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.