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CSG 7.1
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1We were born through three great parents. The first parent is the material world. We were created as the center of the material realm, as composite material beings made from every essential element extracted from the material world. From this viewpoint, these material elements are our ancestors that gave us birth and the material world is an expansion of each of us. The universe is such that material entities can reach fruition only when aligned with the ideal of love. All cells are meant to live comfortably, regulated by the ideal of love. If they were to get upset at each other, everything would go awry. The second parent is the term for our natural parents who gave us birth in the flesh. They enabled us to be born with a definite form. However, no matter how hard they try, those parents cannot become the owners of love. They can be the owners of our life but not the owners of love. The owner of love is God. God exists in the universality and eternality of love, because He is the subject partner of love, the Parent centered on love. Thus, our third Parent is God. In this way, we have three great parents.
2Human beings live for ten months in the womb, a hundred years in this physical world and for eternity in the spirit world. Our face has three levels: the mouth, the nose and the eyes. These represent the three ages of human life. Our mouth symbolizes the age in the womb, the material world. Our nose represents the age on the earth, the earthly, human world, and our eyes represent the age of heaven, the spirit world. The water in the womb of the mother is a universe of freedom for the baby. Even though the baby has to stay hunched up at all times and cannot kick wherever it pleases, and its nose and mouth are blocked, that place is still a universe of freedom for the baby. The vessel that supplies the baby with all that it needs joins at the navel, and the baby can breathe only through that umbilical cord. Yet that world is still a universe of freedom for the baby.
3When you were in the womb, did you have thoughts such as, "I will go out into the world and eat honey, rice cakes, rice, beef and everything else with this mouth"? No, in fact, you were breathing through the umbilical cord and thinking, "If I leave this place, I will die!" To us it seems that a fetus should feel stifled and yet the baby in the womb is anxious about going out, and says, "I wish I didn't have to leave." Nevertheless, when the time comes and the water breaks, everything comes rushing out. Naturally, along with the gush of the amniotic fluid, the baby is safely delivered and everything is fine.
4Life on earth is analogous to life in the womb, for here we are surrounded by air, just as we lived bathing in the waters of the womb. We are living in an air pocket. The very moment we think of as the hour of death is actually our birth into our third life. Dragonflies start out as larva, and as such they swim in the water; then they come out onto the land and crawl for a time. Then they fly freely to and fro, feeding on insects they had never even thought of eating while they were living on land. They fly around with the entire world as their stage. Many insects develop through three stages of life. Most insects have wings. Considering the fact that even insects live in the water, on land and in the air, would it do if we human beings, who are the lords of creation, lived only on land? We have wings of a higher dimension.
5The period in the womb is the age of water. A baby inside the mother's womb is floating in water. Simply considered, we may feel that the baby would find it difficult to live in the mother's womb because it is constricted. Isn't it obvious that the baby would have to take in and pass water, since it is living in water? For that reason, babies in the womb live by virtue of the conduit connected to their stomach. By what means is the baby in the womb supplied with nutrients? It is through the umbilical cord connected to the navel. For the baby in the womb, its navel is its mouth.
6A baby in its mother's womb breathes, but through what? It is through the umbilical cord, which is connected to the mother's body. However, we know that the baby is also connected to the second world, the world of air. After its time in the womb the baby pushes out, and everything behind it is destroyed. At the moment the baby cries for the first time its windpipe and nostrils, designed for breathing air, embrace that world of air. The nostrils are the wonderful supply route. While in the womb the baby prepared for the world of air, but in the process of coming out and connecting to that world, the umbilical cord and the amniotic sac -- in short, everything that enabled it to live in the womb -- are destroyed. The umbilical cord used in the womb is destroyed. At the same time, the baby appears in this universe and meets its Mother Earth. Then it begins to live on elements supplied through its mouth. The body breathed through the umbilical cord while in the womb. To be able to breathe through the nostrils, the air pipes, the body prepares them in advance so that when the baby comes out into the world of air it can change its mode of respiration.
7You are born on earth in order to experience love. You need to breathe in the air we call love. You need to breathe the air of love from your mother and father. You should go through everything in life while being supplied with the air of love. Once you are born as a baby in a family, you need to follow a path similar to a sine curve, going up along the curve and coming down. You are born as a baby and eventually, over time, your body breaks down. You are born as a baby, and you go back to being a baby again. When this takes place, what is about to happen? You will detach yourself from the world of the second womb and connect yourself to the respiratory organs of the third world of love. You leave behind your loving parents and siblings and enter the world of love that is in total harmony with the Original Being of the great cosmos, God. The spirit world is filled with air of love. Therefore, while you live in the earthly world, you should equip yourself with a supply line that will enable you to breathe that love. Hence, you need to have experiences with the spirit world. You need to develop into someone who can feel love spiritually and breathe the air of love.
8When we leave this planet Earth, which is like our mother's womb, and pass on, we will breathe with the respiratory organs of love, that is, with our windpipe of love. We can gain eternal life only when we connect to the third age of love. By connecting to that love, we can return to God. We return to the spirit world by binding to the respiratory organs of love. Yet we still have some distance to traverse to return to God, the Original Being. Because the Original Being is the origin of the seed, it must return to Him after bearing fruit.
9The womb, in which we all spend time, is a world of water. The human body is three-quarters water. This earthly world is the world of air. Yet your eyes, ears, nose and other sensory organs designed for life in this world of air are not needed while you are surrounded by water. Did you breathe even once through your nose during the months you spent growing in the womb? Had you tried to do so, you would have died instantly. Why then does a fetus need a nose? It is there because you are preparing for the next world. In the next world, the earthly world, you live in an air pocket, not a water pocket. What should you do in an air pocket? Just as you prepared your five physical sense organs while living in the water pocket, when you are living in the air pocket you need to prepare your five spiritual sense organs. You prepare the five spiritual sense organs, corresponding to the ears, eyes, nose, and so on, through which you can absorb love when you are in the heavenly world. When you cross the hill of death, those sense organs open up. You will need those five spiritual sense organs in the infinite world.
