I am Taking All Students as Disciples

You know what? Know what I’m doing here? I’m taking all students as disciples to guide, and that includes people who learn on their own but are still able to truly cultivate. This is transmitting a practice that leads to high levels, and it wouldn’t work if I didn’t guide you like this—that would be irresponsible, and it’d be asking for trouble. We’re giving you so much, we let you know so many truths that everyday people shouldn’t know, I’m imparting the Great Law to you, and I’ll give you lots and lots of things, your bodies are purified for you, and there are some other things involved. So it definitely wouldn’t work if I didn’t guide you as disciples. Just going around leaking so many of Heaven’s secrets to ordinary people isn’t allowed. But there’s one thing. Times have changed, and now we don’t use those formalities of kowtowing or that traditional type of bowing. Those formalities don’t have much use, and doing them looks religious, so we don’t do those things. The reason is, suppose you do kowtow or go through initiation, but then after you step out the door you go right back to your old ways, you do whatever you think you should around ordinary people, and you compete and fight for your reputation and gain—then what good did it do? You might even tarnish Dafa’s image in my name!

True cultivation depends completely on cultivating your mind, so as long as you’re able to cultivate, and as long as you can keep on cultivating solidly and steadfastly, we’ll guide you as a disciple. Treating you any other way wouldn’t work. But some people can’t seem to really take themselves to be cultivators and keep on cultivating. It’s just not doable for some people. But a lot of people will really keep up their cultivation. And as long as you keep on cultivating we’ll guide you as a disciple.

So if somebody just does these few sets of movements every day, you think he counts as a Falun Dafa disciple? Probably not. The reason is, when you truly cultivate you have to discipline yourself with that character standard we talk about, you have to really improve your own character, and then, and only then, is it true cultivation. If you just do those movements, your character won’t improve, you won’t have the strong energy you need to reinforce the whole thing, and that’s far from cultivation, so then we can’t take you as a Falun Dafa disciple. And if you go on like that day after day, maybe you’re doing the exercises, but you aren’t following the requirements of our Falun Dafa, you aren’t improving your character, and you stick to your old ways around ordinary people, so maybe you’ll run into other trouble, or maybe you’ll even say that practicing our Falun Dafa steered you wrong. That’s all possible. So you should really go by our character standard in your actions, and then you’ll become a true cultivator. I’ve made it clear to you, so you shouldn’t ask me to do those formality things anymore, like those initiation rituals. As long as you truly cultivate I’ll treat you this way. I have so many Law Bodies they’re too many to count, so I can take care of however many students there are, let alone the students here in the audience.

Buddhist Qigong and Buddhism

Buddhist qigong is not Buddhism the religion—I want to make sure you understand this. And actually, Daoist qigong isn’t Daoism the religion. Some of us are never clear about these things. Some people who are monks practicing in monasteries and some others who are lay Buddhists think they know more about Buddhist things than other people, so they really cause a stir promoting Buddhism’s things among our students. I want to tell you: don’t do that, because those are a different discipline’s things. Religions have religious forms, while what we’re transmitting here is the cultivation part of our discipline. We don’t worry about religious forms unless you’re a specialized Falun Dafa disciple. So anyway, we’re not part of Buddhism in the Age of the Law’s End.

The Law in Buddhism is only a small part of the Buddha Law. There are a lot of other profound Great Law practices, and every level has a different Law. Shakyamuni said that there are 84,000 cultivation disciplines. And how many disciplines are there in Buddhism? It has just a few, like the Tendai sect, Huayan sect, Zen sect, Pure Land, and the Esoteric sect. They don’t even add up to a fraction of it! So it can’t cover the entire Buddha Law, it’s just a small part of Buddha Law. Our Falun Dafa is also one of the 84,000 disciplines, but it’s never been related to Buddhism, from the original Buddhism right on up to the one in the Age of the Law’s End. And it doesn’t have anything to do with today’s religions.

Buddhism was founded 2,500 years ago by Shakyamuni in ancient India. At that time, after Shakyamuni had Unlocked and Enlightened, he recalled what he had cultivated before, and he spread it to save people. In his discipline, no matter how many tens of thousands of sutras have been written, there are actually just three words, "Precept, Concentration, Wisdom," and these are the features of his discipline. "Precept" was about making a person get rid of all the desires ordinary people have, forcefully making him do away with his desire to get things, cutting himself off from everything in the secular world, and so on. So he would free himself of all attachments, there was even nothing in his mind, and naturally he could enter into concentration. They complement each other. After he’d entered into concentration, he would need to sit in meditation and really do cultivation, and cultivate upwards relying on his power of concentration. So this is the true cultivation part of that discipline. They don’t teach anything related to techniques, and they don’t transform their innate bodies—they only cultivate the gong that determines levels. So he would single-mindedly cultivate his character, since a person who doesn’t cultivate longevity doesn’t care much about evolving gong. At the same time, while he was in concentration he would strengthen his power of concentration, endure hardships in meditation, and shed his karma. "Wisdom" refers to Enlightenment, and coming to have great wisdom. He would see the Truth of the universe, see the reality of every dimension in the universe, his great divine powers would be majestically displayed, and his Wisdom and Enlightenment would be unlocked, which is also called being "Unlocked."

There were eight religions spreading in India back when Shakyamuni founded his discipline. One of them was deep-rooted, and called Brahmanism. When Shakyamuni was alive he constantly battled on philosophical points with other religions. What Shakyamuni taught was a true teaching, so in the course of teaching his Law, the Buddha Law he taught flourished more and more, while other religions became weaker and weaker. Even that deep-rooted Brahmanism was on the brink of extinction. But after Shakyamuni’s Nirvana other religions started to thrive again, especially Brahmanism. Then what happened with Buddhism? Some monks became Unlocked, or Enlightened, at different levels, but the levels they reached were pretty low. Shakyamuni reached the Tathagata level but a lot of monks didn’t.

Buddha Law has different manifestations at different levels, but the higher it is, the closer it is to the Truth, and the lower it is, the further it is from the Truth. So after those monks became Unlocked and Enlightened at low levels, they interpreted what Shakyamuni had said with the manifestations of the universe that they saw at their levels, with the situations that they had learned about, and with the truths that they had comprehended. In other words, the monks interpreted the Law that Shakyamuni taught just about every which way, and there were also some monks who spoke about what they comprehended as if that was Shakyamuni’s words, instead of telling people Shakyamuni’s original words. As a result, the Buddha Law was altered beyond recognition, and it was no longer the Law Shakyamuni had preached. Eventually this caused the Buddha Law that’s in Buddhism to disappear in India. This is a major lesson from history, and that’s why later on you don’t see Buddhism in India, of all places. Before it vanished, Buddhism went through a number of reforms, and in the end it incorporated things from Brahmanism and formed a religion that’s found in India today, called Hinduism. It no longer worships any Buddhas, it worships some other things instead, and it no longer believes in Shakyamuni. That’s how it is now.

As Buddhism developed it went through several fairly big reforms. One took place soon after Shakyamuni passed away, at which point some people founded Mahayana, or "Greater Vehicle," Buddhism based on the high-level truths Shakyamuni had taught. They believed that the Law Shakyamuni taught in public was for ordinary people, that it was for people to attain self-salvation and achieve Arhat Fruition, and that it didn’t talk about saving all sentient beings, so they called that Hinayana, or "Lesser Vehicle," Buddhism. And monks in Southeast Asia have kept the original way of cultivation from Shakyamuni’s time, and in our Han region we call it Hinayana. Of course, they don’t see it that way—they believe they’ve inherited Shakyamuni’s original things. And it turns out they’re right, they have inherited the cultivation methods from Shakyamuni’s time, for the most part.

After this reformed Mahayana was introduced to China, it established itself in our country and became the Buddhism that’s now spread in our country. But it’s in fact totally different from the Buddhism of Shakyamuni’s time, from their dress all the way to the whole state of Enlightenment and the cultivation process, it’s all changed. The original Buddhism only worshipped Shakyamuni as its venerable forefather, but in today’s Buddhism there are lots of Buddhas, Great Bodhisattvas, and so on. What’s more, it’s become a faith that worships multiple Buddhas—people believe in many Tathagatas. So it’s become a Buddhism that worships multiple Buddhas, like Buddha Amitabha, Bhaishajyaguru, Buddha Vairochana, and so on, and then there are a lot of Great Bodhisattvas, too. So all of Buddhism is totally different now from what Shakyamuni originally founded back in his day.

