I had my first Out of Body Experience (OBE) at 24, a few months before I went to the university. I lived in a single room apartment in Shomolu, in downtown Lagos. That wonderful night, I dreamed that a man I read to be of dark and evil intent wished to psychically attack me in the head. I fought back. The fighting violently disarranged and damaged furniture in the tiny room. One leg of my writing desk broke. The refrigerator was overturned. The standing KDK electric fan fell. Co-residents in the house gathered in the corridor, near the door of my room. Outside, our neighbours gathered in front of the house. In a twinkle, my would-be assailant disappeared from my gaze. I saw my body on the bed. Till this day, I do not know how I undid all the three or five security devices on the door, and rushed out into the corridor. I could not sleep in that room alone the rest of the night. So, I was taken to my grandmother who lived two streets away. A staunch Christ Apostolic Church woman, she conducted what was akin to a “deliverance service”, going by today’s church vocabulary. From her, my patenal uncles took me over. They were more used to traditional remedies for psychic and other attacks. They made a wooden effigy which I had to keep under my pillow before I retired to bed for the night. But, as much as this gave me the confidence to sleep, because I believed it would keep away that man or any other, I knew this effigy would be embarrassing in the university. So, I began to think about how I could defend or protect myself against such attacks with that recourse to external, physical aids or weapons. Little did I realise that, through the exercise of will, I was opening the door to a vast, new world in the course of my spiritual development.
This course was to help to deepen my understanding of many concepts and to lead to the recognition and deepening of many more. I was happy to learn that there is only one world, not two, here and the hereafter, or here (earthly) and the beyond, as we always say of that part of this one world which our physical senses cannot experience, and which we have not developed those other inner senses within us to interact with. I began to wonder: If this man came through the medium of the air which I could not physically see, I, too, would like to be able to experience life in that mode, not to frighten or to hurt people, but to protect myself. Afterall, is it not right for one to own a gun if thieves are likely to invade one’s home with guns at night?
These efforts have paid off with more OBEs, day-consciousness in some dreams, and the knowledge that “the Lord gives to His Own in their sleep”. In this regard, one of the experiences I would ever cherish is the passing of my father. On the Monday which preceded the Wednesday of his passage, a woman I perceived to be my mother walked past me in a dream and announced that my father had left the flesh. I told my wife I would see him on Saturday. Back in the office at The Guardian newspaper that Monday, I asked Mr. Gbenga George, who worked with me, to take him to the Guiness Eye Centre of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) where he was billed to see his ophthalmologist, Professor Bukky Adefule-Oshitelu. Everything went well. Then, at about 3:40a.m two days later, on Wednesday, he came to me in a dream. He announced in Yoruba language…”mo ti lo o, ranti gbogbo ohun ti a so, se ehin mi ni ire oo” (I have gone, remember all we discussed, tidy up my affairs). I woke up my wife, my heart pounding, and announced to her what I had just experienced. She called me Joseph the dreamer on account of my dreams which came to pass. I prayed that he was alive and ill, so I packed some herbal first aid remedies for ailments I knew were his challenges. By 5:30a.m, one of my brothers who lived with him and one of his tenants were at my gate. I knew the ultimate had happened. The first question I asked was:
“What happened?”
My brother answered:
“It’s daddy.”
“What happened to daddy?”, I asked praying he would still be alive. But I was wrong.
“He passed on”, my brother replied.
“When?”, I asked.
“At about 3:30a.m”, he said.
That was about 20 minutes before he appeared to me in a dream. I asked them to go, promising to rejoin them in the family house for a meeting. For he had willed that his earthly remains be interred not later than the Saturday after his passing. We honoured his will.
People who understand these matters will know which of the many possibilities may have taken place. It was possible the silver cord which bound the soul of my father to his just discarded earthly body had not severed, and his thoughts had taken up such powerful forms (thought forms) which I easily picked up as pictures because we were emotionally close while he lived. In this case, his thoughts may have bound him to his body for longer than he probably needed to be chained to it. So, on the day after the funeral, I went to the cemetery at about 5:30a.m, to advise him to turn his gaze away from this earth, and seek helpers in the so-called beyond, remembering all the concepts we discussed about the continuation of life in the beyond after life on earth.
The Inquisition
I have told the foregoing stories to invite attention to some of the concepts misunderstood by many Christians today. The scent of the Christmas season still hangs densely or heavily over us in Nigeria, inviting us to expend this season judiciously, as the first part of this series advocated last Thursday. But what do we find everywhere? Revelry. Even the sex clinic programme of a Radio station is staging a Christmas party for its listeners and the big companies are falling over one another to donate prizes as a public relations strategy!