10Water symbolizes the age in the womb. Next, the earth is the age of air. We are born from our mother's womb and then we live in the age of air. Next, the spirit world is the age of the eyes. It is the age of the sun, the age of sunlight. Love can be said to be light, because it illuminates, and so it is the realm of light. Human life has three stages. A dragonfly first lives in water, emerges and lives on land and then sheds its skin and flies around feeding on other insects. It passes through three distinct periods. This is also true for us as the lords of creation. When our time in our mother's womb concludes, do we come out embracing everything we used there, or do we separate from it, our connection to it destroyed? If we were to remain tied in any way when we came out, we would be in serious trouble. Conversely, if the umbilical cord were severed while we still needed to eat and breathe through it, we would die. But when we come out of the womb, we need to sever that umbilical cord. It must be cut off without hesitation. We come out destroying everything of the past.
11When the time comes, we must all end our life in our mother's womb and begin our life on earth. Regardless of whether we desire it or not, the law of the universe operates this way. Then a new, vast and boundless world unfolds before us, one which we had never dreamed of or imagined. Our life in water ends and our life on earth begins. A span of ten months in the womb transitions into a span of one hundred years of life on earth. People lead diverse lives and go through changes as they prepare for the spirit world, the world we go to after we die. That is why I tell you not to worry about dying. You are simply moving to a better place.
12Just as we never imagined life in the world during our time in the womb, while we are living in the flesh we cannot imagine the very different, eternal and infinite world that is waiting for us. It is not a world of despair. Our life of one hundred years in this limited earthly realm transitions into life in the eternal realm transcendent of time and space. While living in the womb, we are supplied with nutrients from our mother through the umbilical cord, and our earthly life depends on the three basic elements of the universe -- water, air and light -- as well as nutritive elements. Once we enter the spirit world, however, we no longer need material nutrients; we live breathing love for all eternity. In the eternal world, we eat if we want to and we do not eat if we would rather not. No matter who we are, we live our life in three stages: ten months in water, one hundred years on earth, and eternity in the spirit world.
13After the age of water come the age of land and the age of light. In this regard, a person lives through three successive ages. The solar system, with the sun at its center, is always in daylight. On the other hand, night follows day on planet Earth. The spirit world is always in light. There are the ages of water and of air leading to the age of love. Love must never be extinguished. Like the light of the sun, love must be there at all times, night and day; whether morning, afternoon or evening, whether at the North Pole, the tropics, the South Pole or anywhere else, love doesn't change. We will go to the spirit world to enter the age of love. The spirit world is like a storehouse for fruit grown and harvested during the four seasons. It is bathed in a light like that from the sun.
14At first, we were nurtured through our mother's placenta. The womb is the vessel in which we grew. We kicked away everything completely as we broke away, emerged from that container, and were born. Similarly, our physical body is the container for our spirit self and we will break away from it too, and fly away. Accordingly, human beings pass through the world of water and of land and finally come to live in the eternal world of true love, which is a world of light in the sky. In the spirit world, because love is the life element, we carry out all instructions given through love immediately. Nothing is impossible. In that world, even if a billion people were to have dinner at the same time and place, the amount of food necessary for such a feast could be instantly prepared.
15The light that illuminates the spirit world is that of true love. True love is like sunlight both in the earthly world and in the spirit world. That is why we leave behind the regime of living through our nose and come to live through our eyes. When you live through your eyes, you know everything with crystal clarity and nothing escapes you. After the world of the nose we enter the world of the eyes, the world of light. The fact that it is the world of the eyes tells us that our eyes that see this world will also see the spirit world. Through them, we can see whatever we like. We can see the Heavenly Parent; we can see the earthly Parents; we can see the vastness of the heavenly kingdom and how it compares to the earthly kingdom. We come to know that the spirit world and the earth are one reality, not two separate realities. Our eyes are made to see both.
16As soon as a baby is born and cries for the first time, it begins to breathe through its nostrils; thus it connects to the second world, the world of air. When it leaves the world within the womb and connects to the world of air, it must discard the umbilical cord and amniotic sac that have sustained its life in the womb. These are destroyed and simultaneously the baby is born into Mother Earth. Thereafter it feeds through the mouth and breathes through the nose. But the food we eat on earth is the nutrition necessary for the life of the flesh; it is not the original essential element of life. The essential life element is love. Therefore, while we live in this world, we also need to breathe the air of love provided by our mother and father.
17Life is short. Ten years can pass almost without you knowing. Everything is decided in the thirty years after your marriage. The path of life does not wait for you forever. Life is busy. We all have to die at some point. Do you have confidence that you will not die? You will surely die, and then you will go to the spirit world. Life on earth is but an instant. It is like the months spent in your mother's womb.
18Since air in the spirit world is composed of love, if your spirit self is not prepared, you will not be able to breathe when you enter the heavenly realms. The world here is a world of air, but the next world is the world of love. You have to prepare your spirit self to feel love. Otherwise you will not be able to establish relationships in the spirit world. Then you will have bigger problems that will take millions of years to resolve.
19After our earthly life, we must go on to the third stage, the world as it was originally meant to be, and live in that world of love. Therefore, we need to equip ourselves with respiratory organs suited to the world of love and we need to break out of this physical body, just as a baby bursts from the amniotic sac, destroying it in order to be born. That is why a woman experiences labor pains. In the same way, death is like a second ordeal of labor pains. What do we need to prepare during our life in this physical body? During our time in the womb, we grew the organs with which we would breathe air. Similarly, during our life in the flesh we need to prepare a windpipe that breathes love when we go to the spirit world. When you break out of your body, you go beyond the limited environment of your past life, breathe through your love windpipe and live with unlimited freedom.
20Those who breathe love while on the earth do not die; rather, they live. While breathing inside the mother's womb, we are preparing a windpipe suitable for the future world of air. Though we are alive, when we disconnect from the placenta that connects by a cord to our stomach and come out, we are transformed to exist on a new, higher dimension and we are supplied with higher dimensional elements. We emerge and receive an infusion of air. After you emerge from the womb, what are you preparing for? It is love. It is not only air which you are infused with, but love; you receive elements of love. You are not living only to eat. Then what should you be filled with during your life on earth? You should form a new character of love during this time.
21Until now, no one noted that while you are in the womb, in the age of water, you prepare five physical sense organs that you do not need there. Those organs are not necessary in the womb. However, once you come out into the world of air and sever the umbilical cord, you need them. Similarly, while you are living in the age of air you need to prepare five internal, spiritual sense organs. These are not external, bodily organs. They are the five God-centered, internal organs you need in order to lead a carefree, unlimited life through which you harmonize with the world of love.
