1. Where does true love begin? It is not from you; it begins from God. God is the origin of love. He created this world because He needed His ideal love partner.
Accordingly, even the creation of heaven and earth had its origin in love. Love is possible only in a world of reciprocity.
Love makes no sense outside the concept of reciprocity. Therefore, if there is a man, there must be a woman; if there is a right-hand side, there must be a left-hand side; if there is a top, there must be a bottom. There must be above and below, front and back, right and left.
Through these connections, a sphere is formed. Before creation, God had a mind and body. In the unity of mind and body, in love and without conflict, God lived and dreamed of realizing a world of ideal love.
God wants not quiet love, but explosive love that can spin 360 degrees. To make and to find a partner for that kind of love, He created heaven and earth.
(213-079, 1991.01.14)
God is the origin of true love
2. Any of you who have had a mystical experience will begin to wonder about and search for the origin of the universe. When you put this question into words and seek the origin of the universe, you will come to know one thing: Human beings are the original foundation of the universe, and represent the whole world of creation.
What is the original foundation of human beings? It is life. What is the original foundation of life? It is love. If there were no love, there would be no life. Then what is the original foundation of love? Here you must look higher than human beings.
You must look to God. So we say God is love. We say God is love, using the noun love, but that noun, love, cannot be realized all alone. It requires a reciprocal relationship. (48-206, 1971.09.19)
3. The word love makes sense only about a reciprocal relationship. Not even the almighty Heavenly Father can establish love all alone. Love can be realized only in a reciprocal relationship.
God's purpose in creating Adam and Eve was to feel joy. How can you experience happiness? It is not just by seeing, speaking, or touching, but only by loving that you come to feel happiness. God began the creation to actualize joy.
(114-012, 1981.05.14)
4. Love does not begin with me. It comes from my objective partner, and to receive it, I must open my door wide and invest myself completely in that partner. I must support my object partner.
God, the Creator of the universe and the owner of true love made the world not for Himself but for His object partner. God invested everything in His partner, everything of value that He possessed. (178-309, 1988.06.14)
5. True love originates in living for the sake of others. When God created the universe, the ideal of love was at stake. For the sake of what He had made, God has put out of His mind the thousands of years of fallen human history.
Over and over and over again, He has given love in the face of betrayal and humiliation at the hands of human beings. That unconditional giving of love remains on earth, even in this fallen human world. It is a parent's love. What is true parental love?
When loving their children, parents who think, “Oh, I must get back everything I've given my children, with interest!” are not true parents. True parents sacrifice day and night, giving love again and again to their children. No matter where they go, they do not forget them and want to give more to them.
They live for them twenty-four hours a day, transcending time and distance. This kind of love is closest to the original love. Because He is the origin of this kind of love, God could lead human beings to the truth and lay the foundation for their salvation. (142-035, 1986.03.03)
6. Love cannot begin from a self-centered position. We can love only when we can stand in our partner's position, honoring and protecting that position. Is there anyone who would say to his or her loved one, “Hey, you! Serve me!”
When you lift your partner and live for your partner more than for anyone else; when you feel you want to exist because of your partner, that is love. If you make yourself the center and command, “Do as I say!” that is not love.
(042-259, 1971.03.21)
7. Even God cannot be happy alone, so He made all things of creation. Happiness and love begin from a reciprocal relationship. This is where the phrase “it is good” begins.
Can anyone be truly happy alone? Words such as goodness, love, happiness, and hope apply when we seek to realize meaning in a reciprocal relationship of a higher dimension. This is how our level of happiness is determined.
(061-331, 1972.09.03)
8. Love is not centered on me. Love does not begin with me. A love relationship can come about only through a partner. Without a partner, it can't happen. Therefore, both men and women need object partners. That is because love is not “mine.”
Love is something to be shared. Love is the power that can embrace everything in the universe. That love does not start with me alone; it is sparked by having a partner.
Therefore, when there is no partner, I do not feel love. Even when there is a partner, love cannot function if I have a “me first” attitude. (145-215, 1986.05.11)
9. We say that parental love is good and conjugal love is good. True love is not self-centered. Love does not start from me but from my partner. Love comes from my husband or wife, from my sister or brother.
Love does not start from me alone, but from relating with others. The owner of love is my object partner. (34-332, 1970.09.20)
10. God wants to give His true love endlessly to His object partner. Parents hope that their children will surpass them, so they want to give their children more and more.
