Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 137
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 3: The Mission of Religion in Achieving God’s Ideal
Speech 15: Understanding Life and Death, pg 477-482
The hope to fight against death and prevail
All things of this world will pass away. Our families, nations and even the world itself will pass away. Ideologies and philosophies will pass away. What will remain? Whatever remains, that is the hope that can defeat death. We might consider that a person who does not possess such a hope or aspiration has been defeated by life.
There are people who, from the time they are born, reject all the hopes and aspirations presented by the secular world. These people embrace aspirations not of the human world but those that are eternal and of Heaven. Heaven helps these people. A life of faith does not embrace aspirations that are rooted in the secular world. Instead, it embraces hopes that surpass even the gates of death. It dreams of the world of eternal hope.
Someday I too will die. When we are young, we don’t think much about death. Yet we become increasingly serious about death as we grow older. This is because death is a gate through which we are inevitably destined to pass. However, what happens to us after we die? Do you know why I am speaking about death? I am speaking about death in order to teach the meaning of life. Who really knows the value of life? It is not the person who goes all out to preserve his or her life. The only one who really knows the value of life is the one who goes into the valley of death. As he or she desperately cries out to Heaven at the crossroads of life and death, that person confirms the value of life.
Why do people fear death? It is because they do not know the purpose for which we are born. Those who do not know why we are born do not know why we die. Therefore, among the first questions philosophers ask are, “What is life? Why are we born?” If we think about it, we realize that when we die we are reborn into the midst of God’s love. Although in our world people often cry out, “Oh no, I’m going to die! What am I to do?” They make a big fuss. Do you think God cries out, “Oh no!” and is overwhelmed with grief when we die? Or do you think that God laughs, “Ho, ho, ho!”? The truth is, He is happy. That is because the moment of the physical body’s death is the moment we experience the joy of leaving the finite realm of love to enter the infinite realm of love. It is the moment of our second birth.
Then is God happier on the day we are born into the physical world or at the moment we leave our physical body behind? At the moment of physical death, we are born a second time into an infinitely expanded realm of love. We then become His newborn children. Of course God is happier at the second birth. I am telling you this because you need to know that unless you are released from the fear of death, you cannot have a relationship with God.
God feels happy to watch and directly participate in our life. Consider how a baby is born and wets its diapers as it begins the process of growth. God is happy because, as the child grows, the pulse of love within God’s heart also grows. When God makes a face, the baby imitates Him and makes the same face. When God smiles, the baby smiles as well, and when He is sad, the baby too is sad. This is how babies gradually grow to resemble God. As babies grow, they also begin to resemble their parents. From their parents, they learn language and the rules for daily life. Of course, all these things have their origin in God.
So, after God has lived with us on earth, what if one day He sails over to the other side? What are we supposed to do? If we say, “Wait, God, I want to go with You,” will He reply, “Who are you? Do I know you?” Is He likely to leave us behind? Or will He want to take us with Him? Of course, He will want to take us with Him. Nonetheless, God will say, “I can’t take you with me now. I’ll take you with me after you have grown a little more. I want you to work a bit more on your perfection.” We can then reply, “Well, we can’t go now, yet we are certain that the time will come when we are able to go.” Then we can look forward to that day. When we have a physical body, we are unable to follow God wherever He goes.
You need to be willing to die for the person you love
It is only natural that we would aspire to resemble God. On His part, God also would want His sons and daughters to resemble Him. We have to conclude then that God designed us to be born again into a body that enables us to resemble Him.
God and human beings long for that eternal day when we can soar through the heavens together. The day we are born as beings who can take wing with God, the day we are born into that body, is the day of our physical death. On that day we cast off our physical body like an old coat. Then, would we welcome death or fear death? The answer, of course, is that we would welcome death.
For what purpose then would we die? We would die for the sake of God’s true love. That is the love whereby we seek to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of others. We can conclude that the reason we cast off our physical bodies is so that we can participate in the realm of God’s work of love. We die for the sake of the world of God’s love. Wouldn’t you like to be born as God’s true sons and daughters who can receive and practice true love?
If we could measure God’s wealth, how rich do you think He would be? Have you ever thought about that? With all those heavenly bodies in the universe, isn’t it likely that one would be made of solid diamond? How about one made of pure gold? God is truly omniscient and omnipotent. Wouldn’t He want His children to have everything? What do you think? God can go from one end of the vast universe to the other in an instant. Is this something you would be interested in doing? To gain that ability, what do we need to do? We have to obey the laws that God has established for us. Only by doing so can we be with Him. It is impossible to be with Him if we behave in a disordered way.
