Belvedere, New York
Translator - Bo Hi Pak
Merely hearing about a good day makes us feel good. Without exception all men are looking forward to living good lives, but who is going to decide what is a good day? No matter how many good things are going on around you, unless you are feeling good yourself you do not think it is a good day. Our conclusion is that you are the one who decides what is a good day.
A good feeling is correspondent, needing to be reciprocated. No matter how good you are, you don't really feel good unless the environment responds to you. Upon waking up in the morning the surrounding atmosphere gives you a certain feeling or mood. Something may uplift you and then you feel good, or nature may communicate with you and you feel happy.
The beauty of nature is not just horizontal, however, but is also vertical. Sunshine beams down upon the earth and creates vertical beauty. When you look at a broad river stretching away before you, you feel absolutely expansive and want to breathe the universe. Yet all these factors alone cannot make one really happy.
Joy cannot be stimulated only by seeing objects. Viewing the river and the sunshine cannot fully stimulate your joy. If at the same time your ears perceive beautiful music or sounds of nature then the visual beauty will be greatly enhanced. If you are gazing at beautiful sights and ' all of a sudden you hear beautiful music then your eyes are pulled in the direction of the music, right?
Which of the two is more stimulating? Why music? Music is another expression of visible nature, capturing the essence of human joy and sorrow. Human passion can be conveyed by music and generate a certain mysterious feeling of inspiration in the listener. People drive three or four hours to get out of the city for a picnic on the 4th of July, looking for a beautiful, natural setting. Yet even then they carry a radio or Sony TV. Why? It is human nature not only to seek the beauty of nature but to pursue stimulating sounds of music as well. Without it we are not complete. Smell is another stimulus to reach one more level of awakening.
However, even if your vision is satisfied by beauty and your ears by beautiful music and your nose by beautiful fragrance, what happens when all of a sudden someone appears with whom you can share your joy? That stimulating relationship comes first; when you have someone you really want to talk with then everything else becomes secondary.
When you have someone you can relate to with love then it is not only your mouth which is speaking. Your entire body is involved in your conversation. When you communicate with a passionate heart, your entire body and soul are totally mobilized to express yourself. You cannot just talk, but want to gesture with your arms and move around and look at everything. That is what makes your expression more genuine.
Your senses are for perceiving and communicating joy
Why did God give man his five senses? They are God's gift for perceiving joy and relating ourselves to everything around us. By looking at someone's eyes you can tell whether that person is joyful or sorrowful. Your eyes tell everything about you. But even more amazing is the fact that all five senses work together. There is no such thing as your eyes laughing and your mouth crying. When your eyes laugh then your whole face harmonizes together to express one feeling. Often people erroneously think they laugh only with their mouths. It is the same as if a single individual in a group would stand up and start laughing; you would say he was a crazy person. No, your entire body laughs, including your limbs.
Sometimes I speculate about who invented make-up. Women try to re-create themselves by using cosmetics, but they invest the most time and creativity in making their eyes beautiful. Your eyes are a very critical part of your face, carrying great weight in your expression. If your eyes look bad then your whole appearance is bad.
To draw attention to their ears women wear earrings. Nowadays even men sometimes wear an earring, or go one step further and wear a nose ring. The nose is also an important area. You want your nose to stand out in a beautiful way, but with the wrong kind of make-up your entire face looks flat. Western women with bigger noses want to make their noses look a little smaller, while Oriental women have flat noses which they want to make stand out a little more. After fixing their eyes, nose, and ears women also fix their mouths.
This emphasis on make-up illustrates my point this morning. Your senses are such an important medium of communication that you want to improve them to carry greater weight. In addition to wearing make-up, Western women like to decorate their necks. Unlike Oriental women, Western women expose the upper parts of their bodies, particularly when they go to parties. Then they need to wear necklaces with ornaments in the center. Western women are tall and have long necks and to balance their long necks they wear necklaces to create a focal point of attention.
In an effort to look shorter, Western women wear short skirts. A tall woman in a long dress looks like a crane or a stork! However, women's behavior in the West does not suit the shorter Oriental women. If little Oriental women were to expose the upper portion of their bodies and wear short skirts and necklaces then they would look ridiculous.
Whether you realize it or not you make efforts to harmonize with nature, wanting to present yourself in the best way possible. All existence in the universe is relative to something else. You want to wear good clothes in order to present yourselves well to other people. If you don't care about your surroundings then you do not have to pay any attention to how you dress and act.
We relate our love to everything in the universe
The topic is "Good Day." On which good day would I share the greatest joy? Which day is the best day for your ears? Is this a good day because you are hearing a good message? What is a good day? When your eyes perceive beauty and your ears hear beautiful things then you might say you had a good day. Every sense must be in harmony. It is a good day when all five senses and everything in your body can rejoice together.
