Something is desperately wrong!

Sun Myung Moon
September 20, 1975
Unification Theological Seminary Inaugural Convocation Address

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Honorable Mayor of Red Hook, distinguished guests, respected seminary faculty and students, ladies and gentleman:

It is my utmost pleasure to extend my warmest welcome to all of you present this morning at the Inaugural Convocation of our Unification Theological Seminary.

I deeply appreciate your coming here. I feel honored, especially because to my knowledge the attendants here are, without exception, those who have been greatly concerned about the Unification Church. We have recently had the close attention of the American society drawn to us, and the unreserved encouragement and support from many of you justified and strengthened our work.

As the founder of the Seminary, I want to assure you that we will do our very best to repay your friendship and good will toward us. May our mutual friendship be a lasting one in the divine will of God!

In history there have been philosophies and religious doctrines working in the backgrounds of politics, economics, the arts and religion. Nevertheless, the reality is that they are all stalemated, resulting in confusion and chaos, without having brought about the realization of their promised ideal worlds.

Faced with this stalemate, people are turning in every direction in search of someone to take up the gauntlet for all people and pioneer a new way for humanity, straightening and guiding their direction towards a clear and achievable goal.

The people cry in unison, “Something is desperately wrong!” We have tried every possible way to diagnose and cure the sickness in society. We have finally concluded that the cause of the sickness is an internal disease and not external. By having emphasized the external elements, we have lost the intrinsic and central element of our existence. We are left without hope.

What is the intrinsic and central element which man lost? If we go back to the very beginning, we can readily understand that the greatest cause of the sickness is that man lost God, who is the very source of his life. With the loss of God, man lost sight of the absolute value and focal point of life.

Rediscovery of God, establishment of the father-son relationship between God and man and the resurrection of divine love that we, as the sons and daughters to God our Father, invite back into our hearts – these should be made human conditions toward ultimate peace and happiness. We can turn nowhere but to religion for the great revolution of human consciousness.

Let me daringly say that Unification Theology will surely accomplish the task. Only human wisdom centered on God alone would enable one to make the right decision and enthusiastically participate in this great cause.

Distinguished and capable professors of high caliber will be with us teaching the 50 hand-picked students who are well prepared with burning enthusiasm. It is by these people that the Seminary will be initiated. In other words, I am not the founder of the Unification Theological Seminary after all, but rather the founders are these students who are here before us. The Seminary is not a place or building; it is these people who are equipped with the spirit and ideal given by God through Unification Theology.

We must change our direction from the established theologies which are deprived of life and spirit and turn to a new theology with a dynamic vitality and life style in which God would directly participate. By our learning it thoroughly and having the logos incarnated in ourselves we will surely be able to build great personalities, making it possible to best use the acquired ideal and knowledge in accordance with God’s will. You certainly shall not only be able to practice what you have learned, but also make it a part of your daily lives.

Armed, upon graduation, with a capacity for creative leadership, these students, I am sure, will be able to usher in a new world of a higher dimension after removing society’s vicious social vices.

Any educational institute of graduate level is, in itself, a miniature society in an embryonic state, and is being nurtured like a baby is in its mother’s womb. Therefore until future days when you will begin your life in society, you must invest all your energy and time in studying and training yourself to be capable master builders of the ideal world in conformity with God’s will. Brilliant deeds and results accumulated with our blood, sweat and tears will provide excellent answers to the numerous skeptics who question us now.

More than in any other educational institute, to teach and study in one where men and women are produced who will contribute in establishing an ideal world under God is surely what would please God and make man happy. This is a sacred task well worthy of a hard struggle.

Therefore, I sincerely hope that the professors and students of the Unification Theological Seminary would, as the name implies, be united into harmonious oneness so that the whole institute will have sound growth as a living organism, thus securely establishing a solid foundation and a shining tradition in the Principle to be inherited by future generations of students.

Unification Theology is God’s ideology, God’s philosophy and God’s doctrine; and the Unification Theological Seminary will be the very arena where you will practice the knowledge and ideal you acquire here. Consequently, you are going to build a miniature Kingdom of God right here in our Seminary according to God’s providential blueprint.

We will establish a new world of unified culture with the Orient and Occident integrated, thus transcending national boundaries, racial discrimination and the generation gap, thus enabling the realization of the earthly Kingdom of God where one world and one human family will at last be the reality.

With this great mission of vast importance ahead, it is natural that we anticipate in the future countless difficulties and hardships. However, your strong faith and conquering spirit will more than overcome all of them, finally reaping the victory you are entitled to.

In this sense I strongly believe that the Inaugural Convocation of the Unification Theological Seminary today is the laying of the cornerstone of the earthly Kingdom of God.

I am most humbly grateful to God.

May God abundantly bless you, the Seminary, its Faculty and students!

Thank you!

Yankee Stadium

Sun Myung Moon
September 1, 1975
Tarrytown, New York
Translator: Won Pok Choi
Special thanks to Peter Nordquist for finding this speech

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

As you know, today is September 1, 1975. Up to the present, you have been praying hard for our Yankee Stadium campaign next spring. With such a great goal ahead, we have to organize ourselves and systematize our activities towards that goal. Whether or not we can bring success to the campaign depends on how well we can mobilize the people. Whether you become heavy artillery like cannon or just rifles will determine our success. Up to date we have been fighting with rifles, but we must now fight with cannons. The greater the target is, the more we must be well prepared with heavy arms like cannons. You must either become the cannon itself or the rounds fired from the cannon. When you are the rounds, we must put you into the cannon and fire you out. The question is: how much explosive powder do you have? I want your rounds to be exploded on the horizontal level instead of the vertical level, covering more space and more people. Then what does a cannon signify?

The cannon ball, when it is fired, must be able to tear away the target. What we have as our target is nothing other than the established churches, the universities, and the cities. Why is our first target the established churches? It is because when God looks down upon the earth, His eyes first rest upon the established churches, other than the Unification Church. The churches have been playing an important role in carrying out God's will by disseminating God's word among men.

The churches must not be the churches of their leaders but the churches of God. The churches do not belong to their denominations. The Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist Churches must belong to God, not to the people. But we know only too well that at present the churches do not belong to God, but rather belong to man. In cases where the church leaders have been leading the people to belong to themselves instead of belonging to God, we must annihilate that goal and revise it, to make them belong to God. The goal in the Unification Church is to shift or change the established churches in such a way that the people there will belong to God, and by doing that, to save the nation and the world. In our revolutionary battle, we represent God, and if and when each one of you can represent God and can mobilize as many people as God would have you do, you can bring success.

As we read in the Bible a verse stating that, "Your greatest enemy is found in your own household," likewise the leaders in the established churches are our strongest enemies. It is because they have been leading their sheep astray, and we have to do something with them to make them discard their old way of leading people.

But in our battle when we fight against those people, the best strategy for us to adopt is to move their hearts. And our tactic is not to fight against them face to face but to move their hearts and to encourage them to change to our way. Up to the present, we have been witnessing to the people on a one-to-one basis, but from now on, we will work on a one-to-a-church basis. If our target for each person is a church, one church, then, it means we can reach all the citizens of the city. So all of the citizens of the city of New York are our target, and we must always stress that.

When we look into a church we find the priest or pastor there, and the laymen or the staff -- the deacons and people like that -- and the adults' association and the youth association. How to move these people is the question. We will mobilize our all-out efforts, but when it is not sufficient, we must mobilize our financial base too.

At first, we are not going to tackle the whole church but rather meet the people one by one, or group by group, so that we can win those people to the point where we can mobilize them. In that sense, too, we must have the manpower even to mobilize or to maneuver them. In battle we must hold the balance of power in order to overpower others. Then what is our power? On our side, too, we need the manpower to tackle them. If the other side has 1,000 while we have 10, it means each of our 10 people must be responsible for 100 of theirs. This means that one person must be able to win 100. Common sense tells us it's impossible to work in any other way. We must infiltrate the church organizations to influence the staff members, and then we must be so nice to the laymen as to be able to influence them by warming their hearts. In doing that, we must be wise and not fight against them fist to fist, but rather win by using a strategy opposite to the ordinary way of fighting.

Then with that purpose ahead of us, in what way are you going to employ this tactic? In the established churches the active members can be moved when you tell them, "If you go on like this, there will come a day in which those influenced by the Communists will overwhelm you and you will be martyred at their hands, as the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Christians were in the days of the Mongolian invasions." You can convince them by saying, "We cannot go on like this; we have to do something. There must be either revolution or reformation in the established churches." And they will be convinced. Even in a vague way, Christians have been trying hard to put into practice God's will in this world. But they know too well if they go on like this, they cannot carry out God's will, and they themselves as Christians will perish together with the whole world.

In America the Christians and the nation itself come into peril because in the United States you have every variety of rupture that can come about in the Christian world, since this society is composed of people from different nationalities and backgrounds. So the churches are in a stagnated position where they must turn about or bring reformation in order to change the system into a new one that can apply to the present world and the next.

In doing that, what group can they turn to but ours, the only group in which young people are ready to die and to sacrifice themselves in every way necessary for the salvation of this nation? In the city of New York you must influence the people to realize that what we say is true. You must be able to create a climate of public opinion in which even church staff members will talk about our group, saying that there's no group but the Unification Church which can save this nation and the world. By working hard in every possible way, we can show the people that we are the ones who can do the job.

With what I have just said in mind, if you are going to attend some church you must be able to formulate a tactic or strategy to fight those people. And, as I said before, our tactic is going to be to move their hearts and to do that we must have a special strategy. In bringing about a transition or change in the lives of the people, we can apply three methods. First, we must reach them at the time when they are stuck in a difficult position and want to break through the barrier of difficulties, because they know that if they cannot do that they are doomed to perish. Secondly, we must find the time when they are sorrowful or grieved over something serious because at that moment people can either break through or become frustrated and retreat. And thirdly, when people are shocked or have failed they feel frustrated and they will turn to other people for something. They know that if they retreat everything is lost, but if they can break through there will be new life and new goals.

Having contemplated these three methods, we know only too well that people in the established churches are disappointed, stagnated and at a dead end. How can we know this? It is evident in the way people are falling away from the churches. The church leaders and staffs are sorrowful and grieved because they are losing their sheep. They are agonized and sad because people are leaving the church and they themselves can only cling to the empty church and be faced with despair. So to them it is natural that if they retreat or stagnate there, they will diminish to naught, but if instead they can break through, there will be another light shining out. The conditions in the established churches nowadays are thus well prepared for us to work and when we fire our explosives they will be ours. The church leaders and staffs feel these kinds of things more strongly than the laymen do, so we must find the way to reach them, convincing them and persuading them that we are the only group able to do the job, when they themselves cannot. But do we really have that capability? They will find that Reverend Moon, as the leader of the group, has that capability.

Up to this time I have studied the situation in the established churches, and after finding those factors which make it easy for us to work, I created our tactics and our strategy. Our previous accomplishments, done in such a short period of time, will be a great proof to the people. What we did in the Madison Square Garden campaign was a sheer miracle. The city of New York, the target of people's aspirations worldwide, has been fought against and won over by our hands. Before we did that, nobody in the whole world could have imagined that just a handful of people in a small group like ourselves could do this. The newspaper articles report what we are doing -- our having bought Belvedere, Barrytown, and so on, in such a short interval of time. It's like this: people at first narrowed their eyes, and then opened their eyes wide to look at us. Our purchases of Belvedere, Barrytown, and the Columbia University Club [4 West 43rd Street, NY, NY], caught their attention, but from now on we must really surprise and astound the people at the way we can influence the whole world, revolutionizing or reforming it.

To the Americans in general, it is nearly a miracle for a small Oriental man like myself to have done such a huge job in barely two years stirring up the entire nation of America. And another wonder for them is that so many American people, who don't even obey their parents, would obey this man! Even the Senators and Congressmen are saying that Reverend Moon moves the hearts of their own children and their children are obeying me. Suppose the Senators and Congressmen would tell their children to fundraise and bring the money home, would they do that? Far from that! Even though they may try hard again and again to convince the children, "You have to raise money for the household," and things like this, they wouldn't do it. But this Oriental man, even without speaking the language, has influenced the young people to do this work for a great cause in such a short interval of time, which is a true miracle.

And they know that these young people, when they fundraise, do not use the money for their own purposes. Instead they are fed with simple food and they sleep in a humble place, and they are clad almost in rags. But still they want to work. And this is the greatest wonder to these people. Those people who are thinkers will contemplate this fact. When they look into your eyes they will find something different shining out from your eyes. Maybe at the dawn of the day you were awakened and driven out into the city without even washing your faces, but your eyes still shine out! However fierce an animal a tiger may be, while he sleeps he is nothing to fear, but with his eyes open the whole world will tremble before him. He's bold and people will be scared.

What you have so far done in America has been a sudden happening, a miracle. People will wonder whether I am a politician, an economist or a legislator, because I am working and directing you in every area. So to look at us, they must turn their heads in every direction. But they will finally conclude that what we are doing is being done in the religious sphere. Originally the religious leaders were supposed to guide the politicians, and the politicians to guide the economists. In other words, people in the religious world don't have to deal with the financial community because by influencing the politicians and statesmen, they can influence the financial world too. God above, through the religious leaders, can influence politicians who will then influence the economic world, and the world will be changed in that way. But at the present time there's a great rupture between the economic, religious, and political worlds. That is why I, as a religious leader, have to unify those three fields of life -- the religious world, the economic world, and the political world -- so that I will be able to shift or change the world's direction. I know it is God's will to unite the three to create the world where God's system is applied. Moreover, there will be no question whether or not we can influence the political and economic world. Even though I myself am not a great statesman or economist, I am going to train my people to be politicians and economists. In the future America, the greatest of all the senators and the greatest of all the congressmen will be the products of the Unification Church. In the economic world too, I will have our people influence the whole field of economics. We must not be ordinary Christians. We must be so strong as to be able to influence all those fields to bring them together under God's will.

In training each person, I will educate him in such a way that he can be either a religious leader or a political leader or an economic leader. I myself am like that. No one, I'm sure, can excel me, even in the religious sphere. I will surpass even Billy Graham. Billy Graham's period of influence will pass away as he grows old, but things are different with me. Even though I may die, you will have the heritage from me; but what I desire is for you to have the goal realized before my death. And I'm sure you can do the job, and that's what will make me more famous than Billy Graham. Does Billy Graham have people who at one command from him would obey him and do things even at the risk of their lives, or die at one command? I do. He doesn't, but I do. Isn't that true?

After coming from the sea [fishing], I heard the story how the burglars came into J-House [MFT fundraising headquarters at Belvedere - White House] and John Hessell and Mr. Ido fought bravely against them. Even shedding blood, they bravely fought against them, and the burglars were scared and wanted only to escape. And from now on, since people have read in the newspaper how things happened there, even though we may invite the burglars, they won't come. That kind of courage is needed. John Hessell, as you know, is a man of small stature and hence seemingly weak, but his willpower and the will of God working in him enabled him to fight fiercely. He was seriously injured and was hospitalized, and had to have stitches in many places. But when I heard the story I said, "Okay, that kind of person is usable." I enjoyed the story. He is manly, most manly. When you have a strong goal ahead of you and when things block you from meeting the goal, you can fight against them and expel or crush them. In that way, in that sense, Unification members are the strongest. We have created a most vivid history with our own hands and deeds in face of difficulties and persecutions. We have often been wronged, and when we should have been justified, people just wronged us. In trying to better the world we were wronged many times and on so many occasions, although resentful, we had to persevere; but not this time. In my mind I blessed John Hessell, saying, "in the future you can dominate the financial world, and in the same way you tried to keep the money from the burglars you can have the money drawn to our side to be used for the purpose of God." What I need are persons like John Hessell and Mr. Ido. For the sake of justice, for the sake of righteousness, there is nothing for you to fear. With utter confidence you must fight against even those who are fighting you with bullets.

I have come to think that we must train our people in dueling, too. We must be armed with physical power, too, when it is used for the good purpose or great cause, so I must train you like that. So back in Korea I have organized karate institutes and some other kinds of martial arts institutes. There are evil groups of gangsters, and we can have our people fight against them, if need be. And in some cases we have actually done that and brought them to their knees before us. So people are scared to think that this Reverend Moon can direct even the physical power of his members and do that kind of thing. I like that. I'm a most masculine type of person, and in fighting I refuse to be defeated.

You "know I love the sea, and even today after this meeting I am going to go out to the sea, and I am determined to be number one man on the sea, too. What I'm doing is not just to catch tuna fish or just sell it -- imagine, it will even make us more money, compared to the money I spent on it. When I fish I say, "When I am successful in doing this, I will be successful in the Yankee Stadium campaign." Everything I'm doing is a struggle and a fight against satanic power. I'm over 50 years of age, but I will not be defeated by any young man on board. I can stay up almost the whole night without sleeping, but other people are exhausted and doze off as they do things. In every way I excel those people, and I want to influence you people to become like me.

These past few months I think it was Mother especially who tagged me "Superman." Not only Mother, but all my children call me "Superman." The day before yesterday I went out on the sea in the storm and tempest, and the ship tossed and rocked, and when it tossed and rocked the things in this corner went sliding to the other corner, and those in the other corner go to this corner, back and forth like this. Everybody thought that they were going to die. Suppose there was a small hole in the bottom of the ship? You are doomed to die. In steering on the sea the boat will go zigzag like this, not straight ahead. In Jin was with me, and she would get hold of me, cling to me, saying, "Oh, I'm scared, Poppa. I'm scared, Poppa." Up to that moment she had been somber without feeling like throwing up, but at that moment she said, "Oh, I feel like vomiting," and when I gave her the small basin she threw up for the first time.

You know Mr. Eu who was with me on board is the man who used to be the captain on our first boat, the Chung Sum Hoa or Heavenly Victory. He's a regular fisherman, but he, too, felt like throwing up and lying down.

