Master Woo Myung Teaching – How Can We Reach Truth and Why Must We Become It?
First, we must understand what Truth is.
What is Truth?
Most of us have learned that Truth is never-changing and everlasting. So then, what exactly is this never-changing and everlasting existence? Let’s begin by thinking about the Universe. The Universe cannot be drawn because it is infinite; however, let us try illustrating it as the following:
This Universe contains the stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, and it is on this Earth that man lives. Truth is just as we see it, and just as we hear it; what we see here is the whole of the universe.
There are the stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth in the Universe.
Now let’s imagine that these stars, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth and we humans were to go back in time so that we lived eternities ago. Scientists say the lifespan of a star ranges from five to fourteen billion years. Compared to an eternity, the lifespan of the Sun, Moon, Earth, man and even the fourteen-billion-year lifespan of a star would be like a split second. Therefore, as time passed, we humans, along with the stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, would have all disappeared, so that now, at the present time, nothing would remain but pure emptiness.
Now imagine that since an eternity ago the hottest of fires has been burning up the whole of that emptiness all the way up to the present. Does the emptiness disappear? No, this existence remains as it is.
This emptiness, which is the Universe before the infinite Universe, is Truth. It is a living existence that has always existed without beginning or end and will continue to exist eternally.
Just as each of us have both a body and a mind, this infinite Universe also has a Body and a Mind. The Body, or Jung, is the emptiness; the Mind is the sole Shin, which is omnipresent throughout the entire Universe.
Due to his self-centered attachments, man is confined to his own image, which is the reason he can neither see the God of the Universe, nor the great Soul and Spirit that is the Body and Mind of the Universe. Only when man becomes the great Soul and Spirit will he be able to see and know the great Soul and Spirit. So long as he has his self-centered attachments – in other words his sins – man cannot become one with Truth.
This great Soul and Spirit is the Creator. This great Soul and Spirit is what creates and sustains the stars, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth – the whole of creation – including us. All of us have learned in science class that the stars, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, all creations, and mankind came from the Universe. The Universe is the Soul and Spirit of Truth. And unless he returns to this existence of Truth – the Soul and Spirit – man cannot live eternally.
The way to become the great Soul and Spirit is to abandon one’s self-centered human mind as well as the body that contains it. Furthermore, one must abandon the universe of one’s own delusions.
Only then will this great Soul and Spirit remains. When the whole of one’s body and mind is completely reborn as the great Soul and Spirit, one will be reborn as the child of God. This is resurrection. This is eternal and everlasting life. The entirety of the great Soul and Spirit is oneself; such a person is Truth, itself.
When one is reborn as the great Soul and Spirit, one lives forever as the immortal Truth because the Whole is the individual and the individual is the Whole. One becomes the Energy and Light of the Universe, which is the everlasting Truth.
Heaven is only for a person who has become Truth, which is the great Soul and Spirit of the Universe. Man’s mind is only as big as himself, but when it becomes as big as the great Soul and Spirit, he lives forever in Heaven. But in order for this to happen, he must first throw away his mind, body, and even the universe. Only then will he become the great Soul and Spirit, itself, and live forever as an everlasting immortal; only then will he reach completion. The Christian Bible, the Buddhist Sutras, and the scriptures of other religions all speak from this complete state of being.
Now that we know what Truth is, I will explain Heaven and hell.
The difference between Heaven and hell is that Heaven is the world
where the great Soul and Spirit of the Universe lives, while hell is where one lives knowing only what one has experienced – where one lives enslaved to the shadows of one’s past.
Last night, I dreamt I was on a battlefield. Gunfire was coming from all directions and all of my fellow soldiers were killed. I decided to flee and hide, but in order to do so I had to run to the mountains fifty miles up ahead. Having been shot in the left leg, I began limping towards my destination. Not realizing that I was dreaming, the pain I felt seemed so real. All night long, I dreamt of running around, limping in the battlefield amidst a shower of never-ending gunfire, until finally, as I reached the mountains, I was shot by the enemy. At that moment, I woke up from my sleep and realized that I was not in a battlefield; there had been no gunfire, nor had I been shot. The dream was an illusion.
