Our African Unconscious
The Black Origins of Mysticism and Psychology
By (Author) Edward Bruce Bynum, Ph.D., ABPP
Foreword by Linda James Myers, Ph.D.
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In Stock
- Edition: Revised Edition of The African Unconscious
- Pages: 480
- Book Size: 6 x 9
- ISBN-13: 9781644113967
- Imprint: Inner Traditions
- On Sale Date: September 14, 2021
- Format: Paperback Book
- Illustrations: 27 b&w illustrations
Reveals how spirituality and the collective unconscious of all of humanity originated in Africa
In this African-revisioned look at the unfolding of human history and culture, Edward Bruce Bynum draws on archaeology, DNA research, history, depth psychology, and the roots of religion and science to demonstrate how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity connected with a primordial African unconscious.
In this African-revisioned look at the unfolding of human history and culture, Edward Bruce Bynum draws on archaeology, DNA research, history, depth psychology, and the roots of religion and science to demonstrate how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity connected with a primordial African unconscious.
• Examines the Oldawan, the Ancient Soul of Africa, and its correlation with what modern psychologists have defined as the collective unconscious
• Draws on archaeology, DNA research, history, and depth psychology to reveal how the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science came out of Africa
• Explores the reflections of our African unconscious in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern psychospirituality
The fossil record confirms that humanity originated in Africa. Yet somehow we have overlooked that Africa is also at the root of all that makes us human--our spirituality, civilization, arts, sciences, philosophy, and our conscious and unconscious minds.
In this extensive look at the unfolding of human history and culture, Edward Bruce Bynum reveals how our collective unconscious is African. Drawing on archaeology, DNA research, depth psychology, and the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science, he demonstrates how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity, both psychically and genetically--a primordial African unconscious.
Exploring the beginning of early religions and mysticism in Africa, the author looks at the Egyptian Nubian role in the rise of civilization, the emergence of Kemetic Egypt, and the Oldawan, the Ancient Soul, and its correlation with what modern psychologists have defined as the collective unconscious. Revealing the spiritual and psychological ramifications of our shared African ancestry, the author examines its reflections in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern Black spirituality, which arose from African diaspora religion and philosophy.
By recognizing our shared African unconscious--the matrix that forms the deepest luminous core of human identity--we learn that the differences between one person and another are merely superficial and ultimately there is no real separation between the material and the spiritual.
• Draws on archaeology, DNA research, history, and depth psychology to reveal how the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science came out of Africa
• Explores the reflections of our African unconscious in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern psychospirituality
The fossil record confirms that humanity originated in Africa. Yet somehow we have overlooked that Africa is also at the root of all that makes us human--our spirituality, civilization, arts, sciences, philosophy, and our conscious and unconscious minds.
In this extensive look at the unfolding of human history and culture, Edward Bruce Bynum reveals how our collective unconscious is African. Drawing on archaeology, DNA research, depth psychology, and the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science, he demonstrates how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity, both psychically and genetically--a primordial African unconscious.
Exploring the beginning of early religions and mysticism in Africa, the author looks at the Egyptian Nubian role in the rise of civilization, the emergence of Kemetic Egypt, and the Oldawan, the Ancient Soul, and its correlation with what modern psychologists have defined as the collective unconscious. Revealing the spiritual and psychological ramifications of our shared African ancestry, the author examines its reflections in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern Black spirituality, which arose from African diaspora religion and philosophy.
By recognizing our shared African unconscious--the matrix that forms the deepest luminous core of human identity--we learn that the differences between one person and another are merely superficial and ultimately there is no real separation between the material and the spiritual.
