Yes, whence cometh joy, and whence cometh sorrow? As I did state last week, we cannot always talk about sorrow. We must learn to plant joy and brighten up. We must understand the chemistry of sorrow and what drives the waves of joy and happiness. The question of whence cometh joy and whence cometh sorrow becomes germane when we consider the fact that wealth, material endowments do not necessarily confer joy on a person, despite the comfort and pleasure these can fetch at the press of a button.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo once said: “The pursuit of wealth is not a bad thing in itself because, without the food and comfort which wealth provides, life will be penurious and drab”. But more than that, in the unscrupulous world we live today, we cannot despise wealth for a man without means could be put at a disadvantage. However, it must be wealth honesty, and high-mindedness accumulated. Indeed, as Awolowo was to add: “But always remember that any wealth accumulated on a selfish basis, at the expense of the State in defiance of social justice helps to create a disorganised society in which everybody will eat everybody, and no one can be safe”.
The point being made is that earthly endowments may confer comfort and the accumulation of the same cannot be ignored in an unscrupulous world, these do not necessarily fetch joy and happiness. It can be observed that a poor or lowly person may know joy and happiness as well as contentment.
There is a need to understand the nature of joy and the nature of sorrow. Joy and sorrow are immeasurable quantities. They exist nonetheless; they can be sensed; they can be felt. But they cannot be touched or quantified like energy or work performed by energy. Yet they exist as intangibility, that intangible force or pressure under various banners point affirmatively in this direction.
The science of hypnotism suggests, for instance, that something other than the familiar day-consciousness can be projected beyond the familiar frame of reference into the “wilderness” unknown accounts of which in the physically subconscious state movement within which often radiates without and sometimes even breaks down its coarse receptacle, the tangible body, or tears it apart.
Such phenomenon suggests something besides the motley crowd of familiar computations: a pressure, though tangible, does not exist in a vacuum. Nothingness cannot give rise to something and tangibility cannot efface into nothingness. As science has decoded in matter, matter can neither be created nor destroyed, although it lends itself to transformation.
What then is pressure? Is it tangibility of a consistency other than material? If it is, is this tangibility subject to depression or excitation, in this case, experiences which, at that level, correspond to the coarser for – sorrow or sadness with which we are familiar? Investigations going have been found to accord with reality.
It was not too long ago that Kellian photography revealed these energy fields as ethereal prototypes of all coarse forms have come to be known. I have been advised that there is power ex-ray equipment that records auras!
What I am getting at is that joy and sorrow are not material but spiritual contents experienced in the core of an earth-man, from where the powerful waves of such experiencing impinge on the physical body which they affect positively or negatively on account of the transformation in blood radiation which they cause. That is why try as science has, it has not been possible for the mechanistic theorists to attach a weight to joy or sorrow and why their origin, also, have to be sought beyond the material threshold.
This of necessity calls again for the trajectory of the origin of man, that immaterial-animating core of the man on earth, that is earth-man, which will require volume to scratch even the surface. Suffice it to say, however, that since this core is non-material and does not lend itself to a material probe, it stands to reason that its origin must be beyond the material and any contact with it must be in the realm and with instruments homogeneous to it.
The contention is not dismissive of any investigation. For all around us, from the bowels of the earth to its topsoil and the cosmos even in this materiality, this invisible world speaks loud and clear and in a language that can be easily understood. It cannot but be so. For like must feel like. The language contains the guidelines for orderliness, adherence to which brings varying degrees of conformity while repudiation connotes sorrow in like manner. We are in the realm of Natural Laws or the Laws of Nature, also known as Divine Laws.
Issuing out of Life, and bearing the Creative Will – the Creative Will being the Holy Spirit – it should go without saying that Nature is always right. And through it has everything on earth issued, atom, element, molecule, compound; man, or beast; the planetary systems or the gigantic galaxies. In all these designs, order reigns. And in all these designs, the semblance of the smallest is to be found in the greatest and vice-versa such that the beginning flows into the end and in the unceasing opening and closing of cycles as evidence of order. In the cycles are contained the processes of sowing, germinating, maturing, flowering, fructifying, fruit-bearing and ripening, harvesting and closing, collapsing into a primeval stage, in the end, going back to the beginning in the outworking of mechanisms that govern life – according to “In the Light of Truth”, the Work ‘which leaves no gap, contains the answer to every question, and clearly shows mankind how wonderful are the ways in Creation that are upheld by the many servants of His Will'”.
Take, for example, the atom. Its core is surrounded by shells of electrons, a minute, nay, invisible replication of our solar system which also is a diminutive replica of the cluster of solar systems which constitute a galaxy. This system replicates itself up to the farthest points (82 billion miles) observable today through telescopes to nail home the point “as above so below”. Order in Nature means proceedings according to natural lawfulness or naturalness. Man has always striven to recognise this lawfulness because his passage to this vale of matter having been facilitated by Nature, he carries slumbering within him this recognition which the material bandage subdues, but which nonetheless he has duty to awaken as a condition for his ascent or resurrection from matter.
