By Abdu Rafiu
The issue of collective guilt can’t but continue to astound a great many and generate questions especially where class is concerned. How come that a billionaire, engineers and perhaps a few more well educated and exposed persons share in what may have been described as collective guilt with artisans, and workmen. The contention is that their paths may not have crossed until the building project brought them all together. The explanation proffered in this column on how the powerful and underlings died in the failed Ikoyi high-rise project caused consternation in view of the gulf in social classes, difference in ages and disparate ethnic backgrounds of the victims among them many workmen. The contention by many is that their paths would never have crossed but for the building construction which brought them together; each contributing what he had and could–skills, expertise and all– to the longed-for success of the project.
Two important points while discussing the subject of fate we must of necessity return to are who man is and his re-embodiment which is called re-incarnation. The discourse of last week could not cover them adequately. A great many conveniently ignore the two points while tackling the so-called mysteries of life, yet without knowledge of them justice in life and the concomitant trajectories in the journey of man cannot be understood.
By collective guilt is meant simply common guilt. It is a scenario of a wrong-doing, shortcoming, wanton conduct or failing is the same which evokes the same waves of radiations and spins the same thread of radiations for the weaving to which all who may have contributed are connected. The next question then is: who is man? He is a spirit. Most people are familiar with the word soul, but spirit is regarded as a ghost. Because ghosts are dreaded, the contemplation of the word spirit is avoided. Every man bears a soul within him, but in the soul is encased the spirit. Soul constitutes wrappings around the spirit, which wrappings it gathers around itself in every plane it traverses on its path from the Spiritual Realm, its point of origin and home, to this earth. It had to wrap the substances of each plane around itself to be able to manifest there and on earth with the material substance of “dust” called body which is discarded at death when he seeks to turn his gaze upwards, to return home in Paradise. The clergy says of him at interment: “Dust thou art and to dust shall thou return”. The return to Paradise is possible only when he has attained to full maturity and an ennobled spirit, one who has washed his linen clean which in the words of Christian Standard Bible is referred to as robes. “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.”(Revelation 22: 14). As it is more clearly put in Dake’s Annotated Bible, the washing of the robes is by obeying the commandments of the Creator: “Blessed are they that do His commandments that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” (Revelation 22: 14). Thus we have body (earth-man), soul and spirit. The body is the last covering. When he drops the earthly cloak he manifests in the Beyond as soul. As he goes up, ascending other planes, he sheds the coverings as well and enters Paradise as spirit in shining spiritual garment. It is hardly realised that there are mountains, forests, meadows, seas and animals in Paradise, Spiritual Creation which the early Yoruba people refer to as “Akokoda Aiye” and Subsequent Creation, the Material Creation below it as “Asehinda Aiye.”
The earth is supposed to be developed as a paradisaical reflection of Creation Proper that is a prototype, if we human beings had lived according to the Will of the Creator. By nature as a connecting bridge between the Spiritual Realm and the earth, he is supposed to be a receptacle for pure life streaming from the Light, the Rays he is to use for the upliftment of the material world. Man can live in Paradise only if he has learnt the Will of the Almighty Creator. We are therefore down in the vale of matter that the earth is, a school, to learn that Will and make it the integral part of our lives. In the process we become mature spiritually and self-conscious. The development into self- consciousness enables the spirit to take on full human form. Man is given the tools and faculties to achieve this life’s purpose on earth. Prophets, Teachers, Guides and helpers were sent down to assist the human being in his development, to bring enlightenment, to recognise the Will of the Creator in His Creation, enlightenment about Creation and about Himself. As I have pointed out before in these pages, among the Prophets sent were Elijah (630 B.C.); Isaiah (720 B.C. ); Jeremiah (630 B.C.). The coming of Moses is very well known, as the one who received the Ten Commandments of God on Mount Sinai. Ezra (458 B.C.) tried to enforce the Ten Commandments in Jerusalem because man has always preferred what he thinks about himself and what life is about. Such was it that Teachers also had to be sent out. Lao-Tse was sent to China in 600 B.C.; Buddha to India in 550 B.C. and Zoroaster 600 B.C. also to Persia known today as Iran about the same time as Lao-Tse. When all mankind would not heed the teachings of Truth they brought, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself had to come. After His violent departure and things began to go downhill, Prophet Mohammed was sent to Arabia by the Almighty Creator in 571 A.D. to bring the knowledge of Allah, the One God and the Truth.
Where the Teachers, the Prophets and the Son of God are recognized and appreciated, their teachings are distorted or embellished until they become caricatures of the Truth. Today, the Rays of the Power of the Holy Spirit, the Justice Arm of the Most High, are encompassing the earth closing the cycle in awakening and purification, features of the prophesied End-Time when the Holy Spirit takes charge as the Judge—in the proverbial Age of the Holy Spirit. All that is evil is being driven in unprecedented intensification and acceleration to meet its waterloo and all who have sided with it. Thus the end is going back to the beginning. As evil is driving towards its crescendo, so is blossoming rising connected by radiation threads to the authors.
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary defines fate as follows: the apparent power that determines the course of events over which humans have no control; the ultimate outcome. The Law of Returns drives fate and the Law of Homogeneity locates and brings people of the same tendencies together, links one to the other who have sowed same seeds, and in the intensification regardless of class, importance and immaculate raiment to reap the fruits of seeds sown. As George Orwell was to say, “An average millionaire is an average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.” Is it not also said that death is a leveler? The Law of Returns in its inflexibility ensures that the sower is tied to his harvest, and if the sowers are many, they are tied to the collective harvest of their produce so that in the Law of the Cycle, every journey ends where it began for the cycle to close.
