RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, a Circle and aStraight Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

But the 'foundational education' of Vincent Oluwatoyin Adepoju is not self generated studying under an adept Babalawo', is it?  If so, our reactions would have been different

Encounter with a Babalawo by his own admission is very recent, after the events of formal education which he now misrepresents as only complementary to life long self- education,  was terminated.

 This seems a made up story.  Studying under Babalawo takes years of commitments before one graduates to be on their own, which the referent is unwilling to undergo, yet is eager to misrepresent as having accomplished, as he makes up things as he goes.

Intellectual honesty is the bedrock of the virtues of scholarship.

Formal education was terminated overseas at the behest of the host country.  This is not unheard of.  

Parallel educational institutions abound in his own country and he has forgotten he narrated an aborted attempt at continuity with Professor Ademola Dasylva.

Why take to the internet to weave a self- confusing tale of heroism?

Approaching independent scholarship through a different route has been genuinely successful by others who are forthright, and who acknowledged those to whom they are beholden, with their expressly sought and given authority (and not skirting round avoidance of such acknowledgement in thinly disguised plagiarisms.)

OAA

Mr President, you took an oath to rule according to the Constitution.

Where are the schools to promote the teaching of the country's lingua francas?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 25/11/2020 07:19 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>, WoleSoyinkaSociety <WoleSoyin...@yahoogroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, a Circle and aStraight  Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?

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                                                 Between a Spiral, a Circle and a Straight Line

                                                              How Do I Tell My Life's Story?

                                                                   Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                 Compcros

                                                      Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                        "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                                   

A scholar's biography is often an account of a linear progression, a movement from one level of schooling to another, from one academic job to another based on the kind of schooling received,  their publications mapping cumulative contributions to knowledge over the years.

But what  if the scholar's foundational educational development is self generated, with the academic training being complementary yet formative, the academic and the self generated education enhanced by learning  within a classical African educational system, studying with a babalawo, an adept of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge?

Instead of a forward movement across academic systems, this scholar's journey is marked by recurrent dropping out of that system, returning to the self education that is his deepest orientation.

How may the pain and confusion represented by those journeys be distilled, anguish emerging from trying to be what is different from one's deepest self but which is the norm one has been socialized to try to adapt to?

Scholars' biographies often highlight their publications in academic fora, but the work of the scholar in question, though also evident in academic platforms,  is more represented by self publication in social media and other online platforms, taking a path he finds congenial, and possibly gradually working his way towards developing his own knowledge network, consisting of  his own publications and perhaps those of others, the platforms he uses in presenting these and the social media groups he has created under the inspiration of his guiding interests.

Reworker of classical African knowledge systems, Ifa, Ogboni, Ekpe and Olokun, writer in female centred aesthetics, explorer of intersections between the visual and verbal arts, philosophy, spirituality and science, worker in comparative cognitive processes and systems, are how I describe myself as I survey what I am doing, creativity that is more impulsive than planned, its configurations understood only after they have emerged under the compulsion of the daemon that is my true nature, slave master and inspirer, a nature partly understood by myself, a force outside the boundaries of social integration and biological imperatives, a consuming fire.

To what degree is my life's story a spiral, returning to the same orientations suppressed by the drive to adapt to expectations, developing them at deeper levels partly enabled by the synergy between my self developed skills and the skills gained from the social systems I struggled to adapt to?

To what degree is my life's story  a circle, seeking an ultimate centre of knowledge, beyond space, time and biology but integrative of them, the  pursuit of which I struggle to actualize  in a circle of activity unique to myself, the tension between this quest for uniqueness and the pull towards social adaptation being the story of my learning journeys up till now?

How far is the image of the straight line relevant here?

A line of aspiration, luminous through various detours, flaming under the activities one did not want to engage in but was compelled to so as be part of how things are conventionally done, the insistent voice that cannot be denied no matter how painful it is to be guided by it.

Is it possible to be possessed by a demon of knowledge?

A force that has no interest in the well being of its host, something whose drives have no relation to human biological or social interests?

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju is a writer at the boundary of a quest for ultimate meaning and a world centred in more immediate values, a tension that has been the matrix of his life in search for structures of knowledge with which to engage this ultimacy, from various religions and philosophies to the visual and verbal arts, integrated within undergraduate and graduate studies in English and Comparative Literature  from the Universities of Benin, Kent, SOAS and UCL, a quest presently constituted by reworking classical African systems of knowledge in terms of vehicles for the search for the core of what is and how best to live.

Written under the inspiration of being asked to  submit my biography for the book on the scholar Nimi Wariboko to which I contributed.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                                         😎😀🙄🎼🔭🍷🌐♨🌉🔥🏇

                                                                                         

                                       

               Contemplative presences from the Yoruba origin Ogboni, bottom left, Buddhism, top left, Gabon, middle,

                                               and self portrait by French artist Paul Gauguin, bottom left.

                                                                        Collage by myself

My brother Agbetuyi,

You could not have been more helpful to me than if we were collaborators.

I can be reasonably certain that you will read any composition of mine posted on this forum.

I can also be sure that your reading will pick out strategic issues that would benefit from being further clarified and elaborated upon, which you will often take pains to point out.

If not for your challenges in particular, I wonder if I would have composed my comprehensive essay on AMORC, nor the elaboration of my work on Ogboni that has flowered into a significant body of theory and practice. 

You also raised some vital questions on the logic of correlating cognitive systems in my earlier post about ''The Adepoju System of Initiation into African, Asian and Western Philosophies and Spiritualities,'' questions I would have loved to answer, elaborations that would be priceless for my work, issues raised by you as insightful as if you were a critically acute book or journal editor assessing a paper.

Your latest challenges on my description of my biography are also insightful.

My only problem with your engagement is the determined hostility that the work of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju seems to inspire in you, leading to the cloaking of critical insight in vitriol, the muddying of discourse in insults, the ad hominems that spoil what would otherwise have been beautiful debate.

I get the impression that you are challenged by what seems to be the egocentric persona of Adepoju, presuming to rework such ancient systems of your ethnic ancestors as Ifa, moving into even the ultimate Yoruba origin esoterica represented by Ogboni, and now claiming to be able to have something strategic to say about other African and even Asian and Western systems and even adding the hallowed name of Immanuel Kant to the mix.

You just have to accept this reality. 

Is there any debate we have been in in which I have not demonstrated that I am adequately informed on the subject?

I would love you to refine your style of engagement with me so learning may develop that could benefit you, myself and others. 

If one has not spent every day of decades in meditation for hours, not spent hours across years  meditating alone in a forest, not engaged in various spiritual practices from across the world, not studied systems of knowledge across cultures, is one in a position to begrudge others who are doing so  and  demonstrating the fruits of their efforts?

The best one can do is engage them respectfully, learning from them as they learn from one.

One may also map  a scope of achievement representing the maximizing one's potential and pursue that scope.

On account of the depth and scope of my exposure to various spiritual and philosophical systems, I am able to readily rework any spiritual system I am interested in or even create new ones. 

Yet, these are ultimately exercises that fall short of the ultimate goal, that which cannot be systematised, the goal of knowledge that comes to itself with the incomprehensible One, as the Christian theologian Karl Rahner puts it, that which is best represented by silence, by pregnant non-speech,  as  Buddhist apophatic spirituality sees it, palpitations from beyond time and space yet sensed within the spatio-temporal coordinates of the self.

Thus, within the variousness of one's journeyings, one is aware of one's cognitive poverty. 

The impossibility of unifying all of being, an insight described of Aristotle by one  scholar, all I have learnt seeming like grass in the face of the Beyond revealed to me, as attributed to Thomas Aquinas, the ocean of truth lying undiscovered before me as I pick pebbles by the seashore, at times finding one shinier than the others, as famously credited to Isaac Newton, the glorious books I had written to mirror the world now revealed to me as no more than an addition to the world, as described of one of his characters by Jorge Louis Borges...

Yet, beyond such questions at the very edges of possibility is the fact that intellectual and spiritual capacity are not equivalent to the skills required to manage life in society, and the intense pursuit of abstract cognitions is not always compatible with managing social possibilities...

Yet, within such cognitive pursuits, how much can one really know?

Are the horizons of learning not endless, ever receding, a skyline that can never be reached?

Is one therefore different from the ragged, decrepit man,  who is yet a beam of light from the hearth of Gueno, the Ultimate, an ultimacy closer to the human being than his jugular vein, as the Koran puts it, an ultimacy close yet distant, revealing itself only when it wishes, even when sought for across a lifetime, as described of Kaidara of the Fulani by Ahmadou Hampate Ba?

