Post on 24-Apr-2023
i
Evolution of African Collective
Consciousness
An Integral View of African Development
by
Roland Lucas
ii
Copyright 2019 Roland Lucas
ISBN: 9781713240464
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from both the copyright owner and the publisher.
iii
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all spiritual warriors who have never given up the struggle for
freedom and justice for African people. It is also dedicated to the warriors in training.
May they too ever reflect the vindication of Africa and its sons and daughters
throughout the African diaspora.
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Acknowledgement
This book is a collage of wise teachings I've been blessed with being exposed to.
These teachings come from the rich vanguard of African spiritual and liberation
traditions, past and present. For their work, upon which my own learning has grown,
I’d like to give special credit to Jacob H. Carruthers, Dr. Maulana Karenga, Dr.
Chancellor Williams, Dr. Ben Jochannan, Dr. Muata Abhaya Ashby, Dr. Amos Wilson,
Dr. Francis Cress Welsing, and our ancestors, Dr. Henrik Clark and Cheikh Anta Diop.
This book is also composed heavily of teachings from the Taoist tradition, as elucidated
by Master Ni Hua Ching, and the Hindu spiritual tradition, as elucidated by Sri
Aurobindo. I am not a historian or psychologist by training. I am a student and
schoolteacher with an appreciation of wisdom teachings and I hope to share them out
of love and fidelity to truth to uplift African peoples, and by extension, persons from
all walks of life. I approach this work then from an African-centered education stance.
Essentially, all credit for this work goes to the Universal Divine One Who moves
through the souls and intellects of the giants I mentioned above and Who has inspired
me to further, in whatever way and to whatever degree, the human evolution of the
Divinity within. Though I am not an historian nor writer by training, I could not help
but share the inspiration I received with others, particularly with our youth, who need
any authentic Afrocentric teachings we have to offer them. Failure to share our
authentic African centered teachings with our youth, will result our losing them, and in
a retardation of our collective evolutionary push to be unfettered expressions of the
Divine on earth.
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Foreword
As the wise ancestors of most traditions point out to us, there is a natural, balanced,
and integral way of life that leads to a higher spiritual realization. Life is a Great Unity,
and we only need to be receptive to its instruction. This integral way of life ultimately
leads us to the realization that we all share in the essence of the Supreme Being and, in
fact, are part of the Supreme Being that is manifesting through our own beings. From
this perspective, it is erroneous to think that it benefits us to hurt, dominate, murder,
or otherwise abuse others or nature; for we are that other and we are nature. Can a tidal
wave harm the ocean? Can a fierce storm harm the sky that accommodates it? Can an
exploding star harm infinite space? We are the ocean expressing as both the calm and
the turbulent waves. We are infinite space containing the countless stars. We are one
with the Supreme Self that contains and manifests as the selves of all people. What we
do to others, therefore, we do to ourselves. This is the basis of the imperatives, "Love
your neighbor as you love yourself,” and “Do unto others, as you would have them do
unto you.” When we do so, we come to realize that we and the others are the same self.
The error in our thinking is we accept only that which our limited senses and intellect
tell us is real, despite knowing first-hand the limitations of the senses. We make
assumptions and rationalizations based on the partial perception of our senses. Doing
so leads us far from the ocean of truth and into a small, isolated pond of limited vision,
into a limited self-identify.
The oneness of life is evident from the fact that all things in life can communicate
with each other, which we see as the powers of attraction and repulsion. The electron
of an atom is attracted to the proton of the atom because there is a medium shared by
the essence of the two that facilitates their interaction. If not for the shared medium,
the electron and proton would not attract and nothing in life could be formed. This
shared medium that facilitates the attraction and repulsion of all things speaks to the
underlying oneness of all life. However, because we cannot normally perceive this
shared medium with our five senses, or with the instruments that we've created to
extend sense perception, we discount its reality. We discount the reality of the integral
oneness of life.
By going beyond the limitations of the senses, the limiting thoughts, and the partial
belief systems derived from the senses, we can directly perceive the oneness of life that
we truly are. As taught in the ancient spiritual traditions of Khemit, China, India,
esoteric Judaism, and Christianity, attainment of this perception is a great achievement
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ultimate in life. Meditation, virtuous living, chi gong, yoga, and many other spiritual
practices facilitate this goal.
Once we transcend the dualistic concepts of Black versus White, Male versus
Female, Me versus You, Life versus Death, etc. and realize these apparent differences
are just facets of the whole, then we can effectively build societies based on balance,
harmony, justice, peace, love, and high virtuous expression. This is called living Maat
by our Khemitian, or Egyptian, ancestors. We can start by listening to the essential
message shared by most wisdom traditions: that behind its apparent diversity, life is a
unity. As we sincerely open ourselves to the messages of the wisdom traditions, we will
begin to attract wise ones living in our lifetime who are willing to elucidate the wisdom
teachings in ways we can comprehend in our time and place. Through inner awakening,
may we all come to know that we are one with the Father/Mother Supreme Being.
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Table of Contents
Dedication: ......................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgement: ............................................................................................................ iv
CHAPTER 1: Introduction .................................................................................................9
CHAPTER 2: Collective African Expression Through Spiritual Culture ........................41
CHAPTER 3: Decline of Indigenous African Spiritual Cu;ture in the East ....................64
CHAPTER 4: Cultural Unity and African Collective Consciousness in Pre-Colonial
Western Africa .......................................................................................................77
CHAPTER 5: Assimilation of Christianity into African Spiritual Culture ......................92
CHAPTER 6: The Maafa and African Resistance to it Essential to Evolution of
Consciouness........................................................................................................108
CHAPTER 7: African Worldview as a Lived Experience .............................................137
CHAPTER 8: Education ................................................................................................151
CHAPTER 9: Groundings with My Brothers & Sisters - Reorientation .......................164
CHAPTER 10: Organization for African Power ............................................................180
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1: Attitudes when Identified with the Outer Being .............................................. 26
Table 1.2: Identification with Inner Being ........................................................................ 29
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3.1: Pre-Colonial Trade Routes in West Africa ..................................................... 67
Figure 3.2: Africa’s Major Trade Routes in Ancient Times ............................................. 68
Figure 3.3: The Beja People of Southern Egypt and Northern Nubia .............................. 74
Figure 3.4: The Beja People of Southern Egypt and Northern Nubia .............................. 75
Figure 5.1: Excerpt from the Black Manifesto................................................................ 103
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Chapter 1
Introduction
There exists, spearheaded by a critical mass of spiritually evolved Africans, the
evolving higher consciousness of the African collective, or the Ausarian Self. This Self
of higher spiritual consciousness can be fully known when the higher consciousness of
one's individual self is known. As the ancients of spiritual culture have taught,
knowledge and effectuation of one's higher Self is a supreme undertaking of life.
Knowledge and effectuation of the collective Self or Ancestral consciousness is an
equally supreme undertaking. The reason this must be so, is that life is a Unity behind
its marvelous diversity; thus, one's individual higher Self is one with any collective Self
(i.e., national soul) that the Supreme Being is poised in. The status of the whole is always
relevant to the status of the individual, and vice versa. Our individual spiritual
achievement is not complete if we isolate ourselves from the condition of others or
from our ancestral heritage, self-content with our supposed state of Nirvana. We must
see the evolving spirit in ourselves and in others of our collective as the same.
Ultimately, there is only one Self that expresses through the unity and evolving diversity
of life, the Universal Integral Divine One. The higher African Self has given to the
World its first great humanity and civilizations; this same evolving higher African Self
has a role to play in giving to the world its next higher expression of humanity and
civilization.
Individual spiritual development naturally occurs over the course of several
lifetimes. The individual soul puts on physical and mental forms throughout multiple
lifetimes, not unlike how a person puts on different clothes for different occasions.
Individual spiritual development can be accelerated in each lifetime by concerted
individual efforts, combined with the descent of Divine Truth Thought/Will Force
from higher planes of vibratory existence. In the Hindu tradition, there are forms of
Yoga used by initiates called Kriya Yoga and Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo that serve
this grand purpose.
Likewise, the evolution of higher consciousness of any collective occurs over the
course of centuries, even millennia; it can also be accelerated in each period with a
concerted effort by the collective, an effort typically spearheaded by a highly conscious
and spiritually evolved cadre (i.e., spiritual elders or selfless leaders). For the African
collective, which is the focus of this writing, the concerted effort needed to further its
spiritual evolution in the current era must be solidly organized, span all levels of
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collective action (i.e., culture, economics, education, politics, etc.), and be guided by
already spiritually evolved individuals. These spiritually evolved individuals have the
objective of not only transcending immediate obstacles that face the African collective,
but also strive for the highest ideal of unfettered Divine expression through the African
collective. A kind of Kriya Yoga under the tutelage of African adepts is needed today
for the African collective to accomplish this ideal in our lifetime. Indeed, this spiritual
evolution of the African collective will be part and parcel of the evolution of all
humanity, as it was before its interruption by negative external forces.
A Spiritual Evolutionary View of African Historical Development
Individual spiritual development rarely progresses in a straight upward slope, but
rather in a spiral that sometimes loops downward before ascending to ever-higher
levels. The same can be said of collective spiritual development. It is important for us
to at least have an overview of this sometimes hidden, yet ever-rising spiral of collective
African spiritual progress. It is also essential to keep in mind that spiritual consciousness
is the basis of and gives proper value to all mental and material realities.
The Universal consciousness that has become involved with material matter also
evolves to higher expressions of itself through physical matter. Hence, physical matter
supports but is not an ultimate cause nor limiting substance of individual and collective
spiritual growth. We must take stock of our historical spiritual progress through the
ages, along with apparent setbacks, so that we may better know where we are and what
development remains towards reaching our collective ideal as unfettered, unlimited
expressions of the Divine Will/Force in the world.
The underlying view promoted in this book is that historical events relating to the
African collective should be seen from the perspective of serving as material for the
growth and development of the higher African collective consciousness, just as
experiences are food for individual spiritual growth. We must note that individual
experiences of a person can be assimilated on the surface and utilized for superficial
egoistic gains of the being with the mind, body, or vital force as the nexus of identity
formation. Collective group experiences can likewise be interpreted on an analogous
superficial level, leading to a decadent and immature society.
In this work, we focus on the assimilation of historical experiences by the deeper
inner or higher Self of the African collective, the group-Soul. Most traditional African
societies have developed an understanding that individuals have a higher Self or Soul
that experiences the changes of life on the mental, physical, and vital levels. So too is
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there a real group-Soul when individuals gather together in synchronicity, solidarity,
symbiosis, and strive for collective goals. There is also a hereditary DNA basis for a
shared collective group-Soul, a phenomenon recently termed epigenetics.
We should not view our collective African history in surface terms of apparent
ascension and decline or of isolated events. Rather, we should look beyond the surface
at how the deeper African collective consciousness, the group-Soul, has assimilated
historical events to increase its collective Self-awareness as an embodiment and agent
of the Divine. In this work, only the general lines of some African historical and current
movements are mentioned to encourage the reader to view them—and the plethora of
details they relate to—from the perspective of the evolving higher African Collective
Self.
An individual can go through periods of regression and ignorance with respect to
knowledge of his/her true higher Self. So too can the African collective forget its prior
grand accomplishments of high divine expression and become exteriorized in
superficial grooves of expression. This is what has happened to the African Collective
to varying degrees, and with planned intent, for the past several hundred years with the
advent of European and Arab warring into Africa, and up to the modern era with the
rise of global White racism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.
If we recall our collective spiritual experiences of past progress, for the essence of
these experiences is always available to us, then our collective higher Self will be
invoked. It will come to the forefront of our collective consciousness to govern our
collective life and actions in the world. We will move in more forceful, enlightened, and
universally life-affirming steps towards expressing the Divine through our collective
higher Self in all modes of life—spiritual, mental, or material.
It appears that the European collective understood the ramifications of Africans
knowing our story, knowing our true Self. They demonstrated a rudimentary
understanding of the inverse relationship between a people who know their higher
collective Self via historical memory and the European’s ability to control such a people.
Thus, they undertook every means to cut off Africans in the diaspora from our
culture—our collective memory—and blot out or revise African history. Africans must
not rely on Europeans for making his-story, the European story, into the collective
African story. The European collective world-view must not be the African collective
point of reference.
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All peoples have their own group-Soul to discover and authentically express. If
Africans on the African continent and in the diaspora supplant their own worldviews
with Eurocentric world perspectives, we will continue to be exteriorized, and flounder
in ignorance of our collective higher Self, which I call the Collective Ausarian Self. The
reason for the name reference to Ausar is that in Ancient Egyptian spiritual culture.
Ausar represents the true Self of the individual. This true Self has an integral view of
life that understands the Indivisible Unity always supporting the diversity of life. The
Ausarian Self knows itself to be one with all things. This Self resides in the individual
while also existing as the unifying essence of life. In its poise as the higher collective
African Self that has witnessed the entire sweep of African historical development, I
refer to it as the collective Ausarian Self.
The reason for the name reference to Ausar is that in Ancient Egyptian spiritual
culture, Ausar represents the true Self of the individual. This true Self has an integral
view of life that understands the Indivisible Unity always supporting the diversity of
life. The Ausarian Self knows itself to be one with all things. This Self resides in the
individual while also existing as the unifying essence of life. In its poise as the higher
collective African Self that has witnessed the entire sweep of African historical
development, I refer to it as the collective Ausarian Self.
How can we assess whether the collective African Self-consciousness is indeed
expanding and that we as African people are becoming more Self-realized as powerful
agents of the collective Ausarian Self?
➢ One important measure is the degree to which we honor our collective historical
culture and experiences as a basis for future collective action, or Sankofa. (Measure
1) Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana that translates generally as "Go
back and get it." Kame Agyei & Akua Nson Akoto (2000)give a more extended
meaning to the word:
“Sankofa is an ancient concept. Though the work is ostensibly Akan, it is a
timeless principle of all creation, and applies to both spiritual and material
aspects of creation. Sankofa is not merely “going back to fetch that which you
have lost.” It is a dual process of internal and external development. This
concept of Sankofa is analogous to a forest of giant oaks with a linked and
intertwined root system. Sankofa is that process epitomized in an ever-
expanding root system that develops almost imperceptibly. That root system of
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timeless historical tradition anchors and nourishes our cultural reality, the
flower of our existence.
The expansion of that root system is facilitated by and facilitates, in turn, the
expansion of the tree’s crown of limb and foliage. This dynamic and
expansive rooting system that is Sankofa, is the process of recapturing the
essence of our Africkanity and thereafter immersing the personal and collective
self in that Afrikanity, and simultaneously ridding the self of non-Afrikan
elements. Sankofa is that concept that invokes that spiritual/metaphysical
entity/energy that gives life and form to the processes of reAfrikanization. It is
a process of re-convergent energies, of the spiritual, ideational, moral and
physical dynamics of rebirth. It is this reality of rediscovery and reactivation of
that root system that lies at the basis of this current movement of cultural
revival.”
Such appreciation demonstrates an awareness of our collective African Self-
evolution along a continuum. One method of honoring ourstory is through invoking
the continued presence of our honorable ancestors who have, through their good deeds,
paved the way for our progress. In doing so, we give evidence of our awareness of a
collective consciousness that transcends physical realities. Other indications of the
expansion of collective African Self-consciousness are:
➢ When we embrace cultural structures, sometimes old and sometimes new, which
transcend previously constructed distinctions among us in our societies (Measure
2). When we do this for the greater good of African people everywhere, it can be
said that this is an evolutionary growth of collective African Self-consciousness.
When various African groups are concerned with only their group’s capacity for
development and expression, this demonstrates a limiting growth condition.
o This value was an imperative as Africans were taken from different nations
on the African continent, enslaved in the Americas, and had to submerge
their superficial ethnic differences to provide mutual support for surviving
the Maafa, or great destruction of their African way of life. Africans, in doing
the “Ring Shout” in bush harbors on plantations, were not concerned with
what African nation one was stolen from.
➢ When we individually and collectively refuse to be defined by others or to take on
uncritically the cultural values of other groups, whereby in doing so we facilitate
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their survival thrusts at the expense of our own group (Measure 3). Our collective
resistance to enslavement, and our collective effort to raise our condition beyond
that or servitude to Europeans and what they have insisted is our lot, is an example
of this value.
➢ When we develop material self-sufficiency (Measure 4). Material development
serves as a foundation for higher spiritual development. It is a positive sign when
African people achieve self-sufficiency, intercontinental trade agreements, and
independence from external domination of African resources, the prerequisite for a
harmonious society and for unlimited spiritual growth.
➢ When we practice cultural expressions, develop cultural traditions and institutions
that affirm our unity as a people (Measure 5). The creation of independent Black
Churches and Kwanza based on the Nguzo Saba, are prime examples.
➢ When we resist the cultural intrusion by alien cultures (Measure 6), even if this
requires accommodating their dominant structures, as through syncretism of
African spiritual systems and expression with dominant Christian and Islamic
religions.
➢ When we project our African-centered values and gifts in our relations with other
peoples for our mutual uplift and for a more harmonious world community
(Measure 7). Black Gospel, Jazz, and popular music or examples of our sharing
with the world our cultural gifts. Africans have maintained a moral high ground in
the practice of religion, ethics, and provided value for true democracy for the world.
➢ When we create, maintain, and defend cohesive nations/kingdoms that allow
freedom of its peoples to thrive materially and spiritually (Measure 8).
o Collective consciousness has traditionally been deeply involved with
developing the individual through rites of passage. The individual is taught
early and throughout life how to evolve into a fully functioning member of
the collective society. Individual rights are balanced with the motives of the
collective. Every individual, even if born into the lower rungs of society, are
afforded opportunities to develop spiritually, materially, and psychologically,
as integrated members of the society.
o On a macro level, we can trace the evolution of the collective African spirit
through the evolution of African nations and kingdoms, even as they declined
or adapted through syncretism in the face of overwhelming pressures from
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Asiatics/Arabs and Europeans. In cases where one nation/kingdom/empire
was not able to survive these pressures, the Spirit took up its evolution in
succeeding nations/kingdoms/empires in areas removed from these
immediate pressures of invaders. It is worth studying how after Kemet was
overrun by Arab invaders, where the collective Spirit of the indigenous
Africans moved to. Surely the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eretria, as well as
West Africa (Hausa States, Ghana, Mali, Songhai,) were some of these
destinations. The Dogon of present-day Mali, trace their lineage to Kemet.
➢ When we join in common cause with other Africans on the continent of Africa and
throughout African Diasporas for freedom, justice, and mutual uplift (Measure 9).
This was always the aim of the Marcus Garvey movement. Today it is exemplified
with the incorporation of the diaspora nations as the 6th region of the African Union.
➢ When we establish integrated supranational organizations and institutions that foster
common security, economic, and political practices to elevate the African collective
on the continent of Africa and in the African Diasporas. (Measure 10). The OAU
and its predecessor the African Union (AU) are examples, as will be the United
African States envisioned by the AU.
As we consider what further milestones we would look to that show an individual has
achieved higher spiritual attainment, we can relate and extend those markers to
important indicators of the evolving collective African Self-consciousness.
An Overview of Individual Spiritual Development
It is reasonable to generally associate the stages of individual spiritual development
to that of collective spiritual development since a collective is made up of individuals.
The group-Soul is the unity behind individual Souls working and living together. At a
deeper level, the individual and the collective are an undifferentiated whole, with the
Supreme Being manifesting in all individual beings. There are some essentials to know
about individual spiritual development that in turn can be applied to understanding and
actualizing any group spiritual development.
The undifferentiated Divine Being, the One Self without a second, became involved
in physical reality, matter, and through the eons has evolved increasingly higher forms
of individualized vehicles of being, capable of expressing the unity and integral nature
of Life with greater facility. The human being is one such vehicle. The human Soul is
an apportionment or extension of the Divine Soul inhabiting matter. This integral view
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of life is expressed by the ancient African ancestors of Kemet (Egypt) in the following
passage from The Book of Coming Forth by Day, Chapter 83, Changing Into a Bennu
(Phoenix):
“I came into existence from unformed matter; I created myself in the image of
God Khepera, and I grew in the form of plants. I am hidden in the likeness of
the Tortoise. I am the essence of every god and goddess. I am the origin of the
four quarters of the world. I am the seventh of those seven Urei who came into
existence in the East. I am the mighty one Heru who illuminates the world with
his person. I am Pa Neter (God) in the likeness of Set and Djehuti who dwelleth
among us in the judgment of Him who dwells in Sekhem, and of the spirits of
Anu. I sail among them, and I come; I am crowned. I have become a shining
one-glorious. I am mighty. I am holy among the gods and goddesses …”
Foundational to understanding the processes of individual and collective
development of consciousness is knowing the makeup of man. The ancient Egyptians
recognized seven dimensions of the human, the Ba, Ka, Khaibit, Ab, Khat, Sahu, and
Khu. The Ka and Ba relate more to spiritual and transcendent aspects of our being,
whereas, the other dimensions are more of the mental, vital, and physical aspects of our
being. The Ab refers to our will, which can be enlightened by Divine Truth (Tehuti)
and merged with the Divine will, or overshadowed by our desires, intellectual will to
selfish power, and otherwise by the lower aspects of our being if we allow it. The Ka
refers to the abstract personality structure of a person that gives form to substance and
creates matter. It is a thread of consciousness between man’s tangible and intangible
being. It can be disintegrated upon death unless it is divinized through spiritual
cultivation and become transcendent. R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1981) gives these three
aspects to the Ka:
1. Divine Ka—the original Ka which is the creator of all the others.
2. Intermediate Ka—Kas of nature, mineral, vegetable and animal.
3. Inferior Ka—individualized Ka; inherited characteristics of psychological
consciousness. Consciousness of the Ka evolved from the Inferior to the
Divine Ka.
Schawaller de Lubicz (1981) expounds on the individualized and universalized aspects
of the Ka:
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“A man ignorant of his own spiritual world has little or no contact with his
Divine Ka. His personal Ka is brought down to the whole of his lower Kas;
therefore, after death, he will become his own shade or ghost … the quest for
spiritual springs of action and the enlargement of consciousness, can modify the
character of his “personal” Ka until the spiritual faculties are awakened and it
makes contact with the Divine Ka.”
The Ba represents the vital principle or spirit contained in all life in Kemet. When it
was represented by a bird with a human head, it symbolized the human soul that goes
between heaven and earth. It is the most spiritually transcendent aspect of the human.
It is unlinked with the Creator—free, unfixed, and unaffected by the human being
whose only link to it is a link of consciousness. It too has individual and universal
aspects in the human being. Schawaller de Lubicz (1981) gives these three aspects of
the Ba:
1. Ba (universal soul) the spirit of fire, which gives life to the world in all its
parts. The spirit Ba is in all constituents of the world and in its final perfection.
2. Ba (natural soul) stabilized the bodily form (Ka), and its character is Osarian
(Ausar), this is, it is subject to cyclic renewal (rebirth).
3. Ba as the human soul is represented by a bird with a human head.
Na’im Akbar (Akbar, 1994) gives the Egyptian etymology of the word Psyche, which is
very revealing of the Ancient African study of man.
“Psychology is a Greek word revealing its most recent origins among the Greek
students of the Ancient African masters. “Psyche”, frequently identified with a
Greek goddess of the same name actually means “soul.” According to Massey
(1974) the word Psyche is actually derived from the Egyptian in which Khe is
the soul and Su is she; hence the feminine nature of the Greek Psu-khe. Without
the article “P”, Saku means the “understanding, the illuminator, the eye and soul
of being, that which inspires.” Not only is the study of the mind derived from
ancient Egypt, but even the word used to characterize that study (psychology).”
(p. 2)
Our Ancient African ancestors gave us the injunction “Know Thy Self.” We can see
they have studied the nature of man deeply and have much to teach us about our Selves.
The Divine has provided for the individualization of people through the formation of
the individual ego-sense. But as we have seen from the Egyptian divisions of man, this
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ego-sense is not the determiner, the true support, nor the highest aspect of our being.
It is only an outer layer of the human dynamic, an evolutionary mental construct that
needs to be transcended to get to realization of the REAL. I relate the Egyptian Ka and
Ba to what I call the Psychic Being, the Soul as well as Ausar. Our Soul, Ba, which is an
immortal apportionment of the Divine, is the highest aspect of our being. The ego-
sense is a surface organizing expression of our being that is sustained by our
identification with the individual body, vital force, and mind as being our true self. To
reach the higher essence of our being we must instead identify with the Soul as our
higher Self, viewing the mind, body and vital as instruments of the Soul; thus, shifting
the organizing control of our lives to a higher principle.
The Soul is immortal and resides in a field of perfection. It has no real limitation
and is not at all separate from the Supreme Being. It thus has access to all Knowledge,
all Power, and all Presence of the Supreme Being. It is one with all things, one with the
Divine Will/Force. This Soul resides in all people but is not expressed through most
people in unfettered, non-egoistic terms. In most people, the Soul is hidden, unengaged,
and only a few rays of its brilliance pass through to the externalized being. The Soul
puts forth an ever-faithful representative of itself, the Psychic Being, (Ka) which actively
engages life, and evolves throughout the journey of life. The Soul can be thought of as
presiding over our nature, while the ever-faithful representative, the Psychic Being, is
actively involved with transforming our nature to a higher principle. This representative
pierces through the ego-sense, giving the outer centered person some glimmer of the
Soul's magnificence. This ever-faithful representative, the Psychic Being, is our True
Self navigating the world of differentiation and change.
The Psychic Being is located behind the energetic heart center, which is in the middle
of the chest. It is not to be confused with the emotions of the heart, or imaginings of
the mind. It is a higher principle than these, yet ideally gives them their true value and
expression. It is because of the inherent connection and fidelity the Psychic Being has
with the Soul that we can grow and accomplish anything on earth. For most of us, the
rays of light from the Soul are distorted and diffused by the ego-sense, causing our
actions, in turn, to be distorted and diffused. The Psychic Being can reveal the Soul in
increasingly wider degrees as it uses life's experiences for that exact purpose.
By shifting our identity and center of consciousness from the ego to the Psychic
Being, we can increase the Psychic, Universalizing influence in our lower instruments
of mind, body, and senses; over our lives. Our outer being will thus be illuminated,
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transformed, and guided by the Soul's light that funnels through its evolving delegate,
the Psychic Being. I may refer to the Individual Soul and the Psychic Being
interchangeably as people are more familiar with the Soul, verses its delegate the Psychic
Being.
A Soul-centered life vs. an ego-centered life is accomplished by our identification
with our inner Soul and moving our consciousness to the Psychic Being. The Psychic
Being will then take charge of the outer instrumentation of our being (body, vital and
mind), and utilize it correctly for the purposes of our inner Soul. The Soul and Psychic
Being are indestructible and survive the death experience until the previous life's
experiences are assimilated and the Soul puts forth another life form of itself (body,
vital and mind). The growth and essential experience of the Psychic Being are never
lost. Once an individual is living a Soul centered life, there is no sense of personal self
vs. the self of others.
The true Self of others is one with one's own Self. As mentioned earlier, the Ka and
Ba have universalized dimensions to them, not just individualized. This one Self is the
Ausarian Self of not just the individual, but also of the African collective, and extends
to all people. However, when I refer to the Ausarian Self in this work, I am speaking
mainly of the Universal Divine Being in the poise of the African group-Soul, witnessing
and enacting the historical development of African peoples the world over. For a deeper
understanding of the Psychic Being, the individual and group Soul, I refer the reader to
works written by Sri Aroubindo, particularly his books, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of
Human Unity, War and Self-Determination, The Synthesis of Yoga, and The Psychic Being.
Discussion on Ni Ching’s version of Hua Hu Ching
I have discovered that the esoteric teachings of both the Hindu religion and Taoism
are consistent with African views on the integral nature of life and on individual as well
as collective spiritual development. For this reason, I include here my reflections on
Hua Ching Ni’s (1995) version of some sections of the Hua Hu Ching, an ancient
Chinese classic originally attributed to Lao Tzu. I’ve found this version of the original
text to be an excellent guide to personal spiritual cultivation. I have summarized some
of my understandings of the lessons for individual spiritual development for selected
Books enumerated in the Hua Hu Ching. Keep in mind that practices on individual
spiritual development are applicable to collective spiritual development. It would be
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instructive as one is reading the below teachings to consider how these teachings can
be extended to the spiritual development of the African Collective.
Book 1
Referring to the master teacher … “His instruction was neither ordinary religion
nor worldly wisdom, yet it revealed the truth of every aspect of the universe.” To
realize our unlimited life, we need not add things external to our nature, as in religious
creeds, doctrines, and domineering human intermediaries to our own divinity. Our
inner nature already has everything needed. Adding externals to our nature is like trying
to wash water or adding a finger to our hand.
Book 2
“How should men and women who are motivated to attain correct awareness
of their true nature calm their minds?” Being motivated to achieve correct awareness
of our true nature is a start; however, knowing how to calm and manage the mind is
essential. The mind can be an instrument of liberation or imprisonment. It can imprison
buy being stuck in the past, living in an imagined future, and trying to preserve the
moment. It is said the way to manage the mind is like imagining a smooth ball rolling
along a smooth disk (not stuck on any limiting conceptions). Then let go of this image
of a ball and disk and all other attachments of the mind. Added to the difficulty are all
the dualities created by the mind that separates us from perception of the Real.
Intellectual symbolic knowledge and direct perception of the Real are not one and the
same. A symbol is merely a stand-in for the actual reality but is never the reality itself.
In our runaway information age, there is a lack of guidance on how not to clutter or
fixate the mind in groves of partial perception.
Book 3
"All lives are one life that can be called the One Great Universal Life.” It is
the same Source that courses through all forms. So, no life form should be disrespected.
Again, it is the mind that establishes dualities, and notions of superior VS inferior, more
sacred and special than the other, self-verses other. To achieve awareness of the true
nature of life and Self, these dualities of the mind must be dissolved. You may ask why
treat others as yourself? The reason is because, in ESSENCE, you and “other” are the
same. Namaste. Yes, there is diversity and distinction. Yet there is unity behind all
diversity. Even more, there is a great Equality of the many and the One Source. Both
the many and the One must be embraced as equal. God and man are one. Embracing
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is not even the best way to put it. We need not embrace who we really are as in reaching
out. We need to just realize who we really are with inner, integral awareness. This
process is more of a removal of the obstructions to our integral vision. This is not the
same as intellectual awareness. It is direct perception beyond thought and symbol.
We are the many and the One at once. Embrace that, but ultimately, just be that
which you already are with integral awareness. I think at the core of this instruction is
that we must maintain a non-discriminating mind. That is, maintain an awareness of the
underlying unity behind diversity. To value one lifeform above another is harmful to
achieving this awareness. I don't think it means to ignore the fact that some need FIRST
aid over others. There are people, groups, whose conditions are so poor or oppressed,
that they demand our service first. If someone or some group is dying, regardless of
color, nationality, social status, or any other distinction, that person or group needs our
focused service FIRST.
Dr. Claude Anderson, who wrote Powernomics, speaks against Blacks getting
involved in horizontal issues or issues that affect all groups like poverty, or the
environment. He says Blacks need to focus on vertical issues that affect Blacks uniquely,
like economic racism. I understand his point and I refer to it when I say that if someone
or some group is bleeding, that they should receive first aid. Blacks need to service
ourselves first in those areas that we are bleeding in, which is practically all areas of
people activity. This does not contradict the instruction of unconditional service. It's a
fine line. Equality and balance are not always in the middle. Some need more, and with
a greater frequency, to strike a balance to the whole.
Book 5
"Kind prince the mind can be just as immeasurable as the universe itself. An
integral being ... unites his mind with the Subtle Origin and its expression in
which there is no past, present, or future. This is how an integral being deals
with his mind." This tells me that to un-tie the knots of the mind, the hang-ups, the
habitual grooves, or whirlpools we get stuck in, requires joining our minds with that
which is above these limiting mental constructs, the Subtle Origin. This goes back to
the previous injunction of having a non-discriminating mind that does not regard the
dualities of life as irreconcilable and all definitive. One then rises above the countless
dualities, gain/loss, success/failure, beauty/ugly, and life/death, becoming free and
unlimited. For the African, it also means aligning one’s consciousness with the African
Ancestral consciousness or the African Group Soul. African invocation of and
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communion with Ancestral spirits are expressions of going beyond the mental
limitations of past, present, and future
Book 7
"To hold the mind with any rigid framework is to immediately become
trapped in the bondage of duality. If one does not discriminate between what is
labeled as sacred and profane, one is liberated from the bondage of all
concepts." Again, the instruction is not to be fixated on any mental constructs. Allow
the mind to move freely like a smooth ball on a smooth disk, and don't be fixated on
the image of a smooth ball and disk. Religious doctrine causes the mind to get stuck,
fixated and crystalized. This state becomes a self-accepted prison from the wider
realization of universal oneness and Being. This injunction speaks to the spiritual
traditions of across Africa, that defy supersede religiosity or doctrine. Not everyone will
break free from the bondage of religions and other mental crystallizations; yet there are
beings that support unlimited evolutionary growth beyond the three gunas (Hindu
term) of mind, body, and vital force.
Book 8
"All the far-reaching, un-faded teachings of the ancient sages come from the
same source: the subtle truth of great oneness.” Behind the words, the sacred texts,
recorded experiences, are the same un-faded Source that sustains all life, that IS all life.
This Source exists without the need of our individual minds to image or fix it into
concepts, precepts, or doctrines. It outstrips these, and so can we, with a non-
discriminating mind. This same Source, which sustains us, is within us. We need only
go past the symbolic language and images created by the mind to perceive it. It IS our
TRUE SELF, for we are one with IT.
Book 15
"Kind prince, to a universal integral being there is nothing that needs to be
tolerated or labeled tolerance. Tolerance exists only in the relative sphere. Why
is this? If you have risen above the relative concepts of the mind, there is no self
and others, no longevity or brevity, no life or death in your mind, so there is no
hatred or resentment. What, then, is the necessity for tolerance? One who is
highly evolved is attached to nothing and does not depend on any particular
mental concept or form in his relations with people or in serving them." The
practice of this way of perception would almost be like starting life over. We must
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unlearn so much to have correct perception. We must let go of so much to embrace an
unlimited life. The place to start is our insistence on holding on to the dualities of the
mind that separates us from the underlying REALITY of oneness. All dualities are
expressions of the same essence between the opposites. Though focusing on one end
of the pole is a means of rising above the other pole, as in focusing on the positive to
rise above the negative, this keeps us bound to the relative realm of dualities.
Once we keep to one end of a pole, there will always be the suggestion in the mind
of the opposite end of the pole. The way out is to see the oneness that is behind the
dualities. Don't reject the many for the One, or the One for the many. That is another
dichotomy. See the many and the One as an integral WHOLE. In seeing THAT, realize
THAT as your essence because all of existence and non-existence is THAT.
Book 32
"The world and the particles are not separate, isolated things. The particles
could be gathered to become the world, and the world could be dispersed to
become particles. One small particle contains the nature of the world, and the
world contains the nature of each small particle; the nature of each is the same.
Although they are not one and the same, neither are they different." I’ve pondered
over this question deeply for many years in early stages of my quest for spiritual
understanding. Here is the position I arrived at on this question after much mental
struggle. The force of attraction and repulsion speaks to the pervasive oneness of life
that is behind all diversity. The universe is made of particles, electrons, protons,
neutrons, quarks, etc. How do these particles know to organize themselves in relation
to the “other?”
It is by the force of attraction and repulsion. Now for one particle to relate to
another, to know the other through attraction or repulsion, there must be a medium
between that shares in the essence of each. If this were not so there could be no
communication, no relation. More so, this medium, sharing in the essence of each
particle can thus be said to be on some level, identical or indistinguishable from the
particles they join. If this were not so there would be a break in the path of
communication, preventing communication. But what we see is that everywhere, all the
time, there is communication of attraction and repulsion. Therefore, all that exists is
integrated in oneness by this shared subtle medium. Life is backed by oneness, while at
the same time expresses in diversity. Because of the integral oneness of life, I am one
with all, and life is unlimited. From this understanding springs my courage, clarity,
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peace, strength, power, and transcendence of ego, pain, and even the dissolution of
death.
One may believe that focusing on the African Collective Self is exclusionary of and
separate from the Soul of other groups. Consider the injunction to “Know Thy Self.”
This injunction does not negate the Self of others. It implies that to truly know your
Self, is to know the unity of life, and your oneness with it, with others. Indeed, then
there is not a dichotomy of Self vs. other, as the “Hua Hu Ching” mentions. This mental
construct is an impediment we must dissolve. Put another way, for a person to know
the world of existence, and even the Divine he/she must use the senses and
individualized intuition of his/her individual vehicle and Soul. The same applies to the
group-Soul. The group-Soul must come to know the world of existence and the Divine
through from its own Self-realized poise. This is the basis of the injunction, “man Know
Thy Self”, as the beginning of all knowledge, even knowledge of the Divine. From that
poise, we recognize the oneness of our Self with all and THE ALL.
An Overview of Collective Spiritual Development
Collective spiritual development, just as in individual spiritual development, is a
natural progression of the Spirit of the Universal Divine One involved in matter and
Life, to higher forms that have a greater capacity to express the One Being. The destiny
of humanity is to evolve collective social life to levels that will increasingly reveal and
more freely express the indwelling Spirit of Oneness. The Divine One is the All, the
only thing that really exists, THAT has become involved in all of matter, and is evolving
through matter to higher expressions of itself. The Higher Self of the African collective
is one with the Universal Divine One and is currently spearheading the evolution of
indwelling Consciousness that resides in physical matter.
Stages of collective spiritual development are generally aligned to the social
development of a people going from family, to clans, to powerful nation-states, to
country. In the Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu, it states that if an individual knows how to
guide his individual life, he knows how to guide the life of his family, the state, and the
country. Implied in this statement is that if a society is organized by un-enlightened
individuals, then the family, state, and country is based on an unsteady foundation and
likely has embedded within it the seeds of decay, disintegration, and transformation.
There are notable examples where societies have grown large, perhaps based on their
domination over other collectives, and imploded from the lack of internal cohesiveness
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that comes only by recognizing the inner divinity of all people inside and outside the
collective. The Roman Empire is just one such example. Even societies that lasted for
millennia (i.e., the Nubian and Egyptian civilizations) where transformed from their
relatively stable structures, to other forms, as the Unlimited Being cannot be
permanently limited to any organizing structure. It must evolve to wider expressions of
the Divine.
A whole spiritual movement can begin with just one spiritually evolved adept, where
his/her energy is disseminated throughout the society starting with a few faithful and
self-realized disciples. A spiritual group may flower and become a significant sector in
a society over time, seeking to influence the society in subtle or overt ways. The spiritual
energy may later be disseminated over a larger number of people; however, the intensity
or vibration levels of this energy may become diffused from the original core group, as
the number of members increase. A common historical occurrence has been that the
purity of the original insights and energy of a founding spiritual teacher become
distorted as they passed through many minds over time.
The original expanding spiritual awareness may have become limited in crystalized
forms of creed, doctrines, sayings, and prohibitions, and the original insight lost. The
faithful may be split into various stratum of spiritual development, ranging from those
who have reached the highest esoteric understandings and spiritual attainment, to those
who tend to make the teachings into mere formulas and creed of good social behavior.
In the latter case, there is little transformation towards higher consciousness taking
place; but it is a start. Since spiritual development in a society is guided by a group of
individuals of self-mastery who have dissolved their egos, collective spiritual
development need not detract from individual development and vice versa. Individuals
support collective development, and the collective supports individual development
without stifling proscriptions. Collective development, however, occurs at a slower rate
than individual development. Collective spiritual development is more along the lines
of an average or common denominator of the development of its members.
As mentioned, an individual can live an egoistic superficial life of his/her outer
being. With individual spiritual cultivation, the person shifts the center of identity to
the inner being, or true Self. The same is the case with collective spiritual development,
since the collective is made up of individuals acting in some form of solidarity and
synchronicity. The progressive Impetus of the Divine Spark is for larger collective to
take on attitudes of collective inner being, as opposed to that of collective outer being.
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When the collective identity is placed with the outer being, a manifestation of collective
egoism, the collective espouses attitudes that can be very destructive to all people in the
world, as in imperialism and racism. Imperialism is egoism played out on the world
stage.
Ultimately, the individual or collective that is living mostly in the outer being is
evolving, however slowly, towards Divine revelation in the world; for the true
determiner of life and evolution of consciousness is the Universal Integral Soul of life.
Below is a chart listing some attitudes/perspectives of the individual and collective inner
and outer being.
Table 1.1 Attitudes when Identified with the Outer Being
Perspectives of the
Individual
Perspectives of the
Collective
Attitudes Towards Life
Identified with
Physical Life
Everything is separate.
Matter is eternal; hence
matter is God.
Truth is only what can
be verified with the
physical senses.
One’s body is one’s self.
“I am sick; I am dying”
Species, including
humans, are fortuitous
accidents, as in chance
mutations that give rise
to natural selection and
the survival of the fittest.
Society highly values
extending sense
perception and ability to
analyze the physical
world with technological
instruments.
Society seeks short-term
material gain with little
to no concern for long-
term damage to the
environment.
Measures collective well-
being by physical
possessions, i.e., land,
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minerals, human labor
force.
Champions members
with physical beauty.
Discrimination against
its own members based
on superficial
characteristics.
Members’ value
measured in ability to
make things; products
over people.
Material possessions are
acquired by any means
necessary with little to
no regard for other,
except for the other’s
capacity to resist and
retaliate.
Identified with the
Vital Energy
Absorbed with pursuit
of wealth, sex and
power.
Life governed by
emotions, desire and
personal preferences.
Everything is a resource
for the powerful
individual, whose limits
are only the more
powerful.
One’s emotions and vital
energy are identified as
one’s self. “I am happy”;
Indiscriminate forces of
nature control life;
precipitating their need
to be controlled by man
(man VS Nature).
Society lives beyond
sustainability of
environment. This leads
to coveting resources of
other sovereign groups.
The vitally strong of
society are most
cherished, whereas the
sick and weak are
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“I am sad”; “I am
strong”; “I am weak.”
devalued, exploited, or
ultimately eliminated.
Champions members
with vital prowess as in
sports or hunting.
Promotes instant
gratification, the pleasure
principle.
Seeks progress by having
highly motivated and
productive members
who work and sacrifice
for the collective, even at
expense of individual
growth.
Seeks to secure and
enlarge its self by vital
means or charisma.
Seek power relations in
society where a few
benefit at the expense of
the many.
Identified with the
Mental Faculty
Life governed by moral
and mental principles.
Mind is a product of
physical matter.
Absorbed with one’s
own perspective and
conceptions.
One’s mind is one’s self
– “I think therefore I
am”
Society governed by
moral and intellectual
precepts.
Logic and reason is God,
Logos.
Extols the virtue of
mind over matter and
behavioral psychology.
Theories of mentally
superior races.
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Sets up society where the
mentally adept are
rewarded far above all
other members.
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Table 1.2 Identification with Inner Being
The Individual
Perspectives
The Collective
Perspectives
Attitudes Towards Life
All things are connected,
though in appearance
separate.
Search for the purpose
and meaning of life in
one’s Self, rather than
external to one’s self.
Death is viewed as a
transition to another
phase of life and being.
The disintegration of the
body is viewed like the
changing of clothing.
Life governed by what is
intuited to be the truth
of one’s inner being.
Life is a Divine
revelation.
Aspiration for human
perfection as an
embodiment of the
Divine on earth.
The infinite is in the
finite but not limited by
the finite; and the finite
is in the infinite and can
identify totally with it.
Humankind is a Divine
manifestation.
Matter is the Divine
Spirit in manifested
form.
Truth is what can be
verified by the inner
being, and by collective
progress.
The environment is not
a possession but a means
of support granted by
the Divine.
A Divine Will ultimately
controls the forces of
Nature.
Humans can engage
nature to further the
Divine expression.
Society engages in
sustainable modes of
production that do not
harm the environment.
The forces of Nature are
viewed as powers of the
Divine and are honored
as such.
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The Divine is the
ultimate cause, sustainer,
executer and benefactor
of actions.
The body, the vital and
the mind are instruments
in service of soul, which
is an apportionment of
the Divine on earth.
Recognizes the
limitations of sense
perception.
One’s life is an evolution
of the Divine that is
involved in life.
The mind is used to
organize society based
on Divine revelation.
Pursues and measures
collective wellbeing by
fostering collective
identification with
Divine.
Pursues and measures
collective wellbeing by
fostering collective
identification with
Divine.
Promotes initiation into
higher God knowledge
and expression.
The talents of all
members are respected
equally.
Men and women are
viewed as inherently
equal.
Promotes initiation into
higher God knowledge
and expression.
The talents of all
members are respected
equally.
Men and women are
viewed as inherently
equal.
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As above so below;
society is to be a mirror
of Divine order.
Attitudes Towards Self The Individual The Collective Self
I am not my body, my
mind, nor my vital
energy. These are
instruments in service of
my Soul, which is an
apportionment of the
Divine on earth.
Recognizes the
limitations of sense
perception.
One’s life is an evolution
of the Divine that is
involved in Material
existence.
Pursues and measures
collective wellbeing by
fostering collective
identification with
Divine;
Promotes initiation into
higher God knowledge
and expression.
The talents of all
members of society are
respected equally.
Men and women are
viewed as inherently
equal.
Attitudes Towards
Others
The Individual The Collective
All people are
expressions of the
Divine;
All people are treated
with the dignity, equality,
respect, and honor that
one would give to the
Divine because the
Divine resides in each
person. Ubuntu.
Honors the concept of
the human family and
respect for its diversity
as expressed through
other collectives.
Embraces cultural
structures that transcend
previously established
divisions among us in
our societies.
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Respects the sovereignty
of other people’s land.
Seeks symbiotic power
relations with other
collectives, and views
these as an indicator of
the society’s health and
progressive nature.
Warfare is only for
checking aggressive,
imbalanced forces.
Spiritual aspiration and
Divine grace are the
world’s salvation.
Honors the equal rights
and protections of other
collectives in the world.
Uses its granted powers
of life to further
harmonious
development of Diverse
expressions of the
Divine via other
collectives, while
fostering unity amongst
the diverse collectives.
Pays recognition to our
honorable ancestors,
who through their good
deeds have paved the
way for our progress.
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Bases progress upon
higher principles taught
by ancestors.
One example of how negative attitudes of an individual can be related to that of a
collective is where an African, continental or diasporic, lives life simply for material
gain, mimicking their colonial oppressors, thereby missing the greater meaning of life.
So too would the espousal of exclusively materialistic or exploitative goals by the
collective African value system, be a misunderstanding of the meaning and the
collective goal of African life. A specific example of this is embracing extreme capitalism
consumerism at the expense of collective national development. Material gains are
indeed a primal and necessary foundation for the promotion of a healthy society;
however, they are not to be mistaken for the ultimate purpose of life or to be acquired
and the expense of others. Materialism in a society leads to coveting the resources of
others at all human costs, not seeing the other as one’s self.
