Former Headquarters Church, Korea
We know that everyone living upon the earth must live bearing responsibility.
When we think of the family, parents have responsibility as parents, and children have responsibility that they must fulfill before their parents as children. And that family has a responsibility before society and the nation.
Even looking at one nation, that nation bears the responsibility God has entrusted to it in the world situation and in the historical course of the world.
Looking at the world too, we know that the world also bears responsibility at some stage of the process before the providential line that aims at one cosmos. Going up in this way, we come to know that God too is laboring to carry out His responsibility toward this earth today as He passes through the course of history.
The Origin of All Responsibility Is from God
The places where responsibility can reside are not many. That an individual is born and bears responsibility, the motive of that responsibility does not lie with the individual, nor does it lie with one’s nation. When one goes searching for the final standard, God becomes the motive.
The motive of the responsibility a family must bear does not lie with the family; the motive of the formation of any nation does not lie with the nation; nor is the world the motive. All those motives come to rest in God. Therefore, when we search out the origin of that motive, there is nothing that has not come from God. Then, since the responsibility bestowed upon us, which has unfolded in ten thousand forms through that motive, also has its motive from God, it goes without saying that in the end it cannot but coincide with God’s responsibility.
Seen from this point, we human beings have a responsibility that the mind desires and a responsibility that the body desires. Then what is the responsibility the mind desires? It is to fulfill the purpose of God, who bestowed all this responsibility, centering on that purpose. Therefore, the mind must command that this responsibility be carried out. Thus we come to know the fact that our mind exists to give that command and exists to accomplish God’s purpose.
Seeing this, we come to know that our human life remains within this process of how to govern the body, centering on the mind. The mind and body of each of you struggle every day. We feel through social life, or feel of ourselves, the fact that what the mind desires and what the body desires are opposed.
Even within a single word, we feel the fact that what the mind desires and what the body desires clash and are opposed. It is so in the life of a day, and one’s plans centering on a year are likewise so.
In the course of passing through a year, the body is not in accord with the direction of carrying out the purpose the mind desires but takes an opposing direction.
To Become a True Person
If the gathering of such individuals became the family, and the gathering of families became society and the nation, and the gathering of nations became the world, then where will that world, or the road the world must go, come to rest? All the historical phenomena up until today have been produced by the form of the mind.
Just as each of you today cannot bring your mind and body under control, so all the currents and the history of the world are not brought under control. In the end we must consider that it amounts to nothing more than a picture drawn of the form of our mind and body fighting in different directions.
Seen thus, unless there is a true person today, there can be no true responsibility. In other words, only a person who has borne true responsibility, that is, one who has passed through the course of history together with God, who bestowed the responsibility, and reached the intended result, can be called a true person. Apart from such a person, one cannot be called a true person.
One cannot become a true person merely by saying that one has fulfilled one’s responsibility in one’s lifetime, centering on one’s own individual conscience. A true person must be one who, in the process of fulfilling that purpose together with the historical motive, can appear with confidence before all heaven and earth from a position where motive and purpose can be made to coincide, saying, “I have fulfilled my responsibility!”
Otherwise, one does not become a true person. Because there is a beginning, a process, and a result by which one can become a true person, if one cannot stand in the position of having fulfilled that purpose of becoming a true person, one does not become a true person.
Seen from that point, where will the direction of history go today?
And from where, and centering on what standard, must this age today be brought under control?
We cannot but consider such problems. When we, who were born following the relationship with God, who is the motive of all things, come to reach the supreme result with the direction of our conscience in accord with His purpose, today’s society and the purpose we desire can find their point of resolution there. They cannot be found anywhere else. This is a natural fact even when we infer it from our own individual selves. Therefore, we must in all respects go from the origin of conscience, through the process of conscience, all the way to the destination of conscience. This appears in the form of colliding with the current of history.
Then, even though countless great men have come and gone upon this earth and countless prophets and noble forebears have labored upon this earth and departed, what matters is whether the goal they aimed at coincided with the direction of heavenly law (천륜), that is, whether they went in a direction that coincided with the supreme purpose our humankind desires. We cannot deny the fact that a person is evaluated, whether he is a historical figure or not, according to the degree to which he passed through such a process.
From that viewpoint, however small the one individual called “I” may be today, if he is the head of some family, he is not an individual who remains within the limited sphere of that head of household. Though born as a member of a family, he is not a self who remains within the limited sphere of being so-and-so’s child.
Though that individual was born within a limited sphere, you will feel well within your sphere of life the direction of conscience that seeks to cross that limit, to cross the historical limit, to cross the world-historical limit, and extend into the world of purpose that fulfills the final responsibility.
The Orientation of the Mind and the Value of the Human Being
Then why does that conscience urge me on in this way?
That conscience, while desiring such a direction, does not urge “me” to be evil but advises me every day, “Be good,” “Be true,” or “Become a center whom all people can revere.” And what is it that is opposed to this? It is the body. This body fails in every way to form a partner here and is opposed in every way from one to ten.
