Li Hongzhi
May 30 & 31, 1998, in Frankfurt, Germany

Some of you present here are veteran students, while many are new students.

A few years have sped by since I began teaching the Fa.* I previously stopped in Germany when I went to teach the Fa in France. I came to look at this place’s environment. This is my second time coming to Frankfurt, but it’s my first time meeting new students from some different regions of Europe. I think it’s a predestined relationship that has brought us to practice this Dafa* together. In the Buddha system we believe in predestined relationships. That being the case, we should cherish this Fa. Many of you present here haven’t studied the Fa in depth and have often treated it as ordinary qigong.* The spread of this Fa in China has resulted in up to 100 million people studying and practicing it. The number of people in regions outside of China is also quite large. Why is that so, and why is it that the education level of those who are learning this Fa is relatively high? Many are noted individuals in intellectual circles. In many regions of China as well as other places there are people of relatively high social standing who are practicing. Of course, when ordinary qigong was first introduced to the public in China, most of its practitioners were older people and people with illnesses. So people regarded it as a type of physical exercise and something to help keep them healthy. Of course, qigong did discuss some supernormal phenomena that aren’t easily seen in ordinary human society, and this gave qigong an air of mystery, but that’s all it was.

Many people aren’t able to completely understand what qigong is about. Since the time Dafa was made public, I have unveiled some inexplicable phenomena in qigong as well as things that hadn’t been explained in the qigong community. But this isn’t the reason why so many people are studying Dafa. It’s because our Fa can truly enable people to Consummate, truly save people, and allow you to truly ascend to high levels in the process of cultivation. Whether it’s your realm of mind or the physical quality of your body, the Fa truly enables you to reach the standards of different levels. It absolutely can assume this role.

I just mentioned that many people are studying the Fa. People who are well educated are clearheaded and generally won’t learn something blindly. These people are usually rather steadfast once they learn the Fa because they know its preciousness. The book reveals many of Heaven’s secrets, and what’s more, its inner meaning is enormous. No matter how high a realm or how high a level you wish to achieve in cultivation, it is able to guide you. No one has ever taught this Fa to humankind before. If you didn’t study Dafa, you wouldn’t obtain this knowledge no matter how many books you read or how great your achievements in human society were. That’s because this isn’t something one can learn from books or can find in humankind’s knowledge. You could rummage through every book there is—ancient or modern, Eastern or Western—and you still wouldn’t be able to find it.

There’s another matter: To practice cultivation one has to read the book a lot. Many people don’t pay attention to studying the Fa in their cultivation. That is not right. Why do I have a rather strict demand when it comes to this? I’ve often said that if you want to cultivate, you must read the book a lot, read it repeatedly. The book has just enormous inner meaning—it’s inconceivable. Many new students don’t have a thorough understanding of this and haven’t paid enough attention to it. They think that a book is simply black ink on white paper—“I’ll know what it’s about after I read it once.” Of course, every book in human society is like that since they’re limited to merely superficial knowledge and they lack any inner meaning; you know what they’re about after giving them just one read. Yet this book is different, as it provides guidance for people’s cultivation. If you want to improve yourselves in this Fa, you have to keep reading the book. Only then can it guide your cultivation.

Consider this: In cultivation practice it used to be that a master would guide his disciple. When it was time for you to improve, he would tell you how to practice, how to improve, and what it’s like at each level and in each realm. But that could only be done on a small scale and with a small number of people. Today we have so many people—as many as 100 million people are learning. It’s impossible for me to teach everyone in person and show them every exercise movement. So to resolve this challenge, I’ve written into this book everything that I can give you and everything that can enable you to improve and transform yourselves—all these are compressed into this work of Fa. Not only will your improvement be guided by its principles: Behind the Fa there is powerful inner meaning. Its concepts are extraordinary, they are absolutely not everyday people’s theories. What we’re dealing with transcends the realm of everyday people. So teaching these things will affect life-forms that are beyond that of ordinary humans and the way other dimensions are. In other words, although the book(s) appears to be black ink on white paper, behind every word there are infinite dimensions at different levels, and behind the words even Buddhas, Daos,* and Gods of different dimensions are manifesting themselves.

Think about it, everyone: I’ve repeatedly emphasized that you should cherish the book. When you don’t know how precious it is you won’t pay much attention to it, and of course you won’t be considered wrong. But if you already know how much inner meaning it has and still don’t respect it or take it seriously, then I would say it’s a different matter and you shouldn’t be like that. Of course, on the other hand, when you’re aware of how much inner meaning it has, you will know for yourself to cherish it.

Some of our students have said: “It’s really strange—I find that the book is different every time I finish reading it. The next time I read it, it’s once again totally different.” You have many questions after reading the book the first time: “Why is this? Why is that?” But when you read it a second time, you will find that all of your questions are resolved—it can answer all of them. Yet you’ll have new questions, since cultivation is a process of ascending. The new questions that emerge will be higher than the questions and answers you had when you read the book for the first time. When you read the book for the third time, you will notice that all of the questions you had and couldn’t understand during the second time are resolved. And if you keep reading, it will continue to be this way. There are now quite a few people who’ve read the book over a hundred times. They can no longer set down this Fa. The more they read, the more things they see in the book and the greater its inner meaning. Why is that so? If the Buddhas, Daos, and Gods in the dimensions behind the words see that it’s time for you to improve, they will naturally let you understand the principles existing in that realm. You will then feel that you suddenly understand another inner meaning of the sentence.

Before, when I discussed enlightening, I expounded on a heavenly secret nobody had disclosed: “Cultivation depends on oneself, while gong depends on one’s master.” For thousands of years people have thought that they themselves were cultivating and elevating. Actually, you can’t achieve anything cultivating [on your own]. Nothing can be resolved if you don’t have a master taking care of you. That is, the real issues are resolved by your master—they’re resolved by the factors behind the Fa. Your own enlightening is only about your continuing to cultivate after you overcome difficulties in your practice. That’s what we mean by “your own enlightening.” As for truly enlightening to something from the principles, if this Fa doesn’t let you know it, you can’t enlighten to it no matter how you try. So you have to meet one condition: You must genuinely practice cultivation.

Religions in the West used to teach faith, while those in the East would teach enlightenment. The idea is that you have to be resolute. Without this type of mind[1] you can’t accomplish anything. Put another way, when you don’t have a good understanding of the Fa you’ll have trouble being resolute. Some people feel really concerned when they see that other students don’t study the Fa: “You’ve obtained the Fa, but you don’t study it. What a shame!” It is, indeed. A lot of people don’t take Fa-study seriously, and instead take this to be ordinary qigong: “I’ll do the exercises a little and tone up my physique.” Of course, our Fa is immense, so it’s very effective when it comes to strengthening one’s physique, healing illnesses, or maintaining health, and the changes one experiences are powerful. But if you only aspire to get well or stay healthy, you won’t gain the things that come with improving yourself. Besides, what I’m doing today has a clear objective. I’m not imparting this Fa to heal someone or to keep someone healthy. My goal is to guide people to high levels and to truly elevate you. If you can’t conform to this approach, you can only gain those mere health improvements. But if you come for some purpose other than genuinely learning this Fa, I’m afraid you might not even gain that little bit. On the other hand, you can gain everything if you’ve come to truly learn this Fa. Even if you come without any specific purpose, if you come to learn not intending to get healed or maintain your health, or if you have some other thoughts, the results might be good. That’s because during the course of your improvement you’re allowed to have a process of gradual understanding; that’s why we ask you to read the book. You need to understand what it’s about. Then you can decide whether you can keep learning and keep cultivating.

I hold that we should give a new student the book to read as soon as he begins the practice. After he reads the book he will decide whether it’s something he can do. If he’s up for it, he’ll come to practice cultivation; if he’s not, we shouldn’t force him. Even though we’re offering salvation to people we can’t force them. Before a person is able to practice cultivation, he needs to have the desire in his heart to improve, to cultivate, and to reach a higher realm. If a person’s heart isn’t moved, no one can do anything about it. What results from coercion is not cultivation, and coercion cannot lead a person to cultivate. It’s completely futile if a person’s heart isn’t moved or if he doesn’t want to change himself. You know that these are extraordinary principles. If you want to cultivate toward high levels and to elevate your realm, how could you [if you’re forced]?!

A lot of people who practiced qigong in the past got into a wrong way of thinking: “I’ll improve as long as I do the exercises diligently and extend their time every day.” Actually, nothing would improve. Those people could never break through the stage of illness healing and health maintenance, that is, the level of harnessing qi. Yet qigong isn’t limited to that. It has merely, in an effort to do good for people, made public those cultivation things at the lowest level that can heal illness and maintain health. But its purpose lies elsewhere. That’s why I often ask: Why did qigong—something that had never been seen in Chinese history and had never before appeared in the world—emerge amidst today’s [modern-science-driven] state of society? People are only human. The human mind is restricted and people’s intelligence is limited. So they can’t realize these things, and they think that all of this is natural and coincidental. I say that nothing is “natural,” nor is there any such thing as “coincidence”—everything has its cause. What I just discussed was to tell you that we should take studying the Fa seriously. As long as you study the Fa, you will elevate in cultivation and different states will emerge. But if you don’t study the Fa you will attain nothing.

Qigong exercises are for nothing more than healing illness and maintaining health, no matter how you perform them or how much some qigong masters boast about them. They definitely won’t lead you to a high and profound realm. In the past, it was absolutely impossible for anyone—whether he was in some cultivation circle or religious community—to know a Fa this profound and unfathomable. Ordinary qigong only teaches people how to heal themselves and keep healthy, for it doesn’t have Fa to guide people in cultivation. What I’m saying is, if you want to reach that realm and develop profound abilities, your realm of thought has to be up to par.

We know that Buddhas and the Dao system teachings in the past said that one has to emphasize virtue in cultivation. Jesus told people that they should be good people. What’s meant by being a good person? What does emphasizing virtue mean? It means that you should conduct yourself better and better. How good should you be? You should be better than all everyday people—then you’re someone who transcends everyday people. Since you are a cultivator your body will develop gong,* and your gong will grow as high as your realm of mind. The higher your realm of mind, the higher the level of your gong. I’d say that science will never be able to achieve this; that is, its development will never approach the realm of Buddhas. That’s because no matter how science progresses, humans are still ordinary humans. Think about it, everyone: An everyday person has all kinds of emotions and desires, as well as various sorts of attachments. With all kinds of worldly desires, you want to go to Heaven—how could that be allowed! Wouldn’t Heaven become a society of ordinary humans? Wouldn’t it become a society of ordinary humans in which people fight, compete, and deceive one another? So your realm of mind has to reach that height before you can go there.

Many people have religious beliefs. But if you believe in today’s religions, for one thing, gods no longer look after things, so it’s hard for you to raise your level. Another thing is that a lot of people can’t comprehend the true meaning of what was said by Jesus, Yahweh, or Saint Mary in their day. Some people hold that a person only needs to have faith in order to go to Heaven. Having faith is only a foundation. Many people’s understanding stops at the superficial meaning of the words. They say, “As long as I have faith, I’ll surely go to Heaven after I die.” Let me tell you that you won’t be able to go there. Why not? Think about it. What is true faith? You’re merely saying with your mouth that you have faith, but in your heart you don’t actually have faith. Why do I say that? Because when you truly have faith your actions match your words. When you confess in church, saying, “My Lord, please help me. I did something wrong today. Please forgive my sin,” your conduct is rather good at that moment. But once you step out the church door, you do as you please and behave just like an everyday person. You make the same mistakes, and among everyday people you even behave worse than them. Then think for a moment: What was the use of your confession? Many people don’t go deeper than what’s on the surface. You shouldn’t repeat your mistakes after confessing. When you later find that you still make other mistakes, you go again to confess and stop repeating the same mistakes. As you do this and continually break from the mistakes committed among everyday people, aren’t you a better person? Haven’t you reached a higher realm and become a good person who far exceeds everyday people?! Aren’t you practicing cultivation and elevating your xinxing?* Since Western culture doesn’t have the concept of self-cultivation, neither Jesus nor Yahweh mentioned the term “cultivation” back when they taught their Fa; there wasn’t even that concept. The reason is, they knew “Cultivation depends on oneself, while gong depends on one’s master.” As long as one practiced cultivation, everything would be helped by the god of the heavenly paradise one would go to. He would effect changes in your body, transform your body, and enable your body to attain the great power that a god has. All of that would be done by gods.

Some people say that they’ll go to Heaven after they die. People who haven’t practiced cultivation are, in the words of your Western culture, called “spirits” after they die. These spirits are actually ghosts. Think about it, everyone: What are they? People in the East have a clear and definite concept of human body cultivation: One develops a Buddha-body through cultivation, that is, a divine body. If a person doesn’t have this Buddha-body—in other words, if a person doesn’t have the body of a heavenly paradise’s god—his spirit fears light after coming forth [from his body]. It disintegrates in sunlight, and can’t even reincarnate. That’s why people are covered with a cloth after they die—it prevents exposure to sunlight—and buried in the earth so that their spirits won’t disintegrate. Buddhas and gods are infinitely brilliant, even brighter than sunlight. Wouldn’t a person’s spirit dissolve were he to see a god? How could it go to Heaven? It thus needs to have the body of a god and, at the same time, change the compositional elements of its intelligent beings through cultivation to make them comprised of high-energy matter. Only with a Buddha-body or a god-body can it go. Can a spirit come to the human world? No, it can’t. So before it can stay in this world, it needs to have a human body to reincarnate with and needs to be born through the bodies of parents. Some people mistakenly think that they’ll go to Heaven if they just have faith. How could that be? It sounds ridiculous to those of us in cultivation circles. You have to truly practice cultivation before you can go to Heaven.

So in Western religions, in the process of having faith in God, a person’s xinxing and his realm of mind continually elevate, and he becomes a better and better person. Then wouldn’t you say he’s practicing cultivation? Form is unimportant in cultivation; there are all kinds of cultivation methods. It’s a difference in cultivation forms between Western and Eastern religions. Why don’t they mention cultivation in the West, like they do in the East? Both are in fact cultivation. It’s simply that Eastern culture is very specific with regard to this, while Western culture doesn’t talk about these things. That’s because when gods come down to save people and to impart their Fa, they need to adopt a cultural form that’s intelligible to people. Only then can you understand—only [when they] use the human languages of those times can you understand. What I’ve said is also to tell you that practicing ordinary qigong can’t enable people to reach a very high, profound realm. It’s impossible. Only real cultivation can do so. Qigong is only something at the lowest level in cultivation, so it’s limited to healing illness and maintaining health. Even when it comes to healing illness and maintaining health there are some requirements for people, because after all, it’s a form of cultivation and is different from any kind of medical treatment that exists among everyday people. If you want to learn qigong to heal your illness, you have to meet the requirements of qigong’s principles.

What does it mean to meet the requirements of qigong’s principles? Because it’s beyond the ordinary—if you want to use extraordinary means to treat illness without resorting to medication, shots, or surgery, and be cured, isn’t it supernormal?—human beings have to conform to its principles before their illnesses can be truly healed. This is the fundamental reason why many people fail to get rid of their health problems even though they practice qigong. Since you want to use this supernormal method to eliminate your illness, you have to conform to the supernormal principles. So you have to follow qigong’s requirements, be a good person, and break your tendency to do bad or immoral things—only then will your illness be truly cured. This is the real reason behind recovery from illness. This doesn’t apply should you opt for everyday people’s medical treatments. You will then have to undergo surgery, get shots, or take medication in order to recover. Yet there’s a principle in the universe, called, “no loss, no gain.” To gain, you must lose; when you lose, you will gain. This is an absolute truth. Do you know why your illness improves in the hospital? Some people say that it’s healed through the technological means of modern science. I say that’s just modern people playing out a way, or a form, of manifestation in modern society. The true reason behind your recovery isn’t limited to that. Things have to conform to the principles of the universe in this dimension. You know that when you’re sick you have to spend a lot of money seeing doctors. Of course, some countries have good social welfare programs, and people in those societies have health insurance that can resolve this problem. But you still suffer—don’t you suffer when you’re sick? You are afflicted when you’re suffering, and suffering is itself a way of paying off karma. In addition, you need to spend money, have injections, take medication, and you might even be cut open in surgery. Haven’t you endured suffering before your condition starts to improve? But let me tell you that this recovery hasn’t corrected the illness at its root: it has pushed the illness karma to somewhere else or postponed it to the future.

This is because the illness doesn’t originate from the outermost surface of an ordinary human’s physical body; rather, it comes from the plane of microscopic particles beneath the body made of the largest molecules. The human body is composed of molecules that have particles at different microscopic planes, and each plane of particles is a dimension. Of course, the dimensions aren’t stacked up together. They are in the form of smaller particles comprising larger particles. Yet the realm of each plane of small particles is a dimension. There are many dimensions like these, and it’s actually there that the causes of many illnesses reside. Illnesses don’t come from the surface. What appears on the surface of a person’s flesh or tissues is only the superficial manifestation of an illness.

After you have surgery, you think that your tumor has been removed. Actually, what’s been removed is the flesh tissue that’s made up of the plane of the largest molecules. It is removed, as its cells are no longer present in this dimension. Yet you can’t remove the more microscopic particles that comprise the cells. But since you no longer see those cells at the body’s surface after they are removed, it appears as if you’re healed. Later on, the illness might transform, and some illnesses might relapse. Since the illness wasn’t truly eliminated, it might move to somewhere else and another tumor might reemerge there. Or maybe it will be transformed into some other illness or some misfortune. This is the real underlying reason that we’ve observed. When supernormal abilities are used to treat an illness, however, surgery isn’t necessary. Why can a supernormal ability remove a person’s tumor? It’s because it removes the illness from another dimension, a dimension that’s invisible to the human eye. Let’s use a simple illustration. You see that this cloth has a lump protruding up here. Why? It’s because there’s a cause behind it—my hand is behind it. If you take the cloth away but you don’t remove the hand, it will come over to this side. This means that if you don’t resolve the cause behind it, you can’t eliminate the problem at its root. In other words, human medical treatments can’t solve the fundamental problem, for they only resolve problems on the surface and can’t eliminate karma.

In this world, whether a person loses or gains, whether he’s happy, whether he’s totally content with how things are going, whether he has good fortune, and the extent of his misfortune—all of these are determined by two substances carried on his body. One is called virtue (de), and the other, karma (yeli). It’s just these two substances taking effect. We accumulate virtue when we do good things. In the old days people talked about accumulating virtue. People now consider it something conceptual or in the realm of mind. Actually, it’s a type of matter, a truly tangible substance. The karma that people speak about has been clearly explained in Eastern religions. What is karma? It’s a black substance. A person generates this material when he does wrong. When too much of this thing is accumulated, he will have unpleasant things happen to him, such as getting sick, having misfortune, or going through hard times. I’ve found that everything that happens to humans is the result of what humans themselves have done. In this human world, whether you are happy and whether you are doing well are the result of your own doing. These things often manifest in your present life, while some of these things will manifest in your next life; most of them manifest in the next life. What’s meant by “manifest in the next life”? It means that it won’t occur in this lifetime but will appear in your following lifetime. The part that manifests in this life is called “retribution in the same life” by cultivation circles in the East. [That is,] after doing something wrong, you will meet with immediate retribution. Some people fall on their face when they step out the door after doing something bad. They don’t see it as retribution for doing wrong, but think it’s coincidental or natural. I hold that there’s no such thing as “natural phenomena,” as all things are ordered—coincidence doesn’t exist. In this dimension there are many, many things that people aren’t able to see. Of course, modern science knows that there is air, oxygen, hydrogen, and other trace elements that are composed of molecules, but that’s all it knows. Yet your eyes can’t even see those things.

