Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 186
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 4: The True Family Movement
Speech 14: True Families: Gateway to Heaven, pg 656-660
Chapter 2: The Human Course Centered on Love
Section 1: Why are people born?
Section 2: The love-centered original vision for human life
Section 3: Love, the nutrient for eternal life
CHAPTER TWO: The Human Course Centered on Love
Section 1. Why are people born?
If we ask the question, “Which came first, life or love?” the answer can be argued either way. However, which do you really think came first? Love came first. The fundamental core of the universe must disseminate love prior to originating existence. Otherwise, there would be no value to the things of existence.
When we examine the origin of life, we must ask whether life or love came first. Until now we have not been able to discern this clearly. But now we know it could not have been life that came first. It was love. What comes second must fall in line behind what comes first. It is natural that we offer our lives for the sake of love. This is how we ought to understand it. Therefore, let us understand how to live our lives in a way that is true.
We conclude that since love gave birth to life, we must walk the way of love and die for love. The purpose of human life is to establish a love that can be welcomed by the macrocosm, not just the microcosm. It is to be born, to love and to die in the midst of the great universal love that is acknowledged by God, creation, our parents and the angelic world.
Human beings do not choose to be born. Then, are we born by our parents’ desire? No. We are born by God’s desire. We are born through the love of our parents, which represents God’s love. Each of us was created as a new life by means of the love of our parents, representing God’s love.
Love has the power to create the whole. Each of us was born as a central being of the entire universe, with the capacity to receive all the love in the universe. The highest purpose of life is to be born through love, to be raised in love, to live by love, and to leave a legacy of love when we die. Nothing can be of greater value than to live out our natural life within our own family as a life of love that is the center of the universe.
It is important to understand why people are born. We are not born for the sake of knowledge or power. We are born because of love and from love.
Then what makes love so great? It is because love is the fountainhead of life. You were born in the midst of your parents’ love. You were not born from your parents’ desire for monetary profit or pursuit of knowledge. Because you were born in love this way, you ought to bear fruit in love. This is why you need to have children.
A husband and wife become complete when they become as one with each other and come to have sons and daughters as their partners. Human beings cannot exist apart from love. So we can say that each of us lives on the foundation of love. Everything in creation has the origin of its existence in God’s love.
Since all things exist with love as their foundation, it is undeniable that human beings, as the center of the created universe, also must have begun in love. Since human beings begin in love and mature through love, we are beings that cannot live apart from the standard of love.
Section 2. The love-centered original vision for human life
What is the cause of human existence? The cause originated in love. Then what do you think the purpose of human existence is? The purpose of our existence is to fulfill the ideal of love. Human beings came into being through love, so our purpose is to perfect love by forming a foundation of love and then expanding and connecting it so that it becomes complete.
Because our origin is love, our purpose must also be reached through love. For this, a man and a woman in a partner relationship must become as one in love and connect front and back, right and left, and higher and lower.
Even if a person becomes an absolute being, or establishes an absolute purpose, it will be of no use unless this person is joyful. Our daily lives ought to be joyful.
We live for the sake of a certain purpose. When we achieve this purpose, something new comes into being that is greater than the original existence itself. What is this? What is most precious for a man or a woman? It is love. Only love can connect us to happiness and joy. No matter how lofty our purpose may be, if we do not establish the authority of love in the subject position over our purpose, we will have to pursue a different purpose. The limit of purpose is that it cannot stand above love.
What are you living for? There will be some who say that they live to eat. Others will say that they live to work, and still others will say that they live without a purpose.
What do human beings live for? If someone says that he lives for the sake of love, what a wonderful answer that would be. Human beings are born as the fruit of love, give love during the course of their lives, and eventually return to the eternal love of God’s bosom. This is the original vision of human life and the purpose of our creation.
We are born in love and raised in love. We then connect to a love of a higher dimension, meaning that we leave the love of our parents and seek out the love of a partner. We can say that the love we experience as children is formation-stage love and that conjugal love is growth-stage love. No matter how much a couple may be in love, they cannot see the completion of their love until they have children. This is why they want to have children. This is completion-stage love. So the process of going through children’s love, conjugal love and parental love is the fundamental basis for how we lead our lives, and the necessary path leading to the love ideal as God created it.
Love gives birth to life. We are born of love, raised in love by the love of our parents, meet a loving spouse whom we can love, and then die in that love. This is the course of human life. In the original vision for human life there was no concept of sorrow or pain.
Originally, the universe was meant to operate under a standard of love by which everything would converge simultaneously in a comprehensive union that would encompass both the vertical and horizontal. Children’s love, conjugal love and parental love would combine and create such a union. This would become the focal point of the entire universe, the directional orientation of all cells in the universe.
All the spirits in the spirit world would be focused on this point. Moreover, they would protect this position so that no one could invade it. If this place were to be destroyed, it would be catastrophic. For true love to be protected and preserved, it would need to take on some kind of structure. In the teachings of the Unification Church this structure is called the four-position foundation.
Section 3. Love, the nutrient for eternal life
When you were a fetus in your mother’s womb, you did not receive only nutrients from your mother. You also received love. In a similar manner, people living on earth do not receive merely physical nutrients from the natural universe. We also receive love, an essential element of life, from God.
Plants absorb sunlight as an element of life, and in a similar way love is an element of life for people. Our earnest desire is for the kingdom of heaven on earth and the kingdom of heaven in heaven to be places where we can eternally relate to one another with true love.
The life path for both men and women exists because of love and for the sake of love. We each have a path to travel, and it is a path of love. We go this way to obtain love, to protect love and to form an environment filled with love. When a woman puts on makeup to make herself beautiful, it is because of love. When we want something and work to get it, it is also because of love. We endure hardship and move forward in order to obtain precious love.
From the moment we are born, we receive parental love. For as long as our parents are alive, they will love us at each stage of our lives, through childhood, young adulthood and middle age. If we grow up receiving parental love, then eventually the horizontal love of husband and wife will take form within each of us.
What is marriage? It can be compared to a school that men and women enter so that the men can learn things they did not know about women, and the women can learn things they did not know about men. When all the grades are A+, then the husband will be absolutely happy and the wife will be absolutely happy. You bear sons and daughters as a way to learn how to love the world. Without them, you cannot be connected to the future. Your sons and daughters are given to you as educational materials so that you can be connected to the future world.
Acts of filial piety toward your ancestors, or your grandfather and grandmother, enable you to be educated by the spirit world. All these things are connected, with love at the center. The grandfather and grandmother, husband and wife, and sons and daughters are all connected, with love at the center.
Just as blood cells circulate throughout the human body, our ancestors in the spirit world, going back even to the ten thousandth generation, are able to circulate up and down and communicate with their distant descendants. It is important to know that this is how the spirit world and the entire universe are structured. True love will take dominion over everything. We can say that becoming a servant, even a slave, to true love is the greatest happiness.
FFWPU, USA