216. The True Family and I

Book 2: A Model for the Family Ideal and World Peace
Part 2: The Path to Exemplary Families and Global Harmony
Chapter 3: The True Family and I

This speech was given by Reverend Sun Myung Moon on May 16, 1995 during a speaking tour to seventeen South and Central American nations, and then by Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon between September 14 and October 26, 1995 during speaking tours to Japanese cities and Korean universities.

Today I would like to speak to you for a time on the subject “The True Family and I.” This is because the world's problems stem from the family. Let us ask what we mean by a true family.

The origin of the conflict between mind and body

If we ask whether the world we live in today is good or evil, the answer would be that it is evil. Why do we judge it to be evil? It is because whether we consider world history, this nation's history, or the history of any other country, we see unremitting conflict. Through conflict and struggle, the parties involved will not develop but will necessarily decline. To say that the world is evil implies that its nations are evil, that its inhabitants are evil, and that we ourselves are evil. If we study ourselves, we cannot deny that, within each of us, our mind and our body struggle with each other.

The origin or the cause of struggle remains a problem that must be resolved. If an individual does not possess within himself or herself a foundation for peace, then no matter how peaceful his or her family, nation or the world might be, he or she will not be happy. The individual is the true battlefield. As you know, World War I, World War II and the Cold War each came to an end. It will be possible to bring such conflicts to an end in the future. However, the struggle between our mind and body has existed from ancient times. It has continued throughout the course of history, it continues today, and we do not know how much longer it will continue into the future.

If we consider the existence of God, it is problematic that God would permit the struggle between mind and body to continue throughout history and even today. However, if we consider that it was human beings who caused the struggle, then we can understand that it is human beings who must indemnify it. God cannot take that responsibility away from us, nor can He intervene in it.

Where does the struggle between mind and body originate? We inherit life from our parents and from the parents of our parents. If we continue going back this way, we eventually arrive at the first generation, that is, the first human ancestors. The origin of our life is the love of our parents. If this struggle began before we were even born, we would have to conclude that the problem related to the circumstances in which our first parents entered into a love relationship with each other—that is, the origin of the struggle between mind and body—results from a problem in the conjugal love between Adam and Eve.

The love of Adam and Eve was not a love accompanied by true happiness. Quite to the contrary, it was conflict-ridden love. Because the roots of our life are in this love, we can conclude that this is where the conflicts plaguing the inner self of human beings originate.

The Bible teaches us that because of having sinned, Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden. Once they had been driven out of the garden, they began to multiply children. God could not follow and bless them in marriage. Thus we need to ask, under whom did they marry? We can conclude that, because of having fallen into sin, they married under the auspices of Satan.

The root of fallen love, life and lineage

The Fall consisted of Eve being tempted by Satan and her later temptation of Adam. Therefore, when our ancestors Adam and Eve established a relationship of conjugal love, that relationship was unhappy and conflict-ridden. Today humanity still has its roots in that relationship. We cannot separate from the origin of that struggle between mind and body. The Fall began with immoral love. Due to a love relationship that God did not desire, Adam and Eve united with Satan. They did not become the ancestors of goodness; they became the ancestors of evil, thus creating the roots of fallen love, fallen life and a fallen lineage.

If this is true, what began as one fallen family grew into tribes, nations and a world. It is a world whose more than five billion people, present-day humanity, are descendants of Satan. It is undeniable that we inherited the lineage of evil parents. No one knew Satan's blood was present within our bodies and that this was so displeasing to God. This is the essential problem. 

How will we eliminate those roots within us? Satan dug his roots into our physical bodies through the fallen lineage. You have to understand that if humankind had not fallen into sin, our minds and bodies naturally would have become one. It is because of the Fall that there is a conflict between the conscience, which has a positive charge, and the body, which also has a positive charge, making it inevitable that they resist each other. This is the starting point of all the struggles in history.

God works to separate good from evil in order to reverse this situation. God is public-minded and continues on the path of living for the whole and going toward the goal of love and peace. On the other hand, Satan is selfish and individualistic. Satan is always trying to destroy the good side through hatred, evil and war. His intent is to prevent the humankind from ever returning to God's side.

God cannot severely punish humanity for having gone with Satan. God's strategy for returning humanity to His side is to allow evil to attack. Later, God can claim reparations for the undeserved damage and abuse. Satan's strategy is to strike first; yet in the end he loses everything. Throughout history Satan has tried to ruin God's plan with hatred, evil and war, while on the other hand, God has been working to re-create love and peace.

