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Encyclopedia of African Religion

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Encyclopedia of African Religion

Molefi Kete Asante & Ama Mazama

Pub. date: 2009 | Online Pub. Date: January 26, 2009 | DOI: 10.4135/9781412964623 | Print ISBN: 9781412936361 | Online ISBN: 9781412964623| Publisher:SAGE Publications, Inc.

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Space and Time

Elizabeth Andrade

In Africa, the time-space dimension is viewed as interrelated. The African foundation of spirituality, for example, is governed by the seen and unseen and convergence of time and space. To understand the relationship among humans, nature, and science, it is necessary to consider the concept of wholeness in the African worldview. Reality has the characteristics of the unseen and the seen, the concrete and the abstract, as with space and time. In fact, what we perceive with our senses are but representations and symbols of this reality. The African idea is that the world extends beyond the limits of empiricism. For instance, physics cannot explain many of the innate abilities and observations of humans such as telepathy, clairaudience, clairvoyance, clairsentience, or precognition. Time is also nonexistent and cannot be measured in the dream state, yet sleep or dream time is measured by time in the physical world. Time, as a ...

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