1What kind of being is God? He is the God of love. St. Paul said, "Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:39) Even Jesus Christ would be nothing without God's love. This is why we value God's love above everything. God's love is the original source of life, the source of happiness, and the source of peace.
2God's love is stronger than the sun. When the sun rises in the morning, the shoots of all plants turn toward it. Yet God's love, and it alone, is the source of life, the source of our original mind, and the source of the ideal.
3The coming Lord possesses God's original true love and His real truth. Through this truth, families emerge, and true societies, nations and the world emerge. On each of these levels -- individual, family, tribe, people, nation and world -- love, ideas and personality emerge. It all begins with the individual. In this way, a person who lives a true life as an individual, in whatever corner of the world he or she may be, is living for the sake of the whole world. That is how it is in the world of love. Living in the world of heart for even one hour would be our source of pride for a thousand years, and living in that world for one day would give us pride for ten thousand years. It is true love that allows us to experience the precious value of life. True love lets us feel even the energy by which our cells multiply. The world filled with God's love is like that. It is hard to describe in words, but it is a world of enchantment where all our cells are dancing and we feel as if we are flying on the clouds on a bright spring day.
4How shall we describe God's love? It is like being enraptured by a warm spring day with white clouds floating gently in the sky. The air shimmers above the ground, insects crawl around, and ants scurry about, exploring the world. Beside a flowing stream, pussy willows bloom, frogs sing songs of spring, and bees and butterflies flit about. It feels as if you are drifting off to sleep, but you aren't sleeping. You are awake and in a happy mood, rejoicing in the beauty around you. God's love has such a flavor that lasts forever. Our mood as we focus on becoming the ideal object partner for whom God is seeking is like our mood in that flower garden with the fluttering butterflies and buzzing bees.
5The place where God dwells is filled with love. It is a place where the more you give, the more you want to give, and the more you receive, the more you want to return millions of times more than you receive. This is the kingdom of heaven. Because you can give more and receive more there, you feel an explosive stimulation, as if all your cells are bursting. God's love is like that.
6What defines a good person? It is the attitude that good and precious things belong to the whole, rather than to him or her alone, and it is the heart to connect the value of such things to the value of the whole. God, who created heaven and earth, is a being of utmost goodness, the root of all things, and the subject partner of love. When there is someone whom God can truly trust and love and to whom He can entrust things, He will want to hand over everything He values to that person. If this is so, the desire to give one's most precious things to others is the principle of heavenly law and the original heart of all people.
7God's love encompasses parents' love, the love between husband and wife, and children's love. Of course, it includes siblings' love as well, and when that expands, it also contains love for the nation and the world. So we say that God's love is parental love, conjugal love and filial love. This is the most wonderful statement that can be made. Because the power of love can guide everything, it affects one's destiny. If we really understood love and its power to determine what happens in our life, we would be able to change our destiny.
8The love God needs is absolute love. Just as God needs absolute love, unique love, unchanging love and eternal love, we also need absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal love. In this respect, we resemble God. Since God has both a masculine and feminine nature as well as plus and minus qualities, He created human beings, His substantial object partners, as men and women. Thus when people marry, they become the substantial plus and minus representing God. God seeks to bring perfect unity between His vertical love and horizontal love through marriage; this is God's Will.
9When giving us love, how much would God want to give? God is not one who limits His love, saying, "Okay, okay, that's enough." God wants to love without limit. Even after giving everything, God will still say, "Because of who you are, I want to live deeper inside you." That impulse is in the original nature of love. Once having entered into a relationship of love, God would be happy to live even as a servant. A father feels joy even when he sees his beloved infant son or daughter climbing onto his dining table. Love transcends the law. After giving all His love to people until now, can God say, "I have given everything to you. Why have you given nothing back?" The God of absolute love still has the attitude that He has not been able to give all the love He wants to give. God cannot assert Himself. It is a principle of creation that God wanted to give humankind complete love, and for that reason, because He still has not been able to give us that complete love, He wants to give us something more. Because God is like that, the more we think of Him, the better we feel.
10God says, "I am love." This means He likes love by night and by day, while working, resting, dancing or crying. This is why He said, "I have love, in all its fullness." The phrase, "in all its fullness," indicates that everything is contained therein. The one who likes love most is God. Since God has such love, if we come to know and taste His love, we will not let go of God even at the cost of our life.
11To receive God's vertical love, an original, unfallen couple has to stand in loving oneness, the man on the right and the woman on the left, perpendicular to God's vertical love, ablaze in love and unity. When that happens, they engraft to God as one man and one woman. How are they engrafted? There must be a balance. What does this entail for the individual? Start with the understanding that God is the bone of love. With respect to love, God's love is like the bone and human love is like the flesh. The bones and the flesh become one and assume a form, like the human body. God's love is the bone love, and True Parents' love is the flesh love.
12Do you have eternal love in your heart? Have you arrived at the position where you can say, "God's love has come to me. It will never change. Though heaven and earth may change, this promise does not change"? That's where you have to be. God's love appears in places that do not change. God's love is unchanging, so we can say it is eternal. Because it is unchanging love, if it comes to you, it comes on the foundation of your having also developed an unchanging heart. Therefore throughout your life, everything you eat, you should eat for that love; you should sleep for that love; everything you do should be only for that love. If you have a perfect, unchanging standard for the sake of love, God's love will appear. If that doesn't happen, all the promises of the universe are proven false.
13God is in the position of the Father for all humankind. Because He is the Father, He is the center for all His children. Even though God created humankind, since He is in the position of their Parent, He also naturally exists for their sake. Parents want to exist for the sake of their children. Day and night they worry about their children's safety. Parents try to protect them from troubles and from harm. The way of goodness is to seek and connect to the original nature of such a parent; that is the way of love. Goodness brings the connection of love in the parent-child relationship, and enables us to realize our purpose. That is why we have to base goodness on love, and not just any love, but God's love, which is at the center. If we do not do so, we cannot establish the center of love on earth.
14Until now, God has loved those people, tribes and nations that were dear to Him. He blessed the Israelites as individuals, as a people and as a nation, adding blessings again and again, with the concern that they might reject His blessing if they thought it too small. Even this was not enough. He wanted to bless them further by sending His beloved Son. When they rejected that blessing, He even gave them the life of His Son. Even after His only Son died as he did, God still wanted to give more love. This is why, on the day when this love is finally returned, all of heaven and earth will be transformed into the ideal kingdom of heaven.
15Where do God and human beings connect? They connect where their life, love and ideals intersect. This is nothing other than the parent-child relationship. How great would our joy be if we could be equal to God? God is the subject partner of our love, life and ideal. If this is so, do we still need to pray? God's authority and dignity are not the issue. Without hesitation we can hold on to God. When we experience God embracing us, caressing us and loving us, it melts our very bones.
16What happens when you experience God's love? Your hair will dance and so will all your cells. When you become completely intoxicated in this love, you don't faint; you want to live forever. If someone tries to wake you, you plead not to be awakened. As the saying goes, "A saint's delight makes him forget the passage of time." There is indeed a way to become enraptured by this level of love, which exists far beyond human imagination.
17Why do all people like God and follow Him? It is because God is the One who gives everything to them, then continues giving more, continues giving everything for thousands of years, and still feels it is not enough. He says, "Now I can give you only this much, but wait a bit longer, and I will give you something that is many hundreds of times, many thousands of times better." This is because He has so much in His heart that He is never satisfied with what He has given today. Far from it; He promises to give better things in the future. If we were with that kind of God, we would be happy even if we were poor and had no food to eat. Such a reality would be no problem, because we would be stimulated by hope. It would be like receiving a jolt. In fact, that kind of situation is all the better because it leads to new resolve. Being together like that, our tears, shed for the future, would be mutually comforting. We would not despair over the present reality but would be filled with hope for tomorrow. Encouraging each other face to face, we would express our mutual resolve. It would be an intense experience.
18It is not so much Adam and Eve's bodies that God likes as their love for each other. God wants to be in the place where the two unite. The final destination of the purpose of creation that God seeks is the place where He can meet His children and love them. The final destination we wish to reach is where we can attend God as our Father and receive His love as His children. This is why human beings strive to become the children of God and God strives to make us His children. The place where these two desires coincide is none other than in the parent-child relationship. There is no place higher than this.
19God is not in need of knowledge, as He is the creator of knowledge. God is not in need of power, as He is almighty. God is not in need of money, as He can make diamonds and gold whenever He wants. There is only one thing that God needs: love. You may ask, "Can't God have as much love as He likes?" But God cannot have love by Himself. No matter how impressive a Ph.D. you have, no matter how overwhelming your power as a ruler of the world, no matter how awesome your wealth as a mighty king, you cannot possess love by yourself. What God needs most is a partner with whom He can share true love.
20In terms of love, God is the origin of all the related emotions. It is from here that parents' love, husband-wife love, children's love, brotherly love, the love of relatives and the love of a people emerge. Just as the branches, twigs and leaves spread out from a tree trunk, and as ripples flow out from waves, the shoots of love grow out; the farther they go, the more sensitive you become. If you become a person who receives God's love, the one among your relatives whose heart is closest to God will be attracted to you. If God is with you, people are attracted to you, although they don't know why.
