Deep within human consciousness, there is a space reserved for all of our communications and fellowship with God. Silence rules this arena, lending itself to deep and contemplative interaction. An absence of sound so complete that it allows one to hear one’s breathing, is the perfect setting and mood for this meeting. Home is here because God is here. Meditation takes us to His core, making it apparent that whatever level of consciousness or understanding we conceive ourselves of having, His shadow of consciousness is more majestic, making it so that He “sees” and “understands” things that are far outside of our limited knowledge. We’re finite while He is infinite, so naturally His realm incorporates Worlds we cannot see. Still, there is the butterflies-on-the-stomach excitement gathered from the prodigious energy exuded by His presence, since His reward for our faith here is that anything is possible. Our prayers, creative imaginings and communications can give birth to real-life, miraculous occurrences, that upon serious reflection, we must acknowledge came only from Him. He will often use the life stories of others as universal lessons, especially those of us in tune with His deliriously joyful, electricity-like sacred power. He wants us to rejoice in, and glory in His aura. We feel it with the impact of a tsunami when we witness it. In some instances, that may be the total extent of His teaching.

Which brings us to the example of one, who in 1946, was known as Mr. Malcolm Little. Mr. Little found himself in a Massachusetts prison, after having been convicted of burglary. While in prison, he was introduced to a new religion and theology, a religion that set his spirit, intellect, commitment, loyalty and divine regard on fire. He became absolutely obsessed with his personal relationship with Allah, and with all that he was learning, absorbing like a sponge. At the core of his religion was a faith that a man now known as Elijah Muhammad had met God in human form, and was thus God’s personal Messenger. The man that the Messenger chanced meeting was W.D. Fard, physically described to have been half-black and half-white, having come from the East to the West, with Asiatic features, and shiny, smooth, flowing black hair. Malcolm was lost in prayer, meditation, communion and deep reflection for days on end, trying to be a most devout believer. Eventually, Malcolm would drop his “Little” surname and replace it with an “X,” making it so that he would ultimately become famous to the World as “Malcolm X.” In the midst of a family crisis, one that brought him great personal turmoil, Malcolm describes the following, as he rested in his prison cell:

I prayed for some kind of relief from my confusion. It was the next night, as I lay on my bed, I suddenly, with a start, became aware of a man sitting beside me in my chair. He had on a dark suit. I remember. I could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at. He wasn’t black, and he wasn’t white. He was light-brown-skinned, an Asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily, black hair. I looked right into his face. I didn’t get frightened. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I couldn’t move, I didn’t speak, and he didn’t. I couldn’t place him racially—other than that I knew he was non-European. I had no idea whatsoever who he was. He just sat there. Then, suddenly as he had come, he was gone. (From pg. 190 of The Autobiography Of Malcolm X.)

For many, perhaps this story may seem incredulous. It has the qualities of a fairy tale, or make-believe. But, let us sit back for a second, and consider the mental state and acuity of Malcolm X. Malcolm is considered by many (me amongst them) as one of the greatest intellects that the World has produced. He was highly intelligent, a man known to be generally lucid, sane, temperate, logical and rational. There are no extraordinary tales of him having any kinds of mental imbalance. In fact, there is every reason to believe in Malcolm’s equipoise, honesty and reliability in reporting this, as he called it, a “pre-vision.” Malcolm came to believe that the gentleman that appeared to him was none other than W.D. Fard, the man who had founded The Nation Of Islam that Malcolm was in the process of joining, and the person that members of the religion believed to have been God-in-the-flesh.

Often, when a believer is faith-based, God will have the situation set itself up to where the person will have a normal, 5-senses encounter with another human being that seems impossible and unreal. The witness experiences the other character in the full meaning of what it means to be human, but after-the-fact, the meeting appears to be impossible and unreal in analyzing it rationally and logically. How is it possible for Malcolm to have met W.D. Fard in Malcolm’s Massachusetts’ locked prison cell, when Fard disappeared years before in Detroit, especially when Fard seems to have appeared instantaneously, out-of-the-blue? How do we explain his vanishing? We must remember that GOD’s reality is not OUR reality, and what we reason as “impossible” to our awareness and sensibilities, is not impossible to God.

Malcolm’s pre-vision of W.D. Fard is not the sole divine meeting to have occurred in the larger Malcolm X story, for there is another remarkable set of circumstances that occurred both on the night before Malcolm’s assassination and the day of. It involves Malcolm’s oldest daughter, Attallah, and Mrs. Juanita Poitier, the estranged wife of actor Sidney Poitier, and the mother of their four daughters. Malcolm had befriended Sidney and his wife prior to his death. Mrs Poitier had very little contact with Malcolm’s wife, Betty Shabazz, previously, and did not know any of Malcolm’s children.

Or, at least she thought she didn’t. On the night of Malcolm’s assassination, Mrs. Poitier lay comfortably in her bed in Pleasantville, NY, drifting off to sleep. Six-year-old Attallah Shabazz was thirty-four miles away with her mother, spending the night in the home of a family friend in Queens. Mrs. Poitier always left her bedroom door cracked, with the hall light on. In her semi-conscious state of sleepiness, she heard a faint voice calling to her. She looked up to see a tall and slender child standing by her bedroom door. Poitier thought it was her youngest child, and in some portion of consciousness, threw back her covers, and invited the child to, “Come get in the bed with Mommy.” Mrs. Poitier noticed that the girl’s hair looked strangely light, almost as if it was phosphorescent. The young girl drifted across the room, putting one knee on the bed. Then, as suddenly she had come, the girl instantaneously vanished.

The next day, upon hearing of Malcolm’s death, Mrs. Poitier was concerned for Malcolm’s wife and their children, so she went with a friend to visit the Shabazz family. Upon wading through the crowd of those offering condolences, she located Betty Shabazz, with her oldest daughter, Attallah, attached to her mom. Poitier swore that Attallah was the child that she had seen in her bedroom the night before. Attallah looked Mrs. Poitier directly in the face, exclaiming, “I am glad that you’re here.” Poitier was confounded, offering her condolences to Betty before returning to address Attallah, telling the child that she did know her. “Oh, yes you do know me,” Attallah said, taking Poitier’s hand. They spent several minutes together thereafter. To this day, Juanita Poitier remains nonplussed when she thinks about this whole encounter, since she has no idea how Attallah Shabazz knew her and how the child managed to materialize, and then vanish, from her bedroom, such a long distance away from where she was staying. (Summary from pgs. 235 & 236 of Betty Shabazz: A Remarkable Story Of Survival And Faith Before And After Malcolm X.)

Now, what are we supposed to make of these two anecdotes from the larger Malcolm X narrative? Is there something that we are missing in our analysis? I would say that we’re not. I think the combined morale from the two stories is simple. Malcolm’s life story works to show the divinity, the magic and awesomeness of one’s devotion to attract a symbol of God’s reality and efficacy. Taken together, these two stories are like Moses standing before that burning bush in The Bible, watching a burning shrub that is not being consumed by fire. Is it not “impossible” for material to burn, but NOT BE consumed by fire? God had W.D. Fard and Attallah Shabazz incomprehensibly show up at a distance, time, space and continuum, where they logically could not have. Their presence in these two situations are symbols, representations drawn by Malcolm X’s profound and abiding faith in Allah, with God rewarding Malcolm’s allegiance with the existence of these two realities. Such is the augustness of God’s living power and presence.