Mystery of life

I have for years been following the debates over “life after death” (or “life after life” and reincarnation for some) from a distance. I watched for the same reasons that I read cartoons, comic strips, or jokes. I could not identify the truth that they sought to unravel or explicate. I could not understand what the fuss was all about, except that some people could derive hope from the possibility of a second chance after making mess of their lives this time around. They seemed to talk at cross-purposes most of the time for reasons that I shall give presently.

I felt some times like participating when I thought I noticed a flash or the semblance of something relevant. A counter feeling always overwhelmed me that there was really no common denominator between what I thought they were talking about on one hand, and what I could offer on the other hand. It would seem as if I was a mathematician trying to participate in a discussion between geographers. The paradigms are separate and irreconcilable. It occurred to me recently however, (when I read the postings on the theme on BBC religon message board) that there was a higher-level paradigm relating to the discussion about life after death and reincarnation. I felt that the issues were about the human condition. Human beings share human issues, as cows share cow issues, and the birds and the bees share the issues of their respective species. To that extent, so I contemplated, I could find a common denominator between the western position on one hand, and the “African attitudes” on the other hand; or western metaphysics versus African equivalents on the other hand. Why western metaphysics, eastern metaphysics, oriental metaphysics, African attitudes, etc. and not human metaphysics? I leave the answer to the philosopher.

A few examples can illustrate how a serious person who is dedicated to finding Truth should go about divining mysteries. He/she must first understand the nature of mysteries universally. Take for example the dog whistle. The human ear cannot hear the sound that it gives off. The proof that it gives off any sound is the reaction of the dog when one blows on the whistle. The reaction of dogs to the whistle is a mystery to those who cannot imagine that some level of sounds exists, which is not audible to the human person. Some humanist may insist that the only way that he can agree that the sound that a dog whistle gives off exists, is to make the sound audible to him without any artificial aid.

Another example is the colour-blind person. The person sees only grew colour in the rainbow. This is a humanist who will insists that rainbows have only a grey colour. "If it were not so," so he insists, “prove to me that rainbows have other colours”. The colour-blind person lacks the sense and faculty to differentiate the colours of the rainbow. Anyone who is sapient would not continue the debate. A mystery, to be comprehended or divined, requires that the seeker equip himself/herself with the appropriate faculty, keys, tools, and the knowledge to apply them and learn the lessons. Hammer and chisel are no use when solving mysteries.

I am only an Oboiro or public revealer of mysteries from Africa. I suggest that you withhold any adverse reaction or indignation until you read through my humble impute; lets try to follow together where my experiences about the human condition, and knowledge of mysteries lead in this regard. I shall put in my best, which has proven to be sufficient in other circumstances (including when treating mental health patients for the past 40 odd years).

We need to digress for a moment to reflect on some of the reasons why you should consider the viewpoint from other ethos. The first startling mistake in the western approach to the issues relating to life after death (and the corollary of life after life) was that those that I read considered that life after death must continue on earth and in this universe. This is not necessarily so. Life after death continues in the “next” or “other” universe, compatible with its essence, nature, or inner urgencies. Life after death could certainly not continue in the world or realm of the dead. The same being or entity cannot be both dead and living in the same breath and in the same universe. It does not make sense.

The “other” or “next” universe is the universe of those who live there. This will become clearer presently. Those of us who recognise that there are many universes have no problem with this. The person who sincerely desires to learn and know must be ready to make some adjustments; to learn, by definition is to change or adjust.

I continue next with others' mistake of thinking that life after death is a myth. The doubt about life after death arises otherwise due to the language of analysis. I read as graduate student of ethnography in Edmonton Canada decades ago, what was called the “Sapia Wolf hypothesis”. (my apologies if I spelt the name incorrectly) Sapia Wolf hypothesised that, “The language, which we habitually use tends to modify our perception of reality”. To the native speaker of the English Language who is also monolingual, and whose logic also mono-polarizes, “life after death” is inconceivable. By “mono-polarization”, I mean fitting phenomena in a single line or sequence into one universe: e.g. one life, one universe, one soul, one existence, one wife/husband, one reality, one God, one religion, one correct concept of reality, one truth, one logic, etc.