Then what is the essential factor? There must be one event which can evoke the joy of all five senses. Only one word expresses that essential factor: love. Who in this universe will recognize the precious value of love? Man values love the most. Have you ever heard of art in the animal world? A literary masterpiece or a great painting expresses love. It is as simple as that. True and profound writings about the interactions of love in the past, present and future are always part of great literature.
The art of expressing beauty is essential in literature. An author doesn't just talk about "eyes," but about "eyes which sparkle like stars." There are all kinds of expressions of character, like, "your nose stands up like a craggy mountain," or "your nose is the symbol of strength." The fundamental purpose for using such adjectives and /images is the expression of love. In comparing something to nature, you are not just expressing a feeling about nature but expressing love. You always relate the beauties of the trees, flowers, flowing rivers and waterfalls to love.
Why do men do this? To begin with, beauty and nature were created to stimulate our sense of love. That is one purpose of their existence. A masterpiece of literature has as its central theme a love which connects all of the beauty and wonder of nature--the heavenly bodies, the beauty of rivers, mountains, trees and flowers--all of which come together to stimulate the expression of human love. Unless a work expresses the feelings of everlasting love then no matter how well it is written, the reader easily loses interest. The central theme of true art is always how to manifest the human passion of love. Poetry is no exception; poems just use fewer words. Young people in particular are idealistic and most sensitive to all these feelings, being easily intoxicated by the emotions in art and literature. Science and other areas of teaming are very monotonous and dry in comparison.
What about religion, is it a dry subject? Religion is not a dry subject because a religious way of life is centered upon love. Religion has also stimulated a great quantity of art. The major portion of art is the horizontal expression of human passion, but a religious expression of passion describes vertical love. That is the only difference between secular and religious art. An expression of vertical love is not found in jumping around as in classical or folk dancing; you don't pray by square dancing, for example. The passionate love is the same, but the expression is different.
The religious experience engenders a deeper awakening of love which inspires something even greater than the horizontal form of art and literature. For this reason, a religious philosophy and life serves as the basis for art in every culture. In European museums the masterpieces are those which are related to religious philosophy or a religious expression of love. The foundation of all art, whether it is sculpture, painting or literature, is always a religious passion or inspired divine love.
In looking at a painting of a man and woman in love, seeing that they are in love does not give the viewer inspiration. If their surroundings in the picture suggest an atmosphere of love and the composition itself suggests some quality of heavenly, eternal love, then the painting becomes profound, conveying an essential depth of feeling in that one finite frame. That painting is realistic because it depicts a man and a woman, but it is also profound because it is as deep as the universe and God Himself. In viewing such a painting you can be greatly moved by the substantial connection between human reality and such profound depth.
It is also human nature to express the consummation of human passion in different ways. In addition to pictures of your family you may have a picture of some religious personage whose philosophy describes a certain kind of love. Normally your family pictures are displayed underneath the image of some religious personage, which shows that you want to be embraced by some greater universal awakening or environment. That environment is the setting in which you want to show your love. That is vastly more meaningful than offering your love in a setting as barren as the desert.
Yet that is not all. In addition to those pictures you decorate with beautiful pictures of nature and with plants. In doing all this you imprint your personality within your room and create a microcosm of the universe there. When you go into someone's room you can quickly know that person's personality.
Why does your mind work like that? Somehow it pleases you to do that; some inner feeling pushes you toward surrounding yourself with greater beauty. It is our constant effort to harmonize ourselves with the universal existence. Even those who have no religious concept at all and who do not know about the saints and religious leaders at least have a secular person they respect, like a hero in history or a national leader or even their own ancestors.
This particular human behavior is universal, whether in the past or in the present, whether Western or Oriental. Do you agree? It expresses your basic original nature of not wanting to be isolated, of wanting to be with people you look up to or love, and with nature. You want to be a part of your surroundings and you constantly look forward to both horizontal and vertical relationships of love.
In your loving relationships you always want to be embraced by the entire universe, having your cosmos around and within you. You just cannot bear to be outside of it. The good day is the day you acquire that horizontal love and vertical love harmonized together in the universe, so that you are living in an atmosphere intoxicated with love. The conclusion I come to is that this is the good day you are looking for.
Everyone has to agree with this conclusion, whether the President of the United States, an Oriental or Westerner, a high-ranking or a humble person. Even in the spirit world everyone will agree with this conclusion. Furthermore, if you go to God and ask Him whether that is His conclusion, He will say, "Yes, that is my conclusion also." Why do you applaud? Something in this message made you laugh and feel happy. Words of truth stimulate your feelings of joy.
