Father’s Speech On December 1, 1994 At Belvedere International Training Center Tarrytown, New York
THE life of faith began as the result of the fall. Centering upon the four major religions, there are numerous religions, all following a certain direction of fai.th. The religious life has a worldwide dimension as well as an individual dimension. However, there is only one life of true faith, and the object of that life is the absolute God Himself. Living a life of faith is to live the way God desires us to live. It does not begin from ourselves, but rather from God. It is not a matter of what an individual wants, but what God wants.
It is simple enough if everyone goes in one direction. However, confusion arises when people inject themselves into this understanding of the way to go.
In our individual life we face many problems arising from human relationships. Science progresses and makes one discovery after another, and people can make progress through following the scientific formula. However, it is difficult to find the formula for the life of faith, the religious life. What is the formula for the individual life of faith? It is the family. The family is the unit and formula of life itself. The basic unit of society is one couple, their relationship to their children, and their children’s relationship to them. That unit forms a family, which becomes the formula for our life. Everything else is the mere expansion of this family.
THE SEED THAT GROWS INTO THE FAMILY TREE
You are familiar with the eight stages of individual, family, clan, race, nation, world, cosmos and God. Everything inter-sects at a ninety-degree angle. Only the family is able to settle down permanently. Corresponding to the relationship with God is the vertical father-son relationship. The relationship between husband and wife is horizontal, and the relationship between brothers and sisters is like front and back. Thus there are three axes in the family: up and down, right and left, and front and back, corresponding to parent and child, husband and wife, and brother and sister. This forms a global shape and becomes a formula.
The clan, race and nation are merely extensions of the family unit. Within the family there are four roles: parent, spouse, child and brother or sister. Just as these four elements exist within the family, they also exist within the country. They can be found wherever you go in the world, without exception. Since this forms a global shape it cannot be divided into a smaller scale or different shape. The family sphere is formed centering on the vertical relationship. The family is like the seed of a tree. The basic relationships are part of the design of family life. Therefore, wherever you go, you are like the seed which grows into the family tree.
The family system has upper and lower hemispheres, right and left hemispheres, and a central position which is occupied by true love. Such a sphere can move in any direction possible, but it always comes to a stop in an upright position. It is the formula. No matter which part of the surface you choose, it inter-sects with the vertical line at a ninety-degree angle. Therefore, a sphere is the ideal shape. There are no differences, no prejudices, no different kinds of treatment. All are equal.
The surface of the sphere is always hard in order to protect everything inside. In the seed of a tree, the bran or seed coat protects the contents which surround the embryo that will later form the roots, trunk, branches and leaves of the tree.
Trees grow and prosper because all of the basic elements are present: roots, trunk, branches and leaves. This can be applied to the human family also. It even extends into the spiritual world, where the family will gather and live together. When we think of a son, we think of his parents as well. Is that correct? When we think of a wife, the presupposition is that there is a husband. When we refer to a younger brother, the elder brother comes to mind, and vice versa.
We may refer to right, but left is equally important; they are included within each other. This concept is important. The right side exists for the left side, not for its own sake. This is the very beginning of existence. You did not begin for yourself, you began for someone other than yourself. A man comes into existence for a woman. And everyone came into existence for the sake of their parents. East exists for the sake of West, and vice versa. The lower part exists for the upper part.
If a plus entity comes into being, it exists for its object, which is minus. If there is no minus then there is no reason for the plus to exist. Plus only exists for the sake of minus.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FAMILY
What then is the significance of the family? Without the family, there is no vertical connection. To lead a religious life means to keep your subject in mind. We belong to either the subject or object category. Whether we are subject or object, we live for the sake of the other.
Each family desires to be the center of the whole cosmos. In order to climb to a high place, we need a ladder which we can climb step by step. These steps include the family, clan, race and nation. Your family needs to ascend the ladder at a ninety-degree angle. You cannot climb to the top with one step. The history of restoration also follows the ladder, step by step.
The family does not change, but it ascends to a higher place. The family does not rise up automatically; it has to expand its realm horizontally with each higher step on the ladder. As we go up we have to expand to a bigger realm. The universe is also formed in this way. The universe always has a core and surroundings, in much the same way as our body has bones and flesh. There is always a core and its surroundings. The core is always in the subject position, and the surroundings are in the object position. As the family unit goes up, it has to expand. A tree bears fruit, and this fruit is the result of eight stages of development within the tree. A big tree is like the universe.