But I remained intact from all those feelings and desires. Willpower -- the spiritual or mental power is what works. And that, too, comes from training. So as Unification members, each one of you must be able to do almost everything. In doing anything and everything, I want you to excel even a little bit -- even tiny bit like this -- over other people. Then you will be the victors. On the racing field, even though you may have raced 10 miles or 100 miles, or thousands of miles, those who get to the goal just a little bit ahead of the others -- even one step or half a step ahead, will be the winners. In going out to the sea I tell our people that we should go just a few minutes earlier than the other boats and come back a few minutes later than other boats. If we make that our principle, we can be victors. In a storm other people may be exhausted but even though you may be exhausted, if you are a little less exhausted than other people, you are the winner. After coming back from the sea other people collapse and sink into sleep, but I always stay up a little longer than they do to prepare for the next day. Then I feel I'm left alone, all by myself. Then people think, "Oh, it is because Master is fond of the sea, fond of boats but we are not." But what I'm meditating upon is that I must be the number one man in everything.

The day before yesterday in the stormy winds and heavy rain I expected to have my boat lead the way. I thought there would be no other boats on the ocean that day, but I saw one boat there and I was disgusted. Then I cast out the fishing lines and on the third try I hooked a tuna. It was ten after eight in the morning out on the open sea. After the fish took the bait and was hooked, then the tackling and struggle began. We struggled more than four hours -- four and a half hours, actually -- and after these very long hours of struggle it escaped. When I caught the 840-pound fish which was the record weight at that moment, it took me only one hour and 45 minutes. But just imagine, I was on the sea under the heavy winds and rain, and I fought for four hours and a half and then lost it! In struggling, I would have to follow the fish, sometimes for 20 miles, sometimes reeling in, sometimes playing out line. We almost caught it, and then it escaped, and the people on board were all exhausted and disappointed about that. But I cried out in my mind to the fish, "Oh, you brave one. Hurrah for the brave!" Something like this: "I would like to have my people in the Unification Movement be like that," I said. The fish dragged me some 20 miles or more and I had to follow him. It was wonderful and exhilarating even though I had to follow him around. I must honestly accept the situation: I am defeated and he is the victor, and I have to praise him. He still had the hook in his mouth, and escaped by cutting the steel line. And I thought in my mind, "I decorated him with the heavenly stainless hook." In the world of fish he can be proud of having been decorated with that medal. Then his history will record that he has fought four and a half hours against this strong man and was the victor. Then I said, "I learned a lesson from you. From now on in fighting against my enemy I will do what you have done." After four and a half hours of struggle one can easily be exhausted, but he was not. And neither was I. In coming back in the tempest I thought and thought over those things which had happened that morning. I felt more challenged, and I welcome stimulating things.

Sometimes I like change and variety such as I am faced with in the storms. I like that kind of sensation. That's what makes me like the sea better than the land. When you walk on the land, you find nothing different from what it was yesterday and today, for example, walking in a garden, things like that. Out on the sea, however, every moment things change. On the land you can walk decently like this, but on the sea when the wind comes you must adjust and keep your balance. On the boat you need to walk this way, and you will find yourself walking the other way. That's what is interesting. The changeability and the variety stimulates me. But when the sea is serene and calm, it is more so than what it is on the land. Sometimes I feel as though I am looking at a glass plate when I look at the surface of the water. But the thing which interests me most is steering the boat in the midst of the tempest, with such a variety of things happening. But when I drop my lines with the hooks and meditate like this, I feel I'm the most leisurely person in the whole world. I have no space to take a walk or go back and forth, so I have to utilize a small space in doing things. There's no place to enjoy myself, no theatre there, no recreational park. I cannot listen to music either because it must be quiet to catch the fish. I have only sky and sea to look at. When I look at the sky and water, I feel I'm united with heaven and earth. When I feel the utter solitude there, I come to feel God in utter solitude: He's alone; I'm alone. And I know that I'm not an ordinary fisherman, to feel things like that. I'm the only one.

In steering the ship I feel as though I'm headed for my permanent home, homeward bound. This is something parallel to our course of restoration, I feel. Advancement after advancement is my motto out there. In face of the difficulties and storms I feel more challenged and the most thrilling thing is to fight against a situation and to win over it. Do you understand what I mean? Then would you still say, "Why on earth is Master going on the boat so often?" (No)

In going out on the boat, I profit on the spiritual side. When I'm on land with people I cannot meditate too deeply and I cannot plan too well what I'm going to do with the missionaries and with my people here, but out on the sea I have miles of deep meditation and plans. It is far better than even being at home. So then I thought, "Well, I can understand Jesus having been a fisherman." But to be on the boat is a fatiguing thing, very tiring. Just think, you rock and toss all day long. Like it or not, you have to do that, toss all the way through. But I do not get tired of it. I think, "Just come what may, you tempest come, and I will accept you. This is only an interesting story for you, but I told you the story because I want you to know that in the Unification Movement you must be trained that way, to accept something new, something thrilling, something changeable and exciting. The more difficult things may be, the more you must invest of yourself, the more of your energy. And when you do that, everything will be solved. In doing things I will do extraordinary things. After having been on the sea for 20 days without catching any fish, I would go out to the sea earlier every day, earlier every morning, and my people would say, "Oh, why doesn't our Master go the ordinary way? The regular fisherman would do this and that, but he does things differently. He's overworking us, having us overwork ourselves." When I fail I put in more energy and I become more enthusiastic, and I bring success. But when I find you people getting exhausted I decide not to use the person too much. By applying that way of thinking, there's nothing but progress coming to you. You must risk your life in doing things. Then they will come to be solved. In the spirit world and this, up to the present moment I have spent my whole life in doing things like that, tackling Satan. Once I get hold of something I won't let it go. I will say, "Either you die or I will perish." That's the essence of my character. That is the spiritual posture that you as the Unification youth must have. If there be any newcomer here, he would think Reverend Moon to be funny -- a funny man. Well, he's from an Oriental country. He doesn't know the deep side of America, and how can he be so confident as to say he is able to cook this nation? But I will try until I succeed. I will go ahead doing things until I succeed. That means I will succeed in the end. That's the degree to which I have confidence in myself.

We have Mr. Kuboki here. I know well enough the situation in Japan which makes things difficult for us to work, but I will be seemingly blind and tell him to do things, order him to do more and more. He could have said, "Oh, the more I do things, the more he will impose things on me." But if you are not discouraged or frustrated and continue to do things as ordered by me, you will be a success.

After the fishing I may go hunting in America. Suppose you are with me, following me up every steep mountain path and down again, you know, chasing after the boars and bears, what will happen? Not one day, two days, but one -- not even one week, but months and months, month after month, until I catch them -- and that means I will catch them. If I continue to chase them around for one or two weeks in succession, that means they have no time to eat and they get exhausted. It is only too natural for them to be caught. That's my way of thinking.

So let the established church members come against us. We will fight against them and win over them. What I need is that kind of brave Unification youth. Sometimes I would say, "Oh, I wish I would be in the position of the plain members, not the leader here, and I can do more things than these people. I can easily get associated with church leaders and do this and that, by applying my own special technique, and influence them and win their hearts." Well, when I feel I'm getting defeated by words then I can even use my physical power, wrestling with him, and jokingly I can say, "Can you win over me in wrestling?" I can tell him, "Naked we are just the same. No difference between you and me." But I will have more spiritual power, more physical power, to win over them. So for me it is easier to make enemies or opposing persons our friends.

Suppose there is a person who is severely opposed to our movement, and I will visit his home just nonchalantly and joke with him, and I will ask him, "Do you take a special interest in opposing me? If you find yourself in good humor whenever you oppose me, go ahead and do that; I welcome it. In that sense I'm your friend. I just love to do that kind of thing. In opposing me you must need money. You have to print many leaflets and things like that. If you are in need of more money, I will give you the money."

Suppose I find that person at the table eating. I will joke at him saying, "It is a thrilling experience to eat with one's enemies, so why don't you eat with me?" And I will be seated at the table and just go ahead and eat. In eating I will laugh; in laughing I will eat. I will stare at him and look at him, and if he is pleased -- if he is in good humor I will say, "You are a great person. I like the kind of person that you are." If he doesn't come against me at that moment he is quite a person, and I can make friends with him. Then I will have made a friend of him already, and from then on I can visit him almost every day, sometimes taking him to the movie and things like that, and our tie will be deepened. Then can he still oppose me or stab me or beat on me in that way? No.

I have the record of having lived in the household of a person who was strongly opposed to me, one year and a half. I would eat with them, and I would sleep there in their room, and in that way I trained myself to live with the foe. Well, if I find that by doing that way I can save my country, I can save the world, well, how on earth can I not do that? I can either be a hero in the tragedy or comedy, I can be a great warrior and strong soldier. Making impossible things possible is the thing I take interest in. With a clear goal ahead to bring the victory at the soonest possible time is what I want to do.

In order for us to influence the established churches I can even use my own money for those churches if they are in need of money. If what they are agonized over is that they don't have the members, I can send my own members to their churches. In doing that I can show them it is for the public purpose, for the goal greater than mine I can do anything and everything. I'm the only one who is talking like this, and do you think it's an accessible goal? Can you do this? (Yes) Okay, thank you.

So our confidence is that we can cook the established churches.

What I always think is in what way we can get what they want to have. If they are in need of a school and don't have it, we will have the school. If they are in need of a car or an airplane and they don't own either we will get them and let them use them as their own. Then even though we may refuse to have them come, they will. They will be drawn to our side. If the people in the established churches are so moved as to our Church attracts the most brilliant people then we are already a victor. I don't want you to boast saying, "We have a great asset in the Unification Church. We are good at this and that." Don't be boastful of yourselves. Show them that we are humble people and we are doing what we are doing only for the sake of God's will. In carrying out God's will, in our fundraising and everything we do, we do things for the sake of God's will. And then, after having done those things, after having accumulated good deeds for ourselves, if we ask them whether they did all those things for the sake of God, they will have no way to answer. Then deep in their hearts they will think that these people are different from themselves as the leader in the church. Even in religious circles, how to raise money, how to make money is the first thing they consider. But if they find our group using the money for the sake of God's will, for the sake of mankind, they will be touched. The established church ministers are hired people getting salaries, but in using the money do they use it for the sake of God, for the sake of the great cause designated by God? They are looking for places where they are better paid. But in the Unification Church we can let them know that our people will go to the place where they will be less paid, if it is God's will, and they will rather prefer going there to doing other things. You can tell them, "You call our Master a heretic because he's different from you, yet he has fought his way under difficulties and hardships only for the sake of God's will. And we want to imitate him, we find an example in him, and after training ourselves to be like him, we want to do the job for God." Then they can be moved. Then they have the sense of comparison. They will compare their youth with ours, and as time goes by they will find a vast difference between theirs and our people.

For the female members the knack of the thing is for you to get associated with the ministers' wives and children, the daughters. Well, you don't even have to visit their homes. You know the wives are going to the market, the grocery stores, the daughters are going to the schools, and you know the hour they go to the grocery stores and go to the school. You can wait there on the corner of the street and walk with them and talk. You can even deliberately step on their feet and they will say, "Ouch," and you can say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I did that without knowing," and you can apologize and go ahead and talk. In order to compensate for what you have done, you will follow her into the grocery store. "What would you want to buy? This? Or that?" You can help her out, and you can accompany her back home. And upon leaving you can say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I have to apologize to you again, and I will come back to visit you some other time."

Sometimes you would find them visiting the grocery stores at noon, and you can invite the housewife to luncheon, and at suppertime maybe -- almost suppertime -- you can have her dine out with you. Reading the record of what you have done, I know some of you have not been able to bring in even one person in a month's time or year's time, and I'm just discouraged at that and disgusted. Why don't you make a plan for the whole year and have it carried out, one by one? And you must create a tactic of your own how to handle these persons; though it may take months and years, you have to succeed and win him. I know you don't like to visit established church pastors, ministers because they are most severely opposed to us. But as I told you before, why don't you feel more challenged in the face of strong opposition'? If the church minister will find you to be a very usable person, usable young man, and you are always ready to help him then in case of difficulties he would feel like calling you and just have you go on an errand and things like that, and you'll be most willing to do the job, and that way you'll get to talk to him. Then you will say, "It's not a normal way of approaching people, but it is good, so I will try." You may have an upset stomach. Is it normal way to use the medicine or not? If you say using the medicine in that case too is abnormal, is not the right way, you are not normal. In using the medicine in that case, you can get help from the medicine. In face of opposition you can tell yourself that you are using the medicine to counteract what is wrong. With this kind of tactic in mind, there will be no question for you how to witness to the people and bring them. If they need money, you will help them with the money. If they need people, you will help them with the people. If they need some kind of plan, you can work it out and supply them with it. And how can they dislike it? In the established churches they are stalemated, at the dead end, and if we can show them how to break through and open up the way to reach the goal, they will follow us. While they are declining and descending, we are ascending, prosperous, up and up. And if they see the difference, they will follow what is better. Then let them do what people will dislike, and more and more people will be on our side, and they too will be convinced to follow us.

In Korea we invite many established church ministers and have them go through public lectures on the Divine Principle by giving them shelter and food. Even after that, when they are in a difficult situation we will visit them and help them. So our strategy is not to fight with fists face to face like that, but to convince them and persuade them, and in the long run have them follow us.

At the time of Madison Square Garden campaign we tried to bring the people in general, but from now on for the Yankee Stadium campaign we must be so ready as to bring a church as a whole. So from now on, how to mobilize the churches as a whole will be the problem. If only the established churches would follow our way, then they can have the members of their churches increased and they can have the money which is what they need. And all would be provided with everything they are in need of. Just think, if they really understand what we are doing in the Unification Church. If they find their youth coming to our church after hearing the Divine Principle and see them change for the better and begin to work for their own churches, will they object to us? In that way we can absorb the people absolutely, because they will find us to be different people. In that way we can have those people united with us. So in this battle, if we win over them and absorb them, they will be our friends. They will have no reason to oppose us. So this time you are going to become the explosives to explode and defeat or absorb the established churches. And who is going to fire the cannon? I will. You are artillery shells and I will put you into the cannon and fire it. Can a shell already fired come back to the original position? (No) At the sound "Boom" you will be exploded, never coming back. By being exploded, you will cover the whole area of your concern and responsibility. If you are an explosive, your aim and your mission is to be exploded. An explosive armament is expensive, but if what you do by being exploded will be greater in expense than the explosive itself, then it will appease the artilleryman and the bullet itself. So what we have as the armament is the Divine Principle, and that is why it is feared by the established churches. By giving them the Divine Principle we can draw them at once to our side.

But who is stepping on the brake to stop the people from coming? It is the ministers, not the laymen. Then whether to explode the brake or dismantle it will be the question. To dismantle the parts so that we can use the parts later on will be the wiser way. That's what I mean when I say we must cook it, eat it and digest it. Let us dismantle the parts and polish it again and oil it and grease them and use them again for our purposes. This is how we are going to blow up the established churches.

Then what is our tactic for the universities? University campuses are where people use their brains. The problem on the campuses is the students being communized. And the young people's view of the world is being corrupted. In that case our armament is the Victory Over Communism ideology and the Unification ideology. Armed with those things, we will be stronger in every way over them. Then they will see us doing things in the face of difficulties, being fiercer people than they are, even though they may use violence. The chronic agony that is haunting the professors on the campuses is how to influence these young people, how to educate the people, to change them into decent people, when they use violence and are being communized. So before influencing the students, we want to influence the professors and people educating the young college students. And if we can show them and give them the ideology to educate their students with, then they will be more than glad to accept ours. If we can draw the professors and deans and staff of the universities to our side, then it is easier for us to influence the students through them. You can sometimes ask them to have you stand on the platform and talk to their students, and you can tell the professor that you can easily influence the young people in a 30-minute speech. And after one try if it is found effective, you can continue to do that. Then we can make friends of the professors and deans of the colleges and universities, and even the high schools, and then you can easily gain access to the students.

There is an endless list of various tactics to be used. In any and every way possible we have to move the campuses. Our being a religious association, a religious institute, is a great asset, and we can even donate money to the schools. We can even erect or build a memorial auditorium for the school. In the opening ceremony you can address the people about the money we earned and how we earned the money. In doing that, you can almost shed tears, and with a tearful voice you can appeal to the people saying, "We have raised this money by shedding tears, and our sweat and blood for the great cause." Then you can stimulate the hearts of the people and win their hearts.

Next comes how to influence the mass public. You must fight until the time the New York populace will say, "We will either be absorbed by or escape from these people; there's no other way possible." In escaping, they will smile at us because they know we are winners. How to do that is the question. You must be neat looking, of a pleasant disposition and with a decent way of doing things. In that case you are heroes and heroines, like actors and actresses on the stage. With suitable dress and makeup and manner and all those things you can act out what you have in mind. Perhaps you will smile back and say, "Why are you doing that, because you are concerned for me or you have something against me. Why don't you tell me what it is?" After three or more such experiences, you will still smile back and not get angry, and they will be touched. They will. They will think in their homes, "Why do those people do that kind of thing? They raise money, they are ill-treated and are misunderstood and they don't get angry; why is it so?" And they will think deeply about you. To be actors and actresses you must sometimes look into the mirror at yourselves to find out what you have as characteristics on you face, and what expression of yours will please the people or displease the people, and then you can best use your talents.

If the people of the city of New York have the impression that the American Unification young people are neat and tidy people, serious, and can motivate others and are equipped with all these assets, then the New York populace will be absorbed by our side. How to do that will be up to you.

Realizing that the year 1976 is the bicentennial year, the anniversary of the founding of your nation, you can use some very good tactics for that too. In thinking what you are going to do, you must be thrilled to think how many people you can influence out of the whole population of eight million in New York City. The first thing we must employ, the first tactic we must employ is to use the mass media. People will carry our articles in the newspapers. Be it good or bad, they will propagate our movement. The citizens of New York will have seen you day after day, and they know that you are tidy, brilliant young people, so decent and so good in your way of doing things, and when they read the newspaper articles, which revile us and say bad things about us, people will not trust the newspapers. Then there will come some courageous people who want to visit Reverend Moon and see -- and they are more than welcome; even though they may come to shatter our movement, I welcome them because they will for sure find good things in our group. Maybe 150,000 people will oppose our movement and only 50,000 will support us. It's more than welcome.