From Chapter 2. The African Unconscious
Oldawan: The Ancient Soul
The oldest human soul is an African soul. Rooted in anthropology, biology, history, and genetics, the mysterious ocean that is human consciousness is at bottom collective, luminous, and genotypically African in its genesis. We have mentioned in the previous chapter that the oldest known human race is an African race. This leads us to the intuition that the oldest, deepest, and most primordial level of human consciousness is that mode of consciousness the hominid species has been most preoccupied with in its 2.5 to 3 million years of existence. “Man,” in some variation of his present form, was in Africa from 2.5 to 3 million years ago and then, as Homo erectus, spread to the other areas of the world. Humankind carried out its first preliminary and earliest most sophisticated experiments within the African milieu. All the hominid variations, from the early and primitive lost pre-Australopithecines, to the Australopithecines we know of, to Homo habilis to Homo erectus and eventually to Homo sapiens sapiens, unfolded on the same continent shaped like a skull looking eastward on the planet like the mysterious sphinx. Their deep recurrent experiences, their racial memories are rooted in our own brains in a collective, primordial way. Indeed, from 2.5 million years ago hominid ancestors experimented in some conscious way with their own mental landscape and with branchings and diversifications unfolded progressively more subtle forms of intelligence. These branchings, approximately 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, criss-crossed in a single female human being, dark and Africoid, on a forgotten savanna. Perhaps 188,000 years ago an Africoid male wrote upon every Y chromosome his own unfailing signature. In a very real way, the roots of the collective hominid and the human unconscious are really a primordial African unconscious.
The great pioneer Sigmund Freud was actually aware of this on some level. He referred to the collective unconscious as the racial memory. His library in Vienna was littered with artifacts from African and especially Egyptian history and anthropology. Freud was also ambivalent about this realization and revealed this on several occasions. He feared, as many do, the notion of a primordial African consciousness as the wellspring of human consciousness. He referred to it as the “black tide of Mud and occultism.” It was perhaps the greater fear of the boundless unconscious, fear of the primordial darkness, and his own ultimate racial and egoic dissolution as a European. Carl Jung referred to the collective unconscious as, indeed, we understand it generally today. However Jung was also aware from his own experience that he felt most in contact with his deepest, most elemental self when he was traveling the African continent. He left Europe several times with the intention of establishing a more universal perspective on this collective unconscious by studying the dreams of Blacks in Africa and in the United States. Many times he mentioned the uncanny experiences he had and the sense of some bottomless primordial memory underneath and foundationalizing his recent, emergent European memory. Despite his vision, he was still like many Europeans afraid of “going Black” and all that means for an ego identified as a White person. Recall that prior to 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, all Homo sapiens sapiens were Black and that “racial” diversification as we think of it today had not yet begun. The present-day implication of this, of course, is that beneath the wealth of contents in our shared or multicultural unconscious the primordial essence and genetic roots of our African dynamism dwells. Jung felt this deeper racial memory as his bedrock memory, and it unfolded within him a great peace and sense of unity between all the peoples of his planet. Many people have had similar experiences and insights.
This repression of the primordial African unconscious is an act of repression not only in Europe but also in Eurocentric science. It might be thought of as the collective “threatened return of the repressed.” In the early Greek myths appears the motif of the “devouring sphinx,” and we can see in this myth the fear of an ancient Kemetic Egyptian consciousness. This is associated with the earliest Greek myths and stories that allude to their origins as an Egyptian colony from Africa (Diop, 1991). The Greeks as a people did not come from Egypt of course, but strong early elements of their great cultural flowering did owe much to their neighbors farther to the south who had been flowering for millennia. It would seem that the Greek consciousness and Greek civilization, emerging from an early colony of Egyptians from their own mythohistorical point of view, was in some ways afraid of a slideback into its parent stock. This process of the emergence of classical Greek culture from contributions from Egyptian culture quickly arose around 600 B.C.E. However, it would be unfair to assume that the ancient Greeks were anti-Egyptian. If anything, they were very much pro-Egyptian and recognized ancient Egypt as not only the source of much of their own civilization but the source of civilization itself. Civilization is taken to mean not only medicine, but also the arts of writing, mathematics, astronomy, archeology, history, and philosophy.
