3) God's Purpose for Creating Adam and Eve

3) God's Purpose for Creating Adam and Eve

In Genesis 1: 27, it is written that when God created man in His own image, He created them male and female. As such, we can conclude by inductive reasoning that God is a Being of united masculinity and femininity.

God, as a Being of this nature, could not live alone. Needing an object partner, He created the world. Therefore, God created one man and one woman.

God's internal nature consists of masculine character, God as Father, and feminine character, God as Mother. Therefore, one can describe human beings and the universe created from God as embodying the God of dual characteristics, of masculinity and femininity.

God created Adam and Eve first in order to become embodied, and second to perfect His love. If Adam and Eve had become perfected embodiments of love, God would have dwelt in them and they would have become the perfect parents of love for all humankind. God's image would then have been manifest as Adam and Eve, the incarnate Parents. Next, Adam and Eve were to have multiplied their children and established an ideal world. The ideal world established by human beings would have connected the spirit world and the physical world. This was another reason why God created human beings.

Therefore, centering on love, God was to have dwelt in Adam and Eve, becoming the incarnate True Parent to all humankind. After Adam and Eve went to the spirit world, God would have continued to manifest as the divine Parent, clothed in the image of Adam and Eve. However, you must understand that because of the fall of Adam and Eve, God could not realize these intentions.

God created man and woman with the purpose that the two love each other and become one. God did not create Adam for Adam's sake or Eve for Eve's sake. God created Adam for Eve and Eve for Adam. Likewise, God created Adam and Eve for His own love and His own joy. God did not create Adam and Eve for the sake of knowledge, power or money. The omnipotent God does not need knowledge, power or money; He only needs love.

God did not create Adam and Eve for the purpose of giving them knowledge, power, or many treasures to live a good life. God's purpose was to raise Adam and Eve as the embodiments of love.

God purposed that human beings establish a foundation for love through the family. The world without love is hell; even God's existence loses its meaning. Understand the absolute law of creation: love is human beings' God-given purpose.

Why did God create the universe, and Adam and Eve? We must know the reason. God created because it was good. God wanted to enjoy His good creation.

God wanted to enter and dwell in Adam to become the incorporeal Father, and He wanted Adam to become the corporeal father. Thus, Adam should have become God in the flesh. Why does God need a body of flesh? Because the incorporeal God can not have dominion over the corporeal world that He created, God needs an incarnation of God.

Therefore, God created Adam and Eve to be the incarnations of God. This required that Adam and Eve become one with God. Likewise, Jesus came to become one with God. Adam was supposed to become one with God, but he failed; he screwed up God's plan. Therefore, Jesus had to come to straighten it out. I use a vulgar expression, "he screwed up," but I believe it is not out of place. Jesus probably would like this expression. It gives a more realistic feeling than some euphemistic phrase such as "he made a mistake."

God is an invisible being. To have a form of flesh, the incorporeal God created Adam and Eve. If Adam and Eve, with God dwelling in them, had attained maturity, married and had children, then God would have become the internal Father and Adam the external father. Adam then would have completely resembled God.

Thus resembling God, Adam and Eve were to become the father and mother of humankind. Had this happened, then throughout history people would have always acknowledged the existence of God. No one would doubt the reality of God. If human beings had not fallen, we would be able to see God anytime and God would respond to us whenever we call Him. Who, then, would deny the existence of God? No one would deny it, even if the whole world opposed them.

Watching Adam and Eve loving each other, God would not have been a lonely being. God would have felt matching joy, thinking how strong His own inborn love nature was flowing.

For God, Eve was His future wife. This is because Adam, becoming one with God, was to become God himself. Satan seduced God's wife. Satan is God's enemy and our enemy.

4) Adam and Eve's Growing Period

4) Adam and Eve's Growing Period

Adam and Eve were created with the possibility of becoming perfect without any sin. They were to grow to perfection by obeying God's law. During the growing period, on the way to becoming a mature man and a woman, they were meant to remain as brother and sister. They were to establish the true tradition of living as brother and sister.

During the period of adolescence, the love between man and woman begins to ripen. God must have been waiting, watching and anticipating the day when they could embark on the road of mature love. In the Divine Principle taught in the Unification Church, this period is called "the realm of dominion based on accomplishments through the Principle." Without completing the growing period, one cannot establish the foundation for mature love. God waits for human beings to complete the growing period, for the time when He can directly rule them with love. This is why the growing period is termed the realm of dominion based on accomplishments through the Principle.

The reason God told Adam and Eve, "Do not eat" was that it was not yet time for them to love each other. Since Adam and Eve were still in the growing period, God gave them the commandment to wait until they had matured.

When a person is born through parents, he or she is not born ready-made as a husband or a wife. Rather, he or she is born as a son or a daughter and is educated about love. Through education about love, people learn how to unite with each other.

Therefore, we must stand before God in order to receive education about love that is centered on God's love. We should receive this education of love until we understand the standard of all value, and until we become mature.

From this point of view, one might ask whether Adam and Eve were growing up in God's love. There is no mention of this in the Bible. Instead, the Bible begins with a story about the Fall.

What attitude should Adam and Eve have shown in order to receive this education? Because God the Parent related with Adam and Eve as His children, Adam and Eve should have followed wherever God went and should have remained under His supervision.

However, they left their position as the children of God and departed from the proper attitude. Because God is the absolute Being, Adam and Eve should have followed and obeyed Him absolutely. God was the Mother who gave life to Adam and Eve, and God was their Guardian. God was their Protector against any threat to their lives.

Moreover, it is obvious that God would have enjoyed seeing Adam and Eve attain maturity and love each other more than they loved Him. Why! God is their subject partner. When God's object partners become the wonderful embodiments of love, God as the subject partner will feet much greater value in loving them. Therefore, God's joy would increase.

This is the very first law of creation for human beings. However, since a fallen human being cannot receive this education of love, he cannot even approach that position.

Adam and Eve were to be the lords of all creation. Yet they should have waited until the time decided by God, their Father; that is, they should have waited until they had matured both physically and spiritually. God also said to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply." This means that after their physical and spiritual bodies had matured completely, they were to become husband and wife and to love each other, multiplying sons and daughters.

While they were physically growing up, Adam and Eve spent much of their time together. When something frightening happened, Eve said, "Oh! I'm scared," and she threw herself into Adam's arms or hid behind him. Eve was relieved when Adam embraced her, but at the same time, she received strong masculine stimulation from Adam. Adam also did not dislike this feeling, and received sexual stimulation from Eve, a being different from himself. At that moment, who made the sexual advance, Adam or Eve? Eve was the one who, afraid and jumping into Adam's arms, made the sexual advance. From that moment on, they gradually fell in love.

God created the world with love. Adam and Eve, centering on God's love, were to make the world a well-ordered chain of love, connecting everything to God. Adam and Eve had such a mission. Therefore, they should have always considered what attitude they needed if they were to possess the love that God would one day permit them to share. Because the issue of love was so important, it would determine their life and death.

Every human being, having been conceived centering on one moment, begins during adolescence to look forward to such a moment. We should understand why a man and a woman have to wait before they can have that one moment. A man and a woman can fall in love at any time, yet why do they need to wait? They need to wait because of love. The fullness of love in maturity requires fulfilling the necessary conditions in the growing period, during adolescence.

When Adam and Eve became sixteen, seventeen or eighteen, they naturally awakened to the opposite sex. just as when flowers bloom, people are intoxicated by their fragrance, when Adam and Eve reached adolescence, they began to think about the opposite sex. God also was caught up in this fragrance. Then the three God's love, and Adam and Eve's minds and bodies -- were to become one, at a point which would have become the core of universe. They would then have entered the original orbit, which was to have controlled all love. However, Adam and Eve fell from this point. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have become completely one. If they had become one, God could never leave them, and Adam and Eve could never leave, either. From that point, all the generations would have been connected, realizing the ideal tribe, nation and world. This world would have become a world of splendor, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen upon reaching adolescence around age sixteen or seventeen -- but instead had become one with God's love, then their minds and bodies absolutely could not have divided. With perfect life and perfect love, Adam and Eve would have become a true man and true woman living in a true environment. After the Fall, Adam and Eve always remembered the feeling of anticipation, hoping to stand in that position. Throughout their lives, they longed to find that original position and to think, to live and to love as they were intended to. They surely wanted their children to live in that world.

When can human beings become completely one with God and receive the direct dominion of God? It is the time when man and woman individually become perfect and begin to have give and take of love with each other, in an environment equipped for the reciprocal relationship of subject and object and for the original human love, matured in all aspects. When it happens, God and human beings form a complete whole centering on love and start revolving around the eternal original orbit.

5) The Perfection of the individual and the Starting Point of Love

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.

6) The Ideal World to Be Created through Adam and Eve

6) The Ideal World to Be Created through Adam and Eve

God created one male and one female. After they became perfect, God planned to raise them as one heavenly couple, that they might live a heavenly married life.

God planned to make Adam and Eve the very first husband and wife, and then to build the Kingdom of heaven through them. If this had happened, then the blessings "Be fruitful and multiply" would have been realized at that time. God had given Adam and Eve the ability to multiply His children. The children of Adam and Eve then would have been sinless, perfect human beings.

What else would Adam and Eve have become? No sin would be passed down through the generations of human beings. Through their children, Adam and Eve would have become the God-centered True Father and True Mother of all humankind.

If Adam and Eve had reached perfection without falling, they would have become perfect not only as individuals; their perfection would have had universal and historical significance. Moreover, they would have been able to start a new family centering on God's love. From this family, expanding to a clan, a tribe, a race, a nation, and a world, humankind would have established one big family, with God dwelling in their midst.

The center of this great family would have been God and Adam. The life course of Adam's family, including their lifestyle, customs, practices and the setting of their life, would have remained as an historical tradition in that world. It would be the tradition intertwined with God's love. Because God's love is the origin of life and the source of all ideals, humankind would not be able to leave God's bosom. If they ever departed from it, they would long to return.

Even in this fallen world, when people leave their parents or siblings, they always feel lonely and miss their family. Similarly, once people are intertwined with the love of God, who is the subject of life and ideals, they can never leave His bosom. If they were to leave, they would feel lonely, sad and bereft of joy. Therefore, there is no option other than to become one with God in the realm of His love.

In such a place, a person can be proud of these things: First, God is my Father. Second, we are God's sons and daughters who can receive His love. Third, I am the heir of the universe created by God.

In this world, a person is proud just to marry the daughter of a rich man. However, if God is my Father and if I can receive all of His love, is there anything of which a person can be prouder?