21We should become sons and daughters who are concerned about the heart of our Father and attend Him. Otherwise we will become objects of pity. Once we know that God exists, that He seeks us and works for us, we must understand that it is not enough to attend this God as merely a mental image. God is the substantial being who wants to be with us eternally as one body, eating together, living together, sharing joy and suffering together for eternity. God is the eternally unchanging original being of love, the embodiment of eternal hope. Jesus Christ was the person who made no excuses in front of this God. Completely forgetting himself, he was able to do anything for the sake of God's Will. We must be sons and daughters who can follow in Jesus' footsteps.
22Whenever we see something big, we want to make it our own. In our heart, there is nothing we cannot own. Our heart is vast enough to want to bring God to us and attend Him, and vast enough to bring any country that follows God to us, and to bring the world to us. Therefore, attending God in our heart is not a problem; our heart is that big. We want to attend God in our heart. Since God is a loving God and the Absolute Being, we cannot put this being of absolute value anywhere else. People want to go together, be together and live together with the person they love. How do we want to live together with our beloved? We want to go deeply into one another, and become one. This is the original nature of love.
23A man must be able to say, "I am the subject partner of perfect love representing men." A woman must be able to say, "I am the subject partner of perfect love representing women, so you and I absolutely need each other." What a man absolutely needs on earth, other than God, is a woman. Also, other than God, what a woman absolutely needs is a man. Why is this so? It is so they can receive God's love. To do this, the man and woman both must stand in the position of true perfection, where even if they could turn back they would not want to, and even if they had a chance to stop loving they would not want to. This is the meaning of attending God. The owner of love is neither man nor woman, but God.
24Where can we dig to find God's love? God's love does not originate where brothers and sisters love each other. God's love does not originate with man and woman's love at the center. God's love originates in the love between parent and child. There has to be a vertical relationship. Such a relationship is established only through parents' love, so the parent-child relationship is the foundation for love. In this love there is no distance. In this vertical relationship there must be a center. There is only one center. The center must be the best place. Wherever there are two centers in this world, struggle begins.
25If, with true love, you seek a person better than yourself, you must invest 100 percent, then 1,000 percent, and then invest again. When you think you have invested enough, at that moment, everything stops. When God created human beings, He wanted to make His object partners of love greater than Himself, so He invested every ounce of His being. He invested and wanted to invest even more, in order to make His intangible nature completely substantial. Only when you have invested everything and forgotten about your investment can you find the beginning of true love. It is that simple. This is a fundamental principle of the universe.
26Even though God is the Absolute Being and the subject of true love in the eternal, unchanging and unique realm, He doesn't ask others to live for Him. Working from nothing, God invested Himself to bring everything into being. His investment was for His creation. He had to invest Himself. Through this investment the universe came into being. The origin, the foundation and starting point was true love for the sake of the world. Everything began from true love. This was the original point, the beginning of the ideal.
27God invested Himself totally in making all things of creation. He found love only when the object partner into which He had invested was complete. In the same way, the more we invest ourselves for the sake of the public sphere, the more love will come to us. So we must be devoted children in our families. Why do we need to be dutiful toward our parents and loving toward our brothers and sisters? The more we are, the more love will come to us. Then, what do we want to own? We don't want to own knowledge, power or glory. We want to own love. That's the highest purpose for which human beings were created. It is the destination we seek.
28A mother offers her body for her child, and then forgets her investment. There is no mother who remembers how she gave and shared her flesh and blood. While she is nursing her baby, a mother does not keep a record in a notebook, writing, "Today I gave the baby this many milliliters of milk." She invests and forgets, invests and forgets. The way a mother raises her child is the same way God created all things, by investing and forgetting, investing and forgetting; the two are exactly the same.
29The origin of creation reveals the logic of love for the sake of others. It is great to invest for the sake of an object partner. This is where the life philosophy of "living for the sake of others" originates. Love should take us on a voyage to the ideal. The life philosophy of living for the sake of others originated in order to keep us moving in the direction of the world of purpose. Unless one takes the path of total investment, one cannot reach the destination of true love. This is possible only when you invest yourself totally and live completely for the sake of others.
30True love is love for the sake of others. Giving, or living, for the sake of others means searching for the object partner, the second creation, who is the object of love. Not only God creates; we too are creating now. Just as God invested Himself completely into His creation, likewise true love invests completely. When you invest yourself completely, your creation appears for you.
31True love is not about being served, but serving others. When God created His object partner of love in the beginning, He invested all of His energy, all of Himself, 100 percent. In this way God set the example of true love. In other words, God set the tradition of true love by exhausting Himself completely. This true love is the center of the cosmos.
32The way of true love is not to have others live for one's own sake; it is to live for the sake of others. When God created His object partner of love, He did so for the sake of His object partner, repeatedly investing all He had. This God is the original central being. The original central being with this kind of heart is the God who made all creation. True love for the sake of others is giving 100 percent, then 1,000 percent; it is giving everything, thus turning oneself into a vacuum.
33Love is total investment. A man looking for love needs to invest everything. He has to invest his five senses completely, his eyes, ears, nose, mouth and sense of touch. Unless he fits with the perfect shape of the model according to the original form of creation, he does not qualify to attain his love. Resembling God, he must invest everything.
34God began His creation based on love. He did not do so in order to suffer a loss. People often think that to give of oneself is to lose, so why did God invest everything? It is because love has the power to fill everything to overflowing and still remain undiminished. So God invested everything and used Himself up, but He received love in return. When you invest true love more and more, it does not gradually diminish. The more you invest, and the more you exchange, the more it expands. If it were a principle that true love grows smaller through investment, God would have been depleted. But instead, the more He invests true love, the bigger it gets. The world of true love grows bigger as it moves. If you want to capture love, you need to invest and forget and invest and forget.
35God created all things of creation with the heart to invest Himself for the sake of His object partner, His partner of love. So if you love all things of creation as God did while creating them, when He invested Himself and enjoyed everything with a heart of love, you will stand on God's side. The more you love the things of creation, the closer to God you will be.
36The origin of the universal principle is God. To create the universe, God invested Himself completely in everything He made. Throughout history He has sacrificed Himself ceaselessly to save fallen human beings. The prophets, saints and sages who knew God's Will and followed His Principle with their lives were not satisfied to merely keep the truth to themselves. They sacrificed themselves for the sake of teaching the truth to others.
37Why should I sacrifice myself, having to overcome difficulties, with a sense of responsibility for others? It is so that I can influence others. This is in order to stand in a position like that of God, who invested energy and created everything from nothing. When He looked at all that He had created, "God saw that it was good" (Gen. 1). Therefore, the things that came from that were also supposed to be good. But we are not really good until we stand in the same position as God and follow His principles of creation.
1Where does true love begin? It is not from you; it begins from God. God is the origin of love. He created this world because He needed His ideal partner in love. Accordingly, even the creation of heaven and earth had its origin in love. Love is possible only in a world of reciprocity. Love makes no sense outside the concept of reciprocity. Therefore, if there is a man, there must be a woman; if there is a righthand side, there must be a left-hand side; if there is a top, there must be a bottom. There must be above and below, front and back, right and left. Through these connections a sphere is formed. Before creation, God had mind and body. In the unity of mind and body, in love and without conflict, God lived and dreamed of realizing a world of ideal love. God wants not quiet love, but explosive love that can spin 360 degrees. To make and to find a partner for that kind of love, He created heaven and earth.
2Any of you who have had a mystical experience will begin to wonder about and search for the origin of the universe. When you put this question into words and seek the origin of the universe, you will come to know one thing: Human beings are the original foundation of the universe, and represent the whole world of creation. What is the original foundation of human beings? It is life. What is the original foundation of life? It is love. If there were no love, there would be no life. Then what is the original foundation of love? Here you must look higher than human beings. You must look to God. So we say God is love. We say God is love, using the noun love, but that noun, love, cannot be realized all alone. It requires a reciprocal relationship.
3The word love makes sense only in reference to a reciprocal relationship. Not even the almighty Heavenly Father can establish love all alone. Love can be realized only in a reciprocal relationship. God's purpose in creating Adam and Eve was to feel joy. How can you experience happiness? It is not just by seeing, or speaking or touching, but only by loving that you come to feel happiness. God began the creation in order to actualize joy.
4Love does not begin with me. It comes from my object partner, and to receive it, I must open my door wide and invest myself completely for that partner. I must support my object partner. God, the Creator of the universe and the owner of true love, made the world not for Himself but for His object partner. God invested everything for His partner, everything of value that He possessed.
5True love originates in living for the sake of others. When God created the universe, the ideal of love was at stake. For the sake of what He had made, God has put out of His mind the thousands of years of fallen human history. Over and over and over again, He has given love in the face of betrayal and humiliation at the hands of human beings. That unconditional giving of love still remains on earth, even in this fallen human world. It is a parent's love. What is true parental love? When loving their children, parents who think, "Oh, I must get back everything I've given my children, with interest!" are not true parents. True parents sacrifice day and night, giving love again and again to their children. No matter where they go, they do not forget them and want to give more to them. They live for them twenty-four hours a day, transcending time and distance. This kind of love is closest to the original love. Because He is the origin of this kind of love, God could lead human beings to the truth and lay the foundation for their salvation.
