Explorations in Unificationism edited by Theodore T. Shimmyo and David A. Carlson
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Explorations in Unificationism edited by Theodore T. Shimmyo and David A. Carlson |
Critics and artists alike have long been fascinated by the process of artistic creation, most notably by the reasons for, and the origins of, this creation. When asked the source of their own creation, however, many artists and thinkers can identify only a vague "something inherent"' that impels them to write. Today's critics, though armed with "postmodern" theories of psychological and sociological criticism, semeiotics, structuralism and even deconstruction, can finally only turn to the artists themselves to describe the personal feelings which have led to artistic creation.
This essay will attempt to identify clearly the sources of artistic inspiration which lead to artistic creation. It will further discuss the purpose and basis of art. What distinguishes this paper from other discussions of the creative process is its foundation in religious theory, specifically, the Divine Principle,2 the theological basis of the teachings of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.
It may seem surprising, at first, to base artistic theory on a religious foundation. In Unification thinking, however, the world is one, in all senses, and God's purpose of creation touches every sphere of life. The doctrines of the Unification Church aim at nothing less than explicating all of human life, history and thought by reference to one ideal: God's original and unchanging desire for the creation of the ideal world. This ideal, Unificationists feel, is even now in the process of being realized despite countless spiritual and historical setbacks. A brief encapsulation of God's purpose of creation is necessary, then, for understanding the implications for the artistic field.
God's purpose of creation is simply to have an object into which to pour His and Her absolute, unchanging, true love.
The most essential aspect of God is Heart. Heart is the impulse to love an object and is the fountain and motivator of love. It is the nature of Heart to seek an object to love. This nature of Heart is God's motive for making the Creation... If there is no object, God cannot satisfy his impulse to express care and love, which springs limitlessly from within himself. God made the Creation to be the object which he could love.3
In his plenary address to world-renowned scientists and scholars, including Nobel Prize winners, at the 7th International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences held in 1978, Reverend Moon presented God's situation in the simplest possible terms:
Let us consider what might be most important and necessary for this God. It is certainly not knowledge, power, money, nor life; the magnificence of the universe which he created testifies to his possession of all these. The only thing he might need as the origin of love, is an object to whom he can give love and from whom he can receive love. The created world was made by him as that object. Since man is the center of and combines within himself the elements of all other created beings, He is that most precious being who is to be the object of the love of the original absolute being. Thus only through man can the absolute being realize or accomplish this ideal of love.4
But man finds himself in a world of effect, where absolute value is nowhere to be found. The realization of this absolute value is necessary even for the absolute being himself. It could only be found in the ideal or purpose of an absolute causal being who gives direction or purpose to the activities of the created world of effect. That ideal is love.5
Thus, "Creation was made with the purpose of serving the other in true love."6
True love presupposes unity: an individual's own unity of mind and body, and then an individual's unity with God. The Divine Principle teaches that persons were created in the direct image of God, that is, with the potential to love as God loves, and with a physical and spiritual self which exist through harmonious give and take between each other. A "perfected" person would thus be a spiritually mature person experiencing God's love directly and giving that love to others and to the creation. A true work of art would likewise follow this model: content and form would exist in balance and harmony and would together express the totality of the work's meaning. This perfect personhood and this perfect work of art are models all artists are trying to attain.
I have twice used the word "model" (above) in referring to God, once as the paradigm of a perfected person, and once for the standard in judging a work of art to be perfect. The basis of this model in Unification thought is the balanced and reciprocal giving and receiving actions performed between the internal, and then between the internal and external, aspects of a person or a work of art.
God as the model and pattern of love and truth and of all absolutes seems reminiscent of Plato's absolute models, or Forms. The "form" of interest to us in this essay would be what Plato called the form of ideal knowledge on which a true work of art must be based.
Plato maintained that the knowledge most of us can aspire to during our physical life is limited to shadowy images or representations of absolutes. But true knowledge is knowledge of absolutes, not of images of absolutes.
True knowledge is not concerned with particular individuals or events, but rather with general principles and the way in which particular things reflect those general principles.7
"And knowledge has for its natural object the real -- to know the truth about reality."8
Such knowledge is difficult to attain in our physical world which is a changing and unstable world. Plato acknowledged two forms of existence: Being, belonging to eternity, and Becoming, a characteristic of the natural world. What is revealed to our senses is an imperfect changing representation of an unchanging eternal model.9
According to Plato, then, how can humans have access to unchanging, absolute knowledge? The answer lies in his famous theory of true knowledge as the intuitive recollection of something known beforehand, in a life before this physical life.
Cognition, Socrates maintains in the Phaedo, is a process of recognition and education an exercise of the memory whereby we recall what we knew in eternity: discovery is rediscovery in the nature of selfhood.10
In Phaedrus Socrates notes,
For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason; -- this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God -- when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being... the philosopher... is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired. (The) last kind of madness... is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true beauty... this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest.''
Albeit reserved to the philosophic few, knowledge of absolutes is accessible to humankind through divine inspiration.
Could we not equate Plato's assurance that knowledge is knowledge of absolutes to Unification's view that persons were created to know their absolute Creator, God? It is very tempting to see Unificationism as such; it would thus become a modern day Platonic thought system.
Unification thinking would strongly object to its being equated with Plato's theory of recollection on several points. Although we might agree that at this particular time in the world of becoming our knowledge is limited, Unificationists would respond that 1) progress in degrees of knowledge is possible and that 2) there is a specific reason for our limited knowledge in the present.
Having posited that the Divine Principle teaches that human beings were created to be rulers of both the physical and spiritual realms, our religious theory identifies the reason for our present lack of power to assume this position desired by God. Accepting the Biblical story of the Fall of the first human ancestors, Unificationism understands humanity's spiritual potential as blocked by our disobedience to God's word, and thus stuck at a certain low level of spiritual development until this particular time in history.
Since God is the origin of true love, had man, who was created as His partner of true love, matured and inherited absolutely unchanging true love from God, human history would have developed as a history of unification.12
There has, tragically, been no history of unification, either within humankind's individual self or between God and humans. This disunity occurred because humankind's spiritual dimension, the five spiritual senses, were almost completely closed to God as a result of the fall away from God's love.
