Sun Myung Moon
May 31, 2003
Sheraton National Hotel, Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A.
We have now passed through a time of indemnity in which whoever violated the law could be dealt with immediately. Please make a new start, knowing that you will receive according to what you have given.
Until now, True Mother had to offer bows, but now True Parents stand in the same position. Accordingly, you should follow this same way as True Parents in your own families, and establish a nation and the victorious realm of the supremacy of the UN. At that time a new era can be established in which your families too can start out horizontally from the same position of authority.
When you are offering bows, you should think about the physical world, the spiritual world and Chung Pyung. Centering on Heung-Jin nim, Dae-Mo nim, Choong-Mo nim, Dae-Hyung nim and on True Parents' family, the Han family and the relatives of True Father's family should receive the blessing. On that foundation, the children of True Parents, united as one, must engraft into your families.
We know that we will thus become one in heart, one in body and one in mindset, but what I am saying now should be practiced rather than remain only as words. You are not the symbolic beings of that realm; you should be the substantial beings of that realm, remembered in God's heart as His sons and daughters. You should also know that what I am describing cannot happen if you do not have the right foundation of heart upon which you can say, "This is the ideal family I have established." Do you understand? Let's offer our bows. [Pledge Service is held.]
From now on, you should offer your full bow to "the Cosmic Parent and the Parents of Heaven and Earth." You understand, don't you? We offer our bow to both the Cosmic Parent and the Parents of Heaven and Earth. Both the spiritual world and the physical world are participating in the Pledge Service, and so you should know that God is also present as well.
With all the returning resurrection on earth, from now on, no matter how strong someone is, if that person opposes God's will, he or she will start to wither as if it were autumn. Summer is finally beginning. The Unification Church will grow abundantly whereas the world, which had been growing until now, will start to wither as if autumn had arrived. When the wild olive trees of the world start to wither and wilt without bearing fruit, the true olive trees of the Unification Church will pass through summer, come into bloom and finally bear fruit.
Thus, because the fruit of the true olive trees will be stored in both heaven and earth, beyond the borders of any nation, beyond the U.S., and up to the level of the UN, centering on the heavenly nation, that fruit should be harvested and utilized. It should not be used by the people of this fallen world -- we should know that we are passing beyond such an era. We are to attend ceremonies such as this one with that kind of heart. That is why we must offer our bow to "the Cosmic Parent and the Parents of Heaven and Earth."
You should also realize your ancestors and all religious leaders and the blessed members in heaven are standing behind you, and that in front of you, God is standing in front of True Parents. That is why it is correct to say that the blessed families are bowing to both the Parent of the Cosmos and the Parents of Heaven and Earth at the same time. Do you understand? [Yes.]
I want to say that this year's Day of All True Things is profoundly significant. When was the speech we read today given? [Forty-two years ago.] When we pass the forty-three-year milestone, we enter into an era in which the world will be filled with a bright light.
There should be a season of harvest that ends all the complicated problems of the world today. At the same time, there should also be a harvest time for all the good things throughout the world.
Can good and evil be harvested together? Definitely not. Evil cannot be harvested. Everything growing on land belonging to the Good Owner in Heaven belongs to Him, so only the Good Owner can harvest it. There can be no argument about that. So, even if you insist that you are good, you would not have the qualification to harvest these things, and they would all be scattered.
From this point of view, what is the providence of restoration? What happened? Evil came into being. What is the source, the origin of evil? The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a real fruit. What is this fruit then? From God's point of view, it is the most precious thing on our bodies. It is eternally the most precious thing -- the thing we can least do without in our lives. It was in this that seeds were planted, and so the fruit born from it can only be harvested by God, only from a place God can love and care for.
Love cannot be attained alone
What is the present state of mankind? It is not good. Looking at the present world, if we were to ask whether it is a world of goodness or a world of evil, anyone would say that it is a world of evil. Among the people living in the world of evil, there ought to be at least a few good people, but in actuality there are none. Why is that? It is because of the fall. You should know this. The fall! What was the fall? It was the loss of what, to both men and women, is the most precious thing.