The African collective must, like the individual, strive to be nothing less than the
embodiment of the Divine on Earth, the Collective Ausarian Self. All activities of the
collective must support this objective. All that contradicts, restricts, hinders, or confuses
this objective must be either transformed to support this objective or else extracted
from the body of the organized African collective. Nature and its resources are to be
used in harmonious ways to support the development of the collective consciousness
to higher levels, as well as to express the underlying harmonies of life in more elastic
terms that do not interfere with the health of the environment and the healthy
development of group members, nationals, or neighboring peoples. Now that we have
some measures of collective growth, we can try to get a better understanding of the
evolving collective Self, particularly the African Ausarian Self, as we look at some
common expressions of it throughout ourstory, or even in contemporary life.
The collective Self is revealed wherever there is a massing of individuals with a
common purpose that is somehow relevant to the indwelling Divine Aspiration. This
is a broad description; however, the collective Self has a wide and deep field to operate
in, and any singular description of this Self is bound to be limited. If anyone stops to
think about experiences where he or she was functioning in a group situation, one could
recall the sensation of a collective group consciousness. The following are just a few
examples that come to mind:
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➢ The simple cohesiveness of open fluid cooperation, communication, and
coordination within a family and extended family.
➢ The joy and solidarity felt by Black folks in church gatherings, as they
collectively sing spirituals or freedom songs. This was evident in the pervasive
practice of the “ring shout” in early Black churches and bush harbors.
➢ The collective solidarity felt by Black folks when working and/or completing
a group or community uplift project or marching for justice.
➢ The nationalistic feelings of people in a country when they work towards a
collective goal of national uplift, as was the case with members of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association, headed by Marcus Garvey.
➢ The collective psychical effect when a collective is bracing for an attack or
pending disaster or the collective psychical sense when collective works
collaboratively to recover from a disaster.
➢ The collective psychical effect when a collective successfully fends off a group
threat or disaster.
➢ The collective psychical effect experienced, particularly in a stadium, when a
national sports team wins a world championship game and starts a group
chant.
➢ The collective pride felt at seeing the development of the OAU and its
successor organization, the African Union (AU).
There are countless examples of the above. To get a real sense of collective Being,
one only needs to think back on when he/she was a part of a collective as it asserted
itself to accomplish group motives of high ethical significance. One experience that I
relate to personally is participating in African drum circles. There is a collective Spirit
present during these drum circles that defies description; however, I can say that during
these events, I feel a sense of family, welcoming, of collective vitality, a sense of security,
healing, acceptance, peace, and encouragement. I also feel at ease talking to ancestors
and higher spirits, guides of the African collective, and invoking their positive energy
for support. It is not uncommon for me to call on my African drum teacher who
transitioned, Papa Ladji Camara, and say “Papa Ladi, please show me how to drum to
make the people happy and dance.”
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A collective can also manifest in less enlightened ways when there is diminished
employment of the higher collective will and consciousness. In such a case, there is a
greater influence of the outer shell or egoistic dynamic of the collective. Some examples
of this are as follows:
➢ When members of a collective band together to forcibly take material resources
from the indigenous or traditional users of those resources.
➢ When a collective seeks to bolster its collective self-esteem by diminishing the
accomplishments, value, or rights of other collectives.
➢ When a collective, having achieved some measure of internal success and surplus,
does not seek to assist other collectives to reach a similar status.
➢ When a collective loses its impetus to adapt to changes or integrate fresh
perspectives of life and growth into its collective life.
➢ When a collective view itself as the chosen group by God above all others and
closes itself to the insights and knowledge achieved by others.
The higher collective African Self, the witness to the full range of experiences by the
African collective through the ages, is available to each of us to broaden our
understanding of life, to fortify us for the difficult struggles immediately confronting us
and ahead of us into the future. Part of what the African leaders and priests of high
consciousness mean when they speak of invoking the assistance of the ancestors is that
we have an African spiritual Self that is always available for support of our individual
and collective journey of life.
The Collective African Self Consciousness Recognized in African-centered
Psychology
Many African-centered scholars, psychologists, and activists have illuminated in
their works the perception and expression of oneness that is found in traditional African
societies and social constructs. The below excerpt from Daudi Azibo (2014) lends
support to my understanding of the collective African Self that is evolving through the
distant past, into the present, and through the future. We each are enfoldments of this
Self, eddies of the collective Ocean Self.
"Now since the African is the original human being, the consubstantiation
principle states “we [Africans] are one people, we are of [we share] the same
[spiritual] essence’ … transmitted biogenetically at conception.” This shared
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spiritual essence is the basis for the African self-extension principle: the
contemporary African person is a direct extension of the (presumed) Divine
(Creator, One God, etc.) by virtue of begetting through the Ancestors and the
immediate line of progenitors. Her or his progeny are equally and likewise
extended into the distant, infinite future through the required continuation of
progeny. Taken together, since they are inseparable, the consubstantiation and
self-extension principles give rise to the African extended self-concept."
This all can be encapsulated with the African Proverb, “I am because we are, and
because we are I am.” (p. 5)
Kobi Kambon’s (1998) definition of African Self extends to include the collective
African Self or “African Self-Extension Orientation,” which Azibo referred to as the
consubstantiation principle.
“The African Self-Extension Orientation (ASEO) refers to the deeply rooted,
unconscious, genetically based African Spirituality reflecting a continual-
unending urge/striving for collective-communal expression of African cosmic
(spiritual) wholeness or unity. African self-consciousness (ASC) represents the
conscious expression of African Spirituality (ASEO); which affirms African life,
self-determination, and preservation.” (p. 308)
The basic traits of African personality, according to Kambon (1998) refer to those
beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors; which reflect, project, and reinforce African
Spirituality. These are the cognitive-emotional and behavioral qualities that are
natural/indigenous to African people, irrespective of social-environmental conditions
(i.e., living in under white supremacy domination). There are four components of ASC
(African Self-consciousness). Implied in these components is the recognition of
collective African consciousness. The four components are as follows:
a) Awareness/recognition of one’s (collective) African identity and cultural
heritage.
b) General ideological and activity priorities placed on African survival, liberation,
and proactive/affirmative development.
c) Specific activity priorities placed on (collective) self-knowledge and self-
affirmation, i.e., Afrocentric values, customs, institution-building, etc.
d) A posture of resolute resistance/defense against “anti-African/Anti-Black”
forces and threats to African survival in general.
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Howard Bruce Bynum (2012), lays bare a perception of an African Soul, the African
Unconscious that is like an ocean of consciousness that enfolds to become the
individual lives of each of us. This consciousness transcends time and space, yet
manifest into personalized beings located in time and space, us. It is thereby one with
the Universal Consciousness. Referring to the unconscious Bynum says,
“It also, like Jung’s fuller conception, embraces deep and primordial racial
memories that are pass across the waves of human generations and are implicate
or enfolded in each of us. The ego is a local and boundary-setting process/ The
unconscious or the ancient Kemetic Amenta is a nonlocal phenomenon. The
basic “building block” of the psyche and soma is not the isolated, egoic “atom,”
so to speak, but rather the interconnected, nonlocal “quantum of action.” (p. 84)
Wade Nobles (1985), in his work “Africanity and the Black Family,” gives insight
into to the collective African Self as expressed in extended family and societal relations.
“The notion of self, in accordance with the African belief system, was (is) based
on one's individual consciousness taking its reference point, the family, wherein
one's existence is perceived as being interconnected to the existence of all else.
More specifically, we can note that the traditional philosophical notion of
Oneness of Being requires that man conceptualizes his own existence as being
an awareness of his universal connectedness, i.e., man is an indispensable,
integrated, and interdependent part of the universe. The notions of
Interdependence and Oneness of Being allow for a conception of self, which
transcends, throughout the historical consciousness of one's people, the
finiteness of both the physical body, finite space and absolute time. The notion
of self, or more specifically, the awareness of self for African peoples, is,
therefore, not limited to just the cognitive awareness of one's own uniqueness,
individuality, and historical finiteness. In its truest form, it is self-awareness,
which is the awareness of one's historical consciousness (collective spirituality
and the subsequent state or sense of "we-ness). The most compelling property
of the traditional notion of self is the process of cosmologically grounding the
self in the collective, social and spiritual sense of the history of one's people. In
recognition of this kind of self-awareness, which is consistent with a particular
belief system, we can note that the traditional African (and most contemporary
descendants) view of "self" is contingent upon the existence of other." (p. 55-56)
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This is a profound summarization of how our individual consciousness is
existentially extended into the collective consciousness and is expressed concretely in
the organization of family, then community then nation. Agyei Akoto (1992) affirms
the centrality of the family in expressing the Divine order in no uncertain terms saying,
“Family is the first and foremost expression of Odumankoman in the physical
(human) realm.”
In traditional African societies, there was no separation of spirituality from daily
life and so no need for a word religion. All life activities were imbued with spirit. It
was inconceivable for anything, person, modality, place time, or force to be outside
the purview, influence, and direction of Spirit. To speak of religion or religious aspect
then would imply there not being a religious aspect. This was not the case with
traditional African societies, hence no need for the word religion.
One thing that I am critically looking for is to understand African ontology in
general. I have been searching for corroboration of the idea that has come to me
regarding a real existence of a collective African self. I have found consistent
expositions on the communitarian nature of African societies in general. One of the
concepts to give expression to this collective consubstantiation principle is that of
Ubuntu, which means, “I am because we are and because we are I am.” Within the
word Ubuntu is the root NTU; which means ALL Being. The prefix Ubu is to signify
the particularity of being or individual expressions of the Supreme Being. There are
other related Bantu words having the same root ntu, Muntu, Kintu, Hantu, and
Kuntu. These words are meant to categorize all things in existence. These different
categories the same existence or Being in self-extension. With this fundamental idea
that all things are in essence the one Self we have the reason for proclaiming, “I am
because we are and because we are and I am.”
The below is an explication of the root word NTU, as given by Janheinz Jahn in
his “Muntu, African Culture, and the Western World (1990).” It will be important to
investigate the African conception of time and progressive development to further
understand the idea of evolving Self in the world through the evolving collective
African self?
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I Muntu = ‘human being’ (plural: Bantu);
II Kintu = ‘thing’ (plural: Bintu);
III Hantu = ‘place and time’;
IV Kuntu = ‘modality’.
“Muntu, Kintu, Hantu and Kuntu are the 4 categories of African philosophy.
All being, or essence in whatever form it is conceived, can be subsumed under
one of these categories. Nothing can be conceived outside of them…
NTU is the universal force as such, however, never from its manifestation
occurs apart from its manifestations: Muntu, Kintu, Hantu and Huntu. NTU is
Being itself, the cosmic universal force, which only modern, rationalizing
thought can abstract from its manifestations. NTU is that force in which Being
and being coalesce. NUT is – so we many say by way of suggestion – that
Something which Breton probably had in mind when he wrote: ‘Everything
(in Akan society) leads us to believe that there exists a central point of thought
at which living and dead, real and imaginary, past and future, communicable
and incommunicable, high and low, are no longer conceived as contradictory.”
NTU is that ‘point from which creation flows’ that Klee was seeking: ‘I
am seeking a far off point from which creation flows, where I suspect there is a
formula for man, beast, plant, earth, fire, water, air and all circling forces are
once.’
But in NTU Breton’s contradictions have never existed, nor is it something
‘far away’. If we said that NTU was a force manifesting itself in man, beast,
thing, place, time, beauty, ugliness, laughter, tears, and so on, this statement
would be false, for it would imply that NTU was something independent
beyond all these things. NTU is what Muntu, Kintu, Hantu and Kuntu all
equally are. Force and matter are not being united in this conception; on the
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contrary, they never have been apart.” ~ Janheinz Jahn, Muntu, African Culture,
and the Western World
An explication of the word Ubuntu that points to the African conception of the
collective Self, is given by Jacob K Olupona (1991):
“Africans believe firmly that there is a living communion or bond of life, which
makes for solidarity among members of the same family or clan. The fact that
we are born into a family, a clan, or a tribe immerses us in a specific current of
life, “incorporates” us and molds us to the fashion of that community; it
modifies all our being ‘onologically’ and orients us to living an behaving in the
manner of that community. So. Family, clan, and tribe form wholes in which
each member is only a part. The same blood, the same life (spirit) participated
in by all and received from the first ancestor, the founder of the clan, circulates
in everyone’s veins. For the protection, maintenance, enhancement, and
perpetual preservation of this common treasure, it is a duty to work with all our
energy, to wage ruthless war against all that is opposed to it, and to support at
any price anything that favors it. This is the last word on the customs,
institutions, wisdom, philosophy, and religion of Africans.” (p. 121)
Our collective consciousness will express in situations regardless of whether it is
from a poise of higher awareness, Ausarian Collective Consciousness, or from a poise
of unawareness or unconsciousness. The state of unconscious Consciousness can surge
undirected, unfocused, and unaware. In individuals or groups, it expresses as being
reactionary, not valuing oneself, one's group, or one's ancestral tradition. It expresses
as not having awareness of historical continuity. It expresses as being externalized,
seeking validation from foreigners, or seeking external measures of worthiness, beauty,
and godliness. It also expresses as materialism and consumerism. The Divine Spark that
is involved in us continues to evolve out of us. Having discussed some important
aspects to individual cultivation of our higher inner Divinity, and related those aspects
to collective African spiritual development, we are in a better position to assess,
following broad historical lines, how the collective African Consciousness has evolved
through the ages.
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Chapter 2
Collective African Expression Through Spiritual Culture
Since ancient times to the present, African peoples have been known to generally
value inner spiritual life. Collective spiritual expressions abound in Africa. It is my sense
that traditional African religions in general give expression to the depth of the African
group-Soul, rather than, as in far too many cases with Western religions, become
fossilized into a set of proscriptions that have lost their initial spiritual energy and
morphed into tools of social control by an elite sector of the society. It behooves us, in
assessing the levels of Divine expression through African religions, to first assess the
benefits and limitations of religions in general.
Religions have both beneficial and detrimental aspects to them. I view religions as
training wheels for the individual and society. I think they can be essential to helping
people begin the upward movement to the life Divine. However, too often religions
place obstacles in the way of completing this process. Furthermore, religions often
devalue the Divinity that resides within, and minimize the necessity for bringing the
Divine energy down to transform the instruments of our being into unfettered
expressions of Supreme Being on earth.
Below is a listing of some limitations of religions. Not all religions will have these
limitations, but most will have some. When it comes to realizing our full divine
potential, all limitations must in time be transformed or otherwise transcended.
Religions:
➢ Tend to resist adapting to changing times or accommodation of unique
circumstances.
➢ Tend to restrict or delimit that which is limitless, Divine Being and Expression
➢ Tend not have flexibility to embrace other cultures and religious expression. This
attitude can justify gross actions such as war in God's name; i.e., crusades, or
Jihads, and enslavement or eradication of the non-believer.
➢ Tend to worship God as a super human
o This entails projection of human attributes such as emotions to a God
figure. This can limit understanding of God.
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o This attitude can make human life seem insignificant in comparison to
God, thus trivializing the human experience, and reinforcing the false
notion of man being separate from God, instead of being one with God.
➢ Tend toward exclusivity or the chosen people attitude. This gives rise to viewing
a religion as the only bearer of the Truth and Grace of God.
o This attitude then becomes a justification for oppressing others; such as
confiscation of a people’s land because God ordained it.
➢ Tend to foster dependency on an external salvation in place of individual effort,
giving control of life to so-called intermediaries who intercede on God's behalf,
thus circumventing one’s own direct realization of God within. For example, this
dependency can take the form of belief that baptism and profession of faith
guarantees salvation vs. internal spiritual effort and development.
➢ Tend to promote the dualistic view of God vs. man; where there is an
unbridgeable gulf between God’s status of being and humanity. The opposite of
this view is that God and man are one, since God is all that is.
➢ Tend to promote the view that man is born in sin; which loads guilt on members
and can be used to control the psychology of members. This attitude also
depresses the human capacity to transcend limiting conditions of life.
➢ Tend to seek power to interpret and control actions of members, as in racism or
abusive patriarchal domination over women.
➢ Tend to become ritualistic and worship becomes an enacted script rather than a
dynamic merging with Divine consciousness, as with trance or being “mounted
by the deities.”
The below is a listing of some good points of religions. Not all religions will have
these good points, but most will have some. When it comes to realizing our full divine
potential, all experiences can be used as stepping-stones towards realizing the Divine
within and without.
Religions:
➢ Most often are good guides for moral development, thus serving as an incubator
for the developing soul.
➢ Can promote healthy community interaction.
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➢ Can serve as an introduction to a power greater than the individual ego; thus,
serves as a stepping-stone towards the transcendence of the ego.
➢ With religious devotion one can develop a faith that can surpass the logical
reasoning mind, without abandoning all reason. So, spirituality and reason are
complementary.
➢ Religion can be the springboard to deeper spiritual growth and expansion of
consciousness.
➢ On higher levels of esoteric religious practice, one can transcend the limited view
of the orthodoxy, obtaining a more integral or universal view.
o God and man are one
o The higher motive of a religious body can be not to control the individual,
but rather to bring out latent abilities of individuals; to develop individual
faculties of power and understanding through initiation.
➢ Can organize activities of life to facilitate Divine revelation and expression
through the individual and the collective.
➢ In esoteric religions, objects and man are signatures, signs, or expressions of the
Divine. From this perspective, the powers, forces, forms of life are all seen as
emanations of God. In formal restrictive religions, this perspective is called
polytheism, animalism, paganism, and is condemned.
Capping off this general assessment of religions I include here a prelude that Master Ni
Hua Ching has in many of his books regarding religion. He writes:
“The Subtle Essence conveyed by the teaching of the Integral Way is the deep
truth of all religions, yet it leaves all religions behind to be the clothing of
different seasons or worn in different places. The teaching of the Subtle Essence
includes all things of religious importance, yet it is not on the same level as
religion. It serves people’s lives directly as all religions wish to do, but it surpasses
the boundary of all religions and extracts the essence of all religions.” (Prelude)
I equate the Subtle Essence referred to above with the Higher Individual Self,
the Collective Ausarian Self, as well as with the Higher Collective Self of other national
groups, and of Humanity overall. These are all integral and on the deepest level of
reality, the One Self or Highest Divine Spirit. The Highest Divine Spirit can poise itself
in all these forms simultaneously. Religions are vehicles, instruments, or expressive
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edifices of the Divine Spirit. Some religions are better conveyers of the Divine Spirit
than others. For Africans, traditional religious or spiritual systems, have always been a
means of individual and group expression of the Divine. Africans have not simply
sought mediators between man and the Divine but sought to transform themselves into
unfettered instruments of the Divine through spiritual rituals and divination, and divine
possession (i.e., being mounted or powerfully influenced by deities).
Commonalities of Traditional African Spiritual Systems in Pre-Colonial Africa
One of the areas of social organization that strongly points to a continent-wide
collective consciousness through the ages in Africa is that of traditional religions. This
is evident by the beliefs that are held in common by traditional African religions in pre-
colonial Africa, whether the religion is of a society located in the North, South, and
East or West of the continent. I am referring here to religious or spiritual systems that
were developed by Africans prior to European or Arab intrusions. Some of these
commonalities are as follows:
➢ Belief in One Almighty Creator of the universe.
➢ Lesser deities are ministers, delegates, forces, or Divine attributes of the Supreme
Being, in charge of various aspects of creation.
➢ The Spirit of the Creator permeates all living and non-physical beings.
➢ The human soul is an apportionment or divine spark from the Supreme Being
and has a destiny to fulfill according the Divine Will.
➢ Belief in immortality or persistence of life after death.
➢ Reverence for the ancestors who have passed, yet still interact and even assist the
living.
➢ All aspects of life are under the influence of the Creator; if not directly, then
through deities and the ancestors.
➢ Disease or imbalance on the individual or societal levels seen as resulting from
past wrong actions and must be atoned for or remedied by sacrifice and
correction.
➢ Respect and deference to priesthood for matters affecting the health of the
society. The priesthood is a powerful force in society.
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➢ Priesthood pushes the envelope of understanding, knowing, and spiritual
expression.
o Divination or reading the signs of nature and seeing developing events
o Management of unseen forces
o Tracking long-term trends effecting all, leading to study of cosmic forces,
Astronomy, and Astrology
➢ Development of song, art, dance, symbols, writing to convey and express
spiritual understanding. This led to a learned sector of society known as scribes
in ancient Egypt.
➢ The temple becomes the center of learning for society and in some cases, attracts
foreigners from distant lands. The inner temple is for developing the spiritual
faculties and divine realization of initiates.
➢ The aspiration of building religiously edifying and revelatory structures brought
about the development of architecture, mathematics, and science
➢ The ancestors are closer to the spirit world and can therefore be effective
mediators between man and the Supreme Being.
The espousal of similar religious/spiritual views and practices by Africans across the
entire continent points to a continent-wide, deep structure, common consciousness that
expresses through the medium of traditional African religions. This collective
consciousness pushes the evolution of humanity to ever deeper and wider levels of
expression. This consciousness has been so definitively established, that base and
egoistic concepts have been nearly transcended completely in most African societies.
One concept that is foreign to the African worldview is the concept that fellow
human beings can be treated as chattel slaves, having no greater status than that of an
animal and devoid of basic human rights and dignity. Where there existed slavery in
ancient Africa, it did not have the quality of stripping a person of all his/her humanity,
freedom, and all of life chances. Even were there strict caste systems for the division of
labor, individuals had an opportunity within that system to not only aggrandize
themselves materially, but to develop a deeper understanding of Self and even elevate
to a higher status socially. Not all members of a given society will have a wide and deep
awareness of their higher Self; just as when we are asleep we usually are not aware of
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our waking level of consciousness, though it still exists in a recessive state. So, it is with
the less aware members of society.
Not all religions will be a high expression of the Divinity within the collective.
African spiritual systems cannot be viewed as static cultural structures that do not
evolve over time. Not all religious practices will evoke a higher divine expression of the
Divine involved with human experience; though some will develop practices that give
shape to higher expressions of the Divine within humanity, individually as well as
collectively. Africans still have a role to play in giving to humanity ever wider and deeper
expressions of the indwelling Universal Integral Divine One through traditional
spiritual systems.
Higher Divine Consciousness usually remains potent and refined in a few individuals
as a sacred trust (through initiation), and then slowly disseminates its elevating influence
throughout the general society in a controlled or staged manner to the degree that
various sectors of the society can absorb. It seeks to touch all sectors in some way,
however faint. One primary effect of the higher consciousness must be to elevate the
lives of the society in terms that include the physical, psychological, intellectual, vital,
and psycho-spiritual areas. Education, as with life generally, was integrated in wholes
rather than fragmented into separate disciplines.
Whatever the area of study, it is directed to improve the functioning balance of
society overall. In addition, there is usually a benefit to the surrounding environment or
neighboring collectives that meet it. This is so even if these collectives are foes, for this
too is a means that the Spirit can use to widen its scope of Self-awareness and action
through resistance to corruption on earth. So often conquerors, using their current
power, write the story of their conquests and achievements over those they conquered,
but fail to tell how their own society have been enriched by learning from and general
association with those they have conquered. This is particularly true of Asiatic, Greek,
Roman, Arab, and European invasions of Kemet, known more familiarly as Egypt. No
doubt the Industrial Revolution in North American would not have occurred as it did
without the “capital” and life energies, physical, vital, and mental, of enslaved Africans.
Another effect of the African higher consciousness, individual or collective, is that
it offers a model of human interaction. It informs general humanity as to what is
possible on a wider scale (i.e., Egyptian temple and monument building). To remain
spiritually progressive, societies must not ignore negative attitudes and energy
movements, either internal or external. It must honestly and forth rightfully address
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common human struggles and demonstrate how these problems can be harmonized
and transformed into growth movements. The greater the challenge is that humanity
faces, the greater potential there is for victory over inhumanity; victory of higher
consciousness over chaos. No doubt this is the example that spiritual culture of ancient
Nubia and Kemet served for over ten thousand years of human history.
Deep Thought in Mysteries System of Kemet, Expressive of High Collective
Consciousness
The study of archeology in Kemet, in conjunction with other sciences, has revealed
much regarding the way of life of our ancient African ancestors. However, it is my sense
that the world has yet to fully appreciate that the ancient Egyptians were a black-skinned
African people, remaining so until the infusion of Asiatic hoards into the Nile Delta
after 1645 B.C.E., particularly with the invasion by the Hyksos. Even so, the Egyptians
appeared black up to the day that Herodotus wrote what his eyes witnessed. Subsequent
to the successive invasions by the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs,
there appeared in Kemet the mulatto admixture that progressed to what we see there
today. The ancient Kemetians described themselves from the earliest times as a colony
of Ethiopia, which is South of Egypt.
South of Egypt you have the Nubians who are unquestionably black-skinned. This
is important to state at the onset because I want to be clear that when I speak of the
deep thought of Pharaonic Egypt, I am referring to that of black-skinned Africans
independent of any significant European or Asiatic influence. The high philosophy or
way of viewing life that existed in ancient Kemet is an achievement of black-skinned
Africans; it was not imported. If there were no such thing as global White supremacy
aspiration, an oppressive ideology based on skin color or lack thereof (albinism), this
point about the skin color of ancient Africans would not be necessary. Another point
that is worth noting here that renowned African historian, educator and scholar Dr.
Henrik Clark made frequent mention, is that the Nile River is the world's first
superhighway, carrying on its culture, wealth, and facilitating a collective consciousness.
The Nile flows from South to North because Southern Africa is higher in elevation
than Northern Africa. Therefore, Southern Egypt is called Upper Egypt, whereas
Northern Egypt is called Lower Egypt. It is natural then for the direction of origin,
imprinting, and continued dominant influence to come from the South of Egypt,
Nubia/Ethiopia, by way of the Nile superhighway, rather than from the Mediterranean
Sea. This fits with the profession by the ancient Egyptians that they are a colony of
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Ethiopia. It also fits testimonials by the Greeks as to where they derived their wisdom.
During the late dynastic periods of Kemet, no Greek was considered by their own
learned until they have visited Egypt and studied at the feet of Egyptian sages.
Having said all the above, we now move to the basis of deep thought in Pharaonic
Kemet. The environment that the Kemetians developed in, contributed greatly to the
development of higher thought in Kemet. The Nile was the source of life in what would
otherwise have been largely a desert region. The inundation of the Nile onto the
surrounding banks was a regular phenomenon. Kemet was relatively secure from
invasion for millennia as it was flanked on the East by the Red Sea, and on the West by
desert. To the North was the stopgap of the Mediterranean Sea, and to the South were
a people of like mind in terms of the deep structure of their respective cultures.
Kemet was the daughter of Nubia. This relative security and regularity of
environment allowed the African in Kemet freedom to explore the deeper harmonies,
relations, and realities of life. It was a basis for continuous, progressive, deep thought
and self-reflection. Nature was viewed as supportive of life if properly cultivated, thus
Pa Neter (The Supreme Being) and the Neteru were supportive supports for human
life, if the Divine force was internally cultivated and outwardly expressed. man, and
Nature was viewed as inseparable expressions of the Divine. There was no definite line
between them. Man and God were one, because the Supreme Being resides in all. From
this fundamental and central worldview that is typically African sprang the rest of
Kemetic thought and social organization.
I will refer in the following, to two developments in ancient black Kemet that I think
reveals the deep thought and driving force of our ancestors. These are, the Ausarian
myth, and the practice Maat. Before I do, I want to reiterate that higher collective
thought is not necessarily something that is instantly assimilated by all members of an
entire collective. Even when that higher thought is presented to a segment of a
collective, that segment may not be ready to fully assimilate it. In the ancient Kemetic
Mysteries system, not all the members of the society were privy to the deeper meanings
of precepts taught in the temples. Priest underwent spiritual initiation or years of
preparation and development before they could be counted as knowing the higher
Truths of life. Until then, they were considered as being on many levels ignorant or
uninitiated. This is not to say that the general society had no conception of the Divine.
It is to say that there were still barriers of thought between one’s outer expression and
the inner reality within. Initiation was a concerted effort to eradicate all such barriers.
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It must also be understood that the light of Kemetic deep thought was a beacon
for all of Africa and even the world, this light was assimilated to varying degrees
throughout the African collective throughout the continent. Nubian societal practices,
including kingship and a pantheon of Neters, or gods, were common with that of
Kemetic society. The Nubians were, in many respects, progenitors of higher Kemetic
thought. I say this considering the artifacts found in Nubia depicting known Kemetic
gods; for example, the Qustul Incense Burner, that depicts the white crown of a
pharaoh. So Nubian consciousness was likely on par with that of the Kemetians.
Kemet then was a flowering of other branches in Africa. The deep thought of ancient
Kemetians elevated the collective consciousness of Africa and the World to levels it
had not previously known.
Ausarian Myth Revealing the Deep Collective Thought of Africans
For a comprehensive treatise on the deeper meaning of the Ausarian myth, I refer
the reader to the works of Ra Un Nefer Amen; The Medu Neter Vol. 1. I also refer the
reader to The Ausarian Resurrection, by Muata Ashby. An important thing to understand
with the Ausarian myth and the deities is that their spheres of influence and control, as
delegates of the Supreme Being, are not only in the external universe, but also reside
within the psychic spiritual makeup of humankind. The spiritual forces, deities, reside
in humans, and correspond to various levels of consciousness and power/energy within
a person.
All the levels of consciousness have their role to play in our makeup, but there is a
question of order and precedence if we are to initiate our higher development and
expression of the Divine Spirit within. Ra Un Nefer Amen helps us with this order by
presenting the Kemetic tree of life in his Medu Neter Vol. 1. Not all the ancient Kemetic
Neters are initially represented in the tree of life. However, if the various nodes of the
tree are looked upon as spheres of general influence, all the ancient Kemetic Neters can
ultimately be associated with one or another sphere.
Tracing the meaning and relevance of Ausar in Kemet can inform us of the
deep spiritual evolution of collective African Consciousness. Further tracing how the
Ausarian architype of ancient Kemet has influenced the spiritual systems of other
groups, African and non-African, is a testament to the evolution of African collective
consciousness on a worldwide level.
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Ausar has been referenced through the ages in three domains of reality: as the un-
manifest Creator of manifested material existence, who exists in and beyond the
Creation, (beyond time, hence Lord of Eternity); as the bringer of civilization and
balanced rule; as the Higher Self of every human being that experiences resurrection.
Ashby (1998) gives this transliteration of Ausar as cosmic Creator:
“From the mystical standpoint, the Trinity of Osiris (Ausar)-Isis (Auset)-Horus
(Heru) represents the movement of the Spirit as it manifests in Creation. As we
have seen through the story as well as the iconography associated with them, in
reality it refers to the deeper principles of human, as well as super-human,
existence. Osirus(Ausar) becomes the silent Spirit who is the source and
support of Creation in his names Asar-Tua, “Osiris, the Begetter” (in the Tuat),
and Osiris-Neb-Heh, “Osiris, Lord of Eternity.” Isis (Auset) is the Creation
itself. Horus (Heru) is the dynamic manifestation of the Spirit (of Osiris) which
moves in and interacts with Creation (Isis). Thus, Osiris expresses as Creation
and as the dynamic forces within it. This teaching is also expressed in the idea
of the Trinity concept and the birth of God into human form (Avartarism).” (p.
131)
Ashby gives this description of Ausar as the bringer of civilization in human the
terrestrial realm:
“Osiris (Ausar), having become king of Egypt (Kemet), applied himself to
civilizing his countrymen by turning them from their former indigent and
barbarous course of life. Isis discovered the use of barley and wheat and Osiris
developed the cultivation process for these and established the custom of
offering the first fruits to the Neters. He taught them how to cultivate and
improve the fruits of the earth and he gave them a body of laws whereby to
regulate their conduct, and instructed them in the reverence and worship
which they are to pay to the gods. With the same good disposition, he
afterwards traveled over the rest of the world, inducing the people everywhere
to submit to his discipline, not indeed compelling them by force of arms, but
persuading them to yield to the strength of his reasons which were conveyed
to them in the most agreeable manner, in hymns and songs, accompanied with
instruments of music.” (p. 53)
Ashby gives this description of Ausar as the higher Consciousness or Self of each
person:
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“In the Osirian (Ausarian) myth, Osiris is the son of Geb and Nut, who are in
turn the offspring of Shu and Tefnut, who are themselves children of Ra. In
another Creation myth of Osiris, it is said that Osiris uttered his own name,
Asar, and thereby brought the world and all life within it into existence. This is
the process of Divine incarnation whereby the Supreme Being becomes the
universe. Osiris, Lord of the Perfect Black, is the personification of the
blackness of the vase un-manifest regions of existence. Osiris is the essence of
all things, and the very soul of every human being as the Higher Self, who,
through ignorance has become involved in the world, and struggles to regain its
original state of perfection. … Osiris symbolizes the fragmented ocean of
consciousness which has been cut into pieces by the lower self. No longer is
there the vast all-encompassing, all-knowing, all-seeing consciousness. The
Divine has become limited in association with the human mind, body and
senses, due to the desire to experience human feelings and egoistic sentiments.
Instead of looking at the universe through the cosmic mind, the Divine now
expresses Him/Herself through billions of life forms whose bodies, minds and
senses are too limited to see the vastness of Creation.”
It is important to understand that all the energies of the deities are interrelated with
one another in an integral and complementary hierarchal order. Also, the cosmic, the
terrestrial and the human energies are integral to each other. Humanity must establish
an ideal or balanced order between these energies internally and externally; for as above
so as below. This balance is known as Maat in ancient Kemetic deep thought. The result
of having achieved the correct order or precedence of the Divine forces within is to
elevate our consciousness beyond the finite and merge it with the infinite, for as the
consciousness goes, so too goes our status and power of being.
This is key to reaching our human ideal on earth. We reveal the Divine on earth in
ways dictated by the Truth/Thought and Will/Force of the Divine through the
instruments of our individual lives. The culmination of our inner cultivation is that we
identify ourselves as being one with the Divine in form and beyond form. This state in
the ancient Kemetic tradition is known as becoming Ausar, and the peace achieved in
this state known as Hetep.
Many students of ancient Kemetic cosmology assume the Kemetians thought this
state could be achieved only with initiation plus the dissolution of the physical body.
However, this is not the case. It can be achieved by focusing one's consciousness to the
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sphere of Ausar within and infusing that supreme consciousness into one's waking and
even sleeping life. One makes this Ausar level of consciousness constant and abiding.
Learning of this goal, through study of the Medu Necher or divine speech as
represented by Tehuti (Thoth) the awakening processes of the human faculties
(particularly the intuitive mind and will) to accomplish this goal, is what ancient Kemetic
initiation was largely about.
There was also a philosophy of as above so as below. Harmonies of life on the
terrestrial level were tied to the harmonies of life on the celestial spheres. It was the goal
of Kemetic societies to model and infuse the harmonies it perceived on the spiritual
levels into the society at large, thus allowing for the full expression of the Divine Spirit
in the physical world. This was accomplished through abiding by the spiritual laws
represented by the deity Maat. Thus, ultimately the society, the collective Self, would
become Ausar. I am emphasizing through this work, that as the African collective
practices Unbutu, or mutual support, we expand our collective consciousness, realizing
our underlying oneness, despite our diversity. We “come forth by day” (a Kemetian
concept of Ausar) realizing that which we always were—Ausar.
The Concept and Practice of Maat
Once a person makes strides towards individual spiritual cultivation, one learns the
necessity of practicing collective spiritual cultivation. True Spiritual development
informs us that there is no separation between God and humans, or between one
individual and all other individuals. This necessitates extending our spiritual cultivation
to include collective spiritual cultivation. It is expressed in the ancient Kemetic tradition
by the concept and practice of Maat.
In ancient Egyptian deep thought, Maat represents the harmony and balance of
energies in the universe, in the immediate environment, within a human and between
humans on all levels. It is premised on the idea that there is a natural and ultimately
divinely ordained order for all things, and that humans can have an important role to
play in facilitating this order. The Supreme Being can affect His/Her Will for creation
through the cooperation and heightened consciousness of humanity. The more
conscious we are of the Divine Truth/Thought Will/Force, the more dynamic a role
we can play in the ordered, creative impulse emanating from the Divine Source. If we
are not cooperative in fostering this order, then the Almighty can evolve other beings
to accomplish the unfettered, dynamic expression of His / Her Being in creation. Thus,
the ancient Kemetians sought to establish social structures and interrelations that
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expressed their sense of right order, justice, and universal harmony. All that
contradicted this was considered an evil or source of disorder (Isfet) and was to be
driven out of society.
Here are some Maatian attitudes that determined the approach ancient Kemetians
had towards societal development: Social order is designed to mirror Divine creation.
There is no separation of Divine expression and social order. Leaders are charged by
the Divine to push out disorder and install Divine order. Man can transform into a
divine being or perfected vessel of the Divine, and so leaders are charged to educate
members of the society to the laws and practice of Maat, revealed through consonance
with the intuitive Mind or Tehuti. Social administration is viewed as an extension of the
God's creative acts on earth. Just as there is a model person of virtue who acts on God's
behalf to shape society according to Divine principles, there is the ideal of a perfected
society that is the fruit of its members embracing the Maatian principles of good order.
This divinized society, the Ausarian Self, is not a static mold or icon, but rather like
the dynamic God of creation, is a pliant, charged, effective, expansive, universal,
unlimited vessel of the Divine Omnipotence. It is none other than an embodiment of
the Divine. Just as there is a fully realized divine person, the real meaning of a Christ or
Krishna, there is the fully realized Divine Collective Person. This collective Person’s
reason for existence is the same as that for the individual; to reveal in wider, deeper,
and more effective terms, the Divine Will/Force/Bliss Being that is latent in creation,
thus knowing the Divine by identifying completely with it. At the time of death, the
heart of the deceased is weighed by the gods on the scale of Maat and it is determined
if the level of life lived by the deceased merits only annihilation of the person’s
incarnation impressions.
The worthy will reincarnate with impressions from previous lives intact as stepping-
stones for higher spiritual progress. The 42 negative confessions (describe in detail) are
a general guide for members of the society to know if they are on the right track to
living an elevated life. By no means could 42 tenants cover all the circumstances of life
where balance, harmony, justice, and love need to be preserved and facilitated towards
higher expression.
The effect of these aspects of African deep thought in ancient Kemet is to instill in
the collective society a shared concept of common good and common spiritual or
ethical progress. This attitude no doubt contributed to Kemet society lasting longer
than any other civilization in world history. This collective consciousness also had the
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effect of enabling the society to produce the great pyramids and to push the envelope
of human ingenuity, productivity, scientific knowledge, and esthetic expression. The
ancient Kemetians collectively were the earliest civilizations to develop writing. They
developed three forms: Medu Netcher (hieroglyphic divine speech), heretic and the
third hieratic (later called demotic), the phonetic alphabet from which the Greek and
Latin alphabets are derived. They were the most literate people of the world in their
time and their writing system formed the basis of the writing systems of all other
collectives, including the Greeks and the Arabs.
How can we quantify the effect writing has had on the collective consciousness of
African society? With the advent of writing, ideas of an elevated nature could be
disseminated without necessitating that they be passed directly from mind to mind. A
person can pick up a scroll and peer into the mind of the original writer, possibly
resulting in a direct consonance of conscious thought. The elevating effect on society
that the teachings from the temples had, teachings emanating from high priests, written
by scribes, and disseminated throughout the common people, must have been
enormous. This effect can be seen, for example, in that most people wanted to be
assured an afterlife by being buried in a manner prescribed by the scribe, who got it
from the priest. This manner involved mummification and incantations to the gods,
and hieroglyphs of resurrection surrounding the body of the deceased. A divine afterlife
in the higher spiritual realms was not a conception espoused by a few initiated, but
rather part of the collective consciousness.
The ancient Kemetians, through their writing systems, have left to posterity ample
evidence of their high level of spiritual cultivation. Some African scholars have sought
to catalog the spiritual writings of Ancient Kemet ancestors to reclaim the spiritual
insights they have developed, to usher a renewed push towards the higher African Self
in today’s modern life. One such body of work is “The Husia, Sacred Wisdom of
Ancient Egypt” (Karenga,1984). In The Book of Coming Forth by Day are songs of praises
and glorification to Maat and Neters (gods) as the deceased is entering the afterlife. In
book IX the 42 confessions of the supplicant to Maat, affirming that a righteous life
was lived. If the supplicant’s heart were to be found pure, light as a feather, on the
scales of Maat, then he/she would be granted entrance into the higher realms of the
afterlife. If not, then the Anpu the crocodile would eat what is left of the soul, denying
an afterlife. Here is a sample:
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“I have not done wrong, I have not robbed. I have not been greedy. I have not
stolen. I have not murdered people. I have not cheated at the measures. I have
not committed fraud. I have not stolen the property of God. I have not told lies.
I have not stolen food. I have not spoken curses. I have not violated the law. I
have not killed sacred animals. I have not dealt deceitfully. I have not stolen land
I have not eavesdropped. I have not talked overmuch. I have not been angry
without just cause. I have not committed adultery. I have not been unchaste. I
have not terrorized anyone. I have not violated the law. I have not been hot
tempered. I have not been deaf to words of truth. I have not stirred up strife. I
have not been blind to injustice I have not engaged in unnatural sex. I have not
been deceitful. I have not indulged in quarrelling. I have not engaged in violence.
I have not been quick tempered. I have not misrepresented my nature. I have
not gossiped. I have not slandered the pharaoh. I have not waded in drinking
water. I not been loud voiced. I have not blasphemed against God. I have not
been arrogant. I have not discriminated against others. I have not coveted other’s
property. I have not offended the God of my city.” (p.10)
We can discern from just this passage alone that the ancient ancestors of Kemet
developed a high moral code of conduct that reached into every aspect of daily life. We
can also see the premium they placed on treating others respectfully, justly and with
kindness. A natural extension to this would be to treat even the stranger from other
lands justly, respecting their natural rights and dignity. The mysteries taught in the
temples were no doubt even deeper manifestations of the high African spiritual Self, a
deep wellspring of which the entire society benefited. If only ancient Kemet and other
Great African civilizations could have transformed the aggressive foreigners to this
moral way of life and not succumb to corrosive internal and external influence; what
heights of Divine expression then would the African collective have reached? But all is
not lost. The group-Soul of the African collective has not forgotten or lost the
impression of those heights reached before, the brilliance of Divine expression. These
are still within the African group-Soul to access.
Africans have much to draw upon by looking back on the evolution of African
collective consciousness, expressed in the Egyptian Mysteries system with its mission
of initiation into becoming Ausar, and its value of living according to the moral
principles of Maat. We need not be concerned about adopting the mindset,
philosophies, and practices of other groups foreign to ourstorical motherland. True we
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can learn from the best that all peoples and cultures can offer. But we must do so all
the while being true to our own Self, the Ausarian Self of the African collective.
Priest’s Instruction for Building a Harmonious Society, a Basis for Collective
Consciousness
African societies that have endured the test of time prior to the invasions of
Eurasians were imbued with high moral standards and practices. These societies served
as models for other world civilizations, particularly India, Greece, and the
Mediterranean world, and Europe. The question of what makes for a harmonious
society is a burning one currently where there is still oppression and exploitation on a
massive scale of Western cultures against African cultures. Organized political and
economic solutions to this oppression and exploitation must be formulated to allow for
the free development of the African collective consciousness. However, these African-
centered political and economic structures, on the micro and macro levels, must be
founded also on high moral standards and practices, Maat.
Education into ancient African spiritual culture should be a staple of any modern
African-centered educational system so that our youth will have the necessary
foundational understanding of living a harmonious life, before they attempt to erect
enduring structures that will withstand the external forces that oppress them. I have put
to writing some thoughts, in the form of a fictional story, to this burning question of
how to build a harmonious society back in my late twenties as I was raising my first
child and was introducing myself to ancient Kemetic spiritual traditions. I include a
portion of that story here as I think it still speaks to the primary necessity of Africans
having a spiritual foundation in place prior to constructing socio-political and economic
structures that will mitigate the global force of White supremacy that oppress Africans
even to this day. The setting is ancient Kemet, as it is undergoing invasion by Asiatic
hordes, the Hyksos in 1645 BC. The high priest is giving instruction to an initiate on
how to reinstitute the harmonies of a healthy society, Maat, within the very bowels of
the invaders (Roland Lucas, 2003).
“That night, as instructed, the father and his daughters return to the house of the
Shekemu (high priest). ‘Anetch Huraten Atef-Mut Neter. Anetch Huracten Shekemu. As
we prepare to make the journey to the land of the Asiatics,’ the father says, ‘Our
hearts are open to receive your teachings.’
The chief priest smiles on this little family and says, ‘Nefer-t, I thank you for
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expressing your spirit of Maat with all the village. Auseti, I thank you for saving
my blood. Remember, Auseti, that with a sincere heart and complete
identification with our True Self, we possess power over all external
circumstances. Remember, too, that we must be willing at the appropriate time
to sacrifice our blood for the sins of the world. Now Nefer-t, you wish to know
how to nurture a natural, harmonious society while living among the Asiatics?
Daughters, this may be my final instruction to you. Listen well.’
‘The Neteru, or fundamental principles of life, are rooted in and obey the Will
of the Universal Divine One. So too do wise and prosperous societies take root
in and obey the Will of the Universal Divine One.
‘The Neteru have different functions; yet each Neter shares equally in the One
Source of Life, and is Its extension. Each relies on the others. Can hot exist
without cold? The moist without the dry? Light without darkness? Fullness
without the void? Is one expression of Neter Neter (God of the gods) more
important than the others? No. Each defines and shapes the other. Each Neter
is but a variation of the One Life Force. So, too, do natural societies respect the
variations, different talents, and expressions of people, understanding that they
all share equally in the One Source of Life. Each adds to the productivity of life.
Each can assist the other in a harmonious interplay of Life Force. Leaders
without this understanding establish societies where one segment exploits
another for selfish gain.
‘In Nature, all things are constantly changing, yet behind all changes lies the
unchanging truth of Universal Oneness. Using oracles and a developed intuition,
the wise leader discerns the Divine Will, comprehends life's phases, and can thus
wisely determine what teachings and practices are appropriate for a given period.
This is Heru following the Divine Will as taught by the Neter Tehuti, teacher of
divine speech or the Medu Neter. Guided by the ego, the intellect, and desires,
rather than by the Divine Will, the unwise leader promotes narrow views. The
unwise leader promotes teachings, dictates rules, and keeps ministers who are
not appropriate for a phase of the society. Such a leader moves society far from
true knowledge of the Higher Collective Self, Ausar.
‘The Neteru are constant and pervasive in their potent influence, yet they
allow for change, variation, retreat, renewal, and full development of all things.
Natural societies have constant and pervasive rules of order for actualizing
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the potency of life. These societies also allow for change, variation, and the
appropriate application of laws according to time and place. What is potent,
effective, and harmonious in one time and place may not be so in another.
The wise leader knows how to adjust according to time and place while still
administering over the fundamental order and power of life. This defines the
Shekemu, who access the powers of Sekert, Neter of fundamental structure and
order. The unwise leader is not able to discern the appropriate laws according
to time and place. He therefore misuses powers entrusted to him. This misuse
of power may be intentional and for selfish gain. True spiritual power is
beyond such negative intention. The unwise leader then often compounds the
problem at the expense of others by seeking temporal powers as a substitute
for true spiritual power.
‘The earth, the waters of the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars all give their
energies freely and equally to all, even to those who have strayed from the path
of normalcy. Natural societies do not hinder the virtuous fulfillment of their
members. In natural societies, all members are cared for, especially in times of
difficulty. This is impartial love with the heart of Maat, deity of universal love.
