There is hardly anyone who can reflect just a little who will not be perplexed by the spate of deaths in the land and in several parts of our planet earth. The spate is such that within days we erase the announcement of one from memory to accommodate a shocking report of another. This excludes the clan of the lowly who are mourned privately because their names do not grab the headlines. As I was preparing this column, report came that a traditional ruler and a member of Akarigbo-in-Council in Sagamu had been shot dead in his home. Similarly, a Nigerian singer, Osazuwa Agbonyinma, had been shot dead in the United States where he was based. The Edo State Coordinator of the National Youth Service Corps, Suleiman Andy and Ibrahim, too, has passed away. A Youth corps member serving at Government Girls’ College, Katsina, died in a motor accident on his way back from Kaduna to the school. The mother of Melania, Donald Trump’s wife by name Amalifa Knavs, died at 78. A budding celebrated actor, Adan Canto passed away at 42.

Death is not a subject we human beings take joy in discussing despite its inevitability. Yet, William Blake (1757-1827) said of it: “I cannot think of death as more than going out of one room into another.” When death is discussed whether in a closet or in public arena, it evokes solemnity and sobriety. Somehow, it bows the spirit. So, as I was saying last week…In the enlightenment contained in a unique higher knowledge spreading on earth today, the union of the soul and the physical body is through radiations. The union is no merger. Are we not told in the Scriptures: “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body”? (1 Corinthians 15:44). When there is a drop or deficiency in the mediation of radiations by the body due to illness, we say the person is down or he is under the weather. If the illness is prolonged, since the soul cannot go on indefinitely using a deficient tool, it walks out of the body which is what we refer to as death. The radiations may weaken owing to old age resulting in imbalance in the exchange of radiations between the soul and the body. The medics do us a whole world of good through science or herbal remedies to restore the deficiency and thus the balance in the radiations.

Those who are given the gift of healing through prayers of intercession or through placing of hand on the person who is ill in what the new knowledge calls Magnetic Healing may redress the imbalance as well. In all cases it is the body that heals itself. What is afforded the sick is strength for the body to do so. If the deficiency of radiations comes from the soul, from the spirit, it means the radiations are weakened and dimmed from predominantly materialistic pursuits and little or no attention is given to the spiritual. This can result in cancer affliction or in a young promising man suddenly dropping dead and the whole community begins to wonder and lament. What such indicates is that the animating influence of the spirit on the body formed with elementary particles encasing spirit motes has been gravely dimmed. In other words, the physical body has been denied the nourishment of spiritual radiations, leading to disharmony, indeed dissonance between the spirit and the body. The necessary hormonal orchestra in the swinging of the spirit and the animated body has been severely hampered through uncanny materialistic attitude. Therefore, the man whose spirit is overlaid with dross arising from impure and wholly materialistic pursuits, is unable to look up and keep awake the longing for the Spiritual Realm which is Paradise, our Home Above. The longing for its Home in Paradise is ever consistent with its nature having come from there.

The body radiation diminishes when we sleep and the union with the soul is loosened. It can then not be a surprise that sleep is called the younger brother of death. In his exceedingly invaluable work, “How is it that we Live after Death and What is the Meaning of Life,” Dr. Richard Steinpach says: “The brain current shows up to 30 cycles per second in the wakening state. In sleeping persons it drops to half a cycle per second in the course of falling asleep. But at the same time the heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure and body temperature also diminish. The body economy is maintained only on a “pilot light.” Research has thereby established the outward signs of a weakening of all vital functions, naturally also accompanied by a weakening of body’s radiation, which is dependent on these vital functions …this diminished body radiation makes possible the loosening of the soul.”

A child may come bringing help to a woman who has longed ardently for children but whose fallopian tube may have been blocked. In answer to her ardent supplication to the Most High a soul may be sent to bring help through its radiations to clear the blocked tube. After the soul has fulfilled its mission, what do we expect the child to hang around doing? It is recalled to the plane from, within a year subsequently, she has another baby, and year after year she is blessed with more babies. How can science be conceived to stop such a death, the return to higher planes of a soul who has fulfilled its mission of opening a woman’s womb to thenceforth begin to experience the blessings of the of the Most High.