When we ask what the most precious thing is to men and women -- what the most precious thing to a anyone is -- you cannot answer. To a handsome person the most remarkable feature is his or her face. You may even boast about a particular feature of your face, your nose or mouth or ears, but you should know that none of those are good because they are the result of the fall -- they have nothing to do with God. The same can be said for the rest of the body. Neither the body nor the mind that resides within the body has ever been good. This is the way I see it.
Have you ever thought about when the mind and the body become one? That's the question. Is there anyone who has thought, "Even God's mind and body must fight with each other"?
God is one being. Even though there are millions of situations and millions of twists and turns, no matter what we may say, all those millions of things belong to God, and so in the end they are one.
What focal point causes them to become one? If a family is happy, the whole world can be happy, but that happiness does not come from men and women, who are living beings. That happiness does not arise from the beauty that men and women have pride in. The mind and the body are the basis upon which love can settle. Even if the body and the mind -- which are the root -- are beautiful, God cannot love that person fully. He can only love partially. But if love were to settle in such a mind and body, He could.
God Himself is isolated. He is all alone. What can make our lonely God proud to be happy and at peace? It is love. Love cannot be attained alone. You should know this.
Do you understand? Can love be attained alone? [No.] It's an amazing fact. No matter how great a person is, he cannot attain love alone. Rev. Moon here may be this and that, and his invisible mind and visible body may be united, but can he attain love alone without an object? [No.] Answer, all of you. [No!] No. There are more than five hundred people here; you should be five hundred times louder than I, but I am answering louder than all of you. Can one attain love alone, or not? [No!] He cannot, not even in his dreams, not during the day or the night. A person may feel happy for a short period of time, but that is a fleeting impression of joy and not actual happiness. For someone to feel true happiness and joy, that person should focus on an object and have a relationship of true love. Only then can happiness be with that person always and take root, grow, flourish and bear fruit that God would want to harvest.
The family is to be God's harvest
Therefore, it is the theory of all theories and the truth of all truths that the owner who can harvest everything from the world of goodness and evil is the owner of true love. Only when there is an absolute standard, which cannot be compared with anything else, and when we become one with this absolute standard can absolute value, absolute beauty, absolute goodness and the absolute fruit appear. Only then can you become men and women of absolute beauty. If you are not connected with that absolute standard, can anything be absolute, or not? [It can't.]
Do you feel that this is true? Then what is our final destination? In the process of moving toward that destination, from the starting point, what is it that God would absolutely love and yearn for as the fruit he could harvest? What is the fruit of that process? We have reached the conclusion that it is the standard of a man and a woman becoming one truthfully, beautifully and virtuously through true love.
How many years has it been since the first Day of All Things? The speech we were reading was given forty-two years ago. I am eighty-three years old, so that speech was given half my life ago, but you can see that what I said then and what I'm saying now are the same. I have only spoken about that which is unchanging.
Can I change what I say in regards to the path God must go? Can the starting point be wrong? Can the final destination be wrong? They cannot be wrong. The starting point is good, the process is good and the purpose is good, and the fruit to be harvested is the complete fulfillment of all things hoped for by God. The crop to be harvested that God can hold on to, love and boast of eternally is not a thing.
Do you understand? You should know that the crop is not apples, money or knowledge. Then what is it? The crop to be harvested, which brings you and I together forever and is sought by God, is nothing other than the family -- started, grown and matured through true love.
Is that right, or wrong? [It's right.] Should you wish for such a standard from the bottom of your hearts, or not? [We should wish for it.] If you do not wish for it, at the time God chooses those families to be harvested, you will enter the spirit world and be deemed far below the standard.
Considering your hearts in your everyday lives and looking around at this woman and that man -- at men and women in general -- with regard to the fruit to be harvested by God, the fruit, which is always based on the truth that God can boast of as a jewel of the mind, the body and the environment, you should know that beauty alone cannot become that fruit.
Even if Rev. Moon is the greatest man on earth, he cannot become that fruit alone. You cannot achieve the fruit of love alone. You should know that you absolutely need an object when it comes to love.
