The Three Stages of Life

1. We were born through three great parents. The first parent is the material world. We were created as the center of the material realm, as composite material beings made from every essential element extracted from the material world. From this viewpoint, these material elements are our ancestors that gave us birth and the material world is an expansion of each of us.

The universe is such that material entities can reach fruition only when aligned with the ideal of love. All cells are meant to live comfortably, regulated by the ideal of love. If they were to get upset at each other, everything would go awry. The second parent is the term for our natural parents who gave us birth in the flesh. They enabled us to be born with a definite form.

However, no matter how hard they try, those parents cannot become the owners of love. They can be the owners of our lives but not the owners of love. The owner of love is God.

God exists in the universality and externality of love because He is the subject partner of love, the Parent centered on love. Thus, our third Parent is God. In this way, we have three great parents. (298-304, 1999.01.17)

Life goes through three periods

2. Human beings live for ten months in the womb, a hundred years in this physical world, and for eternity in the spirit world. Our face has three levels: the mouth, the nose, and the eyes.

These represent the three ages of human life. Our mouth symbolizes the age in the womb, the material world. Our nose represents the age on the earth, the earthly, human world, and our eyes represent the age of heaven, the spirit world.

The water in the womb of the mother is a universe of freedom for the baby. Even though the baby has to stay hunched up at all times and cannot kick wherever it pleases, and its nose and mouth are blocked, that place is still a universe of freedom for the baby.

The vessel that supplies the baby with all that it needs joins at the navel, and the baby can breathe only through that umbilical cord. Yet, that world is still a universe of freedom for the baby. (298-304, 1999.01.17)

3. When you were in the womb, did you have thoughts such as, “I will go out into the world and eat honey, rice cakes, rice, beef, and everything else with this mouth”? No, you were breathing through the umbilical cord and thinking, “If I leave this place, I will die!”

To us, it appears that a fetus should feel stifled, and yet the baby in the womb is anxious about going out, and says, “I wish I didn't have to leave.” Nevertheless, when the time comes and the water breaks, everything comes rushing out.

Naturally, along with the gush of the amniotic fluid, the baby is safely delivered and everything is fine. (49-287, 1971.10.17)

4. Life on earth is analogous to life in the womb, for here we are surrounded by air, just as we lived bathing in the waters of the womb. We are living in an air pocket. The very moment we think of as the hour of death is our birth into our third life.

Dragonflies start as larvae, and as such they swim in the water; then they come out onto the land and crawl for a time. Then they fly freely to and fro, feeding on insects they had never even thought of eating while they were living on land.

They fly around with the entire world as their stage. Many insects develop through three stages of life. Most insects have wings. Because even insects live in the water, on land, and in the air, what would it do if we human beings, who are the lords of creation, lived only on land? We have wings of a higher dimension.
(49-288, 1971.10.17)

5. The period in the womb is the age of water. A baby inside the mother's womb is floating in water. Simply considered, we may feel that the baby would find it difficult to live in the mother's womb because it is constricted.

Isn't it obvious that the baby would have to take in and pass water since it is living in water? For that reason, babies in the womb live by the conduit connected to their stomachs.

By what means is the baby in the womb supplied with nutrients? It is through the umbilical cord connected to the navel. For the baby in the womb, its navel is its mouth. (299-069, 1999.02.04)

6. A baby in its mother's womb breathes, but through what? It is through the umbilical cord, which is connected to the mother's body. However, we know that the baby is also connected to the second world, the world of air.

After its time in the womb, the baby pushes out, and everything behind it is destroyed. Currently, the baby cries for the first time its windpipe and nostrils, designed for breathing air, embrace that world of air. The nostrils are the wonderful supply route.

While in the womb the baby prepared for the world of air, but in the process of coming out and connecting to that world, the umbilical cord and the amniotic sac – in short, everything that enabled it to live in the womb – are destroyed. The umbilical cord used in the womb is destroyed.

At the same time, the baby appears in this universe and meets its Mother Earth. Then it begins to live on elements supplied through its mouth. The body breathed through the umbilical cord while in the womb.

