Excerpts from Father’s speech at the 43rd Day of All True Things, given on June 7, 2005, at Cheongpyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center in Korea
Is today a delightful day, a joyous day or a lovely day? Of the three, which would you like it to be? The Day of All True Things is all about creation, and when we say creation, we mean more than one kind; this word is all-inclusive. Therefore, the Day of All True Things is also not just one kind only: there are bright days, and there are dark days, and the days in between—in short, days of every description and color.
When we speak of the Day of All Things, we are referring to the world and all things in it, which includes gloomy things, bright things, ugly things, pretty things, good days, joyous days, loving days, and so on and so forth. The main point we need to reflect on today is what of the many things encompassed by this day should take the central position. This is a day when we can turn a key to open something that is locked up!
Consider your life. Is your life good, bad or mediocre? Do you live in affluence, or in poverty? Have you, in one way or another, been leading lives that progress or regress? This question poses a problem.
If you Unification Church members in front of me here are true members and have remained true from the day you first learned about the Unification Church until now, your solid faith should have become a seed, your lives should have added nutrients to that seed for its subsistence so that it could sprout, and along with that should have grown in happiness and brightness.
When you think about how you have poured decades of your life into the Unification Church, you must ask yourself whether you can feel more joy over having given everything and invested yourself substantially over that time than the joy you felt when you first joined the church. Can you honestly affirm that this is the case, or not? That is an important question.
There is no one among you who was not persecuted when you first joined the Unification Church. Your parents told you not to go to the Unification Church. Though I taught you to obey your father and mother absolutely, and to set an example for everyone around you, even the teachers in your countries, your parents still persecuted you for coming to our church. Why did they do that? That’s the question.
Though you knew what you were doing when you joined the church, your mothers, fathers and those around you all opposed your joining. If there is truth in this world, that way of truth will not be welcome by many people who are near the truth but who are living in the wrong way. Even among one thousand people or ten thousand people, all without exception will oppose it if truth exists in this world.
When you first joined the Unification Church, you started climbing from the bottommost place. In the beginning, you would have given cheers for sheer joy; when you were liberated and had spiritual experiences, you would have felt as if you were floating in midair. At the same time, though, you would also have experienced opposition from all sides—from your parents, your siblings, your neighbors and relatives, your clans, and your nations. If you were from Korea, you would have been opposed by not only the nation of Korea but also all nations related to Asia, such as Japan and other adjacent nations, and further, all nations in the world with any national rights to their name, be they advanced nations or less developed ones. You must have experienced what it felt like to be in such a position.
The question you should be asking yourself is where you, whose circumstances I have just outlined, should live. This is a very important question. Should you continue to live where you are now, or should you first digest then subdue an environment wherein you experience opposition, before living in it? It is not known that you can, in fact, subdue it. How will you surmount the course given to you in life, with high rugged mountains standing in the way and thorns and barbed wire strewn across your path, until you are finally liberated and free to find your own path?
This question is important, because if individuals first joined the Unification Church with joy, but soon found themselves being opposed—be they ordinary individuals, families, CEOs, presidents, or even the proud heads of nations—they need to have something on the other side that will give joy to them, and courage and strength to surmount the opposition they face and cross over to the other side. So, you need to analyze this in detail, and determine the path you follow, saying to yourself, “To achieve such and such a goal, I will have to follow such and such a path.”
If you were to go on recklessly and without thinking of the future, that is worse than not going at all. If you are reckless and thoughtless as to where you are going and what you are doing, you can very easily do harm to the environment, scar it and damage it beyond repair, and so anyone who tries to go on arbitrarily is foolish.
In that case, of the many Days of All True Things, which would be the best day of all? The day on which a person—born as the ruler of creation—occupies the position of a child of God and is loved by Him would be the day of greatest hope for humanity. If God had created human beings to be His sons and daughters—which is the case—the day they occupy their proper positions would mark not only the day of the most supreme joy to God but also the beginning of the day of love. Why? Love is something that cannot be achieved alone; therefore, if a relationship with an object figure is not established, it would remain an unfulfilled dream, it would disappear when blown by the slightest breath.
