I am back again in a newsroom examination hall. The chief examiner is Mr Kingsley Osadolor, my deputy when I was Editor of The Guardian newspaper, Editor of The Sunday title when I was Director of Publications and Editor-in-Chief and, after my retirement, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper. Mr Osadolor said I abused the privilege of an editorial platform to write a column on natural medicine by publishing on that platform this series of articles on June 12 Democracy Day National Honours.
Over the years, I have learned to not make comments on what I am not acquainted with. I comment only on what I experience, or what have become experiencing for me. When I write about herbs and their healing potentials, Iam encouraged to do so by literature in more than 200 books in my study written by leading figures in this art world-wide, who back their claims with verifiable clinical expertise. I personally use many of the herbs as well. Outside this field, I have learned to ask myself; How much of myself do I know ? Saying we know someone , when we are only familiar with him or her, is an abuse of language. The same happens when we give the impression that we know what someone is doing or has done, because, thereby, we are vouching that we know the A-Z of that person or process.
I believe Mr Osadolor made this mistake when, categorically, in his limited view, he said I abused the privilege of this publication in a column designated as NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY. Superficially looking at this title or designation, Mr Osadolor would be right. However, he is incorrect because he did not see through the depths, through origins of the conception. Everything has an origin, purpose or raison detre. I “RECEIVED” this LOGO, did not think it out. It came from INTUITIVE PERCEPTION, not INTELLECTUAL triffle. I will define the crucial words to distinguish the work of intuition from the work of intellect and, thereby, situate the perception of Mr Osadolor where it rightly belongs… in the realm of the intellect. As bright as intellectual work may appear to be, it is inferior to intuitive work, origin of the logo, which is more expansive because, in scope, the intellect is confined by earthly parameters of time and space and, therefore, cannot soar beyond this confinement.
In the following definition of terms, four words are crucial for an in-depth understanding of what the logo and, therefore, the column seeks to achieve. They are NATURAL, REMEDIES, MIND and BODY.
NATURAL
This word connotes living a life that is natural, and this means living in accordance with THE LAWS OF NATURE. These laws can also be termed THE LAWS OF GOD IN CREATION or THE LANGUAGE He speaks to His creatures and which they must strive to learn in order to understand His Will and not run into trouble with the machinery of creation. Creation is governed by laws which enforce adherence to His Will. Therefore, the laws of nature are like the manual of operations through which the designer of a motor car, instructs the owner or motorist about how to use the vehicle or maintain it. If the motor car is well used and well maintained, it will serve purposes for which it was manufactured. Several years ago, I gave home and public lectures based on natural lifestyles. I titled them THE KEY TO PEACE AND HAPPINESS. How pleasant will existence be for a child in the home of his or her parents if he or she does not understand the language of communication in that home? Everything which exists came through these laws and are subject to them. We know about those of sowing and reaping from the Bible, Gravity , (from science), the cycle (from blood circulation, evaporation and rainfall, sunrise and sunset, birth and death) , gradualism and Radiations among others. It is because we do not obey them that our world is upside down, whether in government, education, marriage, nutrition, management of states of disease, business, investor-worker relations, call to service as guardians on earth such as the founding fathers of The Guardian newspaper found themselves, and opposition to such calls, as THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN has sought to explain vicissitudes of this newspaper. Thus, it is within the province of the column to address questions relating to infringements of the laws of nature as foundations of troubles which assail human MIND and BODY.
REMEDIES
These are prescriptions of the laws of nature for anomalies created by disrespect for these laws. Two weeks ago or so, I made my widow’s mite contribution to the ongoing efforts to reform Nigeria’s Constitution for a healthier society. I suggested Nigeria’s present six geo-political regions become self- governing, each under a Governor General, while the office of the President be subsumed. The Governor General would superitend a wholesome, organic economy and cultural growth of his region. Currently, the states in a region are not harmonised by any authority and tend to drift hither and tither as national political waves blow them about. The regions have no unified goals, no direction, no serious purpose. If under the proposition mentioned, a region wishes to address food shortage and rail transportation, all the states must unify their thinking and budgets in favour of the agenda. Isn’t this what the arrangement of the human body teaches us? Is the human body not a product of the laws of nature, as human societies? There are many biological systems which inhabit from the human body, like human races and tribes which inhabit the surface of the earth and particular countries, such as Nigeria. In the human body, these biological systems include but are not limited to the skeletal, respiratory, digestion, reproductive, immune, blood circulation, the nerves, digestion, urinary etc. The cells and tissue of each are differentiated from those of others. They are like tribes of humanity. No one dominates or seeks to absorb or annihilate the other unless something is going wrong. How healthy would you feel, if teeth begin to grow in your eyes or brain, or if bones erupt in your heart or intestine?
