"Secretive Chinese Spiritual Group Holds Protest and Wins a Retraction From Beijing"

Times reporter Seth Faison wrote that on July 6 and 7, close to 1,000 members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement demonstrated inside government headquarters in the southern city of Nanchang, demanding the retraction of an article in an official publication that likened Falun Gong to a superstitious cult. Ignoring warnings, they refused to leave until a government official finally disavowed the article.

Earlier in April, 10,000 members of Falun Gong shocked Chinese leaders by materializing without warning outside the leadership's compound in central Beijing. They demanded official recognition from Communist bosses who had never heard of the group, which claims 100 million members. Current government estimates range between 20-60 million.

Particularly upsetting to Beijing leaders was the discovery that some senior members of the government and the army believe in the healing powers of Falun Gong, a branch of qigong, a traditional teaching that individuals can channel human energy to achieve supernatural powers. Some Falun Gong followers claim that their founder, Li Hongzhi, a New York City resident, is capable of flying and other extraordinary feats.

What has ensued since July 6 and 7 is the outlawing of the sect and a massive crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners and supporters by Party leaders in Beijing. On July 26, Chinese authorities detained about 1,200 government officials who are members of Falun Gong and spirited them to schools in Northern China where bosses required them to study Communist Party documents and to renounce any allegiance to the movement. This is according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.

Shortly afterward, China asked the international police agency Interpol to issue an arrest warrant against Mr. Li, but the agency refused citing both a lack of criminal evidence and the obvious political motivation behind the request. The government is so intent to demonize Mr. Li that it has even resorted to publishing a comic book -- "Li Hongzhi: The Man and His Evil Deeds" -- and is selling them for 75 cents each. The books are full of cartoons ridiculing Mr. Li as a charlatan and an evil genius.

On August 24, the official New China News Agency reported that government authorities were preparing to charge Falun Gong leaders with subversion. An order jointly issued by the Communist Party's Central Committee and China's Cabinet specified that core members of Falun Gong must be punished severely!

Is all this warranted?!

Of course, the Communist Chinese government suspects any organization it cannot control -- witness last year's arrests of the leaders of the China Democracy Party that had established branches in over two-thirds of China's provinces -- and so has declared an all-out offensive against a movement that, until recently, few knew about outside the country. The question is why, and what does all this have to do with Interracial Voice and its readers?

Most esoteric spiritual disciplines -- e.g., Taoism, Buddhism, Vaisnavism, Hinduism, Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, Kabbalah -- agree on one thing: we live in one great sea of vibrating energy. Everything we can see, feel, smell, hear or taste is a form of energy vibrating at different rates, and this vibration produces the illusion of solidity. Physical matter is made up of atoms which in turn are composed of electrons and protons and neutrons all in violent motion -- in other words, particles of energy moving at incredibly high speeds. Far beyond atoms and molecules, at the level of the quantum field, there is nothing other than energy, information and intelligence -- pure consciousness.

Thought has transformative potential, and the quality of intention on the object of our attention or thought harnesses the energy needed to cause the desired outcome. History shows us how, time and again, the powerful thoughts and new ideas of original thinkers, of freethinkers, have altered the destiny of mankind. History also demonstrates how governments and even organized religions have attempted to stymie thoughts because of their transcendental power.

A highly developed thought radiates outward and effects everyone receiving it; the thought stirs each recipient's devotion, ideals and beliefs in a way uniquely familiar to him or her. The one thing in common, however, is the overall raising of the vibratory nature. Everyone who thinks high thoughts emits the kind of vibrations that tend to stimulate a comparable level of thought in others. They act vigorously upon minds accustomed to high thought but also affect to some degree every mind within the sphere of their radiation. This tends to awaken duller minds to higher possibilities, rousing those not ordinarily given to spiritual ideas. Everyone who thinks on a high plane, therefore, is doing a form of missionary work even though he may not be aware of it.

From "Baruch Spinoza and the Multiracial Mindset":

A "racial" freethinker can't help visualizing a vertical ascent in the illumined mindset of the masses from considerations of "monorace" to "multirace" (beyond meditations on "ethnicity" and "culture" as well) to humanity up to pure consciousness and energy in the spiritual realm.