6Love cannot begin from a self-centered position. We can love only when we can stand in our partner's position, honoring and protecting that position. Is there anyone who would say to his or her loved one, "Hey, you! Serve me!" When you lift up your partner and live for your partner more than for anyone else; when you feel you want to exist because of your partner, that is love. If you make yourself the center and command, "Do as I say!" that is not love.
7Even God cannot be happy alone, so He made all things of creation. Happiness and love begin from a reciprocal relationship. This is where the phrase "it is good" begins. Can anyone be truly happy alone? Words such as goodness, love, happiness and hope apply when we seek to realize meaning in a reciprocal relationship of a higher dimension. This is how our level of happiness is determined.
8Love is not centered on myself. Love does not begin with me. A love relationship can come about only through a partner. Without a partner, it can't happen. Therefore both men and women need object partners. That is because love is not "mine." Love is something to be shared. Love is the power that can embrace everything in the universe. That love does not start with me alone; it is sparked by having a partner. Therefore when there is no partner, I do not feel love. Even when there is a partner, love cannot function if I have a "me first" attitude.
9We say that parental love is good and conjugal love is good. True love is not self-centered. Love does not start from me but from my partner. Love comes from my husband or wife, from my sister or brother. Love does not start from me alone, but from relating with others. The owner of love is my object partner.
10God wants to give His true love endlessly to His object partner. Parents hope that their children will surpass them, so they want to give their children more and more. Husbands and wives in love also want their partners to surpass them, so they invest themselves again and again and forget what they have given. This desire to invest and invest again in your object partner sparks the action of true love. From the position of the subject partner of true love, by continually giving and giving again for the sake of human beings, God exists eternally.
11God, too, invested for the sake of human beings. He exists for our sake. Hence people have tried to follow Him for tens of thousands of years. In order to maintain a position in the universe that follows the heavenly law of existing for the sake of others, you also need to exist for others. Only by living for the sake of others can you be accepted in the East and West, in the past and the present. Because God's love is the same in the past and in the present, and in the East and the West, He can deal successfully with the East and West and the past, present and future. Because love can overcome the differences between the past, present and future, development can take place; and because love overcomes the differences between East and West, the two can be united. All this is possible only through love.
12No one wants a beloved partner or a dear child to be inferior to oneself. Where does this heart come from? It comes from God. He feels the same way. God wants His love partner and His children to be better than Himself. Therefore, to create children better than Himself, a love partner better than Himself, He had to invest more than Himself. Even now He has to invest one thousand times more and forget what He has given, then invest ten thousand times more and forget what He has given. Without the concept of investing, we can't expect a better object partner to appear. So a person who gives true love with the original heart that wants to give more, even after giving his or her life and living this way for a thousand years, keeps on giving. God's logic consists of wanting to make His object partner rise to the highest point and then still further, and so if you wish to possess God's love you'll have to invest more than God has invested. The basis of true love is investing even your life and not looking back.
13Because God is omniscient and omnipotent, He has His own sovereign power to invest in what He is imagining, thousands and tens of thousands of times beyond Himself. He invests and forgets how much He has invested. Love can invest itself limitlessly to produce limitless value. When you continually invest yourself, you automatically advance upward in a spiral movement. In the realm of this spiral movement, I can become an owner. Also, I can inherit the ownership of love in the heavenly world. Since love has the right of inheritance, the right to live together and the right to participate together, this sphere of activity belongs to me. Looking at this, we can see that God is the true king of knowledge. Why would He invest Himself and forget how much He has invested? It is so that He can continue to invest Himself again and again. Through the principle of self-replicating spherical movement, eternal rotation begins. From this we can establish the logic for the reality of eternal life. The act of investment repeated again and again exhibits the logic behind eternal life.
14True love dwells in the place where you love, forget how much you have loved, and want to love again. It dwells where you invest even your life and forget how much you have invested, and invest again. True love is giving everything of value all at once and then forgetting what you have given. Why must you forget? Because if you want to give more, you need to forget what you have given already. A mother gives her love and forgets what she has given. She doesn't record it in a notebook and expect to get it back. A mother is happy while giving her milk and giving her life to her child. Even mothers in this fallen world are like this, so you should be even more giving. True love exists eternally among those who invest totally and then forget how much they have invested.
15True love stems from total investment. When you have sacrificed everything and forgotten even your life, true love continues. True love continues on a plane beyond the point of investing your life. This is because true love is the origin of life. Unless you invest more than your life, there is no way to connect to true love. True love is the origin of life, so if you sacrifice everything you can go back to that place of origin.
16The more love you give, the more love you have; it never ends. You will have enough to give even more. Everything else comes to an end. Money, knowledge and power all come to an end. Everything that has to do with human circumstances and recognition in the world comes to an end. Yet eternal true love never comes to an end, no matter how much you give out. Amazingly, it continues eternally. Therefore with the power of love you can move the entire universe and still have more remaining.
17What is the difference between false love and genuine love? Once false love begins, it diminishes and becomes weaker. Once genuine love begins, it increases. True love keeps increasing until it embraces the world. This heart that is infinitely embracing, this heart that holds everything, says, "I will embrace more. I will embrace more!" It is only true love that activates the original heart like this. Only true love does this.
18There is no end to love. There is no end to parents' love. If a man and woman devoted themselves to their child, feeding and dressing him or her well, and raising him or her to be successful internally and externally, and then the child died, those parents would never feel they had done all they could for the child. Even after giving something good, it is the way of love to feel it was inadequate. After giving something good, love never boasts. It bows its head and is humble and quiet.
19What kind of love is true love? The original nature of true love is not to focus on first receiving for one's own sake, but on giving first for the sake of others and for the whole. True love is a love that gives without remembering having given, and continues to give. It is love that gives happily. A mother feels love and joy in her heart while nursing her baby. A filial son feels joy while making sacrifices for his parents out of love.
20True love is love that exists for the sake of others. True love wants the beloved to go higher than oneself. The nature of love is to want one's beloved spouse and children to be greater than oneself. This is the way it is meant to be in the human world. We want our loved ones to go higher than our parents, to go as high as God. God is the same. He loves the people who are in a reciprocal relationship with Him more than He loves Himself. He invests and forgets. This is God's original love.
21It is not the nature of original love to expect others to live for us. But when we seek to live for the sake of others, love multiplies. Love focusing on oneself diminishes, but love for the sake of others multiplies. It keeps growing. Love for the sake of others keeps multiplying and expanding, whereas selfserving love keeps shrinking. The original nature of love is such that when you want to live for the sake of others, your love becomes greater, but when you want people to live for you, your love gradually disappears.
22Real love is not giving and keeping account of how much was given. It is not self-serving. Real love exists for the sake of others. After having loved someone, can you say, "The reason I loved you was so I could be happy"? You must not go there. The person who feels inadequate after having loved, the person who feels many things even beyond inadequacy, is in accord with the principle of ideal love. But the person who says, "Now that I have loved you, you have to love me," is not in accord with this principle.
23When parents love their children, they don't say, "We bought you shoes and clothes a few days ago, and invested our sweat and blood for you, and it cost this much," and record it in a ledger. When parents love their children, they want to treat them even better than the princes and princesses in any palace in the world. With hearts wanting to give more, they say, "I did all I could, but this is all I can give you. I'm sorry." Parents always want to give their children something better. This is why we cherish parents' love. Parents give and yet feel that it is not enough; they love and yet feel that they should have loved more. Even after giving, they still are not content with what they were able to give their children. Parents' love connects to eternal love. That is where our tradition of love begins.
24Everyone wants true love, but love is possible only when we live for others. We need to serve and sacrifice for our partner. Everyone avoids a person who relates to others with the attitude, "You should live for me." This selfish individualism is Satan's strategy, purpose and tool; the result can only be hell. We must live for the whole. If we live for others and for the whole, and serve sacrificially, then everyone will return love to us.
25Why is parents' love so precious? It is vertical love, but it does not remain as vertical love until the end; it seeks to dwell together with horizontal love. Parental love seeks to guide children to avoid going astray, throughout their entire lives. Vertical love is such that it always creates horizontal love. According to that principle, parental love consists of the essence of both vertical and horizontal, based on God's love. Because parental love has both vertical and horizontal elements and responsibilities, parents want to give all their precious things to their children just the way they are. Parents want to bestow everything they have upon their children and want to see their blessings expand horizontally. This is the original nature of love. Why is original love like this? Love is possible only in a reciprocal relationship between subject and object partners, and this is the only way to create that relationship. Through give and take between subject and object partners, a sphere is formed. The vertical is the subject partner; the horizontal is the object partner. Together they make a ninety-degree angle and form a circle.
26God's love is vertical love, but it is not only vertical. It also has a horizontal quality. Therefore, God can appear in front of His sons and daughters, who are on the horizontal. Those sons and daughters not only widen the base of vertical love but also expand it as horizontal love so that, centered on the vertical aspect, all things of creation can create a horizontal environment on the scale of the world and the universe. It is from the loving heart of God's sons and daughters that their desire emerges to govern the world, to have possessions, and to pursue their aspirations. This is all because a vision of vertical and horizontal bonds of love lies in the subconscious of our original mind. We cannot deny that satisfying this essential desire satisfies all human desires.
