Although you worship God as the center of your faith, your understanding of God, as you know, is very vague. Then where do you start looking for Him? That question is of utmost importance.

Where do you start? Although God is surely in the center of your mind, you cannot feel it as clearly as you feel tangible things with your five physical senses. You should not start looking into God Himself. You should look into yourself first.

You have a mind and body. You should investigate yourself centered not on your body but your mind. The mind of every fallen man is different, although its root may be the same.

A circle has 360 degrees, and if two lines are drawn through the center, one perpendicular to the other, it creates angles of 90 degrees. We can divide a circle into 360 parts. If our mind is like a circle, it is important for you to decide how to draw the first horizontal line. The shape of a horizontal line in a circle differs from one person to another. Your original characters are different, just as your faces are different.

When we go to divide a circle starting from zero degrees, adding one degree and then two degrees and so on, we have to use a standard to calculate each degree. If your mind is like a circle, the standard to divide it differs from one person to another. You have to know that.

Everyone is different. Why? Each person has a different horizontal line and vertical line upon which to divide a circle into 360 parts, just as each one has a different face, hobbies, feelings, etc. One person draws a line this way, and another person that way. Everyone does differently. We therefore have to adjust them.

How do you do it? First you must find the zero point. Where is that? In your mind. When you draw a horizontal line upon the zero point, you can draw a perpendicular line from it.

You must stand as an object before Heaven, which is the subject. God has surely given us the foundation upon which we can stand as an object. You must find a perpendicular line upon the horizontal foundation of your mind. There is surely such a perpendicular line in your mind. Everyone has a different standard for such a perpendicular line. How do you adjust your perpendicular line to the zero point? In a power plant there are many different types of meters. Each meter has something similar to the zero point, centered on which its direction, power, quantity and so forth can be adjusted. We must have such a standard.

There is a gate in your mind. The gate does not open in just one direction. Since your mind is always moving around, the gate is always changing its direction as well. Without going through such a gate, you as a minus cannot make a relationship with God, who is a plus. If the direction of the gate is not right, your mind cannot work well. Everyone has such a gate. As you may already know, prayer is different depending on when you pray. Prayer at one o'clock is different from prayer at three o'clock. You should experience it. If you pray in a deep and mysterious state, you will know it. You may have such an experience. Prayers in the morning, at noon, in the early evening, and at night are all different.

Our mind responds differently depending on when and how we pray, just as our physical senses respond differently to different seasons. So you should know when you can pray the best. You can pray deeply when you are close to God. As you continue to make an effort, someday you'll find the gate. Don't you think so? When the gate of God and that of your mind become perfectly one, you can feel exactly what God is feeling.

How can you do it? You need to look into your mind and cultivate it. Your zero point has shifted 180 degrees because of the fall of humankind. Your zero point is not where it should be. It has been behaving its own way. Therefore you need to bring it back to the original place. (Father draws a picture on the blackboard.)

You need to bring it back clockwise. Some people try to do it counterclockwise, because it seems to be a shorter way. They will never succeed, no matter how many years they try. Even one thousand years' effort will not help them. They must go all the way back in the right direction. That is the way it is.

This is true for religions. Religious people should know that the end of this world is drawing near. They should move clockwise. If they move counterclockwise or stay as they are, however, they are destined to be crushed when the day approaches.

Some people have wrong angles and directions. They tend to go in the wrong direction in spite of themselves. There are all kinds of religions. Some of them have expanded centered on God's providence, others centered on Satan. Therefore it is extremely difficult for us to tell good religions and bad ones apart.

This is true for our mind. There are good minds and bad minds. You may think your mind is good, but it is not necessarily true. Some of you are very much influenced by evil, and others more by goodness. There are all types of minds because of the fall of humankind.

What is of utmost importance, therefore, is to start looking for your zero point and try to tune the gate of your mind to God. In other words, as you practice your faith it is very important to find out when the gate of your mind opens. Then you have to adjust it to God.

You always have to be alert. You should always wonder if this may be the time you can successfully adjust your mind to God. Students should wonder if they might be able to adjust their minds to God while studying something, or while having a good time. You have to look for the right moment and make an effort to adjust yourself to God all the time.

First you should know the depth of your mind, and then try to open it. Then you should try to adjust it to the place where the gate of Heaven is located. This is the most precious thing to do in your religious life.

As you make an effort to become a true object of God, a variety of new and dynamic phenomena will start happening to you.

You may have had only a winter mind in the past. But you will start having autumn, summer and spring feelings as well. Why? The universe is always moving around. So is our mind. Just as four seasons are brought about by the rotation of our planet, so our mind is always moving around and experiencing a variety of feelings.