Husbands and wives in love also want their partners to surpass them, so they invest themselves again and again and forget what they have given. This desire to invest and invest again in your objective partner sparks the action of true love.
From the position of the subject partner of true love, by continually giving and giving again for the sake of human beings, God exists eternally.
(234-239, 1992.08.22)
11. God, too, invested for the sake of human beings. He exists for our sake. Hence, people have tried to follow Him for tens of thousands of years. To maintain a position in the universe that obeys the heavenly law of existing for the sake of others, you also need to exist for others.
Only by living for the sake of others cans you be accepted in the East and West, in the past and the present. Because God's love is the same in the past and the present, and the East and the West, He can deal successfully with the East and West and the past, present, and future.
Because love can overcome the differences between the past, present, and future, development can take place; and because love overcomes the differences between East and West, the two can be united. All this is possible only through love.
(187-089, 1989.01.06)
12. No one wants a beloved partner or a dear child to be inferior to oneself. Where does this heart come from? It comes from God. He feels the same way. God wants His love partner and His children to be better than Himself.
Therefore, to create children better than Himself, a love partner better than Himself, He had to invest more than Himself. Even now, He has to invest one thousand times more and forget what He has given, then invest ten thousand times more and forget what He has given.
Without the concept of investing, we can't expect a better object partner to appear.
So a person who gives true love with the original heart that wants to give more, even after giving his or her life and living this way for a thousand years, keeps on giving.
God's logic consists of wanting to make His object partner rise to the highest point and then still further, and so if you wish to possess God's love you'll have to invest more than God has invested. The basis of true love is investing even your life and not looking back. (221-305, 1991.10.26)
13. Because God is omniscient and omnipotent, He has His sovereign power to invest in what He is imagining, thousands and tens of thousands of times beyond Himself. He invests and forgets how much He has invested. Love can invest itself limitlessly to produce limitless value.
When you continually invest in yourself, you automatically advance upward in a spiral movement. In the realm of this spiral movement, I can become an owner.
Furthermore, I can inherit the ownership of love in the heavenly world. Since love has the right to inheritance, the right to live together, and the right to participate together, this sphere of activity is mine.
Looking at this, we can see that God is the true king of knowledge. Why would He invest Himself and forget how much He has invested? It is so that He can continue to invest Himself again and again. Through the principle of self-replicating spherical movement, eternal rotation begins.
From this, we can establish the logic for the reality of eternal life. The act of investment repeated again and again exhibits the logic behind eternal life. (204-106, 1990.07.01)
14. True love dwells in the place where you love, forget how much you have loved, and want to love again. It dwells where you invest even your life forget how much you have invested, and invest again.
True love is giving everything of value all at once and then forgetting what you have given. Why must you forget? Because if you want to give more, you need to forget what you have given already. A mother gives her love and forgets what she has given.
She doesn't record it in a notebook and expects to get it back. A mother is happy while giving her milk and giving her life to her child. Even mothers in this fallen world are like this, so you should be even more giving.
True love exists eternally among those who invest totally and then forget how much they have invested. (207-056, 1990.10.28)
15. True love stems from total investment. When you have sacrificed everything and forgotten even your life, true love continues. True love continues on a plane beyond the point of investing your life.
This is because true love is the origin of life. Unless you invest more than your life, there is no way to connect to true love. True love is the origin of life, so if you sacrifice everything you can go back to that place of origin. (237-235, 1992.11.17)
16. The more love you give, the more love you have; it never ends. You will have enough to give even more. Everything else comes to an end. Money, knowledge, and power all come to an end.
Everything that has to do with human circumstances and recognition in the world comes to an end. Yet eternal true love never comes to an end, no matter how much you give out. Amazingly, it continues eternally.
Therefore with the power of love, you can move the entire universe and still have more remaining. (121-242, 1982.10.27)
17. What is the difference between false love and genuine love? Once false love begins, it diminishes and becomes weaker. Once genuine love begins, it increases. True love continues to increase until it embraces the world.
This heart that is infinitely embracing, this heart that holds everything, says, “I will embrace more. I will embrace more!” It is only true love that activates the original heart like this. Only true love does this. (141-285, 1986.03.02)
18. There is no end to love. There is no end to parents' love. If a man and women devoted themselves to their child, feeding and dressing him or her well, and raising him or her to be successful internally and externally, and then the child dies, those parents would never feel they had done all they could for the child.
