WHEEL OF ENERGY

Killing Spiritualism By Force In China

        ACCORDING to China’s official news agency Xinhua, on 23 January this year, five members of the banned Falun Gong (FG) set fire to themselves at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. On that day at about 2.40 pm, four women and a man soaked themselves in gasoline and set themselves on fire. One of the women succumbed to the injuries while the rest were taken to a hospital by the police. All this was meant to protest against the brutality the Communist government of China has unleashed against them.

        Ten days earlier, about 20,000 FG followers gathered at Victoria Park in Hong Kong and staged a peaceful sit-in. They also held a meeting at Hong Kong’s city hall and demanded lifting of the ban. Though FG spiritual exercises are banned in the mainland, it has not been declared illegal in Hong Kong.

        But the incident of 13 January displeased the mainland regime. Secret Instructions were sent to the pro-Beijing forces in Hong Kong to launch a campaign against FG and to adopted indirect measures to suppress the movement.

FALUN BELIEF

        So in the third week of January, while addressing the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Mr Tung Chee-hwa, chief executive of Hong Kong, echoed Beijing’s assertion and said that FG is basically an evil cult. On the other hand, Mr. Anaon Chan, Hong Kong’s seniormost civil servant, had top resign as he refused to obey the mainland instruction and denounce FG publicly. In fact, many of Hong Kong’s top officials are sympathetic to FG and carry Zhuan Falun, the FG bible, in their briefcases.

        As a doctrine, Marxism is materialistic and strictly atheist. Hence there is no scope in it for spiritualism in any form. During the days of socialization of agriculture through collective farming in Russia in the 1930s, Stalin had declared that, along with the sense of private property, the nation of God and religious belief were to be wrung out from farmers like water from wet clothes.

        To carry out the task he created a regiment of 20,000 trained urban workers, popularly known as “twenty thousands” and sent these loyal workers to villages across Russia. Virgin Soil Upturned by Mikhail Sholokhov narrates how they prevented the farmers, through coercion and torture, from attending churches.

        They also picked up farmers reluctant to adopt collective farming:  they were subsequently brande4d as anti-revolutionaries and enemies of socialism. It is now well known that millions of those unfortunate farmers  were then transferred to concentration camps, called Gulags, in Siberia where they were butchered. But Stalin could not wipe out spiritualism from the hearths of the people. As soon as Communism collapsed, people, freed from the clutches of dictatorship, revived their churches and started attending services.

        One cannot stop people of asking perenlal questions like, “who am I? From where have I come here and where shall I go after death?” and so on. Marxism forbids, along with freedom of speech and other vital human rights, spiritual freedom as well.

        Approval of these freedoms would jeopardize the doctrine itself, ultimately leading to its collapse. And that is the reason why the Communist government of China is relentlessly attacking the Buddhists and their faith in Tibet, has gunned down thousands of students demanding freedom at the Tiananmen Square in June 1989, and very recently, on 22 July 1999, banned the FG spiritual exercises.

        The words Falun-Gong literally mean the “law of the wheel of breathing exercise”. In fact, it is an improved version of the traditional Chinese breathing exercise Qui Gong (QG) and the improvements have been carried out by the 50 year old guru of the movement Mr. Li Hongzhi, who left China in 1994 and is now staying in New York.

        He has also written many books on FG exercises and claims that his system is a more powerful healer of a wounded soul than QG. The basis of both FG and QG lies in the belief that there is a wheel of energy in the lower abdomen of every human being and it remains in a dormant state. Some special exercises stimulate that wheel to rotate leading to a manifestation of that spiritual energy in his daily life giving him courage and peace of mind.

MORAL VACUUM

                One may notice the striking similarity between this concept and the Indian concept of kundalini which believes+ that the dormant kundalini can be stimulated with the help of some yogic exercises like dhyana, pranayama and so on. The traditional Chinese exercises called Qui Gong may be of Indian origin and later on the Buddhists monks, like Kung Fu and other martial art forms, took it to China. The belief gains ground when Mr. Li confesses that his teachings are based on the Buddhist concept of karma and compassion with the final goal of attaining enlightenment (bodhi) and divine bliss (ananda).

                Before the ban, the followers used to assemble every morning under the red-yellow banner of FG in parks. They were mainly middle-aged males and females and unemployed youths. FG disapproves of habits like smoking and drinking. Through FG exercises its followers could find an escape from Communist jargon and the cross materialism of today’s China.

                The rise of FG in China has been dramatic. Within the past five years the number of its followers has grown at a fantastic rate, from two million to nearly 100 million. A Beijing-based academic, Mr. Sin Ming says that, beneath China’s impressive economic growth lies a deeply troubled, aimless and frustrated society. As a doctrine, Marxism is entirely foreign to China and Mr. Sin is convinced that the implementation of that European creed in China has damaged its age-old values. “In the 50 years of Communist rule, nearly every Chinese value has been savagely trampled on. Today nobody knows what is precious in life except money”, adds Mr. Sin. In such a situation of moral vacuum the forceful but simple message of FG provided an opportunity for the Chinese to fulfill their spiritual as well as psychic needs. “Thus FG is trying to revive the traditional Chinese spiritual and moral values crushed by Communism and as a result, people are gathering under its banner in thousands”, says Mr. Sin.

REPRESSION

                Communist leaders of China have the means to suppress any movement they apprehend as a threat. So disparaging remarks started coming out from the government-controlled press and the leaders began to paint FG as an anti-Communist conspiracy. An investigation was immediately ordered. Meanwhile security guards infiltration FG’s operating mechanism and secretly videotaped its exercise sessions.

                At last on 25 July 1999, the government banned the movement on the allegation that it is a pseudo-science like witchcraft. The government also banned traditional QG exercises and nearly two million books and instruction tapes were seized and burnt. Li was declared a criminal and the government sought the assistance of Interpol to get him arrested.

                Nearly 1,200 key members were sent in captivity to a northern city and police started stopping common people in the streets for interrogation and searching their bags for FG texts.

                But despite all such efforts the government has so far failed to discover a political conspiracy or a plot to overthrow the present government in FG. According to the New York based Falun Gong Research Society, 120 FG leaders have so far been killed in police custody, several thousands are missing and several hundred thousands are serving jail terms in cities across China. But though the crackdown has scared everyone in China and followers in China and followers of FG no longer dare to perform their exercises in public parks, it remains to be seen whether the movement can be killed by brute force.