Sun Myung Moon
September 27, 1975
Barrytown, New York
Translated by Won Pok Choi
My topic this afternoon is "God and I." The people of the world, without exception, have some kind of hope and desire. They desire happiness, but always in a self-centered way. What is happiness? We must think it over. For single men and women, you think it may lie in having good mates. Can the mate of your dreams really bring you happiness from the beginning of your married life to the end?
In the beginning, you may be happy, but as you go along, there can be sickness, disappointment in each other, things like that. Your mate may die before you, leaving you bereaved. Can you be really happy in that situation? You might be even unhappier than when you first married him or her. You have seen many such examples among the people around you, haven't you? From this viewpoint, you can safely say that you cannot expect real happiness from those loved ones whom you once loved so dearly that you thought you were going to have real happiness ahead.
You may think that when you have your own children, you would be very happy, but the same thing applies -- who knows? -- your children may become unhappy, disabled, or sick. As children, sometimes you are contented and say you are the happiest ones in the whole world because there's harmony and happiness in your family; but who knows, a little later, your parents might separate.
Just a few days ago, four of our members were killed in a traffic accident. In the other car were a father and mother with their son, and both parents were killed in the collision. We don't know what kind of trip they were making. Maybe they were on the way to visit one of their friends when that happened. They may have thought they were the happiest people in the world, but they did not know what was ahead of them that very day. Seen from that viewpoint, we cannot safely say that what we enjoy now is real happiness.
You may sometimes think you are happy with having a great deal of knowledge. You may be successful in your worldly career with all that knowledge, but is it really truth? Suppose the outcome of a scholar's research could decide the life or death of his nation or the world. He would be a very serious person, but what if he has no money and no equipment for that research. How would he feel? Asleep or awake, even though he may eat or play around, his whole heart is concentrated on that one point. Is he happy or unhappy?
Let's think about power or position. What if you were the president, a senator or congressman. One act or one thought of yours could lead the nation into destruction and peril, or to happiness and success. When you have power, you might think you can do anything, but if your use of that power brings the nation into misery, would your love of power be considered a good thing?
Would money make you happy? (No!) Suppose you have $10,000 in your pockets; your mind would be preoccupied with that, and you could not relax. In the early days of our movement, sometimes one of the members would have to keep a large amount of money on him. I was told that that person could not sleep all through the night. He had to sit up all night, lest the money should be lost. So it is not money which makes you happy. When you compare someone from a poor family, and someone from a rich family, usually people think the one from the rich family must be happy. But it's not necessarily like that.
Then where does happiness lie, if knowledge, money, power, everything can just drift away. People want eternal happiness, absolute happiness, because all relative happiness can pass away with time and environment. Eternal happiness can only come from an eternal source. We have a short life span. If you were asked to name the three most important things, right away you would say: First, man; next comes the created world around you; then God.
All through our lives we have been looking for true happiness through men. But our fellow men alone cannot make us happy. We must have things around us. So, for most people, material wealth has been important. As you well know, human history has been a succession of wars for land or wealth. What is really yours is the question. Would what you possess right now bring you happiness? Would it be a real happiness which will last through eternity? What you enjoy now can disappear tomorrow. Similarly you want to have friends and people around you who will have lasting friendships with you. We are looking for happy people, too.
The Medieval Age was centered around the personage of the Pope, but religion became corrupt. When we entered the Renaissance period, people came to think only about man. Humanism denied and rejected God to find the value of man. Humanism, later on, was denied by a materialistic ideology, giving birth to Communism.
In the present period, people put more stress on material things; both God and men are denied. In the Communist world, in order for you to be a real Communist, trusted by all other Communists, you must be able to kill your father if he's against Communism, or lukewarm towards the Communist ideology. The link between parents and children is denied.
The source of happiness in their society lies in the Communist Party. Apart from the Party, you have no freedom, no happiness. The aim of the Communist Party is to secure hegemony over the whole world. But after they take over the whole world, what will happen? Can they guarantee human happiness?
Centered on the Party ideology, they will have united the whole world into one of terror. There could never be happiness in such a world. In the Communist world, they emphasize only the material aspects of life. The material cannot be connected with men and God in that ideology. Therefore, there can be no such thing as an absolute value under Communism. By our standard, we cannot find any happiness in their method.
Then, how can we find happiness? In America, they enjoy the abundance of material wealth. They have manpower. Can those two solve human problems? We have tried every means to bring happiness through those two things, and we have failed. We must re-evaluate the happiness men and material things can bring. God being the origin of material and men, we must be able to re-evaluate even God, because we don't know Him very well.
