By Abdu Rafiu
Every believer, whether he is a Christian or a Moslem, expresses confidence in the Mercy and Justice of the Creator. They profess their ardent belief in His Justice. In His Love, a majority are not sure. That they consider a different kettle of fish. Some of those who believe in His Love say it is not evenly distributed. What they summon as their evidence is inequalities they see around them, circumstances of birth and variegated opportunities. A great many see life as a gamble. These are even those who give life a thought at all. Many consider themselves too busy and when there is occasional talk about inequalities in life in their presence, they dismiss it as one of those things and they ask that the topic be changed. It has no relevance to their lives. Those who doubt the Love of the Most High blasphemously ask: Why do good people suffer and the wicked prosper?
We did promise to look at the question more closely this week. We must start from the standpoint that the Most High is All-Justice, All-Love and Perfection. What is perfect permits of no improvement and there are no gaps. Where there is room for improvement, it means there was no perfection in the first place. From the basis of perfection His Love is not deficient, nor is His Justice. With the Creator, therefore, injustice is impossible. As we have made plain on a few occasions in this column, man is not just the body, his blood and flesh. He is spirit. It is the animating essence which has wrapped around him substances of the intervening planes he traversed from the Spiritual Realm to this earth. The unseen part which is the soul forges a connection link through the blood. This is why when a man runs short of blood for whatever reason, the soul walks out which is what is called death. When the blood is poisoned or diseased, or it malfunctions, its radiation which serves to hold the body and the soul becomes deficient resulting in the soul again, as it were, walking out.
If I may refer to what we stated last week: The activity of a man which period of maturation takes long may not bring forth fruits for harvesting if he does not live long for one reason or the other. But then, it is his body which expired at the so-called death, not he himself. He himself is spirit, the animating core with finer coverings it picks as it traverses different planes down to the earth which then makes it to be recognized as soul. The soul is, therefore, connected through radiation threads to the man’s activities which have not yet ripened for harvesting. This brings us to the phenomenon called reincarnation. It is a phenomenon which many people do not want discussed or conveniently ignore in tackling mysteries of life, and yet, without the knowledge of it, the Justice of God Almighty cannot be understood. We cannot ignore reincarnation. I hasten to state that in Justice of the Most High lies also His Love. Both Love and Justice are one and inseparable. It is out of Love that Justice is meted out, and from justice love is displayed. A child is disciplined out of love so that he can become a better person. For the sake of justice, the laws of the land make everyone pay for his shortcomings which may even have entailed causing harm to his fellowman. The intention is to make him amend his ways and become a better and harmonious person. What then is reincarnation?
As you probably suspect, it presupposes the re-embodiment of the soul, that is, the return of a soul to this world to continue its life. But where many people have a problem with it is in proof that there is another body other than this very familiar flesh and blood body. Yet, all around us, in the neighbourhood, in offices and in the market place, there is evidence of reincarnation. We encounter people whose names give us an idea of the concept of reincarnation. There are Babatunde, Adetunji, Nnenne, Nnenna, Babawande, Iyabode; Yetunde, Ojetunji. Babatunde translates to the father who has come back; Yetunde, mother has returned; Nnenna, mother of the father that is back. These could not have come from a flight of fancy or some calculation. It was borne out of experiencing of people of olden times who were closer to Nature than men of today. It goes to demonstrate that the knowledge of reincarnation has existed in many cultures for ages. Even if the family is not correct as to the details about the soul reincarnating, it does not annul the concept and the knowledge. For instance, a child who is born just a few days after the death of its grandfather could not have been the same grandparent. A soul hovering around an expectant mother takes possession of the womb when the pregnancy has gone halfway, that is, about five months. The child named so soon would not have had sufficient time to incarnate in the womb of its prospective mother and born –within five months! The cycle takes much longer. Even then it is the exact details of the incarnating soul that the parents may not have; the name itself is not affected because everyone is the name he bears. At the appropriate time the name is whispered by the incoming child in the womb to the christening authority which could be the direct parents, any of the grandparents, a friend of the parents or even a neighbour. The child in the womb steers the thoughts of the parents or the naming authority in a particular direction through its radiations that they can’t but heed and regard as its name. An attentive and open expectant mother even hears the foetus spell out its name. There are no accidents in the names. They correspond exactly to the personality. But this may be a subject for a more elaborate treatment in future. It is brought out here to show that there is pre-earthly existence. And as we now know, there are no fresh incarnations; every human being on earth today is a reincarnation.
The word reincarnation is an English word. There would have been no word for it if the knowledge of it has not existed in the English speaking Western World. There have been publications of people who remembered their past earth lives, where they lived, the road there and the circumstances of their deaths, a few of which were featured on this page two years ago.