I salute you.

toyin

                                                                               

                                         

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982DC955FD0D29A8450A5A6A6FA0%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                                            The Journey Endless 

                                                                  A Reflection on the Infinity of Knowledge 

                                                                            Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                         Compcros

                                                            Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                                "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                         😎😀🙄🎼🔭🍷🌐♨🌉🔥🏇

                                                                                         

                                       

              

                            Contemplative presences from the Yoruba origin Ogboni, bottom left, Buddhism, top left,

               Mukudj mask from the Punu of Gabon, middle, and self portrait by French artist Paul Gauguin, bottom right

                                    Within the heart, there is a door. Beyond that door is a little space.

                                     Within that space are the heavens and the Earth, the sun, the moon

                                     and the stars, fire, lightning and wind.

                                                        Adapted from the Indian Upanishads

                                                                        Collage by myself

Presuming to rework such ancient systems as the Orisa cosmology Ifa, moving into even the ultimate Orisa esoterica represented by Ogboni, and now claiming to be able to have something strategic to say about other African and even Asian and Western systems and even adding the hallowed name of Immanuel Kant to the mix, as demonstrated by my ''Adepoju System of Initiation into African, Asian and Western Philosophies and Spiritualities.'' 

Spending every day of decades in meditation for hours, spending hours across years  meditating alone in a forest,  engaged in various spiritual practices from across the world, studying  systems of knowledge across cultures, the time has come for consolidation, mapping the journey thus far traversed as the forward drive continues. 

A depth and scope of exposure to various spiritual and philosophical systems enabling the reworking any spiritual system I am interested in or even creating new ones. 

Yet, these are ultimately exercises that fall short of the ultimate goal, that which cannot be systematised, the goal of knowledge that comes to itself with the incomprehensible One, as the Christian theologian Karl Rahner puts it, that which is best represented by silence, by pregnant non-speech,  as  Buddhist apophatic spirituality sees it, palpitations from beyond time and space yet sensed within the spatio-temporal coordinates of the self.

Thus, within the variousness of one's journeyings, one is aware of one's cognitive poverty. 

The impossibility of unifying all of being, an insight described of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle by one  scholar, all I have learnt seeming like grass in the face of the Beyond revealed to me, as attributed to Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas, the ocean of truth lying undiscovered before me as I pick pebbles by the seashore, at times finding one shinier than the others, as famously credited to scientist, Biblical scholar and alchemist Isaac Newton, the glorious books I had written to mirror the world now revealed to me as no more than an addition to the world, as described of one of his characters by Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borges...

Yet, beyond such questions at the very edges of possibility is the fact that intellectual and spiritual capacity are not equivalent to the skills required to manage life in society, and the intense pursuit of abstract cognitions is not always compatible with managing social possibilities...

Yet, within such cognitive pursuits, how much can one really know?

Are the horizons of learning not endless, ever receding, a skyline that can never be reached?

Is one therefore different from the ragged, decrepit man,  who is yet a beam of light from the hearth of Gueno, the Ultimate, an ultimacy closer to the human being than his jugular vein, as the Koran puts it, an ultimacy close yet distant, revealing itself only when it wishes, even when sought for across a lifetime, as described of Kaidara of the Fulani by Ahmadou Hampate Ba?

[Ibukunolu A Babajide]

Tella: The Sack Of A Professor And Vice Chancellor

Professor S.A .Tella was until a few months ago the Vice- Chancellor (VC) of Crescent University owned by Prince Bola Ajibola. Ajibola was a one- time Attorney General of Nigeria, a one- time Judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and currently Head of the Elders’ Forum of Ogun State, which impliedly is an advisory body to the Gbenga Daniel-led PDP Govt. of the State.

---

by Poju Akinyanju Feb 27, 2011

Professor S.A .Tella was until a few months ago the Vice- Chancellor (VC) of Crescent University owned by Prince Bola Ajibola. Ajibola was a one- time Attorney General of Nigeria, a one- time Judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and currently Head of the Elders’ Forum of Ogun State, which impliedly is an advisory body to the Gbenga Daniel-led PDP Govt. of the State.

Tella was forced to resign as VC. In publicizing his resignation, he said  because  he was unable retract and apologize, as demanded by Crescent University over which he was VC, on account of a position he had espoused publicly, he chose the option of resigning. The other option, clearly, was to be fired. In the same statement, he raised the alarm that he was returning to Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) where he has tenure as a Professor but whose Visitor was the same Governor whose displeasure at the opinion he expressed caused his forced resignation from Crescent University. He indicated that he was returning to OOU to face a battle of survival.  The Visitor caused to be issued what turned out to be a tongue in cheek response that he has no hand in staff matters of the University. As Tella predicted, a few weeks on return to OOU, his appointment as tenured Professor of Economics was terminated. The reason given for the termination was the reorganization going on in the public funded State University.

This is a perfect season for megalomaniac psychopaths in power to commit murder. No one pays attention.  The nation is overwhelmed by the din of political activities such that even matters that are symptomatic and fundamental to the true practice of the democracy are ignored.  In our on- going and characteristic obsession with single issues, we do not seem to realize that we can have free, fair and supposedly credible elections and still put tyrants in power unless all the facet of life on which democratic practice impacts are jealously guarded and continuously monitored. The University system which is expected to be a training ground for democratic practice, if properly run, is itself under perpetual attack and society seems not to care.

The sack of Tella has thrown up a number of issues which bear our reflection. These include the nature of private Universities in Nigeria; the impact of political heads of public Universities; the fulfillment of the raison d’être of universities in practice and in breach.

The private university, in its second coming, has its origin in elite consensus that the only alternative to a dysfunctional public university system is to create private ones. It did not matter to the ruling class that they were, in the first instance, the architect of the ruination of the public universities. For 8 years, the Obasanjo/Atiku Presidency fought instead of building public universities. At the end of, and as a reward of their struggles, Obasanjo established his own university at Otta and Atiku established his at Yola. This elite decision is also deeply ideological. They need isolated institutions called universities where their children can take degrees to the exclusion of the children of the masses. It is a direct continuation of what they had done to the public primary and secondary tiers of education. As it turned out, it is religious groupings (or elite with religious pretensions) and moneyed fraudsters (at the last count, there were over 40 private universities classified as fraudulent by the NUC) that followed the step of the rulers. These universities bear deep study if we are not to rue their existence in the future. But such a study is beyond the scope of this essay. What is relevant here is the over bearing influence of the owners/proprietors of these Universities in clear breach of the ethos and principles of Universities.  In the Tella instance, Prince Ajibola, the owner of Crescent University, cannot appreciate the need to respect and protect the academic freedom of a Vice Chancellor academic that has an opinion which conflicts with that of his (Ajibola’s) benefactor. If he does not know, Prince Ajibola should be told that a University run the way he is running Crescent University will be one only in name and will not be respected outside its conclave. The position he has advertised by the forced resignation of Tella is that none of his lecturers or student can express a dissenting opinion about anything. The university is about expression of ALL opinions which contend and the one with the higher force of logic surviving. Where extraneous forces interfere (Galileo, Martin Luther, Peter Duesberg etc), the clock of civilization is set back.

The politicians involved in running our universities are the Visitors and nominees of Govt. on Council. The nominees are expected to be men of integrity from society who understand the concept of a University. Unfortunately, our experience in public universities does not bear this out. Such nominees see their presence on Councils as political pay back and not only do the direct biddings but also read the lips of Govt. /Visitor. About Gbenga Daniel, the Visitor of OOU, the less said about him, the better. His record of governance speaks for itself. We could just highlight this by the single instance of his disabling his State’s House of Assembly once he couldn’t control it. His philosophy appears to be to destroy anything that does not agree with him and which he can’t control. In some of his response to a text message campaign by an organization the ‘Intellectuals Without Borders (IWB)’ on the Tella matter, he derided the public asking him to correct himself; and says he is not afraid of the verdict of history. The staying power of our ruling class derives from two factors, they have no shame (a public claim to this factor goes to Obasanjo); and they believe that history (call for accountability now and in the future) is weak or non- existent in Nigeria.