Our philosophy of life should be that the individual always must sacrifice for the sake of the family. This means that all individuals live for the sake of the family. Such a family lives for the sake of the clan, and the clan lives for the sake of the race, and so on. This is the basic direction of human life. This direction is determined by a ninety-degree angle. This direction applies to all families. The ninety-degree angle never changes. It remains eternally. It is not only vertical but horizontal also. Like a tree, the family can grow in only one direction.
THE SUBJECT’S ROLE AND THE OBJECT’S ROLE
Everything in the universe, no matter how small or large, is composed of subject and object. In order to exist and develop, subject and object need to work for the sake of one another. One element cannot demand that the other exist and work only for them. The role of the subject is to invest. The object’s role is to receive the investment and then reciprocate with a grateful heart. If you receive something from your subject, you must not think of it as belonging to yourself alone. Instead, regard it as something that belongs to all, and be ready to return it to the subject with a grateful heart. As the subject continues to invest, the gratitude and response of the object will stimulate the subject to give more. In this way, the sense of love will keep growing, and everyone will be stimulated to do more for the sake of the other.
In the religious realm, subject and object exist to interact vigorously with each other in order to reach up to a higher place and finally reach God again from where all humankind fell down. As we go up, we also expand horizontally. Anyone who is in the subject position must invest.
I keep speaking and investing in you as members of the Unification Church. If you, in tum, miss this opportunity to grow, you will remain as a leaf and never become a trunk or branch. Leaves drop off each year and become fertilizer. Unlike the branches and trunk, leaves are not perennial. The trunk must become large and strong in order for the tree to rise higher vertically. Furthermore, branches must extend their reach horizontally year by year, so that they may form a more prosperous domain for the tree.
We breathe many times every minute, without thinking about it. We rarely notice that our heart is beating continuously. These functions never cease; they are continuous and certain. As human beings living for the sake of goodness, we must beat regularly every day, like a heart, without ceasing. In breathing, if you only inhale or only exhale you will die. Air is also plus and minus, with high-pressure and low-pressure areas moving from one place to another. Like the rhythm of a wave, currents of air move invisibly. Storms are necessary to change and recharge air systems that have begun to stagnate. Storms have a cleansing action.
In the Unification Church we also have ups and downs. This is the rhythm of life. When we face a big persecution we are down, but when this passes again, then we are up. There was an individual persecution time, a family persecution time, a racial persecution time and even a world persecution time. When that ends, then the spiritual world will persecute us, and when that last persecution is over, level ground will be formed and we will find stability.
We have many concepts to deal with, but they are so important for our life. True Parents and the Completed Testament era is here. However, although we experience this, still many people remain unaware of it. Even though your families are similar to my family, because they consist of the same formula, we are at different stages. If my family is up here while yours is down there, we are not in the same stage. My family did not rise up instantly, as I have already explained to you. You need to keep working at it. Ask yourself where your family is going and what you are living for. Keep thinking about these eight stages. Keep trying hard, and keep the proper orientation, then you will ascend.
PRECIOUS OPPORTUNITIES
What are the chances of meeting me in your lifetime? When you meet me, life-giving words flow down to you. It is such a precious opportunity. How long has humankind had to wait for the time when people could meet their True Father? To waste that opportunity is to be unaware of the purpose of your life. To miss such an opportunity is to miss out on that much of life. You have a long way to go.
Why am I so necessary? Your destiny is to go to this high place, but you cannot go by yourselves. You have to cling onto historical Father and never let him go. That is the only hope for us to reach the goal. Suppose a fly happens to stray into an airplane at Narita Airport in Japan and, a few hours later, finds itself in New York. There is absolutely no way that a fly could cross the ocean from Japan to America. So it is with reaching heaven. What chance do you really think you have to reach heaven as you are historically? Do you understand?
LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS
We all have a desire to do something and make it our own. I have already given you the formula of living for the sake of others. People think they lose something when they give to others. I do this because I know that by giving I will automatically find myself in the center. This is the law. If we make a habit of living for the sake of others, we will never stray to the side but will always find ourselves right at the center. We have an ideal formula: whatever belongs to me belongs to the family, whatever belongs to the family belongs to the clan, whatever the clan has belongs to the nation. Then, whatever the nation has belongs to God, and whatever God has belongs to me. God is a big plus and we are a small minus.
