Chapter 1 - The Existence of Human Beings on Earth And In the Spirit World [Part 1]
Section 1. The Course of Life
1. Prayer Regarding The Life Course
Loving Heavenly Father, I have been fighting since childhood, struggling over how shameful it would be to be ridiculed before You, and I am deeply grateful to You that You never let me, especially, forget it or fear it, and that You allowed me to continue till today.
As regards what is good on this earth, there is no standard that is more precious and valuable than connecting to Your original heart. Knowing this, we must infinitely miss and long for that relationship. We must know that a person who can touch and experience Heavenly Father's love has no regret even if he loses everything in the world.
Heavenly Father, for a tree to come to bear fruit, it must go through a summer season and absorb the vitality elements from its root, trunk, and branches. Only through this process can it gain a perfect life force and produce a fruit that will bring forth a second life. Similarly, we must become sons and daughters who search deeply within ourselves as to whether we have a fruit in our hearts that is full of the power of life and that can be born again happily into a new world.
Father, we come to understand that no matter how many years go by, no matter how hard it rains and how fiercely the wind blows, our inner life force must not be invaded by the environment's evil but must go the path of continuous development. That is the only way we can welcome a spring and become a seed-a matrix to produce a second life by being planted again.
Similarly, we reflect that in the course of life, even though someone may look miserable externally, if he has the value of being a matrix who can enhance the spiritual life force and of becoming a seed that can be planted in the infinite world of spirit, such a person is never miserable. Please allow us to realize that the more miserable such a person is externally, the more his internal value is complete and guaranteed. (32:37)
Heavenly Father! We must know that those who have no heart to attend You and to offer You humble obeisance cannot connect their fate to You in the eternal spiritual world.
Father, we are now longing for that day in which we can open the gates of our hearts, feel You there, and bend our bodies to the dictates of our spirits. Therefore, please allow us to become people who can hear Your voice from within our hearts, find our lost bodies, and bow our heads deeply before You.
Please let each of us feel that You have gone through a course of history of much suffering and turmoil before us, in order to find each of us alone. (4:280)
2. The Purpose Which People Desire To Fulfill
Can you meet God, or not? (Yes, we can.) But even if you met God, you would not know it, because God doesn't have a body.
Therefore, in order to manifest His being to all of His creation, Heavenly Father used Adam as His body, showing His face through that of His son. We should know that this is God's ideal of creation.
God is the original Heavenly focal point, and Adam is the original earthly focal point. These two focal points create a 90-degree angle. This is God's purpose of creation, and this is the purpose which humans desire.
Had Adam and Eve not fallen, they would have occupied the positions of heavenly father and mother for eternity in the spiritual world. But due to the fall, their positions are far different.
Had there been no fall of Man, everyone could have gone to the Kingdom of Heaven in the spiritual world simply by attending his own parents as though he were attending God. (119:109)
3. Reason to Be Born
This created world is round everywhere. The sun, the earth, the stars -- everything is created round. Even our mouth, if we analyze it, is all round. No matter what, everything is created that way.
Therefore, how hard is it to make movements? How good to laugh?
Then, in what kind of relationships does the universe exist? It makes relationships by going around and around, making circular, cyclical movements. Even if one individual thing has a round shape, it does not exist by itself individually but makes a relational connection with the whole. Then why are we born? We are born to resonate with the beat of this huge, relational universe. We are born to keep time with the universe. How great this feeling is!
Ocean waves make great loud sounds; there are the same sounds inside my heart. When the wind soughs serenely, it makes my heart feel serene. When a flower releases a beautiful fragrance, it stirs a fragrance in my heart. What a wonderful feeling that is! (104:122)
When you were born, how were you born? If you were born from love, raised in love, live in love, and die in love, then to be born is something to be grateful for, to live life is something to be grateful for, and even to die is something to be grateful for.
All of you should be aware that "I was born by having participated in the place where my father and mother loved and treasured each other the most." You need to know that you are a participator in love.
Because you were born in the love of your parents, think that... Therefore, the reason why the flag makes motion is to show a sign of love. We are all meant to live for the sake of love throughout our lives. So when we see a mother, we wave a flag of love, and when we see a father, we wave a flag of love, and we wave the flag for our brothers and sisters. (103:258)
4. The Relationship Between A Moment And A Whole Life
You must know that the crux of life exists not in some long period of time but in a single moment.