As youths, we all may have wondered if the story about all dead people assembling on Judgment Day had any verifiable validity. We must have experienced our Biology teacher bringing human skulls, femur, tibia and fibula and the rib cage to the classroom to teach us the skeletal system. These bones were dug up in not one place but in many and they belonged to different people. We must have wondered later as thinking adults how a femur in Ibadan would unite with a skull in Kano, the body that had gone back to the soil and which had been mixed with other sands and used to build a house at Bodija; we must have wondered how it could have found its skin covering to remake the man who must now stand before the Throne of Judgment. Many people still feel this way hanging out for proof. It is an impossibility. Such a body cannot be one composed of matter; it must, in fact, be lighter than matter if it is to permeate matter and enter into it as television or radio waves penetrate our locked doors and windows to enter our receiving sets indoors. Such a body can therefore be sensed with material consistent with it. Could it be such a body that Thomas with his finer eyes permitted to open and sensory organs awakening, encountered on the way to Emmaus? Could it be such a body that permeated the walls of the upper chambers at the time of the Pentecost? Could it be the voice of such a body that Paul heard on the way to Damascus? Was it a similar voice that was heard by the finer ears opened up for it during the baptism of the Lord by John the Baptist?
Science as coarse as its efforts are would appear to be nodding in agreement. Scientists experimenting with high voltage photography have been known to have hit a stunning result seemingly supporting this position that there is a body besides the physical body with which the dead enters the Beyond. According to reports on the experimentation in the former Soviet Union, it was an intricate business. In a layman’s language, what happened was that scientists discovered during an unrelated experiment that when ultra violet radiations were beamed on a human body under certain circumstances, they produced photo images not only of the body but of a finer prototype. They next experimented on a leaf, and the pictures were replicated in like manner. Next the leaf was cut into two. One half was thrown away and the other photographed. The half leaf photographed, surprisingly, produced the picture of a half leaf and another finer picture of a whole leaf. In other words, as the experimenters agree, the finer image survived the physical dismemberment of the leaf, indicating “life after death” of the material prototype. Already, the discovery is being touted as offering a good explanation for phantom pains, which sufferers have in limbs or fingers that were long severed. Through mediated unique higher knowledge spreading on earth today, it is now known that the finer limbs and fingers survived their material covering, that is the material limbs and material fingers.
The finer impressions are nothing more than the electrical or etheric outlines of the animating core of the material forms. With such recognition, the mystery of many repeated earth lives passes away, leaving only questions of purpose. It may thus make sense that, if in this earth life a man steals or embezzles money and builds himself a mansion or an empire thus bringing suffering and sorrow upon his victims, he will be obliged to return to live under such conditions as had given rise to, grinding poverty, even to be a beggar on the street or by the gates of the palatial castle he stole money to build. Everyone will be a victim of his own snares no matter how long it takes. The guiding and supporting threads do not allow a wrong or an injustice. They do not heed human opinions or applause or ignorance. A man who perpetrates evil in his neighbourhood who is not caught has only escaped the wrath of the society’s laws this time; he is tied to the radiation consequences of his deeds which have taken on form. Thus his carpet of fate, as I explained two weeks ago, is woven by a species of Nature Beings, the executive servants of the Most High, who serve Him with unconditional, unalloyed and absolute loyalty.
A driver who ploughs through the market or a gathering of school children and kills any of them may return, and in his childhood as a school pupil or as a market chief gets killed by another driver with tendency similar to his in his previous lives. A man who preaches violence and armed struggle will in the lawfulness of life be allowed to experience it in fulfillment of his own longing. He will be led to circumstances that will afford him the opportunity to satisfy his yearnings. A man who bombs and maims will be born in a city under siege and air raids!
My drift, therefore, is that the suffering of the good man is a consequence of his past lives—his thoughts, activities and attitude. He is imperceptibly paying back his overdraft. Cover is pulled over our recollection faculties as an act of Grace and Love so that we do not remember the past and then work to the answer. In other words, the good man may be good today either truly or in our perception, we do not know enough about him and his past or about anybody’s for that matter. A good man may be presenting what he wants the world to see and believe, but the Law cannot be mocked. Injustice is impossible with the Creator. However, since the fruit must correspond with the seed, if he continues in the act of goodness framed with short supplication for strength, the blows of fate lacking in fresh nourishments, will be weakened and dispersed. The binding radiations for atonement will be loosened correspondent to the measure of change that occurred in his life. Eventually, he shall be free for a flight in exaltation into the new—into a new life of joy and happiness! It is said in the revelation of the higher knowledge spreading on earth today that whoever has a firm volition for what is good and strives to give purity to his thoughts has found the way to the Highest. The wicked prosper as he is drawing from his savings, and the fruits of later day sowing have not ripened for harvesting. Adamantine is the Law—for all of us, for all human beings.
