True
Families Gateway to
Heaven
Foreword
With great
pleasure we present to you this selection of
passages
from various speeches delivered by the Reverend
Dr . Sun
Myung Moon .
Jesus
Christ first appeared to Reverend Moon while
he was
praying on a Korean mountainside when he was
sixteen
years old . On that Easter Sunday morning, Jesus
revealed to
him that the time had come to consummate
the work of
establishing peace on earth, and that the key
to peace
was to build God-centered families .
During the
next several years, God revealed to Reverend
Moon His
original purpose of creation, the circumstances
surrounding
the human Fall, and His efforts through history
to restore
humankind to the original purpose of God . Many
secrets of
the Bible were revealed during this period . Notably, Reverend Moon came to
know and to inherit the true
love of God
and to appreciate the importance of establishing
“true
families,” meaning families that practice true love and
are
directly connected to God, our Heavenly Parent .
Reverend
Moon promised to fulfill God’s purpose and
has
tirelessly worked his entire life to accomplish it . For
teaching
this new message he was imprisoned six times . He
was
misunderstood and persecuted in Korea, and later in 6 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
America, by
those who saw the tremendous growth of his
congregation
and the impact his teachings had on others .
Nevertheless,
Reverend Moon, now 90 years old, has never
wavered
from his commitment to God .
Reverend
Moon has influenced the lives of millions of
people
around the world with his teachings about God’s
suffering
heart, the nature of God’s true love, and the holy
sacrament
of the Blessing, that is, a marriage blessed by
God and
connected to God’s lineage . He teaches that all
people,
regardless of their religious denomination, should
unite in their
love for God . Today a growing number of
ministers
of all faiths use his teachings to guide their
congregations
.
Reverend
Moon also teaches that world peace can be
established
through interracial, intercultural and interfaith marriages . He has been
promoting such marriages
for more
than 50 years . He even predicted in October
1975 that a
future president of the United States, within
his
lifetime, would come from an African-American father
and a white
mother .
The
teachings of Reverend Moon have been published
in
collections now numbering over 1,000 volumes . In compiling this booklet, we
have taken material from Cheon
Seong
Gyeong [Heavenly Scripture], a large collection of
excerpts
taken from speeches given from the 1950s to the
present .
The selections are from Book Four: True Family
and Book
Five: Earthly Life and the Spirit World .
Please keep
in mind that Reverend Moon speaks in Korean;
despite our best efforts, the English translation
may be at
times awkward and cannot completely convey
the depth
of his meaning . We hope that you will explore
this book
with an open mind . Our wish is that these words
inspire you
to think about and feel closer to our God .
May God
bless you and your families .
C H a p T e r O n e
The Family
Is the Basis and
Pattern for
the Kingdom
of Heaven
1. The
Pattern for All Relationships
A person is
always situated in a context, relating to what
is above
and below, right and left, and front and back . This
context
determines his or her position . Your life will turn
out better
or worse depending on whether you properly
create
relationships with those above you and below you,
with those
to your right and to your left, in front of you
and in back
of you .
Whether it
concerns issues in your family or problems
facing the
nation or the world, the same formula applies:
we must
deal with relationships to those above and below,
on the
right and on the left, in front and in back .
You as an
individual are responsible to relate properly
to those
above you and below you, to your right and to
your left,
in front and in back . This is the case whether
you are
relating to your parents or your children, to your
husband or
your wife, or to your brothers and sisters .
The same
applies as you relate to the nation and world .
Your family
should take the lead in your nation to embrace
families in
the east and west and north and south, and
encourage
all families to do the same . Your family should
embrace the
civilizations of East and West and of North
and South,
and embrace all the people of the world as
your
brothers and sisters . This is the way to bring about
one world
family .
The family
pattern applies to everyone . Each of you is
situated
within that pattern . When you live by its logic, you
will be the
starting-point of your family, your family can be
the basis
of your nation, and so on to the world, to heaven
and earth,
and finally to God . Everyone has the desire to
be the
center of the universe; moreover, everyone has the
potential
to fulfill that desire .
In this
way, the concept of the family can be likened to
the core of
the universe . Heaven can be likened to parents in giving life to the earth,
representing the children .
The
relationship between East and West can be likened
to that
between man and woman . For example, it is customary that when a woman marries,
she goes to join her
husband
wherever he lives . This can be likened to the way
the
brightness of the east at sunrise illuminates the west
and gives
it the same value .
The same is
true with sibling relationships . When the oldest brother takes the lead in a
task, the younger siblings
join in to
help .
Thus, we
need to be in a parent-child relationship, a
conjugal
relationship and a sibling relationship . The challenge is how all three
relationships can meet at one point .
There
should be just one central point . There should not
be
different central points for above and below, right and
left, and
front and back . If the central points are different,
all the
relationships will be off balance .
But when
the center is aligned, then above and below,
right and
left, front and back, and their common central
point add
up to the number seven . A family that forms the
number
seven in this way is a family of perfect true love
with God at
the center, where all these elements form a
complete
sphere, bringing harmony and unity . From this
perspective,
the phrase “lucky seven” makes sense .
Since true
love never changes, this central core will
rotate
forever without ever changing . This is how a family
can realize
the true family ideal .
Also,
because everything is connected to the core, each
position,
starting with the core (one) and two, three,
four, five,
six and seven, will possess equal value . When
the
grandfather wants something, the grandchildren will
affirm it
and the sons and daughters will want it as well .
Thus, three
generations will share a desire for the same
thing . The
grandfather and grandmother, husband and
wife, and
sons and daughters will all align with the center .
When such love
is present, then parents and children
form loving
relationships and become one . Husband and
wife build
a loving relationship and become one . Siblings
build
loving relationships and become one . They are all
one . Under
what conditions can we say that these relationships make us one? They must be
infused with the true
love of God
. God is the center of love . With true love at the
center,
parents and children will become one, husband
and wife
will become one, and all the brothers and sisters
will become
one . In this way, they all come to have equal
value .
(299-114, 1999.2.7)
2. Where We
Experience Universal Love
What is the
purpose of the universe? God designed
everything
in the created world as study materials to help
His beloved
sons and daughters understand and fulfill the
ideal of
love . This is why everything exists in mutual relationships . Look at the
world of minerals: their elements
interact in
partnerships one to another . Atoms consist
of protons
and electrons interacting in mutual relationships . Without such interactions
they could not continue
to exist .
Without motion there is no permanence or continued existence .
Nevertheless,
the universe is created in such a way that
all things
of creation can have access to its central point –
true love –
only through human beings . (137-59, 1985.12.18)
1. For
passages originating from The Collected Speeches of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the
citation is
given in
parentheses at the end of each passage in the order of volume number, page
number
and the
date of the speech. Dates are in the order of year, month and day. The Family
Is the Basis and pattern for the Kingdom of Heaven 13
The world
is the family in macrocosm . A family that has
fully
realized the ideal of love has an above (parents), a
middle
(husband and wife) and a below (children), right
and left
(husband and wife), and front and back (siblings) . This is the basic pattern .
All relationships of higher
and lower
can be likened to that between parents and children; right and left can be
likened to husband and wife;
and front
and back to relationships between brothers and
sisters .
What can
bring all these relationships into unity? Can
money,
power or knowledge? These will never do it . Only
true love
can do it . This is the clear truth . Without true
love, the
family cannot have a spherical shape .
Why is it
important for our families to have good relationships between parents and
children (higher and
lower), and
between brothers and sisters (those on the
same
level)? They are study materials for developing our
love . We
take the lessons learned from our family relationships and practice them in the
wider world .
How should
we love? Jesus said, “Love your neighbor
as yourself
.” What did he mean? He meant that when you
meet an old
man, you should treat him as you would your
own
grandfather . Treat women and men of your parents’
age as you
would your own mother and father, and treat
young
people as you would your own sons and daughters .
As you
treat the members your family, so should you treat
all people
of the world .
The world
can be compared to an exhibition hall filled
with all
different kinds of people . Some are older than
you, some
are the same age and some are younger . Some
are ahead
of you and some are behind, or to the right or
to the left
. The world presents you with all these different kinds of people . If you can
love each of them with the
appropriate
kind of love, God will dwell with you in the
midst of
that love . (128-22, 1983.5.29)
What is the
Kingdom of Heaven? It is where you love
the people
of the world as you love your own family . If
you can do
this, you will be a citizen of the Kingdom of
Heaven .
Your grandfather and grandmother, your mother
and father,
your spouse, your siblings and your children
– four
generations of family members – provide life lessons for you to deeply
experience love . Citizens of the
Kingdom of
Heaven begin to experience the true love of
the
universe in their family . Therefore, your family is the
foundation
and the study material for learning life’s basic
lessons .
(129-98, 1983.10.1)
We cannot
live without learning to be people of universal love . God has prepared
textbooks and scriptures that
teach us
the way .
2
First He tells us: “Love your grandmother
and
grandfather . Your grandmother and grandfather on
earth were
sent to you as representatives of all your ances-
2. For example, Mencius 1.A.7: “Treat the aged
of your own family in a manner
befitting
their venerable age and extend this treatment to the aged of other families;
treat your
own young in a manner befitting their tender age and extend this to the
young of
other families...” The Family Is the Basis and pattern for the Kingdom of
Heaven 15
tors in the
spirit world . By loving your grandparents, I will
credit you
as having loved them all .” This is His pledge .
Next God
says, “I hold your mother and father to be
textbooks
and models representing the countless mothers
and fathers
in the world . Therefore, when you show exceptional love for your mother and
father, I will credit you as
having
loved all mothers and fathers .”
God also
says, “I hold that when a man loves his wife, he
represents
all the men in the world and his wife represents
all the
women in the world . Therefore, when you love your
wife, I
regard it as though you have loved all women in the
world .”
Then God
says: “When you have loved your sons and
daughters,
I will credit you as having loved all sons and
daughters
.” In this way, our family is where we are trained
to be
people of universal love .
We rely on
scripture to guide us in cultivating ourselves
to love the
world . After you have received this training,
God will
ask you: “Are you ready now to go into the world
and love
the grandfathers and grandmothers of the world
as you love
your own grandparents?” If you can confidently answer “Yes,” then you are
surely capable of saving
the world .
(130-273, 1984.2.5)
3. The
School of Love
God’s will
is to realize the kingdom of love . To develop
the ideal
of love and expand it to make the entire globe 16 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
an ideal
world of love, God set up the family as the school
of love .
There, people earn credits as they progress from
the
elementary grades all the way to university and a doctoral degree .
Expand the
family, and you have the world . Look at the
world, and
you will find grandfathers and grandmothers,
adults like
your uncles and aunts, peers like your brothers
and
sisters, young people, and children . In the kingdom of
love,
people of all ages – the elderly, middle-aged people,
young
people and children – live together as a family, like
your own
family only with much greater dimensions and
larger
numbers of people . (147-281, 1986.10.1)
The family
is the smallest unit for entering the Kingdom
of Heaven
and the school that provides its study material . It
has all the
levels: the grandparents’ level, parents’ level, husband and wife level,
siblings’ level and children’s level . You
can extend
the love you have for your family members –
your
grandparents, your mother and father, your siblings
and your
children – to the people in the world at large who
are of
similar age . This is the way to extend your love to
encompass
all humanity . Only when you love all humanity
with as
much love as you give your wife and your parents,
and care
for the world as much as you care for your own
sons and
daughters, can your family inherit the Kingdom of
Heaven .
This is a wonderful truth . Live it, and you will have
the special
right to inherit all the power and authority of
God who
created heaven and earth . (143-285, 1986.3.20) The Family Is the Basis and
pattern for the Kingdom of Heaven 17
The family
is a textbook of love . It is where we can
obtain the
right to be registered in the Palace of Peace in
the Kingdom
of Heaven after we die .
The family
is the school of love . It teaches us how to
live in the
world, which is nothing but the extension of
the family
. There is a world of people who resemble your
grandfather,
a world of people who resemble your grandmother, a world of people who resemble
your father and
mother, and
a world of people who resemble your sons
and
daughters . Hence, if you expand your family, you have
the world .
If you love
the people of the whole world as much as you
love your
family, and as much as you love God who cares
for your
family, you will be on the straight road leading to
the Kingdom
of Heaven . This is how you should understand the first commandment, “You shall
love the Lord
your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all
your mind,” and the second, “You shall love your
neighbor as
yourself .” If you love God and love humanity
as much as
you love your family, that’s the basis for everything . If you cannot do it,
all the spiritual training you go
through
will be of no use . No matter how great your spiritual discipline as you follow
the precepts of religion, you
will fail
all the tests if you do not know how to love God,
humankind
and the universe .
In the
family there is an ordered process for experiencing love, like a course of
training . The school that is the
family is a
microcosm of the world . Therefore, you can 18 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
expand on
its lessons to love the world . God has given you
the family
where you were raised and where your mother
and father
live as the school where you are trained in the
ways of
love .
You love
your wife, and rightly so . But if you can love
your
parents more than you love your wife, love your
sons and
daughters more than your wife, love humanity
more than
your wife, and love God more than your wife,
then
everything will work out well . This doesn’t mean you
should
abandon your wife . If you love everyone this way,
then
everyone who received your love will also appreciate
and honor
your wife . Wouldn’t that be a wonderful situation? The same goes for loving
your husband . If you really
want to
love your spouse, this is the best way . (142-242, 1986.3.11)
4. Textbook
for the Heavenly Kingdom
Every child
should inherit the good fortune of his
grandparents
and parents . Why do we need grandparents?
It is
because they represent the past . Grandparents represent the living history of
the past . Parents represent the
present,
and children represent the future .
How can one
family encompass East and West and also
North and
South? How can it be the center of the whole
universe?
Its center must be true love . The center of the
grandparents,
the center of the parents, the center of the
children
and the center of God – in every case, the center
is true
love . The Family Is the Basis and pattern for the Kingdom of Heaven 19
When you
love your grandparents and respect them,
you can
inherit the past completely and learn about the
world that
has gone by . From your father and mother you
learn about
the present, and by loving your children you
learn about
the future .
What can
you inherit from your grandfather and grandmother, and mother and father? You
can inherit true love .
You
recognize, “Our grandfather and grandmother are old,
but they
are as one in true love . Our parents have become
as one, too
. Let’s live the same way and inherit true love,
which will
give us a bright future .” You should become absolute true families so that you
can bequeath such love to your
children,
and thus secure your family’s future .