God created man to be the ruler of both realms of the cosmos... God created man's physical self from the elements that make up the physical world and gave man dominion over the physical world through his five physical senses. Similarly, God created the spiritual self from the elements that make up the spirit world and gave man dominion over the spirit world through his five spiritual senses... As a result of the Fall, man's five spiritual senses became dulled and man became unable to perceive the spirit world, which can be perceived only by the spirit mind and spirit body.13
Unificationism comforts humankind by asserting that both communication with God, even direct communication, as well as the acquisition of true knowledge is the hope of both God and man. "Those whose spiritual senses have been restored by God's grace and a religious life can experience this world, either partially or completely"14
The process by which the spiritual senses can be restored -- the mechanism of spiritual growth -- is also outlined in the Divine Principle, in the sections referring to the three stages of growth and in the resurrection section. What concerns us here are the implications for ascertaining how artists can succeed or, in some cases, have partially succeeded in opening up, or restoring, their spiritual senses in order to perceive the absolute. It is through the novel Unification theory of resemblance that such spiritual growth and the eventual apprehension of absolutes (Plato's forms) can be achieved.
The notion of resemblance and the influence of the invisible but "real," substantial spiritual world on our minds and thoughts is a new element of truth revealed by Reverend Moon. Simply put, the eternal part of humans, their soul or spirit, develops as does the physical body. Our level, or position relative to the central point of God's love, in the eternal world after our physical death depends entirely on the level of spirit we achieve during our physical life. There is a direct correspondence between our spiritual level and the spiritual level we will be inhabiting in the eternal world at death, although continued spiritual development there is both possible and desirable.
The Unification theory of resemblance, however, has yet another aspect which helps explain artistic inspiration and creation. In the section of the Divine Principle entitled "Resurrection," there is a discussion of the mechanism by which the spirits of those who have passed on to the eternal world can continue to develop: it is through communication with the spirits of persons who are physically alive.
The following passage stresses the necessity for every individual, dead or alive, to fulfill God's purpose of creation for him or her personally. Thus, resurrection in Unification thinking is the same as restoration or re-creation of the lost ideal of creation.
A person's spirit self can neither grow nor be resurrected apart from the physical self. So for those in the spirit world to be resurrected, they must return to earth and fulfill the responsibility that they left unaccomplished during their physical life. They accomplish this by cooperating with people on earth and working through others' physical selves to help them fulfill their mission... When a person on earth, through prayer or spiritual activities, happens to form a base conducive to spiritual communication and partnership, then a spirit person will return and begin to cooperate with that person on earth by Give and Take Action with his spirit self.15
The time and type of help that a person on earth receives from a spirit person vary depending on the person's attitude, faith, and disposition and the merits of his ancestors.16
Thus, the Unification theory of resemblance depends on one's affinities with God and with spirit persons. The resemblance in a person's life, goals and personality will determine what spiritual levels of thoughts a living person will receive from a spirit person. "Good spirit people who lived conscientiously while on earth, though not religiously, return and cooperate with good people on earth who have similar spiritual levels and circumstances."17
Needless to say, since a living person is the center of the two worlds, the physical and the eternal, the physical person can accept or reject the spiritual dimension of help which is available in all areas of life. If s/he accepts the influence and help of persons in the spirit world, s/he can accomplish both an individual and a collective mission to fulfill an historical task.
A person who dies without completing his mission must return and cooperate with a person on earth who has the same type of mission and the same spiritual disposition. From this mission-oriented viewpoint, the physical self of the person on earth becomes the physical self for the returning spirit person as well.18
Thus, the individual person living on earth represents the hope of God his/her ancestors and history.
The individual body called "I" is, after all, a product of the history of the providence of restoration. This "I", therefore, is the personage who is to fulfill the purpose history is headed for. Therefore, "I" must stand for the will of history... "I" must horizontally restore through indemnity, in my generation, centering on myself, all the missions of all the ages which the prophets and saints, elected for the purpose of the providence of restoration in the course of the history, have left unaccomplished... In order for "me" to become such an historical victor, "I" must know precisely God's heart when He worked with the prophets and saints, the fundamental significance of His calling them, and the providential missions He entrusted to them.19
The question of how to know God's heart and desire for each individual naturally arises. Unification theory states that such knowledge is imparted only at providential times in human history and only by a special person called by God. According to Unificationists, now is a special providential time and Reverend Moon is a special person.
Jesus' age two thousand years ago and the time when Christ returns in the Last Days are both special times when all the faithful on earth can be spiritually elevated... Especially since these are the times when God's Word of re-creation appears anew... then according to the principles of resurrection these times are the most significant opportunities -- opportunities when man's spirit self can be resurrected at an accelerated rate.20
Unificationists believe that Reverend Moon is the direct link between humanity and God at this time in history. Therefore, trying to follow the guidance of Reverend Moon while continuing to develop one's personal relationship with God is the most effective way to achieve spiritual growth in the present.
We must understand all these things through the Lord of the Second Advent, who is to come as the completion of the providence of restoration. By believing in him and becoming one body with him, we must be in the position to set up, horizontally, all the vertical conditions of indemnity in the history of the providence of restoration.21
Thus, humans living today who are religiously or conscientiously concerned with knowing God's will and mission for them personally can receive spiritual guidance through making a reciprocal base with God's messengers and with spirit persons. "The spirit person helps the people on earth to receive revelations or to have deep experiences of truth, and sometimes helps him to experience other spiritual phenomena."22
To recapitulate: Unification theory teaches that each individual, especially a person alive today, has been given awesome possibilities for growth towards communication with God. These possibilities include God's plan for an individual's perfection, the chance of help from the spiritual world, and the opportunity to participate in the creation of the ideal world through the fulfillment of a certain historical mission appropriate for that individual. All of these possibilities repose on the resemblance between a person's character with that of the creator, God, and the resemblance of character with the spiritual persons who will assist in the completion of that individual's mission. Finally, the time in history to effect the greatest changes for the advancement of God's original purpose of creation is now, thanks to the providential nature of the age and to Reverend Moon's spiritual accomplishments. In 1976,
The victory of the Washington Monument rally was the most significant event in human history and God's history. By that victory, the doors of heaven were open and all the barriers were broken down... The spirit world was liberated; the barriers were broken down and they no longer exist. Spirits can now freely come down to the physical world...23
Today's individual has only to avail him/herself of all spiritual help offered to begin developing awareness of the absolute knowledge and love which is God through the restoration of one's spiritual senses dulled since the Fall.
Although not propounded as religious doctrine, numerous other experiences of spiritual communication and interaction have been published within the last several decades. Accounts of such spiritual interaction, and more recently, of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) have not yet been, and perhaps can never be, proven by scientific "facts." Still, a surprising number of "intellectuals," those individuals who have accumulated much knowledge in all areas of life, argue passionately in favor of an invisible world beyond which influences earthly persons' actions and thoughts.