In the Last Days, humankind will return to God's side, and evil will lose support and respect. To prevent that from happening, Satan introduced atheistic materialism, humanism and communism. That was the essential cause of the Cold War that took place following the Second World War, when the victory of the Christian world could have led to a transition toward a world of peace.

The present era is the era of the realm of individualism, of free sex, of children denying parents and parents denying children, and the era of denying the couple. Through homosexuality and lesbianism, an attempt is being made to completely destroy the family ideal. The Messiah at the Second Coming intends to establish this ideal in order to change hell on earth into the kingdom of heaven on earth. The Messiah, as the True Parent, desires the unity of mind and body, the unity of husband and wife, and the unity of children.

The individual, family and world that God desires

There are basic questions that need to be resolved on a worldwide level. These include: What came first, matter or spirit? Which is correct, the materialist theory or the idealist theory? Which comes first, reality or concept? Is the theory of evolution accurate, or is the theory of creation correct?

Let us work toward the answers by way of an example. When we observe the animal kingdom, we discover that in an embryo, the eyes are one of the earliest parts to develop. If we were talking only of matter, would those eyes know of the existence of the sun prior to the animal's birth? If they were pure matter, the eyes would not be aware. However, something or someone possessed the awareness that the eyes were going to see sunlight. Someone knew.

Not only that—the face, being purely matter, would have no awareness that the atmosphere existed, and yet eyelids form in the womb, to assure that the dust in the air will not damage the eyes. The eyes, being purely matter, would not know that steam and other forms of heat would dry the eyes and damage them. Someone knew, however, and arranged for the eyelids to blink, to lubricate and protect the eyes. The original matter itself was not aware; yet there was someone who knew everything before it happened, before we were born.

We can conclude that a simple example such as that of the eye resolves the great debates over whether thought precedes existence, spirit precedes matter, and concept precedes reality. We can resolve the debates of spirit versus matter, of creationism versus evolutionary theory.

Given this, we cannot deny that the universe came into being through the work of God, the Creator. We, therefore, would do well to strive to return to the original world of creation by coming to know the kind of individual, the kind of family, and the kind of world that God desires to see.

The body became the base of operations for hell and the conscience the base of operation for heaven. We did not know that the division of two worlds is contained within ourselves. From this perspective, each of us has to ask if our body leads our mind or our mind leads our body. In reality, throughout history the body has been completely unrestricted as it leads the mind. If the conscience were stronger, we would have automatically returned to God; long ago the world would have been with God. The fact that the physical body leads the conscience shows us that the problem stems from the moment of the Fall, when the force of false love, which tied the first ancestors to Satan, was stronger than the force of the conscience. God, who knows very well our situation, cannot abandon fallen humanity. So God surely established a strategy to weaken the body-centered force that dominates our conscience.

The purpose of religion

The world cultural spheres were formed according to the different human circumstances and antecedents. To this day, religious people have not known that the purpose of religion is to prevent the body from continuing to lead the mind. Had there been no Fall, religion would not have been necessary.

Something went very wrong, and religion became necessary to correct it. What does God intend to do through religion? God intends to discipline the body. You will not be saved just because you believe in religion, or go to heaven just because you believe in Christianity. However, it is the children who are centered on God's love who can go to heaven. Adam's family was to have had the love of God at its center. It was to have had a blood relationship with God. The kingdom of heaven is the place where such families dwell. We need to dominate the body in order to strengthen the power of the conscience. A liberated conscience then will lead our body, and we will return to the bosom of God's love as original beings free from sin.

Therefore, if we ask what religion is supposed to do, the answer is that it needs to motivate our body to do everything it hates to do. What does the body hate most? To serve others! To sacrifice for others! Furthermore, religion asks us to be an offering. Being an offering means our being willing to shed blood and being capable of sacrificing our life. Therefore, the Bible tells us that a person who is willing to lose his or her life shall find it, and a person who wishes to find his or her life shall lose it. What this paradox teaches is that if we live according to the flesh, we will go to hell. If we gain victory over our flesh and liberate our conscience, we will go to heaven. If we subjugate our body's wishes and put our conscience in a totally subjective position, we will liberate the unlimited and infinite hope of the conscience.

In the course of history, there have been numerous religions and religious leaders. Yet those who believed in those religions and in those leaders were not able to attain total control over the body and could not deny themselves completely. They could not liberate the conscience and place it in a position to relate with God on the original basis. We sinful people did not become true olive trees. Instead, we remained wild olive trees with our roots in a false love. Human beings were to have had roots in God's true love; yet we established roots in Satan's love. How are we going to resolve the problem of being wild olive trees instead of true ones? This remains an inevitable and crucial task.