22In your present life you have a nose and eyes through which you can smell and see the natural world in a limited way for one hundred years. But there is an eternal being inside you, staying still and waiting, with its nose, mouth and ears closed until the moment of its birth. In the same way, senses are inside you, waiting to see the eternal sights, hear the eternal sounds, smell the eternal fragrances and taste the eternal flavors. They are like your earthly senses. When that moment comes, each of us will be able to go everywhere, listen to everything, smell everything and eat everything.
23When you go to the spirit world, you will sing songs of love and speak words of love. If someone speaks to you in song in the spirit world, you will want to respond likewise. If you are spoken to through a dance, you will want to reply with a dance. You will rejoice eternally and never tire of dancing. When dancing starts in one place, all of heaven will dance, and when singing starts somewhere, there will be singing everywhere. You will dance with your beloved spouse. When you end up dancing with another in the spirit world, you will say to yourself, "This dancing with you is so I can love my beloved spouse one hundred times more." When you dance with someone else and hold each other's hands, you will feel the impulse to find your beloved spouse and love him or her thousands and tens of thousands of times more than ever. When you go to the spirit world, there is no need for you to work and there is no nighttime. Your eyes are always open. Your organs are working all the time. And what work are they doing? What kind of work will you enjoy doing when your eyes are always open and you never need to sleep? It is love. When you possess such an ideal of love, if you say, "Let such-and-such a thing appear!" it will appear right away. You will live surrounded by original love.
24Why were we born? We were born because of love. To bear the fruit of love, we are born through the love of our parents and we grow up within the embrace of love. After that, we raise sons and daughters whom we can love in place of God. Then what happens when we grow old? We feel everything that parents can feel in the world. Through everything we experience in our life on earth we feel God's presence, and we become a fruit of oneness with Him. It is similar to the way trees bear fruit. Just as a fruit that has absorbed elements from all parts of a tree is harvested, we need to return to God's embrace, for such is the purpose of our birth. That is why God created us, so we can become one with Him through love. Therefore love is the standard of infinite value, unequaled in the entire universe. In the place we become one with love, there is nothing that cannot be found. There, everything has achieved perfection. That is the ideal world to which people alive today need to go. If we call that place the spirit world, it is the spirit world; if we call that place the kingdom of heaven, it is the kingdom of heaven. Such fruits can enter the kingdom of heaven. It is not a place that individuals can enter. Only those eligible as an object partner of equal value, who have borne fruit centering on love and who have inherited the right of ownership of God's love, can go in.
25The first parent is the parents who gave birth to you, but the second parent is the earth. The earth is the second parent of your body. The earth supplies you with the elements that help your body grow. After passing through the second parent, you enter the third parent at the time of death. You cannot enter the third parent without being prepared. You need to resemble the form of God, our Original Parent. Why do we marry? It is to resemble God's form. God is a being of unified dual characteristics. God's characteristics divide into two separate entities, a man and a woman who need to come together in union. They are like the seeds and they return to the position of God's original nature. However, for those seeds to be perfected, they have to traverse the path of the duty of love. This means they need to be born and receive love, grow up with love as their goal, live their life centering on love and, even when they pass on, pass on in order to return to love. Unless you set out focused on the goal of living for others, your path will take you in the wrong direction.
26You need to be stronger than your environment. You need to inherit all the elements so that you can bear fruit in the future, and your motivation to bear fruit has to be strong. Only then, after passing through the course to fruition, a course connected with history, can you remain as a fruit that is indispensable to human society. When a person is born, that person has to master the environment without fail. That does not mean that mastering the environment is an end in itself; you need to pass through a process by which you inherit new life and bear good fruit. After going through this process, you need to occupy a position that can show proper and practical results. For example, the owner sows seeds of grain. They sprout, grow and bear fruit, and then the owner harvests and stores them in a barn. Just like that seed, you need to go through a process of being harvested, because you are needed for a certain purpose.
27Life on this earth is but a fleeting moment. Therefore, a person who cries and weeps for a child who has gone to the spirit world has not yet broken free from ties with the fallen realm. When this person goes to the spirit world, he or she will be blocked by a wall. A person is born from love, lives through love and returns to love. Since its origin is the seed, the fruit will produce new seed. When you ask the reason human beings are born, the answer is that we are born for ideal love. Since this is an eternal love, you will always have your mother and father, your husband or wife and your sons and daughters. Hence, love is precious. Because love begins from God and God is absolute, love cannot change. And because love is eternal, people are born for God's love, live for the sake of love and after living their life this way, stand in the position of the eternal object partner of God, living with God forever.
28In the world of air, the spirit is attached to the body, which nourishes it like a fetus. When the body grows old, the spirit wants to kick it away and leave it behind. If God sees the physical body insisting that it will not die, what will He do? Will He laugh, pity it or scold it? Just as a baby is born and becomes its parents' object partner of love, we can conclude, based on the principle, that we need to be born again in our spirit body and become an eternal object partner of God, our spiritual Parent. Just as a baby is born into this earthly world where it can share love with its mother and father, we need to be born into the spirit world where we can share love with God, our Parent, who moves through the eternal and infinite realms. Without taking the position of His object partner, we cannot possibly become His children.
29The invisible God develops through the visible Adam. When Adam becomes the owner of love and has his own sons and daughters, he feels the realm of substance horizontally on God's behalf. The substantial fruit of the two nations appears, centering on the incorporeal God, Adam's realm of substance, and the grandchildren. This perfected fruit becomes the substance of the spirit world and the physical world, and is able to go anywhere.
30Since our ancestors were raised in the bosom of God, we cannot but wish for God Himself to live in comfort and happiness forevermore. Would it do for God to feel unhappy? We wish for God always to be wonderfully happy. A baby in the womb wishes the same thing. After the absolute God created Adam and Eve, and while they were growing up, He was surely in a state of infinite hope and infinite happiness. He must have had dreams for them. This is true for us as well. It is similar to the fact that we live for a time in our mother's womb; then we are born and our lifetime of living in our physical body begins. How is our current life on earth different from life in the womb? In that we are growing in the embrace of our universe, it is the same.