If we can excuse the Visitor and Council for their inherent though unpardonable limitations, what do we say of the Vice-Chancellor of OOU?  Most Vice-Chancellors believe their loyalties should be to the Govts. that appoint them and that they are agents of Govt. on campus. Mercifully, we have exceptions, even in Nigeria (Bababunmi of LASU, Ukoli of DELSU and now Tella of Crescent University), who read their roles correctly of protecting the autonomy, and freedom of the University and giving it integrity and honour. I wonder if Prof. Wale Are Olaitan, the VC of OOU can defend the reason given for the sack of Tella: ‘reorganization’. Tella teaches in the Dept of Economics which currently has a denied accreditation; i.e. it can’t admit students and its graduates are stigmatized. The Dept. has about 700 students and 13 Lecturers. This gives us a ratio of 53 students to one lecturer. The lecturers’ profile is bottom heavy with 10 of them being in the lower rung. Apart from the Professors, only one other lecturer has a PhD. The Dept. has no substantive Head of Dept. There were 3 Professors, One is the Dean, the second is a contract staff on his way out; the third is Tella who has been sacked. How the sack of Tella aids positive reorganization beats the imagination. The mindset of a large number of University Administrations in Nigeria is not what is best for the system but what satisfies their ego and that of their masters.  Academics are sacked mindlessly or thrown into detentions. It has happened at  Ibadan (Ola Oni, Bade Onimode et al.), Lagos (Olaniyan, Ekundayo et al.), Benin (Festus Iyayi et al.), Nsukka (Asobie, Ogban-Iyam et al.), BUK (Attahiru Jega, Aminu et al.), Ife (Olorode, Fashina, Awopetu et al.), FUT, Akure (Esan Aderinola et al.), FUT,Owerri (Eshiet, Onuigboje et al.), Abuja (Owa, Kolawole, Agber et al.), Ilorin (Oloruntoba-Oju, Oduleye, Akinyanju et al.), OOU (Babarinde et al., and now Tella). The list is endless, indeed at a time the entire academic staff of Nigerian Universities were sacked!

We may quickly look at what Tella said for which he was sacked; though it should not matter what he said. The laws of the country and the responsibility of his profession allow him to voice his opinion on all matters that catch his fancy within the law. In a memo to the State House of Assembly, he made a case against granting of loan opportunity to Gbenga Daniel’s government as follows:

“As an economist, it is imperative to lend my voice to the on-going discussion on the desirability or not of acceding to such request. While I do not object to raising loans to meet developmental obligations by governments or even individuals, I find it ridiculous for anyone to borrow in order to offset an earlier debt. Every loan should count towards investments that will be able to repay the loan in future. Thus, the government should be able to point at what was done with earlier loans and why such projects are not yet bringing out returns to offset such loans. The position of the House that the Government should open its books for evaluation is within the jurisdiction of the House and should continue to insist on this. In fact the Government should publish its audited accounts publicly every year as done by some States government in the present dispensation.  I hereby wish to commend the House on its stand and hope it continues to follow the due process. However, if the Government is able to convince the House on the projects to be invested on (this is likely going to be an afterthought now), the House may reconsider the case after due consultation.”

How Gbenga Daniel, Bola Ajibola, OOU Council and Vice-Chancellor Olaitan can sack an academic staff based on this opinion boggles the mind.
It is time to rally and put a stop to the destruction of academics in Nigeria. The ruling class and their quisling Vice - Chancellors and Councils seem to think that you can run universities without intellectuals. This way we not only remain the laughing stock of the world but our development will remain stunted. 

Poju Akinyanju PhD
Professor of Microbiology
University of Ilorin

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622) / ibk...@gmail.com

AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from off the goose

 

The law demands that we atone

When we take things that we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who take things that are yours and mine

 

The poor and wretched don’t escape

If they conspire the law to break

This must be so but they endure

Those who conspire to make the law

 

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

And geese will still a common lack

Till they go and steal it back

 -        Anonymous (circa 1764)

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Toyin Adepoju:

I learn from anyone and everyone both my in- class students and my professors and mentors.  I learn from my adult students even as at today.  I was discussing with my half Igbo/ half Yorùbá  young adult graduate learner during the weekend ( early 20s) and its quite rewarding what she reconfirmed as the Biafran War causes which 60 something plus neo- Biafrans on our listserv pretend not to know about the causes.

But in recognised fields and disciplines I learn from the masters.  That is the only way quackery will not be passed on as expertise. This is how and why formal education thrives.  In literary translation we call it authority bestowed.

You cannot, being no graduate of Ifá' transform Ifá to what is not acceptable to Ifá authority and pass it on.  That is recognised as disguised fraud.  The same goes for Ògbóni.

Look at it this way:  All the foreign universities in which you claimed you learned, if you told them you only picked up the University of Benin prospectus and course offerings and read up all the itemised book listing as a result of which you thought you had knowledge of a university graduate and call yourself a BA holder  ( having not attended the university and passed the required courses) from that same university would they not describe you as a fraudster and deny you admission for graduate studies?

Why do you choose to rate Ifá lnstitution and Ògbóni institution so low you can ride roughshod over them while pretending to do the Yorùbá a ' favour' by helping to spread their civilization?  The Yoruba dont need such favours.

I refer you to one of my own philosophical mentors ( who gave me perhaps the greatest grounding in western philosoohy) Barry Hallen who for decades have done what you began within the last few years when we saw you groping in the dark unable to come to terms with or decide on what to do with your sudden premature return to Nigeria. 

 Barry Hallen worked closely with our HOD (late) Olubi Sodipo to understand and push the boundaries of Yoruba philosophy.  He understood he could not impose Western philisoohy on Yoruba philosoohy; he understood you could not merge the two as you attempt to do.  He knew he could not independently rework anything or construct ' 'universal' version of anything single- handedly.  He is basically a honest man in search if no cheap pseudo heroism.  This is why we accept him as a true master of philosophy.

You can see how far Nimi Wariboko has gone, coming home ( more on him later) and you can see how austere he is; not pontificating everywhere and not misallocating precious time to be spent on rigorous research,  web-site- crawling looking for sensationalisms.

Where did he describe himself as genius?.....I scratch my head now because I cannot recollect...

OAA

Mr. President you took an oath to rule according to the Constitution.

Where are the schools to promote the teaching of the country's lingua francas?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 25/11/2020 17:42 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, a Circle andaStraight  Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?

                                                                         😎😀🙄🎼🔭🍷🌐♨🌉🔥🏇

                                                                                         

                                       

               Contemplative presences from the Yoruba origin Ogboni, bottom left, Buddhism, top left, Gabon, middle,

                                               and self portrait by French artist Paul Gauguin, bottom left.

                                                                        Collage by myself

My brother Agbetuyi,

You could not have been more helpful to me than if we were collaborators.

I can be reasonably certain that you will read any composition of mine posted on this forum.

I can also be sure that your reading will pick out strategic issues that would benefit from being further clarified and elaborated upon, which you will often take pains to point out.

If not for your challenges in particular, I wonder if I would have composed my comprehensive essay on AMORC, nor the elaboration of my work on Ogboni that has flowered into a significant body of theory and practice. 

You also raised some vital questions on the logic of correlating cognitive systems in my earlier post about ''The Adepoju System of Initiation into African, Asian and Western Philosophies and Spiritualities,'' questions I would have loved to answer, elaborations that would be priceless for my work, issues raised by you as insightful as if you were a critically acute book or journal editor assessing a paper.

Your latest challenges on my description of my biography are also insightful.

My only problem with your engagement is the determined hostility that the work of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju seems to inspire in you, leading to the cloaking of critical insight in vitriol, the muddying of discourse in insults, the ad hominems that spoil what would otherwise have been beautiful debate.

I get the impression that you are challenged by what seems to be the egocentric persona of Adepoju, presuming to rework such ancient systems of your ethnic ancestors as Ifa, moving into even the ultimate Yoruba origin esoterica represented by Ogboni, and now claiming to be able to have something strategic to say about other African and even Asian and Western systems and even adding the hallowed name of Immanuel Kant to the mix.

You just have to accept this reality. 

Is there any debate we have been in in which I have not demonstrated that I am adequately informed on the subject?

I would love you to refine your style of engagement with me so learning may develop that could benefit you, myself and others. 

If one has not spent every day of decades in meditation for hours, not spent hours across years  meditating alone in a forest, not engaged in various spiritual practices from across the world, not studied systems of knowledge across cultures, is one in a position to begrudge others who are doing so  and  demonstrating the fruits of their efforts?

The best one can do is engage them respectfully, learning from them as they learn from one.

One may also map  a scope of achievement representing the maximizing one's potential and pursue that scope.

On account of the depth and scope of my exposure to various spiritual and philosophical systems, I am able to readily rework any spiritual system I am interested in or even create new ones. 

