Editor's note: Sun Guangyu, now living in Beijing, started practicing Falun Gong in 1993 and used to attend many Falun Gong teaching sessions. He had photos taken with Li Hongzhi, and participated in the designing and printing of Falun Gong emblem and its hanging scroll. Under his influence, his whole family, 9 members in all, practiced Falun Gong together. In August 1994, Sun Guangyu moved into the mountains in North Anhe township of Haidian District of Beijing, practicing "Fa" and teaching "Gong" there. In Falun Gong circle of Beijing, he was quite an influential figure. Having got rid of the spiritual control of Li Hongzhi, Sun Guangyu reveals some details of his association with Li, in the hope that his experience might awake those who are still obsessed with Falun Gong.
I'm Sun Guangyu and I'm 74 years old. I was born in Waigoumen village, Fengning County, Hebei Province, and now I live at Dagong Village, Sujiatuo Town, Haidian District, Beijing. In the despair of the death of my daughter in October 1993, I joined Falun Gong by mistake.
I took part in the "April 25" besiegement of Zhongnanhai in 1999 and scattered handouts and held up banners on the Tiananmen Square in 2000. Between June and September 2007, I illegally gathered Falun Gong practitioners together to study and practice Falun Gong and "send Righteous Thoughts" time and again, and acquiesced them to make "little loudspeakers" at my home. In October 2007, I was arrested. Out of showing leniency towards an old offender like me, the government granted me bail out on November 2. With the help of anti-cult volunteers, I came back to myself and saw through the evil nature of Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong.
I find it really unbearable to recall what I have done in the past 15 years with Falun Gong. In 1993, I joined Falun Gong by mistake. Thinking that Li Hongzhi and Falun Gong had saved me and given me life a second time, I regarded Li as a savior. At the beginning of 1994, I attended five teaching sessions held by Li Hongzhi in Tianjin, Ji'nan, Dongying, Shijiazhuang, etc. in only two months' time, talking with him and showing my respect by offering banners to him.
Obsessed as I was, I used to regard Falun Gong as something more important than life, willing to do anything that was good to it. In order to show my diligence and piety to Li Hongzhi, in August 1994, with the approval of Li Hongzhi, the first edition of Falun Gong hanging scroll I designed was put to print, and I also designed an emblem for Falun Gong; in order to promote Falun Gong among children, following the experience of Yao Jie (one of the Falun Gong diehards)in holding classes, I held a 10-day Falun Gong session for kids with 20 attendants since July 18, 1997, teaching them cult ideas of Falun Gong with the purpose of turning them into Falun Gong practitioners too. I also put up a sign of "Juvenile Summer Camp" on the door as a disguise.
My evil behaviors soon won the recognition of Li Hongzhi. On August 31, 1997, accompanied by Yao Jie, Li Chang, Ji Liewu and Liu Guirong, Li Hongzhi came to my home by car and acknowledged what I had done. He asked me to go on making contributions to the Dafa and promised me that I could go to heaven with consummation soon. We also had a photo taken together. As a result, I became crazier about Falun Gong, not having the slightest doubt in Li Hongzhi. Spiritually controlled by him, I was entirely a puppet of him, following every order of his. I was going further everyday on the road of "practicing" paved by Li Hongzhi, thus further away from humanity as well.
Now that the black clouds no longer overshadow the sun, as I look back on Li Hongzhi, I find him as a greedy, deceptive, deluding and traitorous cult leader.
In his fallacy of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi engrafted the cult idea of "truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance" in the mind of his followers as the soul of Dafa, tempting people by going to heaven with consummation. The three words--truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—like poisons injecting into my blood, made me obsessed with them, as most of the addicts were, and still are. According to the explanation of Li Hongzhi, truthfulness means saying and doing things truthfully, returning to one's true self, and finally becoming a true holy man; compassion can help one to have kindness and pity; and tolerance means tolerating what cannot be tolerated by ordinary people. As a matter of fact, Li Hongzhi just grabs money and exercises spiritual control over practitioners in the disguise of "truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance", leading kind people to a evil road, to the opposite of the people, and to a bottomless abyss. Where indeed is truthfulness, compassion, or tolerance? Jumping out of that wicked circle, one can easily tell right from wrong, righteousness from evilness. The nature of the "truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance" talked about by Li Hongzhi is nothing more than asking followers to have "truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance" in Li Hongzhi himself.