Thus, if the direction in which the mind turns is to the right, the direction in which the body turns is made to be the opposite. Then, when the direction the mind turns is to the right and the direction the body turns is its opposite, how far one has turned the body toward the right side within an environment in which mind and body conflict becomes the character and the value that person can leave behind just before he dies, having been born and lived his whole life.
When, centering on that value, one has left behind content that is to some degree a plus before the direction in which history flows, that becomes the result that the person achieved a standard of goodness in accordance with heavenly law and the Way of Heaven, and it becomes the condition that he carried out his responsibility.
Therefore, those who joined the ranks of the wise and the saints did not live centering only on their people. A person who is only for his people does not become a sage. Such a person must live, transcending history, for the one world that heavenly law desires.
So when one becomes a person who holds content whose thought later generations can revere throughout long historical ages and who, through actual living, continues the generations and forms a relationship upon the earth, one leaves behind the name of sage. When one comes to stand in a position where one century, or several centuries, or several dozen centuries, or thousands of years of history have been given their relationship through him, he becomes a historical sage.
Then the question is how far the holy will he conceived and asserted was developed in actual society or throughout the whole world. In other words, even if what he wished for while pursuing the internal world was not successful in his generation, how much did it remain as a responsible value in the historical age? By such questions, we must gauge that person’s responsibility, centering on world history. The result of that gauging determines the weight of that person’s character.
Seen thus, as you also know, Jesus was no more than a young man who was driven and chased by his people and disappeared. The life of that young man, just past thirty, who was hung on the cross and died, was wretched. At that time, no one welcomed him. Everyone pointed their fingers at him.
In that time, in that age, no one even dreamed that Jesus, who disappeared in a position of shame where even his parents could not run to him and embrace him as their beloved son, that Jesus who walked along the shore of Galilee, would come to found the worldwide cultural world of today.
Then how did Jesus leave such a result to the world?
The cause of the responsibility we human beings must bear lies with God. Jesus lived a short life, but he lived with his mind pierced by the intent to realize the world of purpose through the Will that God desired and the direction with which God concurred. Because that life was more excellent than that of anyone in history, God could not but establish Jesus as the representative of history.
What is the cause by which Christianity was able to remain even while passing through a historical course of sacrifice and martyrdom? Our original mind knows this. The mind is the same as a magnet. The mind always wishes to follow the direction in which God goes. When this is restrained by some external force, the mind breaks through that force. Because the relationship of the history the mind hopes for has remained, the lives that pursue that road must necessarily follow the road the mind desires.
The reason is that there is an original working by which the conscience urges. However much one blocks by some force a human being who possesses that working, it may be blocked for that moment, but eventually it cannot be blocked. Because it cannot be blocked by any force of history, what has developed by treading over the ridge of death within history and fulfilling that Will is precisely Christianity. Therefore, the religion that has shed more blood of martyrdom than any other religion is Christianity.
There is no way to block this original mind by human power. Why? As long as the human mind pursues the direction of goodness, and as long as the original human mind is in a reciprocal position of seeking to be in accord with the direction of heavenly law, however much one denies this, it is the very act of denying that is denied; the original mind itself cannot be denied.
That is why religion has become the origin of many circles of thought and culture today. There is no culture of any kind that does not have religion as its origin.
Religion has, to some degree, presented broadly the road toward the world the mind desires, the world of purpose the mind seeks to go to. Furthermore, because religion became the center that brought the mind under control in each age and the center that presented the direction of the historical age, we cannot deny, when we infer from history, the fact that culture was founded and developed centering on religion.
From this viewpoint, when we consider our individual selves today, the individual is tiny, but he is not a human being restricted within some limited sphere. Because the motive of all his responsibility lies with God, God must without fail fulfill that responsibility until one world is realized, until the whole world produces a world beyond the relationship of one family.
The Highest Standard the Mind Desires
Though human beings have fallen, because the original purpose of creation must set out centering on a family of love, God without fail seeks to gather once more the lost relationship and lead it into the world of goodness. Therefore, without realizing one world and crossing over the ridge of the relationship centered on the family in which all people can stand in the place of God’s heart (심정), human beings cannot reach the world of purpose God desires.
Then what becomes the problem to reach the world of purpose God desires?
True parents must be found. A true family must be found. A true clan must be found. A true people must be found. A true nation must be found. A true world must be formed.
That is why humankind today, however vaguely, pursues one world and cries out for the equality of the world and the equality of all people, and pursues in common an ideal world of peace and happiness. Herein lies the reason.
Moreover, they have been pursuing vaguely from a one-sided position, without knowing how to form an ideal true origin, an ideal true individual, or an ideal true family. But within vagueness there can be no accomplishment. In ignorance there can be no accomplishment.
Then what is the one true ideal standard for accomplishing this?
That standard cannot be reached with the body alone. Within the sphere of the concept called “I,” there are body and mind, but the mind must without fail be the center. There can be no “I” apart from the mind. Therefore, the truth comes forth from the position where that mind can be raised highest, that is, from the highest standard of rest that the mind hopes for; there can be no truth that goes beyond this.