During that time period a series of reforms took place. Bodhisattva Nagarjuna imparted a secret cultivation method, which went from India to Afghanistan, and then entered our Xinjiang region and spread to the Han region. It happened to be during the Tang Dynasty, so people called it Tang Tantrism. Confucianism has had a huge influence on China, so our moral values are different from those of other nationalities. The Tantric cultivation method includes male-female dual cultivation, which is something society couldn’t accept at that time. So it was wiped out during the Hui Chang period of the Tang Dynasty when Buddhism was suppressed, and Tang Tantrism disappeared from our Han region. In Japan there’s Eastern Tantrism now, which they learned from China back then, but they didn’t go through anointment, and according to Tantrism, anyone who learns Tantrism’s things without going through anointment is said to be stealing their Law, and they won’t recognize him as somebody who’s been taught by the master himself. Another branch went from India through Nepal to Tibet, it’s called Tibetan Tantrism, and it’s been passed down up until today. That’s pretty much how things have gone with Buddhism. So I’ve given you a really brief and general sense of how it has developed and evolved. At different points during Buddhism’s development some other disciplines have come along, such as the Zen sect, which Bodhidharma founded, the Pure Land sect, the Huayan sect, and so on, and they were all based on an interpretation and understanding of what Shakyamuni taught back in his time. So these are all part of reformed Buddhism, too. Buddhism has a dozen or so disciplines, and all of them have taken on the form of religions, so they’re part of Buddhism.

Now the religions that were created in this century, or not just this century, a lot of new religions around the world were created in the past few centuries, most of them are fake. When Great Enlightened Beings save people they have their own heavenly kingdoms. When Tathagatas like Shakyamuni, Buddha Amitabha, and Buddha Vairochana save people they each have a world that they preside over. There are over 100 of these worlds in this Milky Way system of ours, and our Falun Dafa has a Falun World.

So tell me, where do those fake disciplines take people to when they "save" them? They can’t save people. What they teach isn’t Law. Of course, when some people first founded their own religions they didn’t want to be demons that damage the original religions. They became Unlocked and Enlightened at different levels, and saw some of the truth, but they were far from being Enlightened Beings who can save people. Their levels were very low. They discovered some of the truth, and they realized that some of the things ordinary people believe in are wrong, and they told people how to do good things. They didn’t oppose other religions at first. But over time people came to believe in them and became devoted to them, and people thought that what they said made sense, and later they put more and more faith in them. So people became devoted to them and stopped being devoted to religions. Once their attachments to fame and profit sprung up, they would ask the public to give them a title, and from then on they’d operate under the name of that new religion. I’m telling you, those are all evil religions. Even if they don’t harm people, they’re still evil religions, since they’ve interfered with people’s faith in the original religions. The original religions can save people, but those ones can’t. And as time goes by they do bad things on the sly. A lot of things like that have spread over here to our China recently, like the so-called Guanyin sect, which is one of them. So make sure you watch out. They say that in one country in East Asia there are over 2,000 of them. In Southeast Asia and in some Western countries there are all kinds of things that people believe in. One country even goes so far as to openly have witchcraft. Those things are all demons that have showed up in the Age of the Law’s End. "Age of the Law’s End" doesn’t only refer to Buddhism—a lot of dimensions from a very high level on down have gone bad. And "Law’s End" doesn’t just have to do with the end of Law in Buddhism—it’s about how the world goes when it doesn’t have the restraint of the Law in people’s hearts to sustain morality.

In Cultivation You Need to Commit to One Discipline

We teach that in cultivation you need to commit to one discipline. It doesn’t matter which cultivation you do, you shouldn’t mix in other things and cultivate thoughtlessly. Some lay Buddhists cultivate things in Buddhism as well as our Falun Dafa’s things. I want to tell you, you’re never going to get anything—nobody will give you anything. The reason is, even though we’re all Buddhist, there’s still an issue of character, and an issue of committing to one discipline. You only have one body, so which discipline’s gong is your body going to develop? How’s it going to be evolved for you? And where do you want to go to? Whichever discipline you follow in cultivation, that’s where you’ll go. If you cultivate by following Pure Land, you go to Buddha Amitabha’s Western Paradise, and if you follow Bhaishajyaguru, you go to the Emerald World, or at least that’s how religions have put it, and it’s called "no second discipline."

The cultivating that we talk about here is actually about the whole process of evolving gong, and it follows the specific discipline a person does. So where do you think you’re headed? You’re straddling two boats, and you won’t get anything. Not only shouldn’t a qigong be mixed with a monastic Buddhist cultivation, there shouldn’t be any mixing among different cultivation methods, different qigongs, or different religions. Even the different disciplines within the same religion can’t be mixed in a person’s cultivation. You can only choose one discipline. If you cultivate Pure Land, then Pure Land it is, if you cultivate Tantrism, then Tantrism it is, if you cultivate the Zen sect, then Zen sect it is. If you’re straddling two boats, you cultivate a little of this, a little of that, then you’ll get nothing. In other words, even in Buddhism they teach "no second discipline," and you aren’t allowed to mix things into your cultivation. One group has its way of practice, the next group has its way of practice, and each of them has to follow its discipline’s way of cultivation, and its way of evolving, if it’s going to grow gong. In other dimensions there’s a process for evolving gong, and that, too, is an incredibly complex and incredibly fascinating process, and you can’t just freely mix other things into it while you’re cultivating.

As soon as some lay Buddhists hear that we’re practicing Buddhist qigong, they drag our students to temples to convert them to Buddhism. I’m going to tell you: students in the audience, don’t do that. You’d be damaging our Dafa and damaging the precepts in Buddhism. And at the same time you’d be interfering with our students and cause them to get nothing. You can’t do that. Cultivation is a serious matter, and you have to commit to one discipline. Although the part that we teach among ordinary people isn’t a religion, the goal of cultivation is the same: it is to achieve Unlocking, or Enlightenment, and to succeed in cultivation and achieve Perfection. That’s the goal.

Shakyamuni said that in the Age of the Law’s End it would be very hard even for the monks in monasteries to save themselves. And how much more so for lay Buddhists—even less would they be taken care of. Even if you’ve taken somebody as your master, that person you call master is also a person who’s cultivating. If he doesn’t really do cultivation it’s a waste of your time. When a person doesn’t cultivate his mind, he can’t go up, no matter who he is. Conversion is an ordinary people’s thing. You think you’ve made yourself Buddhist once you’re converted? And the Buddha will take care of you then? No such thing. You can kowtow to him every day until your forehead bleeds and burn bundle after bundle of incense for him, but it’s still useless. It only works when you really cultivate your mind. When it gets to the Age of the Law’s End, the universe has gone through huge changes, and even places where people practice their religious beliefs aren’t good anymore. People with abilities (and this includes the monks there) have seen that, too. Right now I’m the only person in the world who is publicly spreading a true teaching. I have done something that’s never been done by anyone before, and I’ve made this available to everyone during the Age of the Law’s End. The truth is, a person doesn’t get an opportunity like this in 1,000 years, or even 10,000 years. But whether you can be saved, which is about whether you can cultivate, that still depends on you. What I’m teaching is an enormous truth about the universe.

I’m not saying you have to learn my Falun Dafa, but I can say that what I’m doing is sharing some principles with you. If you want to cultivate you have to commit to one discipline, or else you won’t be able to cultivate one bit. Of course, if you don’t want to cultivate we’ll leave you alone. The Law is meant to be heard by people who really cultivate. And that’s why you have to commit to one discipline, and you can’t even mix in thoughts from other practices. I don’t teach about using thought direction here, and our Falun Dafa doesn’t care much about thought direction, so don’t go adding anything like thoughts into it. You really need to watch out for this. For the most part we have no thought direction—don’t Buddhists talk about Emptiness, and Daoists Nothingness?

One time I had my mind connected with four or five Great Enlightened Beings, Great Daos, whose levels were extremely high. You want to talk about high levels?—they were so high an ordinary person would be stunned. They wanted to know what it was I was thinking. During all these years that I’ve been cultivating it’s been absolutely impossible for other people to read my mind. Other people’s abilities can’t get in even a bit. Nobody is able to know me, and nobody is able to know what I’m thinking. They wanted to know what was going through my mind, so after I agreed to it, they connected my mind with theirs for a period of time. After they were connected it was a little hard for me to bear. It doesn’t matter what my level is—since I’m among ordinary people, I am doing something intentional, saving people, and my mind is on saving people. But how still were their minds? So still it was scary. It wouldn’t have been a big deal with just one person that still, but with four or five people sitting there, and all of them that still, like a pond of still water, there was nothing… I tried to feel them but I couldn’t. During those days I really felt discomfort. I had that kind of sense. It was something most people couldn’t imagine and couldn’t feel—it was completely nonaction and it was empty.

When you cultivate at a very high level there’s no thought direction at all. The reason is, a set of foundational things was already laid when you were at the ordinary person foundation-building level, and when your cultivation reaches a high level, cultivation is totally automatic, and that’s especially true in our practice. As long as you improve your character your gong will be growing, and you won’t even need to do any movements. Our exercises are for reinforcing the automatic mechanisms. Why do people become still in deep meditation? It’s complete nonaction. Maybe you’ve seen how Daoists use all kinds of movements, thought activities, thought guidance, and the like. But I can tell you, once a Daoist goes slightly beyond the level of qi there’s nothing, and they don’t use such-and-such thoughts anymore. So, some people who used to practice other qigongs always have trouble letting go of things like those breathing techniques and thoughts. I teach them college-level things, but they always ask me about elementary school kids’ things, like how to guide this or that thing or how to use different thoughts. They’re used to doing those things now, and they think that’s how qigong is. But the truth is, it’s not.