If you study yourself, you will notice that your conscience knows everything about you. The conscience is closer to you than your own parents are. It desires to possess true love, to be embraced eternally in God's bosom. When we marry, we separate from our earthly parents, not from our conscience with which we are born. The conscience loves us, and its mission is to transform us into eternal sons and daughters of God. 

The desire of the conscience is to occupy the absolute center

The conscience does not need a teacher. Have you ever heard of a minister of education in some country announcing a plan to educate the conscience? If we had gone the original way of the conscience, we would have known clearly the course to follow in life. It would have taught us and guided us to return to God's bosom. Because your conscience knows everything about your life, when you go to the spirit world you will discover that there is a complete record there of everything you did on earth. This strategy of religion works to fulfill the original mission of the conscience so our original conscience can work to convert us into unblemished, true sons and daughters of God.

Is there anyone here who is convinced that he or she will never die? We will all go to the spirit world someday. When you enter the spirit world, you will immediately be known by your name. Your entire life will be known, as well as that of your ancestors, because the spirit world transcends time and space.

We must not bring anything into that world that stains our conscience. For that reason, you need to understand that the conscience stands above all other teachers.

Today we have gathered distinguished personalities. Among them are some professors. Honestly, there has never been a professor who possessed a teaching ability superior to that of the conscience. It fulfills the same role that a compass fulfills for a ship's captain.

To the many distinguished people gathered here this evening, I would like to ask, "When you married, did you want to have a spouse who is inferior to you?" The answer is no. And if I asked you whether you wanted a spouse ten times better than you or one hundred times better than you, no doubt you would reply that, if it were possible, you would prefer that he or she be one thousand, ten thousand, one million times better than you. This is because the ambition of the conscience is to experience the maximum amount of love. It wishes to possess the absolute being. The same was true for our ancestors, and the same will be true for our descendants. Even God would respond in the same way.

Is it possible for all of our desires to be fulfilled? A senator will want to be president of his or her country, and later an important person on the world level. He or she will want to be an important person in world affairs. Ultimately, he or she will want to achieve the highest position in the world. That is the measure of ambition of the conscience. From the beginning of history until now, people's general thinking is that the ambition of the conscience cannot be completely satisfied. However, my husband, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, arrived at the conclusion that it is possible to satisfy it.

How big is the conscience? How can the conscience be measured? Do you think that the day will come when the conscience will possess God? Do you think that if something bigger than God exists, the conscience would desire to possess it? If something exists that is larger than God, the conscience wants to occupy that larger thing. 

Then what is it that the conscience's ambition is seeking? If there existed something that had the maximum value in the cosmos, the conscience would desire to possess that as well.

The thing that God desires the most is the true love of all people

Now, if we compare the human conscience with God's conscience, which would be larger? If God's conscience were larger than a human being's, what would God do with it? The conclusion is that what God wants to possess is the same as that desired by the immense ambition of each person, and that is true love.

We know that God is absolute; yet do you think God is happy? Might He be lonely? Ladies and gentlemen, even if a person becomes president of the nation, if he or she lives alone without a spouse, that person cannot be happy. If we do not have an object partner of love, we cannot be happy. 

Does God need someone the same way? How do you feel about this? Even if God is God, He feels very lonely. The human being feels empty when he or she lacks money, or knowledge or authority. However, God does not need money, knowledge or power.

This is because He is the Creator. The question is: What does God need? We call God the King of Love or the Owner of Love. If God is the King of Love, this means that God needs a queen. This is an absolute principle. Then who can be the absolute God's object partner of love? A true human being!

Ladies and gentlemen, you need money. You need knowledge and you need power. However, if you do not have a spouse, all of that will be useless. A husband needs a wife and children. A wife needs a husband and children. The place where those object partners of love are found is the family.

My husband and I serve God, the subject partner of love, as His object partners of love who completely satisfy the ambition of His conscience. The family in which man and woman unite as object partners of God's love, and where children live happily, centered on the true love of God, is the foundation of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Thus, just as human beings want their object partner of love to be infinitely more valuable than they are, God also wants the human being, His object partner of love, to have infinite value. A true human being is a person of infinite value. Yet we did not know that Adam and Eve were meant to be that kind of man and woman. 

If we were given such a high aspiration in our conscience, it is because God is the subject partner and God wanted human beings to be in the position of His object partner. God did not want human beings simply to be a part of God; He wanted them to have a completely different personality. God allowed us as human beings to have the action of conscience at such an elevated level simply because God hoped that human beings would be  1,000 or 10,000 times more valuable than even God Himself. Please understand this very clearly.

