There is A huge difference between intellectual knowledge and the spiritual truth that is conducive to salvation and enlightenment.
Intellectual and conceptual knowledge, for all its utility in the world, does not always profit the spiritual seeker, and too much of it may even impede higher realization.
There is a gulf between Athens and Jerusalem—between the conceptual systems of secular philosophy and the scriptural truth of religion. The Scriptures call us to check our priorities, as we live in an age that pushes secular learning.
A second topic of this section concerns ways of knowing. While intellectual knowledge is gained through empirical perception of sense data and rational formulation of theories, spiritually minded people employ intuition and sensitivity to the inner dimensions of reality.
Reliance upon reason can impede the spiritual path; hence, much religious practice, such as Zen Buddhism, is aimed at blocking the intellect.
For instance, the Zen koan, “Has a dog the Buddha nature?” only leads the questioner into a welter of mental confusion until he realizes that the way out is beyond any conceptual understanding whatsoever.
Nevertheless, Father Moon regards both the paths of rationality and spirituality as having their place in the Kingdom and seeks for a balance.
The final texts return to the opposition between secular knowledge and divine knowledge, focusing particularly on the damage caused by science and technology when it is not restrained or directed by spiritual wisdom.
Ultimately, science and all secular knowledge need to be guided by what Father Moon calls “absolute values,”—the true love of God that seeks to benefit humanity and the whole creation.
Sun Myung Moon
Intellectual Knowledge Does Not Profit for Salvation
What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Tertullian (Christianity)
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by Him. 1 Corinthians 8.1-3
My now-deceased mother really scolded me. She said, “Go away somewhere into the wilderness since all you seem to do is look at books. For all the days to come you will be pitiful because the book blocks your path. Never will anything be revealed to you in a vision, for you live like a white man.” Delaware Testimony (Native American Religions)
Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Ecclesiastes 12.12
A thousand and hundred thousand feats of intellect shall not accompany man in the hereafter. Adi Granth, Japuji 1, M.1, p. 1 (Sikhism)
This is true knowledge: to seek the Self as the true end of wisdom always. To seek anything else is ignorance. Bhagavad-Gita 13.11 (Hinduism)
Though I reach a high rung of knowledge, I know that not a single letter of the teachings is within me, and I have not taken a single step in the service of God. The Baal Shem Tov (Judaism)
True words are not fine-sounding; Fine-sounding words are not true. The good man does not prove by argument; And he who proves by argument is not good. True wisdom is different from much learning; Much learning means little wisdom. Tao Te Ching 81 (Taoism)
Of all things seen in the world Only mind is the host; By grasping forms according to interpretation It becomes deluded, not true to reality. All philosophies in the world Are mental fabrications; There has never been a single doctrine By which one could enter the true essence of things. Garland Sutra 10 (Buddhism)
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For the Jews demand signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Corinthians 1.20-25
Rabbi Eleazar Hisma said, “Offerings of birds and purifications of women, these, yea these, are the essential precepts. Astronomy and geometry are but fringes to wisdom.”14 Mishnah, Avot 3.23 (Judaism)
It was necessary for human salvation that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that humans be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover would only be known by a few, and after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas humankind’s whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that human salvation might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they be taught divine truths by divine revelation. Therefore, besides philosophical science built up by reason, there necessarily should be a sacred science learned through revelation. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.1.1 (Christianity)
The whole object of the Prophets and the Sages was to declare that a limit is set to human reason where it must halt. 15 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 1.32 (Judaism)
Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike. The first is error; the latter is truth. Metaphysics is above physics, and matter does not enter into metaphysical premises or conclusions. The categories of metaphysics rest on one basis, the divine Mind. Science and Health, 269 (Christian Science)
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
The ideal world will not be realized based on the human brain but upon God’s love. (Way of God’s Will 1.8)
Philosophy and religion have different starting points. Philosophy [at its best] is a human quest in search of God, but religion is the path laid out for us to meet God and begin to live with God. (187:70, March 19, 1989)
Extensive reading of sacred texts and philosophy books that line library shelves does not enable you to achieve unity of mind and body. (May 1, 2004)
Know that no amount of knowledge will enable you to fulfill the ideal of creation. Neither knowledge nor power nor money avails us to fulfill God’s ideal of creation. Only with love can we fulfill it.
