222. The Path of Life for All Humankind, Part 2

A grandmother and grandfather bind their hearts together centering on their grandchildren. This is necessary so that the vertical line of love can have a beginning. Then grandchildren become one with their grandparents. Grandparents are in the same position as God, so we need to attend them as we would attend God. Grandchildren will not be able to find the vertical axis of  love without doing this.

After the formation of the vertical axis, horizontal expansion can occur. The horizontal can be connected to all directions, although the vertical has only one direction. The horizontal can turn north, south, east or west; it has a range of 360 degrees. The vertical can move centering on only one axis and cannot be divided.

Our first task is to create mind and body unity, centering on love. We need to know how to love the spirit world, which is the vertical world centered on God. Furthermore, if in the future a central nation emerges, we will have to love humanity centering on that country. When we love the spirit world and the whole of humankind by means of sacrifice, service and dedication, we can automatically become the central figures who can have dominion of love over the two worlds and make them into one. Then God will surely dwell there.

The entire spirit world and physical universe together are called the cosmos. The spirit world and the universe yearn for the unity of the cosmos centering on true love. True love can unite the cosmos. True love can transform all families into completed families and make them one. Thus, we can conclude that true love is the only thing that humanity needs absolutely, whether we are alive on earth or are in the spirit world.

All beings are attracted to true love. Animals and plants are attracted to the one who possesses true love. They want such a person to be their master. Every being is trying to become one with the person who has true love. The desire of all things is to be closer, to dwell together with, and to be under the dominion of a person who possesses true love. We can conclude, therefore, that nothing in this world is more precious than a true person who possesses true love.

Human beings have no wings. If we want to fly farther than any insect or bird, or circle the planet faster than an airplane, we cannot be confined to our substantial physical body. Even the strongest runner cannot run for very long. As the highest beings in creation, human beings are in a reciprocal position equal to God's. So human beings need to be able to act even more quickly than light, which travels at about 300,000 kilometers per second. It is our spiritual selves that make such a thing possible. I can be in Seoul, and my spirit self can travel to New York and be back in an instant, faster than a bolt of lightning. The spirit self is capable of acting at the speed of thought.

The fastest action in the world is not the transmission of electromagnetic waves. It is love. Love travels faster and flies higher than anything in the world. When two people at opposite ends of the earth love each other, they pull toward each other from across the globe. That is the power of love. In the world of God's original ideal, a person who has experienced true love has the ability and authority to possess instantly anything God wants.

People need to experience such a state while on earth. One can rise to this position only if the physical and spirit selves become one while establishing a love relationship with God, centered on a true family. We can feel God's love by loving our countrymen, the people of the world, and creation. Each of us, regardless of nationality, has to develop the heart to love people of all races. We need to love not just people; we need to love even the smallest microorganism. This love has to spring naturally from within. When a flower blooms, its beauty and fragrance come naturally. The blossom of love has to bloom in the same way. The fragrance of love would fill the air naturally.

To do this, we need to receive the nutrients that make it possible for the blossom of love to bloom. In the same way that plants receive nutrients from the soil and air, we receive nutrients from our physical body and spirit self. We receive vitality elements from our physical body, and we receive living spirit elements from our spirit self.

This is how we become beings who are totally equipped to love and how we develop the ability to fly anywhere. When this happens, the solar system and the entire universe become the stage of our activity.

The spirit world is a world centered on love

When human beings finish their physical life, they go through a second birth. This is called death. The place into which we are born this second time is the spirit world. We go into the spirit world and, on behalf of the entire universe, receive love from God, our third Parent. That is to say, we receive ideal love. So in the spirit world, unity is inevitable. 

At the moment of our death, we leave the second world, the world of air, and fully connect to the third world, the world of love. We leave behind the love of our natural parents and siblings and enter the spirit world. There we eventually enter the sphere of love in which we merge with the original body of God. The seed comes from the original body, so it has to bear fruit and return to the original body.

In the spirit world, people breathe and live centered on love. A person who is unable to develop a complete character of love will be limited in his or her movements. This person will not be able to move freely. If there are several gates, for example, he or she may be allowed to enter through one gate only. If a person wants to be able to fit in with any season, any place or any time, he or she needs to develop a character of perfect love. This is why human beings were created to live through three stages.

The dragonfly lives first as a nymph, swimming around in water. Then it climbs out of the water and molts. Finally, it starts to fly and begins catching and eating bugs that it never would have imagined eating while underwater. It flies around with the world as its stage. There are many insects that have wings and develop through different stages. Human beings, who are the highest form of creation, have wings of a higher dimension.

We are born in love, live in love and, as God's representatives, give birth to sons and daughters through love. Eventually we reach the resting place of love and return home so that we may live eternally in God's presence. In other words, our lives begin in love, ripen in love and are finally harvested as the fruit of love. When a person dies, he or she harvests the fruit of love.