Concepts are keys which open the doors on earth and beyond it. Wrong or misunderstood concepts bar the way to paradise. I dare not tell the stories I have just told if I lived in the era of the INQUISITION. This was the period Christians who had or expressed views contrary to those of the Apostles and the Church were severely punished, sometimes with stoning to death or burning on hot plates. It was a weapon of the Church to enforce conformity with its teachings, right or wrong. Jews were the first targets of the inquisitors and their tribunals. The Spaniards and the French were to have bitter tastes of it. Historians believe thousands of people were savagely killed over about 700 years, ending in about 1820. Jewish Christians who held beliefs of Judaism alongside their Christian faith were ignonimously massacred. The Roman inquisition, forcible suppression of Reformation of the Church, originated from the Vatican and was abolished about 1908. But it was merely reformed and renamed the HOLY OFFICE. The office was run by Cardinal Josel Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI. It keeps an eye on what theologians write or teach. The Roman Inquisition created the INDEX OF FORBIDDEN BOOKS to wage a war on books which advance ideas which the Church did not like. The index was not abolished until about 1900. The church has not, even today, stopped its clampdown on the opinions of Christians different from those of its leaders. The content remains the same, but the form always changes. As stated in the first part of this series, the leaders of religion rose against the teachings of Jesus because they thought these teachings would dispossess them of their authority, power and influence over men. So, they conspired and executed Him. When the people sought to rise against the execution, the Sanhedrin, highest religious order, told them Jesus had come to die for their sins and had taken the sins away. A huge bureaucracy was set up to maintain this deceit. In AD 553, the fifth ecumenical council of the Christian Church took place in Constantinople, then capital of today’s Turkey. King Constantine was the first Western Christian monarch. He forced his people to become Christians and built Constantinople as capital of his country which, today, has become an Islamic nation. The AD 553 Council was under the Presidency of Eutychius, Patricia of Constantinople. Emperor Justinian wanted the council to abolish certain long-standing beliefs established by early Christian Fathers, including ORIGEN, who taught about re-incarnation. Pope Vigilius of Rome disagreed with the proposals. To upstage him, Emperor Justinian invited to Constantinople equal number of Bishops from the East and the West of Europe. Bishops from the West boycotted the conference when the intent became known. Eight African Bishops attended. Pope Vigilius was summoned to Constantinople. Avoiding the meeting, Pope Vigilius took refuge in a church from May 5 to June 2, 553 AD. About 160 Bishops attended. Only 16 Western Bishops were there. Africa was represented by eight. None came from Italy. The Council was to confirm condemnation by Emperor Justinian of “THREE CHAPTERS”, a series of teachings which he said were heretical. Pope Vigilius had earlier condemned these teachings but later re-recognised them, setting the stage for a show of power and authority by the Emperor. The Council did the bidding of Emperor Justinian. Italian Bishops and French Bishops opposed him as did most, if not all, Western Bishops. Pope Vigilius caved in and approved the Council’s decision on February 23, 554 after, as reported, the Emperor threatened to depose him. The decision were 14 anathemas (rejections) of Nestolannism. This doctrine was advanced by Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople. It made a distinction between the Divine nature and human nature of Jesus. The church was divided. But as Islam advanced, taking over Turkey for example, Bishops from across the East and West divide made compromises later passed on as coming from the Holy Spirit. Christians should ask: does God compromise?
Origen, whose teachings were as widely respected in the early Church as the teachings of the Apostles, taught about reincarnation. But the anathemas employed by the church in the struggle for authority and power effaced his teachings.
Many Christians do not know what goes on in the leadership. Politics often decide doctrines and dogmas which are handed down as having been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Thus, when the Bible was compiled from an array of Books, so many that are even more educative of the times and Mission of Jesus were left out because the Church leaders did not favour them. Today, followers dare not believe that anything exists outside the Bible that is of more spiritual benefit to man than the literature in the Bible.
The forgoing is why I said earlier that, if I shared my experience about my first Out of Body Experience (OBE) and subsequent day-consciousness in dreams during the time of the inquisition, I may have been tortured by being forced to drink boiling water, thrown into a pitch-dark dungeon, executed at the stake or flung onto a hot metal to roast to death.
Persecution goes on nevertheless for challenging Church Order. But for the irrepressive soul with oil in its lamp (the Five Wise Virgins), Christmas season offers an opportunity to step out of the cage of dogmas, and to “seek” and “knock” at door of the Eternal spring of Wisdom. It is in this regard that I share the following experiences.