‘The constant cycles of nature give birth to and support the evolution of all life.
Natural societies live in tune with the cyclic phases of nature. Understanding that
all things in nature are equally important and have a symbiotic relationship to
each other, these people respect the rhythms of the natural environment. This is
called living according to the laws of Maat. Without this understanding and
respect for the laws of Maat, a society abuses or destroys the natural
environment, or lives beyond the environment's sustainability. With a further
lack of restraint, it seeks to plunder the lands of its neighbors. This is done with
ignorance to the Law of Energy Response that ensures a corrective response
from nature.
‘In natural societies, on the other hand, laws are applied consistently and equally
to all members. These laws are derived from natural developments and universal
principles. They are not artificially established for the gain of some over others.
‘In nature, when corrective forces are applied to a type of energy arrangement,
this is done because this arrangement threatens the harmony of the whole, not
just because it is different. In natural societies, an individual or a group is not
arbitrarily singled out for correction because their characteristics or behaviors are
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different from others in a society. It is only when individuals or groups threaten
the virtuous fulfillment of the society that forces are applied to limit them. To
apply limiting force otherwise is to be unnaturally discriminating, which leads to
social ruin.
‘When society is governed by the desires of the lower nature, disharmony and
criminality are engendered. Based on ignorance, lack of reasoning and
identification with the lower self, these desires allow feelings of discrimination,
sexism, and egoism to flourish. In this condition, people come to feel that they
are separated individuals who have a right to hurt and even own others who are
‘below’ them as measured by physical strength, wealth, or fame. This egoism and
separating individualism engenders a feeling that others, including nature, are
objects for one's own egoistic aims. Thus, it becomes possible to plunder,
dominate, kill, or destroy others. When society is based on the principles of
spiritual truth, the lower nature is channeled, refined, and harnessed as an aid
towards spiritual and material achievements that benefit all life. When
opportunities are promoted for all to discover their full potential in an
atmosphere of caring, understanding, universal love and support, then the best
in humanity is brought forth. ‘The goal of leaders in a natural society is to
provoke the awakening, development, and integration of its members’ inner
Neteru so that they may all become Ausar. This is a process that cannot be
forced. It is a natural development facilitated by leaders who are guided according
to the intelligence of the heart rather than the intellect or desires. This is called
Heru following the guidance of Tehuti. Such a leader intuits from the Divine
within. Such a leader knows how to continuously renew, vitalize, and organize a
society.’
But now Nefer-t interjects a question. ‘Shekem,’ she says, ‘I understood your
teaching about bringing heavenly energies in support of earthly energies to
manage one's spiritual development. How can I relate that to promoting a healthy
society among the Asiatics?’
The Shekem responds, ‘In nurturing a healthy and productive society, heavenly
energies of the leadership must be lowered to support the earthlier energies of
all people in the society. The leadership of a society must find or create ways to
fuel the productive development of the society. The people will respond and
work toward the heavenly goals of the society. If the leadership of a society does
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not develop, refine, and identify with the lowest of its people, then nothing
positive will come from such a society, and it will eventually disintegrate. If
leadership is too strong and intrudes itself too much into the daily lives of people,
then their hot heavenly dictates will cause the people to rebel against it, and
nothing positive will be accomplished. For individuals and societies, there must
be a healthy balance of heavenly and earthly energies to produce that which is
natural, potent, and enduring.
‘Daughter, true growth occurs in the process of solving the problems of life,
both individually and collectively. All difficulties can be resolved through
following the holistic, integral way of life. Creating a better society and world
starts with creating internal spiritual development. If you can create internal
harmony, then you know how to create external harmony. If you know how
to govern yourself, then you know how to govern society and the world.
Through spiritual self-cultivation, one comes to realize that there is an
indivisible unity between all things, and that there is no self-versus others,
Black versus White, male versus female. Because we all share the same
essential nature, we are all one, and the one is continuously expressed in all.
With this holistic vision, a people of virtue will plant the seedlings of a new
age of enlightenment and civilization that will sprout and cover the earth. ’
The father now addresses the Shekem. ‘Venerable Shekem, I am eternally grateful
for your instruction. I have one last request. Please give to us some words of
spiritual power that will protect us and help us remain on the integral way as we
make the journey into the land of the Asiatics.’
The Shekem responds, ‘My Son, the power of any prayer or invocation comes
from the sincere projection of the heart. With sincerity, one invokes the greatest
powers of the Universe. Without sincerity, there is no power. For your protection
you may repeat, from time to time, these words with great sincerity: Highest
Universal Spirit, the One without a second, you and I are One. I also give you these
cautionary words: Thoughts and words have their power, but the greatest power
comes from living and being the integral way of life. Constantly practice virtue and
wholeness in all activities with awareness of the Divine Source, your true self, as
the doer of all activity. This is the greatest protection and potency of life. Auseti,
this is the Source of your Mystical Pearl; the Source from which the greatest
healers draw their power.’
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Auseti asks, ‘Venerable Shekem, how did you know about the Mystical Pearl? I
have told no one about that old man who showed it to me. And how did you
know that I once failed to have my healing stone when the life was leaving a body
right before me?’
‘Daughter,’ the Shekem replies, ‘I and Highest Universal Spirit are one. Now I give
to you this word of power to use when there are conflict and tension around and
in you. It is HA. This is like the sound you make when you are laughing deeply
from the belly. It is good to remember not to dwell only on the seriousness of
life, but to also be joyful and spiritually tipsy at times. This will help you to be
flexible to your surroundings. Tension causes stiffness. Recall that when the
winds of life are fierce, it is the stiffest trees that snap first. Remain firm to your
principles; yet be flexible to all that is around you. The Divine One experiences
this life through you for its greater purpose. This Divine One, who expresses as
your True Self, does not kill and is not killed. Even as you see an enemy, it is the
self-seeing itself. Therefore, you must love even your enemies as you love you
self, even if you may have to slay your enemy to uphold the greater justice and
peace.’
‘Venerable Shekem,’ the father says, ‘we are now fully prepared to leave for this
journey following tomorrow's initiation ritual. Is there anything else we should
know in preparation for tomorrow's initiation ritual?’
The Shekem responds, ‘This journey will be your daughters' initiation. It will be
how they will fulfill the meanings of their names. Indeed, their journey will be
our journey and the journey of all humankind for all ages.’
And hearing those final words, the father and daughters bow, thank the Shekemu,
and return to their home.” (pgs. 38-43)
Africans need to draw upon the spiritual tools available to us to endure global White
domination. That we have not forgotten how to laugh and enjoy as we struggle through
this experience is a testament to our strong spirits. Of course, laughing is not sufficient.
We must fully prepare ourselves by accessing some serious spiritual powers to help
weather the oppressive forces arrayed against us, and to help create a better world based
on Maat. We are all on a journey toward achieving an abiding realization that we are the
One Self, expressing in various forms. This is the journey of all humankind for all ages.
The current struggle we are all in with global White colonialism is just one stage of that
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journey. When we find our true Selves, and conduct all movement from that, then we
can maintain an inner smile, even through the harshest of times.
Below is more evidence of high collective African spiritual-cultural achievement
through Kemet:
• The very founding of Kemet, a unification of two lands
• Working in harmony with the cycles of Nature
• The development of agriculture to maintain a healthy diet
• The development of the capacity to store food for times of scarcity
• The development of self-defense capabilities
• The establishment of trade in goods and ideas with other countries
• The establishment of maritime capabilities to contact other people
• Architecture that reflect their knowledge of physical materials, iron working,
physics, transportation, math, and spirituality
• Development of mathematics, astronomy to tell the cycles of time, and an
understanding of physical forces
• The establishment of a class of scribes
• The establishment of libraries for consolidating knowledge and building upon it
for future advancements
• Animal husbandry
• The balance between male and female governance
• Advances in writing systems for both sacred matters and commerce transactions
• The attention to medicine, hygiene, and public health
• The attention to preparing for the afterlife
• The reverence for the honorable ancestors
Indeed, every marker one can think that proves collective spiritual growth can be
found in the culture established by the African ancestors of ancient Kemet. It is also
important to emphasize again that Kemet was a high expression of neighboring African
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56
nations; it was the daughter of Nubia. Nubia itself had many dynasties of its own that
preceded and coincided with Kemet. It must also be emphasized that the high
achievement of Kemet had likewise a positive influence on the surrounding countries
of Africa. Consider how the decline and conquering of Kemet had a negative ripple
effect on all of Africa.
For instance, the decline of Egypt created a vacuum that allowed the Arabs to
intrude not just into Kemet, but also into most of Africa through the spread of Islam.
This Arab intrusion, which included over 1000 years of Arab slave trade, in turn
weakened Africa to the point it was not able to withstand the onslaught of Western
Europeans who eventually carved up all of Africa and sent her into a dark age. This
dark age was not to take firm grip before some of the wisdom teaching of Kemet spread
throughout Europe via the Arabs, and not before Africa had another flowering of high
civilization and spiritual achievement of Collective Consciousness through the Mali,
Ghana, and Songhai empires.
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Chapter 3
Decline of Indigenous African Spiritual Culture in the East
Early Foreign Intrusion into Kemet and the Erosion of African Spiritual Self
Consciousness
Before the exit of the Anglo-Saxon from the Caucus Mountains around the end of
the Würm glaciation (10,000 B.C.E.), Africans were the only people from the tip of
Africa and all up through the area known as Jordan and through the Top of Turkey.
The Phoenicians were originally of Black/African stock. At some point, Hebrews were
created by mixing original Africans with invading Anglo-Saxons. They were the Hyksos
who eventually invaded Africa and who were subsequently expelled from Africa by
Africans. At one point, the Hebrews were allowed into Africa, and they mixed with the
African tribes already there. The so-called lost 12 tribes of Israel were not lost if you
knew where to look, African tribes (i.e., Akan). Africans are the original creators of
spiritual traditions and culture. We need not refer to Hebrew stock or the Jewish religion
to validate us. Why get caught up with a copy religion and not go back to the original
African religion that Anglo-Saxons copied so carefully from? I'm saying all religions are
copies from the original African, just as all people are.
What has happened to the collective Soul of Kemet, of Africa, resulting from wave
after wave of invaders taking over Kemet? Christianity is one offshoot from the
Kemetic Mysteries System. Many of our African scholars have made the connection
of the key concepts of Christianity to those that preceded them by thousands of years
in Kemet. Dr. Henrik Clarke was among them to assert that every element that went
into the creation of Christianity came from Kemet in some way, but that the new
creation was an inferior copy of the original.
One such effect of converting Kemetic archetypes into Christianity was the shift in
emphasis from an inner salvation (realizing one’s true Self being one with the divine),
to that of an externalized salvation dependent on the intermediation of Jesus Christ
and his representatives on earth (i.e., bishops and Popes). Africans in Kemet
emphasized the elevating of the individual or the collective state to that of Ausarian
Consciousness; becoming Ausar. This world dominance of an externalized view of
salvation lent itself to the development of a religious body of mediators for Christ,
(bishops and Popes) that in turn facilitated the control of the masses of people by the
bureaucracy of the state. This was Constantine’s primary motive of making
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Christianity the state religion of Rome, to control society through religion as it did
through Roman military and state power.
This approach to religion was to become a permanent fixture of Western societies
down to this day. It was also to maintain its opposition to an African approach to
spirituality, namely that of entering ecstatic communion with the Divine through ritual
and trance. Kemetic societies did have Pharaohs as the earthly representatives of the
Divine, and priests to help administer Divine dispensation. However, the Pharaoh and
priests were facilitators that brought the people into a self-realization of the Divine,
and did not presume to determine that realization, as with the European conception
of paying one’s relatives out of purgatory and into heaven, or purporting that Black
people had no soul, for example.
Following the decline of Kemet due to successive invasions, its wisdom continued
in modified forms via the interpretations and transliterations made by the Arabs &
Moors, as they dominated Egypt, the whole of North Africa along the Mediterranean
regions (Maghreb), Spain and much of Christian Europe from the 8th through the 15th
centuries. Europeans were again exposed to vestiges of Kemetic wisdom through the
reinterpretations of Arabs who were in control of Kemet and its store of knowledge
even though the library of Alexandria by then was burned down. Arabs also had access
to the knowledge of the Coptic Egyptians of the time and set about translating Geek
knowledge stores that were themselves derived from Kemet. This exposure, along with
that of African and Arab culture and knowledge, can be credited for the emergence of
Europe from its recognized “Dark Ages,” and into the European Renaissance; though
the application of that knowledge did little to prevent Europe from instituting a dark
age for Africans in the form of the barbaric transatlantic slave trade (War). The Arab
slave trade during that same period was evidently an enticing example for Europeans.
We must then consider how the dimming of the light of Kemet was due to a confluence
of factors. The effects of that demise influenced both how Islam and Christianity were
to interact with the African world going forward. In both cases, it was an approach of
total disregard for the wisdom traditions of Africa.
The question remains, what African groups were the keepers of Ancient Kemetic
knowledge after the conquest of Kemet by the Arabs and Eurasian groups? Chancellor
Williams (1987), recounts how many Egyptians fled South into the Eastern Sudan.
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“Now, for some centuries Arabs and Jews (the latter called Solomonids by most
historians) had been swarming into this southeastern region, pushing through
the middle in such a way that even in Abyssinia the Blacks were pressed
southward, always southward! Egyptian history was repeating itself: The Asians
and Mulattoes held Northern Abyssinia, with the center of power in the strategic
kingdom of Axum. From Axum, the Arabs prepared their forces for the
destruction of a now weakening Ethiopian empire. The weakness, as usual, came
from separatist movements struggling for power, it was the old-time factional
fights among leaders who felt they must “rule or ruin” – a drive so well known
that is needless to recount. But it was the situation for which the Axumite Arabs
and their Colored and Jewish allies were waiting. In 350 A.D. their armies
destroyed Meroe, and an epoch in history ended.” (p. 139)
This quote form Chancellor Williams refers to the beginning of the pressure by
Arabs to seize Black people’s land along the Nile, and force Black people further South.
With this pressure came resistance, but also a retreat of Kemetic wisdom back to where
it originated, into Nubia. The Ethiopians then can be counted as among the groups
who have preserved much of the wisdom teachings and commensurate expansion of
Ausarian consciousness of Kemet following its demise.
Just as the Arabs pushed to create the Maghreb and become the dominant influence
in North Africa and the Mediterranean areas, so too must the wisdom of Ancient Egypt
have preceded that push and influence the African peoples of the regions, including the
Libyans, Berbers (originally Black), the Garamantes of southwestern Libya,
Tunisia/Carthage, Algeria, and all territory between to Morocco, not to leave out the
northwestern Central African countries that had trade with these countries. See map of
trade routes with northwest Africa and the Northern coast.
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Figure 3.1
Pre-Colonial Trade Routes in West Africa
What about the West? From where did the libraries of Timbuktu draw their wisdom
unrivaled in the known world? Is there a connection to the wisdom of Kemet? We
know that Mansa Musa made a pilgrimage to Mecca, passing through Kemet first, and
there are well-traveled, and likely ancient routes between West and East Africa. Where
there is trade in commodities there is also trade in knowledge, technology, and culture.
J.C. deGraft Johnson (1986) recounts:
“Mansa Musa developed Timbuktu as a commercial city having caravan
connections with Egypt, Anjila, Ghadamer, Fez, Sus, Sijilmasa, Tuat, Dra’a, and
Fezzan. Side by side with trade and commerce came the encouragement of
culture and learning. In addition, it became a center of learning, one of the
foremost centers of Islamic scholarship in the world. The University of Sanlore
Mosque was highly distinguished for the teachings of Koranic theology and law,
besides other subjects such as astronomy and mathematics.” (p. 98)
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The existence of ancient Trade Routes points to the exchange of ideas, values,
practices, culture, and DNA. It also points pathways for the expanse and evolution of
the collective African consciousness / Being. Moustafa Gadalla (1999) gives the below
details on ancient trade routes in Africa:
“In Africa, caravans of merchants guarded by soldiers introduced Egyptian
products and techniques to distant traders. They carried these goods and
innovations Westward along the savannah, toward Lake Chand and further
westward, southward to the highlands of Ethiopia and Equatorial Africa. The
trade routes of this region are the oldest in Africa.
Figure 3.2
Africa’s Major Trade Routes in Anciet Times
Many of them were already in existence at the beginning of the Common /Era
(CE), and some can be traced back to the third millennium BCE.
Egypt was connected with the lands to the South by three main routes:
1. Darb el-Arbeen
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The Forty Days’ Road links Asyut in the Nile Valley to El Fasher in the Dar-
Fur Province of Sudan, a journey of 1,082 miles (1,721 km). It was the shortest
and safest distance to travel into western Africa. The route was strung along
several green and lush oases such as El Kharga. Dozens of towns, forts, and
way stations spread over the depression floor.
From El Fasher, another route led west through DarFur, towards Lake
Chand, ending in the area of Kano (northern Nigeria), at the upper reaches of
the Niger River Basin.
2. Sunt (Elephantine) Road
It began at Sunt (Aswan), and went to El Fasher in Dar-Fur, by way of the
oases of Selima and Bir Natrum. Sunt (Elephantine Road was branched off to
Sema West, where the caravans and expeditions transferred to ships in order to
continue the journey to beyond the trading post established at Kerma, above
the Third Cataract. In the same way, protective escorts and merchandise bound
for Egypt from the South disembarked at Semna, where the fortress of Semna
South was built (during the Middle Kingdo) to protect the travelers. During the
time of the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BCE, this highway was in continuous
use all the way throughout the Roman Era, as many inscriptions on the Rock of
Offerings at Sunt (Elephantine) testify.
3. Nile Valley to the Red Sea
There were also several trade routes to the Red Sea from the Nile Valley, which
allowed trade with Asian countries. Some of these ports along the Red Sea
were: Suakin, Massawa, and Zeila.
Other routs led south from the Nile Valley towns of Asyut, Qus, Sunt (Aswan),
and Dongola, via the oases of Kharga, Dakhla, and Dunqul, to kufra, Dar-Fur
(western Sudan), and Kordofan.
Another route led from the western oases of Egypt to Bilma and Gao, but this
seems to have fallen out of use by the 10th century.
In Sudan, the main transversal route, running from east to west, started from
Suakin, to Sennar or Qerri, and continued across Kordofan to Darfar and on to
the countries in Wes and Central Africa.
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The whole African continent was known to the people of Egypt as confirmed
by Herodotus, who reported that Necho, King of Egypt, c. 600 BCE, sent an
Egyptian ship with Phoenician sailors to circumnavigate Africa, and that they
returned safely and reported their endeavor.”
It is not a stretch, considering the interconnectedness of Kemet with the rest of
Africa via ancient trade routes to say that Kemet had a wide and deep positive impact
on the entire continent of Africa. The destabilization of Kemet had, in turn, negative
consequences throughout Africa, particularly at the front of Arab and later European
intrusions. Chancellor Williams, in his Destruction of Black Civilization, expounded on
the long-term effects of forced migrations of Black people from their traditional
homeland into neighboring territories, resulting from European and Arab intrusions,
or the expanding Sahara. These effects include the dilution of the ability to maintain a
high level of civilization, due to fragmentation and a loss of specialization within a larger
production system. The fragmentation leads to the development of different dialects,
customs, social organizations, and shifting loyalties. This all also puts pressure on the
receiving populations. Suspicions of selling neighbors into the Arab or European slave
market or memories of such past betrayals heightens the tensions between African
neighboring ethnic groups. Citing Chancellor Williams, Robin Walker (2006) recounts:
“People in retreat before slave traders often fled to some of the most
inhospitable places they could find. Some took to the hills (Nuba Mountains),
others to the swamps, and others to the caves. Under these extreme
circumstances, their culture degenerated, often to the level of savagery. If
organized enslavement and violence continued over generations, whole
communities would know no other life other than the hills, caves, or the swamps.
There were other consequences. Small communities, cut off from all other for
generations, soon developed their own dialects and languages. This is the root
causes of the hundreds of dialects spoken today, even over small geographical
areas. Moreover, a mentality of distrust of others developed among these
fragmented and isolated communities, often caused by Blacks and people of
mixed ancestry being used by the invaders to do the slave raids. As communities
saw their own people acting against them, they increasingly saw other Black
groups as ‘traditional enemies’ to be blamed and mistrusted for generations.
Thus, the combination of the migrations, communities being raided by Black and
Mixed-Race groups, the birth of new dialects and languages, a mentality of
distrust and exclusivity, and the cultural decline of millions into savagery, are the
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basic reasons for the tribalism and political instability of modern Africa.” (pgs.
541-542)
Williams (1987) traces the effects of the conquering of Kemet upon those who chose
not to flee to other regions, but rather stayed on to face the invaders in near proximity:
“Finally, I referred to Blacks who, though forced to move, never left their
homeland region. The Noba (Nubians) did not move very far from where they
had lived from times immemorial. A far greater number of Blacks held on in
their ancient center after it was overrun, refusing either to leave or be enslaved.
They stayed and battled against the invaders, finally, being concentrated in the
southern provinces of the Sudan where the earlier history of the race in Egypt is
still being repeated, line by line. And this is why it is so easy to understand the
history of the Blacks and see very clearly how they were not only forced far back
behind the advancing races, but also pushed to the lowest levels of degradation.
For that history is still being made today, covertly and openly, for all the world
to see. The Blacks who are under pressure today in Bahr El Ghazal, Upper Nile
and Equatoria are still fighting for survival against the all-conquering Coloured
Arabs just as their forefathers fought five thousand years ago from the
Mediterranean in Lower Egypt to where they are now making a last stand.
Romantic history? Who needs it? They have been massacred by the hundreds
and villages left in ashes, but they fight on. This all-black region is kept isolated
and cut off from the developments and higher levels of life seen in the Arab-
dominated Sudan. These Southern Sudanese have remained (even in 1973) both
“primitive” and “pagan”, just as their brothers elsewhere had to remain under
similar circumstances.” (pgs. 193-194)
The conquering of Kemet by foreign invaders, first by the Hyksos, would embolden
other Semitic groups to invade in turn. The destabilization this caused rippled
throughout all of Africa. One of the means Arabs used to gain Arabize ever-increasing
territory in North and East Africa was to marry African women of his standing in the
society, thus circumventing the matriarchal descent, and transforming it into an Arab
patriarchal society. Kemet became Arabized phenotypically and Islamized mentally and
religiously. As the light of Kemet faded, the African Collective Spirit retreated to the
South in Kush and Ethiopia.
In the long run, when it is time for these groups impacted by migrations to unite
against a common enemy or form a federated government, their ethnocentrism would
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inhibit such unity and can in many cases lead to civil war. This is what we see in the
case of modern Sudan. The Southern Sudanese were correct to battle against Arab
imperialism, even as it presented in the form of Arabized Blacks. However, the
fragmentation and ethnocentrism that developed in Southern Sudan resulted in civil
wars over the oil resources of the country. So, we who are routing for the indomitable
African Spirit to manifest in the originators of civilization, are disappointed to see them
devolve into barbarism and ethnic cleansing. Where we can find hope in the situation
of the Sudan and other African Countries with similar problems, is in the intervention
and arbitration of the African Union.
Developments in Ethiopia
Ethiopia is known to have resisted Arab intrusion as well as absorb Islamic faith
without being overrun by it. Northeast African nations/kingdoms/empires, from
ancient to medieval times, were indigenous African creations. This is not minimizing
influences by non-African nations such as Greece, Rome, and the Aryan mixed Semites.
There was robust trade with foreign nations via the Red Sea. However, these foreign
peoples did not bring to Africa civilization that they had barely managed to create in
their own regions. Now when we look at the periods following the intrusion of these
foreign nations into North East Africa, particularly Arab ascendancy as they had the
most success infiltrating the interior beyond the coastline, we see an inexorable eroding
of indigenous African customs, religious expression, and even physiology, to that of a
heavy Arab makeup.
Africans became Arabized. This of course accelerated after the Arab invasion of
Egypt in the 7th century. Trying to trace where Africans have held the line against
Arabization is a complex task. Perhaps it can be made easier by determining where the
fault lines are today and compare that marker to the autonomy Africans had prior to
Arab intrusion. Along the way, we can note major battles where Africans resisted Arab
intrusion, even to the death. These battles will inform us of the strength of the African
collective spirit. This is not to minimize the strength shown by attempting to be flexible
and absorb foreign elements into indigenous social constructs. Indeed, such flexibility
at times is a superior form of strength. For example, there are advantages of a diverse
collection of states adopting a common Arabic language or script to facilitate inter-
regional commerce. North East Africans syncretized Judaism and Christianity to
indigenous African culture, without being occupied by foreign peoples. However, the
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benefits of submerging indigenous cultural forms have its breaking point, which was
reached more times than not.
It is estimated that the Land of Punt was in what is now Eretria and Ethiopia. The
kingdom of Punt was a creation of indigenous black African people. According to
Drusilla Dunjee Houston (1985):
“In the inscriptions, relative to the campaigns of Pepi I, Negroes are represented
as immediately adjoining the Egyptian frontier. This seems to perplex some
authors. They had always been there. This was the Old Race of pre-dynastic
Egypt - the primitive Cushite type. This was the aboriginal race of Abyssinia.”
(p. 35)
Houston (1985) recounts that from the most ancient time Egypt traded with the
Land of Punt. In fact, Egyptians claimed that they came from the Land of Punt. So,
there was a synergy between the two, a harmony of Spirit. We know Eretria is
predominately an Arab dominated culture today.
“The Sphinx and the pyramids were symbols of some form of religion of the
Old Race. Baldwin quotes from Diodorus Siculus, “The laws, customs, religious
observances and letters of the ancient Egyptians closely resembled the
Ethiopians, the colony still observing the customs of their ancestors.” Egyptians
in later days affirmed, that they and their civilization came from the black tribes
of Punt (generally accepted today to have been the Somaliland south of Nubia).
Some scholars seek to derive Egyptian civilization from some Oriental source.
There is evidence that the culture of Egypt was not developed in Egypt from
their traditions and their earliest remains. It did not come from the north or east
but must have been imported from the south for as Budge affirms, Egyptians
had all the characteristics of an African race. Sergi shows that the discoveries of
Flinder Petrie and De Morgan prove that prehistoric Egypt was not influenced
by any Oriental civilization.” (p. 68)
Eretria (Land of Punt)
The Beja people of Southern Egypt and Northern Nubia give a glimpse into how
these ancient Egyptian-affiliated people looked. The Nomadic peoples look less Arabic
than those in cities where there is a concentration of invading power.
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Figure 3.3
The Beja People of Southern Egypt and Northern Nubia
The ancient civilizations in Eastern regions of Africa no doubt impacted the cultures
trading with them like Greece, Rome, and Kemet. These kingdoms include:
• The Axum Empire – 350 AD Axum invaded the Kush Empire and it fell. In 710
AD Adulis, the capital of Axum, fell to the invasion of Arab Islam, cutting off
Axum from its former trading partners.
• The Beja picked up from there Axum from about 750 AD but were also
absorbed by Arab Island. The Beja converted to Islam in the 13th century.
• The Zagwe dynasty,(the Agwa people) was a historical kingdom in present-day
northern Ethiopia. Centered at Lalibela, it ruled large parts of the territory from
approximately 900 to 1270. Zagwe fell to Islamic Amhara in 1270 A.D.
• Solomonic Dynasty – (14th century).
• Modern Ethiopia/Abyssinia. Ethiopia despite being known to be a predominantly Christian Country is 50% Islamic. We know that Ethiopia historically has played a huge role in developing the Christian religion.
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Figure 3.4
The Beja People of Southern Egypt and Northern Nubia
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A detailed account of these kingdoms is not given here. However, the reader is
encouraged to frame any such historical research within the context of the evolving
African Collective Consciousness. None of these Eastern kingdoms that ascended into
prominence provided the regional stability and high level of enduring spiritual culture
for as long as that of Kemet. The Arab intrusion into East Africa and the subsequent
Arabization of Kemet, the Sudan, the Eastern regions of the Nile, through to South of
Eritrea and even Ethiopia, caused a destabilization, fragmentation, and disruption of
the evolutionary push of the African collective Spirit.
That Spirit continued to show in limited expressions as with the resistance of
Southern Sudan against Arab domination of the North of Sudan. However, the
constant factional civil wars, successive governments that oppressed their own civilians,
and the inability to halt the inexorable process of Arabization and conquest of vital
resources, is indicative that the collective African Spirit was in an arrested period of
evolutionary development. The same can be said for Ethiopia. With the decline of
Kemet and Kush, we see the rise of first Southern (Ethiopia, Nubia, Monopatapa), then
Central (Hausa and Bernu-Kanem states) and West African empires. Just as Kemet was
in its waning days, Ghana rose to prominence from about the 6th century to 1240 A.D.
This represents macro shifts in the locations for evolutionary advances in collective
African consciousness.
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Chapter 4
Cultural Unity and African Collective Consciousness in Pre-Colonial Western
Africa
In considering the evolution of the African collective consciousness towards its
highest ideal, we must look not only at religious beliefs in the African collective. We
must also look at how these beliefs were lived out daily in concrete relations between
members of the collective, in relations with the environment and with other collectives.
We should look at how, throughout ourstory, the African collective has organized
material, social/political, and educational powers of life to promote the perfection of
humanity as an unfettered instrument and expression of the Divine. This implies
suppression in the society of the opposite, a staunch individualism, exploitation of man
by man for the benefit of a few and consigning the fate and function of members to a
limited role with little to no possibility of progress.
In the following, the underlying premise is that a cultural, ethical and spiritual thread
has continuously spanned all of Africa, and even all of humanity; however negligible
these threads may appear to a given onlooker. Cultural, social, religious, scientific, and
material exchanges continent-wide in Africa, all amount to development of the African
collective spiritual consciousness. I present a summary list of common constitutional
tenants found to run through all early African states. This summary is adapted from a
list giving by Dr. Chancellor Williams in his "Destruction of African Civilization.”
The people as a collective are the first and final source of power. The rights of the
collective are superior to the rights of any one person. Note: this does not mean that
the individual's rights should be unreasonably curtailed so long as they do not detract
from the rights of the collective. Kings or Chiefs are not rulers but merely facilitators
for the collective. Government and the people are the same, and so elected officials
speak not for themselves but for the collective society. Officials represent not their own
individual will, but the collective will of the people. Decisions made by a council of
elders are final and cannot be overruled by the King who is the council's spokesperson.
The land belongs to no one. It is to be used by each generation as a sacred trust from
the Creator. Each family has a right to land sufficient for its support. Every member of
the state has the right to appeal a decision made from a lower court to a higher one.
The trouble of one is the trouble of all. The community is conceived of as one party.
Even as the high Sprit of African collective consciousness cannot be fragmented
and always remains integrated even as it is differentiated into the individual lives of
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Africans, so too were/are the life activities of traditional African societies integrated
into a whole. Cheik Anta Diop in his books, The Cultural Unity of Africa and Pre-colonial
Black Africa, speaks to a continent-wide cultural unity that can be traced over all of
Africa prior to the colonial influence. This cultural unity, evidenced in common
practices through all areas of people activity, including political and economic
structures, is but an expression of the deeper spiritual unity behind it, the collective
African Self.
We can investigate how the high African collective Consciousness, the Ausarian Self,
has expressed in other major areas of social organization, contributing to higher African
spiritual realization. Essential questions to ask in considering how pre-colonial African
societies were organized on the mundane levels are, “what allowed for their civilizations
to endure for centuries as in the kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, and Songhai; or even
millennia as in ancient Egypt and Southern Ethiopia?” “What were the structural
harmonies built into such societies?” “What were the mitigating factors that reduced
the tendency for revolt and disintegration, and thus allowed for the continued evolution
of the involved collective Spirit in African societies?” Cheik Anta Diop (1996), gives his
analysis of some of these structures:
Matrilineal System
A matrilineal system is where the wealth and power of the common family, tribe, or
aristocracy of the state is passed down through the female side of the family line. For
example, the succession to kingship would be the son of the king’s sister, or in some
cases the sister herself. The child would bear the name of his maternal uncle, the one
whose heir is to be. African societies produced some of the world’s first queens as heads
of state. Traditionally, all African societies, as well as Indian societies prior to the mixing
with European and Arab influences, have been matrilineal. This guarantees that the
female is revered in society and has equal respect, if not more, to that of men. This
system of wealth transference and kingship succession has been at the core of providing
for ongoing stability in family life for millennia. It precluded sons of fathers fighting
over rights to family inheritances or sons dispatching of their fathers to seize the throne.
Diop (1996), drives home the point of how matrilineal societies as practiced in
traditional African societies, promoted stability within.
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“Matriarchy is tied to agricultural life for economic reasons. The woman is seen
as the most sedentary element in society. In a family, the boy is more mobile than
the girl and, even in a sedentary regime, he is like a bird on a tree branch. If he
had to transmit political rights, property, ancestral, cult or any other social values,
all that would be lost, scattered outside, and tradition would quickly cease to
exist. This is why it is his elder or younger sister, it does not matter if he is older
than she is, who transmits the rights of inheritance from the African viewpoint.”
(pg. 132)
Twin-Lineal System
Oba T’Shaka (2001) elucidates the core values in African societies as espoused by
ancient Kemetic and the more recent Dogon peoples. The present-day Dogon people
trace their origins to ancient Kemet. Upon careful investigation, it can be seen that
their ontology, epistemology, and axiology mirrors those of Kemet.
“In Kemetic (Egyptian), Dogon and African philosophy in general, the two, the
masculine and feminine, water and earth, air and fire (I will add construction and
destruction, joining and separating, attraction and repulsion) all emerge from the
one, the creator. The oneness, or Unicity, of the universe is easily said, but not
easily understood. In African Sacred Science, from the One or Primeval Water
comes the many, the twin truths of life. The creator is the source of all, which
derives from the One. Masculine and feminine, male and female, water and earth,
fire and air, positive and negative, day and night, the sun and the moon and all
of the other twin forces, COOPERATE MORE than they conflict because they
come from the same Source.” (p. 112)
According to T’Shaka (2001), Dogon and Kemetic cosmology tell us that disorder,
rather than evil incarnate, is the source of the evils of the world. The Dogon’s say that
if a man does not have the benefit of the caring mother, or the sensitive mother
principle, then that imbalance will cause disorder.
“Set in Kemetic (Egyptian) cosmology is the divine principle of disorder in the
cosmos. … As we have seen the primordial Nommo Twins and Ausar are both
symbolic of the watery germinating principle that is the force of order, as dryness
is a source of disorder. As a result, the cosmic forces of order and disorder are
related and are tied together by the bonds of kinship. These ties are important
because the Dogon, and the sages of Kemet are telling us that order and disorder
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are twins, they are two banks of the same stream. They occupy the same space
and struggle with each other for dominance. They are complementary and
conflicting, with the harmony between them outweighing their conflict. The
forces of order and disorder lie inside of us. When we synthesize the masculine
and feminine, and balance males and females we are able to achieve order within
ourselves and in society at large.” (p. 109)
The balance between the male and female principle in our societies give the dynamic
creative potential to express the High Spirit of the Collective African Self in wider and
deeper terms. The question of how African societies have constructed stable forms of
social, political, and economic structures is an important one from the macro point of
view taken here. These stability-ensuring structures allow for the development of higher
expressions of the divinity that evolves through humanity. Another such important
structure to analyze in this vein is the caste system.
Caste System
Traditionally in Africa, the cast system has essentially been a form of labor division.
It reduced competition and formed effective monopolies. People of the caste were
empowered by a patron, and members of a caste could typically assume a common last
name, so the system was hereditary. Each profession typically had its representatives
within the government who could have complaints addressed to the satisfaction of all.
The equality between members of a caste was not always in function, but always in
essence. The balanced respect between the castes provided for the stability and
longevity of the society. Referring to the caste system in traditional Senegal, Diop (1987)
speaks to this point by saying:
“Unlike the attitude of the nobles towards the bourgeoisie, the lords towards the
serfs, or the Brahmans towards the other Indian castes, the ger (upper class
nobles practicing agriculture) could not materially exploit the lower castes
without losing face in the eyes of others, as well as their own. On the contrary,
they were obliged to assist lower caste members in every possible way: even if
less wealthy, they had to “give” to a man of lower caste if so requested. In
exchange the latter had to allow them social precedence.” (p. 2)
Diop (1987) also speaks to the point of how this system reduced the tendency for
upheavals, as in revolutions, initiated by discontented caste members of the society.
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“Consequently, if a revolution were to occur, it would be initiated from above
and not from below … members of all casts including slaves were closely
associated to power, as de facto ministers; which resulted in constitutional
monarchies governed by councils of ministers, made up of authentic
representatives of all the people. We can understand from this why there were
no revolutions in Africa against the regime, but only against those who
administered it poorly, i.e. unworthy princes. In addition, there were of course
also palace revolutions. For every caste, advantages and disadvantages balanced
out… It can be understood why Africa’s societies remained relatively stable.” (p.
2)
Did this traditional caste system limit the human potential of the people in society?
Did it preclude the possibility of a person expressing their higher divinity? Aside from
traditional restrictions from moving from one caste to another through intermarriage,
it does not appear from details given by Diop that there were material restrictions within
the caste. A member of a caste could accumulate wealth in each profession just as in
another, including slaves as odd as that might sound juxtaposed to the slave systems of
European origin. Since there were no severe limits to the material foundation of a
person’s life, it stands to reason that there were no unnatural impositions to a person’s
spiritual development or to that of any caste either. We can then further deduce that
these cultural structures, while not essentially limiting the possibilities for spiritual
material and growth of individuals, do not limit the capacity of society to express the
Divine evolution on a collective level.
Constitution
It has already been established that succession to the throne in traditional African
societies was done mainly according to a matrilineal system of inheritance. However,
the King appointed ministers and council members who helped govern the society, and
such appointments were not exclusively from the class of nobles but could come from
the common people. Diop (1987) gives an example of this:
“Mossi is a constitutional monarchy. The emperor, the Moro Naba, comes by
heredity from the family of the previous Moro Naba, but his nomination is not
automatic. He is chosen by an “electoral” college of four dignitaries, presided
over by the Prime Minister, the togo baba, as in Ethiopia. He is actually invested
with power by the latter, however, is not Nakomse (nobleman), but comes from
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an ordinary family, and who is in reality, the representative of the people, of all
the free men, all the citizens who constitute the Mossi nation.” (p. 43)
Diop (1987) further explains that with the organization of political power being
shared with members from the common people, and even from slaves, revolutionary
tendencies within any group were mitigated.”
“Thus, ministers who assist the emperor, rather than being members of high
nobility of the Nakomse, are systematically chosen from outside of it, from
among the common people and the slaves. They represent at court, as we shall
see, the different social categories, professions, and castes. “Those without
birth,” slaves and laborers, organized into professions (castes), far from being
kept separated from power in this period which extends far beyond the
Occidental Middle Ages (since, very likely, it may go back to the first century and
the foundation of Ghana), are associated with it, not in any symbolic but in an
organic way. Each profession has its representatives within the government; they
will, as needed, present its complaints.” (p. 44)
Diop (1987) details similar constitutional and social structures from other African
states. All groups of societies were respected and could have their grievances heard,
ensuring healthy social development. This contrasts with political exclusion of the
slaves, plebeians, and surfs of Europe. This translates into a freedom to develop human
potential that corresponds to plasticity in spiritual and material development of the
entire society.
The King as Representative of Both the Nation and the Divine
Thinking of the traditional African King as a representative, or embodiment of the
Divine here on earth, points to an ontology that embraces the possibility of humans of
any status as becoming divine. In the case of Egypt, not only was it possible for the
King to become Ausar, the immortal Divinity, it was also possible for others who were
of lesser status to do the same as evidenced by the coffin text of such persons.
Furthermore, it was part of the cosmology of traditional African societies that all aspects
of life were a mirror or had a connection with the invisible higher realms of the divine
existence. At a deep level the divine and the worldly life were in communion. Such
ontology necessitates the view of humans as being divine, so that in the least
communication with the higher realms of the spirit is possible.
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Displacement of North Africans by Arabs following the fall of Khemet
The development of slavery as an institution and market did not start with the
European intrusion into Africa, but with the Arab invasion of Kemet from 639-42 A.D
and their subsequent incursions into the Sudan / Ethiopia, until the Arabs finally
consolidated complete control of the Sudan in the fifteenth century. The Arab slave
trade had 800 years of a head start over the European slave trade and has continued as
a major institution where Arab-Islam has taken hold in Africa for a span of over 1400
years. Initially, Africans in West of the continent were looking to get the Romans off
their back and made certain alliances with Arabs to do so; yet once the Africans and
Arabs could push out the Romans from North Africa, the Arabs replaced the Romans
as oppressors.
The Arabs went on to colonize all the East coast of Africa and North Africa initially.
Eventually they pushed inland to Ethiopia and West Africa. Along with Arab entry into
Africa began an international system of the nefarious trade in African slaves. The Arabs
brought with them a religion’s creed that degenerated from its original proposition of
equality of Blacks and Whites, as purportedly instructed by the prophet Mohammed,
into a religion that rationalized reducing all indigenous non-Muslim African believers
to slavery, domination, or death; just as Christians would do to the good Samaritan (the
perceived other) African and Indian during the transatlantic slave trade. An African
non-believer in the Arab-Muslim conception was an “Infidel,” an enemy who Muslims
were authorized to do Jihad on, destroy their native African religious practice, and even
the very native Africans themselves. This development was gradual, starting with
trading colonies of Arabs. It eventuated to the creation of an Arab/African mulatto
people who did not identify as being African, yet who were able to push further into
the heart of Africa and spread the xenophobic beliefs of the Arab-Muslim fathers.
Some make the old and fallacious argument that both indigenous and Arab-Islam
Africans had started the slavery institution and that the Arabs were just picking up from
where the Africans began. While it is true that there were native African servants, these
servants, who may have come to their lot as prisoners of war, for example, were not
treated as chattel, as spiritless beings. They were considered in the grand scheme of
things as part of the African society and could have many of their complaints redressed.
As stated earlier, they in many cases able to accumulate wealth, and to rise in position
within the society. Furthermore, the institution of invading a village for the expressed
purpose of capturing humans to feed the slave market was not started by Africans and
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was not a major practice by indigenous Africans. Once the Arab-Muslim invaders firmly
established themselves in Africa and succeeded to disrupt the normal balance of native
African economies, they were then able to put pressure (mostly through sustained
military pressure) on one African village to seek slaves from another African village.
The same held true centuries later for European invaders, who had possession of
the gun, and could use this technology strategically to pit one African village against
another. Once a mulatto class of Arab-Africans was created, this group of people had
no serious compunction to enslaving non-Muslim believing Africans. Why these
mulattos sided with the disruptive Arab culture over the mother culture of all is one of
the great questions of history and human psychodynamics. That dynamic was the
spearhead thrust into the side of indigenous African culture. It was to be the weapon
used by Arab invaders, who would, by proxy, further weaken African nations to the
point of making them vulnerable to subsequent European conquests and end the last
of the great African civilizations, the Songhai Empire.
The Arab slave trade drained Africa of a low estimate of 100 million people over
1400 years of Arab intrusion. It is estimated that 40 million were taken alive, and that
for everyone that was taken alive, three would die before the enslavement transaction
was completed. Many of the enslaved were taken to India to serve as Arab
mercenaries of war against the Hindus. Others were sold to Arab households and to
Europeans. Some were also sold to Muslim African heads of state for their own
purposes. For details on this see “The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for
Inter-Religious Dialogue” by John Alembillah Azumah.
It is a wonder how a desert people with few resources, and with no civilization to
speak of prior to their invasion of Africa, could gather the strength to overtake Africa.
As I alluded to earlier, North Africa was weakened by repeated Asiatic invasions by first
Hebrews (Hyksos), then the Greeks, then the Romans, the Assyrians, and the Persians
(Iranians). These invasions changed the population of North Africa, creating a mulatto
group that did not side with the protection of native Africans. This all served to weaken
Africa to the point where they could not resist even a modest army of Arabs. The
invasions caused a splintering of once cohesive African cities and states, into small
groups of colonized Africans, or small groups of Africans who migrated South and
West, to avoid foreigners and direct domination. These smaller groups, in either case,
were not sufficiently strong to put up a lasting resistance to foreign successive foreign
invaders.
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What does all of this say about the collective African higher consciousness? It
certainly did not have the wide dynamic expression in Arab-Muslim controlled regions
that it did prior to invasion. However, with the light of Kemit going out, there arose
grand African civilizations in West Africa that gave expression to the higher
consciousness of Africans for a time before both Arab-Muslim and European intrusion
would take near-complete hold. These were the empires of Mali, Ghana, and Songhai
in West Africa. These native African Black empires rivaled any of those existing at that
time in the world. A high expression of the empires of Mali and later Songhai was
education taking place in the university at Timbuktu. People from all over the world,
even Europeans went to Timbuktu to become learned. It is quite a paradox that the
highly learned of the University of Sankore at Timbuktu, while under the kingship of
an African Muslim, also kept slaves to manage their home affairs while they sought their
higher learning.
The Continuance of the Kemetic wisdom teachings through the Arabs & Moors into Europe through
Christianity and Free Masonry
Africa has always been the light of the world and the giver of wisdom to the world.
Prior to the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Romans, and the Arabs becoming major players
in the world, they made prolonged contact with Africa, even though that contact never
did benefit native Africans. With the Arab intrusion reaching West Africa and ending
the last purely African great civilizations of Songhai, the peoples of West African
progressively came under the influence of Islam. It was an Islamized West African army
that was to invade Spain for 700 years. Black people invaded Spain (Blackamoors or
simply Moors and Berbers) in 711 and 712 A.D.; however, the mentality behind the
invasion was not native African.
The invasion was started with a reconnaissance mission of 500 men led by the Black
Moor Tarif. With that mission’s success, the invasion began in mass by a Muslim
general, Tariq-Bin-Zibad backed by mostly Black Moors (6700) with some (300) Arab
soldiers. This incursion was followed in 712 by conquests from the Arab general Musa
Nosseyr with mostly Berber troops. This invasion therefore does not represent an
expression of higher African consciousness. In many cases, the invading Moors were
welcomed by the native Spanish people, who viewed them as relieving Spain from the
tyranny of the Visigoths, licentious Christians that ruled over Spain for the previous
200 years. The effect of the Arab-Muslim invasion into Africa was to replace the
indigenous African societal structures of governance with the religious state of Islam.
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So we cannot say that the Moorish invaders of Spain were operating strictly from the
indigenous cultural thrusts of Africans. What motivation did the Moors, eighty percent
of whom were African, to occupy Spain for 800 years? The Moors didn't demand
religious conversion of Spaniards to Islam. They didn't enslave the populace and extract
free labor. They built up their society, established universities, built roads, baths,
promoted agriculture, introduced literacy and science, and provided for all those things
that we call civilization.
What then is the underlying reason for going to Spain to do this? Mind you as soon
as Africans were put out, the enslavement of Africans as a system commenced. Though
Arab/Moors did not require the Spanish to change their religion, customs, or language,
this invasion when viewed from the stance of traditional African values was a violation
of those values and a departure from the fundamental African worldview as exemplified
by the Maatian principles of Ancient Egypt. Belief in the religion created by the
Hebrews, passed on to the Romanized Christians, and then to Arabs, was a copy of the
original African spiritual way of life in Egypt, that no longer had the spiritual clarity
conducive to natural African development of higher consciousness. This is likely the
source of the unenlightened invasion of Spain by Africans.