Li Hongzhi was mad with me twice. Let's have a look at the deceptive "four big functions" of Li Hongzhi and his shameful personality in this.
In May 1994, just before Li Hongzhi was off to Chongqing for teaching sessions, some head of the general tutorial station of Beijing asked me to buy five railway tickets of hard berth. There was only one day left. I tried my best and finally got the tickets. Two old ladies, out of their respect for Li, wanted to take this opportunity to visit him, so we decided to take the tickets to him on the day of the trip. Li Hongzhi usually got his ticket one day before his trip. When he did not see the tickets the night before leaving this time, he asked a Mr. Liu, head of the general station, to find me before dawn. Liu, accompanied by a large group in cars, searched every place that I could be, but I was nowhere to be found. I finally delivered the tickets for the noon train at 7 o'clock in the morning, but Li Hongzhi and his entourage still went mad at me, refusing to listen to my explanations. Li Hongzhi used to regard the Earth as a speck of dust in the universe, so how big is Beijing or me Sun Guangyu in his eyes? Where is the magic power of the "Major Buddha" of the universe?
On August 31, 1997, Li Hongzhi came to my residence at Dagong Village. Interested in the natural environment there, he said that he wanted to build a meditation abode and urged Li Chang, Yao Jie, and me to get it done immediately. Later, Yao Jie thought that it was too difficult to build a house, so she found some excuses and left the responsibility with me, calling Li Hongzhi time and again complaining about me. Before long, Li Chang brought the criticism of Li Hongzhi, and the Falun Dafa Research Association and the general tutorial station of Beijing also accused me of planning to build a meditation room for myself here. I felt that I was wronged. Didn't the Master say this himself? How comes that it became my idea? Just then, the words of Li Hongzhi came again: "I didn't ask anyone to do anything, let alone asking Sun Guangyu to build a meditation room." His denial of his own words made it impossible to believe in the moral character of such a sacred "enlightened man". When I told these unbelievable things to the fellow practitioners, they all said that the Master was testing me. When I have come to myself, seeing all the horrible cases and what Li Hongzhi has said and done, it finally occurred to me that there is nothing that Li Hongzhi would not do for his evil purpose.
Addiction in Falun Gong also brought devastating harm to my family. As I believed in the lies of Li Hongzhi that one practitioner would benefit the whole family and Li`s promise, I dragged my wife, my eldest son and his wife, and my second son and his wife into Falun Gong. And other family members, under my influence, all participated in the activities of Falun Gong to different degrees. At that time, I thought it was a good thing with incomparable virtues. However, as a result of practicing Falun Gong and creating disturbances following the orders of Li Hongzhi, my eldest son was taken into custody for illegal actions several times; his wife become insane after practicing Falun Gong; and my second son was sentenced to a 4-year imprisonment and is still in jail. However, when I visited him in the jail, instead of persuading him to behave himself for a early deliverance, I cited the scriptures of Li Hongzhi to encourage him: "Don't grieve about being imprisoned, for the Dafa will be with you as long as you have 'Righteous Thoughts' and correct actions", asking him to "go on practicing Dafa without any doubt at heart" with the hope that he would still take the position of a Falun Gong practitioner in jail and oppose government education. In 2002, my wife died of Falun Gong for not going to the hospital in time. The whole family was in deep grief, but I told my sons that she didn't practice Falun Gong in vain; she had reached consummation and gone to heaven. Seeing family members being reeducated through labor or put to prison, together with the death of his mother, my third son was greatly hurt mentally and his once happy family is broken too.
Due to my special relationship with Li Hongzhi, many Falun Gong addicts often came to my place and got together, and I supported them by encouraging them to stick to their position as Falun Gong practitioners. At the same time, I also cheated the local government with the purpose that they could relax their vigilance on me. Under my influence, many people were sent to be reeducated through labor or sentenced to imprisonment for stubbornly committed to Falun Gong and repeatedly causing disturbances.
I hope that my experience could warn those stubborn addicts of Falun Gong and help them get back to our society, our humane society. No matter how diligent you are, you cannot be more diligent than I was; no matter how pious you are, you cannot be more pious than I was. And you don't have the promise of Li Hongzhi as I did. But what I have got in the end? A nightmare! A nightmare so horrible and unbearable to recall!
The country and families will not have peace unless Falun Gong, the cancer of the society, is removed.
(Facts.org.cn, July 24, 2008)
