The Words of the Kaufmann Family |
The Unification Mission
Frank Kaufmann
June 19, 1992
I. Guidelines for Reading
It is best if the following material is approached on the basis of prayer, or whatever aids to reason one uses to assess truthfulness. Reason while a helpful and important faculty for divining truth is inadequate to the task without spiritual assistance. Evidence for the insufficiency of reason alone is the frequency with which reasonable people engage in self destructive behavior. Likewise serious attempts to assess Father Moon and his movement always include appeal to God, or some higher reservoir of knowledge and truth for guiding and assisting reason and its attendant critical faculties.
II. Liberation
The essential concept which pervades Unification piety is liberation, or freedom. Unificationists seek to remove all shackles, burdens, and barriers, both external and internal, both contingent and structural which inhibit the free rise of the self and the world to God. Unificationists labor intensely on the purification of the self and conversely bear unlimited commitment to the liberation of the world. Unificationists live to remove every conceivable obstruction, enslavement, oppression, social or political condition which prevents the entire world, and every individual within it, from having clear access to God, from having complete freedom and complete peace.
What constitutes peace? What constitutes freedom? Both concepts can be defined similarly. Simply said: Freedom is the state of having no one and no thing against you. Nothing conspires to prevent your unbounded joy. The lack of freedom means that an external agent with greater power than yourself imprisons or enslaves you impeding the pursuit of your determination and purpose. This agent acts "against" you.
Peace can be defined similarly. The lack of peace comes as a result of having something or someone against you. This agent may not have sufficient power to imprison you. Nevertheless, even without power the mere state of enmity is sufficient to deny you peace. If we do not have peace we do not have freedom. If is even one is against me, I am not free.
It does not matter how rich, powerful, or even militarily superior I might be, the mere existence of an opponent, threatens my happiness and deprives me of freedom. Enemies require me to build walls and fences, to put locks on my door, to have standing armies, to have nuclear weapons, and so on. If there is even one person or thing against me, I become enslaved. An enemy does not even require superior might to deprive me of my freedom. All nations should prefer to spend their money on schools, social programs, the arts, medical facilities, or relief programs. Who then obliges them to spend such incomprehensible amounts on the military? In this way nations are enslaved. The freedom to build national, cultural, and educational prosperity for nation or family is held captive, by the mere presence of an enemy. The decision on where I or my nation can devote its resources is not determined by the bearer of the resources, but by those against us. How disadvantaged we all are in this regard!
The Unification project then, is simply the complete dissolution of the concept and possibility of enmity. Enemies make freedom and peace impossible. And without peace and freedom, human happiness is not possible. Any where on earth one finds a single agent defining itself as the enemy of someone or something else one finds a destroyer, a barriers builder, and an enslaver of itself and the other. Thus the Unification project for the world, in short, is advocating and embodying the process and the means by which enemies cease to exist as a reality in human affairs.
The Unification ideal is that no one person on earth has any enemies, no one family, or nation, or block of nations, etc. has even one enemy. In fact the ultimate ideal is that such a notion would not exist. This is the end goal and desire for Unificationists.
III. True Love
Anyone who hears or reads Father Moon constantly encounters the expression "true love." This is the mechanism for the removal of enemies. Living in accordance with the way of True Love is the Unification mission. Unificationists believe, if a movement can successfully establish conditions in which no one suffers under imprisonment or from the aggression of enemies, that the world can ascend to God, live in harmony with His law, rejoice in the presence of his perfect Love, and flourish in unbounded joy.
This point is crucial. The end must be the pursuit of God's love. A project strictly oriented toward justice at the political level, lacks the essential, necessary elements for the achievement of world peace. Ideologies for peace that do not contain within themselves a program for self purification and the obligation for their practitioners to surrender to the perfect will of God endanger the world with destruction, and cannot bring peace. Ideologies which have undertaken projects in this fashion include Communism, Secular Humanism, Post-Enlightenment Rationalism, and others. These do not contain guidelines for the purification and the reconstruction of self. They encourage conscientious behavior, and have extensive moral rhetoric for healing the world, yet have been detrimental to human health and well-being. The authentically religious person must live in a unified project for self-liberation and service to the world.
The Unification effort to remove enemies from the world is not restricted to world orientation, which would make it a dangerous ideology, but rather contains a radical and rigorous demand for self-purification, and obedience to the living will of God. We seek happiness, but where does our happiness lie? It lies in becoming one with God. There is no other way. No amount of drugs, no amount of sex, no amount of money, no amount of university degrees, no amount of power or authority can bring happiness. This should be old news. Certainly evidence of the misery that characterizes the lives of those seeking happiness through self-indulgence is overwhelming.
Happiness is derived from being one with God. The pursuit of that requires and results in peace and freedom. If there are enemies, barriers, or obstructions, that happiness cannot be achieved. We cannot devote our energies and the full glory of our lives to the constant praise and glory of God because we are bound, fighting a forces that oppose us. Thus the removal of enemies is vital for the self and its responsibility to reach God.
Once again; The enemy of my longing for God, of my perfect freedom and perfect peace is dissolved through the application of True Love. Thus the central principle characteristic of Unification piety is to live a life of True Love. This is what Unification members seek, teach, strive to incarnate.
IV. The Inner Enemy
To achieve liberation of self for the free ascent to God we need to identify that which opposes us in that effort, and the means of operation employed for the successful removal of this impediment. This is a most difficult task. Most non-religious or only moderately religious people are not conscious of an internally operative enemy, a force which enslaves or oppresses by means of techniques which act on us from within. Most people mistakenly assume themselves and their actions to reflect a unified will and self. What religious people know through revelation at first, and through experience later, is that there exists an influence on human beings which runs as close to the self as the blood which flows through our veins. This is the enemy and defiler of our pure and original desire operating from within with incalculable skill, effectiveness and hatred. this force is know to have personhood and is known in Abrahamic traditions as Satan. He enslaves us and obliges us to engage precious resources in a never-ending battle against him. Even this internal enemy cannot be conquered by force. It must eventually be brought to desist in its evil intent towards us.
