Robert Jay Lifton: Destroying the World to Save It
reviewed by Lessley Anderson

During the morning commute hours of March 20, 1995, a poisonous nerve gas called Sarin was released in a Tokyo subway train, killing eleven and injuring five thousand. Traced back to a Japanese religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo, a bizarre story emerged of a blind, meglomaniac guru, and the followers who killed for him. In Aum ideology, cult members prepared for Armageddon, in which a godless society would be purified. Meanwhile, members of Aum’s inner circle tried to speed up the process. The story of how and why the cult used of weapons of mass destruction to bring about an apocalypse is the subject of Robert Jay Lifton’s Destroying the World to Save It, (Metropolitan Books).

Lifton, a psychologist whose body of work includes a book on Nazi doctors, aims to draw attention to the serious threat posed by cults like Aum in an age of techno and bio warfare. Besides Sarin, Aum also tried its hand at germ warfare and nuclear weapons acquisitions, albeit unsuccessfully. It manufactured guns, narcotics, and was planning to smuggle Sarin into the U.S. inside ice sculptures. By exploring this history, the psychology behind it, and the apocalyptic cultural climate of post-WWII Japan, Destroying the World is a case study designed to help you spot killing cults before it’s too late.

There’s nothing wrong with Lifton’s project. But most readers, myself included, will read the book for a juicy story of Aum’s weird world — the sci-fi contraptions, LSD rituals, and killing hospitals that were described in the press following the attack. It’s all there, but buried in pages of Psych 101-type passages like, "No adult is a mere product of childhood," from the chapter on the guru’s early years.

If you’re dedicated enough to slog through the psychobabble, however, there are some goodies. A description of Aum’s chief scientist, Hideo Murai, for instance, paints a disturbing portrait. A successful surgeon, Murai’s goodbye to his family consisted of handing his mother a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He then joined Aum to build electroshock equipment, special headgear designed to channel the guru’s brainwaves,and a revolving bed designed to "enhance spiritual emancipation."