Actually, I can tell you that in this dimension, at the extremely microscopic level, they are—including the enormous, pervasive matter—all gods. They know clearly every move and every action made by humans and the things they’ve done. When people do bad things they always think that nobody can see what they’ve done. They know that what they did was wrong but still try to find a self-deceptive excuse that will allow them to feel justified and at ease. They don’t believe in gods whatsoever. Here’s an offhand example. It doesn’t involve any matters of religion or race, I’m just talking about people doing wrong. You probably know that a few days ago a certain country conducted nuclear tests, exploding five atomic bombs in succession. Many countries were shocked! That’s because people the world over all long for peace. What were their atomic explosions for? I’m not invested in any notions. I’m only talking about people doing the wrong thing, I’m not commenting on whether that nation was right or wrong. Let’s think about it. Although the nuclear bombs were detonated underground, gods won’t tolerate the damage they do to the earth, to the human environment, and to the material world that’s composed of different [sized] molecules! When Heaven punishes humans they think it’s a natural phenomenon. The temperature in that country immediately shot up to the highest in the world. It stayed at over 122°F (50°C), and a lot of people died from the heat. And a windstorm came along later and caused many deaths. People don’t realize these phenomena are the warning of gods: “You cannot do that.” People just take them to be natural phenomena. Nothing that happens in this world is coincidental. Just take a look: If any nation, region, or individual does something bad, some special phenomena will immediately follow. Disasters and everything that befalls humans are the result of their own conduct. Just now I briefly discussed some things at an elementary level. The veteran students in the audience already have a deep understanding of these things. Since many of you in the audience are new students, I’ve merely discussed these situations in brief.

If you want to understand these things completely, I think you should go read the book. The book, Zhuan Falun, has shaken the scientific and technological community the world over! The inner meaning of Zhuan Falun is really enormous and rich. Since cultivation practice is divided into different levels and various realms, after one reading of the book you’ll find: “Oh, this is a book that tells you how to be a good person.” But I can tell you that it’s not merely teaching you how to be a good person. If that were all there was to it, you wouldn’t be able to raise your level. If you want to elevate yourself, the book needs to contain principles of Fa that are at higher realms and that guide you beyond being a good person. So, this book must have inner meaning at those levels. When you practice cultivation towards even higher levels it will be able to guide your cultivation towards high, higher, and even higher levels. So this Fa has to have that ability, it has to have inner meaning at different levels to guide your cultivation. It will guide you all the way until you reach the goal of cultivation—the realm of Consummation. The higher the level you reach, therefore, the more things you’ll see in the book as you practice cultivation. What I’m saying here is primarily aimed at new students. I’ve only discussed these things briefly, but it’s actually pretty advanced. You will have different understandings. I won’t say much more now, as this Fa conference is mainly for sharing experiences and understandings.

I would like to hear students share their experiences and understandings gained through studying the Fa in cultivation. I’ll answer questions for you the last half day before the conference ends, and that too will be teaching the Fa. You’re sure to raise different questions. The questions, which aim at cultivation, are common among students and benefit your improvement together. You can write your questions to me on slips of paper, and I’ll answer them. Veteran students have made very rapid progress during the recent period of time, and there’s now quite a gap between them and the new students. The Fa has been thoroughly taught to our students. What remains is just a question of how you improve in cultivation.

Just now I talked about some of the most basic principles, primarily for new students. I’d have to sit here and teach for days if I were to explain them thoroughly. I’ve only talked about them a little bit and in general terms.

A chance for us to meet is hard to come by. You always feel that you’ve been cultivating for quite a while but your chances to meet with me have been few. You are actually by my side every day, only you don’t know it. But you aren’t allowed to know this, because you are still, at the surface level, an ordinary human. Only when you cultivate to that stage will you be able to know it. What I’ve just said means that I’m able to look after you if you want to practice cultivation. No matter how many people practice, I can look after them all. I have countless Law Bodies (fashen). This concept doesn’t exist in Western religions, but it does in Eastern ones, particularly Buddhism. It’s said in Buddhism that Buddha Amitabha has many Law Bodies. I can tell you that my Law Bodies are innumerable, they’re impossible to count. In other words, no matter how many people practice cultivation, I’m able to look after them all. Yet these Law Bodies are me, and they’re also the specific embodiment of [my] wisdom. This can’t be understood with human concepts, for today’s science is limited to merely the present dimension and to its understanding of the structure of the plane of the largest particles.

Contemporary science is capable of seeing the composition of the largest molecular particles. A feature of steel is that it’s stronger than iron, because the elements and structure of its particles are different. What is copper like? What are silver and gold like? Science can grasp these things. So then it utilizes the materials known at present, and only develops with that as a basis. But let me tell you that that’s the greatest obstacle to contemporary science in its effort to know other dimensions. In other words, it hasn’t taken the path of understanding the matter in microscopic worlds or in those that are even more immense. In fact, matter is made up of different small molecular particles, and those molecular particles are made up of atomic particles. Atomic particles are then made up of nucleic particles. And nucleic particles are made up of more microscopic particles. The more microscopic particles are made up of even more microscopic particles. The even more microscopic particles are in turn made up of even more and more microscopic particles. To humans it appears infinite and endless. It keeps progressing further down like this. How microscopic does it get? I can tell you that the microscopic state that particles reach is astounding!

Shakyamuni saw three thousand worlds in a grain of sand. The three thousand worlds he spoke about didn’t refer to human society. He was talking about his theory of three thousand worlds. Let me put it simply: It means that in our Milky Way there exist three thousand physical dimensions similar to that of our humankind. In other words, there are three thousand planets like this one. But what he meant was that there were three thousand such worlds in just one grain of sand. I’ve discussed this in the book, Zhuan Falun. If there are so many human worlds as well as microscopic beings existing in the three thousand worlds of a grain of sand, then there might also be rivers, lakes, and seas in the worlds of that sand, and they too would have sand. Then in that sand aren’t there three thousand more microscopic worlds and more microscopic societies like those of humankind? Shakyamuni was able to see things at a very microscopic level. He was a Buddha so he had that ability. But I can tell you that that, too, was shallow. If you keep on tracing things that way, you will find that the particles in those microcosms are infinite and endless. Let me give you the simplest illustration. I’ve told people that the largest layer of particles humans can see is not that of molecules; the largest layer of particles humans can see is that of planets. But planets aren’t part of the layer of the largest particles in the cosmos. They are merely the particles in between the macrocosm and the microcosm. Just think how many enormous planet-particles there are.

The universe is a unit, an integrated particle. Three thousand universes similar to ours constitute the second layer universe; that is, they form a plane of larger particles. This is only an expansion from one linear direction. Yet the expansion of particles is boundless and infinite—they spread everywhere and permeate everything. When an electron revolves around the nucleus of an atom, doesn’t it resemble our Earth revolving around the sun? They’re exactly the same, whether in terms of mechanism or form. The smaller a particle, the higher its density. If you were to magnify an electron to the size of our Earth and look to see what’s on its surface, what would you find? Might there be human beings? What exists on it and the particle’s form of existence are, of course, two different concepts. I’m just giving you an idea. Wouldn’t it look like a planet?

Nowadays humankind considers itself to be the one and only higher life-form in the entire universe. I can tell you that in reality humankind is the single lowest life-form in the entire universe. There are living beings on every planet except the moon. The moon was constructed by a humankind in the past (humankind’s history repeats in cycles). When humankind’s karma becomes too massive, the human race is destroyed. Then a new human race again comes into being and evolves. Later, when it becomes bad, it is again destroyed. Since I mentioned the moon, I will tell you that the moon was constructed by a prehistoric humankind in a rather distant age. It wasn’t this large back when it was first constructed, though it was brighter than it is today. Yet that alone would have seemed quite large to humankind today. Because it’s hollow, with the passage of time it has gradually become covered with the dust that continually falls from explosions of the universe’s matter. The dust of material that’s generated from the explosions when planets are re-created has continually covered the moon; this has significantly increased the thickness of the moon’s surface. The thickness of its surface has increased to several dozen kilometers; that is the dust on it. If dozens of kilometers were subtracted it would be its original size.

What I just said was to tell you that living beings exist on every planet. Moreover, many are living beings whose appearances are similar to humans, only they don’t exist in this dimension because different particles form different dimensions. If you want to enter those dimensions, you can’t understand them with the concepts of today’s human science—this science is simply too shallow. For you to enter those worlds, you have to conform to the modes of being, forms of life, and ways of thinking in those worlds. Only then can you know them. You will discover upon entering one of those worlds that its particles are smaller than those of the human dimension, yet its dimension is extremely vast. We humans exist between these two types of particles, molecules and planets.

Air is composed of molecules, isn’t it? But you can’t see it. Flowers, grass, trees, iron, steel, the clothes you wear, your flesh body, your hair, everything you use, and everything around you, all of these are composed of molecules. Soil is made up of molecules too. We humans call it “soil.” But actually, gods think of everything in the human dimension as composed of soil. Gods regard molecules themselves as soil. Someone asked me about the statement by Yahweh, the Lord of Western people, that he used soil to create man. In fact, everything in this dimension, including air, is soil in their view, only we humans can’t understand it. You’re simply covered with soil, surrounded by soil. Humans are crawling around in mounds of soil. Everything is composed of soil, and humans are in this soil. I think that after I’ve explained it like this, it shouldn’t be difficult to understand the story of man being created with clay as told by the Lord of Western people.

If you want to know the way living beings exist in other dimensions, you will have to conform to the ways of existence in the dimensions of the planes of smaller particles. You can’t understand it by using today’s scientific theories; you have to throw out the concepts of modern science before you can understand. Once you understand it, you will discover that it isn’t the concept of time and space held by humans. Though you see that I’m talking here, the last sentence that I just uttered was also being listened to by the beings in other dimensions. I’m transcending all space-times in doing this. In a dimension with very fast time, the sentence I just said has already passed through millions of years. That’s the idea. Yet the living beings in different space-times aren’t the slightest bit aware of whether their time is fast or slow. This is because the composition of matter in different dimensions is in sync with those dimensions’ time, and they have their own record of time. During the time in which I just said that sentence, they have already gone through tens of millions of years. Perhaps their span of one year might seem longer to them than one year on Earth [does to those of us here]. In other words, you can’t use human thinking to ponder these things. So if you want to understand other dimensions, you need to conform to the ways of thinking and state of things in those dimensions before you can comprehend them. There are multiple inner meanings behind this Fa. This is also telling you why it has different inner meanings in different dimensions, and why there’s such great power behind this Fa that can transform your bodies and enable you to improve. I’m simply telling you that you shouldn’t use an everyday person’s mindset to conceive of their forms of existence. Behind the words there are countless, layers upon layers, of higher life-forms.

I have merely discussed this in connection with contemporary people’s thinking and knowledge. Simply put, I’m incorporating science, which people today depend on, when I discuss these things. Although I’ve incorporated modern science in telling you these principles, I can tell you that I don’t approve of this science. First off, in light of the entire, immense cosmos, this science is like kids’ stuff. But as humans see it, it has brought about modern machines, making things seem so much better than in ancient times. In fact, I can tell you that this science falls far behind when it’s compared with that of the last human civilization. Even the most sophisticated instruments are terribly crude when compared to those of the last civilization. Moreover, the development of this science is confined to a limited scope; it has set boundaries for itself. So what situation has this caused? It doesn’t dare to acknowledge anything outside empirical science. This is most dreadful, most dreadful for humankind, that is. Why is that? Think about it, everyone. Science is really shallow. In the words of scientists themselves, it’s not yet very developed. People now believe in it strongly and think it’s the absolute truth. This belief is shared by many theories in society nowadays, as well as by Western religions, be it Catholicism or Christianity. What you truly believe in is not your Lord—what you truly believe in is science. Deep down in your bones, what you really believe in is science, whereas your religion is merely a superficial formality that has become a civilized act of humans. But let me tell you that science is a religion too, and it’s a well-established religion.

Secondly, you know that usually religions tell people how to conduct themselves. Science, meanwhile, also has [a system that] starts from elementary school and spans to high school and college. In religions there are priests, bishops, and other clergy. Yet this science is even more developed. It has its teachers, people with bachelors, masters, doctorates, and post-docs, and also advisors. The higher the degree someone possesses, the more scientific doctrines he’s mastered. The names and titles for its teachers and administrators are numerous. In this respect it’s well developed. Usually religions teach people to believe spiritually so as to achieve material transformation, whereas science tells people to perceive materially so as to elicit people’s spiritual trust and support. Science, however, is not something gods imparted to humans. Instead, it was passed down to humans by alien beings inside the Three Realms, and for the purpose of controlling humankind. People’s belief in it has surpassed everything. But I tell you that precisely because of its shallowness, this science has caused the degeneration of morality in human society. This is most terrifying. Because science isn’t able to perceive microscopic matter’s specific forms of existence, it doesn’t know that karma is generated when humans commit bad deeds or that this black substance brings disaster to humans. It doesn’t know that when people do good deeds they bring about the white substance, which brings them happiness, and brings them conditions and rewards that they’ll experience when they reincarnate in different dimensions. Moreover, science isn’t capable of proving the existence of heavenly paradises. So whenever you mention these things, those people who believe in science will say that you’re spreading “superstition”—“None of those exist. What I believe in is science.” Think about it, then: Isn’t science ruthlessly striking like a big club at the most vital thing that protects humanity—morality? This is extremely terrifying!

Because humans know that doing bad things will keep them from going to Heaven and that one might even descend to Hell to suffer retribution, they have moral codes. Humans restrain themselves from doing wrong in order to sustain humankind’s morality. Once humans no longer believe in these things, once they no longer believe in gods (though gods truly exist), when people don’t believe in gods, think about it: It’s extremely horrifying! People dare to commit any evil. They think that nobody sees them, and so they do bad things. The new generation raised on modern science dauntlessly kills, commits arson, and does bad things. Gangsters and organized crime have appeared in society, and people use drugs, traffic drugs, do prostitution… they stop at no evil. There’s a lot of filthy and obscene stuff. People do anything they please, they do whatever they want. Think about it, everyone: Isn’t this sort of society appalling?! This is the biggest disaster that science has brought to us. Since science can’t prove the existence of gods or the existence of virtue, and since it doesn’t know about karmic retribution, when you mention these things people will strike at you with this big club—science—and say you’re “superstitious.” When human morality progressively deteriorates to the point of nonexistence, society reaches a state that nobody can do anything about, and human beings arrive at the most dangerous time, because gods won’t allow a warped humankind like that—one that’s somewhere between human and beast—to exist.

Here I’m just telling you this principle. I’m not against humankind’s knowledge. Yet I’d like to tell you not to blindly believe in science. Science is capable of bringing some improvements to human society within the limited boundaries of the present physical dimension. But the consequent disasters it also brings about are quite substantial. What I was referring to are disasters that humans can’t see. The disasters that people can see, such as environmental pollution and ecological damage, are also quite appalling. This science has brought a whole series of social problems. Since it’s difficult to turn people’s mindsets around all at once and since we have new students here, I won’t say more about it. Many social problems are brought about by science—it’s downright dreadful. You don’t believe in gods, yet gods truly, tangibly exist. In the immense cosmos gods are everywhere, they are omnipresent.

Humans descend here from various levels because of their wrongdoing. They drop to the lowest level, this deluded society, and are given a pair of eyes made of the largest molecular particles. And for that reason your eyes can’t see other dimensions. Then during our cultivation, why can some people see things that everyday people can’t? It’s because those persons’ Wisdom Eyesight has been opened. We call it “opening the Third Eye.” They don’t see with the human eye that is composed of molecules. Nonetheless, some of these people still feel that they’re using their eyes to see. In fact, both types of eyes can function at the same time, only you feel as if you are using your eyes to see. I explained this matter just now to help you progress in cultivation.

Next, I’ll talk a little more about the matter of religion. Many Westerners have an obstacle when they obtain the Fa owing to their religious beliefs. In fact, I can tell you that among the religions out in today’s human world, no upright religion in the world is being looked after by gods. Any special religious phenomena, miracles, or manifestations that take place are the result of lower spirits at work in human society. And they’re harmful to people. No gods are looking after religions.

So we have a problem here. If no gods are looking after religions, you won’t be able to improve yourself while cultivating in them, and there’s no god listening to you when you make a confession in church. So how could you make progress? What I’ve said is not to attack religions—what I’ve described is a real phenomenon. It’s really like that. Why do gods no longer bother to care? It’s like what I just said: What you truly believe in is science, not gods. Of course, it wasn’t completely like that in the beginning. Some people still had a part of them that believed in gods. Later on, things of that part gradually faded and faded until eventually they were gone. So gods have stopped looking after humans, and that’s one of the reasons. The social conditions caused by modern science have resulted in the deterioration of humankind’s morality and have led to humans’ stopping at no evil. Humans have lost the behavior of humans as well as the code prescribed for being human, so gods no longer regard humans as human. For this reason they no longer save people. That’s the fundamental reason why gods have left.

I’m talking about the true situation of humankind here. You all know that Westerners don’t understand why Chinese people are still so reserved when it comes to relationships between men and women. Let me tell you that this is how humans should be. Sexual freedom, which has mixed the human races and muddled human ethics, is absolutely forbidden by gods. So as cultivators, you absolutely should not do that sort of thing. You may have a wife or a husband. This is the normal way of life for human beings. But you are committing a sin if you have sexual activity with someone who isn’t your husband or your wife. The gods in every upright religion of the East and West have emphasized this point strongly. When normalizing how humans should be, they discussed this very seriously. And there are other problems nowadays, such as organized crime, homosexuality, and the worship of violence. What we’ve mentioned are only phenomena, yet they reveal the state of society. People tolerate violence and indulge in it, they look up to mobsters, and they even worship the pirate leaders of the past who killed people and set fires. It means that people are no longer able to tell good from bad; they can no longer tell good from evil. What they worship are not righteous and good things, but bad things. Drug addicts and those morally bankrupt people with no temperance or discipline do whatever they want in society. Human values have been completely inverted.

It used to be that the prettier the toy figurines (the figurines that children like) in stores were made, the more people liked them. Nowadays, the prettier they’re made the less people like them. If you make them look like demons and monsters, or the uglier you make them look, the faster they sell. And why is that? Nobody asked you to buy them, so why do they sell so quickly? It’s because everyone likes to have them. It means that people’s values have inverted, and their demon-nature has grown large. Think about it, everyone: Won’t it be dreadful if humans continue to go on like this? If you conduct yourself very conservatively, courteously, and graciously, or if you’re upright, you get attacked. People consider this kind of person stiff and old-fashioned, outmoded, not trendy! Will there still be any boundaries if this trend continues? It’s horrible. Everything of humankind is sliding down in this trend. The same is true with literary works and works of art. In the past, paintings had to be done really beautifully and exquisitely for people to be touched by them, for people had kind hearts and considered art like this to be good. Nowadays a person won’t be touched if you paint a great painting, because he doesn’t have a heart of goodness. If you paint something wildly—like what’s called Abstractionism, Impressionism, or Modernism—they will consider it quite good. But how’s that good? If you really apply human reasoning to explain it, you won’t be able to come up with an explanation. In what kind of state can a person explain it? You will say it’s good only when you’re muddleheaded or in an altered mental state. Yet those states are exactly manifestations of a person’s demon-nature coming forth. In other words, not only have human values inverted today—man’s demon-nature has grown that strong.