Even after giving something good, it is the way of love to feel it was inadequate. After giving something good, love never boasts. It bows its head and is humble and quiet. (48-297, 1971.09.26)
The original nature of true love is giving for the sake of others
19. What kind of love is true love? The original nature of true love is not to focus on first receiving for one's own sake, but on giving first for the sake of others and the whole.
True love is a love that gives without remembering having given and continues to give. It is love that gives happiness A mother feels love and joy in her heart while nursing her baby. A filial son feels joy while making sacrifices for his parents out of love. (556-298, 2007.02.23)
20. True love is love that exists for the sake of others. True love wants the beloved to go higher than oneself. The nature of love is to want one's beloved spouse and children to be greater than oneself.
This is the way it is meant to be in the human world. We want our loved ones to go higher than our parents, to go as high as God. God is the same. He loves the people who are in a reciprocal relationship with Him more than He loves Himself. He invests and forgets. This is God's original love. (300-237, 1999.03.23)
21. It is not the nature of original love to expect others to live for us. But when we seek to live for the sake of others, love multiplies. Love focusing on oneself diminishes, but love for the sake of others multiplies.
It keeps growing. Love for the sake of others keeps multiplying and expanding, whereas self-serving love keeps shrinking.
The original nature of love is such that when you want to live for the sake of others, your love becomes greater, but when you want people to live for you, your love gradually disappears. (129-264, 1983.11.13)
22. Real love is not giving and keeping account of how much was given. It is not self-serving. Real love exists for the sake of others. After having loved someone, can you say, “The reason I loved you was so I could be happy”? You must not go there.
The person who feels inadequate after having loved, the person who feels many things even beyond inadequacy, is in accord with the principle of ideal love. But the person who says, “Now that I have loved you, you have to love me,” is not in accord with this principle. (60-084, 1972.08.06)
23. When parents love their children, they don't say, “We bought you shoes and clothes a few days ago and invested our sweat and blood for you, and it cost this much,” and record it in a ledger.
When parents love their children, they want to treat them even better than the princes and princesses in any palace in the world. With hearts wanting to give more, they say, “I did all I could, but this is all I can give you. I'm sorry.” Parents always want to give their children something better.
This is why we cherish our parents' love. Parents give and yet feel that it is not enough; they love and yet feel that they should have loved more. Even after giving, they still are not content with what they were able to give their children.
Parents' love connects to eternal love. That is where our tradition of love begins. (60-084, 1972.08.06)
24. Everyone wants true love, but love is possible only when we live for others. We need to serve and sacrifice for our partners. Everyone avoids a person who relates to others with the attitude, “You should live for me.” This selfish individualism is Satan's strategy, purpose,e and tool; the result can only be hell.
We must live for the whole. If we live for others and the whole and serve sacrificially, then everyone will return love to us. (316-241, 2000.02.13)
25. Why is parents' love so precious? It is vertical love, but it does not remain as vertical love until the end; it seeks to dwell together with horizontal love. Parental love seeks to guide children to avoid going astray, throughout their entire lives. Vertical love is such that it always creates horizontal love.
According to that principle, parental love consists of the essence of both vertical and horizontal, based on God's love. Because parental love has both vertical and horizontal elements and responsibilities, parents want to give all their precious things to their children just the way they are.
Parents want to bestow everything they have upon their children and want to see their blessings expand horizontally. This is the original nature of love. Why is original love like this?
Love is possible only in a reciprocal relationship between subject and object partners, and this is the only way to create that relationship. Through give and take between subject and object partners, a sphere is formed. The vertical is the subject partner; the horizontal is the object partner. Together, they make a ninety-degree angle and form a circle. (34-234, 1970.09.13)
26. God's love is vertical, but it is not only vertical. It also has a horizontal quality. Therefore, God can appear in front of His sons and daughters, who are on the horizontal.
Those sons and daughters widen the base of vertical love and expand it as horizontal love so that, centered on the vertical aspect, all things of creation can create a horizontal environment on the scale of the world and the universe.
It is from the loving heart of God's sons and daughters that their desire emerges to govern the world, to have possessions, and to pursue their aspirations.
