“Live in heaven while living on earth”
“In heaven, there is no disease”
Meishu-sama
Among those who hang our divine scroll, there are quite a few who see images of the sky with purple or golden clouds or with the moon and stars. This is the state of the highest heaven. In short, what we have to do is to live in heaven while living on earth. And in heaven, there is no disease.
Sermon, date unknown
Kyoshu-sama
Doesn’t heaven exist within you? Doesn’t “a world absolutely free from disease, poverty and conflict” exist within you? Doesn’t “a world filled with truth, goodness and beauty” exist within you?
Let me tell you this. You yearn for such a world precisely because that wonderful world, heaven, already exists within you. That is why I always say to you that you have to climb up to heaven existing within you first. Well, actually, you already live in heaven. Did you know that? So “to climb up to heaven” means to acknowledge that you already live in heaven.
Did you know that at this moment, you already exist in heaven and serve in the divine work of Meishu-sama in various ways? That is why many feelings come into your mind. When you engage in activities relating to flowers, those feelings come, don’t they? When you interact with people, those feelings—both good and bad—they come, don’t they?
Those feelings come precisely because you are already a resident of heaven. In heaven, God is using you in the work of salvation. Through you, God is advancing the work of granting forgiveness to all and accepting and welcoming all into heaven.
On Ikebana and Art
October 24, 2018
Masaaki-sama
We assumed that “a world absolutely free from disease, poverty and conflict” could not exist anywhere else but on this earth, and we did our best to get there. But whether that world exists within us or not makes a big difference. It may seem small, but there is a very, very big difference. This world is not only within Meishu-sama, but it exists within each one of us too. Meishu-sama had firm conviction of this.
That is why in the Sacred Word “The uniqueness of the salvation of our Church,” Meishu-sama was able to say to all of us followers that we must climb to heaven first if we want to serve in the work of salvation. And he taught that heaven is within us, and to be united to that heaven is salvation. He said, “This way of salvation is different, or rather, opposite, from all the other religions.”
What is the way of salvation for all other religions? It is to build a heaven on this earth solely through human effort, isn’t it? To construct a world free from disease, poverty and conflict solely through human effort is the usual way for other religions, isn’t it? But Meishu-sama is saying that the uniqueness of our salvation is in climbing to heaven before anything else, climbing to the world free from disease, poverty and conflict. And he is saying that if that power is reflected onto this earth, then that kind of world will certainly come about.
So does heaven exist within each one of us or not? This difference seems small, but it is immense. We have “The uniqueness of the salvation of our Church” and a hymn that reads, “Before anything else, / I am trying to be a resident of heaven. / For into heaven I wish to save the people of the world.” If you are to save the people of the world into heaven, then you must live there first. And that heaven is a place without disease, poverty and conflict. If you are able to come in contact with the joy of that world, as a result, based on the law of the spiritual preceding the physical, the joy of the spiritual world will be reflected on the physical earth and that world absolutely free from disease, poverty and conflict cannot help but be created.
Meeting with Executive Directors, Regional Directors and Other Ministers
October 7, 2018
Heaven is the world where God lives. If you can live with God in heaven while living on earth, that, I say, is a paradise on earth, that is, a heaven on earth.
Meeting with staff ministers
March 18, 2016
Published in Glory, no. 27, April 1, 2022
