Age of knowledge revisited

Hardly is it suspected that the physical defines undercurrents that eventually lead to the physical either as condensation or as pressure. Unaware of the undercurrents we simply conclude that what we do not see or feel does not exist. We have scientists to thank; with their microscope the world now knows that there are living organisms bitterly fighting themselves in a drop of water.

Water itself is a combination of molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. The place of heat cannot be overlooked. We boil water, after a while we open the lid of the pot, and what do we find on that lid? Water! Geographers tell us that when hot air rises to a cooler region, we have what they call conventional rain.

There is no need to go into the subject of heat today beyond stating that without heat there is no motion. Where there is no motion there is no life. A characteristic of the human spirit is that it is magnetic and there is the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species with its inherent and power of motion.

The sun is a star composed of spirit motes the concentration of which gives rise to electro-magnetic waves called sunlight. It is also the splitting of these spirit motes which stream down from beyond what is proverbially known as Paradise and form atoms even found in cell molecules of our body. It is the animating influence of the human spirit on the cell molecules that keeps a person away from cancer if it is not dimmed through crass pursuit of materialism or power.

What I am getting at is that a great many believe that what they cannot feel or see even with the aid of modern day scientific gadgets does not exist. Some, who believe that there is more to life than meets the eye, as it is said, do not know enough about the Beyond that it is vast, indeed defined as all that cannot be perceived by earthly means.

As I did state last week, what most modern priests, clerics and scholars have been unable to grasp is that Creation has is a structure, and they may need to seek clarity on concepts and pictures as well. The Primordial Creation is the highest, yet there is the Divine Realm which is not part of Creation. And separating the Divine and the Throne of Grace of the All-Highest, Most High God is an ocean of flames which only the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit can cross.

This is because their radiations which brought about the flames are the same as the Most High bears. They are parts of Him. The real Creation is the Spiritual Realm, the vastness of which is beyond the contemplative faculties of man to survey or comprehend. The densest part of the subsequent Creation is where the earth has its place. The Ethereal World which we call the Beyond is bigger in size and vastness than this physical world. It has its own gradations.

As we all must have experienced it while in the air, on a flight cruising 35, 000 feet from the ground, neither trees nor human beings are seen looking down from that height until the aircraft begins to lose height in descent preparatory to landing. It, therefore, cannot be difficult to grasp when it is said that the earth with all its 7.8 billion inhabitants is no more than the tip of a fountain pen in relation to our universe.

From all this, we should begin to have an idea of how far from this earth Paradise is, and how farther still the abode of the Holy Spirit is at the summit of Creation where He is the eternal Mediator through Whose Power the entire Creation is governed as the Will of the Most High while the Lord Christ governs the Divine Realm after re-uniting with His Father following the brutal end of His Ministration of Love on earth—Both working at the behest of the Father Who is in Them and They in the Father as Trinity.

With this vastness alone, it becomes imperative to understand the nature of the Creator, the Almighty Creator of all. Many see Him as no more than an old King in the neighbourhood, at most some distance high up beyond the clouds—even when astronauts have revealed that the moon is about 400, 000 miles away from the earth.

Thus, I stated last week that the old knowledge can no longer suffice; it is limited. The Law of Motion demands of us that we grow and deliberately, from time to time, re-examine our belief systems, religious or spiritual, and summon the courage to throw out of the window those that belong to the age of ignorance, primitive and pervasive superstition. The knowledge of the building blocks, of the developmental stages would necessarily remain. No one would forget he started from a primary school.

Now I want to recall what I wrote in this column in November, 1993, captioned The age of knowledge. It goes as follows: Knowledge is power, it is often said. And when the man of knowledge comes we rise in salutation, paying him generous homage. His intellect, generally regarded as the seat of that knowledge, is praised. We look at him in admiration. The man of knowledge is celebrated from land to land, from one end of the world to the other.

The man of knowledge is he who has read far and wide. He has read the Life of Rousseau. He has studied Alchemy. He has read about Apollonius Hipparchus. He is familiar with Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. He has read T. S. Eliot; Wole Soyinka; William Wordsworth; Achebe; J.P. Clark. He is familiar with John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Age of Uncertainty and the later work, The Affluent Society.

The man of knowledge is one who has read Flora Nwapa. He speaks about Vincent Ike with uncommon familiarity. About Amos Tutuola’s Palm Wine Drinkard. And about Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu, Morountodun and Once Upon Four Robbers. The library of the man of knowledge is filled with Niyi Osundare’s works and Odia Ofeimu’s. He is he who has grappled with Segun Sofowote’s English As She Is Spoke which Alfred Opubor described as, in his words, “a confident road map, produced by a teacher who has earned his stripes in the heart of the Nigerian battlefield for language excellence.”

The man of knowledge is one who has read, digested and made the content of William Shakespeare’s works his own. He is familiar with the thought of Heracleides of Heraclea Pontica that the earth turns on its axis and that Mercury and Venus revolves round the sun. He is familiar with Archimedes of Syracuse of “Give me where to stand and I will move the earth” fame. He has read about Herophilus and his discovery of the nerves and differentiation of cerebrum and cerebellum. He has read about Pythagoras and Plato as the fathers of geometry who, it was reported, brought its development to such a stage that the inscription over Plato’s Academy could not but read: “Let none enter who knows not geometry.”