Is that the job of a certain nation, or would you think it is the job of everybody, including you? Is it the job of the whole world? (Yes.) Both nations and the world consist of individuals like you. Before your nation is happy, you yourselves want to be happy. Before the world is happy, you want to become happy yourself. You are the source of happiness. When happy individuals are assembled to form a nation, that nation will be a happy one. And the world will be a happy world.
God, of course, would want to have the whole world happy, but can He make the whole world happy at once? (No) With God, too, everything begins from one point. He must be contemplating how to make the happiest nation in the world. How do men think about things? Every one of you thinks of being happy yourself. Suppose there's a German boy; he wants to make the whole nation of Germany happy by his being happy. The same is true with an Italian, and with an American.
But when you are centered on your own self and on your own nation, can you bring real happiness to the world? (No!) The broader the scope is, the greater the value of happiness. If you think of happiness centering on a democratic world, or -- if you are a Communist -- centering on the Communist world, that is a little broader scope of thinking about happiness, since it transcends national boundaries.
In the democratic world, people have come to a dead-end, and the Communist world, too, is stalemated. People are seeking any way to bring happiness to the whole world. In that way, they are thinking of things as God does.
What is the goal of human happiness? What is the model? The goal must be to have the whole world enjoy happiness, transcending the boundary of ideologies such as democracy or Communism. Who can make the whole world happy? If there is any such person in the world, God would like to find him. All through history men have struggled hard to find real happiness, but they have failed because real happiness lies only in finding such happiness as God would have us find.
The whole universe is the common possession of man, not an individual possession. Everything in your possession is possessed in common with others. Even in dealing with other people, you cannot treat someone as your own. Nothing can be controlled or possessed by you, and you cannot exercise your free will over things. When you say you are Americans, it means you belong to America. You are possessed by something bigger than yourself.
If someone mistreats an American, it means they mistreat Americans as a whole, or the American nation. If someone loves an American it means he or she loves America itself, because the individual is not the individual alone, but the common possession of America as a whole. From this viewpoint, your sister is not your possession and your parents are not your possessions.
So, you cannot freely use or control those things or people. I want you to have the idea that you are of common possession so you cannot freely do things without thinking of the public. If you want to use someone or something, you must do so according to the public law, or common law. Under common law, you cannot violate any person's rights.
There must also be a definition of love which can be understood by everyone. In the family, between children and parents, there must be a law of love; between the husband and wife, too. Happiness cannot be brought about when you neglect one another and deny others' interests. Only by taking into consideration other people's interests can you bring real happiness which you can enjoy with everyone else.
So we come to the conclusion that ultimate happiness lies where everything is under common possession. We can safely say, when a thing is under the common possession of God, men and things, then it is ultimate. So ultimate happiness, real happiness is where things and men are under the common possession of God, men and things. And it must be a lasting relationship, not a temporary one. In order for you to become happy, try to find out what is held in common by men, God, and things.
Have you ever found any educational institution where they teach that? (No!) In the scholastic world, some deal with the material aspect of things, some the humanitarian aspect of things, and some God. In the political world, there's division between religion and politics. That is, neither of those fields could bring happiness.
Politics without God; religion without politics -- these cannot bring about real happiness. Only with all those things combined together and headed for combined happiness, can we reach lasting happiness. That is what we have that is different in the Unification Church.
God needs both men and things. Men need both God and things. Things need both God and men. But when we talk about the value of a thing, we can define that thing as most valuable which is not only needed by men, but also by God. When you think of a person, you must think of him as a man, with his material means and his way of thinking about God included.
Up to the present, people have thought of themselves in an utterly self-centered way, apart from God and their social environment. But, apart from both of these things, you are not really yourselves. The democratic world thinks of things as centered on men. The Communist world thinks of men as centered on economics, or things.
In neither world do they think of themselves as needing God. When you look closely into yourself, you will find that man is made both of spirit and flesh, mind and body. Your physical body belongs to the material world, while your mind belongs to the spirit side. Do you really understand that there are in you two powers: one belonging to the spirit side, and one belonging to the fleshly or material side?
There are two persons in you. Very possibly, the way your inner man or spiritual man thinks about things, and the way your physical man does, are different from each other. Is there unity and harmony between your mind and body? (No.) But are you struggling hard to unite these two into oneness? (Yes!) God abides in your spirit, and material is in your flesh, so, you are one with God and material combined.