The
three-generation family can be likened to the universe . Representing the
present and the future, such true
families
possess the very love that pulses throughout the
universe .
This is the love that we can also learn about by
observing
nature’s textbook: the love between male and
female in
the animal world .
If your
grandmother were suddenly absent, your family
would feel
distressed . If your grandfather were absent, it
would be
the same . The remaining grandparent just could
not feel
good about it . This earthly example indicates something about heaven . When a
grandfather and grandmother
have lived
happily together on earth, after they pass over they
will live
happily together in the Kingdom of Heaven . If they
separated,
their dwelling-place would not be heaven . Likewise, a family can live together
as a family in the Kingdom 20 True
Families, Gateway to Heaven
of Heaven
when the grandparents, mother and father, and
children
have been living harmoniously together on earth .
Your loving
relationships with true grandparents, true parents, true children, true
families, a true nation and the true
universe
will qualify you to enter the Kingdom of Heaven .
The model
and textbook for the Kingdom of Heaven is the
true family
. (162-140, 1987.4.5)
The family
provides us with lessons that enable us to establish the Kingdom of Heaven .
Its lessons were created by God .
Any person
living anywhere in the world can enter the
Kingdom of
Heaven if he loves every old man he meets
just as he
loves his own grandfather . A person who can love
everyone he
meets of his parents’ age just as he loves his
own parents
will be welcomed everywhere . It is the same
in every
country . When he goes to the spirit world, he will
transcend
every boundary . Furthermore, a person who has
the heart
to regard all the young people of the world as
his own
sons and daughters will be able to travel freely
throughout
the Kingdom of Heaven . All the twelve pearly
gates are
open to him, and the regions in all four directions . Thus, the family provides
lessons that teach us how
to connect
ourselves to the Kingdom of Heaven .
When you
apply these family lessons to loving your
nation, you
will become patriots . When you apply these
family
lessons to the world, you will become saints . When
you apply
these lessons for the welfare of all beings
in heaven
and earth, you will become God’s sons and
The Family Is the Basis and pattern for the Kingdom of Heaven 21
daughters –
divine sons and daughters . This is a desire that
every
person shares . (137-78, 1985.12.18)
You must be
able to embrace the sons and daughters
of all
races, and their grandsons and granddaughters too .
This means
you have to stand as true parents, with God’s
true love,
and inspire your family to love all the world’s
people . By
abiding in God’s love and in a relationship with
the
original True Parents, you will be able to attain that
standard of
true love in your family . Only then can you
enter the
Kingdom of Heaven . (176-210, 1988.5.9)
5. Uniting
the Love of Three Generations
The family
that is connected through love and united
in love can
encompass past history, the present era and the
future .
Such a family has been God’s greatest desire, and
He has
sought for it over the history of six thousand biblical years .
The
original mission given to Adam and Eve at the time
of creation
was to establish such a family, where everything
would come
under the dominion of true love . No one
would cut
themselves off from a relationship if the love
were
inherent and absolute .
God did not
want Adam and Eve to remain an individual
man and an
individual woman . He looked forward to the
new family
they would form through their union . This was
God’s
primary point of origin in creating men and women .22 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
You can
enter the Kingdom of Heaven without any
problem
once you have established a true family . We need
to live in
this world feeling fulfillment from the love of
God flowing
within our family . Only this will enable us to
transcend
the snares of this world . (30-86, 1970.3.17)
To form the
family realm of love, you must be absolute .
As parents,
you must be able to represent the past . As husband and wife, you must be able
to represent the present .
As the
children, you must be able to represent the future .
You should
consider that to love your parents, your partner or your children is equivalent
to God relating to the
world .
When
husband and wife and children have become
as one
body, they are able to represent the cosmos . They
can
instruct others to take their love as an example to
follow, and
teach their descendents to follow in their path .
The place
where they can make such statements, both to
themselves
and to others, and communicate the heart of
heaven, is
the homeland of the heart that will be remembered by all heaven and earth .
(30-80, 1970.3.17)
What has
God been seeking all this time? He has been
seeking
ideal object partners . He has been looking for
people who
resemble God and who possess the inner and
outer
aspects of His world of creation . What is the starting
point that
leads to such a result? It is the family . Nothing
represents
the universe better than the family . To be one
The Family Is the Basis and pattern for the Kingdom of Heaven 23
with our
parents is to bring the past and present together .
You can
love the past by loving your parents, love the present by loving your spouse,
and love the future by loving
your
children . In your family, you can experience the love
of three
generations . Your family is the core unit where
these three
kinds of love are concentrated . (30-80, 1970.3.17)
Then, where
does life in the Kingdom of Heaven begin?
It begins
in the family, and not in some other place . The
Kingdom of
Heaven is nothing more than a three- dimensional expansion of the family; it
does not exist separately
from the
family . Thus when you embrace your husband
or wife,
you should think of it as leading to the unions of
all men and
all women in the world . This is how in your
family you
can set the condition of having loved all humanity . This is the path you
should follow in your lives .
When you
love your parents, you are connecting past
history
with the present era, and you are paving a road that
will let
God come to you . This is the reason you must love
your
parents . To love your parents is to connect everything
in the past
to yourself who lives in the present, bringing
together
the past and the present so they become as one .
Also, loving
your own children connects the present reality with the future .
Unification
Thought is the philosophy that extols such
love and
teaches how it can be practiced throughout eternity . (30-83, 1970.3.17)24 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
6. Training
Ground of the Heart
We cannot
live disregarding the heart . Even if you were
the
president of a country or possessed all the authority in
the world,
you could not live without a place to express the
joy in your
heart . The president has people under his command, government ministers to
serve him and followers to
meet his
every need, but they cannot fulfill the desire of
the heart .
Only in the family can you experience such fulfillment . Hence the president
returns to his family, where
he and his
spouse can rejoice with each other and with
their
children . You should be able to boast to others about
this joy .
It is a joy that can only be experienced directly, not
secondhand
.
The same is
true for God . Even if the whole world were
restored,
God could not be happy without a family . Therefore, God must have a family of
His own . (25-86, 1969.9.30)
In the
family, parents should be at the center . In educational institutions which
represent society, teachers should
be at the
center . Your parents raised you from infancy and
helped you
develop physically and emotionally . What is
school,
then? It is a place where you are trained for your
future role
in society . As the family is the training ground
of the
emotions, school is the place where you can try out
different
roles and prepare for your future role in society .
But society
is not the ultimate end . It is a stepping-stone
to the
nation . The nation has a leader . Why is it that people The Family Is the Basis and pattern for the
Kingdom of Heaven 25
want to see
the president and be near him? Once people
have
learned all they can in the family and then in society,
they desire
to go on to the next level .
The
president is the fruit of the third stage, following
on the
stages of formation and growth . A seed is planted
and sprouts
(formation), begins its cycle of growth, and
finally the
elements come together to produce a flower
and bear
fruit (completion) .
In the
course of our growth, we attend school to be
educated to
become people who can become important
pillars of
society and talented people who are needed by
the nation
. What is the purpose of our studies in school?
It is
training . The school is a place for training and experimenting . With
training, you are not in the actual situation;
it is a
time of preparation . Be sure to prepare well .
What sort
of training happens in the family? It is cultivation of the heart . Your heart
is cultivated by the love at the
center of
the family . This prepares you in school to relate to
your
classmates with the same affection as you have for your
own
siblings . In the nation, too, you should relate to others
with
affection . The education you receive from your parents will be important for
you in school and in the nation .
Parents
should create a foundation of heart for their
children
and bequeath to their children everything having
to do with
the heart . Then they should teach their children
to live as
they have lived, giving them specific guidance on
how to live
in the family, in society, and in the nation . (180-
130,
1988.8.22)26 True Families, Gateway
to Heaven
A family is
not necessarily good just because it lives in
a nice
house in an affluent neighborhood . Even a family
that lives
in a humble house in a poor neighborhood can
be a good
family . A good family affords peace to all its
members,
who view their family as the center to which they
want to
link all aspects of their lives . In a good family, parents and children have a
relationship of heart such that
they live
for each other . Their family serves as the original
homeland of
their dreams . It is the source of their motivation in all that they do in life
. It is the foundation for their
lifelong
happiness . (29-17, 1970.2.15)
7. The
Original Hometown
The family
home is a good place . Why is it good? It is
good
because it is where my mother and father have lived .
It is good
because it is where my elder sister and elder
brother
have lived . It is where my younger brother and
younger
sister and where all my relatives have lived . This
is why
every human being feels a yearning for his or her
hometown .
People feel more deeply about their hometown than they do about their nation .
A Korean will love
the nation
of Korea and want to live in Korea . But even
when he is
in Korea, there is one place where he will yearn
to return
to . It is his hometown .
Our
hometown! How can we describe our hometown?
It is the
place where our hearts are entirely lifted up in four
directions
and in three dimensions . What is that heart? It The Family Is the Basis and pattern for the
Kingdom of Heaven 27
is the ties
that bind us in love . Above us, we are bound in
love to our
mother and father; as right and left, we are
bound in
love to our spouse; and below us, we are bound
in love to
our sons and daughters . We are bound in love to
our
relatives in these three dimensions . This is the heart of
the
original homeland .
People
treasure above anything else this originating
point of
their happiness, where true love is at the center .
This is the
reason they cannot help but feel a yearning
for their
original homeland . Then, where is God’s original
homeland?
Where do you think God’s original homeland is on the planet Earth? This is a
question we need to
consider .
Since God
is the God of love, He must surely have prepared a starting point on earth
where He could reside . So
where is
this starting point? To answer this question, we
need to
understand how God prepared that starting point .
God wants
to reside in the place where He first formed
His family
. What kind of place is that? It must be the place
where a son
of God dwells, a man who truly understands
that God is
his Father . In other words, it is the home of
God’s
only-begotten son, who can be the vessel for the
entirety of
God’s love . Also, it is a place where a daughter of God dwells, who can be the
vessel for the entirety
of God’s
love . Where that son of God and that daughter
of God
marry and complete their family, that place is the
starting-point
of God’s original homeland . (23-151, 1969.5.18)28 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
If you
could dwell in that original homeland, who else
should be
there? All the people you miss should be there .
Your
parents should be there and your brothers and sisters
should be
there . All your friends and relatives whom you
have longed
to see should be there . Moreover, they should
not be the
sort of people that you would want to see just
for a
moment . You would want to spend eternity with them
and never
grow tired of them . This is the kind of world we
need to
establish . This is the Kingdom of Heaven, which
religions
are seeking for in this age . (23-81, 1969.5.11)
We long for
our original homeland because this is where
we find the
people who are closest to us: our parents, our
brothers
and sisters, and our relatives . These people will
always
guide us . Whenever we visit, they will welcome us
just as
they did in the past . When we face difficulties, they
will show
sympathy, console us and receive us with joy .
It is
important to realize, however, that although you
may return
to your original homeland with a heart of longing, if people do not welcome you
on your arrival, then
your
intense heart of longing will vanish and you will turn
back with
feelings of deep regret . You need to have people
there who
will welcome you . (23-80, 1969.5.11)
8. The Cosmic
Ideology
All things
start from one, divide into many, and ultimately come together again as
something larger . One The Family Is the
Basis and pattern for the Kingdom of Heaven
29
divides
into many, and the many unite again into one .
Then that
greater one divides again, and they recombine
into an
even larger unit . This process repeats continuously .
Families
exist within this process of continual division and recombination, yet the form
of the family never
changes .
In the family a husband and wife meet, build a
relationship
as two people, and become one . The clan
brings many
families together as one . Clans combine to
form a
tribe, and tribes combine to form a nation . The
family,
however, is always at the center . The horizontal
world develops
as an expansion of the family .
This is why
no society can do without the family . If
family
conflicts are not resolved, we cannot solve the conflicts plaguing our world .
Once a
family is restored, then through that family
we can
fulfill the ideal of a unified cosmos . The cosmos
includes
the spirit world (heaven) and the physical world
(earth) .
Heaven and earth can be compared to a person’s
mind and
body . Mind and body must become one .
Just as a
subject partner needs an object partner and
vice-versa,
a man needs a woman and a woman needs a
man . The
union of a man and a woman leads to a family .
God’s
foundation of love will not be attained except
through the
family . (26-189, 1969.10.25)
The cosmic
ideology teaches that we should first unite
our mind
and body, next form a family that embodies
God’s love,
and on that basis we can connect the spirit 30 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
world and
the physical world – the cosmos . The character
ju (宙) in
cheon-ju (cosmos) refers to a house or a home .
We thus
understand the term “cosmic ideology” to mean
that unity
in the cosmos – between the incorporeal world
and the
corporeal world – is rooted in unity in the family .
What does
this have to do with us? Everyone needs a
family . If
you cannot be united in your family, you will have
no place to
stand in a united cosmos . The family serves as
the
ultimate standard for fulfilling the cosmic ideology . If
you cannot
sing songs of peace and praise the happiness
of your
family, you will be miserable, both on earth and in
the spirit
world . (26-189, 1969.10.25)
Where does
the task of building the Kingdom of Heaven
begin? It
begins in our families . Our philosophy for establishing the Kingdom is
family-centered . In the word
cheon-ju (cosmos)
the character cheon (天) means heaven
and ju (宙) means
house or home . Thus the phrase cheonju ju-eui (cosmic ideology) literally
means the ideology of
heaven’s
family .
Everything
in the 66 books of the Bible is God’s word
expressing
His earnest desire for an ideal family . Consider,
what is the
earnest desire of every man? It is to have an
ideal wife
. Also, every person born a woman has the earnest desire to have an ideal
husband . She may earn the
highest
academic degrees and command influence over
world
events, but her deepest desire is still to meet an ideal
man . She
wants to meet an ideal man whom she can love
The Family Is the Basis and pattern for the Kingdom of Heaven 31
and with
whom she can give birth to sons and daughters
filled with
blessings . This is the root of happiness . The
ideal of
the Unification Church does not lie anyplace else .
It begins
in the family and concludes in the family . (26-103,
1969.10.18)
What kind
of teaching is the cosmic ideology? It is chambumo ju-eui, the ideology that
teaches us to be true parents .
These
teachings uphold the way of life where we relate to
others with
the mind of a parent . This is the way of life in
our home,
the way of leadership in the nation, and way
each of you
should conduct yourselves as individuals .