31We are born in love that represents God; we live in love, we reach the destination of love by having sons and daughters and we return to God to live with Him eternally. In other words, our life begins with love, matures with love and is harvested as the fruit of love. Death is the point at which the fruit of love is harvested. We received our parents' love, shared the love of husband and wife and loved our children. Therefore, we have to harvest the fruits of God's love that have ripened in the internal world of love, scattered throughout our lifetime, and take them with us to the spirit world. When I become completely one through love, I come to resemble God. If a husband and wife unite and realize completely those three stages of love, when they go to the spirit world they will become, for eternity, the object partner god in front of the eternal subject partner God. This takes place when a husband and wife pass away with true love as their center. Thus, we begin with God and end with God.
1Human beings were created with a dual structure. This dual structure consists of spirit and flesh, mind and body. When do they become one? You cannot fully unite the two as one merely by cultivating your mind and offering prayers, no matter how spiritually awakened you become. The body has five major senses. The mind, including the spirit and the conscience, also has five senses. There is only one power that can bring the cells of these five external, physical senses and five internal, spiritual senses into oneness so that they resonate completely and are filled to the point of exploding. That is God's love, which is the common denominator of everything in the universe. Without that love, unity between the mind and body is impossible.
2In the relationship between our spirit and body, the spirit is the more important. The physical body continues for about a hundred years and then it dies, but the spirit lives eternally, transcending time and space. Regardless of how well people dress and how luxuriously they live on earth, in the end everyone dies. Accordingly, before passing into the spirit world we need to successfully harmonize the spiritual and physical standards and achieve, through our lifestyle, a perfect union of the spirit and the flesh. That is, during our life in the limited earthly world, we have the responsibility to perfect our spirit within our body.
3Each of us has a spiritual self and a physical self. In the Unification Church, we refer to these as the spirit and the body. Originally, the spirit and the body are supposed to become one. Ultimately they have to become one. And at what place do they become one? At a place of resonance. This is like the vibration of a tuning fork. When you strike one prong, it produces a tone that resonates perfectly with the other. Like a tuning fork, our spirit and body also achieve unity through resonance.
4When do the spirit self and the physical body become one? This is the question. When God's love comes into our heart, our body automatically and actively reacts. It is not God's wisdom, ability or power but only His love that can bring us into a realm where our body and mind resonate in complete unity. What is the one focus, the ideal standard, desired by your five physical sensory organs, such as your eyes and nose, as well as by your five spiritual sensory organs? It is neither God's power nor His wisdom. It is His love, the center and the standard point of everything!
5When our spiritual and physical selves harmonize and resonate with each other in God's love, the spiritual cells and physical cells interact perfectly. When we open our eyes and they are working perfectly, we can see everything throughout heaven and earth for the first time. When we use a highly efficient microphone, our voice will ring out fully everywhere. Similarly, once our physical and spiritual selves become one and attain an explosive state through the power of love, that complete union emits a light on the same wavelength as the heavenly world, the earthly world, and even God Himself.
6All created beings in this world exist in pairs based on the ideal of reciprocity. That is why the number two is so necessary, from the smallest being to the greatest. In human beings, an individual's mind and body must become one. Then husband and wife have to become one, and then the spirit world and the physical world have to become one. From the beginning, these entities were meant to be united.
7Between the body and the spirit, the more important is the spirit. Our flesh lives for one hundred years within the limited realm of time and space before disappearing into nothing, but our spiritual body has the power to transcend both time and space. Accordingly, our essential purpose is to recognize our historic responsibility and fulfill it. Regardless of how well you may live physically, in the end you will die. Then which is more important, spiritual standards or physical standards? We do not live based on physical standards. The flesh exists for the spirit and not vice versa. You should not cling to the lifestyle that secular people follow. You should find a more worthwhile basis for existence, with your physical body and spiritual body united substantially. This will serve to strengthen your physical body also.
8From God's viewpoint, is there any difference between a young person, a middle-aged person and an elderly person? God looks only at the spirit self. He can see if a spirit self is young and active and has a self-disciplined character. He does not see the outer shell. He sees what will be left from inside after the outer shell has been cast off.
9What happens when we go to the spirit world? We become God's body. A person becomes the body of God. It is recorded in the Gospel of John and in 1 Corinthians, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God?" (1 Cor. 3:16; cf. John 17:21) Human beings are thus the temple, the house where God can dwell. Then how can you come to resemble God? When you reach the completion stage of your portion of responsibility, God dwells within you. Oneness is created between you and God and through that love, unity of life is achieved. Your life is assimilated into God's. When a man and a woman become husband and wife and have a family, their love brings them into unity. In the same way, the power of that love brings them into God.
10Human beings have both a mind and a body. Above our mind is our spirit and above our spirit is God. This is why we can become perfect when we become completely one with God. Though a person is only one small entity, because he or she represents all of history as well as all future relationships, he or she possesses cosmic value.
11Would you like to live eternally on earth, or would you prefer to live eternally in a substantial world of incorporeal love? You would say that you prefer to live eternally in the world that has become the substance of incorporeal love. So when God tells you that He wants to show you the spirit world, would you be able to follow Him with your physical body? That is why you need a spirit. This is not a delusion but a fact. If we assume that God exists as the center of the invisible mind and that He requires an object partner, wouldn't He wish to take human beings with Him, show them every part of the eternal ideal realm He created, and give them all of it?
12We can see the incorporeal body through our spiritual eyes. In the center of that incorporeal body is the spirit, and that part corresponds to the human mind. That is the place where you can meet with God happily, without other people learning about what you are doing. If God and you love each other in such a place, no one can take that love away from you. That place is the final destination of vertical love and the starting point of horizontal love.
13The spirit mind is the union of mind and spirit, and it moves toward a single goal. As such, with our conscience centered upon God, it can motivate us to achieve ideal personhood based on the unity of our spirit and flesh. Our conclusion can only be that if we did not have a spirit mind, we would be unable to search for the origin that can connect us to the spirit world and true love. When the spirit mind comes into us, our body rejoices and everything follows it. The two become one automatically. Until now, our biggest problem has been the separation of our mind and body. When God's spiritual power comes into us as the origin of our spirit mind, our mind and body become one naturally. Unless a revolution occurs at this fundamental level, unless we discover the origin that can govern everything that comes from the root, we have no path to the ideal. Only through a strong motivation can results come.
