Let Us Return to Nature

Where are you from? [I'm Japanese.] I told you not to think of your self as bound by a nationality. You are a blessed family member who was born in a place called Japan. That should be the way you think. Do you understand what I mean? [Yes.] In the recorded providence, there is no longer any such thing as "Japanese." The more often people meet each other, the stronger are the feelings that can grow between them. Who do you miss the most in the world? Who? Your Father. What Father? [True Father!] That father is neither a Japanese father, nor a Korean father, but rather, my father....

It is indeed precious and unforgettable truth. Has there been one moment in which a person could say, "God belongs to me?" Probably, before the fall, one might have said that. Can you really say that about God and us now? We lost everything due to the fall. People lost all things and even children. If we think of God as the first generation, Adam and Eve were the second generation. God never had His third generation. Since God lost Adam and Eve, do you think that God could use the word "we"? Do you think that God wants to have something to be proud of? You would like to be proud of yourself, too, right? Without exception, everyone innately wants to be proud of him- or herself. This is no less so for God. However, does God have anything that He can pride Himself in? No. Not only does He not have anything He can be proud of but also He cannot even have a sense of Himself. He has lost everything. He poured everything of Himself into His ideal and lost it all. He really cannot claim His own existence. That is how miserable God is. Do you get it? [Yes.]

When you think of God, who could not have anything of His own and who could not speak of the things that were connected to Him, how should you evaluate your lives? How sacrilegious you have been: "Mine! My father and my mother! My spouse! My children! My house! My country!" No one knows how heavy are the sins people commit everyday by living their ordinary lives thinking of and claiming these as their own. I am uncovering a truth you do not see.

This cosmos we live in is grand. Do you know how big the solar system alone is? Perhaps a hundred billion solar systems exist in the grand cosmos. Think about it. Light travels three hundred thousand kilometers in one second.

How fast sunlight is! It can travel around the world seven times in a second. But it takes billions of years for light to travel around the entire cosmos. Can you take in the unimaginable scale of the cosmos God created? Why did God, who created this massive cosmos, make this world? Because of love that can embrace the vast cosmos. He had wanted to bear the fruit of love through His objects of love, Adam and Eve, but He lost them. With that loss, the world of creation became the symbol of His sorrow, like an open wound in His heart. Think how sad and miserable God must have felt. You can never find this truth in any book in any library in the world. Reverend Moon is the first one to speak of this.

Brothers and sisters, whose face is this? Whose forehead is this? We say, "my forehead," and "my eyes." What about the nose? [My nose.] What about the mouth? [My mouth!] What about the ear? [My ear!] What about the hands? [My hands!] What about the body? [My body.] What about a woman's sexual organ? (laughter.) It's hers. What about a man's sexual organ? It's his. It is actually a real blasphemy to claim ownership in the world....

How should you rearrange and recreate the way of finding your true selves, your true partners and true children? That is the problem. We have found the God of love through absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience. Have you ever thought of having the kind of heart God has, even in your dreams: investing infinitely and yet forgetting everything you have invested? God created the vast cosmos and yet has more creative power to create an even bigger one. Have you ever dreamed of wanting to have such a grand mind as God's?

Knowing what you know, you, members of the Unification movement, cannot ask for blessings from God. I can't pray to God to grant me blessings. Even when I did not have any money, I could never ask God for money. How can a person who does not have his own nation ask for money for the sake of the world?

One must shed his own blood and sweat. He must risk his own life instead of money. Only then things can break through in front of him....

I have gathered religious leaders from various religions and national leaders representing various peoples of the world and made an offering. No matter how great America is, it has no other way of surviving except through Reverend Moon. Nobody can go to heaven without following my words. Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Russians, even those who are trapped in hell must be willing to follow the flag of Reverend Moon. If they just do whatever they want to, there is no way for them to prosper. Why? Because God cannot be present in their lives. It is not enough just to believe in God. If it were enough, why wouldn't God do anything about this world being destroyed? What kind of incapable God is that? You must understand all this.

With the full understanding of that, what is today? Foundation Day for the Nation of the Unified World! The world! Today you are celebrating the day of a nation's opening, right? All the nations are satanic. There is not a single nation that can connect people to the world. We should have a nation. Obviously, we should have the world. Heaven on earth and in heaven is where God can claim all things. It is where God can love His own sons and daughters, His nation and His world.

