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Mind-body conflict, and peace
Where is the source of our peace and happiness? You misunderstood that it is in a future you are searching for. It cannot come from there. Why? If you, whose mind and body are in conflict, established a family, then it would be like four people with four different purposes fighting each other. Four family members imply eight purposes (each person having a mind and a body), a hundred members imply two hundred purposes, 100 million implies 200 million, and 3.5 billion implies 7 billion purposes. The nation and world are established like that in the human world, but that world absolutely cannot be the ideal.
Where is the base of the solution that will bring peace? You have to know it is not in America or Russia. The question is where the base is. How can a man whose mind and body are in conflict ever take the view of the universe of peace and the view of a happy world of peace to heart? This is a very important issue.
Is your mind at loggerheads with your body or not? [Yes, it is.] Does that indicate there is peace or conflict? [Conflict.] When will the problem be solved? When will wars in the world end? Have you given it any thought? That's not necessary. When and how do I completely end the war within my body? The wars of the world will end when I put an end to the war within my body. The peace of my body is directly linked to the achievement of peace in the world.
What is a hard-fought battle? The First and Second World Wars were horrific wars. Which has been the fiercest war? The fight with Satan centering on myself is the fiercest war. You must know this is the severest war. World peace will not exist before this problem is solved. We have to sing songs of peace, of complete liberation and of complete victory. Until we can establish such a realm of the victorious Prince, a world of peace will not arise on earth. Where does peace come from? It comes from true religions centering on God. This is the most theoretical conclusion. From where? From Korea? From my home? From my father and mother? No. It begins with me. As heaven is in my mind, I have to make it appear as my own heaven.
My body is Satan's front line in battle and my mind is God's. Wars break out from there. As long as I do not discover the flag of peace within my body, world peace cannot come.
All men have two conflicting entities within themselves. If two people are fighting like cat and dog, how many sides will be formed? Four. When five people have an argument, we get ten opposing sides. If the entire population of 3.6 billion fights, we get 7.2 billion adversaries. As each and every one is in the sphere of dispute, how can peace and unity be achieved in the world? We have to address that problem.
When you look at your individual self, the person of your mind and the person of your body are different. These two "people" are in your individual self. If we look at the husband and wife of a family, there are actually four "people" fighting. Ten members would mean twenty "people" were fighting. Can peace and happiness be found in that family?
In the Bible, mankind is referred to as being orphaned - countries without owners. Does Korea have an owner? You may think, "My country will last for a hundred or a thousand years. My people will live for a thousand or ten thousand years" - you think like this. But this is nonsense. You do not know when some robbers might take over the nation. We cannot trust our countries. We do not know when our families will be violated. Hence, we cannot put trust in our families, tribes, cultures or lifestyle. We cannot live in an atmosphere of horror in which we are unsure when or how things will go. Moreover, our mind and body are on bad terms. Therefore, they cannot become the basis for peace.
The source of misery is the self. When has your mind had a peaceful time? My mind and body are always at war. If there are two people in the family, it will be divided into four warring factions. A family of five will be divided into ten. As the population of Korea stands at 30 million, 60 million protagonists are in fact residing in this nation. As the population of the world stands at 3.6 billion, 7.2 billion fighters are living on the earth. So, does there seem to be peace here? It is out of the question.
We cannot tell when we will run across someone with the nature of a thief. Does there seem to be peace, happiness and a sweet home in such a place?
Though God has long been waiting for peace, just by leaving the body of troublemakers as they are, unity is absolutely inconceivable. To achieve an ideal, a unified world that all nations desire, first the mind and body have to be united. Again, unity cannot be achieved just by leaving the mind and body in a divided state as they are. It is the same for the mind and body. Between the mind and body, one of them is a combatant. Do any of you like combatants? Everybody feels mad at the mention of fighters; we like pacifism that does not advocate fighting. However, there is a combatant in our bodies. The reason for its existence is the fall. Just by looking at my individual self, elements pointing at two purposes, one of goodness, one of evil, are in my body. Though there is a mind oriented toward goodness, there is also a body oriented toward evil that acts to the contrary. If we cannot solve this in the course of history, the body - a monstrous enemy - will forever remain in that state. Caught between two purposes, what a man needs is to reach the point at which he can be connected to one purpose only. Only that will be in accord with the original purpose of man's existence and God's purpose of creation. Because of the fall, man was torn between two purposes, and old age creeps upon him without his being aware. His life becomes one in which peace and happiness cannot dwell. Not only is life a sea of agony and anguish but also an ocean of tragedy and lamentation. Connected to the present in this way, God cannot help but look for a way of dealing with man on this earth.
All of you are fighting now. You are firing a cannon centering on your life. Your mind and body are fighting before facing the world. How can you do it peacefully? Does the body win the fight, or does the mind win? You must become people who can say, "My mind definitely wins." A person whose mind wins is on the side of goodness. Likewise, a person whose body wins is on the side of evil.
Mankind has walked a course where each person has been in conflict based on the mind and body. It failed to see the day when peace and unity reigned, a day when they followed the heavenly law and ran toward their clear purpose. In other words, since the struggle between mind and body has been the author of history to this day, this has inevitably let to a division into two worlds [of good and evil].