If Adam and Eve had established a God-centered ideal family, then God's will would have been accomplished. Adam's family, attending and serving God the Father above, and as the ancestors of all humankind below, would have become the family that established the starting point of unified love. To realize the ideals for which God created Adam and Eve, their family should have become the foundation upon which to bring everything into unity through love.

If God's will had been realized through husband and wife's love and children's love, then this would have been the foundation for a realm of unified culture to be established on this earth centering on Adam's family. Instead of numerous peoples forming their own cultures and civilizations as exist today, the world would have a single culture, a single philosophy and a single civilization centering on Adam. If history had begun in this way, then our culture, history, customs, language and traditions would be one.

Again, we would have established the ideal family, ideal tribe, race and nation in the realm of God's love, and as this expanded even more, we would have formed one ideal world according to the ideal of Adam. The root, trunk and leaves of a tree are all connected as one life. The worldview from the standpoint of God's will is like this. Centering on love, we should attend God as our Father above, and below, we should transform all humankind into our brothers and sisters sharing one life, the life of love. Afterwards, we should establish the eternal ideal world centering on God. The people living in such a world do not need salvation or a Messiah. They are God's good sons and daughters.

If Adam and Eve had established the first God-centered family, then centering on that family the God-centered tribe, nation and world would also have been established. In that world, God alone would be the sovereign ruler. Then from the very beginning and for all eternity, the world would have abided under the perfect sovereignty.

If this had been accomplished in the Garden of Eden, then there would not be the many different nations and languages we see today. Everyone would be included in Adam's tribe, following the one tradition set up by Adam. The language spoken by Adam would be the language of the world. Indeed, the whole world would live as one nation under God. This was God's plan, that all humankind be born in the Kingdom of heaven on earth.

We are meant to enjoy a heavenly life here on this earth. After our physical life, we are supposed to enter heaven in the spirit world and abide there forever. This was the original design of God. In such a world, there would be no Satan, no evil and no hell.

7) The Fall of Adam and Eve

7) The Fall of Adam and Eve

How did Adam and Eve, created by the omnipotent God, fall? This is an important theological problem.

Many Christians believe literally what is written in the Bible, that Adam and Eve fell by eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If they ate a literal fruit, then it would not have been a big problem. However, when we see the history of the providence of restoration taking six thousand years, we can understand that Adam and Eve did not fall by merely eating a fruit.

How, then, did Adam and Eve fall? Simply, Adam and Eve fell due to a problem of love. Because the problem was love, the providence of restoration has taken thousands of years and has been prolonged repeatedly to this day. Most religious believers have not understood this fact.

Who was it that trampled on love? It was the archangel. He trampled on the love of Adam and Eve. The archangel seduced Eve, and through her, he trampled on Adam. As a result, Adam and Eve's love, which should have centered on parents' love and followed the true path to reach God, deviated and went astray.

This is why all humankind, which was supposed to inherit God's flesh and blood, instead received Satan's flesh and blood. Most religious believers never even dreamed of this.

It is written in the Bible, "Do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." The commandment contains the implication that the relationship between God and human beings could be broken. Indeed, a problem arose, which the Divine Principle explains about clearly. The Divine Principle is a great gospel for people who do not know clearly about the Fall. It is the great gospel for saving all people, who are living in suffering.

We cannot accept that the fruit was the literal fruit of some tree. Why would God create a fruit that could cause a situation in which all humankind would suffer in struggles and destruction for millions of years? It is more logical to regard this situation as resulting from the matter of love that I have been discussing.

Where did the Fall start? [In the family.] What was the fall of the family? Was it eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good or Evil? Nothing other than love could cause Adam and Eve to fall as a family. Did they fall through eating the literal fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Could the Original Sin arise from eating a literal fruit? If, as many believe, the Original Sin occurred when the father ate a fruit, then what kind of fruit could cause thousands of generations of his descendants to become sinners? The generations are related through lineage. If the root of sin is planted in the lineage, the sin continues forever by the law of heredity. Only the problem of love could make this happen. Wrong love was the cause of the Fall.

The Fall occurred when Adam and Eve were tempted by illicit love. This love, though not permitted by God, came at them from the left and the right. Succumbing to it, they violated the moral law.

When you come to know about love, you will be well acquainted with everything. You will not only know the facts of the earth plane, but also your spiritual eyes will open and you will under, stand the physical and spiritual worlds in all their dimensions. You will reach the level where you can see God face to face.

However, Adam and Eve fell before they fully developed their awareness of love. Their immoral relationship with the archangel was the fundamental cause of the destruction of the universe.

The Fall happened because of love. The main point of love is not the eyes or the mouth. The Fall occurred through a man and a woman's love organs. The Fall ruined everything.

The place where love is consummated is where all the senses merge together. However, the fall destroyed this original standard and damaged the entire universe.

We are supposed to grow centering on love. However, when something goes wrong with love, God steps back. In this respect, the Fall cannot be anything other than a failure of love. This is why it became a problem for God, for humankind and for history. Only disastrous failure of love can cause such a shock. It was the greatest catastrophe in the whole universe.

The Fall was making a love relationship with Satan.

The Fall was this: we joined with Satan and left God.

The Fall was the failure of love caused by an evil motive towards the lineage. This is why we inherit the result of the Fall as the Original Sin.

Amazingly, the fact that the Fall resulted from love was only revealed in the time of Reverend Moon. I have investigated its history and systematized its theory, so that no-one can deny it.

The reason that the omniscient and omnipotent God could not prevent the Fall is as follows:

God must maintain the absoluteness of love, so it was for Adam and Eve to develop their love up to the level desired by God. Since they fell during the process of their growth, God could not prevent their fall. As all human beings have to go through the period of adolescence, Adam and Eve were to become perfect after going through a certain growing period. Then they would have become one with God. Yet, they fell before reaching that level.

If Adam and Eve, standing before God, could have understood God's inner feelings, they would not have been able to fall. God as a Parent had a heart of love for His children, but the children did not know their Parent's deep heart. The Fall occurred when Adam and Eve were young. Yet, was the motivation of the Fall because of their deficient age, or rather because of their deficient hearts? If Adam and Eve had said, "God knows me. He can never leave me no matter what," and had felt that they were the center of God's every concern, then they would not have been able to fall. In-other words, the Fall took place because Adam and Eve's hearts were not in accord with God's heart. The Fall happened because their wishes could not meet Heaven's wish, and their thinking strayed from Heaven's thinking.

What is the Fall? The Fall occurs when we engage in human-centered love and ignore heaven and earth, ignore human beings, and ignore God. Therefore, any society where promiscuity is rampant will perish.

The Fall was the archangel and Eve together bringing her husband to ruin.

The Fall was the separation of man and woman. Adam and Eve became enemies.

The most serious among all sins is the sin that ruptures divine love. We must know this law of nature. Adam clearly failed in his duty as a brother, and Eve failed in her duty as a sister. When the archangel tempted Eve, Eve should have checked with Adam and Adam should have asked God. However, because they acted on their own, they went the way of the Fall.

What do you think the Fall is? The Fall meant that they could not live as the original ideal human beings, become the true loving husband and wife desired by God, and live with God centering on love.

The Fall meant that Adam and Eve, who should have become one with each other centering on God, instead became one with the archangel, a servant of God. Instead of inheriting God's lineage, human beings descended from the servant's bloodline. Therefore, no matter how much fallen people call God "my Father," they do not feel it as true to life.

This is because human beings inherited a fallen nature, an inclination to think only of oneself without caring for anything else, including God. We became beings of contradiction, and hence whatever we establish-tribes or nations, etc. divides after a while. In this way, we formed the realm of satanic culture. In the satanic realm, whatever is established as one divides into two, and two into three, until ultimately, everything divides.

God has been unfolding the providence of unification, to bring the divided cultural realms into one. Every human being has an original nature that desires to be part of the central existence of the universe. However, in this world, the central existence is not God, but Satan. Therefore, whenever people seek for the center, they end up becoming unhappy rather than happy. Such has been the unfolding of the miserable history of humankind.

8) The Consequences of the Fall

8) The Consequences of the Fall

Eve united with the archangel through an immoral and adulterous relationship. Then Adam united with Eve, who had become one with the archangel. Adam and Eve thus established a family through a conjugal relationship centered on Satan, rather than God. Consequently, all their descendants stem from Satan's bloodline.

Accordingly, although the sons of Adam and Eve were supposed to become the first and second sons of God, because Eve had an immoral love relationship with the archangel, they became Satan's property instead.

In the original ideal of creation, love determines ownership. According to the Divine Principle, when people make a love relationship, the subject and object partners of that love establish a clear right of ownership over each other. Looking carefully from this Principle viewpoint, we thus recognize that because Eve fell by having an immoral love relationship with the archangel, the right of ownership over Eve's descendants belonged to Satan. Satan could then justifiably claim them as his own.

John 8:44 reads, "You are of your father the devil."

Due to the Fall, the first human beings had no choice but to submit to Satan, their false father. Human beings exchanged fathers. They abandoned God, the true Father, and united with Satan, the false father. Thus, the first man and woman became the son and daughter of Satan.

Adam and Eve unlawfully became husband and wife under Satan, without the blessing or permission of God. Therefore, when Adam and Eve had children, their children were under the same false father as they were. Their children were born not as the children of God, but as the children of Satan. From Adam onward, people have multiplied children carrying the Original Sin and formed the sinful world. All this was the consequence of the first human beings not keeping themselves centered on God.

This world is a world of sin, a world of distrust, a world of crime, a world of hatred and war. Nations destroy other nations without pity. This is hell on earth. In fact, the master of this earth is Satan, not God. Thus, it is written in John 12:31, "Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out."

We all know that God created the universe. We also know well that God created human beings. However, God could not become our lord. This is because human beings exchanged lords. Human beings rebelled against God and united with the false lord, Satan. Therefore, Satan has been the father of humankind.

Adam and Eve, the first ancestors, disbelieved God's Word and fell. They therefore could not become each other's true ideal counterpart; they lost the true husband-wife relationship.

God's original purpose for Adam and Eve was that they marry as a good bridegroom and a good bride, becoming husband and wife. As husband and wife, they were to become parents. In spite of this purpose, they fell and their relationship was ruined. This is why the providence of restoration began with their children, Cain and Abel.

Our lives are not supposed to be situated in a history with such a beginning. We cannot help but resent being born into such misfortune, such an unbearable situation. You should protest and reproach your ancestors for it.