How to assemble 200,000 people in Yankee Stadium is our only goal. If you will have won the hearts of 50,000, leaving the other 150,000 opposing us, I will tackle them and I will cook them for my part. So arouse the attention of the people, incite the problems and issues. What people are interested in is to see the notorious evil persons or very famous good decent persons, isn't it true? Either way, we'll attract them. Psychological warfare will be valuable. Let the rumor be spread to call me the notorious robber and things like that, I more than welcome it because people will come to see me in that way too. So I want you to raise the question, arouse the attention of the people.

In arousing the attention of the people, don't use your fists and physical power. Just influence them with your spiritual posture. I say I will handle the rest of the 150,000, when you win 50,000. Go ahead and do that, and then wait and see if I can do the rest. Won't you like to do that? (Yes) Some will say, "Oh, there are bad rumors against this man from the Orient; let's go and see him;" or some will say, "More people praise him; he must be a good one. Why don't you judge him after seeing him yourselves?" And in that way people will be drawn to us, so why don't you spread out the rumor saying he is a bad man or good man, if you please. You can even stimulate them by saying, "We are white people; how can we be defeated by this yellow man? Let's go and fight against him." That's exciting, isn't it? People talk -- and you can even tell them that this person was successful at Madison Square Garden, and back in Korea he could mobilize some 1.2 million people at the rally, and now he is planning the Yankee Stadium project, and then after that the Washington Monument Rally project. "Why don't we stop him from doing that before he advances any further?"

You can encourage them to be so courageous as to go there and see him for themselves.

So for some people the motivation of their coming to Yankee Stadium is to see a bad man, an evil man, and for some to see a good, decent man. Well, whatever the motivation, we'll encourage them to come. Let them come. And after that I will handle them and cook them. To bring them to the auditorium, to the stadium, is your responsibility. So in the good competition will you defeat me, or I defeat you? (Defeat you!) Well, I like that idea! Go ahead and do that.

So how to arouse the attention of the people, how to bring the issue to the people is the problem. I have even thought of beginning to buy the Empire State Building, and issues will arise and we will be brought to the court, and article after article will be written about us, and in this way we will cause our movement to spread and the articles will say, "This group will put on the Yankee Stadium spectacle," and then they will be drawn to the place, and I've even thought of that. How to arouse the attention for the people, how to make the issue. Well, out of 100 people, if we can win 51 while on the side of opponent they have only 49 ballots, I will be the winner. It is just barely larger in number. That is the system of election in the democratic world. So before long, in the nearest future the public polls will speak in favor of Reverend Moon, not against him. Don't you think so? (Yes!) Is it probable because Reverend Moon is a handsome man or a man of good build? No. Something other than that. It is because what he's doing is great, different from what others are doing. Why, compared to what we have done in Korea by assembling 1.2 million people at the rally, what we are going to do for the Yankee Stadium will be just nothing. A Korean expression states that you can carry out the job even after having your supper. Well on the way almost towards twilight, sunset, carry it out. You brilliant and well-to-do American young people, will you be willing to be defeated by an Oriental man like myself? (No) So 200,000 -- oh, it's just a tiny number. In trying to bring those people you think of two million, two million, to overpower the place. You must have that courage. Then is Yankee Stadium of any problem at all to you? (No) K-n-o-w? Or no? (No!) I'm in good humor, as you see.

Then with the Yankee Stadium project ahead of us we must advance forward with full effort, mobilized. Do you object? (No) By using a democratic method you said, "Aye, yes." Then you are going to carry it out, won't you'? (Yes!) We have already decided on our victory, isn't that true? (Yes) Then I don't have to keep my eyes on all these things. My job is to speak to the people, that's all. (Yes) Then don't be concerned wherever I am. Don't look for me, but just do your job, I will trust you. Are you confident of this? (Yes) Then towards the end of September I will leave America for Korea and maybe in coming back visit the European countries; maybe, you know, visiting the new countries where we sent our missionaries, if I can afford to do this. Then what if I appear just the day before -- the day prior to the Yankee Stadium day? Is it alright? (Yes -- No) If it is true I am more than glad. I am overwhelmed. Well, let's put it this way: would you want to have me around you? (Yes) Well, which do you really mean? To have me around, or have me absent? (Around) If this Reverend Moon, who is hated most by the Westerners or white people, became suntanned and almost like a Negro, would you still like me and love me'? (Yes) Then let me think it over. Then we decide right here that from the 1st of September we will march forward for the goal of Yankee Stadium. (Yes)

For the campaign, as was with the Madison Square Garden campaign, Mr. Kamiyama is going to be responsible over the whole thing. Some of you may think, "Why Mr. Kamiyama, when there's Mr. Neil Salonen as the president?" Neil Salonen's work will be very big playing the role of the president, and Mr. Kamiyama will be responsible over the campaign, and the whole thing will be manipulated by myself, so we will have unity among three great powers: Korea, Japan and America. All over the whole world. Korea is Adam's place, Japan is Eve's place, America is archangel's place. This unity is what was there before Adam and Eve. With the three nationalities of America, Japan and Korea united with one another, then it will represent the whole world united into one.

What I think is that for the Yankee Stadium project Korean people will pray the hardest. Next the Japanese members will pray hard because Mr. Kamiyama is responsible over the whole campaign and they are more concerned for the Yankee Stadium project because of their representatives working with it. That is going to provide a great and strong spiritual foundation for we can have Korean and Japanese members pray hard, and in having those people pray hard, we can bring the spirit men -- Oriental spirit men -- to be mobilized here in the Western world to influence the Western spirit men and the Western people. And on the spiritual level the East and West will meet and concentrate their efforts on Yankee Stadium, and then in order not to be defeated by the Oriental power you must have the Americans fight harder. That is why I posted the Japanese girls to each of the 50 states. In the local churches, too, there must be unity between three nations. With Japanese, American and Korean united into one -- or any other nationality, three nationalities united into one there's nothing impossible. While headquarters is moved to New York City, the reason for my not using Neil Salonen for that purpose is what I explained. Do you understand? He had to concentrate the triple efforts, that's what he did for Madison Square Garden. For the Yankee Stadium campaign Mr. Kamiyama can even use Neil and order him to do this and that. So if you have a true person responsible over you, equally responsible over all, obedience to him can restore through indemnity the evil way of white people's having dominated Eastern people, Oriental people, by Mr. Kamiyama using Neil. Do you follow me? So there shall be no objection in my using Mr. Kamiyama over all you people in that project, that campaign. It is not because I love Mr. Kamiyama more than I do you, but for the will of God and for the success of the campaign it is the most proper way.

Well, if you people in America are in the passive position, then it means you are going to be blessed, you are going to receive something out of the efforts Mr. Kamiyama makes. Madison Square Garden campaign was the formation stage level of things, and this is going to be the growth level. The growth level is the most important one. The second stage always corresponds to Eve, and Jesus is the Second Coming of perfected Adam. So the second stage is always very important. Jesus came to look for and to find his bride. Something like that will be realized by our bringing success in this campaign. So there's great significance in my using a man from the nation representing Eve. In light of the Principle, if applied in the appropriate way, we can certainly bring the victory. And after the success in the Yankee Stadium campaign, maybe next time when we have the campaign for the Washington Monument, I may have to use Neil for that. Then without even my helping you and Mr. Kamiyama's helping you, you must bring the success for the Washington campaign. You Americans. In that way you will be prepared to work on even without me after the campaign. Understanding what I mean by saying these things, you must not look down upon an Oriental leader like Mr. Kamiyama, but just support him to bring success, the greatest of all the successes we have hitherto ever had. Suppose Mr. Kamiyama will have brought great success for our work in the United States, but he will not stay here forever. He will leave for his own country some time in the future, and then America is going to be your own field of work. After Yankee Stadium and Washington campaign, there will be nothing great or important we will have to do. Maybe we can have an air show or a speech tour. I can make a speech on an airplane flying at low altitudes using a microphone. Then by doing that I can cover the whole world at a time. After our missionaries will have paved the way, when I'm in England I can meet the Queen. When I am elsewhere I can meet the top ruler of the nation. Then I can put those people in my pocket; I can manipulate those people. Then there will be no problem to cook those people. Just wait and see; I will do that. The sooner the better. We will be carrying out those things in the nearest possible future. Then people will praise me and they'll label me with every good noun and adjective, and there will be no objection coming from any corner of the earth. If that day comes, I can manipulate the United Nations.

We have to entertain a great hope. We have only a handful of people here like this. I'm saying great things but you know they are going to be realized. Once I say it, I will carry it out. Can you believe it? (Yes) Do you know it or feel it or believe it? (Know it!) If I say this to the 200 million Americans they will call me insane, beside myself, but you believe me. They will snip at me. If you are not disbelieving me, then you, too, are crazy. People will be scornful of me. They are going to be failures. I am being disdained or scorned, but I am going to be a success. Do you support me if I say you have to pour out your whole energy and whole being of yours into this campaign. Do you support my idea? (Yes) Really yes? (Yes)

We have so far divided New York into many churches -- how many? Twelve churches. From today on they will be assembled together working in one unit. They will bring more profit, more crops than they have done on the separate levels. Would you prefer to be slapped on your cheeks and legs and be victorious, or not be slapped? (Slapped) You prefer the first to the second? All of you, those who have blue eyes, brown eyes, black eyes, all agree with me, don't you? (Yes) So you can never complain, never, never complain. If you complain I will step on you, and you will have no words to utter in complaint. You must be thankful. You must be ready to say thank you if you are beaten and you complain of it. If you agree with me, hold up your hands. Then those who disagree with me, hold up your hands. Then you cannot say I am a dictator. You choose things of your own free will. If you still think I'm a dictator, hold up your hands. Then you don't mind if I step on you or push you hard and beat on you? (No) Well, suppose I meet you on the street and find you people not working, idling away the time; I will just attack you, beat on you, and you can never complain. You promised. I can even slap on the cheeks of the women and the passers-by will say, "What a man, beating on the cheeks of the women!" And there will be a fight on the street, and what a wonderful scene. In that case, that man is on your side fighting against this person, and you will come to my side fighting for me, which is the sensational thing. Then they will want to listen to you for the reason and you can explain, and they will be drawn to you. You can witness to them. That's another way of witnessing to the people.

So I'm more than sure that no one here will complain -- no one in New York, no one working for the Yankee Stadium campaign will complain. So don't worry, Mr. Kamiyama. You have obedient members; don't worry. Instead, you must feed these people with rich nourishing food and have this brood of people sleep well to be prepared for the work to do today. And for Kamiyama, I command you not to eat good food, not to sleep comfortably. I have less of such things than other people. I will go out on the Atlantic Ocean and catch more tuna fish to feed you with. I want you to become plump like tuna fish, and as energetic as the tuna. Do you agree with me? (Yes) No objections? (No) If you really agree with me, hold up your hands.

Why Father Goes to Sea

Sun Myung Moon
August 23, 1975
Barrytown, New York
Translator: Won Pok Choi
Special thanks to Peter Nordquist for finding this speech

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

As you can see, I'm all suntanned. Those who are seeing me for the first time, please hold up your hands. Newcomers shouldn't think that I am this dark. I have been out at sea for quite a few days, and you must be wondering why I go to the sea so often. I want to tell you the reason. From now on, human endeavor will focus on the sea, passing beyond the age of land masses or continents. Seas cover almost two thirds of the earth, and contain infinite resources. Thus, it will be of great importance in the future who obtains control over the seas.

But as it stands now, nobody likes to work on the ships, and the ships' crews are leaving their jobs. The women -- especially the American women, who are often so individualistic -- don't like to have their husbands work on the ships because they don't see them for weeks, months, or sometimes for years. They want to keep their husbands by their sides, so the men tend not to want to go to sea. Will you women folks here please tell me honestly if you would like to have your husbands be sea-goers? Even if I ask the men this same question, I don't think there are many who would answer affirmatively.

We are going to be the masters of the future world and we need to take hegemony over the ocean, which is not yet established. After having sent out our members to 127 nations it is only a matter of time, I guess, until we are able to influence the whole world in that way, but the problem is who will have hegemony over the oceans. There are infinite resources and natural wealth down at the bottom of the sea, so we are going to do the job with Father in the center. Nobody else but our group, led by Reverend Moon, can do the job.

Since I came here I have been to every state in the United States, and I found that almost all the wealthy people have streamlined limousines and good cars, but not too many people have yachts. And the members of the yacht club want to buy more yachts, and more beautiful ones. When we go to the coast people are anxious to know who has the best yacht in that vicinity. So I came to think that the secret of attracting the attention of people in the financial world is for us to own good yachts. That's why I came to the conclusion that I had to buy yachts. I own a Lincoln limousine and good cars to compete with those people in the worldly sense, but now I wanted to own the very best yachts. The one we own now is manufactured by Pacemaker, a very famous make, and everybody admires it. It is a fine yacht. Those who come to the coast keep asking, "Whose yacht is this? Who owns this?" Tell them, "Reverend Moon." I told you this because even you people have been wondering, I'm sure, why I am going out to sea so often in a luxurious yacht while you are struggling hard, studying and witnessing to the people. Now those questions are well answered, I think. In fact, I don't like to go out to sea very much, but the situation demands that I do this. I think it is necessary. It will be very helpful in the providence of restoration.

So in Freeport -- Freeport is where our yacht is docked, near Johnson Beach -- in the vicinity of Freeport everyone knows who I am and that I own the yacht, and consequently they are very much interested in me and in our work. Common sense tells them that the owners of yachts use them for luxury purposes and that they go out to sea for recreation and usually come back early in the evening. But they find that this man, Reverend Moon, goes out at dawn on his yacht, out to the heart of the sea, and comes back very late, almost the next morning. That frightens people.

I have established a record in catching many fish. Unlike most yacht owners, I'm almost a fisherman. They all know that I am fishing, not just using the boat for a luxury yacht. They are wondering why we don't sell the fish. They think, "That fisherman doesn't sell the fish. He must not be interested in making money. What does he do with those fish?"

My ambition is to take hegemony over the seas in the future, as I said before, and as a yacht owner, too, I want to attract people's attention. In the future people in port cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and everywhere will phone the people in the Freeport area to find out where Reverend Moon's yacht is and what he is doing now. And in the future when I want to go out on the ocean on the international level people will find me doing a good job. What I always do first is to attract people's attention and let the rumors spread. Then I will buy more yachts, more boats. Just imagine, if I buy boats in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, on Cape Cod and in all of the eastern ports, what will happen? Then you people can have banquets and meetings there by inviting your own guests, and you will be famous. You will attract the attention of the people in your vicinity.

After doing that, I'm going to organize a nationwide yacht club where many people experienced in that line will assemble, and once they assemble under the auspices of my club, I will win them. By that time people will question whether or not Reverend Moon is qualified for that and they will find that I am a very experienced fisherman and I know where I can find giant tuna, salmon, and many other fish. And above all, they will find that I have loved the seas more than anyone else. That's the strongest point. Then people will ask me to tell them about the seas, and I can tell them many things, talking for hours and hours.

Then what am I going to do next'? At the present time you are witnessing to people one by one, visiting and talking to them on the individual level. How can we ever cover the 200 million population of America by doing that? But we can do a mass witnessing job by using the yachts. When we invite the corporate executives from GMC, Coca Cola and other huge companies to go on the yacht and win them, then they can be responsible to bring the people under them.

Then I'm going to buy a $1 million yacht and stay on the ocean like this, and then I can attract the people very fast, very quickly. However rich a person may be, at best he owns one such boat, one yacht worth a million dollars, but I'm going to buy 12 such boats. Then our yacht club membership will grow very fast, and with a large membership I can influence the yacht manufacturers, and they will be drawn to our side. Don't you think it's worth doing? (Yes) Then we will sponsor a yacht race, and even before we have bought those yachts I will lease all the yachts in the Freeport area and lend them out free of charge. When those yacht owners know I'm doing that for the people of the world, that I will pay them and that I will lend the yachts to racers free of charge, and that my purpose is to train the young people, they will really like it. Just imagine, if I do the same on the east coast in the New York area -- I borrow many yachts and lend them out free of charge for the young people to go racing on the seas. Then the mass media will cover the story and we will be widely known all over the world.

When I talk like this do you really understand me and do you really think that I am confident? And that once I say it, I will carry it out? In this way I can win over all the wealthy citizens of the United States. They cannot even imitate us because under me I have brilliant young people, very active and true to purpose, like you people. So there will be no equal to our group.

During the coming three years I will be the person who has loved the sea more than anyone else in the world. Your pilgrim fathers landed on this continent because they sought religious freedom, but in a way they also came here for their own sakes. But I am going to do this for the sake of all of mankind. In that way, too, I will establish the world record.

When I went out fishing this time I hooked a giant tuna, but not being an expert, I did not know that it could be so strong as to cut the line and escape. I almost caught it, and when I wanted to lift it up, it got away. I promised to catch a tuna for you people and I was desperate, and if there had not been a weather forecast predicting a storm I would not have come back. But in fishing like that for so many days I learned the knack of catching fish, so from now on if I go out to sea again I will surely catch the fish for you.

The place where I went is the foremost place for catching giant tuna. My dream is to buy a villa or a very big training center on that coast. Then you can take turns visiting there. How wonderful!

In doing anything and everything, I always set the record. Suppose I decide to leave my place at 4:00 o'clock a.m., I will get up at 2:30 or 3:00 and wake up my members, and they will be reluctant to go out but I will push them hard, so my boat is always ahead of other boats, and in coming back it is always the last. So in that way our boat is very famous and the people in that area know that it is Reverend Moon's boat.

