’s asking a lot for us to explain the whole affair in a way that everyone would understand.

I’m still a member of Aum, but the people who have left Aum don’t think Aum is 100 percent bad, and those who remain don’t think it’s 100 percent correct. There are lots of people wavering. So it’s not like the media reports it, that the remaining members are all
dogmatic believers. Most of the really dogmatic devotees of Asahara have left.

Every member is deeply troubled. Some people who’ve left have come to me for advice, and we’ve talked about this. I think I’ve gained a little breathing space now, but there was a time when all I could think about was whether I’d be able to adjust to life outside.

At the moment I’m earning my living teaching children in their homes. The members here live as a community, helping each other out. The guys I live with are out working on construction sites. When they heard you were coming they wanted to meet you, but they couldn’t very well skip work
[laughs]
. Everyone’s just doing odd jobs. The guy next door, for instance, is a truck driver. He’s been doing it for quite some time. Of course if his company heard he was an Aum member no one would hire him, so he keeps it a secret at work.

Other than rent I hardly spend anything. I don’t watch TV. Meals are provided. No luxury items. Utilities take up a bit. We can get by on about 60,000 yen. College students use about 100,000 yen a month, don’t you think? All of us are living like this, just scraping by.

The media says Aum is involved in all kinds of business deals, but that’s not true. Of course the Aum-related company Aleph, Inc., is still in business, but since the police are interfering, it’s not easy to keep it going. Some renunciates are old people who can only work from home, and some are ill. We have to take care of them. Everyone has to work to make sure they can be fed and housed. So there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver as far as money is concerned.

MURAKAMI:
How are the Aum children you taught?

They’ve all gone back to the secular world and attend normal schools. Since you can’t raise children on a part-time job, their parents have all stopped being renunciates and are working full-time. I imagine it must have been hard for them to find work. I really don’t know much about how the kids are doing. In many cases they were forcibly separated from their parents.

Our way of teaching doesn’t involve hitting or any kind of violence. Our basic approach is to talk things through and use logic to persuade people. As renunciates, we have to follow our precepts
strictly, or else what we say won’t be very convincing. It’s like telling someone not to smoke while you’re sitting there puffing away. Who’s going to believe you? Children watch how adults act very closely. Some of the Aum children were taken to juvenile homes, and I imagine the people there must have had their hands full
[laughs]
.