That indeed is heaven for God! It is the perfection of the ideal of creation. A-what? [Men!] A-Let God's hope and wish come true forever and ever! You should say Amen. [Amen.]...

God lost everything and was completely devastated and alone. He had nowhere to go. He was a prisoner. How could you call God your Father? To call Him your Father, you should be willing to put yourself in worse situations than God. Can you really consider yourselves deserving to call God your Father? You should call him Father only when you experience a worse situation than His. Those who want to die? [Will live!] Those who want to live? [Will die!] This is absolutely logical. You should be willing to die at anytime. You must clearly see the fact that God has been imprisoned for thousands of years and that you are miserable sinners who cannot live real lives until the day of God's liberation. Some of you are so proud of yourselves, putting on airs. You're nothing but riff raff. With that kind of attitude, you will be lost sooner or later.

You should know that such an attitude has nothing to do with us or me. Why? The cosmos should be under God's dominion. However, God lost the position of the Master. This world is therefore doomed. We must patch up this doomed world and liberate God to make this world into a world of prosperity. The doomed must turn into the prosperous. ...

Does Foundation Day for the Nation of the Unified World have anything to do with you? God does not have ownership of the world. Does Japan belong to God? Is Japanese culture God's culture? [No.] Is America God's nation? [No.] Korea is not God's nation. We should turn everything upside down and repair it. Nothing belongs to God at the moment.

You may think I am lying to you, but if I am really telling you the truth, there is no hope without me. There is absolutely nothing else; you might as well just give up.

Have we now completed the establishment of God's kingship? [Yes.] Do you understand the full meaning of the establishment of God's kingship or not? [We do.] How much do you know? Do you know as much as God does or as I do? Or do you know as much as those who do not know and who are going to go to hell? What relationship do you have with kingship?

It doesn't sound true but it is. You can figure out whether what I say is true or not when you go to the spirit world. You will know. A hundred out of a hundred: things will just fit right in. There is no way to run. You will be caught in one way or another. I am investing everything to liberate all of you, but you think that I am trying to destroy you. You scoundrels!...

What do you pray about when you pray? Where do you Japanese members center your hearts when you pray? Do you not pray centering on so and so's name of a central blessed family? It is not a prayer anymore. You needed prayers in the fallen realm. You must say that you are sincerely reporting to God. It should not be a prayer but a report to God.

You cannot report anything unless you have done something better today than yesterday. You can never again pray if you live your life just as you did yesterday. Without progress, without improving towards God's concept, you cannot pray. That is your position when you pray in the name of a central blessed family.

How are things different from ten years ago? How are things different between this year and last year? If you pray when nothing has changed from the past, you are simply becoming increasingly impudent....

You should be able to make God proud of you. You should have that kind of relationship with God. God should freely call His son, "my son;" God and His son can be "we," but that is not enough. Two entities is not enough to make a nation or even a family, so God needs a daughter. The first son and the first daughter should have united based on love. Only then can God's dual characteristics become the center. A man can be in the center through a woman, even when he turns to the left. They can be right and left....

You have to make yourselves ones who are included in the equation when God proudly uses the word "we." Your couple should be "our couple" for God. That is the true unity of "we." Originally that "we" should go beyond the family level. There should be grandparents, parents and children, the three generation four position foundation, and finally, starting from the next generation-the fourth generation-a clan from which seeds can emerge. Based on a family of unity, a nation and world can come about. We haven't been able to find a family that God can call "our family."

How can you define the history of Christianity? It is the history of brides, isn't it? Christians have longed for the coming of the groom and to wed. They are in the position of Cain waiting for Abel. There is no other way for them. There is no other way. Do you have families? [Yes.] Are they on God's side or Satan's side? [God's side.] You say that you belong to God, right? Then can God address you as "my son"? Adam and Eve fell at the age of sixteen. They were totally lost. Have you ever been so much better sons and daughters to God than Adam and Eve? Have you or not? [We haven't.] Because you haven't, you are not in the position to be called God's sons and daughters. Centering on a man called True Father and a woman, True Mother-that is, centering on True Parents-God began to talk about His son and His daughter. You must understand this point. Centering on True Parents' family, their sons and daughters, God started using the term "Our Family."