MIND
We speak of mind-over-matter. Scientists cannot figure out what the “MIND” is, because it is weightless and unverifiable by research tools but they accept there is something more to earth man than blood and flesh. I discovered this at 24 in 1974 as I often write when I had my first OUT-OF BODY-EXPERIENCE (OBE). My brother, Architect Tunji Kusa, who shared a bed with me that night is a living witness of what I write. I came out of my body, and beheld my body fast asleep in bed beside him. An astral or ethereal soul was in the room to attack me. I do not “shake like a leaf” when confronted by adversity as Mr Osadolor suggested in his rejoinder. How much does he know about himself not to mention of another person and from which sources these other persons receive inspirations which energise and drive the visible works of his hands. It would be a Hallmark of presumption, conceit and vanity if anyone says he or she “knows” the other. What we call “the mind” is SPIRIT, the living ego in the earth-man , the I in the language who speaks, in the possessive sense, of “my head” or “my stomach”, that which came out of my body that great night in 1974 to defend his sleeping body. Since then, I have concerned myself seriously with the meaning of existence.
BODY
The body is the dust casing in which the spirit exists on earth. It has no life of its own , was animated by the spirit on its incarnation to set off foetal blood circulation and the first kicks of pregnancy. This body would later serve for the soul’s anchorage on earth for the fufilment of the task assigned to it in this part of creation. The highest capacity and tool of this body is the INTELLECT, anchored in the brain. It is meant, by the Laws of Nature, to be the tool or servant of the spirit on earth. In the majority of mankind, however, it has pushed the spirit aside and taken over the throne. That is why many persons no longer do anything right on earth. An active, soaring Spirit is different. It easily connects with the higher spheres of existence from where it received guidance which the subordinated intellect easily implements.
I would have been electrocuted by high tension cables about 20 years ago, if my intellect governed me. I had parked my car on the road and gone into my residence to prepare for the office. Done, and set to go out, I approached the perimeter fence gate. As I was about to open it, the INNER VOICE, that is THE INTUITIVE PERCEPTION of the spirit expressed in the INNER VOICE, suggested I go to re-check the house entrance door. The intellect wondered why I should since I double checked it under one minute earlier. That quiet voice suggested…WHAT WILL IT COST YOU TO DO SO? I obliged. As I turned round, and before I took the first step, I heard sounds of cracking metals right on the road, in front of the house. I thought armed robbers were operating and tip-toed to the back of the house for safety! Later, I discovered fallen high tension cables on my car. I had not noticed that a wooden electric pole was beside my foot gate. Termites had eaten it up from the bottom. That morning, it collapsed. Had I not obeyed the inner voice, that voice of my Guardian SPIRIT to not let the intellect be my guide, I would have been electrocuted.
I told the story to underscore the fact that we are linked to higher spheres from which we receive guidance and that it was through such guidance that I RECEIVED the idea for the logo NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY. This high guidance also provided the ideas which led to the editorial compartmentalisation of THE GUARDIAN and its profitability from the fifth year onwards. Everyone is linked to high guidance. Whether he or she strives to activate the network which spans the earth to Paradise is another matter.
Long before I came to The Guardian, I had been steadily guided towards the knowledge of extra terrestrial existence. I mentioned some of these steps in the introduction of my website. My first OBE and several others which followed continually grew my interest in what many of us still call “THE BEYOND” that is a world beyond our physical abilities to experience and to explore. Such persons have not arrived at recognitions that they bear within them the material consistency of this world within them and that it is inert if they do not activate it. Everything boils down to activating every ability of the spirit lying dormant within and that was why The Lord Jesus admonished us to SEEK, promising that we shall find, to KNOCK, promising that the door shall be opened unto us, to ASK and it shall be given unto you. Active in these dimensions, I increasingly recognised that the human Spirit is on earth, a school of Life to grow from CONSCIOUSNESS OF EXISTENCE of the spirit germ to SELF CONSCIOUSNESS and, from there, to consciousness of its environment, the other beings who inhabit it with him, Creation and the Almighty Creator discern the purpose of all these as the recognition of The Will of God, unconditional submission to this Will and become privileged, upon its development, into a HUMAN BEING to participate in the further development of this part of creation through ennoblement by the Spirit.
