Sun Myung Moon
February 2, 1975
Although we may be in a position to worship God who is the center of our faith, our position is unclear. Then where should we start looking for that position?
Although our subject partner is established, we cannot feel it. We cannot conclusively distinguish such a spiritual thing as clearly as we perceive things with our five physical senses. When we consider from where we should begin approaching this problem, we understand that we cannot start by looking into the subject partner. We could not possibly start by looking into God Himself. We should, to that end, begin looking into ourselves first. Each individual has a mind and body. Although we have both mind and body we cannot, however, begin to seek within ourselves for this position centering on our body. Only by centering on the mind should the examination be carried out.
When we observe fallen people today, whether a thousand or even ten thousand, do we see that their minds are the same? Although the root may be the same, the minds differ depending on the nature of their environments. Not all are the same. Why? Our faces are different, our habits are different, and the emotions we feel are different. In the same way, our horizontal line and the perpendicular line with which we can form an angle is different. We must have the angle set correctly.
Then how should this be done? With heaven as the subject partner, we should stand as the object partner before that subject. God, the subject partner, has surely given humankind the foundation to respond to Him as His object partner. Therefore, contained within that foundation of the horizontal mind there must be a standard for the mind to be perpendicularly oriented in a direction toward the vertical. That direction surely exists.
When you look at a horizontal line, it looks like a plane but when it stands perpendicular, the standard for that perpendicular line will be different. How do you adjust to the zero point? If you go this way, there will surely be a counteraction. Therefore, you have to adjust to that zero point. In a power plant there are many different types of meters. Each meter has something similar to the zero point from which direction, power and quantity are measured. There has to be such a zero point standard.
What kind of standard is that? It is something that exists and yet does not, or something that does not exist and yet does. There is such a place. Those who practice Zen meditation use the term ecstasy to refer to a state of mind similar to that. You should be able to approach a spiritual level of that kind. Once you reach that standard, you will find something that would surely enable your horizontal standard to respond.
There is a gate in your mind and it is called the mind's gate. It does not open in just one direction. Since your mind rotates, the gate moves as well. Without going through such a gate, you as a minus cannot establish a relationship with the plus. Everyone has that kind of mind's gate. When you pray, you get a different feeling depending on the time of your prayer. Prayer at one o'clock is different from prayer at three o'clock. You will understand this when you experience it. If you pray in a deep and mysterious state, you will know that your prayer will be different depending on when you pray. It will feel different. What you feel in the morning, at noon, in the early evening, and at night are all different.
Likewise, the level of our feeling within our state of mind differs in the same way our physical senses respond differently to the changes of the four seasons. That is how it is in the realm of our mind. So you should know the best time to pray. That time will be when the degree of your response to God is greatest. As you continue to delve into that sphere, you will find the gate. When the gate of God and the gate of your mind become perfectly one and revolve around a certain standard, you will find the path to fully experience what God is feeling.
What should you do to reach this state? You need to cultivate your mind.
Some religions have expanded in step with God's providence and others in step with Satan. Since these religions are all mixed up, it is extremely difficult to differentiate the good and bad. The same is true within the realm of our mind. There are good minds and at the same time evil minds. Your mind may think, "Yes, I am good," but that thought itself is not good. Our minds were formed as a result of the Fall. Consequently, there are some whose minds are influenced by evil and the evil realm of Satan, and others by goodness. There are all types of minds.
Then what is of utmost importance? The way you set the gate to your mind is the most important matter in your life of faith. Therefore, in your life of faith, always be alert to those times when the gate of your mind opens and how to tune it to the gate of God's mind. Always be prepared for this. You always need to have a mind-set in your daily life of seeking and adjusting your mind to God at any given time.
Therefore, be constantly aware of the depth of your mind and try to open the gate to your mind. Then try to adjust it to the place where the gate of heaven is located. This is the most precious thing to do in your life of faith. As you gradually come to stand in that object position, what happens? You will experience a new three-dimensional feeling that you never felt before. You will somehow come to experience that unknown feeling.
In the past, you may have experienced only a wintry sensation, but you will start experiencing the sensations of not only autumn but also summer and spring as well. Why? The universe is rotating and so is our mind. Just as the rotation of the planet causes the four seasons, the realm of mind-in-motion naturally allows us to feel the changing degrees of sensitivity.
There are four seasons in a year. A day, however, is a year in miniature. There are also four seasons in a day. The morning corresponds to spring, the noon to summer, the early evening to fall, and the night to winter. In this way, there are four forms of seasons in a day. There are also four seasons in the morning which corresponds to spring. You can have springtime, summery, autumnal and wintry feelings even during just the morning. Just as large units are divided into sub-units on a large scale, small units are also divided into sub-units on a smaller scale.
