Up to this point, Guide, who'd studied mathematics, was our accountant, but after this some followers he'd trained took over the finances. This freed him up to do other things, and he used this free time to organize within the church a group of hand-picked followers, bright athletic young people. Since we started the church, I've always wanted all members to be equal. That's why I didn't create any official positions. After some time passed I told him my concerns about expanding his elite group any further. But he told me to let him have his way; having been a teacher for so many years, he said, he found it a real psychological boost to be able to have young people in his charge again.
"I haven't really said anything about my own position in the church, have I? Anyway, the basis for our teachings was this: that we should all be conscious that the end of the world was approaching, and be more open to it, on both an emotional and an intellectual level. And most importantly, we should repent.
Isn't it a tragedy for this planet to be destroyed-a planet that has sustained so many countless lives-because only a small minority are truly repentant?
(Though some people would argue that the only thing that's destroyed is the environment needed for mankind to survive, not the planet itself.)
"With these feelings in mind, Guide and I began spreading our mes- sage to the world. That's all it was, really. To tell the truth, I would have been happy dealing with the end of the world and repentance just on my own per- sonal level. If I had my own time connected with God I'd be able to face death without any regrets or fears. I wasn't thinking about the afterlife or the sal- vation of the soul, just that I'd be able to survive for a certain time. During that time, as the end time drew near, I'd have a clear understanding that it was the end, I would repent as one, individual human being, and, as far as possible, I would end my days in a personal relationship with God, like some mystical hermit. That was my dream. And it could have come true.
"Why did someone like me, then, become the leader of a religious or- ganization? Why did I come to have so many people call me Savior, and why did I let them? The reason is that I didn't train myself enough, like the her- mits of old had. Ultimately I couldn't free myself from the one basic element of humanity-language. During this time, my trances steadily became more profound. I was also able to expand the visions I encountered and make them more real. And I couldn't keep silent about it. I was awed by the magical power of language.
"There are two aspects here. The first is connected with the contents of my trances. I'd fall into a deep trance and enter the world beyond. After re- turning to our world, I couldn't keep from mulling over the visions I'd had there. And here, the role Guide played was decisive. I'd turn to him and talk about the visions I had but couldn't understand. Words just spilled out. He'd put what I said into some sort of logical order, and I'd tell him his words weren't like the experience. And once again, he and I would try to get closer to what I saw in my trances. The visions and these new words would illumi- nate each other. That's how I learned the irreplaceable power that words can have.
"The second aspect of language was this: When, through Guide's help, we were able to narrate from what I'd read in that book in my trances, people began to come to listen to us. Before I met Guide I'd been doing something similar. At first it was just one or two people who'd listen to my solitary tales and then use the details as a kind of fortune-telling to figure out their future.
The number of people gradually increased until there was a set group of about fifteen who'd gather together. And then new people would come, men and women with pressing concerns of their own. A woman would ask how she could get her runaway drug-taking son to come home. A man would say he treated his father-in-law so coldly it's practically like he committed suicide, and how can he deal with this? As I got a reputation for being able to give people hints to solve their personal problems, more and more people began to gather around me. I was able to live on their offerings. Up to then I'd eked out a living writing record reviews for a music magazine.
"As I've told you, it was at this point that I met Guide. He came to a gathering to get my advice on a very personal problem; his wife and autistic son were afraid of him and had run away from home. Even if we can't get back together right away, he said, he wanted to find out where they were and whether they were okay.
"And he did get some results, so afterward he still kept coming to see me. He'd come alone and we'd have long talks. One day he happened to be there when I went into a trance, and he took care of me for several days. After I was back to a normal state of consciousness, Guide told me, in clear language, what my mutterings had meant. I can never forget how surprised and happy I was when my visions were revived like that. That's how our relationship began.
"Before long he began seeing me as a savior. I don't know whether, in the beginning, he believed that or not. Maybe he thought it was an amusing nickname. But I began calling him Prophet, because of how he interpreted my visions. Those names helped our relationship run more smoothly. That was the turning point at which what had been a private gathering turned into a religious organization.
"Our church grew overnight. We started out with fifteen people, and in less than two years over five hundred people had renounced the world to join us. Having people renounce everything to join wasn't Guide's idea. One old lady did it and others followed suit. Since becoming a renuncíate meant selling your house and land and donating all your assets to the church, our financial situation improved by leaps and bounds. Guide took care of the bookkeeping, as well as of the steps needed to make our church nonprofit.
As I mentioned before, at that point we had over two thousand members.
"At this stage my own personal prayers and teachings were simple. I remember being questioned once by a Belgian reporter who was writing a piece on our church. I have trances, I told him, in order to gain a deeper under- standing of the approaching end of the world. This helps me be more open to it, intellectually and emotionally. My goal is complete repentance. As the power of the repentant grows, our connection with God will exceed the level of each individual and may even influence society.
"Suspicious of why the interpreter was silent, the Belgian reporter asked, 'Is that all?' just to make sure. 'Are your teachings really that simple?' The way he said it implied he was trying to unearth some secret teachings that had to exist in a church like ours, with over two thousand renunciates and funds exceeding two billion yen. To tell the truth, though, that was all there was to it.
"It was after our church became a religious foundation that Guide cre- ated his group of the best and the brightest of our young people. He expanded this group at a feverish pace. He bought some resort facilities in Izu that had belonged to a printing company and showed them how to fix it up; when it was finished it was quite a nice research facility. He created research teams to carry out inquiries in many fields-chemistry, biology, and physics-spar- ing no expense. At first the team members were selected from among our followers and were allowed to carry out the kind of research they had been doing in their former graduate schools and research labs. Over time, though, these members began to ask that former colleagues be allowed to join them.
As they did their research together, the new people would usually become believers, a development that took off quickly.
"Guide was always so excited when he reported to me on the activities of the Izu center. Those researchers who joined the church had all had some spiritual unease, and some people had dropped out of the competitive world of graduate school and research labs. Others couldn't get along with their academic advisers. Once these young people found our state-of-the-art re- search facility, they cooperated with their fellow researchers and immersed themselves in their research.