Those of you who believe that love can be achieved alone, raise your hands. I see a few. You Buddhist monks who are here must all marry. You may feel insulted by what I’m saying, as if you have woken up after having a bad dream, but your dreams will continue getting worse until it is almost as if you had died; then you will wake to find that you have been resurrected, wouldn’t you? Just as there is every possibility that you will wake up and find yourselves dancing in a field of flowers, there is also every possibility that what I’m saying is not mere rambling, but that everything I’m saying is significant. Bearing this in mind, monks or Buddhist nuns, men or women, will become disqualified if they do not marry. No matter how hard they may try, they wouldn’t know or understand love.
What more can I say about this? I have drawn my conclusion, so there is no need for me to say anything more. You can become saints and sages, holy sons and daughters, and families of holy sons and daughters. Now that I have told you to get married, what more is there to it?
We need to become princes in whom God can take delight. We need to respect God’s rights. Under what circumstances would we be in the best position to respect His rights? When we become His firstborn sons and princes and the firstborn daughters and princesses of God, and serve Him as such. He is alone in His palace, so we need to become His physical bodies by having Him leave His palace and come and reside in our minds, becoming one with His sons and daughters. Which should laugh out loud, “Ha ha ha,” in joy—the mind or the body?
Where is the starting point, the source of my joy? It is when we serve Him from the depth of our hearts while centered on the love of a child for a parent, become one, form a family and live happily. It is from our heart, serving God; it is not in the human realm but in the realm of heaven and God that our joy begins. Happiness originates not in the human realm but in the realm of Heaven and God, the flower of happiness that blooms there would be of the greatest happiness, and the scent given off by that flower would be the sweetest. In short, from that place would emerge the absolute scent, the absolute flower, the absolute condition, and the absolute love that is greater than the greatest in the world.
What, then, is creation? Why has the Day of All Things remained as it has to this day? Through the Fall, we lost our intended position; the origin of the Fall was the failure of the prince and princess, serving God as the king, to establish the domestic environment of love in the midst of a place where the flowers of love bloom. Through those flowers, butterflies and bees connect to the origin of life and seek God to connect to Him.
Considering this, would God have rejoiced, or grieved, as He cast His eyes on the fallen environment? An answer is unnecessary. All bad words that exist in the world, despair, discouragement, and the like, began there.
How did something so unfortunate ever happen? Every bad thing, the misery of humanity, stemmed from God’s losing His dream of love blossoming in a family of love; on account of this, we are drowning in the inescapable sea that is this weary world, suffering from discouragement, despair, disagreement and discord. If we had the ability to liberate and free ourselves from such a situation, there would be no need to worry. The reality, though, is that we have no such ability. Even God Himself has been entangled in this trap we ourselves have created.
What is the key to solving this problem? What is the core of the Divine Principle? What is the gist of what Divine Principle teaches? Is it religion, love, or obedience? [It is love!] What comes first, love, religion or obedience? [Love comes first.]
We need to delve into the matter and find out what is at the root. Wouldn’t God have wanted to have the object of His love in His grasp, to hold, to keep near? Some of the people here have risen in the world; they have served as ministers, presidents, standard-bearer of nations, and are boasting to others, “There is not one Korean citizen who does not know me.” The important question, though, is whether you have become the object of the King’s love….
What is happiness? The person who always has an object figure to give to and receive from whenever he wants and who enjoys this free environment night and day, when young, when old—eternally—can truly be said to be a happy person!
To summarize it all and to draw a conclusion about ourselves, we should ask ourselves whether we are happy, wretched, lonely or glad. That’s the conclusion. Well, those of you who are here, are you happy, or unhappy? [We are happy.]
So, what did I say God likes the most? [Love.] Love. Have you seen love? Do you understand love? If the love of God is true love, do you understand true love? How can people who do not even understand the love of a sparrow twittering outside or the love of a pig understand true love? This is also a big problem.
