Sun Myung Moon
June 11, 1998
Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, USA
Opening Banquet for the Convocation on the Family and World Peace
Photo date and location unknown
Honorable scholars, respected faith leaders and world leaders in various fields, I warmly welcome you to this special convocation entitled, “True Family and World Peace.”
We now stand in a historic period of great transition. We have to resolve the grave moral confusion, world conflicts, environmental problems and crimes that have stained the twentieth century, so that we may welcome the twenty-first century with hope. Humankind longs for a world of peace, free of war and suffering. Yet it is difficult to be hopeful when the future is threatened by a “money solves all” mentality that is useless in the face of the decline of our youth, family breakdown, drug abuse and the spread of AIDS. Today any positive influence that national or religious authorities have on youth has been greatly diminished. Economic development, political proposals, and advances in science, communications and information technology are all unable to bring about human happiness or a peaceful world. I
Ideal of creation based on true love
Throughout the long course of history, humanity has never achieved complete happiness. In fact, individuals and families have experienced endless sadness. Despite this, human beings never gave up their inexorable longing for joy. This is because God originally created humankind to live in happiness in true families. Although human beings have lived a life of sin and suffering due to the Fall, they have relentlessly sought the originally intended life of joy.
Then what is the essence of true happiness? What is God’s plan for human beings to become truly happy? God is the embodiment of true love. Moved by the ideal of true love, God created all things investing Himself unconditionally in them. Nonetheless, no individual can fulfill true love alone. Even God needs a reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving between a subject partner and an object partner in order to establish and experience love. Ultimately this takes place in a true family.
True love lost due to the Fall
A true family starts with the ideal of the true love of a true person, which is God’s fundamental purpose in creating. How can a mere human being stand as the partner of the absolute God? This is not a matter of working hard or attaining a prominent position. It is possible only through a relationship of true love. When a subject partner and an object partner establish an ideal relationship of true love, they immediately possess the rights to equal position, equal participation in each other’s affairs, and equal inheritance of true love.
God’s true love moved Him to create human beings as His object partners. This being the case, the most precious thing for all people is the fulfillment of a true family centered on the original true love by which God created human beings. Thus true love is the basis for human happiness. Within true love there is infinite joy, eternal freedom and eternal harmony.
God is each person’s subject partner of true love, true life and true ideals. Therefore human beings became the object partners of true love, true life and true ideals. God is the Parent, the Creator, and human beings are conceived as His children and are designed to become one body with Him in true love. God originally created true human beings to live in joy. Our minds and bodies were meant to be united with God’s love and intoxicated by it. God created human beings so that He could experience infinite joy by participating in true families’ lives of happiness. Through the experience of true love, God wanted to live together with us and achieve harmonious oneness with us. However, the first ancestors of humanity fell.
All of us constantly live with a sense of intense conflict within ourselves. It is a conflict between the inclination of the self-centered mind that strives to fulfill evil desires, and the inclination of what I call the “original mind” that strives to fulfill good desires. We say “my body” and “my mind” as though we were a unitary being, yet we also feel within ourselves the clash between the divided body and mind. The mind and body struggle and often contradict each other. This is due to the Fall of the first human ancestors.
This division and conflict in each individual has expanded to all levels of existence, sowing division and grief in families and societies, and ultimately in nations, the world and the cosmos.
The Fall violated heavenly law through Satan’s selfish and false love. Consequently it brought about ignorance of God and true love. Through this human beings lost not only God, but also any sense of their own original value. Dominated by Satan’s false love, we lost the ability to establish true families centered on true love. Without this fundamental lifeline to happiness we have been unable to become true people, unable to attain the oneness of mind and body necessary to complete the original ideal.
Basis of unity between mind and body
Everything in creation comes into existence and operates in accordance with a prescribed set of laws, and the highest of these is the law of love. A person does not reach perfection through knowledge, power or money, but rather through true love. In other words, each of us is meant to perfect our heart through experiences of true love, so that we might grow up spiritually to epitomize the heart of our Heavenly Parent, who is the God of true love.
