The following are true stories and newspaper articles published regarding Mahikari:
Sect Brain Conditioning Alleged Japanese World Rule Is Sect's Aim Pendant Connects and Protects What They Say... Six Find New Life After Leaving Mahikari Family Destroyed by Group Influence, Says Mother
Sect Brain Conditioning AllegedThe West Australian - October 18, 1997By Leeroy BettiHe left the cult after five of its most promising young members, wearing pendants meant to protect them, died in a car accident returning home from a Canberra Mahikari center. His faith was shaken when the accident was blamed on the members. Mr. Greenwood, 49, said it took several years to realize his thinking had been gradually conditioned. "At first they say come and go as you like," he said. "You don't need to believe everything." Then pressure was exerted to censor members' reading material and they were encouraged to do more for the cult. "They start saying, 'You have such severe karma, if you don't erase it you will die a terrible way," he said. "You become more involved and it becomes more severe until every waking moment is amounting to, 'What can I do for the organization?'" The cult believed everyone was possessed by spirits and performed what was called spirit investigations. The person investigated, by receiving light to the forehead, often writhed and the minister giving light spoke to the spirit. People sometimes babbled in unknown languages similar to what occurred in some Pentecostal churches. Mr. Greenwood, who lives in rural New South Wales, said those who joined Sukyo Mahikari were nice people who wanted to do something good for the world. Many did not know the full teachings, which were revealed slowly. Some had not been translated from Japanese. He had made many trips to Japan as a cult member and was taken to a village where Jesus Christ was said to have died. He found in Japan that Sukyo Mahikari was only an offshoot of the cult founded by Yoshikazu Okada. He found later that Mr. Okada had been strategist in the Rape of Nanking during World War II, in which about 200,000 Chinese were killed and 20,000 women were raped. Mr. Greenwood has written a book, All The Emperor's Men, in which he claims that the people behind the cult aim to create a Japanese global theocracy. |
Japanese World Rule Is Sect's AimThe West Australian - October 23, 1997At the lower levels, the organization was not evil or negative at all. It gave me many positive life experiences, similar to any learned in a Christian religion. However, the main emphasis was on Japan. God's representative on Earth was Sukuinushisama (the founder of Mahikari) and then Oshienushisama (his daughter and current leader of Sykyo Mahikari). From that, everything followed that anything Japanese was divine as well. The big shock for me was realizing we were being influenced to obey and worship Japan and the Emperor, thus leading to world domination by the Japanese. This is still my biggest concern about this organization and all cults coming out of Japan. Millions upon millions of dollars are pouring into Japan each year from all around the world and little is reciprocated. The organization does not assist local communities financially or materially at all. We were told your problems and suffering are due to your deep sins and impurities and you had to make greater efforts to erase these. This involved making more monetary donations to Mahikari and putting more time into "serving God" by giving Light and leading people to Mahikari. One scored "spiritual points" by getting more people to be members of the sect. The biggest problem with questioning members is that they are still influenced and will see the world with distorted eyes. Last year I was vigorously defining the organization, the people and Japan one day; on the next I was on the "other side" and could see Mahikari from outside for the first time. The suddenness of change, due to reading Garry Greenwood's book, sent me into a state of shock from which it took more than two weeks to recover. Andris Tebecis (the leader of Sukyo Mahikari in Austriala) will spout the "party line" no matter what is said or done. He is a smooth talker with answers for all occasions. He will defend his position in the organization because he is treated like royalty wherever he goes. He is waited on hand and foot. All his travel fares, food and accommodations are supplied by people in the organization as they believe he is also a representative of God on Earth and by serving him they are also serving God. I was completely convinced that I was being protected by God while wearing omitama and giving Light to people, protected from all the evil and revengeful spirits that were out to get me due to activieis in my past lives. This was "proved" to me through "spirit investigations" where spirits spoke and told of my past misdemeanors. This walled me in so much that I was filled with fear and was never able to even contemplate leaving Mahikari as I believed I would cease to exist in the normal human form if I wasn't wearing omitama. I have since discovered that life goes on without it, and it is even better. Guilt is another remnant of the strong influence of the organization. I felt guilty at my lack of efforts for God, no matter how much I was doing. It got to a stage where, if I read about an unfortunate person in the paper, I would feel responsible for their predicament because I hadn't gone to give them Light and Salvation. I felt guilty that I hadn't brought my family to Mahikari or any of the people I had contact with. This greatly hindered normal socializing for me. We were influenced in areas of health. We didn't immunize our babies as it was injecting them with toxins and poisons. We regarded doctors and medicine as obsolete as Mahikari had all the answers and Light would solve all problems. We were told not to have mercury fillings in our teeth as it poisoned the brain, and so on. I had a dim view of Western medicine, education, religion and political systems due to the indoctrination I had received. The "Teachings" were worded so that everything that was not Japanese was inferior and Mahikari had come to save the world just in time before the "Baptism of Fire" (Armageddon). We were told priests would burn in hell because they were teaching the "back-to-front" way and had not awakened to God's new revelations. It was our duty to convert priests and people in positions of power to Mahikari in order to save the world. My years in Mahikari have left me with a variety of experiences, many of them positive. However, life outside it has a sense of freedom which I am enjoying. I extend a warning to the people of WA (West Australia) to be wary of the Mahikari organization and others that are like it. It has no outward signs of indoctrination or brainwashing, but they must be there, as my view of everything was distorted. |