What I'm aiming at is to have people know that I am the most enthusiastic person, and that once I begin to do things I will never quit until I am successful. And they will find that the more days that go by, the more zealous and enthusiastic I will become. Ordinary people, after one week's fishing, get exhausted and they feel like giving up, but in the Unification Church we pioneer in every field and those pioneer workers must never get exhausted, whatever difficulties they face. Similarly, in witnessing to people, when you are faced with more difficulties you must become more enthusiastic and more desperate. And more than anything else you must pray hard. By repeating, you will get experience. You are not expert fishermen, but when the expert fishermen try three times you will try five to ten times, and so you will acquire more experience than they have. That's the way you become the experts.

I have been out to sea every now and then for one year, but for the coming three years I will concentrate my efforts on the sea. Wouldn't you want me to do that? By owning yachts, I can invite the Senators and Congressmen in the future to go on the yacht. That's the best way. While you go out witnessing, I will lay that kind of foundation for you people.

I have been in the United States two years and six months, but I've done quite a lot of work, don't you think? If you imitate me, if you do what I do, you will be successful too. If you go out to the respective states and witness to the people on a 1/1 basis or a one-two or one-three basis, then with the number of members we will have we can influence the political world. We can choose mayors and governors of our liking. Do you think that I am going to be influenced by the Senators and Congressmen, or that I will influence them? You are right, very right; I will influence them. I'm going to make out of you persons like me, and it will be no problem for you to influence the governors and Senators and Congressmen.

If you want to resemble me you must have the same ideology I have and use the methods I employ. And in action, too, you must be foremost and capable in putting your ideas into practice. My philosophy is that in the face of difficulties I feel more challenged, and I take the rebuffs as greater and greater challenges, and I feel thrilled in the face of difficulties.

If you can overcome three things, you can overcome almost anything. The first is to overcome what you eat. If you can survive hunger, then you won't fear starving or being poor. Have you all experienced at least a seven day fast? Those who have, please raise your hands. Almost all of you. Then in the future no matter how poor you may be, you can eat one meal in three days, I think, and you can survive. In that sense, too I am a most trained person. I'm not afraid of starvation. But on the other hand, I'm capable and confident of finding something to eat no matter where I go. I know what to eat from among the grasses and tree buds and things like that on the mountainside. And whenever I am hungry I know the tactic of how to win the hearts of the people so that they will give me something to eat. So I've passed that test. I don't have any fear of starvation and I don't worry about what to eat.

When I'm at the seaside I am a fisherman and I can catch fish and eat them, so I will never retreat because of lack of food. I'm having you people fund raise by selling things, but if I were to fundraise I would be the number one man in that field, too. I've done that. I can read the faces of the people and tell what kind of people they are. In my conversations with those people I can sense what kind of person this is and what he is doing these days, and things like that. The people are astonished, and in that way they are drawn to my side. I must say again, I can transcend the concern about what to eat.

I've experienced a bit of everything; there's nothing I have not experienced. I am a good carpenter, and I'm also a good mechanic. So wherever I go, I know I will not starve to death; I can do something to earn money. If I go out on the sea I become the captain of the boat. With my abundance of experience and keen observation I can immediately make best use of the few facts I glean right away from a new situation. Since I am so experienced, I even know how to live on a small fragment of bread. When people have one slice of bread I know a tactic to have the person share it with me. It may sound easy, but it is not as easy as it sounds.

My idea is that you must go through those kinds of experiences at least before the age of 30. I'm good at every athletic game. You can see how strong I look. I am strong, but at the same time my hands are flexible like this, and when I look at my eldest daughter Ye Jin, I think she would be a good dancer if I would let her do that. If you are sitting back there or standing even absentmindedly, I can kick at you and you will be blown to the other side. It is a result not only of my physical power but also my spiritual power that I can do that, a most difficult thing. Even at my age I can jump over a fence because I have trained myself for that, too. I have experienced almost everything. I know how a laborer feels and how the fisherman feels, so I can make friends. In order to make friends with such people I will take off my jacket and with the jacket flung over my shoulder I will go to them and they will be fascinated. You have been watching me doing things. I was born in the small country of Korea and the arrogant people in the United States tend to look down upon a Korean man, but this man from the Orient came here into this unknown land and has stirred up the whole society of the United States in just a few years. The boldness, the courage comes from here.

My philosophy is to have my people under the age of 30 go through the same experiences I have gone through. No matter how hungry you are and how long you have not been eating, even if your cheeks are hollow like this and your eyes look like that from exhaustion, since you are young people if I feed you with rich food for three days or two weeks you will get plump again. I'm telling you things from my own experience. Up to the age of 30 I went through many periods of starvation. Would you want me to train you in that way? (Yes.) Well, Reverend Moon has not been made in a day or overnight, just eating, getting, relaxed and doing things I choose to do. No, I put myself through trials to learn to transcend starvation.

And just as you are trained to transcend hunger, on the other hand you must also train your stomach to be able to digest anything and everything. Do you follow me?

Second is the problem of shelter. You must feel at home in the whole world. The whole world is your home. The whole world is your bed. The whole sky is your quilt or blanket. No matter where you are, you have a place to shelter yourself or to sleep. Even in the winter, if you have trained yourself you can survive the cold. Even in the snow, if you can find a piece of wood you can survive. If you train yourself like that, you cannot complain about a poor place to shelter yourself, or worry about where to sleep. If you can't find any shelter at all you can go to some corner and snuggle yourself up against the wall and rub against the wall. Since I have trained myself in that way, I can sleep soundly in the car sitting up straight like this. You must never waste the time when you are riding in a vehicle. Utilize the time. If you know how to use the time when you are in the vehicle to sleep, then you will save more time. So a place to sleep is no problem at all. If you cannot find a place to sleep, sometimes you can find a tree outdoors and you can climb up and fasten yourself with your belt in the branches and sleep. So there is no question about where to sleep.

Then you must know how to win over beautiful clothing. Even though you may be clad in rags, you don't mind. That kind of attitude is necessary. Even though I am a man, I know how to sew. When my shirt wears out I can patch it. I can knit my own socks. I can do almost everything to clothe myself. You cannot believe it, can you? In my childhood days I would teach my younger sister how to knit.

With those three main needs -- food, shelter and clothing -- solved, you will not have to worry about your living situation.

Then the next thing you want is to do something worthwhile. In doing these things too, you must invest more energy, more time and more zeal; those three will enable you to win in doing anything you undertake. If you want to invest more time than other people would in some task, you must sleep less. That's the knack of the thing. With just two hours of sleep every night, I can go on. It is because I have trained myself in such a way. When I bring people out on the boat, out to sea, even Mother is not sympathetic with me. They all say, "He's a superman anyway. He has an iron skeleton, and such strong muscles that he can do the job; but we can't, so we must rest." Well, you must train yourself. Would you want to go through that kind of training? Why, when you have such affluence as not to have to worry about what to eat and what to wear? How come? Why do you have to train yourselves? You must remember that in Africa and in the underdeveloped countries your brothers and sisters in the same human family are starving to death. We are doing this, training ourselves to transcend what we eat, because of those people, because we want to save those people.

I guess all the women members would want their mate to be like me. It is because with a husband like myself your life would be very secure, because there is nothing that I cannot do. Do you really want to find a mate like myself? Because you do, that's why I want to make our men into persons like me. Then like a blacksmith I must pound on them. Are you ready to go through that kind of training, you men folks?

In America you have running water, bathrooms, toilet facilities and things like that, but those who have been in Korea and in Oriental countries must have seen people shouldering excretions and carrying them to a distant place, perhaps to the fields. If you are really sympathetic with your brothers and sisters living like that in any corner of the earth, you must start training yourself. In that area of the world they must even handle the excretions with their bare hands, because they want to use them as fertilizer. Can you do that, if you are put into that situation? You will say, "Oh, I'm a college graduate, how can I do that?" But you must feel the thrill of experiencing most unusual things like that while other people are doing the same, and then it becomes something of a higher dimension. At first you want to shut your eyes, you know, never breathing, with your mouth shut tightly, but later on I want you to breathe normally and talk while you are looking at those things and handling them. Then you will make friends with those dirty things, because they become fertilizer and grow things that you eat. And you will get deeper and deeper in your philosophy of life. So the question is always your attitude, what you think about something. You must first digest every situation in your mind, in your thinking.

I don't want you to become leaders only in America, but in every corner of the earth, so you must experience every kind of thing people experience. If I were you, if I were sent to the southern tip of Africa or to the jungle area, I would plunge myself into their way of life, and side by side with my skin rubbing against theirs would work with those people mingling with them with love and heart. America has been giving foreign countries financial aid, but you are reviled. Why? What is the reason for that? It is because you aided people with your material wealth in such a gesture as to throw it to them, but your heart has never gone with it. It should have been that your heart went first and you felt deep sympathy with them, and with tearful eyes and aching hearts you would then help them out with materials. If you had done that, America would have become the leading nation of the world in both heart and wealth.

People call us names and we are persecuted, but why? Why are American young people attracted to our movement? It is because you find good people, loving people, in this movement. And with keen observation people will find that everything we do we are doing for the sake of other people. So never mind the persecution. Just endure a little while longer. It is only a matter of time before they will know that we are doing good things. We want to help other people not because we have an abundance of money and things to give them, but because we have heart and truth.

You can be confident that no matter how severely your parents, your schools, cities and states persecute you, your faith in this movement will get stronger and stronger, and there will be more and more people who will want to belong to our movement, centering on Reverend Moon. People find in Reverend Moon a quality of leadership different from that exercised by other leaders. Do you know clearly what I mean? I'm an Oriental man with black hair, black eyes, and a different complexion; why do they follow me? Why do you follow me? Is it because of the wealth I have? Because of the knowledge I have? You follow me not only because of my knowledge, but because of the ideal I teach which contains heart and truth.

When I ask you to be united with each other, what I mean is that you must become one, heart to heart, bone to bone, flesh to flesh; every particle of you, including your inner selves, must become one.

However great a nation America may be, the future of America will certainly depend upon her youth. Then what kind of young people does America need? She needs young leaders who can really shoulder the future of this nation, but the existing educational system cannot educate or raise young people to be these leaders. The Unification members are a different breed of people from the others in this vast American society. Do you realize that? We are 100 percent different from other Americans. We are different in that we are closer to God, and -- some of us, at least -- one with God, one with Him. That's the qualification for the future leaders of America. Then we can be confident that the future of America will be in our hands. All the rest of the American young people will drift away with the winds and tides of time, but our young people will remain as the leaders of this country, and finally of the whole world. I have always been confident of this. All the people of the world may drift away with the tides of time, but I will remain forever with my ideal and the truth, I am absolutely confident of that. I have tested myself in many ways not only on this earth but even in the spiritual world to determine whether or not I am qualified to do that. I have concluded that my ideology -- which is God's, I know -- will take hold of the whole world in the future. I feel that kind of confidence and faith in every cell of any body. If I think of myself as a bullet, I'm the strongest bullet in the whole world. If I'm a drill, I'm the strongest one, opening my way wherever I am. However hard or strong America may be, if I drive my drill I can open the way, and the hole will become bigger and bigger and open up a channel to reach out from here to the whole world. So I want you to become persons like me. If I am the trunk or root of the tree, you must become the branches and leaves and bear fruit. It is the nature of the tree which decides whether or not it is a strong tree, so even though you are only branches, the branches and roots and trunks all have the same nature or quality. So you will resemble me in that way. Have you become like that, or are you on the way? In order to test you, I must kick you and push you hard.

I began my talk this afternoon by telling you about the boat, so I will conclude my talk with that point. In order to teach you people, I have taken the staff members out on the boat, one by one. For instance, the other day I took Neil Salonen out on the boat. But most of them wanted to escape from the hard work. Would you want to go out on the boat? You would become exhausted. Then without waiting for me to take you on the boat, why don't you buy your own boat and train yourself, like I did? That's my philosophy. Even in the face of difficulties I will never become exhausted; rather, I will take it jokingly, or as a challenge. When I was tortured in the prison camp I would make jokes to the person torturing me. "You are a human being, too; how can you torture me like this? Do you want to test me? I can enjoy it, and I can survive, so go ahead. How can you kick me like this? How can you poke me?" I could even joke at that moment. And they would become appalled, and finally they would be touched in their hearts and I could make friends with them. Then the torture would be lessened, and we would be friends forever.

You must be thankful that you are endowed with life in this age and that you have joined our movement, and that you are armed with this philosophy. It's a great thing. Are you still fearful of difficulties and hardships? Will you retreat, or advance forward? If someone severely persecutes you people, you must visit him, not let him alone. When you are really hungry and you find that person eating something, you must seat yourself at the table and eat with him. Since you are a starved person eating, he cannot blame you. While you eat you just smile at him, and he can never be angry. Most people are still in the satanic world, and how can you choose to work in the face of their defamation? Instead, why don't you venture to meet those people while they are reviling you and attacking! You young people have that kind of generous heart and adventurous spirit.

Just imagine, I was an utter stranger in this land two years ago when I visited the senators and congressmen and predicted that I was going to stir up this nation. I told them I was going to mobilize many brilliant young people under me, so they must get ready to use those people to save this nation. They were very skeptical about what I said. I know they must have been thinking: "Well. I was born in America, educated here, and I have worked for many years to become a senator, and I could barely win this seat, and I'm not at all successful in my work. How can you, a stranger in this land, manipulate the young people here? I cannot even manipulate my own family, my daughter; how can you do that?" They looked so doubtful, and looking at their doubtful faces I eagerly accepted the challenge. I resolved to show them, to prove my abilities to them, and what happened? I have done that. So you can see that difficulties, hardships and persecution are stimulants to make you more spiritual in the things you are going to do, so you must never shrink back in the face of persecution.

If I were in your position and sent to one of the most underprivileged, underdeveloped nations, I would make the land change in one year. I can do it. You must be like me in this respect. Are you confident you can do that? If you don't bring that result, it is because you haven't tried hard enough. Try very hard to do your best and you will accomplish it.

And so when I go out to sea on the boat, you know it is not for recreation. You know what it means to be a leader. Everywhere, even on the boat, to lead and guide the people. I sleep less and work more than they do. I may tell my people that tomorrow we will leave at 5:00 o'clock a.m. They will sleep until 5:00, but as the leader I must get up at 4:00, get prepared and wake them up to go. Suppose it's already 2:30 and I have to wake them up at 4:00, then lest I should oversleep I will just stay up the whole night. That's the way leaders should be. I watch them sleep while I stay up the whole night thinking and planning.

I'm like any other man who feels fatigue. I want to lie down and sleep. But I stay up the whole night because of my responsibilities. Once I do lie down, I snore. (Even sitting in the car I snore so loudly that Mother always nudges me.) I've been awake working while she has been sleeping so that's good material to use to train her not to sleep, or to get along on less sleep. She cannot complain because I am doing this myself and telling her to do as I do. That's how leadership should be. If I tell you to go here or there, to do this and that, without doing that myself, you wouldn't obey me. But when you see me doing more than you are doing, you are willing to obey me.

On the boat other people would want to take a nap but I would never, never take a nap. When I get sleepy I immediately think of the people who are praying hard under difficult conditions, and my members who are praying for me. Wherever I may be, whatever I may be doing, I always think of you people, and the spiritual bond goes straight to you, always linking you and me. It is the principle of principles that if you give out love and truth to other people, their hearts, without their being conscious of it, are moved because God operates there. God moves your heart, and in that way you are linked to me and miss me.

I want you to know that we are going to take hegemony over the ocean from now on, and to remember me when I'm out on the boat, and to remember that I don't go out to sea for recreation but for another purpose. In the future I don't want you girls to dislike the idea of having seamen as your mates. In the future if you are faced with the possibility of having crew members as your future husbands, you must immediately think of me. The women who will marry the ships' crews and the maritimers will, I think, be the type of girls who are more emotional and artistic. By emotional I mean that in waiting for your husbands you will sometimes miss them and feel melancholy. I used to ask Mother what she feels when I am away at sea, and if she understands the heart of the fisherman's wife, and she says, "Yes." This time I brought Mother with me and she stayed in a small bungalow I leased while I went out to sea, and in the evenings when our yacht was coming back she would come out to the dock and wave to me. And that sentiment -- that emotion -- is very poetic. And when I saw the delight and welcoming expression on Mother's face, it warmed my heart more than ever. So when you have one disadvantage on one side, there is always some advantage on the other side. There is always some advantage.

Suppose I buy a big ocean liner and take you out on the boat and travel all around the world, not coming back for three years; would you like to do that? What if some of you die on the boat? What if we bury you in the heart of the sea? When you think about it maybe it sounds ideal, but when you experience the ocean life for three years, it may not be so good as you have imagined. Everything is always the same. What you think about is always the question. When there is some difficulty you must think of something opposite. As Unification members we have experienced many such things. After joining this movement, in the face of hardships and persecution you sometimes feel discouraged, but the next moment you get encouraged and pepped up again with more promising things to come at the price of your difficulty. So how you view the situation is always the key. You must learn the knack of digesting and grabbing hold of the situation, not let the situation manipulate you. The problem lies in you, your attitude, not in the environment.

You have been educated and directed to do this or that, and by experiencing things and by doing things you become more educated. You learn more. The sea is a wonderful place. I think in the future people will even manipulate the thunderstorms and things like that. If that day comes, all the people in the world will want to go out on the sea instead of staying on the land. When I look at the glossy, calm ocean the deep sentiment I feel in the bottom of my heart is something I cannot describe. I am sometimes thankful for the roaring waves and tempests, because they force the wealthy yachting people to stay on land, and only poor or adventurous people go out on the sea. But if we can handle the problem of storms and weather conditions in the future, I'm sure all the rich people will prefer to live on the ocean instead of on land. I think that things never come with everything advantageous. So when troubles come, there's a promise of good times ahead of you. If you are equipped with that idea, you will never be afraid of anything. The deeper the valley is, the higher the mountains are. We are now digging in to the low part, the bottom, and then it will be our turn to soar up.