A Governor at a crossroads
The Governor of Oyo State, Mr. Seyi Makinde, was caught between the devil and deep blue sea. He was trying to prevent an ethnic conflagration in his state and calm nerves. He was conscious that should there be an ethnic blow-out, he would carry the can. Well intentioned as he might have been, he mismanaged the situation. He dissociated himself from the angst of his people, panicked and rushed to Abuja and it would appear to extricate himself. He of course asked President Buhari for enhanced police strength in the state. I am for every effort to prevent ethnic hostilities. Such a scenario could be complicated. His concern, therefore, was understandable and laudable. No one would fault that. It was the way he went about it after he woke up from his slumber that was ill-thought out. His pronouncement in Akure was unkind. No one can fault the argument that you do not solve insecurity challenges with criminality, nor will anyone advocate tackling one criminality with another criminality.
In the face of glaring failure of leadership and security agencies—people are killed, many are kidnapped and made to pay ransom; their women are mindlessly violated, self-defence becomes inevitable. That is the higher law. We are talking about a people facing existential challenges. Their representatives in the organization called Lanlate Renaissance Group, catalogued all efforts to get the Governor, the Speaker Oyo State House of Assembly and their representative in the Federal House of Representatives in Abuja to see their plight, to act to save them. All the efforts were unavailing. Their distress calls fell on deaf ears.
Both the timing of the governor’s address and his audience at Akure could not have been worst ill-chosen. The speech by the spokesman of the Miyetti Allah rendered in fluent Yoruba to prove his integration into the town in which he was born 47 years ago and the social circles was conciliatory and more reassuring. The governor’s speech was what he should have taken to a meeting of the stakeholders, his people at Ibarapa and Oyo North (Oke-Ogun) bearing the brunt of atrocities in their land which he now belatedly did. You lock yourselves up in a large hall and argue it out, even fiercely among yourselves. No such meeting took place despite the most pressing and urgent necessity to have one. In contrast to Makinde, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State stood firm.
What brought matters to the boil was the killing of Dr. Fatai Aborode, who came from the University of Glasgow, Aberdeen to set up a big farm. He had complained about the destruction of his farm by cattle driven into the extensive acreage employing many youths. He was killed gruesomely for complaining about the destruction by the Fulani herdsmen. Also on the list of prominent citizens killed was Mrs. Sherifat Adisa, owner of Subawah Petroleum in the area. The case of a young lady who heeded the clarion call for the youths to go into farming is well known. It was widely publicized. Miss Modupe Oyetoso acquired 5,000 hectares of land in Lanlate to do farming after her graduation from university. She was kidnapped and kept in the bush for two days until her parents put together an unstated amount as ransom to her abductors. Her fiancé was shot dead in the encounter with their attackers. For all these no arrests were made, according to the people of Ibarapa.
Here is the headline in one of the reports: “We can’t solve insecurity challenges with criminality, Makinde declares” The report itself reads in part: “Governor Seyi Makinde declared on Monday that his government would not try to solve the insecurity challenges in his state by backing those bent on taking laws into their own hands or carrying out jungle justice against perceived wrongdoers.” The innuendo was clear.
If people do not defend themselves in the absence of help from the official quarters, they would be annihilated. The governor did not visit the troubled areas and families mourning their loved ones killed on their farms or kidnapped to reassure them before people decided to take their safety in their own hands. Would self-help have ever been necessary if the police had been up and doing and Makinde had shown sensitivity to the plight of his people? What were the Igangan people to do after they were pushed to the wall? It is unnatural that people would throw up their hands in resignation when their traducers pinned their backs against the wall and butchered them soullessly. No one on earth is living at the pleasure of his neighbour. In the face of official negligence and failure everyone faced with existential threat owes himself the duty to take every step to protect himself. The governor must have heard General Danjuma cry out when his people were being killed in Taraba.
It was not until matters got to a head that Governor Makinde thought it fit to send a delegation to Igangan to address the people with the police commissioner assuring the crowd there that the police would look into their complaints. The former Lagos super cop, retired police commissioner Fatai Owoseni, now security adviser to the governor, was on the entourage. The governor’s speech at Akure fell short. It exhibited neither empathy nor understanding for the harrowing experiences his own people had gone through. Makinde has been thought capable of doing better than that all along. I believe he still can. He is a likeable fellow and he started well. His meeting with the stakeholders a few days, which he ought to have done when the outcry was loudest, is the way to mend fences. It was the right step to calm nerves.
The Guardian
