By Abdu Rafiu
The Month of May, noted for its unique and glorious blessing, is closing its cycle on Sunday, to be handed over to the ever-refreshing month of June, which in our clime is characterised by heavy rain. It is the month when rains do not just fall, but pour in buckets, trying to put a lie to the bogey of Mr. Climate Change. Rains rise, reaching out to a climax in the month of June, what geographers call the first maximum in the equatorial belt. Before we can catch our breath, the wonderful Month of May (Please, excuse my use of emphatic tautology) has come and is closing its cycle, saying goodbye to us in two days.
There is so much to say about May. It is a month of lightning and thunder strike, a phenomenon in Nature that when it strikes, in spite of thunder arrestor, the technological magic of the modern man, we dash for momentary cover, shaken to our marrows. Yet, there must be lightning and thunder to moderate temperate and tropical atmospheric temperature imbalance. May is a month of restoration. May comes with a weather that is a mixture of rain and sunshine, a signal foreshadowing the rainy days ahead. In these times EKDC and its Ikeja or Ibadan and Benin, Enugu or Kaduna cousins, do not get as much trumpeted on rooftops as they are accustomed to receiving in January or February, indeed as their forebears, ECN and NEPA, got which my boss and Editor-in-Chief, Allah-De, wrote about 61 years ago! In May, not cowed by Climate Change, the day and night can be refreshingly cool.
There is more to the Month of May. As the fifth month of the year, May swings in the Law of Numbers as the month of love. As numerologists are wont to say, mostly those who occupy themselves with the science of Numbers, Figure 5 represents Love. It is powered by the force that is Love and it swings in Love. It can, therefore, be no surprise that the Son of God Almighty, Jesus, carries five letters, for indeed, He is the Love Part of the Father as I have mentioned a few times in these pages, while Imanuel, the Justice Arm of God, swings in Figure 7 which is Perfection. Thus, the Justice and Will of God manifesting in the Divine Laws, also called the Laws of Creation and otherwise more referred to as the Laws of Nature, cannot be anything but perfect. It is through these living and perfect Laws, self-acting and self-enforcing, irrevocable, immutable, automatic and unceasing that the Most High Creator governs the whole of His Creation.
Sandwiched between April, the fourth month which swings in Nature featuring awakening and sprouting, and June, the month of power, the love of May is not to be interpreted in the narrow sense. For love is not indulgence, it is severity. The releasing power of love gives to everyone that which is of benefit to him. Thus, it is said true love gives benefit, not comfort. Ultimately in benefit lies comfort. The tongue of fire, as I have illustrated before, for example, is beautiful and attractive. A child finding it irresistible only needs to touch it once in his life to learn the right lesson! In experiencing, therefore, lies knowledge, and knowledge rightly applied, leads to maturity and development. Experiencing grappling with materiality breaks us within, brings us to an awakening, affords us knowledge and gives our souls polish, and refinement.
In May, out of Love, the Almighty Creator renews His Creation through the outpouring of Power from On High. The Lord Christ said to His Disciples, “Be ye gathered in Jerusalem and ye shall be endued with Power from the Holy Spirit.” It is an Event that has been taking place from the beginning of Creation. If in any year, this renewal does not take place, Creation will shrivel and wither and all creatures, animate and inanimate, denied of energy, will go into extinction. We can see from the foregoing why in May, regeneration in Nature, a gift of love, drives everything relentlessly towards its climax, particularly towards the end of the month. In this driving or forcing towards blossoming, everything is animated and it regenerates the good and the bad, to bring to their authors, in justice, the bountiful harvest of their labour. It is also the month of protests by youths, the month of Aluta Continua! I will come back to this presently.
Many people who have had the blessing of standing in knowledge of the importance of May of every year for human existence and the outflowing attendant happenings, strive inwardly to withdraw from material encumbrances in the last three days of that month to give it deserved attention and draw abundantly from the power and unquantifiable blessings outstreaming from the Throne of Grace. Many a man does not know we are tiny parts of a mighty whole and that this mighty whole microscopically is present in each of us. If we consider that heart beat count is about 72 every minute and the blood as it circulates in the body, and reflects on this microscopic event at play and in relation to the gigantic universe, we get some picture of what is going on in the mighty whole, the universe. One then begins to wonder: Does it mean that the universe has a heart which is beating and pumping “blood” round it? If this is so, of what significance is it for the existence of every creature, including man, in the universe?
