Destroying the World to Save It
"With unusual access to former Aum members, Lifton has produced a study of the inner life of a modern millennial cult, offering a subtle portrait of how guru and disciples reinforce each other's wildest destructive fantasies. Lifton offers a sobering exploration of how Aum's guru, Shoko Asahara - charismatic leader, con man, madman - created a religion from a global stew of New Age thinking, ancient religious practices, and apocalyptic science fiction; of how he recruited scientists as disciples and set them to producing the "poor man's atomic bomb" (chemical and biological weapons). "Taking stock as well of Charles Manson, the Heaven's Gate cult, and the Oklahoma City bombers, Lifton argues that Aum Shinrikyo was not just a "nightmare of Japanese religion," but a global nightmare that revealed a world unexpectedly at risk."--BOOK JACKET.