PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS:RELATING WITH THE GROUND OF BEING THROUGH WENGER'S "MEDITATION IN INNER AND OUTER SPACE"

Writers who have the Greek pantheon at the back of their minds have labelled the Yoruba orisha the god of war, the god of the sky, the god of the sea, the river god, the god of medicine, etc. Such attributions are not incorrect. The forces named do belong to or are associated with different orisha. But on another level the orisha is also an historical figure, an ancestor, war leader, hunter or city founder; an animal, a tree or a rock; a Jungian archetype. Such a many-layered complex of associations is neither arbitrary nor merely picturesque. The comparison with the Greek pantheon is particularly misleading, because we know little about the Greek gods as magic forces and our image of them has been constituted by a Greek literature that has reduced the original religious symbols to mere dramatis personae.

The Yorubas on the other hand, even today, are particularly sensitive to the inner vibrations of the world; they are still in tune with nature; they want to be part of rather than masters of the world. They can still see meaningful relationships between certain natural forces, historical personalities, the forces associated with certain animals, the magic qualities of minerals or even colours. They also know that to certain individuals some of these forces are congenial, others destructive, and that the art of living consists of knowing who has to be in tune with what. The real African science is the accumulated knowledge in the collective consciousness of a people of how to live in tune with the nonhuman world.

Again, we could use the term ‘to make orisha’.

The magic knowledge that is employed to build up the power-symbols of the orisha is not just superstition. It is during the building up of such an ibo that the priest has to display his personal intuition guided by the subconscious knowledge of the tribe. Outwardly the ibo, the mystic magic object that contains the actual power of a shrine, is nothing but a lump of materials in which all kinds of ingredients have been embedded feathers, bones, leaves, ashes, stones and beads which are included because of their colour value. What is practised here is a knowledge of the inner tensions of the universe, a knowledge of the psychic radiations of plants, animals and minerals, an understanding of which of these forces are congenial to certain kinds of people and certain kinds of gods. The making of an ibo, which is left only to the most senior priests, is like a process of clarification and purification, a final sifting of psychic forces that prepares the priest for his ‘mystic adventure’.

The artist, like the priest, operates on a certain level of consciousness, where he is in closer contact with trees, animals, spirits. Susanne Wenger believes that there is an intelligence of water, an intelligence of trees. Man becomes more man, learning to respond to these forces.
He learns to stretch out his antenna in all directions, he learns to constantly to make more contacts with the forces that surround him. Objects we merely pass become to him encounters and conversations. It is on this level that the priest and the artist develop their personality. It is on this level that they discover the all important affinities or spiritual relationships.

Ulli Beier,The Return of the Gods:The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger(Cambridge:Cambridge UP,1975)

AN APPROACH TO THE GROUND OF BEING 2

PERSPECTIVES

EMIC
-ANTHROPOLOGY-ROBERT FELEPPA, "EMIC,ETICS AND SOCIAL OBJECTIVITY"
CURRENT ANTHROPLOGY,VOL.27.NO 3,JUNE 1986.243-255.

ALSO CALLED

INTRINSINC
-LITERARY THEORY-NEW CRITICISM-RELATED TO STRUCTURALISM-WELLEK AND WARREN'S THEORY OF LITERATURE

INTERNAL PERSPECTIVES AND METHODOLOGIES
-WESTERN ESOTERIC SCHOLARSHIP-PIERRE RIFFARD'S "The Esoteric Method" In WESTERN ESOTERICISM AND THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION (Leuven:Peeters,1998).


INSIDER EPISTEMOLOGY
-RELIGIOUS STUDIES BROADLY -DEEPAK SARMA'S EPISTEMOLOGIES AND THE LIMITATIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY:DOCTRINE IN MAHDVA VEDANTA


1.WENGER

Here I am,one with the water:I think and feel like the river,my blood flows like the river,to the rhythm of its waves,otherwise the trees and the animals wouldn't be such allies.

I am here in the trees, in the river,in my creative phase not only when I am here physically,but forever-even when I happen to be travelling-hidden beyond time and suffering, in the Spiritual Entities which,beceause,they are Real in many ways,present ever new features.

I feel sheltered with them,-in them-beceause I am so very fond of treess and running water-and all the gods of the world are trees and animals long,long before they entrust their sacrosanct magnificence to a human figure.

2.

