Anyone living on this earth thinks of himself or herself the most, and as most important. It is a human trait that one thinks of the family, and world centered on himself, and even thinks of God centered on himself. It is human nature to think of oneself in relation to others.

Then what is the source of one's self? Every man started his existence in God. We know that human history has existed for hundreds of thousands of years, but everything starts from one's self, myself, and everything has existed to bring about myself. There have been generations and generations in your ancestry.

If you can visualize your ancestral tree, you will see many types of people -- a tall grandfather, a short grandfather, a tall grandmother, a grandmother of small stature -- every kind. There were handsome and beautiful men and women, and some were crippled and disabled. So your ancestry, when it is visualized, is an encapsulation of humanity.

Seen from the viewpoint of God, the discrimination is that some of your ancestors were good and some were evil. We can imagine many types of ancestors. Some were thieves. Some were murderers. We cannot but think of our ancestry in those terms too. Those kinds of people are mingled into our bloodstream, and you are the product of that lineage. Therefore, if we think of our ancestry in terms of our vast past, we are not pure. We are not so clean; we are not so decent.

God knows everything -- your background, and your ancestral tree. In His eyes, more of your ancestors have been evil than good. Everyone here imagines that his or her ancestry has been good, or fairly good at least. But that is not the way it is. Again, I must say that you are the fruit of stained lineage, every one of you.

When we think of fruit, it is the result of one year's toil, and in one fruit there is every element -- the nutriments absorbed, and the sun, and the elements coming from the environment. You don't know the past story of the fruit, but if you have a small scar on the surface of an apple, for instance, there is a long story behind this.

It is human nature to think of things in terms of oneself alone, but this is not the right way. You think of things centered on yourself and say, "This is bad; this is good. This is bad because I don't like it. This is good because I do like it." But this is not the way we should think of things.

It is possible that your ancestry in general has been good, but in your generation, you yourself are committing many sins, and it makes your ancestry lower, or stains your ancestral lineage. Generation after generation your ancestors have been making graphic ups and downs. You are either situated on the peak of graphic ups and downs, or in the very low bottom. And when you are situated at a low point and you think of yourself being lofty and high, what would happen to your ancestry?

We have four seasons in a year, revolving around, one after another. Well, let's put this graph of ups and downs in circular form. Some are situated up here; some are down here. Some are towards the east; some are towards the west. The circle or sphere revolves as human history revolves. Compared to the seasons, we can say that our mornings correspond to spring, summer, corresponds to noontime, evening corresponds to the night. Centered on the point of noon, starting from early morning, we ascend or go up, but from the noontime, we begin to descend or come down.

You have so many ancestors. Some belonged to what we will call spring, some to summer, still others to fall, and the rest to the winter. That's in terms of the past; but on the horizontal level, in the present day, what we see around us can be classified like that too. Among you, there are some the type of spring, some the type of summer, some representing fall, and the rest representing winter, in terms of your dispositions, or in-born nature.

Those who belong to spring would take delight in making friends who belong to fall and those who belong to winter are more or less for those belonging to summer. When we find our mates, when we are blessed, we must think of people in those terms, too.

Our life itself can be compared to seasons, too. Our childhood belongs to spring, the adolescent period is a transition to summer, youth represents summer, middle-age represents fall, and the aged represent winter. Our human life is the total of spring, summer, fall, and winter. We pass from childhood, through youth, middle-age, and old-age. So we cannot like our childhood alone and feel like omitting some parts of our life belonging to summer, winter, or fall. The total experience of each age is our life.

What is the definition of a good man? A good man is the type of person whom children, youth, middle-aged, and the aged can like and vice versa, someone who can like children, youth, middle-aged, and the aged. If you are really entitled to the position of subject towards nature, you must be able to love spring, summer, fall, and winter alike. God likes children, youth, middle aged, and the aged alike.

We have many colors here -- white, black, yellow, blue, and red. God never likes just one of the races, but everyone. He likes and loves white people, black people, yellow people, and red people. With all those included, we can call this humanity. Human history has been woven with those people. The development of human culture has been too. In Western civilization too, there have been periods corresponding to human childhood, youth, adulthood, and agedness. Then where is Western civilization situated right now at this point?

