On Holy Pilgrimage: A Long Journey for Freedom - Softcover

Rahman Oladigbolu

9780976835400: On Holy Pilgrimage: A Long Journey for Freedom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0976835401 ISBN 13: 9780976835400

Publisher: Oracle Publishers, 2005

Rahman was at a threshold in his life, where vistas of his future shone brightly and inviting. He was coming to America to pursue his film career, a dream he had nurtured in his heart for so long, and that he held onto courageously. But when strange events began to happen, shattering the structure of life he had always known, he had his measure of existential anxiety, though not aware that he was in for a ride of a lifetime. First, he lost his sister in an unexpected circumstance. A few months later it was his turn, caught up in a web of pain and mysteries that now characterized his life, and his dream slipping down the abyss. Unless he would make a drastic decision, getting his life back or back to normal might not be achievable. But there was not anymore freedom to make a choice, as was in the offing. Lying asleep on a sickbed one fateful night, he saw the figure of a man in a dream, chasing him around a neighborhood with a gun. The gunman shot him and, in the! strangest event so far in his life, he woke up with the bullet in his body. On the brink of death, Rahman struggled against enemies that no one could see, in a battle inexplicable to the world around him. For years, he would not remember that there was a place called America or a vocation called film. This is the story that On Holy Pilgrimage recounts, a story whose telling alone was a miracle. While the book is an external, internal, and reflective narratives of crucial events in the author’s life, it is a medium through which he contributes to the on-going debate over the intellectual validity of the African thought and thought-process. Out of their misunderstanding of the African mind, and their greed to pillage the continent’s resources, the Europeans have misrepresented the story of the African and have consequently subordinated it to European experience. Through his experience, Rahman discovered that most Africans now live with ambivalent personalities, confused to the point that they find it easier to accept the Western story about Africa than to affirm what they experience in their world, or attempt to understand it for convincing presentation to the general world. In the African experience, there is ample amount of wisdom that the world needs to learn from, and no one can unravel its mysteries appreciably enough than Africans themselves. When the world understands the value of a people’s mind, they appreciate them better. It is high time Africans came out to explore and tell the story of their soul. For this, On Holy Pilgrimage becomes a voice, as the story of the African experience in, and contribution to, the modern world. On Holy Pilgrimage is also is a universal story, of the human experience on earth. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychotherapy, introduces the concept of psychopathology in everyday life, as certain unconscious manifestations within our daily lives. The author views every day life as inherently psychopathological of some sort, with both conscious and unconscious choices underlying every decision and indecision that humans make. Hence, On Holy Pilgrimage is about life as a psychopathology and psychotherapy. When a famous actor stated that psychiatry was a pseudoscience, the author in an interview thinks the actor’s comment, “while understandable, is ignorant and utterly insensitive to the arduous tasks that professionals in the mental field are undertaking.” As his story implies, psychology is the basis of all knowledge, and it is the end; everything in the middle, from science to religion, is getting lost and rediscovering, getting ill and healing. For this reason, On Holy Pilgrimage narrates a human experience, already extraordinary in its gaping events, explores the unconscious motives behind the events, reveals them as symptoms of the individual’s condition, and relates the story as representational of every human life. The title, On Holy Pilgrimage, was thus decided upon as a metaphor for the journey of the human specie in th

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About the Author:

Rahman was born in Oyo State, Nigeria, into the royal family of the kingdom once known as Oyo Empire. He started his formal education at Alaafia Nursery and Primary school at Ibadan, completed his primary education at Saint Andrews Demonstration, Oyo, and his secondary education at Olivet Baptist High School, also at Oyo. Then he made a decision to come to the United States to study film production. But as a thinker says, events sometimes mock at human foresight, and there is nothing more certain than the unforeseen. A peculiar unforeseen would be Rahman’s lot for the next decade after his decision, and which culminated in his first book, On Holy Pilgrimage: A Long Journey For Freedom. Though Rahman decided to write the book to tell his story, to awaken the world about the depth of the mysteries within which life is cocooned, the book initially served only as a therapeutic avenue for him to keep his sanity while going through one of the worst experiences any human could be subjected to. With his body tortured by a mysterious illness, and his intellect by the conflict of cultures, Western scientific and traditional African cultures, his primary motivation to write the book was his discovery of the concept of reincarnation, a complex reality without which he thinks higher understanding of life might be impossible. Confused in his world, living ‘on the lip of insanity, not knowing the reason he was made to suffer, whether by science or witchcraft or fate, Rahman discovered the human mind, the balcony from which both the inside and outside of the universe could be perceived. Spending seven years on the sick bed, this territory became his only realm of work and! play. It would transform the worldview that Rahman had ever known, and put him on the pedestal to a new height, a new way of life. Rahman now lives in Massachusetts. He obtained his Associate Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from Quincy College and is furthering his education on scholarship at Harvard University, where he wants to obtain degrees in both Neuropsychology and Liberal Arts. For him, the new frontier is in the human brain, the relationship of it with the human mind and the ever-evolving human world in general. He is currently an active independent filmmaker and writer. His next book is a response to the acclaimed books by Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors.

Review:

An intriguing story of horror and enlightenment... a tale of human strength in the face of meaningless suffering. --Richard Philips, Freelance Journalist, FL

This is a very exotic reading that we haven't seen in America in a long time. --Jessica Brown, New York

This is a triumph for the long-discounted African experience. --Rudolf Okonkwo, Columnist, Nigeriaworld.com and author of Children of a Retired God

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