As a Chinese saying goes, "It is difficult to draw a person, but easy to draw a ghost." People are not likely to be fooled by real and visible things, but they are apt to be misled by absurd and unreasonable things, and by fraudulent methods.
In his book Zhuan Falun, (Turning the Wheel of the law) one can perceive that Li Hongzhi knows this trick well. Most of his examples cannot stand close examination. He steals terms and garbles statements from Buddhist scriptures, and works on the natural and social sciences, which sound familiar to people, to entice them into believing in his sincerity.
First, he boasts that "Falun Gong" is as important as Buddhism. According to Zhuan Falun, when saving people, each Buddha, such as Sakyamuni, Amitabha and Vaorpcama, dominates a realm. There are over 100 such realms in our galaxy, and our `Falun Dafa' also has its Falun realm." As Buddhism has great prestige in China, people are likely to be hoodwinked by this.
Then he claims that he can cure illnesses and drive out evil spirits, appealing to people who wish to keep fit and live long lives. He says in the same book: "You may cure your disease by receiving treatment directly from me or at the practice center, or through self-study via my law-bodies."
At last, again by taking advantage of people's desires to keep fit, he entices the believers to join his practice center, so that he can further control their minds. "My practice center is the best place for self-cultivation. Once you start to practice at my center, you will achieve much better results than by receiving any medical treatment. My law-bodies, sitting in a ring on the cover above the sky, are watching the practice center. It is a self-cultivation place with a big wheel of the law in it, which makes it different from other centers. Many of the advanced believers have seen the center of "Falun Dafa" bathed in a red light."
Thus Li Hongzhi made the believers fall into his trap step by step, and built up his tightly knit organization. As soon as "Falun Gong" was banned by the Chinese government, Li Hongzhi's "omnipresence" disappeared completely, and his lies collapsed under their own weight of deceit. Those who continue to peddle his lies are mainly the parasites of "Falun Gong," who cannot earn their livings otherwise. Meanwhile, most of the erstwhile believers and the Chinese people as a whole have already realized the wicked nature of "Falun Gong," and repudiated it.
(Compiled by New Star Publishers, Dec., 1999)