If, at the beginning of creation, a family could have been realized in which God and human beings could have united in a relationship of true love, today we would not have to worry about hell or heaven, because we would automatically enter the kingdom of God.

The problem here is that God's true love and true human love did not begin at a common point, united as subject and object partners of love. The love of God and the love of human beings began in two different directions with two different goals. Therefore, it has been impossible to realize the ideal world for which God and human beings are both longing. God's ideal of beginning on common ground was completely frustrated.

Inheriting true love, true life and true lineage is our salvation

False parents arose centered on Satan's love. Being their descendants, we inherited that false love, false life and false lineage and thus are destined for hell. We have nothing to do with the kingdom of heaven. 

We did not know that we were supposed to win God's love through our conscience, by being people whose spirit dominated our body through will. Have you ever heard the expression “lovesick”? If a lovesick person addresses the root cause that led to the lovesickness, his problems will be solved. All people are fallen, but they still have the original mind they inherited from Adam, and this causes them to long for God, just as if they were lovesick.

What does the conscience do to win the true love of God? A person may have money, knowledge or power; yet, if he or she loses the love of his or her life, none of those things have any meaning.

If you unburden and liberate your mind completely, your conscience automatically will connect with the true love of God. Let us compare the position of the conscience to the position of love. You will see that love precedes the conscience. This is because the conscience begins from love.

The kingdom of heaven is the place where we go to live in unity with God's true love and a free conscience. It is the place we go after having lived centered on love and after engrafting ourselves into the lineage of God's love. Without winning this love, we never can enter the kingdom of God. We will have to wait thousands of years until that day comes. Due to the Fall, there will not be a connection with the kingdom of heaven as long as humanity is not illuminated by God's true thought and sustained by God's true love.

The person who lives in unity with a true conscience and true love automatically will enter the kingdom of heaven. No matter how much faith a person has in Jesus, if he or she is not linked to the love of God, and if that person's mind and body are struggling, that person cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The person who inherited Satan's lineage cannot enter the kingdom. Religions with the mission of opening the way are struggling among themselves. This will lead to a sad state of affairs in the Last Days.

God cannot be found where there is conflict. Religion is a movement to subjugate the body and liberate the conscience. Religion itself is not the key that unlocks the door to salvation. We have to know that the love, life and true lineage of God are the key that opens the door to salvation. That is what we need to inherit.

Faith in religion alone will not save us. In reality, religion exists as a foundation to discipline the body. When our conscience is liberated, its ambition can ascend to God. Does this idea make you want to try to find out more?

Humankind must return to God

Who will know first what someone is doing, the conscience or God? The conscience will know first. A human being is a person distinct from God because he or she has to occupy the object partner position in a meaningful way. In the same sense, husband and wife are different. The characteristics of each are clearly different. If we were to conclude that God knows everything prior to it happening, we would be saying that we are indistinct from God, as if we were a single body.

An ideal cannot be perfected when it is self-contained. After Adam and Eve sinned, God asked, ''Adam, where are you?" Humankind comes from God's love and returns to God. God is waiting for our return.

Ladies and gentlemen, when parents reach the age of one hundred years and their children reach the age of eighty, the relationship of parents and children also becomes a relationship of companions, of friends.

We cannot compare the physical strength of the average woman with that of the average man. She can never defeat him, although through love, wife and husband are attracted to one another and follow each other. If Adam and Eve had been the object partners of God's love, would that not have been pleasing to God? God created the universe before Adam and Eve were to have matured as His object partners of love. God had the ambitious hope that in the future they would be His ideal object partners. If, after having perfected themselves as the object partners of God's love, they had asked God to create something greater than what already had been created, do you not think God could have done so? 

As infinite as the ambition of our conscience is, we have to know that God can create everything that we desire. God created us with the value of true love object partners. The restoration of this value, lost at the Fall, is the purpose of human life and history. God established religions, and the founder of each of them promised that someday he would return. 

Christianity teaches us that Jesus will return. In Buddhism they speak of the return of Buddha. Confucianism alludes to a new Confucius. Likewise, in Islam we find the return of the Mahdi, the divinely guided one. Let us consider the reason that God established the different religions. We have to understand that the Will of God is accomplished centered on God's beloved children, children who are like God's flesh and blood. With those beloved sons and daughters, God wants to form families, tribes, races and nations.

This tells us what kind of person the Messiah is. At the time of the Second Coming, the Lord is the person who perfects the ideal for which all religions have longed. He will come to the earth with the original and eternal love of God.

