Consciousness

In defining the term consciousness for African people, the immediate task is to free African thinking from the meanings and constraints imposed by training in Western thought and techniques, and especially by the Western episteme and paradigms inherited and used for thinking itself. The African heritage of black people is replete with elegant, elaborate, and extraordinary conceptualizations of human knowing and awareness. The following explication is a brief and partial composite of African-centered understanding of consciousness.

In regard to the notion of consciousness, it is fairly well documented that Africa conceives of reality and all that is within reality as a mental expression of the divine. Ancient Nile Valley metaphysics, for instance, believes that Djehuti (whom the Greeks call Hermes) is the mind and will of the creative demiurge and that from this personified divine mind emerges the word that brings all things into being. Similarly, Dogon metaphysics states that the universe is a thought in the mind of Amma, the creator. In terms of consciousness, the philosophical thinking of the Akan makes a distinction between Adwen (“realms of knowing”), Nea Wonhu (“thought” or “that which can not be perceived”), Nea edtra Adwen (“that which transcends thought”) and Anidho (“levels of awareness”), Anidahoso (“awareness of self”), and Oben (“perception beyond the ordinary”).

In Kikongo Lingala, the word for conscious is ezaleli, which means the way you are in life, your essence. The Bantu-Congo believe that there are diverse forces and waves of energy that govern life surrounding humans. This fire-force, which is called Kalunga, is complete in and of itself and emerges within the emptiness or nothingness and becomes the source of life on earth. This Kalunga is a force in motion that can be considered consciousness. The [Page 198]Bantu-Congo believe that the heated force of Kalunga blew up and down as a huge storm of projectiles, Kimbwandende, producing a huge mass in fusion. As Fu-Kiau puts it in Tying the Spiritual Knot: African Cosmology of the Bantu-Konko (2001), in the process of cooling, the mass was in fusion and then solidification occurred, giving birth to the earth. In a very real way, the world as a physical reality, floating in Kalunga, emerges as an act of consciousness.

The term consciousness as African people apply it is therefore a construct that represents their ability to know, perceive, understand, and be aware of self in relation to self and all else. All that is consciousness is, in fact, revealed in and determined by relationships (i.e., energy in motion). At the most fundamental level, consciousness is found in the pulse that gives us life. A heart cell, for example, is unique in that it produces a strong electromagnetic signal that radiates (or relates) out beyond itself. The electromagnetic (EM) field produced by the heart radiates outward some 12 to 15 feet beyond the human body. In effect, every human being is in constant contact or relationship with other human beings and energy-vibrating life forms at all times. Indeed, in The Biology of Transcendence: A Bluerprint of the Human Spirit (2002), J. C. Pearce writes that if two live heart cells are kept apart, and then when they begin to die (as evidenced by fibrillation) are brought into close proximity with each other, they will resume their regular life-producing pulsation. This indicates not only a cellular relationship but also the awareness and understanding (consciousness) of each cell to every other cell, which is evidence of and critical to life. What is most important here is that what is seen as the electromagnetic (EM) energy of the cells is in fact the consciousness of each cell, which carries information or awareness. It is the vibration of each cell that results in the awareness of self (one cell) and other (another cell). Consciousness is, in effect, the intelligent energy of the divine.

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