Abilities and Potency

A lot of us don’t have a clear understanding of qigong terms, and some people always get them mixed up. They call ability "potency," and call potency "ability." The gong that we get from cultivating our character comes after we’ve assimilated to the nature of the universe, and it’s evolved from our virtue. It’s what determines how high a person’s level is, how strong his potency is, and how high his Fruition is—it’s the most important of the gongs. So what kind of cultivation state might come about while a person is in the process of cultivating? He might have some supernatural abilities come out, which we call "abilities" for short. The gong that I just talked about, which raises your level, is called potency. The higher your level is, the greater your potency and the more powerful your abilities.

Abilities are just by-products of the cultivation process. They don’t represent your level—they don’t represent how high a person’s level is or how strong his potency is. Some people might have more of them come out, and some less. And you can’t take abilities to be the main goal of cultivation, and you can’t get them by seeking them. Abilities only come out when a person decides that he truly wants to cultivate, he can’t make them the goal of his cultivation. What do you want those things for? Your only goal is to use them around people, isn’t it? But there’s absolutely no way you’re allowed to just go and freely use them around ordinary people like that. That’s why the more you want them, the less likely you’ll get them. It’s because you are seeking, and needless to say, seeking things is an attachment, and it is exactly attachments that cultivation tries to get rid of.

There are a lot of people who’ve cultivated to high realms but who don’t have any abilities. Their masters have locked them, since they’re worried they won’t handle themselves well and will do bad things. So they don’t let them use their divine powers along the way. There’s a good number of people like that. Abilities are directed by a person’s mind. While a person is sleeping he might not be able to handle himself well, and maybe he’d dream something and then discover the next morning that everything was in total upheaval. And that’s not allowed. Cultivation is done in the setting of ordinary people, so the people with great abilities usually aren’t allowed to use them, and most of them are locked, but it’s not absolute. There are a lot of people who’ve cultivated pretty well, and they can handle themselves well, so they’re allowed to use a portion of their abilities. If you ask someone like that to just go and show you some of his abilities, there’s no way he would. He’s able to handle those situations.

Reverse Cultivation and Gong Borrowing

Some people have never practiced qigong, or maybe they’ve learned a few movements in some qigong class, but that’s all just about healing and fitness, and that’s not cultivation. So in other words, these people haven’t ever gotten real instruction. But they suddenly get gong overnight. Let’s talk about where that kind of gong comes from. There are a few scenarios.

One is reverse cultivation. What’s reverse cultivation? It’s like this. Some of us are a bit older and want to cultivate, but they don’t have enough time to start cultivating from scratch. When the qigong upsurge was taking place they wanted to cultivate, too. They knew that people could do good things for others with qigong, and that they’d be able to improve themselves with it at the same time. So they had this wish—they wanted to improve, and they wanted to cultivate. But a few years back during the qigong upsurge, those qigong masters were all just popularizing qigong, and nobody was truly passing on high levels’ things. Even today, I’m the only one who’s truly transmitting a qigong at high levels publicly, there’s nobody else. People who do reverse cultivation are over 50 years old, so they’re a bit older, and they have great bases, and the things in their bodies are excellent. Almost all of them are people who a master would take as a disciple, or who a master would choose as a successor to pass on his things to. But these people are getting on in their years, and now they want to cultivate. That’s easier said than done! Where are they going to find a master? But with the thought of doing cultivation, just with this wish in their minds, it shines like gold and shakes the Ten-Directional World. You always hear people talking about Buddha-nature this and that, and what they mean is exactly this Buddha-nature that’s come out.

When it’s looked at from a higher level, the meaning of life isn’t about being human. Human life came into being in the space of the universe, so it was assimilated to the nature of the universe—to be True, Good, and Endure—and it was originally good and kind. But as the number of beings grew larger, they formed social relationships, and then some of them got selfish or bad and they couldn’t stay at high levels, so they dropped, they dropped to a certain level. At that level they became bad again, so they kept dropping and dropping, until they finally dropped to the level of ordinary people. A person is supposed to be completely annihilated when he drops to this level, but out of mercy the Great Enlightened Beings decided to give people one more chance in the most harsh environment, so they created this dimension.

The people in other dimensions don’t have bodies like this one, and they can levitate and expand or shrink. But in this dimension they make people have this body, this mortal body that we have. Once you have this body, you can’t take it when it’s cold, you can’t take it when it’s hot, you can’t take being tired, and you can’t take being hungry—you get the idea, you suffer. When you get sick it’s hard to bear it, and you go through birth, aging, sickness, and death. It’s to have you pay off your karma by suffering, to see if you can return, and to give you one more chance. That’s why human beings have dropped into a realm of delusion. After you drop here this pair of eyes is created for you to keep you from seeing other dimensions or how matter really is. If you’re able to make it back, you will see that the most painful hardship turns out to be the most valuable. You have to experience a lot of hardship when you try to cultivate your way back by awakening in the middle of delusion, and that’s how you return quickly. If you become worse you’ll be annihilated, so in their eyes, being human isn’t the meaning of life—it’s to have you return to your original, true self, to go back. Ordinary people can’t awaken to this. The ordinary people out in the ordinary world, they’re just ordinary people, and they think about how to get ahead and how to live the good life. And the better they live, the more selfish they get, the more they want to have, and the more they stray from the nature of the universe. So they’re heading for destruction.

That’s how it looks from high levels. You think you’re going forward, when you’re actually going backward. Mankind thinks that it is developing its science and forging ahead, when the truth is, it’s only moving according to the laws governing the universe. Master Zhang Guo, one of the Eight Daoist Immortals, rode backward on a donkey. Hardly anyone knows why he rode the donkey backward. He had realized that going forward was actually going backward, so he rode the donkey turned around. So the moment some people want to cultivate, Enlightened Beings treat that wish as extremely precious, and they can help with no strings attached. In the same way, with our students who are sitting here today, if you want to take up cultivation I can help you with no strings attached. But if you want to be an ordinary person, are thinking about getting healed, are wanting this and that, and so on, then forget it, I can’t help you. Why? Because you want to be an ordinary person, and an ordinary person is supposed to experience birth, aging, sickness, and death—that’s how it’s supposed to be. Everything has underlying causes, and they can’t get fouled up. Cultivation wasn’t originally a part of your life but now you want to cultivate, so going forward we have to rearrange your path, and now we can adjust your body.

So when a person wants to cultivate, as soon as that wish comes forth, the Enlightened Beings see it—"This is just so precious." But how can they help him? How can he possibly find a master in this world who can teach him? And he’s already over 50. The Great Enlightened Beings can’t teach him, because if they were to show themselves here and teach you, to teach you the Law and how to do exercises, they’d be leaking Heaven’s secrets, and they couldn’t even save themselves from dropping. Human beings have done bad things and dropped into this realm of delusion, so they have to cultivate by awakening in the midst of the delusion, and that’s why the Enlightened Beings can’t teach them. If you saw a living, real Buddha teaching you the Law and how to do exercises, even people who’ve committed unpardonable sins would come to learn, and everybody would believe then. Then what would be left to awaken to? There wouldn’t be a question of awakening. Human beings are supposed to be annihilated since they dropped into this realm of delusion of their own doing. But you’ve been given one more chance to go back out of the delusion. If you are able to return, then you return, but if you can’t return, what’s in store for you is continued reincarnation and destruction.

A person has to walk his own path. So if you want to cultivate, how does it work? Here’s what they came up with. There was an upsurge of qigong back then, and it was the result of a change in the celestial phenomena. So in order to be in sync with the celestial phenomena, they gave this person gong proportionate to the level of his character. They attached to his body a soft tube, which works like a water faucet, and when it was turned on gong would come. When he wanted to send out some gong, gong would come, but he himself couldn’t send out gong, he didn’t have any gong of his own. That’s how his cultivation state was, and it’s called reverse cultivation—you keep cultivating from the top down until Perfection.

When we’re talking about cultivation in the usual sense, it’s something that goes from the bottom up until the person is Unlocked and has cultivated to Perfection. The reverse cultivation that we’re talking about refers to when older people don’t have enough time to cultivate from the bottom up, so it’d be quicker for them to cultivate from the top down. That’s another phenomenon that came up at that time. Those people’s character had to be very high, and they were supplied with energy in proportion to their level of character. Why did they do that? For one thing, it was to go along with the celestial phenomena at the time. And when someone like that was doing good things for others he could bear hardships. That’s because when you interact with ordinary people, all kinds of ordinary attachments interfere with you. Some people don’t even believe the person when he heals them. When he treats them, he drives out a lot of bad things, but maybe at the time it’s not obvious how much he’s healed them. So they’re not happy, they don’t even thank him, and they might even call him names and say he cheated them! It’s exactly in grappling with these problems, it’s in this environment, that the mind is tempered. He was given gong so that he could cultivate and improve and go up, and while doing good things for others he could develop his abilities and increase his gong. But some people couldn’t tell what was going on. Didn’t I explain this?—they couldn’t teach these people the Law, and it was up to them to figure it out. It was a question of awakening. If they couldn’t figure it out they’d have no way to help them.