The later Romans had a collective unconscious memory of ancient Egypt. In ancient Rome there were many cults of the “Black Madonna.” These were variations of the earlier Kemetic cult of Isis, a cult which itself was even older than the Egyptians and originated in the Nubian civilization that was prior to the Egyptian civilization. As mentioned before, the cult of the Black Madonna in all its variations can be found scattered throughout Europe and the Near East. This is a manifestation of the memory and the influence of the collective unconscious in its African expression. As we shall see in future chapters, numerous luminaries of the Greek tradition actually studied in the Egyptian mystery schools and later translated directly the texts and philosophy of ancient Egypt into their own (Finch, 1990; James, 1954; Schwaller de Lubicz, 1961).
When the genius of Kemetic Egyptian civilization was rediscovered by Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, this threatened return of the repressed was handled differently. Egypt was mentally and “scientifically” taken out of Africa and made an extension of European and Middle Eastern history and development. It became “Egypt and Africa.” Along with this came a sudden interest in Indian culture and the Sanskrit language. The Indo-Aryan connection to India was heightened, and slowly a Caucasian genesis was seen in Hindu civilization. The indigenous African was erased from the teaching of history and the unfoldment of human civilization. This subtle psychological process continues to this day on a large scale. With a few notable exceptions, in the Eurocentric tradition it was simply inconceivable that a highly evolved civilization that gave light to the mind could have its genesis in a dark and mysterious world and then move in an African migration down toward the Mediterranean. This is despite the fact that the Romans did not come until Caesar, around 30 B.C.E., that the Greeks did not come in mass numbers before Alexander in 333 B.C.E., that the Jews did not come to be known before Abraham and Joseph, that the Assyrians, Phoenicians, and many others did not come until very late in the day. By that time the Kemetic lens of the human mind had already developed several written scripts, astronomy, medicine, mathematics, mummification, a form of biological psychiatry, a precise calendar, the pyramids, and by the 8th century B.C.E. in the 25th Dynasty, had made contact with peoples from southern India to the Americas. Such awareness must be repressed if you are to hold people in bondage and justify the belief that they are an inferior race. Otherwise, a deep disquiet disturbs the peace and the order of society is merely based on pure power, aggression, and savagery. This is incongruous with a selfperception of being a person or people of reason, enlightened and committed to the spiritual equality of all human souls in the community of God. Yes, all this must be repressed and replaced with a perception that is more soothing and justifying of one’s actions and the “mission” of one’s culture. And yet this deep memory does not stay dead. It is alive and gives rise to our deeper experiences and perhaps our earliest, most noble aspirations. It is within all of us and all of us are within it.
Oldawan: The Ancient Soul
The oldest human soul is an African soul. Rooted in anthropology, biology, history, and genetics, the mysterious ocean that is human consciousness is at bottom collective, luminous, and genotypically African in its genesis. We have mentioned in the previous chapter that the oldest known human race is an African race. This leads us to the intuition that the oldest, deepest, and most primordial level of human consciousness is that mode of consciousness the hominid species has been most preoccupied with in its 2.5 to 3 million years of existence. “Man,” in some variation of his present form, was in Africa from 2.5 to 3 million years ago and then, as Homo erectus, spread to the other areas of the world. Humankind carried out its first preliminary and earliest most sophisticated experiments within the African milieu. All the hominid variations, from the early and primitive lost pre-Australopithecines, to the Australopithecines we know of, to Homo habilis to Homo erectus and eventually to Homo sapiens sapiens, unfolded on the same continent shaped like a skull looking eastward on the planet like the mysterious sphinx. Their deep recurrent experiences, their racial memories are rooted in our own brains in a collective, primordial way. Indeed, from 2.5 million years ago hominid ancestors experimented in some conscious way with their own mental landscape and with branchings and diversifications unfolded progressively more subtle forms of intelligence. These branchings, approximately 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, criss-crossed in a single female human being, dark and Africoid, on a forgotten savanna. Perhaps 188,000 years ago an Africoid male wrote upon every Y chromosome his own unfailing signature. In a very real way, the roots of the collective hominid and the human unconscious are really a primordial African unconscious.