What True Parents say ought to be in one and only one language and should not need interpretation and translation. You should know that. Is there anyone who likes learning foreign languages? When I first came to America... it is the same even now... whenever I found a new word, I looked it up in the dictionary and wrote it down in a notebook; but as I grow older I remember less, not more. There was a time when I could remember ten pages of words from my notebook, which I had looked up in a dictionary. I could even remember the spellings and on which page I could find a word, but now I can't remember very clearly; those pages are faint in my memory.
I think as a person grows older he approaches a period in which he cannot remember a word unless he looks it up more than twenty times. It's normal to have to look it up five or six times. Can you imagine how difficult it was for me to learn English from when I was fifty-two until I was nearly seventy? You should remember that I learned English amidst many hardships and difficulties, because I thought I did not have the right to be a parent if I could not even understand the language of the people of the English-speaking world, who are in the children's position. It would take young people about a year and a half to learn Korean by memorizing 150 pages of a Korean book, but they are not doing it... I told you I would use an interpreter until the end of the 1980s and that from 1985 you should study Korean, but it seems that all the children here are fake.
Why can't you understand what your True Parents are saying? Why do you need an interpreter? Don't you realize what a shameful fact that is? Evidently, you were adopted by someone else and lost your parents and so grew up in a country other than your own and do not know the love of your parents.
That is why American people, and the people of the world as a whole, do not know the love of parents. You do not know the love of a father or a mother. You do not know the love of a brother or a sister. You do not know the love of a spouse. Civilization has been ruined; it has been corrupted by individualism, which causes you to deny your own families.
This world would be in ruins right now if not for Rev. Moon. Through thirty years of tearful struggle, I have insisted on the restoration of families; the family is more important than the nation. I have spoken of the natural law of families. God's harvest fruit is not an individual but a family -- and not just any kind of family, but an ideal family.
An ideal family has the parents and the children in a vertical relationship. There can only be God and Adam and Eve. The relationship between God and Adam and Eve is a parent-child relationship, no doubt about it. God is the father, and Adam and Eve are the son and daughter. To become sons and daughters, for the family to be formed, true love and true life must be brought together in the blood lineage.
Even the best couple in the world, which lived happily and affectionately and claimed that they were the ideal couple described by Rev. Moon, couldn't be an ideal couple. Why couldn't they be? They wouldn't yet have formed a family. There must be a family! For sure! Say that. [For sure!] Not just a husband and a wife. That ends in one generation only, just one generation. Your thinking must be straight on this. Even if you loved each other and had become one, it would all end in the one generation. Even if you lived on earth luxuriously, with plenty to eat, once you went to the spirit world it would all be over. Such people are a burden to the world.
Because they'd be indebted to the world, once they'd gone to the spirit world, such people would have to pay back what they owed. They have to pay it back with the fruit of their harvest, but they would already have claimed for themselves all the good things that could be harvested. Theoretically, these indebted people could not usually be touched by God's love, and so they'd go to hell. You should therefore try to realize rationally that such people create hell automatically. Do you understand?
There is nothing dirty in love
Okay, do you need to hear what Rev. Moon has to say? Is it interesting or shocking? It is very pleasant -- maybe the most pleasant experience in life -- to get together with your beloved spouse and make love. Theoretically speaking, those who deny themselves that happiness in order to listen to me speak -- which is even more interesting! -- stay up nights to listen, are on the alert, and keep to that path every day and every year, for perhaps all of their lives, will come closer than anyone else to becoming the fruit of God's blessed harvest.
Can all the people present here do that, or can't you? Raise your right hands, not your left hands, if you are sure you can do so. American people have a tendency to raise their left hands. Is it because they are all left-handed? You should know that when you raise your hands, you should raise your right hands. It is impolite to raise your left hands. That is because men usually stand on a woman's right side, in order to protect her.
On that note, it is also interesting to know that among the Westerners, there are many left-handed people and there are also a remarkable number of people who sleep on their stomachs. When I first came to America, I found it very strange that there are so many left-handed people. In the East, it is very difficult for left-handed people to get married.