So, would God like true love the most, or not? [He would.] Since He likes it the most, would He have wanted, as the object of His true love, the substantial entity of true love to be something that is just as incorporeal as He is, or would He have wanted that entity to be the most visible thing in all creation, superior to others and able to listen, see, and speak better than others as their representative, in other words, qualified in every aspect to be their king? So, which would it be—the former or the latter?
What is the very essence of the matter? Is God reckless and thoughtless, or is He prudent and discreet, thinking deeply, highly and broadly? If desire is great, does one become the owner of desire, the owner of ambition or the owner of faith? What is best—desire, ambition, or faith? [Faith.]
When you say faith, what is that all about? Desire or ambition is something a person can cherish alone, but faith is different. In the Korean word for faith, shinang, the Chinese character for “shin” stands for “faith (ｽﾅ)” and is made up, in turn, of two Chinese characters, “man” (ｻ邯 ) and “word” (ｸｻｾｸ), so the word “shinang” means that man becomes one with the word and worships (the Chinese character for ang (ｾﾓ) stands for “worship”) the One on High. Plainly speaking, the word “faith” clearly brings us together with God, and so it is different from such words as “ambition,” “desire,” “despair” or “lamentation.”
So, what would He choose to be, the One with absolute ambition, the King of desire or the King of faith? Which? [The King of faith.] Why? The word signifies our becoming one with the word in worship. No being on earth is superior to one’s father, teacher or king. Only God is. It is only He, and none other, who can be the Lord whom humankind united with the word can worship!
If you don’t like powerful ambition or desire but want to serve God as the greatest king of ambition and the king of desire through your faith, you have to use expressions pertinent to faith. You need to understand that desire and similar things concern the individual alone, whereas faith is premised on the existence of a relationship.
When we ask what God desires above all other things, the answer is a mind of absolute faith, something that cannot be achieved alone. This encompasses humankind, the word, the truth and all principles. In short, God wishes to become the king of absolute faith!
The conclusion you should reach from these facts is that all that symbolizes dreams, love, ideals and everything that is good beyond goodness cannot exist without God, and that such things cannot exist if you reject the actual existence of God’s love, God’s faith and God’s absolute obedience. From the very outset, God upheld absolute faith.
Do you think religious figures, such as Jesus, also upheld the kind of absolute faith that God had at the time of the Creation? Jesus was the son of God, as were Confucius, Buddha, and other religious leaders; as such, they should have followed God’s example, but what are the conditions of relationship that establish absolute faith? Only if you follow the path that seeks out those conditions can you reach the right conclusion. Otherwise, numerous realms will be mixed together. If that had been the case, there would have been no way to restore the spirit world, and God would have been beset with difficulties.
God insisted on absolute faith. What was that faith? It was the faith, desire and ambition necessary to establish the object of absolute love! What is the essence, the pith and marrow of the Unification Church? God is absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience! It is to establish these three principles in a place where they could be united as one, and to make it so that the object of love would absolutely believe, serve and uphold God.
It is not enough for that object of love, the object centered on love, to practice only absolute faith. He or she must also practice absolute obedience. Obedience refers to giving everything one has—even one’s own way of thinking and one’s form of existence—and forgetting that one has given. The place of obedience is entirely connected to giving up everything and forgetting everything one has given up.
That is why absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience are the three parts that make up the whole! You’ve never heard this before, have you? Such a concept is not found in the Divine Principle book. What did I say absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience are? [Three parts that make up the whole.] If one of the three, absolute obedience for instance, is missing, absolute faith would crumble and absolute love would cease to exist. Only when obedience is there can the whole be solidified into perfection.
Since this is the case, when our absolutely faithful God was setting the standard within Himself, would He have considered finding His wife? Would He have thought of investing Himself absolutely to have sons and daughters? Naturally, before you can think of having sons and daughters, you first need to have a wife. Then, on what is absolute faith based? On God Himself! Absolute faith was determined centering on God Himself.