Had human
beings not fallen, Adam and Eve would
have
brought the teaching that would have spread all over
the world .
The ideology of the original unfallen Adam is
exactly the
teaching about how to live as a true parent . It is
the
teaching about how to live as a father and as a mother .
There is no
higher teaching than this .
This is the
reason the Unification Church must link
matters of
the heart with the heavenly ideology . Heart is
cultivated
through the philosophy of true parents and is
practiced
within the framework of the original ideal family .
As long as
connections remain to families that have internalized this philosophy, the
Unification Church will not
perish .
(26-201, 1969.10.25)33
C H a p T e
r T w O
Love: the
Basis of Human Life
1. Why Are
People Born?
Which came
first, life or love? You can argue for either
answer .
But which do you think really came first? Love
came first
. The Primordial Core of the universe must have
emanated
love prior to creating existent beings . Otherwise, existent beings would have
no value . (143-277, 1986.3.20)
At the very
origin of things, which came first, life or
love? Can
you discern the answer? Love came first, then
life .
Since what comes second must surrender to what
comes
first, it is natural that people give their lives for the
sake of
love . This helps us understand the true way of life .
Since love
gave birth to our life, we should walk the path
of love and
ultimately die for love .
The purpose
of human life is to establish a love that can
be welcomed
by the macrocosm, not merely the microcosm . It is to live, to love, and to die
participating in the 34 True
Families, Gateway to Heaven
universal
love that is recognized by God, the angelic world,
all things
of creation, and our parents . (83-164, 1976.2.8)
Human
beings do not choose to be born . Are we born
by our
parents’ desire? No . We are born by God’s desire .
We are
conceived through the love of our parents, which
represents
God’s love . Each of us was created as a new life
by the love
of our parents, which represents God’s love .
Love has
the power to create the whole . Each of us was
born as a
central being of the entire universe, receiving all
the love in
the universe . The highest purpose of life is to
be born
through love, be raised in love, live by love, and
leave
behind a legacy of love . In our family we should live
by this
love, which is at the very center of the universe .
Then we
become people of the greatest value . (Blessed Families
and the
Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1063, 1978.9.21)
It is
important to understand why human beings are
born . We
are not born for the purpose of attaining vast
knowledge
or political power . We are born because of love
and for the
sake of love . What makes love so great? Love is
the
fountainhead of life .
You were
born out of your parents’ love . You were
not born
from your parents’ desire for money or knowledge . Because you were born from
love, you should bear
the fruits
of love . This is why you need to have children .
A man and a
woman each becomes complete when they
Love: the Basis of Human Life 35
become one
as husband and wife and then have sons and
daughters
as their object partners .
Human
beings cannot exist apart from love . Each of us
lives on
the foundation of love . Everything in creation originates from God’s love .
Since all things that exist have love
as their
foundation, it follows that human beings, as the
center of
the created universe, must also have begun from
love .
Since we were born from love and mature through
love, it
follows that we cannot live separated from the
realm of
love . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1062, 1988.8.20)
2. Life in
its Original Form
What is the
cause of human existence? That cause is
love .
Then, what do you think is the purpose of human
life? It is
to fulfill the ideal of love . Human beings are conceived through love, so our
purpose is to perfect love . First
we should
form a foundation of love in the context of our
family .
Then we should expand it and connect it everywhere, making it complete .
Since the
beginning is love, the end is also attained
through
love . For this, a man and a woman begin a
relationship,
become one in love, and expand their love
to connect
with everyone around them: front and back,
right and
left, above and below . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol.
I, 1064, 1986.1.3)36 True
Families, Gateway to Heaven
No matter
how firmly we have determined to become
an absolute
being and live for an absolute purpose, it will
be for
nothing unless we are happy . Our daily life should
be joyful .
We may live
for the sake of a certain purpose . Yet once
we achieve
it, some new, greater purpose may appear that
makes the
earlier purpose seem insignificant . On the
other hand,
what is this most precious thing for a man or
for a
woman? It is love . Love is the key element needed to
experience
happiness .
Therefore,
no matter how lofty a person’s purpose may
be, if he
fails to establish a love that can take dominion
over
purpose, once he attains his purpose he will not be
satisfied .
So he will embark on another purpose and in the
end not be
satisfied with that either . Thus, purpose is limited . It cannot stand above
love . (29-130, 1970.2.26)
What are
you living for? Some people say they live to
eat . Some
people say they live to work . Still others live
without a
purpose . What are you living for? Declare that
you live
for love; that is the most excellent answer .
We are born
as the fruit of love, we spend our lives
loving
others, and eventually we return to the eternal love
of God’s
bosom . This is the original vision of human life
as God
created it . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1064,
1982.4.26)
Love: the Basis of Human Life 37
A person is
born in love and raised in love . Then he
or she
leaves the love of parents behind and seeks out
a love of a
partner, which is the love of another dimension . We can say that children’s
experience receiving love
from their
parents is formation-stage love, and spouses’
experience
receiving conjugal love from their partner is
growth-stage
love . However, no matter how much love a
husband and
wife receive from each other, it is only when
they have
children that they can be completed in love .
That is why
couples naturally want to have children . Parents’ experience of receiving love
from their children is
completion-stage
love .
Going
through the stages of receiving parental love,
conjugal
love and children’s love is fundamental to human
fulfillment
. They constitute the path to fulfilling God’s
original
ideal of love that He purposed at the creation . (48-
12,
1971.8.31)
Love gives
birth to life . A man is born from love, is
raised in
love by his loving parents, meets a loving wife
and loves
her, and then dies in that love – this is the course
of human
life . In this original vision for human life there
would be no
sorrow or pain . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom,
vol. I,
1065, 1982.10.29)38 True Families,
Gateway to Heaven
Originally,
God designed the focal point of the universe to be the place where every type
of love combines
into one .
God’s vertical love and human horizontal love
would come
together in a comprehensive way that involves
parental
love, conjugal love and children’s love simultaneously in an all-encompassing
union . This would become
the focal
point of the entire universe . Every cell in the universe would turn in its
direction .
All the
spirits in the spirit world would turn and focus on
this point
. They would protect it and not allow anyone to
invade it,
since if it were destroyed it would be catastrophic .
This focal
point needs a certain structure to maintain
itself and
preserve its integrity . In the teaching of the Unification Church, this
structure is called the four-position
foundation
.
3
(Blessed
Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1066, 1982.10.29)
3. The
Nutrient of Life
You
shouldn’t forget that while you were a fetus, you
not only
received nutrients from your mother, you also
received
love from her . Similarly, while you live on earth,
you not
only receive physical nutrients from nature, you
also
receive love from God . Love is an essential nutrient
for life .
(Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1066, 1984.4.24)
3. The four-position foundation is the Divine
Principle’s term for the four-fold
structure
of a God-centered family, composed of God, husband, wife and children.
It is
called “the fundamental foundation for the life of all beings.” (Exposition of
the
Divine
Principle, p. 25) Love: the Basis of Human Life 39
Just as
plants absorb sunlight as an element of life,
people take
in love is an element of life . Our dearest wish
is to live
eternally in circumstances where we can love and
be loved .
This is the hope of the Kingdom of Heaven on
earth and
the Kingdom of Heaven in heaven . (Blessed Families
and the
Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1066, 1986.3.20)
The paths
that men and women walk are for the sake of
love . We
each have a path to travel, and it is a path of love .
(Blessed
Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1066, 1984.4.24)
We travel
this life to obtain love, to keep love, and to
create an
environment of love . A woman puts on cosmetics or gets a massage for the sake
of love . Our wants and
our work
are all for the sake of love . We willingly endure
hardships
and press forward in order to obtain precious
love .
(Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1066, 1982.4.26)
From the
moment we are born, we receive parental
love . As
long as our parents are alive, they will love us at
each stage
of our lives, through childhood, young adulthood and middle age . Having
received parental love as we
grow up, in
time the horizontal love of husband and wife is
bound to
blossom within each of us . (Blessed Families and the Ideal
Kingdom,
vol. I, 1067, 1973.4.16)
What is
marriage? It is like a school where men learn
things they
did not know about women and women learn 40
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
things they
did not know about men . When all the grades
are A’s,
then the husband and the wife will be happy .
Raising
sons and daughters is like going to another
school,
this time to learn about loving the world . Your children are your connection
to the future . They are given to
you to
provide you with lessons about how to relate to the
future
world .
Acts of
filial piety toward your grandfather and grandmother, or to your ancestors,
have the purpose of enabling
you to be
educated by the spirit world . All your ancestors
are
connected to you through love . Love is the central line
that links
grandfather and grandmother, husband and
wife, and
sons and daughters . As blood circulates through
the human
body, these links enable your ancestors in the
spirit
world going back even ten thousand generations to
circulate
up and down and communicate with you, their
distant
descendent . The spirit world, like the universe as a
whole, is
organized according to connections of love .
Everything
submits to the order of love . This is why
people say
that becoming a servant of true love and a slave
of true
love is the greatest happiness . (Blessed Families and the Ideal
Kingdom,
vol. I, 1067, 1985.10.4)
4. What Is
God’s Love?
You should
discover God’s love . How can we characterize God’s love? It can be compared to
a warm spring day,
with white
clouds gently floating in the sky, shimmering
Love: the Basis of Human Life 41
waves of
warm air rising from the ground, and insects
flying to
and fro . Ants are crawling in and out of their
nests,
exploring the ground . Pussy willows are in bloom
by the
stream . Frogs sing new songs of spring, bees swarm
and
butterflies flutter about . Lying in the grass, you feel
a happy,
sleepy intoxication come over you . You feel like
resting
there forever .
This is
just how God feels when He finds His ideal partner . God likewise feels as if
He were in a beautiful flower
garden,
with butterflies and bees flying around . When
imagining
this, do you feel good or bad? Dull-witted
people may
not be aware that God has feelings . But truly,
He feels
good .
When you
run into someone whom you are pleased
to see, you
grasp his hand firmly and shake hands . When
someone
greets you joyfully, saying, “Wow, it’s been a long
time!” and
shakes your hand firmly, does it make you feel
good or
bad? [Audience: “Good .”] If anyone says it feels
bad, go
ahead and kick him!
Do you like
it when someone grasps your hand firmly?
[“Yes, we
do .”] You mean you want to like it . How can you
say for
sure that you like it? You have to know the person to
like it .
If the person is a stranger, how can you like it when
he grabs
your hand? But if he is someone you are fond of,
then when
you grasp each other’s hands, you don’t want
to let go .
You young
ladies here, think of how it will be when you
are married
. If your husband loves you, you feel as if you 42 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
don’t need
anything else in the world . You want to live your
whole life
staying by his side . I enjoy watching a man and
woman
holding hands, especially when the man’s hand is
as rough as
a cow’s front hoof . We enjoy seeing scenes like
that in the
movies . But if the woman were to say to the
man, “Oh,
you have such pretty hands,” the man would be
offended .
This is how it is .
Love is
eternal . Love is not two; it is one . It is two becoming one . When a man and
a woman become a couple and
love each
other, they are bonded together . Of course this
does not
happen literally, but in heart . In fact, they reach
a level
even higher than this; they touch God’s love . If you
live with
God’s love, will you become one or not? Think
about it .
You are destined to become one . (Blessed Families and
the Ideal
Kingdom, vol. I, 1068, 1970.12.22)
When a man
and a woman fall in love, they experience all sorts of wonderful things . But
if you could taste
the
profound experience of God’s love, you would find
it
incomparably greater than any worldly love . When a
person has
really tasted God’s love, no amount of difficulty
or sorrow
can defeat him . He dwells in a realm of absolute
freedom .
Such a realm truly exists; the question is how to
find it .
(39-240, 1971.1.15)
God’s love
can basically be divided into three major
types:
parental love, conjugal love and children’s love . Love: the Basis of Human
Life 43
God’s love
is the core that fills them and unites them all .
(173-278,
1975.11.23)
5.
Inheriting Love and Bequeathing Love
A glorious
new morning will dawn on the day when
God assumes
a physical body . Even more glorious will be
the moment
that He has a son and a daughter through
whom He can
experience the love of husband and wife .
Still more
glorious will be the moment when He can love
His
grandchildren . The day God can love His grandchildren will be more glorious
than when He can love His son
and
daughter .
How do you
think God explained to Adam about the
joy He felt
at the moment He created him? Was it enough
to say to
Adam, “This is how happy I was”? People can only
understand
the joy of parenthood when their first baby is
born and
they become new parents themselves . Likewise,
we can only
understand God’s happiness at the creation
when we
give birth to our own sons and daughters . When
children
are young they can’t comprehend parental love,
but they
come to understand it later in life when they have
a family
and begin raising their own children . Then they
understand,
“So this is how my parents loved me when
they were
raising me .” Therefore, the day your child gets
married is
a day of glory, and the day your child has a child
of his or
her own is a day of glory . (Blessed Families and the Ideal
Kingdom,
vol. I, 936, 1978.1.22)44 True
Families, Gateway to Heaven
You need to
know God’s love . How can you really know
it? First
you need to experience the love of your parents
and learn
to express your love for them in acts of service .
Next, you
need to experience conjugal love with your
spouse and
learn to express your love by serving him or
her well .
Next, you need to experience what it is like to
love your
children and know how they love you . You will
learn that
to be a parent you cannot just give orders to your
children,
but must learn to understand and serve them as
well . This
is the way you learn about God’s love . Until you
have cared
for children like this, you are still incomplete
and will
not be able to truly understand God’s love .
Without
having the experience of raising your own
children,
you cannot begin to fathom how much God
has loved
human beings, His children . Similarly, until
you have
experienced life as a husband, you cannot know
God’s
experience of loving a woman as His wife, and without the experience of being a
wife, you cannot know God’s
experience
of loving a man as Her husband . Although you
may already
know what it is like to be a child of God, you
cannot
truly understand God’s parental love until you
become a
parent yourself . Therefore, to become a true
parent who
knows God’s love, you need to have sons and
daughters .
(133-138, 1984.7.10)
Parents
want their children to be married because they
want to
bequeath to them all their parental love . When the Love: the Basis of Human Life 45
parents
die, they leave behind their substantial selves with
their
descendants . This is why we need descendants .
Love
continues forever . Since love is the highest human
desire, everyone
has their arms outstretched wanting to
inherit it
. When parents have bequeathed their love to
their
descendants, they can stand proudly before God
when they
arrive in the spirit world .
