Readers of The Christian and Reincarnation, Building Future Societies: The Spiritual Principles, Thinking about God: Reflections on Conceptions and Misconceptions, as well as The Primordial Laws of Creation must be familiar with their author, Stephen Lampe. Not many, however, are aware that the writer is the same as Dr. Stephen Lawani, former Director of Information Services, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and later Manager, World Bank, Washington DC.
The pseudonym provided Lawani, a graduate of Chemistry in the employment of a global Scientific research organization a shield and cover against possible embarrassment and contradiction of sorts for writing on spiritual subjects held as untenable or invalid, not subject to empirical procedure or test! But that was not the only challenge Dr. Lawani, who emerged the best graduating Chemistry student of his set at the University of Ibadan in the 60s with a university scholarship offer to study up to Ph.D. level, but ended up training in librarianship and Information Science, faced in his career and bid as a writer to share his convictions and what he described as “peerless and invaluable enlightenment” he said he gained from reading the work, In The Light of Truth: The Grail Message of Abdu-rushin. In his books, Lawani tries to advocate and explain how the application of this spiritual knowledge could help solve much of the problems confronting humanity today at the individual, family, group, national and global levels. The adherent of ‘The Grail Message’, has, however, had to incorporate a publishing company, Millennium Press, which exclusively publishes his works in order to safeguard their integrity. According to him, though fascinated and eager to publish his first book, publishers both home and abroad demanded that he make certain alterations and adjustments to suit market sensibilities, a compromise he said, he rejected, because it would undermine the fundamental truth and help in his message.
The erudite scholar, prolific author and newspaper columnist, who recently clocked 80 tells more in this interview as friends and relations celebrated his birthday anniversary, Saturday, July 13 in Lagos.
As a book person, how do you feel?
I feel proud to be a lover, extreme lover of books.
May I know which is the most interesting and most important book you have ever read?
Obviously from our conversation so far, the book that I can say has made the greatest impact on me, and that has really touched me, with which there’s no comparison, is In the Light of Truth, The Grail Message by Abdrushin. Why do I consider it so? For me, it is impeccably logical. It hits me as true. I am convinced that it is a revelation. It answers the key questions of life that I’ve always had. Why are we on earth? Where do we go after death? We talk about the Kingdom of the Almighty. What is this Kingdom? Is it just one single entity? Does it consist of many planes? It is stated in the Bible that in my Father’s house, there are mansions; Does this mean that the father’s house is really creation and that the many mansions are the planes in this creation? Is that what it means? Those are questions that I always asked myself. In The Grail Message, I found answers.
Outside academic papers, you write mostly on spiritual matters, why so?
As a matter of fact, I have written more on information science and library science in various prestigious international scientific journals; there are more than 60 such publications. Even now, years after I’ve left the profession, many of my articles are cited, and interestingly, it’s all over the world, even journals whose languages I don’t understand. In fact, the first time I would write outside non-technical, non-scientific work and publish it was in 1987. At that time, I was still at the IITA. I was there from 1969 to 1996. By 1987, I had come across this work, ‘In the Light of Truth, The Grail Message’. Having come across it, in my own reflections on the work, I felt that you can only believe, you can only fully logically accept the work, if you believe in reincarnation. The author, of course, says you must be personally, individually convinced about his work. He says, “I offer, I do not solicit,” and he says, you’re wasting your time if you don’t fully accept it, understand it, and then decide to live by it. In my own reflection, I resolved that one must believe in reincarnation. That if you don’t believe in reincarnation, the whole system, as I understood it could not be convincing. So, I did a special reading on reincarnation, including especially the Bible since I was aware that some Christians, not all, do not believe in reincarnation. So, I wrote the book. By 1987, I was ready to publish it. I gave the manuscript to many major publishers in Ibadan and also to some others outside Nigeria. And in each case, they were willing and anxious to publish it, but they would say you should tone this down, rewrite, this chapter to make it acceptable to the readers. I told myself that I was not going to compromise my views in order that the publisher may accept it. So, I decided, after thinking for a long time to establish a publishing house, and I formed Millennium Press.
But before getting to the publishing, the printing and distribution, I must mention that I had a problem with the name. Working for an international research organization dealing with agriculture and holding a rather significant position in the organization, I thought it might be odd for me to publish a book on reincarnation, a deeply religious philosophy. So, I decided I was going to use a pseudonym. I remember it was around UI gate area as I was driving from town to the IITA campus where I lived that the name Lampe just flew into my mind. I knew enough German at that time to know that Lampe means lamp. I said since I was throwing light on a subject, that would be a good name to adopt. But I began wondering whether human beings bear Lampe. As a librarian, I knew how to find out if Lampe is name human beings bear. I drove directly to the Library and I found in an index of authors many Lampes. That’s how I adopted Lampe but also retained my first name and middle initial.