Each one of your features expresses
the heavenly four positions
The forehead is an expression of God's world and is wide in order to depict the wide heavenly world. The eyebrows placed as they are symbolically represent the boundary between heaven and the physical world. So the features below your eyebrows are an expression of the physical world. Your eyes symbolize a man and a woman standing side-by-side on the same level. Wide eyes are horizontally long instead of vertically long. Can you imagine your eyes being vertically long? The eyes move horizontally more than vertically. When you look up, your whole face moves up instead of just your eyes. However, when you look from side-to-side you don't have to move your face too much; your eyes can move instead.
Just like the eyes, men and women are supposed to move more horizontally than vertically, covering the entire horizontal universe. You can find three parts in your eyes, representing formation, growth and perfection. In addition, the eyeball represents the universe, symbolized by its roundness. Unless wheels are round they will not move smoothly. For the same reason men and women should be round, not square or angular.
Your ultimate goal is to become a man or woman with the same qualities as the eye. Below the eyebrows everything exists in duality, while above the eyebrows there is only one. Again there is a contour, with your forehead, nose, and mouth representing formation, growth and perfection. There are three lines in your mouth-the upper lip, the lower lip and the line where they meet.
Have you ever thought about who sets the direction for your body? Your nose is always forward of your body, going in front of you and guiding the way. There is a little valley between your nose and mouth. There are vertical and horizontal lines in your face, with the mouth and eyes creating horizontal lines and the nose forming a vertical line.
Another analogy can be made about your face. The eyes represent God, the nose represents mankind, and the mouth represents the entire creation. This is very logical because you absorb the things of nature through your mouth. The central point of the universe is Adam and Eve, the nose, and overall the entire universe is always watched by God, the two eyes.
God existed in the beginning, and later when men were created with physical bodies the eyeballs developed first. Do you know that? This is not only true with humans but also with the entire animal world. The nose develops last. This is especially true of Orientals. Westerners are born with bigger noses so you do not notice this too much, but when an Oriental baby is born it usually has a very flat nose. In Jin is a good example because she has a flat nose, but later as she reaches the age of 20 her nose will be more prominent. This parallels the course of creation, in which man was created last. The nose is the last to be perfected in the human body.
Why do you have 32 teeth? 4 times 8 makes 32; the number 32 is composed of 8 groups of 4. The teeth are the first parts of your body to deal with nature, continuing their work every day.
When you have 32 beautiful teeth you will never get hungry because your teeth will always be ready to deal with the universe. The appearance of your teeth is very important, particularly for women. It is logical that the things of nature, knowing they were created for the purpose of men, would want to be taken care of by beautiful teeth instead of ugly teeth. Did you know that nature appreciates beauty? Our appearance is not just random; it corresponds with the universal creation.
The respiratory system has four units, and the same is true of vision. Inside the brain there is one focal point for reception of nerve impulses from your two eyes, which explains why you see one image instead of two. You have two ears and can hear sounds coming from all four directions.
The overall structure of your body is also an expression of the heavenly four positions. Your mouth and nose both have a shape which is a modification of the four positions. On your hand the thumb represents God and the two thumbs represent the dual essentialities. A baby growing in its mother's womb frequently holds its thumb inside its fist. It is symbolic of God remaining in the center of the universe, surrounded by time, the seasons and all existence. Each finger has three segments corresponding to the three stages of growth, and all together your four fingers have twelve segments, paralleling the four seasons and twelve months.
You have three essential organs-the lungs, heart and stomach. When you look at the human face you see three major areas and by analyzing their proportions you can analyze someone's personality and destiny. The universe is round and the entire human body is also basically round. Don't look at someone just from the front because he should have beautifully round and solid features in the back also. Athletic champions tend to have thicker bodies, meaning that they are rounder.
Perhaps you think my head is an average size, but actually it is an extraordinary size. I can never find ready-made hats that are big enough. My head is wide both sideways as well as front to back. The individual is indeed a microcosm of the universe, so by knowing universal truth one can analyze any individual. Without even one word of conversation I can know a lot about a person.
Harmony is needed because all
of man's characteristics are essential
The differences between Oriental and Occidental people are noticeable. Westerners have large eyes and immediately perceive anything that is close by. On the other hand, Oriental eyes are smaller but they illustrate a tendency to penetrate more deeply and look further away. This difference already reveals who it is that will have greater vision of the future and a deeper philosophy of human life; Westerners are more pragmatic and reality-oriented than Orientals.
My eyes are narrow but long. Because physically I am very similar to this universal structure I can perceive and penetrate many situations and understand people from many different cultures. This is very meaningful.
