What does it take to not only reach Truth but also share it with the world?
This inspiring journey follows Master Woo Myung, who sought answers about life and death, became enlightened, and courageously began guiding others through the path of Truth. From personal suffering to miraculous transformations, he shares how eight levels of meditation can bring about the completion of humanity and an eternal life in Heaven.
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🎬 YouTube Video
📝 Original Writing by Master Woo Myung
From Enlightenment to Spreading Truth in the World
I was conceived during the Korean civil war, and I was born around the time South Korean troops retaliated to the first North Korean invasion.
There were two mountains near my hometown where I spent my childhood, Mount Bongwoojae and Mount Ansan. My village was almost right in the middle of the two, and during the war my village became a battleground with North Korean troops camped in Bongwoojae and South Korean troops in Ansan. When the war ended, we often found remnants from the battles around the village.
A few of the older children died while playing with grenades that had been left behind. There was also a time when my friends and I went to the stream to catch fish and found human bones. We had dammed up a spot filled with fish but when we found the bones, we broke the dam and let all the fish go. We also often found human bones while gathering firewood in the mountains, as well as bullets and used cartridges. It was a time of abject poverty; due to the civil war that broke out just five years after Korea became free from Japanese rule, everyone at the time, from all those older than me to those ten years younger, worried about where their next meal was coming from and how to survive.
My older brothers all died of smallpox at a young age, and with just three daughters until I was born, I was a much-cherished son. My father also passed away when I was nine, and we were one of the many sorrow-filled families of that time.
In the olden days, the family paid respects to the deceased for three years, at a place called binsoe. We lay food at my father’s table every morning and night and it was during this time that I began thinking about the futility of life, where people come from, why we live, and where we go after we die.
I had read many scriptures by the time I reached my mid-thirties, but I had not found any answers that satisfied me. I decided to find the answers to these questions on my own. I spent those years with the constant thought in the back of my mind that after I earned a lot of money, I would go and live in a cottage near a mountain stream and meditate on Truth until I became enlightened.
I sought out many sages and ascetics while living in the world, but no one truly knew Truth – there were just many who pretended to know. In Mount Jiri, there was a person who told me to focus my consciousness in the middle of my forehead. I also tried various Buddhist meditations and there were places that asked me to throw away my thoughts.
In my life, everyone was my teacher; my parents, my teachers, my friends, everybody around me as well as everything that I saw.
One day, I had a vision while I was meditating at home. In the vision I was coming down from the mountains to Gechon Lake (literally meaning the lake where the heavens open), which was between my hometown and the town where my mother’s family lived. At the time, I was forty-one years old. I could not easily forget this vision and it was always vividly in my mind.
I ran a college preparatory tuition academy and I earned enough to be financially comfortable. Towards the end of 1995 and around the beginning of 1996, I made up my mind to take a vacation during some public holidays and go to Mount Gaya and seek Truth. On the 3rd of January, 1996, I was enlightened that I am Truth and that my destiny is to save the world by teaching Truth.
I met with Jesus Christ, Shakyamuni and many other saints in heaven. From then on, I had the ability to see with the eyes of heaven, and hear with the ears of heaven; although I knew absolutely nothing, at the same time there was nothing I did not know and all my previous questions disappeared.
I continued to study Truth diligently while running my preparatory tuition academy. When I, a true fool, came to know everything, the feeling of frustration in my chest cleared, and absorbed in the fun of knowing Truth, I stayed up many nights, writing and writing. At the time, I published a book called “The Book of Wisdom” and many people who read the book sought me out at the academy. I bought them dinner, gave them a place to sleep, and talked to them about Truth.
During that time, I told more than a hundred people about the way to become enlightened. I told them to go home, diligently practice the method and return when they had become enlightened. Months passed by, and no one came back. So in November of 1996, I rented out a room at an inn located in Sun-yoo-dong, Moon-gyung, and taught the method to around ten people.
I was very reluctant, and afraid, to teach and spread Truth. I wanted people to meditate and become enlightened on their own if possible and since I was earning a fair amount of money through the academy, I thought I could simply continue to earn more and provide them with a place to meditate. On my way to Moon-gyung, which was the first time I set out to spread Truth, there was a rainbow in front of me the entire way – as if to raise my down-trodden spirits. And while we were meditating in Moon-gyung, there was a rare and strange cloud in the sky which the meditation students looked at in wonder.
A week later, nine of the ten people who had come were enlightened of the first level. They were so overcome with joy, they did not know what to do with themselves and we drank and partied.
A month later, I taught the method in Un-yang, Kyung-nam. Word had spread that people were attaining enlightenment and more than fifty people came. A month after that, I taught the method in Moon-gyung-Saejae, and later on, I rented a student dormitory in Mount Gaya.
What began as one session every month quickly became two sessions and then two sessions became four. In the beginning, in order to attract many people to come, I gave a lot of people the abilities to see and hear with the eyes and ears of heaven. They were able to see heaven, and hear the messages of heaven.
Fortune-tellers from all over the country came when people heard this news.
When fortune-tellers become possessed by the spirits that enable them to foresee certain things, they suffer physical pain. I asked them if they wanted to be rid of the spirits and many said yes. Not long after I drove the spirits out of them, one of the fortune-tellers came back and asked me to reattach the spirit that had been in him. He told me that without the spirit, he could not earn a living for his family because he could not foresee the future. So I reattached it for him.