Our mind is like that. In other words, the feelings your mind experiences are not always fixed. According to the seasons, it would be good to know that you correspond to spring, but you are unaware that you correspond to winter. You should, therefore, know how to discern what the present time corresponds to by having a variety of experiences and through an abundant life of prayer.
Once you are in such a state, what kinds of phenomena happen? In Korean there is the word ahmshi (a hint). By an example you can understand its meaning: a person casually walking along happens to see a bird fly off from the wall of a beautiful house; even after the bird has flown away, the observation of the event implicitly teaches a lesson. Such phenomena will occur. Such phenomena will start taking place in your actual daily life. The number of these suggestive conditions will increase. You will derive insight into something as you happen to overhear someone talking. Such experiences will increase gradually.
Once past that stage, what kinds of phenomena take place? You will start receiving revelations in your dreams, but I am not talking about the ones during deep sleep. Saint Paul experienced the third heaven while half awake. Do not let such phenomena pass you by inadvertently. Compile and analyze the data scientifically to find out what they are trying to connect you to. The result will surely come out. You will gradually experience that the revelations you had in your dream – which you can hardly forget – will turn out true 100 percent in reality. You will have such experiences.
People or things you connect with in the half-awake stage of your dream are going to appear in reality. You may think you experienced having sung a song with someone in a dream, but in reality you were not dreaming, you were actually singing that song with someone at your side. Such phenomena will happen. What this means is that your mind has entered a realm in which it resonates with the spirit realm like a tuning fork. You should regard such things as very precious.
Then, what will happen next? As God exists, where will He appear? God will appear not in the air but through your mind. Why have not you been able to experience that? Because your mind is not yet firmly established in its own existence and because you have become people who are being dragged around by your body. Once your mind is firmly established within its existence and forms a higher dimension of character whereby you can declare it to be another subject entity, the situation will surely be different.
When you reach a higher level through prayer, you will start talking with your mind. A state of resonance will occur. It will be on a higher level, and you will physically hear what you are saying in your mind. You will advance to that kind of state. During the first stage a hint or suggestion in your daily life will be given. Therefore, believers must collect the vast amount of such facts.
When coming into contact with people, do not treat them offhandedly. Always wonder if they can teach you something. Always be hungry in heart. Have a seeking heart that expects to receive something from those people. After all, what is the self? You are always either a subject or an object partner in a relationship. It means you are in a fixed position either as a subject or an object partner. Therefore, when a being appears who can become your subject or object partner, you will know it immediately. If you have people to witness to, you will easily know what kind of people they are. Your mind would go to them out of joy, by way of thought waves. Every mind has its own wavelength. A butcher smells of meat and a dealer in fabrics smells of cloth. Just as your body has its own smell, your mind has its own unique smell. A form of sensing the smell of the mind will take place.
Our body has something similar to the sense of touch that makes contact with everything. Your mind emits something like invisible electronic waves to look for its own object. Therefore, believers must think that everything is in a reciprocal relationship with them. Why is that necessary? Because we have lost all kinds of relationships due to the Fall. The Fall severed our ties with nature, with the original human being, and with God. In order to reconnect the world of the severed relationships you must always endeavor to get yourself connected. Those relationships can be pioneered only when you take such action. Without such an attitude, you will never succeed in pioneering in a relationship.
All of you must have the heart that is seeking something. After praying in the morning you should be able to sense that something good will happen that day. Do not think that something good will happen on its own course, but actively start looking for whatever it is. This type of attitude is what you should have in leading a life of faith. Therefore, feelings, experiences and putting them into action will bring life to you. All this occurs during the half-awake state.
If your spiritual level goes higher, what will happen? You will start receiving revelations and directions. You have to analyze revelations. Directions are given directly to you by someone, but it is different with revelations – which is why they lead to problems. You must always interpret revelations. Some revelations come verbally and others visually. You could have a vision of a couple of deer drinking water from a spring and then glancing at a mountain in the distance on a nice spring day. Such a vision symbolizes boundless hope and happiness. All such phenomena will take place.
Such things are not accidental. Heaven is doing this to help you to cultivate the field of your mind. Why does it have to be so? The field of your mind is not flat, like a sheet of glass – it is uneven. It is in the form of a flat surface but the shape itself is uneven. So when a heavenly ray hits the uneven plane of your mind, it will be reflected towards a direction opposite to the incoming ray just like the refraction of light. Visions, therefore, are all different. God works in such a way to enlighten each part of your mind.