The great pioneer Sigmund Freud was actually aware of this on some level. He referred to the collective unconscious as the racial memory. His library in Vienna was littered with artifacts from African and especially Egyptian history and anthropology. Freud was also ambivalent about this realization and revealed this on several occasions. He feared, as many do, the notion of a primordial African consciousness as the wellspring of human consciousness. He referred to it as the “black tide of Mud and occultism.” It was perhaps the greater fear of the boundless unconscious, fear of the primordial darkness, and his own ultimate racial and egoic dissolution as a European. Carl Jung referred to the collective unconscious as, indeed, we understand it generally today. However Jung was also aware from his own experience that he felt most in contact with his deepest, most elemental self when he was traveling the African continent. He left Europe several times with the intention of establishing a more universal perspective on this collective unconscious by studying the dreams of Blacks in Africa and in the United States. Many times he mentioned the uncanny experiences he had and the sense of some bottomless primordial memory underneath and foundationalizing his recent, emergent European memory. Despite his vision, he was still like many Europeans afraid of “going Black” and all that means for an ego identified as a White person. Recall that prior to 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, all Homo sapiens sapiens were Black and that “racial” diversification as we think of it today had not yet begun. The present-day implication of this, of course, is that beneath the wealth of contents in our shared or multicultural unconscious the primordial essence and genetic roots of our African dynamism dwells. Jung felt this deeper racial memory as his bedrock memory, and it unfolded within him a great peace and sense of unity between all the peoples of his planet. Many people have had similar experiences and insights.
This repression of the primordial African unconscious is an act of repression not only in Europe but also in Eurocentric science. It might be thought of as the collective “threatened return of the repressed.” In the early Greek myths appears the motif of the “devouring sphinx,” and we can see in this myth the fear of an ancient Kemetic Egyptian consciousness. This is associated with the earliest Greek myths and stories that allude to their origins as an Egyptian colony from Africa (Diop, 1991). The Greeks as a people did not come from Egypt of course, but strong early elements of their great cultural flowering did owe much to their neighbors farther to the south who had been flowering for millennia. It would seem that the Greek consciousness and Greek civilization, emerging from an early colony of Egyptians from their own mythohistorical point of view, was in some ways afraid of a slideback into its parent stock. This process of the emergence of classical Greek culture from contributions from Egyptian culture quickly arose around 600 B.C.E. However, it would be unfair to assume that the ancient Greeks were anti-Egyptian. If anything, they were very much pro-Egyptian and recognized ancient Egypt as not only the source of much of their own civilization but the source of civilization itself. Civilization is taken to mean not only medicine, but also the arts of writing, mathematics, astronomy, archeology, history, and philosophy.
The later Romans had a collective unconscious memory of ancient Egypt. In ancient Rome there were many cults of the “Black Madonna.” These were variations of the earlier Kemetic cult of Isis, a cult which itself was even older than the Egyptians and originated in the Nubian civilization that was prior to the Egyptian civilization. As mentioned before, the cult of the Black Madonna in all its variations can be found scattered throughout Europe and the Near East. This is a manifestation of the memory and the influence of the collective unconscious in its African expression. As we shall see in future chapters, numerous luminaries of the Greek tradition actually studied in the Egyptian mystery schools and later translated directly the texts and philosophy of ancient Egypt into their own (Finch, 1990; James, 1954; Schwaller de Lubicz, 1961).