At death, the soul throws away its garment where it was sent. The mother, lacking in knowledge and understanding, however, becomes inconsolable for losing a child she had gone round the world, to the best hospitals to find but all to no avail. Now, one came and did not stay! However called the body to enter the Beyond, another material plane, albeit lighter. It is clearly stated in the unparalleled enlightenment of these times shed In the Light of Truth: “The process of dying itself is nothing but birth in Lord? to the Ethereal World, similar to the process of birth into the Gross Material World. After the separation the ethereal body remains attached to the physical body for a time as if with a navel cord. The higher the soul now born into the Ethereal World has already developed itself towards this Ethereal World during its life on earth, the looser this cord will become.”

Where the cord, that is the silver cord, has not severed or loosened it is possible for the soul to be drawn back into the body. There are several testimonies to this as recorder in the book, Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody who did an extensive research on dying and life after life. In one account we read: “The doctor had already said that I was gone, but I lived through it. Yet, the experience had been through was so joyous, I had no bad feelings at all. As I came back, I opened my eyes, and my sister and my husband saw me. I could see their relief, and tears were pouring from their eyes. I could see that it was a relief to them that I did survive I felt as though I had been called back—magnetized back—through the love of my sister and my husband. Since then I have believed that other people can draw you back.’’

The stories of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha in Bethany who was raised from the dead by the Lord Christ; also the son of the widow of Nain. (Luke 7:14) were a case in point although under different circumstances. We are told “The more a man’s volition has chained him to this earth, i.e. to gross matter, indicating thereby a refusal to acknowledge any continuation of life in the Ethereal World, the more firmly will this volition bind him with this cord to his physical body and consequently also bind the ethereal body, which he needs as garment for his spirit in the Ethereal World.
“The denser his ethereal body is the heavier it becomes according to the prevailing laws, and the darker it must appear. Such great resemblance and close relation to matter makes it very hard for the ethereal body to detach from the physical body, so that it happens in such cases that it must still undergo and feel the last physical pains as well as the whole process of decay. Neither does it remain insensible with cremation…

“It is different with those people who during their life on earth have begun to strive for all that is noble. Because they bear within themselves a living conviction about the step into the ethereal World, the severance is much easier. The ethereal body of such a person and its connecting cord are not dense. Their texture is alien to that of the physical body, and permits the severance to be very quickly effected. Thus during the entire so-called death struggle or last muscular twitching of the physical body, the ethereal body is already standing beside the latter, if indeed one can speak of a death struggle at the normal death of such a person. The loose and slender condition of the connecting cord prevents the ethereal being standing beside the body from feeling any pain, because being so frail and light in substance, this cord cannot transmit pain from the physical body to the ethereal body.”

The departed’s new garment which is the ethereal cloak makes it possible for the soul to penetrate walls of the house to go its way or fly from Europe to alert loved ones and other relations back home in Nigeria that he had departed earthly life. We may have had cases of people feeling somehow on easy in the night about their son only to receive information about his exit the following morning. The sojourn of each person on earth has a tenure which can be lived through uninterrupted to the end aided by science or shortened where health care delivery is inefficient or deficient. Once the tenure is over, the soul departs no matter how great the medical technologies are. Science itself derives its content from matter. What science can do is to raise life expectancy as it is doing. It can prevent through timely intervention of death that could have resulted from carelessness or ignorance and bad health habits or communicable diseases. It can help prolong life through engendering improved standard of living. From the statistics I gave last week, we can see that because of higher standard of living life expectancy in the Western World is higher than what obtains in the developing countries. But science cannot add a day to the life of a man whose time is up. Matter is matter. Because the body is matter it dissolves into matter regardless of whatever attempts by scientific discoveries may be. It is a Law which no scientific wizardry can overthrow.

The whole of Creation is governed by immutable Laws which may be called Natural Laws. They are perfect, unchangeable and incorruptible as I have stated repeatedly in this column. They ensure order in life or death and they are self-acting because they are living, giving expression to life, power and the Will of the Most High God. For a great many, death is in fact immense progress, a giant stride in fulfillment through life’s journey to longed-for Heights. For those who terminate the lives of their fellowmen, they must fear the torments and horrors that are features of life in the depths of abyss. The spate of death and destruction is loud statement to us all that ‘It is indeed getting dark slowly, but inexorably!’