In the past, sculptures were carved beautifully. Sculptors’ skills, technique, and artistic foundations were excellent. These days a heap of junk piled together is considered a work of art, and it’s considered the masterpiece of a great artist. People’s values have inverted to such an extent. Think about it, everyone: What will our world become in the future? In one country I found a toy made in the shape of human feces—they even made toys in that shape, and yet there were still people buying it. What do people now esteem? What do they now like? This isn’t just the simple matter of a social trend or a so-called pattern, it is a shift in people’s values. What will happen to people who have such values? Are they still human? Only demons are like that. Demons are evil, while humans should be good. Good and evil are unmistakably different. As for people who don’t like good things but like demonic things, everything about them is demonic, only their outward appearances haven’t undergone big changes. Yet as a person’s demon-nature grows, you will find that even his face, appearance, and body are changing and becoming more and more hideous, and more and more fierce—even his eyes will reveal a ferociousness. It’s truly terrifying if humankind continues on like this! If humankind doesn’t put the brakes on now…

Think about it, everyone. I spoke a moment ago about a principle, namely, that human society’s evolution has involved different periods of civilization. We now know that there was a Stone Age. Let me tell you that Stone Ages have in fact occurred dozens of times on this earth. What is a Stone Age? It comes about after a civilization is destroyed, and only a small number of relatively good people survive; as mentioned in the story of Noah’s Ark, only a very few, good people survive. What do they do when they’ve lost their tools? They carve tools out of stone. Then humankind evolves and a new civilization begins. People have named this process a Stone Age. The alleged Stone Age whereby apes evolved into humans never took place—it never existed. Yet people say that humans evolved from apes. This is something brought about by modern science. Isn’t it ridiculous? Darwin’s theory of evolution is full of holes. If you don’t believe it, then carefully reexamine it: During the evolution from apes to humans and from primitive organisms to modern organisms, the intermediary links are totally absent. Yet people have nonetheless accepted the theory. Now that is blind faith![2] And this is the current civilization’s worst disgrace and scandal. That’s what is truly bizarre!

What I just discussed was in regards to the state of human society as a whole. Think about it, everyone: If gods don’t regard humans as human, then isn’t man in danger? As I just discussed, why were humans in different periods of civilization destroyed? Why does the Mayan culture no longer exist? One can see from the archeological artifacts how degenerate people were at that time. The Caucasians of the last civilization in the West—the ancestors of Caucasians—were the Ancient Greek race; not modern Greeks, but the race of the Ancient Greeks. There are very few people of this race. I’ve found that they are the white Indians of India. There are very few of them. Why was their civilization destroyed? Homosexual things have been found in the archeological artifacts and remains of ancient Greek civilization. The lifestyle at that time was very corrupt, degenerate, and extravagant. Wasn’t that the case? It was because they had progressed to the final stage. The last cycle of Caucasian civilization wasn’t like that in the beginning—the early stage of a human civilization certainly wouldn’t be that depraved—but when the civilization progressed to the later stages and became really depraved, gods saw that humans were no longer any good and thus destroyed them. The good people who were left began to evolve anew, and they became today’s Caucasians. Think about it: If humans continue to develop without inhibition like this and if gods no longer regard humans as human, that’s just terribly dangerous!

Jesus spoke of mercy for people, and that he had come to save those who believed in him when humans would face calamity. When no one truly believes in him, who would he come to save? The destruction of humankind in different time periods all resulted from the corruption of human morality, something extremely dreadful. Humans want to do things in such-and-such way, they want to develop in such-and-such way, and they want society to reach a certain state—humans want to call all the shots. Yet up to this day humans have never been in charge, and they’ve only made society worse and corrupted human morality ever further. Especially in the past few years, the speed at which humanity has slid down is incredibly fast and frightening. I never talk about great catastrophes or calamities, since discussing those things would cause chaos in society. That would amount to making careless remarks, so I don’t talk about those things. I’m not concerned with whether they exist, and I’m not going to discuss it. But I’ll tell you one thing: What I am imparting today is a righteous Fa, and I’m teaching you to be a good person. If you are a good person, could whatever catastrophe have anything to do with you? That’s how it is. I’d say that there won’t be any catastrophes if people in human society become good on a large scale. That’s because nothing in human history is coincidental—every outcome has its cause.

I think that my discussing this issue just now will benefit your cultivation, because the notions that people have acquired nowadays can hinder their obtaining the Fa. My telling you what the present human society is really like is helpful to your obtaining the Fa. What I’m teaching is a Law, a principle. You have your own mind, and you can evaluate it yourself to determine whether you find it correct.

What I just discussed is quite advanced and delicate, and the range of issues involved is quite broad. Yet I didn’t target specific peoples or individuals. I merely focused on social phenomena. No matter what kind of person you are and no matter how many bad things you’ve done, I will look after you as long as you can truly cultivate with a sincere heart. If you don’t cultivate, then nothing can be done.

This is an experience-sharing conference, so people are going to share what they’ve learned through their experiences. At the end, I will spend half a day answering your questions, and then, too, I will be lecturing on many Fa-principles.

I’ll use the afternoon specifically for answering your questions.

 Question: How can we get rid of bad thoughts?

Teacher: This question has a certain degree of universality. Actually, they reflect a state in our cultivation practice. For example, in the ancient cultivation ways of the past, including other religions in the past, cultivators would intentionally confine themselves to a state of total isolation in order to prevent bad thoughts from arising. Some went to monasteries or convents, some went to temples, and some went into the mountains and stayed in caves where they were totally isolated from the world. Moreover, they had to meditate in deep trance over a long period of time. Their types of meditation in deep trance were totally different from the kind of entering tranquility that I’ve taught you. They would reach a state of trance where they were no longer conscious of anything. You might even say that they were sleeping. They wanted to have the mind become tranquil. I consider that state they entered exactly like having the Main Consciousness cease to exist. A serious problem would result if we were to still use those ancient cultivation methods today. Since in the future we’ll have people learning Dafa on a larger scale—hundreds of millions of people—what would happen to human society if all of those people were to enter that state? Meanwhile, that kind of method can only allow the Assistant Spirit (fu yuanshen) to cultivate, not the Main Spirit (zhu yuanshen). In other words, you are unable to consciously cultivate yourself—you can only cultivate your Assistant Spirit while in trance. That approach doesn’t meet the requirements of the Dafa we’re teaching today, nor is it suitable for today’s working people who cultivate in a society of everyday people.

I see that the most crucial factor in a person’s cultivation is improving xinxing. If his thinking truly elevates, everything else will elevate along with it. All that a person does, all of the things he thinks about, and all of the things he wants to do are directed by his mind and his thinking. True progress only happens when you can really elevate your mind and your thinking. So today we aim directly at people’s minds—that is, we aim directly at you—to have you truly improve yourself, as opposed to taking that other path. We don’t take the path of meditating in deep trance over a long period of time whereby a person isn’t aware of anything and lets his Assistant Spirit take over everything. We know that since all of you make great efforts in cultivation, if you were to obtain nothing in the end and could only get blessings for your next lifetime as a reward, then I think I would have let you down, and you would feel that you’d let yourself down. We don’t take that path.

So to enable you to truly practice cultivation while living in the society of everyday people, I’ve adopted a really special method: transforming you from the most submicroscopic level of your existence. Cultivation ways of the past transformed a person by starting from the layer of the largest molecules and progressing toward the submicroscopic levels. We’ve thus taken exactly the opposite road in cultivation. If we were to start transforming ourselves from the surface, over ninety percent of the people sitting here today would have extensive supernatural abilities, and the earth wouldn’t be able to hold you. That’s because once your surface layer has changed, you can pass through any part of a house. Bricks and concrete, composed of the layer of the largest molecules, can’t confine you since the layer of the largest molecules in your body has completely transformed into high-energy matter; the layers of smaller molecules in your body, below the largest one, aren’t obstructed by them. It’s just like air being able to pass through a piece of cloth when you blow at it. It means that you could pass through. Perhaps nothing in this world would have an effect on you anymore. That scenario is unacceptable, then, as humankind’s entire society would become one of gods.

In a society of gods a person can’t cultivate this way. That is, in a society where illusion is shattered and where everyone can see the true manifestation of gods, you can’t cultivate this way. It doesn’t mean you absolutely couldn’t cultivate, but that, at the very least, it wouldn’t be easy to cultivate. In other words, there’d be no more illusion. The most efficient cultivation takes place amidst illusion, and this dimension is precisely one of illusion. So we’ve adopted the opposite approach: At the microscopic level we are gradually transforming you starting from your body composed of the most microscopic particles of your existence, and breaking through, layer by layer, toward the largest molecules. In other words, we are breaking through toward the surface of your body until we finally reach the flesh cells composed of the layer of molecules visible to the eyes. Then you will Consummate. That’s the path we take.

This disciple asked how we could get rid of bad thoughts. Many of our students have been cultivating for a long time. Why haven’t the bad thoughts that used to reflect into their minds been eliminated? Sometimes it feels like those thoughts were removed by cultivating, yet after a period of time they discover that the bad thoughts are surfacing again. Why is that? Actually, what I just spoke about was to tell you that we start transforming you from the microscopic level. Your surface hasn’t been reached yet. Your bad thoughts are being weakened and removed layer by layer, but they haven’t been completely eliminated. Because of the type of path we’ve taken, it can be said that you have cultivated quite well even though those thoughts haven’t been completely removed. Some human thoughts are allowed to remain, however, so that you can keep cultivating in the society of everyday people before you reach Consummation. If you didn’t have any ordinary human thoughts it would be hard to stay among everyday people.

If a cultivator were to have no human thoughts, he would know what thoughts are going through others’ minds. From just one word, one act, one gesture, one move, or even one look in someone’s eyes, he would know exactly what that person is up to. What appears in people’s minds—especially the minds of everyday people in society—are all bad thoughts, which you wouldn’t be able to stand. What’s more, you could see that the toxic substances in the air are unbelievably abundant! All bad things throughout the entire society would be visible, and you could see them all. Do you think you could stay here? It would be just impossible for you to cultivate here. Why have some people gone to far off mountains to cultivate in isolation? There was no way they could stay among everyday people. What I’m saying is that when your mind hasn’t reached the final step—that is, before your molecules have reached the last stage of transformation—you will still have ordinary human thoughts popping up, and that includes the bad thoughts that are carried and concealed among everyday people. Is it true then that no matter how we cultivate ourselves, as long as there’s no change in the surface body, the bad thoughts will be just as strong as before? No, it’s not.

You don’t realize that you’ve already improved greatly. A lot of your bad thoughts have been removed. Those that remain are miniscule. In addition, you have noticed and realized that you still have bad thoughts. You weren’t able to notice them before. All of this is progress and elevation. What’s more, even though the things appearing in your mind are bad, and sometimes even very bad, they’re very weak. As long as you are determined and as long as your Main Consciousness is in charge, you’ll be able to suppress them. Before, you weren’t able to suppress them. That’s why people are driven by those thoughts to say bad words and do bad things. Now it’s just that you can sense your bad thoughts, but it’s hard for them to affect you. What I just said means that this is the path we’ve taken. So don’t be afraid. You know that you have those thoughts, so you’re in the process of improving yourself. A great deal of your bad thoughts have already been removed.

All of you sitting here are cultivators. The gaps in cultivation among you might not seem that noticeable. Yet when you’re in everyday people’s society and are with people who don’t practice cultivation, you will find it unbearable. You will find that you don’t like listening to what they say, and sometimes you will even think what they do is silly. And why is that? It’s because already there is a large gap between you and them. You wouldn’t feel like that if the gap was small or insignificant. You only feel like that when the gap is significant. But you will only feel like you’re just a little better than them. This too is a cultivation state we’ve created for you. Only this way can you practice cultivation among them and work with them. If you’ve understood what I just said, you’ll realize that is what’s going on. But on the other hand, I still have to tell you that you shouldn’t say, “Oh, now I understand. So that’s how it is. From now on I’ll let them be. The bad thoughts can do whatever they want, and I won’t care.” Then you’d be willfully indulging them, which is the same as not cultivating. Although bad thoughts still exist, I’ve said that this is the way in which we cultivate—bad thoughts are eliminated gradually. If you don’t actively suppress them and get rid of them, if you don’t have this will and aren’t determined, then you’re not cultivating. That’s the relationship.

Question: If a person has bad thoughts, does it mean he can’t cultivate?

Teacher: I just explained this. Let me give you an illustration. Your bad thoughts are, to be explicit, just like a thread that we’re constantly cutting and getting rid of, piece, by piece, by piece, by piece. It will still exist before it’s completely eliminated. Why would you say you can’t cultivate? Isn’t cutting it and getting rid of it cultivating? Actually you have made great progress cultivating. So that’s the idea.

Question: I have a relative who’s old and ill. Is he one of those who can be saved?

Teacher: What you’re asking is whether older people who have illnesses can practice cultivation. Our Dafa is taught to the public, and its superficial form is not selective. Everyone knows that we aren’t charging anything for today’s conference—the door is open and anyone can enter. People who are not predestined won’t want to enter. In other words, we don’t select people. If people really come in to learn and they want to cultivate, then I have to look after them. No matter how old or young that person is, or whether he’s sick or not, I have to look after him. But the key point is whether you treat yourself as a cultivator rather than an old person or a sick person when you come here. That’s most crucial. If you always think: “I’m old, can I still succeed in cultivation? Is there still enough time to practice cultivation?” That strong attachment of yours is an obstacle. The longer you hold on to that attachment, the shorter your life will become.

All the same, there have been some people who were ill and who came. In the beginning this type of person would think: “I heard that people become really healthy and free of illness after practicing Falun Dafa for awhile.” Gradually, however, in this Fa he came to an understanding and, along with this, eliminated the attachment to illness that was in his thoughts. There’s no problem with that. If he didn’t get rid of the thought of healing his illness, it would have created a serious obstacle in his cultivation since he would always think in his mind: “Why is my illness still not healed while others have all gotten well?” Then in essence, this thought was no different from practicing for the sake of curing illness. I’m teaching this Dafa to save people, to solve humans’ fundamental problems, not to cure people’s illnesses. If you really want to practice cultivation, you aren’t able to practice with a sick body. So if you are a true cultivator, your illness will naturally be removed during the course of cultivation. But the goal isn’t to cure your illness. Your body is purified in order to pave the way for your cultivating. So you’ll attain nothing if you come to get your illness cured. I think I’ve explained the matter clearly.

Question: How should I treat the chongwu (pets) at my home?

Teacher: “Chong” is to love, to be fond of. You love it, you’re fond of it, and you’re attached to it, right? Isn’t that what it means? So when you asked the question you spelled out your attachment. Our taking good care of living things and everything in nature that exists for human beings is not wrong. But nothing should be overdone. You really shouldn’t overdo it. Human beings are the highest and most perfect life on earth—and gods view it this way too—whereas all animals (regardless of whether they’re large or small) and plants, and all living things, are created for man. Those things wouldn’t have been created if there were no human beings. In some regions and countries nowadays, the adoration of animals has gone to an extreme. Some people love and care for animals more than human beings.

I just said that gods created human beings; they created this earth for man’s existence. Those living things were created for people to enjoy, for them to play with, for them to live off of, and for them to feed on. And along with this they make the earth flourish. Everything is created for man, but if man becomes inferior to animals, then that’s the same as violating the laws of Heaven. Of course, we cultivators shouldn’t be like that. We practice compassion and we’re compassionate to all beings. But we absolutely shouldn’t go beyond this compassion and develop another attachment: being overly caring for those things. Overemphasizing anything isn’t right. In modern times, especially in Europe, people are overly fond of dogs; I have found that it’s the same in the United States. Let me tell you that gods created dogs to guard people’s homes, and absolutely not to become your kids or your friends, as if they were on a par with human beings. Humans should never be equated with dogs. So you should never go too far. Remember this: Humans can cultivate into Buddhas, while no animal can; humans can cultivate into gods, while no animal can; and humans can go to heavenly paradises, while no animal can. If an animal wants to go, then it needs to reincarnate as a human in its next life and cultivate before it can. I think I’ve explained this clearly.

Question: Can my fondness for other living things be considered my respect for them and my wish to preserve them?

Teacher: This matter has been discussed in Zhuan Falun. You still aren’t discarding the attachment, and I won’t say anything more. I’m not against protecting endangered animals. The excessive damage people have done to nature is wrong, extremely wrong. Yet it’s also wrong for people to overdo something. Resolving the problems of the human heart and morality is what’s fundamental. If as a cultivator you’re attached to those things, then they are obstacles in your cultivation. When everyday people overdo things like that—treating animals and people as equals—it’s the same as insulting themselves, cursing at man himself, and ruining the dignity of human beings.

Question: Can deceased parents and friends benefit from my cultivation?

Teacher: Everyone’s life is arranged at the time of birth: On which day something good will happen, on which day something bad will happen, which school and college a person will attend when he’s growing up, what job he’ll do after graduation… The way I see it, all of these are in fact predetermined. Consequently, a person’s efforts also become an inevitable part of him. Are people able to control their own lives? Can you succeed at whatever you want to? Can you become President if that’s what you desire? No.

In reality, we humans all know we can’t just do whatever. Yet the guiding influence of this society and this science encourage you to strive for things. So when some people obtain something, they feel as if they’ve acquired it through their own efforts. Actually, if you weren’t overly attached and you lived and worked as normal, you would obtain it just the same. It’s just that your efforts become an inevitable part of your obtaining it. Things are like that because people bring it upon themselves. Since people throughout the entire society are “striving” and trying terribly hard like that, the entire society has been pushed into this situation. So you have to do things that way in order to get what you’re entitled to. It’s not that certain individuals have changed, but that the entire society has changed. All the same, a person can’t change the course of his own life. Then since you can’t change your own life, how could you change the lives of others? You can’t. You might think: “I want to use my power or money to make my close relatives, good friends, and children happy and have good lives.” Actually, let me tell you that your children’s reincarnation into that wealthy family of yours is probably due to the blessings they accumulated in their previous lives. If they don’t have blessings, they won’t be able to inherit your wealth. Nor will they be able to turn your efforts into reality. It’s bound to be that way. Maybe your excessive efforts will cause their lives to be short and they will fail to meet your expectations, or maybe they’ll go gambling or play the stock market and in one shot lose all that wealth you left them through your efforts. Or maybe something else will happen. This is to say, if they don’t have the blessings they can’t inherit it. Some parents give their children a certain amount of money, hoping to have them live comfortably and happily. I can tell you that it’s actually not that simple. They need to have the blessings for that to happen. It absolutely won’t work if they don’t have the blessings. [For example,] no matter how much money you give them, they’ll get really sick and spend the money on medical expenses. That’s how things are in the human world. Human beings can’t see through it, but I see it clearly.

