5) The Perfection of the individual and the Starting Point of Love
An individual cannot attain perfection by knowledge, power or money. Rather, perfection is realized through love -- not vulgar love, but the original love. By this love everything is perfected.
We all have five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. These five senses should begin from the foundation of perfected love and function centering on perfected love. Every sensation of one's eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, and so forth, should be perfected centering on love.
Ideally, we should experience the objective world through out five senses when they have become one centering on love. This means, in short, that we would live in ecstasy. In this state, enraptured by our surroundings, we would lovingly take in the world around us.
One cannot abide in that state by oneself. One must be relating ever more closely with a counterpart. One's counterpart is ever changing, and the feelings coming from one's counterpart are ever changing.
True love has the quality that it can enlarge to fill endless space or shrink to an infinitesimal point. Such is heavenly love. When we look through the eyes of love, it does not matter whether something is big or small. Small things have their value in a small package, while big things have their value in a big package. To create such a world of love is indeed the ideal of God.
God created the mind and body based on love. For an individual to become perfect, these must become one. An individual grows to maturity through their eternal give and take action.
The process of the perfecting an individual starts from love and matures centering on love. Its maturation is like a bud growing into fruit. When the person attains the proper standard of love, God will dwell in his future marriage. Until love has matured, there is no basis upon which to bear fruit.
Everything is created and sustained based upon the law of love. When a flower blooms, the stamen and pistil within the flower engage in give and take action; through this circular movement, a fruit is produced. It is the same in the animal world and also among human beings. All come into existence through the circular movement of love. Everything in existence reaches its completion only through relationships of love. We therefore affirm that every entity can become perfect only through love.
A human being can unite his mind and body when he becomes one with the core of God's love. When a person unites his mind and body and enters the realm of God's love, then the person becomes mature. This describes how an original human being who did not fall can grow towards individual perfection.
The perfection of an individual means the unification of mind and body. When the mind in the subject position engages in give and take action with the body in the object position, then this unified mind and body becomes the object of God. The mind should be unchanging forever.
The mind tends to focus on heaven and the body tends toward the world. The concept that these should become one is the doctrine of the Cosmic Teaching. Do you know what I mean by the Cosmic Teaching? It calls upon us to make the cosmos -- that is, the corporeal and incorporeal worlds -- into a unity. Should not the person who tries to rule the cosmos have a united mind and body? If that person does not have a united mind and body, he or she would perish. When your mind and body unite centering on God, then God will be the internal God, and you yourself will become the external God. Is that not so? Then, around what center should we unite our mind and body? We should center their unity upon love.
Regard yourself as the problem. You can be your own worst enemy. If you cannot unite your mind and body, you become your own enemy.
What is the meaning of individual perfection for us today? It has to do with our faith in the form of a vertical parent-child relationship. As God loves us, we also must love God. Because love is realized through a relationship with a counterpart, there can be no separation between God and ourselves as children of God.
The perfection of an individual starts from the point where he or she makes a vertical relationship with God.
It is right that we should love God as God loves us. It is the law of the Principle. If you respect and attend God as the vertical center, you will receive His love as His sons and daughters. Unless we establish such a tradition of mutual love, we will not establish the starting point for our individual perfection.
You all should know that the fulfillment of one's responsibility is the only way to the perfection of one's character.
The reason God cannot fully display His love toward fallen man and woman is that they must first perfect their character.
God is the subject partner of true love. Therefore, only when an absolute object partner appears does He engage in the give and take action of love.
What do you think perfection of character means? It means to become a person who can fulfill his or her responsibility. That is to say, one must first be restored to one's original position before the Fall and then reach perfection, finally capable of fulfilling one's responsibility. This process involves a revolutionary change in character.
Individual perfection means the perfection of character. We can say that when a person fulfills his or her responsibility, he or she realizes the perfection of character. As children of God, we must become mature people who can stand before God in a position to praise and love Him. Once you clearly understand that you can obtain true love only after you have perfected your character, you must bear in mind that there is no other way to go besides the way of perfecting your character.
In the satanic world, there is no connection to the realm of heart. You will be led to true love only after you have gone through a revolution of character. Bear in mind that unless you free yourselves from selfishness and self-centeredness, including worldly greed, attachment to your own children, and your fancies of cultural superiority, you will never be able to reach perfection.
For Adam and Eve to become people of mature character, they have to start anew by living according to the complete, ideal religion and denying everything in the satanic world. Therefore, although I have been receiving so much persecution, I have been denying every worldly thing in order to stand in a position of perfection.