This is all because a vision of vertical and horizontal bonds of love lies in the subconscious of our original mind. We cannot deny that satisfying this essential desire satisfies all human desires. (34-235, 1970.09.13)
True love is the origin of existence
27. If their children were in a life-or-death situation, parents would readily expend all their possessions to save them. Considering this, we can see that life is more precious than material things.
Then between love and life, which is more valuable? Between husband and wife, if the husband prepared a treasure for his wife with the full investment of his life, she would never tire of it; she would want to keep it for ten thousand years. But if the treasure were given without love, she wouldn't want to keep it.
Thus, the value of the treasure depends on the investment of the heart. If there were one couple in the universe whose love remained unchanged for ten thousand years, their love would be more precious than life.
That is why people sacrifice their lives for love. We don't abandon love for life, but we abandon even life for love. (136-108, 1985.12.22)
28. In this world, there are gems such as diamonds and pearls. Why do we call these precious? A diamond is so hard that nothing can corrupt it; thus it has the special nature of being unchanging.
A pearl's elegant sheen never changes for thousands or tens of thousands of years; nothing can compare to it. Why is gold so great? Its golden luster never changes, even for thousands of years. Nothing can surpass that color.
Because of the unchanging qualities of these things, people treat them as treasures. But there is something we would never give up, even for these treasures. Such treasures have no life. You would never give up your beloved one's life for treasure. (136-107, 1985.12.22)
29. The first measure of value in the kingdom of God is love. It is not life, but love. That love is unique, unchanging,g and eternal. Based on this standard, all value is decided.
Since God holds that highest standard, it has very naturally become the decisive standard. When God says, “That person is a man of character,” or “She is a valuable person,” His assessment is based on this standard. (099-063, 1978.07.23)
30. The common denominator for all beings is life. Life comes from love. So love is more valuable than life. Who is closer to the center, someone who is willing to sacrifice his love to sustain his life, or someone willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of love?
Who is closer to the truth? The one who sacrifices his life to attain love is closer to the center and closer to the truth. This is because the one willing to sacrifice love for his life is self-centered, whereas the one willing to sacrifice his life for love is not. (174-015, 1988.02.23)
31. Love subjugates life. Love has the power to change the direction of life from right to left. But life cannot dominate love. Then what about God, the subject partner of life and love?
Even God is vulnerable in the face of love. Even though God is the absolute standard of life itself, when He faces a love stronger than His love, He submits to that love. If there is a power that can move the power of life, it is the power of love. (48-149, 1971.09.12)
32. What is true love? In this human world, since we have never seen God, we say we don't know.
True love is stronger than a mother's love for her child, stronger than the burning passion of first love, that explosive power that rushes in, oblivious to even a life-or-death situation.
The love of parents, who will sacrifice their lives to protect their children from death, is connected to Heaven's love. Heaven's love begins there.
(121-126, 1982.10.24)
33. Even though the omniscient, omnipotent God owns true love, He doesn't want the root of love to begin with Him. He wants to place the root of love in people who can be His partners of love.
That is why, even though we associate God with true love, God wants people who can love truly, into whom He can invest everything He has. When God invests, He does not begin with inferior things.
He invests the best things first. To God, the best thing of all is true love, so He invests everything in the person who will love with true love.
(177-269, 1988.05.20)
34. God was behind the original formation of the universe, but His central motivation was to set up the way of true love. He was not thinking only of Himself. Before God thought of Himself, He invested everything in a second self, a partner that could be the object of His love, and He respected that being.
What was to be the substantial result of His love? It was not God Himself, but the object partner into which He invested, who was made to bear the fruit of His love. This is a wonderful concept. This is the beginning, the origin of the formation of the universe. In short, why did God create heaven and earth?
This is a philosophical question. Why did God create heaven and earth? Of course, He created what was good to behold, but more than that, He created heaven and earth to attain a love that is like His love. (177-270, 1988.05.20)
35. There can be no result without a cause. My mind and body came from my parents. Through the love of my mother and father, their two lives combined. Love harmonizes everything.
Through true love, my mother's inner mind and body harmonized with my father's inner mind and body. The life force spreads out like a fan, and the lineage connects with love at the center. The first cause that led to my existence was not the lives of my mother and father.