Due to the Human Fall, there's a contradiction between your conscience and your fleshly side. Had it not been for the Fall of man, your fleshly side would obey your spiritual side. You must at all costs make those two into one. You must unite those two centered on a universal value. What must be the universal value, then? It means, when you rejoice, you do so with God and all things. When God rejoices, you will rejoice together with Him and with material things. When material things seem to rejoice, they do so with God and you. When God, man, and all things rejoice together, that is the ultimate and universal value.
Man's outward appearance can be divided into two, with each half a copy of the other. It's something like two halves put into one. Inside you, something similar to that happens: your mind and body are joined together in oneness. One is a visible thing, while the other is invisible. If you are more inclined to the spiritual side of things, you are apt to discard the material side.
When you are more inclined to the material side, it's the other way around. The best thing is for you not to be inclined to one side but to be well-balanced between the two. When you harmonize your spirit and body while living on earth, you will create the earthly Kingdom of God; after passing away to the next world, you will live in the heavenly Kingdom of God. You will have restored yourself.
In your mind, God's power is at war with the satanic power inherent in your physical body. Do you realize that? (Yes!) So you must know the wonder of your whole being. You are the microcosm of the whole universe; the essence of the spirit world and the essence of the material world are combined in you. When you say "I," you must be able to find in yourself the contracted form of the spirit world, including God, and the contracted form of the entire physical world.
You want to be the center of human society, too. Without being that kind of person, you can not find real happiness. If someone really represents God, man, and all things then God needs that person, the whole human society needs that person, and the things of creation need that person. If you were in God's position, would He not think that He's in need of such a person? (Yes.)
When you look at something, your eyes meet at one focus, and only when those foci are united can you see something. In hearing too, both your ears must grasp the same frequency in the sound or else you cannot hear well. Isn't that true? In breathing, too, if one of your nostrils is stuffed up, can you breathe well or smell well?
The view of personality we are teaching in Unification theology is that you must be someone needed by God, men and things. Only with all three combined can you build your real personality. And only when you find happiness possessed in common by all those things can you name it a real happiness, and a lasting one.
Theology up to the present has taught that God is high above us; we are only sinners, not entitled to meet Him, and there's a vast gap between God and man, between man and all things, and between God and things. God will remain almighty and good, and men will always remain sinners. That man can stand on the same level as God is the greatest of all discoveries.
Only when we view happiness with God's eyes, with men's eyes, and from the point of view of all things, can we find lasting happiness. With those three elements united, we can build a really valuable personality. There are people in this world who place more value on a diamond than on their own life.
On the other hand, there are people who value God far more than they do themselves. But without you would God mean anything, would things mean anything? So, only with God and all things combined in you, can you really define the value of God, man, and all things. We must be able to both look down on the earth and look up at the sky, at heaven.
Is happiness something ready-made, so that you can search for it? Or is it something you are creating? When you say you'll be happy when you have your mate, can you create that girl? (No!) If you say you are going to be happy when you have a big diamond, can you make the diamond? (No!) That means you cannot make happiness. We are compelled to say that happiness is something already there. Men and women already exist.
There's happiness everywhere, only it is not associated with you. Originally, there was happiness. But people have been groping in the darkness in search of happiness, in vain. What does that mean? They struggled hard looking for happiness because they knew that happiness existed somewhere. Then where do we find that happiness? It comes with your life. At the time you are born, you are endowed with happiness.
Then where does happiness come from? You are given birth by your parents, so it should come from your parents. What is the source of your parents' happiness? It is your grandparents. When you go far back, it comes from where? (God!) You are the product of God's love. So, when you are born here, you are born with the love of God, thus you are born with happiness. Your very life comes from God's love. Your happiness, too, should come from God. That love and happiness were endowed at your birth, but somehow you lost them! You have to look for them again and find them, by restoring God's love in you.
How is it that man has not been able to find God's love or happiness? It is because of the Human Fall. But for the Fall, that love from God, that happiness from the source of God, could have been yours upon your birth. So if you restore God in yourself, the real man inside you, and the real value of all things in yourself, love and happiness must abide in you. So, our ultimate goal is to receive the Messiah.
We must be able to restore all things and restore ourselves as real men, by recreating ourselves into Abel before the Fall. Then alone we can go to the Messiah. Abel is in the position of the offering to God. He represents all things. Abel is also in the position of Adam before the Fall. Adam before the Fall was united with God, God was in him and he was in God. Before the Fall, Adam represented God, all men, and all things. Then alone you can be in the sphere of divine love. That is the picture of the whole restoration of man. That can be applied on the individual, family, national, and worldwide levels.