To be able to breathe through the nostrils, and the air pipes, the body prepares them in advance so that when the baby comes out into the world of air it can change its mode of respiration. (139-213, 1986.01.31)

7. You are born on earth to experience love. You need to breathe in the air we call love. You need to breathe the air of love from your mother and father. You should go through everything in life while being supplied with the air of love.

Once you are born as a baby in a family, you need to follow a path similar to a sine curve, going up along the curve and coming down. You are born as a baby and eventually, over time, your body breaks down.

You are born as a baby, and you go back to being a baby again. When this takes place, what is about to happen? You will detach yourself from the world of the second womb and connect yourself to the respiratory organs of the Third World of love. You leave behind your loving parents and siblings and enter the world of love that is in total harmony with the Original Being of the great cosmos, God.

The spirit world is filled with an air of love. Therefore, while you live in the earthly world, you should equip yourself with a supply line that will enable you to breathe that love. Hence, you need to have experiences with the spirit world. You need to develop into someone who can feel love spiritually and breathe the air of love. (139-213, 1986.01.31)

8. When we leave this planet Earth, which is like our mother's womb, and pass on, we will breathe with the respiratory organs of love, that is, with our windpipe of love. We can gain eternal life only when we connect to the third age of love. By connecting to that love, we can return to God.

We return to the spirit world by binding to the respiratory organs of love. Yet, we still have some distance to traverse to return to God, the Original Being. Because the Original Being is the origin of the seed, it must return to Him after bearing fruit. (139-214, 1986.01.31)

9. The womb, in which we all spend time, is a world of water. The human body is three-quarters water. This earthly world is the world of air. Yet, your eyes, ears, nose, and other sensory organs designed for life in this world of air are not needed while you are surrounded by water.

Did you breathe even once through your nose during the months you spent growing in the womb? Had you tried to do so, you would have died instantly. Why then does a fetus need a nose?

It is there because you are preparing for the next world. In the next world, the earthly world, you live in an air pocket, not a water pocket. What should you do in an air pocket? Just as you prepared your five physical sense organs while living in the water pocket, when you are living in the air pocket you need to prepare your five spiritual sense organs.

You prepare the five spiritual sense organs, corresponding to the ears, eyes, nose, and so on, through which you can absorb love when you are in the heavenly world. When you cross the hill of death, those sense organs open up. You will need those five spiritual sense organs in the infinite world. (302-167, 1999.06.13)

10. Water symbolizes the age in the womb. Next, the earth is the age of air. We are born from our mother's womb, and then we live in the age of air. Next, the spirit world is the age of the eyes. It is the age of the sun, the age of sunlight.

Love can be said to be light because it illuminates, and so it is the realm of light. Human life has three stages. A dragonfly first lives in water, emerges and lives on land, and then sheds its skin and flies around feeding on other insects. It passes through three distinct periods.

This is also true for us as the lords of creation. When our time in our mother's womb concludes, do we come out embracing everything we used there, or do we separate from it, our connection to it destroyed? If we were to remain tied in any way when we came out, we would be in serious trouble.

Conversely, if the umbilical cord were severed while we still needed to eat and breathe through it, we would die. But when we come out of the womb, we need to sever that umbilical cord. It must be cut off without hesitation. We come out destroying everything of the past. (299-038, 1999.02.01)

11. When the time comes, we must all end our life in our mother's womb and begin our life on earth. Regardless of whether we desire it or not, the law of the universe operates this way. Then a new, vast, and boundless world unfolds before us, one which we had never dreamed of or imagined.

Our life in water ends and our life on earth begins. A span of ten months in the womb transitions into a span of one hundred years of life on earth.

People lead diverse lives and go through changes as they prepare for the spirit world, the world we go to after we die. That is why I tell you not to worry about dying. You are simply moving to a better place. (447-158, 2004.05.01)

12. Just as we never imagined life in the world during our time in the womb, while we are living in the flesh, we cannot imagine the very different, eternal, and infinite world that is waiting for us. It is not a world of despair.

Our life of one hundred years in this limited earthly realm transitions into life in the eternal realm transcendent of time and space. While living in the womb, we are supplied with nutrients from our mother through the umbilical cord, and our earthly life depends on the three basic elements of the universe water, air, and light – as well as nutritive elements.