14The mind is vertical and the body horizontal. The mind is the vertical "I" and the body is the horizontal "I." There are the two. The vertical "I" is the mind and the horizontal "I" is the body. Their structure is the same. Everything in creation shares this. If one goes up, another comes down. Consider the example of a tree. The roots absorb nutrients and the leaves also produce nutrients. The leaves receive sunlight and their chlorophyll creates and supplies nutrients. The roots also absorb nutrients from the ground. These nutrients interact with each other. In Principle terms, they are the vitality element and the life element, ever giving and receiving in a relationship similar to that of mind and body.
15We need to eat spiritual food. When you are hungry, which should taste better, physical food or spiritual food? To survive and stand on God's side, you should enjoy the taste of spiritual food more than physical food. The flavor of a life centered on spiritual power should far excel that of a life based on physical might.
1We wish to resemble God, and it is only natural that God would cherish the hope that we would resemble Him as His sons and daughters. For this, human beings must be born again, assuming a form that can resemble God. God and human beings are eagerly waiting for the day on which they can fly together forever. The day of our death when we discard our physical body is the day when we are reborn as people who can fly. That being so, should we welcome death, or grieve over it? Naturally we should welcome it. And when we die, what are we dying for? We should declare that our death will be for God's true love, that is, love for the sake of others. If this is so for us, we will shed our physical body in order to participate in the realm of activity of God's infinite love and for the sake of the world of God's love.
2If you fall sick and are about to die, you typically lapse into a coma. You are in a state in which you are not sure if you are dead or alive. While there in the spirit world, you see everything about the place where you will live. Your friends and relatives who are already there come and greet you. The vast kingdom of heaven that unfolds before your eyes is so dazzling and splendid that you exclaim, "I should hurry up and come here." Your life continues and eventually you transition to that world. As you head toward different places, each better than the last, you pass through a first, a second and a third gate and enter the next world, where you are welcomed. Death is not something that should dismay or dishearten you. You are not going down; instead, you are making a leap. In short, you ascend. Therefore, you should not fear death. Death comes in accordance with a natural cyclic law, as the process of moving you to a better world.
3People generally think that everything ends when we die, but that is not the case. Because there is a spirit world, life continues as it is. While on earth you need to prepare to enter the spirit world. Since you breathe love in the spirit world, in order to breathe freely there, you should keep love at the center of your life on earth. If you do not center on love during your physical life, you will be unable to breathe freely in the spirit world. Because the spirit world is a world where you breathe love, you can think of it as a world in which love is your air. Your second new beginning is referred to as death. Hence, there is nothing to fear. Death opens the door to a new beginning.
4Between life and death, which is stronger? Is life stronger than death or is death stronger than life? In Satan's world, death is stronger than life. After coming to know God's Will, you should not dread having to die. Only by dying can you resurrect. So what is the death mentioned in the Bible referring to? It does not signify ending our eternal life that comes from God. Instead, it means ending the life we inherited through the fallen lineage of Satan's world. This is why those who seek to lose their life for God's Will shall find it.
5At the end of our physical life, we go through a second birth. This is death. The place where we experience our second birth, the place where we go after death, is the spirit world. As we enter that world, God, who is our third Parent, bestows upon us true love that represents the entire universe. We are supplied with the true love of God's ideal. That is why unity will surely be achieved in the spirit world. At the moment of death, we leave behind our second world, the world of air, and we need to connect with our third world, the new world where we are designed to breathe love. We leave behind the love of our parents and of our siblings, go to the spirit world and ultimately enter the world of true love in harmony with God, the Original Being. Since the Original Being planted the seed, the fruit needs to return to the Original Being.
6The reason we die is that our ability to love in our physical body is limited. If we want to possess the true authority of God's boundless true love as His object partner, our limited physical body will not suffice. This is why we need to transform into an incorporeal spirit. We do so to share the ideal of love equally with all of heaven and earth. For this reason, the moment of our death is not the doorway to a path of pain; it opens the door to happiness through which we can possess universal true love. Death signifies a transition from the earthly world, where we can only crawl and walk, to a world where we can live and fly freely. To qualify as a traveler who can enjoy true love with the entire universe as his or her stage, and to enter that world, we are made to pass through death. Death is nothing less than being born anew.
7Someday we will discard our physical body and go to the spirit world. As human beings born into this world, we need to be prepared for death. We need to endure hardships, through which we develop good character. That will become our true self in the eternal world. You will be born as a good and healthy baby only if you receive good prenatal care inside your mother's womb. Your life on earth is similar to your life in the womb. So you need to model yourself after God's external form and divine character in order to grow properly. And even when you are fully grown, you need to overcome obstacles at the risk of your life.
8Because our death is a second birth, it is not something tragic. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have lived in a realm of resonance with God. Their body and mind would have been in resonance. When we live on earth centering on love, we achieve love that has the same standard wavelength as the love of the spirit world. As we do so, we can perceive the spirit world while living on earth. Just as we are born of our parents on earth, live together with them and learn from them and thus perfect our life on earth, we are born again centering on God, the Parent of love in the heavenly world. We who have perfected the five spiritual senses live together with our Heavenly Parent in the eternal world of love as God's sons and daughters, His friends and His body. That is why death is not the end. Death enables us to smash the boundaries between the limited world and the infinite world. By dying, we cross that summit, entering our second life.
9Death is similar to coming out of the womb, where we lived in a world of water, and in the process destroying the umbilical cord and the amniotic sac. Death is our second birth. It is our departure from this limited world, where we breathe through our nose, and our arrival in the place where we can receive God's love. That is what death is. This is why we have a first ancestor and a second ancestor. Our path of life is such that we leave this world where we received our parents' love and we seek out the place of the love of God, our infinite and eternal Parent. Embraced in God's bosom, we form bonds of infinite life and love and return to the original homeland where we can live eternally. There we breathe love, just as we breathe air now. We originated from God, and by achieving this real authority of love we incarnate God. In love, our value is equal.