When some people received gong they suddenly felt unbearably hot one night while they were sleeping and they could hardly keep their covers on. When they got up the next morning they got a shock from whatever they touched. That’s when they knew they had got gong. When somebody had pain somewhere in his body they’d give him a quick rub and then he’d feel better, so it worked pretty well. They knew that from then on they had the ability to summon gong. So this guy would make himself a qigong master, he’d hang up a sign, and he’d give himself the title of "qigong master." At first, because he was pretty good, maybe he’d turn down the money and gifts that people tried to give him for his healings. But he couldn’t resist the contaminating force of the big dye vat of ordinary people. The reason being, the people who did reverse cultivation like that hadn’t truly cultivated their character, and so it was hard for them to keep up their character. Slowly the person would start accepting small tokens of appreciation, then gradually he’d start to accept bigger things, and finally he wouldn’t settle for anything less than what he had in mind. In the end he’d complain, "What’s the point of giving me all this stuff? How ’bout money!" And he wouldn’t let it go if people didn’t give him enough money. What’s more, he stopped giving qigong masters of true practices any credit. All he heard was other people’s flattery about how talented he was. If somebody said something bad about him he’d get upset. His attachments to fame and profit all ballooned, and he thought he was smarter than other people and just something else. He thought that he was given the gong to become a qigong master and make a big fortune, when it was actually to have him cultivate. When his attachments to fame and profit welled up, his character had actually dropped.

I’ve said that however high a person’s character is, that’s how high his gong is. So when that guy’s character dropped he couldn’t be given that much gong, as it had to be given in proportion to his character—however high his character was, that’s how high his gong was. The more he was attached to fame and profit, the worse he dropped in the environment of ordinary people, and his gong dropped along with him. In the end, when he’d completely fallen, he wasn’t given any gong anymore, and he wound up without a trace of gong. There have been quite a few people like that in recent years, and most of them were women in their fifties. You might see an older woman doing qigong exercises, but she didn’t receive any real teachings. Maybe she learned a few movements for healing and fitness at a qigong class. But one day she suddenly had gong. Then when her character went bad and her attachments to fame and profit welled up, she dropped right down, and now she’s nobody and her gong is gone. There’s now loads of people like that who did reverse cultivation and fell. The ones who are left are few and far between. And why is that? Because they didn’t know that it was to have them cultivate. They even thought that it was for them to get rich, get famous, and become qigong masters in the ordinary world. When in fact, it was to have them cultivate.

What is gong borrowing? There’s no age limit, but it does have one requirement, which is, the person has to be someone with especially good character. There were people like this who knew that you could use qigong to cultivate, and they wanted to cultivate. They had the wish to cultivate, but where could they find a master? A few years back there really were true qigong masters passing on their qigongs, but what they transmitted were all just healing and fitness things. Nobody was spreading things that went to high levels. And there weren’t other people to teach you.

So now that we’re talking about gong borrowing I’ll mention another thing. Along with his master soul (master consciousness), a human being also has a subordinate soul (subordinate consciousness). Some people have one, two, three, four, or even five subordinate souls. The person’s subordinate souls aren’t necessarily the same gender as the person’s body—some might be male, some female, and they’re all different. And in fact, the master soul isn’t necessarily the same gender as the mortal body, because we’ve discovered that nowadays a lot of men have female master souls, while a lot of women have male master souls. That fits exactly with the celestial phenomenon in which the yin and yang are reversed, where yin is prospering and yang is in decline, as Daoists put it.

A person’s subordinate soul usually comes from a higher level than his master soul. This is even more so for some people, whose subordinate souls come from really high levels. But you should know, the subordinate soul is not a possessing spirit! He was born together with you from your mother’s womb, has the same name as you, and is part of your body. When people think about things or do things in their daily lives, it’s their master souls that call the shots. What the subordinate soul mainly does is restrain the master soul so that he does as few bad things as possible. But when the master soul is very attached, a subordinate soul can’t do anything about it. The subordinate soul isn’t deluded by the ordinary world, while the master soul is vulnerable to that delusion.

The levels some subordinate souls come from are very high, and maybe they’re just a bit away from achieving a True Fruition. When the subordinate soul wants to cultivate, he can’t if the master soul doesn’t want to—there’s nothing he can do. Then back during the qigong upsurge, one day his master soul wanted to learn qigong like other people did and cultivate up to high levels. Of course, his motive was innocent, and he didn’t have any desire to get rich or famous. A wave of happiness immediately came over his subordinate soul, "I’ve wanted to cultivate but I don’t have the say. Now you want to cultivate, and that’s exactly what I want to do." But where could he find a master? The subordinate soul was pretty talented. He left the body to track down the Great Enlightened Beings he knew in his previous lives. Since the levels of some subordinate souls are really high they can leave the body. After he got there he told them he wanted to cultivate and to borrow some gong. They saw that this guy was okay, and of course they’d lend a hand to somebody who wants to cultivate. So that’s how the subordinate soul borrowed gong. This gong often released radiant energy and was supplied through a tube, and then there were things that were borrowed and in finished form, and things that are in finished form are almost always accompanied by abilities.

So when that happened, the person might have had abilities at the same time, and he’d go through something like what I described a minute ago: he’d feel incredibly hot when he slept at night, and when he woke up the next morning he had gong, he’d get a shock from whatever he touched, and he was able to heal other people. He knew that he’d gotten gong. Where did it come from? He wasn’t sure. He had a vague sense that it came from the space of the universe, but he didn’t know the specifics of how it came. And his subordinate soul wouldn’t tell him, because it was the subordinate soul who was cultivating. The only thing the person knew was that he’d gotten gong.

The people who do gong borrowing can be of any age, and the bulk of them are young people. So a few years back there were people of all different ages, and some who came along were in their twenties, some in their thirties, some in their forties, and there were also some older folks. Young people have an even harder time behaving themselves. You see them behaving like nice people in day-to-day life and out in the ordinary world, and they take their reputation and their own gain lightly. But once they stand out a little among their peers, they tend to be affected by reputation and gain. They think that they still have a lot of living to do, and they still want to try to go after some things and get ahead a bit, and reach some ordinary-people type goals. So after they get abilities and some special skills they often go use them as a tool for chasing after their own goals. But that’s just way out of line. So they wouldn’t be allowed to use them like that. The more they used that gong, the less they had, and they’d end up with nothing. It’s even more of these people who’ve fallen. I don’t think there’s one left now.

The two scenarios I just talked about both have to do with people who have pretty good character getting gong. That gong didn’t come from their cultivation—it came from the Enlightened Beings. So the gong is inherently good.

Spirit Possession

A lot of us in the cultivation world might have heard of stories about animals, like maybe foxes, weasels, ghosts, or snakes, taking possession of human bodies. And what are these things all about? Some people say that practicing qigong develops supernatural abilities, but the truth is, it’s not that it develops supernatural abilities—those "supernatural abilities" are just a person’s innate abilities. It’s just that as society moves forward, people pay more and more attention to the visible things in this material dimension of ours, and they come to rely more and more on our sophisticated tools. So our human innate abilities have steadily atrophied, and now it’s come to the point where they’ve totally vanished.

If someone wants to have abilities, he has to go through cultivation, return to his original, true self, and bring them out through cultivation. But animals, on the other hand, they don’t have complicated thoughts like people do, and so they’re connected to the nature of the universe and do have their inborn, innate abilities. Some people say that animals know how to cultivate, that foxes know how to make elixir, that snakes and such-and-such animals know how to cultivate, and so on. It’s not that they know how to cultivate. At the start they didn’t know a thing about cultivating—it’s only that they had those innate abilities. So under certain conditions, in certain environments, and after a long time their innate abilities might take effect, and they’ll be able to get gong, and have abilities come out.

Now that things have gone this way, that animal gets some special abilities. At one time we would have said they’d "acquired subtle powers" or "gained special abilities." A lot of people seem to think animals are just incredibly fierce and that they can control people easily. Actually, I’d say they aren’t fierce—they’re nothing before a true cultivator. Big deal if they’ve cultivated almost 1,000 years, a pinky is more than enough to crush them. So now that we know animals have innate abilities and can have some special abilities, there’s another law in this universe of ours: animals aren’t allowed to succeed in cultivation. That’s why you’ve read in ancient books that they’re killed once every several hundred years in large catastrophes or small calamities. When an animal’s gong grows to a certain level after some time, it’ll be destroyed, struck by a thunderbolt, or something else will happen to stop it from cultivating. That’s because they don’t have the essential nature that humans have, and they aren’t able to cultivate like humans do. It’s guaranteed they’d be demons if they succeeded in cultivation since they don’t have human traits. So they aren’t allowed to succeed in cultivation, and that’s why they’re slain by Heaven. They too know that. But like I said, the world is sliding downhill bigtime, and there’s no evil some people won’t do. When it’s hit this point, isn’t the world in danger?

"When something reaches the extreme it reverses"! We’ve discovered that every time the world was destroyed in the different cycles of prehistoric ages, it was always when the human race’s morals were terribly degenerate. Right now the dimension where we human beings exist and a lot of other dimensions are in great danger. And the same goes for other dimensions at this level. The beings there, too, want to leave as quickly as possible, they want to climb up to higher levels. They think that by going up to higher levels they can escape. But that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? If you want to cultivate you have to have a human body, and that’s one reason we’re seeing qigong practitioners get possessed.

