It is often said that man is the architect of his fortune. This is a deep pronouncement to which, like most proverbs and wise sayings, the modern man pays scant attention. Hardly do we invite ourselves into serious contemplation of what these reveal about our past and our present and about deep knowledge. The man of old was close to Nature and could draw from the fountain of wisdom Nature mediates. We are wont to call words of wisdom the sayings of our elders. They opened their faculty of cerebellum to draw from the Rays of Primordial Wisdom, emanations from Omniscience that stream down unceasingly into our world. They also composed some of the sayings from their observations of the consistency in Nature. What has the preserve of consistency and simplicity than Truth from which Nature issued? Those from whom words of wisdom issued, sometimes effortlessly, are referred to as philosophers—Socrates, Aristotle and Plato referred to as the renowned philosophers of the Golden Age. They are called sages and they are also called wise men.

Consider some of the proverbs we still pick from our elders: “Whichever way the moon shines it will not dry up the leaves; One does not ask a cat to look after his fish. Were it not that the tongue is clever it would not have successfully lived among the teeth. No one tells a dumb man that it is raining outside. Where a hyena is the judge a goat will not get justice. The throat that swallows chewed food does not know what the mouth suffers. No child pays for its mother’s milk. He who hides a fire must not forget that he cannot hide the smoke. However, much one pets a sleeping child, she will look for her mother when she wakes up. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. When the cock crows at dawn the lazy one blames the night for being short. A man on top of a tree does not need anybody to remind him to hold on to something tightly.” As Moshood Kasimowo Abiola was wont to say: “There is no prestige for a king who has no queen.” And John Keats did demonstrate to the world in Ode to a Nightingale in Ancient Marina: The solution to life’s problems is not escapism. In other words, you don’t solve a problem by running away from it. In our clime we have Abraham Adesanya, the erstwhile leader of the Yoruba, Professor Chinua Achebe, whether in Things Fall Apart or Arrow of God, and Moshood Abiola, to thank for bringing us to speed with the disarming wise sayings of our elders and the deep knowledge contained in them. Achebe wrote in Arrow of God: “Who would swallow phlegm for fear of offending others, how much less swallow poison?”

In the Foreword to the book, “The Leader’s Tongue: A compendium of immortal word of Pa Abraham Adesanya”, by Journalist/Political Activist Sola Lawal, former Minister and Governor, Cornelius Adebayo writes: “Metaphorical expressions—anecdotes and proverbs in particular—are the most prominent elements in the conversation of elders in Yorubaland…They express our deepest feelings when they are too ‘deep for words.’” The reason the modern man cannot draw from Primordial wisdom to form proverbs is because of the imbalance he has brought about in the cultivation of the cerebrum and cerebellum. One is over-cultivated at the expense of the other. (This is a subject for another day).

‘Man is the architect of his fortune’ is an expression a great many all over the world grapple with daily. As I was saying last week: “The conditions in which children are born and in which they live cannot but continue to elicit world-wide interest and provoke debate. Some are being where fighting is raging and in the next minute, mother and child and its sisters barely two and four years are bombed. The father is maimed. Many are born blind, deaf and dump, and deformed at the same time. In camps and ranks of refugees, hundreds of children arrive with nothing to feed on. Many are thrown into gutters and thousands driven homeless by natural catastrophes and man-made disasters. Only few children are born into happy and peaceful conditions and people of means, and into a world unlimited opportunities.” Why does God permit all these? It is a question countless number of people ask faced with all manner of experiences, either of their own or those of their neighbours or fellowmen in general.

According to the enlightenment of higher knowledge available to mankind on earth today, we are told the following: “Tribulation, despair and destruction are always and only the lawful reciprocal effects of wrong actions…all the fear and suffering can only be ascribed by man to himself; and he could have avoided a great deal had he not stubbornly entered upon wrong course.” We human beings pay little heed to the mechanisms that govern our lives. But the mechanisms pay no heed to public opinion nor is ignorance of them is of any account. The law of returns must run its course sooner or later.

