Inside the Village of Aum Shinrikyo

KAMIKUISHIKI, Japan -- In the foothills of Mount Fuji, Aum Shinrikyo cult members live in a world of yoga and meditation, listening to their venerated master, and chanting his words. They kneel in the lotus position in a room filled with the sound of chimes and the smell of incense.


Outside their sanctuary, it looks like an armed camp. Swarms of heavily armed police surround the sect's headquarters in a pastural area about 150 kilometers west of Tokyo. Authorities have arrested more than 100 sect members during the past four weeks on various charges, including kidnapping former members, and they have seized tons of dangerous chemicals in the wake of the nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway system.


Despite growing tension, caused by the sect leader's prediction that disaster would strike Tokyo this past weekend, life goes on inside Aum Shinrikyo. "Tension? It's rather calmness which is in my mind," said a woman who joined the group four months ago. "You know it's not like something when you do sports or when you eat something very delicious. It's something more deep and calm, yes, it's very different from the ordinary world."


Go inside Aum Shinrikyo's headquarters and you find another world, where every room in every building has a piano-sized air-filtering machine, constantly humming in a corner -- a safeguard against a future attack of nerve gas, say followers, who believe the leader's prediction that Armageddon will occur in 1997.


Everyone takes off their shoes before entering Satyam 10, the spiritual center of a sect that has attracted thousands of followers around the world, compared to just 10 in 1987 when an obscure son of a carpet maker, Shoko Asahara, founded the group. He is no longer present here, but still appears in hundreds of photos, wearing a purple tunic. They line the sect's buildings, plastering every wall, hanging from the ceilings, pasted on phone handles, cabinets, sewing machines, even electrical outlets. His bearded presence is the most eerie part of going inside Aum Shinrikyo, aside from the people who live here. They are obsessed with him.


"He's perfect," said Yasuo Hiramatsu, a 30-year-old monk. "He can explain life and death, and reincarnation." Yasuo dropped out of college and ended his mechanical engineering studies to join the sect and practice its mixture of eastern mysticism and the occult. At 23, he embarked on a quest for salvation by denying himself earthly pleasures like food and sex. Sect members eat once a day and sex is taboo. Nevertheless, many are happy. "I would like to stay near my master," said the young woman, acknowledging that Asahara has disappeared since the subway attack. "Spiritually, we are very close."


On the second floor of Satyam 10, a flight of stairs leads into a room full of sewing machines used by members to make their own clothes.


Everyone has a job working for Aum Shinrikyo and they live on the premises, but they get paid little. That's because sect members have disconnected themselves from the material world. They have to give up all their property to the sect.


"It is almost like a business," said one former member, who broke away after disagreeing with Asahara's tactics. "He talks about religion to trick and to brainwash people."


Whether that is true or not -- and, of course, the group denies it -- Aum Shinrikyo is a multimillion-dollar enterprise, producing computers sold in downtown Tokyo. The sect also churns out thousands of books at its printing plant and produces videotapes at its sophisticated studio. The material is shipped to branches in Moscow, Bonn and New York.


What the sect was doing with a witches brew of chemicals, nobody knows for sure. The police suspect they were making sarin, the deadly nerve gas responsible for killing 12 people in the subway. Adding to their fears, the police have uncovered a secret underground laboratory and found a match between the sarin residues left in the subway and on the cult's property.


So far, nobody has been charged with the attack. The evidence is no more than circumstantial. What remains is a community of believers trying to follow a man who claims he can levitate himself and predict the future. Whether his group attacked the subways system remains to be proved, but one thing is certain: Asahara has such a hold over his followers, they would do anything to please him.


The siege of the compound is likely to continue until the police find Asahara and more evidence. In the meantime, his followers are trying to obey his commands and to achieve enlightenment.


Some cult experts believe the police are bringing down so much pressure on the group, by seizing their children, that it could snap, like the Branch Davidians did in Waco, Texas.


"Well, it appears that the Japanese officials are dealing with cult members in the same way that the FBI was dealing with David Koresh's organization, treating them like criminals, or treating them like hostages, as opposed to treating them like members of a mind-control cult," said Steve Hassan, an expert on cults and counselor for ex members. He said that if Aum Shinrikyo's members perceive "the outside evil world is coming after us," the police crackdown will only solidify their beliefs.


"It seems to me that they're backing them further and further into a corner, where the only out is death and it frightens me horribly," Hassan added, during a recent interview with CBS News. "They're allowing him no out. No way out."


The sect's spokesman, Fumihiro Joyu, said he considers some of the police actions "completely illegal" and an independent lawyer in Tokyo concurred that the authorities have violated the sect's right to due process. "I don't know what they are trying to do," said Joyu, "but what they are doing will result in nothing but religious persecution. In other words, destruction of our religious community."