Why did He need absolute love? God requires an object. Before establishing a standard of faith that emphasized Himself, He established the position of love that emphasizes the object; with God in the position of a husband, this position of love, God’s object partner, would be a woman.
One of His deepest desires, therefore, was to find a loving wife. In order to do so, He would have to invest everything He has into the task, giving hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of times, ungrudgingly—indeed, gladly—to perfect that object of love.
Would God wish the object of His love to be ten times better than He, or billions of times better? [Billions of times.] Do you feel the same way? [Yes.] If you really understand God’s wish for His object to be billions of times better than He, the question is whether you have set up such a path, direction, and purpose—to forget billions of times and to express respect billions of times by serving and living with your wife or husband. Reflect on this point as you look back on your life.
If a husband is immersed in moody silence, not saying three words about where he has been and what he has been doing, doesn’t his wife tend to start nagging and irritating him? A woman feels left out and ignored if her husband knows something but does not share that information, doesn’t she? A woman doesn’t like her husband to keep secrets. There are bound to be secrets. You should realize that there are no secrets on the path of love, but on the paths of the nation and ideal world, secrets need to be kept between men and women.
When God was creating the universe, He wished to make the object of His love the most precious of all the extremely small beings created, to be elevated over time, so that the object of His love would have gone from low to average, then above average, then higher, higher, and higher until it became the highest of all creatures. Even then, God would have wanted the object of His love to be millions of times better than the best. So, laying aside His own dignity and honor, He would have to give a hundred times and keep forgetting that He had ever given. The value of the object of His love would be equal to only what He has given.
Therefore, when you give, you should forget what you have given, be it something with a value of a 100, 110 or 1,000. Even when you give to the level of 10,000, you should still forget that you have given and be of a mind that you will give continuously, forever, and continue to forget that you have given. Then, the substantial object of love and the substantial object of hope—standing on a foundation of absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience—will automatically want to give her life and all her possessions, to deny herself millions of times in order to give more; she will be filled with so much love that she will even want to give her own life for her sons and daughters. You cannot help but acknowledge the logic behind this statement! [Amen!]
That is why God created everything, from the molecules of the smallest microorganisms to elements themselves, to be the raw materials for creating His future ideal, substantiated entity of absolute love. God has repeatedly given absolutely and forgotten thousands of times in making even the smallest of the small objects of His absolute faith and absolute love. He can continue to do so for thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, and even billions of years, trying to find that woman who can think of Him as her father, as her husband, as her brother, and as her object of love. From this fact can be derived the logic that if there were a son and a daughter who treated their mother in the same way that God invests in someone and forgets, they could not help but be a son and daughter of filial piety; the same would be true of a loving wife who treats her husband in that way. Moreover, a husband and wife who care for each other in that way would be the mother and father of patriots, saints and holy sons and daughters.
When you come to understand God, you will also realize that, as a being of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, He created the microorganisms, atoms and molecules in order to make what I have just said come to pass. …
In a Korean nobleman’s house, the lady of the house resides in the master bedroom, while the grandfather occupies the bedroom across the hall. Under those circumstances, who would act as the master of the house? [The occupant of the master bedroom.] The master bedroom! Who occupies the master bedroom, the mother or the daughter? Who? [The mother.] Yes, the mother. Unless the mother embraces and loves her sons and daughters, she cannot be rightfully called a mother, and consequently, she cannot be the occupant of the master bedroom, where the master of the house resides.
In summary, God, the Creator of the universe, set a task in relation to everything He created. He can concern himself with them only when He practices absolute faith and absolute love, losing Himself absolutely and completely, and giving Himself thousands and tens of thousands of times to make His object.
You should realize that the great work involved in the creation of each and every thing was carried out on the foundation of His having upheld absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Therefore, you should not treat any part of creation carelessly. You have learned today that in creating the elements that may become the cells, blood and muscles of His future loving wife, God set such a standard for Himself, because He wanted the object of His love to be established on the foundation of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. [Amen!]
