• Membership has an
extremely high turnover rate.
Actual membership figures are really hard to come by.
Hopefully, the anecdotal evidence I can provide will be sufficient to
give you some idea of the turnover rate in Sukyo Mahikari membership.
The professional appearance of the official Sukyo Mahikari
websites and the promotional book by Dr. Tebecis perhaps give the
impression of a large and flourishing organization. However, Sukyo
Mahikari numbers are actually quite small.
In the 90s, the total worldwide membership of Sukyo Mahikari
was estimated at 500,000 with the majority of these members being in
Japan. According to discussions amongst former members on Japanese
discussion sites, membership numbers are dropping within Japan, and
some dojos are closing. More recent estimates suggest that the total
membership may now be closer to 200,000.
The figure reported by Sukyo Mahikari in 2004 was 530,000
members worldwide, but this figure is perhaps double the actual figure.
The organization regards ex-members as "sleeping", and includes them in
the membership count, for up to 5 years after they leave the
organization.
According to research published in 1991 by Catherine
Cornille, the total membership figure for all of Europe at that time
was about 10,000 (although the organization itself claimed double that
number), but the number may be considerably lower now. The Sukyo
Mahikari organization itself admitted to a drop-out rate of 70% in
Europe. I have no figures for centers in Africa, Asia, and South
America, but I believe some of these are quite large compared with
western countries.
Anecdotal evidence from US and Australian members who have
left Sukyo Mahikari fairly recently suggests that membership numbers
have dropped in both these countries over the last 20 years. That of
course means that the number of people leaving has exceeded the number
of new recruits. I have no evidence at all of membership patterns in
other countries, so everything below applies only to the US and
Australia.
One former member told me that, 14 years after she received
primary kenshu, she was the only one left of the people who attended
kenshu with her. Then she left, giving a drop-out rate of 100% for that
particular kenshu. When I left Sukyo Mahikari, 10 years after my
kenshu, about 8% of people from that group were still members.
I remember one particular kenshu during the time I was a
member, and remember looking around a year later to see how many of
those people were still active members. Only about 5% were still there.
In those days, the majority of new recruits would last less than a
year. A small percentage would still be members 5 years later, and an
extremely small percentage would make it to 20 years of membership.
Most of these would be the Mahikari staff (center leaders and doshis)
you see now. A surprising number of staff, after years of full-time
dedicated service, have eventually come to the conclusion that Sukyo
Mahikari is false and have left.
I've heard that, these days, new recruits are asked to
prepare very thoroughly for kenshu, and typically receive okiyome many
times before kenshu. From what I hear, this appears to have reduced the
drop-out rate, but also greatly reduced the recruitment rate.
From even just the above, I think we can assume that, for
every member you see now, at least 10 members have joined at
some stage and already left Sukyo Mahikari. Piecing together the little
information I do have suggests that, these days, the total membership
for the US and Australia, put together, is no more than two (or perhaps
three) thousand. These figures include children and young adults who
were born into the organization.
If any Sukyo Mahikari staff wish to supply more accurate
figures, I will be delighted to update the estimates I've presented
here.
Despite the unfortunate lack of firm data, I think that we
can safely assume that an awful lot of people have left Sukyo Mahikari
over the years... despite the kenshu promise that practicing Mahikari
would bring health, peace, and material prosperity... despite the
teachings that say that any criticism of Mahikari is the work of
disturbing spirits, and should be dealt with by increasing our divine
service... and despite the Goseigen (p. 161) warning that God
will surely manifest the phenomenon of Judgment clearly upon them
[people who reject Okada's teachings] at an unexpected moment and
carry out the Art of beating them to a pulp.
Incidentally, I've not heard of any of the many thousands of
former members being beaten to a pulp. If you do decide to join
Mahikari, don't be afraid to leave.
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• Experiences suggest
that mind control occurs in Mahikari.
It's easy to believe that members of a spiritual group are
affected by mind control if membership in that group leads to extreme
and obvious behaviour, such as wearing strange clothes, aggressive
soliciting of new members and funds, sudden lifestyle changes involving
isolation from mainstream society, or, in the most extreme cases,
torture, mass suicides, or murder. Mind control is harder to spot if
group members dress like everyone else, live and work in mainstream
society, and do nothing that is obviously outrageous. However, such
people may well be victims of exactly the same sort of mind control
techniques.
Fortunately, involvement in Sukyo Mahikari does not lead
ordinary members to violent, illegal, or deliberately deceptive
behaviour... it just uses up most of their spare time and money.
However, I believe that members' perceptions of reality and perceptions
of self are controlled just as thoroughly within Sukyo Mahikari as in
the more obviously dangerous groups.
It would take a whole book to substantiate that opinion.