When you have a wheel, when it turns in its circular motion, what was on the top will come to the bottom, and right up again. When the cycle speeds up, what was on the top will quickly come down and quickly go back up, with all the intermediate variations.

In the future if all the Unification young people are ready to voluntarily shoulder the heaviest responsibility, then this nation will be changed for the better in the soonest possible time. So if you want to become really happy, you must be able to digest both ends, both extremes. You girls have the possibility of becoming the wife of the President. It is easy; all you have to do is marry a President. For me it is easy to get hold of persons in the highest positions in society, but it is much more difficult to win the hearts of the people on the bottom levels of society. The happiest people are those who don't look only at what is high up there, but also look down at the people -- on the lowest level. When you can enjoy life not only on the land but also on the sea, with those two complementing each other, you will have developed a well-rounded personality. While on earth you want to get hegemony over both the land and the sea, and when you go into the spirit world after your physical death you will have lived fully during your earthly life, and then you will enjoy your spiritual life as well.

Everything has two sides -- for example, look at your hands, the backs of your hands and the palms. Up to the present moment American youth have seen only one side of things. You have many people who are allergic to fish, and not too many people have seen live fish, but if America is going to get hegemony over the Pacific Ocean, then you must be interested in what the sea contains. In talking about the sea, I wanted you to know a different side of the earth. You have been thinking of the land, not the sea, but I want you to be wholesome and well-rounded, with knowledge of both. And in living on the land, too, I want you to think not only of the fields but also of the high mountains. I want you to be well-rounded in your thinking.

Actually, I didn't mean to tell you so much about the sea, but since I have already talked for several hours I will stop here and reserve other topics for the next time.

How to Prepare for Death

Sun Myung Moon
July 21, 1975
Excerpt
Barrytown International Training Center

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Today I'm going to talk about human death. Sooner or later you are going to die. Nobody wants to talk about death, but because we know that there is a spirit world where we live for eternity, we are serious or concerned about our death.

In my school days I talked of death many times with communists, and I had a very peculiar way to answer their questions. It was my concept that if one does not know God, one cannot recognize the spirit world because God is the center of the spirit world. When you look at your faces, you find you have two eyes. To prove the existence of God you must say, "Do you know the history of your eyes? Where are they from?" They will simply answer, "My eyes were born out of my mother." Your next question will be, "Then where did your mother's eyes come from?" You keep on asking questions, until you reach the very source of eyes. In terms of the Bible we can say that the eyes of Adam and Eve came from someone. But before Adam, did the eyes know that there would be dust in the air, strong sunlight, etc.?

Even communists would answer no. Communists say that material comes first. But the eyes themselves could not have known that there was going to be dust and sunlight. Eyes were created to feel light. Even before Adam's birth, someone knew that. There was a blueprint. Why do the eyes twinkle? Somehow, someone seems to have known that there would be vapors; your eyelashes brush the vapors away and protect your eyes. Don't you think that there was someone who knew that there were going to be such vapors? (Yes.) The eyes themselves could not have known that. Look at your eyelashes. Your eyelashes prevent dust from coming into your eyes. Did they have foreknowledge of dust in the air? Someone had that. Who could have been that someone? Did Adam himself know it? (No.) Then who else could it be? (God!)

One more question: are you born out of your own will? (No!) Did your parents know who you were going to be? (No.) Who planned it? Before your birth did you ever think how you were going to look?

(No.) Every result comes from motivation. Why are there eyeballs on your forehead? Someone knew that human beings were going to walk standing straight up like this.

Someone planned the blueprint first

Look at your nose. If your nose was upside down, narrowing like this, when it rained raindrops would come into your mouth; sweat, too. You have two deep lines here for raindrops to detour around your mouth. What if your lips were as hard as the soles of your feet? Every part of your body is delicately made to suit its purpose. How can the communists say they all were created out of nothing? If I ask them questions like that, they cannot answer. They know that in the material world, too, to make something they have to have a blueprint first. From that we can gather that there is someone who planned the blueprint before the coming of humankind; whenever you wash your face, when you look into the mirror, you feel the wonder of who made you. Even looking at your eyes alone, we know that well before the birth of the eyes there was someone with vast knowledge of natural science including the heavenly bodies, the air, dust, everything existing in the world.

Every one of you is like a museum full of mystery representing the whole of the natural world. If you could enlarge your eyes to absorb the whole world, you could take in all the wonders of nature at one glance. Our bodies are a palace of mysteries. Each one of you is a thing of wonder; just imagine, a thing of wonder and beauty is walking about on the surface of the earth. Do you recognize the value of a human being in that way? When we consider the source of our lives, we must recognize that someone made it possible for us to exist. Can you deny that? (No.) When you debate which comes first -- the spirit or the flesh -- then your answer must be spirit came first. This alone can repel the materialistic ideology.

What is more important, visible things or invisible things? (Invisible.) When you observe human society closely, you know that anything material is the product of something invisible and internal. This podium is something we can see and couch, but does it come from something invisible and internal? (Yes.) We cannot see our mind, but we know it exists and we know that everything starts from something invisible -- that table, the trees, the auditorium -- everything. When you want to study, first your will tells you to study and then you move about. Without your thinking how to study, you cannot start. From this viewpoint we can say that everything that exists in concrete form started from the invisible.

When you confront communists you can ask the same questions. If they are defeated in answering you they will finally recognize that you as an individual were born as a result of invisible will and everything else is also the product of invisible cause. When you smile or laugh, is it because your mind is happy or your body is happy? (Mind!) Your laugh is a result. Everything has as its subject something invisible. Anything as simple as a towel is a product of the human hand, but ultimately it comes from the workings of an invisible mind. When you talk about the mysterious human body, isn't that the product of something invisible too? We can safely conclude that our body is the product of something invisible and internal. Every morning when you wash your face, why don't you look into the mirror; when you look at yourself you must find the wonder of life.

Beyond the clouds is the sun

The Bible says that spirit world has four pearl gates. Everything was created with something invisible as subject and the visible thing as the object, so whenever we see tangible things we can think of their origin as being something invisible. It is a most logical and scientific conclusion. In this light we can say that communist logic is wrong. We come to the conclusion that God exists. Then why don't human beings see God? The cause and result, the subject and object, must be harmonized into oneness. We are so made as to feel Him and see Him. But why don't we recognize Him or see Him?

Because something wrong happened and our whole body is out of gear in that sense. On sunny days you see the sun, but on cloudy days would you say that there is no sun? You know that beyond the clouds there is the sun. But for those who have never seen the sun, would they say that there is a sun when it is not visible? The Human Fall means that man fell into darkness. But when you get rid of that cloud, the darkness, it is natural for us to see the sun or God. If you don't recognize God, your spiritual eyes are clouded. Due to the Human Fall our spiritual sight is blinded, so we want to recover it. But however hard we may struggle, we cannot do it on our own without the cooperation of God. God and man must work together to recover those things.

Then what must be the ideal of man? Man's ideal can be produced when we have give and take with someone, with you as the object and someone as subject. Why are you happy when you meet your mate? Males are for females, and females are for males -- subject and object. I'm sure American girls would admit that in America everything is centered on women. Why are men not in the position of the subject? In every point man excels woman. The average man is taller and stronger than women.

Woman confines herself in a small world. She wants to be loved by her husband and by her children, and she's contented with that small world. Men are not like that, they are adventurous. So, while we live here on earth man is in the position of the subject while woman is in the position of the object. But neither man nor woman is happy without a mate; only when you join with each other do you become happy.

The ideal comes from give and take

So when you are asked the question where the ideal comes from, your answer should be that it comes where there is give and take action between a subject and an object in harmony and unity -- between subject and object, internal and external, cause and result. That is the very core of truth. Without harmony and unity through the action of give and take between subject and object no ideal can come about. Man's ideal too, can be realized only when you have the action of give and take between subject and object. Not only that, but when those two are united into one through the action of give and take it should be vertically connected with God, having another action of give and take between you two united and God. The relationship between your parents and you is that your parents are in the position of the subject while you are in the position of the object. Only when you enter into give and take between you and your parents do you feel harmony and love.

In the Principle we call this harmony in the family the perfection of the four positions. Do you have a clear notion of what it really means? Because God is the source of everything, you cannot feel real happiness unless you are united with Him through the action of give and take. Everything in life is revolving around. Suppose God is immobile and you are never moving; there is no harmony, no action or life. The object must revolve around the subject as the core or center. If you really know God and want to revolve around Him it means you occupy God, who is the core of the whole world. But as you look at yourselves, your position now is fixed here without revolving around God. The center will be waiting, but unless you revolve around Him there will be no relationship between you and God.

God is something like electricity. Electricity is invisible, but when you turn on the electricity, the generator comes into action. From the result you can see that the electricity is on. Likewise, you can feel God in operation when you really are connected with Him. Some of you, I'm sure, still don't know God. But sooner or later you must become like that, to know and feel God operating in you. You must always be ready to receive God, to switch on the source of power. The effect should know the origin or else it cannot be connected to it to set it into operation. Even the leaves of the trees face the sun.

Vines tend to grow on the sunny side. Only men lack knowledge of God. God is the center of the whole universe, as the sun is the center of the natural world, and we have a tendency to seek out God. When you think of God, do you miss Him and are you happy to think of Him?

Now let's talk about human death. Sooner or later we are going to die. How to die is a great problem. If you die without being prepared it's awful. Unless you have a connection or relationship with the source or God, what comes after death will be awful. Have you done that? Are you in continual relationship with God? God is your eternal existence. You believe that in your imagination, but not with complete knowledge or feeling. You must know that you are the result of God's creation, making yourself also an eternal being. Be confident of that. The orbit in which you revolve around God will be eternal. There will be no change. Your mind must miss God in order to be united with Him and resemble His unchangeability, uniqueness and absoluteness.

If God is the cause and subject, and if you as the object and result do not resemble Him, you have no relationship with Him. It is something like iron fragments being attracted to the magnet, God being the magnet. If you are not prepared to be iron filings at least, you cannot become one with God. Without your doing that you cannot be safely situated in the spiritual world. If you cannot do all these things you are something like a chestnut shell without the chestnut, just the shell without the flesh. In building your personality you must be prepared to be the object of God. Your personality is the expression of your invisible mind, through which you can be connected with God as the subject.

When you do good things don't just pretend to be good. Don't do good things just to look good, but to be one with God, to resemble God. Do you feel that God is always watchful over you? Do you feel you are being drawn to God by magnetic power? If you feel that, every moment of your life is wonderful. You still lack that kind of experience, I know, so that's why you want to be trained in that way.

Peel away your sinful layers

Why can you not operate like that, always being drawn to God and one with Him? Due to the Human Fall your sinful side is thick. You could not' feel electricity or energy through that -- much less feel God or see Him or be united with Him. You must peel away your sinful layers. Do you know how snakes get rid of their skins? To remove their skins they have to pass through very narrow places and go the reverse way. So in any and every religion they emphasize living an ascetic life. You must try to light the lamp of your mind, and the light inside you will shine out to multiply people like you. As you do that, as you give out light to other people you will shine more and more, and your personality will become perfect. Why am I telling you to light the lamp of your mind? It is because God is the source of light, and you must at least be small lights. Unless you have something in common with Him, you cannot become one with Him. Your light must grow and grow so as to be as light and as big as God, and then be united with Him. When you want to give out your light you must consume yourselves, like the wick of the candle consumes itself while it burns. When you consume yourself like that to shine out as a light, then your empty part will be filled by God. When I encourage you to do good things for the sake of other people it means to give out your light, to give your whole being out, for you to be filled by another source.

If you are used to feeling happy when other people are happy because of you, then you have the quality of subjectivity, like God. First of all, I want you to be in the position of object to God, and then resemble Him and play the role of the subject for others so that you can leave behind you something valuable, something good. If you die without doing that, you have nothing to bring back to God. If you are selfcentered, greedy to grab things from other people without giving them anything, God would not like that kind of person.

On the worldly level, when you want to be educated you start in kindergarten and go on through 12 years of education, four to six years of university, and then graduate school. You spend almost 20 years educating yourself. You prepare yourselves for as long a period as 20 years to make your worldly career a success, but we are going to live in the vast wonderful spirit world. We are going to live there with God through eternity. Then how long and how intensely must you prepare for that?

Would you not prefer to live in the spirit world in happiness and glory, rather than living in this world as a small success? (Yes.) That's why Saint Paul said, compared to the glory and greatness we are going to have in the spirit world, the tribulations we are going through in this world are nothing. When you are persecuted, go through hardships and difficulties and have many battles to fight, when you win over all those things, those are going to be the foundation for you to be welcomed in the spirit world.

For whom have you lived?

Suppose you have lived a long life and you are at the brink of death. When you look back on your life you will ask yourself, "For whom have I lived my life?" The conclusion, I'm afraid, is going to be, "I lived for myself." Even then, have you lived your life for yourself in a good way, in a wholesome way? What is the definition of living a good life for yourself? In the real sense, if you really want to live for yourself, for you to be glorified, you must live for the sake of other people. If you put more stress on the fleshly side, just living to satisfy your fleshly instincts, that's not the way it should be. You are not capable of living for yourself, in a sense. At the end of your life your conclusion will be, "I have not been able to live for myself and I have not been able to live for others. I have lived in vain." Would anybody like that kind of person? (No.) In the spirit world too, all the myriads of saints and spirit men wouldn't like that kind of person.

What is God like? What way of life is God living? God is of course living both for the sake of Himself and for the sake of others, because living for the sake of others is living for the sake of Himself. And in what way should we be living? We must first of all think of living for others. We are here for others. We are living for others and we are dying for others, so the most horrible thing would be to die without doing this. The horror of death is not that you end your physical life but the horror is that you are doomed to hell without having lived for others. We must overcome the way of life in which people live in vain without doing anything for others. In religion we are taught to live our life for others so that we can be entitled to the heavenly kingdom. As soon as you arrive in spirit world you will be asked by God, "What way of life have you lived?"

Can you boldly answer Him, "I lived to earn money for my livelihood, and I lived for my children, and at best I have educated them. That's all I have done in my earthly life." Would God like that? Any animal can do the same thing. What do you have that excels animals? Of course you have to eat and live and educate your children, but in addition you must do something at least -- as many things as possible -- for the sake of other people. I'm always sensitive about death, so I want to be prepared for death. I want to put everything in order -- what I have done or what I have. Otherwise one cannot be at ease. You are like a criminal sentenced to death: when will the execution come is the only question. In order to compensate for your sins and in order for you to be forgiven of your sins and accumulate many good things, you must live a good life, without knowing when your death is going to come.

Will God or Satan greet you?

We are without knowledge about the spirit world. It is an unknown world; we must understand that we go there all by ourselves. Your parents have nothing to do with you, your children have nothing to do with you the moment when you die. You are going to the spirit world all by yourself. There is the possibility that you are going to be welcomed by Satan instead of by the saints up there. If you leave something behind after having done good things for the sake of other people, then you are sure to be welcomed by saints and angels up there, guiding your way to the heavens. In which of the two ways would you prefer to be welcomed there? Upon your death messages will be circulated up there and God will order some of the angels and saints to come out and welcome that man with open arms or with music and dancing, all those things. But on the other hand, if you die without accumulating any good deeds, the black hand of Satan will be guiding you to hell.

Which of the two would you choose? If you have done many good things on the earth, myriads of saints would come out to welcome you with beautiful music. I never forget about the minute of death. It's something like a dream, and you cannot quite visualize what it's going to be like. Everyone's place is already prepared. What we do on earth will determine our position in spirit world; we must think what we are doing here is most important. If you are already there, after death you cannot say, "Oh, I should have done this and that, and I must come down and live again, and then after having done all those things over again die a second death." No, you cannot do that. You are endowed with only one life. So the fleshly side is not important. Once you die, your flesh will decay. But what is invisible, the good things you have accumulated, is the most important thing.

Compared to the vast spirit world, this earthly life is small in scope. Compared to eternity, the span of our life is just a puff, just one breath maybe, compared to eternity. So should your concern still be about the earthly life? If you do, it is because you don't know about that vast world up there. In the life of faith you must think, talk, and do things always in connection with the spirit world, in connection with what God thinks of what you are doing. This is just an ephemeral world in which we are endowed with a short life span; to prepare to live through eternity in a good position and glory is of greatest importance. I want you to be prepared for death. When God sent me to the earth, God wanted me to accumulate good deeds to save others. Then when I go back to spirit world I will bring the gifts back to God.

You are studying, but for what? To know how, to live for God and others. Don't ever think that you are going to be successful in this movement because our movement is expanding all over the world. Don't dream of being indebted to the movement, but try to have the movement indebted to you. Don't dream of being indebted to America but serve America and have America be indebted to you. Ultimately in that way you are going to do things for God and for humanity.

Bring back glorious gifts to God

Upon your birth you are given your share of responsibility. You are the product of the cause or origin, God. You are endowed by Him with certain gifts, but if you try your best, then you can cultivate what you have in the field of gifts even more. Don't ever think that physical death is a sad or undesirable thing. We have a vast world up there, and I wanted today to talk about death because I want you to be well prepared so that you can bring back a glorious gift to God, to live there with Him through eternity.

Up to date I have taught you many, many things on how to live, how to serve others, but with the problem of death ahead I want you to be really serious about how to live the profitable life for other people so that ultimately you live for and glorify God, to be able to bring back glorious gifts to God. That way alone you will live in a desirable position in spirit world through eternity.

Be well prepared for death

When you join this movement it is something like being given a sack to fill. I want you to fill up the whole bag with good deeds. When you die your physical death you will go to spirit world with that sack on your shoulder. How much you have fulfilled will be the question, and what are the contents of the fulfillment. Don't ever think chat you do this and that because you are told to do it by God or you are doing it for me. You are ultimately doing these things for yourself'.' You must be eternally grateful to the Unification movement, to me and to God who has taught you how to live life so that you can fulfill. You can fill up your bag to bring it back as a gift to God, which will determine your position there. Look into your own selves. If you are prepared to do things that will please God, please me and please every brother and sister in this movement, you will be welcomed by God up in the spirit world. In order for you to be able to do that, you must welcome other people and do things for other people. If you want to be prepared for death, always closely examine yourselves whether or not you are like that.