The purpose of this section is to cite accounts and theories of spiritual interaction in order to prepare, and already suggest, an explanation for artistic inspiration and creation.
Three of the best known names in the field of spiritual research are Arthur Ford, Dr. Raymond Moody and Anthony Borgia, following in the wake of such esteemed psychologists and scientists as Carl Jung and Michael Polanyi. From Dr. Jung to Dr. Moody, these accounts span almost one century. More amazingly, the accounts verify each other's "discoveries." Let us hear the "evidence" as they have written on the subjects of spiritual growth, spiritual communication and the life after death experience.
Anthony Borgia has most clearly defined "spiritual influence" on earth persons in his book Life in the World Unseen.24 Actually, Borgia is merely the instrument, or "medium," through which the deceased British minister Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, is communicating. He (or they) posits, first, that the spiritual world is much more aware of life on our plane than we are of it. "The two worlds, yours and ours, are in constant and direct communication, and we are fully aware of what is occurring upon the earth plane at all times."25
Further, the explanation of "spirit guides" is familiar to Unificationists who appreciate in it our theory of "returning resurrection." "Every soul that has been, and is to be, born upon the earth plane has allocated to him -- or her -- a spirit guide," "a guardian angel." "They are drawn from every nationality that exists upon the earth-plane, and they function regardless of nationality."26
Supporting further the Unification theory of returning resurrection, Borgia stresses the spiritual similarities between the spirit guide and the earth person.0
The principal guide is chosen for each individual on the earth-plane in conformity with a fixed plan. Most guides are temperamentally similar to their charges in the latter's finer natures, but what is most important the guides understand and are in sympathy with their charges' failings. Many of them, indeed, had the same failings when they were incarnate, and among other useful services they try to help their charges overcome those failings and weaknesses.27
Unification theory would go one step further and, as a conclusion to this spiritual help rendered by the spirit guides, state that, if the physical person manages to overcome these failings through the help of the spirit guide, then both the physical person's soul and the spirit guide can reach a higher spiritual level upon the death of the physical person. This is the Unification theory of "returning resurrection."
At times, however, it is a frustrating experience for the spirit guides because the physical person's awareness, described here as a "wall," has become so dulled.
It would be safe to say that by far the greater number of spirit guides carry on their work all unknown to those whom they serve, and their task is so much the heavier and more difficult. But there are still others whose lives upon earth render it practically impossible for their guides to approach within any reasonable distance of them. It naturally saddens them to see the mistakes and follies into which their charges are plunging themselves, and to be obliged to stand aloof because of the thick wall of material impenetrability which they have built up round themselves.28
Once in a while, however, a thought from the spirit guide is received even by these most dulled of beings: "...even in the worst souls there comes an occasion, however transient, when the conscience speaks, and it is usually the spirit guide who has implanted the better thought within the brain."29 Of course, it is up to the earth person to accept or reject this thought, Borgia states.30
Reverend Arthur Ford dedicated many decades of his own life to the pursuit of spiritual communication and had experiences of being a spiritual medium, participating in spiritual interaction, and surviving a Near Death Experience. In all of his books, including Unknown But Known in which he recounts the "Sun Myung Moon Sittings," he emphasizes humankind's joyful potential for spiritual growth. The vocabulary he uses frequently describes this growth in terms of "psychic development,"32 "evolution of consciousness,"33 and a "capacity for awareness."34 Ford's self-proclaimed task is to spread the good news of humankind's co-creatorship. "The great science news of our century is that man has been given full partnership -- and full participating responsibility -- in his own evolution."35
In order to become aware of this most important dimension of human life, the development of the spiritual senses, Ford became conscious of the need for spiritual maturation; he learned for himself the limitations of the physical senses. In the chapter entitled "Reflections on My Own Mediumship" of his book The Life Beyond Death,36 he reflects on his NDE and the insights gained from it.
Several things occurred to me as factors which have inhibited our ability to apprehend the realities of the beta body and of the expanded universe available to it. Perhaps the most formidable is the misconception that our five senses -- sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch -- are the only means of knowing that we have. It is obvious, if we would only stop to think, that we have many more senses than these. Nobody has ever seen a person. We see the physical body of the person and some of the kinetic effects it produces, but the person himself is invisible... We know people not through the gross five senses but through subtler awarenesses of the beta bodies.37
Ford learned most of all the value of human life as the opportunity to develop character. For him, character is the "real" person every individual is, that is, the "person" who will remain in the spiritual world.
In this sense, speaking from the point of view of the workaday world, we are already invisible and should not be surprised if the actualities of deeply experienced life are not available to our outer eyes and ears. The beta body can be prepared for its further journey beginning here and now. Character is developed not in the act of dying but in the act of living. Spiritual illumination is no more reached in a single step than is physical perfection or intellectual attainment.38
Ford may be one of the rare individuals who, through his efforts to be humble to the senses other than the physical five, has been able to effect, in his own mind, the beginnings of physical and spiritual unity.
One thing we do know for certain: Thought can be transmitted from one human mind to another in somewhat the same way that radio waves travel from one station to another... My point is, of course, that the intangible world of thought governs and controls the tangible world of substance. We now find ourselves in an evolutionary pact with the creative forces of the universe. What we are and what we will become will be the result of a joint human and divine imaginative effort. In this effort, the higher realms of being that lie outside earth's biosphere will have an important part to play.39
Once again, we hear the message of the good news of the spiritual world that is waiting to join with any small effort by humans to accept its help.
During a two week coma, Arthur Ford had a near death experience that he recounts. Like all those who physically "died" and were resuscitated, he found the world beyond much more beautiful and comfortable than "real" physical life. So much so, in fact, that he had no wish to return to his physical body. He explains that he was "sent back" because he had not yet accomplished the mission he was born for.
They mentioned my having failed to accomplish 'what he knew he had to finish.' There was a purpose for me, it seemed, and I had not fulfilled it... 'They're going to send me back,' I thought, and I didn't like it... When I was told I had to return to my body, I fought having to get back into that beaten, diseased hulk I had left behind...40
Having understood the purpose of his own creation, and having experienced the spiritual world, Ford assumed his "true" task of heralding the "glory beyond" of the life to come. He disliked being sick, but looked forward to dying once again.