When the genius of Kemetic Egyptian civilization was rediscovered by Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, this threatened return of the repressed was handled differently. Egypt was mentally and “scientifically” taken out of Africa and made an extension of European and Middle Eastern history and development. It became “Egypt and Africa.” Along with this came a sudden interest in Indian culture and the Sanskrit language. The Indo-Aryan connection to India was heightened, and slowly a Caucasian genesis was seen in Hindu civilization. The indigenous African was erased from the teaching of history and the unfoldment of human civilization. This subtle psychological process continues to this day on a large scale. With a few notable exceptions, in the Eurocentric tradition it was simply inconceivable that a highly evolved civilization that gave light to the mind could have its genesis in a dark and mysterious world and then move in an African migration down toward the Mediterranean. This is despite the fact that the Romans did not come until Caesar, around 30 B.C.E., that the Greeks did not come in mass numbers before Alexander in 333 B.C.E., that the Jews did not come to be known before Abraham and Joseph, that the Assyrians, Phoenicians, and many others did not come until very late in the day. By that time the Kemetic lens of the human mind had already developed several written scripts, astronomy, medicine, mathematics, mummification, a form of biological psychiatry, a precise calendar, the pyramids, and by the 8th century B.C.E. in the 25th Dynasty, had made contact with peoples from southern India to the Americas. Such awareness must be repressed if you are to hold people in bondage and justify the belief that they are an inferior race. Otherwise, a deep disquiet disturbs the peace and the order of society is merely based on pure power, aggression, and savagery. This is incongruous with a selfperception of being a person or people of reason, enlightened and committed to the spiritual equality of all human souls in the community of God. Yes, all this must be repressed and replaced with a perception that is more soothing and justifying of one’s actions and the “mission” of one’s culture. And yet this deep memory does not stay dead. It is alive and gives rise to our deeper experiences and perhaps our earliest, most noble aspirations. It is within all of us and all of us are within it.
Figures
Foreword to the 2021 Edition by Linda James Myers, Ph.D.
A Note from the First Edition by Allen E. Ivey
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Diaspora, or the Great Dispersion
Prologue: The African Origin of Human Consciousness
Waves of Hominids and Their Stock
Diaspora into the Ancient Americas
The Rise of Civilization: The Egypto-Nubian Legacy
The Emergence of Kemetic Egypt and Its Contact with Other Peoples: Asia, Mesopotamia, “Olde Europe,” and West Africa
The Diaspora into the Americas during Early Civilization
The Dark Ages and Medieval Europe
Dispersion, Genetics, and the Mother Tongue
Summary
2 The African Unconscious
Oldawan: The Ancient Soul
The Nature of the Unconscious
Some Basic Tenets of the African Unconscious
Summary
3 The Roots of Modern Science and Religion in Ancient Egypt
Medicine, Mathematics, and Astronomy
The Rise of the Modern Religions in Ancient Egypt
Contemporary Science and the Ancient Ideas of Fire and Energy
4 Kundalini and the Spread of African Mysticism
Kundalini and the Religious Traditions
Kundalini in History and Science
History and the Neters of Egypt
The Bodily Perception of the Living Current
Psychoneurology and the Solar Logos
5 The Osirian Complex
To Bind Them in Myth
The Family of Human Myths
The Osirian Myth, the Osirian Journey
Implications of the Osirian Complex in Culture
Summary
6 The African Religions in Their Diaspora to the West
Roots in Kemetic Egypt
West African Religions in Their Diaspora
Ethnic Diaspora to the West
Ifa, the Unconscious, and the Implicate Order Storehouse Memory
A Science of Divine Communion: The Psychospiritual Dynamics of Embodiment or “Possession”
The West African Psychology of Religion
Mediums, Diviners, and Their Forms of Spirit Possession
Training and Initiation
Summary
7 Freud, Judaism, and the Limits of Psychodynamic Insight
The Jews of Ancient Egypt: Three Theories of Origin
Jews in the Americas
Familial Patterns and the Cognitive Style of Psychodynamic Thinking
Root Techniques of Psychoanalysis and Mysticism
Insights of Psychoanalysis
Some Parallels between Jewish Mystical Thought and Ancient Kemetic Egypt
Summary
8 The Present Confrontation in the Americas
The Milieu of Race in the New World
Reflections of Black Imagery in the New World
Nurturing Images of Blackness in Eurocentric Cultures
Menacing Images of Blackness
Blacks’ Perceptions of Whites in the Americas
The Seeds of Black Spirituality in Slave Religion and Philosophy
Our African Unconscious as Expressed in the Work of the American Founding Fathers
9 The Rudiments of Kemetic Philosophy in African/Indian Yoga Science
The Serpentine Symbol and the Solar Consciousness
Yoga Discipline, the Living Darkness, and the Light
Basic Principles of the Transcendental Discipline
The Evolutionary Force Operative Today
A Paradigm of Spiritual Energy: Body, Breath, and Cosmos; The Km Wirian Synthesis
The Multiplicity of Paths
Our Unfolding Afrogenetic Paradigm
Nexus: The Living Earth, the Body, and the Stars
APPENDIX A
Principal West African Yoruba Deities (Orisha) and Their Expressions in the Americas
APPENDIX B
The Ten Plagues of Moses
APPENDIX C
Partial List of Dances of African American Origin
References
Index
About the Author
Foreword to the 2021 Edition by Linda James Myers, Ph.D.