He is regarded as a man of knowledge who speaks as if he was an eyewitness to the French Revolution. He is familiar with the Thoughts of Karl Marx and The Selected works of Mao Tse-tung. He has read Awo’s many books and Zik’s Odyssey. He is familiar with the work of Mozart. He is conversant with the work of Handel. He is one who asked if he had read Winston Churchill’s Second World War, Alone,” he speaks in the affirmative. Has he read Okigbo, the poet?

A man of knowledge is one who has read Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. He is said to be one, who in the words of one-time action Governor of Lagos State, Lateef Jakande, (LKJ), reads everything in print and who knows something about everything and everything about something.

In the ages past, the universally accepted knowledge was that stored in stone, skins, trees, scrolls or walls such as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Today, the universally accepted knowledge is that documented in books, and books are kept in libraries. Thus, the man of knowledge today is one who is expected to have waded through libraries. No, I take that again. Today, the universally accepted knowledge is that also stored in the e-books and in the magic, all pervading Internet as well as in links and its portals Mr. Google, Google and its variants—FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter alias Mr. X with Donald Trump as the chief librarian and editor-in-chief. Mr. AI, the thought police of these times, is keeping a watching brief.

Books contain thoughts of the writer who, in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, has chosen to reveal the world and particularly to reveal man to men…his writing has brought about the commonality of language and revealed the world of universalism. Knowledge brings confidence. It engenders a feeling of wellbeing. There is an air of being on top of the world.

In the early days, university students were often referred to as the leaders of tomorrow. In testimony to this, in all parts of the world, the men of knowledge have been in power in all countries for upwards of two centuries today. They control influence and privileges.

I remember renowned mathematician Chike Obi pressing hard in 1964, in the First Republic, that a thorough knowledge of Pythagoras’s Theorem should be minimum qualification for Nigerian legislators. He spoke in Parliament. He spoke using the vehicle of his radical, non-conformist Dynamic Party.

Through knowledge, there have been discoveries. The knowledge itself may have derived from observation of phenomena. It has been observed, for example, that energy radiates—although the source of the energy is not generally known. Yet, energy must have a source. Discoveries have brought about great improvements in our lives. Through observations, experimentation, and cognitions, the outworking of life’s principles became established. And these established principles have been used to bring about what they call inventions which have facilitated life. I hasten to state, though, that there are no inventions, there are only revelations because all man needs is already provided in Creation. The invention of electricity by Michael Faraday will live in the hearts of men for all time. The principles of invention have today become widespread knowledge. Subsequent attempts after him have been to polish and perfect his efforts.

Systems, practices and cultures of different peoples are observed and documented to form a body of knowledge. So is the behaviour of man under different circumstances and environments, be it politics, or economic pursuits. Reports of such behaviourial studies abound. In the age knowledge has not lost its innocence, learning mistaken for knowledge, became a power rated far above wealth. He would have the best women if he could just conjugate in Latin—because it was strongly held, that learning moulds character. Early writers evincing knowledge were courted by kings, by the powerful, and the mighty among men. Learning has been essentially regarded as the route to knowledge. As proof of learning, books have sprouted.

However, if in spite of knowledge man has not known peace and joy, the secrets of what scholarship is expected to unravel, should the world not spare some moments of thinking of alternatives? Should searching and questioning not have begun bearing in mind that without reservations about what one holds in his hands, he cannot begin to ask questions, the right questions; and without the questions being asked, there can be no answers, and without answers there can be no progress. Should we not ask questions such as Wither our world? The guiding rule of Socrates, reputed to be the wisest man in Greece, stated, “I must first know myself as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.”

If our knowledge does not include revelation about ourselves, how can we address what is in our interest and how do we know our goal? What does our knowledge say about the economy, politics and nation-building—all of which are giving way if we care to see, and if we care to hear? What does it say about Life after Life? Afterall knowledge is about truth and truth is about reality. Thus true knowledge being Truth and Truth being Light illumines, dispersing ignorance and lack of clarity.

If we accept that there is life in the non-physical, we must also accept that beings in the non-physical have knowledge. Does knowledge gained here end with a person’s demise on earth? If the answer is in the negative, it is logical to appreciate the fact that human beings in higher planes, in the Light Region or Paradise must carry higher and richer knowledge. We would know that the closer a Realm is to the Source of Life and Light the higher and more pronounced the motion. Are we not told in Psalms 90: 4 “…for a thousand earth years are as one day in the spiritual’’? We read also in 2 Peter 3:8: “With the Lord one day is a thousand years.” It should stand to reason, therefore, that John the Baptist coming as he did from the Primordial Spiritual Realm, the highest spiritual realm, would have richer and expansive knowledge and capacity to receive directly message of Revelation of the Light than John the Apostle who was from a lower Realm and was on earth.

“Verily I say unto you,” so says the Lord Jesus, “Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.” (Matthew 11:11). John the Baptist received the Revelation in the Isle of Patmos and passed it on to a human being on earth, John the Beloved of the Lord, who was spiritually open for it and who translated it into earthly words.

As I did state last week, mankind today have been blessed with so much that they have no excuse standing on the same spot going round in circles, but getting to nowhere in particular.
This piece, updated, was first published on this page in November 1993. It is being rerun because of its relevance in our today’s world. It will be concluded next week—The Age of Knowledge .