INTRODUCTION
Like
many people throughout history I have been on a quest: a search for
an understanding of ultimate reality. This has been the fundamental
theme of my life. After a long, meandering journey I have found an
explanation that satisfies me but is difficult to use as a guide in
my life. Along the way I have come across some other philosophies of
life and learned very much from them. One in particular served me as
a guide for many years and set my life on a course which I can and
will no longer change: the Divine Principle as taught by the late
Korean religious leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
I
no longer believe in the Divine Principle and Rev. Moon, who
proclaimed himself with his wife Hak Ja Han as the “True Parents”
of humankind, essentially the one and only Messiah. In fact I no
longer believe even in the God postulated by the monotheistic
religions. My idea of “God” is quite different, closer to the
reality I perceive and understand. But I am no longer alone and free
to pursue my quest wherever it may lead me. I have a family and a
responsibility that I cannot and will not shirk. My family was begun
by Rev. Moon and is inseparable from him and the movement he founded.
Here,
then, is the story of my meanders.
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Chapter
1
New
York City, Thursday, 6 March 1975. After a long flight over the icy
wastes of Iceland and Labrador, this was Manhattan, a different
world. It was after dark, on 42nd Street near Grand Central station,
when I encountered what to me was a foreboding of Doomsday. The tall,
dark buildings, the impression of decay given by the city's famous
potholes, and the steam rising here and there from pipes running
under the streets reminded me of a haunting image I had in my mind of
the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, which I expected to occur
within a few years' time.
It
was a relatively warm night for this time of the year in New York. As
I walked with my backpack on my back, I noticed a young man standing
on the sidewalk in front of a small blackboard, alternately drawing
and gesticulating rather wildly while he gave what seemed to be a
lecture at the top of his voice. The funny thing was, there was no
one listening.
Another
young man stood a few meters away, apparently waiting for something
or somebody, but he seemed to pay no attention to the first one. I
looked at the blackboard but the figures the lecturer had drawn meant
nothing to me. I caught the words "Last Days" in the stream
of his talk, and then something about the Bible and a "Divine
Principle."
Tired
as I was after the long flight, the man's lecture seemed too arcane
for me to be able to figure out what he was talking about even though
his mention of the "Last Days" had intrigued me. Also, I
was hoping to catch a train to Montreal rather than having to spend
the night in New York. So I asked the bystander where I could find
out about trains to Canada. "Sorry mate, I can't help you
there," he said with an accent that didn't sound American. He
turned out to be an Australian who knew little more about New York
than I did.
As
I walked on, down Park Avenue, then over to Fifth Avenue and back up
towards 42nd Street, I saw more young people giving lectures in front
of blackboards set up on the sidewalks. Some of them had an audience,
others did not. They all seemed to preach the same message and draw
the same figures.
One
of the city's yellowcabs stopped at the curb in front of me and two
well-dressed young women got out, one black, the other oriental. Both
came right up to me and introduced themselves: Barbara from Guyana
and Tamie from Japan. They asked me if I needed some help. I told
them I was from Luxembourg and asked where I could catch a train to
Montreal. Barbara said I had to go to "Penn Station" below
Madison Square Garden. She told me they would take me there but could
not because they had an appointment in the building in front of which
we were standing.
She
explained that they had to attend an important lecture about a new
revelation about God and a new understanding of the Bible, and she
invited me to attend if I was interested. I said I might be
interested but first I had to find out about trains to Montreal, as I
was hoping to catch one that same night. Barbara gave me directions
to Madison Square Garden and both girls handed me their business
cards, suggesting that I call them if I needed any further help.
I
walked slowly down Fifth Avenue, lost in thought. Yes, this big city
really conjured up the feeling that it was doomed, and the entire
civilization that created it was doomed. It would all be annihilated
in the nuclear war that I saw coming within a few years' time. That
holocaust had to happen -- and I actually wished for it to occur.
Because I felt that something was fundamentally wrong with this
civilization. More than that, something, was fundamentally wrong with
humankind.
In
my view, the earth and in fact the entire universe was a harmonious
whole, like a gigantic organism within which every part played a
certain role and all parts were complementary to each other. Only man
did not fit into this harmonious whole. Man was like a malignant
cancer that, though originating from the whole, spread uncontrollably
and destroyed other parts of the organism. Man alone was going
against the purpose and design of the universe, and modern human
civilization represented a cancer that had grown to such proportions
that it threatened to overwhelm an entire planet. It had to be
destroyed. Actually, because of its inherent contradictions, it was
bound to destroy itself.
But
I believed there could be, there had to be, a new beginning --
because the universe had brought forth humankind and it was thus
meant to exist, but it clearly had somehow gone wrong. Modern
civilization would be destroyed but there would be survivors in
different places. Those people would have to live in nature and start
anew, but they would have to avoid the original mistake that made man
go in the wrong direction.
I
felt that those survivors had to become completely one with nature,
one with the spirit of the whole, the essence of the universe. And
they should never ask the question "why?" To me, this was
the root of all the problems. We had to attune our hearts and minds
to the harmonious whole of the universe without ever asking why
things were the way they were and why we were what we were. Asking
"why?" somehow meant that we separated ourselves mentally
from the whole -- and that was what caused humankind to go astray.
Our
ancestors in Stone Age had made this mistake, and the survivors of
the expected nuclear holocaust would have to go back to Stone Age to
try again. I was on my way to Stone Age. I was planning to go to a
remote area in the wilds of British Columbia and to try to live in
nature on my own, ridding myself gradually of all the implements of
civilization that I carried with me to help me get over the initial
shock.
