MARK GRUENBERG—Ben Hurley, an Australian who left Falun Gong after a dozen years as a member, reported four years ago that even then—three years after his initial blog about it—he got reports from once-scared members.
“The stories express a mix of excitement and terror,” Hurley wrote on the Religion and Ethics website after the Australian Broadcasting Corp. ran its own exposé of Falun Gong. “Excitement that they can now listen to pop music, or eat sashimi, or have a beer, or have sex, or take up a hobby, or hang out with non-believers—without feeling filthy and unworthy.
“And lingering terror as they face up to their living god, and attempt to banish him from their minds and out of their lives.”
That living god is Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi. “A number of people labored over the decision to contact me before finally plucking up the courage because they believed that Li could read their minds,” Hurley wrote.