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The man who seeks

By Abdu Rafiu
24 October 2019   |   2:59 am
I have just read an online report of a bizarre find in a container in the United Kingdom. According to the report, police discovered 39 bodies in a container early yesterday in Essex

Police discovered 39 bodies in a container early yesterday in Essex, believed to have been brought in from Bulgaria.

I have just read an online report of a bizarre find in a container in the United Kingdom.

According to the report, police discovered 39 bodies in a container early yesterday in Essex, believed to have been brought in from Bulgaria via a town in North Wales. There is hardly a day such weird reports do not feature as media menu for the world to read.

No less mind-boggling is the report of a Federal Government panel headed by the retired Inspector-General of Police Abubakar which states that some 25,050 children have been turned into orphans and 4,983 women into widows by bandits.

Some 190,340 were displaced within eight years, that is from 2011 to 2019, all the gruesome statistics covering Zamfara State alone. In the same state, 1071 persons were killed in the first quarter of this year.

In the northern parts of the country, no fewer than five children torture chambers have been burst by the police and the children put in shackles set free.

Similarly in the West and the East, they uncovered baby factories where babies are raised for sale. Harems of teenage girls are lured with a promise of Eldorado by unconscionable women only for them to discover that young men are drawn to lurk in the shadows to give them babies.

Also frightening is that there were buyers on stand-by made up of again, women. They were childless women in search of babies they could call their own. Instead of going to orphanages that dot the landscape, where they give could ventilate their ardent longing for babies on whom they could shower their love, attention and care they headed for baby markets. In the process, they compound their childlessness. In their next incarnation, according to revelations of the higher knowledge now spreading on earth, the same cruelty would be visited on them. Not only would they be childless, but threads would also put them in circumstances that they would go to jail.

The crime rate continues to mount in several places with Venezuela on top of the chart followed by South Africa, Afghanistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, El Salvador, Namibia, and Syria according to statistics in the digital media. Switzerland boasts of the lowest rate globally. Other countries brandishing very low crime rates are Demark, Norway, Japan, and New Zealand. In the United Kingdom recently, it will be recalled, there were 13 stabbings within 24 hours in which knives were used in gang violence. In Nigeria, according to Global Terrorism Index, 1,700 people were killed by herdsmen.

The collapse overtaking the world must compel those not hardened in their minds and consequently closed, to be agitated about the direction of our world, whether it is in escalating crime rate, or natural disasters. In the Lagos area, the rain has been falling daily, leading to a deluge of floods for almost the whole of this month of October. The rainfall forecast for October by metrological services is 157mm.

In September the amount of rain that fell was 163.2mm. Nearly two weeks ago, there was wildfire in California. Those perplexed by the development, the horrors of Climate Change, can’t but want to seek answers for their bewilderment and the unaccustomed phenomenon.

It can then not be for nothing we are admonished: “Seek and ye shall find.” Indeed, a person begins to seek when he begins to have reservations about life. In agitation, he asks: Who am I? Where have I come from? Where do I go when I depart this world? Those who have gone, where are they? What about concepts? When loved ones, friends, acquaintances, neighbours pass away, there is a torrent of messages wishing the departed to rest in peace.

Does a soul rest in peace in the Beyond? Does the departed sleep on in the bosom of the Lord in Paradise? These are stated without qualms, without our deep reflection. They are stated because they are wishes that everyone has said and repeated for centuries. Because they have been stated for that long, they must then be right! Does it ever occur to us that some of the well-meant wishes, rightly understood, may, in fact, amount to cursing the departed? It must be fascinating too, for a moment, contemplate a man who sleeps all day.

We all believe that a man must be sick to sleep all day. The sluggard who sleeps all day soon loses hold on life, he loses strength and he is useless to himself, his family, his community and his neighbours who will naturally show concern. In Beyond, life is far more active than what obtains on earth. The terrestrial ponderousness to which the earth is subject is non-existent in the Beyond. Everywhere in the entire Creation is driven by motion.

Consequently, there is no part of creation where rest as we know it obtains and is possible. There is yet another universal saying that the voice of the people is the Voice of God! But is it? Can it ever be? Who is man, the sinful and puny humanity for his voice to be the Voice of the Highest, the Creator and Source of all life?

Many in the developed world in particular for about 150 years struggle with the belief of how much more have conviction on the existence of the Creator and concept of Heaven and Hell. Is justice in the world? Why do some people have in abundance and live in splendor and a majority languish in penury and afflicted by diseases? Why are some born sightless and a great many born with clear, sharp eyes? Why do good people suffer? There are several other unanswered questions. The immortal words of Terence McKenna must continually ring in our ears when he said: “Nature is not mute; it is the man who is deaf.”