Today is the Day of All True Things, and you should remember that each created entity, without exception, came into existence on the basis of God’s having practiced absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience.
There are many people who claim to have succeeded in life through their personal efforts, or who claim to have risen in the world through the fulfillment of their dreams. It is the lamentation of all of creation throughout the world that among these there is not one person who has conceived of establishing a beautiful garden on a hill containing all aspects of creation, as one of the world’s famous sites, where he might think to himself as he gazes upon it, “Oh, how beautiful. I love this garden as much as did my grandfather, and I would like to create the garden that God long ago created, and which He loved; in fact, I am going to imitate Him by creating such a garden.”
Start living with such a mindset from now on. When you see pebbles kicked along unknowingly by your feet or dandelions growing on roadsides and being trampled on and crushed, your heart should overflow with the mind of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, similar to that of God at the time of the Creation. Think how much He would have grieved if He had ever failed to create something to perfection, or if a leaf had fallen off and He had to make it whole again with a tearful heart. Anyone who ignores the fact that contained in all forms of creation are the touch and heart of the Creator will be lamented over and even cursed by creation.
Now that you understand that those who could not become owners had to leave for a faraway place, the Unification Church members of today should realize how much God devoted Himself to creating all things from nothing, abiding by the standards He Himself had set.
The subject of absolute faith, the subject of absolute love, the subject of absolute obedience, God, can receive love when the ideal is established and He is attended as the owner, the Creator who has established the ideal. God has to surely devote Himself to the extreme to complete the ideal as the owner, the Creator. I am giving you this advice and recommendation, hoping that everything has been made clear to you through what I’ve said today. [Amen!]
What did I say God set up as His standard in His great work of creating the universe? He established creation on His absolute faith and His absolute love. Absolute faith and absolute love are invisible; they are concepts. And though God is invisible, He can see Himself.
So, we have come to perceive that God Himself practiced absolute faith when He set Himself the task of the Creation. Repeat after me, absolute faith. [Absolute faith!] Absolute love! [Absolute love!] Absolute obedience! [Absolute obedience!] Love and faith are concepts, related to self-denial. God knows how much of yourself you have given.
In order to inherit this, we need to know in what form God exists. He is a being with dual characteristics and both masculine and feminine qualities, and in regard to creation, He is in the position of the masculine subject. With this conclusion, cause and effect fit together, without this the problems of the cosmos cannot be solved. Without this knowledge, the universe cannot be explained.
So, you see, I am not crazy. I am so knowledgeable! I have even gone to the spiritual world. After returning, if I hadn’t spoken but had just hidden, I would not have been vilified and cursed. If I enlightened you spiritually about what you need to know once in every decade or century, I would have unified the whole world without having to be abused. Had I done so, however, a great number of people would have wound up in hell. So I had no choice but to endure the risk of a head-on collision.
Even if you were to worship a grain of sand as devoutly as you would God, or even more devoutly, no one would accuse you of idol worship. If you gave everything you had with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience similar to that of God, and forgot you had given, the particle of sand would not curse you for not devoting yourself more than that. The owner of that grain of sand would have only blessings to bestow on you. God only knows how to give blessings to those who follow and adore Him, and so whoever treads this path will receive blessings at all events.
When the left hand reaches out to hold something, but it looks like it would be too heavy, the right hand automatically follows to support the left hand. Does the left hand say, “Hey, right hand, please come and help me!”? The right hand assists the left without being told. That is absolute obedience, isn’t it? Look for yourselves: When you are walking down the street, your left leg moves together with the right hand, and the right leg together with the left hand, in perfect coordination. That is how you naturally move….
It is very simple: Since God created the universe with absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, you need to train yourselves, so that you can give love in place of God. The perfection of the realm of complete oneness, where you can claim, “God is I,” is the ideal envisaged at the Creation for you, and also for the family, nation and world! Amen!