However, there is no such thing as God's nation, nor His tribe. In order to create the new tribe, I blessed you throughout the world. But the blessed families turned out to be such fakes. You have all become miscreants. It's a total disaster. Do you know how hard it is to be blessed? It took six thousand years for me to be blessed. There are only six thousand years of providential history, but tens of thousands of years of history since the creation of the universe. History is full of struggles to solve the conflicts between Cain and Abel. It developed into conflict between the democratic world and the communist world, the right wing and left wing. In Adam and Eve's family, Abel was on the right side and Cain was on the left side; the younger brother was in the position of the elder brother, and vice versa. Things were upside down. The mother and father were upside down, so their sons and daughters were upside down, too. How hard it is to straighten things out....

Nobody really understands why life is as it is now unless they look at it from the historical view of restoration through indemnity. People can clearly understand all of this history on earth as well as in heaven through learning the Principle.

I am teaching you such valuable knowledge. The time has come for you to be the masters of yourselves and of the world, but you have lost yourselves and lost your own families. If you are not leading your families toward the righteous way, can you really go to where True Parents are? No way. There were paradise and hell, but there will be family-level paradise and hell. You will go where you deserve to go. Those of you who have followed the Unification movement can move up. According to the Dr. Lee Sang-hun's reports [from the spirit world] they treat our members differently there. We go up and up. God, our ancestors and all the angels in the spirit world support and open doors for Unificationists to rise. Hell is where you descend and continue descending. Are you going to learn Korean?

Are you going to learn English or Japanese? [Korean!] Why do you need to learn Korean? To follow True Parents. To be like True Parents. To be the people whom True Parents want you to be. You can understand only seventy percent of my words through interpreters. In the academic world, the scholars who know the original language have so much more authority than those who do not. Can you promise that you will definitely master Korean within three years starting from today? You can't? Those who say they cannot, raise your hands. Those who say they can, raise your hands. You said so.

If you really believe that everything of yourself belongs to God, you must naturally think that your body belongs to God. A man's and a woman's sexual organ belong to God. Your sexual organ is not yours. It is a treasure you must offer for the sake of God's nation. People think that their sexual organ is theirs and do all sorts of evil. Knowing what you know now, is it possible to practice free sex, homosexuality and lesbianism?

It is the tenth month, October, the third day-which signifies the number thirteen. Do you know what January 13th was? [It was when True Parents held the Coronation Ceremony for the Kingship of God.] It was the day of establishing the kingship of God. Twelve is the central number for the twelve months of a year that include spring, summer, fall and winter. Then, the 14th celebration of this holy day is on its 13th anniversary. Everything fits. Since the establishment of God's Coronation Ceremony, we have now passed from January to September, it is now day three of the month of October. You should always discern based on the number three. When you have a new opening of heaven and earth, you should always think of the number three; three days, three years or thirty years and so forth. That's the main point.

Today is October what? [The third.] What's tomorrow? [The fourth.] What is special about the fourth? [It is the day of your being released from prison in South Korea.] I hope that tomorrow is also a day of heaven's opening. [Whereas in English we use the translation "foundation day "for the Kae Cheon Jeol holy day on October 3rd, the literal meaning is "opening day of heaven."] What kind of day of heaven's opening? It was the day for the heavenly gate to open at Seodaemun prison. That was what it was. What is special about the fourteenth? [It was the day you were released from prison in North Korea.] It was the day for heaven and earth to open at Heung Nam prison. So, it is also a day of the opening of heaven! When you die and there is a seunghwa ceremony, that is also a day of heaven's opening. It is the day you can start to go anywhere you want to go and joyfully run around in the bosom of God. Isn't it a day of heaven's opening for you? Don't you feel happy just to hear about this? [Yes.]...

Our time has come. Is the Unification Church a church or a nation? [It is the Unification nation.] It is the Unification family, the Unification church and the Unification nation all at the same time. Why? Because a church symbolizes tribes. When you talk about transcending religion, it has to do with ethnic groups [minjok]. That is what you should remember.

Religions have only one root. That is God's true love. So many religions do not understand this point. God is the Father of each one of you. He is the root. What is God again? [My Father.] God is our Father.