It is in
the family that love becomes complete . We say
that the
path to the Kingdom of Heaven runs through
the family,
because the family is where we can realize the
realm of
oneness of love . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol.
I, 937,
1978.9.21)
The
principles that we should follow can be seen in
nature .
Seeds are sown in spring, in summer plants reach
their full
growth, and in autumn they bear fruit . Winter is
a time for
storing up seeds for next spring’s planting . Likewise, when you go through
winter-like harsh times, you
should put
things in order and carry the essence of the
new seed of
life deep within your heart . Only then will you
have seeds
to plant again when spring returns .
Having thus
equipped yourselves, you will be prepared
to become
parents and bear sons and daughters in your
likeness .
You will know to raise your sons and daughters to
follow the
same principles as you do . (26-158, 1969.10.25)
Why do
people feel sad when they do not have sons and
daughters?
It is because they cannot complete the circle 46 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
of life .
When you see birds feeding their young, you recognize the deep love of the
mother bird . People generally
like
children more than adults . While they show polite
respect to
adults, they demonstrate warm affection to children . You can realize how much
your parents loved you
when you
have your own sons and daughters and raise
them .
Everyone
should get married, have children and raise
them . This
is the only way they can know both children’s
love and
parental love . It seems that many people these
days avoid
having children . They hesitate to have children
because
children may limit their freedom to marry and
divorce .
But when people fail to establish the four-position
foundation,
they cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven .
This is
because they do not fully know God’s heart of love
for human
beings . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 937,
1982.4.26)
6. Seeking
the Center of Love
Human
beings are born in love, raised in parental love,
and grow up
as they extend their love horizontally to relatives and friends . A stage in
the development of horizontal
love is
completed when they meet a partner of the opposite sex and grow together as a
couple . In their conjugal
union, the
couple represents the love of heaven and earth .
The fruit
of that love is the children they bear . Children
are the
result of love, born from the core of the heart . Love: the Basis of Human
Life 47
Those
children, born from a man and woman who
share love
based on deep heart, create a path for the parents that will take them to the
central point of love . When
they follow
this path to the center, they will meet God . By
having
children as fruits of love, human beings come to
deeply
experience the love by which God created human
beings and
all things . By loving their children with the
same love
that they had received as they grew up, they can
have a deep
experience of the parental heart of God .
The love
that parents pour out to their children is not
materialistic
love . It is an intrinsic love . Though everything
in heaven
and earth may change, the love that parents give
their
children will never change . In every time and place
parental
love is the same .
By becoming
a parent and loving your children, you
will
understand and deeply experience how God has been
loving
human beings, His children . Through the experience of being a parent and
loving your children, you will
feel to
your bone how much your parents have loved you .
This is why
people revere their parents even more in
their old
age and fulfill the duties of filial piety to lovingly
care for
them . If you do not have the heart to do this, you
are not
qualified to be parents, and your love towards your
children
can only be considered hypocritical .
We need to
feel and understand how much God has
loved us .
We can do this by becoming parents ourselves
and loving
our children . This will enable us to love God
with
greater sincerity .48 True Families,
Gateway to Heaven
In this
way, it is natural that we should love our elderly
parents
more than we love our children, and love God
more than
we love our parents . This is the order and law
of love .
As was
stated, human beings are born in love and grow
through
their childhood years receiving parental love . But
once we
grow to a certain level, our parents’ love alone is
not enough
for us, and we begin to expand our love horizontally to include love among
siblings and relatives . This
is because
as we mature, we want to receive all the love that
exists in
heaven and earth .
In
particular, as we enter the years of adolescence, we
begin to
crave the love of the opposite sex . By giving and
receiving
love with someone of the opposite sex, we are
able to
enter a new and comprehensive realm of love . It is
here that
for the first time we are able to set out in search
of the
center of love .
The cosmos
has a spherical shape . By the give-and-take
of
horizontal love with our partner, we begin to revolve
together .
The relationship traces a circular shape, the first
step in
forming a sphere . Next, having chosen a partner of
the
opposite sex and shared love, we bear the fruit of children . By the give-and-take
of love with our children, we
begin to
revolve on a vertical axis . This vertical love when
combined
with the horizontal love creates a three- dimensional spherical realm . At the
same time it establishes a
center –
the center of love .
The center
of love that emerges out of this spherical
Love: the Basis of Human Life 49
motion
created by these love relationships is the core of
existence
of the entire world of creation . It can be likened
to the Sun,
around which the Earth continually revolves
and which
provides for its existence . The center of love
possesses
infinite force, which enables the motion of love
around it
to continue forever . This center, which arises
within a
sphere of love, is the dwelling-place of God .
All created
beings that exist in the world are given birth
and exist
by virtue of God’s love . They all seek the center
of God’s
love . God is the furnace of love . (126-245, 1983.4.24)
7. The
Three Ages of Human Life
Human
beings spend time developing in their mother’s
womb before
they are born . They live on earth for a certain period, and then die . Prior
to birth, the fetus spends
about ten
months
4
in the mother’s womb . While it is in
the womb,
it has limited freedom . It develops by receiving
nutrients
from the mother through the umbilical cord .
About all
it can do is straighten and bend its fingers, open
and close
its mouth, and wriggle its feet . Nevertheless, for
the fetus,
the mother’s womb is a world of freedom and
the
entirety of its realm of life .
After ten
months, the fetus is born into the world as an
infant and
begins to grow . Now its world is the wide earth
and human
society . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1071,
1983.4.24)
4. Ten months by the lunar calendar are
equivalent to nine solar months.50
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
Love is the
purpose of human existence at every stage .
The fetus
was conceived in its parents’ love . It develops in
the
mother’s womb, the bosom of its parents’ protection
and love .
After birth, the child doesn’t know any better
and so may
wet her bed, but the parents will not blame
her for it
. Parents’ love is such that they do not recognize
ugliness as
being ugly . Their love enables them to digest
everything
joyfully and without complaint . When a child
reaches
maturity, at around twenty years of age, he or she
should meet
an eternal partner in love . That is when he
or she is
engrafted into a higher love, whose measure is to
live for
the sake of the other according to the principles of
Heaven .
Continuing their life course, the couple has their
own
children and gives love to them .
Thus
throughout our life, we can experience the
greatness
of God’s love . We do this by participating in
completing
the substantial realm of God’s love that exists
between God
and us, His object partners . (143-285, 1986.3.20)
Human life
in the world can be compared to the life of a
fetus in
its mother’s womb . It is our hundred-year sojourn
in the womb
of our Mother Earth . Just as the fetus is ignorant of the world outside the
womb, people living in the
earthly
world are ignorant of the reality of the incorporeal
spirit
world that awaits them after death . They only have a
vague sense
that a world after death probably exists .
Yet just as
the human world exists in the fetus’s future,
even though
it did not know about it while in the mother’s
Love: the Basis of Human Life 51
womb, even
so the spirit world exists in reality regardless
of our
beliefs or feelings about it . Yet since the world after
death
cannot be perceived by our five physical senses, we
must
overcome our disbelief through religious faith . (Blessed
Families
and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1071, 1983.4.24)
Human
beings pass through three ages in the course
of their
life: the water age, the land age and the air age .
Don’t
animals and all things live in the water, on land, and
in the air?
For human beings to stand as the lords of creation and be qualified to have
dominion over all things,
we must
exist as a complete life form, more complete than
any other
creature .
To be the
lords of all creatures at home in the water, we
are given
an age when we live in water . Next, during the
land age,
we exist as the highest being among all the land
animals .
It follows that we must also have an air age . But
human
beings do not have wings . Without wings, how can
we fly? We
should be able to fly higher and farther than
any bird or
insect . Then what should we do? This cannot
happen as
long as we are in a physical body . No matter
how high we
jump, we cannot get far off the ground .
Yet because
human beings are the lords of creation, and
because we
stand in a reciprocal relationship to God, who
is a
spiritual being, we need to have the same stage of operation as God . It is
well known that light travels 300,000
kilometers
a second . Human beings can travel even faster .52 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
We will
have this capability in the air age, when we live as a
spirit .
(112-202, 1981.4.12)
This world
in which we live is not all that exists . There is
also the
spirit world . What sort of place is this spirit world,
where we
dwell after we die? It is an eternal world, filled
with the
air of love . Your physical life is a time of preparation for life in the
eternal world of spirit . (140-121, 1986.2.9)
8. Training
to Be in Rhythm with the Spirit World
The spirit
world is a place overflowing with the elements of love . On the earth we
breathe air, but in the spirit
world
people live by inhaling love . The love you give and
receive in
the spirit world is not secular human love . It is
true love .
(145-267, 1986.5.15)
When you go
to the spirit world, this is what you will
find .
Those who are well-endowed with love for their parents, brothers and sisters,
spouse, and children – that is,
those who
experienced deep love in their family life – enjoy
great
freedom . They can go anywhere without restriction . On the other hand, those
who did not experience
love on
earth are narrow-minded, and in the spirit world
they find
themselves isolated and alone, with no freedom
whatsoever
.
The love
between parent and child is a vertical relationship, the love between husband
and wife is a horizontal Love: the Basis
of Human Life 53
relationship,
and the love among siblings is a relationship
that
circles and surrounds . These three relationships differ
from one
another . Therefore, only when you experience
deep love
through each of these three mutually distinct
interactions
on earth can you circulate freely – vertically,
horizontally,
and in a circle .
For
example, a person who did not taste parental love
because his
parents died early is in a rather tragic position
because he
is missing an important experience of love .
Likewise,
those who did not experience the conjugal love
relationship
of husband and wife, as well as love in the
family,
live a destitute existence in the spirit world because
they lack
those crucial life experiences where they were
supposed to
develop their love . Those who had no brothers and sisters on earth will also
be in an impoverished
state in
the spirit world, because they lacked the opportunity to develop that dimension
of love . (Blessed Families and the
Ideal
Kingdom, vol. I, 1067, 1977.1.1)
There is a
reason why we need to get married . We marry
to have the
full experience of parental love, conjugal
love, and
children’s love . Such experiences are necessary
because the
spirit world is filled with the air of these loves .
The reason
you need to have a family is to train yourself
to be in
rhythm with the spirit world . Those who go to
the spirit
world without these experiences of love cannot
follow the
rhythm there . It will be as if they are missing a 54 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
nose to
inhale the air . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 1067,
1977.4.3)
You are
born from your father and mother . On a more
fundamental
level you are born from God, who made you
by
employing your father’s seed and your mother’s womb .
God is your
True Parent . You will find Him by first knowing
the love of
your physical parents and then experiencing
the
universe as your parent .
Relating to
your physical parents is just a temporary
stage . In
time you will greet the moment of your death; it is
a jubilant
time when you will go to meet your True Parent .
You will
meet your True Parent in a place overflowing with His true love . This is the
Kingdom of Heaven
in heaven,
where the atmosphere is composed of love –
parental
love . It is not a love for oneself; rather, it is an
unconditional,
giving love in keeping with the principles
of service
and sacrifice . To make the grade there, you
must love
humanity and love the universe . Life on earth is
the
training ground for you to develop such love . (105-108,
1979.9.30)
Do you know
how important your life on earth is? You
only live
it once . It is a brief moment that only comes once .
Compared to
the expanse of eternal life, earthly life is
but an
instant . It seems too short . Therefore, during this
moment we
must look beyond our physical life and prepare ourselves for the spirit world .
(207-99, 1990.11.1)55
C H a p T e
r T H r e e
The
Original Vision for Love
between Man
and Woman
1. Bringing
Joy to God and All Creation
A man and
woman may love each other, but is their love
in accord
with God’s will and the criterion He requires? Is
their love
in accord with the model of love that exists in
the mind of
God?
If the
first man and woman had become one in love
based on
the love of God, then they would have become
that
universal model of love . God surely desired that
human
beings display such love . The man and woman
surely
wanted such love from each other . It would have
been true
love, the very core of the universe . It would have
become the
standard by which all love is measured . (Blessed
Families
and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 335, 1983.6.5)
God’s love
and human love are the same in their
essence .
Love is the power that strives for oneness . Why
does a man
long for a woman, and a woman long for a 56
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
man? It is
because only through a woman can a man possess God, and only through a man can
a woman possess
God . In
other words, when a man and a woman become
one in
love, God is in the midst of them . (Blessed Families and the
Ideal
Kingdom, vol. I, 336, 1982.4.26)
Remembering
that God is the source of the duality of
male and
female, whenever men praise the beauty and
worth of
women, or women praise the merit and honor of
men, they
should give even greater praise to the magnificence of God . (25-277,
1969.10.5)
When a
woman whom God loves is in a man’s heart,
and a man
whom God loves is in a woman’s heart, and
the two
love each other even as they praise God together,
God is
delighted with their love and all creation rejoices .
Heaven and
earth rejoice to see them embracing, for it is
precious in
their sight .
When that
man and that woman embrace each other
in mutual
affection, the entire universe enfolds them and
supports
them . This is the original vision of God’s creation . It will be realized in
His ideal . (Blessed Families and the Ideal
Kingdom,
vol. I, 334, 1969.2.4)
God’s
original design was that each man should meet a
woman with
whom he can rejoice, and each woman should
meet a man
with whom she can rejoice . More than this,
their
budding relationship should bring joy to God and all The Original Vision for Love between Man and
woman 57
things of
creation . Then, all creation will be mobilized for
this couple
and want to receive their dominion . Birds will
sing for
them, and butterflies will flutter and dance with
joy . God
will rejoice, people will rejoice, and all of creation
will
rejoice .
Had the
first human ancestors started off history by fulfilling this original plan of
God, the world today would be
the ideal
world that God originally envisioned . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom,
vol. I, 336, 1969.2.4)
2. Men and
Women Are Born for Each Other
For what
purpose is a man born? He is born for the
sake of a
woman . This fact cannot be denied . Likewise, a
woman is
not born for her own sake, but for the sake of a
man . A
woman who does not come to a clear understanding within herself that she is
born for the sake of a man will
encounter
problems in her life .
God, the
Great Administrator of heaven and earth,
established
this principle within His Principle of Creation .
We cannot
enter the world of goodness, truth, happiness
and peace,
or the world of love and ideal, unless we follow
this
principle . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 338, 1975.1.16)
Every woman
is born to one day join with a man, and
every man
is born to join with a woman . This is the highest
truth . By
following this principle we can find the realm of 58 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
blessing .