Once we enter the spirit world, however, we no longer need material nutrients; we live breathing love for all eternity. In the eternal world, we eat if we'd like to, and we do not eat if we would rather not. No matter who we are, we live our lives in three stages: ten months in water, one hundred years on earth, and eternity in the spirit world. (447-158, 2004.05.01)

13. After the age of water comes the age of land and the age of light. In this regard, a person lives through three successive ages. The solar system, with the sun at its center, is always in daylight. On the other hand, night follows day on planet Earth.

The spirit world is always in the light. There are the ages of water and air leading to the age of love. Love must never be extinguished. Like the light of the sun, love must be there at all times, night, and day; whether morning, afternoon, or evening, whether at the North Pole, the tropics, the South Pole, or anywhere else, love doesn't change.

We will go to the spirit world to enter the age of love. The spirit world is like a storehouse for fruit grown and harvested during the four seasons. It is bathed in a light like that from the sun. (313-224, 1999.12.19)

14. At first, we were nurtured through our mother's placenta. The womb is the vessel in which we grow. We kicked away everything completely as we broke away, emerged from that container, and were born. Similarly, our physical body is the container for our spirit self, and we will break away from it too, and fly away.

Accordingly, human beings pass through the world of water and land and finally come to live in the eternal world of true love, which is a world of light in the sky. In the spirit world, because love is the life element, we carry out all instructions given through love immediately. Nothing is impossible.

In that world, even if a billion people were to have dinner at the same time and place, the amount of food necessary for such a feast could be instantly prepared. (298-313, 1999.01.17)

15. The light that illuminates the spirit world is that of true love. True love is like sunlight both in the earthly world and in the spirit world. That is why we leave behind the regime of living through our nose and come to live through our eyes.

When you live through your eyes, you know everything with crystal clarity and nothing escapes you.

After the world of the nose, we enter the world of the eyes, the world of light. The fact that it is the world of the eyes tells us that our eyes that see this world will also see the spirit world.

Through them, we can see whatever we like. We can see the Heavenly Parent; we can see the Earthly Parents; we can see the vastness of the heavenly kingdom and how it compares to the earthly kingdom. We come to know that the spirit world and the earth are one reality, not two separate realities. Our eyes are made to see both. (391-161, 2002.08.21)

Preparing the respiratory organs of love while on earth

16. As soon as a baby is born and cries for the first time, it begins to breathe through its nostrils; thus it connects to the second world, the world of air. When it leaves the world within the womb and connects to the world of air, it must discard the umbilical cord and amniotic sac that has sustained its life in the womb.

These are destroyed and simultaneously the baby is born into Mother Earth. Thereafter, it feeds through the mouth and breathes through the nose. But the food we eat on earth is the nutrition necessary for the life of the flesh; it is not the original essential element of life.

The essential life element is love. Therefore, while we live in this world, we also need to breathe the air of love provided by our mother and father.
(298-305, 1999.01.17)

17. Life is short. Ten years can pass almost without you knowing. Everything is decided in the thirty years after your marriage. The path of life does not wait for you forever. Life is busy.

We all have to die at some point. Do you have confidence that you will not die? You will surely die, and then you will go to the spirit world. Life on earth is but an instant. It is like the months spent in your mother's womb. (143-334, 1986.03.21)

18. Since air in the spirit world is composed of love, if your spirit self is not prepared, you will not be able to breathe when you enter the heavenly realms. The world here is a world of air, but the next world is the world of love. You have to prepare your spirit self to feel love.

Otherwise, you will not be able to establish relationships in the spirit world. Then you will have bigger problems that will take millions of years to resolve.
(265-326, 1994.12.01)

19. After our earthly life, we must go on to the third stage, the world as it was originally meant to be, and live in that world of love. Therefore, we need to equip ourselves with respiratory organs suited to the world of love, and we need to break out of this physical body, just as a baby bursts from the amniotic sac, destroying it to being born.

That is why a woman experiences labor pains. In the same way, death is like a second ordeal of labor pains. What do we need to prepare during our life in this physical body?