Because Adam and Eve fell, God cannot regard them as the ancestors of a true humanity, as the parents of humankind, or as His son and daughter. Although Adam and Eve were God's only son and daughter, they descended to a position where God could not treat them as His son and daughter. God had intended to bless Adam and Eve as husband and wife when they grew up. He wanted to find in them object partners who would offer filial devotion. Nevertheless, Adam and Eve proved themselves unfilial as a son and daughter, as well as unfilial as a bridegroom and bride.

God had great hope for Adam and Eve's future. He had been investing a great deal in them and was looking forward to the future. Nevertheless, because Adam and Eve fell, God was unable to feel from them the heart of filial piety as children or the heart of filial piety as bridegroom and bride, that is to say, as husband and wife. God expected that Adam and Eve would establish the position of loyalty and filial piety, and thus become the ancestors of a hopeful future and the king and queen of all humankind. However, you must know that Adam and Eve did not become the object partners who would offer filial piety to God.

As a consequence of the Fall, human beings lost the true love of a father, the true love of a husband, and the true love of a brother. Since Eve's fall caused this loss, women have had to suffer so much through history until they find these loves.

As a result of the Fall, we lost true parents, true husband and wife, and true children. Eve and the archangel caused this loss.

Consequently, women living on this earth are dependent upon archangel-type fathers, archangel-type husbands, and archangel-type brothers. Therefore, women are very miserable. It is like the daughter of a rich man who lives with a house-servant. Driven from her parents' home, she and her children are considered members of the servant's bloodline.

Since women never received love from their original husband, original father, and original brother, the person who comes as the Lord brings these kinds of love. Due to the Fall, three kinds of love relationships (with a father, a husband, and a brother) could not be perfected, and consequently women could not become happy daughters. Therefore, the Lord has to come on this earth with these three kinds of love combined.

Because the order of love was trampled down, we cannot bring happiness to the world until we restore the order of love.

People in the satanic realm have no relationship at all with God's lineage. In other words, while human beings were supposed to be born as the children of good parents, in reality they were born to evil parents. From that evil center, one family spread out to a tribe, nation and world.

The Fall might seem to be a problem limited to Adam and Eve. However, because Adam and Eve are the ancestors of humankind, they are like a spring whose waters flow to influence every subsequent individual, family, tribe, race, nation, and world.

The fall of Adam and Eve was not a fall just of Adam and Eve; it was the fall of human history altogether. That is to say, as a consequence of their fall, Adam and Eve became evil parents instead of good parents. From evil parents, evil children were born. These evil children formed an evil tribe, evil nation and evil world, which today numbers over three billion people.

The history of humankind living in this satanic realm has not been joyful, but very sorrowful. The present condition of humankind in this satanic realm is not joyful, but very sorrowful.

Because Adam and Eve fell, God's ideal of creation was not realized. Rather, Adam and Eve became the fallen parents and multiplied children with Original Sin. The history of humankind has developed from this family, expanding to the tribe, race, nation and world. The ideal of True Parents who can stand having perfected God's original will has remained unfulfilled ever since the Fall. The ideals of the true family, true tribe, true race, true nation, and true world centering on True Parents remain unfulfilled as well.

9) If Adam and Eve Had Not Fallen

9) If Adam and Eve Had Not Fallen

If the first human ancestors had not fallen, whose sons or daughters would you be? From birth, you would naturally be sons and daughters of God.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen, all humankind would be true sons and daughters of God. We would not be people mocked, dominated, or accused by our enemies. As the sons and daughters of God, wherever we go we would have absolute authority to represent God's unlimited omnipotence. Were such sons and daughters to form a family, it would be the family of God, to which everything in the universe would submit. Again, were this family to form a tribe and spread abroad, the whole creation would come to guard them and be absorbed by them. However, because of the Fall, human beings instead became the objects of mockery by their enemies.

As they are totally under enemy occupation, human beings are not in a position where God can intervene.

Suppose the first human ancestors had not violated the original law of God, but instead had become one with God eternally. No one would then be able to pull Adam and Eve away from their unity with God. Having been born as a son and daughter of God, and having matured in their relationship to Him, then even if someone challenged Adam and Eve, pointing to someone else and saying, "Hey, who is your father? Isn't he your father?" and even if he tried to persuade them with theories and doctrines, nothing could make them deny their relationship with God. No one could make them deny their relationship with God, not even with a gun or a knife.

If there were no Fall, the original heavenly family would have formed in the Garden of Eden and prospered within God's dominion. Satan would have no grounds to accuse this family.

Because Adam and Eve fell, they could not understand God's heart. But, suppose Adam and Eve had grown up, perfected their character, and then stood in front of God. If Adam and Eve had reached maturity as perfected beings, then God would have blessed them and bequeathed His heart to them. God intended to raise them as a heavenly husband and wife who could share His love and heart, forming a family in His lineage.

If the first human ancestors had not fallen, what a world this would be! If Adam and Eve, protected in the embrace of God's love, had reached maturity and perfection, then God would have given them the Blessing of marriage. For this God created them man and woman. If this had happened, then instead of being the fallen human ancestors, Adam and Eve would have become the sinless people who could receive God's love. They would have become the completely perfect, true ancestors of humankind. They would have become the True Parents living on this earth. In other words, they would have emerged as the true bride and bridegroom whom God could truly love on this earth.

From the love of Adam and Eve, who, not having fallen, would completely support God's will, true brothers would have been born on this earth. As sinless parents, Adam and Eve would have given birth to sinless children and thus have formed a family on this new earth centering on God. Once this family had expanded into a sinless tribe and race, nation and world, then this earth would have become a world governed by God, in both name and reality. God would then have become the King of all humankind.

Had this happened, we would not need a savior, religion, or prayer. We must understand that only because of the Fall do we need a savior, religion and prayer. These came as gifts of the Fall.

Let us imagine what the unfallen world that God originally intended would have been like. Adam would have become the True Parent and brought forth true children. They would have become the true lineage of Adam's tribe. The culture of that world would be Adam's culture. That world would be a unified world.

Whatever is united in God's love cannot be divided. Even in this fallen world, people who love each other would rather die than be apart. How much more would this be true of two people who have become one in God's love in the unfallen, good world. When united with God, the body and mind become one and do not separate. The reason it does not happen this way is that something went awry.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have received God's complete love. As a son and daughter receiving God's complete love, if Adam and Eve had united in God's love, they would have given birth to children who were centered on God's love. Therefore, in the true love of God, they would have set up the tradition of a husband, the tradition of a wife, the tradition of a son and the tradition of a daughter. By establishing the tradition of a family centering on God, they would have accomplished God's will.

God originally desired that this world become a garden of love. Adam was the floral fragrance representing God's right side and Eve was the floral fragrance representing God's left side. The day when these two sides were to have met, the fragrance of love would have filled the whole of heaven and earth. However, because of the Fall, a terrible stench pervades this world. We must not become such foul-smelling people.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen, but had fulfilled God's will, this world would surely have become a God-centered world with a single culture. It would be the world of Adam and Eve's culture, the world of Abel and Cain's culture. Therefore, instead of many different languages, traditions and cultures, this world would be one global nation, which attends and serves God.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen, what kind of world would have been established? It would have been one nation over which God has direct sovereignty. Instead, because of the Fall, the world was established under Satan's dominion. Therefore, we need salvation, belief in God, and a religious life.

Adam and Eve were supposed to become perfect according to God's will, receive God's blessing, and establish God's nation starting from their family. They should have achieved their perfection through true love. If Adam and Eve had attended God and had become His horizontal counterparts, then the world fulfilling the purpose of creation would have begun and expanded to the far reaches of the universe.

After becoming one as husband and wife, Adam and Eve were to establish one world based on that tradition. However, Adam and Eve abandoned God's will and fell.

After being created and brought to birth, Adam and Eve were supposed to learn and master everything in order to one day govern all things. If Adam and Eve had teamed about natural law and the nature of living things, they would have understood about good and evil. They then would not have acted in such a way as to fall.

In order to restore the fallen world established by Adam and Eve to the original world, God has been walking the course of indemnity. This is called the "Providence" and the "Way of God's Will."

1) The Original Love of Man and Woman

1) The Original Love of Man and Woman

When God's most precious masterpieces, man and woman, love each other centering on God, their love is the highest and most transcendental love, not worldly love. Their love is the most beautiful love, the representative of all love, and the love that shines forever.

Even though a man and a woman love each other, the issue is whether their love agrees with what God originally meant love to be, and whether it meets the standard of love that God intended for human beings. The issue is whether their love corresponds to the model of love that God has in mind. We can conclude that if the first man and woman had become one in love centering on God, they would have become the model for a love-centered universe.

God must have desired such love for human beings. Man and woman must have also desired such love from each other. This quality of true love has to be the core of the universe. It should be the standard, like the metric system.

The love between man and woman must be love centered on the ideal of creation. When a husband loves his wife and a wife loves her husband, their love must be centered on God's ideal of creation, not centered on their own couple.

If a husband and wife are a God-centered couple, the wife can move about anywhere in her husband's world and the husband can move about anywhere in his wife's world; and they can move about anywhere God dwells.

For whom are human beings supposed to live? When God created Adam, Adam's value of existence could not be complete since Eve did not yet exist. Adam needed Eve as his spouse if he was to exist eternally. In this sense, a woman is a man's subject partner. On the other hand, a husband has charge over his wife.

The power by which a man has charge over his wife, and a woman has charge over her husband, is love. No power other than love can enable a man and a woman to dominate each other. The only way they can dominate each other is with love.

God, too, exists with dual characteristics. God can exist eternally because these two distinct aspects engage in give and take action centering on love. God's love is absolute because His dual characteristics completely submit to each other in love. We must know that perfect dominion is only possible through love.

God does not stop after forming a vertical reciprocal realm of love. God created the existent world as the stage upon which horizontal love can exist, based on this vertical realm. In order to connect to the horizontal love relationship, He created the world as plus and minus, ultimately man and woman. Consequently, God would have dominion over the created world, centering on human beings through love.

My earthly parents give birth to my physical body, and my vertical parents give me eternal life. Love alone makes it possible for the horizontal parents and the vertical parents to unite. Where a perfected man's love and a perfected woman's love become one at the center of God's genuine will, that is where God's love dwells and where my life is conceived and brought to birth.

The reason God created everything in complementary pairs was so that they could receive God's true love. God wanted them to receive this one love. As a man and woman are a complementary pair, they will definitely become an ideal husband and wife once they perfect God's love, connect that love to their own self, and share that love with each other from the same ground of complementarity as God.

God's love and human love are essentially the same. People love each other to become one. Why do man and woman long for each other? It is because a man can possess God only through woman, and a woman can possess God only through man.