Just being a Westerner should not become your pride. A Westerner has a longer but also narrower nose because God has a special purpose for the white people. That particular feature of Westerners is related to the fact that the Western culture developed primarily in the northern areas. A longer nose is a benefit when living in a cold weather climate because winter air has to travel a longer distance and will warm up more before entering the lungs. In addition, the nostrils are narrower in order that too much cold air should not enter the nostrils at the same time. The black people have different characteristics, with shorter, wider noses. The culture of black people developed in the warmer regions. Hot air should move in and out of the body more quickly than cold air, and with shorter noses the air travels a shorter distance. The beauty of the creation stems in part from its adaptability.
Would nature be as beautiful if each species had only one color? Would bears be as beautiful if they were only white, or are bears of many colors more interesting? Among human beings, those who live in the northern areas have whiter skin, while those nearer to the tropical zones are darker skinned. Those in the middle areas have yellow or brown skin.
Westerners whose ancestors are from the far north often have blue eyes, representing a longing for the blue color of clear skies and fair weather, and for the clear blue water of the warm seas. When you are living in an area covered by icy whiteness you grow up longing for green areas and blue water.
People in the valleys should not scorn those on the peaks or vice versa. Both features are needed, so harmony is the key word. There are seven major colors of the universe and one color alone cannot fully express beauty. The harmony of these colors brings out the fullest beauty. White is created when every other color is reflected away and also when the seven colors of the rainbow all blend together. White is the color of perfection and nobility so the highest places on earth are covered by white snow. God's beauty is harmonized beauty.
The hand expresses many things about a person. When his hand is very thick, that person is richly blessed. Having a deep palm indicates something similar; when you have a deeper container then things remain in it. Each of our features has some meaning.
Oriental culture analyzes the universe by first examining basic principles. On the other hand, Western culture examines the external creation first, trying to then deduce basic principles. Which way is more direct?
It can be said that the Western culture is a meat eating culture, while Eastern peoples primarily eat vegetables and fish. The white culture originated in the northern areas of the globe and the most available food came from animals. Having its origins in the necessity of killing animals, Western culture developed the practice of medicine that emphasized treating symptoms of illness primarily by introducing foreign substances or by surgery.
Did you know that Westerners have shorter intestines than Orientals? The explanation is that the main food was traditionally meat, a substance which should not remain in the body too long because harmful substances may otherwise be produced. Paralleling this fact, Westerners generally lack the spirit of perseverance and patience to hang on until the last.
Among the animals, tigers and lions also have very short intestines because their main food is meat. Animals like the cow and ox have very long intestines because their primary food is grass. In the Bible it is recorded that the animals which were offered as sacrifices were vegetable-eating animals, like sheep and oxen and doves, which eat insects. Animals like the cow, sheep and ox have infinite patience; no matter how hot the day, they keep chewing and keep plowing.
Oriental people have longer intestines because vegetable substances are more beneficial when they remain in the body longer. By having to pass through a longer digestive tract food remains in the body longer. Throughout history the people who needed greater fortitude and patience to endure more suffering and to be a pioneering force were the Asian peoples. The Western culture needs an alternative to its present way of life; Western culture will decline if it continues along one extreme.
It is also time for white people to love the darker colors and to appreciate the hot weather as well as the cold. It is providential that America has been entangled with Asian affairs and involved in assisting Korea. It is not just because the American people have merciful hearts. It would not bring good fortune to this country if President Carter ever disengaged this nation from Korea. If America were to retreat from Asia at this time then because of the law of indemnity America would suffer a great deal to overcome the effects of her failure. I have a clear responsibility from God to stop America from abandoning her providential responsibility. Asia and America must maintain their connection.
We are the kind of people who
breathe the universe every day
How do I know you white members love me? Simply by the fact that you are here, in many cases against the opposition of your own parents. Why are you doing it? I did not make you do it. The universal destiny is pushing American young people to come to the Unification Church. Providential destiny is not a man-made destiny; it is heaven's work that the Unification Church is plowing forward, and anyone who is trying to stop it by human power will be shattered. The destiny of God shall not be affected.
If we were only engaged in selfish, human affairs we would have been destroyed a long time ago. If an individual without a heavenly purpose had received such accusation and slander as I have he would have collapsed a long time ago. But I am different; the more persecution and pressure I receive, the tighter and stronger I get. No one can turn me back because I am not waging a man-made campaign; I am following a universal destiny. That is why you are extraordinary, even fearful people. No one can figure you out. Only a small portion of the moon shows before the full moon appears, but each day more is seen. Opposition never makes you Moonies small; it only makes you grow. Through the month of June we have been hard-pressed, even seeming to decrease in the eyes of the world. But from the month of June on we are going to gradually show more and more until the full moon is seen. The day of the full moon is a good day.
