My Testimony

Gerard Pouyet
September 1970

Gerard Pouyet

I was born the 31st of March, 1932 in Paris, in a quarter which I like to remember.

I did classical studies, then three years preparation in special mathematics with a rather hard professor and three years engineering studies in an Institute of Technology. And, at last, my military service. I spent all this time in a rather tormented manner.

I began finding my way out of personal difficulties through an encounter with the works of a German psychologist, Kunkel. The first book that I found in a bookstore, at reading the first few lines, reached me at my depths. His works have been the best help for me for 10 years.

At that time, I decided to spend time in Germany, and I wanted something for a long time. I stayed as an assistant in a large industrial firm in the Ruhr.

It was during this stay that I met God and the New Testament, through a woman whose memory often comes back to my mind, and a pastor whose total faith filled me with complete satisfaction.

I returned to France. I worked in the project branch of a nuclear center. I found an intensive atmosphere, very stimulating, also crushing.

Unsatisfied with this work, not knowing why, perhaps really knowing, I went into aviation, following the ambitious dream to become somebody in the more advanced technical branch, nevertheless with an even greater dissatisfaction.

I understood that I must answer a truer call which was to enter into my father's enterprise. This decision cost me enormously, particularly the attitude of one or two decisive persons openly opposed to my entry.

I found the New Testament naturally helped me considerably in my work, in the first years. Afterwards, difficulties came more and more surely.

I found God the moment I decided to do His will in all points. But I decided it representing myself in a particular situation. And I actually accepted entirely this situation.

Soon, I saw that the call of the conscience could be terrible. So that sometimes I made myself deaf to my conscience. I said to myself, rationalizing this, that it was in part real call of the conscience, and in part, imagination, Satanic imagination. This rationalizing, and admitting all excuses, was the start of a slow fall.

To set the situation up again, to re-find God at a moment when I was very far from Him, I decided to realize the call as it was, just the call. I did it once, before many witnesses, among them, my father, creating a very impressive atmosphere. From this, I received considerable joy.

Then, other more terrible calls came to my mind. I was seized by faith, frightened, paralyzed.

I was very unhappy about it for a long time.

And I met Zen, particularly through two works of a German professor of philosophy, Herrigel, one of the first Europeans who went to Japan to practice Zen. These works corresponded to intuitions I had in very difficult moments.

This was for me a way to re-find God without having to surrender myself from the beginning to heroic actions to make me come out of myself.

At last I met the family at the end of the year. The first time was on the street. A young girl was taken speaking with a very arguing person. I was surprised to hear such a person with such a complete and simple faith and an accurate and actual, not only philosophical knowledge of God. It was Therese. I listened to her that day a few minutes. I did not feel alone, I knew God, and was not in a hurry, but at this time decided to meet these people again, and I went on joyfully about something else I was sure to find.

I called on the family more. What I heard was in deep accordance with the contents of my convictions. At the first, I listened to Henri. What I enjoyed was not so much new knowledge but the fact that all I heard, not only I found it again in other people and could share it, but also what was yet disparate in my mind began to build a structured mosaic.

This process was made up of many steps and I can hardly say more about it, only that something divine continued to grow in my mind.

It was at this time that, having already heard much about Mr. Moon, and without having met something which could be against my own thinking, I suddenly heard the actual mission of our Master. In such a progressive manner I was led by fiend, I could accept it without any inner objection. I was still all the more struck by it. I said nothing and went on to listen, inwardly seized by a sort of mental dizziness, representing God to myself beyond time-God, the creation, Adam, Eve, men, the prophets, history, Jesus, who has become for me, in my mind, such a living person, God, suffering, active by His heart, silent and waiting anxiously for the response of men.

I thought about Revelation, about I has had interpreted it, keeping a feeling of desiring to know.

And that was so, actual, that only God is used to do it.

What I received from the family is still difficult to express. The surface is superficial and the depth is deep, and not the inverse.

My memory of the meeting of May in Essen takes on reality and comes back clear to me.

All that were my more profound acquirements I found again to be more powerful- exchange between people on the only true level, the prayer of the Orient, the action of the Occident, the confirmation that perfection was not a myth, and the way to this already explored.

What Reiner [Vincenz] introduced me to, the possibility in a very large manner to cooperate with the restoration of the work of the men by the Tong-Il Industry, with the restoration of their hearts by the Anti-Communist movement, with their infinite cosmic perspective, makes me see tangibly what it is to have a True Father.

Blessed will be the name of Our Master.

Gerard Pouyet