Rearing Monarchs #26:

Universal Prime Energy, expanded
Unification Thoughts, July 2023

Welcome back
If you’re joining us for the first time, it might help to catch the drift of this series by taking a look at its purpose and focus.¹

Introduction

In the most recent articles, rather than expressing the relevance and applicability of Unification Thought to rearing grandchildren, we’ve been looking into some insights that it provides into the Principle itself.² And a while back, a good friend, author and fellow lecturer had expressed that some of the ideas in the Principle of Creation were a bit too abstract for people to grasp. I’d responded that, with insights gleaned from Unification Thought, I actually found some of the ideas in the Principle of Creation to be rather “thrilling”; and so he asked me, “Which ones?” There were enough that I didn’t know where to begin and his question remained unanswered for a long time. But much later, one gifted young Divine Principle animator asked me a question about Universal Prime Energy and my response to him provided the inspiration for this particular article. Rather than entirely rewriting my response to his question, I’d like to take excerpts from it, so the personal tone of what follows will be different from the more general tone of previous articles.

The Nature of Universal Prime Energy

Without familiarity with Unification Thought, ideas like Universal Prime Energy are not very clear, as you are well aware. So let me answer your question about it and then, afterwards, I’ll give more background. I’ll start with the Principle and then clarify with Unification Thought.

God’s universal prime energy directs His eternal dual characteristics to form a common base for their mutual relationship. They then engage in give and take action. Based on the forces generated by this give and take action, the dual characteristics construct a foundation for their eternal reciprocation. This is the foundation for God’s existence, upon which God eternally exists and generates all forces needed to create and sustain the universe.

• Exposition of the Divine Principle, p. 22

That statement is where the misunderstanding originates and which Unification Thought needed to clarify. The reason is that God is the Cause of time and space and therefore God is necessarily beyond them. So the statement is both misleading as well as logically and theologically unacceptable that God’s Hyungsang exists physically in the created universe. That’s why Unification Thought must be more specific and address that oversimplified expression in the Exposition text. This is what Unification Thought explains:

According to today’s science, the fundamental cause of matter is energy (physical energy) which gives rise to elementary particles: That energy has both particle and wave natures. However, since science only conducts its research within the parameters of the phenomenal, resultant world, the energy science is describing is not yet the fundamental and primary cause of matter. The Theory of the Original Image holds that the ultimate cause of matter lies in the Original Hyungsang. Thus, the Original Hyungsang is the stage just prior to the physical energy being described by science, and so it can be called “prior-stage energy” or simply “pre-energy.”

…In God’s creation, two kinds of energy…are generated from the pre-energy in the Original Hyungsang through give and receive action…. Forming energy is that energy which becomes particles and creates material. On the other hand, acting energy is that energy which acts upon all things and is manifested as the force that causes give and receive action (i.e., centripetal force and centrifugal force) among all things. This causal force is called “Prime Force” in Unification Thought. When Prime Force acts…as the acting force among all things, it is called “Universal Prime Force.”

• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 8

The highlighting and bolding is not in the original text; it is my own, added for emphasis. (And the term “pre-matter” appears on p. 549 of the New Essentials of Unification Thought book.) To help us visualize these ideas better, here’s an appropriate figure:

For the sake of familiarity, I’ve inserted the two terms “Incorporeal World” and “Corporeal World” from the Exposition of the Divine Principle textbook.³

And in case you don’t have the New Expression of Unification Thought textbook, it can also be found on this web page. Scroll down a little bit to the subsection entitled Original hyungsang and Science. But whether you do this additional reading or not, the following statement in the Exposition textbook can still be understood properly:

In the created universe, the dual characteristics that make up each being are empowered by universal prime energy to establish a common base. They then engage in give and take action. Based on the forces generated by this give and take action, the dual characteristics construct a foundation for their continued reciprocation. This becomes the foundation for the existence of each individual being, upon which the being becomes an object partner to God and is able to generate all forces necessary for its continued existence.

• Exposition of the Divine Principle, p. 22

With this, the “simple” answer to the question about Universal Prime Energy would be 1) Universal Prime Energy enables actual physical beings to exist (and to act and multiply), but 2) that created matter in the physical universe originates more specifically with the “pre-matter” from the Hyungsang of the Creator God. This is the metaphysics beyond the physics of science.

That’s why the diagram makes a very clear distinction between the Prime Force and the Universal Prime Force—the former is causal, within the immaterial God and the latter is caused by God in the material universe that God created.

You can sort of see why the Principle doesn’t go into that kind of detail. I suppose that if it did that—and went into that level of depth for all such statements in the Exposition textbook—we wouldn’t have just 400 pages to deal with, but several volumes instead. For example, imagine what the Parallels of History or the Preparation Period would become if more detail was given about all the historical events they allude to.⁴

I hope that you’ll be able to understand this Universal Prime Force better after you reflect—and perhaps pray—about all this.

The back story

At the start of this article, I’d promised that I’d also mention some “background” to all this, so here’s that piece:

First, in an older Unification Thought textbook, it’s stated:

Li (理), in the Oriental Li-ch’i theory (理 気 說), corresponds to reason in the Sung Sang; and Ch’i (気) corresponds to the Hyung Sang in the Original Image.