Left to a great many of us, the conception and poser must be hard to disentangle because the instrument for it that we carry is stunted from lack of development and use, and making man for a very long time, an unbalanced being to simultaneously experience material and immaterial existence. I am referring to the hind brain, the cerebellum which is the spiritually receptive part of the two brains. The frontal brain, the cerebrum, the seat of the intellect, has outpaced the hind brain from over cultivation which makes it to be evidently the big brain and is so called, whereas the two are meant to be equally developed. While the cerebrum, the “big brain” is the sharpest instrument of the material world and celebrated, the cerebellum is the connection point with the immaterial, the invisible world. Thus, as we learn in revealed knowledge, the average earthman knows only his physical environment and of nothing else. Yet, that other exists and is tangible to whosoever connects himself or herself to it.
Earthly affairs, political, social, economic and so on, or simply put, our tangible world is upside down solely because many of us are no longer able to connect with the immaterial world. Which is why the government distances itself from the hunters at Ogbomoso who have volunteered to bring out the children in captivity from the National Park! The government does not know where they are coming from. Are they Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmole? Over to our own WS, the Noble Laureate! The immaterial world from which we are now distant is the world which should govern our activities in the material world.
Revealed knowledge and what is knowledge is a subject for another day. In the meantime, we may reflect on the hint by even our language on the lopsided development of our brains. We do not speak of a small eye and big eye. Nor do we speak of a big hand and a small hand. Both lobes of the ear are symmetrically positioned and physically apportioned. So, something must be wrong with the conception of a big brain and a small brain. It is this imbalance that makes governments, citizens and the professions to be unable to think straight when it comes to doing things the way of the universe, the microscopic part of it, expects us to conduct ourselves.
Back to the subject of May and Nature. This reminds one of the memorable thoughts of Mikhail Gorbachev, the agent of reform of the old Soviet Union and the liberation of its various peoples who constituted it from the unnatural union. Mr. Gorbachev said in 1994: “As an ongoing re-evaluation of values is basic to the evolution of civilization. In its early history, mankind treated Nature with reverence. People were afraid of Nature, regarding it as something superior and unfathomable; they worshipped Nature as kind of deity. Harming Nature was a deadly sin.
“Later as man accumulated knowledge and practical skills he began to see himself as superior to Nature, setting himself the goal of conquering it and subordinating it to his own interests
Soon, it became apparent that the arrogance of technical knowledge scars nature with wounds that will not heal”.
Mr. Gorbachev went on to blame the problem in the relationship between man and nature on “a crisis of spirit.” He urged the world to recognise the urgent need to reconsider the old views, and attitudes towards nature and reach a new level in learning the laws that govern the system that incorporates man and nature.
What then is Nature? This brings us back to the fundamental issue Mr. Gorbachev raised in his profound perception. What is Mother Nature? Like many human words which have lost their original meaning in human perception long ago, the concept of Nature remains nothing but a vague expression for many people today. Many long to be close to nature. They throng the seashore for its refreshing spectacle, the rippling of waters the undertows, the sheer breath-taking expanse of the ocean that bows the spirit; tides rising and falling. Some wander in the woods for the oozing of insects, the ruffling of leaves, for refreshing air and the enrapturing beauty of the forest. Some head towards the mountains for their indefinable rarefying effects on the spirit, and others to simply behold undulating hills. Many long to be close to Nature when they are tormented by the plastic city life and flee to the beautiful greens of the invigorating countryside, even if it is only for a short while.
These days it also has suddenly become wise to be natural for the sake of good health. Medicine is advancing all right. But has it not created two problems where it sought to solve one? Natural spring water is thus the vogue. And there is a return in droves to herbal remedies once contemptuously discarded as having no place in modern medicine and the world. Talk of beautiful nature fills the air. We speak of natural beauty and everyone is enraptured and uplifted by beauty that is natural, which has moved away from artificiality. We are enchanted by the former which bears life, but repelled by artificiality that is not animated in any way, that is dead. Yet man has not evinced signs of being tired to tinker before the works of Nature he is forced to bow.
