By David G Maillu
Let’s talk about our life and, first and foremost, give it a scientific glimpse regarding what life is. Life, science can also tell us, is a bundle of active and nuclear energy enclosed in a human body. That energy is a spark of the universal energy. You can say that spark is similar to the spark from the effervescent molten thing, like beer. The spark of the beer returns to the beer to become one with the beer. My hypothesis it that, scientifically, that is what happens to the “human” spark. It loses being active and returns to the mother universal energy.
Africa and the world, is full of uncountable stories, even scientifically proven, of people who have died returning to haunt relatives in form of ghosts, even when they had died decades ago. They are labeled as ghosts, spirits, angels, gods. They all have one thing in common. They don’t have tangible bodies. They are capable of appearing and disappearing and, like x-ray, they can go through solid walls perhaps, because they live in other dimensions.
There is a documented story that the ghost of Abraham Lincoln of America is, even up to this age, a frequent visitor of the White House, perhaps watching the behavior of the people and to quietly advice the White House holders on how to move on securely.
When I was engaged in writing the “African Bible” one of the participants, the late Professor Osaga Odak, retold us how, shortly after he was born and given a name, his parents suffered desperately from his endless day-and-night crying which went on for months until they became sure that the boy was going to die because he could hardly eat for crying.
Medical doctors could not help them at all. Until one day they were forced to consult a diviner regarding the fate of the child. They diviner told them a simple story that the child was crying because he was given a wrong name. The baby boy had a relative who had been dead for a long time. That relative was the one demanding that the boy should be named after him so as to invite him back to the family. The parents had no alternative but to do exactly that. They set off by dropping the name of the child and thereafter reorganized for a new ritual in renaming the child. When the ritual was accomplished and the baby boy given the new name, the crying ended completely.
This is not a new story to many African homes. This is why naming a child is a religious event in traditional Africa. During prayers, the dead-living spirits are given acknowledgment. The dead-living spirits live among the living human beings, although their role remains mysterious. There are endless stories of practical advices and revelations offered to the living by ancestral spirits. African religion has it that some of those spirits remain solid guides to the living where, if necessary, they can effect disciplinary punishment to the living in order to force them to reform. It is religious in Africa to acknowledge the potency of ancestral spirits for which the Whiteman has described as primitive and pagan religion.
If this sounds strange, return to the religions Islam or Christianity. For example, faithfuls strongly believe that Jesus is still alive. Both Mohammed and Jesus are ancestors believed to be dead-living. The Catholic Church bring into fold the Mother of Jesus and pray to her, as also they pray to other ancestors that include biblical Abraham, Jacob and so on.
Have we been faithful to our ancestors or have we broken traditional religious cardinal laws? Terrible things are written on our political the walls. Isn’t time for us to stop and take stock of our native religion regarding where we might have wronged our ancestors in order to earn and witness the awfully alarming happenings taking place particularly in the Central Province community?
Spirits form the background of Reincarnation in African Religion
Spirits and ghosts appear in different wavelength-dimensions. The story about spirits in African scientific thought is real. Hypnosis has a chapter to contribute to the reality of spirits. Spirits form the background of reincarnation. Modern scientific world has a chapter in investigations which have proven the existence of reincarnation. We belong to the past just as much as we belong to the present and to the future. Being elements of the living process of the Universe, we are born with special senses to live and help us find way forward. African spirituality acknowledges that we have sensory nerves that can help us see to the past and to the future. God can speak to man through various means. You can also use agents to reach out to God too.
The Dream medium
Why do we dream? Dreams, big or small, are unfolding waves of the many faces of the Supreme Energy which we call Nature or God. Everything that nature brings to us must have a meaning, an understandable or hidden meaning, abstract or direct. In other words, Nature does not lie. “And God spoke to him through a dream,” is a common statement in the Bible. The Bible is full of dream stories which show that one of the many ways God uses to communicate to people is through dreams. Dreams are not a manifestation of human beings. Other living things dream too. Those who have lived with domestic animals have stories regarding when they witnessed a goat or dog dreaming.
Through dream waves many people have been able to see events in distant future. From the biblical dream of Joseph with his twelve brothers which predicted his rise, to the ones he interpreted while in service in Pharaoh’s kingdom together with the ones recorded in the Book of Revelation highlight the subject.
The dead-living or spirits communicate with us through dreams. African spirituality has a big chapter in the role that spirits play in many aspects of our social life. Spirits are not at play only among Africans. They are universal. To give an example, ask the record keepers of the White House and they will confirm, “Historic buildings can usually boast a ghost or two, however, the White House in Washington, DC has had more than its fair share of famous people passing through its portals, but former President Abraham Lincoln seems to be the most active of the ghosts recorded there.” (8) (8) Modern Mysteries of the World, Colin Bord, pg.83; Strange events of the 20th Century, Grafton Books, 1989, London.
Does this not say that President Abraham Lincoln is still alive somewhere? Nevertheless, in spite of the United States of America being armed up to the teeth with scientists – astrophysicists, agronomists, psychiatrists, scientologists and the host of the others – all of them operating from the empirical platform approach would still fail to explain not only the reasons for the spirit of Lincoln paying visits to the White House, but explain away the dream of President Abraham Lincoln. It was a dream that foretold his assassination nearly five years to come. In his own published words he reported accurately what he saw in the dream by saying:
“About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been waiting for dispatches from the front. I could not have been going to bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. Soon I began to dream. (In the dream) There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was his answer. ‘He was killed by assassination.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream.”
What proved that the President’s life was predestined was that on the election night, 1860, he had a strange dream of which, in the mirror, he saw two images of himself – one image glowing in health and the other ghastly pale, as if in death. The inter-operation of the dream was that he would be elected to a second term, but would die before it had run its course, hence the symbolism presented by the second ghastly image of himself in the mirror.
Over five years after the day of his dream about his death in the White House, on April 14, 1865, at 10: 15 P.M, President Lincoln was shot dead, just when he had been nominated for the second term (9)
An important question one might ask is whether, in the meantime, the soul of President Abraham Lincoln was ever subjected to reincarnation since his death. Lincoln’s prediction tells openly that we tread on a programmed universal consciousness.(10)