Some people might then think, “Since I’m a cultivator, can I give them happiness through my cultivation?” The meaning of happiness is different in the eyes of a cultivator. The happiness among everyday people is, in fact, not true happiness. It’s merely a short time of ease and comfort that’s bought with money, and it won’t last forever. What a cultivator wants is to truly make it possible for them to be happy forever, retain their human bodies forever, and never suffer again. There’s no suffering in the heavenly paradises. But when you’re a cultivator who hasn’t succeeded in cultivation and yet you want to give that much to others, that can only be an attachment. And once an attachment forms, it will affect your cultivation. In other words, we should discard our attachments and cultivate. That doesn’t mean you should stop being concerned with everything else. You can live as usual among everyday people and be together with your family. I’ve let you retain enough human thoughts to be able to do that; it’s not a problem for you to take care of your family. But if you, as cultivators, want others to obtain happiness through your cultivation, then there’s only one way: have them obtain the Fa. Then they too will be saved later on. Perhaps they’ll cultivate even better than you and won’t need you to worry about them. Some people might think, “Can I make them happy through my cultivation, or by using my special abilities or supernatural abilities?” You can’t. If the person’s karma is massive you would have to pay for his karma in his place, and then you couldn’t Consummate.

I remember a story from Buddhism. Shakyamuni’s entire hometown was going to be flooded, and all the villagers would be killed. So one of Shakyamuni’s ten main disciples used a supernatural ability of his to hold all the villagers in his hand. It was at night, when people were asleep. The people didn’t know [what was happening], as if they’d been hypnotized. He thought that these people were all in his hand and wouldn’t die. The flood came as expected and submerged the town. The next morning, he thought the trouble was over and that although the town was flooded its people would be all right. He opened his palm and saw that everyone had been turned to ashes. Because his cultivation level was limited, he wasn’t aware of gods who were more microcosmic and more enormous than him. It’s just like the relationship among molecules—large and small molecules—that I mentioned. He could only use his supernatural ability within his own realm; he didn’t know what gods beyond his realm were doing. It means that everyone has his own fate. Besides, a cultivator should only put his mind to vigorously moving forward in cultivation.

There are some people who think, “If I Consummate through cultivation, I’ll definitely come back to save my family members.” If you have this thought at present, I won’t say it’s an attachment. But it is a strong attachment if you always think like that. If you have an attachment like that when you’re near Consummation, you won’t be able to Consummate. If you succeed in cultivating into a great god or a great Buddha, will you be capable of doing that? You will be more than capable. You will be able to hold the earth in your palm with no effort at all, let alone save your family members. Yet let me tell you that those things can’t be done casually, owing to the same principle I just mentioned. If you want to save your people—if you want to give them salvation—you have to find a way to make them improve. If you aren’t able to help them improve, your taking them to a heavenly paradise is strictly forbidden. Everything in the heavenly paradises is composed of more microscopic particles of matter. The surfaces look very refined and smooth, radiating brilliantly. That’s because the more microcosmic the matter, the greater its energy. If you were to place something from the earth up there, it would be the same as placing garbage in the most sacred and pure palace. That’s not allowed. You have to turn the garbage into the best thing, something fresh, before you can do that. In other words, if you want to take care of people, it can only be accomplished by having them become good.

You know that when Jesus entered among ordinary men to save people, he had to suffer for people, and he was eventually nailed to a cross. You don’t know what this means. You only know that Judaism did that terrible thing. Actually, it’s not that simple. There were other factors involved. If we’re to follow the logic that you just expressed, think about it: Since Jesus had such great abilities and his father was Lord of the Caucasians, couldn’t he do whatever he wanted? Why did he spend so much effort on Earth persuading people to do good, telling people principles of the truth, and suffering so much for human beings? And at that time he also had to endure suppression and sabotage from other religions. Why then bother to do things the way he did? It means that even though he had such great abilities, he still had to rectify the human heart in order to save a person. If any of you sitting here can’t cultivate your xinxing to the point of Consummation, then I can’t do anything about it either. I can teach you the principles of the Fa, I can help you evolve gong, I can eliminate a portion of your karma for you, I can protect you, and I can do a huge range of things for you that you don’t know about but that are necessary when you Consummate and afterwards. But if your heart doesn’t change and your mind doesn’t elevate, then all of that is in vain. That’s what I mean when I say that if a person’s heart doesn’t change, even a Buddha can’t help him.

Not being able to make a person improve doesn’t mean nothing can be done when he’s become bad. How could that be the case? He can be cast down to lower levels or exterminated at will. But since gods are compassionate... The “loving heart” that Jesus spoke of was in no way the love among humans. Taking human love for the “love” or “loving heart” spoken of by Jesus is equivalent to abusing Jesus’ words, blaspheming Jesus, and blaspheming gods. The loving heart that Jesus spoke of is “compassion,” only he used the language of Westerners to express it. At that time Western culture didn’t have the concept of compassion, nor did it have a term for compassion. This is a disparity caused by the differences in time periods and the cultures of the different regions. I think I’ve discussed all facets of this matter; that is, how everyday people handle these things, how to handle them during cultivation, and how to handle them after you eventually succeed in cultivation.

Question: What requirements should we meet before we can spread the Fa?

Teacher: Yesterday I listened to students from various regions who’ve done work for Dafa sharing their experiences together. I was truly happy. For one thing, I saw your determination with the Fa and the heart for being responsible to yourself. And along with that you want others to obtain the Fa. I am truly happy for you. By exchanging with each other experiences and insights from situations of different regions you can gradually enrich your insights. As for meeting certain “requirements,” I don’t think there are any requirements. And there’s no way there are any requirements in terms of having certain material possessions or power. There’s only one thing: As long as you’re a cultivator who has the enthusiasm to [spread the Fa], you can do it—anyone can do it. But you should handle one thing well: Don’t speak about things that are at too high of a level when you talk to people. If you tell them your present understanding of the Fa—including what I’ve said today—if you say those things to them, they will be intimidated. That’s because you haven’t sensed that you have gradually improved to this stage in cultivation before being able to comprehend principles so high. They are still everyday people, and their thoughts are still at the level of everyday people, contemplating how to make money, how to fulfill some aspiration, how to gain the boss’s favor, and so on. Those things are still top priority for them. They won’t be able to bear it if you tell them things this high. You can just tell them the simplest superficial meaning of the words. I think people with predestined relationships will want to learn [the Fa] once they hear about it. And people with no predestined relationship won’t want to learn, no matter how you try to persuade them. There’s one point to make: Be sure you don’t drag people over, and don’t force people to learn it when they don’t want to. [If you say:] “You’re my friend, you’re my family member—you must learn, you have to learn,” not only will they not believe it, but when they come they will say bad things and play a negative role. So everyone, please make absolutely sure you pay attention to this.

Question: Is Falun Gong consistent with Christianity in any way in its view of the development of humankind and the earth?

Teacher: Of course, I won’t blame new students for not having studied the Fa in depth. What I’m teaching are the principles of the cosmos. And this Dafa is the grandest, it penetrates the cosmos from top to bottom, and it can create living environments for all beings of the cosmos as well as for gods at different levels and humans. How could there be any comparison? This Dafa of the cosmos has created living environments and conditions at different levels for living beings of different levels. In other words, the living beings at a given level have to conform to the principles at that level and to the Fa of the cosmos at that level in order to exist there. To put it even more simply, the future environment in which you will live is determined by the height of the level you can cultivate to. The principles that Jesus stated in his time, however, were principles that taught the everyday people of society how to cultivate in order to go to his paradise. Where is his paradise? To be precise, it’s within a small expanse of our Milky Way, in a celestial body corresponding to our Milky Way. Jesus is at the same level as the conventional Buddhas mentioned in the East, whereas the Lord referred to by Caucasians in the West far exceeds that level. But neither of them has gone beyond this small universe. Yet our Dafa has created boundless and countless universes like this one, more than all the world’s grains of sand. So would you say they can be compared? The principles that Jesus spoke about are only the Fa at the level of Tathagata in the small universe within the boundless Great Fa. That’s the relationship.

Jesus is a fine God. It’s not just me who says that: Gods in the heavens all regard him that way. In order to save people he was crucified by humans—have you ever thought about what that means? And yet Christianity takes the cross as the symbol of God, the sign of the heavenly kingdom, and the symbol of Christ. That’s the biggest disrespect to gods. That is man’s own doing, definitely not what gods have told people to do. Because the cross is placed on graves, it truly represents death—not a god. All gods in the universe condemn humans for doing that. Furthermore, Christianity has used the image of Jesus suffering on the cross as its symbol. That is something gods cannot tolerate—they absolutely can’t tolerate it! But people are still doing it. People have been doing disrespectful things like that to gods for hundreds of years.

Jesus has many magnificent images. He performed many miracles among ordinary humans. And yet instead of taking his glorious and magnificent images as symbols, you have taken the crucifix as the symbol. Are you respecting this God or hating him—do you want him to be crucified forever? People, you don’t know what you humans are doing. One day I was watching the news on TV in the U.S. when I saw two glassblowers in Taiwan who were said to be a famous couple. They consider Buddha statues a form of artwork, and have made a lot of glass Buddha figurines. Taking Buddha to be artwork is in itself blaspheming Buddha. But what’s more, the figurines of Buddha that they made were missing torsos, with only a head and half a face. They made Buddha into Modernist and Impressionist stuff. But think about it: Those are magnificent and mighty gods. In the old days, when people mentioned God or a Tathagata Buddha, they felt a sense of reverence. Would they dare to treat them like that? You think that you’re portraying Buddha, promoting Buddhism, and doing good things. But it’s not just your average discourtesy: It is the greatest disrespect. You are actually cursing and slandering Buddha, distorting his mighty image. You’re doing the worst thing. The other day I said that people’s values have inverted. Human beings just don’t understand what I mean. They can no longer distinguish good from evil, righteous from wicked, or good from bad. All values have been turned upside down. 

Question: Why can’t I practice Falun Gong while working in Christianity?

Teacher: Let me tell you that your work in Christianity is only a job. You can work there, for sure. I don’t regard the current religions as cultivation anyway. I treat them as religious professions that are no longer capable of saving people. That’s because they truly have become professions, not cultivation. All the same, to make sure you can truly improve and that I can take you home, I ask you to concentrate on only one cultivation way. That is definitely beneficial for you. I have spelled out the subject of “no second discipline” in Zhuan Falun. This Fa is immense, but even so, you’re still mixing things into it. Even mixing in low-level things is unacceptable, and doing so will mess up the body you cultivate with and everything you’ve developed by cultivating, and you won’t be able to return home. You would be sabotaging your own path of advancement. I’m the locomotive and all of you are sitting in the passenger cars. But you pull out the rails—rails that were designed for this train. If you replace the rails with narrow ones, then see if you can still go home. Nothing should be mixed in. Only by purely following one cultivation way can you reach Consummation. With regard to this matter, I’d suggest you carefully read the “no second discipline” section in Zhuan Falun again, calm your mind and read it, so I won’t say any more about it here.

I’m truly looking out for your well-being. It’s not that I want to badmouth some religion. It’s predestined relationship that has brought you here. If I couldn’t be responsible to you, that would be my problem; if you don’t take responsibility for yourself, that’s your problem. So I have to explain the issue to you clearly.

Question: What does Jesus represent nowadays?

Teacher: Jesus is a mighty God in his realm. But he is no longer taking care of anything related to Christianity, nor is he looking after people. Religion is a name given by human beings. When Jesus was in this world, he never said that his way was Christianity. When Shakyamuni was in this world, he absolutely didn’t say that his way was Buddhism. It is humans who made it part of everyday people’s society, gave it a name that belongs to the society of everyday people—“religion”—and involved it in political affairs. So they call it such-and-such religion. It has lost the means that truly allow a person to re-ascend through cultivation, reach Consummation, and go to Heaven. Many religious figures have even become politicians, and there are some who angle for money. How could they meet the standard for cultivators? How could they become good people and go back up to Heaven? With those filthy thoughts, how could Jesus give you a golden, radiant god’s body? How could he let you pollute that immeasurably-pure divine body with your bad thoughts and karma-filled body?! What I said are principles of the Fa, I’m not pointing at the student who raised the question.

Question: Both my legs and knees have problems. Will I be able to sit in the full-lotus position?

Teacher: If you’re saying that you have an illness, I never acknowledge the concept of “illness” since it’s caused by karma; and some illnesses are caused by foreign intelligent beings. If you’re saying that you’ve been injured, I think that as long as you treat yourself as a true cultivator, unexpected miracles will occur. We’ve had people who even had nails and steel plates mounted in them, yet eventually they were able to sit in the full-lotus position. Nails and steel plates are only mounted to the body that’s made of the largest particles. Of course, I’d say that none of those things are problems in cultivation. Take your time and practice steadily. Even people in their eighties and nineties are eventually able to sit in the full-lotus position. But that said, I don’t recommend that you do it overly forcefully. If you can’t really meet the requirement and are obviously unable to sit even in the half-lotus position, yet you force yourself to sit full-lotus and eventually break your leg, then that’s no good. A person’s attachments will cause problems once they become strong. Being eager and impatient over success isn’t good. You should move forward vigorously and diligently in cultivation—that’s correct, but only with the Fa.

Question: Can the mind-intent of “three focus points along one line” help me get rid of distracting thoughts quickly?

Teacher: It seems you haven’t read the book. Our book, Zhuan Falun, can answer all of your questions, especially the beginning-level questions. “Three focus points along one line” is a method used in Dao system cultivation. Now that you’re practicing Falun Dafa you can’t use those approaches and methods. Besides, it can’t enable a person to completely eliminate his distracting thoughts. Intentionally using any method to reach the state of tranquility just isn’t going to work. There is no miraculous cure-all like that in this world.

If you want to truly reach tranquility, there’s only one way: Continually improve yourself in Dafa and eliminate your various attachments. As your attachments become fewer, you will notice that your mind becomes purer and cleaner when you do the meditation. At last, when you’re approaching Consummation, all of your attachments will be gone and you will find that you’re able to settle into tranquility as soon as you sit to meditate. Improvement is made through this type of process. People who cultivated in other religions in the past or in the remote mountains in ancient times cultivated the Assistant Spirit; they made the Main Spirit unconscious. So they couldn’t enable people in everyday society to practice cultivation, much less cultivate the Main Spirit. In China, practitioners from a few cultivation ways in the Dao system were required to drink a lot of alcohol. You might have heard about this. They would carry wine gourds, drink until they swayed and faltered, and finally lie down and sleep for three to five days or a week without getting up. Why did they do it that way? They were using the method of making the Main Spirit unconscious and cultivating their Assistant Spirits instead. You’d see them lying there drunk and asleep, while their Assistant Spirits had left the body. Although those immortals have left behind many miracles and people think they were great and extraordinary, I think those people were rather pitiful. The next life they had to reincarnate again just the same. I’ve seen them reincarnate again. That’s how it is.

Everyone, please be sure to remember this: You must concentrate on one cultivation practice alone. Don’t mix in ideas from any other practices. Mixing them will cause you interference, and they will make your gong impure. You’ll have no way to return, and it will be impossible for you to ascend in cultivation or Consummate. And you shouldn’t go and adopt some method hoping for a shortcut to tranquility or improvement. That would bring problems to your cultivation. You need to solidly improve your mind. All gods are watching you. Be sure not to adopt some other methods, none of which will enable your mind to improve. If a person’s mind doesn’t improve, nothing else counts. The exercises are a supplementary means to achieve Consummation—they definitely aren’t the reason behind real improvement. When your xinxing has improved, your gong will rise accordingly. In other words, the transformation of gong is accelerated by the exercises and so improvement is made. If your xinxing is only a certain height, and you think, “Let me speed up the transformation and make it higher,” it won’t get any higher. It can only reach the height of your xinxing. So xinxing improvement is the number one priority. Put another way, a person’s gong can only be as high as his [xinxing] level. This is an absolute truth. No matter which cultivation way you practice you can’t escape it. It’s an absolutely true law of the universe, a law which every religion and cultivation way has to abide by.

Question: Can mind-intent be added while doing the fifth exercise?

Teacher: Absolutely not. If it’s because you can’t become tranquil, we have a method. Sometimes you say: “I really can’t do anything about it. It bothers me so much I have no way to become tranquil. It feels like ten thousand horses galloping around in my head.” Why can’t you calm down? It’s a mental state caused by your postnatal notions from the society of everyday people as well as your karma. Those aren’t your true thoughts. Now that you are cultivating, you have to eliminate them. That’s why they don’t let you. So they have your mind run off like ten thousand horses galloping about in your head, preventing you from becoming tranquil and making you go off into wild flights of thought.

To cultivate, you know, a person has to find himself and cultivate himself. If you’re able to differentiate it from yourself and think, “Those aren’t me. Think if you want to, but I want to become tranquil. Let’s see how long you can keep running off like that,” then treat them as others’ thoughts. If you can really find yourself and differentiate yourself from them, this method will work. That is, if you treat yourself as a third party, “I’ll watch you thinking all over the place, let’s see how long you can think for,” then maybe things will get a lot better. But this is only a method to differentiate yourself and strengthen your Main Consciousness—it won’t enable you to enter the state of absolute tranquility. Why does this way work, whereas the method mentioned earlier doesn’t? It’s because that method belongs to one of the small-way practices, which can’t lead you home. All of those methods artificially seek to elevate people, without improving xinxing. That’s not allowed and won’t work.

Why do I tell you about this method? It won’t bring you to a state of absolute tranquility, but it bespeaks of something good about it: Namely, you can identify which thoughts are yours and which ones aren’t. You certainly won’t acknowledge those bad thoughts [as yours], so of course they’ll quickly be eliminated. Isn’t this also “cultivation depends on oneself, gong depends on one’s master”? Why do I tell you not to acknowledge them? Think about it, everyone: Which part of your body isn’t you? Your hands move however you want them to, your arms move however you want them to, and your head moves however you want it to, and that’s because all of them are you. Then why don’t those thoughts settle down when you want them to? It’s because they are not you. Your true self is pure and clean. Dirty things are postnatal contamination. That’s why they have to be removed and discarded in cultivation, and this is rejecting them.

Question: Can homosexuals who don’t give up their behavior...

Teacher: You mean, “Can he cultivate if he doesn’t give up his partner in this behavior?”

I can tell you that I mentioned something yesterday: I said that gods no longer regard people as human. Even though you’re still upholding religions, Jesus no longer looks after you. He didn’t acknowledge religion in the first place—he only acknowledged human hearts that could become good again. Why doesn’t he look after people anymore? Because people nowadays can’t be called human. That’s truly how it is. Never in history has society been in as big a mess as today. Yesterday I mentioned things like organized crime, drug addiction, perversion, sexual liberation, promiscuity, incest, and the shift in human values, as well as homosexuality… Think about it, everyone: Humans are created by gods. A man is given a wife. That was stipulated by gods. People now want to find a partner of the same sex. Gods think that people do that because they no longer have human values. You are wantonly indulging your thoughts. Your thoughts, like the ones I just mentioned, are not actually you. The mentality that makes you homosexual was driven by postnatally-formed bad things. But you yourself were numbed by them and went along with them and wallowed in the mud. You need to find yourself again and stop doing those filthy things. Gods view them as filthy. No matter whether a government permits it, the law of your government is not the truth of the universe. That’s because the law of a government is made by humans, and when humans make laws, they have the intention to rule and punish others, or they make laws against their conscience in order to protect things and gain power or votes. So they are not made with good intentions.