Communism teaches that whatever belongs to everyone else also belongs to me. Such a belief cuts off all the different stages. However, when everything that belongs to God belongs to me, the circle is complete.
Ever since I came to America, I have invested whatever I had into America: people, property, money and skills. I invested this for the sake of the world. Now, through the Washington Times, the world is responding to me and feels that they need me.
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Unificationists are always wondering where we are going and why we are suffering. Do not be like that. If we are going to reach the goal we must go through suffering. Maybe we should suffer even more! The one who only follows can never become the center or the master. However, the one who leads and takes initiative will find himself in the center position.
In the past, America has always played the central role. However, it now seems that America will never be able to digest the East. It seems likely that the East may well digest America. Unless America follows this formula, and advances up the ladder to reach God, she will plummet down. If a nation reaches a high level but loses track of the ladder, it can only crash. The Unification Church is the only entity that has a clear ladder and a clear teaching about how to follow it. Is there anyone here who can confidently say that if they pass to the spirit world today they will be in the same place as me? That is not likely to happen, because of what I went through in order to reach that ladder. I am at a very different level from you. I have already told you that you need to go through many stages. Without going through all of these stages, you cannot go to the same spiritual world as me.
No matter what your position, you can always orient your-self in a ninety-degree angle. Do you understand?
The title of my sermon today is “My Life of Faith,” but there is nothing that is mine in my life. Would you desire a limited kind of ‘my’ or a farsighted, limitless ‘my’? On which ‘my’ is your religious life centered? You begin at the individual level, because we are an individual. As you have a family you expand to the next level, but then you have to come back to where I started. You need to keep going out and then return back to the center. In the process, you form a circle. Do you understand? (Yes, Father.)
Those who are present this morning, do you belong to the lowest category or do you aspire to the highest level? One is like a grammar-school level, whereas the other is like a Ph.D. course. All too often you are in the elementary level, but, because it is such a fantastic school, you think you are going through a Ph.D. course! If you think you are at the highest level when you are just at the elementary level, God will deny you, and all things will reject you. Those who think so arrogantly will eventually drop away.
We lead a religious life for the sake of others, not for our-selves. God is not making us live this way, but we decided to go this way of our own volition. Then this becomes a legitimate condition. If we choose to lead a religious life in order to liberate God, we will find ourselves liberated. God has to be happy before He is able to liberate us or before we are able to liberate ourselves. When God is unhappy, we cannot liberate ourselves. Even God cannot liberate us. Therefore, the ‘my’ in my religious life is not for myself but for God. God is subject and we are object. We must live for the sake of God, since He is already living for our sake. We give everything back to God with a grateful heart because eventually it all belongs to us. It cannot belong to anyone else except us.
Our perspective on life must be crystal clear. We live for the sake of God. If you follow me, you will go to heaven. You may follow someone else who is going in the same direction and also reach heaven. That means there is only one correct way of life, not two. Do you understand?
Furthermore, you must continually remind yourselves where you are positioned in these eight stages. Are you confident about where you are and where you will be going? When I reach up here I want to go even further and begin something even more gigantic. Then where will you be? Will you follow me up to a certain point and then say you can go no further?
I have always insisted that America must surpass other countries because it is destined to go higher. Once I invest so much into America, it must live up to my expectations. Other-wise, it will fall down.
FOR WHOM DO YOU LEAD A RELIGIOUS LIFE?
For whom are you leading your religious life? (For God.) This is in contrast to Christians who proclaim that they believe in God in order to be saved by Him. God wishes for the whole world to be saved, not only the Christians. If we are going to be God’s rightful partner and object, we must follow God’s ideal. The whole world is our goal, never the Unification Church.
Until now, I can point out that you have been focusing literally upon ‘my’ religious life, and this is wrong. If some people feel that it is too cold to come to Belvedere to listen to me, God will certainly not be happy with them. When God comes here and sees only a few faces, naturally His heart is sad. Every level that is higher than yourself would be sad because of your absence. Do you understand? (Yes.)
My life has been so public and so open. At the age of eighty I still work as hard as I did in my twenties and thirties. This is the way that we pass to the spirit world: not lying in bed, but doing the work. There are other continents to which I did not give so much attention. I have invested everything into America, but now I have to go to South America and Africa because I have not visited the countries there for long periods of time. I will go around the world and will eventually come to rest in Korea. Are you going to follow along? (Yes.) We have to make a big circle if our aspiration is to liberate the universe and God. How wonderful it is!