This site contains only brief generalizations and a few examples of
mind control at work in Mahikari. For detailed discussions of how mind
control works, refer to books such as Steve Hassan's Combatting
Cult Mind Control, and Michael Langone's Recovery from Cults.
I see two levels of mind control within Sukyo Mahikari:
ordinary persuasion, and actual mind control. The ordinary persuasion
level of influence surrounds all of us every day. It includes things
like peer pressure, emotional manipulation, promises and threats,
restriction and distortion of information, group dynamics, and normal
socialization mechanisms. We all need to learn to deal with these types
of things, and do so (with varying degrees of success!) by deliberate
and conscious evaluation of the information and misinformation we see
and hear.
The second level, actual mind control itself, is the most
dangerous. The danger is that this level of influence affects our
subconscious directly, without our conscious brains having a chance to
evaluate and reject the input. Subliminal advertising would be a
familiar example of the sort of thing I mean (although, as far as I
know, this particular technique is not used within Sukyo Mahikari).
Research suggests that various activities and conditions
tend to switch off our active thinking and evaluative brain processes
(beta state) and encourage a receptive mental state (a light trance or
alpha state) in which information slips into our subconscious without
first being evaluated by our conscious brains. The subconscious mind
has enormous power, which can be either used or abused. Things like
self-hypnosis, speed learning, and neuro-linguistic programming attempt
to harness these powers for our benefit... with our conscious consent.
Mind control uses the same powers to control us without our consent, as
we are not even aware that this process is occurring.
I hasten to add that, with the possible exception of the
highest leaders, no members of Sukyo Mahikari deliberately use mind
control techniques. I believe that the day-to-day practices encouraged
by the teachings of Mahikari simply have that effect.
For example, one method of inducing a light trance is fixed
concentration on a single thing. This is something members do for 10
minutes, with their eyes closed, every time they receive okiyome on the
forehead. Many members report feeling slightly "spaced out" after this
process. When in this state, the members own subconscious may well be
healing the person, since this is what members believe will happen. The
flip side, of course, is that the teachings of Sukyo Mahikari can also
get stuck in the subconscious, even if our conscious brain thinks that
these teachings are nonsense.
I've heard numerous current and former members report that
they initially were very skeptical about Mahikari, but after receiving
okiyome a few times they started to believe the teachings. Mahikari
encourages skeptics to "try it and see". This might sound like a
reasonable suggestion. However, if there is a potential for mind
control, "try it and see" seems like a risky thing to do.
Other things that researchers identify as promoting alpha
states and light trances are prolonged chanting, fatigue, listening to
long lectures delivered in a sleep-inducing manner, emotional
manipulation, listening to confusing or contradictory
information...anything at all that encourages our active evaluative
brain processes to "switch off". I think there are elements of both
levels of mind control (persuasion, and actual mind control) in the
content and delivery of the Sukyo Mahikari primary kenshu.
Okay, that's a brief overview of the theory, but where's the
proof?
Objective solid evidence of mind control is very hard (or
impossible?) to provide. One indicator might be that many former
members report that their first response to any negative occurrences is
to think that God is admonishing them for not following the teachings,
or for leaving Sukyo Mahikari, or for saying things critical of Sukyo
Mahikari (as I am doing here). Members are taught to "think
spiritually", which means that everything that happens has an invisible
spiritual cause, even if it might look like there is an immediate
physical cause.
For example, if someone who believes Mahikari teachings
falls and breaks a leg, the physical thing that brought about the
accident is not regarded as the real cause. The real cause is assumed
to be that there is something wrong with the person's basic attitudes,
and that God is admonishing him. Therefore, the person will try harder
to be humble and obedient, try to spend more time participating in
Sukyo Mahikari activities, and offer an apology donation to God (even
if he is not quite sure what he was actually doing "wrong"). This
mindset is very hard to shake off. Hence the first response of former
members... even ones who consciously rejected the teachings many years
ago, and who understand the control mechanisms of Sukyo Mahikari... is
the "think spiritually" response.
I have a sad example of this myself. Several months ago, my
brother died very unexpectedly. I was in shock for the first few
minutes, but the moment I could think again, I silently shouted, I
am NOT going to think that he died because I'm writing critical things
about Mahikari. I guess it must have really been the second thing I
thought, because there was that "NOT" in there. The first thought, or
feeling, must have been too fleeting to register in my conscious brain.
However, the thing that convinced me of the reality of mind
control was the evidence of my own experience when I started reading
the mind control books mentioned above. Again and again, as I read
about control techniques in other cults, I recognized things that
matched my experience of Sukyo Mahikari. Each time, it felt like
something snapped open in my brain... a sudden moment of clarity in
which I could see how I had been manipulated and controlled. By the
time I'd read both books, I was a new person. I no longer felt like a
child. I no longer felt like a failure. I felt happy, free, and very,
very strong. The really nice thing was that I could suddenly
think clearly again for the first time in years.
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