Present in every age and land is the concept of God, Universal Being, The Supreme Value or Reality, Cosmic Mind or whatever designation you may prefer to call that which is transcendent and immanent. A sense of awe, wonder, admiration and worship, accompanied by the urge to unite with this Reality is innate in man. It has given birth to the many forms of worship and beliefs that its practitioners can identify with according to the prevailing and psychological conditions / make-up of such people.

The religious person or the believer is accustomed to the thought of not being the sole master of his house. He believes that God; and not he himself decides in the end. He stands directly under the influence of the reaction. Especially when there are individuals around him who claims to have had an unquestionable authority from God to stand as a go-between between him and the Divine.

The question is: What happens when religion instead of being an instrument of Self-Realization or Actualization becomes a tool for ignorance and control? What do you do when it no longer have any meaningful or constructive impact in your life and only seeks to dominate and enslave both your individuality and renders you incapable of liberating thoughts, actions or will? What happens when it becomes just another tool for corrupt and perverse elite who continues to destroy the collective interest of the people in all forms and respect?

Man is inherently good. He does not actually need religion to express this goodness. If there is anything, religion makes a good person really bad. Simply because it takes away the sense of responsibility that induces an individual to seek to better himself and others around him and thrust this sacred burden on a Deity far remove from him. In order words, as long as there is a god somewhere who will ultimately forgive him, he rather do and profit from  that which he knows will impact negatively on those around him and wait for confession, donation and other religious duties to free him from the guilt of his action. With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Man believes only that which he wishes. And ultimately he becomes that which he believes. In present day Nigeria, one is astounded by the uncontrolled proliferation of all kinds of churches. Often without any inclination to offer to their flock any resemblance of spiritual fulfillment. In-fact the true and sad reality is that the clergy or the pastors, who takes all kinds of designation and titles are illiterates and at worst criminals without any understanding of what spirituality is. There do not know themselves, or the world within and around them. They prey on the ignorance, fears, superstitions of the un-learned and traumatized populace to feed their bloating ego and insatiable greed.

I was born into a Pentecostal family, Dad being a Pastor/ Reverend. But I know that it is only in the Catholic church [despite the continual emergence of its child sex abuse cover-up, an incident that will later also rear up in Nigeria later when people have thrown off the dark cloud that is covering the bright horizon of man’s divinity] that have bothered to train its clergy to have some understanding of what it is to be human and its frailties. With luck, within them, you will find a priest who has bothered to study the paradigm that he claims to follow and to be able to communicate that to the people he seeks to improve their conditions.


There are a great many people who associate spirituality with a great show of emotionalism, this idea has absolutely no foundation in fact; on the contrary, the kind of spirituality which is developed by and associated with the emotional nature of the desire body is unreliable in the extreme; this is the variety that is generated in revival meetings where emotionalism is brought up to a high pitch, causing a person to make a great splurge of religious fervor which soon spends itself and leaves him exactly as he was before, much to the chagrin of the revivalists and other people who are engaged in evangelical work. But what else can they expect? They set out to save souls with drums and constant hallelujahs, with rhythmic revival songs, with appeals made in a voice which is raised and lowered in harmonic waives, all of which are as powerfully effective on the desire body as storms which stir the sea to fury and then subside. The vital body is much more set, and it is only when conversion affects this vehicle that it sticks and stays with a man or woman for life. Those who have the true spirituality do not feel saved one day, in the seventh heaven of ecstasy, and the next feel themselves down in the dumps and miserable sinners that can never be forgiven; for their religion is not based upon the emotional nature which feels these things, but is rooted in the vital body which is the vehicle of reason, set and persistent in the path it has once chose.

I think the time have come for us to question all that presents itself as a remedy to ascertain its claim. It is time for us to analyze, understand and figure out for ourselves what we really are. Enough of accepting every shred of lies that often comes in place of truth and swallowing them without chewing. It is time for us to become aware, to realize the great Truth that every man or woman is a star. It will change our awareness and perception, our attitude toward the world at large. We must perceive  that we are “ living subject” capable of logical and analytical thoughts, endowed with the power to choose, to relate, to bring about changes in our personalities and environment for the uplift-ment of mankind.

Nigeria is where it is today because of our inability to truly to grasp the fundamentals that makes up the totality of our Being-ness.  We wander aimlessly without any conscious idea of where we are going neither do we seek to understand in proportion of the challenges we face what need to be done. There is dearth of both empirical and theoretical knowledge and we go on as if this is normal. What then distinguishes us from the animals that are only conscious but not self-conscious? We must go beyond that, we must become self-aware.

However, religion has its place. Humans have a habit of ritualizing every aspect of their life. It can only co-exist harmoniously with reality when it takes into recognition that as an organized creed, codified to suit a particular era and time that it have a shelf-life. Man, being a social being cannot exist without a tie to the community and sometimes it may take the form of an organized religious entity. This is to most people priceless especially in a country like Nigeria where the successive governments have failed in their responsibilities to the people. But he must try to find real justification for his own existence, his own spiritual and moral autonomy. He needs evidence of an inner and transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the inevitable submersion into mass hysteria and madness. His environment cannot, neither his most fervent religious observance gives him as a gift that which he must win for himself only with an effort and self-denial.

There is no other time more imperative for us to take charge of the present, secure the future and create order out of the this chaos on our lives both outer and inner. It might start from you.

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