Human history has had ups and downs. It went up like this, but came down again. But is this the end of human history? No. If it ends here, this can be called the close of the age. Coming down, you are prepared to go up again. If you go down, at the spur of the bump you can jump up again. We can say that Western civilization is going down, but is Western civilization prepared to go up again? Or is it at a dead end?

One most important thing is that we must never be arrogant in thinking of ourselves. You may be prosperous now, but there is no guarantee that you can keep that position. On the contrary, it is advisable that when you are up, you must be prepared to go down. When you are up, you must be doing something for those less well situated. Even though you are high up, if you are not supported by the people below you, you cannot really keep such a position. If you fail to do so, that's the end of it. Everything moves, not in a straight line, but making waves. This is inevitable.

You must realize that Western civilization is declining. So, if people of the West think of their nation alone and their prosperity alone, they are doomed to decline or perish. But at this point, if you think of the people of the world, the whole of humanity, there is hope for your civilization to soar up again. For instance, white people are enjoying the top, and the black people are here.

If the white people are doing things centered on themselves alone, the situation will be reversed. The same principle can be applied between the East and West. The world is not for the Orientals alone, or for the Occidentals alone. Because of the development of science, East and West came much closer, like relatives -- not neighbors, but relatives. With those two combined, we can picture the wholeness of the world. East and West will come together, but history will still move in waves, or ups and downs.

If those two are united and either one of them does things centered on itself, the harmony and unity cannot last long. We must ride on the tide of human history. When the white people go down, you cannot tread down upon the black race and go up, but you must push them ahead of you and go up. So the law of human history is to work for others and live for others, to help each other.

From this point of view, we can determine that those who are living for other people are destined to rise, and those who are living self-centered lives are doomed to decline. If you are receptive to other people and welcome other people, it means you want to be beneath them, uplifting those people.

On the spur of that power, you can go up again. If you are willing to welcome a person with yourself below him, then you are supported by that person and many others, and you are going to be lifted up. So the manner in which you welcome people is like this: you concede and give your seat to others. That's the way you welcome other people, and from that point on you can be lifted up.

If you are going to make your day a whole and sound day, your morning must concede or give way to the noon, noon must give way to the evening, and evening must concede to night. Morning cannot be so arrogant as to say, "I will cling to the morning, and I will make the whole day morning."

It cannot say that. However hard you may struggle, can you sustain childhood all through your life? You must respect the other age levels too. Rather, you must think that childhood is for youth to come, youth is for the adulthood to come, and the adulthood is for the aged period to come. Isn't it true? (Yes.)

This being the law of God and this being the law of nature, God is teaching us. God would want us to live for other people, sacrificing ourselves. Then in proportion to how much you live for others, you can be supported by others. You can become the nuclear or central figure, with all those people around you supporting you.

Then let's come back to ourselves. Would you want to live for yourself alone? (No.) Would you want to have other people live for your family? (No.) Wouldn't it be wonderful to have the whole world live for your nation? Well, if you are that greedy, your nation may prosper for a period of time. Then that is the end of it. At the height of prosperity, that nation can perish, and disappear from the human scene. But on the way of declining, if you are very careful to make another leap, the history of that nation can go on.

In human history, those who sacrificed themselves for the sake of other people survive, and then become part of the mainstream of human history to last generation after generation. If you are a patriot, if you are a person who has done at least something for the nation, your existence will remain as part of the history of the United States.

You will be remembered by other people, your name and deeds recorded in the history of America. If one sacrifices himself for the sake of the whole world, for the sake of all humanity, we can call him or her a sacred or holy person. From that viewpoint, we can call Jesus Christ the most holy man.

Then why is it that Western civilization, founded upon Christian ideology, is declining? This is strange. It is puzzling to me that a Christian nation like the United States is losing ground, the people becoming individualistic, while they have been taught to be sacrificial for other people. One sign that the Americans are becoming self-centered is that Christianity is declining in this country.

If there is a streak of hope in this nation, it is to revitalize the Christian spirit and have the people live sacrificial lives for the sake of others. Self-centered ideology is against God's will, and against the law of God, so it is natural for those who practice it to perish and decline. If we are going to rise up again, we must discard the old way.

The fundamental spirit of Christianity is to live for other people. Christianity is for the sake of the nation, something bigger than Christianity itself. If Christianity centers on itself and works for the prosperity of its own self, then it is doomed to decline. God sees Christianity as existing for the future generation and for the whole.