The relationship between birth and death, according to the above linear universe is conceived as one passing through trap doors. One trap door is at the birth cannel when one comes out into this world. Life at the end ceases when one passes through another one into the grave. This model makes no allowance for the fact of reality, which exhibits to those qualified that life beyond the grave continues in the “next universe” or the “other universe”. Where life continues must be apart from both grave and “this life” or universe.

Those who compare the life of human beings to the life of animals, suffer from Acquired Divination Faculty Deficiency Syndrome (ADFDS). Human beings are not animals in maters of religion and spirituality. I can’t conceive of animals speculating about what will happen to them after they shall die during thanks giving or new yam festivals of humans. We do not know that they do, if they do. They do not write their spiritual thoughts for our perusal. They may well have ominous feelings of their impending death as horses are observed to display when an earthquake is about happening. We observe animals tied to rope waiting to be slaughtered at Sala, when they appear to be sad while awaiting to be slaughtered. They sometimes lose appetite and are visibly tense. Some interpret this as premonition of their imminent death. Human beings do not know in similar intuitive ways about continued existence beyond the grave. We could divine it if we tried.

Another obvious source of confusion is that people talk of soul, spirit, astral body, self, mind, ghost, one emanation from matter into soul, etc. as the manifestation of one “principle”, “essence”, fire, water, etc. I read once that philosophy was about making one out of the many! This makes philosphy a huge mistake. The conclusion is false, that all terms referring to the genre of spirit, soul, self, astral body, etc. were one, and could be represented by any randomly chosen term among them. The suggestion then is that what one refers to as soul, self, shadow, etc. are aspects or degrees of one emanation from God into matter on the way to becoming pure essence (or the other way round). Alternatively, the words are synonyms.

I read some writings where the debaters are talking at cross-purposes, not limiting themselves to the same object as soul, spirit, mind, etc. one at a time. Take a person who talks of immortality of the soul, and the soul leaving the body with the last breath. This same person may talk of astral body as the soul, when talking about soul travel and astral projection. He interchanges astral body and soul when he shifts to talk of reincarnation. They shift from soul to spirit when people try to contact the “dead” in séances. There is the ghost or apparition that some see under certain conditions. Some people speculate about reincarnation or transmigration of the soul and so on. They do not differentiate or compartmentalise the concepts of soul, ghost, spirit, astral body, self, etc. I.e. each is not thought of as an entity in own universe, as say the soul is in the universe of souls, and spirit in the universe of spirits, and ghosts in the universe for ghosts, etc. The same is not true for a person who reasons and believes like the Africans do. (re: "Truth In The Light Of Homotheism")

Another source of confusion relates to what survives or fails to survive death, which reincarnates, or transmigrates. It is a mystery and those who seek to understand it ought to know that they can only divine it, if it exists. A pre-requisite for this, as is with every case of a mystery, is the sense or faculty for divination. Too much noise or verbiage will only mystify the mystery.

Everyone has the potentiality for Divination for personal consumption. The fundamental Reasoning and Belief (attitudes that I call Homotheism) of the African, presupposes the existence of a number of entities in every human body. They are part of what W. E. Wallis Budge called the human economy in “The Egyptian Book of The Dead”. I counted nine (e.g. ba, ka, khu, sekhem, etc.) in his book. Souls and the others do not take part in the nature of whatever it is that does or does not die. The concepts of living, life, or death do not apply to their existence or manifesting. I shall explain this further below.

This life is a junction between universes. I talk from my experiencing them. The cynic or sceptic could interpret this to mean that I was prone to hallucinating. Trying to refute that line of reasoning would lead us afar from the substance. Assume, if only for arguments sake, that I was not hallucinating.