Then what has religion fought to pioneer?
It has pioneered the standard of the mind. It has come seeking the true mind. The reason is that, because a human being is one who ought to have been born holding an original true relationship, if one searches that out, one can find the origin of the true.
So when we go searching deeply to possess a world of unified results, we cannot but think of the concept of God (神). That is, we come to center on the Absolute Being.
Then what relationship is there between the Absolute Being and me?
It is not a relationship like that of the sovereign who forms a nation and the citizens. We must go searching into a higher position than that, a more serious position than that. That relationship is the relationship of parent and child. There is nowhere to go but the relationship of parent and child.
Then where is the place of origin of the highest motive in which the mind can dwell? From where does it take the purpose of the motive and the origin of the motive, and what result does it aim at? As a reciprocal relationship between the Absolute Being and me, there is nothing but the relationship of parent and child. There is no road to climb to a position higher than that.
If God is the Father and we human beings can become sons and daughters, there is no higher position that a human being can pursue than that.
What could there be in a position above that?
When one pursues the highest position where one can discuss centering on love, the highest position where one can discuss centering on the ideal, the ideal position of wanting to meet someone and live together, what is that starting point? It is the position where one can say that God is the Father and I am the son. There is nothing but this. The source of our life is the relationship of parent and child. Without a father, I cannot multiply.
When we thus dig into the origin of life and dig into the content of the value by which we subsist, there is nothing but father, son, and daughter. Overall, seen from such a concept, we come to know that religion’s assertion that God is the Father is grounded in a reasonable principle.
When there emerges a religion that can emphasize that and analyze it in detail and present content that can make it into a norm that cannot be denied in our emotional life and in our physical living environment, that religion, however complicated the sphere of the world in which it stands, can enter a position where it can be grounded in the origin of the creation of heaven and earth.
Unless one returns there, one cannot form a relationship with God, who is the origin of true religion. When such a relationship becomes the motive and, following that relationship, one passes through the course of history and the course of the ages and welcomes a new time, only then can one reach the point of result at which the original mission and responsibility of being born a human being are fulfilled.
The Way to Become Sons and Daughters of God
Then what is that origin?
It is the true God, the true sons and daughters of God. There is nothing but that. Then what is the true purpose? What is the road of the true ideal in this world, that original road where all human beings can rest? There is no road but the road of forming a family in which the sons and daughters of God can live truly. Who are the man and the woman who can appear throughout all heaven and earth, holding the qualification of true sons and daughters and a figure they can boast of on that day of rejoicing and of brightness! God desires such people. The supreme standard of victory that human beings desire today is precisely that.
From that viewpoint, our Unification Church has come forth presenting detailed, analytical, and concrete content regarding such things. So we can consider that we hold one motive by which we can contribute to a new cultural world hereafter.
Therefore, the Unification Church has come forth asserting the heart (심정) of God. If there is a person who knows the heart (심정) of God, he becomes a son or daughter of God. A person who does not hold the title of filial child cannot feel God’s heart. The position where one can assert God’s heart is a position that holds the content of loyalty and filial piety, having passed through the process of becoming a son or daughter of God. Apart from one who stands in such a position, one cannot know God’s heart. Because within that heart dwell all the circumstances of sorrow and joy, that is, the sorrowful situations and the wishes that accompanied history; when we come to know that heart, we can dig into the historical heart (심정) of humankind.
When humankind comes to know the heart (심정) of God that appears at the crises of history, humankind can for the first time discover a true view of life. Yet until now, humankind has been indifferent to such things.
If today we are to prepare a true figure of love that can pass through history, it cannot be done except through the heart (심정) of God, who led history and formed the relationships of history. Therefore, when we consider the question of the responsible person God desires today, that responsibility can by no means be fulfilled by each of you standing alone and cut off.
One must center on the heart (심정) of God and the relationship of history, which becomes the fence and the foundation behind one. And only by fighting while raising the value of the one center that has brought history under control and taken responsibility for it can one carry out a historical responsibility.
Only by doing this can there be, in our lifetime, conduct befitting a responsible person God desires; you must know that apart from this there can be none.
Become a Person Who Achieves the World of Purpose Centered on the Mind
Therefore, a person must fight centering on the conscience. Centering on what do we say that the mind is right? Can one say it is appropriate to center on some code of etiquette of the Republic of Korea? That code of etiquette can also change. The customs and habits of society can change.
However right they may be, they can be denied at some point in the historical age. The very word right, seen as centering on the absolute origin, on the absolute, stands in a relative position. That word is used in discussing an equal position or a reciprocal position. It is spoken from one’s own independent position.
Let us say there is a road that flows in a straight line from the origin of history to the terminal point of history. A human being lives his whole life going up and down that road. Then if he dies having gone up, he becomes a good person, and if he dies having gone down, he becomes an evil person. He is living such a lifetime.