Maybe some of you are thinking, "How come all those Great Enlightened Beings and all those powerful masters aren’t doing anything about it?" In our universe there’s another law: if it’s about something you’re seeking or just want, nobody can stop you. Here we’re teaching you to take the right path, and along with that, we’re teaching you the Law inside and out and encouraging you to have your own understanding of it, but it’s still up to you whether you decide to learn it. "The master leads you through the door, but cultivation is up to you." Nobody’s going to push you to cultivate. It’s up to you whether you cultivate. Or to put it another way, when you choose your own path, when you decide what you want, or when you’re trying to get something—nobody will stop you. They can only try to kindly persuade you.

You see some people doing qigong exercises there, but it’s actually the possessing spirit that gets it all. How did they attract possessing spirits? Just consider all the people around the country who practice qigong, do you know how many of them have possessing spirits on their backs? If I told you, a lot of people wouldn’t dare to do qigong. The number is scary! So what would bring something like that about? Those things are really wrecking the ordinary world. So how did something so serious come about? It’s people’s own doing. Because mankind is going bad, demons are everywhere. The worst is those fake qigong masters, they all have possessing spirits on their bodies, and when they pass on their practices they’re transmitting that stuff. Never in history were animals allowed to get on human bodies, and if they did they’d be killed—whoever saw it wouldn’t stand for it. But would you believe, in today’s world some people pray to them, they want them, and they make offerings to them. Some people won’t be too happy to hear this—"But that isn’t what I asked for!" You didn’t ask for it, but you asked for abilities, and would the Enlightened Beings of a true cultivation give them to you? Asking for those kinds of things is an attachment that ordinary people have, and that kind of desire has to go. Then who do you think would give them to you? Only demons and different kinds of animals that are in other dimensions. Isn’t what you did just like asking them for those things? So they came right over.

How many people are there who have proper thoughts when they do qigong exercises? When a person practices qigong he has to take virtue seriously, do good things for others, and be kind—he should discipline himself this way in every action and in every circumstance. Take all the people doing qigong exercises in the parks and all the ones doing them at home, and how many do you have thinking that way? To be honest, when some people are doing their qigong, who knows what they’re doing, they’ll be exercising away, swinging their bodies all around, and at the same time going off about things—"Ugh! That daughter-in-law of mine has no respect for me," "My mother-in-law is such a wretch!" Some people even go on and on, from talking about things at their company right on to headline news—there’s nothing they don’t babble about, and the things they don’t agree with will blow their fuse. Tell me, is that doing cultivation exercises? And then there are people doing a standing exercise right there, getting so tired their legs shake, but his mind isn’t at rest, "Things are so expensive these days. Prices have gone up, and my company can’t make the payroll. Why can’t my practice bring out some abilities? If I got some abilities I’d be a qigong master, and I’d get rich—I could make money by giving people treatments." Once he sees that other people’s abilities have come out he gets even more agitated. He gets obsessed with getting abilities, with getting the Third Eye, and with getting healing skills. Now think about it, isn’t that about as far as you can get from the nature of our universe, to be True, Good, and Endure?! He’s simply turning his back on it. To put it a little more seriously, he’s practicing in an evil way! But he isn’t aware of it. The more he thinks like that, the worse the thoughts are that his mind emits. That kind of person doesn’t have a handle on it, he doesn’t know he should take virtue seriously, and he thinks that by doing those movements he can get gong, and that he can get whatever he wants by seeking after it—he thinks that’s how it is.

A person attracts bad things precisely because his thoughts aren’t proper. Then the animal sees it, "This guy wants to get rich off qigong, and that guy wants to get famous and get abilities. Boy, his body is pretty good and what he has is pretty good. But his mind is really bad—he’s after abilities! Maybe he has a master, but even if he does, I’m not afraid." It knows that the master of a true cultivation will see him seeking abilities like that, and the harder he seeks after them the less likely the master will give him them, since that’s exactly an attachment he should get rid of. The more he thinks that way, the less the chance he’ll be given any abilities, so basically the more oblivious he is to how it works, the more he wants them and the worse his thoughts get. Finally that master gives a deep sigh when he sees that this guy is finished, and he won’t have anything more to do with him. Some people don’t have masters, and maybe somebody who happens to pass by will look after them for a while, since there are so many Enlightened Beings in different dimensions. An Enlightened Being might take a look at him, watch him and follow him for a day, and leave him after he sees that he’s not good. The next day another one comes by, takes a look at him, finds out he’s no good, and off he goes.

The animal knows that whatever kind of master he has, be it a regular one or a passing-by one, his master won’t give him what he’s seeking. Animals can’t see the dimensions where Great Enlightened Beings are, so they aren’t afraid, and they’ve taken advantage of a loophole: our universe has a law, that when somebody wants to seek something, or wants something, normally he shouldn’t be stopped. It takes advantage of that loophole—"He wants them, then I’ll give him them. It’s not wrong for me to help him, right?" So it gives them to him. At first the animal doesn’t dare get on his body, so it starts by giving him a little gong as a test-run. The person keeps seeking it, and one day he really gets it, and he can even heal people. The animal sees that it’s worked pretty well, and it’s just like playing a prelude before the show really starts. "He wants them, so I’ll get right on his body. And once I’m there I can give him more, I’ll pour it on!" "You want the Third Eye, right? This time I’ll give you it all." So it gets right on him.

While he’s having that thought about wanting it, right there doing that, his Third Eye pops open, he’s able to send out gong, and he’s even got a few little abilities. He’s beside himself with joy, and he thinks that he’s sought and sought these things and finally got them, and he thinks they came from his practice. But actually, his practice didn’t bring him anything. He thinks that he can see through a human body and see where the problems are in someone’s body. In reality, though, his Third Eye isn’t open one bit—it’s that the animal is controlling his brain. That animal sees things with its eyes and then reflects what it sees into his brain, and he thinks his Third Eye is open. "Want to send out gong? Go for it." When he holds out his hands to send out gong, the animal’s little paws extend out from behind his body. When he sends out gong, the forked tongue from the little snake’s head comes out to lick the sick or swollen area. There are a lot of things like this. Those spirits that possess these people come only because they asked for them.

So he seeks after them, he dreams about getting rich, and about getting famous. "Okay then!"—he gets abilities, he can heal people, and he can see with his Third Eye. That makes him happy. The animal takes a look, "You want to get rich, don’t you? Okay, I’ll make you get rich." It’s way too easy to control an ordinary person’s head. The animal can control a lot of people and make them come to him for treatments, and they’ll come in droves. Oh my goodness!—while he sees patients right here, it’s stirring up reporters over there to promote him in newspapers. It manipulates ordinary people to do these things. When someone who comes for a treatment doesn’t pay him enough, he won’t let them off the hook, and he’ll make you have a headache. What it comes down to is that you just have to give him a lot of money. The guy pulls in both fame and wealth—he’s made a bundle, he’s become well-known, and now he’s a qigong master. People like him usually don’t care about character and they’ll dare to say anything, "I’m second to none but Heaven." They go as far as saying they’re the reincarnations of well-known deities, like the Queen Mother or Jade Emperor, and they even go as far as saying they’re Buddhas. They haven’t really gone through character cultivation, so they seek abilities when they do their exercises and end up getting possessed by animals.

Maybe some of you are thinking, "What’s wrong with that? It’s okay as long as I can make money, or get rich, and I can get famous." That’s what a lot of people are thinking. But I’ll tell you, that animal isn’t doing it without a purpose, it turns out, and it doesn’t give you something for nothing. There’s a law in this universe: no loss, no gain. What does the animal get? I talked about this earlier, didn’t I? It’s trying to get that bit of essence in your body to cultivate into a human form, so it just gathers the essence from the human body. But there’s only this one share of essence in a human body, and if somebody wants to cultivate, he only has this one share. And if you let the animal take it from you, you can forget about cultivating—how would you cultivate then? You’ll have lost everything, and you won’t be able to cultivate at all. Maybe some people will say, "I don’t want to cultivate. I just want to get rich. All’s well as long as I have money. I couldn’t care less!" Look, I’ll tell you: you want to get rich, but after I explain how it really works, then you’ll change your mind. So what happens? If it leaves your body not too late your limbs will feel like lead, and you’ll be like that for good, because it drained you of too much of your essence. But if it leaves your body late, you will become a vegetable and lie in bed for the rest of your life hanging on by a thread. Even if you had money, would you be able to spend it? Even if you had fame, would you be able to enjoy it? Wouldn’t it be horrible?

These things have become really serious and they’re common among people who practice qigong these days. The animal doesn’t just possess the body, it also kills the person’s master soul, and it burrows into the person’s Niwan Palace and squats there. The person looks like a human being, but he’s not. You even see things like that nowadays. Mankind’s morals have changed, so when some people do bad things, and you tell them they’re doing bad things, they just don’t believe you. They think that making money, wanting money, and getting rich are their birthright, and that these are the right thing to do. So they harm other people, they hurt others, and they’ll stop at nothing to make money—they’ll do anything! The animal won’t gain if it doesn’t lose. Would it give you something for nothing? It wants to get the things that are in your body. Of course, we’d say that people invite all those troubles just because that idea they have isn’t right, and their thoughts aren’t proper.