Deviating from this highest truth constitutes the
highest
evil . (21-201, 1968.11.20)
Men and
women are physically opposite . While women
tend to
focus on one area of life, men often work in three
or four
arenas at the same time . Women are more likely to
enjoy
staying at home, and men are more likely to enjoy
traveling
the world . Their characters are opposite as well,
with men
ordinarily more subjective and women more
responsive
. How can these opposites become one? They
can become
one through love . Love also brings human
beings and
God into oneness . (38-255, 1971.1.8)
Why is a
man born? He is not born to earn money, gain
political
power, or pursue academic learning . He is born
for the sake
of a woman . Men have larger physiques for
earning a
living not for themselves, but to support the wife
and
children .
A man’s
sexual organ and a woman’s sexual organ are
different .
For whom do they exist? A man’s sexual organ
does not
exist for his own satisfaction . It exists for the sake
of a woman
. Likewise, a woman’s sexual organ exists for
the sake of
a man . Have you ever thought this way? This
is not
something to laugh about and then forget . (143-275,
1986.3.20)
What is the
symbol of the love between man and
woman?
Where is their love consummated? It is their sexual The Original Vision for Love between Man and
woman 59
organs, by
which they become one flesh . When the man
and woman
love each other, their sexual organs become
the channels
through which their minds and bodies completely merge .
The man’s
sexual organ is not his, and woman’s is not
hers . The
man has what belongs to the woman, and the
woman has
what belongs to the man . Men and women are
not born
for their own sake . They should know clearly that
they are
born for the sake of their partner . (132-146, 1984.5.31)
What are
men and women born to do while living on
earth? They
are born to love each other . For this reason,
God, the
Great King of Wisdom, switched the ownership
of their
love organs . A man has a sexual organ, but that
does not
mean he is its owner . The same is true for woman .
Those who
act carelessly, employing their sexual organ
with no
regard for its ownership, will be judged for having
violated
love . If men knew that they will face a dreadful
punishment
according to this strictest of laws, how could
they dare
think about other women instead of their own
wives?
Conversely, how could wives think about other men
besides
their own husbands? (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom,
vol. I,
340, 1986.3.14)
3. Men and
Women Need Each Other
Every
person without exception absolutely needs love .
Isn’t that
right? To have love, an absolutely necessary 60 True
Families, Gateway to Heaven
element is
another human being of the opposite sex . A
man needs a
woman and a woman needs a 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, the entire human race would
perish in
less than a hundred years . A man may boast that
he has the
power to rule the world, but if there were no
women, all
would be gone within one hundred years . So
women are
absolutely necessary . (25-180, 1969.10.4)
When we say
“human beings” we mean men and women
together .
5
No man should be without a woman, and no
woman
should be without a man . A man does not choose
to be born
as a man; neither does a woman choose to be
born as a
woman . Only after we are born do we discover
that we are
either a man or a woman . (67-267, 1973.7.22)
Men, when
you were born, were you aware that there
are women
in the world? Suppose a man is born and later
finds out
that there are only men; would he not feel bad?
And if a
woman is born and later finds out that there are
only women,
she too would feel bad, wouldn’t she? Yet at
the time a
woman is born, does she or does she not have
any
awareness that men exist? Although she was born without this knowledge, the One
who gave her birth knew it .
5. The Chinese character for “human being” (人) is made
with two brush strokes,
one longer
and one shorter, like a man and woman leaning on each other. The Original Vision for Love between Man and
woman 61
The reason
she is born as a woman is because somewhere
there is a
man who needs her .
Likewise,
the reason I am born as a man is because
somewhere
there is a woman who needs me . We are each
born for
the sake of someone, and God has knowledge of
it .
(37-19, 1970.12.22)
A man
cannot find fulfillment without a woman . Even
his
relationship to God is not complete until he is connected to his human
counterpart, his wife . Human history
has been
miserable because men have failed to understand
that they
absolutely need a woman to love and care for .
Conversely,
women have not understood that they absolutely need a man to love and care for
.
True love
can only be experienced on the foundation
of an ideal
relationship between a man and woman . A
man and
woman who are absolutely committed to uniting
in true
love can attain such unity through single-minded
devotion .
When they have achieved absolute oneness, God
dwells in
their midst .
God would
not like to see a husband and wife joined in
true love
separate, so He made the absolute love of man
and woman
eternal . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 340,
1986.8.20)
God is
all-knowing and all-powerful, but if He is alone,
these
absolute attributes have no meaning . Similarly, a
man may be
handsome and possess a fine physique, but 62
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
these
things have no meaning if he is without a woman . A
man who
lives fascinated by his own good looks and physique leads an ugly, worthless
existence . It is a problem
that so
many men have sunk into such narcissism; it is one
reason why
history has been full of tragedy . God’s providence works to change and improve
the world immersed
in such
self-centeredness . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol.
I, 341,
1986.8.20)
4. Love
Comes from Your Partner
I cannot
realize love by myself . Where does love come
from? Love
does not come from me, but from my spouse .
Since love
comes from my spouse, I must bow my head
and serve
her . This is the origin of the heavenly principle
of living
for the sake of others . We must live by this philosophy . It means, when
someone worthy and precious comes
to me, I
must honor and serve her in order to receive her .
(143-277,
1986.3.30)
I may have
love in my heart, but when I am alone it
cannot
manifest itself . Love does not appear when a man
is alone .
It only emerges when he is with a woman who
can be his
partner in love . Only when you have a partner
to love
will you experience love springing up in your life .
(Blessed
Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 342, 1982.10.29) The Original Vision
for Love between Man and woman 63
We know
that parental love is good and conjugal love
is good,
because these genuine loves are not self-centered .
Love is not
something I can make for myself; it is something my partner gives to me . Keep
this in mind . Love
comes from
your husband and from your wife, from your
sons and
daughters, and from your brothers and sisters .
Love is not
self-made . Your spouse gives it to you . Therefore, who is the owner of love?
Your spouse is the owner of
love .
(34-331, 1970.9.20)
Where did
we say love comes from? It comes from your
partner .
Think about it: if your wife neglected her appearance and always had a mean
expression on her face, your
love for
her would recede . On the other hand, if your wife
takes care
to make herself pretty and always approaches
you with a
lovely smile, your love for her will develop more
quickly .
The way your love functions is determined by your
partner,
according to the way she presents herself: her
speech, her
beauty, her scent, and so on . (Blessed Families and the
Ideal
Kingdom, vol. I, 343, 1982.10.29)
What is the
starting-point of love? The starting-point of
love is not
“I .” The word love implies a relationship . Even
the most
handsome man cannot know love if he is alone
without a
partner .
“I love
you”: these are words that Satan has been exploiting . The truth is, I cannot
create love . You may think that 64
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
you do, but
there will be no progress in the future unless
that
mindset is totally dismantled and transformed .
Wives have
been putting themselves at the center, and
husbands
have been putting themselves at the center, both
wanting to
be served . This mindset destroys relationships .
Since love
does not start from me but from my spouse, if
I am to
possess that love I must serve her and live for her
sake . Love
requires patience and self-sacrifice .
From this
perspective, there is no path anywhere in
heaven or
on earth to overcome the satanic world except
by
following the principles of love centered on God . That
is why God
is holding tightly onto love .
Therefore,
love is the basis for the Buddhist virtue of
compassion
.
6
Likewise, love is the basis for the Confucian
virtue of
benevolence .
7
Compassion and benevolence are
realized
only in the context of mutual relationships . (46-35,
1971.7.18)
5. The
Harmony of Love
Man
symbolizes heaven and woman symbolizes earth .
When the
two become one, they represent the natural harmony of heaven and earth .
Men and
women are different . Men’s muscles are
rugged and
women’s are smooth . Men have beards while
6. Jabi (慈悲) is the
Korean Buddhist term meaning loving-kindness and compassion. It describes a
mind of sympathy rooted in understanding the equality and
interdependence
of all beings.
7. In (仁) in Korean or ren in Chinese may be
translated as benevolence or humaneness.
The Original Vision for Love between Man and woman 65
women do
not . Women’s voices are high and men’s are
low . Yet
we see their contrasting features fitting together
well as
harmony unfolds between them .
We may
liken them to the human body: the right side
and the
left side complement each other to form a whole
structure .
The two halves are bound tightly together .
Ladies and
gentlemen, do you like only things that
are high or
only things that are low? Or do you prefer a
pleasing
balance of high and low that creates harmony?
Estimating
from the line formed by the horizon, fish live
below the
line while mammals and birds live above it .
Women
menstruate once a month, like the ebb and flow
of the
tides pulled by the moon . In breathing we inhale
and exhale
. Likewise, a man and a woman need to establish a line of balance and create
harmony .
People like
to go to amusement parks with their rides
that go up
and down, because their motion duplicates the
motion of
the universe .
Which do
you think is more pleasing, men socializing only with other men, or men and
women socializing
together?
Men and women together is better, because it
better
reflects the harmony of the universe . We should
live in
step with the beat of the universe, the universe that
promotes
harmony through the harmony of yin and yang .
(Blessed
Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 344, 1984.5.31)
When a man
and a woman create loving harmony, they
initiate
circular movement . When a man and a woman love 66 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
each other
and become one flesh, and then bear the fruits
of love,
God descends to them, they ascend towards Him,
and they
meet in the middle . They form a sphere with God
at the
center and begin spherical movement . Out of that
divine
center, family members can make relationships in
all
directions .
At the
center of the sphere, love’s harmony is realized,
and life
emerges and grows . The center of the sphere is the
basis for
equality between the sexes and for the philosophy
that family
members should hold all things in common .
This is so
because the power of love is there . Love is the
force that
embraces all the interactions in the universe .
(Blessed
Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 345, 1982.4.26)
For human
beings, love is eternal . It is one, and can
never be
divided . Once a man and a woman are joined
in love,
they are to live together for a lifetime and then
eternally
even after death . They are two persons, but by
revolving
in oneness with each other they become as one
body .
When the
two people become one, they revolve with
God to form
a four-position foundation of love . This is the
ideal realm
of love . Only true love dwells there; false love
cannot
invade . When a man and woman are blessed by
God and
achieve this perfect unity, God comes to them
freely .
In the
four-position foundation of love, the husband
and wife
will grow to love each other with their hearts by The Original Vision for Love between Man and
woman 67
loving each
other with their bodies, and when they love
each other
with their hearts, their bodies will follow . (Blessed
Families
and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 346, 1984.1.1)
6.
Enraptured by True Love
What is the
most sacred thing in the world? It is true
love . True
love begins with God . Since God exists, there
can be no
other way to happiness than the path of true
love . God
truly desires that we travel the path of true love,
for without
doing so we cannot come into the presence of
God . We
have to understand this point .
God wants
to see, hear, eat and touch through love . As
for human
beings, if we were to receive God’s kiss of love,
our joy
would be so great that we would feel as though
we might
explode from the inside . To rejoice like this is
God’s only
desire . He is not the sort who rejoices to have
diamonds or
jewelry . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 381,
1986.8.20)
The human
body has five senses . We feel and become
aware of
true love through the impressions of our five
senses . If
our eyes are directed toward true love, they take
on the
color of true love and are intoxicated by true love .
How
beautifully those colorful, intoxicated eyes shine!
Think about
how enchanting our smiling lips would be .
Try to
imagine the intense beauty we would experience as 68 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
our five
senses, intoxicated in true love, moved in harmony toward God .
Yet when
God is all alone, He cannot experience the joy
of such
beauty . God can experience joy only by perceiving
beauty in a
partner . It was for this purpose that God created human beings .
How would
God feel as He observed a handsome man
and a
beautiful woman absorbed in each other’s eyes
intoxicated
in true love, kissing with lips intoxicated in
true love,
their hearts singing the melody of true love?
If Eve had
possessed such true love, God would have
wanted to
journey through every corner of her world of
heart . He
would have desired to find out for Himself just
how wide
and how deep was the world of heart of this
beautiful
Eve . God would have wanted to dwell throughout both Adam’s and Eve’s world of
heart, a world more
beautiful
than the heaven and earth that God Himself
created .
You can be sure that God much prefers to travel
within the
world of heart of a person of true love than to
travel the
length and breadth of the universe . Adam’s and
Eve’s world
of heart and true love was to be such that God
would never
want to leave .
What would
have happened if, after God created human
beings, He
had plunged into their true love and lost Himself in that love? What kind of
world would we have today?
God would
dwell in our midst . We would live in oneness
with God,
and create a world filled with joy and beauty .
(Blessed
Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 382, 1986.8.20) The Original Vision for
Love between Man and woman 69
God is
completely responsive to human beings . If true
love had
been perfected in the human world, God would
be living
in our midst, totally enveloped by true love . He
would have
no second thoughts about it . God’s nature is
such that
He is completely happy with anything that happens within the realm of true love
. Likewise, if human
beings were
living in this world of true love, their entire
lives would
be happy and free from regret . In such a world
there would
be no history of warfare, no grief, and no misfortune . (Blessed Families and
the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 383, 1986.8.20)
7. The
Natural Way of Love
Here is a
story from my childhood . One day I caught
a pair of
birds and tried to make them kiss each other’s
beaks . To
see them kiss, I put them in a cage, fed them,
and watched
them . I did it out of a child’s desire to see
them love
each other and sing happily together .
This was an
experiment done out of curiosity to understand the principles of nature . I
continued this experiment,
which I now
understand to have been quite naughty .
It was only
much later that I came to understand that
love
happens in natural settings . Sincere love occurs naturally, in a most natural
setting . Only after a long observation
did I come
to this correct understanding about love . (Blessed
Families
and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 353, 1986.1.3)70 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
If we want
to regain the lost value of love, does it help to
pursue a
university education? Most likely we would only
accumulate
knowledge, become individualistic and come
to worship
at the altar of materialism . Just as Korean bean
soup tastes
right only when it is served in an earthenware
bowl, so we
can find genuine love only by the discipline of
training
our character .
The flower
of world civilization blossoms on the basis
of artistic
harmony . For example, roasted ribs should be
served on a
platter and Korean bean paste soup should
be served
in an earthenware bowl to bring out the proper
taste of
each dish . Once you grow accustomed to the
rough, deep
and refreshing taste of Korean bean paste
soup, you
will never forget it no matter where you may go .
Likewise,
once people become used to the earthy, deep,
relaxing
taste of love, they will always keep their taste for it .