Considering that God is the origin of the dual characteristics, we should praise the sacred value of man and woman. Such is the exalted value of God that we should never cease praising Him.

In the heart of a man, there is a woman whom God loves. In the heart of this woman, the man's object, there is also a man loved by God. When they praise each other, God would watch and rejoice, and the whole creation would rejoice. The element of happiness with which the man and woman embrace would become the joy of both heaven and earth. As they love and embrace each other, the whole universe unites into one. This is the appearance of the original creation according to God's ideal.

Man was created to meet a woman who could make him happy, and woman was created to meet a man who could make her happy. Furthermore, their meeting should transcend the two of them, a time when God and all creation would watch and rejoice. All existent beings in this world would mobilize for the sake of this couple, and would want to be governed by them. The birds would sing songs for them. The butterflies would flit about and dance for them. God would rejoice, humans would rejoice, and all nature would rejoice. If the human ancestors had met in this way and started human history from this meeting, then the world would have become the original ideal of creation.

Who on earth is the owner of love? Who is the master of love? From a man's point of view, neither love nor anything else can exist if there is no woman. The standard of a man's love is a woman. The standard of a woman's love is a man. However, the standard of love based on one's counterpart is not the standard of absolute love. We recognize that our partner is a transient being. Our partner is not a being whom we can acknowledge as having the value of the subject of love. The owner and master of absolute love is God. A thief who stole love, instead of trying to perfect God's love according to His will, committed the crime in the Garden of Eden.

2) The Reason Man and Woman Are Born

2) The Reason Man and Woman Are Born

The reason a being called woman was created was to become the spouse of a man, Adam. If there were no Adam, then a woman like Eve would not have been necessary. Why was Adam created? Adam was created because a man was necessary for Eve.

Human beings, man and woman, are not created to live for the sake of themselves, but to live for the sake of their counterparts.

Therefore, a man is not born as a man for the sake of himself. Neither is a beautiful woman born for her own sake, even if she hates men. Look at her appearance! She was not born for herself. We are not born for the sake of ourselves, but for the sake of our counterparts.

When parents live for the sake of their children, and children live for their parents, both taking good care of each other, they start a rotation. The more they live for each other, the faster they rotate. This is the ideal form of their relationship. It is not square, but round and three-dimensional. As we live for the sake of the other, we give each other a push. Therefore, the more we live for each other, the faster we rotate. We form a sphere, which lets us exist eternally.

The Earth resembles a sphere. The human face is round. Our eyes are also round. They are completely engaged in give and take. In the body, the veins and arteries also engage in give and take. Sickness breaks out when there is a loss of balance-for instance, a way to give but no way to receive. Thus, it is evident that no existence can remain in motion eternally unless it follows the principle of acting for the sake of others. You must know this.

What was the primary reason for man to be born? We cannot deny that man is born for woman. Woman, for her part, is born for man, not for woman. When a woman is not convinced that she was born for the sake of a man, a problem arises. We must know this.

God, the ultimate subject of the creation of heaven and earth, made this the law of creation. Unless we follow this law, we cannot enter the world of goodness, happiness and peace, the world of love and ideal.

Male was created for female, and female was created for male. God does not dwell where one has regard only for oneself. God only dwells where people value others. According to the view of the Divine Principle and the laws of nature, we are walking with two legs.

A woman is born to meet a man, and a man is born to meet a woman. Right? This is the highest truth. Therefore, according to this principle, we must go forward seeking the realm of Blessing. To break away from the realm of the highest truth is most evil.

Men and women are physiologically opposite. While women tend to go in one direction, men go in three or four different directions. Women stay at home, while men wander about the world. In such ways, man and woman's characters are totally opposite. How can a man with subjective character and a woman with objective character unite? They can unite centering on love. It is also love that can unite human beings and God.

Why is a man born? It is not for knowledge, money, or power. It is for a woman. Man is born for woman. A man does not have a bigger frame than a woman so that he can earn money and live for himself. Rather, it is to support his wife and children. The male organ is different from the female organ. For whom do they have these organs? Their organs are not for themselves. A man's organ was made for a woman; hence, it belongs to the woman. Likewise, a woman's organ belongs to her man. Have you ever thought this way? [Laughter.] This is not a laughing matter.

What represents the love between man and woman? Where is love's final destination? It is the sexual organs, which enable a man and woman to become one. The sexual organs provide the path for the mind and body to unite completely in love. The man's sexual organ is not his, and the woman's organ is not hers. The man owns the woman's and woman owns the man's. You must know clearly that you do not exist for yourselves. You were born for your counterpart.

Man is not born for man. Woman is not born for woman. Viewed horizontally, their relationship is one of head and helper, subject and object. A woman is not born with a feminine figure for the sake of woman, nor is a man born with a masculine physique for the sake of man. They are born for each other.

Looked at this way, how can a woman realize her purpose? She cannot realize it by herself. That is impossible. She must realize it together with a man. Indeed, she can realize it only through a man. Doesn't the joy of man and woman lie here? This is something beyond dispute.

Man and woman were created on the earth in order to love each other. God, the Great King of wisdom, exchanged at the creation the man and woman's love organs. Therefore, a man does not own his male organ. It is the same for a woman. Those who use them as they wish, disregarding their owners, face judgment for the violation of love. If you knew that you would receive the most severe punishment required by any law, could you dare even to think of such a thing, disregarding your wife? Could you wives dare to think of such a thing, disregarding your husbands?

3) The Being that Is Absolutely Necessary for the Other

3) The Being that Is Absolutely Necessary for the Other

Love is what you absolutely need. Isn't that right? For human beings, the absolutely necessary elements are man and woman. Man needs woman and woman needs man. How much do they need each other? They need each other more than they need Korea, more than they need the world, even more than they need God. If there were no women, within a hundred years the human race would perish. A man might swagger about unifying the whole world, but all would be gone within a hundred years if there was no woman. Therefore, a man absolutely needs a woman.

What is the most precious thing for a woman? It is a man. What kind of man does a woman need? Whether the man is hand, some, ugly, or disabled is not the issue. The issue is whether he is the kind of man who will give her precious love.

What is the best thing in the world? For a woman, is it not a man? For a man, is it not a woman? The love that a man likes is not his own; the love that a woman likes is also not her own. Is that not right? Does your mind incline to love when you are alone? It does not.

When we say human being, we mean man and woman. No man is complete without his wife, and no woman is complete without her husband. A man was not born from his own desire, and neither was the woman whom the man needs. At birth, one is either male or female. One grows up either as a man or a woman. Eventually, one realizes that one's life is on a course to search for the person whom one needs to become a couple.

When a person is born as a man, does he know there is a woman? After being born, if he were to discover that there are only men, would he feel bad? A woman would also feel bad were she to discover that there are only women. Is that not right? Then, when a woman is born, is she born knowing that there are men, or not knowing? I myself was born not knowing, but the person who gave birth to me knew. The reason you are born as a woman is that there is a man who needs you. Likewise, the reason I was born as a man is that there is a woman who needs me. Isn't that so? We were all born that way.

Woman is the absolutely necessary being for man. Before a man absolutely needs God, he needs a woman as his counterpart. Human history has been so miserable because men could not recognize that they absolutely need women. Equally, women failed to recognize that they absolutely need men.

To taste true love requires that we have an ideal realm. For that reason, a man requires a woman and a woman absolutely requires a man. For the sake of true love, an absolute man and an absolute woman join together with all their heart and all their effort. When an absolute man and woman unite into one, know that God dwells in them.

Because God dislikes seeing a husband and wife joined in true love suffer any separation, He ordained that the love between an absolute husband and wife be eternal. Although God is absolute, omniscient and omnipotent, by Himself His existence has no meaning. Likewise, no matter how handsome and healthy a man may be, his life has no meaning without a woman. A man who is intoxicated with his appearance and health is a scoundrel, a good-for-nothing. It is a problem that many men in the world are so full of themselves. It is also the cause of much suffering in history. Know that God's providence is to change and elevate this world of vanity.

If a man looks for love by sitting down alone, he would be regarded as a crazy person.

True happiness for a woman is to meet her subject of love.

4) Love Comes from One's Counterpart

4) Love Comes from One's Counterpart

Love cannot be realized alone. Where does love come from? It comes not from myself, but from my object partner. Because love comes from my object partner, I must lower my head and live for the sake of my partner. This is the source of the heavenly law, "Live for the sake of others." To receive that most precious and valuable thing coming to you, you must put the philosophy "live for others" into practice.

Love is something even God cannot realize alone. Love is always realized on the foundation of a relationship. Where does love begin? It does not begin from myself, but arises from my partner.

There is love among human beings. However, love does not arise by itself Love does not arise when a man is alone. It arises when a woman stands before the man as his partner. When the partner appears, love arises for the first time.

We say, "My parents' love is good," and "My husband's (or wife's) love is good." This means that the true love is not love centered on oneself Love does not begin from myself but begins from my counterpart. It arises from my husband or my wife, from my sons and daughters, from my brothers and sisters. Love does not start from myself alone; it starts from my counterpart. Who, then, is the owner of love? The counterpart is the owner of love.

Where does love come from? It comes from one's partner. If your partner is ugly and you dislike him or her, love tends to retreat. If your partner is good looking and you like him or her, love's effect works that much faster. Your partner's speech, beauty, smell, taste, etc. determine love's effect.

Alone, one can never feel love. It is the same with happiness. Likewise, we cannot talk about peace if we only consider one country. We must speak about the relationship that can form between two or more countries.

It is the same with happiness. Can you feel happiness alone? You can feel true happiness only when you and your partner, with whom you form a mutual relationship, love each other.

It is the same with freedom. True freedom cannot be realized alone. True freedom is obtained within love, together with love. Only within love can infinite freedom blossom. Within true love, even if one partner holds all authority and rules with a whip, his or her partner would feet no restraint, but rather feel deep joy and delight. This is because in love one lives for the sake of one's partner, ready to sacrifice oneself to save the other's life.

What is the base of love? The base of love is not I. The noun "love" is a relational concept. No matter how handsome a man may be, if he has no relationship with a partner, he cannot have love. The base of love is not I. It is Satan who has been saying, "Love is for myself." The base of love is not I. We have believed that the base of love is myself, but until we expunge this idea and have the correct concept, we cannot change the course of history.

Wives have been asserting that they are the center and expect to be served, while their husbands, for their part, have been asserting and expecting the same. This causes a rupture. Because the base of love is not in you but with your partner, you must sacrifice yourself in order to obtain love. Love always requires sacrifice. Love also requires that you overcome difficulties.