27If their children were in a life-or-death situation, parents would readily expend all their possessions to save them. Considering this, we can see that life is more precious than material things. Then between love and life, which is more valuable? Between husband and wife, if the husband prepared a treasure for his wife with the full investment of his life, she would never tire of it; she would want to keep it for ten thousand years. But if the treasure were given without love, she wouldn't want to keep it. Thus, the value of the treasure depends on the investment of heart. If there were one couple in the universe whose love remained unchanged for ten thousand years, their love would be more precious than life. That is why people sacrifice their life for love. We don't abandon love for life, but we abandon even life for love.
28In this world there are gems such as diamonds and pearls. Why do we call these precious? A diamond is so hard that nothing can corrupt it; thus it has the special nature of being unchanging. A pearl's elegant sheen never changes for thousands or tens of thousands of years; nothing can compare to it. Why is gold so great? Its golden luster never changes, even for thousands of years. Nothing can surpass that color. Because of the unchanging qualities of these things, people treat them as treasures. But there is something we would never give up, even for these treasures. Such treasures have no life. You would never give up your beloved one's life for treasure.
29The first measure of value in the kingdom of God is love. It is not life, but love. That love is unique, unchanging and eternal. Based on this standard, all value is decided. Since God holds that highest standard, it has very naturally become the decisive standard. When God says, "That person is a man of character," or "She is a valuable person," His assessment is based on this standard.
30The common denominator for all beings is life. Life comes from love. So love is more valuable than life. Who is closer to the center, someone who is willing to sacrifice his love to sustain his life, or someone who is willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of love? Who is closer to the truth? The one who sacrifices his life to attain love is closer to the center and closer to the truth. This is because the one willing to sacrifice love for his life is self-centered, whereas the one willing to sacrifice his life for love is not.
31Love subjugates life. Love has the power to change the direction of life from right to left. But life cannot dominate love. Then what about God, the subject partner of life and of love? Even God is vulnerable in the face of love. Even though God is the absolute standard of life itself, when He faces a love stronger than His love, He submits to that love. If there is a power that can move the power of life, it is the power of love.
32What is true love? In this human world, since we have never seen God, we say we don't know. True love is stronger than a mother's love for her child, stronger than the burning passion of first love, that explosive power that rushes in, oblivious to even a life-or-death situation. The love of parents, who will sacrifice their own lives to protect their children from death, is connected to Heaven's love. Heaven's love begins there.
33Even though the omniscient, omnipotent God is the owner of true love, He doesn't want the root of love to begin with Him. He wants to place the root of love in people who are able to be His partners of love. That is why, even though we associate God with true love, God wants people who can love truly, into whom He can invest everything He has. When God invests, He does not begin with inferior things. He invests the best things first. To God, the best thing of all is true love, so He invests everything in the person who will love with true love.
34God was behind the original formation of the universe, but His central motivation was to set up the way of true love. He was not thinking only of Himself. Before God thought of Himself, He invested everything in a second self, a partner that could be the object of His love, and He respected that being. What was to be the substantial result of His love? It was not God Himself but the object partner into which He invested, who was made to bear the fruit of His love. This is an amazing concept. This is the beginning, the origin of the formation of the universe. In short, why did God create heaven and earth? This is a philosophical question. Why did God create heaven and earth? Of course, He created what was good to behold, but more than that, He created heaven and earth to attain a love that is like His love.
35There can be no result without a cause. My mind and body came from my parents. Through the love of my mother and father, their two lives combined. Love harmonizes everything. Through true love, my mother's inner mind and body harmonized with my father's inner mind and body. The life force spreads out like a fan, and the lineage connects with love at the center. The first cause that led to my existence was not the lives of my mother and father. Rather, it was that the lives of my father and mother connected in love, and I was born through that lineage. From the bone of my father and the blood of my mother, flesh and blood connected, and after ten lunar months in the womb, I was born. I had the power of the life of my parents, linked to their lineage. My origin, the fundamental beginning of "me," is not myself. My origin is the life of my mother and the life of my father. Preceding life is love, which combines two lives into one. The origin of all beings on earth, the origin of all created beings, is love.
36What would have happened if there had been no concept of love when God created Adam and Eve? Adam and Eve were born to manifest the concept of God's love, expressed from the time of creation as the relationship of convex and concave forms. This is not something that evolved; there is no evolution taking place. The concept of love leads to the existence of male and female, and this fact transcends evolution.
37We have three important original palaces: a palace of love, a palace of life and a palace of lineage. The purpose of these original palaces is to unite in perfect oneness. This is possible only through love; there is no other way. The place where they unite is the most secret and most holy. Why did this palace become corrupted? It is because of the Fall. Because of the Fall, the palace of love was destroyed, the palace of life was destroyed, and the palace of lineage was destroyed. In fact, that place was desecrated and became shameful.
38In the place where I consummate a love relationship, all my nerves experience a stimulation that is electrifying. Love is in the closest place to me. Love is so close to me; it is inseparable from me. It brings me the impulse and stimulus of joy. It makes me say with an ardent heart, "I want to see that; I want to go there."
39Love has the power to concentrate all our senses together and unite them, focused on one point. The eyes would say, "We want to see"; the ears would say, "We want to hear"; the mouth would say, "I want to eat; I want to speak; I want to learn." Not only this, all the cells of the body would move in that direction. Just as a lightning rod draws lightning to itself on a mountaintop, love unites the action of the nerves. Once the heart is stirred by love, all the senses are stimulated and gravitate to one place. Everything moves together. Our eyes, ears, nose and hands all move together. This is not because of us, but because of the person we love.
40Nature is our first mother; we receive everything to support our life and to grow from that mother. In our physical mother's womb we live in water. On earth we live in air. Then what is the center of our life? It is love. Love is always the issue, whether it's the love of parents, conjugal love or children's love. Air is a prerequisite to life. Even in our mother's womb we have to absorb air; when we move from our mother's womb to life on earth, we have to breathe air. It is the same air; only the way we receive it is different. For us, the most important element in life is love.
41Why were we born? If we say simply, "It is because of love," we've said all we need to say. That love is true love. True love goes beyond the love of this fallen world. The purpose of all religions is to reach the world of true love. Christianity, the religion of religions, emphasizes a love that surpasses the love of this world. Jesus Christ said, love me more than anyone else; otherwise you are not worthy to be my disciple. He said, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matt. 10:37) Why did Jesus say this? To Jesus Christ, his disciples were like his children, and unless they could get past the line of the Fall, they could not have a relationship with Heaven.
42True love is fulfilled not only through horizontal, level relationships, but also through vertical, perpendicular relationships. A horizontal relationship of true love is gradually elevated in an upward direction until it reaches the pinnacle, which is the position of God, the King of true love. In this position everything combines, and embraces. Everything turns into love and blossoms. We can conclude that all beings in the universe want to be in harmony with love and to live in the midst of love. We are born for the sake of love, we live for the sake of love, and finally we die for the sake of love.
43Not only people, but all things of creation desire true love. Thus human beings, as the lords of creation, should embrace and love God's masterpieces and take responsibility to teach them the way of love. All things are seeking such owners. In light of this standard, we should feel ashamed. Darwin's theory regarding the survival of the fittest needs to be reinterpreted in the context of this logic of true love. Even ants and microorganisms want true love; beyond that, they want to offer themselves to the owner who loves them. Based on this principle, human beings, as the highest partners of God's love, have the privilege of taking and even eating all other creatures. Therefore, when we eat the things of creation, we have to have a heart that represents the true love of God the Creator.
1In love there is no end. A love that has expired and come to an end is not love. If you asked your beloved spouse, "Dear, do you love me? How much do you love me?" and your husband or wife replied, "I love you just this much," you would feel bad. This is because in love there should be no limit. Selfcentered love cannot last even one day. Why do a husband and wife fight? It is because each of them wants to receive love from the other. A relationship between those who try to receive love from the other cannot last long. A family in which everyone tries to receive love breaks apart, but a family in which everyone tries to give love to the others will never break apart, even if someone prays that it will. The love in which each tries to give to the other is eternal
2The Creator's purpose for making man and woman was love. True love is eternal and unchanging. No matter how much the era and the environment change with time, true love will remain unchanged. Men and women were created to fulfill the ideal of true love, which is unique, eternal and unchanging. Human beings were not created with themselves at the center. Creation was initiated with God as the root, at the center. Therefore it can be said that all things were created because of love.
3Original love is not human love; it is God's eternal, unchanging love. At the moment we encounter God's love and attend Him as our Master, we become one with Him. When we enter the place of joy where we can interact with God, we can conquer the world. Sharing joy with God is more rapturous and intoxicating than owning all of heaven and earth. No stimulation of the five physical senses can compare with the experience of sharing happiness with God.
4Everyone wants true love. No one would tire of true love even if it lasted for ten thousand years. No group would launch a revolution against it. Then what is true love? It is not the momentary love between young men and women of this world. Since true love involves God, it has an eternal, unique and unchanging nature. When you look at the solar system, you can see that the planets continuously move around the sun as their center, and this does not change. The earth orbits the sun once a year. In hundreds of millions of years it has not deviated from this cycle. It is amazing to consider this big earth circling around for hundreds of millions of years in this orbit. If the orbit were even slightly different, it would cause serious obstacles to the development of life. Likewise, true love is absolute, eternal, unique and unchanging.