Yet, these are ultimately exercises that fall short of the ultimate goal, that which cannot be systematised, the goal of knowledge that comes to itself with the incomprehensible One, as the Christian theologian Karl Rahner puts it, that which is best represented by silence, by pregnant non-speech,  as  Buddhist apophatic spirituality sees it, palpitations from beyond time and space yet sensed within the spatio-temporal coordinates of the self.

Thus, within the variousness of one's journeyings, one is aware of one's cognitive poverty. 

The impossibility of unifying all of being, an insight described of Aristotle by one  scholar, all I have learnt seeming like grass in the face of the Beyond revealed to me, as attributed to Thomas Aquinas, the ocean of truth lying undiscovered before me as I pick pebbles by the seashore, at times finding one shinier than the others, as famously credited to Isaac Newton, the glorious books I had written to mirror the world now revealed to me as no more than an addition to the world, as described of one of his characters by Jorge Louis Borges...

Yet, beyond such questions at the very edges of possibility is the fact that intellectual and spiritual capacity are not equivalent to the skills required to manage life in society, and the intense pursuit of abstract cognitions is not always compatible with managing social possibilities...

Yet, within such cognitive pursuits, how much can one really know?

Are the horizons of learning not endless, ever receding, a skyline that can never be reached?

Is one therefore different from the ragged, decrepit man,  who is yet a beam of light from the hearth of Gueno, the Ultimate, an ultimacy closer to the human being than his jugular vein, as the Koran puts it, an ultimacy close yet distant, revealing itself only when it wishes, even when sought for across a lifetime, as described of Kaidara of the Fulani by Ahmadou Hampate Ba?

I salute you.

toyin

                                                                               

                                         

On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 at 14:49, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

We salute  Hallen and Sodipo.

Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, ''In the House of Inu,'' among others.

But, a lot of great scholars and creatives are self taught.

They could have formal training in one field, and achieve mastery in other fields.

Some might have no formal training at all. 

So, this idea that a person has to be formally trained, by others in a discipline to attain mastery puzzles me.

You are invoking Wariboko whose degrees are in economics, business administration and theology, not Continental or Kalabari philosophy or urban thought, subjects central to the distinctiveness of his work.

Our dear Toyin Falola has all his degrees in history, but we know the multidisciplinary character of his work.

Even then, why not simply engage your interlocutor on the issues instead of insisting on traditional training?

Along with Ifa and Ogboni I am also reworking Hindu Sri Vidya,  Akan Adinkra, Fulani Kaidara, Ekpe Nsibidi,  Benin Olokun, Dogon Nommo thought, and  the thought of Toyin Falola and Nimi Wariboko.

I can provide the relevant links to these works so you may examine them.

You busy yourself with trying to disprove Adepoju but the very masters in various fields insist on recognising him.

My essays in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, 2011 on the central Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology concepts and disciplines Ifa/Odu, Ori, Orisa and on Ghanaian Akan and Gyaman Adinkra visual symbolism, all these being areas in which I am self taught, were commissioned by the editor Abiola Irele.

My essay on art and creativity in the Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy was commissioned by the editors Toyin Falola and Adeshina Afolayan but my degrees are in literature, not art. 

My essay on the artist Owosu Ankomah in the book on him Microcron was commissioned by the artist himself, yet I am not formally trained in art criticism.

My essay in the Palgrave Handbook of African Social Ethics was commissioned by Adeshina Afolayan yet I have no formal training in that field.

My essay on Wariboko in The Philosophy of Nimi Wariboko book covers almost every aspect of his work yet I am not formally trained in the fields he is centred in.

My essay on developing the mystical potential of Ifa was submitted on the request of an academic  editor who likes my work on classical African systems of thought, and is awaiting publication. 

Is it not time you saw things differently?

thanks

toyin

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[Michael Afolayan]

Hmmm, so you were a student of Barry Hallen, Alagba OAA? So was I. Apparently, you were a part of the Ife Mafia of the 70s. Nice knowing you. Yes indeed, but even as much, if not much more than, Western Philosophy, Barry Hallen, was (and probably still is) one of the most hardworking and thoughtful philosophers of the African thought system you could ever meet. Yet, he wore humility and genius on his brows. He was the first person to define for me time and space, or a lack thereof, in the African thought system. And you are right, he recognized cultural and philosophical parallels and did not crisscross one system over the other, facts that explain why he placed credence on phenomenology (recall his famous 1976 article in Second Order).

Okay, let's leave BH alone and visit Toyin Adepoju's effort at paring distinct universes (Yoruba Ogboni, Buddhism, Gabon, French symbols, etc) and becoming an authority on the interpretation of esoteric knowledge mysteries in the caliber of the sacred institutions of Àjé, Ogboni, Ifa, etc., etc. I had wondered from the outset how and why he has been able to do this. Sadly, I have not been able to sacrifice quality time to digest the high volumes of literature he has generated over time on these subjects, which makes it unfair for someone like me to critique him. But, thankfully, you read him quite well. I appreciate his effort in generating all this information day in, day out, and yours as well in reading them. My request is this: Since you have read and seem to understand Toyin Adepoju, and his work on Ogboni, the subject of which he said ". . . has flowered into a significant body of theory and practice . . .", could you please provide me a two-paragraph summary of the work? It sounds like some intellectual laziness on my part, but I truly crave a genuine desire to understand. There has to be something, or some things, in this relentless labyrinth of information. It cannot just be much-ado about nothing. God forbid!

Thanks in no small way!

MOA

===

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Which great scholars and creatives are self taught in todays world?

Your Afolayan and Falola work benefitted from the paucity of scholars willing to specialise in philosophy ( and that is why Falola is floating a prize to attract scholars to this discipline.)  It does not speak of any expertise in ordinary meaning of the word.e. people who engage in scholarship postgraduation involving dozens of book on the subject.  It is better than nothing so self- congratulations are in order?

Wariboko' philosophical expertise in western philosophy flows from his theological training as he and I know.  These are key requirements.  His knowledge of Kalabari thought is comparable to mine in Ifa.  They are native.  But does that make your learning comparable to his.  Your knowledge of western thought is in no way comparable to mine having been steeped formally in the major fields yet I am very, very far from whom you may describe as an expert let alone a genius.

Your position is that of opportunism.  But it has its limitations.  Period.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 25/11/2020 23:00 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTR2zxBTqCr_JHtfHBzuWiS3SyPvyqjMek7TkrZYLarE-A%40mail.gmail.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Alagba MOA.

BH was the epitome of philosophical humility.  A philosopher ( including traditional Ifa and Ogboni philosophers) take refuge in the ' tigritude' adage.  For them it is a matter of inexorable mindset.

If a so- called philosopher is a braggart they have not imbibed the ethos of the pensive philosophical mind.  The transformative role of philosophy on the intellect has not taken place ( I dont care what an orator, politician, architect, medical practitioner, historian or tapster says:  they are not quintessential philosophers and cannot parade themselves as such.  I am not one.  Now I have taken interest in this particular debate because of the amorphous nature of Toyin Adepoju's work and taken the pains to save some in anticipation of occasions like this.  Name dropping and association with well known people and their styles do not make one identical to them.

Being a multidisciplinary scholar does not make one an expert in all fields else we will say Falola is an expert in Literature.  He knows he is not and he knows I dont regard him as such. It is not an offence.  We all know he is unquestionably an expert in History. You can be a jack of many trades but be an expert in only a few because expertise takes a lot of time and in depth knowledge, time which is limited for ALL mortals.

Toyin Adepoju as he portrays himself through his essays  is not an expert in any fields.  He writes a bit here and adds a bit on the other one all of which are on facile level rather than pick on one or a few and do in depth study.  He may yet do this some day.  A scholar?  Arguably so. We need to argue at which level.

He would pick up the essay work of a particular scholar on a field and concentrate on that as if that is all there is to that field rather than fully locate that work within the field  after an overarching study of the whole field first.  This is his stock methodologically approach to most if not all essays he has been writing.  Experts would consider that a lazy approach to studying their field yet he thinks its genius.  Many cannot be conflated with quality.  Even if he wrote one thousand such essays they cannot equate with one in depth study of one expert.  And he wants to conflate all these unrelated systems. The writer of Upanishad was not thinking of Ifa or the Yoruba society.  So how can you conflate them?  Are all human societies structured the same way?

He prefers to meet such experts only through their books and imposes his meanings on them even if that is counter- productive without going a step further to confirm his hunches with them if they are alive as in Nigeria( as Falola does in his interviews.)  I have no qualms if it is on a single authors work particularly if the author wants him to boost their work but I take exceptions when it is done to murder collective patrimonies and disciplines' holy grails in the name of academic freedom.  For me it smacks of arrogance rather than freedom.