I think the fact that this question was asked means that he’s realized this is inappropriate. People nowadays can no longer distinguish between right and wrong, between what they should do and what they shouldn’t. Everyone is sliding down with society’s trends. Human morality is sliding down at a tremendous speed and keeps on deteriorating. Since everyone is amidst the torrent, they’re unable to distinguish between good and bad. What was done prior to your cultivation is done; let bygones be bygones. As a cultivator you should first of all live as a human being does, nobly and upright. Then, join other cultivators and become a cultivator. And eventually, transcend and become a purer, more noble person—one who reaches divine realms and who is like a god. Gods would never permit a cultivator to do that kind of thing, nor would they permit everyday people to.

Question: Is there any way to communicate with intelligent beings beyond Earth?

Teacher: It looks like your attachment is none too small. Many of the questions raised today are by those who have come for the first time. Having seen many movies, having read many imaginative stories, and having been influenced by a lot of things in society, people have developed a warped mindset that indulges in fantasy. You asked how to communicate with intelligent beings. Let me tell you all that an ordinary person can’t do that sort of thing, and he lacks the ability. If you could indeed communicate with intelligent beings but weren’t a cultivator yourself and were without energy, you would be in danger. You might lose your life any moment. Besides, you would see gruesome spirits but no high-level beings, for your level would be too low and limited to only that of humans. So it would be a terrifying situation. It’s even more terrifying if you want to communicate with living beings beyond Earth. Lives beyond Earth are just lives on other planets within this physical dimension that our human eyes can perceive. Yet those lives don’t regard people as human beings. They think people are beasts, a kind of animal. They slaughter people at will and experiment on you at will. They kidnap people to their planets, lock them in cages, and put them on display as animals. Many of Earth’s people who have gone missing were taken by them.

I can also tell you that today’s human science was created by them. Why have those aliens created for humans something like the current science? It’s because what they have on their planet is akin to it. They want to bring it to this planet and eventually replace humans. They found that the human body is really perfect, flawless. So they covet the human body and want to eventually replace humans. They have added their things into one layer of human beings’ molecular cells. That’s already been done now and it has formed on a large scale. So for me to save you today, I not only have to remove all the attachments and karma that you need to eliminate, but I also have to clean up this stuff for you. The road humankind is traveling down is dreadful. Computers would have commanded people one day. Ongoing developments have conformed to this trajectory. Humans were to become the slaves of computers and machinery, and eventually be replaced by aliens. Why have computers developed so quickly, and why has the human brain suddenly become so “sharp”? All of this has been carried out by aliens controlling the human mind. Aliens have registered everyone who knows how to operate a computer. For real. As to our students, I’ve cleaned all of that up for them, so that they won’t be interfered with by aliens when they use computers.

Why are there aliens? Some aliens originate from their planets. Why do some aliens always come to Earth? It’s because they were once humans on Earth. But it wasn’t the Earth of our time. It was the previous Earth that existed at the same location as this Earth. Earth has been replaced many times. Each time it was replaced, there was a portion of lives—living beings created by gods with different appearances, some of whom were similar to today’s humans, some of whom had different forms—who were relatively good at the time and were thus preserved. They weren’t destroyed, yet they weren’t allowed to enter the period of human development on the next Earth, either. So they were sent to another planet. That’s how it was done every time. Also, it has left a record of this universe, for they were humans on Earth in different time periods. It serves that purpose. But due to a slackening in overseeing them, they have developed, and they have created all kinds of scientific methods according to their schemes; some are like the kind on our earth, some assume other forms, and there are a variety of modes of development. Of course, they don’t use the term “science.” The names they use belong to their languages and concepts. These things have deteriorated further and further. And with the deviation of the cosmos’ Great Fa, the aliens have become worse and worse too. That’s why all aliens are in the process of being completely eliminated. They are being eliminated throughout the entire universe. At present, those up there have been eliminated. What’s left are only those who have escaped to Earth, who are mingling among people or who have attached to human bodies. And there are other types too. I’m watching all of them. Let them do their outrageous things for the time being. It won’t be long before they’re eradicated. (Enthusiastic applause) The corruption of humankind is directly related to them, as well. Those are sins, and so they have to be eradicated.

Question: Some people have said that Teacher suggests doing the first exercise three times and the second exercise for half an hour.

Teacher: Every person’s situation is different. However long you do them for is fine. The tranquil exercises usually don’t quite work if they aren’t practiced long enough. If you have time, it’s better to do the exercises more. But it won’t work if you stop doing everything and just do the exercises all day. When your realm of thought hasn’t reached a certain level, your gong won’t be able to grow up to there just by doing the exercises. So cultivating your xinxing has to be the first priority. Why have I told you to read the book more? Reading the book more allows you to understand countless principles; reading the book more allows you to elevate your xinxing. There’s no fixed time requirement. I think the results won’t be ideal if the second exercise is done for less than a half hour. But will it work? Yes, it will. Do it according to the time you have. That’s what I think. You should do the fifth exercise according to your ability. It’s not realistic if I ask you to practice for an hour when you can only sit with legs crossed for fifteen minutes, right? Do the exercises according to your ability. Yet the half hour point is a big hurdle. Regardless of how well you’re able to sit in the lotus position, it’s guaranteed there is a big hurdle when you reach the half hour mark. It’s really hard to break through it. But, once you break through the half-hour point, [meditating] won’t be as hard as when you were at the half-hour hurdle.

Question: Each country has its own characteristics. How can we enable Falun Dafa to grow more quickly, such as in Switzerland?

Teacher: It depends on how you, according to your own situation, enable more of your people to obtain Dafa. Some people say, “My giving money to others is a good deed.” I say that you’ve merely taken care of their happiness and comfort for the moment. Give them Dafa and they will benefit forever, life after life. What a precious thing you give them! There’s a saying in China: “If someone hears the Dao in the morning, he can die at dusk.” Of course, it’s not saying, “I heard the Fa this morning, so I’ll die in the evening.” It doesn’t mean that. It means: “If I’ve heard the Dao, or I’ve heard the Fa in the morning, then even if I am to die in the evening I truly won’t be afraid.” And why is that? That’s because a dying person’s greatest fear is going to Hell. But think about it: If the Fa is in your head, will Hell dare to receive you? Will it dare to receive Dafa? It won’t dare to. Or in other words, could the part of your mind that contains Fa still be a bad part? That’s what it means. How to have Dafa fit the characteristics of different countries? That depends on what you do on your own. It can only be that way, there’s no special way. For example, the people of some nations enjoy listening to music, the people of some nations like to contemplate, and the people of other countries like to live indulgently without restraint. Those are their different characteristics. Do things as you see fit and go by the different characteristics and different behaviors people have. I think you’ll manage to do well.

Question: How do we distinguish good people from bad ones?

Teacher: What’s a good person? What’s a bad person? Do you think that only if a person does bad deeds he’s a bad person? It’s not so. Some people who don’t do bad things also seem really bad, only they don’t reveal it or they show it in a rather obscure way. Why is that? A person doesn’t have any ordinary human thoughts when he’s born from his mother’s womb. He only knows milk and crying. Everything of everyday people that’s instilled in him comes postnatally. In the old days people took family education very seriously. I think the parental discipline that kids in Caucasian families received back in those days was excellent. Yet nowadays, the degree to which children are indulged—especially in the United States—is beyond description. Those children have absolutely no manners. Their entire education has failed. To be responsible to humankind, people have to educate their children. Tell them what is good and what is bad, and they’ll take all of it into their heads. It’s just like a handbag. If the bag is filled with gold, people will say that what you have is gold; if your handbag is filled with dirt, they will say it is dirt. So that’s how people are. If you’ve taken good things into your head, you’re a good person, and when you do things your thoughts are bound to be good ones. If you fill your head with bad thoughts, what you do and what you think are all bad, ill thoughts. That is the fundamental difference between good and bad people.

What’s a good person? What’s a bad person? The violence and pornography promoted by society’s mass media machines and published in all sorts of newspapers and magazines have been instilled in your head. Yet people like to see them, read them, and watch them. The more of them you absorb, the more you become like them. Don’t watch, see, or read those things. You should watch, see, and read good things. As you absorb more and more good things you become a good person. Your behavior is controlled by your mind. People don’t consider education important and don’t give weight to teaching the younger generations; that’s a crime against the whole society. Young people nowadays are simply frightening to think about or look at. Sometimes when I see them I’d rather not look. From the inside on out, from the mind to the heart, the behavior to the clothes—nothing in them is upright.

Of course, it’s not absolute. There are still some whose family education is relatively good and there are some parents who discipline their kids better. You need to understand that you are creating the next generation and the future society. Could you say that you don’t shoulder responsibility for how the next generation is?

Question: I’m a practitioner from Sweden. I know that reading Zhuan Falun in Chinese will allow me to understand more deeply. But is it worthwhile to spend a lot of time in cultivation learning Chinese?

Teacher: Okay, let me talk to you all about this. If you learn Chinese through Zhuan Falun, won’t you have learned Chinese and at the same time studied the Fa? It’s true, Chinese can represent my original words, without deviation. That’s for sure, since it is in Chinese that I teach the Fa. Why did I choose to be born in China and teach the Fa in China? Because this affair was arranged ages ago. The language of the people in that region has greater inner meaning. Its entire development in history was arranged for the future dissemination of Dafa. Many arrangements were made for this. It was thus arranged a long, long time ago, before the Caucasians of this cycle entered civilization. So that nation has a rather ancient history. Its language is the richest in the world, has the greatest inner meaning, and is relatively more capable of expressing a concept of the universe so immense. Without a rich language it can’t be explained or easily described. But even so, this human language can’t express it further at this point in time—it can’t describe it any more, nor can it explain it clearly. No language can. Yet at the level of humans, it’s capable of fully describing everything at this low level.

Then is it that without reading the Chinese book you can’t practice cultivation, that you can’t reach the realm you are supposed to reach, or that the speed [of your progress] is affected? I can tell you, that’s not the case whatsoever. Why not? Because when I teach the Fa using this complex language, many gods at different levels listen to the Fa. You aren’t the only ones sitting here listening to the Fa—there are many, many gods listening too. So your cultivation among everyday people won’t be affected when you read in English, French, German, or other languages. Besides, most of the translators are our students. There’s no problem. If there’s any difference, it’s only a superficial, semantic difference. As we cultivate, we will gradually correct and revise them to make them ever more perfect.

I know that many students want to read Chinese and understand my original words and their original meanings, which is of course the best—that’s even better. If you aren’t able to do that, though, you can rest assured that as long as Zhuan Falun is translated into your language, behind it there are countless Buddhas, Daos, and Gods who will allow you to understand the principles in those realms just the same. That’s not something contained at the surface of the words, as it can’t be written—even in Chinese. So your cultivation won’t be affected. But that said, many miracles have occurred for some practitioners who’ve studied Chinese. The Fa is, after all, the Law. There have indeed been some miracles. I won’t give examples here so as to avoid some of us inappropriately imitating them and developing another attachment.

Question: How do we tell whether a genuine cultivator’s heart is unaffected? How do we distinguish genuine cultivators from fake ones?

Teacher: You aren’t able to tell while still cultivating. But I can tell you that our Dafa is open to everyone. Who is fake? Who is genuine? The fake ones might become genuine tomorrow, while the genuine ones might not truly study the Fa tomorrow for some reason. My Fa has therefore opened such a huge door. But it’s true that some people are harming the Fa. They’re driven to do wrong by those demons that resist the Fa. Such people are easy to discern, for they oppose the Fa from their innermost nature to their words and deeds. That’s how it is. Some students fight with each other over who they think is really cultivating and who’s not. I think that really shouldn’t happen. All of you are in fact genuinely cultivating because your intention is to safeguard the Fa.

I know your feelings toward the Fa: when you think that someone is harming the Fa, you simply can’t tolerate it. Since you are cultivating, you are now defenders of Dafa. You are cultivating in Dafa, so you too are a part of Dafa. Nonetheless, it’s certainly not the case that we’re free of conflicts. During the course of cultivation, it’s certainly not the case that disciples are always in harmony with one another. And why is that? It’s because those attachments that you haven’t yet eliminated through cultivation—those ordinary human attachments that come across intensely—will come out in your actions, whereas the part of your mind that’s already cultivated isn’t seen. Since the attachments are no longer there they can’t be shown. It’s exactly the part of your mind that’s not yet cultivated that comes across. Does it mean that person isn’t good? Absolutely not. On the contrary, we have to say that he is quite good, only his not-yet-cultivated attachments are exposed. What’s the purpose of exposing them? It’s for others to point them out to him, or for another person who has a similar attachment to clash with him. The purpose is for each of them to let go of their own attachments.

Whenever you encounter problems you should each look inward to search for the cause within, regardless of whether you’re to blame or not. Remember my words: Regardless of whether the problem is your fault or not, you should look inside yourself, and you will find a problem. If the matter has absolutely nothing to do with you or doesn’t involve any of the attachments you should break, then that thing would rarely happen to you. If you didn’t have an attachment the problem wouldn’t have come about. I have to be responsible for your cultivation. Any problem that happens to you, around you, or among you is most likely related to you, and there is something for you to get rid of. No matter whether it’s your fault or not, when my Law Bodies are having you remove your attachment, they don’t care whether it’s your fault or another person’s. As long as you have an attachment, they will try everything to have you run into problems and have you recognize the attachment that makes you fall short. Yet you’re still looking around, “This isn’t my fault,” or you’re still thinking, “I’m protecting the Fa.” Meanwhile, the other person is thinking, “I’m protecting the Fa.” In fact, the conflict occurs because you probably each have faults of your own.

Some students hang my picture prominently, light candles, burn incense, and kowtow to me. Please make sure you don’t do that. I’ve always opposed disciples engaging in religious rituals while cultivating among everyday people. Religion has become an organization in the society of everyday people and it is not cultivation. You respect me, and your having that heart is enough to make me happy. (This doesn’t include disciples who practice Dafa cultivation in their original religions.)

There’s another thing that I want to talk to you about. We have a great many Caucasians whose Third Eye will open once they start cultivating. This will be a big issue in the future. Since Chinese people have acquired too many notions of various sorts, when I was first teaching the Fa in China I had to use something rather powerful to open their Third Eye—we had something like that formed at the beginning. Today with Caucasian students, the Third Eye opens not long after they learn the Fa. So a problem comes up. No matter whether you’re one of the many people who’ve seen beings that everyday people cannot or if you’ve seen other scenes, be sure to remember my words today: Don’t pay too much attention to it. If you’ve seen something just let it be. Don’t be affected. Be sure you don’t get elated over it. It’s no more than seeing real phenomena at a very low level, and it in no way represents your level. So, whether you can see things or not, you must put your mind to studying the Fa. Read the book and study the Fa. Read the book and study the Fa. Almost every time when I’m teaching the Fa I painstakingly tell you to read the book, read the book, and read the book. As long as you read the book you will attain things better than you’d expect.

When you see with your Eye, no matter how much you see, those are only things seen at your level. Don’t stir up any attachments. Being able to see is a good thing, and I won’t block your Eye. But you should know that no matter what you’ve seen, you should continue to study the Fa. Be sure to remember this: None of the high-level beings are your masters. Don’t accept anything from them. If you do, it will cause a serious situation that goes against “no second discipline.” You have to put your mind on the Fa when cultivating. Remember this: It is the Fa that makes it possible for you to Consummate, and it is the Fa that has opened your Third Eye. You have to cultivate in the Fa in order to Consummate. Being attached to anything outside the Fa will make you fail halfway through.

Question: I have a Chinese girlfriend. Through reading the books, I know it’s not right to have an interracial marriage. I decided to break up with her.

Teacher: I’ve never said no to your wish to marry someone of a different race. That’s because this is a problem left to us by history, and it has nothing to do with you. All those who are to remain on the earth in the future have to be full-blooded. But you will reach Consummation. You are cultivators and aren’t a part of it. As for your offspring, if they can practice cultivation we will pick them out too. We’ll allow them to go where their Spirits (yuanshen) belong and should go. That’s how we’ll handle it.

The mighty power of Dafa is boundless. We have plenty of ways to handle things. For our students we have any means that are needed. But we can’t just casually do things for everyday people. That’s the relationship. Regarding your situation, I didn’t say you cannot do that, nor did I say you can. That’s because for the present time we’ll let the matter be as is. That is how society is nowadays. It’s similar to the fact that you have alien beings’ culture. Besides, it will have no bearing on you when it’s being taken care of. Since you will have reached Consummation, those who are on the earth in the future won’t be you. All of you will have gone to heavenly paradises. That’s the situation.

Question: Does the Spirit have an appearance?

Teacher: The Spirit does have an appearance, and its appearance is like yours. Yet that appearance is more beautiful than that of your physical body. He is luminous because the compositional particles of his body are more refined, more microscopic, and possess greater energy potency than the superficial physical body.

Question: Does a person’s appearance change when he reincarnates?

Teacher: It might change. But some strong original features remain. Some people say that I don’t change through many lives of reincarnation. But when I incarnated as a Caucasian, I had a straight nose, my eyes were deep-set, and they were blue.

Question: Master has said that the bodies in various dimensions are independent beings. I find it difficult to understand. What’s the relation between the Spirit and the bodies in various dimensions?

Teacher: This is related to the structure of the universe and not directly to humans themselves. In many dimensions there are “you’s” who are the same as you. They share the same name but they are independent. This is different from your bodies in the various dimensions. Your bodies in the various dimensions are your bodies composed of different molecular particles in different dimensions. These are all you.

Question: You’ve said that humankind’s demon nature has now become dominant. Then to what extent is my demon nature attributable to human factors, and to what extent does it come from other dimensions?

Teacher: Every person has material characteristics, half of which are positive and half of which are negative. And along with this, postnatally acquired notions and thought karma are a part of him. I often put it this way: A human being is like a piece of clothing, and your body and thoughts are like a hat. When another being wears them, you become the same as that being. If the consciousness of a person’s Main Spirit isn’t strong, he can be worn by other beings at any time. As things have gotten chaotic to the point they’re at now, the many kinds of bad deeds people in today’s society commit are a really serious problem. In the past, no beings beyond the Three Realms were allowed to enter the Three Realms; no beings within the Three Realms were allowed to exit the Three Realms; lives at different levels within the Three Realms weren’t allowed to interfere with each other; and spirit possession wasn’t permitted. Now all of these things have happened. And this place of humankind is the most chaotic. Many people… when their thoughts are wrong, it’s when their thoughts conform to demon nature, and when their demon-nature thoughts are strong. People always read, see, and listen to bad things in everyday people’s society, they put bad things into their heads, and so their demon nature becomes large. If your demon nature is large then you align with demons and demons will like you. And because you and demons are alike they will enter your body. That is what’s attributable to external factors. Because your thoughts easily become the same as theirs, they can easily control you. That’s one situation. In the dimensions at the same level as that of humans there are countless corrupt lives, and they flagrantly control humans. What do they control humans for? They covet earthly life, they want to occupy human bodies, and they want to seize human substances. Human substances are useful to them after undergoing transformation. That’s why they select those people who suit them. Humankind is now confronted with this problem, yet people still think that they’re quite well off nowadays.