Dying is another matter. I almost did it once before and found it one of the great, memorable, ecstatic experiences of my life. I can see no reason why the real thing should be less joyous than the trial run... I hope, when the time comes, I will have completed that earth task for which I believe my life in the earth sphere was fashioned: to use whatever special talents were given me, through no merit of mine, to remove for all time the fear of the death passage from earth minds, and to raise the curtain a little bit for a glimpse of the glory beyond.41
The word "glorious" has also been used in speaking of the eternal world by Dr. Carl Jung, after he experienced an NDE during a heart attack in 1944. "What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imaginations and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it... The dissolution of our time bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning."42
Dr. Raymond Moody has used Jung's quote to sum up his own feelings about the NDE. Moody, a minister, professor, and physician, has studied the experience of almost dying for two decades and has personally decided that the human spirit does live on after physical death. As he points out, however, science will never be able to "prove" this point.
For more than twenty years I have been working on the cutting edge of ND E research... I have talked to almost every ND E researcher in the world about his or her work... But as scientists and people of medicine, they still haven't come up with 'scientific proof that a part of us goes on living after our physical being is dead... But in the meantime, they keep trying to answer in a scientific way that perplexing question: What happens when we die?...I don't think science can ever answer that question.43
The most powerful "proof" of this experience for Moody is the change in people -- their new-found awareness of the importance and power of love especially -- that the NDE produces.44 As all writers concerned with knowing spiritual reality have concluded, Moody finds that the intuitive faculty of emotion, not the intellect which requires scientific proof, is the way to appreciate eternal life.
After twenty-two years of looking at the near-death experience, I think there isn't enough scientific proof to show conclusively that there is life after death. But that means scientific proof.
Matters of the heart are different. They are open to judgments that don't require a strictly scientific view of the world.45
Reverend Moon has uttered the same assurances that true love (springing from emotion) is more powerful than knowledge (from the intellect) in our pursuit of the most crucial truth about our eternal existence.
Love is not learned by thinking but should grow and be felt within. Absolute values then must be pursued finally not through knowledge but through love. Through physical perception man can apprehend the world of knowledge but not the world of emotion. Absolute value, therefore, resides in the dimension of absolute love. To find it is to know and possess him who is its originator. So the locus of the first causal being, or God, is not in the world of physical perception but is experienced in the realm of deepest affection.46
Granted that all the scientists and spiritual seekers quoted above cite the inner feeling of love as the beginning of our apprehension of the eternal world. Still, they have described only vaguely the process of spiritual growth towards that world. Here is an example from Arthur Ford,
When we consider the vast multitude of significant vibrations which surround us at all times and of which we are totally unaware, we see how ridiculous it is to imagine that our 'five senses' give us anything like an accurate picture of the universe we live in... This matter of vibrations is important to me: I am convinced that becoming aware of the next stage of existence beyond the earth biosphere is very largely a matter of becoming attuned to its vibrations.47
Reverend Moon has described clearly the process of achieving individual unity and then unity with God. His image of the "tuning forks" evokes
Ford's theory of "vibrations," but much more concretely.
What then is the perfection of man? When a man achieves complete harmony of mind and body (that is subject and object) within himself through growth of character, he achieves the condition for realizing absolute love, and he becomes a perfect object to the absolute being who is the original being of all love. Harmony between mind and body automatically brings into existence a range of resonance with absolute being, like the sympathetic resonance of tuning forks, and this is the beginning point where the world of object (created world) can come into contact with the world of subject (absolute original being). The frequency and intensity of harmony achieved between mind and body determines the degree of resonance between man and absolute being. What is known in religious terms as the human fall took place before man achieved this range of resonance, and what is known as salvation is the historical process of restoration of the resonance, thus making man able to respond to divine love.48.
As illustrated above, the resonance (or resemblance) achieved by the unity of God and man is not static, but moving (vibrating) and continual. Whereas the researchers quoted in the section above describe spiritual growth as an individual's perceiving the "glory beyond," Reverend Moon describes the process of unity as a constantly deepening give and take between man and God. Furthermore, Reverend Moon understands this intensified circular relationship as the key to eternal life.
God's true love is to invest His true love and keep no memory of having given. So long as He remembers having given to someone, He cannot give endlessly. Love is moving ahead endlessly, so it should not stop at the memory of what has already been given. Since when God gives He does not retain memory of having given, God's love flows ahead endlessly.
When, with true love, a person gives 100% and even more, a vacuum is created. It is just as when in the atmosphere there arises an area of low pressure another high pressure automatically fills its place and generates circulatory movement. Therefore, where there is a will to serve absolutely, you will be connected to the source of unlimited power. God wants to exist for the sake of man in such a manner. To start at that position and continue endlessly giving in accordance with the original nature means that it becomes possible to exist forever. Thus in the way of true love one can easily find the principle of eternal existence.49
As this section has tried to explain, God's ideal of creation springs from the Creator's essential character of absolute love. The process of spiritual growth and the gradual restoration of the spiritual senses lead to the apprehension of the "world beyond," which humankind was created to know even during the earthly life. The writers cited above have made great progress in experiencing the eternal world and have, through their writings and speeches, attempted to proclaim the good news of the discovery of humankind's true position as the mediator between these two worlds.
I have discussed the Unification theory of the purpose of creation and have cited experiences from other seekers after spiritual truth in order to lay the groundwork for a discussion of the Unification theory of art. It must be noted at the outset, however, that the Unification theory of art and beauty is far from complete; few attempts have been made to apply our theology to this field. No Christian theories of art seem to have been constructed either for this historical period of transition in which we are living. Since we are not yet truly "whole," we cannot know God's true love or the responses to love which are true beauty and joy.
Christianity also promises, on certain conditions of faith and practice, a post restoration vision equal in wholeness and splendor to that prelapsarian one. It may be, however, that in this in-between state of fall and aspiration in which we find ourselves, where wholeness is more a notion than a condition, we can conceive of wholeness, or realize it, only synthetically or symbolically.50
What follows in this section are my own conclusions about artistic inspiration and creation based on my limited understanding of the spiritual realities outlined in Divine Principle.
Simply stated the purpose of artistic creation is to produce beauty and joy. The beauty produced by the artist is a response to the love of God felt by the artist; joy is the response of the beholder upon seeing/reading the beauty produced by the artist. Beauty and joy must be felt spontaneously, through the emotions, not intellectually, through the intelligence. "If you just cannot help but respond in love then what you have encountered is true love; the mind and heart have to feel love in return, without having any choice."51
The cornerstone of the Unification Principle, it seems to me, is the theory of resemblance between God and humankind. As I have tried to explain, this resemblance is neither physical nor intellectual; it is a resemblance in the creative urge that Unificationists call "heart." "The most essential aspect of God is Heart. Heart is the impulse to love an object and is the fountain and motivator of love."52 Thus, "heart" preceded even love since heart is the impulse to love.