During our life we receive the love of our parents, share love with our husband or wife, and give love to our children, bringing to fruition all the seeds of God's love sown in the internal world of love. Eventually we harvest this fruit and go into the next world. When we become completely one in love, we come to resemble God. If a husband and wife work together to complete the three stages of love and then go to the spirit world, they will exist as creators in a reciprocal relationship with God, who is the eternal subject partner. That is what happens when a husband and wife die centering on love. We begin and end in God.

The reason people have to die is that our love is limited as long as we are in our physical body. The physical body is inadequate for developing fully as an object partner to God's unlimited love. That is why we move on to our next life as an unfettered, intangible spirit. We die so that we can become one with the ideal of love, together with all of heaven and earth. Death is not a path to suffering. It is a time when the gate of happiness is thrown open, enabling us to possess cosmic love. To die means to move from a world of land, where we crawl and walk, to a world where we fly freely. We pass through death in order to become qualified travelers who, with love, can enjoy the entire universe. That is why death is, in reality, a new birth. 

We started out in our mother's womb. The womb was the first world in which we were nurtured. When we were born, we separated from that world and entered a new world. Likewise, in death the spirit self cuts off and flies away from the physical body, which is like its womb. Human beings pass through a world of water and a world of land and air, until they come to live in the eternal world of love.

In the spirit world, love is the life element. As long as your command is given through love, anything you say will be accomplished immediately and nothing will be impossible. Even if a billion people say they want to have dinner, the appropriate meal can be prepared and the feast can be ready in an instant. If all the guests say they want to become princes and princesses, then everyone will indeed be turned into princes and princesses. This will actually be possible.

Now that you know these things, would you like to live here on earth or go to the next world? When we are in the womb, we think the womb is the best place to be. We just spend our time kicking. If someone were to try pulling us out midway through, we wouldn't like it at all. When it is finally time to come out of the womb, it is like dying and then being resurrected. In the same way, after physical death we are resurrected to a new form of life. Therefore, death is actually a second birth.

God and humankind are in a parent-child relationship

Ladies and gentlemen, because human beings fell, our life course is not a smooth path. The Fall of the first human ancestors led to misery for human beings. God also suffered misery. For this reason, we do not dedicate our lives only to the accomplishment of the ideal world. An even more important goal for our life is to clear away the sorrow and agony in the heart of God, who is the origin of all life. Thus, when human beings finally attain happiness, then God too will be happy.

God and humankind have gone through the course of history in the same situation, pursuing the same goal. As a result of losing Adam and Eve, God has walked the most difficult path, a path that no one would choose to walk. Human beings, too, have walked this inevitable path of destiny brought about by the Fall, always hoping for the coming day of salvation.

Humankind's most fervent hope is to become sons and daughters of God. This is because no relationship is more intimate than that of parent and child. We were born when the love and life of our parents converged, and thus we represent their ideals. However, words like “love” and “ideals” do not make sense in reference to just one person. Life comes from a love relationship between a husband and wife; it cannot be created by one person alone. When God created human beings, He created us to be the object partners of His own love, life and ideals. This is amazing and incredible.

If l did not exist, my parents' love would not have become visible. The love, life and ideals of my parents exist in relation to me. I am the fruit of my parents' love, life and ideals. That is why the child's position is the most precious of all.

It is remarkable that we started from a point where our parents' love was our love, our parents' life was our life, and our parents' ideals were our ideals. That is why parents look at their children and say, "These are the sons and daughters we love.” Parents sense, realize and know that their children are the substantiation of their love, their lives and their hopes. 

Not a single day can pass without parents missing their beloved children. Even if it has been only a few minutes since they last saw them, they want to see them again. If someone were to try to sever this relationship, they would find it impossible to break, for children are the bone of their parents' bones and the flesh of their flesh. If their children disappear, parents feel as if they want to die. Their ideals are fulfilled when their children succeed.

Even parents born into this world deprived of true love, true life and true ideals due to the Fall know what it is like to love their children like this. How much more, then, would this be true for God, who is the subject partner of all parents!

Completion of the providence of salvation

Had Adam and Eve not fallen, they would have been the children and royal descendants of God's direct lineage. Adam and Eve were in the position of prince and princess who stood to inherit the kingdom of heaven in the spirit world and on earth. At the same time, because they were created as the object partners of the invisible God, who is the subject partner, Adam and Eve were substantial beings who could receive God's love. They were substantial manifestations of the invisible God.

It is the special privilege of a child of God to say, "God is mine. All that is God's is also mine. Even God's love, life and ideals are mine.” It is up to human beings to recover this amazing and incredible value that was originally ours.