I am really enjoying talking to you
this morning. I don't know where the time flies!
When you look at a seed you think of the universe. When you look at the stars you think of the universe. When you look at a bird flying you think of the universe. When the butterfly flutters by you look at the universe. When a tiny little ant is crawling on the ground you think of the universe. We are the kind of people who breathe the universe, who live and harmonize with the universe every day. The universe is our stage.
In the morning you pick up 50 copies of the News World and go to a dirty comer of New York City, yet even then you are breathing the air of the universe, running out to embrace the universe. Even the negative reaction of the people never deters you when you have a universal frame of mind. The sweat you wipe off is universal sweat, not your own. In the same way, when I speak to a congregation I do not think I am just speaking to you but to the whole universe.
I am convinced that when I speak not only you get excited but also nature and spirit world and even God become joyful. Even negative people who come find themselves forgetting their criticism. I have seen instances when people have come to listen to me, not for spiritual inspiration, but to find fault. After one hour they totally forget their purpose for coming and after the speech they think, "Oh, I came for some other reason. I was brainwashed!" That is how the stories of brainwashing got started.
Certainly they were not brainwashed; without realizing it they were momentarily intoxicated at being absorbed into the universal harmony. This is the kind of experience which all of humanity will eventually enjoy. That is certainly not brainwashing. Instead it is washing all the dust off the human spirit so that each person can experience the universal harmony.
By itself, human love can only create a flat surface
I know very well that my critics think amazingly bad things about me. They even think I am not human, but some kind of iron man who doesn't need food or rest and who cannot be controlled. What they imagine is my mysterious quality is nothing else but my being in harmony with the universal destiny. That is what influences my surroundings. It is there like an invisible magnetic force which can attract any metal located in its electric field. Metal is pulled to it because there is a certain rapport. That is exactly what happens when we are together like this. Universal force and strength enable people to feet some kind of affinity with me, whether they like it or not.
Your mind responds to that magnet because the power of love is activated. One person cannot pull another human being unless that love is practiced. I am not talking about horizontal love; this mysterious, powerful love is vertical. Our greatest pride and treasure in the Unification Church is that we bring the living God into the realm of human affairs. God is not a concept to us but a living God with whom all our lives can be connected and harmonized. Our philosophy and theology is uncomplicated, stemming from the heavenly four positions.
This philosophy can unify up and down, front and rear and left and right, all directions. This harmony will create one grand circle, the ultimate expression of perfection. Everything can be absorbed within that circle; there is nothing it cannot contain. Human power and love can be horizontal and therefore unite left and right, front and rear. But human love alone cannot unite up and down. Without the vertical element, human love can only create a flat surface.
How can we add the vertical element? Which comes first, horizontal or vertical? Why the vertical? Look at the tree as one natural expression of universal truth. The trunk has to be correctly aligned in order for the tree to be aligned. If the trunk dies or is cut down then no tree remains. If you ask a tree what it resembles the tree will answer, "I live in the image of the universe."
Trees grow into a rounded shape, particularly those trees which bear fruit; a tree trunk and branches together create one big ball. The vertical line is the trunk itself, growing like a solid pillar. When that trunk is alive the whole tree is alive and reaches up to the heavens. Even vines which spread on the ground like the sweet potato, always turn their leaves and sprouting tips up. All nature is directed toward the source of life. In nature that life source is the sun so everything in nature looks at the sun.
Do you think about what takes the role of the sun in human life? Can we say that the source of love is here on earth and that together men and women can ultimately perfect their love here? That is not true. Only illicit love looks down to the ground. True love is always looking up for some greater source of love, like plants looking for the sun's rays. Such people are proud of their love and have nothing to hide.
Like the sun, the position of love is the universal center. Being higher than man's love, that center is vertical not down on the ground. That center is God. It is His vertical love which supplies the richness and resources of life. It is important to understand whether that life source exists beneath or above man. The higher love represents parental love, while the lower love represents children's love. Love always flows from upper to lower. Throughout Biblical history there was an emphasis on having sons because having an heir was very important. An heir ensures that there will be a channel for vertical love to continue on for another generation and bring prosperity.
Even though the American divorce rate is increasing, most separated parents each want custody of their children. Because the life source of universal love is a vertical one, parents either consciously or intuitively want to become closer to the trunk-line of love through a relationship with their children. If the vertical line is not straight then you cannot expect the horizontal love to be straight. Without vertical and horizontal lines which are at 90 degrees, the ideal of four positions cannot exist.