Like I said today Philosophy editors dont have enough subscibers so they may be indulgent to what other disciplines might reject and that is the tragedy of our times.  It is not for nothing that the highest degree in all disciplines is a Doctor of Philosophy.  Left to me key courses in Philosophy should be made compulsory to undergraduates in all disciplines in addition to History.

If you are well grounded in Philosophy it will show in all your ancillary debates and ways of resolving issues.  This is why orofessions such as Law cherish it.  Engagements in debates by Toyin Adepoju do not reflect such grounding ( so much for self taught- certain things escape the attention of the mind.)  They dont reflect the quality of debates by experts in Philosophy and Philosophy graduates on this forum know that.  I dont care if an expert in geography argues the way he does!

Are we saying if Toyin Adepoju goes to an Ifa priest and academic like Prof. Abimbola he would subscribe to the desecration of Ifa contained in Adepoju's writings ( encouraged on this forum)  such as being able to generate Esè Ifá, referring to himself as a self- initiated Ifá priest?  That he wants to attempt 'universal' Ifa and Ògbóni accountable to only him as Alfa and Omega?  This is where the expert versus novice dichotomy comes in and we should not turn a blind eye  to people crossing the line.

He may say he wants to rework Hindu myth which no Hindu practitioner will accept from him and his editors.  Good luck to them!

OAA

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Sorry.  I took more than two paragraphs.

I can now attempt one paragraph of all I just wrote.  His work is self- centred rather than philosophically stimulating.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Date: 26/11/2020 01:49 (GMT+00:00)

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

My dear OAA,

Thanks.

We have spent some time discussing who is qualified to speak authoritatively  about a subject.

It's time to get back to work.

I shall welcome your engagements, but please, stick to polite though forceful critiques of ideas.

Please avoid using characteristics like  ''nonsense'' and ''meaningless'' that are off putting to most people and would require reams of explanation from you to justify their validity as forms of scholarly expression.

If you are really eager to demonstrate my work as inadequate, you have to focus on ideas, on its logic, avoiding clouding this in questionable approaches.

Otherwise I will be compelled to pass over those responses.

Ifa, Ogboni etc are undergoing fundamental change. It's more realistic to engage with the agents of these changes than try to use one's finger in holding back a river.

I'm puzzled about the claim that African philosophy is lacking practitioners, thus Falola and Afolayan called on Adepoju to write on intersections of art and philosophy in African discourse.  Is that not a sacrilegious claim in the light of the centuries of work in this field?

Can a similar claim be made for scholarship in Yoruba origin systems of thought, leading to Abiola Irele calling on Adepoju to write essays on the core subjects in this field for his edited Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought?

In a world coming after Bascom and Abimbola?

Broda, its not good to project oneself as acting in bad faith.

I forgot to add that the essay on modern African art in that volume was written by me. The one on traditional African art was written by Suzanne Preston Blier, one of the foremost professors of African art, a PhD in Art History from decades ago and luminary at the particularly prestigious Harvard university.

I, on the other hand, have no PhD in anything and all my degrees are in literature.

May God bless Abiola Irele and his loved ones.

On the subject  of correlations between classical African systems of thought and other bodies of knowledge in a spirit of mutual illumination, one may see my essay on Ifa divination in relation to the art and letters of the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh published at the peer reviewed journal Reconfigurations.

Great thanks

toyin

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Oga Afolayan,

God bless you.

You want to understand Adepoju's work and you are relying on a person hostile to the person and work of Adepoju, for whom ''nonsense'' and ''meaningless'' are preferred terms of engagement in his hostility.

Rather than  request guidance from the creator of these systems of knowledge you are seeking help from someone who has nothing positive to say, who escapes when his challenges are met.

I wish you well. 

You don't want to read the work, you don't want guidance on where to start from and how to proceed, but  you have been able to draw such conclusions from the recurrent hostilities of Agbetuyi that ''thankfully, you read him quite well'' and ''Since you have read and seem to understand Toyin Adepoju, and his work on Ogboni, the subject of which he said ". . . has flowered into a significant body of theory and practice . . .", could you please provide me a two-paragraph summary of the work?''

With this approach you have adopted in mind,  I shall not be jumping   into  providing that synthesis you are asking for because your approach does not suggest genuine interest. 

I might also not bother myself with whatever distortions Agbetuyi provides in response to your request.

 I should be able to use my time better.

thanks

toyin

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

This is a very interesting case.

If Professor Tella was invited by the state assembly to testify and he was dismissed as a result I think he may sue for damages from both institutions.  But he would need a good lawyer.

If he just used his initiative then thats a different matter.  In my humble opinion Bola Ajibola may still reserve the right to fire him because he no longer needed his services because of conflict of interests or without stating any reason at all even if most people can infer the reason.  

We must remember it is a private institution and even though he carries out the same duties as his colleagues in the public institutions the conditions of service may not be the same.  

This is a spin of from the capitalist orientation of tertiary institutions in the United States.  We may remember that a stellar academic and political theorist in the United States Cornel West suffered the same fate about a decade ago.  His powerful colleagues in the academy bailed him out by giving him a job in Princeton in the Religious Studies dept where he would not be able to ruffle the feathers of the powers that be, which he gladly accepted to keep body and soul together.  But I cant recall that he challenged the right of his former institution to fire him.

Yes academics have these rights as collaterals of the profession but its a matter of discretion how it is used.  It is no blank cheque.

If OOU stated that they wanted to reorganise and that his services were no longer needed I doubt whether that decision can be successfully challenged in any court.  This is why, when Nigerian academics interpret American tenure to mean an irrevocable job for life I am of the view there are no such jobs that are not without caveats.  If a tenured professor is caught with prohibited drugs he would be fired. ( I think we examined the issue with Prof Aluko when Prof Kperogi was perceived as behaving, when he was newly tenured, as if he could say just whatever he wanted because he had achieved tenure.)

In sum I think the University system has progressed in Nigeria  by having private institutions that took care of specialised concerns in addition to general curricula.  

An area with overwhelming Christian catchment area is not bound to give equal attention to Muslim intake so long as it does not forbid other religions totally from being enrolled.  The same thing goes vice- versa for private universities in predominantly Muslim areas in the North.  A private tertiary institution in Ibadan may employ 70 percent of its faculty from Ibadan citizens  or ' indigenes'  or insist on only Ibadan VCs without breaking any law.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A short ride into history (27 February2011)  - Tella: The Sack Of A Professor And Vice Chancellor

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Thanks for all this effort devoted to my work OAA.

I enjoyed reading it.

But ese Ifa is literature,  as Wande Abimbola has very well demonstrated through his books.

Being literary, it is verbalisation projected imaginatively through  techniques demonstrated by Abimbola.

Anyone can learn these techniques and emulate the significatory universe of ese ifa or even adapt these zones of reference to other subjects.

Ese ifa, as Karen Barber has observed, is what may be described as an assimilative genre in Yoruba literature, integrating other genres into its varied expressions.

The issue here is not whether or not ese ifa can be emulated. It can and I have done it, and perhaps given examples here.

The question then becomes- does my emulating ese ifa expressive techniques make the outcome an example of ese ifa?

Are there other disciplinary criteria that must be satisfied to fulfill this goal?

That is the stance of Awo Fategbe in the debate we had on the thread of one pf my Facebook postings of a traditional ese ifa which I had expanded using my own words.

Fategbe admires my effort but sees it as a contribution to secular literature that does not belong within the ese ifa corpus.

He argues for ese ifa as an oracular epistemology emerging from and activating spiritual realities. 

Even if one believes another person is being heretical, the only way to demonstrate that is through critical engagement with the issues involved.

That's the only way to demonstrate to others the inadequacy one sees in the person's efforts.

We honour the living ancestor Wande Abimbola, one of those who makes us possible.

I begin to identify with your angst, but its like insisting that the sea should not flow. 

I am touched by your seeing my efforts as an attept ''to murder collective patrimonies and disciplines' holy grails in the name of academic freedom.''

 The following is the easiest thing in the world if you know how, although my goal is correlation, not conflation-

  'The writer of Upanishad was not thinking of Ifa or the Yoruba society.  So how can you conflate them?  Are all human societies structured the same way?''

 The world's spiritualities, to put it without qualifications, useful as those are, are saying broadly the same thing, engaging the same questions and providing similar answers.