In this respect, the substance that can subjugate this satanic world cannot be found anywhere in heaven and earth. It can only be found through the law of love centering on God; thus, God is always strongly holding on to love. The word "compassion" cannot be spoken apart from love in the world. The word "humanness" (jen) cannot exist without two people. The words "compassion" and "humanness" (jen) are both relational concepts.

5) The True Perspective on the Opposite Sex

5) The True Perspective on the Opposite Sex

Man symbolizes heaven and woman symbolizes earth. Man and woman should come together and create harmony.

Men and women are different. Men's muscles are rugged and women's are smooth. Men grow beards and women do not. Their voices are different, also. Their opposite qualities suit each other. Therefore, harmony arises between them.

The physical structure of a human being exhibits a complementary relationship of left and right. The two halves are put together exactly.

Do you think it is good to be only high or only low? It is better to make harmony. Looking towards the horizon, fishes live below, and mammals and birds live above.

A woman menstruates once a month. Her body changes with the moon, like the tides which rise and fall. It is like breathing.

A man and a woman in harmony move in parallel. Why do people like Disneyland, with its various rides going up and down? It is because the universe is like that. Which feels better, the concord of some men or the concord of a man and a woman? We prefer the concord of a man and a woman, because the universe is like that. In the universe, the harmony of yin and yang brings about concord; everything follows this pattern.

When two people of the opposite sex make harmony, they begin a circular movement. When they become one in love and bear fruit, God comes down and they rise up, meeting at the center. God becomes the central point of the circle, and the circular movement becomes spherical movement. From the central point, God can reach out in all directions. At this central point is the harmony of love, the quickening of life, and the starting point of egalitarianism and communalism. This all happens because the power of love is there. Love is the power which activates and embraces everything in the universe.

Our young girls say they do not, but their eyes steal a glance at the face of a handsome man. Young men also have much interest in pretty girls, don't they? That is love in the fallen world. No matter how good looking a man is, a girl should first think of him as her brother. She should think of him as one of her brothers, the one who resembles her father. This is because the closest person to a girl is her brother. You should associate the man with the men who are closest to you. Should you come to regard him as closer to you than any of these men, someone who would live for you, then he can become your husband.

Are young girls naturally inclined to think of their partners first? Even if your brother is ugly, he is the one to whom you girls want to go and discuss things with when you have difficulties or when you are happy. You also feet this way towards your father. Then how wonderful if you think, "I will treat my husband better than I treat my father and my brother!"

You already have the love of your brother, who treats you as a true sister, and the love of your father, who treats you as a true daughter. You have to arouse and elevate those loves and find a way to connect them to a higher love. This is the reason you should determine to treat your husband better than your brother and father. Therefore, your husband loves you more than any other man does, even more than your father or your brother. This is how you can be elevated to the next level. This is the reason why young girls wish to get married, even forsaking their father and brother.

Likewise, when a young man meets a girl, he should feel, "Oh, my loving sister!" He should think, "Oh, she is like my loving elder sister, and she is the extension of my loving mother!" A woman should regard her husband as her bridge to the world. Through him, she should be able to love men of every race and nationality.

In the vertical God-centered world, marriage is the training ground for limitlessly extending the road of man and woman's love. In the world where all are related, people learn to love all people, young and old, men and women, through raising their own children. Would not such a world be close to the ideal world?

From the viewpoint of the principle of complementary relationships, when a man and a woman meet, who is the subject? Is the woman the subject of the mind, and the man the subject of the body? Are they both subjects? Is the man the subject, or is the woman? When it comes to affection, women are much more affectionate than men. In this respect, the woman is the subject. However, no matter how affectionate a woman is by nature, she does not become truly affectionate until she meets a man and serves him. Right? A woman is the field of affection, and a man is the seed of affection. The field must be there for the seed to be sown. The seed is not there before the field. When we view the matter from the seed, the field is the object.

Today in this fallen world, love has become the most dangerous thing. Because of the fall, if people do not properly care for love, the whole world breaks apart and turns inside out. People have not understood why love became something false and filthy. Nevertheless, human beings try to guard and protect love out of their original instinct, which longs for true love to appear.

For human beings, love is eternal. Love is one, not two. Once a man and a woman unite in love, they are meant to share happily married years together for a long time on the earth and live together eternally after their death. Although there are two bodies, they unite by rotating as one. When the two bodies unite, they are to rotate with God, forming the Four Position Foundation of love. This is the ideal world of love. False love cannot invade; only true love dwells there.

When a man and a woman receive the Blessing and attain perfection centering on God, God will always come to them. In a Four Position Foundation of love, you can come to love the heart of your spouse through the body of your spouse, or if you love the heart of your spouse first, your body will follow.

The Unification Church understands the providence Of love, which had been hidden for six thousand years. It has been expanding the foothold of the Blessing in order to fulfill the ideal of creation centering on God's love. Through the Blessing, it is establishing the holy of holies. This is the place where new life begins.

What do you think is the center where all physical cells and spiritual elements unite one hundred percent? It is human sexuality. After passing through the period of adolescence and maturing in both body and spirit, human beings seek out the way Of love) where their body and spirit resonate in complete concord and become perfect.

What is the color of love? Is it black at night, white during the daytime, and yellow in the evening? Does love have its own color? In the color at the center of love there is a power, which can bring peace and unity and which can achieve true human equality. Therefore, if people enter the holy of holies as they please, they will bum to death in its fire.

Don't you think that the Unification Church's idea of love is wonderful? The color of love in today's American society is, in a word, disgusting, the color of death. Instead of establishing a world according to the eternal ideal of creation, Americans are drowning in the abyss. Men and women should keep their holy of holies pure until the time of their Blessing. Then, once they love someone, they should keep that love continually. However, Americans are like gangsters and bitches, violating the most holy place of love. The only Americans who do not welcome the Blessing are invalids who have been blinded by love and cannot see what is in front of them. They are the destroyers, not the leading builders of their nation. If American society continues to go this way, it will not have hope for tomorrow, but will be filled with despair. Truly, America will be destroyed not by God's judgment, but by people who have destroyed themselves and lost their humanity.

Where is God's holy of holies? It is where love was to have dwelt had there been no fall, in the sexual union of man and woman. This was to be the most holy place of heaven.

What is love? Love is the holy of holies, the dwelling-place of God. With this love we must cleanse the fallen world. I have already clarified the meaning of the fall. Human beings who were supposed to pass through the period of adolescence without any problem, failed to do so and went off the track. Eve, the ancestor of the human race, fell first by having a spiritual immoral liaison with the archangel. She then fell physically by having a relationship with Adam. Consequently, their sinful lineage has been passed down to their posterity, all humankind.

Know that God can never dwell in a place where the trace of Satan remains. That is why to receive God's love, human beings have to die and be born again. Even in human society, when a woman gets married for the second time, her husband would not like her if she has not yet forgotten her former husband.

Therefore, God has been carrying out the providence of salvation, having human beings cleanse their sin by the process of restoration through indemnity.

6) Man: Integrity; Woman: Chastity

6) Man: Integrity; Woman: Chastity

From now on, you must conceive your idea of heaven centering on the family. You must think deeply about your family. You have to become the prince of your family. You have to become the prince of all the subjects in history. To do this, you as a man must keep your chastity.

Until now, society has emphasized the chastity of women. Right? Who lost their chastity in the Garden of Eden? Was it the woman or the man? [Ans. It was the woman.] Did you say the woman? The man also lost it. Adam, who was the center of Eden, also lost his chastity. Because Adam was seduced by Eve, Adam, who was originally the root, was also cut off. It was the woman, Eve, who made the man, Adam, fall. To indemnify this, women have been trampled by men. Isn't that so? Now, in order to liberate women, I am promoting a movement for the equality of men and women and a movement for the liberation of women. We must carry on these movements more for the sake of posterity than for the people today.

What is the bridegroom who stands before the bride? He is a chaste man. He is a world-level chaste man. You have heard of the expression "a chaste woman" before, but have you ever heard the expression, "a chaste man"? Jesus was a chaste man. He was the chaste bridegroom for all humankind who stood in the position of his bride. Jesus was the man among all men, officially recognized by heaven and earth, by history, by his age, by the present and the future. How could people think that they could be Jesus' brides when they cannot even acquire the title of "a chaste man" or "a chaste woman"? It is the style of a robber to ask to be Jesus' bride without becoming at least a chaste man and woman. Imagine if a woman living in a cave of beggars went about shouting that a world famous president like President Kennedy was her husband? Everyone would think she is crazy.

Yet, that is what the Christians are doing. Like beggars, they have been calling out to the prince of God, "Oh, my bridegroom, please come." They are in rags calling to Jesus, "Please come here and live with me." They have done nothing to liberate Jesus from his deep resentment and help him to complete his purpose. If they do not liberate Jesus from his resentment, can they liberate God, who sent Jesus? No, they cannot. They cannot liberate God; they cannot liberate Jesus; hence, they cannot liberate the world created by God.

You women! Don't look around at the many men out there in the world. No man should be able to have his way with the women of the Unification Church. If you are assaulted, you should either kill yourself or stab the attacker in the stomach with a knife. Do you understand?

Your chastity is more precious than your life. You women are to open the historical path for your husband's love, your sons' and daughters' love, the nation's love and the world's love. With truth and sincerity, you should devote all your heart to the serious task of building the foundation upon which woman's beauty, nobility and emotional tradition can shine.

Now, are you allowed to love someone as you wish, or not? When a man calls you on the street, are you supposed to follow him, or not? You are not. Nevertheless, you follow, don't you? [Laughter] You should not have such an inclination. You must guard your body until the right time. You should not give away your pure heart to a goblin. Men who wander aimlessly on the streets are all like goblins. Will you entrust your fate to a man like that? This is not a trivial thing. You can never regain your chastity, so one wrong step can ruin your entire life. Is that not true? It is the same for men. Until now, women were admonished to keep their chastity, but henceforth men must keep their chastity also. This is the way to restore everything. Your behavior should not deviate from the prescribed and correct path, regardless of how evil and rough the world may be.

You should not sully your innocence during adolescence. It is the precious period when you can overcome and indemnify the resentment of Adam and Eve, who lost their innocence during their youth. You should preserve your innocence, precious and clean. You should have the integrity and determination that, "Even if I have to live alone for a thousand years or ten thousand years, I will not allow anyone to trample my love."

The tradition and teaching of the Unification Church is that you cannot meet and love your partner unless you love your people and nation. You cannot obtain and love your partner unless you love the world. You cannot obtain and love your partner unless you love God. Therefore, after you love God, love the world and love the nation, then you can love your wife or husband. This is a fundamental law.