Clairvoyance
This is the gift of seeing what the physical eye cannot see, even with the aid of the most powerful microscope. Many Christians deny this gift or ability, regarding people so gifted as belonging to the “principalities”. Such Christians forget that the Three Wise Men saw on Holy Night the heavenly host which accompanied the Baby Jesus to this earth. They forget, too, that Peter, James and John beheld Moses and Elijah, long departed from this earth, with the Lord Jesus at His Transfiguration. They forget that Elijah was not taken up into Heaven in a earthly chariot of fire, that no-one can go to heaven in an aeroplane or a motor car or in his physical body, and that the event was ethereal. Balaam in the Old Testament was permitted to see what his horse saw and thereafter disobeyed him…little nature beings preparing that part of the earth for remodeling and development. Unfortunately, Balaam misnamed them Angels! They belong, rather, to the specie of beings called elementals. One of their leaders is so huge that one button of his belt is bigger than our earth! The elememtals and their lords helped the Egyptians to build their pyramids at a time mankind knew nothing about machines for building construction!
Re-incarnation
After the anathema against Origen’s teachings, the church till this day rejects this idea. I suggest an earnest Christian seeker for knowledge in this area read Stephen Lampe’s THE CHRISTIAN AND RE-INCARNATION. Evidence abounds in the Bible that re-incarnation is a reality. Jesus asked His Disciples: WHO DO PEOPLE SAY I AM? Only Simon Peter gave the correct answer: THOU ART THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD. One of the Disciples was surprised and wondered why the Son of God would have come without fulfillment of the Scriptures regarding the return to the earth of Prophet Elijah before this event. Jesus replied that Elijah had come, but he was unrecognised as such, and had been treated as such. Thereafter the chronicler of these events injected his personal opinion in the next verse when he said: AND IT BECAME CLEAR HE SPOKE UNTO THEM ABOUT JOHN THE BAPTIST. Knowing ones recognise that Elijah was not a re-incarnation of John the Baptist. This diminishes nothing from the reality of re-incarnation. Rather it shows that, in the days of Jesus, re-incarnation was a well accepted fact of life that He did not have to speak about it, or that His Ministry was so short that He had no time to deal with misconceptions about it. The major weapon of the Christian critic of re-incarnation is the statement that IT IS APPOINTED UNTO MAN TO DIE BUT ONCE, AFTER THAT, THE JUDGEMENT. Little is it known that this statement refers to the FINAL JUDGEMENT or spiritual death in the End-Time. Lazarus did not die once. Jairu’s daughter did not die once. The widow’s daughter did not die once.
Life After Life
The Bible tells us of the Lord saying I KNEW THEE BEFORE I FORMED THEE IN THY MOTHER’S WOMB. That means we existed somewhere before we surfaced on this earth. We cast away our tangible body to come here, and we would cast away the tangible body of this earth before we leave the earth. When we live the earth, we would not make the grave for our physical, earthly body our new or next home unless we are stupid, and have destined ourselves for the grave through our thoughts.
For no-one can rise beyond his or her thoughts. Were Moses and Elijah in their graves when they were sighted with Jesus at His Transfiguration? Ever since I was in high school Biology class learning the skeletal system with human skeletons procured from different parts of the world, I knew it was not possible for these discarded bones to rejoin and form themeslves anew in THE JUDGEMENT. The body is only a shell or carrier for the spirit, which is the entity slated for Judgement. Even Paul the Apostle told us the body in which he saw Jesus after His Resurrection was not the body of this earth. If Jesus, our example to follow in all things, does not reside in the grave, so should we not.
Distorted Souls
Distortion means alteration. A distorted soul is one altered from one gender to another. The animating core of the genders are different. The female is finer and more delicate than the male. This expresses in the outward forms as the spirit forms the body. Both genders are designed for different roles in creation. The female is given to tending and caring and inclines far more readily to the higher regions of existence than the more obtuse male which has a more earthly flair. Thus, while the male works the earth to give it a paradisal flavour, the female mediates strength and values to him which she absorbs from currents of power from Above to which she is more readily connected. When a woman leaves her ordained sphere of activity or a man departs from his, the volition or expression of will causes a change in the consistency of the animating core. This slowly impacts equivalent alteration on the physical or outward body, as the spirit forms the body. Thus, at the next incarnation, a female soul inclining towards manly life may be reincarnated in a male body and vice versa. This is the cause of many sex changes which surprise many people today. What do we expect to happen to female boxers, soldiers, paratroopers, wrestlers, politicians et.c? And what do we expect to happen to effeminate men? Why will two men not seek to be “husband” and “wife”. And why will two women not desire this lifestyle if they are distorted souls? It is the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species at work. Birds of a feather must flock together. And since the church, too, comprises many distorted souls at its leadership, distorting many natural concepts, why will they not distort the marriage concept?