10Since human beings were born from the world of spirit, they have no choice but to return to the world of spirit. The Korean word toraganda (to die, to return) is interesting. To where are we returning? It is not to a cemetery. It is to our place of origin. We did not begin life in a cemetery. The word implies crossing the vast expanses of history, even beyond its beginning point. It does not mean to return as a Korean even if one was born a Korean. A Korean who dies does not return on that path as a Korean. We return to the original world that brought forth the ancestors of humankind. It means returning to the place where the Creator is. Since that is where we originated, it is to there that we return.
11If someone died of old age, the Korean expression is that that person "returned." When someone asks about our deceased grandparents, we say, "They went back," don't we? To where did they return? They went back to the spirit world. Since we originally come from the incorporeal God, the incorporeal world is our original homeland. From the incorporeal world we come to the corporeal world, multiply on this earth and then return to the incorporeal world. This is the path by which we go back. We originate from the incorporeal Father, then we are born through our corporeal father and mother and we live in the corporeal world. Later we discard our physical body, return to our original form and go to the spirit world.
12Once we are born, it is inevitable that we will die. But where do we go after death? We do not dissipate like smoke. We go to the spirit world. When we go to the spirit world, we will find there is a territory there. Who, then, is the owner of the spirit world? It is God. Therefore, we should become the sons and daughters of God. If we do not become God's children, we cannot enter Heaven.
13You may not know the reality of the heavenly world, but I do. I enjoy a spiritual gift from God, giving me clear insight into that unknown world. Digging into the root of that world, I found its principles to be quite simple. Only those who live for others in line with God's universal principles, that is, who live for the sake of the original ideal, can enter that world. The world that is structured along those lines is the ideal heavenly kingdom. It is the original homeland that humankind should seek. We are fallen human beings exiled from our original homeland, but we are destined to return. Nonetheless, because we cannot return through our own efforts alone, God had to set up a specific path through the course of history by which we can return.
14Whether we know it or not, we are headed for a certain destination. We are getting closer both when we are moving and when we are resting. Not just you but also this people, this world and even heaven and earth are headed there. This is an undeniable fact. Where will you go after you have lived through this life on earth? This is an important issue that everyone needs to resolve. Religions have mobilized to resolve this issue, as have philosophies and history itself. You too cannot deny that this destiny completely captivates you and pulls you along. Whether you can resolve this issue in your mind or not, you are destined to go. This body will see its end and be buried in the ground at the time of our death. Yet will this mind, this life, this heart, these thoughts and even this hope be buried together with our body? A person who is unaware of this, and who has not resolved this in his or her mind, with a clear view of his or her purpose, will surely suffer misfortune.
15If God is the Parent of humankind, what does that tell us about how and why He created us? When the God of love created us, we started out from the place where He had us participating in His love. It is our path of life to start out from the heart of God. We are to grow up in the embrace of His love, reach maturity and form a family in God's love. We are to become mature people who can develop our love to a global level on earth and finally return to the embrace of His love.
16Because we are spiritual beings, our life is eternal. Why have some people practiced loyalty before Heaven, walking the way of death for Heaven with hope in their hearts, though they followed a path many would not have wanted? They have done so because they felt something that ordinary people could not feel; they knew heavenly values that ordinary people did not know. It was for that reason that they could tread even the path of death. You may encounter adversity or sadness in your course of life. Unless your mind becomes stronger than death, you will inevitably feel regret when you face death, and retreat from pain and sorrow.
17You are born from your father and mother, but where do you come from, fundamentally? You come from God. You are born through your father's seed and your mother's womb, yet your mother and father did not create you. You were born so that you could seek out parents that are true, True Parents. You need to find True Parents through the universal Parent and through your natural parents. That is why the moment of your death is a time of jubilation when you go to meet your True Parents. There you will find the true love of True Parents. This is the spiritual kingdom of heaven, a place made up of love. It is a place abundant with the love of the True Parents. That love is a love based on the principle of service and sacrifice, in keeping with absolute law. To become eligible to stand for the test, you have to love the universe. Your life on earth is the training ground for you to love humankind, and the examination room. This is the basis of the universe. If you undergo such experiences and live with such love during your life on earth, meeting the standard, then when you pass on you will surely come into the presence of God.
18People aspire to resemble God. God's plan is to enable us to resemble Him. We therefore need to be reborn into a form that can resemble God. Both we and God eagerly await such a day. The day of our death is the day of our birth as such people. Therefore, should we welcome death or not? We should welcome it. When we are asked what we are dying for, we should answer, "I am dying for the sake of God's true love." Accordingly, we discard our physical body so that we can participate in the realm of activity of God's infinite love, and for the sake of the world of God's love. To die means to be born into a state of being enveloped in God's love. However, in this world people protest, saying, "Oh, I'm dying!" The moment you transition through the point of death is the moment of your second birth. You can experience the joy of leaving the realm of limited love and of entering the realm of infinite love. You cannot establish a relationship with God unless you liberate yourself from the fear of death.
19Human beings inherit a purpose for their life, but then they live for different purposes. For what reason are you asked to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind"? (Matt. 22:37) It is so that you can become God's child. Therefore, you should be willing even to risk your life to love God. This is what we are meant to do, so we cannot go and die in the lowliest of places. Instead, we need to die in the highest place. We should die centering on the heavenly kingdom. We should die in the one and only heavenly kingdom in heaven and on earth. Even in dying, there is a proper method and a proper place. The usual Korean way will not suffice. You need to die in the highest position, centered on the nation of God's heart, which passes through heaven and earth. You need to die at the very center of the heavenly kingdom. Your death should be such that the universe welcomes you with flags flying.
20A person who lives cherishing Heaven's hopes can joyfully surmount even the peak of death, which is otherwise an object of grief. That is why, when you face death, you should not have resentment, nor grieve over things of this world. Instead, you should rejoice and stand before Heaven speaking boldly of the value of your death. God is looking for such sons and daughters of hope. God cannot help but love a person who feels Heaven's joy in such a situation. If there were a throng of such people raising their voices to Heaven, God could not help but answer their cry.