There are four seasons not only in a year but in a day. The morning corresponds to spring, the noon to summer, the early evening to fall, and the night to winter. Thus there are four seasons in a day. There are also four seasons in the morning, however. You can have spring, summer, autumn, and winter feelings even during just the morning. Just as large things change their shape on a large scale, small ones do the same thing on a smaller scale.

Our mind is the same. First you should know that your mind is experiencing all kinds of feelings. Most of you don't know what you are feeling now. You are not usually aware of whether you are feeling summer or spring or winter. You should therefore learn it through your prayer and by having a variety of experiences.

Once you are in such a state, you will start experiencing all kinds of phenomena. You know the word "hint" or "suggestion," don't you? When you are walking somewhere, for example, and happen to see a bird flying off the wall of a beautiful house, the gate of your mind suddenly opens and you start learning something out of nowhere.

You will start experiencing all kinds of phenomena on a daily basis. What someone says will give you a hint to become more deeply aware of your life. Such experiences will increase gradually.

After that stage you will start receiving revelations in your dreams. I'm not talking about your dreams during deep sleep. The dreams I am talking about will happen only when you are half awake. Saint Paul experienced the third heaven when he was half awake. In such a half-awake-and-half-dreaming stage you may catch, say, two-thirds of the words spoken by someone as if beside you, and you can physically experience the dream with your own five senses.

You should not make light of such a phenomenon. You should analyze it scientifically and try to find out why it happened and what you should do about it. You need to check yourself every day as to what may happen next. The result will surely come out. You will gradually experience that the revelations you had in your dream, which you can hardly forget, will be proved 100 percent right in reality.

People you are talking with in the half-awake stage of your dream are going to appear in reality. You are going to hear the song you heard in your dream. Such phenomena will happen. This is because your mind is resonating with the spirit world. You know a tuning fork, don't you? Your mind will become a tuning fork that can resonate with the spirit world. You should think very highly of such experiences.

What will happen next? Where will God appear? God will appear not in the air but through your mind. You haven't had such an experience, have you? This is because your mind is not firmly established and because you are still controlled by your body. Once your spiritual mind is firmly established and becomes the subject of your physical mind, you will start having different experiences.

If you go up to a much higher level, you will start talking with your mind during prayer. Your prayer will resonate with your mind, and you will physically hear what you are saying in your mind. During the first stage you will receive a hint or suggestion of such possibilities in your daily life.

Religious people must be aware of these facts. When you come into contact with someone, you shouldn't treat that person in a casual manner. You should always wonder if he can teach you something. You must always be hungry in your mind. You should look for something new in your mind through him. You are always either a subject or an object in a relationship with him. As a subject or an object you should try to find out something new in your mind through him.

You can easily tell who is your subject and who is your object if you witness to people. You can feel the wavelengths of their minds and witness to them with joy. Every mind has its own wavelength, doesn't it? Your mind has its own unique smell, just as a butcher smells of meat, or a dealer in fabrics smells of cloth, or your body has its own smell. You have to be able to smell your mind.

Just like your body, your mind has something similar to the sense of touch as well. Your mind emits something like electronic waves to look for its own object. It is like a magnet; it has plus and minus. It rejects any wavelengths that are not similar to yours and is attracted to those that are similar, in spite of itself.

Religious people must believe that there is nothing in the world that is not related to them. Why is that necessary? Because we have lost all kinds of relationships due to the fall of humankind. People have cut off their true relationship with nature, other people, and God. You have to be very conscious of this fact in order to bring all the relationships back to the original state by connecting them with each other. Unless you have such an attitude, you'll never succeed in pioneering in this field. This is very logical.

You need be ready all the time to look for something. During your prayer in the morning you may be able to sense that something good is going to happen that day. You shouldn't let nature take its own course, but actively start looking for whatever it is. This type of attitude is extremely important in leading a religious life. Spiritual awareness and its practice will surely enliven your life. This is all based on your experiences during the half-awake state.

If your spiritual level goes higher, you will start receiving revelations and hints on a daily basis. Hints are different from revelations. Hints are given directly to you by someone, and it is not necessary to figure them out. On the other hand, you must always interpret revelations, which sometimes leads to problems. Some revelations come verbally, and others are visual. A vision could be a couple of deer drinking water from a spring and then glancing at a mountain in the distance on a warm spring day. This type of vision symbolizes boundless hope and happiness. You will have a variety of such visions. This kind of experience does not happen accidentally. Heaven is doing this to help you to cultivate your mind. Your mind is not flat, like glass; it is uneven. So when a heavenly ray hits the uneven plane of your mind, it will be refracted. A slight change in the angle of an incoming ray will cause a change in the angle of an outgoing ray. Therefore, God has to give you all kinds of revelations to enlighten each part of your mind.

