Space and Time

In Africa, the time-space dimension is viewed as interrelated. The African foundation of spirituality, for example, is governed by the seen and unseen and convergence of time and space. To understand the relationship among humans, nature, and science, it is necessary to consider the concept of wholeness in the African worldview.

Reality has the characteristics of the unseen and the seen, the concrete and the abstract, as with space and time. In fact, what we perceive with our senses are but representations and symbols of this reality. The African idea is that the world extends beyond the limits of empiricism. For instance, physics cannot explain many of the innate abilities and observations of humans such as telepathy, clairaudience, clairvoyance, clairsentience, or precognition. Time is also nonexistent and cannot be measured in the dream state, yet sleep or dream time is measured by time in the physical world. Time, as a vehicle or conduit that delivers the messages to be acted on in the physical world, is also needed for movement.

Time is then a manifestation of a physical world or material existence, a degree of limitation as compared with the subjective realm where time and space are nonexistent. Time is also a representation of eternity and balance. According to some scholars, the ancient African sages knew how to control the vibration of the pituitary and pineal glands in a manner that enabled them to contact any region of the inner worlds that they desired to visit. It is widely believed that as we dream we are having an experience outside of time and space. Here we can also commune with ancestors of the spirit world, an existence without boundaries or degrees of separation.

African philosophers have said that the universe is considered to be unending in regard to space and time. There is no known edge to the universe, and Africans' idea of time consists mainly of present, past, and little to say about the future. Africans acknowledge time within the cycle of birth, growth, procreation, and death. The major rhythms of time are events like night and day, months in connection to phases of the moon, seasons of rain and dry weather, as well as events of nature that come and go. All of this suggests that the universe will never end despite the transformations we experience in a physical state. The symbolism of circles, used in many rituals, is praised in art and other forms of cultural expression to stress the significance of their continuity. Ongoing and permanent, the universe is eternal and extends beyond what the human eye can detect.

Space is defined as a characteristic of the universe that enables physical manifestations to extend in three directions. Space is then a means by which creation and all life forms can exist and interact. In the West, some have said that space, time, and matter are separate elements; others have contended that they are combined into a fourth-dimensional existence. The Africans have understood that space and time are mutually dependent. This view concurs with those who claim that absolute time is then really the absolute order of events determined by cause-and-effect events and not the measurement of time, which is the subject of ordinary observations.

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