Tag: Knowledge of God

The Key Is to Understand God and His Will

    We know that we have reached the point where it is futile to hope to establish a peaceful or unified world, in the true meaning of the term, through human power, wisdom, culture, or any other human qualities. Bearing this in mind, what is the central problem we are faced with in resolving the issue of world culture? Before anything else, we need to clarify the question of whether God exists or not.
    On the day when all people are aware of the fact that God does indeed exist, they will subsequently come to understand clearly where His will is heading. Once this is the reality, the world in which they live will become the ideal world of oneness and peace. (56-131, 1972.5.14)

    The Unification Church is different from other churches. It teaches us to love our brothers and sisters as we would love our mother and father, and to love our tribe, race, and nation as we would our brothers and sisters. We should be ready to leave our mother and father, if need be, to love our nation. Furthermore, we should be prepared to forsake our nation to love the world. Moreover, we should be willing to renounce the world in order to love God. This is the mainstream ideology of the Unification Church: to seek the path of love that sacrifices what is small and near to us for what is big and far away. (100-80, 1978.10.8)

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    Let’s consider pine trees. As we move from the Polar regions to the temperate zone, trees become different. They vary according to their environment, starting points and history. Let’s think about bears. The bears at the North Pole are white to protect themselves in an environment that is white. The white race is like the white bears at the North Pole whereas the black race is like the black bears in the temperate zone. That is the only difference. Would bears discriminate against each other by reason of the color of their fur? (Blessed Family – 847)

Cheon Seong Gyeong

Selections from the Speeches of Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Book 2
True Parents
Chapter 8

The Three Great Subjects Principle and the Proclamation of True Parents

Section 2. The Proclamation of True Parents

2.9. The religious founders and True Parents

    Essentially, what have we been trying to do during the Old Testament, New Testament, and Completed Testament Ages? We have been trying to bring God inside us. Continue reading “The Key Is to Understand God and His Will”

The Ideal World Will Not Be Realized Based Upon the Human Brain but Upon God’s Love

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God’s sorrow is embedded within us, and at the same time, within this nation, world and within all things. We should liquidate this sorrow and develop a movement to restore His joy. Experiencing God’s sorrow is central to our life.

Intellectual Knowledge and Spiritual Wisdom

Intellectual Knowledge Does Not Profit for Salvation

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The ideal world will not be realized based upon the human brain but upon God’s love. (Way of God’s Will 1.8)

Philosophy and religion have different starting-points. Philosophy [at its best] is a human quest in search of God, but religion is the path laid out for us to meet God and begin to live with God. (187:70, March 19, 1989)

Extensive reading of sacred texts and philosophy books that line library shelves does not enable you to achieve unity of mind and body. (May 1, 2004)

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You Should Think that You Are One with God and One with True Parents

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Peace Kingdom Center, Harpers Ferry WV and Online

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2013

Women have to lead the way. This is the reason I have now directed all the blessed wives in Korea to go to the front line. They have already been mobilized. Because Korea is the headquarters nation, the elder Blessed Families of Korea have all been sent to the front line. So all the Unificationist women throughout the world should follow their example and also go to the front line! Amen. (170-241, 1987.11.21)

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How should you think in order to lead a kind of life of attendance to God? You should think that you are one with God and one with True Parents. If everything in your life is in oneness with them, you should have the idea that everything belongs to God and to True Parents; and that what belongs to True Parents belongs to the kingdom of True Parents and then to you. Since even this house, nation, world and universe belong to True Parents, you come to the conclusion that everything belongs to you since you are True Parents’ son. (161-231, 1987.2.15)

Intellectual Knowledge and Spiritual Wisdom

There is a huge difference between intellectual knowledge and the spiritual truth that is conducive to salvation and enlightenment. Intellectual and conceptual knowledge, for all its utility in the world, does not always profit the spiritual seeker, and too much of it may even impede higher realization. There is a gulf between Athens and Jerusalem—between the conceptual systems of secular philosophy and the scriptural truth of religion. Scriptures call us to check our priorities, as we live in an age that pushes secular learning. A second topic of this section concerns ways of knowing. While intellectual knowledge is gained through empirical perception of sense data and rational formulation of theories, spiritually minded people employ intuition and sensitivity to the inner dimensions of reality. Reliance upon reason can be an impediment to the spiritual path; hence much religious practice, such as Zen Buddhism, is aimed at blocking the intellect. For instance the Zen kaon, “has a dog the Buddha nature?” only leads the questioner into a welter of mental confusion until he realizes that the way out is beyond any conceptual understanding whatsoever. Nevertheless, Father Moon regards both the paths of rationality and spirituality as having their place in the Kingdom, and seeks for a balance.
The final texts return to the opposition between secular knowledge and divine knowledge, focusing particularly on the damage caused by science and technology when it is not restrained or directed by spiritual wisdom. Ultimately science and all secular knowledge needs to be guided by what Father Moon calls “absolute values,”—the true love of God that seeks to benefit humanity and the whole creation.