However,
just as we easily tire of instant foods that are usually heavily sweetened, if
we could obtain love easily and
anywhere,
like instant food, we could not call it true love .
(Blessed
Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 354, 1986.1.3)
Love does
not deepen because you bathe in a fragrant
bath . I
would say that the love of a couple living in the
remotest
countryside, who wash themselves in cold water
before
going to bed, is purer, longer lasting, and ever
deepening .
A couple
that brushes their teeth before kissing is not
experiencing
natural love . The toothpaste smell prevents
The Original Vision for Love between Man and woman 71
them from
tasting the unique smell of their partner . When
I look at
people who brush their teeth before kissing, I
don’t know
whether they are trying to taste love or taste
toothpaste
. (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I, 354, 1986.1.3)
When you
meet someone you like and you fall in love
with her,
you want to embrace her and kiss her . This is
a natural
instinct between the sexes . Previously you may
have
explored your surroundings and made relationships
with its
places and creatures in order to develop feelings of
affection
for the universe . It was natural for you to do so,
as a stage
on the road to finding your one partner of love .
When we
relate to each other in accordance with the
ideal of
partnership – with each man relating to one
woman and
each woman relating to one man – there will
be no acts
or incidents that violate the order of love . A
society
that upholds the order of true love will emerge
only when
men and women join together on the basis of
the ideal
of partnership . (Blessed Families and the Ideal Kingdom, vol. I,
355,
1981.1.13)73
C H a p T e
r F O u r
Our Course
of Life
1. The
Purpose of Creation
God does
not have a body . God created with the intention that all things would
represent His body and that
Adam would
represent His face .
Originally,
God was to be the spiritual focal point and
Adam was to
be the physical focal point . These two focal
points were
supposed to generate two axes that would
meet at a
90-degree angle: the first is God’s purpose of creation, and the second is the
purposes that people desire .
Had Adam
and Eve not fallen, then representing the
face of God
they would have occupied the positions of
father and
mother eternally in the spirit world; yet due
to the
Fall, this was not possible . Had there been no Fall,
everyone
could have gone to heaven simply by attending
their
parents as though they were attending God . (119-109,
1982.7.4)74 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
2. Why We
Are Born
The world
we live in is round: the sun is round, the
earth is
round and the stars are round; even our mouths
are round .
Everything has an inherent round aspect . In
fact, every
interactive pair in the universe relates by means
of one
entity revolving around the other . Such interactive
pairs form
a spherical shape through maintaining a relationship with the greater whole .
Why, then,
are we born? We are born to beat in rhythm
with this
vast universe . Ocean waves lapping against the
shore lap
against our hearts as well . Gentle breezes sighing serenely lull our hearts
into serenity . Flowers in bloom
release
rich fragrances and stir the fragrances in our
hearts .
(104-122, 1979.4.22)
To be born
in love, raised with love, to live with love and
to die with
love makes us grateful for our birth, our life
and our
death .
You came to
be born because you participated in a
moment when
your father and mother expressed the
utmost love
for each other . You were participants in that
love .
Since you were born out of your parents’ love, you
can
consider yourself to be the flag of your parents’ love,
which they
planted at your birth .
Your flag
flutters to express love . We are all meant to
live for
the sake of love throughout our lives . You should
wave the
flag of love for your mother, wave the flag of love Our Course of Life 75
when you
see your father, and wave the flag of love for
your
siblings . (103-258, 1979.2.25)
3. The
Importance of the Moment
Your body
cannot be sound and whole unless you have
a continual
foothold on life, able to absorb whatever nutrients may come your way at any
time . This is the way of all
living
things in the natural world . The turning points of
life depend
not what happens over a long period of time,
but on how
you deal with a single moment .
People who
ignore the moment can fail to obtain something precious . They cannot become
great people . They
cannot
inherit God’s throne and crown . To make each
moment
shine, you should exercise care with each word
you utter,
each action you take, and even each thought
you think .
Deal with life and solve its problems, believing
that how
you deal with the day-to-day challenges of life
will remain
to determine your connection to the world .
The only
way to gain ultimate victory is to do well in each
moment .
Meeting the
challenge of each moment will make you
a victor .
The same applies if you are fighting for an historical victory or even a cosmic
victory . Those who know
the
infinite value of one bright shining moment and live
accordingly
can become great people, even saints, even
God’s sons
and daughters . A single moment can deter-76
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
mine
whether you are on the path of life or death . (31-218,
1970.5.31)
Scripture
tells us that we should first seek the coming of
the Kingdom
of God and pray that God’s will be done . Yet
the more
important issue for each one of us is how I as an
individual
can move forward in unity with God’s will .
Consider
this current hour; how can we spend it in such
a way that
it becomes entirely one with God’s will? That is
far more
valuable than just sitting there hoping for the
Kingdom of
God to appear . Therefore, we should use this
hour to
create the conditions that will enable us as individuals, as well as our
families, tribes and nations, to inherit
and
accomplish God’s will . This is the way we can make a
place for
ourselves in God’s coming Kingdom . Thus the
question is
this: How do you spend this one hour – if you
are given
an hour – to make God’s will your first priority
within the
context of your daily life?
The way we
spend each moment of our life is a very
important
issue . Looking at the history of the providence
of
restoration, four thousand years elapsed from Adam’s
family
through Noah’s family, Abraham’s family, and
Moses’
family down to Jesus’ family . Yet each of the failures
that
prolonged the providence did not happen over the
span of,
say, a year . In the case of Adam and Eve, their fall
was not
something planned out and put into action over
the span of
a year or a decade or several decades . Their
mistakes
happened in a flash . Yet the failure of that one Our Course of Life 77
moment had
consequences that have persisted through
eons of time
. Considering this, we can understand that a
single
moment can have a great and terrible impact .
Due to the
failure of that one moment, countless people
who walked
the path of righteousness in the course of history had to undergo untold
suffering . Due to the failure
of that one
moment, many nations could not follow God’s
will and
fell into the abyss of destruction . They became
part of a
gigantic offering of indemnity that was required
because of
that one moment . When we understand this,
we see that
each hour we just let tick by can be fraught
with
terrible consequences . Even though the Kingdom of
Heaven is
eternal, it does not exist apart from what we do
in each
single moment .
Eternity
does not begin when we die . It begins from the
moment we
understand God’s will . From that moment on,
if we
interrupt our relationship with God’s will for even an
instant in
time, it can create an abyss that interrupts our
walk with
eternity .
Therefore,
as you walk the path of faith through the
course of
your life, do not procrastinate by deferring your
providential
responsibilities from this year to the next, and
then to the
year after that, or from your 20s to your 30s,
or from
your 30s to your 40s, or from your 40s to your 50s .
You should not
live like that . If you persist in your secular
lifestyle,
you just might end up dying without having lived
for the
sake of God’s will for even a single day . In that case,
how can you
possibly go to the Kingdom of Heaven?78
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
It doesn’t
matter that the country you live in is blessed;
you will
have no place in the Kingdom of Heaven if you
were unable
to live even one day by a victorious standard .
You may
face one crucial day or one crucial year in your
life when,
if you fail the test, the consequence will be that
you cannot
enter eternal life . Thus, while it is not wrong
for
believers to spend their days dreaming of eternity, it is
far more
important that they actually join in God’s work to
eradicate
evil and become the standard-bearers of goodness in the real world .
Consider
that Adam’s momentary lapse resulted in
eons of
anguish . Consider Cain and Abel, who were supposed to dissolve the anguish of
their parents, demolish
the wall
between the brothers and create the starting point
for family
unity . It only took a moment for Cain to murder
Abel, yet
that brief incident destroyed the providence of
restoration
that Abel had been elected to lead .
Noah had
toiled 120 years to build the ark . But when
the time
came, God issued the command, “Call the people
to come
into the ark, for the day of My judgment has
come .” The
people had only one brief moment to follow
this order
and receive the blessings of the eternal God .
Those who
did not were drowned in the deluge .
In
Abraham’s case too, God’s promise that his descendants would be “as numerous as
the stars in the sky and as
the sands
on the seashore” was bestowed in just a single
moment .
Abraham’s sacrificial offering did not require
decades but
merely a day’s work . The time it took him to
Our Course of Life 79
cut the
animals for the offering and place them on the
altar was
not more than an hour . Yet the way he spent that
single hour
bore the seeds of life and death, blessing and
curse, for
subsequent history .
Today’s
believers should not be anxious over the
coming
judgment in the Last Days . Rather, they should be
anxious
about how they can take each day that God has
given them
and devote it to the will of God . They should
be anxious
about how they can link their lives to God’s
will .
(37-217, 1970.12.27)
4. Adam and
Eve Grew from Infancy
How did God
create Adam and Eve? The Bible says
He created
them from the soil, but what kind of soil was
it? Where
did He begin? Which part of the body did He
create
first? We should not think that God created Adam
and Eve as
adults . He created them as babies . We know
that every
existence attains maturity after passing through
three
ordered stages of growth . Adam and Eve were no
exception
to this logic . This leads us to the notion that
God must
have gone through the experience of a mother
who
conceives a child in her womb, gives birth to it, and
then
nourishes it . Logically, Adam and Eve must have
begun as
infants and then entered the growth stage . Had
they not
fallen, they would have continued to the completion stage . This is natural law
.
What was
Adam and Eve’s infancy like? We must 80
True Families, Gateway to Heaven
proceed
from the concept that the invisible God nurtured
them as
babies . Their origin was in the realm of the formless, and by passing through
a certain process they entered
the world
of form . (225-198, 1992.1.20)
5. The Path
of a Victorious Life
Since the
society, nation and world in which we live are
far from
ideal, all manner of suffering happens . Good and
evil are at
cross-purposes . If we take a random sample of
a hundred
people, we would find that each of them is jostling for advantage in an “every
man for himself” struggle
within
their circumstances as they cope with the demands
of their
daily lives .
Consider
that in ordinary life, most people lack the confidence that the tasks they
planned in the morning can be
completed
by the end of the day . People who have a wider
range of
responsibilities need proportionately greater
drive and
determination to bring their daily work to a successful conclusion . If their
determination and drive are
below par,
their day will not be success . A series of such
bad days can
turn into months, and months into years .
Our
situation also makes it difficult to meet monthly
goals . To
be successful, we need enough drive and determination to overcome all the
complicated situations and
circumstances
we may encounter during the month . If
that drive
and determination are missing, our efforts that
month will
not be successful . Our Course of Life
81
Having a
successful year requires that we equip ourselves with a fighting spirit, with
an inner drive strong
enough to
thrust aside all the challenges of each and every
one of its
365 days . We can then celebrate a victorious year .
If we live
one year like this, and then the next, and continue in this way, it will
eventually add up to ten, twenty
and thirty
years . Over time it becomes the path of a victorious life . (31-30, 1970.4.12)
No person
living on earth can escape the constraints of
time . It
is true today, and it has been true throughout history . Individuals, families,
tribes, peoples, nations and the
world all
move within the limitation of time .
People
everywhere have goals they strive to attain . They
focus on
their goal for ten years, twenty years, thirty years,
seventy
years, indeed, their entire lives . The greater our
goal, the
stronger our inner commitment needs to be if we
are to
accomplish it . We need to have an inner determination that surpasses the
difficulty of the goal, and maintain
it without
faltering through the allotted span of time . Otherwise, the goal will elude us
. (31-149, 1970.5.24)
6. The
Central Teaching of Religion
You may not
know of the reality of the spirit world, but
God has
given me special grace to have clear insight into
that unseen
world . Digging into the root of that world, I
found its
principles to be quite simple . In the spirit world, 82 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
only those
who lived altruistically, in line with God’s universal principles, can enter
the higher realms . The realm
that is
entirely structured along these lines is the ideal
Kingdom of
Heaven .
Heaven is
humanity’s original homeland . Today we are
exiles from
our original homeland and dwell in the fallen
world . Yet
we still seek our original homeland, and we are
destined to
return someday . But as we could not find the
way back by
our own efforts, God in the course of history
has laid
out paths for our journey .
That is why
God has raised up various religions . God
set up each
religion as a training ground to equip people
for one of
these paths appropriate to their race, culture,
customs and
traditions . Taking into account the diverse
cultures
that exist throughout the four corners of the
earth, God
set up various religions as the training grounds
for
equipping all humankind to become eligible to return
to the
original homeland . As people progress upward
along these
paths toward higher ground, God is leading
humanity to
converge toward a unified religious world .
In all
religions, what is the central teaching that guides
people to
the original homeland? It is to live for the sake
of others .
The more highly developed religions emphasize this principle . Thus they teach
their adherents to be
gentle and
meek, to place others above themselves and
live for
their sake, and to serve others sacrificially . These
teachings
serve to instill discipline in us, so that we can
abide by
the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven . (78-117, 1975.5.6) Our Course of Life 83
7. The
Highest Goal of Life
As we walk
along our life’s path, where should we be
heading?
Our destination is to possess God’s love – to be
owners of
God’s love . To possess the love of God is life’s
highest and
final goal . Everyone, men and women alike,
should take
the path to this destination .
Our life
path should be a journey to the God of infinite love . Of all the ways that
human beings live, this is the
loftiest
path . On that path we may face life-and-death situations even ten times or a
hundred times, and we may have
to continue
the search even after we die, yet we never stop
searching
for the love of God .
What is our
greatest desire? It is to possess God’s love .
You may
have met God, but if you did not discover a love
that is
even more precious, then you have not made God
your own .
Therefore, you must strive to possess God’s love .
Once you
have love, there would be no problem even if
God were
not with you .
When we
possess God’s love, God’s love becomes my
love and my
love becomes God’s love . The internal and
the
external become one for the first time . A nation based
on such
love would be an ideal community . There would
not be
upper and lower classes .
When we
dwell in that place of love, we feel that everything under the sun is good and
exists for our sake . God’s
love has
that quality . Therefore the heavenly world, the 84 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
Kingdom of
Heaven, is a world filled with love . This is our
final
destination . (39-210, 1971.1.10)
8. Our
Wrong Birth
People in
today’s world boast of their social status or
family
background, all the while unaware that they were
misbegotten
at birth . They do not know that they were
born from
the love, life and lineage of Satan, the enemy of
God . This
is a serious problem .