One who ignores a moment fails to possess something precious. Such a person cannot become a great person, nor can he inherit the throne and crown of God. Therefore, you must be careful about each word you speak, each action you take, even things you think, in order to make one moment shine and glow. You must deal with life and solve problems believing that the contents of your daily life will all remain as phenomena in relationship to the world-because that is the only way the realm of victory is determined.
In this way, it only takes one moment for the realm of victory to be determined. Therefore, you should know that a historical realm of victory and a cosmic realm of victory are determined in one moment. One who knows the infinite value of making a moment shine and lives accordingly can become a great person, even a saint or God's son or daughter. In this way, the crux of life and death lies in the single moment.
Today, our attitude is the problem. Of course, it is necessary to first desire the coming of the Kingdom and to wish for the Will to be done. But what is more important is how we can become one with the Will of God, centering on "myself."
If we take this one hour we see that how we use it to become one with the Will is more important than to desire the Kingdom of God to come. Therefore, first of all, we must make an individual-level, a familial-level, a tribal-level, and a national-level environment where we can inherit the Will, in order to make a relationship with the Will of God. Then, centered on God, how do we make a relationship with the Will in this one hour? This is a very important matter.
Looking at the history of restoration through indemnity, there were 4,000 years from Adam's family through Noah's family, Abraham's family, and Moses' family all the way down to the family of Joseph, the father of Jesus. Here, however, what led to the failures did not occur over the span of, say, a year.
In Adam's family, the fall of Adam and Eve was not a result of a planned failure that took one year or 10 years or several decades. Their failure was brought forth in one second, and that failure of one moment became the base for the corruption of the nation which had been in preparation for millions and billions of years. When we think about this, we come to know how fearful one moment is.
Due to this failure of one moment, so many people who sought a religious path during human history had to go through great suffering, and many peoples that could not follow the path of the Will fell into ruin. All these became part of a tremendous offering for indemnity. When we understand this, a single hour that we ordinarily live so casually in our daily life becomes fearful.
But even more, we have to feel what a fearful moment is even one second of one hour that goes by as the clock steadily ticks. We have to become people who can know how to fight evil in the moment. Therefore, you should know that even the eternal Kingdom of Heaven does not exist without having an integral relationship with the single moment.
Eternity does not start when we die. It begins at the moment we come to know God's Will. Therefore, in pursuit of our life of faith centering on our life course, if one thinks, "If I can't make it this year, I will do it next year. If I can't go in my adolescence, then I will go in my 20s; if not in my 20s, then in my 30s; if not in my 30s then in my 40s; and if not in my 40s, well then I will do it in my 50s ..." If one lived his whole life like this, he would never have lived one day of being one with God's Will. If a person lives like this, he will not be able to go to the Kingdom of Heaven when he dies.
Even if a person lives in a godly nation, how can he go to the Kingdom of Heaven if he was unable to live even one day according to a victorious standard? How can a person enter into the eternal world if he could not live even one year according to a victorious standard? This is a sad problem.
Therefore, in the life of religious people, that which is more important than dreaming of eternity is how they can work with Heaven in everyday life to eradicate evil and become fighters for goodness. We must know that, more than anything else, this is a crucial matter.
From this perspective, it was Adam and Eve's momentous failure that led eventually to the resentment and anguish of thousands of years. It was in Adam's family that Cain and Abel had to solve the resentment of their parents and demolish the wall that existed between the brothers, thus creating a spiritually healthy family root. But the murder of Abel, who stood as a representative of the providence for restoration, took place in one second, as well.
We should know that, even in the suffering course of Noah, who toiled to build an ark for 120 years, when God told Noah, "The time has come to realize the day of My desire. Go and launch the ark now," it was done in only one second. Those who followed this order could receive God's eternal blessing, but those who could not were buried within the realm of eternal judgment.
The same is true with Abraham. When God blessed Abraham, saying, "I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore ....Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies," the blessing was also bestowed in one second, in the blink of an eye.