Science continues to discover these fundamental principles of order or orderliness in Nature and categorizes them as laws. Science did not create these laws or anything for that matter. It stumbles upon and recognizes what already is and utilizes the findings for transformation of matter which themselves can only take place within the context of cooperation with the Natural Laws. Thus two atoms of hydrogen reacted with one of oxygen can always produce one molecule of water under specific conditions and temperature. So is it that when hot air rises and gets to a cooler region, condensation takes place and there is rain which geographers call conventional rainfall, characteristically experienced across the middle belt of Nigeria between July and August!
Until lately, however, the tendency was to assume that this natural lawfulness applied only to the elements, that man was above the law when he did not create himself but issued from the Law. There is even the contention that man can conquer Nature, that is, subdue it. There is nowhere disregard for Natural Law is prevalent and as obvious as in the social arena. There it has, therefore, not been surprising to find, practically everywhere, wanton disregard for natural lawfulness, whether in the constitution of the association, friendship, marriages, employer-employee relations, business, resolution of conflicts, education, nutrition, medicine, name it, indeed in the formation of nation-states, with the concomitant redress of balance by Nature which on its own does not bring pain and sorrow; it is refusal to admit the reality is what does. That refusal bows the spirit, hurts, distresses, and, indeed, depresses it. In the state of depression, the radiations of the spirit change, and its hurt and pain rebound on the body.
Conversely, conformity with natural lawfulness frees from any constraint of the redress of balance. That there is disregard for naturalness in the social arena cannot be surprising. Its roots are to be found in the recognition of violence by researchers that imbalance in the brain structure must have a psychic implication on thought and action. The researchers talk about the “biological misconstruction” of man which makes him prone to violence. The ‘misconstruction’ is noticed in the cerebrum, the front and the larger part of the brain, and cerebellum, the back and smaller part of the brain. Since the brain is connected with thought generation, analysis, and application, the oddity of misconstruction must have its stamp on the thought process and action.
The recognition can be said to accord with naturalness except in respect of the definitive phrase. For it is the body of man that has been distorted not man himself that has been distorted through one-sided cultivation of one portion of the brain which has led to the front brain being overused and therefore, according to Law, overdeveloped into the ‘big brain’ to the detriment of the back or ‘small brain’ which, suffering from underuse, must atrophy and has in fact atrophied, in complete harmony with Natural Laws.
The implication of this is serious with man largely considering issues from below upwards and not from up downwards. Any wonder the world is out of joint, as there is no radiating guiding influence from Above, from On High, as the large brain connected with thought generation coming from below is in charge in practically all over the world. The implication of this is obvious and serious. As I have pointed out in this column before, the frontal brain is the seat of the intellect. The back brain is the spiritually receptive part. Impressions from the spirit, the man in the vessel, journey in waves through the blood and the silver cord to the solar plexus just below the diaphragm, to register in a picture form on the hindbrain called the small brain. It is from the cerebellum that is, the back brain, that the picture is transferred to the large brain, the cerebrum. This latter brain decodes the pictures into thoughts or words. From thoughts or words to action!
Impressions from without journey to the man within conversely. But in a situation where the cerebrum has become larger and stronger, it disrupts this balance. Yet the Law of Balance pervades Nature. This is why there is no small arm or big arm except one is cultivated at the expense of the other, no small kidney or big kidney. Whatever is in pairs is of the same size except in cases of congenital malformations or under-developed or underuse, all of which have their explanation in the Law as in the case of the brain. With the distortion of brain structure, spiritual receptivity is hampered and in consequence, guidance is rendered blurred and in nearly all cases in the self-inflicted circumstances of the present time, barred to us, is non-existent. In other words, through the Osmotic Law that the stronger must absorb or overcome the weak, the intellectual brain paralyses the hindbrain, and access to the language of Nature is barred and recognition restricted to where the material kingdom terminates and the finer life begins. Thus a man who is limited is rooted to matter, blind and deaf, and insensitive to all beyond the material of this earth. He acts irregularly in relation to law. This is the root cause and indeed the origin and confusion in which the world, the earth is enveloped today.
From this, it can be recognised that what the Law demands is goodness, pure thoughts, and noble deeds. These are what make the spirit light and uplift it to want to soar, and there is warmth and joy and happiness while ignoble deeds and thoughts, murder, man’s inhumanity to man, and base conduct constitute a burden on the soul, pressing the spirit encased in it down. Regardless of how the world may regard him, he is an unhappy, joyless man. In doing goodness, we plant joy and as with all seeds in time of harvest we reap as fruits joy and happiness.