Now you are blessed and know everything you need to know. Your family is a central blessed family. So your husbands know about God better than I. Isn't that what it means to be a central blessed family? If you were to race with me, would you win or not? If an Olympic champion wants to be a champion forever, he is a thief, isn't he? Records must be broken. Don't you think so? Shouldn't you break records? [Yes.] Are you confident enough to break them? [Yes.]

I have paved the road for you to connect to God on the individual, family, tribal and the worldwide levels. But I have not been able to establish the nation, the nation of the world, the heavenly nation, or the nation of unity. That can only be done when you can unify one hundred and twenty nations or one hundred and eighty nations. Only then can the world automatically participate and automatically perfect itself, and heaven and earth automatically unify, too. The problem is how to establish a nation.

What I did with the establishment of God's kingship and God's liberation is to set the victorious condition indemnifying all the failures in history based on the conditional foundation of indemnity. On God's victorious foundation, I made a ladder for you to go up and down freely from the individual level to the heavenly realm. But you cannot ride in a car or a on a plane to travel this course that I have made. Do you understand? For you to be able to ride on a plane along this course, all the nations in the world should be one nation.

There are always ways to go in the sky, aren't there? Likewise, there are always ways in heaven and on earth. All of the nations combined together can make up a world and the combination of worlds can make up the cosmos. Once we find a nation and connect it to the world, because we have already paved the way to the nation, world and cosmos, the world can automatically connect to the heavenly world. Do you understand?

You must not be shameful masters of nature

We originally planned to have a workshop in Kodiak, but instead we did it in Cheju Island for fourteen days. What did I say then and there? I told you to "be determined!" And how should we live in the end? We should all return to nature! You must now become one with nature.

Being one with nature includes being one with the fish. Do you think God created fish first or land animals? [Fish!] [Land animals!] (laughter.) There are always animals in water and on land. Fish live in water and other animals live on land. How many kinds of animals are there? There are insects and birds and other kinds of animals. How many legs do insects have? [Six.] Six. And how about birds? [Two!] And animals? [Four!] How about people? [Two!] Which one is the master, birds or people? [People.] One of the results of the fall is that we have not become masters of nature.

So, the most important thing is how closely we can live in and with nature. That kind of life is needed in the religious world: people should train themselves to love fish, love insects, love birds, love animals and then to love other people. People should love other people more than they love any animals or plants.

Therefore, a man must love his wife more than he loves nature. Parents must love their children more than they do nature. And children must love their parents more than anything in the world. Only then can they qualify themselves to be the ideal masters on behalf of God! Amen! Do you want to be the masters of such a world? Do you want to try to be exemplary masters of the world? What do you think? [We want to be masters.] To be masters, you should be ready to live lives on behalf of God. All things want to have God as their master. So we should all return to nature! What should we do after returning to nature? We must equip ourselves to be qualified masters, first for the fish in all waters, and next for plants, trees, and animals on land. You must not be shameful in front of plants, animals and fish....

What kind of place is the Pantanal? The creatures there are still raw and primitive. It is where one can truly celebrate victory and where I planted the notice board of love. The Pantanal is the original holy ground. And what next? [The root holy ground.] And next? The holy ground of victory.

Will you go there or not? I would not have named the place the original holy ground, the root holy ground and the holy ground of victory if I had not liked the place so much. There is nothing lacking in that place. Everything is there. I have been to so many places throughout the world. There are always some kind of restrictions with animals, plants and the environment, but in the Pantanal everything is limitless. Everything exists in a pair system.

Did we, in the Unification Church, not coin the phrase "pair system"? [Yes.] Are you using it? Aren't eyes in pairs or not? Pairs should fit together to create perfect harmony. If a nostril closes what will happen? The nose is crippled. If your lips are twisted around by just about two millimeters, you really can't talk properly. Your ears are the same. You can hear things when there is the right give and take between the sound and the eardrums.

After returning to nature, if you can fit right into any situation there, the boundaries of the natural environment you can experience in heaven will be so much wider.