Example- the Upanishads references a small room within the self that contains the cosmos.

It 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.

The great ese ifa, ''The Importance of Ori''  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 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 aspect of the self that embodies the self's ultimate potential,  mediating  between self, cosmos and the ultimate creator.

An initiation ritual of the Western esoteric Rocicrucian order AMORC, operating from within a multicultural grounding in simar 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”

                                                                      

                                                                               

             

A symbol that 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.''

Such confluences represent conjunctions while recognising differences.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                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.

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-

[Obododimma Oha]

Fantastic. Permission to cite this in a blog essay.

Obododimma. 

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                               ''Aiku Pari Iwa'' : Deathlessness Consummates Existence 

                                The Broken Calabash and the Ife Philosopher's Paradoxical Quest for Immortality

                                                              Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

The Yoruba expression

''Aiku pari iwa'' 

May be translated as

''Deathlessness consummates existence''

''Immortality completes existence''

''Immortality consummates essence''

''Immortality completes being''

It is attributed to Osuntokun, a philosopher who lived in the city of Ife in what would now be known as 300 BC.

Records of this figure were deciphered from correlative interpretations of Ese Ifa and Nsibidi texts excavated by the Ogunlayan team at the Opa Oranyan site at Ife in 2015 and recently translated by a combined team of experts in these expressive forms.

Piecing together fragments of evidence in years of painstaking work, the archaeologists concluded that this thinker held death was the door into deathlessness.

''The calabash undergoes shattering to be made whole,'' '' the broken sphere prefigures the complete circle,'' are expressions described by the researchers to be representative of his thought.

What could these mean?

It is speculated that he believed death and rebirth represent opportunities for increasing growth of understanding, until the mind of the individual passes without interruption between these states, ultimately deciding where and how the transitions take place.

A friend tried to find the original archaeological report from the Journal of the African Archaeological Institute where I learnt the information came from but could not find it.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tunde Awosanmi atu...@gmail.com [WoleSoyinkaSociety] <WoleSoyin...@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2020 at 06:29

 

Dear Toyin,

Please share as usual whenever you come across the source of the information. It is worth digging into.

I experimented with this thought in a stage performance a few years back. It'll be great to return to it and further the thought.

Thanks.

'Tunde Awosanmi.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Great thanks, Tunde.

The personalistic aspect of the text  is a work of fiction created to project an idea.

The Ife philosopher is a fictional figure I created in relation to the equally fictional archaeological excavation that unearthed his existence and deciphered his ideas.

Those ideas themselves are a distillation from various sources, African and Asian, resonating with Western thought.

These reworkings are based  on the Yoruba expression ''aiku pari iwa'' from Rowland Abiodun's ''The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,'' ''iwa'', ''being'' or ''character'' or both,  being a subject he further examines in Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.

I  present varied interpretive possibilities  of that expression  in ''Aiku Pari Iwa : Consummation of Being in Classical Yoruba Philosophy''

This blend of fact and fiction  is a response to the question,''What is the logic of Yoruba and classical African ideas of reincarnation, particularly in contrast to Hindu, Buddhist and Western esoteric  theories of reincarnation?''

 

 Hindu, Buddhist and Western esoteric  conceptions  of reincarnation  understand the cycle of birth, death and rebirth as driven by human ignorance of the meaning of existence, on account of which people have to reincarnate, gaining increasing understanding until reincarnation becomes unnecessary.

In these contexts, the Earth is a school and life on Earth the process of passing through that school. 

In my exposure to the Yoruba understanding of reincarnation, however, I am yet to read of any explicit effort to justify the process, to explain its logic within the context of a cosmos operating in terms of inbuilt values, rather than something whose direction is unknown.

The closest I have come to this in my reading is in the ideas of Wole Soyinka and Kolawole Ositola.

Soyinka references the process of birth, death and rebirth as one of passage through the intersection between terrestrial and cosmic being, an ''Abyss of Transition,'' as described in Myth, Literature and the African World, the introduction to Death and the King's Horseman, dramatised in the chant of Olohun-Iyo in that play and perhaps depicted and discussed in other works such as The Road.

Kolawole Ositola  discusses the transmission of sacred mission across generations, mediated by the ethos of the Yoruba origin  Ogboni esoteric order, as quoted by Margaret Thompson Drewal in Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency, 1992,32-8 in the chapter titled ''The Ontological Journey.''

Drewal visualizes  this continuity through reincarnation in depicting this process in terms of a spiral (46-7).

I examine correlations between Soyinka's thought along these lines and Ogboni thought as reflected upon by Ositola and resonating with Babatunde Lawal in ''À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó: New Perspectives on Edan Ogboni,"  on ideas of regeneration in Ogboni in relation to the image of the spiral and the circle in my essay in progress, "Classics in Ogboni Studies : Wole Soyinka: Philosopher of Ogboni" and my forthcoming essay "Tales of Mystery and Power: Ogboni Aesthetics in a Multicultural Context''.

The associative values of the spiral image are powerfully developed in the culturally cognitive Nsibidi symbol system as cultivated by the Cross River Ekpe esoteric order, in terms of a structure of ideas including the sun, journey and eternity.

These ideas suggest an interpretation of the cycle of human life, perhaps in relation to reincarnation, in terms of progression, ''journey'', within spaces of physical illumination, represented by the role of the sun in life on Earth and cognitive illumination, in the metaphoric understanding of  the light of the sun, developments within and beyond terrestrial space eventuating in a movement into eternity, as the interpretation of the symbol at the Smithsonian description of Victor Ekpuk's Good Morning Sunrise, may be developed.

Ekpe esotericism is so closely guarded, however, I am not aware of any publicly available interpretation in depth of their symbols, although Ekpe chief  Effiong Edem Etim's  forthcoming "Nsibidi as an Ancient Way of Communication in Africa before Colonisation : Prospects and Challenges" in the Erudite Journal of the Federal College of Education, Uyo,  suggests movement forward in this direction.  

The spiral motif, as demonstrated by such works as Jill Purce's The Mystic Spiral, by the short, memorable film of its adaptation in an ongoing New York skyscraper  construction,  and the idea of progression into eternity, are recurrent in various thought systems.

The most powerful depiction known to me of human life as progression into eternity is German philosopher Immanuel Kant's meditation on temporality and infinity in relation to terrestrial and cosmic space and time in the first paragraph  of the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason, a meditation beginning ''Two things fill the mind with ever new and ever renewed admiration and awe, the more often and the more steadily they are reflected upon, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.'' 

He concludes on how, through the operations of his personal moral orientations, he is able to escape from the destination accorded to his body by the law of consignment to Earth at the conclusion of his lifetime, and enter into the infinite, having worked out his life within the short span allowed it within the minisculity of the Earth, itself existing within the immensity of the celestial bodies located within the  void of cosmic space.

Those being among Kant's best known lines, various translations of them as well as scholarly and more general discussions of them are constantly being developed , such as Patrick Frierson's ''Kant and the End of Wonder, '' Paul Guyer's ''The Starry Heavens and the Moral Law'' and Howard Caygill's ''Soul and Cosmos in Kant: A Commentary on 'Two Things Fill the Mind...'  ''

A powerful visual evocation of a related idea is the circle and a central motif in evoking the circle in classical African thought is the calabash, as described by Daybo in ''The Calabash, a Cultural and Cosmological Constant,'' recurring in evocations of the womb, as Emma Christian Rice examines in ''Rethinking the Calabash: Yoruba Women as Containers,'' of cosmic wholeness, as in the Yoruba Igba Iwa, the Calabash of Existence, superbly described by Babatunde Lawal in ''Èjìwàpò: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture,'' and most powerfully for me, in terms of knowledge  of cosmic unity in Zulu thought as depicted by Mazisi Kunene in his introduction to Anthem of the Decades.

Calabash symbolism, however, is complexified from its conventional associations with wholeness, with unity of being, by ideas of the value of fragmentation in relation to the calabash or the pot, such as Daniel Odier's account of his  Tantric teacher Lolita Devi's thought in Tantric Quest,  in which this unity needs to be broken to enable new forms of understanding, a perspective incidentally relatable with Olu Oguibe's superb  interpretation of El Anatsui's broken pot sculpture series in relation to African symbolism in ''El Anatsui: Beyond Death  and Nothingness.''

These perspectives are subsumed in the expressions attributed to the Ife philosopher, ''The calabash undergoes shattering to be made whole,'' '' the broken sphere prefigures the complete circle.''

The speculations drawn from these lines-

''What could these mean?