Therefore, a human being cannot but live a life of being buffeted amid the struggle of body and mind. However much one is buffeted, the problem that remains at the last is which side wins in the struggle of body and mind.
Further, the question is how much one leaves behind that can coincide with the right origin and purpose of conscience. Therefore, one must fight day after day. When one clearly knows how great and how magnificent that value is, there will be nothing to be a problem in our lifetime today.
The pleasures of the world are not the problem. The question is whether one can present content by which such things can be clearly known. When such content is presented, a motive is prepared by which the evil society can be reformed and a new world of goodness created.
The Unification Church today is going with such a purpose in view. For that, my eyes must be right, and my five senses must be able to feel rightly. We must act to harmonize and make coincide everything in the course of our lives with that purpose. How splendid a life is that!
If there be a man and a woman who go while gazing upon that value and purpose, convinced that tomorrow’s hope will without fail be realized in the course of history, and who gaze at this with the resolve that they will build a foundation on which they can surely rest at the terminal point of their lives, if there be such a life, this is a powerful life. This is a life lived in a more victorious position than any hero in history and than any sage.
When one becomes such a life, one is for the first time a person who lives a life of responsibility and further a person who can himself shoulder responsibility and exert influence upon society and whom society needs.
When one stands in such a position and asserts and steps forth toward the world, one becomes a person the world can follow. God requires a person who can take responsibility from such a position.
An individual is fine, and the housewife of a family is fine, and the husband and the child are fine. All are fine. There can be no bad person. Therefore, you must clearly know that you must stand in a position that coincides with what God requires.
Existing Isms and Ideologies Cannot Provide the Foundation of Happiness
Then what has this world finally produced today?
The being called I is a human being whose body and mind are not one and are fighting. What has been joined of human beings like me, whose body and mind are not one and in conflict, is the three point six billion humankind of the world. Because this world is a resultant world in which people whose bodies and minds fight have been joined, fighting cannot but break out. Is that not so? In other words, the struggle of body and mind has produced the form and the result of the struggle of this world. That is why humankind has paid the price of much sacrifice in the long historical course. We must know that this is the history through which this world has passed and also the reality of today.
To bring such a world under control, some sovereign nation alone will not do. Then what must be done? Centering on the mind, one must present the content of a true motive and result by which everyone can be victorious. On that day, all the problems of the world are resolved.
Then who will stop the fighting of the world?
No ism or ideology of the world today will do. Humanism centered on the human being will not do. Why will it not do? Did the human mind begin from itself? If so, it is possible. If the human mind began with the human being, it is possible. Then the world would become one, centering on humanism.
In the beginning, did the ancestors of humankind come to be born by deciding, with their minds as the motive, that they must be born? A human being is, in every respect, a reciprocal being.
However loudly one shouts and insists that he is subject, he is reciprocal.
Therefore, the end of the ideology of humanism runs up against a negative result. Therefore, we must now deny what we like.
We must deny the things the civilization of the advanced nations today has been advocating as all good. Because such a thing must occur, the hippies are now furious in America. That is a gift of history. It is the retribution for the evil that violated heavenly law (천륜).
Then, at this time when we look upon the terminal point of the negative world, what must we do? It cannot be solved with the ideology of humanism. Nor will materialism-first or the omnipotence of matter do. Just as conscience cannot be the motive that brought the human being into existence, neither can matter be that motive. Therefore, the origin of humankind must be set right.
But the thought of the time of the Renaissance, which began at the end of the thirteenth century, came on the offensive to strip the human being out of the sphere of the name of God (神).
So in the end, passing through history and reaching today, we have arrived even at the conclusion that God (神) is dead. Then is the man alive? If God is dead, the human being must perish.
If God is dead, is the human being alive?
Before God died, man died first. It is crowds of corpses that are making an uproar, saying God is dead.
In such a social system, there can be no hope. That is, the ideology of humanism and materialist thought and the communist system, cannot provide the foundation of human happiness.
However much a human being may have carried out the human ideal and the responsibility he ought to do in social life, it flows away. It must be denied. Why is that? Because before the mind, the body is always in a position of being denied; whatever is based on the body must be denied.
Communist nations today deny God (神), deny conscience, and deny character.
Communism drives the human being into a sphere of logical norms centering on materialism. But a human being is made to govern logic and theory, not to be bound by them. The world of love cannot be governed by theory.
Can one say by theory what a father’s love is like and what a mother’s love is like?
If ideal love were absorbed into an ideology, that love would not be necessary for us human beings. Such a theory can be made. But can one manufacture love? One can present a direction, but one cannot achieve the purpose itself.
What Must There Be in the Ideal World
Seen from this point, we must surpass the theories of the past and rise to the world summit. Then what must we do? Here we must leap. We must truly leap. How must we leap? We must leap vertically. For that, the history of the past will not do.
The Unification Church today is receiving the criticism of society, but it is not so easy a place as to be persecuted by society in that way. It is not a place that vanishes like a flowing current of water.