Let’s see what our Falun Dafa has to say about this. When you cultivate in our discipline, as long as you can always keep up your character, "one good can overcome a hundred evils"—you won’t run into any trouble. On the other hand, if you can’t keep up your character well, if you seek after all sorts of things, you’re sure to invite trouble. Some people just can’t let go of the things they used to practice. We all know that you have to commit to one discipline when you do qigong—in true cultivation you just have to. Some qigong masters have written books, but so what. You know what, their books are such a mess they’re like those things they practice—snakes, foxes, and weasels, they’re all in there. When you read those books that stuff will jump out from the words. I have to tell you, those fake qigong masters outnumber true qigong masters by a lot, and you can’t tell who’s who. So you have to know what you’re doing. It’s not like I won’t settle for anything but your cultivating in my Falun Dafa. Actually, you can cultivate in the discipline of your choice. But there’s an ancient saying, "No true teachings for thousands of years, better than wild heresy for one day." So you really have to know what you’re doing, and really cultivate a true teaching. Don’t mix anything into your cultivation—don’t even add thoughts. Some people’s Law Wheels have gotten all out of shape. Why is that? They get defensive, "But I didn’t practice that other qigong." But whenever they do the exercises, their thoughts just keep pumping in the things they practiced before—wouldn’t that add it in? That’s all I want to say about spirit possession.

Cosmic Language

What is "cosmic language"? It’s about a person suddenly being able to speak gibberish, like mumbo jumbo, and even he doesn’t know what he’s saying. People with telepathic abilities can get the general idea, but they can’t make out the specifics of what he’s talking about. And some people can speak a few languages. What’s more, some of them think they’re just incredible and think they’re really talented and have an ability. Let’s be clear, that’s not an ability, and it’s not a cultivator’s talent, and it doesn’t stand for your level, either. So what’s it about? It’s actually that your mind is being controlled by a foreign spirit. But for some reason you think it’s pretty good, you like having it, and you’re happy to have it. And the happier you are, the tighter its grip on you. If you think of yourself as a true cultivator, how could you just let it control you? And its level is really low. So a true cultivator shouldn’t invite this kind of trouble.

Human beings are the most precious, and they’re the wisest of all creatures. How could you be controlled by those things? You don’t even want your body anymore—how sad! Some of those things latch onto the body, and some don’t latch onto the body but they still manipulate you and control you, even though they’re at a little distance. When you want to speak it, they’re all too glad to do that, so you’ll go and spew mumbo jumbo. And it can be passed on—another person comes along and wants to learn it, he gets up his nerve and opens his mouth, and he starts spewing it, too. Those things actually come in nests, and when you want to speak it one of them will pounce right on your body and help you speak it.

So how’s that allowed to happen? Again, like I said, it wants to raise its level, but there’s no hardship over there so it can’t cultivate or improve itself. So they came up with an idea—to help people do good things for others. But they don’t know how. Yet they do know that the energy they send out can have the effect of slowing people’s sicknesses down a little and relieving the pain sick people have at the time, but it can’t cure the ailment. That’s how it is, and they know that using a person’s mouth to send it out can have that effect. Some people call it Heaven’s language, and then there are people who call it Buddha’s language. That’s blaspheming Buddhas! That’s just reckless!

You know, Buddhas don’t speak frivolously. If they went and said something in our dimension, they could cause earthquakes in the human world—it’d be terrible! Just think about that thundering sound. Some people have said, "I saw with my Third Eye that he talked to me." He didn’t talk to you. And the same goes for those people who saw my Law Bodies. They didn’t talk to you. The thought that he sends out is in stereo sound, so when you hear it, it sounds like he’s talking. Usually he can speak in his dimension, but once it’s transmitted over here you can’t hear what he says clearly. That’s because the concepts of space-time are different in the two dimensions, in our dimension, a small block of time is about two hours nowadays, but in that large dimension, our small block of time is equal to a year in their time. Our time is slower than theirs, it turns out.

There’s an old saying, "Only one day in the heavens, but a thousand years on Earth." That refers to the unitary paradises where there’s no concept of space and no concept of time, or to be more specific, the worlds where Great Enlightened Beings stay, like the Western Paradise, the Emerald World, the Falun World, the Lotus World, and so on—it’s those places. But the time in those large dimensions is faster, contrary to what you’d expect. If you’re able to receive and hear their talking (some people’s Celestial Ears are open, and when those Ears are open they can hear them talking) you can’t hear them that clearly. Everything you hear sounds the same, like birds chirping, or like a turntable playing at a fast speed—it’s all garbled. Of course, some people can hear music and they can hear people talking. But they have to have an ability that serves as a vehicle to eliminate the time difference before the sound is transmitted to your ears, and only then can you hear it clearly. That’s how it works. Some people call that stuff Buddha’s language, but nothing could be further from it.

When two Enlightened Beings meet they know all that there is to know with just a smile. That’s because it’s silent, mental telepathy, and what’s received has stereo sound. When they smile at each other they’ve already exchanged their ideas. They don’t just use that one form, sometimes they use another method. You know, in Tantrism Tibetan lamas take doing hand signs seriously. But if you ask a lama what hand signs are, he’ll tell you that it’s "meta-yoga." And what exactly is that? They don’t know themselves. It’s actually a language of Great Enlightened Beings. When there are a lot of people, they make those large hand signs, which are incredibly beautiful, and they make all kinds of large hand signs. And when there’s a small audience they use the small hand signs, and they’re beautiful, too, they use small hand signs in all kinds of poses, and they’re really involved and rich since they’re a language. These all used to be Heaven’s secrets, and now we’ve unveiled them all. What they use in Tibet are only a few movements that are just for doing their practice. They’ve catalogued them and made them into a system. Those are only a one-dimensional language for their practice, and they just have that handful of practice forms. Real hand signs are a lot more complex.

The Things Your Teacher Gives His Students

When some people see me they tug at my hand and shake it, and they won’t let go. And then when other people see folks shaking hands with me, they get into the act, too. I know what they’re up to. Some folks want to shake hands with their teacher, since it’s a pleasant thing to do, while others want to get some messages, so after they grab my hand they just won’t let go. We’re telling you: true cultivation is something you do yourself, and we don’t do healing and fitness things here or give you messages to heal you. That’s not part of our practice. I’ll directly remove your health problems for you. At the practice sites they’re removed by my Law Bodies, and people who learn the practice on their own by reading the books have my Law Bodies to remove theirs, too. You think your gong will increase by touching my hand? Are you kidding?

Gong comes from cultivating your character. If you don’t really cultivate yourself your gong won’t grow high, since there’s a character standard. When your gong increases, the beings at high levels can see that after your attachment, that material, is removed, a measuring stick grows above your head. And that measuring stick takes on the form of the gong pillar. However high the measuring stick is, that’s how high the gong pillar is, it represents the gong you’ve cultivated, and it represents how high your character is. It doesn’t matter who adds to it or how much they add to it for you, it won’t stay even if they just add a tiny bit—it’ll come right off. I can make you reach "Three Flowers Atop the Head" right on the spot, but the moment you step outside, that gong will come right off. It’s not yours. You didn’t cultivate it, so it won’t stay, since your character standard isn’t there. Nobody can add a thing to it. It all has to come from your own cultivation. Cultivate your mind, steadfastly raise your gong, always keep improving yourself, and assimilate to the nature of the universe—then, and only then, will you be going up. Some people ask me for my autograph, and I don’t want to give it to them. And then maybe some people tell other folks about how the teacher gave them his autograph, and maybe they want to show it off and want to get protection from the teacher’s messages. Isn’t that another attachment? In cultivation you have to rely on yourself—what are you talking about messages for? Would you care about that stuff when you’ve cultivated to a high level? It’s not worth a cent! That’s only something people care about when they’re in it for healing and fitness.

In the deep microcosm, the microcosmic particles of the gong you’ve cultivated look exactly like you do. When you go beyond Triple-World-Law you are cultivating a Buddha-body. Your gong will be in the shape of a Buddha-body, it’s incredibly beautiful, and it sits on a lotus flower, every tiny particle is like that. An animal’s gong, though, is all stuff like small foxes and small snakes, and even the microcosmic particles in the deep microcosm are that stuff. Also, people believe in so-called "messages," they stir up some water with soaked tea leaves and tell you to drink it, and that’s supposed to be gong. Ordinary people just want to get some short-term relief from their suffering, and they want to postpone and suppress their ailments. Ordinary people, you know, they just do ordinary people things, and it doesn’t have anything to do with us no matter how badly they mess up their bodies. But you are practitioners, and that’s why I’ve told you these things. So don’t do any of that again. Those silly "messages" and all that who-knows-what, don’t even think about wanting that stuff. Some qigong masters say, "I’ll send out messages, and you can receive them all around the country." Receive what?! I’m going to tell you, those things can’t do much of anything. And even if they do have some benefits they’re just for healing and fitness. You are practitioners, so your gong comes from your own cultivation. Any "messages" other people send you can’t make your gong any higher, since it’s just for healing ordinary people. You have to keep your thinking straight. Nobody can cultivate for you. Your level is only going to rise if you get down to cultivating yourself.