Rather, it was that the lives of my father and mother connected in love, and I was born through that lineage. From the bone of my father and the blood of my mother, flesh, and blood connected, and after ten lunar months in the womb, I was born. I had the power of the life of my parents, linked to their lineage.
My origin, the fundamental beginning of “me,” is not myself. My origin is the life of my mother and the life of my father. Preceding life is love, which combines two lives into one. The origin of all beings on earth, the origin of all created beings, is love. (187-044, 1989.01.06)
36. What would have happened if there had been no concept of love when God created Adam and Eve? Adam and Eve were born to manifest the concept of God's love, expressed from the time of creation as the relationship of convex and concave forms.
This is not something that evolved; there is no evolution taking place. The concept of love leads to the existence of male and female, and this fact transcends evolution. (223-021, 1991.11.07)
37. We have three important original palaces: a palace of love, a palace of life, and a palace of lineage. The purpose of these original palaces is to unite in perfect oneness.
This is possible only through love; there is no other way. The place where they unite is the most secret and most holy. Why did this palace become corrupted? It is because of the Fall.
Because of the Fall, the palace of love was destroyed, the palace of life was destroyed, and the palace of lineage was destroyed. This place was desecrated and became shameful. (228-052, 1992.03.03)
We all wish to live in true love
38. In the place where I consummate a love relationship, all my nerves experience an electrifying stimulation. Love is in the closest place to me. Love is so dose to me; it is inseparable from me.
It brings me the impulse and stimulus of joy. It makes me say with an ardent heart, “I want to see that; I want to go there.” (112-256, 1981.04.19)
39. Love has the power to concentrate all our senses together and unite them, focused on one point.
The eyes would say, “We want to see”; the ears would say, “We want to hear”; the mouth would say, “I want to eat; I want to speak; I want to learn.” Not only this, all the cells of the body would move in that direction.
Just as a lightning rod draws lightning to itself on a mountaintop, love unites the action of the nerves. Once the heart is stirred by love, all the senses are stimulated and gravitate to one place.
Everything moves together. Our eyes, ears, nose, and hands all move together. This is not because of us, but because of the person we love. (066-160, 1973.05.05)
40. Nature is our first mother; we receive everything to support our life and to grow from that mother.
In our physical mother's womb, we live in water. On Earth, we live in the air. Then what is the center of our life? It is love. Love is always the issue, whether it's the love of parents, conjugal love, or children's love.
Air is a prerequisite to life. Even in our mother's womb, we have to absorb air; when we move from our mother's womb to life on earth, we have to breathe air. It is the same air; only the way we receive it is different. For us, the most important element in life is love. (132-271, 1984.06.20)
41. Why were we born? If we say simply, “It is because of love,” we've said all we need to say. That love is true love. True love goes beyond the love of this fallen world.
The purpose of all religions is to reach the world of true love. Christianity, the religion of religions, emphasizes a love that surpasses the love of this world. Jesus Christ said, love me more than anyone else; otherwise, you are not worthy to be my disciple. He said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:37)
Why did Jesus say this? To Jesus Christ, his disciples were like his children, and unless they could get past the line of the Fall, they could not have a relationship with Heaven. (219-167, 1991.08.29)
42. True love is fulfilled not only through horizontal, level relationships but also through vertical, perpendicular relationships. A horizontal relationship of true love is gradually elevated in an upward direction until it reaches the pinnacle, which is the position of God, the King of true love.
In this position, everything combines, and embraces. Everything turns into love and blossoms. We can conclude that all beings in the universe want to harmonize with love and to live amid love. We are born for the sake of love, we live for the sake of love, and finally, we die for the sake of love. (316-238, 2000.02.13)
43. Not only people, but all things of creation desire true love. Thus, human beings, as the lords of creation, should embrace and love God's masterpieces and take responsibility to teach them the way of love.
All things are seeking such owners. In light of this standard, we should feel ashamed. Darwin's theory regarding the survival of the fittest needs to be reinterpreted in the context of this logic of true love.
Even ants and microorganisms want true love; beyond that, they want to offer themselves to the owner who loves them. Based on this principle, human beings, as the highest partners of God's love, have the privilege of taking and even eating all other creatures.
Therefore, when we eat the things of creation, we have to have a heart that represents the true love of God the Creator. (316-238, 2000.02.13)
Sun Myung Moon