5We are born because of the love of our father and mother. There can be no result without a cause; accordingly, no life in heaven or on earth belongs to itself. God has a greater purpose, with us at the center. Love is eternal, but it cannot exist contrary to divine law. Therefore, no one is born outside the principle of love. Also, complete love does not originate from one individual alone. A mother's love is God's love. An elder sister and younger brother may be fighting, but when their mother and father come in, they stop. In the same way, our human world needs a mother of love. But in the love of our human world, in the love of the whole universe, there is no mother of love. Humankind lost the original Mother. What we lost was nothing other than God's love.
6True love lasts forever. It is the same love in the spring, summer, autumn and winter. It is the same when you are in your teens, your adulthood and your old age, and even when you go to the eternal spirit world. True love does not change.
7Love has an absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal nature. It has the elements of these inner qualities. The foundation of all the inner qualities, the foundation that desires to form common relationships, across the board, cannot be anything but true love. No matter how absolute and unique God may be, He does not reject a relationship of true love. He willingly makes such a relationship.
8What is the Unification Church doing? We are attending God vertically and attending True Parents horizontally, and in the place where we resonate with them perfectly we seek to inherit true love. The attributes of true love include the right of inheritance and the right to participate together. These allow us to participate in love. Next is the right of equality, which means to stand in the same position. When you have that love, you can go everywhere together. You have the right to participate in everything together, everywhere. Thus there are three great attributes of true love. When you have a relationship of love, you have the right of equal position, the right to participate together, and the right of inheritance. You can immediately stand in the same position.
9When you have true love, you have the right of equal position. The positions of father and son are different, but a father always wants his dutiful and loving son to be with him, and the son also wants that. The father would not say, "Hey, boy, you are the son, so your position is different; you have to go to your place." Even though their positions are different, the son always has the privilege of sitting in the same place as his father. One attribute of love is the equalization of authority. One's beloved has the right to participate in that.
10If you are united in true love you have the right to hold an equal position and to do everything together with your beloved. You do not separate from each other anywhere, day or night. You can attend everything together. If your beloved becomes president, as the president's spouse you can go everywhere with the president. Even if he or she goes to visit a slum, you can go there; you can participate anywhere. You also have the right of inheritance. That is a law that applies to all people. It is a formula. This is why we naturally think about these things.
11God's fundamental purpose of creation is to have true people who can be the object partners of His true love. How can human beings stand in the objective position to God, who is the Absolute Being? That is not possible through human effort or external conditions. It is possible only through a relationship of true love. When subject and object partners form a perfect relationship of true love, they immediately have the right of equal position, the right to participate in everything together, and the right to inherit.
12The person of love is the owner of the eternal God. Among the attributes of love are the right of inheritance, the right to live together and the right to participate in everything together. Even if a woman did not graduate from primary school, if her beloved husband is the president, whatever he owns belongs to her; of course, she can live together with him day and night, and she has the right to participate in whatever he does. Since love has these three great attributes, once you stand in the position of oneness with God's absolute and unchanging true love, you receive the authority to join God wherever He is and live with Him at any time. Then you will be able to see God even without closing your eyes. Those who have deeply felt God's sorrowful heart will stop in their tracks and weep bitterly; such a realm of deep feeling exists. Even in the fallen world, a mother's love is such that if her child has an accident far away, she can sense it. She wakes up calling her child's name. There are many examples of this.
13Even fallen people desire the highest, best and most glorious position. All people of all races desire this position, whether educated or not. Only love can satisfy this desire. Love is eternal, so when you have God's love, you can have eternal life. To stand in an equal position, a position with the same rights as God, you first have to possess God's love.
14When we have a loving relationship with God our position is equal to His and we can share in His rights. When we are united in love with God, we have the authority to participate in His work. Love confers the authority to participate in the beloved's activities. Love also grants the right of inheritance. When you have a loving relationship with God, not only can you stand before Him, you can have all that He owns. Originally people had the privilege of ownership over all that belongs to God. Thus it is natural that we have the desire to become the very best of beings.
15In the original, ideal world, a person who experienced true love would immediately inherit the right and ability to have whatever God desired for him or her. You can attain that qualification only on the earth, while in the process of bringing your body into oneness with your spirit in a true family. The family is the meeting point of God's love and the place where you can attain this. You can feel the true love of God by loving your fellow citizens, loving the people of the world, and loving all things of creation.
16God is the vertical True Parent, and Adam and Eve would have become the horizontal parents, had they not fallen. True love takes the shortest, most direct route. Then where can human love and God's love meet? Where can the vertical and horizontal meet? The shortest, most direct route connecting heaven and earth is the perpendicular line. There is only one such line. Only true love can take that perpendicular path, reflecting the great law of heaven and earth. True love is the original common standard that can measure everything relating to the great law of heaven and earth, and there is only one perpendicular line through which true love flows.
17Where can God's love and human love unite? True love flows through the shortest, most direct route. There is only one shortest, most direct route for love from above; that is vertical. True love takes the shortest, most direct route from the Father above to the son below. Following the perpendicular lines, there is only one point where the two can make contact. Conjugal love between man and woman, representing east and west, also travels by the shortest, most direct route. This horizontal love and God's vertical love intersect at a right angle; they meet on the perpendicular. The love between brothers and sisters also flows along the shortest, most direct route, and meets God's love only at a ninety-degree angle. Consider a man and woman who are able to establish the perpendicular with God's true love at the center. Where in the universe should they meet? They have to meet on that perpendicular, which is the shortest, most direct route.
18God's true love moves along the shortest, most direct route. True love flows along the fastest, closest, shortest, most direct way. If there were one place on earth where true love could settle, it would be the place at which the shortest, most direct route arrives. This place is absolute. It is eternal. Yet because of the Fall, this place was lost. Love has nowhere to settle, and its axis shifts back and forth. Unless True Parents begin the process of settlement, having actualized the philosophy of the love of heaven and earth, based on the logic of true love, this world will not find the way of the ideal with love at its center. In accordance with God's love, horizontal love is drawn to connect with vertical love. Had there been no Fall, the horizontal love between man and woman would have flowed along the shortest, most direct route to intersect with the vertical, perpendicular line at the central point. This is the formula through which we can reunite with the love of God's original creation.
19True love travels by the shortest, most direct route and therefore arrives in the shortest time. When your beloved child is overseas, you can think of your child and be with him or her in an instant, right? Love transcends distance. Since true love travels at the highest speed, with it we can travel anywhere in the universe; the entire universe becomes our sphere of activity. Since love transcends time and space, we have no sense of separation. Everything seems to be right in front of our eyes.
20Love travels at the highest speed as it flows along the shortest, most direct route. This is not secular love but divine love. What is divine love? It is true love. If we enter the realm of true love, because we are able to come and go at the highest speed through the shortest, most direct route, we will be able to act on the stage of the universe in the realm of thought. This may sound like a fantasy, but it is true.
21Love chooses the shortest path. If we are to form a perpendicular line with love at the center, then love has to come through the shortest and most direct route possible. When you go to visit someone you love, you don't saunter along as if you were touring a neighboring village. You go directly, swift as an arrow. Whether night or day, whether spring, summer, autumn or winter, however long its history may be, love always takes the shortest, most direct path. Vertically, the shortest distance is along a line perpendicular to the horizontal. This is how that which is highest contacts that which is lowest.
22What kind of love is God's love? Love is the heart that is never satisfied with what it has given; instead, it feels embarrassed that it cannot give more. One who feels sorry even after giving is truly the owner of love. After parents have bought new clothes for their child, they still feel sorry that they could not buy better clothes. Even after giving, they don't feel satisfied, so they supplement that with love.
23The person who most readily lives for others becomes the central figure. The one who lives more for others rules, supervises and inherits all things. This is heavenly law. Within love there is the right to be always together. You can do everything together in any place, day or night. Do you need permission to go into your sons' and daughters' rooms? Would you need permission to go into your wife's room? If you love God, you can participate in everything with Him, wherever He goes.
24True love gives and forgets what it has given. It does not remember. What is the standard of good and evil? Evil is giving for the sake of making a profit. Goodness is giving and forgetting about it. Even in a family, the person who lives more for the others is on the side of goodness. The person who lives for others eventually becomes the master of that family. If there were ten friends, the best friend among them would be the one who lived for the other nine. Then the nine people would make that one the central figure and serve that person. This is how to inherit the universe.
25The original nature of dominion is love. There is one element of life that can connect with the original nature of love. That is my value as an object partner before a subject partner. At that point, my value corresponds to the value of my subject partner. The value of the object, which is the result, is equal to the value of the cause. My body, in relation to my mind, always has the value of an object partner. My mind, in relation to my body, has the value of a subject partner. These two together make up the being called "I." In this way, the universe brings about connected relationships. Immediately, the relationships between front and back, internal and external, left and right, and above and below are all connected.