While it is true that African and Arab presence in Europe spurred the development
of a backwards Europe, it is also true that ultimately, no conquering people can bring
civilization of true development to another people. Inevitably the Blacks and Arabs
were pushed out of Spain in total by the year 1491 and the very next year, Spain returned
the favor and started the international slave trade of Africans with the exploits of
Columbus in 1492. Could it be that Africans knew the need to contain and civilize the
Europeans, else they would attempt to do exactly what they did once that containment
and civilizing influence was removed? We see how the Spaniards felt no compunction
about stripping Africans of their freedom and humanity to orders of magnitude lower
than Africans did to them for 700 years.
Expansion of African Collective Consciousness through the Empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai
African states engaged in economic exchanges between each other, and with other
countries for hundreds of years. While local traders used the barter system, there existed
a merchant class in lager states that transacted exchange far and wide. Such a system of
commerce necessitated an equally sophisticated infrastructure to facilitate it. This
includes efficient transportation as in roads and animals, policing the tails, knowledge
of weather patterns, communications, money (i.e., gold, salt, and cowrie shells),
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accounting, in some cases writing systems. Along with economic exchanges naturally
came an exchange of ideas, culture, and technologies, and how to deal respectfully with
fellow traders. Such respectful interactions no doubt contributed to a sharing of values,
an underlying unity, and abounding development of internal spiritual consciousness that
included on a deep level the recognition of the other as sharing in the identity of the
Self.
All areas of life were directed under the belief that the Creator is everywhere present
in time and beyond time. An order of daily life was sought that reflected the Divine
order or Will above man. Members of the society were treated with equal respect even
though they served different functions in the society. There was a comprehensive effort
to reach for higher perfection in Arts, Science, Knowledge of Nature and the Universe,
along with man's inner capacities. These disciples were integrated with Divine
knowledge and self-knowledge. A reverence for the dead was an affirmation of the
continuance of the soul after physical death and extension of the high respect given to
elders.
Religion was not just a profession of creed but a daily reality reflected in all areas of
people’s activity. Africans contributed greatly to the advancement of human spirituality
as reflected in their daily living. The African's approach to life prior to Arab and
European disruptions was communal, where the needs of the collective were balanced
with that of the individual. The individual was allowed freedom to advance so long as
his/her advancement did not impinge on the welfare of the collective. This is the
foundation for the collective to realize its wider calling, its Higher Self, the Ausarian
Self. The moral code that guided daily life of respect to fellow members of society,
extended to include respect for trading partners as well as the visitor and peoples
contacted in other lands. The African approach to life was humane and communal,
reflecting an aspiration to contact and give expression to the Divine through the
mundane.
Basil Davidson (1977) gives us a general assessment of West African development
between 1000 A.D. and 1600 A.D., or what he refers to as “six dynamic centuries.”
“Between about AD 1000 and 1600 the peoples of West Africa passed through
a great and memorable period of their history. Many West African communities
developed more useful methods of government during this period. They worked
out new ways of organizing their community life, and of enforcing law and order.
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Some of them went ahead without chiefs and kings and central governments,
while other founded large states and empires. Cities grew in number, size and
wealth, and became the home of new kinds of craftsmen and traders, politicians,
priests, soldiers, writers and men of learning. With their export of gold and ivory,
these trading cities and states became a valuable part of the whole wide network
of international trade that was composed of West and North Africa, southern
Europe and western Asia.
There was plenty of war and ruin in this period, as well as peace and prosperity.
Yet we can think of this period as one in which splendid things were done.
Traveling through the empire of Mali in the fourteenth century, a famous
Moroccan traveler, Ibn Batuta, praised its good government. There was, he
found, ‘complete and general safety in the land. The traveler has not more reason
than the man who stays at home to fear brigands, thieves, or violent gangs’. Such
security showed great political and social achievement, and it was by no means
the only one of its kind.” (p. 25)
El Idrisi, (a conquering Berber?) writing around 1176 A.D., spoke of Ghana, in
decline at the time, as being the greatest kingdom of the Blacks. According to his
account given by Lady Lugard (2015),
“Ghana … is the most considerable, the most thickly populated, and the most
commercial of the black countries. It is visited by rich merchants from all the
surrounding counties, and from the extremities of the West. It’s inhabitants are
Mussulman … The king governs by his own authority, but he does obeisance to
the Abbasside Commander of the Faithful” (the Egyptian Caliph).” (p. 110)
The empire of Ghana lasted 1100 years, The Mali empire lasted 250 years, the
Songhai empire lasted about from 700 A.D. to 1591. By all accounts each empire at
their height achieved high levels of internal cohesion, material wealth, security
throughout the provinces, scholarly learning and teaching, all equating to a high level
of civilization. However, mixed with the evolution of African society was an element
of decay that needs examination, and that is the adoption of a foreign religion, Initially,
Arab leaders were kept separate from indigenous African centers of government. There
were established ministers to Arab centers to facilitate trade with Arabs. African kings
even built mosque so that these Arab and mulatto intermediaries can readily practice
their Islamic faith. There was tolerance on the part of African kings for Islam. Likewise,
there was tolerance by converted Black African kings to Islam for those who refused to
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convert. Some African kings refused to allow Arabs to reside in their land, learning
from the experiences of other regions that once Arabs gain a foothold in their land,
complete disaster and takeover was invariably the result. The Almoravides assault and
pillaging of Ghana is case in point. Lady Lugard refers to an account by the Berber El
Bekri on this destruction:
“In the year 1054, the town of Audoghast, still rich and flourishing, not only
acknowledged the rule of Ghana and paid tribute, but was also a place of
residence of the black monarch. But in the following year, 1055, the Almoravides,
already setting out upon their northward march, made a first example of this
town. They took it by assault and sacked and pillaged it, exposing it to every
horror of barbaric warfare, and it is especially stated that “they treated the
population of Audoghast with this extreme rigour because the town had
acknowledged the sovereignty of the black king of Ghana” (p. 93)
Yes, Islam provided a central organizing medium, and allowed for advances in
learning; however, history shows the corrosive aspect of Islam as it supplanted
indigenous beliefs and practices, paving the way for conquests by first Arabs and the
Europeans. What could have been if Africans did not allow Islam and Christianity to
take hold in West Africa? Could the slave trade and the loss of North Africa to Arabs
have taken place? Once the traditional African religions and practices had been
displaced by the adoption of Islam in West Africa, loyalty to African principles and land
was also compromised, leading to the loss of the internal cohesion and cooperation
necessary to repel foreign invaders, particularly the Europeans. What was the immediate
aftermath of the fall of the Songhai empire by the force of the Moroccan soldiers after
1590? deGraft-Johnson (1986) gives us a sense:
“There was chaos where once there had been order. States broke up. There were
intrigues everywhere; treachery and corruption became the order of the day.
Ordered society gradually crumpled. Famine often too a heavy toll of men and
animals. In 1716, for example, a famine lasting five years was reported to have
engulfed the western Sudan. The invaders and their descendants were absorbed
into the huge mass of the Negro population. The conquest had spent itself. It
had destroyed but never created, and in place of the old West African Empires
th3ere was found an atomized group of peoples ready to jump at each other’s
throats and to sell each other in the slave markets.” (p. 119)
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It is evident that the loss of loyalty to the indigenous land, and customs, and spiritual
values through the acceptance of Islam by West African kings, had opened the way to
ruin for Africa. At first Islamized kings appeared to seek a balance with traditional
African societies; however, this tolerance soon evolved to a resolve to win converts by
the sword in the name of Islam. This equated to an increase of Arab influence and
dominance over Traditionalist like the Mossi people. Robin Walker (2006) puts it this
way:
“As in North Africa, the enslavers (in West Africa), thrusting inland) used
religion to pacify the enslaved. The Arabians used Islam and the Europeans used
Christianity … To demonstrate the role of religion we have already discussed the
1526 letter of King Affonso I of Kongo to the Portuguese begging them to stop
the slave raids. However, elsewhere in the same letter Affonso asks the
Portuguese to continue the Christianisation programe! Why didn’t he respond
more aggressively by declaring war? Clearly Affonso was blinded to the
Portuguese threat because he erroneously believed that they shared his
commitment to the religious faith. He thought they and he were Christian
brothers. Black Muslims made the same mistake. Their responses when faced
with similar challenges were equally unsatisfactory.” (p. 550)
It was a combination of Arabized Blacks (Moors) and their English mercenaries,
that brought about the end of the last of the great Songhi Empire, and the city of
Timbuktu. Even before this, the Kings of the Mali Empire were Islamized, including
the famed Mansa Musa, giving a foot hold for the eventual displacement of traditional
values, practices, and ultimate sovereignty of West African regions. This eroding factor
of Islam led to the inability of West African kingdoms to unite in thwarting the
oncoming European takeover. The 15th century was not only when Arabs consolidated
their hold on the Sudan, but when Europeans ushered in the system of the transatlantic
slave trade that was to rival the Arab slave trade. This was the start of Western
colonialism, neocolonialism, and Western racism/White supremacy. These systems
were to challenge the strength of the African spirit to its limits.
Despite the intrusion of Arabs and Europeans into Africa, we must not lose site of
the continued evolving collective African Consciousness through the ages. When it has
been thwarted in one region of Africa, it has moved to ignite the flower of civilization
and advanced humanity in other areas, thus having an uninterrupted evolution. Cheik
Anta Diop (Diop, 1974) put it like this:
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“African history proceeded without interruption. The first Nubia dynasties are
prolonged by Egyptian dynasties until the occupation of Egypt by the Indo-
Europeans. Starting in the fifth century BC. Nubia remained the sole source of
culture and civilization until about the sixth century AFD., and then Ghana
seized the torch from the sixth century until 1240, when its capital was destroyed
by Sundiata Keita. The heralded the launching of the Mandingo Empire [‘i.e.
Mali … Next came the empire of Gao [i.e. Songhai], the empire of Yatenga [ in
today’s Burkina Faso] … and the kingdoms of the Djoloff and Cayor [in Senegal]
destroyed by Faidherbe under Napoleon III. In listing this chronology, we
wanted to show that there was no interruption in African history. It is evident
that, if starting from Nubia and Egypt, we had followed a continental
geographical direction, such as Nubia – Gulf of Benin, Nubia – Congo, Nubia –
Mozambique, the course of African history would still have appeared to be
uninterrupted. This is the perspective in which the African past should be
viewed.” (pp. 147-148)
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Chapter 5
Assimilation of Christianity into African Spiritual Culture
Notwithstanding the fact that formal Christianity, complete with the Apostles’
creed, was invented by Europeans (Alexander the Greek at the council of Nicaea, in the
year 325 after the B. C. era), to be used as a consolidating force arrayed against non-
European collectives, Africans through the ages have assimilated the Christian religion
and to a significant extent made it their own, particularly in how they practice it. It is a
fact that Africans along the Nile created nearly every archetypal element that went into
the making of Christianity, in Africa thousands of years before any Asiatic contact of
significance. The Egyptian trinity of Osiris (Ausar), Isis (Auset), and Horus (Heru the
sun), was translated into the core Christian trinity of God the father, Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, and Mary the mother of a supposed flesh and blood Jesus Christ.
Eventually Mary was replaced in the European Christian faith with the Holy Spirit. I
refer readers to the book The Historical Origin of Christianity, by Walter Williams and
Gerald Massey’s, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ for details of this rendering of
Christianity from the Coptic Egyptian (African) original.
The Christian religion had its prodigious early growth in North Africa, namely Egypt
and Alexandria where much of the ancient Egyptian religions text was housed during
the formulation of orthodox Christianity or the Catholic Church. These texts would
come be destroyed when the Romans destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Where
Europeans have used the precepts of Christianity to project their culture as being
dominant over Africans, and forcing Africans to service European societies, Africans
have used the precepts of Christianity to contemplate the greater brotherhood of man,
the deeper mysteries of life, the promise of an afterlife, and freedom of their people
from oppression in this life.
Not only have Africans given the world the foundations of Christianity, but from
the time of the birth of Christianity, through the European lead Maafa, and up to today,
Africans have transformed the Christian religion, infused it with a purity and spirituality
superseding that of European input, in a way that makes it distinct from European
expressions of Christianity. Not unlike how Africans transformed the English language
into a form of their own, creating what some characterize in our day as “Ebonics,”
Africans have continually modified over the centuries the Christian religion to help
withstand their condition of imprisonment and oppression.
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European Conquering of Africa through Christianity
The invasion of Europeans into West Africa and the commencement of the
European enslavement and terrorism against Africans is well documented. However, it
is not as well understood that this nefarious trade could not have taken hold as it did
without the consent of the Christian church heads and body altogether. John G. Jackson
(1970) drives this point home by quoting Chapman Cohen (1936):
“The peculiar and damning fact of the history of slavery [as is pointed out by a
careful student of the institution], so far as the Christian Church is concerned, is
this … It was created by Christians, it was continued by Christians, it was in some
respects more barbarous than anything the world had yet seen, and its worst
features were to be witnessed in countries that were most ostentatious in their
parade of Christianity. It is this that provides the final and unanswerable
indictment of the Christian Church. … It should be added that, according to
Livingstone, slavery was unknown to the Africans until it was introduced by
Christians – the Portuguese.” Jackson, further stressing this point, provides this
quote by the Christian apologist, the Reverend Loring Brace: “the guilt of this
great crime rests on the Christian Church as an organized body” (p. 305)
W.E.B. Du Bois and other African scholars estimate that upwards of 100 million
Africa perished because of the European Maafa (great destruction). How can we derive
optimism and hope from this hell? How can we quantify the effect this has had on the
development of African civilization? How can we assess the continued evolution of the
indestructible African collective consciousness through the European/Christian-
directed Maafa? Perhaps we can shed light on these questions by asking and answering
another set of questions, “how have Africans used the Christian religion in ways to
promote the progressive development of the higher African collective Self in the world,
even though in the main the European collective did not have this intent when it pushed
its version of Christianity onto the African continent? Has the African collective derived
any benefit from the religion beyond the pressured need to survive European
colonization and imprisonment?”
It is a common truism that a conquered group will take on the beliefs of the
conquerors to progress in the society reformed to the material benefit of the
conquerors. Of course, the European Romans, from the start of Christianity, used the
religion to stabilize its empire. After emerging from the Dark Ages of being confined
to Europe by the Arabs, Europeans justified imposing slavery on Africans with the
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fallacious notion of bringing civilization and Godliness to Africans, just like the Arabs
did before them. So, their ungodly acts were justified in the name of God. Has it ever
been truly possible for Africans to see God in themselves through the medium of the
Christian religion, the religion of their oppressors? Just as a conqueror has never
elevated a people materially past where they were before invasion, so too a foreign
religion imposed on a people never elevated the spiritual wellbeing of the people prior
to invasion. All the elements that went into Christianity were developed and existed in
Africa prior to the coming of Europeans. The development of the Christian religion,
through copying the original African source, produced a religion that was never
compatible with the African. The God of the European has essentially been a White
man in the sky that favored the White man on earth, to the detriment of the African on
earth.
As most everyone is taught, the Christian religion shares the Hebrew’s belief in the
Old Testament. The Hebrews/Israelites/Jews believed themselves to be the chosen
people of God above all others, and thus destined to rule over all the earth’s people in
God’s name with a divine king. The Christian religion is based on the belief that Jesus
Christ is the only begotten Son of God, who was the fulfiller of the prophecies of the
Old Testament; faith in whom is the only means whereby man can be saved from sin
and eternal damnation. As already stated, the Roman Emperor Constantine managed
to initiate Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and established the
Pope as the supreme pontiff over all religions and even state affairs.
This newly erected catholic, universal religion was given a structure that was not
unlike that of the Roman military command. Indeed, it was a super control structure
erected to place the general populace under the watchful control of not just the church,
but also of the state, and emperor. Commensurate with the newly created Christian
religion in Alexandria and Northern Egypt, a veil of European control was cast over
these parts of Africa. The progression of the Catholic Church with its Egyptian Coptic
Church offspring was backed by the full might of the Roman military. As the Christian
church advanced through Africa from the North, the indigenous African religion of
ancient Egypt was banned and effectively destroyed in its wake. This was the beginning
of Africans losing their minds to European colonizers; and where the mind is
controlled, so the body will follow.
The Africanizing influence on the Christian religion served to ameliorate the
historically deficient capacity of the European to accept and interact with non-
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European as equals. This has been a great achievement and higher development of the
African collective movement. The interplay of the colonizing force of Christianity with
the capacity of the African collective to assimilate and transform the religion as an
elevating factor of collective life, is a complex subject. Indeed, this interplay is still a
dominant theme on the African continent today, as Christianity is resurgent amongst
African counties as with Nigeria for example. No doubt Africans in the Americas have
throughout ourstory used some of the best ideas that Christianity has had to offer, to
cope with the oppressive onslaught of global White supremacy aspiration, as it operated
for example in the Americas during and after slavery. Gayraud Wilmore (1998) gives
weight to this assertion.
"To what do we refer when we speak of the valuable contributions of African
religions (to the religious creations of Africans in America)? Among other
elements we should emphasize the following: a sense of the pervasive reality of
the spirit world above, within, and beneath the artificial world of every day; the
blotting out of the line between the sacred and the secular; the practical use of
religion in all of life; the surrender of excessive individualism for solidarity with
the community and nature; the central importance of the family; reverence for
the ancestors and recognition of their presence with the living to guide and
inspire; the source of evil in the communal consequences of an act rather than
in the act per se; the creative use of rhythmic movement of the body, singing,
and dancing in the celebration of life and the worship of God.
All these elements and more of African Traditional religion were found in some
form, however attenuated, in the slave community and were absorbed to some
degree into Black Christianity (and later Black interpretations of Islam). … More
needs to be done in the future if we are to recover and enhance values,
particularly those that reflect the affirmation of life, and the unity of all life in the
unquenchable desire for survival, elevation, and the freedom to be Muntu, man
and woman, in the most penetrating sense of that profound Bantu word." (pg.
280)
Appreciation must be given to how African Traditional spiritual principles were
submerged beneath the outward expressions of African/Black Christianity. This
adaptation of the form to the essence can be more visibly seen with the African
traditional religion merging of Catholicism in Cuba, Santo Domingo, and other places
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of South America. No doubt similar adaptations, though less visible, were made in the
African/Black churches of North America, including down South.
We must take account of how the Collective African Consciousness that was Self-
aware even in the dehumanizing conditions of American enslavement, was continually
evolving. We must account for how this consciousness was unbroken in its continuum;
from the African Traditional Religions it matured in, through the transatlantic Maafa it
witnessed, and through the abuse it witnessed in the physical, psychological, and
spiritual battlefields of North and South America. This collective African Self
Consciousness found expression in the conditions it was presented with, namely
European war against Africans and European Christian proselytizing, but was not itself
irrevocably altered from its essence. This Collective African Self Consciousness was
embodied by all Africans enslaved in the “New World” but was especially entrusted for
revelation through imprisoned African priests and priestesses.
Summarizing how African survival was expressed through Black Christianity,
Wilmore (1998) writes:
“The point I am stressing is that the early spiritual leaders among the slaves in
the Caribbean and North American colonies were the representatives of the
traditional religions of Africa that we are beginning to understand and
appreciate today. What they brought to Christianity were attitudes and
perspectives both in agreements and at variance with missionary teaching. For
all of what has seemed to Westerners to be weird and outlandish practices,
these men and women retained an instinctive intelligence about existence,
physical and mental health, and the preference in life of that which is radically
antagonistic to and irreconcilable with the best interests of the community.
They had a concept of a Supreme Being who was involved in the practical
affairs of life, but in a different way that the Judeo-Christian God. This Being
was approachable through many intermediaries, but was known by various
names, including Father and Mother, and whose power was supreme over all
other powers of the universe. It was not only in the identification of the healing
powers of the plants and minerals, or in the exorcism of demonic influences,
that these medicine men-preachers contributed to the security of the uprooted
slave. What became most significant for a later period was the fact that they
recognized the relationship between ‘bad magic’ as whites practiced it and the
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dehumanizing situation in which they and their people found themselves.” (p.
41)
Africans who were enslaved in the Caribbean and South America were in a better
position to hold onto their African traditional spiritual practices, even if masked
beneath the Christian religious saints of the dominant society. They associated African
deities with Christian saints of Catholicism, for instance in Santeria.
So in their minds, they were not serving the God of their oppressors in their religious
practices, but rather transformed the Christian faith to serve their own spiritual needs,
their own conceptions of the Creator and the deities.
It is commonly known enslaved Africans in North America did not practice
Catholicism in North America, but rather were forced to adapt to European Protestant
denominations for the most part, (i.e. Methodist and Baptist and to some degree
Episcopalian). These European denominations prohibited the reverence for saints and
religious relics or icons. Thus, the enslaved African in the North did not have the same
means of masking African deities behind European Christian saints. Did this prevent
them from still refashioning the Christian religion to reflect their image of deities, of
God? Did African slaves in America imagine God and Jesus to be necessarily White,
and thus sympathetic to their White oppressors rather than the lowly and oppressed
imprisoned Africans?
We know that these enslaved Africans rejected the version of Christianity for the
most part of their oppressors as being anti Godly. I think there is enough evidence that
our ancestors adopted and adapted the Christian archetypes to address their own unique
circumstances and spiritual needs. It may be a simplistic overstatement to say that our
ancestors accepted a White God and his White son, Jesus Christ, and therefore
automatically accepted the authority of the White man over their lives as masters to
slaves. The mere effort to throw off slavery and dissolve the master-slave relationship
reveals the throwing off the idea of White people being endowed to be masters of Black
people by God. It may even indicate that Black people did not envision the Supreme
Being as a big White Daddy in the sky. Maybe the White Jesus in the Black Church was
just a front, just like the White saints were a front for South American and Caribbean
African religions like Yoruba and Santeria. Other ethnic groups, Chinese, Indian, etc.,
who have adopted Christianity, imagine Jesus and God to look like themselves. Could
it be that Africans in America have done something similar but in a hidden way so as
not to draw the wrath of their White oppressors?
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Wilmore identifies three traditions of the Black religious experience that stem from
the gathered remembrances of African Traditional Religions: “Survival Tradition”,
“Elevation Tradition”, and the “Liberation Tradition.” He categorized the initial
developments of Black religion as the “Survival Tradition” that was essentially
concerned with getting through to the next moment of life. This religion dealt
practically with the matter of sheer survival. Church experience was adapted to give
comfort and encouragement so that Black folks can simply make it through the horror
of forced enslavement, and later the Black codes, Jim Crow and segregation. To the
extent that Africans practiced Christianity, it was a modification of the forms of
European Christianity, to make sense of their experience, an experience that could
never be the same as that of their oppressors. Thus “Black Christianity” is
fundamentally different from White Christianity. The growth of conservative, apolitical
independent Black churches were expressions of the "Survival Tradition.”
The next progressive development of Black religious expression was what Wilmore
calls the “Elevation Tradition.” In this phase, our collective African consciousness was
focused on lifting the moral standing of Black people beyond the imposed degradation
of chattel slavery and severe restrictions of life chances. It was principally concerned
with the uplift of the mentality, the collective material wellbeing, and social standing of
Black people after the abolition of slavery. The proliferation of “Negro improvement
associations” that were strongly tied to a religious denomination illustrates this phase
of Black religious expression. The freedman associations, Booker T. Washington
approach of “pull yourself up by the boot-straps,” self-reliance approach, and later the
Garvey movement fits the “elevation tradition.”
As Africans learned how to adapt and survive the degradation of enslavement and
reaffirm their humanity to themselves (often through coded language and subversive
tactics) their religious expression spawned another phase, what Wilmore terms the
“Liberation Tradition.” The collective push initially for Africans in the Americas was
for freedom from bondage. The use of Christianity was to give symbolism and form to
the singular quest for liberation from the condition of enslavement; hence the strong
identification with the Old Testament (false) story about the people of Israel being held
bondage in Egypt, and ultimately being led to freedom by God through Moses. This
distinctive phase of Black religion in North America was expressive in clear relief
through the abolition movement, the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
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Wilmore says of the three traditions, “The liberation and elevation traditions began
with the determination to survive, but they go beyond ‘make do’ (survival) to ‘do more’
(elevation) and from ‘do more’ to ‘freedom now’ and ‘Black Power’ (liberation).”
Wilmore posits that none of these three traditions were ever phased out and, in many
cases, overlapped each other. He warns against oversimplifications and reductionism.
They found modern expressions through various institutions and movements in
America, be they religious or secular. For example, Wilmore sees the NAACP and the
civil rights movements as stemming from the survival and elevation traditions. The
NOI with its withdrawal from aggressive tactics and emphasis of defense, its emphasis
on separation from White people, it’s initial apolitical stance, was more an expression
of the “Survival Tradition.” Whereas the quest for Black Power through Black Panther
party, for instance, was expressive of the "Liberation Tradition.”
These three traditions ultimately have been rooted in our Africanity, our essential
cultural DNA that asserts our African humanity and even our Divinity. Our unique
religious/spiritual and non-religious expressions continue to have redemptive meaning
not only for ourselves, but also for all of humanity. We should not underestimate how
African Collective Consciousness, evolved through the independent Black Churches,
laying the foundations for African liberation ideology and active struggle in America,
the Caribbean, and on the Continent of Africa. It was from this foundation that the
"Africa for Africans" idea developed. Joseph Booth, a pre-Garveyite who was
associated with Baptists, published a book entitled, "Africa for Africans" in 1897. We
learn from Wilmore (1998) the role Black Churches served in developing African
liberation consciousness.
"The thrust of missionary emigrationism (back to Africa movements), the search
for roots in the pre-Mosaic history of Israel (Egyptian history), the challenge to
the ethical interpretation of love and redemptive suffering in white Christianity,
the prefigurement of black liberation in the story of the Exodus, the willingness
to speculate about the “color” of God and the meaning of a black Christ, and
the development of Ethiopianism in Africa and in the Caribbean and North
America – all of these developments and tendencies gave inspiration and
nationalism, a heightened sense of racial identity and messianism wherever blacks
writhed under the heal of white oppression.” (p. 161)
Before the end of the nineteenth century, what began as theology was secularized as
an ideology of political separatism that reached its most explicit articulation in
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resolutions of the Pan-African congresses and the philosophy of “Negritude.” But well
before that occurred, black ministers and laypersons had drawn cultural and political
implications for repatriation and self-determination, not from egalitarian ideologies of
the Western democracies or from Marxism, but from the Bible and Christian theology
as reinterpreted by men and women who believed that the gospel itself contains the
most penetrating and provocative justification for racial solidarity and social change.
Even as we critique the religions that Black folks adhere to today, particularly the
Abrahamic religions White people have taken up, we must respect what Black religion
did for our ancestors who survived what no one today had to endure or probably could
fully understand. If not for their Black Theology, created in the most trying of times,
we would not be here to make a critique.
Eric Lincoln (1990) posits there are six pairs of dialectical poles that express the
major orientations of Africa people through their forms of the Black Christian religion.
These dialectics are:
1) The dialectic between priestly and prophetic functions
2) The dialectic between other-worldly versus this-worldly
3) The dialectic between universalism and particularism
4) The dialectic between the communal and the privatistic
5) The dialectic between charismatic versus bureaucratic
6) The dialectic between resistance versus accommodation (p. 12)
I would extend this paradigm to understand the collective development of Black life
generally, and to understanding much of the conflicts we experience in trying to get
together as one. Two such extensions are the dialectic between communal versus
capitalistic economic enterprising; and the dialectic between practical self-help versus
dependency on external divine intervention. Lincoln (1990) summarizes his model for
understanding the Black church in comparison to others:
“These six pairs of dialectical polarities give a more comprehensive view of the
complexity of Black churches (and for that matter Black people) as social
institutions, including their roles and functions in black communities. The
strength of the dialectical model of the Black Church is that it leads to a more
dynamic (as opposed to a static, polarizing and limited) view of Black churches
along a continuum of dialectical tensions, struggle, and change. The problem of
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single, non-dialectical typological views (one shoe ideology fits all) of Black
churches (Black individuals, Black movements, other Black organizations, and
Black strategies), is they tend to categorize and stereotype Black churches into
rigid pigeonhole categories like “other-worldly”; they miss the historical
dynamism of institutions (and approaches to resistance) moving back and forth
(between opposites) in response to certain issues or social conditions. Besides
allowing for institutional change, the dialectical model of the Black Church offers
methodological flexibility.” (p. 15)
Albert J. Raboteau, (2004) cautions against a reductionist view, a view that Lincoln’s
model corrects, that Christianity is simply a slave religion that breeds passivity, lack of
concern for the harsh realities of life, and inferiority in Blacks who practice it.
“To describe slave religion as merely otherworldly (or a total submission to the
will of White people) is inaccurate, for slave believed that God had acted, was
acting, and would continue to act within human history and within their own
history as a peculiar people just as long ago he had acted on behalf of another
chosen people, biblical Israel. Moreover, the slave religion had a this-worldly
impact, not only in leading some slave to acts of external rebellion, but also in
helping slave to assert and maintain a sense of personal value --- even of ultimate
worth. The religious meetings in the quarters, groves, and ‘hush harbors’ were
themselves frequently acts of rebellion against the proscriptions of the master.
In the context of divine authority, the limited authority of any human was placed
in perspective. By obeying the commands of God, even when they contradicted
the commands of men, slaves developed and treasured a sense of moral
superiority and actual moral authority over their masters.
In the role of preacher, exhorter, and minister, slaves experienced status,
achieved respect, and exercised power, often circumscribed but nonetheless real.
In the peak experience of conversion, slaves felt raised from death to life, from
sorrow to joy, from damnation to election. The conversion experience equipped
the slave with a sense of individual value and personal vocation; which
contradicted the devaluing and dehumanizing forces of slavery. In the prayer
meetings, the sermons, prayers, and songs, when the Spirit started moving the
congregation to shout, clap, and dance, the slave enjoyed community and
fellowship which transformed their individual sorrows. That some slaves
maintained their identity as persons, despite a system bent on reducing them to
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subhuman level was certainly due in part to their religious life. In the midst of
slavery, religion was for slaves a space of meaning, freedom, and transcendence.”
(p. 318)
The Black Economic Development Conference (BEDC), an organization
promoting black independence, published the “Black Manifesto,” which demanded
reparations to African Americans. The BEDC grew out of a national conference of the
same name held in Detroit, Michigan, on April 26, 1969. James Forman became the
spokesman of BEDC and the Black Manifesto became its platform. The BEDC
demanded $500 million dollars in reparations ($15 per Black person of that time) from
white churches and synagogues and said the monies would be used for nine projects.
The "Black Manifesto," although written by an outsider to the churches, was more
or less endorsed by the church leaders and Black bureaucrats at the Interchurch Center
who controlled the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
The "Black Manifesto" of 1969 exemplifies how the Black church evolved and extended
to self-define our collective problems clearly and adopt a resistance stance to the
dominant society in ways that superseded previous Black church efforts. The Black
Church was pushed to a more active role in Black Liberation. This speaks to the
evolving collective African consciousness in that time according to Measures 3, 4, &
5 discussed earlier.
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Figure 5.1
Excerpt from The Black Manifesto
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The above discussion does not represent my endorsement of Christianity, especially
the European brand; but rather an appreciation for how the African cultural essence
(Mirimba Ani's Asili), continued to express through Africans enslaved in the Americas,
despite the most dehumanizing conditions ever put on a people. My premise is that the
African spirit has used these forms of Western religions, under conditions of forced
acceptance, to express its own authentic essence. I am not arguing that ensuing new
Black theologies, were ideal expressions of an authentic African essence, Mirimba Ani's
Asili; just that they were expressions of an authentic African essence. These expressions
were adaptive to the realities of social control, domination and oppression. There does
remain the question of why we still cling to these creations today when physical
enslavement is over? Why not now revive our African deities in our spiritual and
practice and lived experience? Whereas I do appreciate how our African ancestors have
made use of foreign religions to affect our survival and to affirm our humanity, I do
agree with the following quote by Molefi Asante (1998) that speaks to African
traditional religions being more suitable for expressing our Africanity and Spirituality.
"What is religion but the deification of ancestors, the making sacred of traditions
within the context and history. How can we honor any god who was used against
us? The only people who accept alien gods are defeated people; all others honor
and accept their own name for the Almighty. We must learn to appreciate
ourselves and our traditions. What is wrong with the African God?"
Study the Akan (Ghana) names and meanings for the Creator and you will see that
our Ancestors did not need Western conceptions to augment or boost theirs. What
were the names of the African conception of the Supreme Being, before encountering
the European or Arab? Study these names and your mind will achieve another degree
of freedom from Western mental enslavement. Joseph Buakye Danquah (1968) gives
some of those names from the nation of Ghana.
➢ Nyame or Onyame: “The Supreme Being, the Deity, God, the Creator of all
things” who “never ceases to create things.”
➢ Nyankopon or Onyankopon: “God the Supreme Being, the Creator and
Sovereign of the Universe; the Shining and Only Great One, Onyankopon
Kwaame.”
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➢ Twiaduampon: appellation of God Nyankopon – “The Great Adu (Anu) of the
Twii” (The Twii are the ancient people of Ghana).
Other names of God Nyankopon are:
➢ Abommubuwafre, He upon you call in your experience of distress: A consoler
or Comforter who gives salvation
➢ Nyaamanekose, He in whom you confide troubles which come upon you
➢ Tetekwaframua, He who is there now as from ancient times; He who endures
for ever
➢ Oboadee (Oboo-Ade), He who created the Thing (All of existence in nature) a
name also assigned to Nyame as wall as to Odomankoma.
➢ Opanyin, prince, grandee, chief, elder, superior sovereign of all, even of the
wide or expansive earth. He who is able to do.
➢ Nana, “The Great Ancestor Nyankopon whose day is Saturday”
➢ Odomankoma, the Manifold, Universally filled, the Inexahustible, the
Undimensional (p. 55)
There are more qualifications, none of which needed a European to invent it. Can
Africans use the religion of our oppressors for their complete liberation? I think the
quicker road to spiritual and material freedom for Africans would be to go back and
fetch (Sankofa) their original spiritual science of life existing before European
invasion into their lands and minds.
Summary on Religion and African Collective Consciousness
Surveying Arab intrusion into North East African, the question of the impact of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam on indigenous African societies comes to the fore.
Syncretism of traditional African religion and spirituality throughout Africa and African
diasporas, with Judaism, Christianity and Arab Islam is an obvious fact. It must have
served survival and developmental needs of African peoples facing extreme pressures
of Arab and European invasion and enslavement that caused bodily, material
organization, and socio-cultural displacements. It must have served as a cohesive
element for societies grappling with disintegrating forces perpetuated by Arab and
European colonization and oppression. The central question is, does this syncretism do
more harm than good to the internal coherency of the traditional African societies in
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the long run? Does it meet the needs of unlimited growth and development of the
African society as expressions of the divine Spirit? On the other hand, does this
syncretism delay an inevitable vanishing of the original identity of African societies, a
form of cultural genocide as a prelude to physical genocide? Perhaps historical evidence
gives the best answer to this essential question.
There are two aspects of religion that we must distinguish; one is the purely
theological aspect or doctrine. The doctrines are both what their books say and the
interpretations of their scripture down through the ages. An aspect of religious text or
doctrine that we should gain clarity of is that these texts contain collections of myths
that were meant to be instructive of moral behavior, and as such the myths themselves
were not necessarily conveying historical facts or events. There are things in the
Christian doctrine that are detrimental to African people, for example the verse that
says slaves obey your masters, or the curse of Ham.
The second aspect on religions we must clearly recognize and inform our future
generations on, is how religions were used as the spearhead to penetrate non-white
cultures and subsequently plunder their resources. Too often people read a literal
interpretation of these texts that renders the rational mind inoperative. The Christian
and Islamic texts were written in a political context that had the intent of promoting
the political aspirations of a people, sometimes to the detriment of other peoples; as
with the mentioned “Curse of Ham.” to justify the enslavement of Africans. The
cultural aspirations for power and control of Europeans were cloaked in the religious
rhetoric of universal brotherhood, and one God (theirs) for all. This cloak sufficiently
blinded non-white people to where they could say, "The Christians taught us how to
pray with our eyes closed. Before then they had the Bible and we had the land; but when
we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
When addressing the aspect of the major Western religions, including Islam, and
their usefulness to African people, the focus should be on just that; how useful are they
in helping African people organize to be autonomous from White people? I don't think
it is possible; and so, we need to expound on how embracing Western religions holds
Africans back. Often it is difficult and confusing to take on arguments of both doctrine
AND the political use of religions by Whites. It is enough at such confusing moments
to focus just on the later. Perhaps then the value of traditional African religions can
begin to show in sharper relief.
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We are left still to answer essential questions: “How has the collective African
consciousness evolved since the Great Maafa directed by European oppressors? What
was gained in this evolution from the high price paid by our 100 million murdered
ancestors, and those millions more who survived the plantations to become us?
Where do we see the continued radiance of the collective African Soul in the face of
European and Arab oppression?
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Chapter 6
The Maafa and African Resistance to it Essential to Evolution of
Consciousness
One means of recognizing the evolution of the collective African Self is to recount
how Africans have resisted Arab and European intrusions and oppression. American
schools and media have historically neglected to tell of African resistance to their
intrusions and oppression, from the earliest times of contact to the present day.
Providing this education would defeat their purpose of suppressing the African
collective consciousness. Perhaps if we review the long series of African resistance
movements, we will better appreciate the collective consciousness behind this
resistance. The African Collective Consciousness has not, and will not, accept without
modification, the limiting structures imposed by Arab and European colonialism. It will
by its very nature resist and find ways to transform these limiting structures. This battle
is as old as the battle between good and evil, chaos and order, Heru and Set. It is a battle
that still rages and the African Collective is still resisting.
In his master work, “Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from
4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D,” Dr. Chancellor Williams recounts the resistance of the African
collective to both Arab and European intrusions into Africa throughout the wide sweep
of ourstorical encounters with them. Dr. Henrik Clark and many other great African
historians have also recounted the Maafa (great destruction) from the African
viewpoint. They have tracked the Maafa perpetrated against African civilization, at the
hands of first Arabs and then Europeans, far before 1492 with the inauguration of the
“slave trade” by Spain and Portugal. They show the continuity and effects of alien
assaults as they reached the high-water marks such as the parceling of Africa to
European powers at the Berlin conference of 1832, chattel slavery in the Americas, Jim
Crow and segregation in the U.S., neo-colonialism and economic dependency on the
African continent, and racism on an international scale in current times.
That fact that Africans on the continent and the African Diaspora as a collective
withstood the assault on our collective body and consciousness, stands as a testament
to our inner spiritual strength. The focus here will be on that collective resistance and
strength starting from 1492 and continuing to modern times rather than on the attempts
by Europeans to put out the light of African glory the globe over. Yet it is important to
know the principle strategies used by Europeans throughout history to subjugate
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Africans, including divide and conquer, religious exceptionalism (manifest destiny), and,
of course, brute force. These strategies produce constants in the African world that
amount to a position of disorganization, underdevelopment, and cultural misorientation
for Africans wherever we are. Below are just some of the movements initiated by
Africans since the industrialization of slavery by Europe. Viewed as a related whole,
they express the ancestral wisdom and the evolution of collective African
Consciousness.
➢ Back to Africa movements in the U.S. and the establishment of the first Black
institutions
➢ Black Seminole Indian wars of resistance in Florida
➢ Resistance by Maroon Societies
➢ Haitian revolution
➢ The American Civil War
➢ Black Reconstruction in the U.S.
➢ Repatriation efforts as with “The Black Manifesto” of 1969
➢ Negritude movement founded by Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Léopold
Sédar Senghor (the first President of Senegal), and Léon Damas of French
Guiana
➢ Garvey movement
➢ Niagara movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois
➢ Pan-African Conferences led initially by W.E.B. Du Bois
➢ South African freedom movement spearheaded by the African National
Congress
➢ The great migrations of Blacks out of the Southern U.S. and into Northern
cities
➢ Civil Rights movement in the U.S.
➢ Black Power movement in the U.S.
Here I give only a brief commentary on a few of the above movements, placing
them in the context of the evolution of African collective consciousness as I exhort the
need for reading of the African experience. It is all too prevalent that we read history
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as a collection of episodic and disjointed events rather than see how they are part of a
whole continuum of human development and, in the case with this book, the evolution
of African collective consciousness.
Resistance by Maroon Societies
I mentioned earlier that an important indication of the expansion of collective
African Self-consciousness is when we individually and collectively refuse to be defined
by others and to take on the cultural values of other groups, facilitating their survival
thrusts at the expense of our own group (Measure 6). What can these Maroon societies
Africans established everywhere on the periphery to slave-centered societies in the
Americas tell us about the evolving Spirit of the African collective? Certainly, the
formation of Maroon societies by those ancestors who rejected the European system
of enslavement, who braved the unknown and inhospitable terrain (out of easy reach
by slave catchers) to win their relative freedom and establish safe areas, is an example
of the indomitable Spirit of the African. These maroon societies, also referred to as
Palmares or Quilombos, would range in number from just a few runaways to thousands
spread out along the periphery of the established slave town.
Common African responses to common conditions of oppression can give us some
indication of how the African collective Spirit has evolved, even as that Spirit was
challenged in the most severe way in ourstory of humanity. Rather than being a band
of disorganized brutes, the members of the maroon societies usually followed a
recognized leader, typically designated as king. This king had trusted emissaries to help
dispense order and security for the society. There were codes of honor and ethics within
these societies that included the regulation of marriage and even the sharing of women
between men when there were shortages of women in the society. New members were
accepted based on demonstration of loyalty to the society. Disloyalty was usually met
with a death sentence as revealing the location or logistics of the Maroon society could
lead to its destruction. Certainly, the leaders of these societies learned never to
underestimate the European’s intent on either absolutely controlling the African, or if
that could not be done, destroying the African altogether. This understanding was not
fully appreciated by those Africans on the African Continent who allowed the European
to gain a foothold on African soil.
Other variations of this all-out resistance of the African are: sabotage of tools and
implements of the slavers, setting fires in towns, clandestine murders, and even all-out
warfare as with Haiti and the Seminole wars that included a large percentage of Africans
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fighting for their freedom. In some cases, the Europeans, finding the complete resolve
of the fighting Maroon societies, sued for a relative peaceful coexistence. Once the
Europeans managed to gain any advantage over these Maroon societies, they pressed
that advantage to destroy them. Even so, they continued to spring up. Some of these
societies have lasted into our modern day. In some cases, Maroon societies remained
intact until the independence of the country in which they established themselves. Some
evolved overtime into modern towns with a rich cultural heritage, engaging in farming,
trade, and African spirituality, expressing African survivals in the new world. The
descendants of these African warrior societies will speak proudly of the traditions and
culture of resistance handed down by their ancestors.
Where Africans did not separate from Europeans by running away from their system
of enslavement, they frequently created cultural expressions that maintained a
semblance of African ourstorical remembrance. This includes their creation of new
religious forms such as Voodoo, Santeria, and Palmares, as already mentioned. These
creations can be viewed in the light of Africans individually and collectively refusing to
be defined by others and taking on the cultural values of other groups, facilitating their
survival thrusts at the expense of our own group.
In Maroon societies, you will find the purified resolve of Africans to be free and
independent of White domination. This does not mean other Africans did not have the
same hope or aspiration. Of course they did. It just means that in Maroon societies you
have Africans who made the dream happen. They risked all, sacrificing the familiar, family
ties, and physical life to be free, and they made it happen. So yes, I appreciate the need of
relating our present circumstance to the motivation of those first Maroons. Now we must
find the "Maroon within us" in our day, in our way. We need to make a renewed push for
independence and freedom in our existing plantation lives; and that will have to equate to
material independence. I see no way that can happen without land, and industry. Where is
this land and potential for industry? Africa! Africans in America need to reestablish
business links with Africans on the mother continent.
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian revolution, from 1791 to 1804, is emblematic of the African struggle
worldwide against European oppression. The enslaved Africans in Haiti were behind
the defeat of the most powerful European armies of the times, the French, the Spanish,
and the British. It was the most successful slave rebellion in the Americas that resulted
in an independent African Nation. This means that the Africans in Haiti did not have
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other African successful revolutions to draw on, but rather had to draw upon the
African collective consciousness to reaffirm their humanity, their determination to be
free and vision for self-governance. The African collective consciousness as expressed
in Haiti was carried to the island through the spirits of captured Africans from the West
coastal regions (Guinea coast, Senegal, Togo, Benin, current-day Nigeria) and South
Central regions of Africa (Current-day Angola and Congo). Each transportation of
African prisoners of war to Haiti brought with it an infusion of the essential spiritual
information and resolve needed to confront and defeat the European enslavers. This
reservoir of information was contained within the African spiritual culture, which when
developed in Haiti is known as Vodou. It is helpful here to quote from Richard King
(1990) to give another perspective on this reaching into the reservoir of the African
Collective consciousness for the information needed to combat European oppression:
“Just as there are written records and geological records of humanities’ past there
are biological and mental records of humanities’ origin. The collective is that part
of the human mind which contains the mental records of one’s ancestors and is
that body of knowledge developed by our ancestors and accumulated over
millions of years. The libraries of our mind are infinite, and contain the wisdom
of all man’s past, present, and even the future unity of universal knowledge,
universal life. The hallmark of humanity was the mind. The mind stored the
ability to think, to observe, measure, theorize and thereby communicate with
nature. The mind was indeed the reservoir of millions of years of African
experience in science medicine, art, religion, architecture, military psychology,
culture, and magic, all forming the collective unconscious core upon which all
humanity was patterned. … Knowledge of Black ancestral history provided the
access to and the translation of the collective unconscious memory banks.” (p.
7)
This reservoir is the totality of collective African consciousness containing all past and
present knowledge and wisdom. It was accessed by the initial leaders of the Haitian
revolution to guide their movements to victory over the European powers of the day
and achieve independence.
Leading up to the revolution, Africans had already endured the some of the most
dehumanizing experiences any people have ever experienced at the hands of the French.
Below is a passage from Henri Christophe’s personal secretary that catalogs just some
of the atrocities committed by the French. Henry Christophe was a major agent in the
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Haitian Revolution and elected president of Haiti after the assassination of Dessalines,
who himself was emblematic of the true heart and collective soul of the revolution.
“Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks,
crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have then
not forced them to consume feces? And, having flayed them with the lash, have
they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed
them to stakes in the swap to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown
them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women
inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the
abyss? Have then not consigned these miserable blacks to man-eating dogs until
the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with
bayonet and poniard?”
The collective decision to go to war against the European enslavers was therefore a
matter of life or death and the affirmation of African humanity. In the African retelling
of the Haitian revolution, we are told that it commenced with a spiritual ritual known
as the Bois Caimen Ceremony, and was overseen by Dutty Boukman and a Voodoo
priestess named Cecile Fatiman. African deities were invoked for assistance, and the
members took a blood oath of loyalty to each other and the uncompromising vow to
wipe the French out of the Island in total. This is the African way, to call on the
ancestors, and spiritual guardians who represent the Divine Will, for good on earth, for
support to throw off evil and chaos, which for Dessalines and his followers were in the
form of all French White people on the island. The African collective consciousness, as
expressed in the early stage of the Haitian revolution was advanced to a high level, and
would serve as the foundation for Pan-African World revolutions to come.