Due to the
human Fall, all people have been born from
Satan’s
love . Satan’s love has been passed down through
the
generations to their parents and then to them . Satan’s
blood is
flowing in the life of every mother and in the life
of every
father, and that blood now flows in each of us .
Each of us
is a fruit of these three .
For this
reason, each of you belongs to the linage of
Satan . To
put it another way, Satan’s blood is running
through
your veins . Therefore, Satan propagates his
“ideal”
fruit in the natural course of things . Meanwhile,
God strives
to redeem those same men and women and
transform
them into the pure and wholesome men and
women of
His original vision .
Your
beginning was in Satan’s love . You were born from
his lineage
. Your starting-point was wrong . Since you came
from the
wrong starting-point, you must return to the correct starting-point .
Where is
that correct starting-point? How far back do
Our Course of Life 85
we need to
go? We need to go back to the origin . As we
originated
from false parents, we need to return and start
anew from
true parents . How serious is this? It is imperative to inherit God’s love,
life and lineage afresh .
That is
why, when you receive the Blessing, you undergo
a ceremony
for changing your lineage . Just because it is a
Unification
Church ceremony, you should not think of it
as some
ordinary ritual . It is like a wonder drug, an antidote to restore the dead
back to life . You must believe in it
more than
your own life .
The mistake
our first ancestors made was so serious that
it caused
the suffering of countless people throughout
the course
of human history . People have paid a ghastly
price for
having perpetuated illicit love in the fallen spiritual and physical worlds,
with far-reaching consequences
for
individuals, families, societies, nations and the world .
Knowing
this, we cannot commit that same mistake again .
Never
again! (216-109, 1991.3.9)
9. Eternal
Life
Eternal
life does not refer only to an eternal existence
in the
spirit world . It means living for eternity in the
bosom of
God’s love . God created each individual to live
with Him in
a relationship of Lover and beloved, Subject
partner and
object partner . You are the beloved of God .
God
cherishes the ideal of true love more than He values
Himself .
Although God is the absolute and eternal center 86 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
of life,
His ideal is even more eternal, and the center of
that ideal
is true love . Love is realized with a partner, and
the partner
of God’s love is you .
Love has
the power to bring two individuals into oneness . Love can unify a nation .
When two people are in a
relationship
of true love, they will accompany each other
through any
situation . The same applies to your relationship with God . When you live this
way, you can inherit
God’s
entire fortune and even His entire heart .
I went
through a miserable course to discover this reality, and now I stand on its
foundation . It is sublime and
lofty . I
would not exchange it for anything in the world . It
is an
amazing grace . Because God and I love each other in
this way,
He lets me stand in the same position with Him,
where we
can share true love for eternity .
The spirit
world is in a different dimension from this
limited
earthly world . We cannot move freely within these
mundane
confines, but as the spirit world is a realm of
higher
dimension, you can do anything there; you can
even leap
across time . You can have whatever you desire
anytime and
anywhere, so long as your desire is motivated
by love .
We were originally created as eternal beings . If on
earth we
become people of true love who enjoy an eternal relationship with God, then
when we go to the spirit
world, we
will enjoy such freedom .
The first
standard of life is the criteria of good and evil,
the second
is the original starting point, and the third is
eternal
life . (216-115, 1991.3.9)87
C H a p T e
r 5 :
The Spirit
World and the
Earthly
World
1. Prayers
“Beloved
Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your grace .
You have
protected me through all my struggles from my
youth up to
this day, as I fought to prevent Heaven from
suffering
any shame or humiliation on my account .
“I have
learned that among all the good things on this
earth,
there is nothing more precious than to connect to
Your
original heart . Enable us to yearn infinitely for that
relationship,
knowing that when we truly experience Your
love, we
will have no regrets even if we are deprived of
everything
in this world .
“Let us
prepare today on earth for the day of our birth
into our
third life in the heavenly world as liberated children, endowed with the right
of freedom .” (49-308, 1971.10.17)
“Loving
Father, we know that in order to greet the new
spring, the
relationships in our lives must be harmonious, 88 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
that we
might be completely absorbed in You . Only then
can we
greet the spring season and bloom as beautiful
blossoms .
Let us not be pitiful souls who, when asked
whether we
have ever greeted a spring season in our lives,
are unable
to reply in the affirmative .” (32-37, 1970.6.14)
“Father, we
recognize that if we lack the heart to attend
You and bow
down humbly to You, we will have no relationship to You in the eternal world .
Open the doors of
our hearts
to feel Your heart; let us today hear Your voice
welling up
from the depths of our hearts so that we may
regain our
lost selves . Help us to appreciate Your historical course of toil and trouble
to find each one of us, that
we may
humbly bow our heads before You .” (4-280, 1958.9.14)
2.
Understanding Death
On the
earth we have parents, teachers and relatives,
and in the
course of our lives we make relationships with
them . In
the spirit world the situation is different . In the
spirit
world, people are in different realms according to
how much
they live for the public good, with the most
public-minded
people closest to God who resides at the
center .
Those in a higher realm cannot descend to a lower
realm, and
it is difficult for those in the lower realms to
ascend to
the higher realms .
Human
beings were created to become complete while
on earth
and then pass over into the spirit world . Hence, The Spirit world and the earthly world 89
there is no
provision for returning to the physical world
once we
enter the spirit world . We live just one life, and
then we
must die .
Our
lifetime on earth is too short . Life is too short .
Even a
lifespan of eighty years is too short . It is not even
eight hours
in spirit world time . That is why the power of
true love
is great . True love transcends time and space,
and moves
at a speed that is beyond our comprehension .
(205-65,
1990.7.7)
Without a
doubt, the spirit world exists . It surely exists .
We were
born from the spirit world, and when we die we
must return
there . There is an interesting word in Korean,
toraganda,
which literally means “to return” but also means
“to die .”
Where do we return to? Not to the soil in the cemetery . To return means to go
back to one’s place of origin,
and we
didn’t start out in a cemetery . To return means to
go back
through the vast expanses of history, back to its
most
distant origin .
For a
person to return does not mean that if he was
born as a
Korean he returns as a Korean . Although you
may be a
Korean when you die, your path of returning is
not a
Korean path . We all return to the original world that
brought
forth the first ancestors of humankind . What does
this mean?
It means that since we were made by our Creator, we will return to the place
where our Creator resides .
That is
where we originated, so that is where we return .
The
universe is replete with things in circular motion .90 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
When the
snow on the mountains melts, it flows through
many
streams down narrow valleys, into larger rivers, and
then enters
the ocean . Once in the ocean, it evaporates
and returns
to the mountains as snow, thus completing its
cycle .
Everything circulates . In a similar way, we return .
When we
return, where do we wish to return to? We
wish to go
back to a place where we can be higher, a place
where we
can be happier . No one wants to become smaller .
Therefore,
it would not do to return to the physical world,
where the
laws of motion dictate that all things diminish
through
activity, and where all motion slows and eventually comes to a stop . (141-269,
1986.3.2)
We live in
this world, but it is not the only world that
exists .
There is also the spirit world . This earthly world and
the spirit
world are not two completely separate worlds .
They are
connected as one world .
Then, where
is the place where we are to go, the place
where we
are to live? We are on earth now, living in our
physical
bodies, but we are moving toward the eternal
world .
Ordinary
people are born into this world, pass through
their youth,
reach their prime, and begin the downhill
slide into
old age . They end their lives like the setting sun .
People who
know the existence of the spirit world, however, realize that their lifetime on
earth is but a fleeting
moment
compared to the eternal world that awaits them
after death
. Knowing this, they spend their lives on earth
The Spirit world and the earthly world
91
wisely,
preparing themselves for the world of eternity . (140-
121,
1986.2.9)
Death
illuminates the meaning of life . Who knows
the value
of life? Not those who have lived comfortably .
But those
who have risked their lives know it well . When
people are
hanging at the intersection of life and death,
they cling
to God and implore Him, and many times they
are shown
the value of life . (74-242, 1974.12.31)
Should we
or should we not welcome death? We should
welcome it
. If you are about to die, and someone asks you
what you
are dying for, you should be able to answer: “I die
for the
sake of God’s true love .” You discard your physical
body to
participate in the realm where God’s infinite love
is always
active . You leave the earthly world for God’s world
of love .
To die is
to be born in God’s love . Yet people clamor
in their
death throes, “Oh, I’m dying!” Death should be a
moment of
joy . It is the joyful moment when you pass from
a realm of
limited love to the realm of infinite love . Therefore, the moment of death is
the moment of your second
birth .
Which do
you think God rejoices over more: the day of
your birth
in a physical body, or the hour of your second
birth into
the infinite world as a son or daughter of God
whose every
action is for the sake of love? You might
wonder why
I talk about such things . The truth is, you 92 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
cannot
establish a relationship with God unless you liberate yourself from the fear of
death . (116-172, 1982.1.1)
3. The
Three Stages of Life
During the
course of our lives we pass through three
stages:
formation, growth and completion . We pass from
the realm
of water in our mother’s womb to the realm
of living
on planet Earth, and then we pass on to the
aerial
realm in heaven . In other words, human beings go
through
three periods: the period in the womb when we
live in
water, the period that begins at birth and continues
for up to a
hundred years when we live on the earth, and
the period
when we fly in the heavens . (116-174, 1982.1.1)
Human
beings are born from waters deep within the
womb .
During their period of gestation they live in water .
Inside the
mother’s womb, the fetus is floating in fluid . It
lives by
way of the umbilical cord connected to its mother’s
body,
through which it draws in and expels fluid .
How does a
fetus take in nourishment? It is supplied
through the
navel . The navel functions as its mouth . So,
do not be
disdainful of your navel . Pat your navel and say,
“Belly
button, thanks for your hard work a long time ago .”
Pat your
navel often; it will be good for your health . Do it
as an
exercise . If you exercise this way often, it will make
you
healthier . Even when you sleep in a cold room, if you
cover your
navel, you won’t get diarrhea . The Spirit world and the earthly world 93
During your
time in the womb, your navel was your
mouth . At
birth, a new orifice for breathing opens at a
place above
the navel . What is this second mouth? It is the
mouth you
use for eating . At this point, what is done with
the
umbilical cord attached to the navel? It is cut off .
While we
live in the world of air, our spirit self is attached
to the
physical self and feeds off the physical body, similar
to the
fetus in the womb feeding off nutrients supplied by
its mother
. When the physical body grows old, the spirit
self
discards the physical body and goes out on its own .
This is its
second birth, now as a person who can relate
to the
eternal God, the Father who is spirit . Physical birth
and this
second birth occur in accordance with the same
fundamental
principles .
Once the
child is born in the earthly world, it gets
acquainted
with its mother and father . The earthly world
is where we
can share love with our mothers and fathers .
In a
similar way, we must eventually be born a second time
into the
spirit world, where we can share love with God,
our Parent
. He will connect us to the boundless world of
spirit .
(299-69, 1999.2.4)
After
coming out of the womb, it is not enough just
to breathe
air . You have to develop your love by receiving
elements of
love . It is not enough just to eat food . If you
live only
to eat, you will begin to die . There is something
more
essential that you need to fill yourself with during 94 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
your life
on earth – the second stage of your life . What is
it? It is
love . You must renew your character with love . (139-
214,
1986.1.31)
Love is
what you need during your earthly life . Why do
you call a
child who lives without the love of mother and
father an
“orphan”?
8
It is because that child is deprived of
the love
that can connect him eternally to the spirit world .
For the
same reason, we feel pity for people who live alone
without
marrying . (139-214, 1986.1.31)
Dying
occurs when the spirit breaks free of the organs
of the
physical body, including those that had functioned
in the
second kind of breathing . From that time forth, the
spirit
subsists by breathing only love elements . The internal self had been
developing the ability to engage with
these
invisible love elements on earth through experiencing parental love and
conjugal love . That is why, just as an
embryo
should develop in the womb in accordance with
God’s laws
and principles in order to be born as a normal
baby, we
must grow in the earthly world in accordance
with God’s
laws and principles so that we can be born as a
fully
functioning spirit self . (299-69, 1999.2.4)
Dragonflies
during their larval stage swim in the water
at first,
then crawl about on land for a while . Then they
fly around,
preying on bugs that they never would have
8. The
Korean word for orphan, go-a, literally means “isolated child.” The Spirit
world and the earthly world 95
imagined
eating when they were crawling about on land .
They fly
about freely; the whole world is their stage .
There are
many insects that go through three stages of
life .
Insects in general have wings . During their life-cycle
they pass
through the stages of living in the water, on land
and in the
air . What about human beings, who are called
the lords
of creation; do we have wings? We have a set of
wings of a
higher dimension .
Death is
the blessed gateway to our second birth . What
is the
meaning of death? Earthly life, the time of living
in air,
parallels the time when we were swimming in the
womb . The
air is like our swaddling-cloth; we are eager to
take it off
. Death is nothing special; it is merely birth into
the third
stage of life . That moment of transition is what
we call
death . (299-71, 1999.2.4)
4. The
Central Point between the Two Worlds
I imagine
you must be very curious about the spirit
world . The
many religions of the world provide paths for
us to seek
eternal life, the world where we can live together
with God
eternally in the good regions of the spirit world .
For
religious people, attaining that world is their life’s goal .
However,
what has become of religion today? It is on
the decline
. In this modern age people think that religion is only for the weak; it is
unnecessary for everyone
else . They
think that religions were created by people
to push
morality . Even Christianity, the central religion, 96 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
has
declined . America is the representative of the world’s
Christian
nations, yet people who grew up in American
Christian
homes have lost their faith and are living each
according
to their own way .
Christianity
upholds heaven, the dwelling place of God,
who is the
Lord of the universe and Source of all good .
Why are so
many Christians abandoning their religion?
There are
three reasons .
First,
people do not have a clear understanding of the
reality of
the spirit world . Human beings have the innate
capacity to
compare and would abandon a bad situation in
favor of a
better one . If they knew that the spirit world contained higher-dimensional
realms of greater value, they
would
certainly seek them out . That is original human
nature .
Second,
people do not truly know God . Our connection with God was severed as a result
of the human Fall,
and we have
lived ever since as orphans .
Third,
people do not understand the centrality of love .
Love is
what connects us to God and also to the spirit world .
Even though
many people believe in God and the spirit
world, if
they do not understand that the eternal world is
ruled by
love, they may well abandon their religion .