Do you understand? Did God create Adam and Eve because he needed them, or because he did not need them? [He needed them.] He absolutely needed them, through each of the three stages. The three stages are the formation period in the womb, the growth period on earth and the completion period in heaven-the sunlight period...
Do we consume food or water? We say we eat food, but the main thing we consume is water, which is in a state of equilibrium inside our body-three-quarters of which consists of water. We learn to do this inside our mother's womb. We start our lives by drinking our mother's breast milk, don't we? Isn't that a liquid like water? Our body likes water. The mouth is the symbol of the period inside the womb.
The nose is the symbol for the phase when we are taking in air. If we destroy all the organs used in drinking water and use the nose-which is needed when we come out into the world of air -- to take in water, seven or eight gulps of water taken in that way would surely kill you.
The organ whose door should be preciously guarded is the reproductive organ.
Although the nose breathes in air, it does not the like air itself. The nose was also made to drink in the smell of love. When men live together, they hate to smell each other. When they smell someone else's stinking feet while sleeping, they kick each other and turn the other way round. Women, though, like to smell men's sweat. At least that's what I have heard. Is there any woman who does not like the smell of men's sweat? I don't think so. And since a man works so hard for a woman, even were he to kick his smelly socks off his feet in front of the woman, when she was well-dressed and made up, and even if those socks were to land on the woman's lap, she should be able to pick up those socks and endure the smell. That is the smell of a man's hard work for the sake of a woman...
That is why the noses of men and women are different. Men's noses like to smell women. Do women's noses like to smell men, or not? [No.] Of course, they do not like to smell women. I'm glad you understand what I am saying. That is why there is nothing dirty in love. That is how first love is.
The deep love of husband and wife
I had a younger sister who was very precious to me. She was better than I am, and sometimes I thought she was as wonderful as God. I loved her with all of my heart, but then she became sick. She died when she was eight years old. Even now I think of her. Love can sometimes be frightening. I am 83 years old, but sometimes I think to myself that when I go to the spirit world, one of the first things I will do is to look for her. Whenever I find myself thinking such thoughts, I realize once again that love's spell is something that cannot be blocked by anything, not even human reasoning or desire for the most precious treasures.
My mother found out that there was something wrong with my sister by tasting her excrement. I saw her take my sister's feces in her hands to taste it. Those who have never experienced that kind of mother's love will go to hell. Do you think you could taste your husband's excrement if he was sick and the only way to cure him was by tasting it? Well, could you or couldn't you?
That's why I am saying you have never truly loved anyone. Only the love between a man and a woman, deeper and stronger than the love of a mother, qualifies as the fruit that God harvests and puts in His storeroom as an eternal treasure. If you have loved your spouse more deeply than a mother loves her child, you will have experienced deeper love than that which compels you to live with your parents. You would be able to say goodbye to your mother and move in with your spouse. You would be able to leave your homeland, marry a foreigner and go abroad to live with him, crossing the Pacific Ocean, mountains and vast plains on the way, to find a love that is deeper than a mother's love for her children.
If a husband loves his wife and a wife loves her husband more than a mother loves her daughter, are they still devoted sons and daughters? They are more than that. Even sons and daughters of excellent caliber, who are happy to receive the love of their parents, have to acquiesce to conjugal love, which is even deeper than parental love; they have to bow their heads in submission. This great love between a husband and wife, harvested by God and stored in a storeroom in heaven, could then be taken by anybody and planted, so that more fruits of true love, which God could harvest, would be yielded. In this way, the fruit of true love would spread to the world, and that world would become the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
This fruit, which would grow in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and which would flourish as part of the ecosystem and become an eternal and unchanging model, would then become the substance that would bring about great results and be planted for thousands and tens of thousands of generations -- finally resulting in the expansion of heaven -- and become the cause for the realization of God's dreams of an ideal world. What I am saying is logical and undeniable, and so it would be reasonable to say "Amen."