So I am telling you to worship the sun as the original creation. You might say to the sun: "You have seen all the horrible things happening everyday in the fallen world, haven't you? You must have suffered so much to shine on all those dreadful people on earth." You should be able to say that to the sun, "Here I am the king of the world looking at you, the light of liberation today!" To do that, you must greet the dawn sun earlier than anyone else. You should be the first to say "Good morning!" to the sun.

There are many poems about the morning but none about noon. You can also find many poems admiring the sunset. In the morning, you should greet the start of a new day; and in the evening, you should greet the time of rest. Animals do the same. When you look at animals such as birds, they welcome and cheer the rising of the sun in the morning, and at night, males, females and their young all get together to sleep in their nests. Sunset is the time to get together.

Birds greet each other in the morning and then they go off in all four directions to hunt in rivers and mountains during the day. They hunt for themselves and to feed their young. It is much the same for people.

Why do swallows fly south and come back north in early spring when it is still chilly? In the winter they shrink and contract, trying to survive so they can produce the next generation. We must also possess such strengths and weaknesses. That is why all the birds living in the south cross the ocean and mountains to come north.

The legs of the table here are made of some gnarled branches. Nature reveals such majestic things. In your own homes, if you carefully look at your home appliances, they are all derived from nature. People are supposed to harmonize with nature and our lives are supposed to be deeply intertwined with nature. Those who ignore nature cannot walk the path of a life of faith, of righteousness and of conscience. So we should all be masters who can love the sun with an original heart of love! Do you understand? [Yes.]

You should experience working with sweat from morning to evening in a tropical country to understand what your ancestors must have experienced and your brothers and sisters experience today. If there is a large gap between the way people live in a tropical area and the way you live, you should develop the heart to narrow the gap. You should be able to help out people in poorer areas. By supplementing your hobbies, you should be able to straighten out many hills. Without going through the training to unite with nature, you cannot be well-rounded people. That is how I see it. Have you ever thought that you would like to be a person who is like air? Air is essential for all living things. When there is low air pressure in the south, the air at the North Pole can come to the south instantly. Does it move that way or not? [It does.] The bigger the difference, the faster the air moves.

There are points of low pressure and high pressure in nature. The air always wants to reach a state of balance. When there are quiet and peaceful streams and reservoirs in a warm climate, the wind comes, because the air wants to create harmony by moving over the surface. That is what air is. Water works in the same manner. It moves from the higher ground to lower ground and finally to the ocean to level it out and to create a world of equal balance. People feel cool by the sea in the summer. Land is hot, therefore wind from the south blows onto the land. That is also movement to create balance.

Sunlight is the same. Sunlight also shines into any space there is. It comes right through any space, even in a wall. Those things that are central to our lives have very strong penetrating power to balance things out. Sunlight is one of them. When the sun comes up, it shines on the east and the west equally. It has the power to equalize.

Water is the same. When there is a difference, water always tries to level it out, make it even. Air works in that way, too. It moves to even things out. Sunlight works in the same way. The most vital element of life is love. Love is faster than air, faster than water and faster than sunlight. It has even stronger power to penetrate anything.

Water has adhering power. It exhibits capillary movement. You know about capillary attraction, right? It can stick to just about anything. When there is some space in a tree, it can flow up to the buds of the tree and come back down. It can circulate.

To preserve life, the sun works that way. Air possesses the entire world and water lays the foundation for new lives to begin. The laws governing all the movements of life elements stem from love. You must therefore love water, love the air, love the sun, love the land, love plants, and love trees at all times, day or night, adjusting to any environment. That is the way to adjust the balancing standard of all the kinds of forms and figures of nature. Within nature there is natural balancing power. That is why, today, I am advocating a return to nature as soon as you turn sixty-three.

All beings are interconnected horizontally and vertically. Through the various and harmonious relationships, they can exist and develop. There are so many different and complex species in nature. When we enter into such a world and become part of that harmony, we can actually become one with God's mind, the original divine nature of creation. Therefore, in returning to nature and living our lives in harmony with nature, we can become so much closer to being masters representing God. That is why I conclude that we must all return to nature.

So what is the meaning of this day, the Foundation Day for the Nation of the Unified World? It is the day of opening the gate of heaven. The door is closed not only for people but the plant and animal world. Our environment was supposed to be one where all things were sustained by inhaling and exhaling love, but because of the fall, everything is upside down. No matter how high one goes [in the fallen world], no matter how good one thinks he is, he is destined to fall into hell.