Some married men, when they see a pretty woman, think how nice it would be if she were their wife. Such a person has two minds. We call him a man with the mind of a thief. Satan started from two minds; thus it is right to call such a man with two minds "Satan." He is no different from Satan.

The time has come when men as well as women should keep their chastity. If a man takes a wrong step and loses his chastity, it is as if his entire clan committed a serious offense against God's Will. The time has come when it is no longer acceptable for an elderly man to have a secret affair. A man's philandering will ruin his entire clan. Once you understand the Unification teaching, you cannot do that.

We have now entered the age in which men as well as women should keep their chastity. Men as well as women should keep chaste and create a historical tradition of purity. We participate in the Eucharist, eating Jesus' flesh and blood, in order to embody the tradition of Jesus' pure flesh and blood.

There is a saying, "Man: integrity; woman: chastity." This saying means that one should have integrity for realizing God's purpose and chastity for the fulfillment of love, which is God's will. "Woman: chastity" means that a woman should know only one love. "Man: integrity" means that a man should devote himself to realize just one purpose.

Consider Adam and Eve: their path should have been one of integrity and chastity, but they failed and fell.

For a man to love a woman centered on God, he should maintain his position. He should be able to declare, "I have loved her completely. I have loved her with a love never changing from beginning to end." A woman, for her part, should seal her body well shut. A woman should conceal her essence deep inside, like a peony which is wrapped with many layers of petals. Then she can welcome the coming of spring. She can start her new life in tune with its harmony of heaven and earth. This is how she can love well.

7) Love Is Not About Progress or Revolution

7) Love Is Not About Progress or Revolution

Love is not about revolution, progress, or setbacks. Love cannot be improved, nor can it undergo a revolution. The original model of love itself is perfect, unchangeable, eternal and absolute.

Love has nothing to do with progress or with revolution. Love is eternal and perfect; that is an immutable truth. It is wrong to experiment with love, thinking that it brings progress. In this sense, Americans who exploit love to make money can only perish. God has no reason to bless their future. If America does not self-destruct, I might even explode a love-bomb to make it perish. We should absolutely never use love as a means or as an expedient for making a living.

A husband does not want any revolutionary change or gradual development in his wife; he wants her to remain as she was when they first fell in love. A wife feels the same way towards her husband. All husbands and wives want to preserve the pure love that they had when they first loved each other. They do not want any tint to be added to their pure love; certainly, they do not need any revolutionary change. Truly, husbands and wives want their pure love to remain eternally as it is.

Why does the problem of divorce occur among people who have loved each other? Considering that the people who have divorced or wish to divorce once loved each other desperately, we can conclude that something must have gone awry. There are many reasons to get divorced, but in general, it is because something has changed, something has become different between the two. It is because they could not keep and cultivate their love. Love itself did not change; it is the person's mind that changed.

When a man and a woman become husband and wife, the important thing they need to know is how they can realize unchanging unity. In that unity, singing songs of happiness-that is eternal happiness. Only by possessing something of the unchanging Subject can they attain the true measure of affection.

A woman is happy when she marries her husband because he is a handsome man. Suppose one week later the husband has a car accident and is permanently disabled. Her love would not be true love if she then asked for a divorce. That would be false love.

A study on divorce reported that over sixty percent of divorces were initiated by the woman.

Today, in most advanced countries, white people are the upper class, in the position to lead and move society, and black people are the lower class, in the position of being ruled. However, when it comes to the depth of parents' love for children, there is no difference between white people and black people. Regarding love, there are no rulers and no ruled. This never changes. The loving heart of parents for their children, the loving heart of a wife for her husband, and the loving heart of a husband for his wife-these true loving hearts between true lovers can never change, regardless of how history changes, progresses, or goes through revolutions.

True love is absolute, unchanging and eternal.

8) Love is Something Very Natural

8) Love is Something Very Natural

When I was young, I once caught a pair of birds and tried to make them kiss each other. In order to see them kiss each other, I made a cage, placed them in it and fed them. With the heart of a little boy, I wanted to see the birds loving each other and singing joyfully. It was a child's experiment, done out of curiosity about the laws of nature. Thinking back, I did these mischievous things for quite some time. Eventually, I realized that love happens in a natural environment. True love occurs in the most natural and free environment. It took me a long time and many experiments until I clearly understood this about love.

When I was young, I grew up in the countryside where migratory birds visited and different flowers blossomed as seasons changed. Wherever I went in Korea, there were four distinct seasons. As they changed, I could experience in each the beauty of nature. In Seoul today, you can walk around all day long without seeing anything of nature. I feel sad that Seoul has become such a barren city where the only environment is man-made. You should know that people who grow up in an urban environment lack tenderness and sensitivity. Having no opportunity to experience the mysteries and the beauty of nature, they easily become violent or selfish. When human beings interact with nature, they can learn and become aware of many things.

I was able to learn and practice many things from living with nature. I became aware of what true love and happiness are. It was from the natural world that I could learn the most basic things, more than from education in school.

When the season changed and I saw a beautiful bird flying about, I followed the bird and watched to see how it built its nest and how it lived. Sometimes it took me more than a week to find the bird's nest, and sometimes I might wait more than ten days to observe the bird laying its eggs and hatching them. Looking at the cute baby bird, which so resembled its mother, deeply confirmed for me God's mystery and love. That baby bird, so like its mother, could not have resulted from evolution. Would the baby bird hatch if you brooded the egg? A bird was made to be hatched through the warmth of its parents' body and the warmth of its parents' love.

I once brought a baby bird home and raised it devotedly. Although I took the baby bird quietly, the mother bird cried whenever she saw me. She was crying, pleading for her baby's return. In the bird's world also, mother's love is very strong. When an intruder tries to steal a baby bird, the mother bird will try to protect it, even at the cost of her life.

If a person does not value love, what difference does it make if he receives a college education? He would merely gain knowledge, turn individualistic, and become a believer in materialism. Korean bean-paste stew (denjang chige) tastes best when cooked in an earthenware pot. Likewise, a person's efforts at cultivating character only bear fruit when they are based on love.

World civilization should blossom based on an artistic harmony. To have the best taste, charbroiled ribs (kalbi) should be served on a plate, and bean-paste stew should be cooked in an earthenware pot. Once you get used to the earthly smell and taste of bean-paste stew, you will never forget it wherever you go.

Similarly, once you savor the taste of genuine love you will never want anything else. As we quickly tire of instant foods that have been sweetened, so we quickly tire of love that can be obtained easily anywhere. It is like instant food, and cannot be called true love.

Nowadays, people everywhere are practicing love like instant food. This is a problem. One does not deepen love by bathing in scented water. Rather, love is purer, deeper and longer-lasting between a husband and wife living in the countryside who go to bed after taking a cold bath.

If a husband and wife get ready to kiss each other by brushing their teeth, their love is not natural. They cannot taste each other's personal scent due to the smell of the toothpaste. When I look at people who brush their teeth before kissing, I wonder whether they want to taste love or toothpaste. Observing the way of the world these days, we see that calculating, artificial and feigned love is so widespread that it confuses our notions of human happiness. We can truly say that such love is the chief culprit leading this world to destruction.

When you like and love someone of the opposite sex, it is a natural instinct to want to hug and kiss each other. The reason I come in close touch with the environment is to like and love this universe. This is the natural behavior of human beings as they seek a partner.

When all men treat women and all women treat men according to the teaching of reciprocal relationship /ethic of reciprocity / vertical and horizontal relationship, there will be no missteps or acts that violate the order of love. When men and women relate to each other according to this teaching, they will establish the order of true love. However, where people violate the order of love and disregard their environment, they cannot establish the order of true love.

1) The Significance of Marriage

1) The Significance of Marriage

Marriage can be said to be a ceremony which allows you to open the door of a palace of happiness and enter into it. Therefore, marriage is the biggest event for humankind. Love transcends time and space and it is the greatest thing for humankind. Marriage is a ceremony that reveals and confirms this greatest love.

Why do we term the marriage ceremony "to receive the Blessing"? According to the Principle, if Adam and Eve had not fallen and had become perfected, they would have stood in the position to receive the Blessing. In other words, they were to be the substantial objects of God. Once they were perfected, they would have been objects who totally received love from God as the subject. Through their Blessing, or marriage, God's love would have appeared in the world.

If there were no marriage, then what is called love would not have started in the human world. Who is the master of that love? We must know that the master is not man or woman, but God. When God's love is manifested in us, it becomes God's joy and pride, and we are able to feel this as God's love.

Love cannot be realized alone; it is only realized through a reciprocal relationship. Therefore, when man tries to realize love, he cannot do it by himself alone. The same can be said about woman. When Adam and Eve unite through love, they are able to receive God's love for the first time. From this viewpoint, we can understand that we human beings are born from God.

When two people who love each other give and take in a reciprocal relationship, consoling each other when they are sad, sharing joy together when they are happy, helping each other when they have difficulties and going forward together before God, this indeed is married life on the foundation of God's love.

The reason God made man and woman not in heaven but on earth was to realize God's love horizontally. When you form a subject and object relationship and unite horizontally, the love that combines the two with the subject God is a vertical relationship of love. This fact is extremely important.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus came to earth as a man. Before building God's nation as the King of kings, Jesus as a bridegroom was to meet a bride on earth. Jesus came as the highest standard of all love. Jesus was to appear as a man on a horizontal base, pick a perfected woman, and unite with her centering on the one hundred percent original love of man given from God and the one hundred percent original love of woman also given from God. Then God would come down to seek His lost dignity and honor. When heaven and earth unite through this give and take of original love, then everything in heaven and earth will harmonize naturally and respond.

2) Why We Marry

2) Why We Marry

For what reason do we marry? It is in order to fulfill the ideal of creation, i.e., to realize the purpose of creation. Then, whose purpose is this purpose of creation? Before it is the purpose of Adam, it is the purpose of God. Therefore, before Adam feels happy, God has to feel happy. It has to be like this. Then, in this respect, for whom do we get married? It is for God, and for God's will, which is the purpose of creation. God's will is to fulfill the ideal of creation.

The ideal of creation cannot be realized centering on oneself. All my heart (Shimjung) should unite with God who is the subject; when God moves, I should move, and when God is still, I should be still, too. We should become united internally and externally, centering on a heartistic point of unity. Therefore, unless we set up a base to harmonize with God, we are not able to realize the purpose of creation.

The reason I am getting married is not only for myself but is also for my spouse. What does it mean to get married for the sake of your spouse more than yourself? As everything in the universe is formed according to the principle of subject and object, for man and woman to get married is also a rule in the universe.