The same goes for our lives—only with love can we accomplish it. Therefore, parents who push their children to study all day long [thinking that it is the only way to success], are making a serious mistake. (144:130, April 12, 1986)
Do not boast because you attend a first-rank university. I do not regard it as such a great thing. Maybe you study seven hours per day—that amounts to about 2,000 hours in a year, but if you divide it by 24 hours, it is not that many days. It is nothing to brag about. Love is far more precious, and it cannot be learned so quickly.
Love is absolute and eternal, so you cannot master it even in your whole lifetime.
You can receive a Ph.D. after studying a field of secular knowledge for a few years, but you cannot get the diploma of love even after 30 or 40 years, because the field of love is without limit. Love continues to expand, only to circle around and return to the starting point.
You can spend an infinite amount of time studying love. Nevertheless, you never grow tired of it. It is just fun, filled with more happiness, gratitude and dignity than anything else in the world. (113:324-25, May 10, 1981)
If you are so cocksure of your intellectual prowess, go ahead and see where it leads you. The story of your demise will simply become another cautionary tale in the textbook for raising true sons and daughters. (60:75, August 6, 1972)
Absolute value relates to love and emotion, not intellect. Love is the highest value, containing the purpose of existence and the perfection of existence. True love is such that both the giver and the recipient are happy.
Love is not something to be learned. It should sprout and be experienced directly in a person’s original mind. The world of intellect develops through cognition, but the world of emotion does not.
Therefore, absolute value remains in the dimension of absolute love, not intellect. From this perspective, the First Cause cannot be found within the sphere of our cognition but is experienced in an emotional dimension. Values lacking love do not last forever; they are changeable and someday will vanish.
Philosophies and teachings up to the present time have been helpful to humankind in some respects, but in other respects, they have misled the development of thought and the progress of history. Hence, it is inevitable that we re-evaluate our value systems. (102:59, November 25, 1978)
Sun Myung Moon
Attaining Spiritual Wisdom
The kami-faith is caught, not taught. Shinto Proverb
A monk asked Joshu, “Has a dog the Buddha nature?” Joshu answered, “Mu [Emptiness].” Mumon’s comment: To attain this subtle realization, you must completely cut off the way of thinking.16 Mumonkan 1 (Buddhism)
Pure Knowing has nothing to do with hearing much. Wang Yangming (Confucianism)
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. John 4.24-25
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2.12-16
In the heart of the enlightened man there is a window opening on the realities of the spiritual world, so that he knows, not by hearsay or traditional belief, but by actual experience, what produces wretchedness or happiness in the soul just as clearly and decidedly as the physician knows what produces sickness or health in the body. He recognizes that knowledge of God and worship are medicinal and that ignorance and sin are deadly poisons for the soul. Many even so-called “learned” men, from blindly following others’ opinions, have no real certainty in their beliefs regarding the happiness or misery of souls in the next world, but he who will attend to the matter with a mind unbiased by prejudice will arrive at clear convictions on this matter. Al-Ghazzali, The Alchemy of Happiness (Islam)
Knowledge is of five kinds, namely: sensory knowledge, scriptural knowledge, clairvoyance, telepathy, and omniscience. These five kinds of knowledge are of two types: the first two kinds are indirect knowledge and the remaining three constitute direct knowledge. In sensory knowledge… there is only the apprehension of indistinct things… But clairvoyance, telepathy, and omniscience is direct knowledge; it is perceived by the soul in a vivid manner without the inter-media of the senses or the scriptures. Tattvarthasutra 1.19-29 (Jainism)
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
We should cultivate the heart of true love through experience. True love cannot be learned through the spoken or written word or general education. This is how it was in the beginning.
Adam and Eve, who were created as infants, were to grow and experience love at each stage of life, perfecting in turn the heart of true children, the heart of true brother and sister, and the heart of true parents.
Only by experiencing each of these kinds of love, can we become ideal people who fulfill the purpose of creation. (282:209, March 13, 1997)
There are generally two types of people: the intellectual type and the spiritual type.