1Heaven is a vast place. It is a world bigger and wider than this universe. But even though it is a world whose vastness is beyond description, if the people you love are somewhere in that world, no matter where, they appear instantly when you say you want to see them. And they know right away your frame of mind as you yearn for them. As soon as they arrive, they greet you, and knowing what is on your mind, they say, "Thank you for thinking like this about me." That is why there is no need to explain in the world of mind. Without having an explanation, you can feel it all. When you go there and meet someone, you know right away that he is going to say this or that. You listen to him, even though you know what he is going to say. So how wonderful this world is! True love passes through the shortest route, and true love is the quickest of all. Even if a beloved child is somewhere abroad, as soon as the parents think of that child, they will already have left, seen that child, and returned. Love transcends distance. Because true love travels the fastest, this whole vast universe can be the stage for your life's activities. Since it transcends time and space, there is no sense of distance. It is as if everything is right before your eyes.
2The kingdom of heaven is the world of God's love. It is a world where the air you breathe is love. That world is filled with life. There is no place in it that doesn't throb with life, and everyone is bound together through blood ties. Since its people are descendants of God's one lineage, if God feels sorrow over something, the entire spirit world feels that sorrow as if it were one body with God. And when God feels joy, everyone feels that joy. In this way, God's love is moving the vast kingdom of heaven. In response to this love, the living realm of all created things is beautiful art based on the subject-object partner relationship. Just as we are connected by lineage, everything is woven together, so when God is happy, we are happy, and when God is sad, we are sad.
3Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is among you," (Luke 17:21) and that the kingdom of heaven is centered on God's love. Because the love of God is the center, all relationships in the kingdom of heaven are based on God's love, and a universally well-ordered environment comes about. Then, to reside in that realm, what kind of person do you need to be? Only those who harmonize with the essence of God's love can reside there. People who are not like that cannot experience it. What, then, can harmonize with the essence of God's love? Self-centeredness is worthless. Only investment for others, of one's life, one's devotion and everything one has, allows one to live continuously in the realm of God's love.
4In heaven we can take satisfaction in what we have prepared and in having led a life of attendance. Then what kind of people can go to heaven? Not those who believed in the Lord in order to receive blessings, that is, those whose main wish was to receive blessings. Heaven is the destination for those who live preparing their hearts to attend God. It is a place where even those who die during their time of preparation can go with joy, for they leave behind a life of attendance. Resurrection takes place there. After preparing to attend, you need to lead a life of attendance. Then how can you lead such a life? Try feeling that which is around you; observe your environment. The details of life do not appear easily. How to lead a life of attendance is the crucial question. We should think about this in our everyday life.
5Heaven is a place we cannot enter without establishing relationships of heart. It is the original nation, the nation of original nature which can govern everything. It cannot belong to you based on personal feeling. Rather, it is based on deeply felt bonds of heart. Ultimately it is where we are to communicate on the level of the heart, rather than on the level of personal sentiments. The purpose of God's providence on earth is to lay the foundation upon which we can go beyond sharing ordinary sentiments, and sing out our honest and most poignant emotions from the depth of our hearts.
6Even though Jesus came to establish the original homeland, he was unable to do so before he left this earth. Though he said, "The kingdom of heaven is among you," Jesus was not able to see the kingdom of heaven with his own eyes. Likewise, our most respected forebears and the martyrs, sages and wise people who have come and gone in history were unable to see that place or usher in that day. All those who inherited the lineage of evil from the fallen ancestors have yet to establish ties to the original homeland. This is why everyone is in search of the ideal. In reality, people are pursuing the original homeland. What kind of world will that be? Not a world where people are enemies to each other, or envious of others' success, or resentful when others rejoice. In that world, one person doing well represents everyone's success; one person rejoicing represents everyone's joy. The original homeland is where, when one person rejoices, everyone rejoices; and when one person feels content, everyone feels content.
7Make your life a joyful one with God in the center. Make it the kingdom of heaven. In that kingdom you practice a life of giving. God also has to give. Parents have to give to their children. Even after giving something good, a parent desires to give something even better. As a parent, even if you have dressed your baby in the best clothes and given him or her nice things to eat, you are not satisfied. Instead you say, "I wish I could give better things." Desiring to give something better after you already have given is the heart of a parent and also the heart of God.
8Heaven is the place where husbands and wives go after raising the sons and daughters to whom they have given birth. It is the place they go while guiding their sons and daughters, their grandchildren and their clans. Further, it is the destination of the entire nation. Heaven is realized in that way. No matter how much the religious believers of today wish to go to the kingdom of heaven, it is not a place that you can enter alone. You can never go there alone.
9The kingdom of heaven is what you experience after you have been born of the original parents of goodness, formed a husband and wife relationship, given birth to sons and daughters, loved them and bequeathed everything to them in the harmonious universe where God can rejoice with all creation. The kingdom of heaven is not somewhere the father can go without the mother. It is where everyone -- father and mother, sons and daughters -- is meant to go.
10What is our greatest desire? It is to possess God's love. Even if we have possessed God, if we cannot possess the love within Him, which is even more precious, God cannot be ours. Thus we need to possess God's love. When His love first becomes mine and mine becomes His, the internal and the external become one. A nation based on such love becomes an ideal homeland without upper and lower classes. When we lie down in such a place, we feel that there is nothing in the universe that does not appear good and that does not exist for our sake. Since God's love is like that, the heavenly world, that is, the kingdom of heaven, which is to be the destiny of people today, is filled with love.
11In the process of creation, God made all things and made humankind. Everything began with God at the center. God's Will was for oneness between Himself and all people, and for equilibrium for all things in the creation. We human beings stand in the middle, between God and the created world. Thus we can function as the mediators between the spiritual and physical worlds.
12There is no doubt that God's creation of heaven and earth was glorious. First He created the substantial spirit world. He then created the substantial physical world as a representation of the spirit world. Finally He created Adam and Eve as the central embodiment of the physical world and spirit world. Adam and Eve were destined to move together in rhythm with heaven and earth. The necessary implication was that if Adam and Eve changed, heaven and earth also would change, and if Adam and Eve's center were broken up, the center of the entire universe would break up, and if the center of the entire universe were to break up, the center of the Creator also would break apart.
