My name is Cui Qiaoyun, a retired worker in Kaifeng, the central China's Henan Province, and used to be a Falun Gong addict. I'm going to tell you my experience of "ascension," which sounds so ludicrous now.
At that time, several of us formed a study team, through which Falun Gong practitioners exchanged their experience and encouraged each other, building up our determination to practice Falun Gong time and again. In order to keep up with the practice, we bought a complete set of books as well as audio and video materials on Falun Gong. Some people had financial difficulties to begin with, but induced by the Falun Gong theories of practicing for completeness, curing diseases and body building, and becoming Buddha and Immortal, etc., they paid all they had for the books and discs. That time, ascension in the daylight with Master Li Hongzhi was the hope of all our fellow practitioners.
Infused with the fallacies and absurdities of Falun Gong, we gradually drifted away from the path of normal people and became extraordinary, posing ourselves as practitioners. We laughed at other people in the society who were buying houses, doing business, working, making every effort for a title of a technical post…For the image of the heaven would soon be shown to us, and all the things would disappear in a blink of the eye, but people were still spending money and energy to build houses, trying hard to learn those useless things, or learning those things with a faulty basis. Really, that was our true thought, regarding these people as ludicrous.
It was around the 9th day of the 9th month of the lunar calendar in 1995 that a note was passed along among the Falun Gong practitioners in Kaifeng. The "scripture" wrote: "Come out and observe the heavenly bodies." Hearing the news, members of our team gathered together and discussed excitedly for several days. We gave each other encouragement, imaging how would the Master Li Hongzhi call upon us and show up in the sky when he came, whether he would be able to name his devoted followers, and how we should follow him. Such thoughts made us very excited. It seemed that Consummation was at hand and we would be accomplished and follow the Master away. We even started to arrange for the things behind us, making arrangements for the family and saying farewells to them in the mind. Later, someone said that maybe it was because that the 9th day of the 9th month of the lunar calendar is the Height Ascending Festival, which means that it's time for leaving.
In the afternoon, I went to the supermarket and bought many things, clothes for different seasons for my daughter, quilts and winter clothes for my parents, spending all the money in my pocket. When I got home, I had supper with my all family members. To me, it was the last supper. At midnight, I arrived at the bank side of Longting Lake of Kaifeng. Many familiar or unfamiliar Falun Gong practitioners were gathering there. I found an obscure corner and singly sat down, watching the most beautiful place in the ancient city Kaifeng, with no mood to appreciate the scenery left more than 1,000 years. My heart was filled with joy and impulse waiting for "the Master." Time passed by. An hour later, it was already in the dead of night. Why Master Li didn't show up! Looking around, I could see clusters of fellow practitioners everywhere, waiting, some of them holding kids in their arms. Everyone was waiting for the change in the image of sky. Nothing happened by 2 o'clock in the next morning. At this time, a practitioner suggested that this might be a test of the Master. Others agreed, and scattered in droves. Nobody dared to doubt it was false, for doubt would generate karma. Infused with the theories of Falun Gong, we had lost the capacity of individual thinking and had become mindless puppets. A "feat of ascension" thus ended with silence.
Now I realize that the so-called "ascension in broad daylight" was a sheer trick. If Li Hongzhi were really such a rare "Buddha" rare to see in a thousand years, if he could go "ascension," he would not have to hide in the United States to eke out a living. So many years have passed, but is there ever a Dafa practitioner ascending in daylight?
(Kaiwind.com, January 8, 2008)
