Falun Gong teaches that a person is made up of a soul and a physical body, and that the soul does not perish when the body dies. At death, the soul is freed from the body and moves on to another realm. Followers are told that this experience is pleasurable, and those who achieve full cultivation can ascend to the heavens without their physical body.

Li Hongzhi glorifies the “wonderfulness” of death in Zhuan Falun, claiming that “at the very moment of death, there is no fear. On the contrary, one suddenly experiences a sense of release and a latent exhilaration. Some even feel entirely unbound by their physical body, floating lightly and wonderfully.” (Zhuan Falun)

Li Hongzhi tells followers that only by letting go of attachment to life and death can they reach “consummation.” As he declares in his lecture at the Australian Falun Dafa Lecture Tour, “Those who release life and death become God; those who cling to it remain merely human.”

“If you truly reach consummation, you become an immensely powerful God... you could hold the entire earth in your hand without even trying.” (Zhuan Falun)

Thus, some devoted Falun Gong followers place blind faith on Li Hongzhi’s lies, losing all regard for their own lives and seeing their bodies as mere “empty shells.” In pursuit of so-called “consummation,” they have even recklessly sacrificed their own lives or harmed others.

On 25 November 2001, in Bejing’s Xicheng District, Falun Gong follower Fu Yibin killed his father and wife at his parents’ home and left his mother severely injured. Fu later admitted, “After practicing Falun Gong, I came to see them as nothing but hollow shells, empty vessels with no grasp of life or its value. To me, they were no different from dogs or cats. Although one was the shape of my father, his body had already decayed, it was time to cast it aside.”