A considerable number of Falun Gong practitioners lost their lives simply because they had followed Li Hongzhi's theory and rejected medical help after they became ill.
Li Hongzhi attributes people's sickness to karma.
The word "karma" is originally a neutral term of Buddhism. Li Hongzhi describes to his followers that karma is the retribution of bad deeds. Li claims, a person's sickness results from the karma he accumulated in this life or previous lives, instead of pathological changes in his physical body.
Li Hongzhi points out in his book Zhuan Falun that the rooted cause of man's disease is "karma." Common people always have evil intentions – so they acquired a kind of black substance called "karma." According to Li Hongzhi, people suffer from sickness or other tribulations because of karma which has resulted from people's previous wrongdoings.
Bewitched by Li's fallacies, many Falun Gong practitioners frequently rejected medical treatment after ill; so some of them became disabled or even lost their lives. In January 2001, a 59-year-old retired worker Hu Guangying suffered from a common skin disease. As an obsessed Falun Gong practitioner, she firmly believed in the karma-elimination theory, refused to see a doctor or take medicine. Soon her wound was festering and she died of infection.
Li Hongzhi promises the moon to his followers that practicing Falun Gong could automatically "eliminate the karma" and cure their sickness and there was no need to seek medical help.
According to Li Hongzhi's theory, sickness stems out of one's karma. Then how to remove one's karma?
First of all, Li Hongzhi boasts that practicing Falun Gong is the exclusive way to "eliminate karma" as well as the only effective way to cure one's disease.
Li states in his book Zhuan Falun: "The master can eliminate karma for you."
"The first thing is to get rid of the bad stuff in your body, and that includes health problems. But we don't do healing here. What we do is cleansing the body. And we don't use the term 'healing,' we just call it cleansing the body – we cleanse the body for true cultivators."
"Maybe some folks would be ill like that for years...How could you cultivate with your remaining years? We have to clean up all of that for you and not let those things happen."
"Some people think that treating patients, curing their illnesses, and improving their health are good deeds. In my view, they have not really cured the illnesses. Instead of removing them, they have either postponed or transformed the illnesses. To really dispel such tribulations, karma must be eliminated."
In his book Zhuan Falun Vol.Ⅱ, Li Hongzhi claims: "For us cultivators, other than the karma Master has eliminated, we still have to pay a portion ourselves. You will thus feel physically uncomfortable, as if you were suffering from sickness. Cultivation practice is to cleanse you from your life's origin."
Li does not allow his followers to take medicine if ill.
"Taking medicine while practicing Falun Gong means not believing that Falun Gong is able to cure illness. If you believe, why do you need to take medicine?" (China Falun Gong, Revised Edition)
Li Hongzhi declares, taking medicine or getting injections will not do any good to one's sickness.
Li Hongzhi said: "Always go to the hospital to get injections but it doesn't work...One of our students went to the hospital and had several syringe needles bend on him...but the needle still couldn't go in. Then he caught on, 'Wait, I'm a cultivator! I don't want any more injections.'" (Zhuan Falun)
"The fundamental cause and the sickness don't originate in this dimension. So when you take medicine now you're killing this sickness or the virus at the surface...yet you take medicine and press it back in." (Teaching the Fa in New York City in 1997)
"Operation or surgery can only remove the sickness-karma of the surface dimensions; it has no effect on the ones of the outside dimensions – modern medical techniques are actually cheap tricks in this regard." (Essentials For Further Advancement)
"Once ill, the person takes medicine or seeks various kinds of treatments, which in effect press the sickness back into the body again. This way, instead of paying for the sickness-karma from his wrongdoing in the previous life, he does some additional bad things in this life and hurts others; this brings about new sickness-karma and leads to different kinds of sicknesses." (Essentials For Further Advancement)
Bewitched by karma-elimination theory, many Falun Gong disciples totally act upon whatever Li Hongzhi says, resulting in endless sufferings or even deaths.
A considerable number of Falun Gong practitioners are led astray by Li Hongzhi's karma-elimination theory. They totally reject medical help even suffering from chronic illness. A flashing thought of "medical help" would be considered an insult and provocation against Master Li Hongzhi.
Today, our readers still frequently come across stories of the karma elimination sufferings on Falun Gong websites. On May 16, 2008, the Minghui Net published an article Looking Inward to Search for the Sickness-Karma, describing the painful experience of a Falun Gong follower: "In April, I suddenly suffered from an acute toothache and it got worse while I was sending forth righteous thoughts. Seized with sharp pain, I tossed and turned in the bed, unable to sleep...As sending forth righteous thoughts did not ease the pain, I began to look inside myself...I practiced Falun Gong and studied the Fa since I could not go to sleep. "
Fooled by Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong practitioners firmly believe that practicing Falun Gong would eventually remove their sickness. So they dare not seek medical treatment although they could hardly stand the pain. To get rid of the unbearable pain under such circumstances, some practitioners have killed themselves. A practitioner who resolutely refused to seek medical help in Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, cut open his own artery and committed suicide because he could not bear the sufferings; in one of his pocket, there's medicine that he didn't dare to take when he's alive.
To rationalize the deaths arising from abandoning medical help and rid himself of the responsibility, Li Hongzhi comes up with many kinds of excuses.
