Reincarnation

Reincarnation is generally accepted as a term that means a dead person returns to life in another being. It is thought that, among some cultures, this means a return to life as an animal, whereas it has been said that Africans, who believe in the concept of reincarnation, see it as the return of a living human being.

This is a misunderstanding of the dynamic nature of African existence and a distortion, due to a borrowed term, of the reality of African life. Reincarnation as a term conveys the idea of a bodily rebirth of an individual. However, from the most ancient of times in African culture, this has not been the precise meaning of African existence. Documents from the walls of the temples, tombs, and pyramids attest to the fact that Africans did not have, in ancient times, the idea that after death the soul of a person occupied another.

Thus, it is necessary to discuss this term in the context of what is known of African societies. In the first place, one must dispense with the [Page 565]Western idea of being when speaking of African existence. It is more exact to refer to force inasmuch as Africans believe that everything has force. There is a force to humans, living or dead, plants, rocks, and minerals.

Yet the precise African concept of existence cannot be understood by using the expression being that expresses force, although force is involved. Actually the concept of force is inseparable from the African's idea of being. One cannot be divorced from force because without the element of force there is no conception of being and vice versa. Force is not some separate entity that has to be expressed; it is the nature of objects, things, people, trees, and animals to express force. The Platonic notion of the separation of body and soul, and substance and accidents must be considered foreign to African ideals. In the Platonic conception, substance is that which is considered essential by Western philosophers, and the accident is the physical body in which the substance is housed. When a person dies, it is said that the accident disintegrates, but the substance remains. The substance as the soul, according to many Westerners, can go to either Heaven or Hell depending on the quality of one's life on Earth. For the believers in reincarnation, it is this substance that is said to be reincarnated.

Africans understand the distinction between different forces or inner realities, just as it is possible to see differences existing between material things in nature. Just as someone may say that different beings have different energies in the Western sense, the African says that forces differ also in their essences. The divine force is not the terrestrial or celestial force, and the human forces are different from the mineral and plant forces, yet force is the commonality among all of them.

In African religion, there is a clear hierarchy of forces with God preceding the spirits, then the founding ancestors and the living dead, according to their primogeniture, and then humans according to their age.

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