Christians are declining sharply because they do not know God’s will. It does not take a genius or a holy man to understand God. If you were God, would you be happy with the way America is? Of course not. Neither is God. Times are changing now, and the Christian world cannot adapt itself. It is a sorrowful thing. Yet, here we are.
Do you think that God can do wonders and liberate Christians? (No.) If God can-not do that, which living being can? Who must love, teach and liberate the Christians? It is our mission, but to accomplish it we need this philosophy clearly in our minds. We are the only group of people who have God’s ideal in mind. This is what I am teaching. That is the essence of the Unification Church. I am the only living being who is thinking in this way. If you live as I have been teaching you, then the whole universe will follow us and heavenly fortune will follow us also. John 3:16 states that “God so loved the world.” The world is the object of God’s love, not some Christian denomination and not even a nation. The scripture says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life.” That is a world concept, not a national one. America is not the world itself. Is that clear? (Yes.)
We have to pull hard like an engine, even though we do not like pulling anything. We always want the easy life. If we choose only the easy life on earth, we will go through a thou-sand times more pain in the spiritual world. The whole world, including America, is down at the bottom, and its goal is to reach to this high plateau. Can one engine pull a big train such as that? Can your family bring everyone up here? There is a big gap between what we believe we can do and what we actually do. I have been leading this way of life. You will see that, as time goes by, I will become more and more famous around the world. If the money our community has been investing in America were to be invested some place else, the whole continent would literally move. Please understand that I am working unceasingly for the sake of the world.
SAVE THE PEOPLE AND LOVE GOD
Those of you who are blessed couples, please raise your hands. Almost all of you are. Is your tribal messiah work going well? Do you think that the occupants of the spiritual world are awaiting the appearance of the tribal messiah in their own tribes? When you arrive in the spirit world what will you say to your ancestors? No matter how hard we may think this way of life is, we have no alternative. We must go this way. Are you going to lead a narrow religious life or a religious life on a universal scale? (Universal.)
We have to actively save the people and love God. What are you doing? God is looking down at hell. We must understand where we stand today. If this is the only way of life and I have been going this way, do you think that the people of the world would follow this way at any cost or not? (Yes.) Are you going to follow my way of life at any cost?
There is no way for us to get close to God in reality other than to follow this road that has already been built. We have to reach this plateau, no matter what. Are we really trying very hard to elevate ourselves one step after another? Is that truly what our religious life is all about? Is this what fills our consciousness? If we decide to stop at a certain point, all the rest will need to be accomplished in the spiritual world. However, you have learned from me that it is infinitely more difficult to accomplish things in the spiritual realm. In this world we are surrounded by air. In the spiritual world there is no air or indemnity law. What is air on earth is love in the spirit world. Unless we practice love in our physical body we will not be able to breathe in the spiritual world. It takes tens of millions of years to reach from the starting point to the goal in the spirit world. Later on you cannot claim that you did not really understand what I have been teaching you. You will be with-out excuse. This is not some conceptual teaching. In reality I am passing a way of life on to you.
This is the first day and the first week of December. One more month and we will meet 1995, which is the fiftieth year since the liberation of Korea. It is exactly half a century. History is about to enter into a different realm. When the clock strikes midnight the whole atmosphere changes, but we cannot detect that. That is the official beginning. Even though we may doubt it, the dawn will surely come. We must be ready for the dawn, otherwise we will not be able to do anything with it. We must be perpetually awake and alert.
In the place of God we work for the sake of the world. You have to understand this well, and you must live this way for the rest of your lives. If you are unable to do this, you should cry in desperation and repentance. At least then you could gain God’s sympathy. Be assured that whenever you shed tears, God will accompany you. He will protect you every time you give your heart. Even if you do not make a tangible result, if you always live with this kind of heart then surely you will be able to go near God.
I see so many faithful Japanese faces here. You should get ahead of people right next to me. Do not just follow the crowd, which happens to be Americans. Do you understand? Be the leaders, not the followers. Do not become Americanized, but rather become like God and True Parents. Everyone except me becomes Americanized. Which is the way of prosperity, the American way or True Parents’ way? (True Parents’ way.) You know clearly the correct answer, but your activity does not reflect your answer. Those of you who pledge to live up to the standard which I am upholding, please raise your hands. God bless you.