When Abraham made an offering, he did not take some 10 years. It was done in a day. The time it took him to cut the offering and place it on the altar was less than an hour-but this single hour contained the root of everything concerning historical life and death, curse and blessing. If there was a mistake there, this root would have been destroyed.
Today, what religious people must fear is not the judgment which will come in the Last Days but how they can connect the many moments of their everyday lives with God's Will. (37:21)
5. The Childhood Period And The Order Of Three Stages
Who are Adam and Eve? If God created Adam and Eve, how did He create them? If God used some clay to create them, what kind of clay did He use? From where did He begin? From where did Adam and Eve's lives begin? We cannot think that when God created Adam and Eve He created them as adults. Rather, God created them as infants.
Without the notion that God behaved like a mother who gave birth to, cradled, and raised a baby, we cannot find a logic to explain the formation of all existence.
Everything in the universe develops through three stages. Thus, there was a period of childhood for Adam and Eve. Then there was a time of young adulthood. The next step was to have been a period of maturation. This is a principle of the universe. Then what was Adam and Eve's childhood like? We must start from the theory that the incorporeal God engaged in a process of creation from the incorporeal to the corporeal world, a process as if He even held and raised a baby.
What is this all about? How does one go from birth, to growing up, to maturing, to coming to the position of being able to marry and become a parent? How does one proceed?
You must know that God set up stages of a process for living beings. Through stages, man goes from a period of youth through one of adulthood to a period of advanced age. The fact is that it is through individual people growing in human families that God wants to see the embodiment of the internal process that He Himself engaged in. Only from these thoughts can a theory of the oneness of parent and child be produced. The parent is vertical and the child is horizontal. Therefore, we can say it is a theory of the oneness of vertical and horizontal. (225:198)
6. The Path of Our Life
We know that the society, nation, and world in which we live are far from ideal. There are all sorts of pain and suffering, and good and evil compete together and overlap in confusion. There is no one but "myself" who can go to the destination of my desire and intention.
Among 100 people, each person has to struggle mightily with his environment to create goodness in his everyday life. Therefore, we come to feel through our daily life that virtually nobody is confident to complete the day's work toward spiritual victory that he plans in the morning.
Further, the more we feel that the evil of the environment is an obstacle in our daily lives, and the bigger the scope of the environment-as in the case of society or the world-the more we must cultivate a driving determination to bring a victorious result in our everyday life. If we do not, we will feel that a particular day of our lives will end in defeat. Such single days of defeat will eventually add up to a month, and such months will add up to a year.
If we add one day 30 times, it will come to one month, won't it? But this one month bears an environment that makes it difficult for us to achieve our plan for spiritual success. Therefore, in order to bring victory within this one month, we must equip ourselves with enough driving determination to break through all kinds of complicated situations that will arise and all sorts of conditions that interfere with our planned path. Otherwise, we cannot complete the month's plan and claim victory.
One year consists of 12 months, which are 365 days. In order to achieve victory for that year, one must set some goals on New Year's Day, and make matching conditions that allow one to thrust aside all the trials and interference that the year can produce. If this isn't done, there will arise an environment that is opposing, repelling, and destructive.
In order to accomplish such a year of victory, one needs to be equipped with a fighting spirit, a driving power. If we live a year like this, and then continue on, it will eventually add up to 10 years, then 20 years, and 30 years-and that becomes the path of our life. (31:30)
Today, individuals, families, tribes, nations, and the entire world cannot escape from the realm of time. It has been the same throughout human history. Wherever people live, there is always a goal to be accomplished. We can focus on such a goal for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 70 years, and, indeed, our entire life. But the bigger our goal is, the stronger we must pledge internally. Otherwise we'll be unable to reach it. Unless we maintain an internal determination that can surpass the goal through the process called time, we will never accomplish it.
7. The Original Homeland to Which We Are to Go
You may not know much about the reality of the spiritual world, but, with God's special grace, I know the "unknown" world more than anyone else.
Digging into the root of that world, we find its structural principle to be quite simple. You must understand that Heaven is a place where only those who lived for the sake of others go. This is because unselfish love is the principle of heaven and earth, the root of the ideal that God created. The ideal world of the Kingdom of Heaven is structured with this kind of content. This is a plain fact.