However uproarious and confused the world may be, each person’s resolve is what matters. The direction of the absolute conscience does not change. The direction of the conscience of ancestors who came down a thousand years ago and the conscience of descendants hundreds of millions of years later, their direction is the same.
Can one revolutionize the conscience?
If there were an ism or an assertion that could revolutionize it, God could not be the center of the universe. The conscience cannot be revolutionized. Seeing this, we come to know that dialectical materialism is a contradiction.
Is there revolution in the world of conscience?
Is there revolution in the world of love?
Can one revolutionize a man and a woman loving each other?
Is love done to struggle? It is not so. Knowing the fact that such a bogus ideology is governing the world today, there must occur a reflection upon and repentance of our feeble and insufficient human selves.
If there is an ideology that can turn such a world around and set out powerfully at the head toward a new destination, a new ideal original homeland, that ideology will conquer the world. From that point, what responsibility must you of the Unification Church fulfill? You must fulfill the responsibility God desires.
What must there be in the ideal world?
There must be true love. Would it do for there to be false love in the ideal world?
What kind of people must there be in the ideal world?
There must be true people. True people, that is, a true father and a true mother, must be there. And there must be a true elder brother, a true elder sister, and true younger siblings. There must be a true father and a true mother, and there must be true sons and daughters centered on the true father and true mother. Without these, the ideal world cannot be realized.
The Unification Church has resolved all the difficult questions of the sixty-six books of the Bible. And centering on what? The true family. Therefore, the Unification Church will not perish. Strike it as much as you like. It will not perish.
To go seeking the true family, one must serve the true Father, who is the center of that true family. Who is the true Father? He is God.
If the one who created us human beings is the true Father, we must attend to that true Father. Yet we have not been able to love truly. Since we could not love truly, we could not live truly.
And what kind of being is God?
He is the being who is the motive of our mind. He is the being who is the first source of us human beings. He is the being who is the origin of our ideals. Apart from this origin, no result can appear. Therefore, apart from God, the world is not realized.
Then where is the standard by which we can attend to the true God?
Humankind upon this earth is in a situation like an orphan who has lost his parents. But if the parents he lost are found for that orphan, how great will be his shout of joy? The victory of a great general who has conquered the world and holds an enormous fortune in his hand cannot be compared with this joy. The mind is what is important. However much one may be in a position to be praised for victory, without going before one’s father and mother, one cannot stand as a true child. The problem lies here.
Then was the God who has appeared in the course of history until now an actual God?
He may have been a conceptual God, but He was not an actual God. He could not be a God who could be connected with the feelings that center on living. He became a God who prepared the heavenly kingdom outside the sphere of living, but He could not become a God who welled up from the world of the heart (심정) and formed a direct relationship. Because God has been pursued so vaguely in this way, religion comes to be expelled from the realistic world of science. So the end of religion is wretched. In this sense, the Unification Church today is presenting a new field.
Then where is the road by which we can live again now?
You must clearly know this in the course of faith. There must be conviction.
Whatever sacrifice one makes in the course of history, one must live centering on positive content that holds absoluteness. This is the position in which you can add the value of victory to the historical world and can carry out a responsibility of victory.
The Normal Road That Fallen Human Beings Must Go
From that viewpoint, what true work will you draw for a lifetime before the road the true Father goes? Only by practicing the Father’s work can you draw a true picture.
There is a motive for your having come here too. Motion, or any working movement, without fail has a motive. That motive never begins to become a minus.
God does not begin hoping that the result will turn out badly. If a beginning has been made, it must become a plus over the motive.
So what happens in the end?
Because a result cannot come out without a motive, when the purpose is realized, motive and result become one. Therefore, whatever exists moves to become a plus.
In your activity in the world, or in chemical action and physical phenomena in the material world, there is nothing at all that moves to become a minus to suffer loss. Just watch quietly. See whether anything moves to suffer loss.
All of you! What have you come to the Unification Church here to do? Answer.
Did you come to suffer loss?
When you go out and act in society, or when, though you have no business, you eat an early breakfast and go out to the streets of Myeong-dong, is it to suffer loss?
If you yourself come to know that you will suffer loss if you go out today, you will not go out however much you are told to. One goes out only if there is at least a plus in the mind. It is so with everyone.
If there is a mind that one will suffer loss, one does not move. A place of suffering loss is a place too far removed from the purpose. What does that mean? Suffering loss means that the purpose cannot be attained. Because one must act and develop to realize a purpose, if one suffers loss, the purpose cannot be realized.
Seen from a religious logic, this logic is a logical contradiction. Why? Because religion must suffer loss for the sake of this world. Yet through that loss, it is gaining profit. The world does not know that.
Today the Republic of Korea heaps all sorts of abuse upon me. They curse Teacher Moon, saying, Let him perish quickly. Teacher Moon will not perish. Why should I perish! Human history has tried to crush such a band whenever they came forth with something new. But even if everyone down to the eighth cousin of an in-law opposes and becomes an enemy, the Unification Church will not perish. Try suppressing it in the Republic of Korea. Japan will come forth, and America will come forth. Suppress it plenty, I say. In the future they will be struck. Why is that? Because heavenly law (천륜) comes to rest here. There is nothing above this.