If God is the subject partner of love who exists eternally, then the reciprocal partners of God's love also exist eternally. When I become one with God's love, God becomes me. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, their bodies would have been the homes where God could dwell. They would have placed God at the center of their hearts and become entities of love, life and lineage who would be united eternally through true love. If they had done this, our minds and bodies would not be in conflict today.

The Fall means that we inherited the life and lineage of evil, centering on evil love. We were born from false parents, false olive trees. We therefore must rebuild the lineage by changing that false olive tree into a true olive tree. We have to be engrafted onto the true olive tree, go through at least three generations, and produce fruit that itself becomes true olive trees representing the original standard. Then the providence of salvation will be completed, and fallen people will be restored to their original state.

In this way, God is trying to make us into children of the parents of goodness, based on loving oneness with God. This is why God sends the Messiah to earth as the True Parents. The Messiah is the one who comes to restore the lineage of all of humankind to God and establish the original ideal of creation.

All people desire to be the best. We want to be God's sons and daughters, God's princes and princesses, heirs to God's kingship. Everyone has this original desire; yet we have inherited a different lineage. We say that life is an ocean of suffering as we lament at our birth, lament over our lives and lament even as we die.

Thus, it is important to know how to end the struggle between our mind and body and unite them as one. A person who cannot unite his or her own mind and body will not be able to play a role in uniting the nation, the world or the spirit world. 

Once a subject partner and object partner form a reciprocal relationship, they need to become one with a greater entity. Once a man and woman become one as reciprocal partners, that couple has to become an object partner to a greater subject partner, serving their nation as patriots. Likewise, a patriot who enters into an even greater partnership with the world will be engrafted onto the way of saints. A saint becomes part of a greater partnership with the cosmos and is engrafted onto the way of divine sons and daughters. Only after we have achieved the way of divine sons and daughters can we be engrafted onto God.

Before seeking to excel on the world stage, humans first have to excel as the original family of Adam and Eve. Had Adam and Eve taken their places as the lineal prince and princess before God, they would have been the most exalted among all men and women. However, they fell and lost their rightful positions of the elder son and daughter, the crown prince and princess. This tragedy has remained throughout human history. That is why humankind has traveled a path of life in search of the positions of first son and first daughter so that we might recover God's true love.

If we are to receive God's true love, we cannot live selfishly, centering on our own interests. Instead, we need to live for the sake of God and humankind as our brothers and sisters. The more a person sheds blood and tears for his or her brothers and sisters in place of their parents, the deeper, wider and higher will be the love he or she receives. This is the son and daughter we have to become if we are to inherit everything from our parents. Every man and woman will walk this path. Even if we have to face death ten times or a hundred times, we have to continue our search for God's true love. This is the supreme path of life.

The Divine Principle of the Unification Church teaches that the Fall occurred when human beings left the realm of God's true love. Restoration means to return to that realm. When a person enters the realm of such love, that person can merely look at his or her body and praise it tens of thousands of times. In that world, you know that your own body is what receives God's true love. Words cannot express such joy. This wonderful world is called the kingdom of heaven.

The mission of religion

On the day that the hearts of men and women can take hold of God's true love, we will be inspired to sing and dance for tens of thousands of years. The state of intoxication with God's true love is so wonderful; alcohol or drugs pale to nothingness in comparison. A person can call on any being under heaven, and it will respond. Just the sight of water flowing in a river will inspire us to sing for a thousand years. In heaven, even a simple whisper will convey unfathomable tenderness. Everything will have been accomplished, so there will be no need for treasures of gold or anything like that. From this perspective, the value of human beings is that we are in the position of owners who can commune with the universe through true love and feel the sensations of love. Fulfilling this is the path of life that humanity travels.

Until now, people have known relatively little about the spirit world. It is a world where people are recognized depending on how closely they followed God's principle of existence—the principle of living for the sake of others. A world built on this content is the ideal kingdom of heaven. This is the original homeland for which all humankind searches. Today we live as fallen people who have been expelled from our homeland, so it is our destiny to return there. However, we cannot do this on our own.

God has worked through history to resolve this problem by establishing numerous religions in accordance with the different cultural backgrounds, respecting the customs and traditions of various nations. God has done this so that human beings would have a path to find their way back. Religion is the training ground where we can cultivate the qualifications that enable us to return to our homeland. In accordance with the cultural background of each region, God is guiding us toward one united world religion that can advance us to higher ground.

Since religion is supposed to lead us to this homeland, it has to teach us to live for others. The more advanced a religion is, the more it emphasizes the principle of living for others with humility and modesty. Religion teaches us to exalt all people and to live for others in service and sacrifice.

Let us make the new millennium an age of true peace and true ideals, in which people will practice the way of true love. I hope we will recover the value of true original human beings, establish true families, and live for others eternally, centering on God and True Parents. May your families and country be filled with an ever-increasing abundance of God's love and blessings. 

Thank you very much.