The heavenly world is the original homeland to which we are to go. Today, we are exiles from our original homeland and live a fallen life. But our fate is to return there. We cannot, however, enter there by ourselves, so God has to set up a path in the course of history so people can go in. This is why God created so many different religions: to be training grounds to make a path for every people, culture, custom, and tradition. Religions polish people to be qualified to enter the region of the original homeland. Because of humankind's many different cultural backgrounds, God sought and set the standard of comparison and has been leading the way toward one unified religious world.
What does religion, which guides man to the original homeland, teach? It promotes the path of living for the sake of others. The higher the religion, the more strongly it emphasizes the importance of living for others. Therefore, we must be gentle and meek. Why?
We must strive to stand in a position to lift up many people and live for their sake. Religion teaches us to sacrifice and serve. Why? Because religions must train people to fit the rules of the Kingdom of Heaven. (78:117)
8. The Most Wonderful Path In Life
What should be our path in life? Clearly, to possess God's love. Do you understand? (Yes.) To possess God's love is the most wonderful end. This is the path that both men and women must tread. Even monkeys and ants wish for this!
Our course should be to search for the God of love, who is the infinite and only One -- even if we must go through the valley of death ten or a hundred times. Even if we die, we should continue this course to find this love. It's the most wonderful path in life!
What is the end point of our desire? It is possessing God's love. When we talk about possessing God, unless through it we possess love more precious than my own, God is not my God. That's why we must possess God's love. Indeed, if only we can possess this love, it is okay if God isn't there.
When His love becomes mine and mine becomes His, the internal and the external become one for the first time. A nation based on this kind of love becomes an ideal homeland, where there is no class system of high and low. Do you understand?
When we can lie in that place of love, there is nothing in existence that doesn't look wonderful. We would feel that there is nothing under the sun that does not exist for me.
If this is God's love, then what is the heavenly world like, the Kingdom of Heaven to which mankind is meant to go? That is a place filled with love. (39:210)
9. The Standard Of Birth And The Standard Of Life
1) The Wrong Standard of Birth
Today, people of the world do not know that even if they occupy a prestigious position in society, their birth was spiritually sullied. They don't know that they were born with a lineage connected to God's enemy Satan and to his life and lineage. This is a serious problem.
People are born out of Satan's love. Thus, the fallen world came to be reached by man, and Satan's love was reached even to the parents. Life and lineage became one centered on Satan's illicit love, and that blood is running through the lives of my father and my mother.
Today, this blood is mixed in me. The fruit of Satan's life, love, and lineage is myself. Do you understand? I am the best fruit of love, but we are still linked to those three things. I am referring to fallen people.
Until now, we did not know this. We could not imagine what occurred at the foundation of human history. True Parents came in this age and for the first time proclaimed the origin of the fall.
Your blood and all your five senses belong to Satan's love, life, and lineage. It is the same as saying a satanic world is running through your veins. Satan automatically made a fruit of his ideal, and God has been trying ever since to save men and women, helping them become original, pure, perfected human beings.
Where did you begin? You began from Satan, from Satan's love. Did you see how you started? No, you didn't. When did it happen? A long time ago. A long time has passed since the owner of this house signed the contract, as it were.
Even if a new resident came, even after 6,000 years, the person who has the contract papers is the owner of the house. Do you understand?
It is the same thing with fallen nature. You must know that your starting point was corrupt. America and Americans have no understanding of the fall of humanity. We do not know how we are connected to the 6,000-year history of restoration. But the root of the original essence is there. A central root is connected to the central seed. Everything is connected to the central root.
Since your start was all wrong, you must return to the original point. Since humankind began as false parents, we must return and do it over again as true parents. How serious is this? It's imperative that you be connected to God's love, life, and lineage.
That's why you had a ceremony of the change of the blood lineage at your Blessing -- the time of your restart -- didn't you? You must believe in that more than your life. You should not think it was just a Unification Church ceremony or a common religious rite. It's like an inoculation that can give new life to replace the dead love. It's a detoxification shot.
Through this ceremony, your false love was forgiven and you were Blessed; so you must not entertain other thoughts. Our own ancestors fell, and we know how this one grave mistake sacrificed all of human history. Knowing this, we cannot tread the same path again. Absolutely not.