FOREST AS COSMOS

A. WENGER AND BEIER

Olodumare .... contains all the complexities of the world within him.He is the egg from which the world breaks out.

Olodumare in his pure form cannot be perceived by the senses or understood by intelligence.

In Susanne Wenger’s vision the orisha are part representations of Olodumare. Each orisa is the universe looked at from another angle. Olodumare is the sum total of all the complexities, he is the universe concentrated into one intelligence. Susanne Wenger says that one could conceive God as the one force from which everything emerges-or else one could see him as the coexistence of all the complexities. The Yoruba concept has probably emerged from his landscape-or perhaps it is merely in tune with the same force that also created the landscape. "If you sit in this Oshun forest, you know this forest exists through its multiple forms, through its immense variety-an unorganised beauty where every detail is tremendously strong. Here one becomes aware of the great force of all things: little herbs, little lizards, small creepers, enormous irokos or silk cotton trees. But there is really no hierarchy. And our immense surprise about this divine variety-that is Olodumare".

Ulli Beier,The Return of the Gods;The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger (Cambridge:Cambridge UP,1975)33-34.

B. Soyinka on Ijala

The practitioners of Ijala, the supreme lyrical from of Yoruba poetic art, are followers of Ogun the hunter. Ijala celebrates not only the deity but animal and plant life, seeks to capture the essence and relationships of growing tings and the insights of man into the secrets of the universe.

Wole Soyinka, Myth,Literature and the African World (Cambridge:Cambridge UP,1990)28.

AN APPROACH TO THE GROUND OF BEING

AN ETIC PERSPECTIVE

ETIC
-ANTHROPOLOGY-ROBERT FELEPPA, "EMIC,ETICS AND SOCIAL OBJECTIVITY"
CURRENT ANTHROPLOGY,VOL.27.NO 3,JUNE 1986.243-255.

ALSO CALLED

EXTRINSINC
-LITERARY THEORY-NEW CRITICISM-RELATED TO STRUCTURALISM-WELLEK AND WARREN'S THEORY OF LITERATURE

INTERNAL PERSPECTIVES AND METHODOLOGIES
-WESTERN ESOTERIC SCHOLARSHIP-PIERRE RIFFARD'S "The Esoteric Method" In WESTERN ESOTERICISM AND THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION (Leuven:Peeters,1998).


RESEARCH METHODOLOGY


I am adapting in my research a Rosicrucian (AMORC)conception of a possible cognitive encounter with the Absolute or the ground of being,where

The Absolute is understood as both an end in itself and as a point of reference for a constellation of ideas/
and as a point of reference for the correlation of a contellation of ideas.

See Kant on analytical and synthetic judgement.How helpful will his charactersation of these cognitive strategies facilitate my work,particularly the ultimate goal I outline here?
How does Kants entire project in his three critiques relate to mine?


I see this conception of an ultimate cognitive goal as exemplified by

1.Harvey Spencer Lewis,a modern Rosicrucian philosopher, on the cosmic: "The cosmic mind does not contain the particulars of human knowledge and experience but is an exalted level of evaluation"
from a 1980s edition of The Rosicrucian Manual.

2. The summation of Dante's Paradiso-see in particular the commentary on the concluding canto by Singer.

The Dvine Comedy 3:Paradise, London: Penguin,1988.Trans.and commentary by Barbara Reynolds.

"In that abyss I saw how love held bound
Into one volume all the leaves whose flight
Is scattered through the universe around;

How substance, accident, and mode unite
Fused, so to speak, together, in such wise
That this I tell of is one simple light.

Yea,of this complex I believe mine eyes
Beheld the universal form-in me,
Even as I speak,I feel such joy arise".

345.

Reynolds' commentary:

Summation:
"The final vision,the crown and climax of the whole work,consists of two revelations.First,Dante perceives in the Dvine Light the form,or exemplar,of all creation.All things that exist in themselves ("substance"),all aspects or properties of being ("accident"),all mutual relations ("mode") are seen bound together in one single concept.The universe is in God.

347-48.


In that abyss I saw how love held bound etc: In the Divine Essence,Dante sees that all creation and all time are bound up,like the pages in a volume,in God.


...substance,accident and mode:Substances,i.e. things existing in themselves,accidents,i.e qualities residing in substances,and the relations between both are seen by Dante to be so fused together in God as to be indistinguishable.