Do you understand what I am saying? You clever American women, can you understand? Seventy percent of Christian churchgoers are women. These women have affairs and are spendthrifts, and complicate the world by using fake fragrances. They make themselves into fake beauties using lipstick and having manicures. Why do you need these kinds of things? The number of cells in your body starts to decrease when you pass the age of twenty-three. Therefore, you should get married before turning twenty-four, while you are in your prime.
The fruit God wishes for more than the love of a mother or a father is the love of a husband and wife, which is greater than the love of parents for their children. Is there a couple in America who share such love? There isn't. They are all like leaves falling in the autumn wind. While the fruit to be harvested becomes ripe, they fall prematurely and become nothing but fertilizer. You may say you do not want to be fertilizer in a storeroom in hell, but wait until you die. All of you who do not share such love will end up there, be you the president or anyone else.
Father teaches out of the desire to save
Though Adam and Eve fell when they were sixteen years old, do you think they knew God better than any of the forty-three American presidents have? Adam and Eve definitely knew God very well. Nonetheless, God sent them to hell. The descendants of Adam and Eve are even more evil, so it is almost as if they are riding an express train bound for hell. Who can stop this misfortune? A nation's presidents certainly can't. This is not something that can be decided by laws made by earthly nations. Only God can stop it. Those who do not know God cannot go to heaven.
When I start speaking about this kind of thing, a day is not long enough for all I have to say. The longest lecture I've ever given lasted 16 hours and 45 minutes. That's my record. The first time I gave a lecture in the U.S., the interpreter could not hold it in and eventually wet his pants. His urine flowed on the floor. Later, he even defecated while he was interpreting. It started to stink, so I asked him, "How could you do that here? !" And yet I went on talking. Even smelling the stink of his excrement I went on talking all night, because America was dying, and I had to save it. That is how much I have loved the American people.
I heard that nowadays a pastor who gives sermons that are more than twenty minutes long is soon unpopular with his congregation. Is that true? How long have I talked today, almost an hour? Kwak Chung-Hwan, how long have I talked? Has it been an hour, or more? [Rev. Kwak: An hour and ten minutes.] In that case I'd better run away. [Laughter] Are the people here Americans, or the people of heaven? Do you want to listen to more of my speech even though it's been over an hour? Would you pay a tuition fee for the interesting things I am telling you?
Can anything be free of charge, American members? I have seen children asking their parents to pay them to work, and I have also seen parents who will lend, rather than give, a thousand dollars to one of their children.
It should be the same in the Unification Church, right? If Rev. Moon is smart, should he teach for free, or teach for a very high fee? You should learn for free while I'm teaching for free. What I am telling you now is something that you couldn't afford, even if you'd brought along all of your checkbooks and your father's and your mother's and even your sons and daughters' checkbooks. Even if you were to bring all the money in a dozen people's bank accounts, you wouldn't have enough money to pay for what I am teaching you now.
What I am trying to say is that it was the same for God. For all the money in the world, even God could not teach Adam and Eve what His will was. If He could have taught them His will and stopped them, he would never have let Adam and Eve fall. How could this problem be solved? I have solved the problem for you and have built a straight road for you to follow, so you can learn what I am teaching you for free. It's free of charge.
Nations persecuted the Unification Church and there were even cases where children put their mothers in jail. Persecutors resorted to all kinds of evil deeds to stop our members from coming to the Church. Now the followers have all become old. They are so old they are almost on their deathbeds, and when they die, what will happen? Can dead branches put forth new shoots? If the old generation cannot put forth shoots, they will go to ruin, and that is the way it should be.
The family pledge is our guide
Those men and women who do not want to have children will drive their countries into ruin. They should know that not having children is an act of betrayal to the heavenly nation that will destroy it. That is why Mrs. Moon, my wife, has been pregnant 18 times and given birth to thirteen children. Look at my sons. All of you look here. They are all tall, and I want to show them off. Stand up. Stand up for a minute. [Applause]
Did Mother do well in having so many sons and daughters, or not? They are handsome, and some are graduates of Harvard University. They told me that while they were in Harvard, there were even some instances when they were sitting on the bench in the park talking and American girls would come and sit on their laps. Moreover, if they dressed up and looked their best, women would surround them like a pack of wolves. That is why he shaved his head to look like a monk.