If God were to punish people who are passing through the process to go this road, people who insist that one go this road toward the point of convergence of life, God would perish.
Jesus too died from that viewpoint. However much one strikes, in the end the one who strikes is conquered without a word. However loudly one shouts, one gets caught. One gets caught. Therefore, Jesus, in dying on the cross, gained that much profit. What is the reason he could say, “Father, forgive their sin. They do so because they do not know, so forgive them.” It is because he was that rich.
In such a position, everyone else would have raised their hands and given up, but Jesus did not. He looked upon the great wealth that would appear in the historical age of the future. Because he knew that they would be stripped bare and become beggars and that their descendants would have to walk a road more wretched than his own, with such a heart (심정), he could sympathize and could share with them.
Religion is entirely separated from the world. When one enters religion, that is, a life of faith, one must be separated from material things. One must deny everything that is demanded in the family or in the world. The teaching of religion is a teaching to deny completely.
Then is complete denial profitable?
Thinking of it this way, it seems there is a contradiction. But on the other side of it, there is a certain something. What is that? Religion must find this. Because there is something more valuable than this, we say, let us completely settle the external side. One’s own child is not the problem. One’s own family is not the problem.
Nothing of that nation one reveres is a problem. Whatever one loves is not the problem. Knowledge and power are not the problem. To seek first, centering on the true and centering on the question of value: what is the most valuable and the greatest in the future? This is the normal road that fallen human beings must go.
The Road of Religion Is the Road of Completely Denying Oneself
Therefore, the road of religion is called the road of the Way. The road of the Way (道) is a road that centers on the human being. In the Way, there is the Way of Heaven (천도 天道) and the Way of man (인도 人道).
What combines the Way of Heaven and the Way of man is the Way. The road of the Way of Heaven is the road human beings must go. Unless human beings today cast away the Way of man and follow the Way of Heaven, even the Way of man cannot come into being. Why? Because it was through human beings casting away the Way of Heaven and falling that the way of man came into being.
Now we must return to the original Way of Heaven. After returning to the Way of Heaven, we must combine the way of man. That is why the way of man in the world is now called religion.
On the road of religion, one must completely deny oneself. Hereafter, this must be practiced beginning with the believers of the Unification Church. Do you love your wife more than God? It will not do.
Do you love your son more than God?
Do you love your possessions more than God? It will not do. Two thousand years ago, Jesus too said to those who believed in Judaism, centering on God and boasting of their right as a chosen people,
“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me (Matt. 10:37).
Where is there such a dictatorship?
But that is a word grounded in heavenly reason. It was a public word (公言). Because that public word was correct, God has been restoring the world, centering on that word. You must be convinced of such things. A wise person can compare. One does not go the road of suffering loss.
If one can earn a million won, then even if a person one has met for the first time out of nowhere asks to borrow money, one must trust him and give it. Otherwise, one cannot continue to earn a million won. If there is eighty percent certainty, one must give it all. Even if it is money gathered through a lifetime of a thousand hardships and ten thousand pains, one must be able to give it all at once.
Because until now there has been no religion presenting content closer to God’s Will than Christianity, Christianity has come to play the leading role in moving the supreme cultural world in this end period of the twentieth century. That came about because Christianity is close to God’s Will, not because Christianity wanted to become so. Does Jesus go to the spiritual world and do it all alone? He can do it because God made it so.
All of you, what kind of person is a wise person?
He is a person who goes seeking such a road. Now you must broaden your nature and raise your character to a high position. In social life, you must hold a worldwide feeling and form a relationship with God and go without minding even the ridge of death to develop that relationship in the world.
You must know that this is a worthwhile life. On that road storms will beat and typhoons will blow. The arrows of enemies will fly.
If one is to be struck and die, one must be struck and die head-on; one must not be struck and die in vain in a cowardly position. Even if one dies, one must die in a position where one can feel the greatest worth. One must go a road of death that can move history and shine in history. Such a figure is a wise figure.
Yesterday I spoke with a certain woman. Her husband had fallen ill and was about to die, and that old man, having come to know the Will, knew in advance the day of his death and had been preparing to meet that day. He says he knows what to do with his body so that others will not have a hard time.
So he says he takes only a mouthful of water at a time, reducing the flesh of his body until only skin remains, preparing to meet death.
If it were people of the world, how frantic would they be before death?
Seeing such a thing, it is truly great. That figure who, before the ridge of death, sets his environment in order step by step and handles it solemnly and with profound meaning, that attitude of preparing for and welcoming the foundation of tomorrow, is noble. You must become people who can be like that.
Become the Responsible Person Heaven Desires, Wherever You Are
We must live upon this earth powerfully and earnestly and splendidly. That does not mean becoming a millionaire and riding about in a car like a Mercedes-Benz. It does not mean wearing fine clothes and strutting about the streets of Myeong-dong.