Throughout history those seeking a devout life of faith have abhorred married life. Each major religion recognizes the value of celibacy. Marriage is the horizontal expression of basic human nature, while man is supposed to obtain the vertical expression first. After the perfection of vertical love man is supposed to expand that love onto the horizontal level. This is why religious life stresses the vertical, spiritual life, discouraging horizontal love.
The fall of man began at this very point. Adam and Eve, the ancestors of mankind, engaged in horizontal love before obtaining the vertical love between God and man as parent and children. That was the fall. We have to rectify this wrong beginning. Because human history started with illicit horizontal love, vertical love must be upheld and horizontal love must be denied. Now you can understand why throughout history the religious life has been one of denial, of leaving your spouse and children and parents. In attempting to deny everything in the human world, religious people led ascetic, isolated lives, searching for the lost vertical love. Until recently that way of life was stressed by religion.
Do we need religion then? Human history actually started out with a loving relationship with God and it will be consummated by religion, nothing else. The way of life that denies the necessity of religion, like communism, cannot remain any longer. No matter what people may say or try, there is no other ultimate solution to human affairs. Religion is the only way we can solve human problems. Every culture throughout human history had a religious origin. Those peoples and nations in history which could not advance to a higher religious philosophy were always destroyed. Today's America is a proud nation, but it is the power of Christianity which made this nation's greatness possible.
You must love the world as much as you love God
The religion which will provide a solution for world problems will be the one which can put everyone in touch with the core universal truth and force. The Unification Church exists just for that purpose. There is a proud German man sitting here and he has so much pride in his own country that he thinks the German people are a super race. Why did he come here? Simply because he is a Moonie no one will treat him with respect.
This proud German came to America and was given instructions to sell the newspaper every day and to go witnessing. He was told to do incredible things and yet he does not have to do any of them. He is free to go back to his own country. What power could have kept him here? All of us are here only because we know the ultimate solution for the problems of the universe.
The Unification Church has one special, extraordinary feature, and that is the concept of "True Parents." Never before in all of history has that been heard of. Such a name as True Parents is logical, however, once you really know the fundamental truth. Now you are looking forward to becoming a true brother and sister and a true husband and wife, but how could you do that without first installing True Parents? You need a model or prototype, and the True Parents must provide that standard of human behavior. Thus in the Unification Church we have two of the most important words under the sun: True Parents. That is why people from all over the world and with all different colors of skin are disregarding their old surroundings and relationships and opportunities and following this one goal.
Why is this goal so valuable? Do you need the True Parents? You say so, but how will your parents feel when they hear such words? They quickly feel some implication that they are false parents. For this reason I am sympathetic with them when they want somehow to get rid of me or kidnap their own children. Of course they want to keep you as their children. Have you ever read about parents kidnapping their own children before? Why don't you just go home on your own? Your parents are waiting, ready to do anything for you.
When you come to the Unification Church you gain nothing tangible that you can get hold of. In one way of thinking you are in miserable shape. Yet there is something here you cannot disregard, something formidable and mysterious yet very real. It makes your heart full of joy and inspires you to give your total self and even then still not feel adequate.
I have never said that you must not worry about anything else except loving me. Instead I say that you will only deserve my attention by totally loving the world and the universe. I am actually pushing you out, not pulling you in. My central teaching is this: as much as you love me you must equally love the world, mankind and the universe. If you see something valuable in me then live the same way for the universe.
Other people will say that you are crazy for living this way, but as long as you are sure of yourself in loving God and mankind then you will be totally intoxicated in this way of life and in this love. Then you really won't care about criticism and will find fulfillment. Once you stand on that ground, then no matter what the world says you will have a spiritual strength and power that nothing under the sun can resist or obstruct. When your love and faith are that real then life truly becomes intoxicating.
Do you white people think this is true? What about you black people, do you feel the same? Did I convince you of this? It was not 1; only God could do that. You must realize that we are living in the most incredible time, witnessing unprecedented events. We are being carried along by the universal destiny. This movement is not made by man and I am not just pushing my own ideology.
My life is only like one little seed, dropped in the ground of this dark world and beginning to show signs of life. All of a sudden the world is seeing signs of life, noticing little leaves appearing. Now a tree is forming, growing both vertically and horizontally. As my efforts have an effect on a larger scale then my influence on the environment also grows larger.
When I say you should love the world as much as you love God I mean that your vertical love should be practiced on the horizontal level. In order to create the heavenly four positions you must live both the vertical and the horizontal together. You may want to stay with me, but when you come to me I will only kick you out and tell you to love the world. Then as you come back from the world I will accept you.
We want to create here the total perfection of the heavenly four positions, but to do that you must practice your vertical love in a horizontal world. The person who says he loves the Unification Church and the Unification ideology but does not want to live and practice it is only a swindler. I must love the world as much as I love God; otherwise I am not worthy to stand in the sight of God.
