Are we a species at war with itself? What does our African unconscious reveal about all of us? Dr. Edward Bruce Bynum urges people to come together in his new book Our African Unconscious: The Black Origins of Mysticism and Psychology. Science, evolution, and deep religion all point us in the same direction. Ultimately, we must love each other or die. His new book is available in September.
Edward is also a licensed psychologist and Diplomat in clinical psychology, nationally certified in biofeedback and senior fellow in the National Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. His focus is psychosomatic medicine, hypnosis and individual psychotherapy.
FMM: Tell us your background as a licensed psychologist:
Well, after college at University of New Hampshire I entered Penn State University in the clinical psychology doctoral program. I went from the Masters to the Ph.D in 4 years. Then I did an internship in the state of Connecticut hospital system in Norwich, then was accepted into the post-doctoral fellowship year in family therapy at the Elmcrest Psychiatric Institute in Portland Connecticut. After a year I stood for the state licensing examination, passed and was legally licensed to practice in that state. A few years later I did the same in the state of Massachusetts.
FMM: Your new book Our African Unconscious: The Black Origins of Mysticism and Psychology, What happens when we look deeper down-explain how we share the “psychical and physical” because we all come from Africa.
This is something most of us already intuitively know. It would be difficult to get out of high school and certainly not college without some knowledge of human history, biology and a little about the roots of evolution and wondered about where we all come from. It is also from time to time all over the popular media magazines like TIME and others. You don’t need to be a student of Charles Darwin and thousands of others to know that our species, homo sapiens sapiens, evolved and came out of Africa. What we outline in Our African Unconscious is that we lived and developed ALL of our deeper tendencies as humans, our ability to think and reason clearly, our religious thoughts and intuitions and our family structures and their roles in Africa long BEFORE we walked our of the continent. We even developed our physical structures under African skies. We were there developing all these tendencies in our deep mind and consciousness also for hundreds of thousands of years BEFORE we moved out as our current species. Our surface differences as so called races etc only began to appear about 25 to 30, 000 years ago, a really brief span of time compared to our long childhood development. Before this time we all looked pretty much the same regardless of where on the planet we migrated to, Europe, Asia, Australia, and finally the Americas. Our surface or so called racial and ethnic differences are real, but they are merely surface differences, in our depths of thought, spiritual insights and tendencies of mind, we share a deep identity. Most of us intuitively know this. It is our cultural and political dynamics and issues that make this complex. As the poet Rilke said ‘do not be disturbed by the surface of things, in the depths all is law”.
FMM: What did you discover about yourself as you were researching for your book ?
It may sound commonplace or even trite to say, but I discovered an even deeper empathy that I had for other people who were in distress, dislocated or had their world utterly wacked out by war, conflicts or the absence of so many things I have at my ease, especially those who did not look like me !. When I see a frightened child trying to get aboard a plane out of a war ripped-up country, or the bloody residue of a bomb explosion or natural catastrophe, I realize that , on some deeper level , that is actually me experiencing that. A wellspring of empathy and compassion, not pity, rushes up from within me. And I would go further on this; I know that in my deep ancestral past, that has been me!! It is difficult to describe, but I know that I share on a deep level the same biological and spiritual destiny that they do, and that I must do all I can to bring this awareness on a very real level to others. That we share a common deep structure identity as a species, a common fate and destiny. We either all rise or we all fail. That is what this book is really about.
FMM: Is “Our African Unconscious” a paradigm shift ?
Yes, I sense it is. You know when we discovered fire as a species untold millennia ago, eventually all our scattered human tribes benefited from this. When our dreamers and early mystics discovered the soul in us, something that our earlier Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal cousins had already done and so started burying their dead in elaborate funeral ceremonies over half a million years ago; when Darwin and Wallace uncovered the common evolution of our species in Africa and how we descended from that; when our linguists a few decades ago discovered that underneath the surface of all our nearly 6000 different spoken languages that there is a deep structure syntax which makes it possible for any child in any culture to learn the language of any other culture through generative deep structure grammar, in Our African Unconscious we have discovered our deep structure common identity in our physical DNA and the real origin of our primordial psychological structures and reality. This comes none to soon for us I believe because we are at a pivotal point in our history as a species. The early experiments in space flight are over and we have begun the commercial exploration and use of space. This will only expand as the years approach. We need to have our act together as a united species on a deep level as we begin to venture beyond the planet. God only knows who or what we will find out there !
FMM: Why is this book timely ? How can we truly understand our shared consciousness and identity as a species?
I am a long time devotee of the Star Trek series and all it’s spin-offs. This was so back in high school and even more so today. It became embedded in the mythology of our age even into the whole Star Wars psycho-galactic vision of our future. My point is that in all of these our unity as a species is a given as we pioneer into space and meet our destiny among the stars. This is part our current mythology and also now envisioned for real as within our technological capacities in the future.
FMM: How have quantum mechanics, string theory and Relativity physics been woven throughout your book ?
Hopefully, I was able to balance the different leading branches of the physical sciences, namely quantum mechanics, string theory, and relativity that define our current understanding of the physical world with those in the brain or neurosciences, and the ancient foundations of Eastern, Western and African mystical currents into a cohesive and easily read book. All these areas are sciences, including the spiritual sciences of meditation and yoga that have been with us for millennia. These were well-grounded I trust in anthropology, genetics, and history in a way that shows all these are not out there beyond our reach, but actually touch and influence our day-to-day lives. These references to our physical world help keep it real.
FMM: What is it to be human?
This question, only partially answered, would overfill a thousand libraries. It has no bottom or top. We are all physical, mental, and religious creatures who, despite our long history, are still very much in our infancy. As the great paleontologist and Jesuit priest and mystic Teilhard de Chardin said ‘We are spiritual beings having a human experience’.
FMM: Do you believe there is a sense of fear that monumental changes may altar our sense of self?
It has already begun. Turn on the evening news, the internet, the radio broadcasting the day’s events and it is impossible to ignore the accelerating tidal wave of climate change, growing conflict for resources, toxic environmental discoveries and the painful ethnic, religious and economic crises coming like a speeding train at us and not wondering if our old selves are up to the task. These are not going away just because we declare peace ! We as a species must evolve beyond our present surface perception of ourselves if we are to survive. Yes this fear is palpable in all of us regardless of whatever political, religious or economic situation we find ourselves in. The recognition of a common blood, a common destiny, a common shared identity on the deepest level will go a very long way toward helping us move beyond this pivotal point in our history as a species on this planet. All the deep spiritual traditions have the same trajectory, the same moral and ethical rootwork that they draw upon because we at bottom are all the same species. Yet now we are faced as never before with the existential reality that “we must either love each other or die”.
FMM: What is to gain from this book as a psychologist ?
As a psychologist in particular but for all of us in general one of the things to gain from this book is that not only do we have an ego and an unconscious but that this unconscious is NOT our modern discovery ! The ancients of Egypt knew abut the unconscious and had specific names for its functioning, the Primeval Waters of Nun, and the Amenti or Amenta. Another to be gained is that not only is there an unconscious dimension of our minds and functioning, but also a superconscious dimension, reached by inspiration and creativity, states of ecstasy and deep meditation and other forms of spiritual practice. This is also NOT our present day discovery ! This realization in scientific terms will connect us not only to our ancestors on whose shoulders we stand, but to our progeny who will one day sail the stars.
FMM: My mission in this book has been to describe this journey as I see it as best I can in scientific, humanistic, and lyrical terms. I hope I have done a good job.