It is Li Hongzhi who concocts the "karma elimination" theory and indoctrinates his followers to depend on him for their health and lives. Many obsessed Falun Gong followers readily believe Li's fallacies, concentrating on cultivation and totally rejecting medical treatment. The cases that practitioners died as a result of abandoning needed medical treatment have occurred frequently, which also cause panics and disturbances within Falun Gong organization.
During the so-called Fa conferences, many Falun Gong followers asked Li Hongzhi the same question: "Why some our Dafa disciples died of sickness?"
Li Hongzhi attributes these deaths to "the old forces" and "Dafa disciples."
On the one hand, Li explaines that these deaths were interfered and arranged by "the old forces" ("The old forces" was a term Li Hongzhi employed to describe his imaginary force which set against Falun Gong).
"From the perspective of cultivation, for a person to rise above ordinary people, he has to get rid of all human attachments, and that's how the old forces took advantage of this and arranged all those things. For instance, they arranged for certain students to appear sick at certain times, and for certain students to depart first at a certain time." (Teaching the Fa at the 2003 Atlanta Fa Conference)
"It was the old forces' intention all along to weed out those beings. So, they made them commit sins by doing things that would interfere with Dafa – that's the role they wanted them to play." (Teaching the Fa at the 2003 Atlanta Fa Conference)
"Among my Dafa disciples there are some who were used and deceived by them in the past, for example, [they might have said] 'for you to reach Consummation you'll have to do such and such at such and such time.'" (Teaching the Fa at the 2003 Atlanta Fa Conference)
"Many were Dafa disciples deceived by them, while some were arranged by them; they all agreed to it at some point in history, and that is why it's hard to handle." (Teaching the Fa at the 2003 Atlanta Fa Conference)
"Cultivation and Dafa are solemn, and they can turn human beings into gods. The old forces can't stand that, so they want to test you. They want to see if you will still say Dafa is good and stay and cultivate when they have people pass away who have reached the end of their life spans. The old forces have done that, so when a student faces life-threatening danger, you can't say that he is not good or that he has some serious problems. That is actually the old forces creating a disturbance by taking advantage of human attachments." (Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York)
"It's likely the old forces will lead him to have problems and even make him leave us early in order to test other students." (Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York)
On the other hand, Li Hongzhi explains that, some practitioners died of sickness because they had not cultivated well enough.
"If certain students can't manage to get rid of long-standing attachments inside themselves, they can be persecuted and interfered with. [They might think,] 'I've been doing the exercises, and my illnesses have been cured. I feel so good. My life has become easier.' Their understanding always remains at that level and they can't understand the Fa on the basis of the Fa, and that makes it easy for problems to come up." (Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York)
"Cultivation is a serious matter. That test of one's mind is a black or white issue. The more attached you are, the worse you will feel. When you go to the hospital for an examination you will be made to see that your illness has gotten worse. Yet you still don't enlighten to it. Yet you still don't enlighten to it. Since you still don't enlighten to it, it becomes more and more serious, and in the end you truly can't make it." (Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York)
"That happens because you are not a genuine student, you don't study the Fa, and you can't let go of your attachment to your illness. You are just an ordinary person who wants to get his illness cured...If you can truly cultivate, when you can truly let go of your attachment to living or your fear of death – and not just act that way for others to see while constantly thinking about it inside – then no matter what kind of illness you have, it will be cured." (Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York)
"If that person still doesn't get it after being given chances for so long, even if he has cultivated for years and has followed others in doing Dafa work, if he still can't let go on a fundamental level of his attachment to getting healed, then on a fundamental level he is still not a student, and he will depart when he reaches the end of his lifespan." (Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York)
If these two explanations fail to convince his followers, Li Hongzhi would come up with another pretext – a few Dafa disciples died because they have "reached Consummation," which means they have accomplished their cultivation and become what Li described "Buddha or gods."
"You might know that a few of our students passed away. Some of them reached Consummation, while some [died to] do harm to us. So I didn't make any comments on the matter or offer any explanation. Yet I think those things were a test of life and death for our students."
"A person's life is predestined." (Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Europe)
In a word, from Li Hongzhi's point of view, he and his Falun Gong have "neither part nor lot" in the deaths of Falun Gong practitioners.
Yet what puzzled people most is that while forbidding followers to seek medical help Li Hongzhi himself did not abide by the rule.
When Li Hongzhi worked for the Changchun Grain and Oil Supply Company, he and his daughter had 73 medical expanse reimbursements from the government, of which 48 were for treatments himself received.
From 1982 to 1992, Li Hongzhi worked as a staffer in the Security Office of Changchun Grain and Oil Supply Company. During this period, he consulted doctors to seek medical help at seven hospitals in Changchun City such as the Changchun Hospital; Changchun People's Hospital; No. 208 Military Hospital; Traditional Chinese Medical Hospital of Chaoyang District etc.
In 1984, Li Hongzhi had an operation for acute appendicitis.
These facts amounted to say that the "karma elimination" therapy Li Hongzhi boasted was actually not applicable to himself. In another word, he never risks his own life on "karma elimination" theory if really ill.
So actually, the so-called "karma elimination" theory is just a mechanism Li Hongzhi employs to deceive and psychologically control his followers.