God does not take Christianity as the most important thing, but by using Christianity as the sacrifice, He wants to save the whole world. To God, the purpose of Christianity is most important. His purpose will be realized by using Christianity as the instrument. God set up Christianity in order to save all humanity. But Christians have been living self-centered lives, and this is the sign of the decline of Christianity.

Think of the chosen nation of the Israelites. God had prepared the nation of Israel, not for the sake of itself, but for the salvation of all humanity. They forgot their mission. This is the truth. Then, when we see things from the viewpoint of the whole and myself, if you put more emphasis on "myself," you are doomed to decline or perish. Is that clear to you? (Yes.)

Then let us stop to think of ourselves alone. Then for whom am I? In a word, I am for the whole. This kind of person is liked and loved by the whole, so we define him to be good, a good person. An evil person is disliked or hated by others, and that alone can define the evil man.

Centered on yourself, you have your ancestral past. In that light, who you are for? You are for the past ancestral people too. On the horizontal level, you have all humanity living on this earth. You are related to those people through your family, or relatives. On the horizontal level, you are for your family, your relatives, tribe, nation, and the whole world. Vertically, you are for your ancestors and for the future generations, your descendants.

If you live for the whole, you are situated in the central point; so among all of your ancestors, you are the most important person, if you have lived solely for others, for the whole. Your past ancestors would wish that you do things for the sake of other people more than they have done. On the horizontal level, in the present day, your relatives, your family, and your associates, would want you to live your life for the sake of other people. And your descendants, if they had will, would want their ancestors, yourself, to work for the sake of the whole. Then they can be proud of you. You must be the person who works for the sake of other people more than any of your ancestors have. Do you understand me? (Yes.)

You who are assembled here are Unification Church members. But I can see many differences in light of the service you have done for humanity, or for the whole. In general, we can think that in the Unification Church, all must enjoy equal rights; all are equal. But as I said before, we have some members who belong to spring, some others belonging to summer, still others belonging to fall, and the rest belonging to winter.

Four seasons put together -- we call it a year. The whole year consists of four seasons. Likewise, the Unification Church is like a body, and some play the role of the eyes, some of the ears, the nose, mouth, the limbs, or legs. But they have one thing in common. The eyes are not for the eyes themselves, but for the whole. The nose is not for the nose itself, but for the whole. You must realize that.

You must always have the notion of seeing everything through "Unification eyes," hearing everything through "Unification ears," smelling and talking through the "Unification nose and mouth." If you are in unity with each other, in harmony with each other in that way, we are going to be the strongest group, and what we are going to do is in the will of God.

You are not going in different directions as individuals, but all together you are going a certain way, directed by God. The whole body is moving, not just the eyes or the nose. We are moving towards the goal of saving the whole world. If you are willing to go that way through eternity, then we of the Unification Church will prosper through eternity, never perishing.

We must again realize that the Unification Church as a whole exists for the sake of the whole world, and not for itself alone. That is, Unification members should not live for the sake of themselves, but for the sake of all humanity. Are you that way? If each member of ours is really like that, our church can never perish.

In a way, we can think that we are losing: "If I am totally for someone else, and for the whole, where am I? What am I?" But in that case, if you deny yourself, and invest your whole being for the sake of the whole, then the whole in return will support you, and will live for you. As I always say, those who live for the sake of other people become the central figures. If you say that person is the central figure, without exception, that person is a sacrificial person, living solely for the benefit of others.

Every man, every group, and every organization would support that person to become the president of the nation. Then the definition of the central figure, or central personage, is the person who lives for the sake of other people. God is like that. It would take hours to go into detail, so I will leave it here and go back to the main point.

Where am I from and where can I locate myself? What is my position? Where am I situated? Don't ever try to find yourself in you, but in the whole world. If you live for others and reap what you have done, everything comes back to you and you become the central figure. You must never forget that you are the representative of the whole ancestral past.

You represent your past ancestors. And you represent your family, your relatives, your neighbors, the nation, and all humanity on the horizontal level. That's for the present. For the future generations, you must represent them, being the good start or seed from which to be multiplied.