I find two accounts of two departed persons in some publications sobering and instructive, one is transmitted from the light region. These are contained in two different publications—“More About Life in the World Unseen” by Anthony Borgia, and the other, “A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands.”

The first is by the son of a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. He communicated with Anthony Borgia. It is said Borgia had always acted as his scribe. A literary appreciation of the book states: “Through other sources of communication he has not only been able to verify the substance and content of the scripts, but they have both enjoyed literally hundreds of forgatherings.”

The latter book contains experiences transmitted by a departed Italian named Franchezzo. Here is a short excerpt: “…I knew not that I had died. I passed from some hours of suffering and agony into sleep—deep, dreamless sleep—and when I awoke it was to find myself alone in total darkness. I could rise; I could move; surely I was better. But where was I? Why this darkness? Why was there no light left with me? I arose and groped as one does in a dark room, but I could find no light, hear no sound. There was nothing but stillness, the darkness of death around me.

“After some fruitless struggles, I fell upon the ground in unconsciousness. When I awoke again I was overjoyed to see that my beloved one had returned to me. She was standing near, looking this time as I had seen her on earth, but pale and sad and all dressed in black….She stood over a long low mound of fresh earth.

I drew nearer and nearer and saw that she was silently weeping as she laid down the flowers on that low mound. Her voice murmured softly, ‘‘Oh, my love! Oh, my love! Can you be indeed dead, and gone where my love cannot follow you? She was kneeling down now, and I drew near, very near, though I could not touch her, and as I knelt down I, too, looked at that long low mound.

A shock of horror passed over me, for I knew now, at last, that I was dead, and this was my own grave. Now I stood beside this grave, my own grave, and heard my beloved call me dead and strew flowers upon it.

“Eight or nine months had elapsed since I had died and I had grown strong and vigorous once more. I could move freely over the great sphere of the earth plane. My sight and my other senses were so far developed, that I could see, and hear and speak clearly.

The light around me now was that of a faint twilight or when the night first begins to dawn into the day. To my eyes long accustomed to the darkness, this dull light was welcome though, after a time, I grew so too long for the true day to dawn that the dull twilight was most monotonous and oppressive.

From this Twilight Land, I took many journeys and saw many strange and different countries, but all bore the same stamp of coldness and desolation.” In the Frozen Land: Great statesmen were amongst those whom I saw dwelling in this land, but were those who had not loved their country, nor sought its good. Only their own ambitions, their own aggrandizement had been their aim and to me, they now appeared to dwell in great palaces of ice and on the lofty frozen pinnacles of their own ambitions…chilled and frozen by the awful coldness and barrenness of a life from which all warmth, all passion, was shut out…scarcely one was there enough warmth of feeling to thaw the ice around themselves even to a small degree.’’

In contrast, here is experience is drawn from “More About Life in the World Unseen” an account from a light region: “What is so astonishing,’’ observed Roger, ‘‘is that there don’t seem to be any signs of government anywhere.’’
‘‘Would that be a complaint?’’

‘‘Certainly not a complaint. No, however hard you look, you’ll see no signs of any form of government. It is there nonetheless. I dare say you were thinking in terms of legislatures, acts of parliament, by-laws, orders in council, decrees, and many more horrors of ordered life on earth.

‘‘Now, I’ll ask you a question, Roger. Have you seen anywhere notice-boards or notices telling you you must not do this or that, or informing you what the office hours are, or warning you with the old familiar ‘‘trespassers will be prosecuted,” or “even keep off the grass?

“No, not one—anywhere.’ And you never will; for they don’t exist here. Unique, don’t you think?’

‘very much so.’ From which you will gather ‘, said Ruth, that we are all beautifully behaved.

‘‘The truth is, my boy, that our “government” is by natural laws, and therefore the best in the whole universe. Better, a million times, than anything that could ever be devised from man’s ingenuity. Natural laws need no enforcing; they enforce themselves.’’

“….Each realm has a ruler. That’s not a strictly accurate term, though we use it.

‘‘Does he rule then, then?’’ No, that’s just it. He doesn’t. He presides and that is very different. I am talking about the realm of light now.”

On the occasion of his last birthday celebration on earth, Chief Awolowo longed to have a copy of Dr. Raymond Moody’s book: “Life After Life.” He had read the review in London Times, he said. It was Dr. Moody’s account of patients who had experienced clinical death and had been revived.

All goes to show to us that there is more to life than meets the eye. As I did say recently, the most urgent need of everyone is to seek knowledge. “Seek and ye shall find”, we are admonished. Food for thought, indeed.

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