These victories, followed by the institution of the sovereign Black nation to throw
off the European slave enterprise, served as a beacon of light to Africans the world
over. It certainly gave hope to those Africans who learned of this great accomplishment,
that someday they too may be free from European oppression. The Haitian government
enacted two decrees that stand out as a testament to the Black Haitian’s determination
to remain a sovereign country and to promote freedom for all Africans from European
oppression. The government degreed that no White person could own land in the
country. It also decreed that any African person who sets foot on Haitian soil is
considered and treated as a free person. These few mentioned elements alone
demonstrate the fighting spirit of the African collective and its evolution beyond the
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most severe constraints of European oppression. Haiti as a sovereign nation, has been
targeted especially by European powers for control or destruction ever since its
independence.
The many lessons to be learned from that revolution are still applicable in our daily
lives even now. For example, the "Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" (Harold Cruse, 1967)
as suffered by Toussaint Louverture, exemplified in his desire to be accepted by the
French colonial power, is still present in force with accommodation/integrationist
Blacks of today who seek a more comfortable status within the system of White
domination, or the right to equally oppress lower-class Blacks. The pervasive impact of
the Haitian revolution on Africans in the diaspora today are echoed in the introduction
of Jacob H. Carruthers (“Irritated Genie of Haiti”:
“Race Vindication has long been a major theme in the consciousness of Blacks
living in the United States... Early conceptualizations of this consciousness in the
second decade of the 19th century reflected on the Haitian Revolution as a
demonstration of race redemption... The liberator of Haiti, Jean Jacques
Dessalines, in his speech accepting the office of Governor General for Life of
the newly Independent Black Nation, referring to the possible attempted
invasion of Haiti, asserted that upon their approach... "The irritated genie of Haiti
looming out of the bosom of the sea appears, his menacing face rouses the
waves, stirs up storms and his mighty hand smashes or scatters their ships." We
may well describe the spirit of the Haitian Revolution as the "Irritated Genie of
Haiti.” (Introduction)”
In his book, Island of Memes, Wade Nobles (2015) addresses the collective
consciousness imbued in Haitians from their African origins, through their
imprisonment and transport to Haiti, through their war of independence against the
French, Spanish, and British, and to the present. His research for this book was initially
motivated by the effort to rehabilitate the Haitian mind after the devastation of the 2010
earthquake. He refers to the collective consciousness of Haiti as it developed from its
revolutionary period to the present as composed of various Memes, or sensoria-
information structures. These structures correspond to types of consciousness or
mentalities that shape how a group interprets reality and reproduces approved behavior
patterns or schematic rules of conduct.
“The process by which sensorial-information structures symbiotically infect the
mind or consciousness so as to reinforce and/or propagate the sensorial is called
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“memetic ideation.” Thus, one can classify types of consciousness or mentalities
(e.g., slave mentality, Black consciousness, Franco/Anglophone, etc.) by the
defining nature of the memetic cluster fundamental to its character. Through
these processes. Memetic information is shrouded with the intentionality of
grasping a subject or acquiring certain information, ideas, values, beliefs, and
behaviors that are valuable for future life performance – especially that
information related to the promotion of one’s welfare and well-being … Memes
or sensoria-information structures can be in the form of ideas, symbols, images,
feelings, words, customs, sounds, practices, or any other knowable and
perceptible item or substance. Religion, political dogma, social philosophy or
movements, aesthetics and artistic styles, traditions, customs, and every
component of culture (behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, habits, beliefs,
language, rituals, ceremonies, and practices) co-evolve and serve in symbiotic
relationships as a meme-complex.” (p. 55)
Nobles analyzes the experiences of the major combatants in the Haitian revolution
and uncovers the memes that each had shown to have adopted. These memes serve as
windows to shifting collective consciousness of Black Haitians. The memes he identifies
do not all govern the African Haitian pathways towards liberation and self-
determination. Some, as he points out, cause a shattering of African Self-
Consciousness, and thus have retarded or stunted the Haitian revolution. Below I
summarize some of the positive memes, mentalities, or “Cash of Consciousness” of
Haitians during their initial revolutionary period.
Positive Memes:
➢ Africans are just as worthy of freedom, equality, justice, and self-determination
as any other people.
➢ The Haitian revolution will be won by the support of African deities and the
Divine Will; whereas the European God must be rejected.
➢ All Black people and Mulattoes must unite as one people to remove all White
French rule in Haiti. This is expressed in the provision of the first constitution
that prohibits a White person from owning land in Haiti whereby he can be
named a master or lord.
➢ The land of Haiti belongs to all Haitians, not just to a supposed elite segment
(White or Mulatto, or elite Black) of the population.
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➢ All Haitians are equal. There will be no noble class, no caste system, no status
based on color gradients, no aristocratic or monarchal rule.
➢ No religion will be privileged by the state.
➢ In the event of war for freedom, the cities will be sacrificed, the populace moved
to the mountains, from which guerrilla war will be waged against the invader.
➢ The African deities and ancestors combined with the determined will of the
Black people of Haiti, will deter any invader.
Negative Memes:
➢ Haitians are equally French citizens (a meme adopted by Toussaint L’Ouverture).
➢ French Culture is superior to African culture.
➢ Whites and mulattoes are more human and intelligent than Blacks.
➢ Christian religion will be the officially state recognized religion.
➢ Christian religion is divinely inspired, whereas African religion is demonic or a
heathen religion.
➢ Africans were meant to be ruled by Whites and Mulattoes; therefore, slavery is
an acceptable condition for Africans.
Nobles posits that the Haitian mind, throughout its revolutionary period and leading
up to modern times, has been infected by both the positive and negative memes listed,
to the displaced affect that Haitians are not able to consummate their revolution. Today,
Haitian society is essentially a three-tiered one, both socially and economically. Whites
are at the top tier and the mulattoes are in the middle, serving as a buffer against the
lowest group, Black Haitians. Unfortunately, the path of the revolution forged by
Dessalines and his supporters has been covered over or otherwise detoured by the anti-
African forces and memes that have infected the Haitian mind producing and
reproducing behaviors that are antithetical to African sovereignty in Haiti. Wade Nobles
frames the current state of Haiti as follows:
“The fragile and tattered societal fabric of Haiti’s social structure, pillared by
“White elitism,” “Privileged Mulattism,” and “poor Blackism,” is an
impermeable netting that should be seen as the “waste matter” of the cache of
culture and consciousness in the soul of Haiti. The beliefs and behaviors of
Haiti’s White elite, privileged Mulattoes, and poor Blacks are in many ways the
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simultaneous playing forward of Mackandal’s African consciousness in captivity
with Boukman’s resistance to containment; Toussaint’s embrace of French
superiority; Dessalines’ instinctual rescue of the African mind; Christophe’s
sorrowful attempt at planting Euro-pean models in African soil; Petion’s attempt
at compromise and acculturation; and Papa Doc’s eroding corruption of
traditional African thought and practice. Today, the White elite, privileged
Mulatto, and poor Black in Haiti will all forcefully declare themselves to be
Haitian. Yet in this place called Haiti, under the banner of Haiti, you will find a
social stratum of privilege and denigration as rigid as America’s racial segregation,
South Africa’s apartheid, and India’s caste system. For all Haitians, the rigid
psychological boundaries that separate the White elite, privileged so called
Mulattoes, and poor Blacks are as impermeable as they are invisible. It is this
cache of consciousness with its complex holding of conflicting and competing
memetic ideations that makes it so. The White elite consciousness while extoling
to be Haitian (and pure) is infected with memetic ideations supporting beliefs in
the superiority of things French.” (p. 159)
Wide Impact of European Memes on African Societies
Why have Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea not been able to establish
democratic rule? African societies have histories of rule by monarchies, such as that of
Ethiopia up to Haile Selassie. Constitutional democracies are the exception in the
history of these countries. The transition to democracies is made complicated by the
propping up of warring factions that will concede to do the bidding of foreign powers
in exchange for arms to give an advantage over the next faction. This often led to
resource extraction or control of strategic geography by means other than direct
colonial rule of the past. It is far easier for a foreign power to influence a monarchical
or dictatorial regime by corrupting its head than it is to manipulate a multi-party
democratic constitutional government that has a balance of powers. This is one of the
main reasons why fledgling democracies have failed in many African counties after
independence. Furthermore, the Arabization and Islamization of these countries places
them under pressure to make Sharia law the functional law of the country, rather than
the will of the indigenous people as expressed through democratic processes. The
collective African Spirit is not limited by any one set of religious laws. Religious
freedom, and the ability to express the Divine through indigenous cultural forms, is a
wider expression of the evolving African Spirit.
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Though there has broadly been a concerted resistance to European and Arab
intrusions of various forms into Africa (the European slave trade, colonialism, and neo-
colonialism) the African collective, in its confused and disorganized state, to a large
extent mirrored the values of its conquerors, which consequently slowed its spiritual
evolution. Through the process of colonialism, and subjugation, we have forgotten
much of the wisdom teachings of ancient African civilizations, i.e. ancient Egypt. From
another perspective, the European intrusion into the African collective can be seen to
have fostered, to some degree, an internal resistance that has furthered the spiritual
advancement of the African collective. There is strength and power realized through
victorious struggle. Here are just a few references to African resistance to Arab and
European domination:
➢ Who Betrayed the African World Revolution?: And Other Speeches Aug 1, 1993
by John Henrik Clarke
➢ The Legacy of Arab-Islam In Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue
Paperback – August 27, 2001 by John Alembillah Azumah
➢ How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney
➢ Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas 3rd Edition by
Richard Price
➢ The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers and the African
Elite Paperback – March 12, 1975 by Chinweizu
➢ Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral by Amilcar Cabral
➢ The Irritated Genie by Jacob H. Carruthers
➢ Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico Paperback – December 17, 2014 by Guillermo A
Baralt
➢ The Invisible War: African American Anti-Slavery Resistance from the Stono
Rebellion through the Seminole Wars Paperback – July 10, 2006 Edited by K.N
KLY
➢ Black Power and the Garvey Movement by Vincent, Theodore G.
Black Reconstruction
We can say the irritated genie of Haiti was also out of the bottle in the U.S. during
the Reconstruction period, and though severe attempts were made to put it back into
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the bottle through the Black Codes, Jim Crow, and legal segregation, the irrepressible
Spirit for African liberation could not be forever contained. During Reconstruction, as
with the civil rights era, various civil rights were passed that removed some of the
societal impediments to Black liberty. Land rights, the right to vote, the right to hold
office, the right to marry, the right to education and employment. Black people
demonstrated an ability to manage levers of power within the body politic of American
society.
Black politicians were caricatured during that time by Whites in their news presses
as being buffoons and totally inept in carrying out the duties of high political office
such as the Senate and House of Representatives. Blacks were granted Civil rights, the
right to vote, and to hold office. Yet, these civil rights were revoked during White
reactionary backlash, starting in the late 1870s and backed by the presidency of Andrew
Jackson. This is a lesson to us that in this society where Black people are a minority,
Black people cannot rely on the U.S. government alone to ensure their human and civil
rights. This is a point that Malcolm X made about a hundred years later. The genie was
out of the bottle. Black people had a taste, even if only for a brief decade, of
egalitarianism and political power. Though these same Black civil liberties would not be
recognized by White power holders for another 100 years, the progressive
consciousness of the African collective would not allow these liberties to be denied.
The new battle front for African liberation in the U.S. would be come to be called the
Civil Rights and Black Power movements.
Civil Rights era, a Major Growth Movement in African Collective
Consciousness
The Civil Rights era is one of the most overt examples of the evolving Collective
African Consciousness in recent times. It can be said this era produced the new Black
man, who was before then the “so-called Negro,” as Malcolm X used to commonly say
in his public addresses. It is hard to place a limit to how the consciousness of Africans
in America expanded due to the battles fought and won against overt racism in
American society, starting with say the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
In that decision, Africans in America were legally, if not in practice, deemed entitled
to an equal education to Whites in the same schools. This ruling would serve as a
precedent to strike down the application of “separate but equal” laws and customary
practices in every state of the union. It gave momentum to the drive to desegregate
colleges, workplaces, public facilities, and all other vestiges of segregation throughout
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America. No doubt, this had a transformative ripple effect upon the minds and spirits
of All Africans in America. The Brown vs. Board of Education landmark decision,
emboldened Africans to challenge racism at its core, which we saw in the sit-ins, the
freedom rides, the voter registration confrontations, and the demand for fair treatment
in the workforce. High water marks of the Civil Rights struggle are the Montgomery
Bus Boycott, the march across the Selma, Alabama bridge in defiance the likes of
George Wallace, and of course the march on Washington. However, there were so
many other smaller episodes that when viewed collectively, speaks to the collective
evolution the African Consciousness as expressed in America.
The below stories tell of the collective consciousness and collective Spirit of
resistance to White racism embodied by the Black ancestors who participated in the
Montgomery boycott. If we quietly reflect on them, we can feel as though we ourselves
went through the experience. Perhaps this is so because we see the same elements
playing out today, just in different surface appearances. Perhaps it is also because that
same Spirit which endured those hardships resides in us, that Spirt of the Collective
African Consciousness. The reader is encouraged to cypher in these testimonies the
awareness of individual as being part of a collective movement towards African
liberation.
Joe Azbell (A White news reporter, reporting on a meeting early in the
organizational stage of the Montgomery boycott)
“I was the first white person there. The preachers were preaching as I came in,
and that audience was so on fire that at last this was going to be lifted off of
them. And I recognized that. There as a spirit there that no one could ever
capture again in a movie or anything else, because it was so powerful. The next
day, in a special column, I wrote that this was the beginning of a flame that would
go across America.” (p. 25)
Rufus Lewis (Director at a Black funeral home and a founder of the Montgomery
Improvement Association.)
“I walked because I wanted everything to be better for us. Before the boycott,
we were stuffed in the back of the bus just like cattle. And if we got to a seat, we
couldn’t sit down in that seat. We had to stand up over that seat. I work hard all
day, and I had to stand up all the way home, because I couldn’t have a seat on
the us. And if you sit down on the bus, the bus driver would say, ‘Let me have
that seat, nigger.” And you’d have to get up (or the police would come and either
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lot them up, or worse). A lot of times that we’d go to the front, he wouldn’t let
us in the front. He’d take our money at the front, and then before we could come
on through the back door he’d drive off and leave us standing there. He done
took our money and gone. That’s how it was and that’s why I walked. I wanted
to cooperate with the majority of the people that had on the boycott. I wanted
to be one of them that tried to make it better. I didn’t want somebody else to
make it better for me. I walked. I never attempted to take the bus. Never. I was
tired, but I didn’t have no desire to get on the bus.
When King’s house was bombed, it affected the whole Black community,
because they acted as though their house was bombed, and crowds of people
gathered right down the street where he lived. Soon as they heard it, it was a mass
of people in the streets. That’s the way they responded to him. Now, King had
to come out to tell them that his wife and child were safe, and they could go
home. But they didn’t respond to that. They wanted to do something to make
amends for someone bombing his house. That was the way they felt. And later
on, during the night, they gradually went back home. The damage wasn’t bad,
but it was intended to intimidate. It did just the opposite of intimidating. It
roused the Negroes in the community to stand up, not to run and hide. They lost
in their effort to intimidate. They only gave more courage to King’s family and
the Blacks in the community to stand up with him.” (p. 26)
This story speaks to how our Black ancestors galvanized together as one, in effort and
empathy, as they struggled against their common oppressor. They identified with each
other’s plight, in this case with the plight of the new preacher Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., feeling as if their own home was bombed.
Coretta Scott King
“What happened throughout the mass meetings is that there were songs
interspersed. They had an order of service, and so sometimes they would do what
you call the long meter. Someone would come and sing, without an instrument
at all. Then they would have someone who played the piano or the organ, and
they would start, just like they start at the church services. And they wo8uld sing
the songs and the hymns of the church: What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, “What
a Fellowship, What a Joy Divine, Leaning on the Everlasting Ar.” They’d sing
spiritual like ‘Lord, I Want to Be a Christian in My Heart,” and “Oh, Freedom
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Over Me, Before I Be a Slave, I’ll Be Buried in My Grave, and Go Home to My
Lord and Be Free.” Or they would sing “Go Down Moses, Way down in Egypt
Land.”. They would end, of course, after Martin’s message with a song and a
prayer, a benediction and prayer. And everyone would go home feeling good and
inspired and ready to go back the next morning to a long day of hard work. But
I think they could take it a little better, really- even the work that had been
difficult became easier. It was something about that experience that gave all of
us so much hope and inspiration, and the more we got into it, the more we had
the feeling that something could be done about the situation, that we could
change it.” (p. 30)
Coretta Scott King reveals what we all know to be true about any collect Black effort
or struggle, that they are all invariable associated with songs having a prophetic message
that speaks to our collective striving and our expectation of the Divine Presence
through our collective struggle.
Jo Anne Robinson (A firsthand witness to the Montgomery Boycott)
“We did meet after the news came through. All of these people who had fought
for thirteen months got together to communicate and to rejoice and to share that
built-up emotion and all of the other feelings that they had lived with during the
past thirteen months. And we just rejoiced together. We had won self-respect.
We had won a feeling that we had achieved, had accomplished. We felt that we
were somebody, that somebody had to listen to us, that we had forced the white
man to give what we knew was a part of our own citizenship. If you have never
had the feeling that his is not the other man’s country and you are an alien in it,
but that this is your country, too, then you don’t know what I’m talking about.
But it is a hilarious feeling that just goes all over you that makes you feel that
America is a great country and we’re going to do more to make it greater.” (p.
31)
I think today Black folks still feel alienated from American society and find it hard
to call it our country when the dominant people of the society, White people, work so
hard to strip us of our inalienable rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and
equality; yet still we strive to elevate this country to be more than what it is. We strive
most importantly to be unlimited expressions of the Highest Divinity of Universal
Response, whose African names we’ve forgotten.
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For many of us who were aware of the actual event of the March on Washington at
or near the time it happened, as I was, this march represented the epitome of the Civil
Rights Movement, and the foundational ground from which future gains in the rights
of Black people in America would be won. Some, like Malcolm X, did not see it that
way. For Malcolm X, the march was representative of the sellout, compromised
position of integrationist leaders. Shortly after the march, Malcolm X gave commentary
on the march in his “Message to the Grass Roots,” where he called the March on
Washington “a sellout” and “a takeover.” He went on to say that, “They told those
Negroes what time to hit town, how to come, where to stop, what signs to carry, what
song to sing, what speech they could make, and then they told them to get out of town
by sundown.” One eyewitness to the march, Ivanhoe Donaldson who was a field
secretary for SNCC, agreed with some of the naysayers as to the tangible outcomes of
the march, but saw also some positive result as well. He put it this way:
“I think that a lot of people felt, because of the drama and the vast greatness of
it all, that somehow, we had turned the mystical corner, that a new era of
humanity and social consciousness and social justice was now on the table. That
didn’t happen. So, the rhetoricians and the activists are correct when they say
there was no major accomplishment because of the march, but at the same time,
it does represent a continuum in the struggle, and the need from time to time to
create exclamation points and question marks and commas, so that people can
define themselves in some time frame, which is also important to an organizer,
to bring something to a culmination, to take people to a next step.” (p. 168)
I think Ivanhoe Donaldson was pointing us to see that there indeed was a shift in
the general consciousness of African people in America and that this shift was marked
by the mass demonstration of the march on Washington. It is from the basis of this
shift in consciousness that further organized steps can be taken to gain more tangible
results in terms of enforced rights for Africans in America. Indeed, the genie was out
of the bottle and could not be put back in. Never again would Africans in America stay
immobilized while their civil and human rights were blatantly proscribed by state and
federal laws, as the successor Black Power movement demonstrated. The collective
African Consciousness had irreversibly evolved to a higher level of self-awareness and
expression.
I was born in the early 60s and experienced aspects of the Civil Rights era. I was
only six when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I attended an all-Black
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Seventh Day Adventist school, Hanson Place in Brooklyn NY, from ages 7-10. In that
school, we sung Black spirituals and some of the freedom songs of the time such as,
“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn be round”, “This little light of mine”, “Oh freedom Over
Me”, “Lift every voice and sing”, and “We Shall Overcome”. The spirituals served to
reinforce that freedom consciousness. These included: I’m Gonna Lay Down my
Burden, Down by the River Side”, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, and “I’m Gonna Sit
at the Welcome Table.”
These songs were seared into my heart and consciousness. They imbued me with a
sense of social justice and a responsibility to uphold justice in my sphere of influence.
Through these songs and the overall character of that school, I was plugged into the
African collective consciousness of the time, even at that very young age. You can say
I was given a moral compass which would always point me in the direction of social
justice and make me sensitive to all that would obstruct it. Added to this were the
general messages of defiance in the face of injustice given by the Civil Rights movement,
a defiance further advanced later by the Black Power movement. These messages also
came down through the music of the time. Like, James Brown’s “Say it loud I’m Black
and I’m Proud,” or his “I Got Soul and I’m Super Bad.”
In the late 60s and early 70s, I became one with the evolving African Collective
Consciousness, as it was expressed in that place and time. That consciousness was
foundational to everything else that came after in my own life experience, and I imagine
most Black children of that era can say something similar. There was a sense of no quit,
a sense of moral high ground, a sense of God being on your side, a sense that White
people had some exorcisms to go through. We developed a sense that Black people
were creative geniuses and the most important things we needed to create were our
spaces of justice, observance of our inalienable civil and human rights, and our own
identity as an African people living in America.
The evolution of the African collective consciousness during the Civil Rights era
was in symbiotic relationship with the struggle for the independence of states in Africa,
starting of course with Ghana, which was first state to gain independence in 1957. The
evolution of African Collective Consciousness in the American context, in Africa, and
throughout the African Diasporas, revealed Blacks redefining themselves as equal world
citizens, even if in terms of real power and wealth distribution, little changed in the
immediate present.
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Black Power Movement
Masses of Blacks, recognizing the insufficiency of gaining the right to sit next to a
White person at a food counter, a toilet, or a school, precipitated the quest for a shift
in power relations. It precipitated further evolving stage in the mass movement
identified as the Black Power movement of the 60’s and 70’s. The Black power
movement went beyond the demands of the Civil Rights movement, beyond the right
to sit in a school next to a White person; it demanded that Black students be taught
ourstory from the perspectives of our own Black scholars. Black men, having fought in
world war two, were no longer willing to allow vigilante groups and the police to come
into their communities and brutalize them. They were willing to fight back. The Black
Power movement brought with it also a willingness to discard European definitions of
what is right, good, and valuable. It brought a willingness to confront institutions of
White power and demand the transference of some of that power to Black people,
hence the defining cry “Black Power.” Blacks were willing to step out of those
constraints, define themselves, appreciate the beauty and good in their own culture, and
reach back to traditional and ancient African culture. The time was captured with a
song, as major shifts in consciousness usually are:
"AH BEEP BEEP "Ah Beep Beep Walkin down the street Ugawa. Ugawa That
means Black power. White boy. Destroy. I said it. I meant it And I'm here to
represent it. Soul sister number 9 Sock it to me one more time. Uh hun! Uh
Hun!"
This militancy, the willingness to defy oppressive forces with direct force if need be,
to defend one’s community, one’s rights, and one’s life opportunities, was and still is, a
necessary growth step towards self-realization, nation-building, and maintenance. It is
an evolution of collective African consciousness. One of the first natural principles of
any organic body is to devise mechanisms of self-defense, and so the collective African
body devised in each stage of its metamorphosis, necessary means of self-defense.
The normalization of psychological ideations advancing beliefs in superiority of
things White, is common wherever Whites have implanted themselves among Black
people or implanted Black people among themselves. In some places, the attitudes are
very explicit and visible; in other places, the attitudes are not so explicit and visible, as
is the case in many North American states. The effects are always visible with White
people on the top of the socio-economic ladder, Black people on the bottom, and mixed
or other ethnic groups (i.e., Asians or Indians) in the middle. Thus, as the subtitle of
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Wade Nobles’ Island of Memes states, Haiti has an unfinished revolution. For that
matter, most if not all places where Africans predominate have a similar unfinished
revolution. It cannot be said, however, that the vision of total African rule by Africans
in Haiti has been vanquished. The irritated genie and the Haitian revolution will rise
again. The same can be said for African world revolution. The evolution of the
Collective African Consciousness, wherever it expresses, can never be destroyed, even
if for a time; it is unconscious. Warriors like Desselines will continue to invoke the
African deities and ancestors push our collective consciousness to higher levels so that
we may fulfill our collective destiny.
Reorientation of Progressive African Consciousness in Modern Times
From a broad perspective of ourstory, we can see aspects of the Haitian revolution
and its arrested momentum playing out similarly through major collective movements
of the 20th and 21st centuries throughout the African diaspora and on the continent of
Africa. Wade Nobles’ concept of memes or group behavior shaping ideations in the
revolutionary Haitian context, can be instructive in assessing the evolving African
collective consciousness in places that are either under the domination of European
majorities as in the Americas, or under colonial/neo-colonial rule, as on the African
continent. We can see the purified resolve for African sovereignty in the 20th and 21st
centuries through African participation in wars of independence in the African
Diaspora of the Americas, as well as in the struggle for independent African states on
the African continent.
Most of these mass movements for African freedom and sovereignty are well
documented due to modern technological advancements in printing, photography,
voice recording including radio, movie making, television, and later, computer
information systems as with the internet. We thus have more reliable records and
sources for investigating the evolution of collective African Self-consciousness. We
have better documentation of the African drive for liberation, cultural renewal, material
improvement, and spiritual advancement through the major developments that include
the American Civil War, the American period of Black reconstruction, newly won
African independent states starting with Ghana and Nigeria, the Marcus Garvey
movement, the great migration of Blacks from the South to Northern Cities, the
American Civil Rights & Black Power movements, the birth of the Organization of
African Unity (OAU), the successor organization to the OAU, and the African Union
itself (AU).
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The various stages of this grand evolution in African consciousness of the 20th and
21st centuries are exemplified or embodied in prominent leaders of African descent that
include Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Fredric Douglas, Martin Delany, W.E.B Du
Bois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture (born Stokely Standiford Churchill
Carmichael), Kwame Nkrumah, Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral, Bantu Stephen Biko,
Patrice Lumumba, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. These African descendent
leaders were products and representative of the shift and progressive development of
African collective consciousness in their day. They pushed their African constituents to
new and higher levels of African self-consciousness and sovereignty and were iconic
symbols of the newly established advancements in African collective spiritual
development. Had the individual names never existed, the collective body of African
Consciousness would have produced them anyway. In other words, the demand of the
times produced the leader, and not the other way around.
Each stage of development in African collective consciousness has its merit and
vital importance as a foundation for the next stage. The accomplishment of African
freedom from slavery in the American context (and not enough credit is given to how
Africans freed themselves from American enslavement), is no less important than the
establishment of the African Union. However, the African Union is the highest stage
of our historical development since the beginning of the Maafa, or 500 years of the
African Holocaust perpetrated by Arabs and Europeans. Each stage of our
development not only shows our collective positive resolve to break the physical,
mental chains of Arab and European enslavement, but also reveals how our collective
psyche has been negatively impacted by the White supremacy aspirations embedded in
behavior modifying memes adopted by Africans under European domination.
On the one hand, we see the uncompromising stance of the Black Power movement
to replace European values and power structures with African self-determining cultural
constructs. On the other hand, we also see the failure of Africans in America adopting
integrationist ideals at the expense of African collective economics in the American
context. Where we see the rediscovery of traditional African cultural values by Africans
in the American context, we also see the continued damaging effect of Africans in
America still embracing the concept of a White God and a White Jesus who are the
only dispensers of spiritual salvation. African deities and Ancestral worship are shunned
by Europeans and by Africans in America who embrace European interpretations
(memes) of religions. So, as the Haitian revolution is incomplete and in many was
stalled, so too is the African collective evolution stalled for similar reasons.
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The African Union is the result of shedding limiting facets of the heavy influence of
neo-colonial constructs embedded within the newly formed independent African states.
It is worth considering the overall objectives of the African Union as stated in its formal
constitution. The below is sourced from the Constitutive Act of African Union 2000.
The objectives of the Union shall be to:
a) Achieve greater unity and solidarity between the African countries and the
peoples of Africa;
b) Defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of its Member
States;
c) Accelerate the political and socio-economic integration of the continent;
d) Promote and defend African common positions on issues of interest to the
continent and its peoples;
e) Encourage international cooperation, taking due account of the Charter of
the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
f) Promote peace, security, and stability on the continent;
g) Promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and
good governance;
h) Promote and protect human and peoples’ rights in accordance with the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other relevant human
rights instruments;
i) Establish the necessary conditions which enable the continent to play its
rightful role in the global economy and in international negotiations;
j) Promote sustainable development at the economic, social and cultural levels
as well as the integration of African economies; living standards of African
peoples;
k) Coordinate and harmonize the policies between the existing and future
Regional Economic Communities for the gradual attainment of the objectives
of the Union;
l) Advance the development of the continent by promoting research in work
with relevant international partners in the eradication of preventable diseases
and the promotion of good health on the continent.
These ideals expressed in the AU constitution express the height of historical evolution
towards collective African consciousness through that organizational body. However,
the African Union too, is a stage in the ever-evolving African collective consciousness.
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One can see where the formal creation of the United States of Africa would be a further
evolution from the AU.
The African liberation tradition on the continent and in the diaspora, has grappled
with issues of African identity, African unity, African self-determination, African
misorientation, a united African front, a United State of Africa, a Sankofa approach to
current African consciousness, and strategies for survival under extreme capitalism.
Western powers have also sent out heat seeking missiles to destroy these gains in
African location. It is for us today to honor these past movements, by filling the
positions left by our ancestors. To do otherwise is to betray them and ourselves. No
one will do this for us. No one can or should. No one will save us but us. We are not
kept around to compete with Europeans, but to continue to build them up through
exploitation. We must withdraw that work and administer first aid to ourselves. To build
for another, at the expense of the African collective development, is what it always
meant to for us to be a slave. The evolving African Collective Consciousness demands
that we move past that stage today, learning from yesterday’s lessons taught by our
enslaved and exploited ancestors.
Where is our Mass Movement Today? Is it Dead?
Some argue that Black people in America are currently, and for the past 500 years
have been, powerless under the system of racism and White supremacy aspiration. One
reason given is that we have not overturned the system thus far and so cannot do it
today. In addressing this argument, we must first challenge the definition of power and
the all-or-nothing proposition of having it. We must challenge the notion that just
because a war cannot be won in a day that the underdog is powerless to win it in the
long run. Developments have different phases, like the blooming of a tree, there is the
seed stage that has the instruction for development.
There is the stage where the seed is planted in the mud or dirt, which is analogous
to our transplantation from our natural culture, into a racist culture of enslavement.
There is the stage of the seed breaking through its own casing, the re-awakening of
African self-determination. There is the stage where the sprout breaks through the
ground, as in the wars our African ancestors fought for liberation. Everything prior to
this point is relevant, is progressive, is necessary, but is not manifest to the surface to
see. Then there are stages of further development before the blooming. This is a
description of our collective self-consciousness, mobilization and organization, and
collective Self-realization. The seemingly disjointed, unaffiliated movements on the
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surface of our collective actions have an underlying basis of unity that can again
manifest as a Black Race Movement. It was done with Garvey, which means it can be
done again.
Furthermore, it is inconceivable that Blacks in America would accept being put back
into chattel slavery So, there must have been a Black Power advance beyond that
limitation. Nor can we conceive of Blacks accepting public lynching where thousands
come from surrounding areas to watch and newspapers advertise beforehand. So, there
must have been a Black Power beyond that limitation. We cannot conceive of accepting
an amendment denying Blacks to right to vote. There are many things that are
inconceivable that Black people would accept. So, there must have been an advance
beyond those limitations.
Now this is not to say that racism and White dominance has not refined itself,
changed its methods to achieve its goals. Lynching is done by other means today,
particularly by racists police. The denial of the right to vote is accomplished in
numerous other ways. However, there is no denying the resolve of Blacks to never go
back to legalized oppression (Slavery and Jim Crow). Only Black Power accomplishes
that. There are other levels of liberation that remain to be realized, and I have no doubt
that Maat will triumph over Isfet (correct order/justice over chaos/injustice). The Spirit
behind Black Power is the power that moves it forward. That Spirit is one with the
Divine and is always present. It may be in a hidden state or it may come to the front
and dominate the activity of a people. Even in its hidden state, it is evolving through
the lives of our people.
In the immediate years following emancipation, Black people in America owned half
of one percent of the wealth of the United States. Today, Blacks in America owns half
of one percent of the wealth of the United States. Similar statistics can be given for land
ownership. Does that mean we are not progressing in power? Can there be true power
without ownership of land and a proportionate ownership of the means of production?
Do we have knowledge/power to increase these? A larger question is, by gaining a
greater share of the country's wealth and resources, are we aiming to be like them, to
operate like them? If knowledge is power, as the saying goes, don't Black people have
knowledge of what is demeaning to our collective soul, and will by force of that
consciousness remove the blights, even if in stages? If knowledge is power, do we not
have power, by our knowledge of our oppressor? They say also the greatest knowledge
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is that of Self. Do we not have a greater knowledge of our collective self than ever
before? Is not therefore our Black Power progressing?
Modern Movements Pointing to the Continued Evolution of African
Consciousness
We should ask, “Where is the higher collective consciousness in the face of
European supremacy aspiration in the 21st Century? How is it expressed?” Here is a list
of just some of the mass movements initiated by Africans around the world that express
the continuum of resistance to European oppression, and to the continuum of the
evolution of African collective consciousness.
➢ Organization of African Unity (OAU), which has morphed into the African
Union
➢ NAACP and Urban League
➢ Zimbabwe fight for land
➢ Million marches in the U.S.
➢ Tribute to the ancestors
➢ African festivals - Caribbean parades
➢ Some conscious and revolutionary forms of Rap and Hip Hop in America
➢ Afrocentricity and other metacognitive paradigms for Black empowerment
As African collective consciousness evolves, we see a deeper collective reflection on
our condition, and the development of theories to help explain our condition. One such
theory is the Cress Theory of Color Confrontation, by psychiatrist Dr. Francis Cress
Welsing. This theory posits Europeans are motivated to racist behavior by their deep-
seeded fear of genetic annihilation by the dominant African gene pool. We also have
seen metacognition formulations such as Afrocentricity, as developed by Molefe
Asante. It is a way of viewing reality and analyzing phenomena, using the interest of
African people as a reference point. From the standpoint of Afrocentricity, claims of
being objective, colorblind, universal, modern, and progressive will take Africans away
from our own interests, our authentic lived experience, and our collective destiny.
Asante (2003) defines Afrocentricity as: “…a mode of thought and action in which the centrality
of African interests, values, and perspectives predominate. Regarding theory, it
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is the placing of African people in the center of any analysis of African
phenomena. Thus, it is possible for anyone to master the discipline of seeking
the location of Africans in each phenomenon. In terms of action and behavior,
it is a devotion to the idea that what is in the best interest of African
consciousness is at the heart of ethical behavior. Finally, Afrocentricity seeks to
enshrine the idea that blackness itself is a trope of ethics. Thus, to be black is to
be against all forms of oppression, racism, classism, homophobia, patriarchy,
child abuse, pedophilia, and white racial domination.” (p. 2)
Afrocentricity as initially elucidated by Asante was a product of the times (the 1970s)
and has also evolved since. It was synthesized to respond to what he referred to as a
dislocation of African people away from a viewing of the world from our own interests,
experiences (historical and current), and values. It was a response to “moving African
people off our own terms,” as Asante put it. This Afrocentric approach was not
occurring in Academia, or in the general culture in a pervasive way. We were seeing
things from a conditioned Eurocentric view. Afrocentricity was then aimed at
correcting that. I don't think Asante ever claimed that he was the first to attempt to
correct that. For me, it does not matter who is first second or third. What matters is the
continual affirmation in each generation of a determination to bring an African
worldview into manifestation in terms of our lived experience, under our own terms as
a sovereign people.
More on Developing an Afrocentric Worldview
Mukasa Afrika Ma’at (2010) talks about an African World:
“ ... What is the Afrikan worldview? It is essential to give a clear understanding
of the Afrikan worldview and what is meant when we are discussing it. The
Afrikan worldview must include at some levels, among the following:
1. A racial and cultural identity of Afrikan-ness is the very foundation of
the Afrikan worldview. If we do not know who we are, we can’t be
conscious of anything else about ourselves.
2. An historical Afrikan consciousness is what the study of history offers
to our generation. As is often said, one must know the past to
understand the present and the future.
3. We must devout loyalty to the present struggles of Afrikan people.
One can be versed in the dates and names of the past, and of course
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that is of great significance, but one must also be committed to some
action today. What are we doing in the here and now to correct the
wrongs of yesterday to better the future?
4. Ultimately, we must have an undying commitment to the future
liberation of our people. All Human interests are first concerned
about the righteous preservation and livelihood of their people first.
5. We must have a knowledge of and responsibility to our community,
national, and/or global struggles as Afrikan people. We must be
informed about the events of the world that affect our people, and in
some way, we should be involved in some way to correct injustice.
6. Last, as Afrikans, a belief and practice of Afrikan Spirituality is central
to the divine guidance we must receive from our ancestors and the
Afrikan Creator.”
I don't think Asante would object to his description. I don't see the reason for
Asante's concepts and these to be in opposition. They should be complementary.
What is perhaps more important than African DNA percentage is African self-
consciousness. Our actions, our nation building, our cultural expression, must be from
an African-centered basis. THIS is our litmus test, not strictly DNA. Our battle is that
of a worldview, not DNA strands per say. I agree that people with melanin enhance
this worldview, for our genes carry the ancestral instruction. However, a village must
incubate that instruction for it to be carried out. So, our identity is not measured just by
DNA strands, but by how we plug into the collective African consciousness, how we
embrace our African worldview.
Two Different Realities of Integration, Conflated and Confused
One type of survival strategy employed by Africans, especially where they have
become minority groups in an overwhelmingly dominant White society, is that of
accommodation and integration. This has had both positive and negative consequences
for the ultimate quest for liberation of Black people. There are at least two different
forms of integration. There is the integration that African Americans have fought and
bled for in this country in an attempt to become equal in this society. The result of this
integration has been an abandoning of self, to take on the false projected self, defined
and created by others.
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To become an honorary White is the distorted goal of this integration, which
requires a fading of the Black. The fade cream is more than a physical cream but a
mental and cultural whitewashing. To be in the melting pot requires a melting away of
the previous recognizable form of a people, to become a molding of another's creation.
Consumers, entertainers, cheap laborers, imprisoned free laborers, haters of our own
culture, ignorant of our history, seekers of pleasure to mask the pain, disorganized,
divided, hungry for acceptance, believers in this form of democracy and meritocracy,
the lie that they earned it and if you just work hard enough, all will be well with you and
your people.
Abandoning one's culture to make a people acceptable to another people.
Abandoning one's motherland, traditions, stories, practices, and collective identity as a
people and accepting fabricated substitutes by oppressors is the requirement of this
integration. This all causes an exteriorization of one's identity. We become outwardly
fixated, losing a knowing of self. This integration demands subordination, enslavement,
and a limiting existence. It is ego of the oppressor being projecting onto and enslaving
the ego of the victim. Both the oppressor and the oppressed are at once bounded by
webbings and encrustations of a false view of life, that of separation and fear.
Yet the ancients have given a master key to life, to "Know Thy Self." This
admonition leads to a different kind of integration. This other integration comes not
by rejecting one's cultural inheritance. This other integration is too large to restrict one’s
view to exceptionalism, the seeing of one's culture as essentially superior to another by
default. This other integration comes not by rejecting one's self but does move us to go
beyond the confines of ego self to embracing a Self that recognizes its oneness with all
Selves.
This integration sees the Creator and Man as one. It sees without the discriminating,
segregating mind; but rather with Integral Awareness that embraces all as the All. This
other integration is of the mind, correcting a blurred distorted vision leading to all kinds
of stumbling and blunders and unnecessary destruction through life. This other
integration embraces our true nature, our eternal being that is both formed and
formless; yet surpasses descriptions of both. Integral vision of integral being, living the
integral Way of Life is this other integration. It is by the strength of our integral being
and integral vision, that we as an African people, will replace the dominance of White
Supremacy aspiration with Ma’at in the world.
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The culture and teachings of the wise ancients are not completely lost to us, and the
accumulated progressive experiences of past spiritual progress are latent in our
collective psychic being waiting for re-awakening and reinforcement. Research by
Lorenzo Dow Turner (2002) was an early attempt to reveal surviving Africanism in the
South Sea Islands among the Gullah, and we know how Southern Blacks migrated en
masse to the North to reinforce their preserved African culture in Northern Black
culture.
“A unique creole language spoken on the coastal islands and adjacent mainland
of South Carolina and Georgia, Gullah existed as an isolated and largely ignored
linguistic phenomenon until the publication of Lorenzo Dow Turner's landmark
volume Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. In his classic treatise, Turner, the first
professionally trained African American linguist, focused on a people whose
language had long been misunderstood, lifted a shroud that had obscured the
true history of Gullah, and demonstrated that it drew important linguistic
features directly from the languages of West Africa. Initially published in 1949,
this groundbreaking work of Afrocentric scholarship opened American minds to
a little-known culture while initiating a means for the Gullah people to reclaim
and value their past. The book presents a reference point for today's discussions
about ever-present language varieties, Ebonics, and education, offering
important reminders about the subtleties and power of racial and cultural
prejudice.” (back cover)
It does us well to recount the progress that we have made in the past, the survival
strategies and the syncretism developed to preserve our culture as discovered by Turner,
despite attempts to destroy or invalidate them completely. We must do so to gather
ourselves for another evolutionary push forward. Despite having endured one of the
worse and protracted oppressions the world has ever seen the African collective, in
large measure, has held onto its core spiritual foundation. It has thrown off the most
overt forms of subjugation and continues to seek a spiritual vindication that
encompasses material self-sufficiency despite the continued pressures of global racism
and terror.
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Chapter 7
The African Worldview: A Lived Experience
What follows are some personal reflections, considerations on literature, and
experiences on cultivating an African-centered worldview. They were written by me in
various contexts as I tapped into the African Self Consciousness within myself. They
are a collective summation of my understanding of what is to be African in the world
and to advance the evolution of collective African consciousness. It is important, as we
consider what an African worldview is, not to limit that view to reactions to oppressive
European forces. It must go beyond that to embrace the totality of what it means to be
fully human in the world and to be in harmony with Divine Truth. Thus, my focus is
not to condemn the European, but to elevate the African, and to encourage that
Africans return to their True Self, rather than adopt an alien worldview.
Beyond the Materialism and Rationalism
We have fallen off the path to greater spiritual progress, and tend now to emulate
those on the path of predominantly material, vital and mental progress, at the expense
of a holistic development that has the higher spirit leading the way. It would do us well
to put the uncompromising discerning light on all that obstructs our forward
movement, both internally and externally. Science and materialism can remove those
religious precepts that are most egregious and perverted. Science can assist in clearing
the way to spiritual awareness but it cannot measure that which surpasses it, namely the
spiritual realm. Spiritual enlightenment too can be considered a stage. Those who see
spiritual development as primary above the material cannot settle and be content with
solely material and mental progress; nor can they ignore material and mental concerns,
seeking only a perfectly detached state of spiritual nirvana.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (2015) has stated a position that African philosophical
idealism, which includes religion/spirituality, hinders collective African progress
towards dealing with our material conditions as they objectively are. It gives us a false
reading of reality and thus hinders us in the work of improving our material conditions.
He further explicates his position and that of his African People’s Socialist Party as
follows:
“During the historical period our Party was founded, philosophical idealism was
central to the worldview of the Black Liberation Movement, which relied mainly
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on religious, moral, and colonial explanations to understand and analyze our
situation.
African philosophical idealists of that period sought explanations for our
conditions of existence and our future in the articulations of great leaders or
simply in the consciousness of the Black Liberation Movement itself.
In other words, the idealists accepted the movement’s and its leaders’ own self-
definition as primary, rather than fundamentally examining the actual material
conditions that gave rise to the movement and its leaders…
The African People’s Socialist Party sprang from the very bowels of the
remorseless reality and struggles of our people. As we developed, we were
increasingly forced to shed all reliance on religion, other forms of superstition
and the good will or moral epiphany of our oppressors.
Our struggles to understand our reality, while occasionally encumbered and
influenced by the worldview of the educated and upper classes, were rooted in
attempts to solve real problems of the concrete contradictions in which our
people are embroiled.
We were forced to learn that our preconceived notions gleaned through colonial
civics books, preachers and liberal white friends only helped to obscure the real
contradictions with which our people are confronted. We came to recognize that
we must understand the world just as it is, not as we wish it to be. We were forced
to become philosophical materialists.” (p. 69)
I think this approach is akin to throwing away the baby with the bathwater—
throwing away the essential for what is superficial, denying that the spiritual is primary
over the physical by embracing a purely physical explanation for our oppression.
However, I do appreciate how his position brings clarity to the fact that capitalism was
born not of the internal genius of the European mind and independent effort, but rather
through their “parasitic impairment of the capacity of independent development in
Africa and other places victimized by Europe.”
Much can be said about the ability of negative forces to control the African collective
due to our lack of concerted, organized and uncompromising efforts towards growth.
However, ultimately it is the spiritual that births and gives sustenance to the
physical/material. As the African collective has not abandoned its thrust to be in tune
with the higher spirit, it has not lost that vital support for material wellbeing.
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To abandon spirituality is to take on the worldview of Aryans—materialism—where
only that which can be confirmed by the senses exists. This is a partial vision of reality.
This leads to objectifying everything, including people, which in turn leads to ideologies
of controlling and dominating those objects. Spiritual reality transcends the physical
(time, space, condition). African culture is predicated on this spiritual reality. What does
Sankofa mean, except our innate ability to reach into the collective African
consciousness wherever we are, and thus revive our current reality? In traditional
African cultures, everything has spirit. Everything is a manifestation of spiritual essence.
African ways of understanding and being in the world, culture, is a spiritual journey with
physical expressions. Culture then becomes more than a definition, but a way of life.
The soul I speak of is the African group soul that is experiencing itself in the world, the
expression of which we call traditional African culture.
Beyond the Mind
What is spiritual freedom? If spiritual freedom exists, is it attainable? Yes, it exists.
It is attainable when the mind is released from seeing only duality and a direct
perception of the underlying unity behind diversity is viewed. The mind can be like a
prism that splits reality into what appears to be separate, isolated realities. The mind
needs to be stilled to reverse this partial view. Facts must be interpreted by a cultural
worldview. Two people with different worldviews will interpret so-called objective facts
in different ways. My cultural worldview is African-centered; therefore, I will always
interpret "facts" differently from one who embraces a European worldview. Facts are
not ahistorical, objects having no contextual meaning unless we are rationalizing and
pretending it is so. But pretense does not make it true.
