Love is the most powerful force in the universe. It causes men and women to act in ways that take them beyond their previous limitations, even to the point of sacrificing their lives for their beloved. Love brings the greatest joy to human beings. A life without love is ultimately one without meaning.

From Everybody Wants True Love, Fourth True Family Values Ministry Annual Awards Banquet, Chicago, IL, November 20, 1999.

When a man feels love, the feeling is not generated on its own. The feeling awakens in his heart because of a particular woman.

Likewise, the fire of love is kindled in the heart of a woman not by herself alone but by the man she loves. In other words, our love belongs to our partner. Thus, we should honor our partners love as being even more precious than our love. Each person should be grateful to his or her spouse, and should live his life for the sake of the other.

A horizontal relationship of true love is gradually elevated in a vertical direction until it eventually reaches the pinnacle. This pinnacle is the position of the King and Queen of True Love.

In this position, everything is synthesized, everything is embraced, everything is crystallized into love, and everything blooms. This is why all beings in the universe want to be transformed in love and live in the midst of love. We are born for the sake of love, live for the sake of love, and finally die for the sake of love.

How do we attain love? It is not something that can be bought with money, power or knowledge. Love is not something that is taken; it is given and received. Love belongs in a reciprocal relationship with another. In such a relationship one is both the lover and the beloved, as the giving and receiving of love occurs naturally back and forth in both directions.

Love causes two beings to unite and experience joy. Reverend Moon teaches that true love is motivated by heart and promotes the happiness and total well-being of the beloved. In other words, true love is not for the sake of oneself, but for the sake of the other.

When such love occurs between a man and woman, the consummation of this love is expressed in sexual union. Such love involves a reciprocal commitment between partners that is pure, unwavering and lasting. This commitment is the foundation for the deepest fulfillment for both men and women.

The natural result of the sexual expression of love between man and woman is the birth of children, the formation of the family. Through the formation of the family, new realms of love are experienced.

The second volume in this series, entitled The Ideal Family as the School of Love and the Foundation of a Peaceful Society, describes the sequence of four realms of heart in which we experience different types of love: children's, siblings, spouses and parents.

We begin life in the children's realm in which our primary experience is of receiving love from our parents. If we have older brothers and/or sisters, we immediately experience the sibling's realm, in which the virtues of reciprocal love and harmony must be learned. Later we may experience this realm from the elder sibling's position if younger brothers and/or sisters are born into our family.

Harmony and purity are the primary virtues of the sibling's realm of heart. These virtues lay the foundation for fidelity and commitment, which are the primary virtues of the spouse's realm of heart, which is experienced after marriage. The spouse's realm of heart is the only appropriate realm for the sexual expression of love.

With the birth of ones own children, a new family is formed and the parents realm of heart is experienced. This involves the most sacrificial heart and unconditional commitment to the new infant, who begins the cycle again by receiving love from his/her parents.

When all members of the family succeed in developing their hearts through the experience of the different types of love in each realm, this is the ultimate expression of true love, the fulfillment of God's ideal. God's love is present in such families.

From Heart, in New Hope: Twelve Talks by Sun Myung Moon, New York, NY: HSA-UWC, 1973.

There is an Oriental saying that where there is harmony in the family, everything can be done.

Where there is unity and harmony, the love of God is present, and the ideal can be realized there.

In the ideal family, the husband and wife must be one. The children must become united with each other, brothers and sisters, and all together they will be in harmony like a symphony orchestra or a beautiful painting.

With love there, no other power can intervene.

Reverend Moon teaches that God's original ideal of true love, expressed through the human family, was lost by the first human ancestors. Adam and Eve should have consummated their love as husband and wife in the sanctity of marriage blessed by God. In that way they would have established true love in the first human family.

This family of true love would have been God's family. It would have multiplied God's lineage throughout the earth, producing people who would have experienced the four realms of heart and thus the ideal of true love in their lives. God would have been present in the lives of all His children, who would have lived in peace and harmony as one world family. Instead, however, we have the reality of this fallen world.

From View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation, Inaugural Banquet of the Washington Times Foundation, Washington DC, April 16, 1996.

If Adam and Eve had become a couple of true love centered upon God, God could have dwelt in Adam as His substantial body and thus loved Eve.

What is more, Adam and Eve could have become True Parents who substantially embodied God, and become the origin of the love of goodness, a life of goodness and a lineage of goodness.

Due to the Fall, however, Adam and Eve became the substantial body of Satan and ended up becoming the original evil couple, evil parents, and evil ancestors. Their union became the root of evil love, evil life and evil blood lineage. Because human beings originated from this root, they descended from the adulterous Satan, who is the enemy of God, and inherited this lineage of evil parents.

God created human beings with free will. Thus, Adam and Eve had their freedom to choose between the life of true love in God's family, and the life of selfishness and evil. If the first human ancestors had established their family with God at its center they would have lived eternally with God.

Their family would have been the foundation of God's true lineage. Instead, they were tempted into premature sexual union and established a false family separate from the true love, true life and true lineage of God. Thus, their family began the fallen lineage from which we are all descended, and from which our world of evil and selfishness came about.

From God Is Our King and True Parent, Canaan Baptist Church, Harlem, New York, May 8, 2001.

The commandment given in Genesis 2:17, You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die, was a strong warning about Eve's love. Eve had to protect her sexual purity until she achieved maturity with a God-centered character and entered into a blessed marriage with God's permission. Had she succeeded, she would have multiplied God's eternal love, life and lineage.