So what do I give you, then? You know, a lot of us have never done qigong and our bodies are sick or injured. Some of us have done qigong for many years, but are still milling about at the qi level and don’t have any gong. Of course, there are people who heal others, and maybe you’re wondering how they could do that. When I talked about possession, I completely took off all those spirits, no matter what they were—all those bad things—that were in or on the bodies of the people who can truly cultivate Dafa. And when people who do true cultivation on their own read this Great Law, I’ll cleanse their bodies just the same. And your home environment also needs to get cleaned up. Hurry up and throw out those fox-and-weasel-covered memorial tablets that you made offerings to before. All of those things have been cleaned up for you, and that stuff is gone now. You want to cultivate, so we’re happy to clear the way for you and do all of this. But we only do it for true cultivators. Of course, some people don’t want to cultivate, and even now they still don’t get what this is about. We really can’t help them. What we look after are true cultivators.

There’s another kind of person. Other people told him before that he was possessed, and he too had a feeling that he was possessed. But after it’s removed he still can’t stop worrying. He always thinks that he still has that condition, he thinks it’s still there. But that’s an attachment, and it’s called suspicion. As time goes on, he might invite it again if he’s not careful enough. You have to get rid of the attachment. It doesn’t exist at all now. For some of those people, we already took care of their problems in our earlier classes. I’ve already done those things—I’ve taken off all the possessing spirits.

At a low level Daoists need to build a foundation while doing cultivation exercises, they need to form the Cosmic Orbit, and the field of the elixir field has to be formed, and then there are other things that have to be formed. Here we plant a Law Wheel, energy mechanisms, all the mechanisms for cultivation, and lots and lots of other things, more than 10,000 of them. We have to give them all to you, and they’re planted in you like seeds. After we cure your health problems, do all that’s supposed to be done, and place in you everything you should have, then, and only then, will you be able to cultivate in our discipline successfully. But if we didn’t give you these things it’d just be about healing and fitness. Look, to be honest, if some people don’t care about their character, well, they might as well go do aerobics instead.

We have to be responsible for you when you do true cultivation. Self-learners can get those things just the same, but they have to be true cultivators—we give those things to true cultivators. Like I said, I have to truly guide you as disciples. And along with this, you have to be sure to study the Law of high levels inside out and know how to cultivate, like learning all the five exercises together, and mastering them all. Later on you’ll be able to reach a pretty high level, a level even higher than you can imagine, and achieving a True Fruition won’t be a problem. This Law I’m teaching actually covers different levels at the same time, so as long as you cultivate, from here on out at different levels of cultivation you’ll discover that it can always guide you.

You’re a cultivator, so the path your life takes will change after today, my Law Bodies will give you a new arrangement. How do they rearrange it? How many more years would some people still have to live? They don’t know. Maybe some folks would get really sick in a year or half a year, and maybe they’d be ill like that for years. Maybe some folks would have a stroke or some other health problem, and they’d be immobile. So how could you cultivate with your remaining years? We have to clean up all of that for you and not let those things happen. But let me make it clear up front: we can only do that for true cultivators. Doing it as you please for ordinary people wouldn’t work, that’d be like doing something bad. The birth, aging, sickness, and death ordinary people go through all have underlying causes, and you can’t just go and violate them.

Nobody is more precious than a cultivator as we see it, and that’s why we can only change these things for cultivators. How will we change them? If the master’s benevolent might is very high, or, if the master’s potency is very high, then he can eliminate karma for you. If the master’s gong level is high he can eliminate a lot of it for you, and if his gong level is low he can just eliminate a bit of it. Here’s one way to illustrate it. We gather all the different kinds of karma that exist on the rest of your life’s path and we eliminate some of it, say, a half. You still wouldn’t be able to make it through the remaining half, which is taller than a mountain. So how do we tackle this? When you attain the Dao later on, maybe a lot of people will benefit from it, and so a lot of people will bear a share for you. Of course, it’s no big deal for them. And as for you, you have a lot of living entities that you’ve evolved by cultivating, and also, along with your master soul and subordinate soul, there are many you’s. All of them shoulder a part of it for you. When you go through a tribulation there is little left. And even though we say there’s not much left, it’s still pretty big, and you still wouldn’t be able to get through it. So what do we do? We divide it into countless portions and place them at different levels of your cultivation, and we use them to improve your character, to transform your karma, and to increase your gong.

And I’d like to add, when someone wants to cultivate, it’s no walk in the park. I’ve said that it’s a serious thing, and on top of that, it’s higher than ordinary people, and it’s tougher to do than anything ordinary people do. Isn’t it a higher thing? So it demands more of you than anything of ordinary people. We human beings have a master soul, and our master souls don’t perish. If our master souls don’t perish, then think about it—could your master soul have done bad things when it was interacting with other people during your previous lives? There’s a good chance. You might have killed, owed someone, taken advantage of other people, hurt people... You could have done any of those things. So if that’s the case, when you cultivate over here, they see it clearly from over there. They don’t care if you do things to heal yourself or stay well, they know you’re just postponing it. If you don’t pay it back now, you’ll pay it back later on, and when you pay it back later on it’ll be more severe. That’s why they don’t mind if you don’t pay it back for the time being.

When you say you want to cultivate, they won’t put up with it, "You want to cultivate, you want to leave. If you develop gong I won’t even be able to reach you, I won’t be able to touch you." They won’t let it happen, and they’ll do just about anything to block you. They’ll try to stop you from cultivating. So they use all kinds of tactics to interfere with you, and they might even come to kill you. Of course, it won’t happen like you’re meditating here and your head just gets cut off—that’s impossible, since it has to conform to the way of things in the ordinary world. Maybe you’ll be hit by a car when you leave your home, or you’ll fall from a building, or run into other kinds of danger. There’s a chance these things will happen. It’s quite dangerous. True cultivation isn’t as easy as you imagined. Just because you want to cultivate, you think you’ll be able to cultivate upward? When you really start to cultivate you’ll immediately run into life-threatening danger, this problem will come right up. There are many, many qigong masters who don’t dare to guide people up to high levels. Why is that? Exactly because they aren’t able to get around this problem—they can’t protect you.

There were a lot of sages in the past, and they could only teach one disciple—it was okay if they protected just one disciple. Doing that on this large a scale, though, the average person wouldn’t really dare to do that. But here I’m telling you that I can do that, because I have countless Law Bodies which have my enormous divine Law-power, and they can display their great divine powers and great Law-power. Also, what we’re doing today isn’t as simple as it looks, and I didn’t just come out to do this on some kind of impulse. I can tell you that a lot of Great Enlightened Beings are watching this event. This is our transmitting a true teaching in the Age of the Law’s End for the last time. We’re not allowed to go off course while doing this. When you really cultivate on a true path nobody will dare to just go and give you trouble, and what’s more, you have my Law Bodies protecting you, so you won’t run into any danger.

Debts have to be settled. So on your cultivation path some dangerous things might happen. But when these things happen you won’t be scared, and we won’t let you get into real danger. I can give you some examples. When I was giving a class in Beijing, there was a student who’d crossed the street on her bike. As she was going around a turn, a luxury sedan hit this student of ours at that sharp turn. The student was a woman in her fifties. That car hit her with a bang, and it was a real whopper. People heard a big "Thud!" as her head hit the car, and her head hit the top of the car squarely. When that happened the student’s feet were still straddling the bike. Her head was hit but she didn’t feel any pain. Not only didn’t she feel any pain, but there wasn’t any bleeding, either—not even swelling. But the driver was scared stiff. He jumped out of the car and hurried to ask her, "Are you hurt? How ’bout we go to the hospital?" She replied that she was fine. Of course, that student of ours had high character and didn’t want to bring the driver trouble. She said she was alright, but there was a big dent left in the car.

All the things like that come to take your life, but you won’t be in any danger. Last time when we held a class at Jilin University, a student of ours walked out the main entrance of the university, walking his bike. When he got to the middle of the street, suddenly two cars almost sandwiched him and seemed like they were about to crush him the next second, but he wasn’t a bit scared. Usually when we run into these things we aren’t scared. At that very moment the cars stopped and there wasn’t any incident.

Another case happened in Beijing. In winter it gets dark earlier and people go to bed a bit earlier. The streets were empty and all was quiet. One of our students was rushing home on a bike. Only a jeep was moving along ahead of him. It was moving along steadily when all of a sudden it braked. The student wasn’t paying attention and kept on peddling ahead with his head down. But the jeep suddenly started to back up then, and it was backing up fast, mighty fast. Those two forces worked together to take away his life. Right when they were about to collide, a force suddenly pulled his bike back more than half a yard, and the jeep instantly stopped against the wheel of his bike. Maybe the jeep’s driver realized someone was behind him. The student wasn’t scared when that happened. Nobody who runs into this type of thing gets scared, although they might get scared when they think back about it. The first thing he thought was, "Phew! Who pulled me back? I have to thank him." He turned around to say thank you, only to find the street quiet, without a person in sight. Then it hit him, "It was actually Teacher protecting me!"

