Master Ryuho Okawa, founder of Happy Science (Kofuku-no-Kagaku in Japanese), has devoted his life to the exploration of the Truth and bringing happiness to people all around the world.
History
In June 1981, high spirits, including Jesus Christ, came down to tell me something extraordinary: that I was called to a unique mission. I was called to be a spiritual leader on a global scale.
When a high spirit makes an appearance on earth in this way, it is with a numinous radiance that causes your body to become very warm, and the messages communicated are so filled with truth and light that you are overwhelmed and tears well up. Such was my experience.
The following month, a hidden part of my consciousness the Buddha himself began to speak to me in a mixture of Japanese and Sanskrit, urging me to embrace my destiny and to spread the word of Buddha. He revealed to me that I am an incarnation of El Cantare, the supreme consciousness of his group, and that my mission is to save all living creatures through the revelation of the Truth worldwide.
These revelatory experiences were so overpowering and the scope of the mission set out for me so enormous that I could not conceal my shocked amazement. Still, I also realized at once that I am a reincarnation of the Buddha, and that it has been my mission to reorganize the high spirits in heaven while also integrating all the various religions on earth to create a new world religion. It is up to me to gather all the peoples of the world into this new faith, to pioneer the development of a new civilization, and thus to herald the advent of a new age for the world.
However, I did not feel that I was ready to undertake this incredible responsibility, even though I had immediately intuited the authenticity of my calling and accepted it wholeheartedly. I was still in my twenties and working for an international trading company. Hence, I decided to continue working at my job until I reached the age of thirty. I was, of course, experiencing a great deal of inner turmoil as I operated in the everyday world of business while fully aware of my true identity and vocation.
In 1982 I was assigned to my company’s headquarters in New York as a trainee, all the while knowing that I had received a message from Jesus and been commissioned for a cosmic undertaking by the Buddha. Thus, this Buddha-to-be spent many a day working with my fellow operatives on Wall Street in the intense world of international finance. Meanwhile, I learned English intensively and passed the entrance exam to the City University of New York, where I studied international finance at the graduate level.
But, not unexpectedly, I was less than happy in what I was doing. The gap between the mundane realities of my everyday life and the intense experiences of my spiritual world grew ever more unbridgeable. My sense of identity was severely tested.
Mission
The truth is that our home is in the other world, the Spirit World or the Real World. After leaving the other world, we were born into this world to undergo spiritual discipline for just three score years and ten. We come from the other world and we return there. We who are living on earth think of going to the other world as departing, but in the eyes of those who are in heaven, the journey to this world was the departing.
In the other world, we all led lives as adults. If we brought all our memories with us when we were born into this world, they would obstruct our soul training. So this is the reason we completely forget our past and start with a clean slate. All souls, whether they are highly evolved or immature, must start from nothing. Over the course of time, after we have lived in this world for a while, we come to think of the earthly world as our home, and gradually we forget our true home; this is how we form a set of values that goes against the Truth.
We need to question who we think we are, our way of thinking and our set of values. We need to ask ourselves who it really is who is looking, judging, feeling, and thinking. Is it our true self who is thinking and leading our life? These are vital questions.
Now, let us consider the significance of our life on earth. The main purpose of our life in this world is to discipline and refine the soul. Through numerous incarnations, we have always looked for the best way to continue the soul’s progress, and each time we are born on earth we choose a different environment. We have selected different professions, different circumstances, and different relationships, for example, those who have been wealthy in previous lives are born into poor families and vice versa, and those who were healthy in past lives are born with illnesses. We are born into this world with the supreme assignment of spiritual advancement, by even a step forward.
Because this is the case, in difficult times you should think; “I am now being given this rare opportunity to improve my soul. This means I have found the very purpose of this life.” You must not avoid your task. If you were to complain about it, I would say, “You have been given the map for the treasure hunt and you have been walking, searching for treasure and following the map. Now there is a pile of treasure right in front of you. What are you complaining about?”
