Signposts of Hopes and Illusions

By Majambu Mbikay

This booklet is a distracted look at the landscape. Like a dream, it is illogical and nonsensical at times. It jumps from one thing to another, from subject to the next, from lingo to lingo. It needs no table of contents. It could be read out of sequence, to no consequence, in silence, and with a smile. Nothing serious to ponder here, but paths, just paths, and occasional signposts.
This collection is a silo of my references and my reflexes, accumulated and assimilated over the years, which sustain me in my daily quest for understanding, and vaguely, very vaguely, define me in my hopes and my doubts. It is a collection of analects fetched out of my curriculum hominis, out of my career as a human being, and translated into the multiple languages of my learning. They are answers that trot into my mind, that never exhaust the questions, but question them forevermore, in a fast, almost absurd, carousel of questioning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329532700

Book preview

Signposts of Hopes and Illusions

SIGNPOSTS

of Hopes and Illusions

Majambu Mbikay

Picture1

Copyright © 2015 Majambu Mbikay

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced nor used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2015

IBSN: 978-1-329-53270-0

Les Initiatives Akulà !

L’île-Perrot, Québec, Canada

Email: [e-mail]

Other books by the author

- Je saurais croire: Réflexions sur la foi, la science et la société. Éditions Muhoka, 2005

- La voie de l’exil. Lulu Press, 2010

- Proprotein Convertases (with Nabil G. Seidah, eds). Humana Press, 2011.

- Demain, le Congo: Akulà ! 2012 ebook 2012.

- As I Know, So Shall I Believe. Akulà! 2012, ebook, 2015

- À tout propos, et des mots pour le dire. Akulà ! 2014

- Entre le rêve et le souvenir. Akulà 2014

PREAMBLE

In life, everyone needs signposts

to guide his illusions.

This booklet is a distracted look at the landscape. Like a dream, it is illogical and nonsensical at times. It jumps from one thing to another, from one subject to the next, from lingo to lingo. It needs no table of contents. It could be read out of sequence, to no consequence, in silence, and with a smile. Nothing serious to ponder here, but paths, just paths, and occasional signposts.

This collection is a silo of my references and my reflexes, accumulated and assimilated over the years, which sustain me in my daily quest for understanding, and vaguely, very vaguely, define me in my hopes and my doubts. It is a collection of analects fetched out of my curriculum hominis, out of my career as a human being, and translated into the multiple languages of my learning. They are answers that trot into my mind, that never exhaust the questions, but question them forevermore, in a fast, almost absurd, carousel of questioning.

Funny too, come to think of it. As I here stand naked, facing my inner mirror, I find it hard to take myself too seriously. And when I see the other member of my species reveal himself, better yet, undress himself, in front of my eyes, I can’t help but smile. Homo sapiens sapiens. Not once, but twice wise! Really! How not to smile? Anthropos! Muntu we! Ecce Homo! Behold the Man! As lost as I am, desperately clinging to his nebulous faith and to his approximate knowledge. I am not alone. My questions are his. I must listen to him, talk to him and, yes, I must love him.

I may choose to take life as it comes, to take it easy, to drink it to inebriety, to ask nothing, to question nothing. I may choose to be an animal. However, Life has ways of reminding me of my destiny, through pain, through suffering, through death, which stares at me, looming, in and around me. All this should make sense, demands Consciousness.

But which one?

Île-Perrot, Quebec

October 2015

Section I

CREATION

1. Before

Before Time, before Space, before Matter, before Life, before my life, before it all, what? I do not know. What says Religion, what says Philosophy, what says Science is mere elaboration of Consciousness.

Nothing exists without something. Nothing is the negation of something. Even the original Nothingness had a container.

The Time-Space-Matter trinity arose from the explosion of a primordial singularity, says Physics. Therefore, there cannot be Time without Matter and Space, no Space without Time and Matter, no Matter without Space and Time.

The Universe was born out of a cataclysm, and not out of a disaster. One or the other is an upheaval. The former is purely physical, the latter mostly psychological: it is an opinion of Consciousness.

The Universe is made of chaotic vibrations, of rhythms and rotations. Accelerated, they are sounds, colors and lights. Decelerated, they become particles and matters.

Stars are born. Stars die. They are born from the coalescence of cooled particles. They die from the explosion of internal heat generated by the gravity of Matter.

A Black Hole is the ogre that feeds on the Universe, on Space, Matter, and Time. Could it be the original Nothingness wherefrom the Universe sprung?

As-tu compté les étoiles et les astres radieux,

Déployant aux nuits sans voiles

Leur cortège dans les cieux?

Have you counted the stars and bright heavenly bodies?

Unfurling on cloudless nights

Their procession in the sky?

(Boy Scout’s song)

The sky is a sparkling vault that has captivated the eyes and the imagination of Man since time immemorial. Modern telescopes have allowed him to contemplate them at close range. Thence to believe that the sky was created for his wonderment, there is a line that Man has crossed many times and in many ways in his delusions of grandeur.

The size of the Universe is unconceivable to the human mind. What about the possibility of multiple universes coexisting in multiple dimensions, as Science suggests?

Man’s greatness lies in the fact that he has dared imagine a magnificent destiny for himself in these universes so infinitely vaster than him.

2. Consciousness

If Matter has been brought to life and consciousness, why couldn’t