Then what is the representative person? The person who is representative of all the rest is the person who has lived a life of total sacrifice for others. Is it true? (Yes.) The true central figure, or true representative of humanity, I must define again, is the person who has not only lived for the past, present, and future generations, but for the God of the past, the God of the present, and the God of the future. Would you like to be like this? (Yes.) If you are in that position, God would want to be proud of you before the ancestors of the past, before all humanity living in the present, and before the people of the future. Do you understand what I mean? (Yes.)

You are born out of your parents. You have been a part of your parents; so if all of your ancestors each claimed a part of you, you would have nothing left for yourself. So you must know that you do not belong to yourself. The conception of yourself can come about only when you relate yourself to other people around you.

You can think yourself important only on the basis of your being a product of your past ancestry, and your belonging to and representing the whole. Only then can you find yourself and place value on yourself. This is the only way you can locate or find out your value. Only in this way can you think of yourself as a central figure.

You are in the center of the cosmos with all the rest of the people around you. That's all right as the basis of the idea. If you exist for the sake of other people, and then come back to yourself and say that you are the central figure, naturally they will support you. But if you begin by wanting other people to serve you and be sacrificial towards you, then you will have nothing coming from those people, and you will have lost the whole world.

In order for you to claim yourself, you must put yourself in the central position, being sacrificial and doing things for the sake of other people. Then alone you can claim yourself. If you forget about everyone else and think of yourself alone, then you come to nowhere. And you will have lost everything.

Before the human fall, man was created to live for others; so the world of harmony and unity could have come about. But due to the human fall, man began to live for the sake of himself alone, doing all things in a self-centered way. That's the primary sign of the human fall. God is the center of the cosmos, and has been investing His whole self for the sake of the cosmos. So He can claim Himself as the center, or nucleus.

You too, after having served other people, can come back to yourself, locate yourself, put yourself in the central position, and think of yourself as important. Do you clearly understand? (Yes.) Then where are you bound? (The center.) In order for you to become the central point, what must you be doing? (Sacrificing.) Then where can we start? Among ourselves as the Unification members.

You live together as brothers and sisters. For instance, you are at the breakfast table, and your hands almost unconsciously reach for good, rich food first. Is that the way you should be? (No.) You want to wear better clothing than other brothers and sisters. That's not the way it should be. If there are good things, convenient to use, you want them available to yourself. That's not the way it should be.

Now that you have clearly understood what it means when you say you are the central figure, I want you to put it into practice. Every one of you likes to give orders to other people, or have others do something for you; but you don't want to do something for others. Isn't that true? (Yes.) I want you to go the reverse way, to do the things opposite to what you have been doing.

If you receive orders coming from other people, in utter humbleness, and do as you are told, then you can have dominion over all those people, and over their minds. At length, you can dominate the heart of God, because God is constantly giving orders to us to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of all humanity. If you are living up to that standard, then you can dominate God's heart too.

Now you have said you understood all I had to say, and you promised me that you will live this way of life. So I am going to push you hard from now on and have you work all through the 24-hour day; and you cannot object or complain. Is that true? Common sense says that you require eight hours of sleep, three meals a day, and should be limited to eight hours of work.

But our teacher, master, won't let us sleep, won't let us eat properly, and pushes us hard. In that case, will you be grateful, or will you complain? (Grateful.) If you become like that, God cannot but come to visit you all the time and live with you. He will dance about for joy.

You must remember this -- I must repeatedly say that you must be living for the past ancestors and present humanity and future generations; not only that, but also for the God of the past, the God of the present, and the God of the future. Then you will be living through eternity with God as your Father. God is looking for one like that. Human history of the past, present, and the future is looking for the person like that.

Wouldn't you want to meet such a person? (Yes.) Why, and for what are you going to meet that person? Yes, with him as the example, you want to become like him. If you want to really become like him, you must be taught by him. That person will surely educate you to become a sacrificial person, living for the past ancestors, present humanity, and future descendants, and for the God of the past, the God of the present, and God of the future. Would you still want to be educated by him? (Yes.)

Then, to make a long story short, this person will teach you to die, to deny yourself, for the past ancestors, present humanity, and future generations; to die for God of the past, the God of the present, and the God of the future. This Chinese character (using the blackboard) is "death, death, death, death." Would you like the idea? (Yes.)