If man is on the right side, woman becomes the left side in order to form a horizontal relationship with the universe. If man is the subject, then woman becomes the object in order to form a vertical, upper and lower relationship with God. Therefore, marriage is not for the sake of just man or just woman. We have to get married in order to follow the heavenly law. This is why man and woman have different aspects. They are born that way in order to match with the heavenly law.

Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man. And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love which is God's love. Neither man nor woman can touch God's love alone. If a man or a woman alone tried to unite with God's love, it would just be a one-sided love. Neither one would be able to combine with a three-dimensional, spherical love.

Therefore, man and woman must get married in order to jump into the realm of a higher-level three-dimensional love. In the original world, the more man and woman become united, the greater the center of the activating power becomes, forming a sphere. Therefore, the more man and woman connect horizontally, the more God, who is the maternal womb of the vertical power of love, becomes connected. Then our mind and body become united.

The reason for woman to meet man is to understand man's world. For what reason do women try to take over the world of men? It is to realize the unity of love.

Why do we get married? How good would it be if you did not have to get married if you did not want to? If women did not get married, they would not be able to live fully as a woman and would even get sick. Centering on all the circulating system, a woman's body is made to meet man and to function normally through married life. Women must know that it is not normal to stay unmarried. Therefore, the ideal behavior for a woman is to go through a normal life-course.

What is the normal way? The normal way means the middle way where the average of all aspects can come together in unity. This middle way is the normal way where everything will be in harmony. It will not have any attachment or tilt toward one side or the other.

Where would the road of destiny of an individual, a man or a woman, lead? I am sure no one would want to go down a winding road of destiny. The original psyche of man desires to go a straight way. Both man and woman desire to choose a family life, which complies with their destiny.

Single men and women of today think that after becoming successful, they will form a good family and be good parents. Therefore, husbands, wives, men and women all desire to have a good partner. Why is this so? This is because they feel they are inadequate. Although they feel inadequate, they desire to have excellent sons and daughters. Wouldn't it be great if you could supplement your inadequacies and become better through your reciprocal partner? With these thoughts deep in mind, people desire to love someone.

I want to ask you, where is the Unification Church heading? To Moscow? Then, what is the Unification Church to do by going there? It is easy. We are to go there looking for the kingdom of heaven on earth. Then, why are we to get married? We cannot go to heaven without getting married. We must get married in order to qualify to enter heaven. What is the qualification to enter heaven? It is to resemble God. Then, how can we resemble God? We can resemble God by practicing God's words. We must make God's love my love and God's words my words.

Therefore, representing God, I would say to the world, "You mankind! You should go to heaven!" And then I would say, "In order to go to heaven, I should love mankind as God does and take the whole world with me to heaven." Then you would be a person of God, a person on heaven's side, and there would be no mistake in concluding that you are qualified to go to heaven. Then you would be well qualified to get married.

Well? What was the reason for us to get married? In order to go to heaven. Also, for the sake of humankind. Men should know that the women standing before them are God's daughters and the daughters of all humankind. Man is qualified to become a husband if he can love a woman as a woman loved by all humankind and as God loves her as His daughter. If he cannot, then he is not qualified to become a husband. This is true for women, too. You should not think that that man is my husband. Before thinking of your husband as "my man," you should think of him as God's son and as a man representing all men.

You should become a woman who can love more than the whole of humankind and even more than God. And you should get married thinking that you will transmit the footprints of love for God and for humankind through your family, by yourself becoming the right foot representing man and the left foot representing woman. Because the right leg is the husband and the left leg is the wife, you end up being one-legged if you do not get married. Furthermore, the right and the left legs are to become perfect. If either side cannot become perfect, you are disabled. Therefore, you can have a harmonious marriage only by man and woman both becoming perfect.

Therefore, what I like about my husband is what I like about humankind and about God. And loving my husband is my loving humankind and loving God.

The purpose of marriage is to unify the world of heart and to perfect the love of man and woman. Therefore, to say that you have married is to proclaim that you will prove this. If you have realized the perfection of love and the perfection of heart through married life, then we can say that you have realized the ideal of a family. If you have realized this, then at the time of death, without a doubt you will be able to go to heaven.

3) The True Perspective of Marriage

3) The True Perspective of Marriage

From the viewpoint of the Principle of Creation or the ideal of creation, marriage should take ace at the level of perfection.

When Adam and Eve realized perfection, they were to come before God to be married. We call this level at which marriage can be held the perfection level. When you reach the perfection level, you have a value similar to becoming physically and spiritually united before God.

Through what is the unity of both the physical and spirit bodies brought about? It is through love.

If Adam and Eve had become mature and united through love, before even appearing before God they each would have realized naturally that they were each other's ideal spouse. If Adam and Eve had realized that they were each other's ideal spouse, then they would have stood at a level of horizontal love. At the point where this horizontal love begins, Adam and Eve will start to adore each other. Therefore, man and woman become perfected when love formed through a reciprocal base is realized on a plane, which then forms a right angle as it connects with God's perpendicular love.

Two people uniting together signifies the same thing as Adam and Eve, who are the dual substantial objects of God uniting together. This is also the same as God's original Sung Sang and original Hyung Sang, i.e., the plus and the minus, coming together.

Originally, if Adam and Eve, with their mind and body completely united, had become perfectly matured vertically, and if they had formed an objective realm by becoming a bride and bridegroom who could come in joy before God, and if they had realized a family of God's love through receiving God's Blessing, this would have been the perfection realm originally meant to be realized in the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve had been able to appear in that perfected realm, how would that place be characterized? It would be the place where the Blessing can be given.

The most precious grace of all is God's love. The next is to inherit God's right of creation. As God created Adam and Eve centered on love, it is the children who can inherit the right of creation. Why do you love your children? It is similar to inheriting God's work of creation in the horizontal substantial realm. Therefore, you can feel the happiness which God felt when He created Adam and Eve. Next, in order for God to enable us to have dominion over all things as He does, God gave us the right of dominion in the horizontal position. We call the world which can stand in the proper stage with this right, according to proper order, the ideal heaven. Therefore, you must know that the time of marriage is the time when you inherit God's love, power and the right of re-creation in the perfection realm.

Therefore, the marriage ceremony is the expression of love and at the same time is the ceremony to inherit the right of creation and dominion.

We see marriage as being like the cushion of the universe . . . like a cushion on which you sit. What is the best silk in the universe? Is it yang dan (a kind of expensive silk fabric)? Instead of starting your new married life with a blanket of yang dan and quilt, you should think of loving each other with a blanket of universal yang dan. You should think this way.

A woman is half of the universe. When a woman sticks to a man, 180 degrees and 180 degrees come together, and in order to form a realm equal in value to the universe they have to get married. Thinking of marriage this way, this concept from the Unification Church is so wonderful.

Then what are we to do? Do you like flowers without any fragrance? Flowers without fragrance are not interesting. Would you say, "If I were to become a flower, I would want to become a green flower"? Have you ever seen a green flower? Even when I went to a botanical garden, I could not find a green flower. A flower similar to a leaf does not bloom. By looking at just that, we can say that God exists. Leaves are all green, but have you ever seen a green flower? What is that? There is just one flower which is very close to green. It is the flower of the red pepper. But if you look closely, it is not completely green. It consists of red and other colors. Why is that? It must have that appearance in order to contribute to the harmony of heaven and earth and the law of creation. See! Our perspective of marriage is this wonderful. How wonderful is the perspective of marriage of our Unification Church!

Then does it also contain historical significance? What has God been doing until now while dreaming of this ideal family? God has been searching for this level of man and woman throughout history, but there were none. God could not find anyone who would think this way or even mention these things.

In order for your journey on the road of love to bear fruit, you must understand the situation of the participants -- God, my parents and myself. We all are born with a public purpose; therefore, in order for us to bear fruit, we must base ourselves on a public purpose. There is no other way to be restored to our original birthplace. This is the Unification perspective of marriage.

You must believe that marriage is not for your sake, but for your partner. It is wrong to desire to marry a handsome or beautiful person. If you have understood the basic principle that people are to live for the sake of others, you should know that you will get married for the sake of your spouse. No matter how ugly a person is, you should be determined to try to love him or her more than you love a beautiful person. This is the basic perspective of marriage. If you do not have an established concept that you can love your spouse more than anyone else and think of him or her as God and all humankind, you cannot be restored to the heavenly nation. As a man, if you cannot even love one woman, you will not be able to love God or humankind.

For whom are we to get married? We are to get married for the mutual benefit of all humankind. The husband is a man representing the whole world, and the wife is a woman representing the whole world. Then where is this to begin! It is to start from a place representing the whole world. Marriage is for God's will and is what all humankind publicly hopes for.

The free love rampant in today's world is a trap which Satan made to cause men to fall and to make them unable to come closer to God. Once you are trapped, you can only die or be dominated by Satan. Western people of today, especially in the United States, are unable to form a true family because of the prevalence of free love. The number of people who have failed in their family life is increasing, and the people who are unable to have a family are becoming dominant. I can definitely say with confidence that American society has become a hellish society where love has dried up and where distrust, anxiety and fear are dominant. You must know that you who are living in this age have the responsibility and duty to clean up this society and build one flowing with the love for which God hopes.

Marriage is not for your own sake. If you have a self-centered marriage, your whole family will be destroyed. To want to live a happy life by getting married self-centeredly is just a one-night dream. The problem is your future.

Unificationists of today should not stay still in this present situation, but should develop from now. You should bear offspring with the fortune of the nation and of the world. Marriage is what tries to find people who can create a new nation and new world. Until now, people of this world have said that they will marry for themselves; however, marriage in our Unification Church is a marriage for the sake of the nation and the world.

Why do we get married? We get married for the sake of the nation.

Why do we receive the Blessing? We received the Blessing in order to disseminate it to the whole world.

Korean law forbids marriages between people having the same last name and coming from the same ancestral background, and encourages marriages between people coming from different ancestral backgrounds. This is because Korean people are people who yearn for the unification of their country.

If you look at the old-style Korean marriage ceremony, you will notice that the bride and bridegroom bow down to each other. Do you know why they bow down to each other? It is to pledge to live for the sake of each other. If you do not live for the sake of the other, love will go away.

When a woman goes to live with her in-laws, one may think she is just going to a man because she was born as a woman; another may think she is going in order to save the country. The reason for a woman to get married is not only in order to share happiness together with a man. It is not just to meet one man or for the sake of a family or for the happiness of one woman. Great is the woman who marries for the sake of the nation, thinking she is representing all the women in Korea. Do you understand what I mean?