If we were originally born as people whose mind and body are in constant conflict, the ideal, philosophy and peace would all be nothing but impractical theories. They would all be futile. If mankind were not originally created thus, these things would be feasible, but if man were originally created in this state, they would be in vain. Man is a resultant being, not a causal being. Since his creation was due to something, the result must be one with the cause. Cause and effect cannot be different. As effect occurs with cause as its content, they unite. Therefore, the course has to be in unison, too. This is scientific.
In the future, where will the base of peace be established? How must we solve the fundamental questions? Someone said, "Oh, our society has deteriorated, so we have become like this." That is not true. This world turns out like it is today as an effect of man's image planted in the individual self. When the mind and body of a person are fighting, then if two people meet, it becomes a gang of four fighters. Then, how can we make them one? With money or authority? Men have even killed their own sons to gain power. The fundamental problem is how to unify them. The world where 4 billion people live becomes a fallen world where 8 billion entities are slogging it out. No matter what we do, peace cannot come. We have to tackle the problem from the fundamentals.
Your mind and body have become the battlefield of good and evil, God and Satan. Intense fights are taking place. Rev. Moon has a maxim, "Before one can hope to dominate the universe, perfect domination of the self is necessary." How do we get rid of our habits? Koreans are addicted to hot pepper paste and soybean paste. Can we overcome this? We have to work during the day and sleep at night. Could we not go without sleep? This is a problem. We have to overcome the desires for sleep, food and sex. Without overcoming myself, heaven will leave. How do we liberate man's image, which is surrounded by fog and concealed behind a wall? We have to first make the wind blow to clear the fog away, and then detonate the wall. Who do you ask to blow up the wall? Not me. It will be done automatically. Satan has erected the wall; it is his to demolish.
As these are the Last Days, the world is divided into two and is in conflict. Unless it becomes a world of unity, we cannot survive. None of you thinks the world of mind has to become one, too. This is a problem. Looking at the world externally, a world of peace and unity, an ideal world, has to come; but we do not think that in the world of mind. The external world has to become a world of unity and at the same time has to unite with the world of mind. How do we unite the world of mind at this point in time when we have to leap toward a world of unity?
What is Korea's vision and the world's vision in the twenty-first century? It is a world of peace, a unified world. This is the sublime utopian world in which the ideal is reality. Even if there are 4 billion people living in different countries, they have a common hope. Prior to creating a world of unity, North and South have to unite. Prior to North-South unification, our individual selves have to become one. Even if North and South have achieved a union, or the Republic of Korea is a unified nation of peace, if the individual self cannot become one, the North-South unity has nothing to do with me. Even if that nation is a happy nation of peace and that world is a happy world of peace, if I myself am in agony, groaning in uneasiness, that happiness and peace have nothing to do with me. Even if the nation and world have become one, and if my mind is struggling in great pain, I cannot participate in a nation or world of peace.
If you look at fallen men, their minds and bodies are fighting. If you see a population of 4 billion living in this way, 8 billion contenders will be formed in the end. Is this unity? It is impossible to become one. You may sing of peace all you like; unity is out of the question. So many philosophers have appeared throughout history. They have advocated many ideologies, ideals and teachings and have exerted themselves to build a better world, but they gradually went into decline.
Can people who have not achieved unity of the mind be peaceful and happy, even if they were to welcome a unified environment in the nation? It is impossible. In an environment where the nation is not unified, even if the world has achieved unity, can we be happy and in an ideal state? The answer is no.
Rev. Moon has the maxim "Before you can hope to dominate the universe, perfect domination of the self is necessary." He has fought for decades. That was my first motto, too. Is it all right to fight within my heart after unifying the world? I should be spraying perfume, dressing myself up and going to a dance hall. Nevertheless, where can I go in rags and tatters? I feel ashamed. The universe - the four seasons - does not want that. I have the responsibility to direct the fundamental strife and battle in my individual self, which has a shameful history, toward peace.
Yin and yang, internal nature and external form, have a reciprocal relationship and cannot be in contradiction. Nevertheless, in today's fallen world, we can hear the sound of the mind and sound of the body. The mind and body have not become one yet. How did the mind and body of a man and woman born to resemble God become divided? This is a problem. As God is an absolute being, the mind and body have a central role to play, becoming absolutely one and being assimilated into God's entire world. How did they become separated into two? If the mind and body had freely divided themselves as they pleased, then God does not exist and we cannot find the basis for unity, happiness and the ideal.
Even Saint Paul lamented, "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Rom. 7:21-24) I am not able to set out on a voyage toward happiness if I do not have the base of peace in a mind and body that are not at war.
Wars are not a means to shorten the path to world peace. Not even the UN could do that. Centering on fallen men of the world, who behave according to their individual desires, no matter how many ideals we design they are always buried in a history of confusion and strife. If this problem is not eliminated, we cannot find a path to peace. To do that, we have to know the fundamentals, that the historical background is smeared with dispute. Due to the fall, history began with the war between God and Satan. We must eradicate this.
There are human laws as well as heavenly laws in our lives. If human affection exists, heavenly affection ought to exist, too. These two harmonize all the time, and a peaceful world would not come if contradiction occurs between them. No matter how peacefully people try to live their lives, if they do things as they please, it will call forth the judgment of God.
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