I spent my whole life to find this out, and to pave the way for others to follow, doing things for mankind. In that way I've done a great thing for God and for mankind. The spirit world knows that. You enjoy the results of scientific inventions, but you forget that behind the invention were struggles and hardships for the inventor or scientist. Through me the way is already paved and you just have to follow me, but you never imagine how many hardships and tribulations I have gone through to pave the way for you. Do you think God will just teach someone about all the truth? If that was possible my predecessors and many people having lived before me would have done that. I have struggled hard to bring the truth into life and I've done that my whole life. I seriously wanted to find out what life really means, and above all what death really means and what comes after death. So I want you to be prepared for death and to know that after death there is a more glorious life awaiting you. The Unification path is the shortest cut to heaven in the history of mankind, but you never dreamed of that because you didn't know anything about that. Life is temporal, life is short, so you must be thinking of what to leave behind you after your physical death.

You must hope to live in the eternal world well prepared. If you do as I have instructed you're sure to inhabit the heavenly kingdom. You cannot live in flesh forever. It is natural that your hair will turn gray as you get old. If you think of only the fleshly side of life, you will get discouraged as you get old. But since you know the truth, as you get older you must feel more urgency to work for the sake of other people, to be prepared. By comparison between you and myself, do you think I have more things to leave behind than you? (Yes!) If you feel the quantity and quality of the things you have done is smaller and less valuable that what I have accomplished, you must feel more urgency to follow my example.

It is natural, don't you think, for me to be ahead of you in going to the spirit world? (Yes.) Don't you want to be someone who can be welcomed by Father Himself? (Yes!) That's what I want, too. I want to be welcomed by God. Our desire must be to be welcomed by God, praised by God, and glorified and loved by Him. I want all of you to become persons like that. To be successful in your worldly careers is nothing, as small as a fragment compared to the greatness of what is waiting for you up there. They're small things when I think of death.

Whenever I come here I sometimes think, "Who knows, this may be my last visit to you." In that way I am always prepared for death. You are hearing this kind of thing for the first time from me, and I must repeatedly tell you -- be well prepared for death. I want you to be persons so prepared as to have me and God both coming out to meet you and welcome you up there.

Human Death

Sun Myung Moon
July 21, 1975
Barrytown, New York
Translator: Won Pok Choi

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Today I'm going to talk about human death. Sooner or later you are going to die. Nobody wants to talk about death, but because we know that there is a spirit world where we live for eternity, we are serious or concerned about our death.

In my school days I talked of death many times with Communists, and I had a very peculiar way to answer their questions. It was my concept that if one does not know God, one cannot recognize the spirit world because God is the center of the spirit world. When you look at your faces, you find you have two eyes. To prove the existence of God you must say, "Do you know the history of your eyes? Where are they from?" They will simply answer, "My eyes were born out of my mother." Your next question will be, "Then where did your mother's eyes come from?" You keep on asking questions, until you reach the very source of eyes. In terms of the Bible we can say that the eyes of Adam and Eve came from someone. But before Adam, did the eyes know that there would be dust in the air, strong sunlight, etc.? Even Communists would answer no. Communists say that material comes first. But the eyes themselves could not have known that there was going to be dust and sunlight. Eyes were created to feel light. Even before Adam's birth, someone knew that. There was a blueprint. Why do the eyes twinkle? Somehow, someone seems to have known that there would be vapors; your eyelashes brush the vapors away and protect your eyes. Don't you think that there was someone who knew that there were going to be such vapors? (Yes) The eyes themselves could not have known that. Look at your eyelashes. Your eyelashes prevent dust from coming into your eyes. Did they have foreknowledge of dust in the air'? Someone had that. Who could have been that someone'? Did Adam himself know it? (No) Then who else could it be? (God!)

One more question: are you born out of your own will? (No!) Did your parents know who you were going to be? (No) Who planned it? Before your birth did you ever think how you were going to look? (No) Every result comes from motivation. Why are there eyeballs on your forehead? Someone knew that human beings were going to walk standing straight up like this.

Look at your nose. If your nose was upside down, narrowing like this, when it rained raindrops would come into your mouth; sweat, too. You have two deep lines here for raindrops to detour around your mouth. What if your lips were as hard as the soles of your feet? Every part of your body is delicately made to suit its purpose. How can the Communists say they all were created out of nothing? If I ask them questions like that, they cannot answer. They know that in the material world, too, to make something they have to have a blueprint first. From that we can gather that there is someone who planned the blueprint before the coming of humankind; whenever you wash, your face, when you look into the mirror, you feel the wonder of who made you. Even looking at your eyes alone, we know that well before the birth of the eyes there was someone with vast knowledge of natural science including the heavenly bodies, the air, dust, everything existing in the world.

Every one of you is like a museum full of mystery representing the whole of the natural world. If you could enlarge your eyes to absorb the whole world, you could take in all the wonders of nature at one glance. Our bodies are a palace of mysteries. Each one of you is a thing of wonder; just imagine, a thing of wonder and beauty is walking about on the surface of the earth. Do you recognize the value of a human being in that way?

When we consider the source of our lives, we must recognize that someone made it possible for us to exist. Can you deny that? (No) When you debate which comes first-the spirit or the flesh-then your answer must be spirit came first. This alone can repel the materialistic ideology.

What is more important, visible things or invisible things? (Invisible) You answer that way because you are Unification Church members. But when you observe human society closely, you know that anything material is the product of something invisible and internal. This podium is something we can see and touch, but does it come from something invisible and internal? (Yes) We cannot see our mind, but we know it exists and we know that everything starts from something invisible-that table, the trees, the auditorium-everything. When you want to study, first your will tells you to study and then you move about. Without your thinking how to study, you cannot start. From this viewpoint we can say that everything that exists in concrete form started from the invisible.

When you confront Communists you can ask the same questions. If they are defeated in answering you they will finally recognize that you as an individual were born as a result of invisible will and everything else is also the product of invisible cause. When you smile or laugh, is it because your mind is happy or your body is happy? (Mind!) Your laugh is a result. Everything has as its subject something invisible. Anything as simple as a towel is a product of the human hand, but ultimately it comes from the workings of an invisible mind. When you talk about the mysterious human body, isn't that the product of something invisible too? We can safely conclude that our body is the product of something invisible and internal. Every morning when you wash your face, why don't you look into the mirror; when you look at yourself you must find the wonder of life. The most central thing on your face is your eyes. If I had enough time I could talk hour after hour about eyes. But I have no time for that now. Which part of your body is formed first in your mother's womb? Eyes, nose, ears-which one? Your eyes come into existence first. Eyes symbolize God. If you close your eyes can you see anything? (No) Only by opening your eyes can you see the whole world. Your eyeballs can move about in every direction. Your head is attached to your body, and you can turn your neck. Why would it have to turn? Your neck turns because of your eyes. The neck symbolizes the whole world revolving.

Is there a hole inside your nose connecting with your eyes? What about the channel to reach your ears'? What about your mouth and eyes? Every part of your head has channels to connect with each other. That means internally, where things are invisible, you have connections to reach the eyes, to reach God. What did I say the eyes symbolize? (God!) Then the whole human being must symbolize what? If your eyes symbolize God, your nose symbolizes man. Your two nostrils symbolize man and woman becoming one inside. When a man and woman become one, they can be connected to or be united with God. You have your nose high like this to contrast with your eyes, which are deep. God is invisible, deep inside and internal, but man is visible. When you stand up straight like this, which part of your body is more protruding? The nose. So your nose will guide you, always being ahead. Likewise, man is guiding the rest of nature.

Then what does your mouth symbolize, since it makes a vertical line like this? It means the universe. You have 32 teeth. That's the number four multiplied by eight. You eat and talk with your mouth. When you talk a puff of air comes out of your mouth; that means your words are the product of something inside. Your eyes symbolize four directions. Your head symbolizes the whole universe and your whole body also symbolizes the whole universe. Every part on the head is made of three stages. Your eyes are composed of upper lid, eyelashes and eyeball. Even the eyeball has three parts. The ear has the same system of three parts. In the Divine Principle we teach that everything, is made of three stages or three parts.

Your right hand symbolizes heaven while your left hand symbolizes the earth. Your thumb symbolizes God. God has dual characteristics, so your thumb is divided into two parts, not three like the other fingers. The rest of the hand symbolizes the seasons: three months make up one season, symbolized by the three parts of the fingers, and there are four seasons and four fingers. The whole universe is revolving with God in the center.

The Bible says that spirit world has four pearl gates. Everything was created with something invisible as subject and the visible thing as the object, so whenever we see tangible things we can think of their origin as being something invisible. It is a most logical and scientific conclusion. In this light we can say that Communist logic is wrong. We come to the conclusion that God exists. Then why don't human beings see God? The cause and result, the subject and object, must be harmonized into oneness. We are so made as to feel Him and see Him. But why don't we recognize Him or see Him? Because something wrong happened and our whole body is out of gear in that sense. On sunny days you see the sun, but on cloudy days would you say that there is no sun? You know that beyond the clouds there is the sun. But for those who have never seen the sun, would they say that there is a sun when it is not visible'? The Human Fall means that man fell into darkness. But when you get rid of that cloud, the darkness, it is natural for us to see the sun or God. If you don't recognize God, your spiritual eyes are clouded. Due to the Human Fall our spiritual sight is blinded, so we want to recover it. But however hard we may struggle, we cannot do it on our own without the cooperation of God. God and man must work together to recover those things.

In the Principle we are taught that God has been working behind human history, so when we look at history as a whole we can find God's will working. Many of you are from Christian backgrounds but before joining this movement did you know God exists? Did you feel it? Could you prove it? You were full of skepticism, without knowing which was the head and which was the tail in reading the Bible. But after hearing the Divine Principle you can clearly understand that there was something wrong with man, namely the Human Fall. Then you recognized God, and the fact that God has been grievous over our having fallen.

Then what must be the ideal of man? Man's ideal can be produced when we have give and take with someone, with you as the object and someone as subject. Why are you happy when you meet your mate? Males are for females, and females are for males-subject and object. I'm sure American girls would admit that in America everything is centered on women. Why are men not in the position of the subject? You may say no, but it is because you are Unification Church members, but outside women would say that. In every point man excels woman. The average man is taller and stronger than women and what else? Look at the way you laugh; women start laughing and come down. On the other hand, when men laugh, they lift up their heads. Woman confines herself in a small world. She wants to be loved by her husband and by her children, and she's contented with that small world. Men are not like that, they are adventurous. So, while we live here on earth, man is in the position of the subject while woman is in the position of the object. But neither man nor woman is happy without a mate; only when you join with each other do you become happy.

May I ask you a question? You girls, if you find a beautiful young lady as your girlfriend, would you like to live with her all through your life? (No) When you look for your mate would you want to find one who looks like a woman?(No) Back in Korea there is a member who told me the story of how she first met a man introduced by her uncle. She was going to be engaged to him. She only saw a picture of him and he looked quite handsome. But when she looked at him, his hands were so feminine looking, so smooth, white and beautiful, it just appalled her and she felt horrible. She cannot forget that scene even now. Of course she did not marry this man. Men's hands must look rough and masculine. On the other hand men don't like women who look masculine. They like soft, flexible, sweet things.

So when you are asked the question where the ideal comes from, your answer should be that it comes where there is give and take action between a subject and an object in harmony and unity-between subject and object, internal and external, cause and result. That is the very core of truth. Without harmony and unity through the action of give and take between subject and object no ideal can come about. Man's ideals, too, can be realized only when you have the action of give and take between subject and object. Not only that, but when those two are united into one through the action of give and take it should be vertically connected with God, having another action of give and take between you two united and God. The relationship between your parents and you is that your parents are in the position of the subject while you are in the position of the object. Only when you enter into give and take between you and your parents do you feel harmony and love.

In the Principle we call this harmony in the family the perfection of the four positions. Do you have a clear notion of what it really means? Because God is the source of everything, you cannot feel real happiness unless you are united with Him through the action of give and take. Everything in life is revolving around. Suppose God is immobile and you are never moving; there is no harmony, no action or life. The object must revolve around the subject as the core or center. If you really know God and want to revolve around Him it means you occupy God, who is the core of the whole world. But as you look at yourselves, your position now is fixed here without revolving around God. The center will be waiting, but unless you revolve around Him there will be no relationship between you and God.

God is something like electricity. Electricity is invisible, but when you turn on the electricity, the generator comes into action. From the result you can see that the electricity is on. Likewise, you can feel God in operation when you really are connected with Him. Some of you, I'm sure, still don't know God. But sooner or later you must become like that, to know and feel God operating in you. You must always be ready to receive God, to switch on the source of power. The effect should know the origin or else it cannot be connected to it to set it into operation. Even the leaves of the trees face the sun. Vines tend to grow on the sunny side. Only men lack knowledge of God. God is the center of the whole universe, as the sun is the center of the natural world, and we have a tendency to seek out God. When you think of God, do you miss Him and are you happy to think of Him? (Yes)

Now let's talk about human death. Sooner or later we are going to die. How to die is a great problem. If you die without being prepared it's awful. Unless you have a connection or relationship with the source or God, what comes after death will be awful. Have you done that? Are you in continual relationship with God'? (Yes!) God is your eternal existence. Is it clear? (Yes) Are you confident of that? (Yes) You believe that in your imagination, but not with complete knowledge or feeling, isn't that true? (Yes) You must know that you are the result of God's creation, making yourself also an eternal being. Be confident of that. The orbit in which you revolve around God will be eternal. There will be no change. Do you really know that in the Unification movement you will open up the way to reach God so that you'll be united into one with Him? Can you complain or can you relax? (No) Can you march forward in victory every day like that, or do you go sideways and up and down? Is this your spiritual attitude? (Yes) But would God change like that? (No) God is absolute and unique. You must be like that. Are you absolute? (No) If you are really one with God who is unique, you must resemble Him and be unique too. If you really miss God 100 percent, it is natural for you to resemble Him, who is unique, eternal and unchangeable. Sometimes even Unification Church members become skeptical about God's existence and don't act in accordance with God's will, but if you go ahead like that and die a physical death, the place you will go to is hell. Your mind must miss God in order to be united with Him and resemble His unchangeability, uniqueness and absoluteness.

If God is the cause and subject, and if you as the object and result do not resemble Him, you have no relationship with Him. It is something like iron fragments being attracted to the magnet, God being the magnet. If you are not prepared to be iron filings at least, you cannot become one with God. Without your doing that you cannot be safely situated in the spiritual world. If you cannot do all these things you are something like a chestnut shell without the chestnut, just the shell without the flesh. In building your personality you must be prepared to be the object of God. Your personality is the expression of your invisible mind, through which you can be connected with God as the subject. When you do good things don't just pretend to be good. Don't do good things just to look good, but to be one with God -- to resemble God. Do you feel that God is always watchful over you? (Yes) Do you feel you are being drawn to God by magnetic power? (Yes) If you feel that, every moment of your life is wonderful. You still lack that kind of experience, I know, so that's why you want to be trained in that way.

Why can you not operate like that. Always being drawn to God and one with Him? Due to the Human Fall your sinful side is thick. You could not feel electricity or energy through it-much less feel God or see Him or be united with Him. You must peel away your sinful layers. Do you know how snakes get rid of their skins? To remove their skins they have to pass through very narrow places and go the reverse way. So in any and every religion they emphasize living an ascetic life. You must try to light the lamp of your mind, and the light inside you will shine out to multiply people like you. As you do that, as you give out light to other people you will shine more and more, and your personality will become perfect. Why am I telling you to light the lamp of your mind? It is because God is the source of light, and you must at least be small lights. Unless you have something in common with Him, you cannot become one with Him. Your light must grow and grow so as to be as light and as big as God, and then be united with Him. When you want to give out your light you must consume yourselves, like the wick of the candle consumes itself while it burns. When you consume yourself like that to shine out as a light, then your empty part will he filled by God. When I encourage you to do good things for the sake of other people it means to give out your light, to give your whole being out, for you to be filled by another source.

If you are used to feeling happy when other people are happy because of you, then you have the quality of subjectivity, like God. First of all, I want you to be in the position of object to God, and then resemble Him and play the role of the subject for others so that you can leave behind you something valuable, something good. If you die without doing that, you have nothing to bring back to God. If you are self-centered, greedy to grab things from other people without giving them anything, God would not like that kind of person.

On the worldly level, when you want to be educated you start in kindergarten and go on through 12 years of education, four to six years of university, and then graduate school. You spend almost 20 years educating yourself. You prepare yourselves for as long a period as 20 years to make your worldly career a success, but we are going to live in the vast wonderful spirit world. We are going to live there with God through eternity. Then how long and how intensely must you prepare for that? Would you not prefer to live in the spirit world in happiness and glory, rather than living in this world as a small success? (Yes) That's why Saint Paul said, compared to the glory and greatness we are going to have in the spirit world, the tribulations we are going through in this world are nothing. When you are persecuted, go through hardships and difficulties and have many battles to fight, when you win over all those things, those are going to be the foundation for you to be welcomed in the spirit world.

Suppose you have lived a long life and you are at the brink of death. When you look back on your life you will ask yourself, "For whom have I lived my life?" The conclusion, I'm afraid, is going to be, "I lived for myself." Even then, have you lived your life for yourself in a good way, in a wholesome way? What is the definition of living a good life for yourself? In the real sense, if you really want to live for yourself, for you to be glorified, you must live for the sake of other people. If you put more stress on the fleshly side, just living to satisfy your fleshly instincts, that's not the way it should be. You are not capable of living for yourself, in a sense. At the end of your life your conclusion will be, "I have not been able to live for myself and I have not been able to live for others. I have lived in vain." Would anybody like that kind of person? (No) In the spirit world too, all the myriads of saints and spirit men wouldn't like that kind of person.