Where love
abounds, you are happy . It doesn’t matter
whether you
are promoted to a high position or demoted
to a low
position or you just stay at your current level; in
whatever
state you are, you are content . Does a wife dislike
her beloved
husband if he has a higher position in society
The Spirit world and the earthly world
97
than her?
Does a husband dislike his beloved wife because
she comes
from a lower class than him? When you are one
with each
other you can go anywhere, from the bottom to
the top or
from the top to the bottom, or you can just stay
where you
are . There are no limitations . It is based on this
concept
that many people in the world say, “This world
can become
one . There can be unity among all peoples .
We can
build a world of peace .” (91-140, 1977.2.6)
God and His
love should be at the center; it is the same
for the
spirit world and the physical world, for spirit beings
and
physical beings . But people in their fallen state as we
usually
know them do not have God as their center .
The
relationship between the physical self and the
spirit self
is different from that between mind and body .
The mind is
not the spirit; spirit world exists in a different dimension . In speaking of
the spiritual and physical
worlds, we
understand that they relate based on God’s
love . For
these two worlds to unite as one, God must be
involved .
Were it not for God’s love, the spirit world would
not exist .
It is by God’s provision that we can have a home
there .
People may
think that mind and spirit are the same,
but this is
a confused notion . Due to the human fall, the
mind does
not have a relationship with the spirit world . To
better
understand this, think of the mind of fallen human
beings as
analogous to a person whose body has no bones .
Its form is
like a boneless body .98 True
Families, Gateway to Heaven
The spirit
self is composed of a body-like element and
a mind-like
element . The mind-like element of the spirit
self is
immersed in the spirit world . It always maintains
a
relationship with God . Therefore, if you do not make
a
relationship with God, this mind-like element will not
form in
your spirit self .
Understand
that spirit and mind are two different
things .
The mind of fallen man has no relationship with
God . God
has left it . God can neither relate to the fallen
mind nor
exercise His direct dominion over it .
Your mind
changes, going one way and then another,
but the
spirit world and spiritual beings are not like this .
They set
one eternal goal and move steadily in its direction . Why is this so? It is
because they stand on God’s side .
But the
mind that resides within us fallen human beings is
constantly
vacillating .
I’m sure
you know this from studying the Principle, but
what is the
spirit mind? It is what unites our mind and
spirit and
moves them toward a higher goal . When our
spirit mind
becomes one with our conscience, centering
on God, it
motivates us to become our ideal selves . Therefore, without the spirit mind,
we would be unable to find
the inner
root that enables us to live in proper relationship with the spirit world and
experience true love .
When the
spirit mind sprouts within us, our body
rejoices .
Everything we think, say and do follows the
promptings
of our spirit mind . Then everything begins
to unite
spontaneously . The biggest problem for human
The Spirit world and the earthly world
99
beings has
been the conflict between our mind and body .
However,
when spiritual energy resides within us and
causes our
spirit mind to germinate, our mind and body
spontaneously
become one .
Unless we
experience such a revolution occurring at
the root of
our selves, and unless we discover the origin
that can
rectify everything from that root, we will have no
way to
attain the ideal . Without a motivating cause, there
can be no
result . The purpose of religion is to implant a
spirit mind
within us . The many religions with all their different forms and doctrines all
exist to cultivate the spirit
mind .
(91-142, 1977.2.6)
God in His
majesty decreed that the spirit world and
the
physical world must be united . However, because true
love was
not established, the spirit world and physical
world could
not become one . This resulted in the separation between mind and body . Also,
because true love was
not
established, there has been separation between religion and politics .
Where true
love is present, everything comes together
as one .
Everybody is linked together, from the individual
to the
family, society, nation, world and cosmos . We have
to make
this a reality with our own hands . Otherwise, we
cannot
inherit God’s original Kingdom in heaven and on
earth . How
do we establish resonance between the spiritual and physical worlds and make
them one? It is with
true love .
(216-106, 1991.3.9)100 True Families,
Gateway to Heaven
5. Know the
Spirit World
Eighty
percent of the world’s population does not know
about the
spirit world . Even many believers aren’t sure
whether the
spirit world exists, or even if God really exists .
But the
spirit world does exist .
Imagine a
wealthy person who willingly invests his
entire
fortune to build a garden of happiness for himself .
With that
in mind, we can surmise that God, the Creator
of heaven
and earth, made enormous effort to create His
dwelling
place – the spirit world – to be a world of beauty
beyond
imagining . You could gaze at even just one tiny
part of it
for a thousand years and never grow tired of it .
The world’s
most prized possessions are nothing compared to the things in the spirit world
. Therefore, I have
no desire
to accumulate possessions on this earth . If you
were to
force me to say which I prefer, I would say that
this
earthly world does not conform to my purpose, and I
would
rather live in the spirit world . (15-154, 1965.10.7)
People
generally do not think about the spirit world .
They think
only, “I am alive because I was born . I serve
my parents
because I live in their family . I will live just
the way my
parents lived .” What are such people’s central
concerns?
It is how they can eat and earn a living . They
consider
food, shelter and clothing to be the most important things in life . Most
people’s main concerns are how The
Spirit world and the earthly world 101
to support
themselves, how to feed themselves, and how to
clothe
themselves .
Of course,
people also uphold the principles of morality and the obligations within human
relationships that
enable them
to develop their character as individuals and
find
satisfaction together . However, the norms of morality
differ from
one nation to another . Moral standards and
social
systems vary among world’s diverse cultures . In this
light, we
recognize that there is a huge difference between
the
original standard that God originally envisioned for
humanity to
attain and the norms of ethics and morality
that people
adhere to today . Yet, these must be made the
same .
Where is it
that we are supposed to go, having been
born and
lived out our lives on earth in keeping with the
original
standard? People are not clear about this . For this
reason,
people are doubtful about the spirit world and are
not certain
whether God exists .
However,
people who have studied the Principle clearly
know that
the spirit world exists . They do not just believe
it; they
know it . Why is this? They know it through countless spiritual experiences .
The members who labored to
construct
the global foundation of the Unification Church
went
through a course that included many spiritual experiences . If you learn the
Principle, I am certain that you,
too, will
have experiences such that you will no longer be
able to
deny the existence of the spirit world . (140-122, 1986.2.9)102 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
Once we
know the Principle, what should be our path?
We must
follow the path that God desires for us . We must
follow the
path to fulfill God’s will . What is God’s will? First
we must
follow the path to fulfill God’s will for us as individuals . Next we must
follow the path to fulfill God’s will
for our
families . God has also set up paths for the society,
the nation,
the world and the spirit world . I am the expert
on this .
As you follow these paths, you will see for yourself
that the
spirit world definitely exists . (121-146, 1982.10.24)
Why is it
important to acknowledge that God exists and
that the
spirit world exists? Some people may think, “Even
if God exists,
He has nothing to do with me,” but they are
wrong . To
say, “Even if the spirit world exists, it has nothing to do with me,” would be
like a person who, satisfied
with his
family, claims that he doesn’t need his country
and doesn’t
need the world .
But since
there is a God who is greater than us, and
since there
is a spirit world that is greater than us, we
want to
have a relationship with these greater entities . Just
having a
relationship is not enough . What do we do in this
relationship?
We should strive to become one . We should
move in
step toward the same goal . (104-119, 1979.4.22)
The Apostle
Paul’s experience of seeing the third
The Spirit world and the earthly world
103
heaven
became the driving force that empowered him in
his
missionary activities for fourteen years .
9
You, too, need
to have
such experiences . This also holds true for me . (27-
128,
1969.11.30)
I don’t
fear death . What made me this way? Love did .
It doesn’t
matter how many times I am put in jail; I can
digest that
. My experiences of God’s love have enabled me
to digest
and overcome the opposition that surrounded
me . To
this day, I am overcoming every adversity with my
own hands .
(202-27, 1990.5.1)
6. How We
Should Relate to the Spirit World
The spirit
world is equivalent to the angelic world .
Today’s
world is in the same position as the world at the
time of
Adam and Eve . God created the spirit world before
creating
Adam and Eve .
The satanic
world came into being because the spirit
world went
against God’s will . Therefore, today’s fallen
world can
be restored only after the spirit world welcomes
God’s will
. Similarly, the Lord cannot come to the earthly
world
unless he first subjugates
10
the spirit world . That
is why the
Unification Church has worked until today to
bring the
spirit world to natural surrender . Hence, the
9. 1 Corinthians 12:2
10. By “subjugate” Rev. Moon means to bring the
opponent to voluntary submission, winning him over by love, service and
sacrifice.104 True Families, Gateway
to Heaven
spirit
world must help the Unification Church . (25-233,
1969.10.4)
Where is
the spirit world? It is within your bodies . You
walk around
carrying the spirit world on your shoulders,
attending
it . So there is no escaping it . (162-116, 1987.3.30)
The spirit
world exists . It exists for the sake of this world,
and this
world exists for the sake of the eternal world .
People
question, “Where in the world is God? Can God
be in this
world? Where on earth is the spirit world?” I say,
God’s
dwelling place is the spirit world . (117-307, 1982.4.11)
If our life
simply ceased after seventy to eighty years
on earth,
then we would not really have any problems to
worry
about; but as we continue living eternally it is a different story . Since the
spirit world exists, and you will go
there after
death, what will you take with you when you go
there? The
way to be assured that you will have good rapport with the spirit world is to
practice true love during
your
earthly life . The spirit world is vast . You have no idea
how vast it
is – a world without boundaries . (187-285, 1989.2.12)
The
contemporary interest in electricity and space
exploration
helps accustom humanity to the ways of the
ideal world
of love . We can say by analogy that the spirit
world is a
world filled with the electricity of love . The electricity of love makes
everything possible . For this reason,
The Spirit world and the earthly world
105
in the
spirit world we can govern the form of existence
through the
structure of our thoughts .
The spirit
world is a place that values eternal elements .
It is a
world of harmony, where everything is filled with
love .
Thus, the universe goes into operational mode with
just a push
of the love button .
What is
God’s Kingdom on earth? It is the place where
we can open
all the valves of love . Then what about the
Kingdom of
God in heaven? It is the place where we can
open all
the valves of true love .
As long as
you maintain a loving heart, when you tug on
the rope of
love, everything will come to you . When you
release the
rope, everything will go back to where it came
from . When
you pull the rope sideways, everything moves
sideways .
You can steer the universe any way you like . It
does not
resist, but moves automatically .
Thus we can
understand the meaning of the concept
that the
spirit world is filled with the air of love . If the
God of
love, who with the loving heart to feed all humanity
at once and
make them happy, says, “Let there be food!”
then food
will appear .
In the
spirit world you eat the food of love . People look
at each
other with eyes of love . There are no words to
express the
mystery of the spirit world . The more you hear
about it,
the more you want to hear . There is no concept
there of
being sleepy or tired .
The spirit
world is the place filled with the electricity of
love .
These days, people try to link everything to love . Why 106 True Families, Gateway to Heaven
is that? It
is to be in tune with the spirit world . The spirit
world
operates in this way, and people on earth inevitably
respond to
it . They cannot escape from its influence .
When you
see me in your dreams, I appear to you
through the
waves of God’s love . For that to happen, you
cannot be
asserting your ego . You have to become like pure
gold, which
has a very low resistance . There can be no self .
In this
state, you create a vacuum . When there is a vacuum,
you can create
a realm of resonance . (112-16, 1981.3.15)
Copyright ©
2009 HSA-UWC
HSA-UWC
4 West 43rd
Street
New York,
NY 10036
All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publisher.
ISBN:
978-1-931166-31-7
Second
Edition
Printed on
recycled paper in the United States of America.3
Contents
Foreword
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. . .
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. . .
. . . 5
Chapter
One: The Family Is the Basis and Pattern
for the
Kingdom of Heaven . . .
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. . . . .
9
1 . The
Pattern for All Relationships . . .
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. . .
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. . . .9
2 . Where
We Experience Universal Love . .
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. . . .
.12
3 . The
School of Love . . .
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.15
4 .
Textbook for the Heavenly Kingdom .
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. . .
. . . .
.18
5 . Uniting
the Love of Three Generations . . .
. . .
. . .21
6 .
Training Ground of the Heart . . .
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. . . .
.24
7 . The
Original Hometown . . .
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. . .26
8 . The
Cosmic Ideology . . .
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. . .28
Chapter
Two: Love: the Basis of Human Life .
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. . .
. . . .
.33
1 . Why Are
People Born? . . .
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. . .
. . . .
.33
2 . Life in
its Original Form . . .
. . .
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. . .
. . .
. . . .35
3 . The
Nutrient of Life . . .
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. . .
. . .
. . . .38
4 . What Is
God’s Love? . . .
. . .
. . .
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. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .40
5 .
Inheriting Love and Bequeathing Love .
. . .
. . .
. . .43
6 . Seeking
the Center of Love . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .46
7 . The
Three Ages of Human Life . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .49
8 .
Training to Be in Rhythm with the Spirit World . . .524
Chapter
Three: The Original Vision for Love
between Man
and Woman . . .
. . .
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. . .
. . .55
1 .
Bringing Joy to God and All Creation
. . .
. . .
. . . .
.55
2 . Men and
Women Are Born for Each Other . . .
. . .57
3 . Men and
Women Need Each Other . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .59
4 . Love
Comes from Your Partner . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .62
5 . The
Harmony of Love . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .64
6 .
Enraptured by True Love . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .67
7 . The
Natural Way of Love . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .69
Chapter
Four: Our Course of Life . . . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .73
1 . The
Purpose of Creation . . .
. . .
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. . .
. . .73
2 . Why We
Are Born . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
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. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .74
3 . The
Importance of the Moment . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .75
4 . Adam
and Eve Grew from Infancy . . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .
.79
5 . The
Path of a Victorious Life . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .80
6 . The
Central Teaching of Religion . .
. . .
. . .
. . . . . .81
7 . The
Highest Goal of Life . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .83
8 . Our
Wrong Birth . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
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. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .84
9 . Eternal
Life . .
. . . . .
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. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .85
Chapter 5:
The Spirit World and the Earthly World .
. . .
. . .87
1 . Prayers
. .
. . .
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. . . .
.87
2 .
Understanding Death . . .
. . .
. . .
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. . .
. . .
. . .88
3 . The
Three Stages of Life . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .92
4 . The
Central Point between the Two Worlds .
. . . .
.95
5 . Know
the Spirit World . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . .100
6 . How We
Should Relate to the Spirit World .
. . . . .1035
