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On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 1:23 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
--Between the Self and Eternity, Between Fate and Free WillAutobiographical Mediations Between Olabiyi Yai, Chinua Achebe and Nimi WaribokoonConceptions of the Self and its History in Yoruba, Igbo and Kalabari Thought
A Few WordsOluwatoyin Vincent AdepojuComparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge
Abstract
A very brief exploration of complementarity between diverse engagements with the nature of the self as mortal and embodied as well as immortal and disembodied, focusing on my personal investigations as well as the analyses of diverse thinkers and bodies of thought.
Earlier brief studies of mine on the subject include "Immortality of Self in Upanishadic, Orisa/Ifa, AMORC and Adinkra Thought'', '' 'Aiku Pari Iwa : Deathlessness Consummates Existence' : The Broken Calabash and the Ife Philosopher's Paradoxical Quest for Immortality'' and "Moving from the Finite to the Infinite : Reflections on Mortality and Immortality from Yorubaland to India'' and "Between a Spiral, a Circle and a Straight Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?''.
Contents
Philosophical and Spiritual Ideas as Exploratory Postulates
The Self as Embodied and Mortal as Well as Immortal and Disembodied
Exploring the Idea of the Self's Immortal and Divine IdentityA Personal Account of Exploring the Self as Divine and Immortal
Olabiyi Yai, Chinua Achebe and Nimi Wariboko on Yoruba, Igbo and Kalabari Conceptions of the Self
Correlations Between Classical African Systems of Thought and Between Varied Expressions of Human Thought
Philosophical and Spiritual Ideas as Exploratory Postulates
Philosophical and spiritual ideas, Ideas about fundamental values, the foundational realities of existence, of their ultimate significance, may be best understood as exploratory postulates, as propositions open to examination as to their validity, analyses that are ultimately open-ended on account of the plurality of possible approaches to them which imply that the issues they address are beyond closure in terms of definitive conclusions.
The Self as Embodied and Mortal as Well as Immortal and Disembodied
That is how I approach ideas that inspire me across various bodies of thought, specifically, the notion that the essence of the self transcends the mind, its relationship with the human body and the mortality of these terrestrial coordinates represented by the mutuality of the material and the immaterial in constituting human consciousness.
This idea emerges in various forms in different spiritualities and philosophies, from the Indian Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita to Platonic thought to Yoruba Orisha spirituality, to Igbo and Kalabari thought to German philosopher Immanuel Kant's particularly resonant concluding reflections in his Critique of Practical Reason to Christian theology and beyond.
Exploring the Idea of the Self's Immortal and Divine Identity
How does one examine the validity of this idea? I understand such an idea to be beyond validation by thought alone because I see reason as not capable of reaching a definitive conclusion on the subject. Meditation and prayer are also recommended as approaches to discovering this reality and various people have testified to their own discoveries using these methods, as in Paul Brunton's account, in A Search in Secret India, of exploring the self by enquiring into the nature of ''I'', the sense of self identity, as this method was taught to him by Indian thinker and yogi Ramana Maharshi.
I have employed meditation for years in exploring myself and have not been able to arrive at the definitive understanding that so inspired me in the writings of those who made those testimonies and others who present these ideas. I discovered something, however, through meditation on myself in exploring this idea.
A Personal Account of Exploring the Self as Divine and Immortal
I stumbled on a very powerful centre of direction within myself which I have been struggling to understand, particularly since it contradicts the values of society around me and is distant from my nature as an embodied and social creature, who needs to be sustained by nourishing his body and through the emotional sustenance of interacting with others.
This force is akin to an example of the use of concept ''numen'' in Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1966, '' a strange and terrible numen that used me as its tabernacle'' which is how I recollect the quote, ''terrible'', in that context, evoking painful experiences generated by the distance between the orientations of this force and the social realities in which I find myself, although on cross-checking with the dictionary the quote actually reads ''the strange and powerful numen, which he felt, used him as its tabernacle'' quoting Aldous Huxley from his essay ''D. H. Lawrence'' on that British writer.
''Am I possessed?'', I have asked myself.
'' Has a power established itself within me and is using me for its own goals, a power attracted by my explorations in various fields of knowledge, particularly spirituality, as represented most proximately by Abdrushin's In the Light of Truth and Charles Connell on the Buddha in World Famous Rebels, texts that inspired me to commence meditation as a regular practice, seeking that centre within the self that Abdrushin and others describe as the immortal core of a human being?
What does this power want?
Knowledge, knowledge about fundamental and ultimate realities, integrating as broad a range of understanding as possible across various disciplines. What is its reason for such a hunger? The need for meaning, like a person who needs to make sense of why he exists, and why he is on a planet somewhere in the galaxy, a lost person who needs to establish some coordinates so as to make sense of their existence.
I am not fully in control of how this force wants to go about this goal. The best I can do is try to understand and work with it.