Look, too, at the way he's dressed. When he dresses himself so strangely, the girls coming toward him think he is not right in his mind and they run away. He is doing that in self-defense. When I saw him, I said, "I used to have the same problems when I was young, and your way of self-defense is better than mine was. Okay, go ahead with it." If shaving your head stops beautiful girls from coming after you, by all means, do it. It is in self-defense; it is a safety device, so I welcome it wholeheartedly.
Now, unless your families become the fruit of true love... Would God want a tree with many pieces of fruit on it, or one with a single piece of fruit? [Many!] How many? [A million!] You're being greedy, now. Try giving birth to that many children. Do you think it would be easy? The Family Pledge! The Family Pledge is a family jewel. Those who do not accomplish the Family Pledge cannot be harvested as the fruit of God's nation. Do we recite the Family Pledge, or an individual's pledge? [The Family Pledge.] Would you recite the Family Pledge alone? Would it be better for an extended family to recite the Family Pledge or for a nuclear family to recite it?
Just wait until you go to the spirit world. See if Rev. Moon is lying to you or not. You should know that what I am telling you right now was given to me after suffering through many hardships, difficulties and great persecution -- being jailed several times and going through just about every hardship there is on earth-and so what I'm saying cannot be lies. You should also know that heaven and the spirit world look exactly as I describe them. Rev. Moon couldn't be the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord of the Second Advent and a True Parent if what he said included untruths.
The blessing
The name "the second Messiah," or "the Second Advent of the Messiah," refers to the Lord of the Second Advent. That means that the messiah could not fulfill everything the first time he came, and so he has to come again to accomplish his mission. Because Jesus could not accomplish everything the first time, he has to come again. Had he succeeded, Judaism would have made the whole world into one nation, and there would not have been any need for Christianity or Islam.
If Jesus had not died when he did, he would have blessed heaven and earth by the time he turned forty years old, and he would have united Rome and the world into one nation, and done more besides. Why? Rome in Jesus' time was like today's America, the families were corrupt; ideal families could not be found anywhere in Rome. That would have been the opportunity to center on Jesus and the ideal-family realm of Israel, and for many nations around the world to be engrafted with the nation of Israel. These nations would have cut themselves [as a branch of a tree needs to be cut] in order to be engrafted with Israel. They would have engrafted Israel onto the twelve types of branches and born fruit.
In the past, people thought they would have to cut themselves in order to be engrafted, but now there is no one who opposes the blessing ceremonies of the Unification Church. What is more, they now welcome it. Why? The media in the U.S. were making noise because of the blessed families and mass weddings of the Unification Church, and they decided to find out the divorce rate of the members of our church. They found that the divorce rate in our church was 3 percent, whereas the average divorce rate in America is 60 to 70 percent. Soon all the couples in the United States will have separated.
So now, even parents do not oppose Rev. Moon's mass weddings. Instead, they now call our church and ask us to take care of their children, saying, "Rev. Moon, please match our sons and daughters so that theirs can be ideal couples. We do not mind international weddings at all. The race does not matter. Instead of dividing up and fighting with each other, and creating nations that only bring more conflict into the world, we want our children to make families that will become pioneers of peace and make a world of peace. So please do what you think is best."...
The sons and daughters of archbishops should be put under my care. The archbishops have all left their children behind and gone out to do their work. When the master of the house goes out to catch wild rabbits, he comes home to find the rabbits he kept at home have all been eaten by tigers. The archbishops and people in such positions have lived their lives like that up to now. The time when religious leaders have to live like that has passed.
The fruits of true love
I came to a foreign land and went through many hardships, but before returning to my homeland I gave away some 1,330 items that I used during the thirty years I lived in America shedding blood, sweat and tears. And when I went to Korea, I gave out millions of dollars for missionary work around the world.
I have nothing. I am barehanded, but I have not gone around in society begging for money, or asking people with money to donate. If they want to give offerings, they can; if not, they don't have to. Does God live on the offerings He receives? If I don't have any money, I can make it.
