Immortality of Self in Upanishadic, Orisa/Ifa, AMORC and Adinkra Thought
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
The Indian sacred text the Upanishads references a small room within the self that contains the cosmos.
That idea is related to the famous encounter between Nachiketa and Death, in which he demands from the remorseless reaper how to escape Death.
Death explains that can happen only through a process that enables insight into the unity of the individual self and the Cosmic Self, a zone of awareness in which death does not exist.
Death explains that can happen only through a process that enables insight into the unity of the individual self and the Cosmic Self, a zone of awareness in which death does not exist.
The great ese ifa, ''The Importance of Ori'' from the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, references an aspect of the self, ''Ori Inu,'' if I am putting it precisely, the ''Inward Head'' a non-physical identity that centres the self as the physical head centres the biological self, an aspect of the self that embodies the self's ultimate potential, mediating between self, cosmos and the ultimate creator, an immortal companion that is the only deity that can follow its devotee on a distant journey without turning back, even into the journey of death.
An initiation ritual of the Western esoteric Rocicrucian order AMORC, operating from within a multicultural grounding in similar ideas, but without referencing Ifa, uses similar language in describing a similar conception of the self, known in AMORC as the Inner Self -
''No matter how far your journey may lead, you will never find a friend more loyal, more committed to serving you.''
Ghanaian Akan and Gyaman Adinkra symbolism dramatises a similar idea in a sequence of symbols, one of which is
Nyame Nwu Na M'awu
"Could Nyame [the Supreme Being] die, I would die"
Splendidly rendered in J.B. Daquah's The Akan Concept of God, this symbol evokes the structural delicacy of a butterfly and the beautifully simple intricacy of an architectural monument in suggesting an idea resonating with the words from Death himself in the Upanishads-
"The Self is immortal. It was not born, nor does it die. It did not come out of anything, neither did anything come out of it. Even if this body is destroyed, the soul is not destroyed."
"The one who thinks that he is the slayer and the one who thinks that he is slain, both are ignorant. For the Self neither slays nor is it slain."
"Greater than the individual soul is the enveloping super consciousness, the seed of everything in the universe...the Ultimate Person than whom there is nothing greater... Once That (Supreme Self) is realized, death loses all its terrors, and the one who has realized becomes immortal.''
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