Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 140
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 488-491
The spirit world is a place where you live for the sake of others centering on true love
When you go to the spirit world, you will find that it is made up of several very large realms. Those who lived for the sake of others will go to the highest level. Those who lived for themselves, however, will find themselves in the lowest level. They will find that everyone opposes them. On the other hand, everyone will welcome those who lived for others.
Once you are in the spirit world, your parents and spouse cannot help you. The people in the highest levels are those who lived for the sake of others. The uppermost tiers are inhabited by those who traveled throughout the world living for others, with a heart that went beyond their love for their mother and family. With a saintly heart, they were always looking for ways to save the people of the world from evil.
The one who lived for him or herself alone goes to hell, and the one who lived for others goes to the heavenly kingdom. People separate into these two worlds at the time of death. So we need to live for the sake of the whole, for the sake of the greater good. Live for the sake of the world, for the sake of God, and for the sake of human liberation. Someday people will participate in competitions to see who can live for the sake of others to a greater degree. In the spirit world, the person who has lived for the sake of others will go to the higher position. So you can leap to a higher position by living for the person who is higher than you are. Living for that person is the same act as God bringing forth His own object partner through His creative act. Thus, that person comes to stand as your object partner of love.
In the spirit world we live for others, based on true love. If you encounter a person who has dedicated 100 percent of his or her life for the sake of others, then you have to say to that person, “Please move in front of me, go ahead.” It doesn’t matter how great the United States seems. A person who dedicates his or her life for the people of America to a greater extent than your president can move past the president and be welcomed.
When a person cares only about his or her own interests, that individual becomes everyone’s enemy. The same principle operates in the spirit world. When a person says he or she will live for something greater, then that person will naturally move ahead of others. One who lives for the sake of the world need not worry about living for America, because America is included in the world. All countries are included in the world. We can conclude that the only type of relationship everyone will welcome is one of true love, in which a person lives for the sake of others.
When you die, you have to take three accomplishments with you: one, that you loved God; two, that you loved yourself and worked hard to manifest your essential self; and three, that you worked hard to expand the love you shared with your spouse and family to the entire world. This love for God and humanity will remain forever. It will define your right to ownership in the next world. When you enter the spirit world, the number of people you evangelized will determine your right of ownership.
In the spirit world, pride wells up over the extent to which you longed for people with your life. You do not need anything else in the next world. The only thing you need is the record that you loved God more than the world, more than your country, more than your spouse and more than your children. If a wife wants her husband to love her with godly love of a higher order, she has to say to him, “Please love God more than you love me, and only then love me.”
The world of the realm of heart is the world where love can be made universal
I often preach about the realm of the heart. The foundation for the realm of the heart is the love of true parents, the love of true brothers and sisters, and the love of true children. The world of the heart is one in which we practice these types of love on a universal scale. In this original world, a person can live by the standard of love between husband and wife, although that love has to give primacy to heaven and earth and to the cosmos.
So where do we establish a foundation to qualify for that world? We have to lay this foundation in the physical world. We are not to spend our time on earth for the sake of all the things valued by this world. We are here to qualify ourselves for the next world.
That is the basis for the principle that we live as families in the spirit world. Why do we need to have children? The vertical love of God and the horizontal love of parents combine to bring descendants into this world. It involves a vertical and horizontal mixing of the blood of God and the parents. Thus, people who were unable to have descendants on earth will not be able to harmonize heaven and earth in the spirit world. They will be unable to connect with the rhythm of north, south, east and west. A person who has no descendants will have no place to rest or play in the next world.
In the spirit world, there is not only no need for denominations, there is no need for religion at all. There is no need for entities such as the Presbyterian Church or the Catholic Church. People there are in the realm of life together with God. People who loved the world inhabit that realm, and this includes patriots and loyal subjects, women of virtue and saints. As far as I am aware, however, there is as yet no one who lived his or her life in the original love of God, focusing on the tradition of the realms of the heart.
Whenever you begin a task, begin by placing God at the center. Whether you go to hell, the middle spirit world, paradise, or the kingdom of heaven is determined by the extent to which you harmonize with this principle. The most precious path on earth is that on which a person endures the greatest amount of suffering and sheds the most tears for the sake of Heaven. Those who take that path will receive true freedom upon entering the next world.
In the next world, people who cling to their nationality cannot live together with people of other nations. However, true followers of all religions are able to live together. The religious sphere is one of longing for one world and believing in one God. So people of true piety will be together. The uniqueness of people of faith is in their living their entire life based on the standard of the spirit world. Religion teaches us how to relate with each other focusing on the eternal world, the transcendent world, the dwelling place of the Divine Being, whether we call Him God or by another name.
Representation of world religions in the United Nations
There is a reason for my speaking to the participants in this gathering about the value of life in relation to issues of life and death. You represent religions that are actively practiced throughout the world. I want to stress that it is the responsibility of religious leaders to teach about life and death accurately.
Today, the world’s political leaders are seeking to realize peace and prosperity through the United Nations. In my judgment, however, the path to world peace will be ineffective if we build it merely on the political, economic and military functions of the United Nations. Political, economic and military power can deal with only external, physical and material things. We can reach the internal, spiritual aspects of life only through religious teachings and through the unity and unified efforts of the world’s religions.
I would like to take this opportunity today to propose that we supplement the existing United Nations with a structure in which the United Nations and leaders of the major world religions can work together. I hope that the participants here today, and leaders of all the nations of the world, will seriously consider this proposal to establish a structure encompassing the world’s religions and the United Nations.
Thank you very much.
FFWPU, USA