Then what is the Messiah? What is he like? We say God needs the Messiah and men need the Messiah, but what is he like? He represents men, God, and all things, on the individual, family, nationwide, worldwide, and cosmic levels. His channel is open to reach anyone and everyone. Wherever he goes he's welcomed by everyone, even in the spirit world. That is the personality we want to build. The Messiah is that kind of person.
God both needs him and welcomes him. All of mankind welcomes him, and all things welcome him. Only satanic people wouldn't welcome him, because they are men of darkness, fallen men. Are there more fallen men in this world, or more men of God in this world? (Fallen.) Religions are struggling hard to restore more people to God's side.
You are still in need of the Messiah, so do you have real happiness yet? (No!) Only by locating the Messiah and connecting with him can you inherit what he has. That's the way you reach God. Adam, before his Fall, had things in common with God, and the Messiah also has things in common with God. Are you like that yet? (No!) You must be able to have not something, but all things in common with God.
The theological seminary students are proud of being enrolled there, and you study hard, but you must have something in your mind in studying. Theological knowledge alone won't give anything. Your heart and zeal towards God, and knowing how to apply those things in your everyday life -- all those things will determine what you are going to be. Can you restore yourself in the real sense if God is still far above you? When you are united with God, would anything pull you apart? (No!)
When you think of the relationship between God and you, you must be able to reject temptation coming from any direction by way of misdirected love. In reality, the whole world is under satanic dominion, so you must keep alert. Wherever you go, you must be sure that you will not be tempted by any satanic inducement. Rather, you must think of being the savior to all other people; so, you must be able to save those people from evil temptation.
Then you are entitled to be the second Messiah, or second savior. That's the qualification to be sons and daughters of God. Your attitude must be: "No evil power is entitled to seduce me. The whole world is in the position of the archangel. So, you are in the position to be dominated by me, but not to dominate me. I have God as my Father, so everything belonging to God is mine."
What belongs to Germany is mine, what belongs to America is mine -- can you say that? (Yes!) You must have that much confidence. That kind of "I" is entitled to be in the original world of God's dominion. Whenever you consider the love affairs prevailing in this world, you must tell yourself to exterminate all those things with your own hands.
Would God take delight in free sex? (No!) If you see that kind of thing being done in your neighborhood, in your relatives, in your family, you must be able to root it out. You must say that you will never even look at it. Or, if possible, you will exterminate that kind of thing. Wherever you go, you must be in the subject position. You must be proud of being the second Messiah to save the rest of the world from the dungeon of evil.
The first Messiah, Jesus, was crucified on the cross. You must ask yourself, "Can't I go through the suffering of the cross?" You must do greater things than Jesus did. You must be a greater person than Jesus was. If you are really entitled to be the sons and daughters of God, the whole world will be yours. Then, men will be yours, so, when you see someone trodden upon by satanic power, you must say, "This is mine. How can you invade my possession?"
You must feel that the whole universe would like to come under your dominion. Whenever you are out in nature, do you feel that all of nature wants to belong to you? Do you feel that the whole universe is dancing in joy to meet you? If you are spiritually attuned, you will see that and you will hear nature speak to you.
You can freely speak back and forth with spirit men. When you converse with spirit men, you will find that those people know what real happiness is, and they envy you because you have Godly love. They long to receive God's love. Before those people you will be utterly happy because you have divine love; you will want to smile from ear to ear.
You will feel like shouting at the top of your voice, "I'm the happiest person in the world!", and your voice will resound all through the cosmos. Your happiness will be contagious, making other people happy. When you become like that, you are entitled to be on the same level as God, enjoying God's happiness, man's happiness, and the happiness of all things combined in your happiness. Only in love can you be united with Him.
The subject this afternoon was "God and I." God and I become happy when we are united into one in divine love. We must be able to locate that love of the highest dimension. If you have had the experience of loving your husband or wife, that's nothing compared to the divine love you will feel. The love you have experienced was at best love on or under the level of the archangel. So you can just imagine how much more thrill and intoxication there would be, when you really feel the love of Adam before the fall, in union with God.
You will be intoxicated with divine love. You are drunk with the love of God, and it will last forever. (Laughter) When you miss some person there, you will miss him with your whole body, including all five senses of yours. You forget to sleep, to eat. In that case, the sensation of love is stronger than a thunderbolt. Every cell of yours will be stimulated by love. You will hear every cell shouting with joy.
