Clarifying the Truth to the American Family Foundation

[PureInsight.org]

1. The Significance of Clarifying the Facts to Anti-Cult Organizations

The American Family Foundation (AFF) is a non-governmental organization that studies cults and mind control. It holds annual meetings once or twice a year discussing the issue of cults and cult victims. The people who attend these meetings include specialists in religious studies and psychology, human rights activists, lawyers, doctors, cult victims and their family members. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been using these conference opportunities to spread their propaganda in order to attack and slander Falun Gong. On one hand, the CCP has been using its overseas media to report on this propaganda. On another hand, it imports these overseas reports back to China which escalates the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Many Chinese websites have posted the Xinhua News Agency's report of the original Qiaobao article – "Fang Zhouzi and Deng Zixian Help US Mainstream Society Recognize Falun Gong's Nature; American Family Foundation Lists Falun Gong As An Evil Cult."

Looking back on history, we can realize that the old forces have made these arrangement to damage Dafa beginning with the ideological field. First, the so-called Chinese Science Academy member He Zuoxiu started spreading lies slandering Falun Gong. In the persecution, these people have been the vanguards in criticizing and slandering Falun Gong to the media. Later, they founded the "China Anti-Cult Association" (CACA). The founders and members of CACA have been using their religious and scientific background and social identities to justify and abet the persecution of Falun Gong. They have established many branches in various cities, work units and schools. These branches are affiliated with the "610 Office." Their functions include providing propaganda materials to the people in China and the rest of the world to try to justify the persecution, providing suggestions to the Chinese government regarding the measures for the persecution, providing theoretical criticism of Falun Gong's principles and directly participating in the brainwashing and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. They achieve their aims with the direction and help of the CCP and through utilizing the state-controlled media.

Overseas, the old forces arrange some "anti-cult" people and organizations at different levels in society to resist Fa-rectification. For example, we found that many U.S. government officials who do not support Falun Gong, holding a similar attitude towards Falun Gong like those "anti-cult" people. Some even have a direct connection with the AFF. They have been ignoring the persecution of Falun Gong and supporting the claims of the CCP as part of its international anti-Falun Gong coalition; therefore they have been unintentionally aiding the persecution in China.

Jiang Zemin's persecution of Falun Gong is completely based on lies. The source of these lies is these "anti-cult" forces. Teacher told us, "...matter and mind are one and the same. The scientists in the field of human-body science are now thinking that the thoughts the human brain produces are matter."(From Lecture One of Zhuan Falun) We think that the persecution of Falun Gong in this human world is a manifestation of the evil in the ideological field. These matters in the microscopic dimension have been damaging humans and maintaining the persecution. Therefore, completely eliminating the evil in any ideological field is very important. If practitioners could ultimately utilize our condition to clarify the facts to the overseas anti-cult organizations and make them against the persecution in China, we can eliminate the overseas environment that the evil has been depending on for its living and its so-called "Western academic and overseas media support" for the persecution, therefore further isolating the evil and decreasing the persecution in China. In the meantime, these lives that have been arranged by the old forces to be destroyed may have a chance to be saved after understanding the truth about Falun Gong.

2. Advancing as a Whole Body in the Process of Clarifying the Facts to Anti-Cult Organizations

We understand from the beginning that the process of clarifying the facts to AFF is a process of our advancement in the Fa as a whole body. It is a test for our understanding of Dafa, our righteous and firm belief in Dafa and Teacher and the close collaboration of practitioners.

Some practitioners contacted AFF, and some used their professional titles and knowledge to gradually clarify the truth to AFF. In June 2003, for the first time, practitioners were invited to the AFF Conference in Orange County, California to present a paper. After that, we started to prepare for the AFF Conference in Connecticut on October 18. Twenty to thirty practitioners from at least 6 states participated in this project. We exchanged our understandings from the Fa through several teleconferences and became more and more clear about what we should do.

With practitioners' efforts, the president of AFF wrote to a practitioner stating that AFF listed Falun Gong as a cult and that "you have our permission on behalf of AFF to clearly refute statements made that AFF has listed Falun Gong as a cult." However, we knew that he wrote this letter only to be politically correct rather than truly understanding the truth about Falun Gong. In order to clarify the truth, we need to know how the AFF people think.

As we continued to clarify the truth to AFF, we also investigated the Chinese delegation members and contacted one of them. We also studied the AFF's background and its published anti-Falun Gong articles. We obtained another opportunity to participate and started to prepare our presentation article and video show, and worked with the practitioners who would be attending the conference. During our experience sharing, the practitioners who attended the California Conference mentioned an important point. The AFF people seemed to think that practitioners were evasive when answering questions, as if we were hiding something. We all felt that this was an area where we needed to improve. In Connecticut, all practitioners, regardless of whether they were going to the conference or not, started to discuss all the questions raised at the AFF California Conference and some slandering articles at our weekly group Fa-study. We also began reading through all of Teacher's books.