Although the resemblance between God and humankind has many varied aspects, the most fundamental aspect is this urge to invest or to pour one's entire creative energy into a person or object. The deepest (and perhaps only) experience of this investment known to us who are in the process of restoration is our investment of love in another person. According to Reverend Moon, the "Great Way of Heavenly Principle" is based on the resemblance with God shown in love for another. This "Great Way" tries to embrace everything centering on love. When this happens, earth will shake and induce even God to shed tears. "You truly resemble me. How happy I am!" He will exclaim. God always looks at things in that perspective.53
Naturally, the loving investment of heart in another person brings the greatest joy and satisfaction because it mirrors God's unconditional love for each individual.
For the discussion of artistic inspiration and creation, the theory of resemblance can also apply. I have already indicated the resemblance between a physical person and his/her spiritual guide(s), a resemblance based on personality, past failures, and mission of the persons involved. Numerous quotations have been given to show the influence of thoughts of spirit guide to a physical person. These thoughts may well include "inspirations" to create a certain type of artistic work.
There is also a resemblance between the artist and the work of art. This type of resemblance lies, I believe, in the work's being a reflection of the artist's internal state which is also influenced by the spirit persons guiding the artist. By "internal state" I mean the artist's ability to perceive true beauty by having achieved a high spiritual level.
Finally there is the tripartite relationship of artist -- work of art -- beholder. The beholder will be drawn to that work of art because s/he can feel the same spiritual level of beauty as the artist did in creating the work of art. Diagram 1 (previous page) illustrates this relationship.
The beholder who appreciates, or "feels" something, in the work of art is at the same spiritual level as the artist who is reflected in the work of art. The beholder will recognize him/herself in the work of art, which art is at the same spiritual level as the beholder. The beholder will feel the same amount of love as that invested in the work by the creative artist. Beholder and artist will be drawn together based on an absolute (the beauty of the work of art) which transcends them both. Beauty, then, "is not something that 'exists,' but something that is 'felt.' "54
Two examples of artists in disparate fields will illustrate my contention that the role of the artist is to draw together beholder and God through art created and appreciated centering on absolutes. D.H. Lawrence, popular for his written works, speaks of his learning to paint in order to express other memories within him. As painter, he became aware of his paintings' possibilities to express images and memories locked not only in his mind, but also in the minds of his beholders.
The picture must all come out of the artist's inside, awareness of forms and figures. We can call it memory, but it is more than memory. It is the image as it lives in the consciousness, alive like a vision, but unknown. I believe many people have, in their consciousness, living images that would give them the greatest joy to bring out. But they don't know how to go about it.55
Marcel Marceau, world-famous pantomime artist of the twentieth century, explains his understanding of why the audience identifies with his silent gestures.
Of course you know that when I mime walking upstairs I never saw anyone climbing stairs like that. Many say it is a haunting image of the reality of climbing stairs, yet one does not climb stairs like that. It is the feeling of climbing stairs. I do not say I mime things I have not seen in some way -- I cannot paint a lion if I have never seen one -- but miming takes place inside. You become the other. By sympathy... It isn't copying. If you provoke and overcome rebellions of the body, this is kinetically and unconsciously felt by the audience. You train your body to assume unnatural positions and make them seem natural, and it is that that is felt, kinetically, in the body of each spectator.56
Marceau insists that the link between performer and audience is that which is "unconsciously felt," a "feeling." Most expressive is his use of the words "image of the reality" which he tries to convey in his gestures. Once again, and especially because Marceau does not use words to communicate, the artist is emphasizing communication and understanding through reference to absolutes (the feeling of the action of climbing the stairs, for example) experienced in common between the artist and beholder.
Let us now look at some other thinkers and artists to understand their theories of artistic inspiration and creation. Returning to the first great thinker, Socrates, we learn that "Socrates' examination of the poets had convinced him that they worked, not with conscious intelligence, but from inspiration, like seers and oracle-mongers who do not understand the meaning of the fine language they use."57 He states that God can communicate with humans through great works of art,
for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine... God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know...that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.58
Plato repeats Socrates' view of the progress of awareness of true knowledge that Unificationists call progress in the development of our spiritual senses.
Plato offers an ingenious insight here. He will distinguish different faculties, different ways of knowing something, in us; and then he will show that for each faculty in us, there is outside us in the world a different level of reality for us to know. Thus, the world corresponds to the apparatus of our thinking, the objective world conforms to our subjective limits... Plato's unique viewpoint is that there is a distinct kind of reality out there for every level of our knowing.59
In the Phaedrus Plato assures us that "the divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality."60
Thus, Plato's theory of true knowledge is not based on the physical senses, which cannot perceive thoughts,61 but on the infusion of the divine spirit into the mind of the artist. In this case, inspiration takes over the mind of the artist and the artist is only a medium for God; Unification thinking would stress the conscious utilization of inspiration by the artist instead of his/her passive receiving of inspiration.
Anthony Borgia, as quoted above, also stresses the superiority of the spiritual world over the physical realm. Once again the supposed dominance by the spiritual world leaves little chance of a physical person's co-creatorship through resemblance with God.
Apart from spirit guides, there is another prolific source of influence that derives from the world of spirit... Man can perform certain mechanical actions with precision and exactitude...but all the major discoveries that are of service to the earth-plane have come, and always will come, from the spirit world... Inspiration, devoted to whatever cause or pursuit, comes from the world of spirit, and from nowhere else... Man has it within his own hands as to which source of inspiration he will lend himself -- to good or to evil.62
Unification thinking is more optimistic than Borgia about the role of physical persons; Borgia only thinks people can perform "certain mechanical actions" whereas Unificationism stresses total investment of heart and mind and the freedom of personal expression.
The philosophic school of structuralism, conceived by Levi-Strauss in the late 1940s, stresses the eternal nature of the human spirit, or "mind," and the universality of human thoughts and mental structures. Edith Kurzweil defines structuralism as "the systematic attempt to uncover deep universal mental structures as these manifest themselves in kinship and larger social structures, in literature, philosophy and mathematics, and in the unconscious psychological patterns that motivate human behavior."63
The mental structures sought by this movement are useful for identifying similar human thoughts and patterns in our present world of effect (Reverend Moon) or of becoming (Plato). This school of thought allows deepened understanding of literature and social customs and affirms the bonds between all peoples, regardless of race or historical time. For Structuralists,
History, rather than being a series of 'objective' events tied to a specific era, exists within an interplay of mental structures that takes place at a specific 'moment.' By having the past become part of the present, Levi-Strauss' theory discounts traditional theories of progress or evolution.64
This theory, however, does not seek the origin of structures, or of the reasons which have made human relationships possible. Thus, Structuralism is an important theory that offers hope for human interaction and understanding, and as such emphasizes positive human relationships, but it refuses to assign any eternal or transcendent origin to humankind's observably related behaviors. For Levi-Strauss, "human nature is preordained by unconscious forces beyond human control."65 Not even a hint of transcendence is suggested by this influential school of thought that reigned during the 1960s and 1970s. Structuralism goes to a certain point in bringing people together, but stops short of asserting an absolute which would serve as a common origin and model. One theory that comes close to Unificationism in describing an artist's spiritual development is that of art historian Herbert Read. He calls this a sketch of "spiritual growth." This theory of art is based on the individual's freedom to express new ideas.