Should I sing a song? [Yes!] Before I sing, let's listen to someone else. Where is she? The most famous woman representative of Korea, President Lee of Sun Moon University! Let me introduce the wife of Confucius. Mrs. Confucius is none other than the president of Sun Moon University, Professor Lee Kyung-june. On this special day, I'll rest a little and have a drink of water, while I listen to her sing. She has stood up to sing, so let's welcome her with some loud applause. [Applause] ...
You would do well to record this Korean song sung by Professor Lee and memorize it in commemoration of today. Who knows, maybe ten years from now the person who can sing this song the best will be given the first prize, or a treasure like no other in the world. Today is a day of commemoration, and a seed of commemoration that will bear fruits of love to be harvested and stored in a storeroom in heaven was planted today. When the harvest time comes, I should give out prizes, and heaven will be able to give much better prizes in return for the joy the fruit gives to heaven, as they are harvested and stored in heaven.
Let's conclude. What is the most precious fundamental fruit that God wants to harvest? It is the family. Now, we have learned that the thing we are celebrating today, on the Day of All True Things, are families that will become the fruit that God can harvest. We celebrate True Children's Day, True Parents' Day and True God's Day for the same reason. We are all part of God's creation of the cosmos, and we all want to be harvested by God. Do you understand? [Yes!]
Then what is God's love? What kind of love is true love? It is love focused on God, which you cannot let go of even if you wanted to. Once it clings to you, you cannot get rid of it. You cannot let it go. Would a slave of love want to run away just because that person became a slave, when he has experienced the joy and happiness of a world of love? He would follow that path. Could a person run away even if he were to suffer every day for the rest of his life, for thousands of years, if he had met the partner who would make him a slave of love and form a family with him?
When a person is lovesick he is a man who misses a woman or she is a woman who misses a man, and cares for nothing else. So even if someone comes and gives that person a great treasure, he or she will not have any interest in it. Let's say a woman is lovesick for a man; and let us also say that the man baked biscuits for her, but he did not use water to make the dough. He used his own saliva. He did not make many either -- just one. If you took that biscuit to her and told her, "Look here. The man you love made this for you, but he did not use water to make the dough. He used his own saliva with flour; and he says if you eat this, it will cure everything that ails you." If she were to eat that biscuit made with his saliva, just one bite of it would cure her. Just one bite would do the trick. Do you understand what I am trying to say? What I am trying to say is that lovesickness, though thought to be incurable, can be cured with a bite of biscuit made by the person you love.
If people who are lovesick with false love can experience such a miracle, what would it be like for the princes and princesses of true love? Their love would be much more intense than that. Would they be scorned and criticized or welcomed and praised? Without a doubt, they would be welcomed and praised.
Based on this logic, it is also logical to say that a person who is lovesick would disregard his parents' love, his own sickness and even God's love; but if he were able to get together with the person he loved, the person he was lovesick over--and they could love each other--that love would be the best crop to be harvested in the whole world.
A lovesick person acts like that. Even among ordinary people, loving parents love their children almost as if they are lovesick, and if the children work hard for the parents and accomplish something that had seemed impossible at first, any illness the parents' may have had, even if one or both of them had suffered for more than ten years, would be forgotten in a minute.
Love is a great thing. When peace is trapped inside love, it cannot escape. It does not want to escape but would rather take root and stay there forever. It is like that wherever there is true love. Do you realize what I am trying to say?
So men and women born into this world who are longing to love others so much that they almost want to die should seek people to love before they seek love. When they finally meet a spouse and finally get to love another person, they will realize, "Oh, this is what true love is!" The people who have had a taste of true love would not want to lose their spouses, who gave them such pleasure, would they? [They wouldn't.] What if there were people around who were more handsome or beautiful? Would those people exchange their spouses for a more attractive one? Of course not. Even if they had been sick with chicken pox when they were young and had pitted faces, once they became a couple they would love each other so much that they'd never want to be separated from each other. They would take the first steps along a path that would lead them to the final destination where their love would bloom and come to fruition.