1The fastest action in the world is the action of love. In the world the highest speed is not that of electricity; it is love. It has the most amazing power; it can fly. If two people located at opposite ends of the earth were to fall in love with each other, their love would pull them together, closing the distance between them. Love has such power. So today in the religious world it is said, "Search for love. Stay close to the God of love. Have a deep heart. Pray." Why? It is because when you make contact with the world of love, you can participate with God in all His activities of love. This means you accompany God in His work.
2Love is destined to expand in all four directions: north, south, east and west. From this point of view, with love at the center, front and back, right and left, and above and below combine in an ideal way and begin circular motion. Thus the whole universe is revolving. As the universe turns, the things at the center have to turn with it. There's no other choice. What is at the center of this universal rotation? It is the axis, which is eternally unchanging. Money, knowledge and authority all change. In our time, when even people's feelings change, what can be the eternally unchanging axis? There is one thing that never changes and that is the relationship between parents and children. Even in the animal world this is so. Only parents' love for their children is eternal.
3In order for people to exist, they must sustain a process of giving and receiving, starting with the physical body. Having established the prerequisites for reciprocation, men and women interact with each other; only then can they exist. If men were to say they don't need women, and women were to say they don't need men, this world would be in ruins within one hundred years. To maintain existence, that is to say, to give and receive, we each need a partner. Therefore, to this day men and women have been loving each other and forming families. Love is the power that initiates the interaction between men and women, and it is the power of the action itself. There must be giving and receiving action at the source in order for the power called love to arise. For this action to arise, we absolutely need men and women. To establish the prerequisites for reciprocation, we need men and women.
4All material things are composed of energy, but energy cannot come into existence by itself. Unless a reciprocal standard is set, giving and receiving does not occur and energy cannot come to exist. You generate energy through the giving and receiving action of your entire body. Energy is generated in proportion to this action. Before there can be energy, there must be giving and receiving action. Then what initiates such action? Nothing can do this by itself; an object partner is needed. This is the absolute requirement for the appearance of all beings. If there is no object partner, there is no giving and receiving action.
5The more you love, the more your love grows. Love does not disappear; instead it prospers. There is no way to prosper without love. Furthermore, there is no eternal life without love. So Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment." (Matt. 22:37-38) This is the commandment we need to observe absolutely. Prosperity is possible only through building loving relationships and following the way of love.
6When you invest beyond your limits and even your life, the power of true love generates ten thousand times more energy. You will never fail when you invest true love. The amount of true love you invest will multiply and develop. The more you set the power of true love in motion, the greater it will grow so that you can embrace the world, the universe and even God.
7True love will never be exhausted. The more it is set in motion, the greater it gets. In mechanics, input always exceeds output. But in the world of love, output exceeds input. This is why love is the nucleus of everything. There is always enough true love to provide for your object partner and still have more left over. There is no shortage. Since you always have something remaining after giving true love to your object partner, the more you love, the more true love increases.
8In a relationship of true love, output is greater than input. Saints were persecuted and, at that time, killed, yet their constant investment in true love produced an output greater than the input, and made an imprint in history. Since God has done the same thing, the creation of the universe was possible. When true love is invested, it grows greater and greater. If there is a heart that invests, the foundation for life to exist remains forever.
9True love stimulates the world and supplies it with the surplus energy it needs to rotate eternally. It also sustains the consumption of energy by adding more than it consumes. This is why only true love can exist forever. For people, the most precious things are life and love. Life comes from love. Therefore, everyone who has life automatically pursues love.
10When we say that true love is the origin of life and is able to sustain the universe, we can compare it to air. If I continue to give over and over again for the sake of the universe from a position of low pressure, the universe will pull me to the center and raise me up. I will be at the very center and then rise to the top. What is true love? If I go to the eternal zero point by investing myself completely, over and over again, the universe will add to me. If I go to that place, God will take notice and move on my behalf. The more I invest and forget how much I have given, the more God will support me. If I keep investing with God supporting me, I will become the center. Once I become the center, as I keep investing, I will never sink down into the earth. Instead, I will rise up. Everything will get bigger, and since I keep moving at the center, everything will become rounded. This is how the universe stays in motion and assumes a spherical form.
11Since the object partner of love will be eternal, God continues to invest eternally until it comes into being. And when He has a partner He wants to invest infinitely into that partner, even to His very essence. Since God's investment is infinite, all pairs that move in the world of love have an eternal quality. We can conclude that the love partner of the absolute, infinite God will live for eternity.
12God's love is love for the sake of others and only for the sake of others. Because God wants to keep giving, true love also cannot help but keep giving, and since they give to each other, they revolve. God's love is like that. Since God wants to give endlessly, and the original nature of love is also to give endlessly, they revolve. How did the universe begin? It began from the point of revolving. All existing things, by their intrinsic nature, have to revolve. Then what can go on forever? The love that gives eternally, the love at the very center, will keep revolving forever. When the power of giving and the power of receiving become one and they want to keep giving, they expand. Since there is power in this principle, expansion takes place and the universe is formed.
13Love functions as a lubricant and as an orbit in which things move. Without love there is no lubrication. Automobiles need oil to move. For things to move, we need to oil them. There must be lubrication. Everything needs lubrication if it is to move. Only love can be the lubricant for the highest joy. It does not disappear because it is rooted in the eternal God. The more love moves, the more it develops.
14True love remains even after it embraces the universe; it remains even after it flows through the universe, and it remains even after it blends with the universe. It is the driving force of life, of movement and of everything. Where there is love like that, life at last has value. From that love, all that is ideal emerges. Laughing "ha ha ha!" can be ideal. We can say that crying "wah wah!" can be ideal as well, if it is prompted by love. People shed tears in times of sorrow but also in times of joy. No matter where you are, even in hell, if there were one power that would allow you to know happiness, that would be the power of wanting to live for the whole.
15Love has the power to enhance that which is insufficient, to reinforce that which is inadequate, and to complete that which is lacking. That love is true love. The nature of love for the whole cannot differ from the nature of love for the individual. To reach the world of cause from the world of result, there should be an expenditure of surplus power. This power could be both stimulating and electrifying to human beings, who are resultant beings.
16When you inherit the work of creation you receive the authority of true love. The reason is that to inherit the work of creation is to inherit true love, which is the strongest power. With true love there is nothing you cannot do, nothing you cannot make. You can love even your enemy. The power of true love is not to fight, not to force, but to win over someone naturally. There is no power stronger than this.
17The Bible says, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matt 10:39) How do we explain such paradoxical logic? It is a paradox because the world of evil and the world of goodness move in different directions. It seems contradictory, but it is a widely accepted viewpoint of those on God's side. Unless we overcome the environment that gives rise to this paradox, and unless we make a bold leap into destiny to find the way of true love with its own logic, we cannot be liberated. The power to leap comes not from military might, economic strength, political prowess or intellectual power. It is the power of nothing but love. It is the only path to the eternal, unchanging and correct way.
18Love is the essential force that moves reality; it is indispensable in daily life. This has been so throughout history. Love is the origin of the force that drives our social systems and everything else. This is why students are taught patriotic love for their country. Brotherly love, parental love, conjugal love and worldwide altruistic love -- all are forms of love. What does this mean? It means that without reference to love, which impacts people's daily lives and the course of history, we cannot create the thought and tradition that connect us to history.
19The power of true love is great. True love can melt even the hardest substance. It is more fearful than a clenched fist. Love can conquer any place in a flash, no matter how far and wide. Nothing is strong enough to withstand the power of love. True love can melt even our enemy. We want to become the owners of the world based on love. Love is the pinnacle of hope for the human race.
20If you tap on the heart of true love, the physical body spontaneously resonates. If you become a perfect man or woman through true love, God spontaneously appears. This occurs only through love. True love is the power that leads to such events. So what is true love in reality? True love connects vertical and horizontal. It can weave together above and below, right and left, before and after. Because of that, love can weave together heaven, which is above, and earth, which is below. Going laterally, it can weave together the right side and the left side. I am saying that love is the power to intertwine everything: before and after, right and left, above and below.
21What is it that can give life the taste of honey? It is the taste of true love. It is not the love of man and woman living in this fallen world. Once you taste true love, everything is united. All eyes focus on one place. All the cells of the body are drawn together into a ball and begin to roll. True love has that power. All kinds of cells are drawn together into a ball and roll down the path of love. While rolling down that path, I forget my own existence. The concept of "me" is lost.
22The schisandra (omija) fruit is used to cure a number of illnesses. The berry has many uses in Oriental medicine. It combines five different flavors, and makes an effective medicine. Love, which is the medicine of medicines, also has five flavors. It is bitter, salty, sweet, spicy and sour. The taste of love is like the five-flavor schisandra berry. The tastiest dishes are made with this berry. This is a medicinal food. Everyone likes food that is good for the body.
23In the right season a beekeeper gathers his honey with equipment designed for that purpose. Honeybees store the honey in honeycombs, but there are many holes. Bees save honey to get through the winter, but the beekeeper collects all the honey and provides sugar water for the bees to live on during the winter. So the bees live on sugar water all winter. Then when spring comes and they taste real nectar, they become intoxicated. When the flowers bloom in spring, the honeybees fly from flower to flower. If you look at the bees on the flowers sucking their nectar, their abdomens are raised up and their heads are buried deep in the flower. If you were to pull at a bee's abdomen with a pincer, it would still keep sucking, even if its abdomen separated from its body. How delicious that nectar must be! Now, how does the taste of that nectar compare with the taste of love? Which do you think is better: the taste of honey or the taste of love? What kind of taste would God like most? If God were to smell many aromas, which would He like best? If He were to choose something to listen to, what would He like to hear, and if He were to seek something to feel, what would He like to feel? There is only one thing God likes, and that is love. Nothing other than love can focus God's five senses and fill Him with joy.