Freedom intervenes -- the freedom to create a new reality. Only on that assumption can we explain any form of evolutionary development in human consciousness, any kind of spiritual growth. A novelty-creating freedom exists by virtue of the intensity generated by aesthetic awareness; an evolutionary advance emerges from the act of expression.66
Based on the paragraph quoted above, Read's idea of the progression of the artist's spiritual development may be traced as follows:
Of all the theories of art and knowledge just discussed, Read's comes the closest to Unification thinking on the ways to advance spiritual growth through art.
As all critics eventually do, I must now let various artists speak for themselves about the origin and purpose of the creative process. Briefly, this section will offer quotations concerning artistic inspiration, the purpose of artistic creation and the role of memory in the creative process.
Brewster Ghiselin has assembled testimonies from creators in all realms of human endeavor in what he calls a "symposium," a book he edited entitled The Creative Process. Having presented the texts themselves, he tries to find common themes across them. In speaking of the beginning point of a work of art he states, "creation begins typically with a vague, even a confused excitement, some sort of yearning, hunch, or other preverbal intimation of approaching or potential resolution."67 "Spontaneity is common, but what is given is usually far from complete."68 Ghiselin's use of the word "resolution" is important for the forthcoming discussion of memory and absence. Ghiselin assumes that "image-makers"69 create in order to resolve a tension within themselves and to produce a new reality distinct from themselves. The creators bear out Ghiselin's observations. Jean Cocteau, twentieth-century French playwright and poet, states: "I have never written unless deeply moved about something."70 Jean Lucart, master tapestry maker and painter, shows the dual process of inspiration and discipline needed for creation, "The realization of a work of art requires utilization of intelligence, but the origination is instinctive. Unknown."71
What Divine Principle has called the "impulse" to love may be equated with the "feeling" of emotion which comes over (Plato would say "possesses") the artist at the beginning stages of creation, a feeling that even mathematician Henri Poincare called the "special aesthetic sensibility."72 Ghiselin found these words from Poincare surprising and noted, "In thus emphasizing the creative worker's dependence on affective guides rather than on any explicit intellectual process, the mathematicians are in essential agreement with the artists."73 Dorothy Canfield writes about this feeling that "The beginning of a story is then for me in more than usual sensitiveness to emotion. If this encounters the right focus (and heaven only knows why it is the 'right' one)I get simultaneously a strong thrill of intense feeling and an inner desire to pass it on to other people."74
Malcolm Cowley views "inspiration" as a process of integration. He tells us that the poet Hart Crane wrote verses and carried them around with him for years while "waiting for the moment of pure inspiration when he could put them all together."75
British poet Stephen Spender speaks of the struggle within the mind of the writer who feels him/herself compelled to write, "Poets speak of the necessity of writing rather than of a liking for doing it. It is spiritual compulsion, a straining of the mind to attain heights surrounded by abysses."76 At the same time, once the writer has embarked, the artist knows s/he is on the right path. There is "the feeling of absolute certitude accompanying the inspiration; in the cases cited this feeling was no deceiver, nor is it usually."77 Thus, the artist accepts the inspiration s/he has felt and then works diligently with the ideas received. "This self-surrender so familiar to creative minds is nearly always hard to achieve. It calls for a purity of motive that is rarely sustained except through dedication and discipline."78
Herbert Read notes that the artist's individual purpose, the urge to create a form of some kind, never varies, although the particular style chosen to express this urge may change.
The change-over from one style to the other, from realism to abstraction or from abstraction to realism, is not accompanied by any deep psychological revolution. It is merely a change of direction, of destination. What is constant is the desire to create a reality, the will to form.79
Read cites the sculptress and painter Barbara Hepworth who shares her feelings about her creative drive,
I don't feel any difference of intention or of mood when I paint (or carve) realistically and when I make abstract carvings. It all feels the same -- the same happiness and pain, the same joy in a line, a form, a colour -- the same feeling of being lost in pursuit of something. The same feeling at the end... Working realistically replenishes one's love for life, humanity and the earth. Working abstractly seems to release one's personality and sharpen the perceptions, so that in the observation of life it is wholeness or inner intention which moves one so profoundly...80
Paul Valery, French poet of the twentieth century, also felt this happiness of giving and receiving love through his work but he tries to discount the importance of this feeling for his self-styled logician's brain. "So the more we give the more we wish to give, all the while thinking we are receiving. The illusion of acting, expressing, discovering, understanding, solving, maturing animates us."81
Hepworth's and Valery's quotations illustrate the thought that creative inspiration is personal, irresistible, integrative and, most important, based on emotion and sensibility. Although artists like Hepworth can move from one medium to another in creating, most artists feel compelled to concentrate on one area of art: mathematics, music or literature. Ghiselin notes that "In all this it is clear that creative minds feel drawn toward specific material with which to work."82 And Llewelyn Pons notes that the style of the finished product reflects (resembles) the spiritual nature of the artist as well as the spiritual forces at work around the artist.
Style is the unique expression of the author's unique spiritual consciousness. This spiritual consciousness has been arrived at through various influences. Ancestry has bequeathed to it a certain fundamental disposition, environment has thickened this congenital inclination, and the chance temperament of each individual has flashed it into life out of nowhere.83
But does the work of art really come from nowhere? Even Mr. Pons would not agree, having just alluded to one's ancestry and environment which are also as personal as one's temperament.
Herbert Read observed a "spiritual situation" in the world of ideas and thoughts of an entire intellectual society that had a definite influence on artists.
The briefest consideration of the historical facts shows that the philosophical foundations of the modern movement were already established in logical completeness before the creation of any parallel manifestations in plastic form. A spiritual situation existed, and had already been described by the philosophers, before the artists became conscious of the style, or of the choice of styles, implicit in that situation.84
Thus, artistic inspiration is both personal and social, but both take place in affective, emotion-laden circumstances. The artist is the medium of spiritual forces as s/he shaves feelings through the creation of a new reality, the work of art.