In some respects, the Communist Chinese leadership is not much different from those in and out of this country's government who believe that coerced membership in artificial "racial" and "ethnic" groups adequately defines humans. The same individuals who lecture unceasingly of the need to preserve their perpetually changing cultures and specifically those folk who fought any modification of the current segregated system of "racial" and "ethnic" classification -- cultural communists, as it were -- will also fight tooth and nail against the inevitable campaign to jettison these categories once and for all. The quality of our intention, however, on the thought of eliminating these idiotic and divisive classifications will harness the requisite energy for the mission.

(A belief in not only the existence of separate "races" -- with all the attendant "differences" -- and a "racial" hierarchy but also in the appropriateness of grouping Homo sapiens into arbitrary "racial" and "ethnic" categories is the primary cause of racism and discrimination. You simply cannot take seriously anyone who rails against racism yet is perfectly willing to see the belief system -- which spawns racism, race-hatred and race-based violence -- remain intact.)

Communists are atheists who use fear of death to maintain power. Karl Marx considered religion -- and by logical extension, any meditation on spirituality -- to be the pastime of degraded men who attempt to escape reality. He believed religion to be a technique invented by the bourgeoisie or the capitalists to dissuade the masses from revolution by promising them a better existence after death.

What may be unfolding in Communist China, however, is a revolution of self-realized souls who are in touch with their higher selves, who know themselves as something other than flesh-and-bones bodies and who want a better existence for themselves here and now. Granted, it's a considerable proviso, but if you possess absolute certainty regarding not only the immortality of but also the transmigration of the soul -- the Tibetan Buddhist belief, for example, that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of his predecessor Dalai Lamas -- you have no fear of death, and no government, ruthlessly totalitarian or otherwise, can control you. Combine the advent of the Internet -- technology that, by itself, has the potential to make systems of government and traditional political thought obsolete and which was utilized by the aforementioned China Democracy Party -- with this growing awareness of self as other than body, and you can see why the Party boys in Beijing are panicking.

For that matter, in light of the madness manifested of late in senseless shootings and killings in our schools, community centers, postal facilities and other public locations, is there any doubt that America itself is in need of a spiritual re-awakening?

Expressing somewhat similar sentiments was the New York Times "Religion Journal" section of Saturday, July 24 entitled: "From Witches to Angels, Alternative Spirituality." Times writer Gustav Niebuhr wondered whether esoteric forms of spirituality have ever been so public and available. He posed that and other questions to Richard Smoley, co-author of "Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions," a new wide-ranging book about alternative spiritual paths. Smoley responded that he believed ecclesiastical, institutional religion is weaker in the United States and Europe than it's ever been. He also noted what he considered an underlying trend that he expected to continue, and that is an interest in higher consciousness, a belief that "the human makeup is considerably higher and deeper than we know or have access to."

Now, mind you, this was not in the Village Voice or in the Free Spirit publication that you find stacked in the corner of your local natural-food store; it was in the still relatively staid New York Times.

(Niebuhr's article also reminded me that about the only thing worse than present-day "black" ministers and reverends who hustle "race" and "race pride" to further a political agenda and to line their own pockets were those "white" ministers and reverends who supported -- at least tacitly through their silence -- this country's long, dark night of racial oppression. He cites the Southern Baptist Convention offering an apology to "blacks" in 1995 for many members' support of slavery and racial segregation. What organized religion still refuses to do, however, is take the next step and denounce "race" as the bogus construct it really is. Most religious sects still march in unconscious lockstep to the American "racialist" party line that proclaims the existence of separate and distinct racial groupings on planet Earth. To its credit, the Church of Christ, Scientist, largely through its publication "The Christian Science Monitor," has been a pleasant exception to this ungodly rule. The CSM of late has brought this subject to the attention of its readers with such timely articles as 'Race' is a crude category at best and Erasing a remnant of Jim Crow South from law books.)

In "Wisdom of the Mystic Masters," Joseph J. Weed, a Rosicrucian, writes:

Every man, woman and child in the world is advancing and developing, whether he or she realizes it or not. For some the rate of progress is slow; others go along at an average pace, a few are far out ahead. Each person is different. There are no carbon copies. Some strive to improve and others care for nothing but their own physical satisfactions. Those who want to develop and really try soon outdistance their fellows and come earlier to a true understanding of life. Their open minds, their intellectual curiosity and their persistent efforts bring them eventually to a Teacher who can lead them on the path to illumination and Cosmic Consciousness.

PASS IT ON!

EXTRA READING...

The Reincarnation Controversy: Uncovering the Truth in the World Religions, by Steven J. Rosen

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