You Should not Heal Others Unless You Want to Bear Their Karmic Retribution

My Master said people, in their state of ignorance, are apt to do wrong on this Earth, and for their transgressions, there will be what Buddhism calls “karmic retribution.” The ordeals that people go through or the misfortunes they experience are often cases of them paying off karma.

People often wonder how come the divine, which some religions believe to be all around us, doesn’t heal all of humanity—especially when doing so would, in fact, take but a wave of the hand. Well, it’s because the ordeals people face are traced back to their own misdeeds and debts.

So if someone then heals them with supernatural means, it amounts to undermining the laws of the universe. It would mean that people could do wrongful things and rack up debts without paying for them, which is not allowed. Higher beings all try to preserve the human condition, not violate it.

If you want to truly enjoy a pleasant, illness-free existence, and finally be freed of the human condition, there is only one way: through spiritual practice! Getting people to do real spiritual practice is something that truly benefits all of humanity.

It might be fine for someone who is still developing spiritually to heal a person by alleviating his suffering a little, out of compassion. But even then he is merely postponing the ailment until later. So the person may feel well now, but will have to suffer later; or instead of sickness, it might take the form of losing money or some other mishaps.

To really eliminate that tribulation you have to eliminate the karma. And if a person can really heal people, if he can completely clear out that karma, then he has to be someone quite spiritually advanced. He would have already seen the truth, which is: the laws for ordinary people can’t just be violated like that.

Even if an ordinary person’s ailment could really be rooted out, then an ordinary person would just walk off without any ailment (or karmic debts). But he’d still be an ordinary person, and he’d still be his same old, worldly self afterward and go back to his competitive and self-interested life. How could you just go and eliminate his karma? So truly healing someone like that is out of the question.

The Danger of Transferring Illness

Some people exchange their good innate foundations for others’ karma, by healing them. Yet people with medical conditions have large amounts of karma. Someone who heals people like that is going to feel wretched afterward. Many who heal have had that experience; the other party gets well, while they themselves get seriously ill afterward.

And if they keep doing it, significant amounts of karma will be transferred to them, at the cost of their virtue (blessing). But that would be the price they pay. Even though it’s healing they want, the laws of exchange still hold: if you want to eliminate karma, virtue has to be paid. That’s how the universe works.

If healing is what you want to do, it’s up to you, and nobody is going to intervene. There is something that has been decided in this universe: whoever has a lot of karma is a bad person. Yet you are trading your own virtuous foundations for karma. It’s going to be very hard to do spiritual practice then, with all that karma. You will have ruined your own foundations.

While the people you healed may feel fine now, you yourself have to suffer. And just imagine how dangerous it would be if you healed a couple of cancer patients—you might have to die in their place. Most people don’t realize how these things work.

Fake Healing Masters are Prevalent

No regular person could possibly gain the power to heal after taking a class for just a few days. I can tell you that whoever claims he can cure all sorts of illnesses is under the influence of spirit possession, only he’s not aware that something has latched onto his back. But something has. And so he mistakenly thinks that he is powerful and that it’s a good thing he can heal.

A true teacher must go through many years of grueling spiritual discipline before he or she can accomplish something like healing. Yet some people go about doing healing without ever pausing to consider whether they have the powers necessary to rid people of their karma, or how it’s possible to do healing without receiving the kind of authentic instruction normally required.

And yet somehow they think that they can heal after just a few days of classes, using just their ordinary hands. False masters exploit these kinds of attachments and flawed thinking. That yearning to heal is an attachment, isn’t it?

And so they’re happy to offer classes on healing, with fancy protocols and sophisticated names for what they do, ranging from the “energy needle” to the “illumination method,” to “expulsion” and “supplementation,” to “pressing vital points” and the “single grabbing method.” In each case, their motive is to make money off you.

Animal Possessions

Some people are just insistent about wanting to do healing. Animal spirits can see that kind of intent and will affix themselves to the person’s body, which is called entity attachment. They see that the person wants to do healing, and they will help out.

What happens is that when the person holds out his hand to send out energy, that animal’s little claws also extend from behind his body.

Or in some cases, it’s a snake that has attached to the person, which sticks out its forked tongue from its reptilian head toward the person’s ailment or swollen area and licks at it. There are many cases like this, and these people all got spirit or animal possession through their own pursuits.

But spirit animals don’t help for nothing, as everything comes at a cost. And this makes it dangerous. You can just imagine how hard it would be to make spiritual progress after bringing animals onto yourself. All of your spiritual efforts would have been for naught.

Chi Can’t Heal Chi

Some teachers have claimed that people can do healing after just three to five days of learning their energy practices. It’s like marketing—as if they were in the business of energy. But let’s pause to think: could the average person heal someone’s ailment just by sending out a little basic energy?

Both parties, in this case, merely have the basic energy known as chi (or qi), with the only difference being that one of them has just started practicing and can take in or project energy since the Palace of Toil (Laogong) acupuncture point on his hand is open. So if one of the two tries to heal the other, there’s no telling who might heal who, since both just have chi!

There’s no reason that one of these people’s energy should be more powerful than the other’s. Energy like chi does not heal. And another thing is, a person will be connected with whoever he tries to heal, and it’s possible that the sick energy in the recipient’s body will come over to the healer’s, such that he ends up with just as much of it.

Though the root of the person’s ailment won’t be transferred, the healer might still become ill if he takes on too much of it. And it’s easy for a person to get attached once he believes that he can heal. He might set up a practice and welcome all who come. And how happy he’ll be about it—being able to heal!

But he hasn’t given thought to what makes it possible. It turns out that false healers like these are getting their energy from entities/spirits that have attached to them. And then they turn around and share a little of that energy with those who take their classes, to win their confidence.

But these students’ healing energy will disappear for good after they’ve treated a handful of people. What little energy they had will be gone, since doing that consumes it. It wouldn’t be a higher energy (gong) that they were using since they wouldn’t have had any in the first place.

(This article is an excerpt from “Zhuan Falun” by Master Li Hong Zhi)