13There is a reason God created human beings as two separate entities, man and woman. First, God exists as the subject partner with harmonized dual characteristics, but because He has no external form, He needed a form through which He could relate to the substantial world. Since the creation includes a physical world, God absolutely needed a body that would enable Him to communicate with and act freely in that world. It could not just be the body of the man or the body of the woman. It had to be the bodies of both Adam and Eve together reflecting the image of God. Without form, God is limited in His ability to relate with the corporeal substantial world. Accordingly, if Adam and Eve had become one while attending God and if, after becoming perfect, they had married and given birth to children, they would have become the external, horizontal, substantial True Parents, while God would have become the internal, vertical, substantial True Parent. If this had happened, Adam and Eve would have stood in God's position and resembled God one hundred percent, both internally and externally. And if Adam and Eve, resembling God completely, had become the True Parents of humanity, all humanity would have come to recognize them as God's substantial form. Second, God created human beings as separate entities, man and woman, for the perfection of love. When Adam and Eve became the perfected substantial forms of love and achieved complete oneness, God intended to dwell within them and become the Parent of true love for all humankind. Adam and Eve, who thus would have stood in the position of God's external form, then would have been able to reproduce children and form an ideal family and an ideal world. Once this happened, the spirit world and the earthly realm would have been connected through humankind.
14God has no external form; He is invisible. Even in the spirit world, God cannot be seen. Nonetheless, God needs a body. God created all things because He needs an object partner. Through it, He can assume a physical form. Perfected Adam and Eve were to have become God's body. So originally, when they went to the spirit world, Adam and Eve were to have become the king and queen of the family, tribe, people, nation and world, and of the cosmos. Thus in the spirit world they would have represented God.
15God's vision of the ideal of creation included the kingdom of heaven in the spirit world, but He created all things because He wished for a concrete kingdom of heaven in the physical world where He personally could reside. In other words, God created the world and everything in it to experience the glory of both the spiritual and the physical kingdom of heaven, with Himself and Adam and Eve as the center. He did not plan on establishing the kingdom of heaven in heaven and on earth just for Himself; He created them for humankind as well. God's purpose for creating heaven and earth was so that human beings could live in the kingdom of heaven on earth and afterward in the eternal world of the kingdom of heaven in heaven, centering on Adam and Eve.
16What kind of people can live in the kingdom of heaven on earth? What kind of spirits can live in the infinite spirit world, the kingdom of heaven in heaven? People that have received the love of Jesus and the Holy Spirit on earth and, going beyond that, received the love of the Father directly, lived together with Him and become the victors of harmony based on the ideal of love -- only they can live in that kingdom.
17According to God's Principle of Creation, the kingdom of heaven must be perfected first in this earthly world. Originally God created us such that, after living in the kingdom of heaven on earth while in the flesh, we naturally would discard our physical body, move to the kingdom of heaven in the spirit world, and live eternally. Then what should the kingdom of heaven, which we need to construct on earth, look like? The original family and the kingdom of heaven have the same structure. Basically, in a family there are the original parents, the original husband and wife, the original children, and the original brothers and sisters. When this family becomes one centered on true love, harmony and unity come about automatically. On that foundation, with true love, true life and true lineage woven together, they can take on an even higher purpose.
18If human beings had not fallen, they would have become the perfected true children of God, with God as their Parent and His true love at the center of their lives. Perfected human beings were to form the bond of true husband and wife surrounded by God's love, give birth to and raise true children. Together they were to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth and live together there, and then with their entire family they would one day live in the kingdom of heaven in heaven. If your father went to hell and your mother went to heaven, how could she feel it was the kingdom of heaven? If the parents went to hell and only the children entered heaven, how could anyone call that the kingdom of heaven? The kingdom of heaven is a place where the family enters together and lives in an eternal realm of peace. Accordingly, God can settle His ideal of creation only where heaven has been made real in a family on earth. This is where God longs to dwell.
19You must realize that you absolutely need your grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, husband or wife, and children. Those four stages encompass all of humanity. Then you have to love your nation more than you love your family, and love the world more than your nation. To live in the spirit world, which brings together the past, present and future, you need to practice such love. The kingdom of heaven on earth is established here on earth, and the kingdom of heaven on earth creates the kingdom of heaven in heaven automatically. It is the place where people who have practiced the four stages of love can go.
20If the first ancestors had not fallen or sinned, but instead had conformed to the Will of God, God could have rejoiced when they died. Would they have had any regrets? If you have lived without bitter anguish, if you have been able to rejoice and offer praise before God, and if God Himself is happy with you, then upon your death you will be in the kingdom of heaven He created. That is the kingdom of heaven of God's original intention. People with deep bitterness are not meant to go to that kingdom of heaven. You cannot enter the kingdom of heaven while in torment.
21The kingdom of heaven that God desires is not established only in the spirit world. The kingdom of heaven God desires is established first on earth, and then in the spirit world. The spirit world is populated by the spirits of people who have passed on. That world and this earthly world cannot remain separated. To possess a victorious substantial self and to embody heaven's ideology, you need to uphold both heavenly ethics and human ethics. You need to live the ideology of the kingdom of heaven in your daily life. Then you will be in accord with both heavenly and human ethics. That should be the ideology of the kingdom of heaven for individuals and, at the same time, for the family, society, nation, world and cosmos. Your very being should manifest the ideology of the kingdom of heaven.
22As the incorporeal subject partner, God longed for an object partner who could provide the universal stimulation of love in history, for which He had yearned since the beginning of time. How great that stimulation will be when He encounters men and women who have become perfect object partners, both corporeal and incorporeal! God created Adam and Eve on earth because the kingdom of heaven is to be established first on earth. After they live an ideal life on earth, their spirits are to dwell in the eternal kingdom of heaven in heaven.
23At your home, please take care of nature so as to make a good environment. A person who has given his or her best for this will have a proportional right of ownership in the next world, the kingdom of heaven, which is hundreds of times bigger than this one. You attain this stature on earth. Do you want to be well off there? Or would you rather find yourself in a room in the spirit world just big enough for you to touch foreheads and look at each other's faces? You should live in such a way that you will be able to fly, dance, sing, and go wherever you please, seeking out hundreds and thousands of places. What is the most desolate place in the world? If you go to such a place and find that the soil is barren, you should want to make that place green by yourself, even if it means you have to invest precious resources from your own country. You should at least set a model standard, as does Manmul Peak on Mount Geumgang. The time has now come to make many things. Even after having done so, establishing a beautiful kingdom of heaven remains for us to fulfill in our lives. We need to become the owners, creating an environment where we can live in joy.
Fin de The Nature of Life and Death