Although dreams exist, they are not real – they are illusions that do not actually exist. So just as one lives one’s dream each night thinking that it is real, man lives in the shadow of his memories – self-centered attachments he has in his mind – which are the experiences he has gained from the life he has lived. In other words, the life of man is a dream, and so he lives in a dream-like state of mind.
Suppose that a person has been living his life, and that currently at this moment he is forty years old. Though he may live to the age of ninety, he will continue to live with the same mind as he has had up till now. Furthermore, he will live on with that same mind even after death.
That mind is a dream. That mind is what is hell. It is a dream that exists and yet does not exist because like all illusions, it is not real. And it is here, in such an illusion, that man lives due to his mind. Man cannot live as Truth unless he has been reborn as the infinite Soul and Spirit that created the Universe – the everlasting Truth. Followings are eight levels that allow one to achieve just that.
The Eight Levels of Achieving Truth
In order to be reborn as both Energy and Light, which is the eternal and never-changing Soul and Spirit of the infinite Universe:
A person must first eliminate his body, mind, and even the universe.
Then, only the great Soul and Spirit will remain. It is when the great Soul and Spirit becomes him that he is born again.
And so he is Truth; he is wholly the stars, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, mankind – he is everything. Thus, Heaven is when everyone becomes Truth and lives forever; only then would it be Heaven.
So those are the eight levels of achieving Truth. To put it in a nutshell, they can be depicted as the following illustration:
When you eliminate your individual body and mind from the universe and also eliminate the stars, the Sun, the Moon and the Earth as well, only pure emptiness will remain. When you are born again as this pure emptiness, which is the great Soul and Spirit of the Universe, Heaven would be yours and you will have eternal life. So what would happen if, at this very moment, an earthquake tore open the crust of the earth below your feet, and you fell into hot magma? The Universe would still exist; it would remain the same, just as it is. Therefore, so long as you have completely become the Universe, you will, as the Universe, live forever; this means that you have reached completion and that you have transcended beyond all religions; this means that you have become God and are thus perfect. Furthermore, the world in which all of these things have come true is the world beyond.
Eliminating the whole of one’s self as well as the universe is the perfect, religion-transcending solution for the future. The whole of mankind would become one; everyone would regard others as oneself and would live for others. Because they are the great Soul and Spirit, itself – the Energy and Light of the Universe – they would live eternally without death. This is the reason why man is born into this world – to be born again as the great Soul and Spirit.
God created the Universe and all creatures as being perfect, but man is dead because of his own delusions. Eliminating oneself allows one to become free from this and return to the perfect Creator. The Soul and Spirit of the Universe is alive, and when man wholly becomes the wisdom of the great Soul and Spirit, he will be able to see and know everything in this world truly as it is. Everyone would become saints and would thus live in the true world – in Truth, itself – forever.
All religions will become complete when man abandons his self. Furthermore, it is when he abandons his self and becomes Truth that he becomes complete. So instead of blaming others, one must abandon one’s sinful self and become Truth so that one may live in Heaven, for now is the moment in the Universe when those who have become complete may live in Heaven. Therefore, now is the moment we must seize. Unless man becomes Truth, he remains dead in his dream-like, non-existing illusions. But if he does indeed become Truth, he will live in the world of Truth forever as Truth. Choosing whether or not to become Truth is a choice between life and death. What could be more important than saving oneself? There couldn’t possibly be anything more urgent than this.
It is absurd to believe that a person who is not reborn in Heaven while he is alive would be able to go to Heaven after he is dead. Simply put, he can’t. When his consciousness becomes one with the great Soul and Spirit of the Universe while he is alive, the world in which he lives is both Heaven as well as eternal life, itself. That is why it makes no sense to say that a person who is not reborn in Heaven while alive could possibly enter it after death.
They say it is through faith that one may enter into Heaven. However, it is only when one has Heaven in one’s mind that one truly has faith.
-Woo Myung-