Individual perfection means achieving harmonious oneness in mind and body. Such unity can be accomplished when we learn to love one another with the true love of our Heavenly Parent. In other words, our mind and body can become completely one and we can mature into a personality of true love only when our relationships, throughout our lives, are based upon God’s true love. A true family, the completion of God’s true love, can come about only on the foundation of mind-body unity.
Only true love can build an eternal, ideal relationship between mind and body. When God’s true love resides within the united base of a person’s mind and body, the door of true love opens wide, allowing the person to resonate with the true love of God and the universe. Such a true person automatically becomes the heir of infinite freedom and bliss. This person can see, hear and feel true love in everything. At such moments of seeing, hearing and feeling, the true person will become intoxicated in true love and will live in the highest state of aesthetic emotion. The person of true love fulfills the overall purpose of creation while naturally harmonizing with and taking delight in the environment. Such a person experiences beauty in everyday life.
Someone who achieves this will become God’s complete object partner, resembling Him and inheriting His true love. Such a person will feel what God feels and appreciate what God appreciates.
For human beings, true love is the most holy and precious ideal. One individual alone cannot create true love. Neither can it be created when any partner is self-centered. True love desires to give, give again, and forget what was given, so that yet more can be given and shared. This pattern produces unity. It enables true love to embrace everything. True love is never one solitary being’s possession. After true love is given, it still belongs to its original owner, and also to all people and to the universe.
God’s dream is to realize true love together with humanity. He desires to feel the joy of true love eternally in the world of heart together with all people, who are His children and the highest and the most precious beings of all creation.
Perfection of true love
Once true love is perfected in the human world, what possible political, economic, cultural or environmental problems could persist? There is no problem that cannot be resolved in a world of true love. Such a world is one of bliss, peace and freedom, all imbued with the ideal. It is a world where happiness is magnified infinitely and eternally within the domain of the rights to equal position, equal participation and equal inheritance of true love. The problems that humanity faces today can be fundamentally resolved only through the perfection of true love.
Human beings are supposed to mature in stages as we experience the various forms of the true love of God during the period of our growth. Born through true love, we are meant to first experience, as children, the true love of true parents and the true love of true brothers and sisters. Then, as we mature, we are meant to experience the true love of true husband and wife and finally, as parents, the true love of and for our true children. One achieves perfection according to this order of love. Once an individual achieves unity of mind and body, true love emanates from that person.
Next, a man and a woman, both of whom have perfected their mind-body unity, marry and truly love one another as a true husband and true wife. The true love of God resides within the minds and bodies of this true husband and wife. When children are born through the union of such a couple, they become true parents, connected with the true love of God, and their relationship with God gives them the ability to truly love their children. This is how a perfected, ideal family is formed.
Essentially there are four great loves corresponding to four great realms of heart; these are the true love of parents, of brothers and sisters, of husband and wife, and of children. The true family is the basic unit in which the four great loves can be perfected and the four great realms of heart experienced. It is the foundation of true human love and true happiness, and is the place from which true life and true lineage spring forth. It is the training ground and school of true love.
A man and a woman are the substantial object partners of God, representing God’s masculine and feminine qualities. God’s act of creation was to divide inner, harmonized qualities of masculinity and femininity into two bodies in the physical world, and then to reunite them through marriage into one body that resembles God’s original oneness. A true husband and a true wife represent God’s binary poles, and both exist to form one harmonious body as the representatives of heaven and earth. In other words, men and women are not created to live in self-centeredness. Each is created to exist for the sake of his or her partner. We have to clearly realize that true husbands and true wives exist for their respective partners.
I have already stated that true love cannot be realized alone. It can be achieved only through a reciprocal relationship. True love between a husband and wife is not only for the sake of the couple. It also completes God’s ideal of creation and allows God to be the owner of absolute true love. The absolute true love of God dwells wherever there is a person who desires to unite with his or her spouse as the embodiment of God’s true love.
A true couple embraces God’s true love and moves toward the future with one united hope. The conception of children and prosperity of the family take place on this foundation. God’s ultimate hope is that a couple’s true love will move beyond the mundane realm of the daily environment to form a family that is one with the ideal of true love.