The individual purpose of creation has already been noted; it is to resolve a personal tension, to bring to a closure the emotions and integrated memories within an individual artist.
D.H. Lawrence has asserted that the more public purpose of art is to impart "delight," which the Unification theory of art calls "joy," as a response to the "feelings" animating the artist. "Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness and atonement -- meaning at-oneness, the state of being at one with the object. But is the great atonement in delight? -- for I can never look on art save as a form of delight."85
Affirming the seriousness of the artist's public role, the psychologist most helpful for artists, Carl Jung, links artistic activity with self-sacrifice for the purpose of representing universal human emotions.
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense -- he is 'collective man' -- one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.86
Olney stresses the double purpose of artists who must fulfill their own purpose and then re-create the experience of achieving a new state of self in order to inspire their audience.
To create, to realize, and to recognize one's own daimon, and then to embrace it as in the myth of human love related by Aristophanes in the Symposium, would seem to be what each of us was made for -- his symbolic life and his highest good. The artist's destiny, in autobiography and poetry, is to go yet further; to live the life and at the same time to embrace the wholeness of that life as his daimon and to embody it again in his creation. For 'we artists,' Yeats boasts proudly, 'are the servants not of any cause but of mere naked life, and above all of that life in its nobler forms, where joy and sorrow are one, Artificers of the Great Moment.'87
The content of the work as the artist chooses it is also as serious a part of his/her public role. Although not stated directly here, the purpose of art's "message" is to impart hope of unity with the Creator, and knowledge of life's purpose. Thomas Wolfe writes,
From the beginning...the idea, the central legend that I wished my book to express had not changed...the deepest search in life, it seemed to me, the thing that in one way or another was central to all living was man's search to find a father, not merely the father of his flesh, not merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and wisdom external to his need and superior to his hunger, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united.88
And Herbert Read affirms that "Any construction which has positive meaning for the individual, or for the community, or for life as a whole, has value, has meaning, has relevance. It is what Woltereck calls a 'mode of resonance' in face of the incomprehensibility of existence."89
It has been my contention throughout this essay that the purpose of true art is to stimulate the restoration of the spiritual senses in all persons, and to impart joy to both artists and beholders in order for individuals to know God and the eternal world during their physical life. Thomas Wolfe and Carl Jung have alluded to the role of the artist in preparing all people to re-create these spiritual senses.
Henry Miller states this desire directly; he says that the artist must become a true person, which Unificationists would interpret as meaning a person who has fulfilled his/her individual and public purposes of creation.
In any true sense, we are certainly not yet alive. We are no longer animals, but we are certainly not yet men. Since the dawn of art every great artist has been dinning that into us, but few are they who have understood it. Once art is really accepted it will cease to be. It is only a substitute, a symbol-language, for something which can be seized directly. But for that to become possible man must become thoroughly religious, not a believer, but a prime mover, a god in fact and deed. He will become that inevitably. And of all the detours along this path art is the most glorious, the most fecund the most instructive.90
Perhaps the most important tool of the artist in creating is the use of memory. The content of a person's memory, we would say, is a personal intuition (or vague awareness via the influence of the spirit world) of former communication with God, the lost "resonance" of love with the creator which the first ancestors never completely achieved.
When artists talk of memory, however, few allude to this real and pervasive historical memory centered on God. Today's artists "remember" only emotions and sense-impressions which then become the basis of their works. Spender notes
memory exercised in a particular way is the natural gift of poetic genius. The poet, above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense-impressions which he has experienced and which he can re-live again and again as thought with all their original freshness... I have a perfect memory for the sensations of certain experiences which are crystallized for me around certain associations...91
It is perhaps true to say that memory is the faculty of poetry, because the imagination itself is an exercise of memory. There is nothing we imagine which we do not already know. And our ability to imagine is our ability to remember what we have already once experienced and to apply it to some different situation.92
Gerard only echoes Spender, "Since imagination only regroups sensory material, there is truly nothing new under the sun."93
The novelist {Catherine Anne Porter uses her memories as the basis of all her works, "This constant exercise of memory seems to be the chief occupation of my mind... Now and again thousands of memories converge, harmonize, arrange themselves around a central idea in a coherent form and I write a story... Yet when I begin a story... I must know a story 'by heart' and I must write from memory."94
Is it only the very modern artists who have forgotten, not remembered, the importance of focusing on absolutes in order to communicate affectively, effectively and deeply with their readers? Writers of the nineteenth century come closer to the Unification ideal of memory as a remembrance and longing for God. For example, William Wordsworth links memory to absence. About the poet he says, "To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present."95
The French Romantic poets were decidedly Christian in spirit. The philosophic basis was provided by Mme de Stael who in her treatise On Literature (1800) stated: "Ce que I 'homme a fait deplus grand, il le doit au sentiment douloureux de Tincomplet de sa destinee."96 ("Whatever glorious achievements have been wrought by man, he owed to the acute feeling of his unfulfilled purpose in life") Mme de Stael, then, saw humanity's artistic milestones as attempts to find the true meaning and purpose of life which, at this time, were to be based on one's relationship with God.
Modern critics of poetry (although not the poets themselves), are returning to Mme de Stael's view that the goal of poetry is to facilitate union with God and to exercise co-creatorship. In Metaphors of Self, Olney affirms
It would seem, then, in realizing the self one is perfecting humanity and completing creation in the only way that one can do it: in one's own self. Thus it may be that God needs our help...to achieve creation itself... At least it is undoubtedly true that for many men the attempt to comprehend the self and its relations to the universe... is nothing less than an experience of God... This is but a step from saying, what is also true, that realization of the self is divine, and that, in our moment, in perfecting his creation, we return the favor of God and create him in our own best image.97
Robin Skelton in Poetic Truth also states that the creation of true poetry also advances the purpose of creation.
We can agree that the 'whole man' is the perceiver of truth... This knowledge which the whole man reaches is not an objective kind of knowledge. It is participant...98
We must now consider this 'whole man,' the 'transcendental man' with regard to his relationship to truth... Poetry, in attempting to realize, by way of language, a completely participant world, is looking back to childhood. It is also looking forward. It is making the assumption that the complete participation in the world is the end of the human endeavor and that...man is constantly trying to become at one with the universe.99
Skelton goes further than modern critics and links poetry, love and God through the theory of participation (which we would call 'resemblance').