After the stage of revelations, you enter the stage where you have experiences such as those found in the Book of Revelation. In this stage you enter the spirit world and have various experiences all day long; you get connected to a far-off world. You can reach the limits of a state where you feel God in your daily life. Unless your faith is based on such experiences, you cannot apply the resultant realm of God's great will to the field or sphere of your daily life. Therefore, believers without such experiences cannot be trusted. Faith based on such experiences is important. For this reason, you must make an effort to enlighten yourselves.
While our members are praying, spiritual phenomena are taking place. Such things called spiritual phenomena do exist. The spiritual forces enter our bodies like electric power. You would know if you had these experiences; you will experience a force stronger than your normal awareness entering your body, as if you were in contact with high pressure. When you experience supernatural and superhuman emotions, your body will certainly reject them, since your body carries the fallen nature. Your body will surely come to repel this divine nature from God.
Therefore, if some kind of godly nature flows strongly into fallen humankind, fallen people cannot be purified in a natural way. When this power flows in, it does not come in at once but enters in an alternating plus and minus manner in the way sound waves are transmitted with alternating amplifications and attenuations. This power comes in sometimes strongly and sometimes weakly, all the while cultivating us. You will have vibrations, lose your consciousness, and the phenomenon in which spiritual forces act strongly takes place. This is manifested as spiritual phenomena.
What will happen next if you continue having such experiences? Your physical body and your physical fallen nature will become purified, and through this you will naturally come to accept these works 100 percent. When that happens, even without such phenomena you can enter a state higher than the spiritual phenomena and then receive all that heaven teaches while not being overwhelmed at all. You have to go through these courses to reach that level of purification, as well as the phases of receiving revelations and directions.
Once you reach the level of such experiences, your mind will give you directions. You will be struck dumb when you try to talk to someone, or you will scold someone in spite of yourself. You will experience such incomprehensible phenomena from time to time. Therefore you have to be able to control them. If you mishandle the situation, people may treat you like a crazy person.
It is absolutely necessary to go through such a course of experiencing these things. If you enter the position of having had experienced through the trials of life, by feeling and experiencing that which entered your mind, you will become stronger. You will not be affected by anyone's comments. Understand that both spiritual experiences and their realization are of the utmost importance in your lives of faith.
What should we do to enter that state? Generally, there are two types of people. The first type consists of so-called intellectuals, who search for truth. They only accept things that stand to reason and reject anything contrary to it. The other type consists of people who grasp things by feeling rather than reason. In the Unification Church they are called the intellectual and the spiritual people respectively. Whereas intellectual people look for external understanding first and then try to apply it to the internal world, spiritual people look for internal feelings first and then try to apply them to the external world. We may call the former the incoming type, and the latter the outgoing type. These are the two types of people.
Since that is the case, intellectuals generally do not like prayer. When they think about it, it looks like superstition, it cannot be trusted, and it makes them feel that their own existence is going to be denied. Those are the intellectuals – they seek to find truth by forming theories. Spiritual people, on the other hand, are born being fond of calling on the name, God. They just like God for no particular reason and do not require any explanation. They do not mind skipping meals as long as they can call God, Father. Such people exist.
Generally speaking, in spiritual movements, which type of people do you think are successful in creating a revolutionary movement? Intellectuals cannot do it. Those who have accomplished great things in the realm of faith were not intellectuals but were mostly simple and uneducated – they were spiritual people.
They live true to their feelings and do not care about the world. They do exactly what God tells them. There will arise occasions in which what they are doing turns out to be exactly the right thing to do in that situation. As a result, they turn out to become great figures in history. Saint Paul was originally an intellectual, but since he was struck by spiritual lightning from heaven on the road to Damascus, he changed his mind and went on by faith instead of his head. He felt that by searching internally one found an explosive path rather than by searching externally, which led him to deny everything that was external and to start respecting things that were internal. Through this, he became a standard-bearer of the new Christian revolution.
Such being the case, those emphasizing reason cannot play a role as great leaders of the religious world of the spirit. There are two types of people. You should know which group you belong to. Spiritual people in general are usually not great at reasoning, though they are great spiritually. They may start out strongly, but they become weak later on. Then, since they are not consistent from beginning to end, they do not last forever – they surely drop out at a certain point. On the other hand, those who are good at reasoning and truth but poor spiritually can also never last long. Therefore you have to make an effort to coordinate these two aspects in your daily life.
It is said that you must worship in prayer and in truth – in spirit and in truth. This means that you have to create a balance and enter a state of harmony. People should mediate between the spiritual and physical worlds. You should stand in the center of the spiritual world and be the people who can mediate standing at the center of the world of truth. Otherwise you cannot attain the perfected position.