Many people who came in those early days sought Truth so that they could brag about what they know or to become a superior version of themselves. These motivations stemmed from their strongly fixed frames of minds and many of them gave up meditation when things did not work out the way they wanted. The ability to see heaven and hear heaven had come to them before they had become completely enlightened to the Truth and because they still had their own minds, they were not able to meditate further due to their remaining selves.
Every week in those first few years, I opened the path to these abilities for 10-20% of the people who came. Many people gathered on the weekends to meditate because they wanted to receive these abilities and they found it fascinating to hear the news of heaven.
In this way, I guided many people through the first level of the meditation, but soon I realized that they still had their own false minds. I became enlightened of the method for the second level – the method to realize that human minds do not exist – and began to teach people.
After people completed the second level, they were enlightened that human minds do not exist, but they thought that nothing exists after death. I realized I needed to find a method to teach them of existence. At this time, heaven showed me the scene of my death and the scene of life. I realized that this meant one has to die and I began to teach people how to discard their very selves.
I taught the first level in Mount Gaya, and the second level in Hajam, Kyung-nam. When we were in Hajam, I made a miracle happen: pillars of fire shot up in the sky near the place where we were meditating and the next day it was reported in the local papers. Everyone who was meditating at the time cried out with wonder when they saw the pillars of fire.
I taught the first level in Mount Gaya, and the second level in Hajam, Kyung-nam. When we were in Hajam, I made a miracle happen: pillars of fire shot up in the sky near the place where we were meditating and the next day it was reported in the local papers.
Everyone who meditated was cured of any illnesses he had. When people became free from the suffering of their minds, they were also cured of their physical illnesses. For a period of time afterwards, I often cured people of their illnesses in front of hundreds of people watching.
After people practiced the third level, they were enlightened that the Universe is within them. However, they still did not know the Universe’s body and mind, or in other words, Jung and Shin, which is the origin of the Universe. Thus I taught them the next level and brought them to enlightenment. Then came the fifth level, when one comes to know that in the Universe there is the one God, who is the only existence in the world and that one’s self is this very existence. I also brought people to enlightenment in the sixth level that when God of the entire Universe and the land of God are within one’s self, heaven is right where he is. In the seventh level, one surrenders all of his self to the Universe so that only the Creator and God which is Truth remains, and this existence becomes his mind. When he is then reborn as the body and mind of Truth, he is the eternal and invincible Energy and Light of the Universe, which is life itself.
God has already given us all salvation, and heaven is within one’s self. That is to say, within one’s self there is God and the land of God. Thus, for such a person it is a new world – a new heaven and new earth – because he is reborn as God and has gone to everlasting heaven while his body is still living.
It is a new heaven and a new earth when man is reborn as God into the land of God. This is the eighth level. In the seventh and eighth level, God is within one’s self so it is possible to converse freely with God. Since one’s consciousness has changed to the consciousness of God that is life, he knows everything because he is wisdom itself. God’s words are wisdom, and he is able to hear and know the words of God through wisdom.
To have the seal of God on one’s forehead is none other than his mind becoming God. In Korean this is called hon-jool and it is a sign that God has entered his mind.
What someone has in his mind can be seen in his thoughts. There are over six billion people in the world but no two minds are alike. Thoughts are the expressions of what one has or holds in his mind. His mind exists in his clump, or mass, of thoughts.
For a person who has become one with God of the Universe, the pathway from the Universe to God within is wide open. In other words, he is connected as one with God of the Universe through his forehead. Such a person is one who has been given hon-jool for God comes forth from the forehead of a person who has God within.
The next stage is for the whole body to become light itself. A person who has become one with the great Soul and Spirit of the Universe is reborn as light itself.
Then, if one is enlightened that his body itself is complete, he is the great Universe’s Soul and Spirit that is Truth, so the thought that his body existed in the past completely disappears. This is the sign that he has been completely born as Truth itself.
The Universe is originally one: the great Soul and Spirit. A person who has become this existence itself does not die – he has achieved human completion and lives forever. This is the seventh and eighth level and it took eight years to take people to this stage.
In the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth level, one has only one enlightenment at each level but in levels seven and eight, one can be enlightened from everything he sees and hears and every time he thinks.
If one is completely enlightened, in other words, if he has died completely, he becomes Truth itself; and when he drinks the water of life from Truth, his self is forgotten completely.
Perfect Truth is the place where all knowing has ceased. It is the place where there is absolutely nothing that one knows, and there are no questions, doubts or suspicions. Such a person lives without false minds, and he does not store anything he does in his mind. His is the mind of God, so he just lives.
The way to Truth can only be reached if one discards all of his questions, his need to know, and knowledge itself. He must cast off these delusions and only when he discards even the curiosity of knowing, can Truth be the only existence remaining. When there is absolutely nothing in his mind, when his mind is the state where everything has ceased, there is no knowledge in his mind but at the same time a person who has become Truth will know all Truth.
There is enlightenment only in levels seven and eight. This is because only then does one become the consciousness of God and is reborn as God; therefore he is wisdom itself.
In the previous levels, one comes to know as much as his mind has been cleansed, as much as his mind has expanded, but true enlightenment of knowing everything only comes to a person in the seventh and eighth levels. A person in these levels does not have any obstacles or blockages, and is omniscient and omnipotent. He knows all of Truth that is righteousness. Only a person who has done levels seven and eight has been reborn with God’s consciousness; and only he who has drunk from Truth’s water of life is an enlightened person. He is a person who has achieved everything and he is complete.
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