I am of the thought that everyone does know everything. It is a matter of tapping
into the collective consciousness that is also in concert with one's wisdom faculty that
is one with the Universal. Therefore, it is said the greatest knowledge is self-knowledge.
Self is connected to all. To be "conscious" is to be conscious of consciousness (self-
aware/self-reflexive). It is to know of THAT consciousness that is INVOLVED in life
and is EVOLVING out of life. We are THAT freeing up of consciousness. Spiritual
cultivation entails being aware of that evolving consciousness through us.
Truth
There is no one expression of truth—no one way to truth. Everyone has a side of
the truth. Everyone has a way to truth. Yes, there is a Unity, a Great Ocean of Truth,
but there are many rivers to It, many tributaries to It, and when we arrive, we will see
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how unnecessary it was to discount the truth of people we see as the other. The other
is in the end our self, evolving to oneness, the Ocean. Was it not said that God and man
are one? If so, is it not true that man and man are one? There is no other. You and I
are one; your truth is as valid as mine.
Balance, harmony, and truth are based on the circumstance, not on a supposed
universal idea or principle. Every circumstance has its own truth and so there is no
religion, no standard that can dictate the truth of the moment, the unique circumstance.
Truth must be intuited in the circumstance. This means there is no universal method,
no universal language of mathematics, or universal standard of knowing that is devoid
of cultural context. It is situational, grounded in the lived experience, and to be lived in
the moment.
The implication of math being a universal language is that there is such a thing as a
universal knowledge system that goes beyond the specific culture of a people. I maintain
that such a system is fallacious. As a math teacher, this is how I apply my teaching. Math
/Science/Knowledge is culturally determined, contrary to what the dominant society
says. It is like saying walking is a universal process for all humans. It has well-defined
parameters. Yes, but people walk for culturally determined reasons. What is the
abstraction of pure universal walking?
Likewise, some may say counting/math is a universal process for all humans. It has
well-defined parameters (base 10 in most cases); yes, but people count for culturally
determined reasons. What is valued as worthy of getting counted is culturally
determined. Knowledge and/or truth have epistemological, ontological, and axiological
contexts or groundings. We come into knowledge based on our own experiences, based
on our historically developed consciousness, based on our culture. This is how we
experience life. To know is to be. Ideas of a universal logic are fabrications. Yes, there
is logic, but logic is always applied with a premise. Those premises are culturally based;
culture that has settled on definitions, values, and what counts as important.
Meeting of Polarities
There are two Hermetic principles named polarity and vibration. This is taught in
the Kybalion. These principles are both concerned with raising the being to a higher
level. They both acknowledge that nature has dualities, lower levels of vibration and
expression, and opposites of higher levels of vibration and expression. It is taught that
to accomplish a higher level of vibration and expression, one need only focus the
attention, the aspiration, on the higher end of the pole, not on the lower end. This
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focusing on the positive end of the pole will raise the level of vibration and allow one
to transcend the lower expressions. To overcome the darkness, focus on the light, and
the darkness will automatically get displaced.
Evolution of the Involution
The descent of Consciousness from spirit to matter is the great involution of Life.
The ascent of consciousness from matter into integral awareness and status of Being,
even while clothed in matter, is the great evolutionary process of Life. The involution
proceeded in stages and so too the evolution proceeds in stages. The involution is a
diversification from undifferentiated Oneness. The evolution will not be a return to
undifferentiated Oneness, but rather an integral awareness of the underlying unity of all
things accompanied by a free capacity of the physical being to accommodate a
continued expansion of integral awareness and power of being. For the evolutionary
being to support this integral power, it would have to transcend existing physical
limitations with a higher vibration of super-consciousness, Integral Awareness. It would
have to transmit the unlimited will/force of the One Being even while hosting a limited
form.
I Am the One that Became the Two and the Many
Consciousness is indivisible, and African consciousness is one with universal
consciousness. In African spiritual systems, the deities are considered extensions of the
Universal Divine Spirit, the Supreme Being by many names. The deities are expressions
of that Integral Being. Indeed, all of life, including humans, are extensions of that Being.
There is just one Being in existence. This is what African higher
spirituality/consciousness teaches us. Now you can take that as high as you can.
To say the Creator is everything and not any one individual thing seems
contradictory. A high system of spirituality will resolve these contradictions with an
integral vision. What happens in Western ideology is a conditioning, dictating that only
Western philosophy, or perhaps Eastern philosophy has the track on higher
consciousness. Africans have been studying what it is to be human and to reach higher
consciousness for hundreds of thousands of years, before there were any other kinds
of peoples on earth. Every other ethnicity has been a relative latecomer in the last 55,000
years.
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Time
What is referred to as time, I see as gestation and movement. Though it is true that
there are cyclical/re-occurring gestations and movements, these reoccurrences happen
within a context of larger gestations, movements, cycles; hence they have a new quality
even as they reoccur. Every Spring, there may be running water in the same river, but
the water is not the exact same water as before. Gestation is progressive with
reoccurring patterns. The consciousness involved in matter is progressively evolving,
gestating, to reveal its unlimited essence.
On a deep esoteric level, we can say that everything everywhere is connected; hence
the concept of movement, of gestation, is a relative perception of the mind. However,
this esoteric perception of integral oneness needs to be balanced (not denied) with the
equal reality of the world of formation and transformation = gestation. Don't deny the
oneness and don't deny the production/gestation of the many forms (new
arrangements/qualities of the One Being).
Sankofa
There is virtue in learning and carrying on from the past (Sankofa). Merely trying to
relive the past, however, is not enough. We must understand principles, lessons,
accomplishments of the past, and seek innovative applications of these to today's
circumstances. Collective concentration, focus, and devotion will allow for another
concerted push forward towards collective spiritual advancement. We can see that
having an African worldview is having an appreciation for the Oneness of life amid the
apparent diversity of life. As we live out this Integral view of life, we give more free
expression to the Unlimited Being that resides within us; thereby promoting the
evolution of the Collective African Self, of the Spirit that is involved with matter.
Ancestral Amnesia
What is the true condition of people with no Spiritual awareness? It is when the
Divine within is obscured. The person is not aware of their identity as being one with
the Supreme Being. It is as if one has amnesia, with no historical memory. Having lost
this identity, one’s actions become diffused and aimless. Perhaps there will be vestiges
of this memory, recognition, awareness of one’s identity, which will spur the spirit to
further self-discovery. This first dimly lit candle may be nurtured back to an illuminating
flame with instruction or initiation. This is the proper function of education.
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Culture
Culture is what gets enacted, either individually or collectively. To deny the historical
culture of a person is to deny that they were active in the world as a people; that this
action had meaning or relevance to the present person and their relations. To deny
cultural history is to deny the learning that past actions have provided the lessons
wrought from experience that informs how to act in the present and the future. To
deny cultural history is then to induce individual or group amnesia, and then ask the
person or group to function normally. To deny the cultural expression in the present is
to deny the natural expression of a person’s being. It is to ask a person to stop acting
according to their natural life energies, in their own best interest, to shape the
environment so that it supports their own life. To abandon one’s culture is to abandon
being agents of life, which is the prerequisite for being agents of an unlimited divine
life. Cultural amnesia of one’s ancestral heritage then is strongly correlated with spiritual
amnesia of one’s true Self.
Africanity
I would say that most Africans in America have expressed the following cultural
values in our sojourn in America, thus expressing our unbroken Africanity. Africans
everywhere have a reverence for ancestors. We see a persisting connection with our
ancestors and invite them to guide our lives in a positive, progressive direction. Africans
everywhere:
• Have reverence for ancestors. We see a persisting connection with our ancestors
and invite them to guide our lives in a positive, progressive direction.
• Have a sense of a Supreme Being, who also has powerful delegates of Its power
(saints, deities)
• Have a sense of extended family, a welcoming and acceptance, beyond direct
biology.
• Have respect and appreciation for nature and other beings as having an essence
that they can share with.
• Have respect and appreciation for nature, and other beings as having an essence
that they can commune/communicate with. This is pronounced with episodes
of "Catching the Holy Ghost" or being mounted by a deity.
• Have a sense of justice, balance, and harmony and how to achieve it.
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• Value the emotional/intuitive modes of understanding as being equally, if not
more, important than strictly rational/logical thought.
• Cherish rhythmic, vibratory, and musical expressions as ways to express their
inner being and harmony with life.
• Have a sense that their identity and development as a human being is extended
to incorporate the development of others.
Shedding the White Masks
Africans in America have internalized habits that, for the most part, are not healthy
for the African psyche. There is an unconscious aspect of culture in this regard.
However, there is also an unconscious aspect of African culture at work within us that
is natural to our psyche. As to my conscious worldview, value, understanding of
existence, way of approaching thought and coming into knowledge, way of viewing
others, nature, the spiritual life, ways of relating to others—in short, my culture—as I
consciously enact it as an agent of positive constructive life, that is all African. It is also
informing my unconscious, as I clean my unconscious of European misconceptions.
It is a healthy exercise to occasionally behave as if an oppressor did not exist, so that
we can feel what it is to be Natural and responsive to the greater pulse of life, rather
than be constantly reactive to the ego minded, with an equally low ego mindedness.
Indeed, a more appropriate response to the oppressor is to discount their truth. I think
we have enough evidence to throw out Anglo-Saxon and Negro-Saxon culture and
worldviews, replacing them with authentic African culture and worldviews.
At some point, we must stop being afraid of not being accepted and acceptable to
the European power structure. We must stop trying to climb that ladder of European
cultural social merit. We must stop paying attention to European cultural valuations of
us as good, bad, beautiful, ugly, smart, unintelligent, Godly or sinful, etc. We must divest
from this value system because it was never a system designed for us in the first place.
It was never a system that spoke to our truth or reality. It was never a system that related
to our experience.
It is a system that is all too ready to distort our experience and feed it back to us as
truth. When we accept that distortion, we become distorted. There is but one way out
of this trap and that is to divest from seeing the Euro-centric experience as a universal
experience that speaks to the African experience. Africans must find our center in our
own being, our own experience, our own truth, which is as valid, and potent, as any on
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earth. We must have the courage to own our truth and ignore all the attempts by
foreigners to own our minds. There will always be attempts to own our minds, but for
every attempt, we must be strong enough to ignore it and continue with our rightful
mission in life until the end. One must resist the urge to simply remain comfortable
within the structure of a racist society. When racism offends our sensibilities, that is a
wakeup call to return to original culture, our ancestral consciousness, our reason for
being, and our purpose. We must awaken to our sense of justice, empathy for "other"
and the imperative to fight for justice in the world.
African Identity Development
A person of African descent cannot in a full sense benefit from or contribute to the
evolution of collective African consciousness if that person does not identify as being
African or works to develop his/her African Self-consciousness. This is the reason for
focusing on identity development of people with African ancestry. This development
is not an automatic or a given, especially with the assault on their identity by the
propaganda machine of White supremacists that operates on micro, meso, and macro
levels of society.
Any African-centered psychologist will affirm that one's basic identity is one's self-
identity, which is ultimately one's cultural identity. Without a strong cultural identity,
one is lost. One’s basic identity is one’s self-identity which is yoked to one’s cultural
identity; but from a spiritual standpoint, one must expand that individual and cultural
identity to a universal divine identity as being one with all things (human becoming
Divine Man). There is first a necessary and healthy ego development that all beings
must maintain their organism. Spiritual beings will transcend this identity with a real
understanding of the nature of being in the world as an extension of the Supreme Being,
and thus will view their Self as the Self of all other beings. At a deeper level, the
dichotomy of the self-verses the other is dissolved. But this is an evolutionary
development for a person as well as for society and for humanity. As Wade Nobles
(2006) puts it:
“Self-awareness or self-conception is not, therefore, limited as in the Euro-
American tradition, just to the cognitive awareness of one's uniqueness,
individuality, and historical finiteness. It is, in the African tradition, awareness of
self as the awareness of one's historical consciousness (collective spirituality) and
the subsequent sense of we, or being one. It is in this sense that the self is
portrayed as TRANSCENDENCE INTO "EXTENDATION.” (p. 103)
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That is, the conception of self transcends and extends into the collective
consciousness of one's people. This conclusion is based on the African ontology,
axiology, and epistemology rooted in the understanding of oneness of Being. Through
African spirituality, I have gained everything and nothing. African Spirituality teaches
you who you Truly are, one with ALL of life, with the Divine. In recognizing this
oneness, that you are one with all, there is then nothing to gain, because you are already
ALL of THAT.
The effort to transform ego identity to universal identity happens with the collective
as well. It is going from being marginal beings of a Euro-centric culture, to being central
subjects of an ongoing historical development; followed by being of service to the
overall human project of fully expressing the Supreme Being in the world. We must
stop defining African by a skin color or hair texture. Africa produces all the variations.
This was so even before European and Asiatic intrusion. To answer who is African, we
must get at cultural values, cultural understanding of existence, and cultural
transmission of knowledge and ways of knowing. Where these three stars lineup for
indigenous people on the continent of Africa, or others from the diaspora of Africa,
you have a common African people, sharing a common worldview; irrespective of
variations of phenotype.
I am an African liberation warrior. As I draw breath my being is opposed to ALL
foreign intrusion into Africa, whatever the front. Africa is my mother country; it is the
mother of all humanity. I cannot ignore the rape of my Mother. Though I have been
blinded in the past by the European profession of progress, of freedom, of democracy,
of enlightenment, of technological advancement, I see now that this European promise
is an illusion, a complete farce.
I reject in total this false promise and return to my motherland, Africa. I devote
myself to her liberation from exploitation and domination. I see through all the white
lies. There is no more righteous thing to do than to protect and defend the Mother of
humanity, Africa. Since we all will cast off this physical form on that day of our great
transformation, let us know from now until that day, that we were true to the
progressive force of life that courses through the Soul of Africa, the Ausarian Self of
the African Collective.
Africans in the Diasporas
For me, being African is more of a worldview than having a near 100% DNA level.
One’s ideological, epistemological, and axiological positioning reveals African identity.
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This worldview can be African-centered or not. If the worldview is African-centered,
then that person is African for me, regardless of ethnicity. However, being African-
centered is a high bar to reach, even for people living on the continent of Africa.
African-centered is seeing one's self as part of the historical continuum of the African
experience, which will likely mean having ancestral ties to the African continent. It also
entails struggling for African self-determination, sovereignty, and unlimited
development. So, if a person meets that bar, then that person is African, a "brother" or
"sister."
A benefit to Africans in America of not knowing what specific tribe in Africa we
descend from is that we would treat them all with equal respect as if each were possibly
the one we descended from. We are then more apt to embrace the cultural unity that
spans all West African countries and beyond. We are more apt to support the ideals of
a United States of Africa, rather than provincialism.
Africans in America are an amalgamation of African from different nations of West
Africa. We have lost provincialism to perhaps gain a strong Pan-African identity. When
we do identify with our roots, we claim all of Africa, not just one nation. This I think is
a strength that will be vitally important when the time comes to unite the diaspora with
the mother country into a United States of Africa. We lost a provincial identity to gain
a continent identity, an African World body.
Authority and Standards to Follow
I think part of the problem is not having a standard cultural measuring scale to
measure the truth, validity, correctness, and benefit of actions. If everyone has his or
her own measuring scale set differently, there won’t be agreement on what constitutes
the correct balance in a situation. When there is a common measuring scale, there is
less arguing over what is the balance point. This is what culture provides, a way to
measure words, actions, and value in a way that is common to all. For example, in some
traditional cultures, female circumcision is central to the culture. I heard yesterday that
if this practice were not done, it was believed the woman would die, and so would her
family. Also, the woman could not marry. Nearly all agreed to this, so there was not
much argument. In another culture, splitting the lip to put a plate was the norm to
measure beauty. Everyone agreed, except one woman who said it makes you drool. She
refused to do it even though the bigger lip plate commanded a bigger number of cows
at a wedding. It does not matter what outside people value; the inner culture sets the
scales and there is less arguing.
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I think what will have to happen is some small groups of Africans in America will
have to show the way; model what it is to act appropriately with each other. I thought
the Ausar Auset Society would be this model, but I sense it is falling short for some
reasons. However, look up that society, and you will find clear codes of conduct that
people in the society agree to. Now if that society had more democratic elements, I
think it would have more of an appeal and be an example for the larger society to
emulate in many ways.
In my late twenties, I was a member for two years in the Ausar Auset Society. In the
Ausar Auset Society, from my memory of 25 years ago, members: 1) always greeted
each other with hetep, 2) needed some guidance and counseling prior to marrying other
members, 3) were encouraged to support the group businesses, 4) were expected to
make their spiritual development a priority by attending classes, rituals, and retreats, and
5) volunteered their labor for special projects. The thing I found lacking was outreach
to the wider community. There was too much separation between the society and the
larger African community. Having more outreach would show the community by
example how to engage each other.
Rites of Passage
Without an understanding of the historical experiences of African people, American
children cannot make any real headway in addressing the problems of the present.
Certainly, if African American children were taught to be fully aware of the struggles of
our African forebears they would find a renewed sense of purpose and vision in their
own lives. By providing philosophical and theoretical guidelines and criteria that are
centered in an African perception of reality, and by placing the African American child
in his or her proper historical context and setting, Afrocentricity may be just the "escape
hatch" African Americans so desperately need to facilitate academic success and "steal
away" from the cycle of mis-education and dislocation.
What would rites of passage for Africans males or females in America look like? I
think we must re-evaluate our criteria for Black Manhood from an African-centered
view in the diaspora current times, beyond biological maleness. What does it take to
make a Black man in the diaspora today, in this place? What must go into Black
manhood training, beyond what we think males get from schools, from the hood, from
Black women, and from jails, from TV, from the oppressor, and from other misoriented
Black men? What is Black manhood today in the diaspora from an African-centered
worldview?
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Problems with young Black men must be put into the context of the macro
environment. One standard for a boy to become a man is to no longer eat his mother’s
food. This means the young man no longer takes from his mother’s house, but rather
provides for his mother’s house, and by extension, provides for the larger community.
He becomes a producer of wealth. Now with a 90% unemployment rate of Black male
teens in most cities, how does the Black/African male experience the affirming activity
of being a producer? This ties into a community being able to generate its own wealth
and businesses that can set up young people for that vital experience. So now the burden
is on all people of the community to responsibly practice collective economics, start
businesses that will hire Black youth, give them internships or entry-level jobs. This will
teach them to become producers for future households.
What I said was a macro solution. Each of us individually can keep this larger goal
in mind and do little things towards this goal. So how do we help the young male in our
sphere of influence, to become a producer instead of a taker? Of course, teaching them
marketable skills as well as survival skills (encouraging them to learn a skill that is
relevant to producing for their community). Learning how to be an effective
communicator can’t be underestimated. Now how can they do that if they have an
unstable home or are taking substances that dull the mind? How can they do this if they
learn poor spending habits from materialism (buying things they don’t need just to show
off)? How can they learn to be producers if they don’t hang with role model producers?
So, there are a plethora of things we can do for Black/African males to point them in
the right direction. Putting the whole package together to manifest male producers takes
a village, but everyone has a part, and need not wait for others before starting on their
own part.
African Family as the Heart of African Society
Within the context of the historical African collective, Agyei Akato (1992) gives
further clarity on the centrality of the family:
“Historically, the traditional nations of Afrika have always been grounded in
family, or the lineages. As evidenced by the traditional national formations of
Afrika, the state function or structure, in the first instance, is an extension of the
underlying family based social structure. There is every reason to believe that the
primordial social structure was grounded in family. That social structure of
traditional Afrika is itself grounded in a non-hierarchical arrangement of the
constituent lineages or clans. The family itself extends beyond the temporal into
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the boundless spiritual reality of the ancestors. Among the Akan, not unlike all
other traditional African formations, the temporal linkage is transmitted
matrilineally, as it is the woman who is the doorway for temporal or physical
manifestation and perpetuation. The spiritual linkage is transmitted patrilineally,
and it is the father’s spirit that animates and guides the child into its own spiritual
realization. Family and twinlinearity is the root of Afrika’s national formations.”
(p. 99)
African men and women must have a strong sense of their collective African identity
and cultural heritage. They must hold African survival, cultural self-knowledge, and
affirmative racial-cultural development as top priorities. They must participate in the
development and maintenance/perpetuation of Afrocentric institutions. They must
maintain a posture of resolute-uncompromising resistance against all anti-African
forces.
A traditional spiritual society can help a couple obtain a holistic perspective on the
compatibility of the couple. Once upon a time, marriage supported a whole village, and
so the whole village was involved in the process. It was a uniting of families, not just of
romantically involved couples. Since our village is not intact, with elders (not just old
people) serving as guides, we need substitutes, which is where a spiritual society comes
in.
Single women run about 70% of African households. This was not so in traditional
societies, so there must be something about this Western culture that does not cultivate
African marriages. That alone tells you where to look for what makes for a lasting
partnership. We cannot solve the problems we have produced in this culture by relying
on the cultural, mental, physical, or spiritual constructs of this society. We must
reconstruct our own institutions, and that includes marriage. Of those who are
persisting in marriage, are they functional in terms of African Nation-building? How
many even have this value? Or is their value simply to have a house, a car, a big-screen
TV, a suite of iPhones, a cushy job with stability, access to a "good" school, and some
life insurance?
The values of the Euro-construct have us in a destructive cycle. Inserting
foundational information used by our ancestors refreshes the question. Had the
question been asked from an Afrocentric paradigm, our solution would have eliminated
the entire Eurocentric trap we've been mentally enslaved to for the past 400 years.
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An underlying message given by T’Shaka (1995) is that Africans must return to a
balance between male and female principles of natural harmony.
“At the heart and soul of the Black folk cultural tradition is the truth of the
harmonious and complementary nature of the twin forces of life, nature and the
cosmos. ... Harmonious dualism or harmonious twin-ness, tells us that the
seemingly conflicting sacred and secular realms (or other warring sides in our
African family) are truly complementary and ultimately one. Like the creators of
the great Black folk cultural tradition, who drew upon ancient and traditional
African philosophies and culture, we can reconcile the warring souls (i.e., male
vs. female, straight vs. gay, Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King), by seeing the
sacred in every area of life, both human, animate and inanimate. We truly reflect
our belief in the sacredness of human life when we learn to love ourselves and
to love our people. The force that makes it possible for males and females (and
other warring souls of our collective) to cooperate in spite of differences is the
force of love.” (p. 149)
Failure to adhere to the balance of male and female power, in T’Shaka’s (1995)
words, is a basis for imbalance and degeneration within society at large. Hence, the
below warning that Africans must be mindful to maintain this balance, at least within
our sphere of influence.
“Male-female, masculine-feminine imbalance accounts for the social, political,
economic and religious imbalances in the larger society. The external alienation
between man and woman was the reflection of an inner alienation between the
masculine and feminine. This inner and outer alienation, which despised
feminine multidimensional qualities, especially the feminine intuitive qualities
and the female, led to Greek and western man’s first external conquest, the
conquest of the woman. The conquest of females by males is the foundation for
the attempt by western males to conquer nature and the cosmos. ... Just as the
masculine-feminine, male-female balance is the basis for social justice, so the
imbalance between masculine and feminine and males and females is the basis
for savagery and barbarism through the unbalanced, unjust treatment of women
by men, Blacks and people of color by whites, and the unjust treatment of the
weak by the strong.” (p. 185)
We need to accentuate the things that we can find common ground on, rather than
fixate on our differences. Our common group should embrace an African-centered
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worldview, which allows for infinite expressions from that center location. In Mirima
Ani’s (1994) words:
“The principles expressed as those of an African cosmology in which we have
the fundamental "twinness" of the universe; the complementary functions of
opposites that cooperate to form the proper working of the whole. But our
notions of what constitutes intelligence have been molded by the minority
Western European world-view, and so we have difficulty thinking holistically in
this regard, since the European world (creation stories) is predicated on first
separation, dichotomization, and then "dominance" of one of the opposites
(masculine over feminine, chaos over order).” (p. 77)
Preparation for a Family by Africans in a Dominant White Society
How old does the average African in America get to before they have a handle on
the pathological society we find ourselves in? What milestones do we have to pass
through to reach a level of mental maturity, stability, and approach enlightenment? I
think it is around 40 years old. As for milestones, it is when we can fully reject European
measures of our identity and European content for our culture.
When African youth discover that their people cannot fully protect them, cannot
secure their future in business and industry, cannot clear the way for their full
development and exploration of their talents to modify your environment as their vision
sees fit, it creates resentments in them. They rebel not only against the wider society,
but also against the older generation who did not secure the future for them. The
development of African youth today is obstructed and must go through trials and
tribulations that the privileged don't.
No other group will know what it is like to be the most despised, mistrusted, feared,
misunderstood, mistreated, least appreciated, least respected, least invested in, least
consulted, least promoted, and yet most naturally gifted in a society amongst a
dominant group. Knowing that there is a sophisticated police force that is racist and
will seek the least provocation to end your life in a matter of seconds is traumatic. Few
in the dominant society care to understand the psychological effect. We are supposedly
in a level playing field where every group has equal opportunity. Even knowing how
the dominant society lies about meritocracy, democracy, equal opportunity, and goes
about business as such, is all so pathological. The layers of racism are many and the
resulting pathologies are in direct proportion. We are amazing people to have dealt with
this stuff with any semblance of normalcy.
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Africans in American have developed coping mechanisms to racism, with some
techniques working better than others. Some families can develop children who are
equipped to accomplish significant life goals despite living in a racist society. Some learn
to adjust by going along with the rules of racism. Some adjust by rejecting the rules of
racism in total. Most are simply reactionaries to the rules of racism. It is the exception
rather than the norm for an African in America to have a strong African self-
consciousness and to have developed effective coping strategies to racism.
I would say sixty to eighty percent of African adults have moderate to severe
misorientation, moving away from African-centeredness, with matching weak survival
coping strategies. Perhaps twenty percent have a moderate to strong African self-
consciousness, with matching moderately effective coping strategies; and twenty
percent at best have a strong African self-consciousness, along with appropriate and
effective coping skills where their locus of control is internalized and non-reactionary.
These Africans are proactive in planning and strategizing their African survival thrusts
and that of their community. This opinion is based on my lived experiences.
Overcoming Conflict
In considering how to overcome conflicts in our African relationships in the
American context, first and foremost, we must be more serious about how we pick
partners. It must be for more than just superficial things because that will tend to
reproduce the pathologies we have been inculcated with by society and by our parents.
This was my major downfall, picking the wrong partners for my own wrong reasons or
without insisting on philosophical/cultural/political compatibility.
The problems facing the African woman are EQUALLY the problems of the
African man, the entire African nation, and vice versa. Whatever the reasons women
act against life, that men act against life, that children act against life, are reasons that
affect us all equally and we each have a role to play in reversing them. We all carry
pathologies related to being inculcated with the values of a racist society. We are all in
need of deprogramming from these alien values. We all need cleansing, healing, re-
orientation, reconstruction, and construction. The African man and woman will either
rise together or fall apart. Marriage must take on an insulating shell for Africans in
America if it is to stand a chance. The environment is not normal to support normal
relations. Rather than viewing man and woman in the home as head and neck, I think
of marriage more as left-brain, right-brain, two halves of the same head.
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Love
Here is a love poem written as an invitation for love; but not just any kind of love. It was an invitation for the highest, most refined love I could imagine; spiritualized physical love. It represents my deepest respect and aspiration for the love between a Black man and a Black woman. It acknowledges the indivisible union between man and woman; between mankind and the Divine. From the Sacred Sanctuary
From the sacred place I share this heart refreshed by the Divine Bliss.
From the sacred place I share life recast in mold of Truth Thought.
From the sacred place where this being has consecrated all to the All; where all members are spiritualized, universalized and divinized, I invite you to join with me, in the ecstasy of the Divine Pulsation, emanating from the secret space of stilled, yet infinitely fast Force of Being.
Here we shall talk. We shall breathe breaths of fresh rarified air.
Here we shall gaze into each other's eyes in peace, in friendship, in trust, in Love.
All our tensions have been left behind, as protective sheaths of war, discarded once eternal peace is had; and the nakedness of our true Selves is revealed to one another in its essential splendor and majesty.
Our words, our sincere intentions have momentous effect on past present and future.
Here there're no masks, no ulterior motive, no hiding, no running, no worry, no doubt.
Sit with me in this sacred sanctuary and let us with unfettered hearts gradually release God's miracles made normal, issuing from our souls before one another.
In this sacred place we are no longer strangers as we reveal parts of ourselves, always known to each other as if you are my other Self, and I am yours.
We maintain our difference just enough to realize the bliss of Supreme Yoga.
In this sanctuary we can explore and know the deep recesses of each other's Soul.
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There are no longer reasons for veils; all is open; our exchange is free from duty tax.
There is no need for fear; the Divine Will/Force holds all negatives at bay.
Knowing God's Will/Force/Bliss Being, discovered in the sacred sanctuary of our being.
This knowing is not a phantasm of spirit world, for spirit births and suckles the physical.
The sanctuary is not a place for escape, but for realization, rejuvenation, remembering.
Remembering, putting back together, making whole, seeing correct relations, merging with love Being, discovering hidden Divinity, identifying with Source Self.
This is immortality not just for the sacred sanctuary, used as place of hiding and delusion.
Infinitude embraces finite; immortal takes up the mortal; Divinity expresses through man.
Expanding personal love, becoming God Lovers, dissolving ego, all actions made sacred.
Attaining integral vision, all the earth now our sacred sanctuary for Divine play.
The Host sends forth Its Supernal Light, readying the stage for great transformations.
We are ready for the movement to higher planes yet unvisited.
On this voyage for two, all that is base is ejected or else transmuted to lighter principle, more useful for our maiden voyage to lands of Soul before unexplored.
Why a voyage for two and not just one? It is for one, two for the price of one.
Under the transforming Light we close the gaps between us.
Though different we become one, as a rainbow embraces the entire spectrum.
Our hearts, no longer the solo drummer of beats, rejoices in the symphony of free lovers.
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Lovers loving the music, loving each other, loving the audience of the gods, loving the host for whom all is arranged and played.
Even our music is transformed, no longer misread notes on music sheets turned veils.
We play not by sight but by meditative improvisation to each other's heartbeats.
For in this sanctuary, though cool, placid, calm in atmospheric bliss.
It is well lit by the Divine light and we see clearly each other's cues.
We see not with mortal eyes, hear not with mortal ears, knowing only parts for the whole.
We have taken on immortal vision that sees all by identity and oneness.
We exercise the cords of each other's hearts, sometimes playing each other's parts.
Thus we intimately know the full range the melodic harmonies of Soul music.
We are ready for the great duet, our instruments refined for immortal play.
When we play, I know not where I end and you begin, our sounds blending in intricacy.
No feeling of being constrained, as our music bounces off of chambers with no walls.
Our notes transport us to continents yet uncharted; God travelers discovering God lands.
God playing hide and seek with Him/Her Self, exploring as if never seen before.
And is it not better to play with another, than with one's self, though it is one's Self?
This is why I've invited you to this sacred playground, for mystical play.
Not a fleeting game of illusions; but the greatest game, the lila of love.
Is love a frivolous game? Am I to toy with your heart or you with mine? No.
It is a game of realities wrought of Truth Being, of Spirit breath exchanged between us.
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All our members engaged in the play, no longer separate masters of isolated ego islands.
Now devoted subjects on continent of royal king and queen in sincere embrace.
A royal game of real ecstasy and bliss; a game of fun and seeming chance; a game of switching roles and identities that keeps us guessing and laughing.
It's a game of winning and losing, though we know nothing is gained or lost.
How can it when we are one with each other and are one with the All?
Let us play: play with each other, shipmates, with infinite oceans as playgrounds.
We are explorers to new shores revealing hidden mysteries, riches and splendors of Self.
We port and greet the natives as long lost relatives. We prepare a great feast to celebrate.
The communion is wide and deeply felt. Fairies, angels, and even mortals all welcomed.
We dance, for the gods love to dance, to mystic melodies of transformation.
We make magic, and renew our kinship.
You and I repose in loves sacred embrace.
Our Tantra movements causing galaxies to move in turn, our rhythms giving them order.
Our hot Breaths birthing stars, our sweat and fluids oceaning planets,
Our vibrations generating new elements, our essence released inseminating
love child.
Our Soulful play makes God swoon.
This continues for eons in mortal man's time.
We are lifted beyond time and place while still in Love's sacred embrace.
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We rest from our love performance, our musical play; but all does not revert and fade.
We are forever changed.
Our creations continue from their energized cause.
Our Truth Thought formations have our life within them. We are them and they us.
The sanctuary is not for a brief ejaculatory moment.
We rest to ready for higher peaks.
It is always within us as I shall always be with you. We are Soul mates forever.
When our bodies are no longer on this plain, we will still re-member our sacred sanctuary.
Here we can always play God's song in duet. Immortality is not just for this lifetime.
In the sacred sanctuary, past, present and future are known at once in a sweeping vision.
We retfect on our accomplished harmonies. We see a new Truth etched on our hearts.
We have conquered all, including death, together, forever. It is a new stage for life.
We shook off our smallness and bore all to each other in a sacred pact of
oneness. We have revealed and massaged each other's most tender zones.
Each cell of mine integrated with each cell of yours, a unity modeling the Universal.
We have discovered the secret Self through each other by removing self erected veils.
We have learned much through our experience in the sacred sanctuary.
Through faith and trust we've become graduate candidates in the school of immortals.
The final dissertation, a discourse on unconditional love and fidelity to one another, to humanity, and to God, for Whom to Whom, and by Whom all is done.
We have past the test.
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We've come to know in the sanctuary a boundless love.
There we anticipated all wonders, pretending not to know the future, but we did.
For the future was an assured outflow of miracles, though only to mortal eyes, erupting from the earth seen volcano of Love union, backed by Divine Bliss.
Enter we back to the mortal realm through Love's volcano showing only surface results.
But beneath, is the dynamic magnum Force/Presence of Divine Love turned lava flow.
This love flow, lava flow, coming from the depths now intimately known, blows the top off of all obstructions, proclaiming it's irresistible evolutionary movement.
It erupts with sometimes-explosive force viewed and respected if not revered by all.
Other times it moves slowly and steadily, yet still undeniably towards the Goal.
This lava flow, Love flow, is the resultant testament of our committed Love mixture.
It is movement from our sacred sanctuary back to the mortal realm.
Hot fiery display, it founts high peak; inventing new form of Spiritual Love; proclaiming the might of our invisible Source tapped; clearing a path made for all.
Full of the Love flow, we fashion new forms of Self, putting on transmuted instruments.
We are no longer made of base elements, but of immortality oxidized and hiding it's brilliance.
With disguised radiance we roam the earth, secret agents of a mighty country.
Missionaries of a new world order, where the infinite is revealed out of the finite.
We no longer forget our secret mission in the clamor of daily life.
We look out into the world and then into each other's eyes, knowing but not speaking.
We hold hands appearing as mere lovers; but beneath the facade, God lovers.
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Children
To cultivate community consciousness in the child, it should be viewed as a
community offspring, rather than just an offspring of its biological parents. It is only
because of our present tendency to view the child only as a physical entity, rather than
as a mental (I think also spiritual) entity, that we moved out of that collective
consciousness which permitted us to rear our children in this sharing modality. Children
come to this world with a purpose, a mission, an energy disposition, that relates to
Ancestral energy, and the needs of the cultural group, and even the world.
These energies are positive by nature. Negative energies can come into the mix from
the prenatal health of the mother and father that includes the negative psychic energy
of both parents, as well as that of the surrounding family members. I think Africans
have taken on a lot of negative energies from our historic endurance of the European
culture. Post-traumatic slave syndrome is at least a cultural reality, if not also one stored
and passed on in our genes and biochemical processes. Going through a psychic and
physical cleansing process before conception would be a wise thing to do.
Without a contented mind, can anything else have importance to you? Perhaps the
issue is that we are contented when imagining some things, but with others, our minds
become stirred up. There is nothing that can disturb us unless we decide to allow it to
do so. In that case, a contented, mind is always a choice. A disturbed mind is also a
choice. From time to time a retreat is necessary to get to the core of one's spirit and
from there, to reboot operations of a productive life. We become externalized by the
demands of life and the captivating media.
We must be aware of the importance of proper preparation before Africans in
America decide to enter a marriage or have kids. Our situation is not like everyone else's.
We face a racism that others don't. We face stresses that others don't. We are opposed
when trying to access resources that others are not. The average wealth (assets) of a
White person is 141,000 where that of the average Black person is 11,000. Our life
condition is not as favorable to that of Whites, and so we need more preparation before
entering families to make them viable, and to handle the additional stress of family
responsibility. I think for Black men the age to do so is around 40. For Black women,
I think the age is around 35. No kids until then.
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Interracial Relationships
In old-time war, could you kill the father or brother of the daughter who is on the
enemy’s side, and still have a normal love relationship with the woman? In traditional
African marriage, the new relationship was not just between man and woman, but also
between the extended family/village of the two. This reinforced peace between the
families. There is no such hope for peace between African and White families so long
as there is economic and political injustice reigning in America. So, based on these two
points, NO, an African person cannot be actively against White supremacy and be
married to a White person in this age, unless the White person gives up their conception
and allegiance to their social construct of Whiteness.
The African family has traditionally been the very basis for the healthy development
of the good and just society. The focus of the family and by extension the society, has
been both the development of healthy and strong children. The larger intention was to
live and express the balanced order of the cosmos through the family. This order has
traditionally been based on balance between the male and female principle generally,
and based on a system of ethics, which in ancient Kemet was called Maat. Thus, through
healthy family development through the ages, African societies achieved the expansion
of collective African consciousness.
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Chapter 8
Education
The Purpose of Education
What is the purpose of education? You will get different answers to this question,
based on whom you ask. Answers can also vary depending on whom the respondent
thinks education is for. Ask a person with amassed material power extracted by
exploiting an expendable labor pool, and that person will likely respond that education
is for making workers more efficient. They may even half-heartedly give a meritocracy
argument and profess that the more highly educated will climb the wealth ladder.
Ask an exploited worker what the purpose of education is for the children of the
materially powerful, and the answer will likely be for consolidating and increasing the
wealth already amassed within the family. Ask a priest in an established religion and the
likely answer is to learn how to serve God. Ask the ancients in spiritual cultures and the
likely answer is to know one’s self, and how to harmonize with nature. If you ask me,
my answer is the same as that of the ancients in spiritual culture. I would take it further
and include learning how to use one’s natural talents to give service to the world to
further it’s awakening to higher levels of consciousness and harmony.
Generalizing the purpose from an African-centered perspective, Asa Hillard (1997)
states, “An important component of African indigenous pedagogy is the vision
of the teacher as a selfless healer intent on inspiring, transforming, and
propelling students to a higher spiritual level.”
Hillard (1997) further elucidates the purpose of education base on the writings and
teachings of Phtahhotep, a Kemetic scribe/sage who lived in 2,350 B.C.E. He gives the
following aims of education, referring to the true student as the learner, hearer or
listener:
➢ To eliminate strife from among the people, to bring harmony, to bring
order.
➢ To enable the learner, hearer, listener to become a model for the children
of the great.
➢ To enable the learner, hearer, listener to gain Wisdom.
➢ To enable the learner to perform good speech and to have a conceptual
understanding of it, a metacognitive understanding.
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➢ To “speak to posterity,” to learn the things that will benefit and enlighten
those who follow. This establishes clearly the intergenerational and the cosmic
obligation of the teacher.
Once we know what the purpose of education is, then we can better construct
methods of achieving the desired goal; as well as properly evaluate the progress we are
making towards that goal. If exploited African people do not have a handle on the
ultimate purpose of education, while attending non-African-centered schools, we are
likely to receive a treatment that will not add to our goal. In public education, we receive
the treatment of what the established system defines as the goal and the methods of
education. The youth and the parents hardly have a say in what the overall purpose and
methods of education will be. We only hope that our youth who are subjected to the
public educational treatment will come out prepared to meet basic survival criteria; and
if they are lucky, develop their talents in a way that will land them a livelihood that
matches those talents.
Through it all, there is no opportunity to bend the system to address deeper matters
of self-discovery and holistic inner development. We assume that in modern times this
is the norm; it is the price we must pay to be modern humans. I say that this price is
too high. The damage of training youth to simply be efficient producers of wealth for
others, to be a “good worker” or even to thrive in a materialistic pursuit of wealth
accumulation, is to “gain the world but lose the soul,” as the expression goes. Once the
emptiness of this training and way of life is realized, it may be too late to undo it, in
pursuit of a more holistic way of life.
Existing power structures will tend to replicate themselves, and one primary means
of doing so is through the treatment received in schools. Students are taught to replicate
existing power structures. For those with lesser material power, rarely is the outcome
of the education treatment a gain in knowledge and power to wrestle power away from
those who control the system. Rarely is the less powerful taught how to use resources
of the society to transform existing power relations. Rarely will a materialistic society
that is steeped in concepts of exceptionalism, racism, and external control systems of
religions produce individuals who value the opposite of these.
The primary instruction for life by the ancients of spiritual culture to “know thy self’
can have many interpretations, as well as expressions or ways of realization. How did
the ancients of spiritual culture approach advanced levels of education for their youth?
How can those approaches serve to instruct our teachers today in public schools? How
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can they be infused in the existing educational system to mitigate some of the
destructive practices that retard students’ self-discovery? Can we move education in our
modern times to a state that is more conducive to the holistic development of our
youth, while also freeing them from the more limiting structures that replicate existing
unequal power relations in society? I think so.
Tied to the question of what is the purpose of education, is the question of what is
knowledge? Once we know what the purpose of education is, particularly for African
people, then it follows that the content of knowledge should serve the purpose of
education. In other words, what is taught should be relevant to the goal of education
or the purpose of education. I gave a lofty statement of what the purpose of education
is. This broad statement does not preclude more mundane or smaller goals that support
the attainment of higher goals. Allow the following simplified scenario. Suppose leaders
in an agricultural-based country in the current computer age decided that it is in the
national interest to mechanize and adopt technological innovations to allow the country
to compete in global markets. I maintain that this goal is not mutually exclusive with
the lofty goal of achieving a harmonious society of self-aware, and enlightened
populace. I believe that having a strong material base, and independence from the
dominant influence of foreigners, is a vital prerequisite to achieving a harmonious
society. This includes having a strong national defense, militarily as well as from
espionage, sabotage, and corruption from within and from without. To achieve this
requires all levels of practical education in a wide variety of fields. Knowledge then is
broadly defined as what promotes the national goals.
In a capitalist society, knowledge becomes what will give a corporate entity an
advantage over competitors. I don’t have a problem with competition per se; however,
I don’t believe that the profit motive should trump the national interests or goals. Nor
do I believe that innovation for its own sake is essential. I believe that all innovation
and corporate ventures must be aligned with national goals. If they are not, then they
should not be supported by the government and should be circumscribed from being
able to shape the public materially, economically, or socially. Africans continue to be
oppressed by the dominant European collective, and thus cannot freely set “national
policy”—economic, educational, or otherwise—without resistance and conscription by
the dominant society. Yet there remains an African vanguard that continues to struggle
for African Self-determination.
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Integral Knowledge, Being, and View
Determining “what counts as knowledge” involves the convergence of one’s
epistemological, ontological and axiological standpoints, which will inevitably shape the
quality of one’s inquiry into a subject. In quantum physics, there is a concept that the
experimenter will always influence the outcome of an experiment by the very act of
selecting what to measure. This may be difficult to wrap the mind around, by I think it
is true that the strictest of positivist in their very selection of data to analyze, do express
a convergence of epistemological, ontological, and axiological standpoints, despite any
claims of complete objectivity devoid of influence from personal frames of reference
or values. It is always helpful to go back and fetch the wisdom of our African ancestors,
to help with answers to such questions as what is knowing, and what does it mean to
be fully human, or even Divine Man.
The Dogon of Mali identifies four levels of knowing: Giri-So (the fore word—
descriptive), Bene-So (The side word—comparative), Bolo-So (The back word—
analytic), and So-Dayi (The clear word—truth). These also represent progressive levels
of understanding or perceiving reality. So, you can have two or more people observing
or considering the same phenomenon, but depending on their developmental level of
insight along these Dogon levels, they will apprehend the reality of it to varying degrees;
they will have different levels of understanding or insight into the phenomenon. The
Western apprehension of what it is to be human according to Marimba Ani (1994)
remains generally on the first level, or Bene-So, which is a superficial level of knowing
and therefore being. This incomplete knowing of the human makeup is manifested in
incomplete and therefore harmful systems of categorization of Africans in the West.
The evolution, transformation and adaptation of the core African self/worldview (Asili)
to Western environment, is consistent with the Dogon system of understanding, in that
Africans can re-establish our historical roots (foreword), acknowledge our current
situation based on historical continuum (Bene-So), reach back to values/effective
practices applicable to our situation (Bolo-So) and move forward in becoming more
Self-realized (So-Dayi).
Integral vs. Partial Knowledge
Knowledge can be partial or integral. Partial knowledge is where one takes only a
part and ignores the whole or sees the whole and ignores its myriad expressions and
revelation in the part. Integral knowledge knows the part to be inseparable from the
whole. It can see or reach the whole through the part. It realizes that the part reveals
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the whole in a way that defies the logic of a subset not being able to contain the set.
Integral knowledge sees the interconnectedness, wholeness or oneness of all things,
from the macro levels, through to the micro levels. It embraces this wholeness, this
oneness of all things while acknowledging the validity of every expression of the whole.
This knowledge is intimately tied or yoked to one’s conception of self. One can view
the self as isolated, disjointed, and in the extreme in opposition with the other. This is
related to partial vision or knowledge. If there is a partial self- knowledge, there must
then be a partial comprehension of the world. On the other hand, one can know one’s
Self to be joined in oneness and interconnected with the essence of all things. All things
then become a part of one’s self. This vision is intimately tied to integral knowledge.
This is the basis of collective consciousness or recognizing the oneness of self and
village; I am because we are.
Social Application of The Unified Field Theory
My approach to life in ALL its modalities is seeing it as an integral whole with
extended parts that are always connected to the whole. The Whole is always behind
supporting the extension, and the extension is always giving expression, in whatever
degree, to the whole; whether the part “realizes” it or not. Einstein spent much of his
life seeking a “theory of everything” that would integrate the various laws of the
universe into one whole. With this theory one could express the integration of the
various laws of the universe into one comprehensible whole as a mathematical equation
no longer than an inch. This endeavor has its parallels in the quest to understand human
evolution, knowledge systems, and societal organizations, “the whole,” expressed in
various time periods, nations, states, communities; and yet these can be depending on
context, “the parts” of an even larger whole.
If I were forced to offer an equation that would express the relationship of the whole
to the parts in mathematical terms it would be as follows: A:X::X:B or A/X=X/B;
where for example, A and B can be any two events or experiences (past or present), and
X is the whole that can be the collective experience/memory or Collective
Consciousness and Being of humanity on a global, national, ethnic, state, regional, or
local neighborhood levels, depending on the context. A and B are all integrated with
the whole, and therefore with each other. The part can be the experience of a person,
neighborhood, region, state, ethnic group or nation that is always related to, and gives
expression to, a more comprehensive whole and at the same time is related to all other
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parts. From the macro to the micro and vice-versa, this formula extends as an infinite
series in all directions.