During our time in the womb, we grew the organs with which we would breathe air. Similarly, during our life in the flesh, we need to prepare a windpipe that breathes love when we go to the spirit world. When you break out of your body, you go beyond the limited environment of your past life, breathe through your love windpipe,e and live with unlimited freedom. (274-105, 1995.10.29)

20. Those who breathe love while on the earth do not die; rather, they live. While breathing inside the mother's womb, we are preparing a windpipe suitable for the future world of air. Though we are alive when we disconnect from the placenta that connects by a cord to our stomach and comes out, we are transformed to exist on a new, higher dimension, and we are supplied with higher dimensional elements.

We emerge and receive an infusion of air. After you emerge from the womb, what are you preparing for? It is love. It is not only air which you are infused with, but love; you receive elements of love.

You are not living only to eat. Then what should you be filled with during your life on earth? You should form a new character of love during this time.
(139-214, 1986.01.31)

21. Until now, no one noted that while you are in the womb, in the age of water, you prepare five physical sense organs that you do not need there. Those organs are not necessary in the womb.

However, once you come out into the world of air and sever the umbilical cord, you need them. Similarly, while you are living in the age of air you need to prepare five internal, spiritual sense organs.

These are not external, bodily organs. They are the five God-centered, internal organs you need to lead a carefree, unlimited life through which you harmonize with the world of love. (297-186, 1998.11.20)

22. In your present life you have a nose and eyes through which you can smell and see the natural world in a limited way for one hundred years. But there is an eternal being inside you, staying still and waiting, with its nose, mouth, and ears closed until the moment of its birth.

In the same way, the senses are inside you, waiting to see the eternal sights, hear the eternal sounds, smell the eternal fragrances, and taste the eternal flavors. They are like your earthly senses.

When that moment comes, each of us will be able to go everywhere, listen to everything, smell everything,g and eat everything. (117-289, 1982.04.11)

23. When you go to the spirit world, you will sing songs of love and speak words of love. If someone speaks to you in song in the spirit world, you will want to respond likewise. If you are spoken to through a dance, you will want to reply with a dance. You will rejoice eternally and never tire of dancing.

When the dancing starts in one place, all the heaven will dance, and when the singing starts somewhere, there will be singing everywhere. You will dance with your beloved spouse.

When you end up dancing with another in the spirit world, you will say to yourself, “This dancing with you is so I can love my beloved spouse one hundred times more.” When you dance with someone else and hold each other's hands, you will feel the impulse to find your beloved spouse and love him or her thousands and tens of thousands of times more than ever.

When you go to the spirit world, there is no need for you to work and there is no nighttime. Your eyes are always open. Your organs are working all the time. And what work are they doing? What kind of work will you enjoy doing when your eyes are always open, and you never need to sleep? It is love.

When you possess such an ideal of love, if you say, “Let such-and-such a thing, appear!” it will appear right away. You will live surrounded by original love.
(107-331, 1980.06.08)

The spirit world is where the fruit of love is harvested

24. Why were we born? We were born because of love. To bear the fruit of love, we are born through the love of our parents, and we grow up in the embrace of love. Thereafter, we raise sons and daughters whom we can love in place of God.

Then what happens when we grow old? We feel everything that parents can feel in the world. Through everything we experience in our life on earth, we feel God's presence, and we become a fruit of oneness with Him. It is similar to the way trees bear fruit. Just as a fruit that has absorbed elements from all parts of a tree is harvested, we need to return to God's embrace, for such is the purpose of our birth.

That is why God created us, so we can become one with Him through love. Therefore, love is the standard of infinite value, unequaled in the entire universe. In the place we become one with love, there is nothing that cannot be found. There, everything has achieved perfection.

That is the ideal world to which people alive today need to go. If we call that place the spirit world, it is the spirit world; if we call that place the kingdom of heaven, it is the kingdom of heaven. Such fruits can enter the kingdom of heaven. It is not a place that individuals can enter.

Only those eligible as an object partner of equal value, who have borne fruit centering on love and who have inherited the right of ownership of God's love, can go in. (142-121, 1986.03.06)

25. The first parent is the parent who gave birth to you, but the second parent is the earth. The earth is the second parent of your body. The earth supplies you with the elements that help your body grow. After passing through the second parent, you enter the third parent at the time of death.

You cannot enter the third parent without being prepared. You need to resemble the form of God, our Original Parent. Why do we marry? It is to resemble God's form. God is a being of unified dual characteristics.