What is God like? What way of life is God living? God is of course living both for the sake of Himself and for the sake of others, because living for the sake of others is living for the sake of Himself. And in what way should we be living? We must first of all think of living for others. We are here for others. We are living for others and we are dying for others, so the most horrible thing would be to die without doing this. The horror of death is not that you end your physical life but the horror is that you are doomed to hell without having lived for others. We must overcome the way of life in which people live in vain without doing anything for others. In religion we are taught to live our life for others so that we can be entitled to the heavenly kingdom.

As soon as you arrive in spirit world you will be asked by God, "What way of life have you lived?" Can you boldly answer Him, "I lived to earn money for my livelihood, and I lived for my children, and at best I have educated them. That's all I have done in my earthly life." Would God like that? Any animal can do the same thing. What do you have that excels animals? Of course you have to eat and live and educate your children, but in addition you must do something at least -as many things as possible-for the sake of other people.

Is any one of you here confident of living a long life, 70, 80, 90, 100 years? If you say you're confident of that, you are abnormal. How can you be confident of long life? I'm told that 50,000 people a year die in traffic accidents in America. That corresponds to the number of soldiers who died on the front line in the Korean War among the U.N. forces. So living on this earth is something like being in the battlefield. Whenever you ride in cars are you sure you are not going to be killed? Are you confident? Hopefully yes, but nobody is confident of that. I'm always sensitive about death, so I want to be prepared for death. I want to put everything in order-what I have done or what I have. Otherwise one cannot be at ease. You are like a criminal sentenced to death: when the execution will come is the only question. In order to compensate for your sins and in order for you to be forgiven for your sins and accumulate many good things, you must live a good life, without knowing when your death is going to come.

We are without knowledge about the spirit world. It is an unknown world; we must understand that we go there all by ourselves. Your parents have nothing to do with you, your children have nothing to do with you the moment when you die. You are going to the spirit world all by yourself. There is the possibility that you are going to be welcomed by Satan instead of by the saints up there. If you leave something behind after having done good things for the sake of other people, then you are sure to he welcomed by saints and angels up there, guiding your way to the heavens. In which of the two ways would you prefer to be welcomed there? Upon your death messages will be circulated up there and God will order some of the angels and saints to come out and welcome that man with open arms or with music and dancing, all those things. But on the other hand, if you die without accumulating any good deeds, the black hand of Satan will be guiding you to hell. Which of the two would you choose? If you have done many good things on the earth, myriads of saints would come out to welcome you with beautiful music. What do you imagine will happen upon my death? I never forget about the minute of death. It's something like a dream, and you cannot quite visualize what it's going to be like.

I'm sure when you go to the spirit world if you cannot see me around you may think I am in hell. Well I may be somewhere up there where you cannot reach me. Everyone's place is already prepared. What we do on earth will determine our position in spirit world; we must think what we are doing here is most important. If you are already there, after death you cannot say, "Oh, I should have done this and that, and I must come down and live again, and then after having done all those things over again die a second death." No, you cannot do that. You are endowed with only one life. So the fleshly side is not important. Once you die, your flesh will decay. But what is invisible, the good things you have accumulated, is the most important thing. Compared to the vast spirit world, this earthly life is small in scope. Compared to eternity, the span of our life is just a puff, just one breath may be compared to eternity. So should your concern still be about the earthly life? If you do, it is because you don't know about that vast world up there.

In the life of faith you must think, talk, and do things always in connection with the spirit world, in connection with what God thinks of what you are doing. This is just an ephemeral world in which we are endowed with a short life span; to prepare to live through eternity in a good position and glory is of greatest importance. I want you to be prepared for death. When God sent me to the earth, God wanted me to accumulate good deeds to save others. Then when I go back to spirit world I will bring the gifts back to God.

You are studying, but for what? To know how to live for God and others. Don't be so shortsighted as to think. "I must be blessed after three years of work in the movement." things like that. Don't ever think that you are going to be successful in this movement because our movement is expanding all over the world, like that. Don't dream of being indebted to the movement, but try to have the movement indebted to you. Don't dream of being indebted to America but serve America and have America be indebted to you. Ultimately in that way you are going to do things for God and for humanity.

Upon your birth you are given your share of responsibility. You are the product of the cause or origin, God. You are endowed by Him with certain gifts, but if you try your best, then you can cultivate what you have in the field of gifts even more. Don't ever think that physical death is a sad or undesirable thing. We have a vast world up there and I wanted today to talk about death because I want you to be well prepared so that you can bring back a glorious gift to God, to live there with Him through eternity. To date I have taught you many, many things on how to live, how to serve others, but with the problem of death ahead I want you to be really serious about how to live the profitable life for other people so that ultimately you live for and glorify God, to be able to bring back glorious gifts to God. That way alone you will live in a desirable position in spirit world through eternity.

When you join this movement it is something like being given a sack to fill. I want you to fill up the whole bag with good deeds. When you die your physical death you will go to spirit world with that sack on your shoulder. How much you have fulfilled and what are the contents of the fulfillment will be the question. Don't ever think that you do this and that because you are told to do it by God or that you are doing it for me. You are ultimately doing these things for yourself. You must be eternally grateful to the Unification movement, to me and to God, who has taught you how to live life so that you can fulfill. You can fill up your bag to bring it back as a gift to God, which will determine your position there. Look into your own selves. If you are prepared to do things that will please God, please me and please every brother and sister in this movement, you will be welcomed by God up in the spirit world. In order for you to be able to do that, you must welcome other people and do things for other people. If you want to be prepared for death, always closely examine yourselves whether or not you are like that.

I spent my whole life to find this out, and to pave the way for others to follow, doing things for mankind. In that way I've done a great thing for God and for mankind. The spirit world knows that. You enjoy the results of scientific inventions, but you forget that behind the invention were struggles and hardships for the inventor or scientist. Through me the way is already paved and you just have to follow me, but you never imagine how many hardships and tribulations I have gone through to pave the way for you. Do you think God will just teach someone about all the truth? If that was possible my predecessors and many people having lived before me would have done that. I have struggled hard to bring the truth into life and I've done that my whole life. I seriously wanted to find out what life really means, and above all what death really means and what comes after death. So I want you to be prepared for death and to know that after death there is a more glorious life awaiting you. The Unification path is the shortest way to heaven in the history of mankind, but you never dreamed of that because you didn't know anything about that. Life is temporal, life is short, so you must be thinking of what to leave behind you after your physical death. You must hope to live in the eternal world well prepared. If you do as I have instructed you're sure to inhabit the heavenly kingdom. You cannot live in flesh forever. It is natural that your hair will turn gray as you get old. If you think of only the fleshly side of life, you will get discouraged as you get old. But since you know the truth, as you get older you must feel more urgency to work for the sake of other people, to be prepared. By comparison between you and myself, do you think I have more things to leave behind than you? (Yes!) If you feel the quantity and quality of the things you have done is smaller and less valuable than what I have accomplished, you must feel more urgency to follow my example. Whatever may come in the form of persecution or tribulations, don't mind them. Just get over those things and march forward in spite of them.

It is natural, don't you think, for me to be ahead of you in going to the spirit world? (Yes) Don't you want to be someone who can be welcomed by Father Himself? (Yes!) That's what I want, too. I want to be welcomed by God. Our desire must be to be welcomed by God, praised by God, and glorified and loved by Him. I want all of you to become persons like that. To be successful in your worldly careers is nothing, as small as a fragment compared to the greatness of what is waiting for you up there. They're small things when I think of death. Whenever I come here I sometimes think, "Who knows, this may be my last visit to you." In that way I am always prepared for death. You are hearing this kind of thing for the first time from me, and I must repeatedly tell you-be well prepared for death. I want you to be persons so prepared as to have me and God both coming out to meet you and welcome you up there.

A Needed Man

Sun Myung Moon
July 16, 1975
Barrytown International Training Center

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My topic this afternoon is "A Needed Man." In your family there's someone who is the most needed one of all. In your village there must be someone most needed, and in your nation, too, there must be someone most needed by the people. What kind of people are the most needed?

In any society, the most neede person is the person who is sacrificial and who lives for the sake of other people. This has been true through history. A good man is the person most needed by all people. Where do you find these most-needed people. When you look around, if you find a person who is living for the sake of the public, for the sake of the whole, for the sake of other people you can define him as good or as a needed person. History shows that in the past saints and sacred men have without exception been those who lived for the sake of other people; Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Confucius, Buddha, all those people lived their lives for the sake of others.

You want to be educated in colleges and universities. But why do you want to be educated? You want to live a life where you are needed everywhere. You want to be good persons, and who are good persons? Good persons are those who are needed by all other people. When you think you are good people or needed people, you are proud of yourself, because you find examples in sacred and respected men like Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed, and that's the way you want to be. But have you been educated for that purpose? (No.) Then there must be something wrong.

Perhaps the educational system was wrong or you yourselves were wrong. Up to the present, what you were dreaming of was that after graduation you would be successful in a worldly career and you would make more money than others. Everything was centered on yourself, and it was entirely the wrong idea.

We must reevaluate our educational system.

Seen from that standpoint we must reevaluate our educational system. Once we understand that we've had a misguided education, then on the individual, family, national and worldwide levels we want to right the wrongs and remake the educational system. We want to produce persons needed by everyone else. However hard you may struggle in educating yourselves, if you don't practice living for other people you will have been educated in vain.

We have many good-looking young ladies here. Don't you want to have good mates in the future? (Yes.) When you say you want a good husband, you don't mean that he must be a doctor or he must have a master's degree or something like that, but immediately you think of a person who is going to live entirely for you, don't you? (Yes.) Even though he may be only a graduate of primary school, if he is going to live entirely for you, you would rather take him than the one with the doctorate degree who would not live for you. Pure love comes from the person who lives for his or her own spouse.

You must not only have an ideal but you must put whatever you are taught into practice. Then you are going to be good persons and needed persons. Do you want to be needed by your village, needed by your nation, or needed by the whole world? (World.) If you really mean what you say, then you are needed everywhere. Your parents would need you, your brothers and sisters will need you, your relatives, your friends, your nation and the whole world will need you. If the Unification Church can produce many of that kind of people, other people can determine our movement to be good. Otherwise we are going to be called bad. You can picture yourselves in the future and picture our movement in the future by whether you are going to be that kind of person.

Then is the Unification Church a good movement or a bad one? (Good!) Why? Because here we teach the ideal and teach people how to put the ideal into practice: to live for the sake of other people.

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Dream of a life of sacrifice

When you are trained here, you don't dream of any flowery future, but rather of a life of sacrifice for the sake of other people. You want to be the fertilizer for mankind to grow wholesomely. If I teach you to go back to your families and be loyal and pious sons and daughters to your parents, your parents will be overjoyed to have you back, I know. But despite that fact I'm driving you out into the world to live a sacrificial life for the whole country, for the whole of mankind, because I know corruption is prevailing in American society. So after saving America, naturally including your families, then you are going to be devoted sons and daughters to your own parents. Among American youth you cannot find anyone who is ready to live for the sake of other people or for the sake of the country. So we are needed that much more in this nation.

There have been many religions and many nations in the world, but those religions have not taught their people to live for others but only for the benefit of the particular denomination or religious sect. The nations have been educating their young people to live for the sake of the nation at best, and not for the sake of the world.

If the leader of any religion or nation teaches the people to live for the sake of other people, that religion or nation is going to be the foremost one in the world. Let us take an example. Suppose there are two people of equal intelligence and with the same capabilities. One lives and works for the sake of other people. The other does things for the sake of himself. In the long run which of the two will be most needed by other people? Even though they have equal capabilities, if one of the two lives for the sake of other people, then he will attain subjectivity over others. In your family life, too, if anyone in your family lives for the sake of the rest of the family, then he will be the center of the family. In any country, a loyal subject can be defined as that person who lives for the sake of the king and country. In the Unification Family, too, those who are most needed are those who live for the sake of the church and not for the sake of themselves.

There may be some people in our Family who dream of utilizing this movement for their own good. We need the first kind of people, and in society, too, those who live for the sake of other people are always chose who are needed.

Be needed by God

Then, what kind of persons are those needed by God? The same thing applies. Would you want to be persons needed by the United States of America, by the world, or by God? (By God!) Would you want to be a person needed by God, by the world, or by America? (God.) You must cling to just one of the three and let the others go, at first. More than anything else you want to be a person needed by God, don't you? If you want to live for the sake of America and if God calls you to work for the sake of the whole world, you must abandon America. If you are ready to work for the sake of the world and God calls you and cells you to follow Him alone, what would you do? (Follow.) You want to be a person needed by America, but when you want to be a person needed by the world you can even abandon America. And if you find yourself most needed by God, you can even abandon the world and follow Him.

Through religion God is teaching you how to follow Him first, without minding the world and your nation. After becoming entirely one with God alone, you can live your life for the sake of the world and the nation. Without your being united with God, what you have done on the level of the nation and the world will have no meaning in God's sight. First of all, you must return to God and be united with Him. Before being the citizen of America, you must become the son of God. Before being able to dominate mankind, you must know how to be dominated by God, to be the sons and daughters of God. Due to the Human Fall you lost this relationship to God, so what you must restore first of all is to be sons and daughters to Him. You muse construct a family with God as your father, and then you will recover your world and nation and family. That is what the order should be. You are living or fighting for your country and for the whole of mankind, but if you lack unity with God, in the end what you have done will have no connection with God's providence.

Where can you find God? You can find God by knowing His work, how He has proceeded with His providence in the world. We must know how God has been successful or sometimes unsuccessful, and we must be sorrowful because of the successes or failures of our forefathers. We are here to be sympathetic with God, to console His heart and to pledge before Him that we are going to be devoted sons and daughters to carry out the mission left unaccomplished by our predecessors. Then alone can we really find God and know Him and live with Him. Do you really realize that there is God? (Yes.) How does He exist? Do you feel the presence of God in the physical sense as you would miss your food and things like that in your everyday life? It's only a vague concept in your brain.

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Feel the presence of God

You must feel the presence of God as you would feel your own brother or Sister by your side. To really understand your parents you must know Him and feel Him. Suppose someone explains to you that your parents are not your own parents and let's suppose he explains it to you for hours, days, months and years. But you are not convinced that these are not your parents, because you have deep attachment for them. The nation may be mobilized -- the whole of mankind may be mobilized to explain to you that your parents are not your own. Would that do anything? But suppose you are sons and daughters of God? Then you must really feel the presence of God as you would your own parents. If you don't have that feeling, you cannot really say that you have found Him. Are you qualified to be His sons without knowing His presence, without knowing who He is and what He is? You must know Him through experience.

Where do you find God in your living room or on the front line? Even though you may only have a vague concept of God in your mind, if you go out witnessing to the people, testifying to God and teaching the truth to them in the face of difficulties and persecution, that is the best place for you to see Him and feel Him. God is the Being most needed in the whole world because He lives for the sake of other people. If you want to be recognized and needed by God, you must live for the sake of God and for the sake of humanity. Otherwise, you cannot recognize Him or have Him or find Him. It is natural for sons and daughters to resemble their parents. If you are sons and daughters to God, you must resemble God. Don't trust men, but only God.

Before commencing any of my work, I must think over what God would do for the world and put myself in the position of God. God would be grieved by the corruption prevailing in the Christian world, and if I were in God's position I would want to restore it. There's no discrimination in God's sight between all the denominations in the Christian world. There have been fights among the denominations and religious sects. That's why all the churches are empty and all the young people are leaving. If the established churches are corrupt, God would want us to restore them. I intend to do that.

Who can defend America?

God also wants to have someone prevent the Communist threat. America is the final target of Communist invasion. Both Soviet Russia and Red China-and not only those two but North Korea and all the satellite countries -- have their sights set on America as the final target. Who can defend America from the Communist invasion? If America collapses before Communism, there's no free world left. I came to America because I wanted to be responsible for preventing that. If America cannot remain a democratic and free nation, if it cannot carry out its mission as the leading nation of the world, then I must revive America to come back to its original position.

Otherwise the world of peace and freedom cannot be realized. That's what America needs most, that's what the whole world needs.

I named two things God would have us do. First, to revive the Christian churches to their original position, and secondly to prevent a Communist invasion. I must add one more thing: the corruption of youth must also be corrected. You know how corrupted the American youth are. You have been enjoying material wealth. You have been nourished with rich food. And that's not all -- that's just the animal life. Unless you eradicate the corruption among youth, you cannot be revived. The young people here are of a different breed. You are at least trying to live for the sake of other people, your nation and the world.

In America married couples even exchange their wives and husbands, and in that way they think that they are living for the sake of other people. We must revolutionize that kind of thinking in this nation. In the Unification Church we are strict in teaching our young people; we know that's not the way we should behave. We must reform American families because they are not the way they should be.

We will unite young people

We are going to do what the nation of America has not been able to do. We will do what American teachers have not been able to do. We are going to unite the young people of the world, transcendent of nationalities, and then mobilize them to the front line to save the whole world.

That kind of group is needed by God, needed by the world, and needed by America, too. That's the way we are most needed by God, and that's what we are aiming at: to make ourselves into such a group.

God is like a diamond mine or gold mine. The deeper I dig into the hole, the purer and the more I find. I must put my whole energy into digging the hole to find gold or diamonds. More than anything else we are in the position of sons and daughters to God, and just as children need their parents, so we need God. And just as parents need the children, so God also needs us.

If you go through the heart of God, then you can reach out to the end of the world, covering all mankind, but if you remain what you are now you are helpless, without being able to do anything great. When you are united with God, nothing is impossible. That's true. God is as big as the whole universe.

We must prove we are on God's side by being faithful to what we are doing.