24Is the color of love blue or red? What is love's color? It has five colors. Its taste is like the schisandra berry. It has five flavors. If something has five colors, won't that be dazzling? A rainbow has seven colors. Think of all these colors mixed together. What color would that be? When you mix all wavelengths of visible light, you get white. What color do people like most? When God created all things, do you think He first created the color He likes most, or the color He likes least? He created the one He likes best. What color is the flower that blooms in early spring? It is purple. The color purple includes red and pink and all other colors. That's why all elegant things are purple. In the spirit world, the most beautiful color is purple.
25A man and a woman embracing and kissing light up like two poles with opposite charges touching and sending out sparks. If that light is white, we must add heat to create five brilliant colors. When this colorful display is mixed with the vertical love of God, it is transformed into a world of ideal, brilliant hope, like the colors of the rainbow. Since human love is on a horizontal plane, it is simple. People of original love want to combine colors, to see perfectly combined colors through the love of a man and a woman. When that occurs, vertical love will come down. Like a rainbow, God's love will descend to this horizontal love.
26A sense of love is not one-sided; it is all-inclusive. Even cells function in that way. We sometimes say that people are intoxicated by love and that everyone should have this experience at least once. If you are intoxicated by love, when you call out to anything in the universe, it will respond without hesitation. You can sing for a thousand years while watching water flow. The whispering sound of the flowing water is infinitely sweet. Think of it! Through love, people attain the value of owners who harmonize with the entire universe. You want to go the way of completing this purpose. Once your heart has the capacity to capture God's love, you can sing and dance for thousands of years. At that time you will have completed everything; you will need nothing more. There is nothing on earth more precious than this. Once you capture God's love, you have no need for gold, silver or treasure, absolutely no need.
27True love fills everything completely. When God's eye perceives love, He becomes intoxicated. In a family, when the father is intoxicated by love, the mother likes it, the sons and daughters like it, and the whole family likes it. But if the father is frowning, the mother can't help but frown, and the sons and daughters frown too. If the mother is intoxicated by true love, that true love will melt the father. It will melt the sons and daughters too. If the sons and daughters are intoxicated by true love, their mother and father will melt in turn.
28True love is almighty. There is nothing it cannot do. If someone imagines the ideal, the ideal object that they imagine appears. Even if a husband is not handsome, when his wife comes to love him, he appears handsome to her. Love transforms unattractiveness. We don't know our own faces well. Even though we see them in the mirror every day, we don't know them. When we see ourselves in a photo, we say, "Oh, so I look like this?" but when we look in the mirror, we don't think that way. According to our mood, we sometimes look like the most repulsive person, sometimes like the most attractive. Sometimes our faces look round, sometimes long. If we look with the eyes of love, no one is better looking than we are. When your eye is very close to something, can you see it well? You need a certain distance in order to focus. If you are too close, you cannot perceive it.
29Love has great power. Even if someone is a farmhand working in the fields, when he forms a love relationship with the owner's daughter, the owner has to give him all he has. Love can leap from the lowest place to the highest place. It can break down any barrier, no matter how strong. No matter how confused the world is, once you experience God's love, you can leap beyond it. If the American president falls in love with a country girl who is naive, ignorant, unqualified and lacking in many ways, from that day forward she is invested with the right to participate with him in his position. Likewise, if you have true love, no matter how low you are, you can leap to the highest place in a flash. Today, no matter how miserable our circumstances, once we have a love relationship with God at the center and can say, "There is no doubt that You are my Father and I am your child," we can freely go in and out of God's master bedroom; we receive that privilege. Only love can make this possible.
30When you meet your beloved, you want your love to be a flower that blooms forever. You want to explode. When two lovers come together there is such an explosion. Love conquers everything with its brilliant power. There is nothing that can suppress that power. Love has that explosive quality. All beings are in awe when thinking of love, and all cells open their gates.
31Would you prefer to hold on to someone because of love, or because the person had earned a doctorate? Why do you prefer true love? No amount of money has the power to make your mind and body one. No amount of knowledge can make your mind and body and five senses focus on one thing. These cannot make your eyes, nose and ears focus on one thing. Power cannot do that either. But love can. That is why love brings the greatest joy. Our five spiritual and five physical senses can unite their focus through love. In love we enjoy explosive happiness by having the five spiritual and five physical senses unite in one focus. We feel tremendous stimulation in love. We ignore everything else and all our cells unite into one. The power of true love unites the spiritual and physical cells as one. Nothing else can do this. True love is the highest peak.
32Love is the power that unites man and woman. When two people love each other completely, they think, "I am in you, and you are in me." It is like St. Paul; when he had his spiritual experience, he could not say whether he had been in his body or out of his body. What binds subject and object partners together? If one man and one woman just casually meet and live together, that is not love. In love the direction should be right, the physical constitutions should match, and there should be a common base. One is minus and one is plus, which makes for a perfect mutual relationship. Love is when I say I would die without you and you say you would die without me. When two people are bound together completely as one, their two personalities combine and become as one personality, and they have greater value than they do as two individuals. They then become owners who can build a world of higher dimension.
33Neither money nor knowledge can give rise to unity between mind and body. A Korean maxim says that a habit you adopt when you are three years old will last until you are eighty. It is very hard to change your habits and your deep-rooted fallen nature. These have a historical and global character. Only enlightened people who can crush such things underfoot, clear them away, and transcend the world, are able to overcome this problem. Man and woman are physiologically different, and the components of their original natures are different, but they can unite in love.
34The very cells of a mind and body are made to resonate with each other when united in true love. If there is no true love, this is not possible. When you hit one side of a tuning fork, the other side resonates automatically with the same vibration. When they resonate, the frequency is the same. Likewise, when our original mind and original body reach maturity and blend with God's heart of true love, and the environmental conditions are right to allow that, they move automatically and harmonize perfectly. Power is put into action.
35When you enter the realm of resonance with true love, you have a wide view of heaven and earth. The Buddha said, "Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one." Why did he say this? If you reach the center of the realm of resonance, the whole world is in your hands; God is inside you, and you are one with heavenly law. This is why he could say such a thing. If you enter the realm of resonance of true love, you don't need a religious faith. You don't need a Messiah. This is liberation.
36When can the mind and body unite? If the vertical and horizontal had been united, then the great law of heaven and earth would have united the mind and body forever. Only when I love do I attain my true value and find myself. For a man, it is possible to realize his full value as a man only through marriage. That means that the fullness of human potential is realized through marriage. Only by knowing love can a man become complete as a man and a woman become complete as a woman. Completion occurs with love at the center.
37Among the things people seek, the most precious is love. We are driven to seek precious things, precious people and precious love. God, the center of love, has no beginning and no end. To God, governing heaven and earth is not a one-day operation. He will do this for eternity. The center of all precious things is human beings. The center of precious love is God. God sacrificed the things He created to find humankind, and God sacrificed human beings to find love. Love makes two into one. God wants to give humankind that kind of love. In a place without relationships of love, everything scatters, but if you make love the center, everything is drawn together.
38That which can harmonize everything is love. For example, when a girl marries and goes to her husband's home, she discovers that his grandfather and grandmother, as well as his father and mother, are all living there. In the past, in a nobleman's house, do you know how great their influence was and how great their authority? Do you know how complicated their traditions, their moral principles, were? In that environment, a wife could not even stretch out her legs as she wished. So when a bride goes to her husband's home, what is her husband to her, such that she willingly leaves behind her mother, father and brothers? The power of love is a moving force with the ability to harmonize.
39The word love cannot stand on its own. It absolutely requires a mutual relationship. Subject and object partners appear as two, but the two become one. If one becomes the top, the other becomes the bottom; if one becomes east, the other becomes west; if one becomes south, the other becomes north; if one becomes the front, the other becomes the back. Love has the active nature that brings two into natural balance in any environment, in any place.
40True love can transform even sorrow and pain into joy. More than our power, knowledge or money, what we want to leave behind in the universe is true love. This is our original desire. This has absolute authority in each individual. Where does this true love come from? Needless to say, it comes from the true love of God, the foundation of the universe. It derives from Him, and God also wants to experience that love. When you ask a man and woman, who are engaged to be married, about their future spouse, the bride will say, "I expect my husband to be better than I am." The bridegroom will also say, "I expect that my wife will be better than I am." Parents always hope that their children will be greater than they are. This heart comes from God. These words arise out of true love.
41Just as flowers bloom in many different colors, even though love comes from the same root, it appears in an endless variety of forms. This is love's response to the action of its object partner. When you relate to someone who is sad, you feel sad; when you relate to someone who is happy, you feel happy. Love matches the feelings of its object partner. A loving wife's face shows that she can accept everything from her husband's past, even a dark background.