Not only are there more than one universe, our individual existence spreads through many concurrent universes. This is the mystery of life. An aspect of every person does exist in more than one universe at any given moment. Those who approach this mystery must approach it in silence, as we must every mystery. The diviner must overcome the predominance of this universe and this life in his/her focus. The object of contemplation has no name; those who seek to know it by name, or invent a name for it, will suffer in illusion. We must approach it through introspection, contemplation, meditation, and not through their opposites.

Everybody who has the sense or faculty for divination is divining some of the other universes all the time in silence. They could hence confirm the accuracy and veracity of the statement if they would come forward. The tradition of not disclosing what one “sees” beyond the “veil” is mandatory to many; should we however continue to look on while pied pipers are leading our people into the abyss?

The sense or faculty is not open in some, and is underdeveloped in others. It is functioning optimally in the few. Each person exists in more than one universe at the same time as those who have the sensory perception can experience and live through it. The objective faculties are not cut out for this. Simultaneous existence in more than one universe can be easily illustrated with Oboiro’s model given next.

The Oboiro’s model goes as follows: Let there be three universes for the purpose of this attempt at constructing the model in the English Language to the non-native. One universe we shall call “this life”; we shall call a second one, the “other universe”, and a third the “next universe”. We will be using “periods” in our analysis at this time. (Numerous other parameters as things, entities, images, etc. validly could be used, as examples to tell apart the experience in respective universe) One universe is not the future or past in relation to the other two.

Let one hour in “this life” equal ten years in “next universe”. One hour in “other universe”, equal ten years in “this life”. Therefore, one hour in the “other universe” would translate into 10 years (of “this life”) in 10 places or 100 years in “next universe”. You are reading this posting in “this life”. You fall into a trans-like state in “this life” and perceive (watching yourself) that you were in the “next universe”; when you will come round, you will notice that it lasted for six hours. You “lived” (past tense!?) in the “next existence” for 10 years in six places or sixty years according to the time lapse in that “next universe”. Were you born into the “nest universe” from “this life” and died as you were retuning to “this life” you would have died a mature person of sixty years.

You could not remember that you were in “this life” during your concurrent existence in the “next existence”. You wake up in “this life” and notice that you are now in another universe. You can no longer perceive the “next people” amongst whom you lived in the “next universe”. Would those people know that you were also existent in “this life”? What happens to the continued relationship and interaction between the self that you left there and the co-inhabitants of the “next universe’? Meanwhile “you” in the “other existence” goes through an experience similar to the one that you had between “this life” and “next life”; the only difference is that you were now watching yourself in “this life” from the “other universe”. You were in the mental state for five hours in the “other universe”. This would mean that you lived for fifty years in “this life”, and five hundred years in the “next universe”. (We are taking one hour equals 10 years here, the truth is that one day in “some universe” is a thousand years in “this life”.)

You live through these experiences from period to period (say during appropriately peculiar meditations). You notice over the years in “this life” that you keep living in the same city or walking through the same forest or cloud from time to time that are typical of respective universes (inclusive of the “next universe” or the “other universe”. Where exactly do you exist or spend your life in the context of this model? Where is life? Where is death? Where life after death? Where heaven, where hell?

We all live through, or are in nameless conditions. Life or existence (to this extent at least) is a mystery, which means that you can only divine it under certain simultaneous conditions. The concurrent conditions, which must apply simultaneously include that (i) You have the faculty for the “extra-sensory” perception; (ii) You have the relevant key as well as the knowledge to apply it properly; (iii) You have the tools with which to deal with any emergencies such as of attacks by the priesthood whose survival your discovery threatens (include the dwellers of the shadows of death), (iv) That you create for your journeys between the universes, a vehicle, and (v) The teachings of those who have been there before you. (Not teachers, because it is not the messenger that is relevant, but the message.)