I
felt that if I could survive like this for a year or so, then I was
ready to become one of the survivors of the nuclear war to come --
and perhaps even a leader of a new humankind. I was 24 years old and
I believed the nuclear war would come in 1979, which was four years
away. After spending at least a year in British Columbia, I wanted to
make my way down to Patagonia, where I would wait for the holocaust
to begin. The reason why I had chosen Patagonia was that I felt there
would be less nuclear fallout over the southern hemisphere because
most worth-while targets for nuclear strikes were in the north.
In
front of Madison Square Garden I saw two blackboards like the ones I
had encountered before. Several people were standing around either
listening to two preachers who were lecturing about the Last Days or
talking to others.
I
watched the scene for a moment and then looked for the passage to the
train station below the building. Just as I started moving toward the
entrance an Oriental lady in her 30s approached me and asked if I
was interested in science or religion. I said I was interested in
both. She gave me a flyer and told me the people lecturing about the
Last Days were speaking about a new revelation that could bring
science and religion together for the sake of world peace.
The
idea sounded good to me, and when she told me a little more about it
I realized it must be the same revelation the Guyanese lady Barbara
had mentioned a little earlier. I asked where she was from and it
turned out she was Japanese, and her name was Noriko. I gave her my
name and told her I had just arrived from my country Luxembourg but
wanted to take a train to Montreal that evening or early next
morning.
She
said she hoped I could find the time to listen to a special lecture
about the new revelation, which she called the Divine Principle,
before I took off for Montreal. The lecture was going to be held in a
building across Fifth Avenue from the New York Public Library,
exactly the place where I had met Barbara and Tamie earlier.
I
said I was interested but I needed to get information about trains to
Montreal and to buy a ticket first. Noriko called a tall young man
standing nearby and asked him if he could show me where to find what
I wanted. The man introduced himself as Bill. He took me down to Penn
Station, where I bought a train ticket to Montreal.
A
little later Bill disappeared briefly and then returned driving a big
Dodge van. Noriko and I got in and we drove to the building near the
library on 5th Avenue, picking up a few other people along
the way.
I
don't remember any detail but we entered a hall full of people, with
a man in front who had just begun to give a lecture. From time to
time he drew figures and symbols on a large board facing the crowd.
He
explained about how God's nature is reflected in everything through
the dualities of internal character and external form, and positive
and negative charges or male and female genders.
He
said God was like a parent to us humans, whom He created in order to
share his love. But, as told in the Bible, when the first humans fell
away from their Parent He had to let them go their own way because He
did not want to interfere with their freedom of choice. In order to
win them back to His side He guided leaders He chose among them to
set conditions that would ultimately prepare the way for a Messiah, a
person who perfectly embodied God's love.
This
Messiah would have to find a perfect bride together with whom he
would become the “True Parents” in reflection of God's dual
nature and lead humankind back to Him. The Messiah was Jesus Christ,
but the people did not follow him, so he could not find a bride and
had to sacrifice his life to become a spiritual guide and inspiration
to the world.
Jesus's
followers the Christians then became the people through whom God
worked to fulfill His providence to bring a Messiah who could become
the “True Parents” of humankind. The Last Days prophesied in the
Bible was the time when a new Messiah would appear with a new
understanding of God's truth, and this time was upon us. .....
I
remember seeing many pictures on the walls of the man I later learned
was Rev. Sun Myung Moon of Korea, the man who had discovered the
Divine Principle, and I couldn't help feeling even then that perhaps
he was the one the people here believed to be the new messiah.
At
the end of the lecture the speaker suggested there was much more to
the Divine Principle than what he had just explained. He invited
anyone interested in learning more about it to attend a weekend
workshop in a beautiful place in the countryside on the Hudson River
north of New York City.
Over
snacks and drinks after the talk Noriko introduced me to a few of her
friends who were all members of the Unification Church, the movement
founded by Rev. Moon. Some of them asked me how I liked the ideas
presented by the speaker, whom they named Mr. Barry. I said I thought
they were quite interesting because they seemed to indicate a
possibility to reconcile the Bible with modern science. Also, I liked
the proposition that Jesus' death on the cross was not God's original
plan.
When
Noriko suggested I attend the workshop Barry had mentioned I told her
there was a problem: I was allowed to stay in the United States only
until the next day, 7th March. This was because the immigration
official at J.F. Kennedy Airport who checked my papers stamped that
date on the I-94 card that he stapled into my passport. He had asked
me how long I was planning to stay in the US and I said I wanted to
take a train to Canada either that evening or the following day.
When
I showed her the form in my passport Noriko went to talk to Barry and
others about it. Barry later came up to me and said my stay permit
could easily be extended. He seemed quite confident about it, so I
decided there was no need to worry and I could spend the next weekend
in the retreat upstate on the Hudson, which he had called Barrytown.
I
was told a bus would take people to Barrytown the next evening, so I
thought I might have to spend that night in a hotel. Barry suggested
I could stay in a house owned by the church in Manhattan, on 71st
Street.
Late
that evening Bill, driving his Dodge van, took Noriko, me and several
other people I had met after the lecture to the house Barry had
mentioned. The church members called it a “center,” and it seemed
packed with mostly young people. The men and women were strictly
segregated and lived on separate floors. I was taken to a large room
where many men lay close to each other in sleeping bags on the floor.
The ceiling lights had already been turned off, so it was fairly dark
inside. I found a place in a corner with just enough space for my
backpack and sleeping bag.
Early
next morning we were all woken up when the lights were turned on, and
we had to take turns using the bathroom and the few sinks where we
could wash our faces. I talked to some of the men there, and when
they found out I was not a member of the church they were surprised I
had been allowed to spend the night there with them.
Noriko
came to our men's floor a little later to pick me up for a
sightseeing tour of Manhattan. We had lunch in a Japanese restaurant
that day and visited Central Park, the Empire State Building and a
few other places around town. ...
(more on this: Journeys spiritual and physical since 1975
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