These problems are in the final stage of being resolved. That’s why people nowadays are becoming more and more clearheaded in terms of living their lives. Gradually they are finding themselves. Prior to this, people were living with foggy heads and were driven by those lives, by complex and enormous factors. [I needed to] completely free human beings, completely eliminate those external controls, and let human beings command themselves. Otherwise, the Fa that I’m teaching today would be spoken to them. It wouldn’t work if you were all foggy-headed and couldn’t find yourselves, and you let them obtain everything. So this is the first thing I do for my students. (Applause) And everyday people are being taken care of too, for it’s really serious if the everyday people in society are being restrained and can’t obtain the Fa. That’s why when some students expressed to me their self-criticism about how they hadn’t spread the Fa well, I said to them, “You’ve done quite well, but many situations are beyond your abilities.” It’s not your fault that you can’t achieve the results you desire. If you haven’t tried, though, then it is your problem.

There have been times when I’ve looked down from high up in a building and watched people bustling about. I would think to myself, “How do people today live like that?” While I would feel pity for them, I’d also feel that human beings have destroyed everything here themselves by their going along with it. There are reasons for society’s corruption, but everyone has contributed to the problem, swelling the tide. Humans haven’t conducted themselves well in this powerful torrent. Instead they’ve indulged themselves. One of the most typical examples of people indulging themselves is the huge venting of demon nature on the soccer field. When they’re screaming and shouting wildly, they don’t realize that demon nature is exploding with ferocity and gaining strength. When people are doing that wild dancing where they irrationally shout and yell, that’s the biggest venting of demon nature. Things done rationally, when a person knows what he’s doing, are usually done out of Shan thoughts. That is a person’s true self.

Question: I’ve always regarded myself as a strong person and as someone with the ability to control himself. Why can’t I help shedding tears every time I see Teacher or mention you?

Teacher: I’d like to tell you that in different periods of history and in different countries, a great many of you here in the audience had a significant predestined relationship with me. This is one aspect of it. There’s another aspect. “In this messed up world you are still disseminating this wonderful thing.” Those words are spoken by the gods who don’t understand what I’m doing. So it’s even more difficult for me to save you. The part of you that manifests in this dimension doesn’t realize it, while the side of you that is in other dimensions sees all and understands what I’ve given you. Your inability to express your gratitude to me in words, deeds, or even with any possible idea, causes this side of you to shed tears unexplainably. You don’t know to just what degree human society has become messed up. It’s extremely filthy, the karma in people’s bodies is just massive, and the bad thoughts in people’s minds are abundant. There’s just so much of that. Yet I’m removing all of it for you, and I’m planting in your body a shiny golden Falun and myriad things from this whole Fa so that you can cultivate, and I am purifying your terribly filthy body. These are things that no one, since the beginning of Heaven and Earth, has dared to do. (Applause) From another perspective, you have come across a fortunate event that nobody has seen for as long as Heaven and Earth have existed. That’s why you do that. Because you have become more and more clearheaded, I’m putting things more and more explicitly.

Question: Teacher has said that science is a religion. That really shocked me. Would you please explain it in more depth?

Teacher: It is a religion, a well-established religion. Other religions have you perceive spiritually and then gradually have you, during the course of cultivation, discover the truly wonderful things in the universe, discover things that truly have material existence. That’s how things progress in [other religions]. The religion of science, meanwhile, has you discover a few material things, and with this it leads you to believe in it more and more. Eventually it makes you depend on it and become ever more dependent, and you think it seems like the truth. That religion guides you to spiritual belief through material things, whereas ordinary religions guide you from spiritual perception to a true perception of material things. It has taken the opposite road. So it can’t be discerned by people. In order for anything to have a foothold in this world, to be able to hold up, and establish itself, there has to be a key factor: It has to form a field in this dimension, a field that materially exists. Let’s take religion for example. The reason a religion can establish itself is that in the course of many people’s believing, their discussions in firm faith, their worship, and so on, form an environment. And at the same time that environment, in turn, safeguards the religion.

Science is just the same. Its environment has become enormous. Its omnipresence penetrates almost every corner of the human dimension, including every field. You could say it’s all-encompassing, and beyond comparison with any religion. Yet once the material environment has formed, the human dimension has the law of mutual-generation and mutual-inhibition: Where there’s a positive there’s a negative, and where there is good there is bad. So the environment formed in this dimension also has two such factors: One is good and the other evil. The same is true with religion, as its formation carries these two factors. When you’re against it, its evil factor even wishes to kill you. This is the negative, evil factor in that environment. If you believe in it, the factor of the other side is nice to you, and kind. That is its good side. Science also has these factors. If you’re against science, although it won’t kill you, people will rise up together to attack you. Everyone will say you’re “superstitious,” or everyone say you’re ridiculous. It will devalue you in society so that you’re worthless. Starting from elementary school, if you don’t believe in it or learn it well, it will kick you out. In college, if you don’t study it well, you won’t receive a degree or graduate. And if you still don’t master it well, you won’t get a good job. The spheres of this society are filled with its jobs.

Speaking from another angle, every job is full of science. You won’t get a good job if you don’t study it well. And yet, this science is not advanced. Its development is limited to only the boundaries of the present dimension. It’s not able to prove the existence of gods. Neither does it know about retribution for wrongdoing. It will brand you superstitious if you speak about the existence of gods. If you say that a person who does bad things meets with retribution, that a person is rewarded for doing good, and that a person has to cherish virtue to be a good person, science will declare your words heretical and wicked. In fact, this science is attacking human beings’ best side: their innate quality of being truly kindhearted. It doesn’t tell people to cherish virtue, nor does it tell people to be kind. It encourages people to unleash all their desires, destroying the environment that man needs in order to exist, along with the innate nature and standards for mankind. On this note, science is not an upright religion. But it has provided people ease in their lives in the human dimension, along with the illusion of comfort for the time being. It has provided the means for false freedom and false progress after humans’ self-destruction, and thus makes people believe in it even more. As gods see it, however, excessive ease and comfort for humans are not good things. They increase karma and make karma accumulate. And without clearing karmic debts, a person will eventually go to Hell. Even his life will be annihilated. In the old days, you Westerners knew about this principle, and older people understood the principle too: To endure a bit of hardship is all right and not a bad thing, as it’s a good thing to temper oneself in a tough setting. They all understood this.

A person eliminates karma when enduring hardship. Only when karma is removed will a person gain true happiness—happiness free of karma—in his next life. If you want to practice cultivation, karmic debts will be transformed into gong as they are cleared up, and you will return to your heavenly paradise. The religion of science tells you to only believe in it and to disbelieve in real gods. Moreover, it pushes people in the opposite direction—they constantly produce karma. Wouldn’t you agree it’s not upright? But what I’m discussing here is the overall form of this science. I didn’t say that I object to the academic fields created by modern science. People have been living that way in this environment and doing work along those lines. Since society has come to be this way, we can do nothing but maintain it as is, and I don’t object to it. I’ve merely told you the truth about science.

Along with this, I can tell you that science is not the absolute truth. Why did Einstein get into religion in his later years? He—someone with great achievements in science—discovered that religions got it right. People don’t understand him because they aren’t as smart as Einstein was. Those stubborn people don’t understand him; people whose wisdom is less than Einstein’s indeed don’t understand him. Einstein eventually discovered that what a religion had taught was true, and that religion was the true science. So he began to believe in an upright religion. Let me repeat what I just said. Go ahead and do whatever jobs you should do, because [the cosmos], from top to bottom, has caused the entire society to come to this current stage. People keep it like it is. I don’t want to intervene. Since those who I save are you, I’m letting it be for now. I’ve simply told people its true situation. I’ve told it to cultivators—I didn’t say these things to everyday people or people in society. Nor do they need to know. In fact, I’m not the only one who’s spoken about this situation. Many intelligent people have realized that science is a religion; some everyday people know.

Question: In what way will Dafa disciples who reach Consummation leave this world?

Teacher: This question has been addressed a number of times before. If a person is destined to go to the Falun Paradise, he’ll go to the Falun Paradise; and when he reaches Consummation he will take with him his physical body, which will have been transformed into high-energy matter. But most of you are from other, different paradises at higher levels, and in those paradises a physical body isn’t needed. They don’t regard the human body as good. Letting you bring a physical body would change everything your paradise originally had. So they wouldn’t want physical bodies, even if you were to give them those. But, you should know, everyone has this thought: “I want to have one, too.” It’s the part of you that hasn’t yet completed cultivation being reflected in the thinking of an everyday person, which is at the most superficial level. You’ll think otherwise when you see the real situation. You will think like a god, [and say,] “Oh, that’s how it is.”

Yet I also want to bring humankind a magnificent scene at the time of your Consummation. My thought is this: Have all Dafa disciples, regardless of whether they need bodies or not, elevate their bodies into the sky and then fly away; those who don’t need bodies will have their bodies go through Light-Transformation in the air. This will create a glory that’s never existed before in history, leaving human beings a profound lesson. People don’t believe in gods, so let gods truly manifest before people. That is what I’m thinking, but whether it is possible will be decided at the last moment. As for Consummation, there shouldn’t be a problem. It’s only a matter of what form to adopt.

Question: Many students don’t know how they’ve done in cultivation, and doubt whether they can succeed in cultivation to reach Consummation.

Teacher: That’s another attachment. Furthermore, disbelief is in itself the biggest obstacle in cultivation. I just said, “If someone hears the Dao in the morning, he can die at dusk.” It means that if your mind is filled with Fa, the bad things that remain won’t be much, or maybe they’ll have even been eliminated all the way. You tell me where you should be placed. I often tell you that since you’ve obtained the Fa you should no longer think about those issues. To think any further is an attachment. Isn’t it an attachment? It will affect your progress. There will be more people listening to the Fa in the future. Yet not every one of them can reach Consummation; not everyone will come to listen to the Fa. No matter how some people cultivate they still can’t let go of their attachment to being healed; no matter how they cultivate, they still can’t wake up to it. That doesn’t work. I think the people sitting here today don’t have these problems. (Applause) Many people don’t deserve to listen to the Fa. That is why a lot of the world’s people can’t sit here like you do. This Dafa is solemn. It seems to you that you casually walked by this door, came in, and listened to the Fa. You don’t know what predestined relationship you have that made for this “coincidence.”

Question: How do I know whether I can practice cultivation?

Teacher: My door is wide open. I say that I’ve opened a huge door. But in fact, let me tell you: The door I’ve opened is so wide there is no more door, it’s completely open. (Applause) No matter who you are, I will be responsible for you as long as you can cultivate yourself. You’ve understood what I just said, right? (Applause)

Question: Can homosexuals practice Dafa?

Teacher: Yes, but they have to correct this bad behavior, live nobly and upright like a human being, find themselves, and break out of that dark state of mind. (Applause) 

In answering the student’s question just now, because I’m talking to our cultivators about some matters in cultivation, the matters involved are relatively high. Perhaps those who walked in out of the blue or those who’ve just come will find some of these things difficult to understand. Perhaps you’ll mistake us for some kind of religion. I can tell you that we’re not any kind of religion. I’m merely telling people about this Fa. If you want to practice cultivation, I will help you. If you don’t want to learn, I’ll let you be. We don’t have any form, nor do we restrict you in any way—there are no religious rules of any kind. We won’t even take a penny from people. When you come, you may listen as you please. If you want to learn, you may learn. If you don’t want to learn, you may go as you please.

Question: I’m a medical doctor by profession. If I guide my patients to practice cultivation and their illnesses don’t need to be treated anymore, what will I do for a living?

Teacher: So that is a worry of yours. (Everyone is amused). In fact, I’d like to tell you that not every one of your patients is able to practice cultivation. Some people won’t practice even if you tell them about it. But at the same time, if they’re really predestined—perhaps many people with illness have this kind of predestined relationship—they’ll come this way and take up cultivation. Perhaps they have that kind of predestined relationship. In any case, there could be all kinds of situations. As for making a living as a doctor treating patients, you’re still using ordinary human notions to consider it. In actuality, it won’t be like you’ve imagined it. There will still be patients. When the old ones have gone new ones will come. Dafa will take these things into consideration. This is to speak from the perspective of everyday people. From a high-level perspective, if a patient is supposed to obtain the Fa and you don’t let him obtain the Fa because you have to make money—of course, your purpose isn’t to make money, but to make a living—I think that would be wrong. It’s not like you thought.

Question: My husband and I started practicing Falun Gong in September of 1997. In March of 1998, my husband suddenly died from heart disease. How should I understand my husband’s death?

Teacher: If he could have truly cultivated, nobly and upright, and truly regarded himself as a cultivator, I don’t think that problem could have possibly come about. Of course, if I say that he wasn’t cultivating or that he didn’t cultivate at all, you might not agree with that. But I should tell you that cultivation is just a serious thing. To have an average, ordinary human cultivate into an extraordinary high-level being, to become a Buddha, to become a god, or to enable him to “go to Heaven” as Westerners have said—would you say there’s anything of humankind more serious than that? Nothing is as serious. So how should a cultivator deal with this when confronted with it? Shouldn’t you treat it really seriously, and really treat yourself as a cultivator? If deep down inside a person who is cultivating is still thinking about his illness, about the part of the good life he’s longed for, and is unwilling to let go of the attachment to those things of everyday people’s society, he won’t be able to progress diligently. Actually, many people who would have died from life-threatening illnesses have recovered and become true Dafa disciples. In most cases, even those who couldn’t truly cultivate and who died did have their lives prolonged.

Cultivation can prolong a person’s life. Continual practice prolongs a person’s life continuously. So older people should have enough time to do the practice. This is a feature of our Dafa, which cultivates both mind and body. Then why can’t the lives of patients among everyday people be prolonged just the same? Think about it: Is a person’s life prolonged so that he can live an ordinary human life, or is it to let him seriously cultivate? How could it be allowed if he can’t straighten out this relationship and he practices lackadaisically? Prolonging a person’s life is done completely for the purpose of cultivation. If he remains the same as before it’s hard to guarantee he won’t lose his life.

There are countless cancer patients who’ve become well, but there are also cancer patients who have died. Why? Let me give you an example. Some people truly weren’t attached to anything after they realized that they had obtained this Fa. Lying in his sickbed, this person thought: “I’m dying, yet I have the chance to read something like this. I truly regret that I didn’t read it any earlier!” He didn’t think about using it to heal his illness. He simply made the best use of his time to read the book. He said: “I won’t live for long. I’d better hurry up and read the book, hurry up and read it. I’ll read it as much as possible and as many times as possible in the years or days I have left.” During this process, however, he unwittingly became able to leave his sickbed, his tumors disappeared, he was able to walk, he was able to stand up, and he suddenly discovered that he felt unburdened from head to toe. The hospital reexamined him and found that his cancer was completely cured. But doctors often don’t admit that Dafa cured a patient’s disease. For them to acknowledge it would be the same as modern science negating itself. So they say, “Oh, it was misdiagnosed before.” There have been so many cases like this.

Of course, there are also people like this: They heard that practicing Dafa cultivation can cure illness, so they thought, “Ah!” and came to practice. But he had learned that a person who comes for getting healed won’t be healed and will practice in vain, since our objective is to practice cultivation and not to treat people’s illnesses. As long as you’ve obtained Dafa your illness will be cured, but the goal isn’t to heal you. He didn’t want to cultivate according to our Dafa’s requirements, nor did he want to be a cultivator. He only wanted to get rid of his illness. But could this solemn Dafa be imparted to him for the purpose of healing illness? No. So he also knew, “Oh, as long as I don’t mention treating illness and don’t ask Teacher to heal me, Teacher will surely cure my illness in due time.” You see, he didn’t say it verbally and he might have even stopped mentioning his illness to anyone, but after a long period of time he was still thinking deep inside, “As long as I do the exercises Teacher is sure to heal me in due time.” He was still thinking about it like that. That tiny deviation made for a real, fundamental difference. That tiny bit of deviation revealed his true nature: He was still concerned with getting healed.

Generally speaking, we extend the time for cancer patients who come, giving them chance after chance. The hospital prognosis said that this person would die in two to three months. But the time we gave him was extended to a year, a year and a half, and then two years. Nevertheless, he still didn’t change his mode of thought. He still worried about his illness: “Will my illness relapse? Has Teacher really taken care of me and completely cured me?” You see, he still had that in his mind. He didn’t say it aloud to anyone, yet deep inside he was still thinking, “Teacher will surely help me cure my illness.” So although it looked like he was practicing, at his core he had the intention of getting healed. Wasn’t he trying to deceive me, deceive others, and deceive Dafa? He could deceive no one—he was really deceiving himself. Only real transformation of the mind counts as true cultivation. Oftentimes, when some of our students reach their predestined ages—that is, when they’ve spent their preordained years, and can only live to that age—if they’re still unable to treat themselves as cultivators at that time they will pass away. But usually they’ve lived much beyond their original deadline. They are given chances and time to change, but if they really aren’t able to change then they are left alone. On the surface, they’re still reading our books and doing the exercises, but they will die. It’s like what I said about how not all of the many people who cultivate Dafa will reach Consummation. This is what I meant. In other words, if you can’t truly handle yourself as a cultivator, if you aren’t able to do this, those of you who are getting on in years will have to depart.

[For these people,] in your lifetime you have already lived all the human life that you should have lived, so you need to make the best use of your time to cultivate. If you completely throw yourself into being a cultivator your life will be extended. Of course, you won’t know that this prolonged life is an extension; it will seem the same as life before. Your constantly practicing cultivation will continually prolong your life, will thus extend your cultivation time, and will enable you to have enough time to cultivate and achieve Consummation. If those of you whose lives have been extended can’t regard yourselves as cultivators, you might lose your life at any moment. That’s because Dafa can’t just casually extend the life of an everyday person who isn’t able to cultivate. A person’s life is predestined. When he reaches a certain time he’s supposed to die and then reincarnate. The person over there is already pregnant, waiting for him to reincarnate, waiting for him to be born. If he isn’t born, how could it work? After he’s born he will live a certain number of years in the ordinary human society. Later on he’ll need to do his job, and his job is waiting for him. Could not letting him go be allowed? You’d be disrupting the order of the entire society. We can only do that for those who cultivate Dafa. That’s because nothing in the world is more magnificent than a person’s aspiration to cultivate and re-ascend. That’s why we can take care of all this for you, and arrange others to substitute for you, a cultivator. So we say that a cultivator is no ordinary human.

Could we do that sort of thing for an everyday person? Shouldn’t we take it seriously? That’s how it is. That’s why although I said that Dafa is so wonderful, and although what I’ve said sounds good and you applauded when you heard about Consummation, if, on the other hand, you can’t truly cultivate yourselves, you will attain nothing. If you can’t treat yourself as a cultivator you will attain nothing. Only the improvement of xinxing counts as true improvement. Can a person fend off death just by doing the exercises daily, as if they were average physical exercises? I’d say that’s a joke. If he does the exercises every day without improving his xinxing, I’d say his practice is the same as doing your average physical exercises. But, even though it’s just a slight difference, it’s difficult for him to change. When you’ve changed and you’ve discarded human notions—when you’re able to do that—you are then a god. If you aren’t able to do that, you are a human. But could it be as easy as it sounds? Without the mental foundation established through a gradual process of cultivation, a person isn’t able to let go of everything, even if you tell him to!

If you face death today—regardless of what form of death—and are completely fearless, if you aren’t concerned about it whatsoever and think, “Perhaps I’ll go to Heaven after I die,” then death will truly no longer take place. The key is a person’s mind. Our Dafa cultivation aims exactly at one’s mind—to cultivate is to cultivate the human mind. If your mind doesn’t change everything else you do means nothing. Outward acts mean nothing.