348.

Yea,of this complex I believe mine eyes beheld the universal form etc. :A "substantial form" is the distinguishing feature of a substance,that which makes it the thing it is and not another.The "form of the universe",would be the feature,property,or nature of the universe,that which makes it what it is.To glimpse that would be to read in the mind of God Himself the divine iudea of all things,an experince which would defy description in mortal words.All Dante can do is to convey the exultation of spirit which is renewed in him when he speaks of recalling it.

348-9.



The Divine Comedy:The Complete Text
trans. by Henry Cary.ed.Ralph Pite. london Everyman,2001.

...I look'd,
...
...and,in that depth,
Saw in one volume clasp'd of love,whate'er
The universe unfolds;all properties
Of substance and of accident,beheld,
Compounded,yet one individual light
The whole.And of such bond methinks I saw
The universal form;for that whene'er
I do speak of it,.my soul dilates
Beyond her proper self...

358-9.

"In its depths I saw that it contained, bound by love in one volume, that which is scattered in leaves through the universe, substances and accidents and their relations as it were fused together in such a way that what I tell of is a simple light. I think I saw the universal form of this complex, because in telling of it I feel my joy expand".

His experienmce is the reward and the fulfillment of his faithful thinking;but it is also much more,-'exceeeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,according to the power that worketh in us'.In the end,the scholastic,from very faithfulness i his thinking,becomes the mystic,and thought is wholly surpassed in vision.





3. Kunene's description of the climatic congnitive realisation in classical Zulu thought:

4.Anthony Kenny on the nature of a metaphysical system in Aquinas and Hegels exemplification of this understading of a metaphysical system in his works on mind,history and aesthetics.

5.Anselm of Canterbury's proof of the existence of God understood not as prooof but as a cognitive and research strategy,a strategy exemplified by Aquinas Three Proofs,the latter understood,again,as a cogntive and research strategy,for integrating ideas at increasingly inclusive levels of correlation/integration.Note,however,the qualification on intellectual approaches to God attributed to Aquinas's later career.

6.The entire cogntive process operating in terms of a dilectical relationship between extraplation of theory from particulars and theoritical framing of particulars.

7.The vision suggested by the conclusion of newtons principa
8.platos dialogues on knowledge pf the good
9.IFA
A.THE ODU ACCORDING TO OHOMINA
B.ESHU AND PARADOX-PLUS ALL LAWALS TEXTS ON ESHU- RELATE TO TANIA AND COLERDGE-SEE TILLEYS USE OF CLOEIDGRIDGE IN METAPHOR AND MATRIL CULTURE
TANIA-THE SYSTEM IS PARADOXICAL BUT IT DOES NOT COLLAPSE

On the concept of Ori in the Orisa tradition

On aspects of the self in the Orisa tradition and the space of possibilities actualised in the contexts of human social,psychological and physical existence,whether biological,as in the body, and spatial and temporal,as in one's larger spatial and temporal environment.

What is Ori?

It is a word from the Yoruba language of the Yoruba ethnic group of southern Nigeria. It has correlative mundane and religio-philosophical significance.

In its mundane significance, it represents an aspect of human biology. In its religious and philosophical meaning,it signifies a central concept in the indigenous religious and philosophical tradition of the Yoruba, which could be described as the Orisa tradition. At this level, it is used by people who practice or study that tradition, both within and outside the Yoruba homeland and outside Africa, as in the African Diaspora of the Americas.

The word has at least two levels of meaning: one literal, another metaphorical.

The literal meaning applies to the physical head. It y signifies the physical head. It could also refer to the mind, the mind having a particularly intimate relationship with the head as the physical centre of mind.

The metaphorical meaning is a transference of the function of the head as the central point of direction in the biological structure of the human being and of the mind as the centre of human psychological functioning, to a metaphysical conception of the essence of the human being. It relates to a central point of direction of the human person, not just in terms of the body and the mind, as in the biological head, but in terms of the full range of possibilities the individual can realise in a lifetime. The Ori is the name given to the embodiment of these possibilities. It is understood as an invisible but active entity which embodies a sense of purpose and direction which influences the development of the individual whether or not they are aware of it. This ultimate sense of direction is understood to emanate from the relationship between the Ori and the Supreme Being, Olodumare, and is imprinted on the Ori at the point before the individual is born. It therefore represents a nonmaterial essence and directionality of the human being, which predates the person’s birth, and will outlive the death of their body. It constitutes the supreme point of reference in the development of the individual’s biographical itinerary.