Have you thought about the ghastly price that has been paid throughout history because of man's use of illicit love in the fallen universe? You must clearly know how vast the impact and influence of the fall were on individuals, families, societies, nations, and the world. You must know this clearly.
So you were born in corruption. Look at yourself in the mirror: This is your birth. Such an illicit love! (Father spits.) This nose, this mouth, even if your face looks good! (Father spits again.)
You should spit at yourself. This body has been Satan's central channel. So we must deny our bodies.
We were born corrupt. How terrible that birth is corrupt! We must cry out and reverse the corruption. (216:109)
2) The Standard of Life
Here, when I say "life", I mean eternal life. I'm referring not only to the spiritual world but to a life to live for eternity. How do we cultivate such a life?
The entity known as "I" was created to be an object of God's love. "I" am a partner of God's love. God is absolute and is the center of life which is eternal. Therefore, God's ideal is even more eternal, and the center of that ideal is the ideal of true love. "I" am the partner of that love.
How precious the position of God's eternal partner is! How do I come to that eternal place? Do you know what makes for true love? It is when a subject and an object become one.
This sort of love can make a nation become one. When that happens, you can go anywhere and it will follow you. You can even inherit all its property.
But most importantly, you can inherit the place of God's eternal life, and even His Heart. God's Heart of love, God's Heart that is always with the creation and all things, God's Heart of wanting to be in the heart of every single person-you can inherit all of these things. Therefore, how precious is this? I went through a miserable course of suffering to discover this precious value, and I came to stand upon this foundation. How glad we must be! It is the most lofty, solemn, and noble thing-this foundation of being God's eternal partner-which cannot be replaced by anything. It is an amazing grace.
Now we can stand in the same position as God -- to the extent that we can even participate in the place of eternal true love. You cannot find this concept of eternal life no matter where you go in the outside world, no matter where you go throughout Korea. This is a problem.
Since "I" was born as an eternal existence, why don't you die and go to the spiritual world and investigate if what I say is the truth? You will make an amazing leap in one second.
The spiritual world is in a different dimension from this limited earthly world. We cannot move freely in the mundane confines, but the spiritual world is a higher-dimensional place, so anything can be done. You can jump beyond time. If you have a desire for something centering on true love, you can get it anytime, anywhere. It is boundless.
We must know that we are created as eternal beings. "I" is an object centering on the true love of an eternal being. If we become eternal beings of true love and go to the spiritual world, we'll be completely free.
But to do this, we must be trained in true love here on the earth. Do you understand? You are not yet ready. Without completing this kind of work, you cannot go to the realm of freedom in the spiritual world. But if you perfect true love on the earth, you can go anytime.
Now, what are the standards of life? First, there must be a standard of good and evil. Second, a starting point of original goodness. What is the third? It is an eternal life.
I know this very well. Even if a battle I'm in is fierce, even if people shoot guns, I am without fear. Aren't you, too? Isn't it the most powerful Unification Church? Right? (Yes.)
How about you? Are you truly a brave person? (Trying.) It is worthless to try. That is a position of doing things by halves and not being able to achieve things. God would not deal seriously with such a person.
You must secure the point of the terminus -- achieve the goal of true love. That is the position that God would use. When "I" as an eternal being achieve true love, true life, and true lineage, God can appear and connect to me.
So the conclusion is certain. I live for eternity; I was created by God in this way to live for eternity centering on true love. Have you completed this yet? Did you succeed in it, or didn't you? If you come to fulfill this portion of responsibility, you will be truly successful.
The next essential problem follows logically from this: You don't know how to fulfill your responsibility. So we need reeducation.
Yet another problem is the concept of the church and the society. The true concept of church is families centered on the church.
Prior to this are individuals centered on a family. It is not a family centered on an individual. Because individuals haven't centered on their families, all kinds of social disturbances occur in the world. Centering on the higher good is the public path. We cannot deny this.
In addition, the church must be centered on the nation. The nation shouldn't live for the church. Rather, the church exists to save the nation. Therefore, once we know Unification Thought, we are automatically set to save the nation through the church. All of us Unification Church members must work to save the nation. (216:115)