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African Collective Unconscious |
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Ancient African mythology uses all black structures as
symbolic for a hidden doorway to the Amenta's Collective Unconscious of the
human (i.e. Black) family. As an Amenta embryonic potential backs out of this
doorway, its cosmic "genes" organize into a "seed" (i.e. an archetype) so as to
become a "reality being." It is first distributed into the Cosmic, then
Humanity, and finally, Personal realms. Cosmic consciousness is "Nature's"
archetype. A man-made pattern for one such primitive, ancestral exemplar of nature
is a taxon (any accepted taxonomic group such as that common to biology-i.e. a
phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species). An individual's Personal
Unconsciousness consists of "Cosmic Unconscious fragments" and, following
birth, those neutral or bad thoughts which were once conscious but were later
suspended, suppressed, or repressed. The Humanity Unconscious is the universal
soul and whatever is in it is present in all humans. Being a Divine archetype
(i.e. made in God's image or likeness), it possesses dynamic nuclei which give
rise to each human being. Part of it is destined to form the Collective
Unconsciousness (also called Impersonal or Transpersonal Unconsciousness) of
humanity.
Ancient Africans believed that since human are made in the
image of God and that God is love, then the cherished values arising out of
God's love must be present in the Humanity Archetype-- and therefore present in
the Personal Unconscious of each human. However, this relationship is
interfered with when a given individual sees him/herself as separate from other
creatures or creations-- and separation causes Spiritual Pain. Correction
requires the afflicted to do what it takes to switch from such duality (e.g.
"me vs. them") over to the harmony and unity experiences which characterize
spiritual archetypal humans. To these ends Ancient Africans devised perfect
models (e.g. "Man, Know Thyself") for reaching the Afterlife and thereby
avoiding reincarnation sufferings. Just as socialization, in fashioning a human
being's "second" nature, can enhance or
suppress much of one's genetic "human nature" potential and tendencies, Ancient
Africans believed repeated and prolonged periods of human experiences add a
"second" nature or Collective Unconscious to the Humanity Archetype of a
people. The "memory" in which those acquired experiences rests is made of
Intangible materials. This enables the Collective Unconscious to possess
special properties-like retain ancestral memories and then appear, unaffected
by time and space, as instincts or conscious images.
Indigenous Ancient Africans recognized that each member of
the village had an individualized memory and a collective (or "group mind")
memory (Somé African Healing p. 245).
Whereas the individualized memory consisted of a collection of all of
one's entire experiences, the collective memory represented a receptacle for
the experiences of the entire living and dead community -- the latter dating to
the earliest or archetype ancestors. Villagers urged its youth to master the ability
to remember the knowledge "living in their bones" in order to carry out a
personal life's purpose for the health and wholeness of both the individual and
the community-a "We/I" concept.
Apparently, Ancient Black Egyptians incorporated these concepts into
their works on the Dynamic Unconscious. The combination of indigenous African
and Egyptian concepts found their way into the Corpus Hermeticum and writings
of the African scholar Saint Augustine (354-430 AD) and form the foundation for
the Western "archetype" and Collective Unconscious (King, African Origins p15).
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.
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