A Note from the First Edition by Allen E. Ivey
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Diaspora, or the Great Dispersion
Prologue: The African Origin of Human Consciousness
Waves of Hominids and Their Stock
Diaspora into the Ancient Americas
The Rise of Civilization: The Egypto-Nubian Legacy
The Emergence of Kemetic Egypt and Its Contact with Other Peoples: Asia, Mesopotamia, “Olde Europe,” and West Africa
The Diaspora into the Americas during Early Civilization
The Dark Ages and Medieval Europe
Dispersion, Genetics, and the Mother Tongue
Summary
2 The African Unconscious
Oldawan: The Ancient Soul
The Nature of the Unconscious
Some Basic Tenets of the African Unconscious
Summary
3 The Roots of Modern Science and Religion in Ancient Egypt
Medicine, Mathematics, and Astronomy
The Rise of the Modern Religions in Ancient Egypt
Contemporary Science and the Ancient Ideas of Fire and Energy
4 Kundalini and the Spread of African Mysticism
Kundalini and the Religious Traditions
Kundalini in History and Science
History and the Neters of Egypt
The Bodily Perception of the Living Current
Psychoneurology and the Solar Logos
5 The Osirian Complex
To Bind Them in Myth
The Family of Human Myths
The Osirian Myth, the Osirian Journey
Implications of the Osirian Complex in Culture
Summary
6 The African Religions in Their Diaspora to the West
Roots in Kemetic Egypt
West African Religions in Their Diaspora
Ethnic Diaspora to the West
Ifa, the Unconscious, and the Implicate Order Storehouse Memory
A Science of Divine Communion: The Psychospiritual Dynamics of Embodiment or “Possession”
The West African Psychology of Religion
Mediums, Diviners, and Their Forms of Spirit Possession
Training and Initiation
Summary
7 Freud, Judaism, and the Limits of Psychodynamic Insight
The Jews of Ancient Egypt: Three Theories of Origin
Jews in the Americas
Familial Patterns and the Cognitive Style of Psychodynamic Thinking
Root Techniques of Psychoanalysis and Mysticism
Insights of Psychoanalysis
Some Parallels between Jewish Mystical Thought and Ancient Kemetic Egypt
Summary
8 The Present Confrontation in the Americas
The Milieu of Race in the New World
Reflections of Black Imagery in the New World
Nurturing Images of Blackness in Eurocentric Cultures
Menacing Images of Blackness
Blacks’ Perceptions of Whites in the Americas
The Seeds of Black Spirituality in Slave Religion and Philosophy
Our African Unconscious as Expressed in the Work of the American Founding Fathers
9 The Rudiments of Kemetic Philosophy in African/Indian Yoga Science
The Serpentine Symbol and the Solar Consciousness
Yoga Discipline, the Living Darkness, and the Light
Basic Principles of the Transcendental Discipline
The Evolutionary Force Operative Today
A Paradigm of Spiritual Energy: Body, Breath, and Cosmos; The Km Wirian Synthesis
The Multiplicity of Paths
Our Unfolding Afrogenetic Paradigm
Nexus: The Living Earth, the Body, and the Stars
APPENDIX A
Principal West African Yoruba Deities (Orisha) and Their Expressions in the Americas
APPENDIX B
The Ten Plagues of Moses
APPENDIX C
Partial List of Dances of African American Origin
References
Index
About the Author
Edward Bruce Bynum, Ph.D., ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and former director of the behavioral medicine program at the University of Massachusetts Health Services. The 2005 recipient of the Abraham H. Maslow Award from the American Psychological Association and the author of several books, including Dark Light Consciousness, he is currently in private practice in Hadley, Massachusetts.