We need to pass through the three ages of water, earth and heaven
Are you confident that you can refrain from doing what God tells you not to do? We have a dual structure. Our mind is the subject partner and our body is the object partner. The two need to unite, with the body subordinating itself to the mind.
In our life, we go through three realms, corresponding to the stages of formation, growth and completion. We go through the realm of water in our mother’s womb, then the realm of planet Earth, and finally we can fly in the heavenly realm, which corresponds to floating in the air. Once we have gone through the period in the womb, we are born into the physical world. We live in our physical body in this world for about a hundred years, and then we enter the spirit world through which we can fly. We pass through these three realms.
When a fetus is in the womb, it resists leaving the womb for the outside world. It fights as hard as it can to stay there. The reason is that when the fetus leaves the womb, its home is destroyed. All its nourishment and everything else it had in the womb breaks apart and flows away. Also, its head and body swell in size during the birthing process. Who would want to go through something like that? Every fetus cries, “No!” right up to its moment of birth. Eventually, the water breaks and the infant emerges into the world.
As you watch a woman giving birth to a child, you really have to empathize with her. Women who have given birth know what I am talking about. When the mother is pushing, the extent of her beauty does not make a difference. She contorts her face into all sorts of grotesque expressions. She makes such painful faces that even her husband can’t stand to watch and might leave the room. She makes just about every possible face. Thus, both the mother and the baby go through tremendous pain up to the last moment for the baby to be born.
After birth, is it necessary to keep the umbilical cord attached to the baby’s navel? Or does someone cut off the umbilical cord without a second thought? Perhaps someone may object, saying, “That cord is someone’s lifeline. How can you cut a lifeline that connects one person to another?” The newborn infant cries at the top of its lungs because it thinks it is about to die. As God looks on, though, He can’t help breaking into a happy smile. From the viewpoint of the new life that has just been born, one world has just disappeared completely. Now the child has to breathe the air of its new world.
The fetus grows in a watery environment. The period in the womb is a period of existence in water. As long as the fetus is in its mother’s womb, it is floating in water. At first, you might think that the fetus may have difficulty during its time in the womb because it cannot breathe. You may also think that it would need a process of ingesting nutrients and expelling waste products. These functions are fulfilled by the umbilical cord, which is like a hose attached to the baby’s belly. How does a fetus in the womb receive nourishment? It receives nourishment through the umbilical cord attached to its navel.
For the child in the womb, the navel functions as a mouth. So do not be disdainful of your belly button. Rub your belly button a little and say, “Hey, belly button! anks for working so hard back then!” If you pat your belly button often, it is good for your health. Seriously, it’s a good way to exercise. It’s good for your health to exercise your navel. For example, a person sleeping in a cold room can avoid coming down with diarrhea by keeping the navel well covered.
We may refer to our navel as our former mouth. Someone might say, “How foolish! Whoever heard of a former mouth?” There’s no denying the fact, though, that your navel once functioned as your mouth. It also acted as a breathing apparatus. Outside the womb, your present mouth fulfills the function of receiving nutrients. The function has moved up on your body.
Like the fetus in the womb and the physical body outside the womb, a person’s spirit self also needs to receive nutrients in order to grow. The spirit self is attached to the physical body that breathes air to stay alive on earth. It lives off the physical body until the body grows old. Then the spirit self kicks the body away and tries to separate. If at that moment, the body cries out, “No, I don’t want to die, I won’t die!” how will God react? Will He feel sorry for the physical body because of the pain it is enduring? Or will He quietly smile?
The infant who experiences pain when emerging from its mother’s womb grows as the object partner of its parents’ love. In the same way, our spirit self has to leave behind our crying physical body to be born anew as the eternal object partner of God, a spiritual being. We can draw this conclusion based on the Principle. On earth, too, the baby can become a friend of its father and mother after it is born. This is because it is born into the physical world where it can share love with its father and mother. In the same way that the fetus swims in its mother’s womb, a person in the physical world breathes and lives in the swaddling clothes of air. When the baby shares love with its parents while breathing air, we say that it is alive. Likewise, we can share love with God our Parent, who exists as an eternal spiritual being, after we are born again into the spirit world.
FFWPU, USA