Sun Myung Moon's words on The World Rally for Korean Freedom (Yeouido)

Compiled by Taekon Lee
August 17, 2018

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The World Rally for Korean Freedom, which was a massive Victory Over Communism rally, was held on June 7, 1975, at Yeouido Plaza, Seoul. There, 1.2 million people gathered from all parts of Korea, in addition to more than 1,000 representatives from 60 nations. True Father gave a speech entitled "Korea in the World." The representatives from nations across the world in particular passionately cheered for Korean freedom. They declared that, if war broke out and it became necessary to defend the Korean Peninsula, their fatherland of faith and a holy land, they would organize international volunteers to fight for Korea.

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The International One World Crusade came from America, and moved through Japan to Korea. I implemented this specific course because it accords with the providential flow. Since this is the era of restoration, the sensation I caused in America has to pass through Japan and then come to Korea. To allow the third national realm of Israel to become the third worldwide realm of Israel, I had to connect it to the first spiritual realm of Israel and the second Christian realm of Israel. This was a necessary, historic development for the providence. (077-074, 1975/04/01)

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From the viewpoint of providential history, Korea has yet to complete its mission to form an integrated cultural realm and achieve unification. Brothers cannot become one by themselves. Only when the parents arrive can brothers unite. Conflicting brothers are destined to harmonize and become a united Korea through Unification Thought. In this way we can establish a God-centered, ideal fatherland. From there we can finally transform the world into a world of peace, harmony and unity, and a world of victory.

So the kingdom of heaven should be built on earth and, at the same time, it needs to become one with God. God, who is the subject partner of the kingdom of heaven in heaven, should be brought down to earth in order to build one united heaven. This is the mission of Unification Church members. When the parents and children finally become one on such a foundation, their life in the kingdom of heaven of peace can begin.

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Since we have successfully hosted the Day of Hope rallies, we should likewise host a victorious World Rally for Korean Freedom at Yeouido. Having accomplished this, we need to use the substance of these victories to influence Japan, the United States and the free world. So, the World Rally for Korean Freedom should bring together the entire spiritual world and the physical world, so that our descendants will have hope and eagerly look forward to the Blessing. In this way, the World Rally for Korean Freedom will liberate God from His sorrows, liberate human beings from their sorrows, and liberate generations to come from their sorrows. We can realize all of this in one event. (079-084, 1975/06/01)

When we hosted the Day of Hope rallies in nine cities in Korea beginning April 1, 1975, the Unification Church and its members became known publicly, and the Christian churches rose up against us. This was partly because there was someone who received a spiritual revelation, "If Christianity cannot overcome the Unification Church at this time, it will be the end of Christianity." Those churches fought furiously and tried everything to bring the Unification Church to ruin, but we did not perish. In fact, we defeated them completely.

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From the formation stage, Busan, to the growth stage, Daegu, to the completion stage, Seoul, and from there to Incheon, Jeonju and Gwangju, they followed us through all nine cities to oppose us. They did everything they could to discourage us. They prayed for rain when we held the World Rally for Korean Freedom at the Yeouido Plaza on June 7, and they prayed that if it did not rain, there would be blistering, blinding sunlight. Through these battles, the Unification Church became well known. We needed to be known first as individuals, then as families, as a group, and as a people. (079-111, 1975/06/22)

When you consider the current situation of the Unification Church, holding this World Rally for Korean Freedom at the Yeouido Plaza is a significant risk. It is a big risk. It is a risk for us to try to fill that plaza, but we are meeting this considerable challenge in accordance with the fortune of the age. From the viewpoint of God's providence, we know the significance of the era in which we are living, and are aware that this rally aligns with this time.

Currently, Korea is under world scrutiny, and so movements in Korea influence the entire world as well as the nation. Korea is standing at a crossroads and must decide whether to seek the path that leads to victory for the democratic world, or the path of victory for the communist world. The issue here is: Who will serve as the guide? Who will be the first one to work in accord with heavenly fortune? Who will fulfill the mission of the flag bearer? For the democratic world to be victorious, there should be a prominent individual, organization or nation that can provide the vision. History always develops and moves forward to a new level through an individual, organization or nation.

In this urgent state, it is clear that Korea has to work in accordance with heavenly fortune, but Korea itself does not understand how heaven will work through it to reach the world. That is why a particular organization, which represents religion and has this vision, needs to shoulder this responsibility. This is to declare that, among religious organizations, the Unification Church must take on the mission of flag bearer. The Unification Church has stepped forward to fulfill this responsibility by hosting the World Rally for Korean Freedom at the Seoul Yeouido Plaza. (078-206, 1975/05/25)

I have been working all along to move the Japanese government, and also to create an atmosphere in which to form a new realm of civilization for the government and people of the United States. Korea cannot survive by itself. Even if the 34 million Korean people unite as one to overthrow the communists in North Korea, they would not be able to overcome communist China and the Soviet Union.

Communism emerged with the form of a religion, but of the Devil, not of God. The world has to unite as one nation within a cultural realm centered on the religion of God, and then subjugate communism. Otherwise, it has no hope.

Now is the moment when the members of the Unification Church need to unite as one and step forward as representatives of Korea and its people and as representatives of the religion of God in the democratic world. Unification Church members in Korea should never forget that, through this World Rally for Korean Freedom, they need to foster a new spiritual attitude and new pride in the world. To carry out this work, Unification Church members from around the world have gathered together to work with Korean members. They need to unite as one here through the rally at Yeouido Plaza, so that they can unfurl the victorious banner of Unification Thought, which is unique, unprecedented in history, and based on God's Will.

On that day of victory, God will bring the culmination of global civilization based on a providence that has passed through the Mediterranean region beginning on the Nile River, moved through Rome to Britain, formed a continental civilization in the United States, and transitioned to the Pacific Rim. (079- 076, 1975/06/01)

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Many people will gather at the World Rally for Korean Freedom. In addition, billions of people in the spirit world also will attend. Each of you should have the resolution to represent 10,000 people, which means that the citizens of the 60 nations you represent are gathered here. Can you imagine how closely your ancestors and others in the spirit world who have been mobilized are paying attention? You should rid yourself of the sentiment that "I am French" or "I am German." You need to feel you are transcending your native people, otherwise your affection for your country can impede your work for God. You should feel proud that you are each participating in this rally as a representative of 60 nations. (078-242, 1975/06/06)

On June 7, 1975, there was a major confrontation between other churches and the Unification Church at the Yeouido World Rally for Korean Freedom, centered on the International One World Crusade. This international team consisted of young people who were participating in the restoration of God's fatherland. There was confrontation with opposing churches as well as other opposing powers. It was clearly a time of restoration through indemnity.

Now that we have established the family foundation, we need to win the nation. That is why you need to become one with the government, making True Parents your focus. We as a movement need to become one with the government and move everyone. In the national domain, other churches collided with the Unification Church in the four cities of Busan, Daegu, Daejeon and Seoul. I confronted them, asking, "We are now holding revival meetings with international support, so why are you opposing us?" In response, their members had no choice but to raise their hands in surrender.

On this foundation, over 1.2 million people came together. At that time, even the Korean government was surprised. People from 60 nations came and proclaimed, "When you invade the motherland of our faith, we will defend it." Substantially, we stand in a leadership position, both spiritually and practically, in relation to the nation. (191-123, 1989/06/24)

Because the time has come for the Republic of Korea to inherit world fortune, it should not oppose us. Because the time has come for us to take action as a people, I was finally able to bring youth from around the world here in 1975. Together with Korean youth, I hosted these historically unprecedented nationwide events, the Day of Hope rallies. A providential wind brought many people to these events without their conscious decision. The 1975 Day of Hope rallies set a historic record that no religious gathering can break. I connected that success to everything else as the basis for national victory. The nation and the world were unable to connect to Jesus in spirit and flesh during his lifetime, so that connection needs to be completed in 1975.

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Based on this providential understanding, True Parents began full-scale work in the United States in 1972. In terms of its spiritual standard, the Unification Church of Korea stands in a higher position than the nation, and in a leadership position. The three-year strategy in the United States was for the Unification Church to become a religion that attracts everyone's attention, despite being at the center of a commotion and despite Christian opposition; moreover, it was to connect its national-level spiritual victory to Christianity on the world level. Not until I had connected my victorious foundation to the world in 1975 could I come to Korea and fight the battle to determine the standard of victory both spiritually and physically. This was the World Rally for Korean Freedom held at Yeouido Plaza. (084-149, 1976/02/22)

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Korea in the World

Sun Myung Moon
June 7, 1975
World Rally for Korean Freedom
Yoido Island, Seoul, South Korea
Keynote Address

June 7, 1975 is the day of a new historical declaration both for me and for God. Already, at this very plaza, people have sent up a great roar that has shaken heaven and earth, blaming Kim Il Sung who is trying to invade the South, thus caking advantage of the Indochina situation. There have already been many rallies for the total unity of national security. However, this World Rally for Korean Freedom is a most unique historical convention in two senses.

First, today's rally is the only convention which blames Kim Il Sung not only in the name of the people and of mankind, but also in the name of God. Secondly, this rally is a worldwide convention where not only our Korean people gather, but also some one thousand representatives from 60 countries of different languages and cultures gather together to resolve the protection of free Korea and the whole world.

The purposes of this rally are to encourage our people to be totally united domestically in the face of our nation's crisis brought about by the communization of Vietnam and Cambodia, and to show the direction and standpoint which the people of the world should follow. As a result this rally is significant in order to warn Kim Il Sung against conducting any rash action, miscalculating or provoking a war like the last Korean War.

What is Communism? We know very well that Communism began with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, engulfing more than half of the world within the last half-century and inflicting its ruthless and savage actions upon mankind.

Communism is a dreadful, satanic philosophy, whose actions are horribly criminal and destructive.

We Korean people who have experienced the savage action of Communism know better than any other people in the world the criminal behavior of the Communists.

We are the people who have made a greater sacrifice than any other people in the world because of Communism. And at this very moment in North Korea our 14,000,000 brethren are still the victims of Communism. However, the criminal action of Communism does not stop here.

Today we can find the reason why we must oppose Communism and annihilate its criminal actions from the face of the earth. Communism is not only the enemy of mankind, but more significantly it is the enemy of God. Communism is not only an ideological system of politics and economics, but it is also a form of religion based on atheism. Communism completely controls human thinking, action and way of life, which is the unique force that only a religion can have. Communism is a religion insisting that there is no God. Moreover the ideology itself takes the place of God in human thinking, action and way of life, making human beings into slaves and machines. Therefore Communism is an unforgiveable enemy.

For Communism to win victory on the earth is for God to be defeated completely on the earth. It is God's defeat before it is the defeat of democracy and the free world. Therefore, Communism is God's enemy, even before it is the enemy of mankind.

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However, omniscient and omnipotent God cannot be defeated. God will not merely watch Communism win victory over the whole world. In today's rally we must realize that the Unification Church and other virtuous religions who believe in God will surely win victory over Communism, the satanic religion denying God. I sincerely declare that the Unification Church which calls God our Father, and all the other religious people with their obedience and faith should defeat God's enemy, Communism, which is trying to kill God. Therefore we must realize that all religious people, especially Unification Church members, are God's warriors to be called to the front line for victory over Communism and are vanguards and flag bearers in the battle between God and Satan. We can never defeat Communism depending only upon weapons. This is because we cannot destroy firm human belief with only weapons or an atomic bomb. It is through belief and ideology that we can defeat the false. The force that will win victory over Communism, the false ideology, is another spiritual belief and ideology of a higher dimension.

Today we must increase our national power. We must equip our armed forces. We must fortify our defense line. However, what is more important is to be armed with truth, that is to say, our spirit should be armed with faith and ideology. We should be armed with the ideology that there is a God and our spirit should be armed with the faith and resolution that we will fight at the cost of our lives to fulfill God's will. We can win victory over the Communists' false faith and ideology only through the true faith and ideology. This is the ultimate task for the Unification Church members and all religious people to carry out. This is the way to root out and win the victory over Communism.

Today two ideologies are facing each other; one thinks there is a God and the other thinks there is no God. One world is centering on material and the other world is centering on spirit. The world that thinks there is a God is on God's side, and the world that thinks there is no God is on Satan's side. When these two worlds encounter each other the result will determine God's existence.

Therefore the fight to defeat Communism is the fight for God. These two world powers are facing against each other here in Korea. Korea is the final battlefield of these two worldwide ideologies which are against each other. The protection of Korean freedom is not only for the sake of Korea, but for the sake of the whole free world, for the defense of eternal freedom, and for bringing God a final victory. This is the reason why all freedom-loving people of the world should rise up in order to defend Korean freedom.

Therefore, in the June 25th Korean War God sent soldiers from 16 different countries to protect the freedom of Korea, shedding their precious blood. If North Korea invades the South again, enthusiastic youths from 60 different countries are going to defend this country to the last, at the cost of their lives.

The world members of the Unification Church are totally united in the name of God and all people of the world to carry out such a will. The Unification Church has been fulfilling the role of flag bearer and bridgehead in the battle against Communism, standing in the front line of the free world with the belief that Communism is the final enemy of God.

The religion that manifests God clearly will let us perceive the truth, faith and ideology that can overcome Communism. The aim of all the religious people in Korea should be the city of Pyongyang. The North Korean people who became the slaves of Communism are waiting for their liberation by God. Kim Il Sung and his followers dug underground tunnels for the purpose of invading the South. We religious people should dig our own tunnel for free unification to the bottom of the city of Pyongyang with our higher dimensions and should have the courage to liberate our brethren with love and heart.

We must not only pray, but also fight in order to explode God's bomb of truth and love in the center of the city of Pyongyang. Fourteen million North Korean brethren are waiting for God's hands.

In the Old Testament, nine foot Goliath stood stately with a spear in his hand. Before him was the boy David with a stone in his hand. Today we should hear David's cry. He neither cried, "You, foe, receive my stone," nor "Though I am very small, I am very strong. Come and fight with me." David cried, "I am facing you in the name of Jehovah." David defeated the giant Goliath with God's power.

We should defeat Kim Il Sung, smash Mao Tse Tung, and crush the Soviet Union in the name of God. We can gain victory only through faith. Let us fortify our defense line, completely and bravely. And let us fight to the last at the cost of our lives in the holy battle for God. The final victory will be ours at last. God is on our side.

We must know the strategy of Communism. I know Communism better than any other person. After liberation from Japan when I was in North Korea doing missionary work, I myself came through many death situations. The Communists captured me as their opponent and imprisoned me in Hung Nam Prison in 1948. This compulsory labor prison was an execution place where political and religious prisoners were dying slowly. I spent three years in this prison and was liberated by U.N. forces sent by God in 1950. I am a person who has tasted deeply the reality of Communism. I know too well its strategy and plot.

In 1931, one of the staff members of the Central Commit God set up a powerful new leader, the present president of Korea, and the new order in our society when this country was confused and facing the crisis of Communist invasion from the North in 1961. God is helping us gain the final victory at the last battlefield between God and Satan, making North Korea, Red China, the Soviet Union, the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the United States involved in this battle, just like in both the first and the second world wars. We should be courageous and rise up totally with God's special favor and protection.

God loves Korea so much that He is going to establish a unified civilization of the whole world in this country. According to God's providence, human civilization has traveled around the world with its higher dimension, and now it is going to bear fruit.

Our ancient civilization was brought about on the continent. Human civilization was conceived beside the Nile River, changed into the peninsula civilization of Greece, and formed the Mediterranean civilization on the Italian peninsula. This peninsula civilization moved into the island civilization, centered on Great Britain. At last the island civilization of Great Britain crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the American continent and formed the Pacific civilization, and the miracle of modern civilization. But the flow of human history does not stop here. This civilization crossed the Pacific Ocean and formed a new island civilization of Japan in full bloom corresponding to that of Great Britain, and it is going to form a unified civilization here in Korea corresponding to that of the Roman Empire. The Republic of Korea is the beloved one in the new era, and the Korean people are the ones chosen by God. Korea is the cradle of the new civilization that God wants. Therefore Korea is the country where God will make an end of His work of providence in a unification of world civilization.

This should be the pride of the Korean people whom God loves. A mother must unavoidably go through pains in order to bear a great son. Korea is now suffering from those pains. God is testing our potential ability, bravery, and qualifications through this trial, and after these pains He is going to bring us the glory of a great son.

Therefore each of the biggest powers on Satan's side is going to invade this country respectively. We should overcome this trial with God's love and with faith and hope. Our gaining the victory over Communism in spite of all difficulties means that Korea will take a leading role in establishing the unified world, which is God's will. In other words, Korea is the flag bearer of the whole world.

It is absolutely impossible to do this without the true thought and ideology -- the Divine Principle which Korea gave birth to in order to unify all religions. Victory Over Communism and Unification Thought is the ideology.

All the religions which take God as their Father should unite and face the Communists who deny God, but we should defeat them with truth and love. Let them recognize their errors. And finally we should embrace them as our brothers and sisters. The ideology for victory over Communism based on this principle analyses all philosophies and isms, and enables us to unite into one centering on God. This principle, ideology, and thought was brought about in Korea. This is God's ism.

We will govern the country consulting with God and centering on God and there will be neither a party in power nor a party out of power. The time has come when all the religions and conscientious people should unite with our government and defeat Communism with God's ism and unify our territory and people. The time is now. Bliss comes after pain, and the new way comes out of difficulties. When the time comes, let us display the full potential of these Korean people who believe in God.

The famous Indian poet Tagore sang about Korea as follows: "Korea in early days, one of the bright lights in the golden days of Asia, when the light again becomes bright, you will be the brilliant light in the Orient. The place where there is no fear in mind, the head is high. The place where knowledge is free and not divided into pieces by small walls. The place where words spring up out of the depth of truth. The place where the two arms stretch out for the completion of endless effort. The place where the clear flow of intelligence is not astray on the sands of convention. The place where my mind is guided by the thought and action stretching out endlessly. To such a heavenly kingdom of freedom, may awake my fatherland."

Korea will be a bright light in the Orient illuminating the whole world in the near future. The day will surely come when all the people around the world will take Korea which is governed by God as their fatherland just like the poet Tagore. The time is already coming.