“The scope of the author’s knowledge is simply awesome. . . . For those who entertain notions of collective unconscious and deep-structure racial messages, I cannot think of a better text that navigates such thinking.” William E. Cross Jr., Ph.D., author of Shades of Black
“Human biology originally found its footing in Africa and spread geographically outward. Bynum makes a comprehensive argument for Africa’s primal influences on human consciousness evidenced in the spiritual outlook and practices of ancient cultures worldwide.” Laird Scranton, author of Sacred Symbols of the Dogon
“What Bynum has accomplished in pulling together such a mammoth body of knowledge and research into one cogent volume and theme is remarkable. . . . A contribution of this magnitude seldom comes once in a decade.” Linda James Myers, Ph.D., author of Understanding an Afrocentric World View
“Our African Unconscious is indeed a daring work and a unique contribution to African diasporic studies. It is a must for all students of human psychology” Rowland Abiodun, coeditor of The Yoruba Artist
“I read with awe this passionate, billiant, epic work. . . . One of the most exhuastive and revealing studies of Black and human origins I have ever seen.” Lee S. Sannella, M.D., author of The Kundalini Experience
"The author of this book does a very comprehensive and compelling job of revealing the all too often neglected role that Africa played in the earliest stages of humankind’s development. And that would not be just in regards to the fossil record evidence, but also our very humanity, of the emergence of civilization itself – that while Western thought tends to emphasize how civilization was spawned from the Greeks, Egypt, and various other Mediterranean cultures, we all have a deep connection to what he describes as a kind of primordial African unconscious." Alternative Perceptions Magazine
"All in all, Bynum has made a comprehensive case for the need to rekindle the connection to our African unconscious, which has not just been lost, but actively repressed. I’m deeply impressed with the objectivity Bynum maintained while writing so passionately about this subject. With a topic that could run high with tension and volatility, Bynum has taken a measured, level approach to present this information, and I admire how he calls for honoring and celebrating common roots, rather than further separation among humankind. I will absolutely be integrating Bynum’s wisdom for a while and I know I will be returning to Our African Unconscious time and again, as I’m sure there’s more to absorb with each and every read." Alanna Kali, Musing Mystical
“Human biology originally found its footing in Africa and spread geographically outward. Bynum makes a comprehensive argument for Africa’s primal influences on human consciousness evidenced in the spiritual outlook and practices of ancient cultures worldwide.” Laird Scranton, author of Sacred Symbols of the Dogon
“What Bynum has accomplished in pulling together such a mammoth body of knowledge and research into one cogent volume and theme is remarkable. . . . A contribution of this magnitude seldom comes once in a decade.” Linda James Myers, Ph.D., author of Understanding an Afrocentric World View
“Our African Unconscious is indeed a daring work and a unique contribution to African diasporic studies. It is a must for all students of human psychology” Rowland Abiodun, coeditor of The Yoruba Artist
“I read with awe this passionate, billiant, epic work. . . . One of the most exhuastive and revealing studies of Black and human origins I have ever seen.” Lee S. Sannella, M.D., author of The Kundalini Experience
"The author of this book does a very comprehensive and compelling job of revealing the all too often neglected role that Africa played in the earliest stages of humankind’s development. And that would not be just in regards to the fossil record evidence, but also our very humanity, of the emergence of civilization itself – that while Western thought tends to emphasize how civilization was spawned from the Greeks, Egypt, and various other Mediterranean cultures, we all have a deep connection to what he describes as a kind of primordial African unconscious." Alternative Perceptions Magazine
"All in all, Bynum has made a comprehensive case for the need to rekindle the connection to our African unconscious, which has not just been lost, but actively repressed. I’m deeply impressed with the objectivity Bynum maintained while writing so passionately about this subject. With a topic that could run high with tension and volatility, Bynum has taken a measured, level approach to present this information, and I admire how he calls for honoring and celebrating common roots, rather than further separation among humankind. I will absolutely be integrating Bynum’s wisdom for a while and I know I will be returning to Our African Unconscious time and again, as I’m sure there’s more to absorb with each and every read." Alanna Kali, Musing Mystical
SPIRITUALITY/AFRICAN STUDIES
“The scope of the author’s knowledge is simply awesome. . . . For those who entertain notions of collective unconscious and deep-structure racial messages, I cannot think of a better text that navigates such thinking.”