It is speculated that he believed death and rebirth represent opportunities for increasing growth of understanding, until the mind of the individual passes without interruption between these states, ultimately deciding where and how the transitions take place''

are demonstrations of the ideational implications of the imagistic forms represented by the proverbs, if they could be so named.

This style of writing uses a fictional scholarly context, employing conventions of scholarship, in framing or generating a story, thereby creating an imaginative universe in which the reader is invited to engage with a play with ideas in the tension between the seriousness associated with scholarship and the playfulness of functional creativity.

I am inspired in this by the Argentinian writer of philosophical fictions, Jorge Louis Borges, by the US master of mystical horror H.P. Lovecraft and the English magical  fantasist   J.R.R. Tolkien, who created an entire scholarly culture in relation to his Lord of the Rings novelistic series.

On Sun, 29 Nov 2020 at 06:29, Tunde Awosanmi atu...@gmail.com [WoleSoyinkaSociety] <WoleSoyin...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear Toyin,

Please share as usual whenever you come across the source of the information. It is worth digging into.

I experimented with this thought in a stage performance a few years back. It'll be great to return to it and further the thought.

Thanks.

'Tunde Awosanmi.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 6:41 PM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju toyin....@gmail.com [WoleSoyinkaSociety] <WoleSoyin...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

__._,_.___

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Posted by: Tunde Awosanmi <atu...@gmail.com>

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                                      Moving from the Finite to the Infinite 

                                                 Reflections on Mortality and Immortality from Yorubaland to India

                                                                               Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                          Compcros

                                                                   Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems 

                                                         ''Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge''

                                                                                         

                                                                       

                                                                         Good Morning, Sunrise, by Victor Ekpuk

                                                                                             Abstract

''What must we do to defeat the inevitable movement into the unknown that is death?," "How can we make sense of what seems senseless, life extinguished as the unavoidable culmination of a long climb from childhood, having entered the world from a zone unknown, if any such zomes exists in the first place?''   are central human preoccupation, inspiring much of religion and philosophy.

This essay is a brief comparative exploration of various approaches to this subject, using incidental convergences across cultures.

 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

The Yoruba expression

''Aiku pari iwa'' 

May be translated as

''Deathlessness consummates existence''

''Immortality completes existence''

''Immortality consummates essence''

''Immortality completes being''

It is attributed to Osuntokun, a philosopher who lived in the city of Ife in what would now be known as 300 BC.

Records of this figure were deciphered from correlative interpretations of Ese Ifa and Nsibidi texts excavated by the Ogunlayan team at the Opa Oranyan site at Ife in 2015 and recently translated by a combined team of experts in these expressive forms.

Piecing together fragments of evidence in years of painstaking work, the archaeologists concluded that this thinker held death was the door into deathlessness.

''The calabash undergoes shattering to be made whole,'' '' the broken sphere prefigures the complete circle,'' are expressions described by the researchers to be representative of his thought.

What could these mean?

It is speculated that he believed death and rebirth represent opportunities for increasing growth of understanding, until the mind of the individual passes without interruption between these states, ultimately deciding where and how the transitions take place.

A friend tried to find the original archaeological report from the Journal of the African Archaeological Institute where I learnt the information came from but could not find it.

Interpretation of Section 2

The personalistic aspect of the text  is a work of fiction created to project an idea.

The Ife philosopher is a fictional figure I created in relation to the equally fictional archaeological excavation that unearthed his existence and deciphered his ideas.

Those ideas themselves are a distillation from various sources, African and Asian, resonating with Western thought.

These reworkings are based  on the Yoruba expression ''aiku pari iwa'' from Rowland Abiodun's ''The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,'' ''iwa'', ''being'' or ''character'' or both,  being a subject he further examines in Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.

I  present varied interpretive possibilities  of that expression  in ''Aiku Pari Iwa : Consummation of Being in Classical Yoruba Philosophy''

This blend of fact and fiction  is a response to the question,''What is the logic of Yoruba and classical African ideas of reincarnation, particularly in contrast to Hindu, Buddhist and Western esoteric  theories of reincarnation?''

 

 Hindu, Buddhist and Western esoteric  conceptions  of reincarnation  understand the cycle of birth, death and rebirth as driven by human ignorance of the meaning of existence, on account of which people have to reincarnate, gaining increasing understanding until reincarnation becomes unnecessary.

In these contexts, the Earth is a school and life on Earth the process of passing through that school. 

In my exposure to the Yoruba understanding of reincarnation, however, I am yet to read of any explicit effort to justify the process, to explain its logic within the context of a cosmos operating in terms of inbuilt values, rather than something whose direction is unknown.

The closest I have come to this in my reading is in the ideas of Wole Soyinka and Kolawole Ositola.

Soyinka references the process of birth, death and rebirth as one of passage through the intersection between terrestrial and cosmic being, an ''Abyss of Transition,'' as described in Myth, Literature and the African World, the introduction to Death and the King's Horseman, dramatised in the chant of Olohun-Iyo in that play and perhaps depicted and discussed in other works such as The Road.

Kolawole Ositola  discusses the transmission of sacred mission across generations, mediated by the ethos of the Yoruba origin  Ogboni esoteric order, as quoted by Margaret Thompson Drewal in Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency, 1992,32-8 in the chapter titled ''The Ontological Journey.''

Drewal visualizes  this continuity through reincarnation in depicting this process in terms of a spiral (46-7).

I examine correlations between Soyinka's thought along these lines and Ogboni thought as reflected upon by Ositola and resonating with Babatunde Lawal in ''À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó: New Perspectives on Edan Ogboni,"  on ideas of regeneration in Ogboni in relation to the image of the spiral and the circle in my essay in progress, "Classics in Ogboni Studies : Wole Soyinka: Philosopher of Ogboni" and my forthcoming essay "Tales of Mystery and Power: Ogboni Aesthetics in a Multicultural Context''.

The associative values of the spiral image are powerfully developed in the culturally cognitive Nsibidi symbol system as cultivated by the Cross River Ekpe esoteric order, in terms of a structure of ideas including the sun, journey and eternity.

These ideas suggest an interpretation of the cycle of human life, perhaps in relation to reincarnation, in terms of progression, ''journey'', within spaces of physical illumination, represented by the role of the sun in life on Earth and cognitive illumination, in the metaphoric understanding of  the light of the sun, developments within and beyond terrestrial space eventuating in a movement into eternity, as the interpretation of the symbol at the Smithsonian description of Victor Ekpuk's Good Morning Sunrise, may be developed.

Ekpe esotericism is so closely guarded, however, I am not aware of any publicly available interpretation in depth of their symbols, although Ekpe chief  Effiong Edem Etim's  forthcoming "Nsibidi as an Ancient Way of Communication in Africa before Colonisation : Prospects and Challenges" in the Erudite Journal of the Federal College of Education, Uyo,  suggests movement forward in this direction.  

The spiral motif, as demonstrated by such works as Jill Purce's The Mystic Spiral, by the short, memorable film of its adaptation in an ongoing New York skyscraper  construction,  and the idea of progression into eternity, are recurrent in various thought systems.

The most powerful depiction known to me of human life as progression into eternity is German philosopher Immanuel Kant's meditation on temporality and infinity in relation to terrestrial and cosmic space and time in the first paragraph  of the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason, a meditation beginning ''Two things fill the mind with ever new and ever renewed admiration and awe, the more often and the more steadily they are reflected upon, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.'' 

He concludes on how, through the operations of his personal moral orientations, he is able to escape from the destination accorded to his body by the law of consignment to Earth at the conclusion of his lifetime, and enter into the infinite, having worked out his life within the short span allowed it within the minisculity of the Earth, itself existing within the immensity of the celestial bodies located within the  void of cosmic space.

Those being among Kant's best known lines, various translations of them as well as scholarly and more general discussions of them are constantly being developed , such as Patrick Frierson's ''Kant and the End of Wonder, '' Paul Guyer's ''The Starry Heavens and the Moral Law'' and Howard Caygill's ''Soul and Cosmos in Kant: A Commentary on 'Two Things Fill the Mind...'  ''

A powerful visual evocation of a related idea is the circle and a central motif in evoking the circle in classical African thought is the calabash, as described by Daybo in ''The Calabash, a Cultural and Cosmological Constant,'' recurring in evocations of the womb, as Emma Christian Rice examines in ''Rethinking the Calabash: Yoruba Women as Containers,'' of cosmic wholeness, as in the Yoruba Igba Iwa, the Calabash of Existence, superbly described by Babatunde Lawal in ''Èjìwàpò: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture,'' and most powerfully for me, in terms of knowledge  of cosmic unity in Zulu thought as depicted by Mazisi Kunene in his introduction to Anthem of the Decades.