However, if we return to our original position, in harmony with nature in living for others, resembling God's everlasting creativity and love as true masters, we can reflect more and more of God's integrated nature without even consciously realizing it. Only nature can give you that opportunity. That is why I say to you members, "Return to nature!"

Is there any atheism in the world of nature? Is there a need for an inter-religious movement in nature? Is there an inter-ideological movement there? All things depend only on true love. Water, air and the sun cooperate in complete unity. They make up all living things. They also make it possible for us to go to heaven. So can we live without nature or not?

What do you consume everyday? [Water!] And then what? [Air!] After air, what else do we have? [Sunlight.] To whom do they belong? Are they mine or do they belong to nature itself? [They belong to nature.] Yes, they belong to nature. Who is the master of nature? [God.] Everything started from God. You should be His children and experience His love; only then are you supposed to live through consuming things made of His love. However, you are offspring of the thief, the enemy of God who has inherited Satan's blood. That is why all things are in agony. All things, animals, people and the spirit world are all in agony for eternity. To liberate them all , we should return to nature and come to embody God's original, creative love.

What I am telling you is that we should live our lives loving all things that God loves, as true masters! Do you think nature would like that or not? [It would like it.] Of course it would like it. That is why you must go to the original holy ground, the root holy ground and the holy ground of victory. On this celebration day every year, out of the huge population of the world, those who swear that your families will not miss the celebration, raise your hands!

Today is the Foundation Day for the Nation of the Unified World. The time will come when we can go anywhere we want to go regardless of national boundaries. We have assigned peace ambassadors. We will create places in the world for people to go - anywhere you want to go - beyond national boundaries.

We can learn everything from nature. I discovered more than 80 percent of the principle in nature. I loved to spend nights in nature. One moonlit night I was walking through some pine trees. There were pine tree branches crisscrossing like intertwining arms. A half moon was shining through the branches. Words cannot express such mysterious beauty. You have no idea how magical it was to hear the wind blowing while I was meditating in the midst of those drooping pine trees. I will never forget it. You must feel the joy. Do you understand? [We understand.]

Farming can be fun. Digging with sweat can be fun. Can you really work with so much sweat for your entire life? It can be fun carrying luggage. There is almost no labor I haven't done. It will take up too much time if I tell you everything about that sort of thing. In harmony with nature and in a sound relationship with your environment, if you embark on projects, there isn't anything you won't be successful at! Amen! [Amen!] God likes that kind of person. Do you understand? [Yes.] Because you have that kind of nature innately, you come to like me. You want to follow wherever I go, right? [Yes.] Those who want to ride on my plane at least once raise your hands. (Father laughing) Not just anyone can ride on my plane! (Laughter)

I do not pride myself on flying in a private plane. I am actually embarrassed by it. There are too many places to visit, too much to do and too little time, so inevitably I have to use it. Would it not be much better if I took the time to travel by car? I could actually see this and that town, and compare them. That sounds like more fun to me.

You should love the ocean. There is snow in the upper part of the high mountains in Alaska and grass at the mid-level height. Flowers are blossoming there. In the lower part, you can fish and sail. How magnificent the view is! There you can sing 'Do-bee-do-bee-do my love!'-there is no song that does not fit that scenery. Pop songs fit right in. Classical songs or any country-western song feel just right there as well. It's so refreshing. Wouldn't you like that? You have no idea how fresh you feel when you wake up in the morning. This is the best time of year in Alaska.

You should make deep, joyful friendships with nature. That way you can be God's friends and partners, masters of nature on behalf of God. You can be the kings of all creatures God created, and inherit them all. I hope today's Foundation Day for the Nation of the Unified World motivates you to do so. I do hope that I have given you an unforgettable theme for your life! Amen! [Amen!] (Applause)

Should I pray? [Yes.] Shall I make it short or long? [I think it is fine if you make it short.] (Laughter) Okay, then I simply pray that we should love God and perfect the Foundation Day for the Nation of the Unified World! Amen! That's it. [Amen!] (Applause followed by cake cutting and three cheers of Mansei)

[Originally published in Today's World, October 2001]