In my theory of everything as it relates to human evolution and organization, human
collective consciousness on any level is not static, and is not bounded by concepts of
birth and death, past or present. It is continuous and integrated. The collective human
consciousness of today is connected to the collective human consciousness from ages
ago; hence the terms collective memory, cultural heritage, national progress, the soul of
a nation, and African Collective Consciousness.
As I engage a subject of inquiry from whatever level or vantage point, I am always
using this worldview as a basis. Knowledge that cuts off the relationship of one thing
to another, that ignores the relevance of an experience to associated experiences, or that
declares one body essential while related ones irrelevant, is in my view partial
knowledge. It represents partial awareness and a restricted consciousness. There are
always polarities of the same essence. We slide along the poles with varying degrees of
awareness of the essential oneness between poles. We are always swimming in a unified
ocean passing through waves of expression, experience, or knowledge.
Ontological Perspectives
I have described my frame or critical viewpoint of life. It is what I also refer to as an
Integral View of Life with relates to my understanding of the nature of Being. I see an
all-embracing consciousness originally involved in life, which is evolving through life.
This consciousness is moving from lesser to higher degrees of Self-awareness of Its
Being. The arrival to this state of awareness is expressed by the Hindu saying, “I am
That.” This movement to higher levels of self-awareness is the ultimate engine in
human evolution, discovery, invention, civilization, and intercommunication. Advances
in technology, political/economic/social systems are but a movement of the collective
human consciousness towards this Self-awareness of the all-embracing, Self-
Consciousness/Being. So, from a human perspective, we are all in this journey to realize
the same goal, but from different vantage points. All tributaries lead to the same ocean.
The more we recognize and collaborate in our joint evolutionary goal, the more we are
fulfilling our life purpose, and realize a harmony to life.
Pan African/Pan Human Critical Frames of Reference
An Integral View of Life is the primary critical perspective that I bring to inquiry.
Two others are a Pan-African and Pan-Human perspectives. I have a Pan-African
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perspective that is in symbiotic mutual exchange with a Pan Human perspective. The
pan-African perspective that I bring to bear in inquiry is not necessarily exclusive to the
African experience. It is just a way of looking at the world that does not give credence
to the notion that any group of people has a right to dominate, exploit, or otherwise
obstruct the natural evolutionary development of any other group of people. A Pan
African also realizes the interconnectedness of all peoples, but first seeks internal
integration before striving for external integration. It seeks to affirm and realize African
survival, sustainability, development, and progress as a prerequisite for harmoniously
participating in the totality of human evolution. The Pan-African perspective not only
acknowledges the sovereignty and right of Africans to progress, but acknowledges the
same for all peoples of the earth. At its outer limits, my Pan-African perspective morphs
into a Pan-Human perspective; yet the Pan-Human Perspective informs my Pan-
African perspective.
The Collective and Individual Good - Sides of the Same Coin
These three critical and worldview perspectives—Integral View, Pan-African, Pan-
Human—are no doubt interrelated. The language each utilizes might makes it seem that
these are different perspectives. They are each directly concerned with the greater good
of the individual in a symbiotic relationship and equal exchange with the collective. The
individual and the collective are in my view equal, not necessarily in degree, but in
quality because they share the same essence. Ideas and actions that affirm the equal
rights of all humans to evolve towards self-realization, individual and collective, are
valued more favorably in my interpreting and co-authoring the text of life. Partial
knowledge often leads to disharmonious actions and human suffering. I have learned
though, that partial knowledge and self-awareness may be a stepping stone to a more
holistic vision. Slavery, as evil and disharmonious as it has been, may be viewed in a
wider sweep as a movement towards the integration of diverse groups, once the extreme
separation between groups is transcended. Such a view is allowable with Integral Vision,
though by the same view the justification for slavery is never allowable. With an Integral
vision, all opposites are reconcilable and polarities of the same essence, or two sides of
the same coin.
Relations Between Culture, Education, and Social Transformation
In assessing public school policy and praxis, one must first place the school in the
context of the wider socio-cultural field it is situated in. Learning activities in any school
setting are mediated by the macro and mesostructures that schools are situated in.
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Schools are primary sites for the reproduction of the larger cultural values and motives,
which often have much to do with reinforcing a stratified system of power relations. It
almost goes without saying that these macro and mesostructures will deeply shape the
educational practices, experiences, and outcomes that occur.
Bourdieu (2000) intimates in his works that schools are sites where the reproduction
of the structure of power relationships between classes occurs. This happens through
the mechanisms of distribution of cultural capital. Implicating education systems as
such, Bourdieu says, “this means that our object becomes the production of the habitus,
that system of dispositions which acts as a mediation between structures and practice;
more specifically, it becomes necessary to study the laws that determine the tendency
of structures to reproduce themselves by producing agents endowed with the system of
predispositions which is capable of engendering practices adapted to the structures and
thereby contributing to the reproduction of the structures.”
One idea embedded within this statement is that actions by actors are tied up with
an engagement of structures (“engendering practices”), which can lead to a
reproduction of existing structures. This suggests to me that there must also be another
side to the coin, that agents can engage structures with their most egregious elements,
but rather transform them according to their own goals.
It is commonplace for those who benefit within a society where the distribution of
resources is stratified along racial and class categories, to deny the reality that racism
and classism still deeply impinge on the learning outcomes and potential of minority
students in public education. This denial serves the purpose of maintaining these
limiting structures and shielding their macro and meso-level transformation. bell hooks
(1994), in her book, Teaching to Transgress, references the need to transform
educational institutions into sites of liberation:
“If we examine the traditional role of the university in the pursuit of truth and
the sharing of knowledge and information, (Resources), it is painfully clear that
biases that uphold and maintain white supremacy, imperialism, sexism and
racism have distorted education so that it is no longer about the practice of
freedom. …The call for a recognition of cultural diversity, a rethinking of ways
of knowing, a deconstruction of old epistemologies, and the concomitant
demand that there be a transformation in our classrooms, in how we teach and
what we teach, has been a necessary revolution – one that seeks to restore life to
a corrupt and dying academy.” (p. 26)
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Racism is not the only force to be reckoned with. Classism, excessive capitalism
expressed through globalization and manifesting structurally in local schools, is also a
force in need of transformation. Ken Tobin in his paper, “Global Reproduction and
Transformation of Science Education,” also makes the link of macro-level structures
impinging on the local school structures and limiting the educational
outcomes/potential of minority students.
“The Neoliberal demand expressed through Globalization and reaching down to
the public-school system, tends to define education for mostly African American and
Latino students in such narrow terms that are not in my view compatible with their
overarching goals of becoming independently successful by their own definitions.”
(Tobin, K. 2009) Tobin asks, “How should access and appropriation of resources
be included in a theory of freedom in science (any) education?” Tobin (2010) I
extend this same question here by asking, how can resources be accessed and
appropriated in culturally empowering ways to help these groups reach their
overarching goals of becoming independently successful by their own definitions?
Imperatives for an African-Centered Education vs. Schooling
Na’ Im Akbar (1985) asks us to reflect on how Africans in America—and I would
assume by extension, Africans the world over—should approach the education of our
children. He asks, “the first question is: What shall be the ideology of educating the
African-American child? The answer to this question will guide our search both for
content and methodology.” Part of his answer, and mine, is to:
“…move our attention away from the individual conception of the child which
limits it in terms of its separate physical attributes. While continuing to be aware
of the asset or limitation of those attributes, we would begin to judge the child
more significantly in terms of its collective membership in the community of
African-American people of which it is a part. We would begin to judge the
child’s behavior, not so much in terms of its personal convenience (or our
personal convenience), but instead, as a part of the enduring community or
nation of which it is a part. Individual actions attain their significance by the
degree to which those actions further or hinder the good of the community.” (p.
63)
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I believe this ideological approach to education is essential to the evolution of
African Self Consciousness, and to the holistic development of African people in the
world. Central to the development of African Collective consciousness is how Africans
take on the responsibility of educating their own children. Africans must not leave the
education of our youth to those who have historically oppressed them, and who
continue to do so today. The evolution of higher African consciousness will proceed in
pace with the levels to which Africans structure the education of our youth. This
education must certainly encompass moral and spiritual domains. That moral and
spiritual education must extend to the material life conditions of Africans the world
over. The spiritual is not separate from the material. Indeed, the material gives
grounding and support to the spiritual evolution. Certainly, the education of our youth
must address the real pressures posed by global White supremacy aspirations and its
handmaiden, extreme capitalism. It must be centered on the African experience and
serve the higher goals of African consciousness.
As we consider what are some essential elements of an African-centered education
we must first be explicit about the fundamental premises of this endeavor. The first
premise is that there is an African cultural unity that is unique, distinct, with an historical
lineage that reaches back to ancient times from the continent of Africa and that has
spread from there to all the known corners of the earth. The next premise is that the
African continent is the rightful home of all Africans, and that all other peoples who
claim African territory and resources are invaders who must be ousted as soon as
possible. The next premise is that the peoples who have been captured and dispersed
from Africa are still Africans forming a diaspora and they still have their roots in the
African tree; their destiny on earth is inextricably tied to the destiny of the African
homeland and the African family on the continent.
The next premise is that Africans the world over are dealing with a global system of
White supremacy aspiration, which is the same system couched in a different form that
instituted the African slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and other subtle forms
of socio-economic control structures that are in place to exploit and kill African people.
The next premise is that the African collective the world over are not destined to submit
to global White supremacy aspirations, hence, WE have an obligation to counter global
White supremacy at every turn until it no longer exists. This implies a global, organized
response. It also implies that WE must identify with the status of the African homeland
as focus of our collective liberation. WE cannot be considered free so long as non-
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Africans are pillaging African resources and African people on the continent of Africa.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
Having stated these fundamental premises, we can see that the meaning of an
African-centered education comes into a clearer focus. Let’s then be explicit on the
essential meanings of African-centered education. African-centered education,
considering the premises I have mentioned above, must mean that Africans must learn
how to affect our freedom from all limiting forces to that freedom; principally global
White supremacy aspirations. So, African-centered education has the immediate
imperative of training our youth on how to neutralize global structures of White
supremacy aspirations, that limit the life opportunities of Africans (and other peoples
of color) around the world. Structures reflecting Global White supremacy aspirations
limit the life chances of African people in all areas of their socio-economic-political
activity.
African-centered education must first address the essential areas of people activity
that will, in turn, effectuate freedom in all other areas of people's activity. Those
essential areas include economics, government and politics, health, human psychology
self-defense, food production, energy production, education proper, diplomatic
relations, spiritual and cultural education, and exchange. So, African-centered education
is education of our youth that addresses the problems of African development, in all
areas of people activity, but also addresses our immediate imperative of neutralizing
structures reflecting global White supremacy aspiration, by focusing on the essential
fields I just mentioned. If the education of Africans is not focused on these goals
(African liberation) and these fields, I do not consider it African-centered education. In
that case, it is a hindrance to the very survival of Africans as a people. Amos Wilson
(1998) gives this meaning of African-centered education:
“African-centered education is designed to create the kind of people we need to
solve African people’s problems. The kind of education that is being received by
African people today is designed to solve white folk’s problems. You’re being
educated to solve their problems. That’s why no matter how highly educated
your people become, the more problems we have. The more, and you heard me
say it before, the more degrees in business administration we have, the more
other people take over our business districts. Which says what? That this degree
is not designed for us to take control of our economic system. It’s not because
the assumption is, that Black students are being prepared to work for white folk.
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Work in white companies. Strive to move up in white systems. The education
assumes that whites will continue to be in control of the economic system. And
therefore, they are educated on the assumption that they’re going in to get a job
from someone else, and they’re not educated in how? To what? Create jobs for
themselves. And to create their own economic and political structures.
And therefore, you get highly educated Black economists and so forth, who
cannot help Black people to resolve their economic problems. And yet they teach
at Harvard and Yale. And they get Nobel prizes for what? Solving other people’s
problems. And African-centered education is designed to get you to solve your
own problems.”
People may claim that a Western education for African peoples is ideal.
Technological advances and the products spawned by these advances (superior
weapons, the machinery of cities, advances in biological sciences, etc.) are touted as
evidence of the superiority of the European way of life. However, education and
socialization of Africans into European ways of life will only serve European interests
and goals in the short and long terms, not those of Africans. No doubt the knowledge
of the European collective can be useful to Africans, but only insofar as that knowledge
is applied to solving the problems of Africans, the principal problem being global White
supremacy aspirations.
It is a truism that never in history has an oppressive group of people—an invader—
taught the oppressed, the conquered, how to throw off their oppression in order to
install a just society free from oppression. Freedom is not won by the good conscience
of the oppressor, but by the demand of the oppressed. African-centered education must
have as a basis, the demand of freedom from all limiting forces on the life chances of
Africans the world over, starting from where they live of course, but simultaneously in
solidarity with those on the African continent. African-centered education will always
have the historical development of Africans on the continent in perspective, while
solutions to the problem of global White supremacy aspirations are studied and
addressed. African-centered education will train youth on how to understand global
White supremacy aspirations, how to neutralize them, and will facilitate the activity of
our youth to carry out that neutralization.
African-centered education, with the above meaning embedded within it, has a very
different trajectory than the Western education that our youth are subjected to. African
students can have the very best that Western education offers, but if that education
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does not include training on how to apply it to solving the problem of global White
supremacy aspiration, then it is a waste of time and can only be called mis-education of
the African. No matter how lettered, how technical, how sanctioned, how credentialed,
how financially rewarding that Western education is, if it cannot serve to address the
limiting forces of White supremacy aspiration, it is counter-evolutionary in terms of the
progressive African development. It is folly to think that the best of Western education
will teach Africans how to apply their education to solve the problems posed to Africans
by global structures reflecting White supremacy aspiration.
It is equally fallacious to think that public education in schools where Africans
predominate, will teach African youth how to throw off global structures of White
supremacy aspiration. If anything, it will brand such students and teachers of these
students with that kind of education in mind, as being racists, crazy, troublemakers,
and/or un-patriotic. Students who resist the norms of a standard Western education
may find themselves on the failing end of the grade or branded in need of special
education or numbing medication. Teachers who attempt to teach African-centered
perspectives in public education run the risk of losing their jobs, being castigated,
demoted, passed over from greater responsibilities, or otherwise ostracized and
harassed by administrators and peers. Yet I am sure there are African teachers who
persist in trying to raise the consciousness of African students to the realities of global
structures reflecting White supremacy aspiration, and the need to develop resistance to
it.
Having stated what an African-centered education entails and what it is not, we can
delve into some essentials of an African-centered curriculum. What must be in the
curriculum? This is a loaded question and a great many qualifications are needed. For
one we must ask, are we talking about the education of youth situated in a country
governed by Africans such as in Ghana? Are we talking about the education of Africans
in urban schools in America? I think that it is best to talk about the ideal scenario first;
the education of Africans in an African country with a government that is ideally run
by Africans who are not beholden to Western powers. It is not at all apparent to me
that such an African country exists; still, it is a healthy exercise to talk about the ideal
case, even if imaginary, so that we have something to strive for and compare to.
Ideals of African-Centered Education in “Free” African Societies
The global system of White supremacy aspiration is a complex system that has many
facets, many presentations, transformations, and areas of operation. It is not realistic to
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expect any one student to comprehend, let alone master, these facets of operation. It is
important then to have both a comprehensive education on structures reflecting global
White supremacy aspirations and specializations. The focus is not to just know and be
reactive, but to be trained on how to master solutions to the system from a
comprehensive, planning perspective. So, it is important to give students in the early
grades a comprehensive understanding of their African history, development, and
oppression. It is vital to give youth the essential African identity development that will
ensure the student will grow up identifying with the conditions of African people on
the continent and throughout the diaspora. The student in the early grades will be taught
the value of land, resources, free development of human potential on their own land,
and a moral education that clarifies the injustices of White supremacy. This orientation
must be reinforced at every turn and supported by healthy activities that demonstrate
how humans can live in harmony with nature, with neighbors, and with other non-
African peoples. Children can develop a sense of justice and natural harmonies early
on, even in pre-school ages.
As African youth are learning the fundamentals of math, applied science, earth
science, history, culture, and social studies, these lessons should be couched in an
African historical perspective. These lessons should not be taught in abstraction from
the historical life-world of Africans, as in glorifying the exploits and accomplishments
of Europeans. This is not to say that the accomplishments of Europeans should be
omitted, but they should not be given primacy since the focus is on accomplishments
that advance African development. Secondarily, European accomplishments can be
introduced in terms of how these developments advance collective humanity or do not.
If not, it should be explained why and how such advancements only serve the few—
how and why it is detrimental the African development.
During the elementary education of African youth, there should be some means of
tracking the areas of talent and interest of the youth, to steer them into areas of African
development that are most needed by the African collective considering the onslaught
of global White supremacy aspiration. We cannot afford to put the most precious
resources of the African collective, African youth, into fields that have little to no direct
impact on the immediate developmental needs to the African collective. In wartime—
and Africans the world over are at war—resources must be directed to the immediate
defense of the country. There are plenty of areas where a child can give free expression
to their talents and at the same time contribute to the immediate developmental needs
of the African collective. These areas include the arts, sciences, mathematics, social-
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cultural studies, biological sciences, informational and communications technologies.
The main issue is that their studies will have a well-defined objective of solving African
developmental problems. Though Africa is the wealthiest continent in terms of natural
resources on the planet, those resources are not yet organized and deployed to serve
the interests of Africans. Hence in effect there is a limited amount of available resources
to implement towards solving African development needs. That includes human
resources, considering that few have skills that are up to par with the array of devices
employed by the White collective to limit African life chances. Therefore, it is vital that
the available skilled Africans are drafted to the work of African development. Africans
in the diaspora have acquired in Western educational institutions skills that can be
repurposed to serve the developmental needs of the African collective. Organizing that
recruiting and repurposing is something that a free African county should seriously look
at.
African-Centered Education vs. Western Public Schooling
There is no doubt Africans in America have played a principal role in the evolution
of African consciousness the world over. Central to the fight for human rights, civil
rights, equal rights, and the pursuit of professed higher American ideals have been the
struggle for equal education. For better or worse, this has led to the push for integrated
schools. Prior to integration, African teachers taught African students primarily in
segregated schools. After the push for integration, these African teachers were mostly
displaced by White teachers, as the dominant White society did not accept Black
teachers teaching White children. Today, about 80% of the teachers in schools where
Africans predominate are White. Education of Africans in Western public schools is
obviously far removed from the ideal of an African-centered education as I have
described it above. However, we must not abandon the effort to draft students who
undergo this Westernized education into the cause of African collective development.
Furthermore, educators must seek to engage African students in culturally sensitive and
transformative pedagogy in schools where African students predominate.
In his famous last speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I want you to know that
we as a people will get to the promised land.” This is an affirmation that African
Americans see themselves as a unique ethnic collective, having distinct historical
experiences, ways of knowing, ways of being, values, problem sets, and goals, that are
not in total the same as other collectives. This unique ethnic history must be considered
if the education system is to reach and teach African-American students, especially in
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schools where they predominate such as urban schools in America. Ladson-Billings
(1994, p. 134) expresses this by saying, “Without greater exposure to the students’
culture teachers lack the tools with which to make sense of much that transpires
in the classroom.” I interpret this reference to “students’ culture” to mean the ethos
or historical experiences and ideologies shared by the student with others of like
ethnicity. The ethos shared by students does shape how they approach and navigate
learning. However, throughout this dissertation culture has the meaning given by Tobin
(2006):
“Culture comes to be enacted in the form of practices and associated schema
that members bring to salient issues. In the process, they exercise their agency
(i.e. power to act) as part of which they appropriate the structures of a field to
simultaneously meet their personal goals (teaching a science concept) and the
collective’s motives (the schooling of new generations).” (p. 15)
Through positive sanctions and re-enforcement by educators and students
themselves, culturally sensitive activities can develop into lasting dispositions on the
part of students and into teaching praxis for teachers that support students’ self-defined
goals. Considering their unique ethnic identity, it follows that not only must the
methods of teaching African American students be appropriate for this group but also
the goals, short-term and long-term, of teaching African American students must be
viewed as a basis of their education. Further emphasizing this point, Geneva (2000,
p.21) has said, “Teaching is a contextual and situational process. As such, it is most
effective when ecological factors, such as prior experiences, community settings,
cultural backgrounds, and ethnic identities of teachers and students are included in its
implementation.”
This is one basis for my belief that pedagogy and curricula must be designed to
address the needs of schools where African-American students predominate. It must
be designed in culturally sensitive ways that address the unique learning styles,
ideologies, and goals of African-American students. With this imperative in mind, it
then becomes vital that teachers be trained to teach with this sensitivity to ethnic
historical experience. This requires that teachers are given training and a directive to do
so; without which it is by no means a likelihood to occur, since most teachers of African
American students come from an ethnic background different from their students and
lack familiarity with the ethnic historical experience of African American students. Even
when the ethnic backgrounds of teachers and students are similar, it is not a given that
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teachers will deliver the curriculum and instruction with sensitivity to ethnic experience,
because many African Americans teach in the way they were taught, i.e., often from a
Eurocentric perspective.
As things stand now, education in schools with a predominately African American
student body takes on a much different directive and accomplishes not the students’
goals but largely a reproduction of existing unequal power relations. This reality is made
manifest through various means. Danny Bernard Martin (2007) helps conceptualize
some of the ways that this occurs when he addresses the question, “Who should teach
mathematics to African American children?” He states:
“I claim that the manner in which this question is addressed in mainstream
research and policy contexts is largely a function of (a) the simplistic ways in
which the aims and goals of mathematics education for African American
children are framed (i.e., closing the so-called racial achievement gap, increasing
course enrollments, preparing students for the workforce) and (b) the
problematic ways in which African American children are socially constructed as
learners with particular kinds of deficiencies in relation to students who are
identified as white and Asian.” (p. 21)
In answering the question of who should teach mathematics to African-American
students, Martin (2007) makes the argument that they should be people who have a
sensitivity to the learning styles and goals of African American students, and I agree.
He notes, “for me, teacher dispositions, racial competence, and commitment to anti-
oppressive and anti-racist teaching are just as important as knowledge of subject matter;
a teacher who is truly highly qualified must demonstrate competence in all of these.” In
some cases, this ethnic sensitivity will be a natural outgrowth of teachers having the
same ethnic background as their students. Yet having the same ethnicity does not
guarantee a teacher knows how to teach in ways sensitive to students’ ethnic
backgrounds.
In most cases, teachers do not have this sensitivity and require training in how to
teach African American students through leveraging their existing cultural capital. It is
my view that it is not enough for teachers to learn how to speak the code language of
African-American students and act like “they are down” with the kids, though this can
be a great aid. It’s not enough to have teachers with strong content knowledge and
pedagogical skills, though this too is essential. Teachers must be aware of the
socioeconomic realities, pressures, ideologies, and structures that limit the life
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opportunities of African-American students. They must be willing to conspire against
these structures along with the students and develop counter structures that promote
student agency. Teachers must be willing to organize the curriculum and instruction to
help African American students engage these structures in agentic ways to help them
reach their self-defined goals. Educators must uncover the aspirations of African
American students and, given the obstructions they face, to fulfill those aspirations.
This approach should be reflected in lessons taught on a regular basis. It should form
the praxis of teaching for liberation and preparation for the demands of a twenty-first-
century global economy. There must be recognition that this kind of teaching, as with
any, is deeply implicated in the identity formation of students as competent managers
of knowledge capital and other resources to meet the collective goals of their
communities. Any teacher who is willing and prepared to do this kind of teaching is
qualified to teach African-American students.
It is the responsibility of every African educational leader in both the African
continent and the African diaspora to enlist African youth who have gone through
Western educational systems to give of their talents and skills to the cause of African
collective development. African students who have gone through Western educational
systems will most likely have been conditioned to value other goals that serve to
replicate global White supremacy, that to further African development. Nevertheless,
these students must be entreated to undergo a reorientation process so that they can
serve the collective goals of their own people. Without such reorientation, it is unlikely
that a Western-educated African student will value and work toward the development
of his/her own collective goals. Such a student may have marketable skills, but these
skills will end up serving to reinforce White supremacy aspiration socio-economic
structures.
It would behoove us to look closely at the progress of spiritual forms of social
organization, including education, such as existed for thousands of years in ancient
Egypt, China, or India. What lessons can we learn from those developments? Where
would a diligent pursuit of the trajectory drawn out by the ancient Egyptian sages, as
exemplified by their spiritual/social group organization, have taken us? This question
begs an answer. What can we glean from that purview, in our attempt to formulate the
highest ideal for African organization and self-governance throughout the Diaspora in
our time? There are some essential lessons from these ancient spiritual traditions that
we must fetch and apply to our current circumstances individually and as a collective
African people. Some of the most important include the following:
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➢ The realization that the divine permeates all of life. The universe, nature,
and humanity are real expressions of the Supreme Being's infinite being.
➢ The process of spiritual initiation/education was to transform humanity
into the divine human, culminating in the realization that the Creator and humans
are one because all is the Creator.
➢ The divine reality is revealed to the various sectors of society, to the level
and in modes that each sector can assimilate.
➢ World societies, to realize their greatest harmony and progressive
development, must follow the divine order or will, which is often stated,” As above,
so below.”
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Chapter 9
Grounding With My Brothers & Sisters - Reorientation
Misorientation Impacting Our Collective Self-Consciousness
Here is a tough question: When do the distortions and mutations of the African seed
or essential culture, Asili (Ani, 1994), result in a new culture that is identical to the White
supremacy aspiration culture? In more direct words, when do Africans stop being
Africans and become not just confused Africans but Black Europeans or Negropeans?
Is that even possible? Is a Negro more of a confused African who can become
unconfused or a human that is no longer African, but rather a Black European with
now essential European seed culture (values, ideology, ways of knowing, beliefs about
existence, ways of experiencing reality)?
Definition of Negropean: a person of dark hue who has completely rejected his or
her African cultural system and replaced it with a European cultural system. One who
rejects the need for Afrocentrism to facilitate the African survival thrust and consciously
engages in activity that facilitates the European survival thrust.
One of the root causes of the Negropean mentality is fear of the power the
oppressor displays, resulting in identification with the oppressor. This identification
with the oppressor out of fear is known as Stockholm syndrome. This mentality often
produces self-alienation, which manifests in dysfunctional relationships and social
structures created by Negropeans, such as:
➢ Superficial relationships
➢ Relationships based on power conflicts
➢ Relationships based on competition
➢ Relationships based on materialisms
➢ Relationships based on temporary pleasure gains.
➢ Relationships based on convenience and not on compatibility
➢ Non-nurturing society
➢ Non-nurturing family due to its misorientation
➢ Non-nurturing educational system
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Kambon, in his book, Cultural Misorientation, asserts that every African in the
American context is infected with cultural misorientation to varying degrees, from
minor to moderate to severe. His position is that about 50% of Africans in America are
in the moderate Cultural Misorientation (CM) range. At the core, this implies a low level
of African Self-consciousness, which is the opposite of CM. He says that when
considering African mental health, we must first look to African models, since we are
not Black Europeans, operating under their "Universal" constructs of what mental
health is. For us mental health entails behaving in ways that support our collective
wellbeing, or survival thrust (practicing our African heritage/rituals, nation-building
defense, and maintenance). When we are not operating from an African-centered stance
or worldview, we become culturally misoriented and express this condition in
pathological ways that are destructive to ourselves and our African collective. We could
be operating in what appears to be healthy ways from the stance of the European
culture, but not from the stance of African culture (i.e., individualism, materialism,
alienation from African identity, self-hatred, and abuse such as in drugs and Black on
Black violence, not practicing collective economics). These behaviors support the
European survival thrust but not our own.
We need to learn about the scales of African self-consciousness and misorientation.
There are degrees of them. How bad is it in the diasporas? What does it look like to be
a high-functioning Negro, but with no African self-consciousness? What does it look
like to be a teen with developing strong African self-consciousness? What does it look
like to be a teacher with a high level of misorientation and, in turn, pass it on to our
kids? What does it look like to have a moderate level of misorientation, but just enough
to make a marriage fail? European psychological categories don't apply to Africans. Our
categories of cultural misorientation, weak African self-consciousness, and alienation
from African paradigms require natural African correctives that are indigenous to
African culture.
Blacks in European societies who suffer from cultural misorientation adopt, to a
large measure, the oppressor's culture. Black men who adopt the European culture will
also adopt patriarchal dispositions, seeking to dominate, control, abuse, objectify, and
distrust women. All of this is an imitation of how the European behaves towards his
woman. Black men have, to a large extent, lost models of healthy man/woman
relationships as they exist in natural African environments. Black feminism then—if
properly applied and understood—would be a call to return to such traditional, natural
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relations that are not in service of the European cultural thrusts, but rather are in service
of the African cultural thrusts.
Misorientation of One of My “Intelligent” Students
Here is a comment from a former high school math student of mine, which
demonstrates how education in academics does not necessarily translate into an
accurate understanding of the world around you. This was an AP Calculus student, who
was also the valedictorian for her graduating class. “At this stage, I don’t believe in
racism, systematic oppression, reparations, none of that. When I was younger, I
used to think because I’m black, automatically I’m at a disadvantage socially.
Now I think... with all the doors as wide open as they are, if you’re not where
you need to be, there’s something wrong with you. Not because you’re black.”
My immediate response to her was as follows:
In terms of reparations, no group that has power over another group will share that
power willingly. So, I agree, that we must not wait on reparations. Such reparations
would occur only when countries in Africa unite and put tariffs on American
products until reparations are made for slavery and structural racism. That will be
a long time from now. In terms of systematic oppression and racism, which is the
power to harm another ethnic group and limit their life chances, the evidence
abounds and you must look at easily accessible statistics to see it.
No group naturally wants to be at the bottom. Africans, when given so-called
freedom, wanted an equal shot at life in America, starting with 40 acres, a mule, and
some education. None of this was granted in equal measure. I think you are
confused about how we have free choice to struggle, to not follow the brainwashing
vs. the actions of an oppressor to limit the life chances of a group (through
brainwashing and even outright murder), Blacks. Both forces exist.
I think perhaps you want to encourage folks to keep struggling no matter what, but
you must know what you are struggling against. If you ignore the reality of the
forces against you, you will not know why you are not making progress; you will
not struggle effectively. Structural racism and oppression do exist. There is a group
that does harm another group, your group. Learn how, and learn how to struggle
effectively. Don't blame your group for the oppressors’ tools. Teach your group
how to defeat the tools; but this is not done by ignoring the existence of the racist
tools.
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One more thing, every White person who is not fighting against racism is a racist,
because they automatically gain privileges of the system of oppression that the
oppressed don't get. Do not let such people convince you that racism does not
exist. For them, it does not exist because they want to continue to benefit from it.
I think it would be helpful to widen our lens of introspection from the micro-level
of individual pathology to a more mezzo (community) and macro (African
diaspora/Nation) level. We can get bogged down in classifying individuals as out of
balance (with names as Negropean, Uncle Toms), but we must shift to discussing
community-level behaviors/practices that shape individuals and community
behaviors/practices that reinforce and reproduce our own oppression. We must look
at community-level systems, how they operate and fail to operate. We must broaden
our sense of self from just individuals (European conception) to individuals AND
extended community members. In so doing, correctives for behavior are inclusive of
our whole extended self. What happens in one area of an interconnected web affects
the whole web.
Let's stop chasing the American dream and deal with our own
spiritual/mental/material reality! This graph should be a wakeup call to the myth of the
American dream. It shows we’re still dreaming, and reality has not changed since
reconstruction.
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http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-
recession/
Racism is a group activity thus African Liberation is also a group activity. We cannot
be interested only in our individual success and simplistically blame those who don’t
achieve the same level of supposed success when the general society is structured to
limit African success. There is an African saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if
you want to go far, go together.” WEUSI—we, us, I—are one. We must organize
ourselves collectively. It is better to go slow in the right direction (collective progress)
than to run fast in the wrong direction (individualism). For those without a direction
that serves the collective interest, any which way will do. Your culture is your compass.
Constants Amid Changing Forms of the White Supremacist System of
Domination
There are certain constants in European societies, where even change is managed
by Europeans to ensure the perpetuation of those constants. What are those constants?
They are bundled up into a bag called White supremacist survival thrusts. The cultural
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DNA that Europeans initially developed above the 55th parallel (latitude) was adaptive
for that environment. When they migrated out of the ice cradle, they brought cultural
adaptations that were incompatible with the cultural DNA of the African people they
encountered. Their cultural blueprint works for their minority survival. It is destructive
for everyone else. We need not get all twisted about it, just recognize the operation of
White supremacy aspiration for what it is and do what is necessary to put it in
checkmate.
"Yurugu," which means incomplete being in the Dogon tradition, is also the title of
a major work by Marimba Ani, an African philosopher, anthropologist, and African-
centered cultural theorist. The book lays out in scholarly detail the generating principle,
Asili, of the European culture. It explains that the cultural DNA or blueprint of the
Europeans is at its core a quest for achieving completeness through control and
domination of others in compensation for its lack of spiritual vision.
The Asili of Europeans is sharply contrasted with the Asili of Africans, who have as
their cultural seed a quest to express a harmony of life on earth through their living
being and positive interrelations with others, as a reflection of the greater harmony of
nature. The Asili is operationalized through two modes of the culture that Ani terms
the Utamawazu (culturally structured thought), which I see as analogous to
epistemology/ontology, and through Utamaroho (vital force, or energy source of the
culture), which I see as approximating the axiology or value of a culture. This later
functioning is mostly on the subconscious level. The Two modes give expression to the
Asili, and the Asili informs these modes of cultural expression. Together they form the
ideology of the culture and its construction of reality.
What is very informative is that Ani can deconstruct every institutional structure of
the European culture with her conceptions of Asili, utamawazu, and utamaroho. She
can explain the motivation and operation of the European mind in all aspects, that
include, religion, science, philosophy, aesthetics, ideas of universalism, liberalism,
imperialism, rationalism, modernism, progress, materialism, and basic treatment of the
human other. In Yurugu, Ani says, "A pattern of collective behavior, a world-view that,
while not caused by ‘white skin’ in a simplistically physical sense, may be related to the
cultural/historical/spiritual experience of an isolated breeding population that initially
suffered the relatively sudden and severe loss of melanin at an evolutionary significant
point in their development as a group, physically and culturally. Thereby the Asili was
implanted in the cultural genes."
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Who gets to define strong and weak? Who gets to define civilization or barbarism?
This is not a universal law, survival of the fittest. It is a European way of thinking. Shall
we say that the nation that can murder the most people who are not like themselves, is
the strongest and only nation worthy of survival? I say no! There was a time in history
where Africans could have waged a successful war to kill every white person on earth.
That was not pursued. Does that make whites the strongest and Blacks the weakest? Is
strength measured in the power to separate and destroy, or in in the power to relate and
build? Is it stronger to destroy civilizations thus being uncivil, or to is it stronger to
build a civilization and be civil to the other?
Hate requires a protracted energy investment within while dwelling in a negative
emotional state. That is not where I live my life. So, I'm more of a detached agent
against a system of White supremacy aspiration than a hater of individuals. I understand
individuals are operating under the mandate of that cultural system. I accept that and
deal with the battles as necessary. The most effective warriors are not carried away with
emotions of hating the opponent. Do we give some power and control to Europeans
by validating their dominant status in use of the aggrandizing term "White" or the
phrase “White supremacy?” Do you think we are aiding in the reproduction of our
oppressed status by agreeing with this collective term White? It's like calling people
"boss" on a job. I never do that.
I always refer to a person who oversees my work as manager. Calling someone
boss… does that not give him or her permission to be domineering over you? I always
thought so. How about referring to White people as "the man." Does this imply that
non-whites are "the boys?" How about referring to us as minorities? Does this not play
into a psychology of thinking of your group as a global minority, whereas in fact
Europeans (10% of earth's population) are the true minorities? My thinking, however,
is that these various European nationals will band together regardless of how we refer
to them. They have their program regardless of how we perceive them. Only a
counterforce equal to theirs can fundamentally shape their behavior. They will never
reason themselves out of their quest for domination. It is our own definitions that we
accept that will bring us to a position of overthrowing European global oppression.
What transformation—distinct, methodical, and public—has the European gone
through to eradicate this mentality? I don't need any more examples to show the blatant
racism of society, the basic lack of respect, justice, Godliness of this society. I don't
need any more shocking examples of White supremacy aspiration. I've been convinced
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since my late teens, and now I'm in my fifties. I don't need to be convinced about the
need to abandon ALL European values and practices. Europeans don't own the
principle of progress, of scientific inquiry, of justice, democracy, civilization, or higher
learning. By abandoning ALL European values, I don't abandon the markers, modes,
and methods of human progress. Rejecting All European values only means rejecting a
Eurocentric worldview and replacing it with an African-centered worldview. The frame
of reference is change. We stop being an imitation European and become what we can
only truly be, our true selves, Africans. By abandoning ALL European values, we come
closer to living an authentic life, African-centered, in tune with the harmonies and
progressiveness of life.
Not every European person is the power source of racism; but if a European person
is not resisting racism, then they are a conductor of European racism. Analogous to this
conductive participation in racism is how a copper wire conducts electricity from a
power source, offering little resistance, and so allows this evil to flow through them to
the next conductor or to the target. So, as an African, I am not confused about all the
racist wires; I know any of them can cause a lethal shock in each circumstance. All the
wires are live, unless I see an obvious resistor.
To what extent does it hold African people back to have faith that European people
as a collective can change their racist behavior? To what extent does it hold us back to
think that if we become Christ-like enough, that we can show them the Way to live up
to their own religious claims of universal brotherhood? To what extent do integrationist
fantasies hold us back? How pervasive, deeply ingrained, are these beliefs in the intrinsic
good nature of the European, or his potential to become good, programmed in our
minds, such that we find it effectively unimaginable to let go of the false hope? I think
of an abused and dependent wife, who keeps holding out that her abusive husband will
change if she loves him hard enough and does his every bidding. Sadly, our state is in
many ways the same as that of the abused wife, as we hold out in wait for the European
Collective to treat us justly. We even think that the European God or Jesus will change
their heart. So, we wait and suffer continued abuse. We put on the makeup and pretend
that the beating was not so bad. How/when does this relationship end? How long do
we smile for the public?
One of our elder African warriors of today, Baba Mwalimu Baruti, recently reminded
the African community of something written over one hundred years ago by Martin
Delany, a strong African activist, something still applicable today.
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“The slave may become a lover of his master, and learn to forgive him for
continual deeds of maltreatment and abuse, just as the Spaniel would couch and
fondle at the feet that kick him; because he has been taught to reverence them,
and consequently, becames adapted in body and mind to his condition. Even the
shrubbery-loving Canary, and loftly-soaring Eagle may be tamed to the cage, and
learn to love it from habitat of confinement. It has been so with us in our position
among our oppressors, we have been so prone to such positions; that we have
learned to love them. When reflecting upon this all important, and to us, all
absorbing subject; we feel in the agony and anxiety of the moment, as though we
could cry out in the language of a Prophet of old: “Oh that my head were waters,
and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the
“degradation” of my people! Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of
way-faring men, that I might leave my people, and go from them!”
Can You Truly Be Pro Black While Embracing European Versions of
Christianity?
The question is very open ended and so the answers will be all over the place. I think
there are at least seven aspects to the question, so I will give a brief reply to each:
1) European versions of the formal religion vs. Africanized versions of the
formal religion: I think once it was necessary to Africanize a religion forced on us
during our physical enslavement. That kind of direct force is no longer in play, and so
we need not contend with the oppressors’ religion by Africanizing it. We are free to
rediscover the Supreme Being as we did before having Christianity forced upon us.
2) European claims of starting the formal religion vs. African claims of
starting the formal religion: It is a fact that the name Jesus Christ was first used at
the Council of Nicaea and Constantine then made the religion the formal religion of
the Roman State. Before then it was a sect among sects. It is true that most of the
development of the sect took place in Africa.
3) African claims of inventing all the elements that would eventually be
incorporated into the formal religion: Read Gerald Massey's The Historical Jesus where
he broke down how all the elements of the Christian faith (resurrection, virgin birth,
changing water to wine, multiplying the loaves of bread, etc.) were in existence in the
Egyptian Mysteries system before the Christian era. Our African scholars reveal the
same (see John Jackson's Christianity before Christ).
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4) Questions about the veracity of claims for a historical Jesus: This can be a
long debate. I have done intense research on verifying the existence of Jesus. I have
come to the possible existence of a spiritual leader, whose reputation was used to
construct a god and a religion by the Romans and Hellenized Jews. I will post some
reading material on this. Everyone needs to do his or her own research.
5) The veracity of claims that the formal religion was created by Romans to
control others; therefore, it should not be embraced by Africans: No doubt the
Roman church was better able to keep tabs on the masses through the church. Same
with slave masters yesterday and today. The question begs, why did the slave master
take everything away from Africans except the European brand of religion?
6) The question of traditional African spirituality being better suited for
Africans than the later copy in the form of Christianity, particularly considering
the oppression done in the name of Christianity: As Dr. Clarke said, "Why get so
dewy-eyed over a carbon copy religion when you can go back to the original?” Africans
created spirituality, religion, and the deities thousands of years before anyone knew
there was a White man in the world. Our spiritual expression through our own created
religions was enough for us for thousands of years and is still enough.
7) The assertion that worshiping a Christian God and Son automatically is
associated with a European person and so this equates to worshiping European
people = bad thing for Africans: This is well-known. We must exorcise the White
image of God from our minds. I had the White Jesus put above my bed at home
growing up. That image needed to be replaced by a stronger one. Dr. Ben said, "Heaven
is in between the legs of a Black woman." It is a fact that the African woman created
humanity so that is a strong image, as good as any. Nun in the Egyptian Mysteries is
Creator of the heavens, another strong image. The Egyptian archetypes are strong and
serve to replace the European ones.
I was a practicing Catholic for 10 years, 18-28. I rejected Christianity once I fully
came to understand that the Catholic Church initiated the enslavement of Africans,
which allowed for the genocide of both the Natives in the West and the Africans. This
fact destroyed my belief that the Pope is infallible, as it was through Papal Bulls that
Spain and Portugal were given the right to steal Native lands and reduce to slavery all
so-called Pagans, Native Indians, and Africans. However, I also needed to continue my
spiritual development, which I found in the spiritual traditions of Ancient Egypt and in
Eastern esoteric philosophies of Taoism and Hinduism. I don't follow any religion.
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These days, I appreciate the spiritual traditions of Yoruba/Ifa. I fundamentally view
religions as training wheels that if not removed will limit your ability to fly down the
path of spiritual awareness. At a certain point in one's development, we can also see
how religions are used as tools to promote the political/economic/ideological
aspirations of a people. This is what Christianity has done for Europe, what Islam has
done for Arabs, and what Judaism has done for Jews. This is not bad in and of itself,
except that these peoples have done so to the extent of genocide. They used religions
for their gain at the expense of others.
African Self-Destructive Behavior
There are degrees of African misorientation, mild, moderate, and severe. There are
degrees of African self-consciousness, weak, medium, and strong. There are elders, wise
teachers in our African community who try to deconstruct the racist society, reconstruct
African society, and construct new cultural expressions adapted to our current times,
that will promote the African survival and development thrust. The pathologies in
African communities where Europeans have a strong influence are all part of the
protracted battle (10,000 years) we have been fighting with Asiatic/Aryan/European
cultural intrusion. Let's keep the perspective that in war, there are casualties on both
sides.
Is Black male vs. Black male violence solely on Black males? Or does it have to do
with the attack on the Black family structure (propaganda, TV, high unemployment for
Black teens, high unemployment of Black men, high imprison rate of Black males, etc.)
We must recognize that oppression is not just physical; it deals with the mind.
Brainwashing is one way to put it. Amos Wilson described it as a falsification of
consciousness. That is a replacing of our natural consciousness, self-interested cultural
thrust, with that of Europeans. We start with that understanding and say that African
men and women both are afflicted with this condition. We have the same diseased
mental state that expresses as self-hate and literal self-destruction.
If we are both infected with the same disease but manifest it differently, why focus
on the symptoms? Why not address the underlying disease as a unified healing
community? Why point fingers on whose symptoms are more damming? I maintain the
solution at the core is an African-centered detox of European values, ideologies, and
belief systems (including Western religion). It includes an African-centered re-education
of what is a human and what is the purpose of life. It includes reconstructing African
cultural expressions (as is the purpose of Kwanzaa). It involves becoming immersed in
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African Spiritual culture. It involves, participation in African Nation Building through
Pan-African action plans. The solution is not partial and it certainly is not about looking
at symptoms of how African women, men, teens, or elders display their dis-eased state.
Is it the child's fault in Chicago that 92% of teens in Chicago don't have a job? No,
that is the fault of the unseen hand. Now what if that situation improved to the same
nation level for Europeans? Don't you know that the crime rate would go down? Now
what about the unemployment rate for African women? It has not improved
significantly since the recession, as it has for other groups because the service-sector
jobs African women held are not coming back as fast. What about the incarceration of
African men, about 1 in 4? What about the unemployment rate for African men, about
4 times higher than for Europeans? What about more African men going to prison than
to college, and most often for non-violent offenses (being caught self-medicating to
drown problems)? This is all the first violence I speak of.
Africans on the continent of Africa generally comprehend and accept the reality of
neo-colonialism as another version (2.0) of colonialism. The historical record shows
how neo-colonialism has been just as effective, if not more so, in extracting resources
from Africa, maintaining the impoverished conditions on the ground of the average
African. Why then is it so hard to comprehend and accept the concept of neo-slavery,
or slavery by another name today, that is just as effective in marginalizing African/Black
people in America, extracting cheap labor, thus not appreciably changing our condition
of dependency for food, shelter, and all other survival necessities? Perhaps if we
acknowledge we are still enslaved because of our dependent position, and not being
able to control our own destiny, we would see more clearly the path of freedom—
independence (as much as that is possible)—not unlike what the Chinese do in their
China towns.
African Agency Beginning with Inner Change
Being African-centered or having an African worldview is inadequate if it does not
have the African agency component to it. That is imperative. A plan to develop
structures, both intellectual and physical, will promote the survival thrusts and higher
spiritual aspirations of African people. The question, “How do we see ourselves as
agents of change?” is a provocative one that has profound ramifications if we allow it
to resonate with our deeper selves. As for me, it forces me to reflect and attempt to
delve into the deeper recesses of my understanding in search of an answer that speaks
to my truth and, hopefully, a greater truth. There is no separation between our
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individual or private self and our public or collective self. We are simultaneously both.
At any time, we may be poised or focused on one polarity or another, but we are always
both. Change or agency starts with ourselves, with our inner movement and
transformation. Inner transformation brings us closer to knowing that which is
unlimited and constant throughout all change.
One description of that constant is an appreciation of the unity between our
individual self and all else. It is this appreciation that gives deeper meaning to our self-
conception of being agents of change. With appreciation of our integral nature, we
govern change to maintain integral awareness and integrity of being (wholeness or
oneness with all things and people). With this appreciation, I cannot be unjust; I cannot
forsake my fellow human beings; I cannot exploit others; I cannot rationalize or
condone exploitation by others; I cannot see others as inferior or separated from me; I
cannot ignore the injury of any other; I cannot see the condition of another as irrelevant
to me; I cannot ignore suffering; I appreciate the experience, the evolution of all
individuals and collectives as I do my own.