I know that God still loves America and the world, so regardless of how I am mistreated I will still love America and the world. I cannot return to God until I love the children of my fiercest enemy. Then my responsibility will be accomplished. We have to subjugate our opponents, not by force but by love, the natural process of the universe. That is our ideology. This is the most profound ideology anywhere, the perfection of religion. There is no better philosophy than that one.
We are talking about the heart of God, not just die concept of God's existence. Our ideology is simple. I want to love my spouse as much as I love God. I want to love my children as much as I love God. I want to love my neighbors as much as I love God. I want to love the world and mankind as much as I love God. Since I know that this is the only way of life that God can approve and the only way we can reach God, I have been completely practicing this life. I want to leave this tradition and conviction with you also.
The depth of your love for God is your standard for loving your husband, your children, your neighbors, your society, your world and even those in the dungeons of hell. That is your criteria. I want you to make this feeling passionately real, down to the marrow of your bones. You cannot just will this to happen one day; you must make daily efforts and struggle to overcome the limitations of your heart. That's what we are here for. Critical adults may think you. are all immature and young-looking and accuse me of being some kind of fly-by-night charlatan. That is far from the truth; what we are doing is as permanent as a rock.
God wants restored children who can maintain heavenly dignity
No matter how much outsiders study us they cannot find the source of the power of the Unification Church. You have your own dignity and pride in doing even trivial, menial work and no matter how the world persecutes or criticizes me I am not bothered at all. I have my own pride and dignity and power source. Only God's love could bring that power.
Even though I often dress very humbly, I feel even better than a king on the throne of a nation. I have a deep understanding with God. You too can think of yourself as a prince or princess of God. Our Heavenly Father has asked you to go the way of a lowly person in order to come to His throne ultimately. This is what you are doing now. No matter how humble you look, you must not forget your dignity and pride as a prince and princess of God.
That is precisely my way of thinking. I started out in a humble place in the small nation of Korea, yet I had the dignity and pride and awareness of being God's prince and I precisely understood the direction I was walking. The first chapter of my mission included stirring up a great deal of controversy in Korea. In the next chapter I went to Japan and turned the entire nation upside down. Now in the third chapter I have come to America and the entire nation is agitated, wanting to get rid of me. This is not the end of it; America is only Chapter 3. In Chapter 4 the entire communist world will say, -We must completely eliminate him."
I want you to know that you have in your hand a special credential from God and True Parents which says that you are the princes and princesses of God. You are privileged people, but with that credential you must do things which other people cannot duplicate. That is your pride and dignity. I came from Korea with that Heavenly credential and I have done things that other people just cannot compete with.
Because I am summoned by God I cannot degrade this credential or shame myself; I must maintain the dignity of a prince of God even though I may die a thousand times. If you call me Father then you are taking positions as sons and daughters. That means you inherit that credential from me. Can you live up to that credential? Do not bring shame and embarrassment to that position.
Do you have the ambition to be the top notch people of the world? Why do people who do not know anything about God still have that ambition? God initially created man to become His sons and daughters and we have to prove our dignity as His princes and princesses. We have to live victoriously, becoming triumphant on every level, from the individual level all the way to the world level. By setting the standard of triumph and victory you will be recognized as truly being sons and daughters of God.
Put yourself in the position of God who has lost His children and wants to restore them. He is our almighty Father so would He want to have children of dignity and pride or would He prefer children who are petty and weak? Why shouldn't your marriage be arranged based on your whims and desires? Marriage is very important to God so as princes and princesses you should not be capricious and influenced by some handsome man or beautiful woman who is not God-centered. A prince and princess should only marry another prince and princess. Even though a member may be crippled and ugly, he still shines far brighter than anyone who is not God's restored child. The members of our Church have that value.
I want to trust that as strong men and women nothing will deter you. If people slap you and sneer, "Are you a prince or princess of God? Don't be ridiculous"' could you seriously maintain your certainty? I am in the image of God. I may not be handsome like God, but you know that at least my heart absolutely resembles God's.
It is my pride that I have total unity with the love of God. God is my Father and no one can sever that relationship. Even if you behead me you will not separate me from God's love? Are you like that? You must be dignified men and women, standing as the backbone of God's love. You are a tower of strength, the visible form of God's love. As you achieve this nothing can deter you.
Only by your practicing this standard can we have oneness
We will march on until we win the ultimate victory. If death stops me then even after death my march will go on. My worst fear is not that of death but the fear of what it would be like to lose God's love. That is the one thing that we can never allow to happen. I want you to know clearly the position you hold in relation to God and the True Parents. That position is so valuable that millions of dollars of the world's money cannot buy it.
