DEATH(ISU): SUSPENDED ANIMATION PROGRAMME IN EBIRA TAO THOUGHT

Abstract

The study seeks to examine death (isu) in Ebira Tao thought system. The Ebira people resides in the middle belt of Nigeria. As people they strongly belief that the tripod metaphysical issues of birth, death and hereafter form the most fundamental thoughtprovoking phenomena which impact on humankind existential reality. Death generally generates expectations, anxiety, fear, sympathy, pain, sorrow and even joy in the existential life of the people subsumed into the notion of suspended animation. Logically, the ratiocinative spirit behind this line of thought is more of idealistic realism due to the pragmatic occurrence of death in man's life experience.In the light of the above the study seeks to expose and appraise human existence in the light of birth, death and life-afterdeath as transitional odyssey from the physical realm of the mundane world into the spiritual enclave of reality. And as well posits that these tripods form the eternal process of suspended animation since man lives, die and live in the two worlds of the physical and the spiritual. Thus, the paper discovers that a detailed explication of these concepts leads to accepting death and life-after-death as fundamentally shrouded in a process of suspended reality of an individual who occupies two worlds (physical/visible realm and spiritual/invisible realm) at two different times and places.The paper conclude by asserting that human life is existential in an experiential world, and that the issue of death and life-after-death of the same person is the subsuming the whole process of existence into one of suspended animation programme of the Divine Programmer