When intellectual type people search for an answer, if their research coincides with their reasoning, they accept it, but if it does not, they reject it.
Spiritual type people are more intuitive, making decisions based on intuition more than reason. People of the spiritual type feel from inside and apply it to the outside, while the intellectual type experiences the outside and apply it in the inside.
One type is extroverted and the other, introverted. Intellectual type people usually do not like to pray. They resist praying and question the need for it. They do not feel comfortable calling out, “Heavenly Father!”
They do not feel that it is real. Prayer, God, etc. appear to them like superstition. Since they don’t believe in prayer, they feel to pray would be to deny their integrity.
They judge the truth of something by whether it agrees with their theoretical model of the world.
Spiritual type people, on the other hand, love saying the words, “Heavenly Father” from birth. They delight in prayer and do not need any explanation. Intellectual-type people cannot launch a revolutionary spiritual movement.
In the world of faith, those who can do something extraordinary are not intellectuals, but are rather uninformed and simple-minded people who are spiritual. They do what comes to them, disregarding what the world says.
Believing that God told them to do it, they just go ahead and do it. After doing it, they find that what they did turned out to be right.
Great persons can appear from among such spiritual people. The apostle Paul was an intellectual type of person. Nevertheless, after having a spiritual experience on the road to Damascus, he totally changed.
Having felt something explosive from inside that was greater than anything he had experienced from external investigation, he came to deny everything he had been taught and accepted his new experience as the truth. Hence, he could become the pioneer of a new revolutionary religion, Christianity.
You should know which type of person you are. In general, spiritual people are thick in spirit but pointy in intellect. Therefore, although they may be solid in the beginning, they will not be consistent all the way, and after a time their works often fail.
By the same token, although a person of truth may be strong, if his spirituality is weak his works will also eventually fall short. Therefore, whichever type of person we are, we need to balance these two aspects. There is a saying, “Worship God in spirit and truth.” (John 4.23)
It means that people should make these two sides parallel and find harmony between them. We should be able to control both the spirit world and the physical world.
Standing in the center of spirituality and rationality, we should be able to make adjustments between the right and the left. Otherwise, we cannot reach perfection. (76:136-37, February 2, 1975)
Fallen people have been overcoming their internal ignorance by enlightening their spirituality and intellect with “spirit and truth” (John 4:23)… “Spirit” in this context denotes the inspiration of Heaven. Cognition of a spiritual reality begins when it is perceived through the five senses of the spirit self.
These perceptions resonate through the five physical senses and are felt physiologically. Cognition of truth, on the other hand, arises from the knowledge gleaned from the physical world as it is perceived directly through our physiological sense organs.
Cognition thus takes place through both spiritual and physical processes. Human beings become complete only when their spirit self and physical self are unified.
Hence, the experience of divine inspiration gained through spiritual cognition and the knowledge of truth obtained through physical cognition should become fully harmonized and awaken the spirituality and intellect together.
It is only when the spiritual and physical dimensions of cognition resonate together that we can thoroughly comprehend God and the universe. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Eschatology 5.1)
Sun Myung Moon
The Danger of Highly-Developed Knowledge When Spiritual Wisdom Is Lacking
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. Albert Einstein
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. James 3.13-17
Love without wisdom means love without discrimination. Wisdom without humanity means knowledge not translated into action. Therefore, humanity is to love mankind and wisdom is to remove its evil. Tung Chung-Shu (Confucianism)
Science is one thing; wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers. Sir Arthur Eddington
Know verily that knowledge is of two kinds: divine and satanic. The one wells out from the fountain of divine inspiration; the other is but a reflection of vain and obscure thoughts. The source of the former is God Himself; the motive force of the latter the whisperings of selfish desire. The one is guided by the principle: “Fear God; God will teach you”; the other is but a confirmation of the truth: “Knowledge is the most grievous veil between man and his Creator.” The former brings forth the fruit of patience, of longing desire, of true understanding, and love; while the latter can yield naught but arrogance, vainglory, and conceit. Book of Certitude 69 (Baha’i Faith)
As long as men in high places covet knowledge and are without the Way, the world will be in great confusion. How do I know this is so? Knowledge enables men to fashion bows, crossbows, nets, stringed arrows, and like contraptions, but when this happens the birds flee in confusion to the sky.