Valuable outlines of the doctrine can be found in the books of Wande Abimbola as in An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus and Ifa Divination Poetry, and in at least one crucial poem in his Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa where the idea is expounded in the metaphorical and dramatic format of Ifa poetry. Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief by Bolaji Idowu also outlines this theory.

A priceless source of various perspectives on the relationship between this concept and the idea of free will among the Yoruba religious and philosophical specialists, the priests of Ifa, can be found in Adegboyega Orangun’s Destiny: The Unmanifested Being. A perspective on the concept’s relationship to free will may also be found in the conclusion of Soyinka’s poem at the end of his essay “Credo of Being and Nothingness” in his collection of essays Art, Dialogue and Outrage where he speaks of destiny as “self destination”. Oluwatoyin Adepoju’s MA dissertation in comparative literature at SOAS, London, explores the implications of this idea for autobiography and self-portraiture in relation to Ifa divination. His PhD in comparative literature at University College, London, which is still in progress, further engages with the concept.

The concept of Ori can also be related to similar ideas from other cultures within and beyond Africa. It is similar to the indigenous Nigerian Bini concept of Ehi and the Igbo concept of Chi. Achebe has a classic essay on chi which is useful here. It can be found in his Morning Yet on Creation Day. It could be related to the Hindu concept of Atman and the Judaeo-Christian notion of the human spirit. Plato also develops a theory that has some similarities with the concept of Ori, particularly in terms of the notion in the Orisa tradition, of the Ori choosing a destiny before birth

The English poet Wordsworth suggests ideas which have some relationship to the concept of Ori in his poem “Intimations of Immortality”. Carl Jung does something similar in his conceptions of the self and its relationship to ancestral challenges emanating from the individual family line in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Colin Wilson also develops a related conception of the self in his book Mysteries.

It must be noted, however, that there are significant points of both similarity and difference between the concept of Ori and related conceptions from other sources. It must also be noted that this concept is not perceived in a homogenous manner among traditional Yoruba religious and philosophical specialists, as Orangun shows in his discussions with Ifa priests. It would seem, however, that there is a sufficient convergence of perspectives among the specialists to enable the formulation of broad conceptions as in the picture sketched here.

In Yoruba art, the works of Babatude Lawal demonstrate the artistic significance of the concept of Ori. His essay on the hermeneutics of hair by the same title explores this. He also has a relevant essay on representing the self and its metaphysical other with that title. An essay by Rowland Abiodun on the indigenous Yoruba concept of ase also explores the ramifications of the concept of Ori for Yoruba art.

The concept could provide a springboard for philosophical exploration of its implications in relation to central philosophical questions, regardless of one’s position in relation to the idea. The notion of Ori and its associated ideas implicates questions of the nature of the human self. It also evokes questions of relationships between destiny and freewill and how these in turn ramify with questions of biological and social determinism and deliberate choice. These, in turn, relate to issues of probability in terms of the overall structure of contexts that shape human life in relation to human agency. The questions it highlights lead to considerations of the ultimate metaphysical implications of how human and physical settings as well as events, the latter emanating from outside the self and from within it, shape the course of human life. To what degree, if any, are these contexts, such as the parents we are born to, purely arbitrary, and to what degree are they the outcome of design, as with our conscious and unconscious or subconscious choices? How do we explain inborn traits, where no known person in the family line could be said to have passed on the genes that manifest in terms of those traits, as in the case of Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, who was already a mathematics prodigy at eight, in spite of not having any special mathematical training, being born to illiterate parents? For Gauss see biographies at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss;

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Gauss.html

and fact and fiction biography in Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlman, described and reviewed at http://www.amazon.com/Measuring-World-Novel-Daniel-Kehlmann/dp/0375424466 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_the_World

One response to this question about inborn genius is to correlate the concept of Ori with the concept from Western esotericism about reincarnation, where the self carries over abilities developed from one incarnation into another. These abilities, if developed to a high level in previous incarnations, manifest as precocious genius from an early age in another incarnation. But how do we assess the truth value of these ideas so as to move beyond speculation to certain knowledge?

Above: Ori,and its relationship with Orisanla evoked through an Ife head.