• Explaining Unification Thought (1981), Introduction

This statement opened my mind’s eye to something enormous in my personal understanding and experience.⁵ That’s because I had some exposure to martial arts and in general was seriously interested in the notion of Ch’i (or Qi) because it’s the life energy within our miraculous human bodies and, in fact, within all living things. When one’s Ch’i is good, then one’s health is supported in a very fundamental way (thus the value of acupressure and acupuncture). And within all the living things I love—i.e., foods, favorite animals, air, sunrises, geology, astronomy, oceanography, etc.—this life force is what enables them to exist, to interact, to multiply, and to absolutely fascinate and awe me. And so my understanding of Ch’i became that it’s one of the perhaps innumerable expressions of Universal Prime Energy in this breathtakingly magnificent created universe.

Second, we have this statement in Unification Thought:

Forming energy and acting energy both appear from the Original Hyungsang when it is engaged in give and receive action with the Original Sungsang. Heart, the root of love, is the base of give and receive action and therefore, the two energies are both the unity of physical energy and the force of love. Thus, the force of love is contained in Prime Force, and in Universal Prime Force as well. (Since his New Hope Banquet speech in May, 1975, Rev. Sun Myung Moon has often mentioned that the force of love is acting in Universal Prime Force.)

• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 8

This wrapped it all up and brought it to the next level for me. In my youth I was once “given” an experience with kundalini and so I personally knew how thunderously powerful this energy is, even physically. But when I read in Unification Thought that this Universal Prime Energy was composed not only of physical force but the force of love, I had an epiphany. This understanding transformed my enjoyment of all that my senses perceive—sight, sound, taste, smell, touch—into the awareness that every one of these things is not only an expression of universal power/force, but equally true, an expression of how deeply beloved we are to Heavenly Parent. Consider these words:

What is nature? It is an exhibit that God has given us as a gift, something He prepared for the birth of His beloved sons and daughters. Even the song of a bird and a plant growing are decorations prepared to bring beauty into the lives of His beloved sons and daughters. Even the rocks rolling on the road were created as decorations for a nation, since God knew that His sons and daughters would be the owners who would rule over that nation. It is the same with flowing water. God did not want things to be dry and monotonous, so He created things for a prince of dreams and of hope who could look at this infinitely colorful and harmonious garden—this world of love—and inherit it. Hence, we learn from all things of creation. You should be able to sing praises for the beauty of the original world of creation, where everything devotes its entire life to establish a world where each lives for the sake of the other. (175-186, 1988.4.16)

• Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 1, Chapter 2: God and the Work of Creation

If you’re intrigued, please study the mind-opening section in UT Ontology about the universe as a single, living connected body.⁶ Or of the Earth as a living organism “Gaia”.

And so I am humbled by Universal Prime Energy and am deeply grateful to Heavenly Parent and to Father Moon for unfolding this dimension of life to me.⁷

So that’s what I wanted to share. If you’ve gotten this far, thank you. It means a lot to me to be able to share this because not so many people at all ever ask about it. I’m not aware that it’s a common sermon topic. But there’s a realm of beautiful Chapter One experiences that Unification Thought illuminates.⁸ I hope that your understanding will deepen wonderfully as you try to share the Principle.

~ ~ ~

And that’s a very large part of what I shared with the young animator and later with my good friend and fellow lecturer. I sincerely hope that this slightly different approach to the article wasn’t an obstacle to your understanding of Unification Thought. And, most of all, I hope that it can illuminate the gift of our dominion and enrich our connection to this created world. Then we will be able to more fully appreciate the statement (quoted above) that …the force of love is contained in Prime Force, and in Universal Prime Force as well.

To that end, please reflect on these remarkable excerpts from Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book one, Chapter two: God and the work of Creation (2006):

God’s creating heaven and earth was not aimed primarily at sustaining life; it was to realize the ideal of love. (188-196, 1989.2.26)

If God had been thinking only about Himself, would He have created heaven and earth? Creation requires an investment of energy. An artist’s great hope is to create a masterpiece. An artist invests all his effort into making great works of art. A masterpiece appears only when the artist gives everything, and feels he cannot give any more. (78-111, 1975.5.6)

Creation requires giving out energy. God invested Himself. But how much did He invest? Some people think that when God created through the Word, saying, “Let there be this, let there be that,” it was like a game. But no, God completely poured out His true life, true love and true ideals. We do not love something unless we have worked hard and invested our flesh and blood into it. So the period before creating and the period after creating were therefore different. Before creating, God thought about everything centered on Himself, but after starting to create, He existed for His object partner. We do not exist for ourselves but for our partners, for our sons and daughters. That is how it is. (69-81, 1973.10.20)

When God saw everything He had created during the six days, He was filled with pride and He wanted to display them proudly. His joy was infinite as He looked at His creation. When God said, “It is good, it is good,” over and over again with such a joyful heart, to whom was He speaking? He was speaking to all the things of creation. We have to understand that He was talking to all things with such an eager heart. (5-238, 1959.2.8)

You should have a mind that contemplates nature that is imbued with the love of God and says, “Could anything precious owned by a king of this world or by some famous person compare with this?” Without that kind of heart, we are committing a sin before the natural world without even knowing it. If there is someone who can look at a living being and say, “Can anything produced by human hands compare with this? No matter how great someone may be, could he ever be greater than God?” and value most highly all things created through God’s hard work, he must surely be a child of God. Such a person does not need to pray. He lives with God. God guides people into such a position. (9-174, 1960.5.8)

God began His creation from His own essence, giving and giving for the sake of love and forgetting about it. Therefore, if God's partner is to receive, he likewise must pour himself out. This is like investment coming from above and also from below. In this way, heaven and earth join together harmoniously and become one. They become one centering on the love that can embrace and move heaven and earth. This generates great power. (237-130, 1992.11.13)

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