Any talk of nature today is likely to evoke no more than images of coarse forms, that is outward appearances. Pictures of landscape automatically arise as do those of all that are perceivable by the physical senses, At best, this picture conceives of the earth as belonging to Nature. In a sense this would not be an altogether false or incomplete picture if the manifestations often called Nature are seen as no more than mere outward visible effects of the intricate natural activities behind which lie some beings. Yes, some beings! To be certain, Nature is the undistorted material effects of the activities of Nature Beings. Matter has no life of its own. It assumes a living form only when it has been glowed through. These forms, glowing, warm and active are then able to unite with other forms to produce power and evidently stronger forms.
When the animating glow withdraws, matter collapses or dies and returns to its primeval state. It is the same with man. The human body falls away when that which glows in him withdraws—which is the spirit, the real man. That which animates him, giving him life. This glow is a healthy union of radiations and distinguishes what belongs to Nature. Inherent in the works of Nature also are the capacity for self-strengthening and propagation. In the end we all become aware that all of life is radiations and the visible life is nothing other than the coarse replicas of fine animating core. It stands to reason therefore, that man and woman are bundles of different radiations. It is thus revealed in higher knowledge that a woman is defined by the nature of her activity as man, too, is by the nature of his as well. This then means that differences in the words must prescribe differences in the roles. Thus, it is Nature that assigns roles to both genders. And the roles, obviously, are not interchangeable.
At the peak of Paradise stands a Temple—peak but beneath the Divine Temple of the 16 Elders like an annex. In this Temple at the peak of Paradise, there is a vessel. It is from this vessel that all the worlds below receive Power from the Almighty Creator for their continued existence, flowering and fruiting. Once a year, in earthly parlance, power is poured out to the creations below for their maintenance. The outpouring is akin to the pumping of blood by the human heart to all parts of the body. When the heart fails, death is stalking at the gate. So, we are told, as Above, so below. In other words, if there is no outpouring of Divine Power by the Holy Spirit from the Chalice in the Highest Temple at the peak of Paradise, Creation would become deprived of energy and it would shrivel, wither and die…!
Thus, the tones in the radiations of the Month of May most importantly, of the special Power that streams out from On High, drive the month in an all-encompassing, invigorating love. So is it that we stand encompassed in the unrelenting driving power of May. In the grip of its radiance, of that unfathomable love, and we rejoice! As this period approaches in Paradise, the Knights of the Temple Who guard the Chalice beseech the Holy Spirit for this love, and there is rejoicing in the Temple when the Holy Dove appears over the Chalice. It is the spiritually visible form of the Holy Spirit. Clairvoyants sighted the Holy Dove above the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ as the revelation of His Divine identity, and the four-equal arm Cross behind Him, the Cross of Truth that He embodied! Joseph His earthly father would sight the signs only on his death bed when the Lord Jesus stood beside him. So moved was he, we are told, that he exclaimed, “SO THOU ART HE AFTER ALL! An all doubts departed from him. The Dove above the Head of the Lord Jesus is evidence that like His Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, He and the Father are One in their Activities—and with the Holy Spirit in Holy Trinity.
May 30 has remained the peak of Pentecost. The trouble is that this power will be received by many people tomorrow, but not consciously as the Disciples absorbed it. It drives not many people towards beautiful ends as it did the Disciples. Some bubble while a great many use it for ignoble ends. At this period, the soil yield crops in abundance. Fruits and vegetables beckon in manifolds. Traditionally, on the other hand, it is the season of outbursts, not only in Nigeria, but globally. It is the season of protests, turmoil of Aluta Continua in our land with youths raising clenched fists to hit the air if the sky is unattainable. The period is easily put to ill-use and not for upbuilding it is ideally meant. It is a period laden with flashpoints if we run our minds through history whether it is Second World War (1938-1945) and the events that preceded it and then the invasion of Poland by Germany; the Biafran War (1967-1970) after the declaration of Biafra on May 27, 1967. One would not know what informed the shifting of the swearing-in of the Nigerian President from October 01, Nigeria’s Independence Day to May 29, a previously quiet date on the Nigerian calendar. Whatever may have been the reason, our prayer is, may our country attract blessings as would help us to recognize the unswerving Will of the Almighty Creator and fulfil it. For that alone can renew the land, heal wounds and restore genuine peace in the beleaguered land.
The Guardian