However haggard one’s figure may be, it means living a true life in which, within one’s mind, one consults with God and consults to realize the supreme resultant world in all nations and becomes a comrade for realizing that world and can become an owner of that world. It is the mission of the Unification Church to connect such a life to the individual and the family and society, to connect it to the nation, and to connect it to the world.
The fields of your mission are of ten thousand forms. Is the mission small, or is it large? It is not good only because the mission is large. In the end, it is God.
However much one says a son of a household is useful or useless, in the end he is the son of that house. If the son succeeds, who is it that succeeded? Overall, it is not a stranger but one’s own family. Is there a younger brother who is displeased at his elder brother’s success?
There is the saying, “If a cousin buys land, my stomach aches,” but there is no saying that one’s stomach aches when a brother buys land. Because they become Cain-type brothers, they become cousins. In other words, because they are set up as the brothers Cain and Abel, they become cousins. There is the saying that one’s stomach aches when a cousin buys a paddy field, but there is no one whose stomach aches when a brother buys a paddy field. That is because they are brothers. Even if he rises high, he is my elder brother; even if he does well, he is my younger brother.
If the younger brother does well, the elder brother does well after him. All are the family of one household. When it becomes like this, there is no high and low.
Therefore, the question is how one receives one’s share in the bosom of one’s parents and how one forms a happy family under those parents, how one is filial and lives well; the amount of fields and paddies is not the problem. The question is how one is filial before one’s parents and how one holds and lives that relationship of heart (심정); the question is not succeeding in the world and becoming president or becoming something.
It is a blessing to live holding the heart (심정) of a child before the heart (심정) of the parents. In the world of the heart, there is no high and low. The high person must be for the low person, and the person who does not know must be for the person who knows. And the person who knows must be for the person who does not know all the more. In the end, one need only think that the other is acting in one’s place.
If there is a person who is for me, he is the elder brother, and I am the younger brother. If there is a person who does well by others in my place, I must be that much more thankful toward him. The scope in which you can do so will differ, but as an individual, in the process of realizing the resultant world God has presented, you must absolutely not make it a minus.
When you make it a minus, where do you go? You go to hell. Before God’s Will, before the road God goes, God too desires to profit. When one makes it a minus before God, one falls away. It means one goes to hell. When one makes it a plus, there is no need to strive to go to heaven.
What Christianity speaks of today as heaven and hell is a bluff. They do exist, but it is a threat for the sake of realizing a world of goodness. For unbelieving scoundrels, a bluff is necessary. In that sense, I must research and come up with something.
What might be the most fearful bluff on this earth?
Even by using a bluff, if one makes people go the right road, it is all right. So if one makes them perish, one receives Heaven’s punishment, but if one makes them prosper, one receives blessing. This is a joke; you must become the responsible individuals Heaven desires.
If one is a father of a family, one must become a responsible person as a father, and a child must become a person who takes responsibility as a child. If it is a family, one must become a responsible person in the family; if it is a church, one must become a responsible person as a member of the church.
Be Resolved to Die and Suffer to Save the World
The individual exists for the sake of the family, and the family exists for the sake of society. You must know this. To realize the purpose of goodness, one must develop step by step. This is formulated. The individual, by being for the family, must ride the fortune of the family. The family must ride the fortune of society, society must ride the fortune of the nation, and the nation must ride the fortune of the world.
However much the Republic of Korea may be modernized and achieve economic revival, if it falls behind the fortune of the world, it perishes. Nothing can be done. Is that not so? When Japanese imperialism started the Greater East Asia War and occupied almost the whole of Asia, we thought everything was over. But lo and behold, Japan could not ride the fortune of Heaven. With a root like Japan, one cannot govern the fortune of the world. One must move the nation, centering on the fortune of the world. Look at America. The policy ideology America asserts must also follow the fortune of the world.
Otherwise, the fortune of the world strikes it as it passes. Just wait and see. Just wait three or four years. The fair judgment of history will be revealed: that it failed in its Asian policy.
President Nixon is now failing to take responsibility. In such a situation, it would be good if he consulted this Teacher Moon of the Unification Church, but he is failing to take responsibility.
Therefore, do you think the world will become one centered on America as they imagine? Do not even dream of it.
Because they have the Pacific?
Hereafter, when the area around Mexico becomes communist and seizes America by the throat, a repetition of the Vietnam War will unfold in America. It will happen within ten years. Ten years, nothing; if just about five years pass, such a thing will occur. Even if I were a communist leader, I would do so. Not five years; such a thing may occur from next year on.
This time I went to America and met many prominent figures. When I struck at the heart of the matter, asking them whether they were thinking of such things, they said, How could that be so?. When I said, “Are you not being tormented by Cuba even now?” they said Yes.
Currently, East and West have made a strategy and are tying America by the neck and pulling. America, which retreated in the Vietnam War, is the same as a corpse. I do not know what they intend to do, only shouting so loudly like that. Because the inside is rotten, there are many parts that must be cut out. The interior of the society has become like that.