It is not only pain, distress and gloom that are harvested. An online publication in the United Kingdom a couple of weeks ago listed 10 communities said to be the happiest places to live in Britain. According to the report quoting Rightmove’s annual Happy at Home index for 2021, Haxham in Northernbarland tops the list as the happiest place to live in the UK. Says the report: “Residents of the market town were happier than any other place in the UK due to the sense of community spirit and feeling of belonging in the area, as well as its access to nature and green spaces. Haxham also reached the top in 2019 and regained its crown this year as locals also pointed to how friendly and polite people are in the town.” The report Happiness is said to be highest among those who moved highest from a town to a village, with 81 per cent saying they were happier after their move.
I am not competent to adjudge their living wholesome. Even if this is a coarse image of what to expect with the right attitude, with familiarization with the Laws of Nature, life could certainly be more blissful and distress free—even for them. For man, what he has sown returns to him for the closing of the cycle that began from him years, decades or century ago. And he, too, at the end of his sojourn on earth will attempt to return to his point of origin, however pious or depraved he may be in what we call death. He does not however return there if his activities, either in thought, speech or deed are unedifying; they bar his way thereto. The harvesting time arrives only when the seed has gone through all germination, growth and maturation processes to which period differs from plant to plant, and also in accordance with the nature of the thought, speech or deed of a person. The maturation period of vegetables differs from those of oranges—vegetables, 10 days; maize three months; yam nine months; bitter kola 28 to 31 years and oranges 10 years and 15.
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. It is the soul that is connected through radiation threads to the man’s activities which have not yet ripened for harvesting. This brings us to the phenomenon called re-incarnation. The journey of man to this world consists of procreation, incarnation and birth. Then there is re-incarnation out of the Grace and Mercy of the Creator that where we fall short we should come back to the earth to make amends. So is it, in accordance with the enlightenment spreading on earth today, that there is no single soul in this world who has not lived on earth before. Several cultures in different nations hint at re-incarnation as fact of life. The word re-incarnation itself is a pointer. If it did not exist there would have been no word for re-embodiments in the English speaking world. And it was not the English man who brought the concept of reincarnation to the South West where Babatundes, (Grandfather has come back); Yetunde, (the grandmother is back); the Iyabos abound or the South East where Nnanna (Maternal grandfather is back in the family) and Nnnene brandish the names on their forehead. As it is said in the present day school system, a student has some carry-overs which he must clear! Repeat examinations are a common feature of school or college life. At incarnation, the radiation threads of what are to be redeemed are woven into the soul. The harvesting of fruits from what was planted in previous earth lives are harvested in the new earthly sojourn. A veil is drawn over every face so that the past is not remembered and a man can live out his life fully and learn the lessons along the way. With the knowledge of the past life shielded from him he will not be able to work to the answer. Such will avail man nothing.
The conclusion of arbitrariness and injustice arises from ignorance on the part of we human beings and the practice of conceiving a world without rules and regulations. As far as human beings are concerned, the laws passed by parliament are the only valid laws, and all institutions of state, social, political and economic and religious organizations are made to adapt to them. These laws emanate from the thoughts of man and are governed by the limitations of the organs of the thought. It is inconceivable that the Most High, He Who is generally acknowledged as perfect, just, omnipotent and omniscient would bring worlds upon worlds—visible and invisible –into being without laws. The world’s population today is said to be 7.8billion, yet this universe is no more than the tip of a pen, immeasurable as it may be to us, and there are Seven Universes, each with its own solar systems and galaxy and galaxy with own planets of which the earth is one, a plant in the solar system, a system built around the sun and the sun is only one of billions in our galaxy that scientists name Milky Way and there are billions of galaxies in one universe—all Creation in living activities, working and weaving, and weaving and surging, and sparkling, energy fields far away from and to regions incomprehensible to puny human beings, their reasoning and capacity to grasp. Human beings enact laws and draw up constitutions which they regard as the supreme law of their respective nations, to guide them and their relationship with state and their fellow men, and spell out duties and responsibilities.
Human beings a majority of whom have come to realise that they as creatures can ascribe to themselves wisdom to enact order through their constitutions and enforcement of same, but have hesitated to ascribe wisdom to do likewise, and greater to our Creator. A man or a collection of them are not free of their burden of guilt until they have atoned for their evil deeds. The circumstances of birth, association or work place only provide man what he needs which could be bitter or sweet and for him to make progress after atonement for wanton conduct or depravity by killing his fellowmen. Those who rejoice even if in closets are robed in to be dragged into the vortex of evil from where there is no escape until they have come to the recognition of their errors and have paid their debts. The atonement can take several years and they will themselves be killed during as many incarnations it may take for them to change through fire and brimstone, singly or in collective experiences. Sophistry, cleverness avails us nothing. Are we not told: “Eye for eye; tooth for tooth, hand for hand and foot for foot; recompense for recompense? Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” (Deuteronomy 19: 21). The Laws of the Creator, perfect, consistent, immutable and uniform and inflexible in all Realms of Creation are living Laws, and are self-enforcing! A faint sensing of their magnitude, the Laws which bear His Will, and which give expression to It, must force man to his knees in worshipful adoration of His Holy Name.
The Guardian