You went into self-publishing. How rewarding has that been in terms of readership, patronage, as well as in material terms?
The story of my getting involved in this kind of writing has nothing to do with looking for money. I had an excellent job, well paid. Indeed, I was paid in dollars, and that was because I was an international staff recruited in the U.S. So, money was not a consideration.
Q: You used to write a column for The Comet, The Nation and The Guardian. How would you assess the quality and adequacy of public affairs analysis and commentaries in today’s newspapers in terms of understanding what the issues are and how to solve them?
A: You’re right. I was a newspaper columnist for some years. I started with The Guardian on Sunday newspaper and the column was called Millennium Wisdom. I started writing it shortly before I left IITA. Again, this is where my name, Lampe, became useful. I couldn’t have been writing as Lawani when I was still at IITA at that time. I don’t recall getting paid anything. I did it for free. I was writing the column completely out of interest, and the objective was to bring the knowledge, the wisdom in the Grail Message to bear on current affairs issues. That was the whole point. When my contacts at The Guardian – Lade Bonuola, the Managing Director, and Femi Kusa, the Director of Publications established The Comet, by that time, I was already at the World Bank, I decided to shift the column to The Comet and I continued with The Comet until it became The Nation. At that point, I coincidentally, decided not to continue the column because I wanted to face my spiritual writings full time. I didn’t think I would have time for a weekly column.
There are so many columnists. Some columnists you just admire and you read everything they write. Some other columnists, you can see they are struggling. You can see they’re not writing from deep within, and they’re somewhat superficial. But I think one general point one can make is that if you want to be a columnist, you have to choose a subject in which you are personally very much interested, and a subject that you would be reflecting on, even if you were not a columnist. In other words, you should be inwardly-driven as you pursue your subject. And when you are inwardly-driven, you are likely to have commitment to your ideas. You are not likely to write superficially. You are also likely to put your very best into each piece you disseminate. That’s the way I look at it. You can say standards are falling generally, but there are still very, very good writers, obviously very knowledgeable, very committed to the messages they are trying to communicate.
Q: You wrote from spiritual insight in explaining what the issues were. With conventional approaches to viewing and dissecting secular matters and proffering solutions, how do you expect to understand and accept your standpoint?
A: I think, first of all, regardless of what subject one is looking at, one must be logical. You have to convinced that what you’re writing makes sense, that it is objective, it’s not something emotional. It’s something that any serious thinker can see the objectivity in it, can see the logic in it. And one of the most privileged positions one can be in, is to have a source of knowledge that you know is comprehensive in terms of applicability to every subject or field, that it is completely logical and, therefore, one can proudly and honestly defend any position deriving from it. That’s the beauty of the Grail Message; So, for me, it’s a unique revelation for the world.
Q: Writers are supposedly seers and healers. Why and how would you say we are in the situation we have found ourselves in in this country and as humanity and what’s the way out?
A: I think that the problems of Nigeria are not unique. You look around the world today and it’s hard to find a country that stands out in peace, being really well governed, free of corruption, promoting harmony, true justice, and love; a country that one can point to as a model of what our deep inner selves would want. In short, one can see that humanity has a common problem, common challenges, and I think the root is spiritual (not religious). We don’t even understand that we, human beings, are actually human spirits wearing physical clothes. And that these physical cloaks, which some people do anything to satisfy, to please, for which they kill, steal, dispossess whole societies, are ephemeral and are dropped at physical death while the real human being (the spirit) lives and continues to experience the consequences of past right and wrong actions. It is on account of the poverty of the right spiritual knowledge on the part of individuals that human beings are mostly developing wrong civilizations and stick to wrong cultures.
Q: What’s the solution?
A: The solution, to me, is to ‘know thyself,’ know that you are a human spirit, know that you are just a creature of the Almighty; know how you are supposed to live as a creature of the Almighty, and know that only in living in accordance with the primordial laws of creation shall we have a fulfilled life, a peaceful life, and all together find harmony and happiness within ourselves. We must each individually cure ourselves of spiritual indolence and the superstitions promoted by some religious groups. Paradise in the spiritual realm is our eternal home; let’s not chain ourselves to this earth!