I’m not referring to the student who raised this question. I’m speaking about a principle—I’m using this question to explain a principle to you.

Question: If I want to solve a problem or discard a wrong idea, does it help to hold a thought in order to encourage myself while doing the exercises?

Teacher: I’m not against your holding one thought in mind while doing the exercises in order to strengthen your willpower at the beginning stage, nor can I say you’re wrong. But cultivation is a magnificent thing, and a serious thing. Why use “one thought” to restrain yourself?! I think it’s best to cultivate with a thought like, “I just want to reach Consummation; I just want to reach a high realm.” The reason for this lies in a saying in the cultivation world: “Pursue nothing and gain naturally.” That’s the best state of mind. Why did those cancer patients that I just mentioned recover? They didn’t think about having their illnesses healed, nor did they think that they’d be cured after reading the book. Yet they were cured. This is in line with “pursue nothing and gain naturally.” Having no attachments and no obstacles, they recovered quickly. That’s the reason.

Question: Currently, there are many people coming to Europe to spread Buddhism. What’s the difference between our Falun Dafa and other Buddhist practices?

Teacher: The difference is incredibly significant. In Buddhism they worship Buddha Shakyamuni; they believe that Buddha Shakyamuni founded Buddhism. Of course, Mahayana Buddhism worships other Buddhas as well, while Tantric Lamaism—the Tibetan Lamaism in China—is totally different from the Buddhism that Shakyamuni founded. That’s why it’s called Lamaism. The highest Buddha it worships is the Great Sun Tathagata. The White Sect of Lamaism worships Milarepa. All of these are different. So they’ve become totally different from Shakyamuni’s Buddhism. That’s Buddhism. Over the course of its transmission it has evolved into a religion with temples, various religious rituals, rules, and so on. It’s thus a religion.

Here we don’t have anything. I don’t tell you to do this or that, or that you have to be this way or that way. There’s none of that. You read and study the Fa on your own, and you are a good person on your own. So this is completely different from religion. In terms of its form among everyday people, ours is a cultivation form that’s completely unchained and free of any restrictions. Why do we do it this way? Because we have Dafa, from which we learn and know how to do things. Since there are a lot of people learning it, if all of us were to gather [and cultivate together], it would create a disaster in the future—it would create a disaster for humankind. If nobody were to work anymore, and hundreds of millions of people were to become monks and nuns, it just wouldn’t work. It would bring problems to society, to human society, and it wouldn’t work. So you should go and do your job. Not only should you do your job, but you should do it well. If you don’t do your job well, it’s the same as not meeting the criteria for a cultivator, since a cultivator should first be a good person among everyday people. What is a good person? It’s someone who is good wherever he is. Since you earn a salary from your boss, if you don’t do a good job for your boss, I don’t think he would say you’re a good person. You would be taking his money without doing the work. So this means we should do things well. Wherever you are, people should say that you’re a good person.

I’ve said that religions nowadays are no longer capable of saving people. I didn’t say they are evil religions. But many people in religions are driven by money. Some are in temples or churches just so that they can collect a lot of money. It’s said that there is a monk who’s the number one rich man, the wealthiest man in his country. And these people send money home once they get a lot. Isn’t that the same as working at a job? The monks in China are even classified into section level and division level, and make certain amounts of money accordingly. I heard that there’s even a bureau level. That means it’s no longer cultivation—I don’t acknowledge it as cultivation.

And there are some religions that talk especially about doomsday and focus on that stuff. Those are one-hundred percent evil religions. They cause social turmoil and are irresponsible to society. So it’s not hard to distinguish these evil religions. I can also tell you that other than the original, upright religions, all the rest are evil ones. By original, upright religions I mean Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, and Judaism. Those are the original, upright religions. In later historical periods, particularly in the later stages of Christianity, 99.9 percent of the religions that emerged were evil religions. Why is that? Even if they haven’t done terribly wrong things, they hindered the upright religions in terms of saving people during the time when upright religions were still able to; they hindered people in practicing a righteous Fa, hindered people’s belief in upright religions. Haven’t they harmed people by leading them astray and interfering with righteous Fa? Aren’t they evil? Just those sins alone are enormous. As religions have reached the last stage, they can no longer save people today. Many people in them have become politicians.

Question: Can the suffering caused by attachments transform karma?

Teacher: When you try to let go of your attachments during cultivation but aren’t able to, you can transform karma during that painful tribulation. In what circumstances will you not transform karma? When you know very well that it’s an attachment, yet you just want to be attached to it and simply want to do things that way; you won’t transform karma through the suffering. That’s because you are knowingly making mistakes and causing yourself trouble! As for everyday people, the same principle applies to them, so things are the same for them. But we don’t bother with the affairs of everyday people. How the society of everyday people develops is everyday people’s business. Here we’re just teaching the Fa to cultivators.

Question: Do homosexuals have a lot of karma? Perhaps they can gradually break their attachments and practice Dafa cultivation?

Teacher: There shouldn’t be any problem for those who are homosexual, provided they abandon it, live nobly and upright like a human being, and start to practice cultivation. Don’t think about the problem of karma—don’t think about it anymore. Haven’t I told you that as long as you’re able to cultivate yourself, I can use whatever means are necessary? (Applause) If you’re only asking whether there’s a lot of karma, [consider this:] The human excretory organ usually carries karma, as it empties downward during excretion, being that kind of organ. So that karma will have an effect if you have indecent contact.

Question: Master said that three thousand small universes constitute the second-layer universe, and three thousand second-layer universes constitute the third-layer universe. Why is it always “three thousand”?

Teacher: You know that I’ve said: “Nothing happens by chance, and what’s called ‘natural’ doesn’t exist.” When science isn’t capable of knowing or comprehending something, it defines it as a “natural phenomenon.” That term alone arrests people’s thinking. People don’t ponder it any further, as they think that science is, after all, scientific. I find that truly laughable. Science is unable to explain things, but it can deceive people. There are in fact no “natural phenomena.” Lives that are with or without form exist together in this immense universe. The enormous formless lives exert their influence and are balancing everything in the universe and creating everything in the universe. Think about it: Why are the molecules of iron arranged so regularly? Why are molecules of gold arranged as they are? Why are [molecules of] copper arranged as they are? Why are [molecules of] aluminum arranged as they are? And why are the arrangements so even and orderly? If the arrangement isn’t even and orderly a change will take place. What change? If gold doesn’t follow that particular molecular arrangement of metallic elements, it will become something else; the difference is only on the surface. So all of this follows a pattern of regularity, and this pattern of regularity is in no way formed naturally—it’s only that today’s science doesn’t know this and is unable to detect it. There are more microcosmic lives and enormous high-level beings doing different things, dictating different matters, and balancing everything.

I also want to tell you something. I didn’t want to mention it before because human notions are so childish that they’re absurd in the eyes of high-level beings and gods. When you reach high levels you will discover that every theory this science has established for people is rather ridiculous. Science now believes that people who live on the earth are able to stand on the earth without falling into the air or falling away because of Earth’s gravitational force. Actually, we’ve found that things don’t work as the theory of “universal gravitation” states. I’m not teaching the Fa to the everyday people in society; I’m teaching my disciples here who are cultivating, telling you the truth of the universe and the true situation of life and material existence. In this universe, surrounding Earth, there is an enormous, extremely microscopic material environment composed of material lives, layer after layer, which make up this environment in which humans can live. Also, the microscopic water of different levels that your eyes can’t see creates the numerous factors that enable the existence of plants, animals, and matter, and that enable humankind to have vitality here and to be able to live.

There’s a type of matter that enables people to stand on the ground vertically and that prevents them from leaning laterally; and there’s a type of matter that acts as pressure and that presses down on people and objects to prevent them from floating up. There’s another type of matter that ensures the overall stability of the human brain and other organs. If your brain and various organs weren’t stable, when you stood normally you’d feel as if you were lying down; or no matter how straight you stood there, you would feel as if you could never stand straight. This is in no way gravity generated by Earth’s rotation. Sand on a plate will fly off if you spin it. So that’s by no means how things are. But if a person transcends the living environment of Earth, when he reaches beyond this environment, he will have exited the boundary of the environment that’s maintained for humans by the high-level beings, and this person will have broken away from this state. The present science has named this “zero gravity” or the “state of weightlessness.” You know that although an object as large as the moon has “zero gravity,” it is still driven by Earth even though it’s so far away. How could a human who hasn’t gone as far as the moon have “zero gravity”?

Humans have their living environment. Every planet is in place, and they are placed there by the enormous lives in the universe. It’s just like the steel, iron, and gold we have today, whose patterns of molecule and atom arrangements on the inside don’t change. I say that there are no “natural phenomena.” Though all that science can’t explain is categorized as “natural,” it has nonetheless been successful in deceiving people. That term has somehow deceived everyone. Why is it always three thousand? What I just said was to tell you that there is a certain regularity behind this number, three thousand, and that it’s arranged. But it’s not absolutely three thousand all the time, because what I’ve stated are generalized numbers for the purpose of expressing things with human language in a way that maximally allows you to understand.

Question: Our efforts to spread the Fa haven’t been fruitful. Is it due to our enthusiasm and how we’ve done things, or due to a lack of in-depth Fa study? Someone said, “One’s enlightened, innate nature will know what to do.” Is this correct?

Teacher: Those words are correct. Nevertheless, it can’t be achieved yet under the current circumstances. So under the current circumstances, you need to do things based on existing situations. If you want to have others obtain the Fa, just tell them about principles of the Fa at the lowest and the most superficial level, and see if they want to learn, since your intention is to let others know about the best thing. If they want to learn, they will learn; if they don’t want to learn, don’t try to persuade them to learn. The reason is, if a person’s heart doesn’t change, and yet you try to persuade him and force him to come learn for the sake of your relationship, that learning would be fake. It’s fake when a person comes out of consideration for friendship, and he will get nothing. There are no specific or tangible rules for obtaining the Fa, since we’ve taken the path of a “great way without form.” And spreading the Fa is done voluntarily. If people want to learn, let them learn. If they don’t want to learn, let them be. The requirements you set for yourself depend entirely on you. Of course, as a cultivator, you just need to elevate your xinxing and your master will take care of the rest. Your master will create favorable conditions for you once your xinxing elevates.

The problem isn’t a lack of in-depth Fa study on your part. My biggest concern is the following: After a period of cultivation, a pretty large gap develops between you and everyday people in terms of realms and perceptions. So if you speak from a realm as high as yours you won’t achieve good results, since others are still everyday people. An ordinary person watches the stocks every day, schemes against others, fights and competes with others for personal interest, is overjoyed by petty gains and pained by petty losses, he does whatever he pleases, and he has all of man’s emotions and desires. That’s how an everyday person is. If you suddenly tell him about high-level cultivation things, his thinking certainly won’t be able to accept them. You should only tell him the most obvious meaning of Dafa and let him read for himself the inner meanings. I think it’ll be easier for him to accept things this way.

Question: Somebody said that near-sightedness is an abnormal state. He suggested that those who wear glasses should take them off. He said this would help pay off a person’s karmic debt.

Teacher: I haven’t said that. Please don’t do that across the board. I haven’t stipulated here how everything should be specifically done. So please don’t do what I don’t do, because everyone’s situation is different. Some aspects of a person’s karma are easy to deal with during his cultivation, and so they’re transformed for him. But the situation isn’t that simple for some people. If this aspect of a person’s karma is only ordinary, it will be eliminated quickly, and he’ll no longer be able to wear glasses. His vision will be blurry if he wears them. Once he takes the glasses off, his vision will be fine—as good as normal eyes. It’s telling those people they shouldn’t keep wearing glasses and that their eyes are fine. I remember how last time in New York when I’d just finished teaching the Fa, someone swung his arm and hit another student’s contact lens (the lenses one wears beneath the eyelids). The contact lens fell out and tore, but his eye wasn’t hurt. In fact, that was telling him that his eyes had become normal. But he didn’t wake up to it, and insisted on wearing the other lens. Yet the eye that didn’t have a lens had the same vision as it would were the lens in, and it saw things very clearly. Although he could see clearly then and his vision had become excellent, he still wore the other lens. He noticed a difference between the two eyes and felt uncomfortable. It meant that the lens could no longer correct his vision and he should take it out. He didn’t though, and insisted on wearing it. Yet he enlightened to half of it: He knew that eye shouldn’t wear the lens, but he was still awkwardly wearing the other lens. In fact, both eyes had recovered.

Some people are different, though. Some people’s near-sightedness is related to other, complicated factors that need to be dealt with gradually as they continue to cultivate, and so it isn’t removed quickly. If the thought enters his mind that, “Other people have taken their glasses off soon after they began practicing, so I should take mine off too,” or “I have to take them off even if I can’t,” then he might bring himself trouble at work and in daily life. Since he forces himself to do that and he has that intention and wants to do it that way, he can do that. But it’s a hassle for him. And he might cause trouble for himself if he forces it, which just wouldn’t do. So about this issue, I think we should go by the situation. That’s because unlike other health problems, which can affect your cultivation, this one doesn’t. A person who wears glasses can read the book and do the exercises. If it does affect your cultivation, then we will really have to specifically resolve the problem. So don’t stipulate something rigidly or uniformly—you shouldn’t do that.

Question: When someone suddenly understands a principle while studying the Fa, is it because the Buddhas, Daos, and Gods at a certain level awaken the wisdom at that level since his xinxing has reached that level?

Teacher: You can understand it that way. Since cultivation depends on oneself while gong depends on the master, you don’t actually do any of those things, nor are those things you could do. Think about it. Some of you have read the book over a hundred times during Dafa cultivation. The more they read, the more they discover in the book. But those things don’t exist at the surface level of the words. Why does it contain such profound principles? They can’t explain it. Actually, it’s exactly because there is boundless Fa behind the words. When a certain level is reached—when you cultivate to a certain level and are supposed to know the principles at that level, you will understand the principles instantly when you read that line. In other words, it’s time for the Buddhas, Daos, and Gods behind the words to let you know the principles at that level. So they point them out to you. That’s why in that instance you feel like, “Oh, now I understand.” But there’s another situation that you haven’t noticed: When you come to understand the principles at that level—the principles behind those words—your body experiences different reactions. Some people feel a quiver in their body; some feel warmth on the top of the head that quickly penetrates down to the soles of the feet; and some feel a warm current, as if their body was suddenly swelling up, like a sense of excitement. There are different sensations. The person’s entire state is changing drastically right then, but what the surface of the body—a body composed of the largest-layer molecules—receives is nonetheless really weak. So it becomes that mere sensation.

Yet the part of your body that’s composed of more microscopic particles undergoes tremendous changes—changes that truly go right down to your marrow. If you want to enter that level, you have to conform to the bodily standards for lives at that level and meet that realm of mind’s requirements for you. That’s why such huge changes take place. But, when they’re transmitted to the surface of your body they become really weak. That’s because we transform your body from its fundamental nature, cultivating you at the most microscopic level. Moreover, we separate the portion that you’ve cultivated from the parts that you haven’t. They appear to be one body, when they are actually disconnected in the middle and not linked. But they aren’t completely detached. The primary parts aren’t linked, and at a very minimum, the cultivated portion of your body that’s at the surface remains unmoved. What’s the advantage? You are cultivating among everyday people, so you still have ordinary human behavior and conduct that’s driven by various ordinary human desires. You might even say all kinds of things that everyday people say. A god cannot say or do those things. If the part that you’ve cultivated were to follow you to speak or follow the human body to do human things, then it wouldn’t deserve to be a divine part, and that part too would be human. Do you see the reason behind this?

To prevent you from slipping downward, as long as the part of you that hasn’t yet been fully cultivated is maintained among everyday people and the part that is cultivated remains untouched, none of your behavior will interfere with your mind or your body over there. That’s why they’re separated. That is the method we’ve adopted. Not only can you work, study, and live among everyday people, it also means you can cultivate. The consummated parts of you are continually being separated. Some people have said that their minds still have bad thoughts coming up and even filthier ones. Don’t be afraid. That’s because your cultivation hasn’t reached the surface. But you should still repress and reject them, for that is exactly what cultivation is. On the other hand, even if only a tiny bit, even if one cell of the human body had reached a realm beyond the Three Realms (one becomes an Arhat when the Three Realms is surpassed, so the cell reaches the realm of Arhat), it would dominate your entire body, so it’d be even more so when a large portion of your body had been fully cultivated. That’s because the rest of your body would be in the Three Realms and weak, whereas that cell is a high-level life and strong. So it would dominate your entire mind, and your speech and conduct wouldn’t be human—they’d be divine.

Then why haven’t you reached that point after cultivating for such a long time? In fact, that’s because we separated that portion. That is why you can’t achieve it. If you could truly achieve it—let’s suppose I were to unlock all of you today—at your present levels the earth wouldn’t be able to hold you. Every one of you would possess immense divine powers. There were tremors at the time of Shakyamuni’s Enlightenment. At the time, people thought they were earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis. A large geographical area was shaking. With so many people [today]—think about it—the earth couldn’t take it. The reason being, a person’s bodies in other dimensions can be infinitely large—they can be infinitely large at the level where you are. What does that mean? For example, let’s say that you’ve cultivated to a certain level, that you’ve reached the first layer of heavens: Your body will enlarge to the size of the first layer of heavens, but it can also contract to become really tiny. Yet our present physical human bodies are, on the other hand, composed of the largest molecular particles; they don’t possess the quality of intelligence, so they appear to be fixed. But actually, they aren’t fixed. The molecules of your body are in motion. Under a super-microscope your body is like sand: All the molecules in it are wriggling and in motion. But since your eyes are composed of molecules at this level, you can’t see that. Why was Shakyamuni able to see things at levels so microscopic? His eyes were those of a Buddha, and composed of matter at very, very high levels. He could thus see through a lot of matter.

Question: Are the Buddhas, Daos, and Gods at innumerable levels and in even higher realms the concrete embodiment of Master’s wisdom manifest at those levels?

Teacher: You can’t put it that way. When you succeed in cultivation you are still yourself. Yet to the immense Fa and to the universe created by the Fa, you too are part of the universe. You see that the human body has a complete mind and a mouth that speaks, but [at the same time] you know that this body is made up of countless cells upon countless cells, that cells are composed of molecules, and that even more countless microscopic particles form molecules. Could you say those aren’t you? So those particles are part of you. This is different from your bodies that exist in different dimensions that I spoke about. Your cells don’t make large movements like your hands and feet do. But you should know that in their realms they move just the same way, only they’re really microscopic in those realms and you can’t perceive them, so it doesn’t seem like they are moving. That’s why all of your body seems to be under your own control, under the control of your Main Consciousness. But you are also part of the overall body of the universe, and the universe was created by the Fa. That’s the relationship. 

Question: Time is limited. While I want to read the book straight through, I also want to memorize the book. But then I feel that memorizing the book will affect my reading of the book. How can I balance the two?

Teacher: Reading the book cover to cover contributes tremendously to your improvement. If you want to memorize the book, you have to spend some effort to memorize it for a period of time. It will spare you later on from having to read with the book in hand. But you’ll have to set aside some time to concentrate on memorizing it. Otherwise, if you want to read it through, then you want to memorize, and then you go back to wanting to read it through, then thinking like that all the time will keep you stuck like that. Memorizing the book won’t affect your reading the book through, nor will it hinder your advancement due to a lack of reading it through. That’s because when you memorize the book, behind every word there are infinite Buddhas, Daos, and Gods, and every word can allow you to understand principles at different levels.