The picture I am painting for the definition of the task of my column, NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY, is not fictional as some doubting Thomases would like to imagine.
One more example should drive home this point. On a Monday in August 1998, my mother who passed on 5th August 1959 told me in a dream my father had left the flesh. Two days after, a Wednesday, my father came to me in a dream to hold my hand and to announce to me that he had gone, that I should remember his discussions with me and that I should tidy his affairs. On that previous Monday, I had asked Mr Gbenga George in my office at The Guardian to take him to hospital, to see his doctor, Professor Bukola Adefule-Oshitelu of The Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) who confirmed him to be in good health for his age at 76. I was to see him on Saturday. After I rose from that Wednesday dream at about 3.40am, I went to my wife in her room to inform her I would leave home in Ikeja by six for Obanikoro where he lived. Before six, my brother, Yinka, who lived with him, and one of his tenants were at my gate, knocking. I knew what had happened. As soon as I let them in and I asked what happened and Yinka replied “Daddy”, I stopped him and informed him Daddy had come to tell me. Our “discussion” he wanted me to remember was that his body must not be kept in a refrigerator and should be interred on the Saturday that would follow his passing. Through the help of Reverend Adenugba, who heard this story, I was able to get the church in the village to comply with his will. If I had been a person who “shakes like a leaf” as Mr Osadolor imagines, I would not have done what I did next. My culture demanded that I report my father’s passage to his siblings and elders in the community who would hold family meetings that may delay the interrment for three months. I would not be trapped between culture and the man who as my father facilitated my entrance into this part of the world. I bravely stood on his side and carried out the interrment as he wished it be done without informing members of his family and the village elders. Some editors of The Guardian attended the funeral, despite the short notice. A vibrant inner life gave me the inner strength for this defiant activity.
In the course of this inner growth, the divination of my birth as a healer in succession to my paternal grandfather who as a prince of the royal court of the Awujale of Ijebu land ministered to the health of the Awujale of his days, began to merge with my aspirations in life to help my fellow humans in the field of health. My grandmother’s breast cancer in 1980, two years after I returned from youth service, further activated this desire. I began to buy and to read books on ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE which were being written at that time by Orthodox medical doctors in Europe and America who were expanding the frontiers of MEDICINE into the ambit of herbs and spiritual medicine. Doctor Norman Shealy, a surgeon, and Journalist Carolyn Myss, hoisted the flag of energy medicine in the United States. Their book, based on their clinical experiences of healing even cancer of the breast without drugs, was titled THE CREATION OF HEALTH. In it, they even categorically stated that the human ego, the human Spirit, was behind radiant health or dis-ease . I continually reviewed such books and passed the reviews to persons such as Chief Bola Ige. In time, I was guided into expanding the reviews to encompass spiritual content, and then to the logo NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY.
Each word bears a powerful radiation of its own. Together, they are a constant reminder to me of the field of activity IAM called upon to work with them. No one received them for me. So, Mr Kingsley Osadolor cannot de-limit their application. That would be presumptuous, vain, conceit and even garrulous murder of a living spiritual idea.
Since 1999, that is for 26 years, I have published a column of varied content under the conception of the logo NATURAL REMEDIES FOR SOUND MIND AND BODY. They range from CHRISTMAS, EASTER and PENTECOST to President Tinubu’s inauguration in 2023 and herbal medicines for various ailments of the human body, including cancers and uterine fibroids. So, why would THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN be an exception? The question Mr Osadolor did not answer include why he fled from home on learning of the GUARDIAN’s closure, and why he failed to share the information with his direct boss Femi Kusa, but with Andy Akporugo if there were no immediate and direct links with the publication INSIDE ASO ROCK. They lived in a block of six flats where five senior editorial staff of The Guardian lived. Two of them were senior members of the editorial board. Why did only two of them flee? Were these two not the only ones connected with inside Aso Rock?