For the self to have happiness through oneness with God, it must be free from the influence of Satan. Satan acts as an enemy against me in my effort to reach God. As long as he remains my enemy I can never be at peace, I can never be free. Until I am completely free from his influence, until I am completely free from the incessant attack of this enemy I cannot be at peace. The Unification mission for the individual is to rid him or herself of this one constant, ever active enemy, Satan. Thus the first step in liberation is to free oneself from Satanic influence. This is pursued systematically, programmatically, steadily, and diligently. The Unificationist applies the means by which we gradually diminish our relationship with evil impulses and influences until these dwindle to virtual absence. We follow a way of life specifically designed to bring about this effect. If you meet a Unificationist who has achieved some degree of success in their discipline you will find that they are pure-hearted and self-sacrificial.
V. The World
On the world level the activity of Unificationists is the effort to encourage others (be it individuals, families, or nations) to abandon the willingness to hold others as enemies. This too is carried out in a steady and systematic fashion. The gradual removal of barriers is intended for the ultimate purification in which no living person has enemies seeking to enslave or disadvantage them. Life in such a world is one in which one is free to be oriented to God--free to ascend to God and live in the glory of peace and freedom and happiness.
The world, like anything else, is divided in two spheres; one internal and one external. The internal, corresponding to the mind, and the external corresponding to the body.
Those institutions devoted to the health, maintenance, protection, establishment, and encouragement of a healthy mind, one that is free to pursue its rightful course are essentially those of religion. Religion is that which bears responsibility for the order of the internal self, the order of the invisible dimension of human life. For the spiritual purpose for which we are born, religions have the primary responsibility.
The needs of the body, on the other hand, are managed by externally oriented institutions such as those devoted to economy, politics, physical health etc. These institutions pursue reasonable organization and structure so that one's physical needs can be handled equitably, and justly. The responsibilities of these major institutions is to insure that all people have enough to eat, proper shelter and the means by which the physical and cultural necessities of life are protected and maintained.
These two entities should have a harmonious relationship similar to the way mind and body should have a harmonious relationship. If the secular, external, scientific, philosophical, political, economic, or military disregards the teaching and truth of religion a social situation is created which resembles an individual not in control over his or her own body. Lustfulness, greed, gluttony, are expressions of a body dominating the refined desire of the spirit. These have social and global expression in economic, military, or political activity that is not guided by religious teachings. Thus one mission of the Unification movement is to encourage a harmonious relationship between the secular world and what is revealed in the true and high religions. If you see a nation or bloc declining you can be sure that it is parting from God's instructions to human kind. It is a simple proportional relationship.
VI. Religion and Politics
Remember, enemies are those who remove my freedom, peace and happiness. In the effort to remove enmity from the world of human affairs we encounter two spheres in which enmity operates. One is the religious sphere. Certain people are religious in such a way that they bear hostility towards people of other religions. The degree to which one uses religion to generate hostility is the degree one participates in that mode of enslavement which keeps the world from its free ascent to God. It is perhaps the most tragic disorder, for the responsibility of religion is to promote ascent to God.
The secondary, or external expression of the failure of religions to follow their teachings of compassion for all is international and political enmity expressed militarily, diplomatically, economically and in other forms of domination and exploitation. It is not possible to heal or transform divided and hate filled minds through diplomacy, through re-structuring economical trade relations, or other such means. Diplomats and negotiators themselves suffer from human qualities susceptible to hostility, condescension, pride, insecurity, domination etc. People whether in government, politics, banking, economics etc. who have not removed pride, arrogance, hostility, enmity, from their mind by following closely to a religious path and teaching generate political, economic, and military activity which is a direct expression of that enmity.
The Unification mission or project to remove enmity the reality of enmity addresses its manifestation among religions and among nations and blocs. For this reason Rev. Moon founded and supports inter-religious work as well as peace programs in all other spheres of human activity. Please note the partial list of such activities attached to this brochure.
VII. Our Present Situation
How does the world of inter-religious barriers and hate manifest itself on the global scale today? There are at least 5 basic regions in the world which manifest a characteristic religious division. These include the Americas, North and South, Europe, East and West, the Middle East; Africa; and Asia. Each of these blocs have relations within them that are unique to the bloc, or region, and are inter-related with other regions on the global scale.
North America in spite of its multi-religious make-up is inextricably tied to Protestant roots. South America conversely has similar foundations in Catholicism. Europe similarly has a historically Protestant North, a Catholic South (or Mediterranean belt), and an Orthodox East. The Middle East bears historic division involving Christians, Muslims and Jews. Asia bears divisions involving Buddhism and Confucianism, as well as the influence of sectarian divisions among Buddhists. Africa in addition to problems suffered by indigenous traditions, is torn asunder by conflicts between a Muslim North and a Christian South.
Imagine the intensity of the enmity in the region with which you are most familiar, and then extend this awareness to the fact that in all places on earth divisions are as strong, and intractable. Acknowledging this is the first step toward a stance of realism vis-a-vis the peace process.
For peace on earth, the removal of enemies, the liberation of ourselves, the possibility of freedom, and the possibility of personal human happiness, each and every one of these regions faces a task as enormous as the hatred and enmity of the region with which you are most familiar. The unbearable irony is that no religion on earth teaches murderous sentiment. No religion on earth teaches a person to be filled with hate, disdain, and disregard for another human being's beliefs and way of life.
Religion must lead the way in removing the concept of enemies from the world of human affairs.
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