Couples become one through God's true love

The Messiah will become a True Parent and, centered on that lost true love, will work to establish a completed family on earth on the foundation of true life and true lineage.

That is the purpose of the providence of salvation. Due to the Fall, God lost the true mother as well as the children of Adam's family. This means that God could not have true children. There was no family connected to the heavenly lineage, the source of God's love.

Due to the Fall of the parents, we became connected to false life, false love and false lineage, which have caused our minds and bodies to be in conflict with each other. Adam and Eve became enemies, which caused their two sons to fight with each other.

The providence of salvation is the providence of restoration, led by God. It restores the lost sons and daughters, the unity of mind and body, the absolute unity of husband and wife, and the absolute unity of parents and children in the true love of God. This true family, which is qualified to live eternally with God, ought to be connected to Christianity, which is in the position of bride to the Lord. By establishing such a blood relationship with God, we can realize united families, tribes, races, nations and a unity of nations that would form a united world. This would culminate the providence of salvation for all religions.

Distinguished leaders, for your nation to receive God's blessing, you need to become a people whose minds and bodies are united in God's true love. You also need to unite as absolute husbands and wives. When the number of families in any nation that unite as absolute children of God grows, then God will come to live in that nation. If this happens, that nation automatically will become the central nation in service to the world.

Human beings possess this innate nature. If a beloved one lives in the countryside in poverty, his or her partner wants to live there too. No matter where it is, we want to go and live in the place where our beloved is. In the same way, if there is a place where God's beloved sons and daughters dwell, that place, for richer or poorer, will be the kingdom of heaven.

Today I am speaking to you as the wife of the founder of the Unification Church. If you ask me what the mission of the Unification Church is, I will say it is to be a place where God's true love is present. It is to be the place where we want our mind and body to unite in true love and where we want to form ideal marriages with absolute unity between husband and wife. By means of a teaching that can make all people into inseparable brothers and sisters, we are carrying out the mission that God has given us.

The meaning of the international marriage Blessing

The true love of God and the love of the True Parents cleanses everything that was stained by false love, false life and false lineage. Our marriage has established the True Parents' position. The large international marriage ceremonies we conduct are the ceremonies to sow the seed of true love, true life and true lineage that results from the unity of God's love with man and woman's love.

The marriage Blessing is a ceremony to restore families that were formed by marriages that, due to the Fall, received the seed of false love, false life and false lineage. Having families from around the world participate in these Blessing ceremonies will connect them to God's original love. It is my fervent desire that all people receive the Blessing and become families and peoples who can establish the kingdom of heaven on earth.

The purpose of the Unification Church is to succeed in establishing relationships of brotherhood and sisterhood that transcend nations. Through this method we want to realize the ideal of one great universal family centered on God and thus proclaim the ideal of true parents, true spouses, and true brothers and sisters. In this way we will begin the world culture of heart. From earth to heaven we will be liberated to complete the world of the kingdom of heaven on earth. 

During the fifty years since the end of the Second World War, Reverend Moon has been persecuted and criticized by the entire world. The time has come for you to know it was not because he committed any crime. Instead it was to save you. Unlike in the past, people now realize he is a most admirable man.

By the hand of Reverend Moon, communism collapsed. It was Reverend Moon who awakened Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il-sung. To save the United States, which is careening toward a collapse, he established a foundation for Americans to feel hope. Also he is addressing the difficult political tensions of North and South Korea and the Middle East.

You need to know the Republican Party triumphed in the United States, thanks to the influence of Reverend Moon. Perhaps you are unaware of these facts. However, you need to know that if any nation pre-empts the United States in receiving and absolutely embracing Reverend Moon, that nation will become the leading nation of the world.

Everything that Reverend Moon proclaimed has been fulfilled. While it felt as though the entire world did everything it could to put an end to him, he did not die and he is firmly leading the world back to God. My husband is still with us to speak to you and guide you because God loves him. You need to know that he survived because God absolutely protected him. For that reason, I believe that you must seriously study the Unification Church.

Heaven is a place of liberation, freedom, unity and happiness

We met together today, and that makes this a day of deep significance. I have shared a very important message with you, and I place my trust in you. I kindly ask that you not forget what was discussed today. I also ask that you make a new determination to follow the proper path. Based on this new awakening, bring God's blessing to your families and your nation. This is the way ideal families will begin to appear on this earth.

As you probably know, Reverend Moon and I are known throughout the world as the True Parents. If it is true that we, as True Parents, are connected to God in true love, true life and true lineage, I would like you to remember that the beginning of a realm of freedom, unity and happiness is the True Family and I. This will allow the hope of peace to blossom upon the earth. Thank you very much.