S1E8: Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi
Check out the podcast in our player below or on your preferred app under "POS Book Club."
Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi is the central text of Falun Gong, a spiritualist movement that is both banned and persecuted in China and has since become a major player in Western far-right misinformation networks. Beijing calls it a dangerous cult, to some they are “Chinese scientologists,” and to others it is a harmless – albeit odd - spiritual group. Debates surrounding the Falun Gong are highly contentious, mired in propaganda from ideological extremes, geopolitics, and various interests. This review and our podcast discussion focus on the primary text, Zhuan Falun, and related teachings from the Falun Gong master and living-god, Li Hongzhi.
Zhuan Falun is a series of lectures delivered by Li in 1993 and is the central text for Falun Gong practitioners. It lays out a universe controlled by cycles of creation and destruction, conflicts between interdimensional beings and aliens, and Li as a living god (or alien, sometimes it’s unclear) and the sole source of ultimate truth to the universe. His powers detailed in the lectures are immense; Li communes regularly beings from multiple dimensions, he leads an army of invisible spirits (fashen) on Earth that monitor his followers at all times and govern their physical health, he can install (and uninstall any time) a magic wheel in the stomach of his followers that allow them to tap into the same superpowers, he can fly – the list goes on. No laser eyes, unfortunately.
Li draws from Taoist and Buddhist notions of a cyclical universe, but he also draws from… well, wherever he damn pleases. He treats Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, cave drawings and “ancient nuclear reactors” in Gabon as evidence of prehistorical advanced civilizations. He claims he did the math once and civilization on Earth has been destroyed and rebuilt about 81 times, without expanding further. He asserts any person can fly, and his only evidence is David Copperfield. Modern science is the work of nefarious aliens.
Why are these things so easily debunked? Well silly, it’s because our understanding of the universe is simply too primitive. Li has the answers because he can exist in multiple dimensions at once and communicate with high level aliens. Isaac Newton should have tried that instead of whatever bullshit he was doing - how do you like them apples, nerd?
From his official biography, Li Hongzhi was something of a spiritual prodigy, attaining the powers of levitation, invisibility, telepathy, precognition, healing and more by the age of 8. He appeared and rose rapidly at the zenith of China’s qigong spiritualist craze in the early 1990s, amassing millions of followers before moving to the United States prior to Beijing’s 1999 crackdown on Falun Gong and numerous other spiritual organizations.
Li’s teachings came at the perfect time – the population of 1980s/90s China were still managing the hangover of the Cultural Revolution at the same time as they were facing rapid change under capitalist reforms. He appealed to Chinese nationalism with undercurrents of xenophobia; his teachings didn’t just disavow Western thought broadly, but also peculiar specifics such as race-mixing (every race was created by a different alien, and they all go to different heavens). He affirmed that traditional Chinese culture provided an unbroken link to a harmonious connection with the universe that had been lost through successive periods of global destruction. He provided a simple solution to the vacuum of meaning that was grounded in reinterpretations of familiar Buddhist + Daoist frameworks and spoke also to material periods of destruction in China’s recent history.
It might sound like a fun read, but it really isn’t. Li’s presentation style alternates between flooding you with specifics on unfalsifiable claims (e.g. the rules of the interdimensional), and yada-yadaing quickly over his bizarre claims about the material world. There’s always an excuse – if people can fly, why don’t we have evidence? Because the power is locked to prevent social chaos, and anyone who unlocks it is also wise enough not to use it. Obviously. Like the magic wheel he can install in your gut, Li wanders within a closed loop.
Zhuan Falun is both long-winded and deliberately vague. Li leaves you to ponder without much to ponder. In the end, the defining argument of Zhuan Falun is less a clear order of the universe, and more an affirmation that Li Hongzhi is at the center of it.
After poring through this and other works, I still think the funniest part was on the first page. Li’s preamble admits how unimpressive it is, but don’t worry, he has a typically convenient excuse:
On the surface, Zhuan Falun is not elegant in terms of language. It might even not comply with modern grammar. If I were to use modern grammar to organize this book of Dafa, however, a serious problem would arise wherein though the structure of the book’s language might be standard and elegant, it would not encompass a more profound and higher content.
Checkmate. This is Li’s universe and we’re just living in it.