I am then, by nature, an activist for recognition of equality, for social justice and
harmony regardless of the ethnicity, economic status, religious affiliation, or any other
superficial distinction of other vs. self. I am moved to increase the awareness of that
unity. If increasing that awareness calls me to be a social activist, so be it. If it means
having frank and direct conversations about the wastefulness of racism, extreme
capitalism, sexism, paternalism, egoism, or any other ism, so be it. If it means just having
a deep conversation with someone from a different background, great! It could simply
be that I will not allow myself to be narrow-minded and personally prejudiced. What
am I an agent of change for? Equanimity; the appreciation of diversity backed by Unity!
Until an inner change or transformation towards the light of integral awareness is had,
any outward movement will be just a groping in the dark, a hit or miss proposition, or
a momentarily popular fad in the greater evolutionary movement of unlimited Spirit
involved in the individual and collective at once.
Plato used the analogy of the cave to illustrate his idea of forms. The analogy goes
like this: Imagine several prisoners who have been chained up in a cave for all their
lives. They have never been outside the cave. They face a wall in the cave and can never
look at the entrance of the cave. Sometimes animals, birds, people, or other objects pass
by the entrance of the cave casting a shadow on the wall inside the cave. The prisoners
see the shadows on the wall and mistakenly view the shadows as reality. However, one
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man breaks free from his chains and runs out of the cave. For the first time, he sees the
real world and now knows that it is far beyond the shadows he had been seeing. He
sees real birds and animals, not just shadows of birds and animals. This man is excited
about what he sees and goes back to his fellow prisoners in the cave to tell them about
the real world. But to his astonishment, they don’t believe him. In fact, they are angry
with him. They say the shadows are reality and that the escaped prisoner is crazy for
saying otherwise. This analogy reminds of how Africans in the diaspora too often settle
in our mentality for the shadows that the White supremacy aspiration projector puts
before us. We allow others to define and limit our reality. We must step out and go
beyond the cave of shadows to directly see reality, define, and grow our reality.
My keys to progress
➢ Know Thy Self —God and man are one.
➢ Seek balance in the moment—what is balance in one moment may not be
for another.
➢ Since God is All, then God is the doer of all. Don't get caught up in the
“I do” aspect.
➢ Stay true to your ideals but remain flexible in the face of opposition. Water
remains low, but for wearing down the hard, there is nothing like it.
➢ Love and treat the other as yourself, because the other is yourself on the
deepest levels.
➢ Enjoy the temporal, the changes, the surface waves and ripples, but know
how to go deep beyond the turbulent waves, to the still depth below the waves, and
realize the witness Self of all the surface changes.
➢ Stay flexible, supple, like a baby. That which is rigid and inflexible will
break first.
➢ Remain engaged with life, yet detached from any one thing. In this way,
you will identify with the Great All, and realize this All as your true self.
➢ To rise above the negative, focus on the positive. Positive and negative
are two poles of the same thing, and to get on the high end of the pole one must
focus the attention on it.
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➢ Don't get caught up in any one expression of God, be that any one
religion, any one practice, any one path of life. The map is not that important, the
path to the destination is not exclusive; what matters is the attainment, and the
evolution or refinement of the soul en route to the destination, which is the Source
Self.
➢ One of the greatest powers of life is sincerity. Not far from that is
devotion. Above the two is knowledge of your True Self, and above that is Being
your true Self.
➢ Someone said, "to be or not to be, that is the question." I say being and
non-being are two sides of the same coin. Undifferentiated Being is the non-being;
differentiated being is the Being. They are the same thing.
➢ Having a sound philosophy of life will anchor you against those who
would blow you to oblivion.
➢ Life is to be enjoyed, true, but it is to be understood, beyond pleasure and
pain.
➢ The great evolution is the release of consciousness that is already present
and involved in everything, towards higher levels of self-awareness.
➢ Higher development (mental, and supra mental or spiritual) is predicated
on a sound physical foundation, so eat right, sleep right, live a healthy lifestyle, and
avoid extremes.
➢ The rational and mental cannot verify the spiritual, but the true spirit will
never contradict the rational and mental, just like the mother does not contradict
the child. The spirit body gives birth to the mental and physical body, not the other
way around.
➢ There is a witness to the cycles of birth and death. Identify with THAT
because you ARE THAT witness.
➢ Extreme Yang results in the birth of Yin, and extreme Yin results in the
birth of Yang. Excessive pleasure (Yang) results in depletion (Yin); and excessive
Yin (death) results in new Yang (rebirth).
➢ Minimize desires, because that will lock consciousness into small fields,
and block the integral vision of wholeness that is beyond the pleasure principle.
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➢ All of what the great sages of life have accomplished and seen are available
for you and me to accomplish and see. A great teacher will teach the student how
to equal and even surpass the teacher. A teacher is vital, but don't get caught up in
hero worship. Be the sage that teaches you.
➢ Never give up your spiritual aspiration and hope, despite any number of
setbacks. Eventually, you will accomplish your Self.
➢ All things are interconnected. Behind the great diversity of life is the Great
Unity of Life. Live according to the integral way and vision of life.
➢ All is in all, all is the All and I am THAT.
African Diaspora Development
It is a misnomer to think that the culture Africans brought over during the Maafa,
the Middle passage, and that has always been targeted for destruction in American, has
been eradicated. That culture is part of our DNA. It is our seed, and the branches can't
help but grow according to the DNA of the seed. This question assumes African
Culture in America is not African (100% or any other percent). I don't think a person
can have two dominant worldviews, just as a seed cannot produce two different species.
The seed Africans in America are African, 100%. So, the better question is how can we
Africans in America better orient ourselves to express more fully our seed worldview,
the African worldview? We can do that in America or on the Continent, but it is more
difficult in America because of the gravity pull of the European worldview. On the
other hand, the contradictions of European culture experienced can allow one to see it
for what it is and reject it.
Many people set up a dichotomy of either/or between our Africanity on the African
continent VS our Aficanity in the African diaspora. This is a false dichotomy. Malcolm
X once said to this false dichotomy, “If you take chicks and put them in an oven, they
won’t come out as biscuits.” So, if you transplant an African to America, he won’t
become a European, unless of course there is a conscious attempt to breed out the
African genes, as has been done in most Latin countries. The better question is how
can we in the diaspora reclaim our African culture, worldview, ethical values, for our
protection, maintenance, and future prosperity as an African collective everywhere? I
was born in America. I have African ancestry. I have never claimed to be American by
culture as an adult, just by citizenship. Africans trying to be European, claiming
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European ontology, axiology, and epistemology, or seed worldview are just mis-
orientated Africans.
Cultural confusion is a reality, like a disease—not of the body, but of the mind. It
captures the minds of Africans on the continent, the diaspora, as well as those who are
mixed. At its core, it is a belief in the separateness of things or people. The remedy is
African Self-Consciousness and extended identity that views others as one's self, even
the confused. How we view the world determines how we will act. When we act as an
integral whole with an extended self-identity, then we re-establish structures that reflect
this view, we will re-establish Maat, the law of harmony and balance. Be the change you
want to see in the world.
On what basis can we speak of the cultural unity of Africa or United States of Africa?
On what basis can we speak of an African diaspora? On what basis can we speak of
Africans in America, the Caribbean, or in Latin America? What do I mean by basis?
Well basis is an essence that spans and unifies a diversity that sometimes appears
separate. So, what is this basis of African unity? I say it is the seed cultural value that
views all things and people as one; hence each thing or people have intrinsic value and
a right to full expression and development so long as they do not infringe on others.
Indeed, each people have a divine responsibility to foster the development of each
other; this after developing themselves first. This to me is the basis of African unity the
world over.
A case where the warring soul within a person or society is most obvious is that with
mixed raced people. How are we to discuss the mulatto problem then, including
Africans in America, and the extreme misorientation that can plague mixed raced
people? I think the resolution is to speak on it not as much in biological terms, as in
genes, but in cultural terms, as in the degree of cultural confusion, misorientation, and
identification with European or White culture vs. a healthier African-centered
consciousness.
Let's ask the question: is the cultural essence of Latin countries European or
African? Their understanding of the cosmos, of spirituality, of ancestors, of the rhythms
of life, of harmony with neighbors and other, are they European or African cultural
expressions? If they are neither, are they oppositional or compatible with the African
worldview? If compatible with our African practice, conscious Africans (and there are
unconscious ones) must be flexible to accommodate these diasporas. Would it not be
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foolish to attempt to cut off all diasporas from the overall underlying cultural unity of
Africa? That is exactly what the European wants.
Perhaps we should remind ourselves first of the core African values that form our
worldview. Secondly, we must recognize where those same values are replicated or
reformulated in ways compatible with the African value system. Thirdly, we must
recognize our mutual survival interests, unite to fight a common enemy, and reestablish
harmony in the world. What are the core African values that we also recognize in Latin
American cultures? Where does the African diaspora begin and end? What qualifies as
a diaspora? What disqualifies as a diaspora? What is being used to measure/discern that?
Are we clear on how to measure? Is our measuring itself based on the historical African
experience, cultural essence (Marimba’s Asili)? Does our discrimination foster the
development of African forms that are flexible to withstand Global White supremacy
domination, and to foster the African survival thrusts? What is a diaspora? Where does
it begin and end? Does it begin with Haiti and end with Puerto Rico? Does it end with
confused Brazilians who don't think they are African, but includes Brazilians who
celebrate their African roots? I'm currently reading Marimba’s "Let the Circle be
Unbroken," having read earlier her "Yurugu." Who is in the circle and who is out? These
are all critical questions Africans must address.
Historically, there has been a weak level of loyalty among a mixed population
(mulattos) resulting from the conquest of a non-mixed group by a conqueror. When
has a mixed group disavowed completely the cultural intrusion of the conquering
group? Puerto Rico is a perfect example, where so many mixed people want to identify
with the conquering culture of Spain, instead of the revolting African and Native
peoples. This results in a tug of war between Puerto Ricans that will only end when
identification with the oppressor is wiped out in that country.
I've been doing African drumming for about 25 years at the drum circle in Prospect
Park Brooklyn, NY. In that time, there has ALWAYS been a few Puerto Ricans
drumming with the African beat. They will always acknowledge that the source of their
rhythms is from Africa. Now and again there is conflict because the way they play
sometime, not all the times, seems to get away from the traditional African rhythms.
One time when they came early and I was there early too, they went off with the Latin
rhythms and a Black woman scolded them saying this is an African drum circle. They
defended themselves saying their rhythms are also African. Some African drummers
find it hard to play their traditional rhythms with the Latin Congas and rhythms. Having
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African and Puerto Rican ancestry I was always able to find the core rhythms that bring
the two styles together. I would tell fellow drummers it could work if each style listens
to the other and not try to overpower the other. When it works, it all seems so natural,
fun, spiritual, unifying and a good day at the African drum circle.
I think we need a pledge of allegiance developed to the United Peoples of Africa. I
think all peoples of the African diaspora should recite it to demonstrate where we
identify with respect to the motherland. I think the confused countries will show
themselves and the African conscious ones will too.
Here is a United Peoples of Africa pledge adopted and modified from that created
for a public school in Oakland that any African should feel at ease making:
We pledge allegiance of the red, black and green
Our flag, the symbol of our eternal struggle,
To our African ancestors, and to the African Motherland we must defend!
ONE nation of African people,
Of the African continent and the African diaspora,
With one God for us all,
Totally united in the struggle for African Love,
African Freedom, African Justice, and African Self-determination.
African Liberation Struggle in European Controlled Capitalist Countries
As an adult, I have always viewed the African diaspora in America as a nation within
a nation; and so, all of what I described about the evolving society applied to the
evolving African diaspora in America. I acknowledge the reality that Africans in
America do not behave as a nation within a nation, but rather are excluded, through
racism, from an equal share of American wealth. Consequently, African Americans
form an identity group by default, albeit a confused group. I say confused because there
still exists the prevailing double consciousness of the assimilationist vs. the Separatist;
the loyal African American who pledges allegiance to the flag, vs. the African who is
aware of how Plymouth rock landed on them, as Malcolm X put it. Many think of
Nelson Mandela as having pulled off a relatively bloodless revolution, but in the end,
the condition of the average South African has not changed, even with political party
change. Lesson learned. Likewise, neo-slavery in America will not end until Africans in
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America own large tracks of land, and their own labor = owning the means of
production. What percent of Africans in America own businesses and land? Is it
improved from chattel slavery time?
Using one's skill and labor for someone else's profit, where you just get enough to
get up and do it again today and tomorrow equals enslavement. That's what it was
during chattel slavery then, and that's what it is now. The constant is the same, working
for some else's enrichment. So, things change (schooling, integration, more politicians)
to secure this constant into the future. Claude Anderson (PowerNomics) predicted that
if Blacks don't get our economic act together (collective economics) by 2013, we would
be a permanent underclass. According to him, it is now official. I still have hope that
we can turn it around.
We make the mistake of thinking that we can grow normally under a system of
oppression. The most balanced psychological state of an African person in our present
condition is that of a revolutionary. Any other state represents a failure to recognize our
true condition on the battlefield and who our oppressor is. Now revolutionaries can
marry, have kids, enjoy family etc., but a revolutionary never forgets that circumstances
can turn on a dime when there is an ongoing war.
Let's recognize our casualties of war: emasculated men, homelessness, and over-
representation in the prison system; believers in Black middle class status; Black teens
fighting Black teens while other Black teen records it; Black teens thinking sports is
more important than academics; our brightest kids thinking going to Ivy League schools
is more important than studying problems of the Black community; Blacks who value
spending money with other groups more than their own ... the list goes on. These are
casualties of war. It is not a conventional war, but it has conventional results.
There is no such thing as freedom of Africans in America without freedom of Africa
from European world domination, just as there is no such thing as Chinese, Japanese,
Jewish, Russian, Greek, Indian, or German freedom in America without the backing of
their mother countries.
The responsibility of the Afrikan American community is to ensure Afrika's
economic development. The ignoring of Afrika by the Western nations provides
windows of opportunity open to native Afrikans to drastically reduce the massive
outflow or flight of capital, which has been estimated to exceed 80 percent of the Gross
Domestic Product, and to reinvest it in their own countries. Amos Wilson ( drives home
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the imperative for Africans to develop intra African economic development by
practicing a trade protectionism with each other.
“Afrikan peoples and nations across the Diaspora must apprise themselves of a
full, ongoing knowledge of the social, economic and cultural history of Afrikan
nations as well as their contemporary status and reorganize their sociocultural
and economic structures to initiate and fuel continental Afrika's growth and
development. The Afrikan American community, especially, should vastly
overhaul and reconstruct its educational orientation toward knowledge of the
Motherland. It must realize that its own economic salvation is coterminous with
or tied to that of Afrika's. It must invest money and human resources in Afrika's
development and perceive its economic prosperity as its special responsibility
and mission…
The Afrikan American community must become vigilantly and jealously
interested in U.S. and European policies toward Afrika and seek to influence
those policies in both its own and Afrika's favor."
I do not accept a reality where Africans collectively have no choice but to accept
foreign intrusion. History tells us that when we have a collective resolve, there is no
force that can withstand our movement. We will reclaim the thrust of African freedom,
or we will die trying, as we shall all die anyway. Not all Blacks are conscious freedom
fighters. It is true that many have bought into the White Jesus salvation myth,
integration, and the assimilation solution. It is true that Africans have a flaw in our
cultural value of embracing other people's cultural values (religion) and presence among
us, to our own detriment. The Jewish people never had this flaw. It is a stereotype
though to think that ALL Blacks have lost the survival sense of race first, and the
Afrocentric idea/worldview.
We strive to gain power over our own lives. Meaningful political power/government
means managing or distributing products and resources of a nation. Economics implies
owning the means of production to harvest resources and produce refined products
that people need to live sovereignly. Education is to train people how to live in harmony
with the environment, to learn how to engage in political, economic, civil, and cultural
practices to further the survival thrusts and higher goals of a society. It is also to learn
what it is to be human in the world, and what our collective destiny is. You can say that
economics is the material base to support all other higher functions of a society. We
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seek solutions to gain control over the means of production so that we can be sovereign
or gain power over our own lives.
When transmitting or teaching culture—which spans all human activity—we must
clarify whose culture it is and what is its usefulness to the evolution of African
consciousness and Being. The modes of production—from manual to advanced
technology and information science-driven—are a development of culture but it is not
getting to the seed of the culture. Manual labor as in farming can be done in an
exploitative way, as in slave plantation, or an egalitarian way as in Ancient Egyptian or
a socialist organization. Likewise, technology- and information-based economies can be
developed to monopolize information and exploit those who are not in the know,
producing a non-egalitarian society. The seed cultural directive will determine this. I
don't think the solution for us is to out capitalize the capitalist, to muscle our way onto
their dining table. I think it is to have our own table (mother nation), with all the food
we can eat (our own resources) from our own gardens (African continent). This is what
the Chinese, the Indians, the Europeans, and the Jewish people have in the U.S. They
have home countries, with home capital, to develop satellite societies in the U.S. This
is lacking with Africans in America.
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Chapter 10
Organization for African Power
Why do we in the African diaspora have such a hard time uniting and acting in our
own interests? This is a deep question, what prevents us from creating unified
organizations that we all can ultimately agree is the one thing we have not done
consistently, and is the one approach that will roll back the White supremacists’ system.
The answer must be because this is behavior is a part of the White supremacists
programming. It serves the White supremacy aspiration system, for us to ultimately not
form a united front, for whatever reason. We cannot accept any of these reasons. They
all must be thrown in the trashcan. So, yea, the first step is to recognize that this failure
to unite, is paid for, and is in service to, the White supremacy aspiration system. This
behavior is shaped via the Willey Lynch process. Now after recognition, and
understanding, comes a counter-move with a united African front.
How has the Black church fared since the civil rights movement in organizing
Black people for power?
The Black church in America has traditionally played a critical role in keeping Black
families together and healing broken souls. It has provided hope, given some immediate
relief to the needy, and provided some guidance and instruction on how to overcome
racism. The Black church has helped to keep African culture alive through these years.
However, the Black church overall has not invested Black money well, it has not figured
out how to work collectively with other churches and other Black organizations. It has
not embraced fully its uniqueness as an African cultural/religious expression that is not
the same as European religious expression. It has not Africanized to the point of
eliminating the White Jesus concept and White Man in the sky as painted by
Michelangelo. It has not made strong connections with Africa in terms of development.
So, it has the double aspect of being a key saving institution, while also being a limitation
to higher African self-consciousness.
The Black Church and the “Conscious Community” Since the Civil Rights
Movement
It is not possible to separate the Black church from the Civil Rights movement or
even the Black Power Movements. However, we must say that despite the influence of
the Black church, the Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s was not based on
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religious doctrine per se. It was part of a worldwide development in African Self-
consciousness, Pan-Africanism/Black Nationalism, the Harlem renaissance, the
negritude movement, inspiring anti-colonialism and the African liberation struggles in
Africa. They were not based on a religious doctrine, though certainly they were
influenced by religions. Marcus Garvey did not focus on religion to build his UNIA,
Malcolm X later said we should not focus on religion, else we will bicker and fight. I
think religion was one pillar that most of the leaders in Pan-African consciousness relied
on, but I think the African consciousness was not limited to any religion.
The African-centered/Afrocentric movement from the 80s up to the present has
not been based on the Black church, but rather on research and scholarship into
authentic African culture that includes, but is not limited to, a religion. It relies heavily
on African history, ethnographic studies, and on connections with traditional African
religions. I think the Black church and Afrocentricity need not be exclusive of each
other. Many churches attempt to infuse Afrocentric expressions in their worship. The
two approaches can be complementary and need not be thought of as conflicting or
contraries. Kaba H. Kamene has said of the relationship between spirituality and science
that “science is seen (manifested) spirituality, and that spirituality is unseen (hidden)
science. They are two sides of the same coin.” The African evolutionary thrusts within
the Black church and outside of it through secular African institutions are two sides of
the same coin.
Wakeup Call / Preparing the Mind
I can't forget the lesson that Malcolm X taught. He said “I'd rather go with the wolf
than the fox. The wolf will let you know straight out that he plans on eating you;
whereas the fox, wanting the same thing, will fool you to thinking otherwise.” Did the
wealth of Africans in American improve under Obama? No! Yet we are somehow lulled
into thinking that our lot in America has improved. Seeing these contradictions in
society requires a sharp critical lens or radical worldview. A radical mastectomy is an
operation that seeks to get at the underlying pathology of a diseased breast, located deep
within the muscle and tissue of the breast. A radical political or critical worldview is a
paradigm that seeks to get at the underlying pathology of a diseased breast of society,
diseased breast of its body politic (Socio-political-eco-cultural ethos). Both approaches,
mastectomy and critical worldviews, are called radical. Both approaches seek to save
the overall body. We are afraid of both procedures, afraid of the word radical itself. Yet,
when unchecked, negative growth called cancer threatens the life, hard approaches
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called radical are necessary. Is not the future wellbeing of minority groups threatened
by uncontrolled growth of racism in the body politic of American society? Is not
therefore, the larger body politic threatened by its racism, greed, and callousness? Do
we not need to look critically at the underlying muscle and tissue of this negative growth
of the body politic, and treat it with a radical mastectomy? We may lose the breast of
the mother, but the mother will live, and so the child has a chance to grow under her
nurturance. Today we are taught to be afraid of the word radical. It is one of the most
feared words of our language today. That paralyzing fear has a purpose, just like the red
scare of McCarthyism served to smother the movement for Black civil rights, claiming
such a movement was directed by communist Russia.
There is a war to be fought—a war for self-mastery, a war to help our youth, a war
to overcome racism, a war to overcome imperialism that produces poverty in African
societies. Warriors in these wars, and I count myself as one, cannot afford to wallow in
self-pity. Even if one is not a warrior, focusing on the negative is not the way to usher
in the positive. To displace the negative, you must focus on the positive. Turn on the
light, and the dark knows what to do. Yes, you can acknowledge the negative, but at
some point, you must acknowledge your infinite Being, capable of transcending the
negative. Indeed, in the very acknowledgment of this transcendent Self of ours, we
overcome the negative. When that aspect is left out of the equation we stagnate, and I
don't have time for that.
“The essence of intelligence is the ability to adapt to one’s circumstances and
change those circumstances to one’s convenience and survival. There is no
other definition of intelligence. Intelligence is not measured by numbers, and
achievement test scores and all the rest of the nonsense that you have been
given. Intelligence that does not apply to your survival as a people is not
intelligence in any kind of shape, form, or fashion.
But you must understand that intelligence is guided by the recognition of the
existence of a problem. The mind organizes itself in terms of a problem to be
solved. It then starts to collect the relevant information for the solution of the
problem. It then coordinates that information and organizes it and processes it
and expresses through the behavior of the individual so the problem can be
solved.
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The major problem that we have today as students, and as a people, is that we
don’t recognize that we have a problem. And when you do not recognize that
you have a problem you have no means of organizing your minds. And one of
the major reasons your children are having difficulties in the schools is because
they have no problem to solve and they ask you, “why am I studying this,
Mama? What’s the reason I need to know this?” You got to honk the horn,
“Oh, so you can get a job!” Uh-uh. It’s beyond that. — Dr. Amos N. Wilson
Making the Individual Soldier
If one is aware of the systemic nature of the problem then the question is what
action to take. I think there is a level of internal work that must be done. This involves
putting one's house in order before dealing with the collective house. If you can
correctly govern yourself, you can correctly govern your family, your neighborhood,
your district, your state, and your country. If one cannot govern him or herself, then
governing anything outside is problematic. We each must identify how we will
contribute to the solution. For some, it is in a small arena, for others a more expansive
arena. To those given much, much is expected. I think a golden personality, life
fulfillment and contribution to the collective quest for equality can be created on
multiple levels. So, governing yourself involves finding your level. Most likely there are
predecessors who have done great work. Learn from their efforts and try to run with
the passed baton.
We should find sincere people of like mind and make alliances. This includes
organizers as well as foot soldiers. We must assess strategies in your own mind.
Compare your strategies to that offered by others. It is a question of what the best
strategy to follow is, not who came up with it. But how would you know what is best
unless you conceptualized your own detailed version? Make one. I once did an exercise
of creating my own version of a United States government to see if I could make one
that would be truly democratic, one that checked greed and oppression. It had its flaws,
but then again, I had something to compare to that made sense to me. I came across a
more in-depth analysis by both Dr. Amos Wilson and Dr. Chancellor Williams in their
respective works. Also, you will have a critical core that can tell you whether you're in
basic agreement with some other plan.
Talking is doing. You must first recognize the situation from a mature perspective,
know the beginnings, know the historical development, know the ways of operation,
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before you can effectively deal with it, to deconstruct it, reconstruct our culture, and to
construct our future.
Before you have action, you must have a plan; before you have a plan you must have
principles; before you have principles, you have to have a worldview; so, before you
have businesses you have to have principles of African-centered ethos that govern those
businesses. Without that you are just trying to have business like the European man,
with no regard for the ethics, no regard for community, no regard for environment, no
regard for life; governed strictly by the profit motive. You have this let's rush to action
mentality, but you can run fast in the wrong direction. “If you want to go fast go alone.
If you want to go far go together (an African proverb).” We must go together with an
African-centered worldview, principles, and plan. The African-centered idea, as in
Kwanza for example, starts from the worldview and moves down to values, principles,
and attempts to express in ritual discipline as an exemplar to follow in all other areas of
life. It is for the next generation to improve on that expression of African-centered
worldview, values, and principles with more discipline.
I think you take an inventory, a gut check, on how you can reject all European values
and beliefs. We must replace those European values and beliefs with authentic African
spiritual and philosophical ways of understanding and being in the world. We must take
stock on what skills and energy you can contribute to the African survival thrust, which
has ultimately irrespective of what a European does and does not do. What will you do
to further your and your people's higher ideals? This is a good start.
The sad truth is that the dominant society only wants a free or cheap labor force
out of Africans in America. Once that is threatened, Black life must be criminalized so
that our rights can be completely stripped, and we can be forced to work for free
(conscription by prison system). The system is not designed or intended for Africans to
compete or obtain an equal share of the country's resources. Having less than 1/2 of
1% of the country's wealth is still too much for the dominant society to allow Africans
in America to have.
Someone in an African-centered Facebook group once posted: “African people
must seek African solutions to African problems, the importation and imposition
of foreign ideas and ideologies upon African peoples is blatant disregard for the
uniqueness and robustness of African culture, history and spirituality. This
disregard is even more painful and destructive when puppet African leaders
forcefully impose alien ideals upon African peoples.” I agreed and said: Another
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component is what Amos Wilson called the falsification of African consciousness to
whereas he described it African people seem possessed with malevolent spirits of White
supremacy aspiration. Exorcising these "demons," this false consciousness, and
realigning the African Identity to its true Self becomes an educational imperative.
Model Organizational Units
We have established the reality of the Collective African Self and that individual
African consciousness is viewed as extending into the Collective African consciousness.
In the African worldview, the family extends into the community and the community
into nations. All levels of these social constructs are reflections of the Divine realms of
the Supreme Being. It then becomes our business to refine these expressions in our
spheres of influence such that the Divine is experienced as unlimited life on earth. This
is no easy task, as the forces of chaos have dominated African reality down to the family
level. Yet, awareness of these forces arrayed against African people, down to the family
level, we must forge ahead in creating strong families and communities that live
according to Maatian values. As we do forge ahead, we must remain securely aware of
our intrinsic unity, collective consciousness, accessibility of positive powers from the
Divine realms and our African ancestors.
As we operationalize our African worldview and collective consciousness, I think
creating models of African unity to emulate is key. This can be done from any locality.
These healthy models develop local resources, talents, organizational structures,
education for leadership, education for recapturing African-centered consciousness/
culture. These models will also demonstrate the power of collective action. How well a
given model can be extended will be a function of its expansive vision and the efficiency
that its people follow through with local and global initiatives. Another important
function of any good model is its ability to join with existing groups that are also good
models. No one group will have all the answers but woven together, they will be
formidable in dismantling the structures of global white supremacy aspiration and
spreading the now dimmed light of African civilization.
W.E.B Du Bois promoted a concept dubbed "the talented tenth," which advocates
that the top 10% of African Americans must be focused on, developed, so that they
can do the hard work of leading the 90% of African Americans to the promised land,
socio-economic equality, and prosperity. I understand the urgency of the times that
spawned this idea, and I don't think current times are any less urgent. I only think that
this idea, if taken at face value, may promote a division between the "talented tenth"
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and the 90%. This idea should be refined and reformulated to indicate that the talents
of 100% of African Americans are sought after, even if there is a vanguard of 10% that
leads the way.
Organization of Mobilization
This whole buildup to expecting Africans to be reactionary to the European-created
system of laws, and our feeding into it, just reproduces the unequal power relations in
society. We need to do the proactive things that starve corrects this unequal balance of
power, by focusing on our African Law systems, our self-interested survival thrusts, our
national goals, our own development from our own vision, our own worldview.
Mobilization must be married to organization. Mobilization alone fizzles out in a short
time. Organizations are enduring. Everyone should try to join one but find out his or
her vision and ideology for sure first. The boycott and protest of the 60s and 70s was a
strategy that took us collectively to a certain point. It had a measure of success for the
first push for civil rights. Those strategies for that time are currently obsolete. Doesn't
boycott sound like something pubescent to outgrow? Boy must go to man, and cot
must go to bed, along with a house and maybe some property. Boycotts and hands-up
protest are ineffective. They must be replaced with divestment, collective economics, and pan-
African organization. Everything else is a waste of time, living immature and ineffective
integration fantasies. It’s time to stop dreaming, wakeup, and get with an organization.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
If there was just one message I wish would come out of all the marches, protests,
rebellions, and speeches and social media fights, it would simply be: "For the rest of
your life, buy Black as much as possible, and to do that you must do business with your
African brothers and sisters not only in the diaspora but most importantly with those
on the Continent of Africa." This one consistent message for all Black people,
everywhere ... "Buy Black." NOT boycott. "Buy Black for the rest of your life." This
buying Black includes buying Black education over freely accepting Western
indoctrination.
Pan-African Organization
There is no solution that does not include Africa. That is where the problem
occurred first, the rape of Africa and the dislocation of its peoples. The problem must
be traced back to the first cause to get to the solution. Other approaches are responses
to symptoms. As for treaties, there is no Treaty that Europeans, namely Americans,
have respected with people of color. Not a single treaty with native Indians was ever
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202
respected. Europeans must be dealt with from a position of strength to force them to
respect any treaty, and that strength will come from Africans in America combining
efforts with Africa simultaneously. We require an Afrocentric Pan-African approach to
our problems.
Pan-Africanism is both anti-European domination and pro-African unity. It is not
only a negation of European domination. If it were it would be only a reactionary
counterforce, having no deep vision of what it is to be harmonious, natural, to have a
collective voice and consciousness, organized for progressive development. Pan-
Africanism would exist even if Europeans did not. The initial establishment of Nubian,
Egyptian civilization and the other West African civilizations that existed prior to Arab
and European intrusions are expressions of Pan-Africanism.
Since I started being aware of the systematic nature of the Global European systems
of terror, I advocated for Africans fighting for an equal share of this country's wealth,
where equal was having a percentage of wealth in line with our population numbers,
around 12-15% of the country's wealth. I figured we must demand this, and not settle
for less. Now my thinking is that we primarily need to unify with Africa and displace
foreign interest in our home continent. From that base, we stand a better chance of
using our position here as a satellite or outpost for Africa. In that position, we would
better able to secure our just stake in this country, 12% of its wealth.
Amos Wilson goes into depth on the creation of a Black Nationalist Political Party
within the American context. He describes how it can be constructed with checks and
balances, and how it can function to serve Africans everywhere. Amos Wilson (1998)
writes about the purpose of a "Black Brotherhood Collective" in America or a "Black
Nationalists Party" is
“…to facilitate the political organization of the community such that it cannot
only influence American domestic governmental policies for its own benefit but
also for the benefit of Afrikan peoples everywhere" ...by mastering the
techniques by which the resources and power potential of both the national and
international Afrikan community are enhanced and are owned and controlled by
Afrikans, and are transformed into instruments of Black Power.” (p. 365)
Evolving Economic Organization
What would constitute progressive modes of production of a spiritually progressive
African Collective? Understanding that any collective organization, purely secular,
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203
spiritual or a mixture would have to have some mode of production, would the ideal
for Africans be that of capitalism, socialism, communism, or a mixture? I think that
ideal is African communalism. It would ensure food, shelter, and a means to provide
for family according to family size to all. It would allow for the commercial
advancement of any member according to thrift; however, wealth is distributed
according to the level of contribution of members to any venture. It would not allow
any member or group of members to accumulate wealth that would in any way intrude
on the progress of other members.
Wealth accumulation does not equate to greater power over others or greater
immunity from the laws of the collective. African communalism would not engage in
other economies in such a way that will compromise its own rules of economy. All
members are required to provide for the sick and aged monetarily. All members are
required according to his level of wealth, to provide for the welfare of the collective in
times of emergency. Those who have more are required to give more because it is in
the context of the collective that they could accumulate their wealth. Great wealth
accumulation is not possible without the input of the collective. International
commerce would not detract from collective arrangements. Wealth accumulation would
be equitably distributed to all members of society, with limitations of rewards going to
people who contribute in remarkable ways to the overall wellbeing of the society.
Individual wealth is not given beyond what a person can use in their lifetime or to where
an individual can undermine the decisions of the collective will as decided by local
government.
The Balanced Use of Technology from a Philosophical Perspective
For my doctoral thesis, I wrote about how technology can be pressed into the service
of the underserved communities of public-school students. The reason was not to
glorify technology. It was not because I have faith that our society knows how to use
technology to enhance human development. It was more of an immediate survivalist
strategy to cope with the pressures and demands of modern society. It is true that we
can find glimmers of wonder while using technologies that reveal deeper potentials of
human life. In the main, however, the need for oppressed groups to ramp up with
technology is purely for survival purposes. Ideally technology can unveil greater human
potentialities and states of being. This can only be done, however, if our locus of value
and identity is not outside of ourselves, on externals, but rather on internals. It is seeing
the universe and unlimited potentialities within ourselves first, that we can ever hope to
African-Centered Education for the Evolution of Collective African Consciousness
204
discover deeper levels of realities and potentialities external to ourselves. Can we
honestly say that our educational system is set up for to teach our youth to discover the
universe within; an unlimited self-nature? Can we discover anything outside of ourselves
that is wondrous without finding first its correspondence within ourselves? I think not.
Can a proliferation of information truly uplift our lives, without it having a
connection to deeper understanding, sense of self, sense of wholeness and wellbeing? I
think not, and so I think that the answer to our evolving consciousness is not in
amassing more and more information, more and more procedural knowledge, but
rather on how we relate this information to our essential selves. What I am arguing for
is assuring that technology is assimilated into the holistic lives of people. If it does not
serve the holistic lives of people, then it should not be allowed to propagate in that
society. An extreme example of a failed use of technology is using it to control the sex
of a child at conception or developing military capabilities that allow us to destroy the
earth many times over or controlling the minds of the masses. These uses do not serve
the holistic development and evolution of society and should not be allowed to
propagate in society.
This argument goes for not just extreme cases but also for the subtle cases as well.
It again goes to the purpose of education and thus how we will appropriate resources
to achieve those goals. The goal should be to “know ourselves,” evolve our better,
higher selves. The appropriation of resources, including technologies, should serve
those purposes. This has implications for the educational system of the evolving society.
Education is not separate from the wider social structures but rather is embedded within
them. It only makes sense then to align the goals of education with the wider regional
and national goals of society.
I'm asking for a global economic perspective/analysis/synthesis on the possible
economic activity of Africans in America. Let's stretch our imagination for a moment.
Suppose ALL Africans in America were to suddenly wake up and behave as a unified
collective financially, socially, culturally, spiritually. Do you see any significant advantage
(as in a game-changer) for the African world, especially for the mother continent of
Africa, for such a unified block of Africans functioning in America? Do you see any
advantage of a unified block of Chinese functioning as such in America for China? I
wonder if there is a silver lining somewhere, an advantage that can be had, IF Africans
in America woke up and took that advantage. I understand that it is the function of
Europeans in America to prevent this, but I'm asking you what if? Aside from
African-Centered Education for the Evolution of Collective African Consciousness
205
internationalist fantasies, is there a wider destiny/mission for Africans to be in America?
I've heard some express doubt on whether we can develop an African-centered
economic system within a Eurocentric economic system. If we do develop capitalistic
economic structures, would they be compatible with authentic African structures? I
think these are critical questions that must be clarified so that we can clarify our purpose
of being in this country.
Africans on the continent and the diasporas must collectively consider how we must
shape economic, political, and cultural macro structures so that they align with our
African-centered worldview and service our collective motives. We must also be open
to shedding old structures and modalities of collective behaviors that limit the
unfettered collective growth. We must envision ideal structures and work to bring those
ideals into fruition. To that end, I give the below suggestions.
Ideal African political structures should entail:
a. Democratic council representative of all the people from all regions.
b. Appointments of competent advisors.
c. Elections by the people.
d. People can recall anyone by vote.
e. Establishment of alliances that do not compromise the collective
organizational arrangements.
Ideal African religious/spiritual structures should entail:
a. Centers of worship and spiritual instruction available to all
b. Levels of instruction based upon progressive initiation.
A central aspect of land management should be:
a. Africa for Africans, though others who have occupied Africa through
colonialism must be slowly phased out and their lands returned to the people.
b. Outsiders can participate marginally.
Central aspects of an African military should be:
a. Africa must establish a strong national defense second to none.
b. Africa must defend its air, land, and coastal waters.
African-Centered Education for the Evolution of Collective African Consciousness
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Amos Wilson, in his book Blueprint for Black Power (2000) gave details on how
Africans can and must organize for power, lessons not only applicable in the American
context but also throughout the African world. Chancellor William Dr. Chancellor
Williams in his book, Destruction of African Civilization (1987) did the same. In modern
times, Africans, the world over, have developed institutions that address our collective
challenges and goals. These include:
➢ Afrocentricity International, started by Molefi Asante and Dr. Ama
Mazama
➢ All-African People's revolutionary party, started by Kwame Ture
➢ ASCAC - The Association for the study of classical African civilization
➢ The Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities’
League
➢ The Organization US, founded by Maulana Karenga
➢ Afrocentricity International, started by Molefi Asante and Dr. Ama
Mazama
➢ All-African People's revolutionary party, started by Kwame Ture
➢ ASCAC - The Association for the study of classical African civilization
➢ The Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities’
League
➢ The Organization US, founded by Maulana Everett Karenga
➢ The Harvest Institute, founded by Claude Anderson.
We should evaluate how well previous and current African-created institutions have,
or have not, met our African-centered goals, how well they serve as models for our
current and future collective African needs and aspirations. Our goal must be clear so
that we may better organize our collective physical, vital, mental, and over-mental
resources to accomplish our goals. Thus, our collective material progress would be in
step with our collective spiritual progress, and not a hindrance to it. Based on a clear
understanding of our goals, and upon our prior experiences, we should anticipate what
major milestones we must look for that which indicates we are heading a direction that
furthers the evolution of African Collective Consciousness and Being in the world.
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The African Union to Combat the Rape of African Resources
I think small countries on their own cannot solve the problem of global capitalist
corporations corrupting local African leaders. This will need to be done by a continent-
wide body, a United States of Africa. I am thinking about the ways European and even
Asian countries are controlling the lives of Africans on the continent through
economic/military means, but for now through economic means. Such as through:
• Debt accumulated over the decades through the IMF and World Bank.
• Structural adjustment programs limiting the ability to invest in human capital
and in local industrial development.
• The inability of debtor African countries to pay even the interests on their debt.
Taken together, this is a form of enslavement where the plantation is the African
country, that the enslaved is deluded to believe it is sovereign; but the reality on the
ground is not so. The African elite class is well paid to keep the peonage system going.
The masses of African resources in terms of people and mineral wealth are
extracted. Billions leave Africa yearly to European countries. The trade deficit between
African Countries and European countries is perhaps the largest on the planet. Given
this reality, is there a role to play by Africans in these European countries to end this
cycle?
How are “Third World countries” held in debt trap peonage, once they are in it, by
the typical management of their economies by European powers? This management is
imposed on acquiescent countries by IMF prescriptions and supervision (structural
adjustment programs) and is backed by threats of sundry economic punishments if IMF
“recommendations” are disregarded. Structural adjustment programs are imposed
countries by the threat of political destabilization and, if necessary, by actual coups or
invasions. When a “Third World” country refuses to obey the IMF, and boldly embarks
upon a path that could lead it to autonomous prosperity, the West, deploying its
enormous economic powers and its considerable leverage within the private and public
sectors of the “offending” economy, destabilizes its government, installs another, and
shoves the economy back into the debt trap and IMF supervision. W.E.B Du Bois
(1903) in his day addressed this issue of colonialism and neo-colonialism in African
nations head-on during a Pan-African congress:
“Here then, my brothers, you face your great decision; will you for temporary
advantage – for automobiles, refrigerators and Paris gowns – spend your income
African-Centered Education for the Evolution of Collective African Consciousness
208
in paying interest on borrowed funds, or will you sacrifice present comfort and
the chance to shine before your neighbors in order to educate your children,
develop such industry as best serves the great mass of people and makes your
country (African continent) strong in ability, self-support and self-defense? Such
union of effort for strength calls for sacrifice and self-denial, while the capital
offered you at high price by colonial powers like France, Britain, Holland,
Belgium, and the United States, will prolong fatal colonial imperialism, from
which you have suffered slavery, serfdom, and colonialism (neocolonialism).”
The same central problem exists now, just in a somewhat different form with the
same effect; so, the question still applies, not just to Africans on the continent, but also
to Africans in the diaspora. What is our purpose, as an African diaspora? What should
we strive for?
Had the principled stance that ended Apartheid South Africa, been applied with
consistency and historical knowledge, all Arab states of North Africa would have been
excluded from membership to the Organization of African Unity (OAU). But in the
confused climate of the 1960s, in the euphoria of anti-European solidarity, Africans lost
their bearings, got confused about what Pan-Africanism was about. Pan-Africanism was
hijacked by the Arabs and emasculated within the OAU. If 50 states of the United States
of America can form a union why can't the 53 separate countries of Africa form a Union
(Like a United Nations)? I think it can and must be done. Perhaps it must first be an
economic (like the European Union) and military block (Like a NATO), so that mutual
interests are clearly established.
To a large extent, the state of organization of African people in the Diasporas on
the continent of Africa, and worldwide through Pan-African organizational structures,
is a measure of the evolution of the collective African consciousness. If these
organizations on the various micro, meso, and macro levels did not exist, then we could
say that the African collective is in a state of collective unconsciousness like that of
other animal groups that are preyed upon by apex predators. However, we know that
the African liberation struggle has a long history reaching back to Ancient Egypt, the
Asante wars against Europeans, Pan-African struggles of the 20th and 21st centuries, and
expressing currently through various African in the Americas organizations as well as
the African Union. I think the existence of the African Union and its destiny to morph
into the United States or Countries of Africa represents the widest, deepest, and best
expansion of African collective consciousness in modern times. It would have
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209
overcome ethic differences, provincialism, religious differences, and throw off the
greatest representation of chaos in the world, Western imperialism. It is though the
United States of Africa that the world will be restored to balance, and the highest
expression of the Divine Spirit will reach a zenith once again in the world. Africa is not
to replace Western powers as a tyrant in the world. It is to replace chaos, Isfet, with
order and harmony, Maat. This is the kingdom of God, spoken of in religious text, the
earthly manifestation of the heavenly Divine order.
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Concluding Remarks
We must have a clear understanding that we are progressing not for our own sake,
but to come to know and express ever more fully, the Divine that is involved in what
goodness that evolves from ourselves. In recognizing the Divinity within our individual
selves and the collective African Ausarian Self, we come to know the Divinity in others
and the Universal Self. This awareness marks a decisive movement forward towards the
evolution of Divine consciousness through the African collective. We must make use
of all true guides, be they more evolved groups that sincerely join us in our progressive
movement, or be they the African sages of the past and present. We must discern the
connections between African progressive developments with authentic worldwide
progressive evolution, and never think that our progress is solely for ourselves as a
people, for it is always for the Divine revelation to be shared by all.
However, due to the severity of the disintegrating forces assaulting us, the Maafa, (a
Kiswahili term for "terrible occurrence" or "great disaster" perpetrated by Europeans
and Eurasians), we need to exclusively focus on our development, until we are strong
enough to help others. We must know that our collective progressive development is
not just for our current generation, but for all future generations of our people, and by
extension, for the world. We must plan today for at least seven generations forward
into the future. Even as we are willing to share with the world our spiritual gifts, we
must remain vigilant to those negative forces that are pernicious and ever-present,
seeking to disrupt our collective African self-consciousness, our collective social
organization as families, communities, and nations. There is no compromising with
these forces. They must be transcended and effectively neutralized from impeding the
free development of the Divine as expressed through the African Collective Being.
Africans have given the world its first civilization and we have a role to play in giving
the world another decisive evolutionary movement of the Divine involved within us.
This evolutionary movement requires our devotion and our clarity of vision from an
African-centered worldview. We are obligated by our ancestors to teach with clarity an
African-centered worldview so that our children may continue the work of bringing
into the world an unlimited life of unlimited Being, the African Ausarian Self.
I recently reflected on an interesting dream of mine. At the end of the dream, there
was a gathering of Black folks; something of a spiritual/cultural retreat at the home of
a significant ancestor to the underground struggle against racism who collected items
African-Centered Education for the Evolution of Collective African Consciousness
211
relevant to the liberation of Black people. After a viewing of artifacts, we sat at tables
and a woman put it to me, "Brother Roland, why is the revolution not televised?" As I
was about to give a thoughtful, less obvious answer, we were called to attention by an
elder, then I woke up. I end this book with my response.
Besides the obvious reason of not letting your oppressor know your plans, enabling
him to foil them, one reason involves the connection of revolution to the reformation
of power relations. More essentially, it involves one's relation to one's Self; the
reformation of one's inner Spirit. This reformation/revolution is the Self-directed
reconditioning of the Spirit, which is a hidden process. The outcome is a set of new
habits of Being that are aligned with higher principles of universal harmony/Maat, as
well as with the power of life to enforce that harmony outwardly. First comes the inner
work of re-programming and then comes the manifestation of that work.
Televising our struggle and progress against obstructive forces involves the
manifestation of what was reformed. It is an end-stage. True, the information about
what was reformed can be a catalyst for others to join in a reformation of their own or
a collective reformation of the nation. However, every person or collective, must do
the inner work of reformation or developing habits that produce the changed
manifestation, the sought for revolution. To change the outside world, we must begin
with the inside world, our spiritual-cultural development and that inside world of Spirit
is not a stage for a viewing audience. The is an education for our spiritual evolution in
the world. For Africans to re-introduce Maat, principles of harmony, balance,
reciprocity, respect for the earth, respect for different peoples, is truly revolutionary in
this current day and age.
May the revolution succeed in each of one us and in our collective group Spirit. May
we be the change we want to see in the world. The African Collective Consciousness
first brought spiritual culture to the world and may IT evolve new levels of spiritual
enlightenment in the world for generations to come.
African-Centered Education for the Evolution of Collective African Consciousness
212
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