So, knowing that in a few years I must go to America and fight, I am praying for that. Unification Church members must fulfill the responsibility of saving the world.
For that, centering on Korea, we must tread over Asia and even the sphere of Western civilization and realize God’s Will. Therefore, do not lament that until now you have not had some cultural background that governed history.
If there is a tribe that holds the ideological ideal absolutely necessary for the world of the latter half of the twentieth century and thereafter, that tribe will lead the world. Therefore, let the Unification Church become such a tribe.
For that, let us not lament because we now undergo trials. Let us not be discouraged because we are treated with contempt. When we come to welcome a new culture that can make trial and suffering shine, that is, when the origin of a brilliant culture appears in a new age, that trial and suffering becomes one shield of victory by which this environment can be overcome. We must think in this way.
Even though countless people of the world today oppose the Unification Church, that opposition does not become a minus to the Unification Church. The harsh opposition being received now will, several decades hence, be thrown into the breasts of countless people as a silent bomb of conscience. It will be thrown as an atomic bomb.
Once they hear it, they will hold such animosity toward evil that their breasts feel as if they will burst. When we consider that a good source of life can remain not only through the historical ages of the past but beyond the present and into the future only when trial and suffering are overcome, we must know that it is not a bad thing.
What responsibility must I fulfill?
In fulfilling your responsibility, you must not differ in the direction you aim at. Whether as the housewife of a family, or as a worker in society, or as a statesman of a nation, one must carry out one’s responsibility according to the public good, in accord with the direction of Heaven. When a statesman of a nation stands in such a position, that nation remains. When Korea does so, America withdraws, and the communists withdraw. All withdraw.
America too will retreat, and the democratic world too will retreat. Hereafter, the democratic world will not simply remain. Just wait and see. The opposition parties assert democracy so strongly, but it will not remain.
When we look at South America these days, they are all newly carrying out policies centered on the people under military governments, but that amounts to no more than the foothold of a single nation. They try to come forth opposing America, but the military seizes power, and everything is driven into a sphere of ideology centered on the people. When one comes to know the true meaning of such isms, it is fascinating. Hereafter, communism too will not do.
So in the end, the notion of one’s own ethnic nationalism must be driven out. Those who cry out for World-ism (세계주의) do not know World-ism. A worldism centered on the notion of ethnic nationalism cannot stand. It perishes.
Therefore, there must be an ideology that can urge an inner relationship by which one can cast away one’s people and live with the world and love the world more than one’s people. There must emerge an ism that can make one step forward, saying one will make the thirty million people, the Republic of Korea, an offering of sacrifice to save the world.
If such a thought and such an ism emerge, that thought will govern the world. Just as he who would die shall live, if one serves the world with a resolve unto death, in the end one comes to save the world. Unification Church members today must do so. For that, the members of the Unification Church, especially the young people, must suffer.
Fulfill That Responsibility in Reality to Realize the World of Godism
Democracy, before the barrier it had to cross toward the world, fell into nationalism and could not cross over, so it became the end of petty men. It is the same with communism. It denied international communism and has now fallen into national communism. Hereafter, this will fall into clan-type and tribe-type communism. That the word dogmatism keeps coming up shows this.
If there appears an ism that tears down the barrier of worldwide ideology and can sacrifice its people for the sake of the world and make them the fertilizer, that ism is precisely Godism (하나님주의). That is why God sacrifices the sons and daughters closest to Him for the sake of the world.
For that reason, Christianity has until now built an altar of blood. Because God has prepared the origin by which He can love the world by sacrificing those closest to Him, in the end only Godism remains. Do you understand?
Therefore, just because Teacher Moon of the Unification Church is a person of the Republic of Korea, he is not a man who is bound to and included in some policy of the Republic of Korea. He is not a man who lives within the democratic sphere or within the communist sphere. Such isms will perish.
Even if the end comes to history, you must hold a heart (심정) that can cross over the barrier of the world, and you must hold a will by which you can live from the position of a people or a nation centered on the world.
Otherwise, you cannot become a band that remains in the world. In this sense, you must clearly know how vast and important the responsibility the Unification Church must fulfill today is, and you must practice from present reality the responsibility of bringing history under control. Do you understand what this means? “Yes.” You understand, do you not? “Yes.”
Therefore, centering on such an ideology, we must all the more tread over the difficult barriers of reality and become one. It is not becoming one that centers on the body. The body must become one, centering on the mind, and the mind centering on Heaven.
In a person in whom Heaven and mind and body are in accord, peace and happiness and the ideal are settled. Because such a person becomes an origin, that tribe too will necessarily bear the result of goodness.
Therefore, the ideal world is realized only when the internal motive of the Unification Church appears as a result of goodness and forms a time in which one form can be prepared.
To realize such a world, you must clearly know that you must know what God desires of you and your responsibility for that and must unify it in one direction to realize that purpose, as an individual in the individual, as a family in the family, and as a church in the church. Do you understand? “Yes.”