Li Hongzhi: A Quack

Wu said that one of the prominent features of the heretical cults is the worship of their founders. The practitioners strictly follow the instructions of their leader, willing even to die for him. AII heretical cult leaders, such as Jim Jones of the People's Temple, David Koresh of the American Branch Davidian, and Shoko Asahara of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, claimed to be God or the incarnate of God.

Li Hongzhi is no exception. Li, an ordinary person who studied in Changchun City between 1960-69, later working as a trumpet player, an attendant at a guest house, and a security member of the Changchun Cereals and Oil Co., changed his birthday into the birth date of Sakyamuni, founder of Buddhism, at the Luyuan Police Station under the Changchun Public Security Bureau in 1994.

Since then, he claimed to be the incarnate of Sakyamuni, and invented the story that when he was a child, a Buddhist Master gave him instructions for the initial approach to become a Buddhist believer, and his mortification came to a satisfactory end when he was eight years old. Moreover, he lied that he learned Taoist and Buddhist doctrines and kungfu from many renowned masters.

The quack boasted that he is able to "move and fix things, control others' mind and make himself invisible". He crowned himself as the savior who has the super power to postpone the explosion of the Earth and "bring the mankind to a bright world". He claimed to be superior to Lao Zi (founder of Taoism), Sakyamuni (founder of Buddhism) and Jesus, saying, "I'm now the only one in the world preaching the orthodoxy," and "if I can't release your soul from purgatory, who else can?"

Li Hongzhi demanded his followers to believe in him, their all-powerful leader, and practice his Falun Gong. By so doing, Li tried to control the practitioners so that he could play them at will.

Wu said that mind control is the way all heretical cult leaders use to secure their "holy" position and maintain the loyalty of followers. Since the founding of the illegal Falun Dafa Research Society in 1992, Li has used such methods as enticement and intimidation to exercise mind control over his followers.

Qigong, with a long history of at least 2,000-3,000 years, is a keep-fit exercise invented by ancient Chinese after a longterm of observation and meditation. Without superstitious content, it stresses regulating jingmai (passages through which vital energy circulates) and massaging internal organs through special breathing methods.

Wu believed that Li usurped the name of qigong. The heretical cult founder, who claimed to have acquired various qigong methods and the ability to cure his family without medicine, was recently exposed often visiting hospitals because of illnesses in himself and his family members.

However, over a long period, Li tricked his followers with the bait of physical fitness, preaching that Falun Gong practitioners not only would have a good health and be free of illnesses, but could also benefit their relatives and friends. He demanded that they not only practice, but learn his Dafa (Great Dharma) and repeatedly recite and copy Dafa. Moreover, practitioners were also required to empty their minds of any other theory except for Falun Dafa.

Li Hongzhi said that he has countless "holy bodies" of different shapes that can go everywhere to protect his followers as well as monitor their thinking and action. In this way, Falun Gong practitioners were seeded with revering and fearing feelings, and they would then absolutely obey his instructions in order to attain "perfection", become immortal and eliminate sins.

Evidence shows that such mind control, like invisible shackles, made Falun Gong Practitioners downhearted and benumbed, losing the sense of responsibility for their families and society, and gaining a morbid persistency in the practice. Some practitioners therefore became mentally disordered, even committing suicide or doing harm to other people.

0n July 4, 1998, seven practitioners in Haikou City, Hainan Province, died and one was injured in a car accident on the way to Sanya to advocate Falun Gong. Hearing this, Li said, "0nIy those disciples who went to the Dharma Wheel world can attain perfection with an incarnated flesh body. The dead disciples have become immortal in their different world." Just because of this mind control, many kind and ignorant people were deceived, and Falun Gong spread like a plague.

Making up Fallacies for Money

"Making up fallacies is the way of all heretical cults to hoodwink people, and these fallacies are generally nothing more than 'doomsday scenarios'," said Ren Yanli, Director of the Christianity Study 0ffice of the Religion Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Ren, once a visiting scholar at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano in Milan, Italy, has engaged in the research of Christianity for more than 20 years. He is in close contact with religious scholars and theologians in the United States, France, Italy and other countries and regions.

Ren said that Li Hongzhi had also fabricated such fallacies as "doomsday" and "the explosion of the Earth" to create atmosphere of panic and fear so that the practitioners would follow him maniacally. Li said, "In prehistoric times, when human morality was in an extremely bad situation, human society was destroyed." He propagated that the human beings "are degenerating" and "hopeless". He also publicized "the inexorable doom" and that the "doomsday is coming". He even said, "There will be 81 times when mankind is subject to extinction." According to Li, the Earth was going to explode again, and only he could bring others up to the heaven, and only the Falun Dafa was the "super Dharma" which could save the whole mankind. Although Li knew nothing about religion and modern science, he used the terms and concepts of many religions such as Budhism, Taoism and Christianity and modern sciences to whitewash his fallacies.

To prove he is a god who could cure diseases and drive away devils, Li let his followers fabricate an investigation report of more than 10,000 people. In the report, he made up stories that patients were cured shortly after they began to practice Falun Gong, egging practitioners on to believe that "Falun Gong works if you just believe in it and practice it".

Cheated by these fallacies, some practitioners thought they were well when they were in fact ill. Some, though realizing they were ill, refused to go to doctors and take medicines--a number of people died because of this. There were also some people who, frightened by the "doomsday" or the "explosion of the Earth" theory, committed suicide, became distraught or injured their family members or others. According to available statistics, more than 1,400 people died of practicing Falun Gong, and there are more than 100 cases of mental disorder induced by practicing Falun Gong in seven medical institutions in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei and Shandong provinces alone.

Ren said that founders of heretical cults in the world today are all parvenus who collect money illegally, and that Li is not an exception.

Although Li and the core members of Falun Gong announced that they did not aim at money or other profits, they, in fact, grabbed money of practitioners by means of publishing, producing and selling books, pictures, and audio-visual products on Falun Gong, as well as badges and clothes and pads for practice. Evading taxes, they got rich quickly. According to initial investigations by related departments, in recent years Li and his Falun Gong's core members had bought villas, luxury sedan cars and green cards, and trequented gambling and pornographic places abroad to squander money. From May 1992 to the end of 1994, Li, together with others, held 56 Falun Gong courses, collecting more than 3 million yuan. The Shenshen Group Corp., established by the head of the Falun Gong Wuhan center, published illegal books and audio-visual products on Falun Gong, making more than 90 million yuan. A large proportion went into Li Hongzhi's Docket as remuneration and deduction. In addition to two other cases, the illegal transaction volume of the three cases reached 160 million yuan, bringing in a profit of more than 40 million yuan. Moreover, related departments proved that Li Hongzhi has large sums deposited in foreign banks.

Wu said that in contrast to Li, senior religious leaders he knows all have pure hearts and few desires. They pursue for rich and sublime morality instead of material enjoyment, And all the non-profit religious organizations have long been donating to educational, public welfare and other charity undertakings in China's disaster-stricken and poor and mountainous areas like the Aide Christianity Foundation in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, which has been funding local medicare undertakings and academic research in do and academic research in religions in China. They never aim at collecting money.