Knowledge enables men to fashion fishhooks, lures, seines, drag-nets, trawls, and weirs, but when this happens the fish flee in confusion to the depths of the water. Knowledge enables men to fashion pitfalls, snares, cages, traps, and gins, but when this happens the beasts flee in confusion to the swamps.
And the flood of rhetoric that enables men to invent wily schemes and poisonous slanders, the glib gabble of “hard” and “white,” the foul fustian of “same” and “different,” bewilder the understanding of common men. So the world is dulled and darkened by great confusion.
The blame lies in the coveting of knowledge. In the world everyone knows enough to pursue what he does not know, but no one knows enough to pursue what he already knows. Everyone knows enough to condemn what he takes to be no good, but no one knows enough to condemn what he has already taken to be good.
This is how the great confusion comes about, blotting out the brightness of the sun and moon above, searing the vigor of hills and streams below, overturning the round of the four seasons in between.
There is no insect that creeps and crawls, no creature that flutters and flies, that has not lost its inborn nature. So great is the confusion of the world that comes from coveting knowledge! Chuang Tzu 10 (Taoism)
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift towards unparalleled catastrophes. Albert Einstein
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
We should admit that the various sciences and philosophies today have failed to solve the world’s problems. The grand promise of natural science has too often been used for evil purposes instead of for the true happiness of humanity.
The social sciences have been corrupted due to the influence of partisan political interests and thus have played a dysfunctional role on many occasions.
Philosophy has become a lifeless study, having given up the great pursuit of the ultimate ideals of human beings. This trend is becoming more serious because of the passive attitude of many scholars. I think that scholars should not be satisfied only with carrying on their own research.
They should respond to the call of the world, which needs active guidance.
The world demands responsible action by scholars who enlist their capabilities for the good of mankind in accordance with a right value perspective. (170:268-70, November 27, 1987)
Human beings are creations of God, created to lead life with a definite value perspective following the purpose of creation. Yet people have disregarded this value perspective and taken science as a panacea, believing it to be omnipotent.
Consequently, technology has become a source of increasing damage. In human life, science can only be a means; it cannot be an end.
The purpose of human life is to realize God’s purpose of creation. A human being is a unified being of both physical and spiritual entities. Hence, on the foundation of physical life, he is to lead a life of value—a life of love, truth, goodness and beauty.
Technology is needed only for the convenience of physical life, which will allow physical life to become a proper basis for spiritual life. Therefore science that disregards or fails to emphasize the life of value actually brings about the destruction of humanity’s value perspective, leading to today’s reality of fear and insecurity.
Only searching for and discovering the true value perspective can achieve the deliverance of humankind from this unfortunate reality. Science, in turn, must be in accord with this value perspective, which, needless to say, must be based on absolute value.
Where can the absolute value be found?
It can only be found in God’s love. Truth, goodness and beauty, when they are based on God’s love, are elevated to the absolute value itself. In the end, human beings can only avoid the harm that misuse of science and technology brings when science itself recognizes God and people use technology in accordance with God’s love. (106:53, November 23, 1979)
In the library at the University of Cambridge, I saw tens of thousands of rare books in cases. I looked around to see who was studying them, but there was no one; only the librarian was there.
This showed me that the age had passed when knowledge ruled the world and the pen was mightier than the sword. Money controls the world now. Money is the element through which Satan rules the world today. Yet Satan rules the world through knowledge as well.
As people seek knowledge of the external world through science, they forget about God, and in the end they lose God. Meanwhile, philosophy, which should form the backbone of knowledge, extols materialism and holds that God does not exist. Theology, which should be the head of knowledge, claims that God is dead…
Instead of believing that human beings are descended from God, intellectuals now believe that humankind is descended from the apes.
Does that make God happy?
Not at all. Because of ideas like that, God would sometimes like to smash the walls of the universities. (99:103-104, September 1, 1978)
Sun Myung Moon