If you experience that kind of love, you can never deny God. That is the standard of real happiness for mankind. In that case, you are on the same level with God, and you are the one who can make God happy for eternity. That means God cannot be happy without you. It is the right of every human being to locate such happiness and enjoy it.
You must love your nation more than any one else does. You must love your parents more than any other person would. In loving your brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends, you must love them more than anybody else. In loving nature, you must love it more than any other person would. Then they will belong to you. If you reach that realm, you will feel the mystery of life, you will be drunk with the love of God. How wonderful that must be.
The surest way to become like that is to know God. When you know that God has the heaviest burden on His shoulders, you must be able to shoulder the burden onto yourself. Then God will be working with you. When you are absorbed in that kind of thinking, you can look at nature and say, "I'm carrying the burden in place of God." When you look at men, you can tell yourself, "I have the burden of God on my shoulders."
You feel the right to do that, and you feel joy from that. In that case, however bitter a situation you are placed in, you will not complain but instead you will be joyous. If you become that kind of person, compare yourself with ordinary people. Between the two levels there's a vast gap. In that case, you can say that without me, things cannot rejoice. Without me, the church cannot become perfect.
Without me, the whole group -- the theological seminary -- nothing will become perfect. Then you can be confident of becoming the light of the world, shining out to every corner. If you become like that, somehow people are drawn to you, people miss you and long to be with you. Your goodness will be detected right from the first moment of meeting.
Those who see me in prayers, visions and dreams, hold up your hands. I want all of you to have that kind of experience. It is natural for all members to see me, either in visions or dreams, always teaching you what to do. That is what we have different here in this movement. In the past, in order for believers in Christ to see him in visions or dreams it took many years of prayerful life.
But in the Unification movement, if you pray hard that will happen within seven days' time, or within seven months at the longest. There are quite a few, I'm sure, who had already seen me before joining the movement. Why would this be so? Because divine love dominates the whole world, through eternity. In the spirit world, one year corresponds to thousands and millions of years. There's no difference between today and tomorrow. It transcends time and space.
After we have established a national foundation, after having restored a nation, daylight will come, like dawn after the nocturnal darkness. The whole world will be shining because of the light emitted from us. You must feel the blessedness of being Unification Church members. Don't let go of the chance. And where you are situated now is not the level where you are going to be.
You must go deeper and deeper, higher and higher. It is not by studying at the theological seminary that you acquire that. You must cultivate your inner-self, by way of prayers and practice. You must be able to love nature as though it were yours; love the building, love everything here as though it were yours. Love the people here as though they were your people. That's the way you should be training yourselves. Now that you have learned how to acquire real happiness, I want you to put it into practice in your everyday life.
I don't talk very much about spirit world. If I always talk about the spiritual world, it will be too much for you. After you build the best personalities with God, men and all things combined in you, then I can really let you know the whole nature of the spirit world. Even for me, it took my lifetime to investigate spirit world and bring everything there into light.
If I want to set up my antenna reaching spirit world and concentrate on discriminating between good and evil and what you have done in your past, I can pick you out. You must not judge me from my outward appearance, because I come down to your level to lead you up. The level you are ultimately going to be on will be the highest by God's standard.
I want you to cultivate in yourself the spiritual sense. Try to see me in your dreams and visions as many times as possible. After a hard day's work fundraising, maybe on your way back in the bus, you will doze off. Very possibly, you will see me in a vision. You'll be not quite asleep, but you will see me. By being near me you will feel what divine love is like.
When you are out on the street and people call you names or ignore you, you could sink deeply into despair and frustration. If, instead, you feel like consoling the heart of God, saying "How sad you must be!" you will immediately see me coming towards you with myriads of people following me. You will feel closer to me then than to your own physical parents, your brothers and sisters, teachers, or friends.
By feeling my love for you, you can feel God's love for you. In that way, you will feel and know that God is so near you, almost in you. Sin is something like a chronic disease, so you don't feel that tender a sentiment and love towards God. You want to restore that. If you have that feeling cultivated in you, you can almost predict what's going to happen each day -- who you are going to meet. That kind of person has no fear of death because he knows what level of spirit world he is headed for.
I told you all this in order to help you build your full personality, by combining God and all things in you, so that you can be restored to your original status before the Fall. Otherwise you cannot lead people, or become saviors of the people to make out of them persons like you. In the initial stage, if you find yourself not quite like that, you must be humble. You must always be serving others. If you have that attitude, you can open the way.
Scanned by Hans-Juergen Hutzfeld, 02.01.2008-Duesseldorf.