Chapter 5

CHIZUO MATSUMOTO - ASAHARA

    Chizuo Matsumoto was born in March 1955. He was the forth son of a tatami mat maker in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture. He had two sisters and four brothers. Chizuo Matsumoto was born with glaucoma (a disease of the eye that eventually leads to blindness) and graduated from the Kumamoto Prefectural School for the Blind.

    In his early 20's Matsumoto moved to Tokyo. He joined the new religious movements GLA and then went to Argon Shyu. In 1984 he began Aum Shinsen no Kai with 15 members. The organization eventually grew to be a large international organization.

    In the magazine Weekly Gendai, 3rd Feb 1996, it was reported that a woman who claimed to be intimate with Matsumoto, said that Matsumoto was unable to stop taking LSD. She reports that in June 1994 the "Christian Initiations" began whereby LSD was given to new members. The initiates were not told that their drink was laced with LSD. Thus they took the drink. But first Matsumoto would drink from the cup. Per the woman, after Matsumoto took LSD he would not make sense, he would be tired, he would compliment people a lot, his eyes would change, and he would lose balance. From June 1994 the drink was laced with an additional stimulant. From January 1995 all day would be consumed in the ritual. Some days there were up to 100 members, and Matsumoto would sample the drink before each new member. Per the report his face was noticeably changing for the worse. The article makes a point of noting that Matsumoto did not use drugs on others until he had used them himself. During 1994 when the LSD began to be used, this was when the sarin raid was ordered against the judges chambers in Nagoya. It was when they decided to make the gun parts, and it was when Matsumoto decided to reorganize Aum like the national government. This is when Asahara started having ideas of substituting the national government with Aum. One of the people involved in the compulsory investigation of Aum stated, "There is very much a possibility that LSD fostered Asahara's 'craziness"'. 67

    It should be also understood that this is when Matsumoto started to have dreams of Armageddon and the end of the world, and when they started to manufacture sarin to bring this about. Per the source, Matsumoto had used LSD earlier than when it was first used for the initiations of mid 1994.

Aum Head Gear - PSI (Perfect Salvation Initiation)

    The head gear that is seen atop of Aum members issues a series of low voltage currents pulsing through the brain from small electrodes placed onto the scalp.

    Dr. Hayashi describes in his book, Aum and I, how the device was developed. He was introduced to the device in September 1993. Matsumoto had called Hayashi to the headquarters as Matsumoto wanted to show him the new device. It had been developed by Mural, Dr. Nakagawa, and Dr. S (presumably the Aum head psychiatrist Dr. Sasaki) and one other doctor. The system was supposedly to transmit the same brain waves that Matsumo's brain transmitted. A brain wave is a rhythmic pulsation of low voltage electrical current passing from one part of the brain to another.

    In the Sunday Mainichi, 3rd June 1995, there is an interview with an ex-member who wore the PSI for eight days. She revealed that she experienced pain for most of the time. She also experienced excessive heat, cold, shivers, flashes of light, thundering in her head, a desire for sex, hunger and a general ill feeling that left her with little doubt that the experience was not what she had expected. She also experienced ranges of emotions including anger.

    Yoshie Harnada, author of the book Expansion Mind Control, wrote that the PSI was similar to the experiments by Hose Degarto. He placed electrodes on monkey's heads to control and modify their behaviour.68

    Hayashi wrote that when he tried the PSI it burned the side of his head as the voltage was too high. What happens is simply that the wearer of the PSI head gear already has his own brain wave current pulsating through his brain. This supplies him with his senses working and keeps him in touch with his surroundings. With the PSI also sending into the brain new and additional rhythms of electrical current one can understand that the regular brain waves would be interrupted, overloaded, and changed so that a person could expected to experience an altered behavior and emotional pattern.

    With the total improper mixture of LSD, implanted commands from the initiations, electric shock therapy, and the PSI head gear, there perhaps is little wonder that Aum members went on a crime spree that few could ever understand.

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