42God breathes true love. Since this is the rhythm of the universe, the universe continues forever, based on true love. In love there is eternal life. Everything moves in one direction, with God at the center. True love is eternal, absolute and unchanging; once it begins, it lasts forever. It moves according to the shape of waves and circles. When it moves in waves, it connects horizontally; when it moves in circles, it connects vertically. When it moves up, it grows larger; when it moves down, it grows smaller. Thus, heaven's side grows larger and earth's side grows smaller. God's true love is eternal.
43What makes someone an amicable person? If you fight with your wife every day, are you such a person? An amicable person is one who, while heading east, can turn around and head west without any problem. If someone grasps his head and pushes him down, he goes down without resisting, and as he rises up somewhere else, he does not change. The universe is round, and so is the sun. Everything is round. What is the source of all round things? They cannot become round by themselves. They become round only on the basis of a relationship with something else. The world is one existing entity, a substantial entity of relationships that integrates a realm of relationships. It continues on the foundation of this realm of circular relationships. Here, the source that can form circular relationships, the source of harmony, is the action of love.
44You should live enraptured with love. One who is enraptured by love is truly happy. An artist is enraptured by art. A person who loves literature writes books and is enraptured by them, or by the great masterpieces he or she reads. Such people are happy people. Your entire body should live in the rapture of God's three-dimensional, ideal love, and you should follow only Him.
45Love flows into the heart of the individual, into the center of the family, and into the center of a people. Wherever it goes it enters as the mainstream. And wherever it flows, everyone welcomes it. There is no way to block it. God created people to relate with one another through the power of love. The one who lives and breathes along with the universe, connected through ties of love, can go freely to the Palace of God. He or she can open the gates to the Palace and enter at will. There is a sanctuary there, where God is attended. He or she can go in and call out, "Heavenly Father!" Then God will answer, "Oh, my child, you are here!"
46The word equality is meaningless without love. Equality is based on love. There is no equality that is not based on love. Then what is happiness? Happiness is the fruit on the branch of the tree of love. Happiness is the front side of love, the back side of love, the summit of love and the feet of love. These words are all correct. Since love is one, and round, these words are all correct. Without love, can there be happiness? No matter how beautiful a woman may be, she can find harmony only when she meets a man with whom she can be equal in love.
47In a realm with true love at the center there is no injustice. It is like the nature of water and air. The power of love always balances things out like water and air. Water always forms a level surface. High pressure in the atmosphere always transfers to a low-pressure area to create equilibrium. Love is the same. Love balances everything. With True Parents at the center, one culture -- the world of the culture of Adam -- begins. Starting from the individual, it connects eternally to the spirit world.
48In love, men and women are equal. In love, a mother and son are equal, even if her son is the president. In love everything is equal. When a husband comes home he should say, "I'm returning to my beloved wife's house. I'm returning to my wife's loving arms." A wife should say, "My love, my husband, come into my arms!" This is peace and equality. In this way a husband and wife become one. A husband wants to be held in his wife's arms, and she wants her husband to come into her arms, so the two become one. There is no high or low between them; they are one.
49When you say people should be equal, what kind of equality are you talking about? When you receive original love, you have original equality. What kind of equality? It is equality based on love. The highest realm of equality is that based on love. The most important thing to people is love. Since love is also the most important thing to God, when you have equality of love, everything is magnificent. Everything can be accomplished.
50If you want to interact well with the universe, you have to give love. Without love you will never experience interaction with eternal value. Love is said to be meek and humble, and indeed it is, so that it can flow eternally and fully. This is the one method to create flow without resistance. Meekness, humility and sacrifice are accepted everywhere. They cause no resistance anywhere. So it is not really sacrifice. One secret method for working without resistance is to live and sacrifice for the sake of others.
51Love transcends even national borders. God's love has no national borders. It transcends all races, feeling no difference in value between black, white and yellow races. God's love is great. The flow of love is not dependent upon the environment. As it flows it assimilates the environment, which does not resist. God will be pleased only when we adopt the perspective that can make this happen.
52When you enter the realm of God's love, it is as if you are intoxicated by the fragrances of a million spring flowers. It is like the indescribable feeling of sitting on grass and looking up at fluffy, white clouds. At that moment you feel all the cells in your body dancing. That's why we say that God's love is the origin of the power of all living beings and the origin of all happiness. God's love is the condition that is absolutely necessary for happiness, peace and all that we hope for in life, and it is an absolute element of faith.
53Men and women have to be absolutely united through love. When they become one, what happens? It is not conflict, but loving harmony. That is where happiness dwells, peace blossoms and the eternal heavenly kingdom begins to spread. From there, the eternal world rushes in. We are called to make love blossom. Love is the foundation of happiness for all people. That is why if we open the world of true love, everything else we want is guaranteed.
54Our first ancestors' union in marital love should have been simultaneously the perfection of God's love. It should have been an occasion for celebration, in which God, Adam and Eve, and all things were intoxicated naturally in blissful joy and blessings. It should have been a happy ceremony that marked the settlement of God's love, life and lineage in human beings.
55When a person who is the subject partner of love is full to the brim, everything is full. Because all things are complete when one is full of love, one can give boundlessly and authentically. Giving and receiving in this love is the realization of the ideal and the multiplication of the ideal. The world of love transcends distance. What is the speed of love? Not even light can keep up with it. Nothing travels faster than love. Also, nothing is brighter than love, and nothing surpasses the perfection of love. The fullest thing is love. Even a girl who is dozing off bursts into bloom at the appearance of the partner she really loves. Only love can make this happen. What love is this? It is true love, the love that is the source of the universe, the center of the universe and the owner of the universe.
56No one wants to unite if the purpose of doing so is only temporary. Everyone wants eternal oneness. What single element can bring that about? It is love. Love is the foundation for building unity. It is the foundation of happiness that is worth unending dedication. Without love there is no happiness. Without love there is no peace. Without love there is only conflict. But when love is abundant, everything is harmonized.
57When we speak about love, we mean the standard that God has in mind. Love is like leaven. It is the cause, motive and source that can break down the barriers between one person's mind and another's and bring them into unity. If we think of love as small, it is very small; and if we think of love as large, it is very large. Between the two of you, the blink of your loved one's eye can make you feel as if heaven and earth are turned upside down. A smile from the one you love can make you feel as if all of heaven and earth are encompassed within your heart. If you think of love as sensitive, it is sensitive; if you think of it as small, it is small; if you think of it as big, it is big. If you think you can see it, you can, and if you think you can't see it, you can't. Love alone can melt barriers.
58There are so many barriers. Then what is the one central point that can break them down? In this world, money can overcome barriers. Knowledge and power can as well. But once you get past one barrier by such methods, you just encounter another one on the other side. Knowledge has a limit; money and power also have limits. Only true love can destroy barriers globally, above and below, front and back, right and left, from the past to the future, from the east to the west. The one point that can dissolve the barriers between all people is true love. Such is the power of true love. If you have true love, you can climb up on the crown of your father and mother's heads and they won't mind at all. If you travel while focused on love, there is no door through which you cannot pass. You can pass through every nook and cranny of the world. True love can manage and govern the world.
59True love naturally upholds the proper order all the time. That is how absolute it is. The son or daughter cannot intrude into the positions of the father and mother. The parents cannot intrude into the positions of the son and daughter-in-law. Such positions are absolute. Love arises when we maintain perfect order, one with another. Love is not disorderly. In true love there are always front and back relationships, above and below relationships, and right and left relationships. These are not barriers; they define order and process.
60If you looked at the world through the eyes of love and saw a bird in song, you would say, "Why is that bird chirping? Oh, he must be missing his beloved." You would recite poetry, or even just spout it off spontaneously, and write works of literature. The scenes of your everyday life reappear in constant repetition. Ordinary people see water in a stream go by all the time, winding its way, following the lay of the land, meandering along. When it hits a rock, it sprays drops of water and flows on. But a person who fathoms the love behind this water's flow will receive unending inspiration -- really! He or she will write poetry and novels about it for a millennium. How pleasing are the breath of love, the caress of love, the song of love and the words of love!
61Through love, happiness will come into the human world. Without the standard of love, people cannot realize the ideals that they themselves desire. Everything in the universe lives because of love. All things of creation originated through God's love. We human beings, having originated from a greater love than anything else, are the center of creation. We are to return to the spirit world having been born in love, attained maturity through love, led a life in society through love, and completed love.
62In this world, once we give something away it is gone. Yet with respect to love, the more we give, the more comes back to us. That is why we delight in love. We can always give love and in return be filled with love, so we can always be happy and joyful. Giving centered on money leads to collapse. No matter how much you like power, trying to accumulate it leads to misfortune. Knowledge also has its limits. But love is different. The more love is given, the more it circulates.
63Where does eternal life begin? It begins with God's love. I'm talking about God's love, not His money, power or knowledge. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) However, he left one thing out, the most important thing of all: love. He should have said, "I am the way and the truth and the life and the love." These words should be inserted into the Bible. When I say this, some people will say, "Oh! How blasphemous!" But if you ask God about this, He will reply, "Of course!" From this we can see that God really likes love, but He likes true love best of all. This is very logical; I am not speaking out of ignorance.
End of The Origin of True Love