Armageddon, and who would be left.
From 1989 Asahara taught that a final war was coming, first in the 1990s and then imminently, and that only Aum practitioners would survive it. The doctrine shifted from surviving the catastrophe to bringing it about — a change the group never announced and its ordinary members largely did not know had happened.
The Armageddon teaching changed shape twice and the membership was not told. It began in 1989 as survivalism: a war is coming, our practice will carry us through it. After Aum's humiliating defeat in the 1990 Diet elections — twenty-five candidates, all crushed — it hardened into hostility toward the society that had rejected it. By 1993 an inner group had concluded that the war was to be started rather than survived, and had begun trying to produce botulinum, anthrax and then sarin. Ordinary members continued to practise yoga and recite mantras throughout, which is why the arrests in 1995 produced genuine shock inside the group as well as outside it.
The same ground, other faiths
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