There was also something that happened in Changchun. A building was being built near a student’s home. Nowadays, buildings are built so high, and the scaffolding is made up of steel rods that are two inches thick and four yards long. The student was walking not too far from home when a steel rod dropped from that tall building, and it was coming straight down toward his head. Everyone on the street was petrified. But he just said, "Who patted me?" He thought that someone had patted him on the head. Then, he turned and saw that a big Law Wheel was there rotating over his head. The steel rod had slid down along the side of his head and stuck into the ground, sticking up. If it really had hit somebody, think about it, it was so heavy it would have gone all the way through his body, like a skewer through marshmallows. It was that dangerous!

There are a lot of examples like this, they’re countless, but nobody has experienced any danger. It’s not like all of us have to go through these kinds of things, but some of us will. Whether you run into them or not, I can guarantee that you won’t be in any danger—I can guarantee it. Some students’ actions don’t meet our character requirements, they just do the exercises and they don’t cultivate their character, so you can’t call them practitioners.

If you’re asking me what your teacher gives you, this is what I give you. My Law Bodies will protect you all the way until you’re able to protect yourself, and at that point you’ll be on the verge of going beyond Triple-World-Law cultivation and you’ll have attained the Dao. But you have to act as a true cultivator, and only then will you be able to do that. There was someone who held my book in his hand and walked into the street, shouting, "With Teacher Li’s protection, I know cars can’t hit me." That was damaging Dafa, and we won’t protect such a person. The truth is, real disciples don’t act like that.

Energy Field

When we do our cultivation exercises a field is formed around us. What kind of field is it? Some people say that it’s a qi field, or a magnetic field, or an electric field. But actually, that’s wrong no matter what field you call it, because the matter that this field contains is incredibly rich. Almost every kind of matter that makes up all the dimensions of the universe is included in this gong, so it’s a bit more fitting for us to call it an energy field. And that’s why we usually call it an energy field.

So what effect does this field have? You know, we cultivators of a true teaching have all experienced this: since we’ve undergone cultivation of a true teaching, which emphasizes compassion, and which is assimilated to the nature of the universe—to be True, Good, and Endure—when our students sit in this field, their minds are free of bad thoughts, and a lot of our students don’t even think of having a smoke while they sit here, everybody feels it’s a really peaceful atmosphere, and they feel really good. This is the effect within the range of the energy field that a cultivator of a true teaching has. When you leave this class most of you will have gong—you will really have gong—because what I pass on to you are true cultivation things, and you discipline yourself based on this character requirement. You keep doing the exercises without letting up, you keep cultivating yourself with our character requirements without letting up, and then your energy steadily becomes greater and greater.

We believe in saving ourselves and saving others, saving all sentient beings. So when the Law Wheel rotates inward, it saves oneself, and when it rotates outward, it saves others. When it rotates outward, it sends out energy and benefits others. And by doing that, the people within the coverage of your energy field all benefit, and maybe they’ll feel great. You might have this effect wherever you are, whether you’re walking down the street, at work, at home, or wherever. You might unknowingly adjust the bodies of people who are within the range of your field, because this field can fix all wrong states. A person’s body shouldn’t have sickness or injury—having ailments is a wrong state. And it can correct that wrong state. When people who have bad thoughts think about wrong things, under the strong effect of your field they might change their thinking, they might stop having bad thoughts for the time being. Maybe someone wants to badmouth somebody, but out of the blue he changes his mind and doesn’t want to talk badly about him anymore. Only the energy field from cultivating a true teaching can have this effect. That’s why there used to be a saying in Buddhism, "Buddha’s light shines everywhere, propriety and righteousness harmonize everything." That is what it means.

How Falun Dafa Students Should Spread the Practice

After a lot of our students go back home, they think this practice is great and they want to share it with their families and friends. That’s fine, you can do that—you can pass it on to anyone. But there’s something I need to make clear. We give you so many things, and you couldn’t put a price on them. Why do we give them to you? For you to cultivate! We can only give you all this when you cultivate. Then what this means is that down the road when you pass on the practice to other people, you can’t use these things to go make a name for yourself or benefit yourself. So you can’t give classes like I do and charge money. We have some costs since we need to print books and materials, and we have to travel a bit to spread the practice. What we charge is the least in the country, but what we give is the most. We’re truly guiding people up to high levels, and you all know that firsthand. You’re a Falun Dafa student, so when you go out to teach the practice at a later time, we have two rules for you.

The first rule is that you can’t charge any money. We don’t give you all those things so that you can get rich and famous, but to save you, to help you cultivate. If you charge money my Law Bodies will take everything back from you, and you won’t belong to our Falun Dafa, so what you spread won’t be our Falun Dafa. When you pass on the practice you shouldn’t have any thoughts about making a name for yourself, or getting something out of it—you should help them voluntarily. Our students all across the country have been doing it that way, and the Assistants in different regions have set an example. Anybody who wants to learn our practice, you can come and learn it, you just have to want to, and we can take responsibility for you and we won’t charge you a cent.

The second rule is that you can’t mess up Dafa by putting your own things into it. In other words, when you spread the practice, it doesn’t matter whether your Third Eye is open, whether you’ve seen something, or whether some abilities come out, you can’t talk about our Falun Dafa based on what you’ve seen. The few little things you see at your level are really way off, and it’s far from the true meaning of the Law we’re teaching. So from here on out you really have to keep this in mind when you spread the practice, and that’s the only way we can guarantee that our Falun Dafa’s original things aren’t altered.

Also, you aren’t allowed to spread the practice the same way I do, you can’t teach the Law by giving talks to large audiences like I do—you aren’t able to teach the Law. The reason is, the meaning of what I teach is profound and far-reaching, and I’ve built high levels’ things into what I teach. You are cultivating at different levels, and later on after you’ve improved, if you listen to the recording again you’ll keep improving, and as you keep listening to it you’ll always have new understandings and enjoy new benefits, and that’s even more the case when you read the book. I’ve built profound things into my talks, so this Law isn’t something you could teach. And you aren’t allowed to use my original words as your own words, or else that’s plagiarizing the Law. The only way to do it is to use my original words and add something like "that’s what the teacher said," or "that’s what’s in the book." That’s the only way you can do it. And why is that? Because when you talk about it that way, your words carry the power of the Great Law. You can’t take your own understanding and spread it as if it’s Falun Dafa, or else what you’re teaching isn’t Falun Dafa, and what you’re doing is about the same as damaging our Falun Dafa. When you say things based on your own ideas, or based on your own thinking, that’s not the Law, and it can’t save people, and it won’t achieve any effect. That’s why nobody is able to teach this Law.

The way you spread the practice is to play the audiotapes or videotapes for students at our practice sites or instruction places, and then you have the Assistants teach them the exercises. You can use the format of group discussions, where people learn from each other and share and discuss with one another. We require that you do it that way. Now another thing is that you shouldn’t call a student (a disciple) who spreads Falun Dafa "teacher," or "master," or whatnot. There’s only one master in Dafa. It doesn’t matter how early on someone took up the practice, he’s still a disciple.

When you’re spreading the practice maybe some of you will wonder, "Teacher can place a Law Wheel in people and re-adjust their bodies. But we can’t do that…" Don’t worry. I can reassure you now—every student has my Law Body behind him, and not just one. So my Law Bodies will do those things. When you teach someone he’ll get a Law Wheel right then and there if he has the karmic relationship for it. If he has less of a karmic relationship, after his body is rebalanced he’ll slowly come to get a Law Wheel through practicing, and my Law Bodies will help him rebalance his body. And there are other ways, I can tell you. The people who study the Law and learn the practice by reading my books, by watching my videos, or by listening to my audiotapes, if they really take themselves to be practitioners, then they’ll get the things they’re supposed to get just the same.

We don’t let our students heal other people. Falun Dafa students are absolutely not allowed to do healings. We’re teaching you to cultivate up, we don’t let you develop any attachment, and we aren’t about to let you mess up your body. The field at our practice site is better than any other. If you can just do the exercises in that field, you’re better off than if you had your health problem treated. My Law Bodies sit in a circle, there’s a dome over the energy field where we practice, and above the dome there’s a huge Law Wheel and a great Law Body guarding the field. This field is no ordinary field—it’s not like the field at the average practice site. It’s a cultivation field. A lot of us who have abilities have seen this field that our Falun Dafa has, and it’s enveloped in red light, the whole thing is red.

My Law Bodies are actually able to place a Law Wheel themselves, but we don’t want to fuel your attachments. When you teach someone the exercises he might say, "Wow, I’ve got a Law Wheel now." And you might think that you planted it. But that’s not what happened. I’m telling you about this so that it won’t fuel that attachment. It’s my Law Bodies who do all these things. This is how our Falun Dafa disciples should spread the practice.

If somebody tampers with the exercises of Falun Dafa he’s damaging Dafa, he’s damaging this discipline. Some people have turned our exercise instructions into little jingles. That’s totally forbidden. All true cultivation methods are inherited from prehistoric ages, they’re inherited from ancient times, and they’ve forged countless Great Enlightened Beings through cultivation. Nobody dared to touch these things even one bit. Only in this Age of the Law’s End has this kind of thing come up, it never would have happened before. Never, never forget this.

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