1. Intellectual Knowledge Does Not Profit for Salvation

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
    Tertullian (Christianity)

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If any one imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by Him.
    1 Corinthians 8.1-3

My now-deceased mother really scolded me. She said, “Go away somewhere into the wilderness, since all you seem to do is look at books. For all the days to come you will be pitiful because the book blocks your path. Never will anything be revealed to you in a vision, for you live like a white man.”
    Delaware Testimony (Native American Religions)

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The Search for Truth Requires Free Thinking

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2007

We need to create an impetus for one unified language. You read the record of everything True Parents have accomplished, but to read this in translation is a disgrace. It will become your shame in the spirit world. When you go to the spirit world, you might have to pay indemnity for thousands or tens of thousands of years. That is how great a problem this is. Even if the homeland has been restored, people who cannot go over this hill will have no path upon which they can return to their hometown. They will have no certificate of residence that enables them to dwell in their homeland as registered citizens. This is a serious problem. (303-157, 1999.8.17)

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    If the True Parents had not come to the earth to teach people the fundamentals, those people will have problems when they pass on to the spirit world. Through this teaching being conveyed to every village and town in the world, the spiritual and physical worlds can be completely united. Thus, the 360,000 Couples Blessing held this year was truly great. At the end of the forty-year course, we were able to achieve, along with the liberation of women through the appearance of the True Mother, the 30,000 Couples Blessing. The reason the number of couples was set at 30,000 was in order to establish a new foundation of the Blessing in the world, based on the True Mother standing on the global level and involving Cain and Abel. That ceremony was the formation stage, and so this latter ceremony, the 360,000 Couples Blessing, can be said to be the growth stage. Through it, God is keeping the world in pace with His providence by focusing everyone’s attention on the problems of the family.
    At the moment, the whole world has become like hell. However much nations may take pride in being advanced, they must bow their heads in shame over the problems of the family. Families have completely broken down to the point that no one can tackle their problems. The situation is so serious that no economic, military, or political power can deal with it. (272-179, 1995.10.5)

The Search for Knowledge

3. Comprehend the Truth Not Merely on the Authority of a Teacher,
but from One’s Own Extensive Study and Research

Do not be misled by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea: “This is our teacher.” But when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome and wrong, and bad, then give them up… And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them.
    Anguttara Nikaya 1.190-91 (Buddhism)

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The Power of True Parents’ Name

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The Power of True Parents’ Name

The Bible says that humankind fell. So God must be liberated. Through the Fall, the sons and daughters, husband  and wife, the nation, and even the world that was to be ours were forfeited at one stroke. True Parents must come, recover all things, children, families, nations, and the world, and return them all to God. Those who once belonged to God fell under the sway of false love after deviating from the true path of love. Although they were created on the principle of ownership based in love, they were destroyed by fallen love. Now they must be salvaged through the love of True Parents, and all things, children, husband and wife, nation and world must be offered again to God. Then, God will sing praises of that triumph, the return of His universe through true love, and then He will give those offerings to True Parents. They will become God’s possessions and thereby True Parents’ possessions. In becoming True Parents’ possessions, they will become the possessions of the sons and daughters, and then again be distributed in the four directions. Without the world becoming such a place, the Kingdom of Heaven cannot appear on earth.
    What is the local-level breakthrough (tong ban gyeokpa) we are pursuing? We must unite South and North and offer the Republic of Korea to God as the homeland of all humankind. This must be done in God’s name and in True Parents’ name, centered on the achievement of victory in all nations. This is why we have been investing everything. It is for this reason that we are now like a group of beggars. Why beggars? Because we already offered everything decades ago.
    Now we must unite South and North, and in God’s name and in True Parents’ name we must take back all ownership historically claimed by Satan. We must restore the ownership to the throne of God, the Original Parent, so that Korea will emerge from this as the first ancestor nation among all nations throughout history. Working to bring this about is my final purpose of love. (211-126, 1990.12.29)    

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The British royal household’s 518 carat diamond was nothing but a shiny stone to the native people. Who would have known then that diamonds would one day become the most precious jewels in the world? People saw it shining and reflecting light, and thought it was a piece of glass. It is the same in the case of the Blessing. In one way or another, you have received the Blessing. Though it is as precious as a diamond, all of you are thinking that it is merely a piece of glass, of no particular value. You do not know the true value of it until I explain it to you. Then everyone will realize and say, “Oh! It is that precious!” (83-240, 1976.2.8)

The Search for Knowledge

The search for knowledge is incumbent upon everyone. Education and diligent study elevates and ennobles the human person. several aspects of the search are developed in these passages. First, the search for truth is a religious obligation, and the search takes us back to the source of the universe from whence comes all truth. second, an important aspect of learning is to examine oneself. This includes recognizing the extent of our ignorance—how little we know. third, knowledge is not handed to us, but requires us to comprehend a topic and make it our own. Therefore the student makes thorough efforts to understand the matter from all angles. Fourth, the search should be broad, embracing all religions and cultures, including all the sciences.
Several of Father Moon’s remarks in this section were addressed to gatherings of academics and scientists. Others describe his personal search for truth.

1. God and His Principles Are the Starting-point for Understanding

The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom.
    Proverbs 9.11

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek understanding that you may believe, but believe that you may understand, as was said, “Except ye believe, ye shall not understand” (Isaiah 7.9).
    Saint Augustine, On the Gospel of John 29.6 (Christianity)

Without faith there is no knowledge, without knowledge there is no virtuous conduct, without virtues there is no deliverance, and without deliverance there is no perfection [Nirvana].
    Uttaradhyayana Sutra 28.30 (Jainism)

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