Whatever attitude we adopt towards God as Creator, however, we are likely to recognize that love, as the most complete form of participation, is the most creative complex of emotion, intuition, senses, and intelligence... It is not only the poet's desire always to unify the personality which causes him to deal frequently with sexual love... It is also his perception of a guiding principle within the poetic system of values... The relationship of the individual with the idea of God is also the relationship of the individual with ideas of fundamental unity, complete participation, and universal order, and these are notions central to poetic perception.100
We can thus return to our first premise that beauty is a response to love, understanding now that love is the most complete and creative form of participation with another. Beauty born of this love reflects the joy of unity and invites the beholder's response, thus uniting the source of love, the artist and the beholder. As such, beauty is a means to enhance unity, through the memory or experience of love, between individuals and God.
The Divine Principle, in its implications for the artistic field, goes further than other modern theories of art by specifying the source, purpose and mechanisms for the realization of beauty and joy. Love, beauty and joy are the three steps in the unification of God, humankind and the cosmos, and this unification is possible because it is based on the theory of resemblance between humans and their Creator, God.
1. Ghiselin, Brewster, The Creative Process (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), 10.
2. Divine Principle, (New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1973).
3. Outline of the Principle, Level 4, (New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1980), 23-24.
4. Moon, Sun Myung, Science and Absolute Values, (New York: International Cultural Foundation, 1982), 75.
5. Moon, 74.
6. Moon, Sun Myung, "True Unification and One World June-July, 1990.
7. "Rauch, Leo, Plato's The Republic and Other Works, (New York: Monarch Press, 1965), 55.
8. Plato, The Republic, v. 477 quoted in Cornford, Francis MacD., Trans., The Republic of Plato, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), 185.
9. Priestly, J.B., Man and Time (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964), 137.
10. Olney, James, Metaphors of Self, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 38.
11. Plato, Phaedrus, 249, quoted in Hofstadter, Albert and Richard Kaihns, eds., Philosophies of Art and Beauty, (New York: Modern Library, 1964), 60.
12. Moon, "True Unification...".
13. Outline, 40.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 118.
16. Ibid., 122.
17. Ibid., 120.
18. Ibid., 121.
19. Divine Principle, 237-238.
20. Outline, 118-119.
21. Divine Principle, 23 8.
22. Outline, 118.
23. Moon, Sun Myung, God's Will and the World, (New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1985), 353.
24. Borgia, Anthony, Life in the World Unseen, volume I, (San Francisco: H.G. White, n.d.).
25. Ibid., 174-175.
26. Ibid., 175.
27. Ibid., 175-176.
28. Ibid., 176.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ford, Arthur, Unknown But Known, (New York: Harper and Row, 1968).
32. Ford, Arthur, The Life Beyond Death, (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1971), 30.
33. Ibid., 33.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 143-158.
37. Ibid., 146.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 37.
40. Ibid., 146.
41. Ibid., 158.
42. Quoted in Moody, Raymond A., Jr., The Light Beyond, (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 198.
43. Ibid., 193-194.
44. Ibid., 197.
45. Ibid.
46. Moon, Science..., 76-77.
47. Ford, The Life..., 35.
48. Moon, Science..., 75-76.
49. Moon, "True Unification...".
50. Olney, 318.
51. Moon, Sun Myung, "The Tradition of the Unification Church," December 11, 1977.
52. Outline, 23.
53. Moon, "True Unification...".
54. Explaining Unification Thought, (New York: Unification Thought Institute, 1981), 253.
55. Ghiselin, 66.
56. Fifield, William, In Search of Genius, (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1982), 290.
57. Cornford, 323.
58. Hofstadter, 55.
59. Rauch, 55.
60. Hofstadter, 58.
61. Cornford, 186, footnote 1.
62. Borgia, 177.
63. I Curzweil, Edith, The Age of Structuralism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 1.
64. Ibid., 23.
65. Ibid., 27.
66. Read, Herbert, The Philosophy of Modern Art, (New York: Meridian Books, 1955), 104.
67. Ghiselin, 4.
68. Ibid., 5.
69. Read, 100.
70. Fifield, 83.
71. Ibid., 260.
72. Ghiselin, 29.
73. Ibid., 10.
74. Ibid., 174.
75. Ibid., 149.
76. Ibid., 115.
77. Ibid., 27.
78. Ibid., 14.
79. Read, 102-103.
80. Ibid., 103.
81. Ghiselin, 103.
82. Ibid., 10.
83. Ibid., 181.
84. Read, 104-105.
85. Ghiselin, 66.
86. Ibid., 229.
87. Olney, 49.
88. Ghiselin, 194.
89. Read, 101.
90. Ghiselin, 187-188.
91. Ibid., 124.
92. Ibid., 122.
93. Ibid., 239.
94. Ibid., 207.
95. Ibid., 81.
96. Stael, Mme de, De la Litterature, (l.ii), quoted in Lagarde et Michard,XlXieme Siecle, (Paris: Bordas, 1969), 19.
97. Olney, 328-329.
98. Skelton, Robin, Poetic Truth, (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978), 120.
99. Ibid., 122-123.
100. Ibid., 125.
Borgia, Anthony. Life in the World Unseen, volume I. (San Francisco: H.G. White, n.d.).
Cornford, Francis MacD. trans. The Republic of Plato. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945).
Divine Principle. (New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1973).
Explaining Unification Thought. (New York: Unification Thought Institute, 1981).
Fifield, William. In Search of Genius. (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1982).
Ford, Arthur. The Life Beyond Death. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1971). Unknown But Known. (New York: Harper and Row, 1968).
Ghiselin, Brewster. The Creative Process. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952).
Hofstadter, Albert and Richard Kuhns, eds. Philosophies of Art and Beauty. (New York: Modern Library, 1964).
Kurzweil, Edith. The Age of Structuralism. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).
Moody, Raymond A., Jr. The Light Beyond. (New York: Bantam Books, 1988).
Moon, Sun Myung. God's Will and the World. (New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1985).
Science and Absolute Values. (New York: International Cultural Foundation, 1982).
"The Tradition of the Unification Church." December 11, 1977.
"True Unification and One World." June-July, 1990. Olney, James. Metaphors of Self. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972).
Outline of the Principle, Level 4. (New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1980).
Priestley, J.B. Man and Time. (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964).
Rauch, Leo. Plato's The Republic and Other Works. (New York, Monarch Press, 1965).
Read, Herbert. The Philosophy of Modern Art. (New York: Meridian Books, 1955).
Skelton, Robin. Poetic Truth. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978).
de Stael, Mme De la Litterature. (I,ii). in Lagarde et Michard, eds. XlXieme Siecle, (Paris: Bordas, 1969).