Pendant Connects and ProtectsThe West Australian - October 25, 1997People can have the pendant (omitama) only after paying up to $175 for a three-day lecture to become a member. The spiritual connection, or cord, to the Su God will break if members do not make their monthly omitama donation - tied to the value of the Japanese yen. The pendant, containing a piece of paper with a spiritual inscription, allows members to radiate the light of the Su God from their hands as far as they want to send it. Members are taught that their pendants are more precious than their lives. The do not have the Su God's protection without it and they are not to take it off unless it is essential. "One can never know when an earthquake will occur or a fire break out," the cult textbook says. To deliberately wet the pendant, drop it, open it or allow it to touch bedding or be X-rayed will sever the spiritual cord to the Su God. Dropping the pendant is a sign of impending danger, an attack by evil spirits or wavering faith in Sukyo Mahikari. Allowing it to touch an impure place, such as below the navel, is the same as dropping it. Members are taught to sew an "omitama pocket" inside bras or singlets so the pendant does not drop to the ground if its chain breaks. It must be wrapped in layers of plastic and paper, changed every four weeks, and a cloth bag to protect it from water or perspiration. Members must wash their hands and rinse their mouth before re-wrapping it. The pendant should be removed when a member takes a shower, bath, swim, plays vigorous sport or has an X-ray. Any breaches must be reported to cult leaders, whose advise should be accepted. |
What They Say...The West Australian - October 25, 1997
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Six Find New Life After Leaving MahikariThe West Australian - October 29, 1997By Leeroy Betti![[ladies]](images/ladies.jpg)
Six former members of the Sukyo Mahikari organization have defied teachings
that they would be beset by disaster if they failed to pay monthly fees,
left or opened pendants that protected them from negative spirits.
Now says Rose Pritchard: "We feel so free of all the guilt and fear they put on you. "It just affected the family life so much, it always took a back seat to serving Mahikari." Ms Pritchard clutched one of the self-help books the six were advised against reading but now consume with a passion to blaze their own unique paths to God. Six months after leaving the controversial cult, they meet weekly to help each other put aside teachings that sect experts say lead to mind control. They were taught that their divine pendants were more important than life itself. They also underwent survival training and had emergency evacuation packs in their homes in case of any "disaster that could happen before the end of the century." Dorothy Wright, 58, shunned medicine after she became convinced that organization's communion of receiving divine light helped her recover from a spinal operation. "When I finally got to a doctor, he said, 'You've got cancer'," she said. "I thought that diarrhea I had suffered for a year was 'beautiful cleansing,' but, of course, it wasn't. Ines Hedger, who also suffered from cancer, said cult leaders taught that the disease resulted from a family's deep sins and impurities, and that needing surgery meant they had committed a "sin of the blade." Standing in what was once a $3,000 shrine room, recently converted to the chatter of a sewing machine, Jessie Gibbs recalled how regional cult leader Andris Tebecis and Paul Taylor once rushed from interstate to find out what spiritual calamity had caused her statue of God to fall from a cleaning table. "I was living alone and thought terrible things would happen to me," Mrs. Gibbs said. The women said Premier Richard Court and hid wife, Jo, were nice people always treated with great respect at the organization's headquarters. "Like we all have been, they are being conned too," Mrs. Gibbs said. June Russell said they were taught that men were "upstream" and women were "downstream." She left after a leader phoned her one night after hearing that she doubted the teachings of the organization. "He said, 'So you don't believe in the supremacy of Oshinesama (the cult's Japanese leader)?' I said No. He said 'Oh well, that's it then.' He washed his hands of me," she said. The women said they had spoken out in the interests of people in the cult and other's who might join, warning they were taught that to question the organization's beliefs meant that they were disturbed by spirits. Meditation, a practice they all embrace now, was dangerous and allowed negative spirits into their bodies, they were taught. "Did we really believe all that rubbish?" Sandra Mitchinson said. |
Family Destroyed by Group Influence, Says MotherThe West AustralianHer husband of 13 years walked out on her and their four children 18 months after joining the cult. He tried repeatedly to impress the cult's beliefs on his family, despite Helena's wish not to be involved. "He continually placed (the cult's) priorities before his family," she said. Helena's husband sometimes slept at the cult's Mt Lawley centre to guard it. He even suggested selling their house to raise money for the cult. He also opposed conventional medicine, favouring the healing power he believed his cult pendant (omitama) gave him. "One of our children came down with tonsillitis and needed treatment. My husband strongly objected to seeking medical advice, or using antibiotics," Helena said. "When the boys wanted to go to the beach, he said he would not be able to rescue them if anything happened because he could not get this omitama wet. "He gave me that book (Mahikari, Thank God for the Answers). I never read it. I said: "You've got four gods here, our children." "The last straw was when he would come home he would do all this bowing and clapping and the kids were laughing and mimicking him. I said: 'I've had enough." After relationship counselling, she asked him to leave and make a choice "for everybody's sake". "I'm angry not one of them (other cult members) showed concern for the little gods he left behind," she said. Helena said her husband's behaviour continued to affect the family's lives after the split. It happened when one of the children was taken to hospital with a broken arm. "He turned up to casualty and did his clapping and his prayers," she said. "Our son turned his head to me and said: "Oh, no, not here. Here we go again." "I said: 'Either you have come to be with your son or take your religion and leave." "He left." Helena, whose children asked her not to use her full name, did not want to apportion blame. She wanted to share her concerns. |
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