Contemplating Unification Thought

Ontology

by Dr. Jennifer P. Tanabe

Unification Thought holds that all things were created according to the Law of Resemblance, i.e. were created in the likeness of God. This means that all beings, or Individual Truth Bodies, have the same attributes as the Original Image, namely the dual aspects of songsang and hyongsang, and Yang and Yin. As explained in the Theory of Original Image, Yang and Yin exist for the purpose of variety and development, as well as for the expression of beauty through harmony. In the created world apart from human beings, this makes a lot of sense. When we come to human beings though, as will be seen in next month's article, all is not harmony and beauty!

All things were created only in the likeness of God, not identical to God, which means that they have songsang and hyongsang aspects, but their manifestation differs according to the level of being. God first conceived of human beings as most closely resembling His own nature, and then lowered the dimensions of songsang and hyongsang, and subtracted specific elements, to conceive of animals, plants, minerals, etc. This is called the "layered structure" of songsang and hyongsang in existing beings.

An important point to note here is that Unification Thought agrees with the evolutionary order of the actual appearance of beings, from minerals upwards to human beings. However, the first beings conceived of were human. God first conceived of all things in His mind, in the Inner Four-Position Base, starting with human beings and then actually created them in the reverse order, through the Outer Four-Position Base.

External expression

Here we have one of the major controversial issues in Unification Thought. The terms "subject" and "object" are loaded terms in Western philosophy, where subject refers to a self or being with consciousness, and object to the being or idea which is recognized or faced by the subject. This means basically that the subject is a human being and the object is not. In Unification Thought, however, human beings are often in the "object" position, which most people find objectionable, since they do not want to be treated as objects, i.e. things! Clearly, we have to understand that in Unification Thought the subject-object relationship can be applied to a human being and a thing, to two human beings, or to two things. Thus, both subject and object in Unification Thought can be either human or thing, so there is no need to take offense!

However, this is not the end of the problem. Dr. Nona Bolin, at the recent ICUS in Korea, eloquently argued that the distinctions in traditional metaphysics between inner and outer, subject and object, are no longer regarded as "neutral and benign." Modern philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Derrida and Foucault, have argued forcefully against the continuation of distinctions that perpetuate notions of discrimination, privilege, and inequality of value. She commented that the "correlative" relationship between subject and object in Unification Thought may be distinguished from the dialectic struggle of opposites and characterized as a relation of harmony of purpose, but it is still a power relationship. The relation is one of "dominion" of subject over object, and the object must remain object or become an unnatural subject repulsed by the natural subject.

As respondent to her paper, I attempted to explain that, unlike traditional Western philosophy, the correlativity between subject and object in Unification Thought does not refer to the polarities of truth vs. error, good vs. evil, sane vs. insane, well vs. sick, normal vs. abnormal. In other words, the concept that the second member of the pair is the negative, corrupt and undesirable version of the first is excluded from the dual characteristics, thus differentiating Unification Thought from traditional Western philosophy and its inherent problems. Since the Unification Thought texts do not discuss this criticism of traditional Western philosophy, I was grateful for Dr. Bolin's warning that Unification Ontology appeared to be carrying this "overwhelming metaphysical baggage."

Good and evil

So, how do subject and object relate according to Unification Thought? Unification Ontology stresses creation according to the Law of Resemblance, which means that the relationships within and between created beings find their origin in the Original Image. The prototype of such relationship is "the round and harmonious nature of the give-and-receive action between the Original songsang and the Original hyongsang ." ("Essentials" p.72) In God there is no time and space, but in the created world give-and-receive action is expressed in terms of time and space and becomes circular motion. The participants in the motion are subject and object, and when they engage in give-and-receive action centering on purpose, the result is that both union and motion appear simultaneously. The center of the motion is within the subject, and the object revolves around in a circular or spherical motion [see figure].

Clearly this works for planets orbiting the sun, or electrons orbiting protons in the nucleus of an atom, provided we understand that "circular" or "spherical" includes the variations such as ellipses on the circular form. It is also helpful to understand that not all circular motion involves physical motion, but can include spiral motion as each generation of plant or animal performs a cycle of life which is repeated in spiral form through successive generations. Also, on the level of human beings, spiritual circular motion, or songsang circular motion, is performed rather than actual physical motion. This means that you don't see people physically running in circles around their "subject" or their bodies running circles around their minds, although I often feel that my two-year-old daughter has me running in physical circles around her!

Empirical support

This leads to a very important point in the relationship between subject and object, which is that a harmonious relationship exists between a subject and an object, not between two subjects, or, for that matter, between two objects. However, the positions of subject and object are "relative", each created being exists both as subject to another being, and as object to another being, and all created beings must be object to God the original and ultimate subject. So, a planet may be subject to its moons but object to the sun. While two planets may affect each other's orbits (hopefully avoiding collision courses!), as two objects they do not maintain a true give-and-receive relationship with each other but only with the subject, the sun. Two subjects, or two objects, naturally repel each other and this action strengthens the give-and-receive relationships between subject and object. In the ideal natural world this phenomenon maintains order and harmony.

Of course, in the realm of human relationships things get a lot more complicated and controversial. So next month's article on the Theory of Original Human Nature will deal with the subject/object relationship, and an even hotter topic, Yang and Yin in human beings.


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