Question: I belong to the generation that saw the Nazi symbol. I’d like to ask why the symbol happened to be appropriated? How should we understand the true meaning of this symbol?

Teacher: You know that the  symbol of the Buddha system was recognized in Buddhism at the time of Shakyamuni. Over twenty-five hundred years have since passed. In other words, it far predates the time of the Nazis. It’s said that people have found it in the [ruins of] Greek civilization. Then it would predate Buddhism by more than a thousand years. That means its history is rather long. And that’s merely what can be known to man. In fact, the symbol belongs to Buddhas. How old are Buddhas? That can’t be measured with time—time on earth, that is. So this symbol of theirs is quite ancient for the cosmic body and for the universe. It’s quite ancient even for the universe, not to mention for mankind’s time!

Then why did the Nazis use it? I’ve mentioned that nothing is by accident, and that “natural” doesn’t exist. This question is very sensitive in Caucasian society. I only teach the Fa to my Dafa disciples. I don’t teach it to the everyday people of society—I am not teaching everyday people. I’m only telling you these things because I’m responsible to you in cultivation.

Nothing that happens on earth—that is, nothing that happens in human society—is accidental. You know, to prevent humans from prematurely deteriorating to the point of being destroyed—[in other words,] to sustain human lives and maximally allow people to return again when reincarnating and not descend to Hell and eventually meet with annihilation—gods in the past continually helped humans pay off their karma. That isn’t known to man. As gods helped man pay off his karma, they also helped society, matter, and all beings pay off their karma. Even some matter has karma. For example, say that a person has done bad deeds. He dies and his karma follows him—it follows his being. Then he won’t be able to reincarnate as a human in his next life. If he reincarnates as a tree, that tree will have karma. If he reincarnates as an animal, that animal will have karma. By the same token, this means that if he reincarnates as some kind of material, that matter will have karma too. I’d say if you could open your eyes and take a look at the world, you almost couldn’t live here—there is karma billowing everywhere. What happens if man’s karma becomes too massive? Gods won’t come to the human world to directly eliminate karma for human beings. Karma elimination can’t be unconditional—the universe has this law. So gods uphold the laws of the universe when they do things.

The universe has a law. What’s it called? It’s called “no loss, no gain.” To gain, one has to lose. So if you want to eliminate karma for man, people will have to bear the karma. If you don’t help them pay off their karma they will accumulate more and more of it. If the karma becomes enormous, it’s called “evil beyond forgiveness.” Annihilation is what comes after the state of evil beyond forgiveness is reached. The person’s existence will be annihilated and not allowed to continue—it will be completely annihilated. So if you want to eliminate karma for humans so as to protect them, they have to endure the suffering of paying off their karma. How are they to suffer? They have to endure natural disasters, man-made calamities, and disease. In fact, let me tell you a truth: If a person doesn’t get sick, if that person doesn’t get ill once during his lifetime, he is one-hundred percent guaranteed to descend to Hell after he dies. That’s because a person produces karma while he’s alive. It’s just like what Jesus said: Man has sins. People are in danger if they only produce karma and don’t pay it off. That’s why people get sick and have misfortune. What happens when people on a large scale have accumulated karma? Earthquakes, fires, floods, and even plagues and wars.

Speaking of wars, we’ve come back to our subject. The question gets sensitive if we elaborate further. What I’ve said is in fact the truth of the universe. So let me stop here. Nothing in the world is accidental. Since I don’t want to get involved in politics or interfere with the society of everyday people, and since I’m only responsible for you cultivators, I’ll stop here. I want to leave it to you to analyze on your own.

Question: People from other practices often disturb us at our practice site.

Teacher: If nobody interfered with you while you’re practicing a righteous Fa, you wouldn’t succeed in it. If no one created problems for you, you wouldn’t have an environment for improving your xinxing. It’s impossible for you to succeed in cultivation if you don’t encounter any problems. That’s the principle at work. Yet when some of our students encounter these disturbances, they often push away the problem in the name of our Dafa. Instead of examining themselves, they rely on Dafa to push away the problems. For instance, they say, “He’s here to harm our Fa!” They don’t search for the cause inside themselves or ask why things happened that way: “Is it because we’ve done something incorrectly? Is it that I didn’t do things well myself? Is it warning us of something or testing us?” The truth is, outsiders can never affect the Fa. Those things most likely happen to improve our students. In a certain region students who had two different views started to fight. At first they didn’t consider it an environment for making the improvements they should have made, or a good opportunity to find where they fell short. As a result they aggravated the problem. And in the end, they handled things as everyday people do. So they fell, at least in terms of this, to the realm of everyday people. So, similar problems will occur again in the future, because [I] have to enable you to pass this tribulation. You can’t miss out—you must pass it. So I’ve said that this is how cultivation goes: You aren’t allowed to keep any attachment. If we can truly be unmoved even when thunder strikes, you will see those people leave on their own.

Yet there’s another situation. We human beings have karma ourselves. You want to practice cultivation, yet there are so many beings in the Three Realms who haven’t achieved Righteous Attainment. If they have a score to settle with you, or if you owed them in any of your previous lives, they will really come for revenge. They will really try to prevent you from cultivating, and they’ll employ all sorts of methods to interfere with you. They might even make strange things frighten you. All the same, you should remain unaffected. You’re cultivating now, so what is there to be afraid of? You’re cultivating nobly and uprightly. Besides, you’re cultivating in a righteous Fa. So after interfering with you one way or another, those devious, wicked things will find it meaningless and leave. They can’t affect anything. Since many people will encounter this sort of thing, I’ve addressed it in Zhuan Falun as well. 

Question: What is the “annihilation of a person’s body and spirit”?

Teacher: That’s something really horrifying—extremely horrifying! Were I to tell you the details, you wouldn’t be able to bear the extent of its dreadfulness. It’s just too frightening! People think they only have one life, when in fact this lifetime is just like being asleep, as your true self assumes little role. When you come out of the shell of your physical body, you will find that you are light and buoyant. You will discover that your mind is totally open, as you are then free from the human brain’s restrictions. Upon your entering that dimension, time will change from the time in the dimension of ordinary humans. It’s like waking from sleep: You will suddenly find that everything you did over the course of your life is clearly and vividly before your eyes. Every little thing will appear, as if you had just done it—it will be that clear. The brain will have suddenly been set free. You will know all of the good things and bad things you’ve done. Can you say that the things you’ve done among ordinary humans aren’t your own doing? You can’t just reincarnate again and keep doing bad things. Gods look at your being in its entirety, not just one lifetime of yours. Accordingly, you, as a being, have to pay for everything you’ve done. That’s the principle. So if a person does bad deeds he has to pay for them.

If annihilation is to take place, that’s just terrifying! If body and spirit are to be completely exterminated, how are they exterminated? It’s done by killing and exterminating the tangible beings of this person’s entire life. At the moment when the body is killed, his Spirit and all of his intelligent beings—which can exist in realms at this same level—will all be killed. But he isn’t really dead after being killed. He has merely left this level, and his more microscopic beings still exist. Then the more microscopic beings are killed at the same time. And he has to pay at every level for his karma during the process of being killed. How does he pay for it? He pays through the pain from being exterminated and through all the suffering—just like suffering all kinds of torment in Hell, such as being seared with a sheet of burning-red iron. In short, everything has to be paid for through torment, and then he’s killed level by level. His existence is still not over yet after being killed, for he still has beings composed of more microscopic particles. Beings at those levels have to continue to suffer, to continue being killed. And then his bodies at even more microscopic levels will continue to suffer, and continue being killed, until all are completely annihilated. That agony is utterly horrifying!!! Some people say, “When I die, all the bad things I did will be over with.” How could it be that easy?! You have to pay for all the bad things you did before they’re “over with.” Yet this “over” isn’t really over: You are cast down to somewhere tremendously filthy—the filthiest place in the cosmos. Gods all say that human sputum is the filthiest thing. You will be thrown into a pot of sputum. You feel that a sick person’s sputum is filthy, the filthiest thing. But let me tell you that it can’t even be compared with those filthiest of filthiest places. This person will be cast down to the filthiest of filthiest places, yet he’ll have a glimmer of consciousness and know that it’s filthy. You tell me what that’s got to feel like! He will stay there forever and never be able to get out. Now that is really something horrifying! Shakyamuni didn’t discuss it to this extent. He only spoke of Hell and mentioned the eighteen levels of Hell. Each level of Hell is more miserable than the previous one. Sometimes I say that even eighteen levels of Hell aren’t enough to match a person’s sin for damaging Dafa. I’ve just told you about something horrifying!

Question: I’m fortunate to have participated in the task of translating Teacher’s books. Teacher mentioned a “crazy monk sweeping Qin” in Zhuan Falun. Is that the name of a person or a historical anecdote?

Teacher: The anecdote about a “crazy monk sweeping Qin” did happen. The story took place at Lingyin temple in Hangzhou, China. The wicked minister Qin Hui in the Southern Song period came to the temple to burn incense. A monk there used a broom to brush dirt at the wicked minister Qin Hui a few times. That is, Qin Hui came into the temple while he was sweeping the ground. He then used his broom to sweep toward Qin Hui, sweeping dirt onto him to the point that Qin Hui’s eyes bulged with anger. Since he was the Prime Minister, he wanted his men to capture the monk, but then he saw that the monk was deranged. You could say he was insane, and he did seem insane, but he wasn’t actually insane. He was actually quite rational. Cultivation methods were odd in the past. We can’t have you follow those sorts of paths. I think this society would be in trouble if all of you were deranged. In this case, the monk’s situation was caused by a cultivation state. “Qin” means Qin Hui, the Qin Hui who caused the death of Yue Fei.* It’s a cultivation story from ancient China.

Question: How long is it before one can reincarnate again?

Teacher: Oh, you’re asking, “After death, how long does one stay over there before reincarnating again.” You’re a little too worried about things that are none of your concern. These things are arranged by those particular gods who are responsible for reincarnation and affairs in the human world. It’s all done by them in accordance with a person’s situation and his karmic situation. Yet a certain situation exists, where some people have to wait a long time before reincarnating; others wait for a short amount of time. Why? Suppose that when human beings reincarnate in society they tend to come in groups. Then instead of randomly reincarnating somewhere, they would often come as a group. People within a group form certain social relationships among themselves in one lifetime, and in the next life it is again arranged that they’re related in society. Oftentimes, those who aren’t related to your group seem to have nothing to do with you. People living in this world all have the feeling that some people in society don’t seem to have anything to do with them, whereas some other people always seem to have some connection with them. Those may very well be people in their group. So a group often reincarnates together when it comes time for reincarnation. But they might not live in the same place, nor will they all come at the same time. You come first, then he comes later; some are old, some are young. Anyway, that’s how they come. After coming here, you pay back to him in this lifetime what you owed him in your previous life. That’s how things are. If you were good to him in his previous life, in this life you will have his help and he’ll repay you with something good. It’s just like that. This refers to some of the things that happen during reincarnation for those who haven’t accumulated a lot of karma. Those whose karma is massive might be unable to reincarnate as human beings again. They reincarnate as plants, animals, or eventually substances. They are eliminated only at the very end.

Question: You’ve said that a person can’t take on others’ karma, not even that of his own children. My twenty-one-year-old child is becoming morally depraved. What can I do to make him gain a sense of responsibility?

Teacher: Let me answer your first question first. The meaning is, a person absolutely cannot change others’ lives. You can’t even control your own life, let alone the lives of others. No matter how hard a person tries, he’s merely walking down the path of his own existence. Maybe it seems like you’ve obtained something with your efforts, when in fact it was inevitable. If you hadn’t tried hard you wouldn’t have obtained it. That’s because trying hard also becomes a normal part of you, and you’re sure to act that way when the time comes. All the same, you’re committing a crime if you don’t educate your children or teach them how to conduct themselves. Parents share a portion of the karma generated by their children when they’ve done bad things as a result of being raised poorly. But it’s a different matter if the child can’t be taught from a young age, as everything is pre-arranged. Then why should you still educate them? If you teach them to be good persons, they will no longer generate a lot of karma, the quality of their lives will be different, and they might even become cultivators.

As for paying for others’ karma, that’s a scary thing! It’s because if you were to add others’ karma to your own, you wouldn’t even be able to live more than a few days before you died. The karma would be tremendous—it’s not how people have imagined it. I have unveiled high-level things to you, but you often comprehend them with human thinking. That doesn’t work. As for a child’s becoming depraved, we do have a responsibility as parents to teach him well. But this child is already an adult, and he won’t listen at all. You didn’t discipline him strictly when he was little and you spoiled him. It was inevitable that he would become depraved when he grew up. I think it’s difficult to discipline him now. If he listens to you, you can offer him a kind word of advice when he’s willing to listen. You’re best off not saying anything when he’s irritated, as saying something then is just like saying nothing, and you might even get yourself all frustrated. It’s not your fault if he can’t be disciplined at all. But we’re still responsible for not having taught them well in the past—there’s no question about that. If humankind’s next generation goes on like this, the older generation will have committed a sin.

If a person can still be clearheaded and is able to find himself—that is, when he’s level-headed—you can give him the book to read. If he can read it, there might still be a way. Some of those who committed crimes in the past have mended their ways through Dafa cultivation. There are also drug addicts who’ve been cured of their addiction since they joined us in practice. But I’ll tell you this: Be certain not to bring any drug addicts to our place in order to clean up their addictions—you will harm my Dafa. Our practice doesn’t do that sort of thing for people. People do bad things on their own, so they have to suffer for it. We’re telling you here: Our Dafa’s might is boundless, but it is for people to practice cultivation. If you truly practice cultivation, it wouldn’t do for you to have such a filthy body and mind. That’s why we purify you. This means you will feel better physically, your health problem will be gone, or perhaps your bad habits will be removed. It will produce these types of results. This is done for the purpose of cultivation, not for healing people or cleansing people of poison.

Question: You’ve said that everything in the world has life. Why is it that some people are able to remember things they did in their previous lives, but few people remember that they were plants or animals before?

Teacher: That’s because you haven’t heard of any. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There are quite a few, in fact. Some people can remember things from their previous lives because their brains weren’t thoroughly cleared. During their reincarnation, their brains weren’t properly cleared or their memory part wasn’t locked tightly. A little is left and so they have memories of the previous life. As for plants, when I gave seminars to teach the Fa in China, students wrote down for me, after ten days of study and cultivation, what they’d learned through their experiences, and many people mentioned things like that. They knew what kind of plant they had reincarnated from. But let me tell you: That’s not the look of their true being, it’s only their look in that particular lifetime. One can reincarnate as anything during the cycle of death and rebirth. What you truly are depends on what your Spirit is—only that is your true image.

Question: Can we introduce Zhuan Falun to priests and nuns on a large scale?

Teacher: I actually consider all of them everyday people. They will only become gods if they can truly succeed in cultivation. They’re still humans now, ordinary humans. It’s just that they have a different job. That’s how I look at it. Yet their work is, after all, related to cultivation, so religion is an obstacle for them. They stubbornly hold on to their religion, and aren’t able to let go of it—that’s the biggest hindrance to their obtaining Dafa. But there’s no way to tell them the principles of the Fa. If their hearts aren’t moved by this immense Fa of the universe, you don’t need to bother with them anymore. And they have another huge obstacle: They don’t even read the book [of Dafa]. That’s tough to handle. That is their biggest obstacle. Is there a way to remove the obstacle? You can talk to them. If they take in what you say, they’ll hear you. If they aren’t willing to take in what you say, there’s nothing else you can do.

Question: Animals can’t go to Heaven, so there shouldn’t be any animals in the heavenly paradises? Is this conclusion correct?

Teacher: It’s not that I’m trying to come up with something; I’m teaching the principles of the cosmos’ Fa and its true situation. So your mind has to be clear about this. Animals are strictly forbidden from going to Heaven. If they want to go to the heavenly paradises, they need to reincarnate as humans and then practice cultivation before they can go. Humans can’t go to Heaven either—they too have to practice cultivation. Then are there animals in heavenly paradises? Yes. They are all docile and kind animals. There are elephants and lions, as well as dragons and phoenixes. They can’t be compared with animals in the human world—they are gods, just like the dragons worshipped in the East. But there are other organisms and animals as well, the vast majority of which are born in those dimensions. They’re created by the Fa for the beings at those levels, and they are created in order to enrich the environment of the high-level beings at those levels. But there are also those who went up from Earth, though they didn’t get there through cultivation. The paradises of some Buddhas have animals. How did they get up there? There are other ways. For example, they might have gone up there through salvation by Buddhas, although they could have been something other than animals when they were on the earth. They might have been humans. I’m not going to elaborate on this. In other words, you should stop thinking about these divine things. They really have nothing to do with your cultivation. During cultivation you should hurry to get rid of your bad thoughts. You need to become an extraordinary person, change yourself into an even better person, and eventually achieve the standard of a god.

Question: Which dimension is the Main Spirit in? Is he simultaneously controlling the bodies in every dimension?

Teacher: That’s right. But it’s not completely so, because the part of him that is bewildered and blocked by the illusions of ordinary human society is unable to come into play.

I think this Fa conference has been a big success. While you shared your experiences and understandings, most of the time I was listening up there. I’ve found at this conference that the Caucasian students in Europe have advanced rapidly, and their understanding of the Fa is profound. That has never happened before—it’s outstanding. In other words, this Fa conference has been a complete success and achieved its objective. I think that this conference will, at least among the students we currently have, spark a surge of Fa study. You will cherish this Fa even more, and along with that spread this Fa and enable more people to come learn this Fa. You realize this Fa’s preciousness more and more, and that’s because you have come to know the principles of the Fa at different levels through your constant cultivation and improvement. That has allowed you to understand what it is. The more you study the Fa, the more precious you will find it. So what allows us to best advance is reading the book a lot. Reading the book a lot allows us to advance most rapidly.

From the beginning on, every one of our students sitting here has been able to really listen attentively and really think and relate things to himself. That is excellent. I also hope that through this Fa conference you will progress even more rapidly in the near future—progress even more rapidly by drawing on the power of this Dafa and the power of the Dafa conference. When I see you next time you will surely have made even bigger breakthroughs and have had even greater changes. That goes without saying, there’s no doubt about it. You can only advance more and more and come ever closer to Consummation.

I don’t want to say anything more since I’ve already talked a lot. All of you—especially veteran students—know what to do. I just hope you can balance studying the Fa, your work, and the other things you do among everyday people. I hope you’ll practice cultivation nobly and in an upright manner, and strive to reach Consummation soon.

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Glossary (provided by the translators)

Dao                  1. Also known as “Tao,” a Daoist term for “the Way of nature and the universe”; 2. An Enlightened being who has attained the Dao

Dafa                 “The Great Law,” or “The Great Way”; short for the practice’s full name, Falun Dafa, “The Great Way of the Law Wheel”

Fa                    “Law” or “Way”

gong                “cultivation energy”

qigong             A general name for certain Chinese practices that cultivate the human body. Qigong has been immensely popular in China in recent decades.

xinxing            “mind-nature” (lit.), “thought,” or “character”

Yue Fei            A Chinese war hero who lived from 1102–1141 A.D. Yue Fei was renowned for his bravery and loyalty to the state.