Illustration not from the book, but from the movie “Rebirth of Buddha”, also by Ryuho Okawa. As usual it was a hit in Japan, but in the West… not so much. More or less “members only” here. With the very occasional exception. *whistles innocently*

Ryuho Okawa has really pulled out the stops. He is publishing “The Next Great Awakening” in the USA. It stands out from most of his books translated so far by having a substantial section on space aliens. According to Mr Okawa, there have been several waves of these in the past, and there are several new alien races living among us today. His plan is for Earth to become an interstellar Planet of Love. (One may remember his foretelling, already in one of his first books, that Jesus will return to preach the message of love for the galactic age, in a future where tensions between earthlings and aliens will be running high.)

This is unlikely to do much good for Happy Science’s public image in the West, where people are far more skeptical to aliens than in Japan.

I’ll give the requisite thought to loving my alien neighbors as myself once I actually meet them. Until then, I shall have to work on my relationship to you Earthlings. That may well be enough for this lifetime, I fear.

At least this goes a long way toward putting to rest my fears that Ryuho Okawa might be the Antichrist (with a capital A). I cannot imagine the capital A making a PR blunder like that.

Of course, the book is not all about aliens. But I have a feeling that they are going to get most of the attention. That is kind of sad, because Mr Okawa usually has lots of useful advice. He is known to read 1000 books a year, and have distilled from them some of the most useful advice given to mankind through the ages. I have found similar advice in books of religion and philosophy, often decades or centuries old, and more often than not hard to read unless you are an intellectual. It would be a loss if people rejected all of that just because of a few UFOs.