God's characteristics divide into two separate entities, a man, and a woman who need to come together in union. They are like the seeds, and they return to the position of God's original nature. However, for those seeds to be perfected, they have to traverse the path of the duty of love.

This means they need to be born and receive love, grow up with love as their goal, live their life centering on love, and, even when they pass on, pass on to return to love. Unless you set out focused on the goal of living for others, your path will take you in the wrong direction. (138-099, 1986.01.19)

26. You need to be stronger than your environment. You need to inherit all the elements so that you can bear fruit in the future, and your motivation to bear fruit has to be strong. Only then, after passing through the course to fruition, a course connected with history, can you remain a fruit that is indispensable to human society.

When a person is born, that person has to master the environment without fail. That does not mean that mastering the environment is an end in itself; you need to pass through a process by which you inherit new life and bear good fruit. After going through this process, you need to occupy a position that can show proper and practical results.

For example, the owner sows seeds of grain. They sprout, grow, and bear fruit, and then the owner harvests and stores them in a barn. Just like that seed, you need to go through a process of being harvested because you are needed for a certain purpose. (36-011, 1970.11.08)

27. Life on this earth is but a fleeting moment. Therefore, a person who cries and weeps for a child who has gone to the spirit world has not yet broken free from ties with the fallen realm.

When this person goes to the spirit world, he or she will be blocked by a wall. A person is born from love, lives through love,e, and returns to love. Since its origin is the seed, the fruit will produce a new seed. When you ask the reason human beings are born, the answer is that we are born for ideal love.

Since this is an eternal love, you will always have your mother and father, your husband or wife, and your sons and daughters. Hence, love is precious. Because love begins from God and God is absolute, love cannot change. And because love is eternal, people are born for God's love, live for the sake of love and after living their life this way, stand in the position of the eternal object partner of God, living with God forever. (143-312, 1986.03.21)

28. In the world of air, the spirit is attached to the body, which nourishes it like a fetus. When the body grows old, the spirit wants to kick it away and leave it behind. If God sees the physical body insisting that it will not die, what will He do? Will He laugh, pity it, or scold it?

Just as a baby is born and becomes its parents' object partner of love, we can conclude, based on the principle, that we need to be born again in our spirit body and become an eternal object partner of God, our spiritual Parent.

Just as a baby is born into this earthly world where it can share love with its mother and father, we need to be born into the spirit world where we can share love with God, our Parent, who moves through the eternal and infinite realms. Without taking the position of His object partner, we cannot possibly become His children. (116-175, 1982.01.01)

29. The invisible God develops through the visible Adam. When Adam becomes the owner of love and has his sons and daughters, he feels the realm of substance horizontally on God's behalf.

The substantial fruit of the two nations appears, centering on the incorporeal God, Adam's realm of substance, and the grandchildren. This perfected fruit becomes the substance of the spirit world and the physical world, and can go anywhere. (326-316, 2000.07.16)

30. Since our ancestors were raised in the bosom of God, we cannot but wish for God Himself to live in comfort and happiness forevermore. Would it do for God to feel unhappy? We wish for God always to be wonderfully happy. A baby in the womb wishes the same thing.

After the absolute God created Adam and Eve, and while they were growing up, He was surely in a state of infinite hope and infinite happiness. He must have had dreams for them. This is true for us as well.

It is similar to the fact that we live for a time in our mother's womb; then we are born and our lifetime of living in our physical body begins. How is our current life on earth different from life in the womb? In that we are growing in the embrace of our universe, it is the same. (74-013, 1974.11.10)

31. We are born in love that represents God; we live in love, and we reach the destination of love by having sons and daughters, and we return to God to live with Him eternally. In other words, our life begins with love, matures with love, and is harvested as the fruit of love.

Death is the point at which the fruit of love is harvested. We received our parents' love, shared the love of husband and wife, and loved our children. Therefore, we have to harvest the fruits of God's love that have ripened in the internal world of love, scattered throughout our lifetime, and take them with us to the spirit world.

When I become completely one through love, I come to resemble God. If a husband and wife unite and realize completely those three stages of love, when they go to the spirit world they will become, for eternity, the object partner god in front of the eternal subject partner God.

This takes place when a husband and wife pass away with true love as their center. Thus, we begin with God and end with God. (298-312, 1999.01.17)