In the past, there was a woman named Masako who was the wife of King Young Chin. Masako came from Japan to Korea to get married. For what reason could she have come? Was it in order to love a Korean man? It was for the sake of the country. This kind of person is famous in history. This marriage was politically arranged in order to form a tie between Korea and Japan after liberation. This woman will remain in history as a sacrifice representing all Japanese women. Don't you think so? This woman's marriage is historical because the purpose of the marriage was large.

Then, who in all heaven and earth tried to get married with the biggest purpose? It was Jesus. When Jesus came as a bridegroom looking for a bride, he wanted to get married for the sake of the world. He was the only person with that purpose.

4) The Changes of Adolescence and the Right Time of Marriage

4) The Changes of Adolescence and the Right Time of Marriage

During our childhood, we desire only to grow up healthy. But when we reach adolescence, changes occur physically and mentally; our interest in the opposite sex grows and we're attracted to good looks. Externally, we try to dress up fashionably and concentrate on making our faces look more beautiful. We can tell if a girl has reached adolescence or not by the look of her lips.

Girls will begin menstruating and their physical body will start to look different. Their hips grow bigger, breasts develop, lips grow red and their eyes begin to have a mysterious glow. For what and whom do you think these physical changes occur?

These physical changes occur to make a straight road go around in circles, to start a circular movement. Going straight cannot bring any harmony. When we go back and forth on a straight road, it will not bring any harmony, but only will destroy the environment. Everything must go around in order to preserve and bring harmony to the environment. Everything must go around for this reason. But we cannot go around by ourselves. We need to go around centering on our reciprocal partner (spouse).

Coming together with our partner will start a circular movement automatically. This is the principle of heaven and earth. Therefore, physical changes occur in girls to enable them to meet their partner and to go around. When two people are attracted to each other, there develops a power to make them go around. Therefore, the reason women dress up and wear make-up is not for their own sake, but for their partners.

When is a person in full bloom? It is during young adulthood. This age is the seven-year period from age of eighteen to twenty-five. This period of seven years is the time when the flower of love blossoms the most. How precious is this once-in-a- lifetime period when one is fully blooming!

You all know the peony (magnolia), don't you? The bud of this flower has a different-colored yellow flower inside. How many layers of petals does it have? The petals are all tightly wound together on the flower. Can you push them open? They are tightly coiled so that it cannot be easily opened up. Men and women are similar to this. When is your bud of love going to blossom? That time is when beauty is manifested to the greatest degree: in the midst of harmony in the universe. This is the best time for people, also. It is the masterpiece of God, and it is the period which shines as the very center and the best. Isn't it so?

During the growth period, adolescence is when one becomes most beautiful. A person in adolescence is like the bud of the most beautiful flower. The person who can love adolescents the most can receive God's grace and can be invited to God's room. Do you understand what I am talking about? Can you understand this kind of love? Then, are you able to be like that now? If you have understood and you are a man, you should start preparing what is needed.

Adolescence is when you feel as though you have become a prince of the whole country. Isn't it so? It is a period when you turn everything upside down centered on yourself. Adolescence is a time when you talk back. So if you push yourself, you can easily go in a different direction. This is why juvenile delinquency has become a worldwide problem today. During adolescence, you cannot be happy unless everything you do is self-centered. You feel so proud when even a small thing gets involved centered on you.

I saw a girl around twenty years old laugh without any reason. She would laugh, "ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...," even when she saw a ripe persimmon drop from a tree during the autumn season after all the leaves had fallen. Young adults can understand and feel things without knowing what it is they are feeling. Because everything happens in relationship with her, she gets to have the best feeling. Therefore, adolescence is a point of conversion when one can be in touch with everything and form a relationship.

Why is this? This is because of the original nature of creation which seeks to unite man and woman one hundred percent completely, centered on God's love. However, because of a mistake, this nature was dented, stepped on, broken, like a crack in a beautiful bowl.

Originally, man and woman have the nature to unite centered on God's love. God's love is unlimited. God's love powers all life on earth. If this love were inside all people, the world would be filled with holy people.

Even to the most beautiful girl, adolescence only comes once. During that time, she is the most beautiful flower of all, and it is the most precious time for her in her entire lifetime. So would a girl think, "I want to live alone"? Such a person is not a woman. Does such an animal exist? [Laughter.] Also, among men who look very good at the age around sixteen, would any of them say he wants to live alone? At this time they all start to look for a reciprocal partner. Whom do they resemble that makes them this way? They are this way because they resemble God. If God is not like this, how can His children be like this? It is because God is like that. During adolescence, which is the most precious time in one's life, the desire to seek a partner is the same in man and woman. Is it so, or not? If you think it's not, go ahead and age and die alone.

Try saying to a beautiful woman, "Beautiful women are said to be unfortunate. A beautiful person like you should age and die alone." Even a quiet beautiful woman would really get mad. Nothing worse can be said to a person. This beautiful woman will have value only when there is a man who appreciates her completely and connects her to heavenly love. Therefore, is a person with an unstable emotion happy or unhappy? Grandmothers, please answer. They say she is unhappy. It is true.

When is love linked? When does the power of love push us out? When man and woman reach adolescence and all their physical functions reach one hundred percent perfection, everything comes to a halt. Everything becomes saturated. Movements always go through a saturation point. They come to a halt once and then they start moving again. Everything reaches a point of saturation and stops.

The stage prior to becoming saturated is the period of adolescence. Adolescence is the period when all physical functions reach the stage of maturity. For example, it is similar to a balloon which is filled with air up to the point of bursting. It would burst if a little more air is put in. How wonderful would it be to burst after the completion of love! Similarly, when a person reaches the age of eighteen, he or she becomes stretched out to the point just before bursting. Then they are able to start rotating so beautifully for eternity.

When our spiritual and physical bodies completely unite, original love comes within us. Even in the fallen world, during the time of adolescence, man and woman can stand on a parallel line where our spiritual and physical cells harmonize. During adolescence, the cells of our spiritual and physical bodies joyfully greet everything with open doors.

The human world during God-centered adolescence would be filled with joy and happiness.

When you unmarried men and women during adolescence meet and talk, your hearts bounce, don't they? You become excited and a change starts occurring in your mind. However, if your mind does not center on God and comes to stand on the opposite side, it becomes evil. Your mind should be centered on whom? God. It is true love that can bring you up to a place where your God-centered heart and Shimjung can unite. Can you understand? Because human beings should live their whole life like this, men and women are to have ideals and hopes that are centered on love.

What makes you shine at the final stage is love. Love which is not conscientious is not love. You may not understand what I am talking about now, but you will be able to understand once you get married.

I am sure that very often male students want to look at the faces of female students and female students want to look at the faces of male students without any reason. Isn't that so? That time has come. This is because you are still young. When you are fifteen or sixteen and become high school students, your thoughts turn toward your partners. Your eyes go around in circles. Don't you think so, high school students? Please be honest. How are your minds? Do you dislike being with male students or is it nice? Tell me at once!

Well! It's O.K. for female students not to answer because they are women. Men, it's not bad to have female students around, is it? Now is the age of adolescence. This is why even Hyo Jin, when he sees a female student . . . I'm telling a true story. When you are frank, everything will be understood, anywhere. This is why I am being frank. If you think it's a lie, you are wrong. I am talking very frankly.

Male students think only about how female students are looking at them, and female students are the same. You think, "Oh, I should comb my hair," or "I should take care of my dress," or you look into a mirror. You do this not thinking of how it looks to you, but only of how male students are looking at you. Isn't that so, female students! Then how about male students?

This is good and natural. It is not bad that you think that way. But I am telling you to think with a more artistic heart.

When you reach adolescence, you become more ambitious, going in and out, to and from many places. By the way, from now on, an unmarried man will need a bride and a bride will need an unmarried man. Isn't that so? Those who think it's wrong should quit.

A nicely-dressed woman's eyes shine even more brightly when she sees a man. In order to find a partner, it is very natural to dress up. Women walk around with their hearts burning to meet a handsome or ideal man.

When would God think is the time men and women feel the most happiness? Would God say, "I feel good looking at an aged couple laugh and dance, saying they love each other"? Or would God be happier watching a young man and woman, in love through both mind and body, sing and dance together?

What is happiness to human beings? Can we say we are happy when we have a lot of money and wear many diamonds? Can we say we feel happy by dressing up gorgeously with perfume and makeup, singing and dancing? Of course, each person would differ slightly. But true happiness can only be found when you become intoxicated in love with your spouse, laughing, singing and whispering. The person who can do this is a happy person.

A person who hears whispered words from his or her lover can be said to be a happy person. Whispered words of love in your ears make you feel so happy that you feel you are in a dream. The time when happiness is the most flowering and most meaningful is during young adulthood, when the power of love is overflowing. This is the time when you can grab love with all your might and become unified through love.

Omniscient and almighty God created a time during which man and woman can blossom beautifully. That time is young adulthood. To these newly matured men and women God gave the blessing of marriage as a gate to gain happiness. Everything in this world loses the value of its existence if it does not engage in an ideal reciprocal relationship. Therefore, it is a very natural development for man and woman to receive the Blessing and get married after growing and becoming mature.

You will be in trouble if you try to rush the experience of love. The feeling of being intoxicated by love and becoming happy is like a preview of what is to come when the time is right for the gate of love to open. But you should wait until the time the gate opens to enter. The gate should proudly open when you have become the master of love.

When do you think is the right age to get married? When your mind and body have the most perfected power is the precise time to get married. Your power weakens when this time passes, and then no matter how much you try to maintain your naivete, it becomes difficult to seek a partner.

5) Education and Marriage

5) Education and Marriage

Marriage opens the door to human happiness. Studying in order to open the door to happiness is very good. However, if that study is for the purpose of becoming rich or powerful, it is a mistake. Study must be for the purpose of attaining true love.

Why do you go to school? Happiness cannot exist without love. Therefore, we can say that the purpose of going to school is to shorten the road to love.

When young women go to university to earn a degree, ultimately it is in order to meet a good husband. There is no other reason. No matter how great a man is, he would be an unhappy person if he could not form a family that is united.

The reason for studying is to meet a true man and to become a true mother. In order to become a true mother, a woman must study for the country and become a true wife who can serve her husband as a true man. If you cannot gain this stature as a person, you will not be able to serve your true husband or have a true son. A woman must become a true wife and, as the homemaker of the family, must get along well with the husband until old age. If the study is for the purpose of becoming a good wife, then wouldn't all university graduates eventually be gray-haired couples? However, among university graduates are there more gray-haired couples or people who get divorced? Needless to say, people who are uneducated live together happily for a longer time.