Olabiyi Yai, Chinua Achebe and Nimi Wariboko on Yoruba, Igbo and Kalabari Conceptions of the Self
What has this personal account got to do with Olabiyi Yai, Chinua Achebe and Nimi Wariboko on Yoruba, Igbo and Kalabari conceptions of the self, respectively, in relation to the direction of human life particularly at the nexus of fate and free will?
The responses of these thinkers to these bodies of knowledge exemplify some of the richest accounts I know of the idea of the self as both encapsulating the material/immaterial unity constituting embodied consciousness and transcending it, of the self as immortal and grounded in divine reality, yet directive of or deeply engaged in the life of the mortal expression of the self in the terrestrial world.
This orientation contrasts with what I understand of the Upanishads, the Gita and Christrian perspectives, in which the essence of self is transcendent and largely aloof, the Upanishads summing up a similar perspective in the imagery of ''two birds, sitting in the same tree. One eats of the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree. The other, eating of neither, simply observes''.
Philosophy, the critical relationship with ideas, may be fruitfully pursued through using it as a means of examining one's life in dialogue with broader contexts beyond oneself. Hence I began this essay with an account of my efforts in exploring a particular idea, with a focus on my use of meditation in pursuing this goal.
I find the synergy between Yai, Achebe and Wariboko fascinating because they may assist in examining the various possibilities of this idea, its various possibilities of perception, facilitating moving forward with it.
Yai's formulation of what may be called Yoruba Ori Theory of the Self emphasises dynamism, motion between possibilities, movement between contrastive but complementary realities, in contrast to the often referenced understanding of this idea as representing a destiny embodied in the self, agreed upon in orun, the world of ultimate origins, where the creator of the universe, Olodumare, is encountered by the self as it literally or figuratively kneels to agree to a destiny to be lived out on earth.
I consider the idea of destiny as delicate in relation to understanding free will but as impossible to ignore, given the various influences on human life by forces beyond peoples' control, from genetics to the human and material environments people are born into.
Yai states, ''ori is essence, attribute and quintessence, the uniqueness of persons, animals and things, their unique eye and ear, their most alert guide in their journeys through this world and the one beyond.'' ( From a review in African Arts, of Henry Drewal et al's Yoruba:Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought).
Yai's summation restates a position dramatized by the poem ''The Importance of Ori'' from the corpus of the Yoruba Ifa system of knowledge and divination, which depicts ori as the only deity that can follow its devotee on a distant journey without turning back, even the journey of death. ( Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa by Wande Abimbola and Martin White et al's African Poems site).
These perspectives resonate forcefully with another position presented by an initiation text of the Western esoteric order AMORC in reference to the '' inner self'', its variant of a similar idea as the Yoruba ori, ''in all your journeys, you will not find a friend more loyal, more committed to serving you.''
Achebe's engagement with the version of the idea in Igbo thought is represented by his essays ''Chi in Igbo Cosmology'', ''The Igbo World and its Art'', by his novels Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God and his short story "The Madman''.
Unlike Yai and the Yoruba Orisha/Ifa tradition, AMORC, the Upanishads, the Gita and Kant, bodies of thought and thinkers referenced so far in this essay, Achebe does not postulate or affirm the ideas in question but explores them, often demonstrating their complexities, their perplexing character as constructs of the human mind trying to fashion value out of intractable realities.In ''Chi in Igbos Cosmology'', he narrates his efforts in collecting various strands of the Igbo chi concept, Igbo Chi Theory of the Self, from dialogue with various Igbo culture bearers and trying to unify these pieces of information coming from a decentralised oral tradition.
in ''The Igbo World and its Art'' he presents a conception in Igbo thought of relationships between individual and general creative enablement, in the idea of ''ike''. In his novels and short story earlier referenced, he may be described as exploring the tension between two seemingly contrastive but complementary Igbo expressions,''when a man says 'yes', his chi says 'yes' '' but ''a man can say 'yes' and his chi says 'no' '', in the context of whether or not these expressions adequately describe or map what may be seen as the struggle of people to navigate the divide between their own inward contradictions and the fissure between themselves and society.Nimi Wariboko invokes a more varied weave of ideational coordinates in engaging with conceptions of self and their relationship with the unfolding of human life. Kalabari ideas about the self as an identity originating from beyond the material world and as embodying a destiny which may be negotiated while on earth and his own reflections on intersections between human potential and environmental possibilities are intertwined as he moves between Kalabari, Pentecostal and Continental thought in various books, from Nigerian Pentecostalism to The Pentecostal Principle, among others.
Correlations Between Classical African Systems of Thought and Between Varied Expressions of Human Thought
Classical African systems of thought, in particular, are best understood in relation to each other as variants of similar ideas, particularly so on account of the similarities in differences between human efforts to make meaning of existence, across the humanities, social sciences and sciences, a defining identity of human cognition evident across these disciplines as human activity has unfolded across space and time, dramatizing the humanity as an entity on a collective journey to a zone unknown.
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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