Eve fell, however, because Lucifer disregarded his servant's position and drew her into an immoral relationship based on his excessive desire.

I repeat: the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents Eve's reproductive organ, and God gave the commandment to protect her chastity. When He created us, God invested His entire heart and soul in our reproductive organs. He created them as the palace of true love, the palace of true life, and the palace of true lineage.

The story places the fruit in the context of good and evil in order to tell us that if Eve were to have a relationship with a king, she would give birth to a prince, and if she were to have a relationship with a Mafioso, she would give birth to a villain.

The quality of the harvest depends upon the seed that is planted. It was called the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because it could manifest good or evil.

While we may despair at the current state of the world, with all its problems, Reverend Moon's teachings explain clearly that the root of all these problems lies in the loss of true love in the family. Knowing the root cause allows us to solve the problems. The establishment of families of true love is the essential step in restoring this world to God's original ideal world of love, peace, and harmony.

The establishment of families of true love requires going against the currently accepted norms of society. In order to counter the free-sex ethic of the fallen world, a higher ideal of love and sexuality is needed. Reverend Moon calls this the ethic of absolute sex.

The external expression of absolute sex is abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage. However, the internal expression is more significant.

Internally, the absolute sex ethic means that true love is the supreme value sought in sexual relationships, and not self-gratification. This allows a more profound experience of joy that encompasses the spiritual and physical dimension of the couple. Only an unchanging commitment to ones eternal spouse, centered on God, leads to the fulfillment of such supreme joy.

From True Family and True Universe Centering on True Love, Founder's Address, 15th Anniversary of The Washington Times, Washington DC, June 16, 1997.

What is the difference between man and woman? Their bodies, including the sexual organs. Then to who is mans sexual organ absolutely necessary? Mans sexual organ exists for the sake of woman.

The human sexual organs are shaped as concave and convex. Why are they shaped that way? Both of them could be pointed or both could be flat. Why are they shaped differently? Each is for the sake of the other.

Woman absolutely wants what is mans. And man absolutely wants what is woman's. Until now, we did not know the fact that, absolutely, woman's sexual organ is man's and man's sexual organ is woman's. By owning each others sexual organs man and woman come to know true love.

Only through the experience of two becoming one can we know the highest level of love. No one can absolutely deny these facts. Everyone should recognize this. At the place where husband and wife become completely one, the ideal couple will be created. In that very place, absolute love exists. That place of love, which is absolutely unchanging, is the dwelling place of God.

Absolute sex is centered on God, and free sex is centered on Satan. Historically, world literature and the media have often stimulated free sex. But from now on, you should lead the way to prevent free sex. Free sex should completely disappear.

Free sex, which is self-centered, destroys the possibility of true love and is the enemy of God's ideal. Absolute sex is not no sex, teaching that celibacy is the only way to experience the true love of God.

Absolute sex teaches the true value of the sexual organs and the sexual expression of love between man and woman. Reverend Moon clearly explains that God created man and woman to experience the joy of sexual union.

The root cause of our problems is the misuse of the sexual organs. Under no circumstances should sexual relationships take place outside the sanctity of marriage. The conjugal realm is the only place where sexual activity can occur with God's blessing. Any sexual activity outside marriage is like poison to those involved.

From God Is Our King and True Parent, Canaan Baptist Church, Harlem, New York, May 8, 2001.

Adultery does not just destroy the individual, but also the family, clan and nation. In the Garden of Eden, Satan defiled the chastity of youth. He is harvesting the fruit of that crime in the wave of immorality that is engulfing the worlds youth in this time of the last days, when history reaches its conclusion.

If the reproductive organs are this important, to whom do they belong? A wife's reproductive organ belongs to her husband, and a husband's belongs to his wife. In this circumstance, a person's reproductive organ can be unlocked by one key and one key only. Under no circumstances should you make a spare key. This absolutely cannot be permitted. The wrongful use of this key leads to the destruction of the family and the nation.

The result of wrong use of the sexual organs is destruction, of the individual, the family, the society, the nation, and the world.

Reverend Moon's teachings on absolute sex give hope not only on the family level but also for the society and world. He explains that world peace will be established on the foundation of God-centered families, those who live in accordance with God's standard of absolute true love.

From In Search of the Origin of the Universe, Family Federation for World Peace Farewell Banquet, Washington DC, August 1, 1996.

When a sexual organ is used in the same way as a blind person wanders aimlessly and without direction, it will, undoubtedly, lead you as its owner to hell. By the same token, one will be led high up into heaven when he or she uses the sexual organ according to the standard of God's absolute love. This is a clear conclusion.

The family sets the cornerstone on the road to world peace. The family also can destroy that road.

It was Adam's family in which the destruction of the foundation of human hope and happiness took place. Therefore, when we establish the Family Federation for World Peace, the road going 180 degrees opposite the direction of the satanic world will be open, and for this we cannot help but give thanks to God. Without following this road, there is no freedom, happiness, or ideal!

What force can turn around this world of hell?

It is impossible to achieve this unless our sexual organs are used in accordance with an absolute, unique, unchanging, and eternal love. God is the original owner of the sexual organs.

Now, please go back to your homes and affirm with your spouses that your sexual organs are absolute, unique, unchanging, and eternal.

Proclaim that yours is truly your spouses and what your spouse has protected so well until now is truly yours. And please pledge that you will live your life with gratitude and in eternal service to your spouse. In such families, God will dwell eternally and, centering upon them, the world-level family will begin to multiply.