The next step brings about much higher spiritual experiences, such as those found in the Book of Revelation. In this stage you enter the spirit world and have various spiritual experiences all day long. Here, you have a direct relationship with God. Unless you have such experiences, it may not be possible for you to apply God's providence to your daily life. It may be very hard for those with no such experiences to believe in what I'm saying. You have to know how important it is to lead a religious life based on such spiritual experiences. So you must make an effort to enlighten yourself every day.

We Unification Church members often have spiritual experiences during prayer. The spiritual forces are like electromagnetic power. They enter our bodies. You will experience high pressure entering your body, pressure that is supernatural and superhuman power and is much stronger than your conscience. Since your body has been influenced by various fallen natures, you'll certainly find yourself trying to reject these supernatural forces even though they originate from God or original human character.

Unfortunately, fallen man never accepts God's power without rejecting it first, which means that he cannot be purified right away. Because of this habit, God lets His power enter your mind in varied strengths and at varied times - sometimes strongly and sometimes weakly. In doing so, God will gradually cultivate your mind. You may have vibrations in your body, lose your consciousness, or become overpowered by strong spiritual forces.

What will happen next if you continue having such experiences? Your physical body and all the fallen natures will become completely purified, and through this you will become totally able to accept God. Once you are in such a state, you can receive guidance from Heaven directly and will never contradict it even if you have no further spiritual experiences.

Eventually, you have to be completely purified. But you have to go through many different stages before you reach that level. You have to go through receiving hints, suggestions, and revelations in your dreams and having various other spiritual experiences.

Once you reach the completely purified stage, your mind will start giving directions to you. You may not be able to speak at all, even though you want to talk to someone. Or you will scold someone in spite of yourself. You will experience such incomprehensible phenomena from time to time. Therefore it is very important for you to know how to control these experiences. If you misuse them, people may treat you like a crazy person.

It is absolutely necessary to have such experiences in your religious life. Then you have to put these experiences into practice. You have to experiment. In doing so, you will become stronger, so much so that you will no longer be influenced by anyone's words. You have to know that both spiritual awareness and its practice are of the utmost importance in your religious life.

How can we achieve that goal? Roughly speaking, we can divide all human beings into two types. The first type consists of so-called intellectual people, who search for truth. They accept anything that sounds reasonable and reject anything contrary to reason. The other type consists of people who emphasize feelings rather than reason. In the Unification Church they are called spiritual people. Whereas intellectual people look for external understanding first and then try to apply it to the internal world, spiritual people look for internal feelings first and then try to apply them to the external world. We may call the former the incoming type, and the latter the outgoing type. Roughly speaking, these are the two types of people.

Intellectual people generally don't like prayer. They don't know exactly why it is necessary for us to pray or to call God "Heavenly Father." Many cannot believe it. They consider it superstitious and think that their own existence is going to be denied eventually. Intellectual people like to find truth and form theories. Spiritual people, on the other hand, seem to have been born being fond of calling on God. They tend to rejoice excessively without explanation. They don't need to eat as long as they can call God "Father."

These are two totally different types of people. Which type of people do you think is successful in a revolutionary spiritual movement? I don't think intellectual people can do it. Those who have accomplished great things in the religious world are mostly simple and uneducated people. They are not intellectual but spiritual.

They don't care what the world will say about them. They see things without prejudice and do exactly what God tells them to do. As a result, they turn out to become great figures in history. Saint Paul was originally an intellectual person. But since he was struck by spiritual lightning on the road to Damascus, he became crazy for Heaven. He emphatically denied external searching and started giving importance to internal experiences, thereby becoming a new standard-bearer of the Christian revolution. As is often the case, those emphasizing reason cannot play a role as great leaders of the religious world. Elder Pak, here, is a simple person. He looks simple and warmhearted. Yes, there are two types of people.

You should know which group you belong to. Spiritual people are usually not good at reasoning, though they are very mature spiritually. As far as reasoning and truth are concerned, they are usually not consistent from beginning to end, so they most likely drop out halfway. They cannot go to the end. On the other hand, those who are good at reasoning and truth but poor spiritually cannot go to the end either. Therefore you have to make an effort to correct your weaknesses.

It is often said that we have to pray in spirit and truth. This means that you have to create a balance between learning from the physical world and from the spirit world. You should stand in the center of both the physical world and the spirit world, and adjust yourself to the right or the left, as the case may be. Otherwise you cannot become perfect.

If you are good spiritually but poor intellectually (Father draws a line on the blackboard), you cannot go straight. You turn this way to the left. Do you follow me? It is as if you were being pulled the wrong way by a strong person. But if you strengthen your spirituality by truth, you will find it easy to go straight. (76:125)