From this viewpoint, we can take Jesus' teaching as the teaching of highest dimension. He said, "Those who want to gain their lives will die, and those who are ready to lose their lives will gain them." Is it a good teaching? (Yes.) Do you welcome that idea? (Yes.) Then go ahead and die. I want to see you die. You said you understand and you promised me that you will go the way, the way of death. You answered with your own lips. (Yes.)

If someone dies for the nation, the nation is under his domination, and if one dies for the sake of the whole world, he can dominate the whole world. If he can die for God, then God belongs to him. I don't think there is any other group where they are educated with this ideology. Unificationists alone are being taught this. You must be ready to die for the past generations, for present humanity, and for the future descendants: to die for the God of the past, the God of the present, and the God of the future. Isn't it a wonderful idea? (Yes.)

Then I want you really to be in the wonderful competition to live and die for the past, present, and future generations, more than anyone else in the whole world. And then you can gain the whole world. What you have done, your deed, is what you alone can claim; and with what you have done, you will live through eternity.

If you realize this in the real sense, you cannot say you are exhausted after having fought for several months, or several years in the local states. How many years could you live this way of life? How many years? One year? Only the present time? Forever? (Yes.) Then you can never complain. You can never dream of saying you are tired. Is that right? (Yes.) Are you that way? (No.) Not yet.

In the past, moral standards or religious teachings have been teaching something like this in smaller dimension. We exist for mutual benefit. Parents live for children; children live for parents. But the family as a whole lives for the relatives and the tribe. The tribe should live for the nation, the nation for the world, and the world for the whole cosmos, including the spirit world.

The whole world, or cosmos, should live for God. In that way we can erect the Kingdom of Heaven in the spirit world. The whole world, or cosmos, should live for God. In that way we can erect the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Would you want to live in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth or in the kingdom where people live for the sake of themselves? (Kingdom of Heaven.)

Then we can safely define that those who live self-centered lives are doomed to hell; and those who live unselfish lives, for the sake of other people, are destined for the Kingdom of Heaven. You have nothing which belongs to you in the real sense. Are your eyes your own? (No.) They are created for the sake of other things and other people. They were inherited by you from your ancestors.

So first of all, you must never complain. Learn how not to complain and how not to be discouraged at the time of difficulties, how not to be exhausted after a long day of hard work. God can find out what kind of character you have only in times of difficulty. God will take out His notebook, and grade you at that moment, when you are in difficulty, when people are apt to grumble and complain. When you are in the situation where people are apt to be angry, indignant, or complain, and you smile and go through the difficult situation, in that manner, you will feel victorious. You are victorious.

In God's view, beauty is something different from what you think. Suppose that there is a beautiful girl and for a few days she been working out in the sun so many hours a day, that she became suntanned. She does not have make-up, and she looks rather ugly, outwardly. But that's the utmost beauty that God esteems in you.

If you have worked like that for the sake of your own self, there is no merit; but if you worked for the sake of other people, or the whole, then there is value in it. For instance, you are selling flowers or peanuts on the street, and sometimes you are rejected by the people. You have been called names, and things like this, and you almost cry out. But in that case, the tears are something of beauty. If you are grateful to God and almost happy in your heart because you are doing this for His sake and the sake of humanity, then the merit is yours and God will be proud of you. In later days mankind will have to be grateful to you.

Doing the same thing, if your attitude is like this, that's heaven, and if your attitude is the other way around, that's hell. So even though you are crying, don't cry for yourself, but cry for the whole, cry for God. Don't complain for the sake of yourself, but you can complain for the sake of God. For instance, "This evil world, what shall I do with this evil world?' I have to destroy evil from this world.'' That kind of complaint is acceptable. Every moment, you must be careful not to be accused of something by Satan.

I hope I made myself understood. If you go on living your lives for the sake of the whole, you can be proud of yourself. In our movement, we are doing that. We are going to put it into practice. And we will live for the sake of all humanity. I want you to be proud of what you are doing, and proud of the Unification Church. And we will live for the sake of all humanity.

I want you to be proud of what you are doing, and proud of the Unification Church. And we will have succeeded in our mission and build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth with our own hands. That's what makes it important that we are here, and makes us the most important group in the whole world. If we live this way, we can be proud of ourselves. Do you understand? (Yes.) Let's pray.

Scanned by Hans-Juergen Hutzfeld, 08.01.2008-Duesseldorf.