--William E. Cross Jr., Ph.D., author of Shades of Black
“Human biology originally found its footing in Africa and spread geographically outward. Bynum makes a comprehensive argument for Africa’s primal influences on human consciousness evidenced in the spiritual outlook and practices of ancient cultures worldwide.”
--Laird Scranton, author of Sacred Symbols of the Dogon
The fossil record confirms that humanity originated in Africa. Yet somehow we have overlooked that Africa is also at the root of all that makes us human--our spirituality, civilization, arts, sciences, philosophy, and our conscious and unconscious minds.
In this extensive look at the unfolding of human history and culture, Edward Bruce Bynum reveals how our collective unconscious is African. Drawing on archaeology, DNA research, depth psychology, and the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science, he demonstrates how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity, both psychically and genetically--a primordial African unconscious.
Exploring the beginning of early religions and mysticism in Africa, the author looks at the Egyptian Nubian role in the rise of civilization, the emergence of Kemetic Egypt, and the Oldawan, the Ancient Soul, and its correlation with what modern psychologists have defined as the collective unconscious. Revealing the spiritual and psychological ramifications of our shared African ancestry, the author examines its reflections in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern Black spirituality, which arose from African diaspora religion and philosophy.
By recognizing our shared African unconscious--the matrix that forms the deepest luminous core of human identity--we learn that the differences between one person and another are merely superficial and ultimately there is no real separation between the material and the spiritual.
EDWARD BRUCE BYNUM, Ph.D., ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and former director of the behavioral medicine program at the University of Massachusetts Health Services. The 2005 recipient of the Abraham H. Maslow Award from the American Psychological Association and the author of several books, including Dark Light Consciousness, he is currently in private practice in Hadley, Massachusetts.
“The scope of the author’s knowledge is simply awesome. . . . For those who entertain notions of collective unconscious and deep-structure racial messages, I cannot think of a better text that navigates such thinking.”
--William E. Cross Jr., Ph.D., author of Shades of Black
“Human biology originally found its footing in Africa and spread geographically outward. Bynum makes a comprehensive argument for Africa’s primal influences on human consciousness evidenced in the spiritual outlook and practices of ancient cultures worldwide.”
--Laird Scranton, author of Sacred Symbols of the Dogon
The fossil record confirms that humanity originated in Africa. Yet somehow we have overlooked that Africa is also at the root of all that makes us human--our spirituality, civilization, arts, sciences, philosophy, and our conscious and unconscious minds.
In this extensive look at the unfolding of human history and culture, Edward Bruce Bynum reveals how our collective unconscious is African. Drawing on archaeology, DNA research, depth psychology, and the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science, he demonstrates how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity, both psychically and genetically--a primordial African unconscious.
Exploring the beginning of early religions and mysticism in Africa, the author looks at the Egyptian Nubian role in the rise of civilization, the emergence of Kemetic Egypt, and the Oldawan, the Ancient Soul, and its correlation with what modern psychologists have defined as the collective unconscious. Revealing the spiritual and psychological ramifications of our shared African ancestry, the author examines its reflections in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern Black spirituality, which arose from African diaspora religion and philosophy.
By recognizing our shared African unconscious--the matrix that forms the deepest luminous core of human identity--we learn that the differences between one person and another are merely superficial and ultimately there is no real separation between the material and the spiritual.
EDWARD BRUCE BYNUM, Ph.D., ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and former director of the behavioral medicine program at the University of Massachusetts Health Services. The 2005 recipient of the Abraham H. Maslow Award from the American Psychological Association and the author of several books, including Dark Light Consciousness, he is currently in private practice in Hadley, Massachusetts.
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