Aleph: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

What Aum became, still practising and still reporting to the state.

Aleph is the name Aum Shinrikyo took in February 2000. It apologised to victims, accepted a compensation obligation, withdrew some of Asahara's Vajrayana lectures from teaching, and continued: meditation, sutra recitation, retreats, communal centres. From about 2007 a majority faction restored Asahara to the centre of practice, which is when Joyu Fumihiro left with a few hundred people to found Hikari no Wa, a smaller group that presents itself as a philosophy circle rather than a religion. Japanese law does not treat Aleph as a new organisation. It is the same legal body, under continuous observation, required to report its members, its money and its buildings twice a year.

On the record

Aleph is legally the same organisation that carried out the 1995 sarin attacks. It has been under an observation disposition by the Public Security Examination Commission since February 2000, under the 1999 Act on the Control of Organizations Which Have Committed Acts of Indiscriminate Mass Murder, which obliges it to report its membership, assets and facilities to the Public Security Intelligence Agency. The agency reports roughly 1,600 members and about 30 facilities across 15 prefectures. Further restrictive dispositions have been issued against Aleph in recent years for failures to report. It pays compensation to victims of the 1994 and 1995 attacks under a court-supervised scheme.

Why it is filed this way

Whether Aleph is a successor or a continuation is not an open question in Japanese law — it is a continuation, and that finding is what makes the observation regime applicable. Whether it is the same thing religiously is argued: Aleph says it renounced the crimes, the state says the devotion that produced them is intact.

Active in Japan and, according to the Public Security Intelligence Agency, in Russia. Hikari no Wa, the 2007 split under Joyu Fumihiro, is a separate and smaller body and is likewise subject to reporting requirements.

DeitiesAsahara remains the object of devotion for the main body, which is the reason the state keeps the group under observation. Aleph's own public material foregrounds meditation, victim compensation and the legal proceedings, and says relatively little about him; the Public Security Intelligence Agency describes internal practice as retaining absolute devotion to the founder. Those two descriptions do not agree, and a reader should know that both exist.

Founded2000 CE · Tokyo, Japan

FounderJoyu Fumihiro, as representative at the renaming

AfterlifeAs Aum: rebirth through the realms, shaped by karma and by practice.

TextsAsahara's lecture transcripts, in restricted internal circulation · Aleph's own public statements and the Aleph website

The map

Aleph’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

1984 CE Aum Shinrikyo 2000 CE Aleph

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

The practice Asahara taught is still the path. This is the position of the main body of Aleph and the reason the 2000 reform did not hold. The meditation, the stages and the cosmology are the ones Aum taught; what Aleph says it has abandoned is the apocalyptic conclusion drawn from them. held by most Go deeper — context →

Aleph says the crimes were the acts of individuals. The state says the group is the same group. Aleph's public material treats 1994 and 1995 as the work of members who have since been tried and executed, and points to the compensation it pays. The Public Security Intelligence Agency treats Aleph as the same organisation under a different name, with the same object of devotion. A reader is entitled to both statements and to the fact that they conflict. ⚖ contested within Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

A Asahara, after the execution. He was hanged on 6 July 2018. What his images and recordings are now used for inside Aleph is the single disputed fact about the group: Aleph says they were withdrawn, the Public Security Intelligence Agency says devotion to him is intact and cites that finding as grounds for continued observation. Domain Whatever authority the practice still rests onStanding The point on which Aleph and the Japanese state give directly opposed accounts Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

Meditation at the centre. Seated practice, sutra recitation and yoga in an ordinary rented hall. There are around thirty such facilities across fifteen prefectures, and the state knows where each of them is because the law requires Aleph to say. When daily at the centres, with seminars through the yearWho members, and enquirers at the public sessions Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Buddhism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Jainism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Christianity — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Branch Aleph — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what Aleph shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

Public Security Intelligence Agency, Ministry of Justice, Japan, Aum topic pages (rendered) where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.