The importance of the family
The purpose of restoration, which is to return all of humanity to the state of goodness God originally intended for us, is accomplished through the revival of Adam’s family, for the Fall took place in that family. Before God can restore a church, a people, a nation and the world, He needs to find one central family that can be God’s partner. Throughout history, God sought a true family that could be His ideal object partner. Such a true family would be fundamentally different in its essence from typical human families; it would be an ideal, original, true family united with God. God’s providence calls for a family, not an individual, because the individual is not the purpose of salvation; rather, families are the basic unit of salvation.
How would humankind have been affected if Adam and Eve had centered their lives on true love, and had not fallen? Adam and Eve would have become the ideal, true couple of true love and would have become true parents and true ancestors to their descendants and to all of humanity. The entire human population, having descended from true parents, Adam and Eve, would have become one great family and a peaceful world, rooted in Adam and Eve’s culture of true love, would have emerged. Therefore, the culmination of the history of restoration lies in establishing a true family centered on true parents and true love. The central true family is the hope of humanity and the hope of God. This true family is the origin of true love and true life, and it is the foundation of peace and happiness for humanity.
The revolution of true love
There is a saying that you reap what you sow. Due to false love based on Satan’s self-centered desires, our human ancestors became people of evil character. They became evil spouses and evil parents, spawning a history of evil and falsehood. Even the parent-child relationship and the basic standard of ethics and morality, which have somehow held human society together, have been gravely weakened. Monstrous acts of decadence and immorality continuously occur and their severity is worsening. It signifies that the seed of these evil phenomena initially by one crucial fallen act in the Garden of Eden is bearing evil fruit on the worldwide level at this historic time of harvest.
Original, true love is perfect. It does not change over the ages. The origin of such love is true, unchanging, eternal and absolute. However, the first human ancestors became the origin of false love by falling during the period of their growth, while they were still in a state of imperfection, or spiritual immaturity. A civilization built upon this foundation of selfish, evil and false love is no longer sustainable. If it persists, humanity will face ruin.
What good are technological developments and material wealth when the foundation of the family is crumbling and we bequeath our deep problems to our descendants? The time has come for historical mistakes and violations to be resolved at their root. What is needed most urgently is a revolution of true love initiated by True Parents. We cannot expect to achieve happiness and a peaceful world without fundamental changes. The problems of today must be resolved by teaching a worldview based on true parents, true family and God’s true love.
Respected leaders, I hope you will research and evaluate seriously the peace movement and worldview of true love that I have planted throughout the world. The true love and pure love movement for the youth and the true family movement of true love, which transcend nationality, culture, race and religion, are not to be seen as sectarian.
A nation of peace is needed before there can be a world of peace. And the precondition for peace in a nation is peace in the family. Power, wealth and knowledge, which worldly people have ordinarily desired, are not the necessary and sufficient conditions for peace and happiness. True happiness is not proportional to how much property one owns and is not dependent on one’s degree of physical comfort. One can attain true peace and true happiness only when such mundane things are accompanied by true love. Genuine peace and infinite happiness can be gained only when we serve others with true love and when we feel that love returned.
Respected leaders, I know you have produced tremendous accomplishments, advancing human welfare and social development in each area of your endeavors through exceptional dedication. And, of course, you will continue to make even greater contributions to society. However, humanity now faces unprecedented grave peril. Remedies from any single specialized area will be insufficient. So I urge you leaders to become the conscience of the age and lead the world by actively creating true families, which are the prerequisite and fundamental basis of a peaceful world, and by guiding others to do the same.
The first stage of the marriage Blessing of 360 million couples, which I will officiate this Saturday, June 13, is one of the fruits of my having taught the ideal of the true family throughout my life. Those participating in the Blessing ceremony have already promised God that they will be people who will form true families by becoming true couples and true parents, centering on God’s true love. I am boldly carrying out a historic revolution of true love for the realization of world peace through the true family movement.
Honored leaders, what can be more urgent than to save humanity from its path of family destruction? Again I urge all of you to become active in the true family movement for the sake of world peace.
I sincerely wish for God’s true love to bless you, your families and your nation.
Thank you very much.