Of Chukwu, Meek (1970, p. 20) says: “He is the author of heaven and earth, he sends the rain, makes the crops grow, and is the source from which men derive their chi or accompanying soul. He is the father of the gods, for some at least of the gods are said to be his ‘sons’. But he is a distant deity of vague personality, and sacrifice is seldom offered to him directly. Yet he is regarded as the ultimate recipient of all sacrifices. Thus, if sacrifice is offered to Anyanu, the officiant asks Anyanu to accept the sacrifice and bear it to Chuku.”
This relationship of the minor Igbo gods to the high god Chuku is similar to the relationship among gods found in our template Vedic cosmology. In the Bhagavad Gita (9. 23), Krishna, the Supreme God, says, “Those who are devotees of other gods and who worship them with faith actually worship only Me, O son of Kunti, but they do so in a wrong way.”
According to Ogbuene (1999, p. 109), the various gods and creatures, including Chineke, are seen as simultaneously one with and different from Chukwu: “The Igbo recognizes that Chukwu is one, vast, and that He informs and unifies every other being. The so-called gods or spirits are not themselves Chukwu, but simply reflect certain aspects of His principles, ways and consciousness.” This is remarkably similar to the doctrine of inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference (acintyabhedaabeda-tattva), characteristic of the school of Vedic philosophical thought to which I adhere (Gaudiya Vaishnavism). The teachers of this school explain that just as the rays of the sun are simultaneously one with and different from the sun, all souls are simultaneously one with and different from the Supreme Soul.
According to the Vedic cosmology, God, Krishna, has three features: sat, the feature of eternal existence; cit, the feature of unlimited knowledge; and ananda, the feature of ever increasing transcendental pleasure. This last feature is manifested in loving exchanges of spiritual pleasure between Krishna and His eternal associates. These exchanges are characterized as nitya-lila, eternal pastimes. Material loving affairs are considered imperfect reflections of the original spiritual pastimes. Chukwu, the supreme god of the Igbo, also displays the three features of existence, knowledge and pleasure pastimes. The existence feature of Chukwu is displayed as Okike, in which “He is manifested in the creation of everything visible and invisible” (Ogbuene 1999, p. 109). The sum total of everything that exists, material and spiritual, as well as existence itself, is called ife (Obguene 1999, p. 112). Chukwu also displays a knowledge feature. According to Ogbuene (1999, p. 110), “Chukwu is a living God who knows the secrets of all hearts.” Ogbuene (1999, p. 163) goes on to say, “The Supreme Being Chukwu is not only an ocean of consciousness [knowledge] and being [existence], but also an ocean of love and bliss. His purpose in creation is to play the game of love with Himself, through his creatures but in different capacities.”
Humans are called oke-chukwu, which means “the portion from Chukwu.” When Chukwu manifested the first humans, he uttered mmadu, “may beauty be” (Ogbuene 1999, p. 160). According to Ogbuene (1999, p.
162), the Igbo believe that “mmadu manifests the divine thought, translates the infinite into the finite, the divine spirit into sensory phenomena.” Humans are the creatures closest to God, and their relationship to God, Chukwu, is established by aja, sacrifice and prayer. “Every day, first thing in the morning, a typical traditional Igbo family gives gratitude to Chukwu in the form of prayers. This is introduced by the washing of the hands, making lines on the floor with nzu—a kind of white chalk, and sometimes painting the toes with the substance.The colour white symbolizes the pure, the unspotted, the spiritual” (Ogbuene 1999, p. 235).
The universe of the Igbo, with its multiplicity of gods and spirits, is highly personalized. Richard Neal Henderson (1972, p. 117) wrote: “Men know that there are gods, spirits and ghosts . . . and know that the agencies may act upon them directly. However, while the courses of human lives and communities are presumed to be set by these wills, they are largely unknown to men. Men therefore continually seek to bring them into personal or public awareness through acts of communication.” This communication is facilitated by “messenger spirits” such as the vulture.
The Igbo cosmology has several levels or worlds. Different accounts mention various numbers of worlds—eight, seven, or four. Henderson (1972, p. 109) states that “from the viewpoint of men occupying this one, the other worlds are all ‘lands of the dead’ into which all persons who die should subsequently be incarnated.” These other worlds are also the sources of souls incarnating into this world of our experience. The Igbo consider themselves to be in rather constant communication with these other worlds and their inhabitants, who retain an interest in the affairs of this world. Some of the dead, who have retained too much attachment to this world, remain here as ghosts. Henderson (1972, p. 109) states that “these are the ‘bad dead’ who have violated the world order.”
Final Remarks on multilevel Cosmology
Our “test drillings” in the field of cosmologies of various peoples throughout the world reveal some significant degree of family resemblance to our template Vedic cosmology. We find that humans and other living entities are possessed of souls that survive the death of the gross physical body. We find that in addition to a gross physical body, living entities have a subtle material body, through which the soul can act in ways that surpass actions performed through the medium of the gross physical body alone. We find that humans exist as part of a cosmic hierarchy of beings, in a multilevel cosmos. At the topmost level, we find a supreme conscious being, living in a purely spiritual domain. We find a creator god, who manifests the bodies and dwelling places for souls who enter the world of matter. We find that this creator god is assisted by many other demigods and demigoddesses. We find that souls can travel from body to body, and from level to level of the cosmos, by transmigration or other forms of travel.
Apparitions, Angels, and Aliens
Sometimes when hiking, one looks back on the route traversed before moving onward. In this book, we began our journey with a review of evidence for extreme human antiquity. This archeological evidence, which contradicts current Darwinian theories of human evolution, suggested that we need to look for a new explanation for the origin of human beings. But before starting to look, we decided we should first answer the question “what is a human being?” In that way, we could be sure that any explanation we proposed actually did the job of explaining what needed to be explained. Today, many scientists assume that a human being is simply a combination of matter, by which we mean the elements listed in the periodic table. But we saw that it is more reasonable to start with the assumption that a human being is composed of three distinct things: matter, mind, and consciousness (or spirit). We saw that modern science itself provides sufficient evidence for this assumption. Therefore, if we are going to explain the origin of human beings, we have to explain from where matter, mind, and consciousness each came and how they came together in the form of human beings. The existence of matter, mind, and consciousness in the human form suggests that the cosmos is arranged in regions where matter predominates, where mind predominates, and where consciousness predominates. In other words, there is a multilevel inhabited cosmos, in which we humans find our particular place. We reviewed testimonial evidence for this multilevel cosmos in classical Western culture, and then showed how this same understanding has been present historically in varieties of cultures throughout the world. This multilevel cosmos is inhabited by varieties of extraterrestrial and extradimensional humanlike beings.