During the preparation, we also upgraded our self-cultivation. Some practitioners said that when reading some evil articles or websites before, they would develop symptoms of headaches and nausea that they were only be able to eliminate through several days of Fa-study and sending forth righteous thoughts. When practitioners had different opinions, we would look at each others' intentions, consider our common ground and disregard the differences to avoid conflicts.

We also learned lessons from the California Conference and prepared to answer all questions based on the Fa, using our wisdom, and in a direct way using the format that ordinary people could accept. We would also expose the persecution and encourage their kindness. Before the conference, most practitioners who were attending the conference spent one day studying the Fa, doing the exercises and preparing for the conference.

3. Showing the Dignity of Dafa While Clarifying the Facts

As soon as we arrived at the conference, we started to tell the facts of Falun Gong with kindness to all attendees and the AFF organizers. These people more or less have been affected by the anti-Falun Gong propaganda, and because of some of their deep human notions, they all had various attitudes towards Dafa. However, they all changed after listening to our fact-clarification.

The audience had a warm response regarding practitioners' well-prepared presentation. Many people later found that we shared their thoughts or expressed their thanks. Some ex-cult members hoped to learn Falun Gong in order to repair their mental wounds. Some asked specific questions regarding cultivation. Some expressed their anger towards the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong, and some supported the practitioners' efforts.

AFF also arranged to have some people famous for slandering Falun Gong give a presentation after us. We had been clarifying the truth to the audience during the intermission and sent forth righteous thoughts to clear the field. After they started their presentation, under the strong righteous field, one of them was unable to speak clearly, and another was only able to show half of his slides. Right after they finished, we immediately clarified the facts to the audience using the format of asking questions. Some practitioners pointed out that they were taking Teacher's words out of context and explicated Falun Gong's cultivation principles. None of them could give one example of Falun Gong practitioners causing damage to society or to practitioners themselves. They could only escape their awkward position when time was up. Afterwards, a member of the audience told a practitioner "I felt those practitioners asking questions have provided more information than the two who gave presentations. They (the two people) really should have done more preparation." Actually, what he does not know is that those people's failure was not because of lack of preparation, but because the lies could never endure the truth and the evil could never prevail over the righteous. We again kindly talked to those two people who were against Dafa and pointed out that their action might damage themselves as well as increase the persecution in China. We also distinguished between those who intentionally slandered Dafa and those who were deceived by the lies. We treated them with kind hearts and remembered to eliminate the evil behind them.

AFF also arranged a dinner meeting for us to meet those who were against Dafa and some scholars who were interested in Dafa. Most people at the dinner missed our presentation. (However, they could watch the tape recording later.) Therefore, their minds were filled with CCP's propaganda. They felt that Falun Gong must have done something wrong since the CCP wanted to oppress it. The president of AFF started to question us, " I am a lawyer whose job is to mediate. I hope that both sides (Falun Gong and CCP) could step back some. I also want to know where the smoke was, if there were any." One practitioner clearly pointed out, "A lawyer's job should not be to mediate and ask Falun Gong to back off. A lawyer's job is to maintain justice. In this persecution, Falun Gong practitioners have had nowhere to back off, except giving up cultivation."

Then we introduced Falun Gong's principles from various angles including the staged Tiananmen self-immolation and the 4/25 appeal. We flet that their hearts were changing. They originally measured us with the frame of "cult," and then gradually came out of this frame to re-examine Falun Gong. Finally, they could feel the dignity of Dafa.

4. Completely Eliminating the Evil and Awakening Human Beings

Through contacting AFF, we felt some people were longing for Dafa deep in their hearts. The AFF organizers repeatedly said that they wanted to know what Falun Gong was and invited us to submit a presentation to their journal. We already submitted our presentation at this conference. A professor and editor from Mexico invited us to submit to his journal. He was editing a special edition regarding how some cults advocate violence and suicide. He hoped that we could write about Falun Gong's principle against killing and how the CCP framed Falun Gong with the self-immolation.

The recent lawsuit against the China Press' slander and hatred instigated in Montreal, Canada has again proven the necessity and urgency of clarifying the facts to anti-cult organizations. Last week in court, the attorney of China Press used "AFF has listed Falun Gong as a cult" in his argument and submitted some anti-cult specialists' articles that were presented at previous AFF conferences as exhibiting evidence for criticizing Falun Gong. Since we knew very well about these so-called specialists and the background of AFF and some of us had written articles refuting their articles, we were able to recount what we knew to our attorney, so he could be on top of this case.

We think that this "anti-cult" field arranged by the old forces should be used to expose Jiang Zemin's gang, the biggest evil cult. The evil has prepared the tomb for itself. Our next step, as part of our truth-clarification, will be to expose the CCP cult that participated in the persecution of Falun Gong, destroy the old forces arrangements and continue to eliminate the evil and awaken human beings.