It is possible for us to be welded together so perfectly that nothing can separate us. Then if I push you out into a mission far away, what you are actually doing is not becoming separated but expanding your center of oneness, and your power will increase according to the degree of your unity. In other words, the further away you go, the more your power will increase. It is analogous to stretching a rubber band. The more you stretch it the greater will be its pressure and tendency to contract. In the same way, your desire to be close to the central point increases. The further you go away from the center, the stronger is the pull you feel.
You are pushing yourself forward because you feel pulled to the center all the time. That's what you are doing now in witnessing and fund raising. You go out because you know the significance of your mission, but actually you want to be in the center, and in order to get back there quickly you have to finish the mission. Then you can say, "Father, I am here."
That is why my pushing you out is not a merciless act but a loving act. By doing so you feel the greater attraction to the center and you become more energetic. When you have difficulty and hardship you think, "How much Father suffered in order to make me grow and raise me up. In order to let our people grow I must suffer like Father." When you compare yourself to my position you will always gain strength.
If you keep doing, thinking and acting like that you cannot help but keep growing; you cannot stand still and grow. Your gradient of influence and power is based on how much you are growing. Ultimately you will become like the original center, like a sun which generates energy rather than a moon which reflects energy. By practicing this you can come to fully understand my situation and God's loving heart. Only then can we have oneness and a common pride between us. There is only one mainstream, and it is connected to this way of life. We want to liberate God from 6,000 years of sorrow in our lifetime. You are very ambitious if you want to do this quickly.
The center of this world is God's position. By disciplining yourself in this way you will become a living, walking God, a true son or daughter. With God in the center and each other at either end a new creation will be formed and the heavenly four positions created.
The happiest day and the good day will be the day God feels delight because of you, the day when you people and all the universe can be harmonized in ecstatic joy and delight. Your perfection is the source of joy for the universe. That will truly be the ultimate good day. Jesus taught and lived this way, desiring most to have a true loving relationship with God.
Jesus' first goal, therefore, was to become an absolutely pure, perfected son, and his second goal was to become a true husband for one woman to whom he could pour out his entire love, a woman who loved God as much as he loved God. Jesus' third goal was to be like God in loving his sons and daughters as God loves His own children. Jesus wanted to become a father himself so he could love his own children. Those were his three goals.
After fulfilling this position as son, husband and father, Jesus wanted to fulfill God's desire by expanding this harmonious love to the entire world, enabling the entire world to enjoy the same intensity of God's love as Jesus did. As you know, Jesus was crucified on the cross. His great misery and heartbreak was that he then could not fulfill his goals of husband and father. Certainly he could not spread those three loves of God throughout the universe. The crucifixion totally blocked the fulfillment of Jesus' desire.
We must inherit Jesus' heartbreak of his unfulfilled desires and take the responsibility to bring the good day when they can be achieved here on earth. Then we can expand our love throughout the world and embrace all the things of creation. The day we can make that a reality is truly the best day.
Once we achieve all of Jesus' desires in full then no other duty will ever be as heavy. We will rejoice over our accomplishment with dance, music and song. We may not see the total fulfillment of it in our lifetime yet we are not discouraged because this Principle will be fulfilled whether you are here on earth or not. That is our pioneer's privilege, laying the cornerstone of the Kingdom of God.
When you realize that this staggering dream could come this close to being reality in our lifetime, how can you sleep at night? How could you ever sit idle? It must become your hard-headed struggle to shorten the period of accomplishment. I want to completely give my blood and sweat for this goal in order to shorten the time. Your prayer should be, "God, don't let this arduous task be passed on to my descendants. Let me do it. If there is any suffering to do, let me suffer so I can leave them the accomplished, fulfilled Kingdom of God." If you live in that philosophy every day yet still are not able to fulfill this goal in your lifetime, then still you will be free from the accusation of your posterity. However, if you spend this time idly then you indeed will be accused.
Every day we must give our absolute, maximum effort to see this good day. I don't care which path I have to take in order to see that day. I may work like a beggar or be maimed, but no matter what happens to me, as long as it helps to advance this purpose I do not mind.
I am close to the age of 60 and keenly aware that each moment is totally precious. In my heart I am constantly declaring an emergency. Mankind is sitting idle, waiting for your helping hand. You are not working so that I may see that day, but because God is waiting for that day and mankind is waiting for that day.
This is the first Sunday of the month of July, 1977. You must become builders of the good nation and the good world. If you are committed soldiers then the good day will be realized. You must feel that if anything hampers that goal then you could toss aside your own ego and fate. Forget everything and become unswervingly fierce, dashing forward to restore everything. Shall we do it? Those who will do it raise your hands. Let us pray.
