Man's most basic relationship, said Ancient African sages, was to the soil. The sameness of the life-giving soil was likened to the sameness of Ma'at principles that generated the African tradition sense of community. This "community" implies that the substance of God is in all God's creations; that God's substance is what gives each creation Dignity (i.e. inborn worth); and that all God's creations are linked by invisible bonds.
Of these creations, "the good earth" was deemed the most modest and humble because it provided the nutrition for seeds to grow into food and flowers. Similarly, the people's real self, like the soil, enabled individuals to evolve into their highest selves and thereby fashion a sense of community -- known in today's Western world as humanity.
Put another way, humanity is to one's real self as a flower is to its seed. Just as a seed's growth in soil is a living experience, so is the cultivation of humanity. Hence, humanity is not something separate from life but rather is itself a Ma'at (or good character) manner of living. By humanity experiences differing almost as widely as the people having them, humanity can only hazily be defined.
In African tradition, since humanity has a spiritual/humane people-centeredness, the individual and the community are defined in terms of each other. Although the individual has a physical, mental, spiritual, and divine nature, it is the individual and community which complete each other.
Both are interdependent and engage in complementary Yin/Yang type mergings. These people-to-people and people-to-spiritual linkages necessarily form connections between moral principles and human interest (Coetzee, African Philosophy p. 401, 441). Because moral values derive from human fellowship, together they design the meaningful reality of humanity (Ani, Yurugu p. 352).
This composite of morals, the individual, and the community makes each and all the people model human beings, creates their African nature, and causes them to manifest Humaneness (the application of Ma'at principles). Since African Tradition focuses on salvation (becoming immune to evil once in the Afterlife), Black Egyptians developed a dual approach for its attainment.
First the contemplative phase of reflective thinking and meditation was about the individual blending into universal truths in order to synthesize thoughts and feelings related to whatever would constructively influence behavior.
Second, the rational phase concerned the acquiring of mental discipline and principles from studying the ten African Virtues and the seven Liberal Arts. The rational objective was to be able to translate and constructively build the synthesized stored thoughts and feelings of contemplation into words and deeds of a Ma'at nature.
In the Egyptian Mystery Schools, the rational humanity structure was taught at least as early as the third millennium BC. The Liberal Arts -- forerunners of the European humanities -- were Grammar, Arithmetic, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music (James, Stolen Legacy p. 28).
Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic were African disciplines of a moral nature and by means of which a human's irrational tendencies are purged away. Geometry and Arithmetic helped provide understanding of the problems of one's "being" and of a physical type. Music (or Harmony) meant the living practice of philosophy (i.e. the adjustment of human life into harmony with God).
From these studies, intended to liberate the soul, came principles concerning human interaction. Thus, synthesized thoughts and feelings from contemplation would change what is said and done in human interaction. Likewise, what is said and done in human interaction reacts upon and helps shape what is contemplatively thought and felt.
Each African was responsible for checking what he/she thought, felt, said, and did so as to not drop below the standard of Ma'at values. Those who passed the humanity test experienced good relations with and behaviors toward other human beings as well as within nature. They therefore qualified to enter the heaven Afterlife.
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D
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