The power of Falun Gong
The power of Falun GongThey’re a familiar sight exercising and meditating in suburban parks. A joint Foreign Correspondent-Background Briefing investigation delves into the world of Falun Gong and its mysterious leader.
By Eric Campbell and Hagar Cohen
It was a hot and humid day in rural New York state as Anna and her mother sat in the small room next to the grand Tang Dynasty-style temple, waiting for him to appear. “Master is coming soon,” said a woman sent to wait with them.
Fourteen-year-old Anna was wearing a dress with straps in the oppressive April heat. “Oh no, you cannot show your shoulders,” the woman said. “You cannot show too much of your chest, because Master is coming.”
It was Anna’s mother who had arranged this “special appointment” with Master. Everything would be taken care of after this, she told her daughter. They both knew what she meant — the anorexia Anna had been battling for many months.
But Anna had come reluctantly. Her mother had tricked her, saying they would run errands together, until Anna realised the car was heading along the familiar road north. She knew the route well, knew where it led.
Nearly two hours outside of New York City, in the shadow of the densely forested Shawangunk Mountains, is a place they call “The Mountain”.
Anna remembers a gravelly path, up a steep slope and then you see it, the beautiful lake, so perfect she could hardly tell if it was natural or just another imitation.
But then that was The Mountain, a place where replica ancient Chinese temples sat among the green North American hills.
And where the real and the unreal were sometimes hard to untangle, especially for a child.
Anna waited. A few minutes later, Master entered the room.
He spoke first to the woman and then to Anna’s mother. Then he looked at Anna, looked right into her eyes. He raised his arms, waving them in the air, then he was chanting something she couldn’t understand.
“By then it was pretty clear what this was supposed to be,” says Anna, now 25. “This was supposed to be an exorcism.”
She was face to face with the man reckoned a God-like figure among his followers at The Mountain, who Anna had grown up believing could read her mind and listen to her dangerous thoughts.
But now the spell was broken.
“I remember looking into his eyes and thinking, ‘you are just another regular, pathetic man’,” she says.
On the way home driving south, Anna recalls how her mother was relieved. “You’re all better,” she told her daughter. “You’re normal now. Now I love you.” Anna just looked out the window.
“It was like seeing everything about the practice just crumble before my eyes. I could not believe it anymore.”
Today, Anna, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, is trying to rebuild her life after what she sees as abusive experiences in the Falun Gong spiritual movement. She is revealing for the first time the secretive world she discovered at The Mountain, also known as Dragon Springs, a spiritual base for Falun Gong and the sometime home of its reclusive founder and leader, Master Li Hongzhi.
Anna is speaking out about her experiences in Falun Gong out of concern for the movement's growing influence. Foreign Correspondent/Background Briefing: Scott Strazzante
It’s estimated Falun Gong has tens of millions of followers worldwide who praise the healing properties of its meditation exercises and the wisdom of Master Li’s teachings.
A joint investigation by the ABC’s Background Briefing and Foreign Correspondent has also found families damaged by their involvement with the movement and claims its teachings on modern medicine could have contributed to premature deaths, which Falun Gong denies.
It comes at a time when media outlets linked to the movement are becoming serious players on the conservative side of America’s media, throwing their weight behind Donald Trump and his tough stance on China.
Falun Gong practitioners are a familiar sight in many cities across the world, calmly practicing their exercises in parks. Many say the spiritual movement's practices lead to improved health and healing.
“This group is not fading into obscurity,” says Anna. “It has a lot more power than I thought and that is very concerning to me, especially when I think about how many people are probably going to become indoctrinated and how many children and families are going to be affected by this.”
As with many of its followers, Anna’s family first encountered Falun Gong by seeing a group meditating in a park. One of them handed her father a flyer explaining the movement’s philosophy and her mother bought some tapes and books to learn more about it.
Gradually, it took over their lives.
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