IN the previous articles I told you that despite the presence of the Old Testament at the time of Prophet Hosea in the land of Israel, it never prevented him from seeing the truth at that time that his people were perishing because of lack of knowledge. It could be said that the same scenario prevailed as at the time of Jesus in the same land of Israel.

Despite the active presence of the Old Testament at that time, the tragic influence of the leadership of the Pharisees did not allow his people to make the correct sense of the truth of the OT. What could be said to be the real truth of the OT could be deciphered in the statement of Jesus when He said that ‘the Pharisees would not go into the kingdom of heaven and they would not allow those who want to go, to go in’. This statement could be taken to mean

that what ought to be the proper approach to religion that the OT could offer was going wrong under the teachings of the Pharisees.

As I concluded in the last article, what could be said to be the nature of the knowledge that was going wrong gives rise to the topic now in question ‘mind and the kingdom of heaven’. The aim of this is to convince the world at large beyond reasonable doubt why it is important for them to begin to see the intrinsic relationship between the kingdom of heaven or God and the concept of the mind. The concept of the average man in the world about heaven is that of an abode, a space outside the material world.

For intellectual convenience, there is nothing really wrong with this conception because in intelligent discussions where the concept of knowledge in itself is healthy, when you use the term ‘heaven’, the context in which you use it as a concept to represent something beyond man or above man will still be understood in concrete terms rather than in abstract terms. ‘Heaven’ as a concept in healthy intellectual circles will be concretely recognised for what it is — the store house of unquestionable intelligence.

What then is intelligence especially in the context of this discussion? it is about the mechanism of operational laws whose empirical certainties can be substantiated in a discernable linkage between cause and effect. Discernible linkage between cause and effect will give you a perception of order. Order is the chief characteristic of an intelligent operation. It is not chaotic. It can lend itself to an enlightened explanation. So if probably you have heard it before that ‘order is the first law in heaven’, this foregoing explanation would have made it clear to you why ‘heaven’ from a healthy intellectual explanation would have been referred to as the store house of unquestionable intelligence.

It may also prepare your mind to appreciate why in healthy intellectual circles God Almighty is better recognised as either The Supreme Intelligence or Universal Mind. It is in an effort to bring the nature of God away from abstract religious understanding that every human being on earth independent of religious contamination can identify with. It helps to easily introduce what I have been calling the rule of intelligence into the proper dimension of religious understanding that in due course may help to remove the stress of understanding and conflicts that religion is inflicting on all of us.

Ayo-Vaughan, a psychologist, lives in Lagos.

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it