Public figures and public affairs commentators do not shrink from agitating for armed struggle as an effective resolution of conflicts. Because their yearning is an armed option to problems of human relationships, in justice and fairness, the protagonists should have their yearnings met by being born in conflict zones or war theatres in another earthlife. When a man tastes the consequences of evil he longs to move away from it. If he knows the cause and distances himself from it, he will suffer the effect of evil no more—whether as a child or an adult. The living never-ceasing loom in life is tended diligently and loyally by Nature Beings appointed for the duty so that each person can wear the garment he orders. This is saying that every activity of any person no matter his state in life is a seed which is carefully nurtured until it bears fruits and the fruits ripen for harvest according to their nature. Every moment everyone gives cause to fateful consequences and stands in reactions of past activities. Public opinions count for nothing in the workings of the surging and mechanisms of life. Says Job: “As I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.”

Knowledge of life and existence enables man to have the total picture of happenings in the world—yesterday, today and can predict the future, the knowledge of automatic workings of the inflexibly just and perfect laws which govern life, the Laws that bear the Will of the Almighty Creator.

It is important to know that a person is not just his body and that he does not cease to exist simply because he has departed this world. The body he drops, yes, but he himself moves away. This is a knowledge that is wide-spread most cultures, fortunately as obituary columns in our own clime will readily prove. A wife tearfully tells the departed husband not to forget her and the children he is leaving behind. Why will a woman go to her husband’s grave with flowers if it is not out of consciousness that he is alive in the Beyond? A man keeps coming to the earth until there are no earthly ties left to bring him back in the future, although it is not an endless return as the earth itself has a span after which it must pass away and disintegrate. Early people in some Nigerian culture have recognised the re-embodiment of people who have departed. The error was in the details. Judging from biological resemblances, they arrived at the wrong conclusions that a particular child was the grandfather that has just departed.

When a man departs he goes away with his credit and debit and will return with them, those which are of earthly material substance. Those which are of the ethereal in nature he settles in the Ethereal World. When he has exhausted his credit, the debit account is brought to the fore to experience, which could be to experience war, violence or travails depending on the nature of what he had sowed. When the credit is exhausted we talk about reversal of fortune. And so, as the seed, so the fruits—multiplied. Justice and love demand, therefore, that a person collects his due, pleasant or unpleasant. Generally, man knows of love, indulgent love, but not about justice that is in true love, in the Laws of Nature also called the Divine Laws, especially if he is at the receiving end of a rotten fruit and he blames all but himself for the chaos and distress of his life.

There is no human being in any part of the world who is living on earth for the first time today. This means children are not as young as it is often thought. They are old men in young bodies. Put more appropriately, they are souls in young bodies; old men in new garments; old pilots in glittering new aircraft. Since the automatic, living and perfect mechanisms of life will not permit injustice, it follows that no child is innocent of the condition in which it may find itself. It is the world that does not have the whole picture.

Until the world’s leaders do so their drive, noble and laudable as it may be, will flounder. Having the total picture should not be an excuse by neighbours and passers-by to mock and jeer so they do not burden themselves. Threads spun by such attitude which is lacking in love and compassion may force the mockers to have a taste of the harrowing experiences themselves in some other earthlife. Creation came out of love of the Most High and it swings in His love. Deviation from it is defection from the Light.

All human beings are in the world to make progress, mature and refine themselves as well as their environments. Opportunities are afforded in love for those who may fail to re-sit their examinations, until the final one comes which is either, or. The solution to distress by children is in adults of today who may be children of tomorrow to behave better, to strive towards what is dignifying, noble, decent, fair and uplifting. In these lie peace, joy and bountiful opportunities for adults who may be children tomorrow! It must, however, be stated that the opportunity of a tomorrow gets slimmer by the day and by the year. We learn from higher knowledge on earth today that “The Divine Power of the Light now strikes like lightning into all threads” bringing into an awakening all that is dead in all human beings, good or bad—to face judgment. All the extra-ordinary events perplexing our world are manifestations of judgment, of purification sweeping through the earth. Thus, man is truly the architect of his fortune—here and hereafter. SUNMI SMART-COLE

“Sunmi Smart-Cole is a study in the indomitable nature of human spirit. The possibilities are inexhaustible with the right attitude. Sunmi Smart-Cole, society photographer, horticulturist, musician and promoter of public good, is an inspirational proof of this.” NEXT WEEK: Sunmi Smart-Cole that I know.