People who are thinking in a self-centered way remain in the satanic realm. If you have inherited God's heart and have reached the standard of perfected character, then you can connect with God's standard of character and unite with perfected Adam's standard of character. We must become people who can meet the standard of original, perfected character. To become like this, we must continually reform ourselves and fulfill our given responsibilities. In this respect, I can definitely say that nothing in this world can make you reform and perfect yourself. If anything can, it is the Unification Principle.
To reform this world, we must perfect our character one hundred percent. Otherwise, we cannot reach the level of perfect joy. This is because, even after fallen humanity has been restored, there would not be perfect joy as long as memories of the Fall remain in us. Even God should not have the notion that man once fell. In order to erase even the notion that human beings once fell, we must become beings who are more than one hundred percent perfect.
Where is love's embarkation point, love's encampment, and the place of love's safe settlement? Among you, some might hope that it is your mind and body. In fact, if your mind and body become the place where God's love can settle safely, then you will become the perfect encampment for unification. On that day, you will become God's son, the son who will inherit the family business, the great enterprise of heaven and earth. Everything will go well for you; you will become the object of God's love and receive the utmost love from God. When that day comes, God will close His eyes, shedding tears of gratitude, saying, "Oh, my son!"
Where does love start? It starts from a perfected individual. From the viewpoint of the Divine Principle, we are to start loving after reaching individual perfection. We reach our destined love only after we have gone through adolescence and have become qualified to love the opposite sex. We must be able to correspond with the harmony of heaven and earth and carry out our responsibility.
However, in the case of Adam and Eve, it did not happen that way. What kind of love was their love? Their love did not happen at the place where all things in heaven and earth can unite. It was not the subjective love. Their love should have been the subjective and necessary love. They did not have this destined love. Therefore, today's human race descended from people who never tasted such love. Although we know the word "love," we do not know the concept of a world of true love. In the world of true love, when we prepare the foundation to love each other centering on God, then God, for the first time comes down with His love.
In other words, when God sees human beings, who are His masterpieces, love each other, He cannot help but loving them. With this attitude, God makes a way for people as His sons and daughters to join in relationships of love. That is the meaning of the Blessed marriages of the Unification Church.
God, who existed in the beginning as the Word, created human beings on the last day of creation, after creating all things. When creating human beings as His object partners, God created the male Adam as His object partner and then created the female Eve as Adam's object partner.
Centering on God, Adam and Eve in the position of subject and object partners are to make a relationship of love. At the same time, God and the two human beings, Adam and Eve, would make a relationship of subject and object partners. Were Adam to make a subject-object relationship with God, without making a subject-object relationship with Eve, he would not be able to possess God's eternal love, nor could he exist eternally. By only making a relationship with God, Adam would only be able to move in a straight line. The same would apply if he related only with Eve.
Eternity and perfection are obtained not from linear motion, but require spherical motion. To change from linear motion to spherical motion, Adam also needs to make a relationship with Eve as his object partner. Adam alone cannot establish the harmony of life and love.
Everything in creation exists based on movement through three points. If the movement does not go through three points, it will not be perfect or eternal.
Adam was not meant to approach God in a straight line. Rather, he was supposed to approach God through his object Eve, and Eve through Adam. That way they could proceed in a spherical movement. For Adam to approach God through Eve, they have to have a love relationship. Adam by himself does not have the strength to approach God.
What would have happened if Adam and Eve had reached perfection? What would have happened if they had completely matured as a man and woman and had reached the level where they could receive the Blessing? Centering on one love, they would have become the Mother, united with the entire universe. In unity with God, and together with God, they would have initiated a new beginning in the universe, in heaven and earth. What would have been its starting point? It would have been love. From the beginning, the starting point was supposed to be love. What love? It would have been God's love.
Where would be the origin of this God-centered unified love? God intended that Adam and Eve would grow up without falling and come to embrace all things in heaven and earth. Their hearts were to overflow with happiness, enraptured with God's love. They were to be filled with hope for tomorrow and with a love big enough to embrace all future generations. When Adam and Eve reached such a level, then for the first time the starting point of true love would appear, where a man and woman could unite centering on God's love. If they could not reach this level, the starting point of unified love would not appear.
After achieving perfection as an individual and perfection as a spouse in the conjugal relationship, we need to receive public recognition centering on God's love to establish the true ideal.