Calabash symbolism, however, is complexified from its conventional associations with wholeness, with unity of being, by ideas of the value of fragmentation in relation to the calabash or the pot, such as Daniel Odier's account of his  Tantric teacher Lolita Devi's thought in Tantric Quest,  in which this unity needs to be broken to enable new forms of understanding, a perspective incidentally relatable with Olu Oguibe's superb  interpretation of El Anatsui's broken pot sculpture series in relation to African symbolism in ''El Anatsui: Beyond Death  and Nothingness.''

These perspectives are subsumed in the expressions attributed to the Ife philosopher, ''The calabash undergoes shattering to be made whole,'' '' the broken sphere prefigures the complete circle.''

The speculations drawn from these lines-

''What could these mean?

It is speculated that he believed death and rebirth represent opportunities for increasing growth of understanding, until the mind of the individual passes without interruption between these states, ultimately deciding where and how the transitions take place''

are demonstrations of the ideational implications of the imagistic forms represented by the proverbs, if they could be so named.

This style of writing uses a fictional scholarly context, employing conventions of scholarship, in framing or generating a story, thereby creating an imaginative universe in which the reader is invited to engage with a play with ideas in the tension between the seriousness associated with scholarship and the playfulness of functional creativity.

I am inspired in this by the Argentinian writer of philosophical fictions, Jorge Louis Borges, by the US master of mystical horror H.P. Lovecraft and the English magical  fantasist   J.R.R. Tolkien, who created an entire scholarly culture in relation to his Lord of the Rings novelistic series.

                                                                 An Invitation to Contribute to this Initiative 

You are invited to donate to Compcros: Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems, from where this essay comes, so as to facilitate research and publication, developing one of the world's largest collections of freely accessible, original texts, cutting across and often integrating diverse disciplines and cultures. 

Also published in

Cognitive Diary blog

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

I have pointed out on this forum  how Soyinka summarised this in his poem 'Seed' from Idanre: with the paradox ' rust is ripeness' 

It means death and life are complementary values of continuity and regeneration

' Aiku pari Iwa therefore means being and non being are complementary and that is how Yorùbá concept of reincarnation and Àbíkú( which Soyinka again wrote a poem on) are to be understood.  

People are reborn to carry out specific tasks which only the Òrìşa know, and which only the Ifá priests ( whom Toyin Adepoju is not among having no formal training) can interpret.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 29/11/2020 13:00 (GMT+00:00)

To: WoleSoyinkaSociety <WoleSoyin...@yahoogroups.com>

Cc: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>, Bring Your Baseball Bat <naijao...@yahoogroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: [WoleSoyinkaSociety] ''Aiku PariIwa''  : Deathlessness Consummates Existence : The Broken Calabash and the IfePhilosopher's  Paradoxical Quest for Immortality

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyin....@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

Great thanks, Tunde.

The personalistic aspect of the text  is a work of fiction created to project an idea.

The Ife philosopher is a fictional figure I created in relation to the equally fictional archaeological excavation that unearthed his existence and deciphered his ideas.

Those ideas themselves are a distillation from various sources, African and Asian, resonating with Western thought.

These reworkings are based  on the Yoruba expression ''aiku pari iwa'' from Rowland Abiodun's ''The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,'' ''iwa'', ''being'' or ''character'' or both,  being a subject he further examines in Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.

I  present varied interpretive possibilities  of that expression  in ''Aiku Pari Iwa : Consummation of Being in Classical Yoruba Philosophy''

This blend of fact and fiction  is a response to the question,''What is the logic of Yoruba and classical African ideas of reincarnation, particularly in contrast to Hindu, Buddhist and Western esoteric  theories of reincarnation?''

 

 Hindu, Buddhist and Western esoteric  conceptions  of reincarnation  understand the cycle of birth, death and rebirth as driven by human ignorance of the meaning of existence, on account of which people have to reincarnate, gaining increasing understanding until reincarnation becomes unnecessary.

In these contexts, the Earth is a school and life on Earth the process of passing through that school. 

In my exposure to the Yoruba understanding of reincarnation, however, I am yet to read of any explicit effort to justify the process, to explain its logic within the context of a cosmos operating in terms of inbuilt values, rather than something whose direction is unknown.

The closest I have come to this in my reading is in the ideas of Wole Soyinka and Kolawole Ositola.

Soyinka references the process of birth, death and rebirth as one of passage through the intersection between terrestrial and cosmic being, an ''Abyss of Transition,'' as described in Myth, Literature and the African World, the introduction to Death and the King's Horseman, dramatised in the chant of Olohun-Iyo in that play and perhaps depicted and discussed in other works such as The Road.

Kolawole Ositola  discusses the transmission of sacred mission across generations, mediated by the ethos of the Yoruba origin  Ogboni esoteric order, as quoted by Margaret Thompson Drewal in Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency, 1992,32-8 in the chapter titled ''The Ontological Journey.''

Drewal visualizes  this continuity through reincarnation in depicting this process in terms of a spiral (46-7).

I examine correlations between Soyinka's thought along these lines and Ogboni thought as reflected upon by Ositola and resonating with Babatunde Lawal in ''À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó: New Perspectives on Edan Ogboni,"  on ideas of regeneration in Ogboni in relation to the image of the spiral and the circle in my essay in progress, "Classics in Ogboni Studies : Wole Soyinka: Philosopher of Ogboni" and my forthcoming essay "Tales of Mystery and Power: Ogboni Aesthetics in a Multicultural Context''.

The associative values of the spiral image are powerfully developed in the culturally cognitive Nsibidi symbol system as cultivated by the Cross River Ekpe esoteric order, in terms of a structure of ideas including the sun, journey and eternity.

These ideas suggest an interpretation of the cycle of human life, perhaps in relation to reincarnation, in terms of progression, ''journey'', within spaces of physical illumination, represented by the role of the sun in life on Earth and cognitive illumination, in the metaphoric understanding of  the light of the sun, developments within and beyond terrestrial space eventuating in a movement into eternity, as the interpretation of the symbol at the Smithsonian description of Victor Ekpuk's Good Morning Sunrise, may be developed.

Ekpe esotericism is so closely guarded, however, I am not aware of any publicly available interpretation in depth of their symbols, although Ekpe chief  Effiong Edem Etim's  forthcoming "Nsibidi as an Ancient Way of Communication in Africa before Colonisation : Prospects and Challenges" in the Erudite Journal of the Federal College of Education, Uyo,  suggests movement forward in this direction.  

The spiral motif, as demonstrated by such works as Jill Purce's The Mystic Spiral, by the short, memorable film of its adaptation in an ongoing New York skyscraper  construction,  and the idea of progression into eternity, are recurrent in various thought systems.

The most powerful depiction known to me of human life as progression into eternity is German philosopher Immanuel Kant's meditation on temporality and infinity in relation to terrestrial and cosmic space and time in the first paragraph  of the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason, a meditation beginning ''Two things fill the mind with ever new and ever renewed admiration and awe, the more often and the more steadily they are reflected upon, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.'' 

He concludes on how, through the operations of his personal moral orientations, he is able to escape from the destination accorded to his body by the law of consignment to Earth at the conclusion of his lifetime, and enter into the infinite, having worked out his life within the short span allowed it within the minisculity of the Earth, itself existing within the immensity of the celestial bodies located within the  void of cosmic space.

Those being among Kant's best known lines, various translations of them as well as scholarly and more general discussions of them are constantly being developed , such as Patrick Frierson's ''Kant and the End of Wonder, '' Paul Guyer's ''The Starry Heavens and the Moral Law'' and Howard Caygill's ''Soul and Cosmos in Kant: A Commentary on 'Two Things Fill the Mind...'  ''

A powerful visual evocation of a related idea is the circle and a central motif in evoking the circle in classical African thought is the calabash, as described by Daybo in ''The Calabash, a Cultural and Cosmological Constant,'' recurring in evocations of the womb, as Emma Christian Rice examines in ''Rethinking the Calabash: Yoruba Women as Containers,'' of cosmic wholeness, as in the Yoruba Igba Iwa, the Calabash of Existence, superbly described by Babatunde Lawal in ''Èjìwàpò: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture,'' and most powerfully for me, in terms of knowledge  of cosmic unity in Zulu thought as depicted by Mazisi Kunene in his introduction to Anthem of the Decades.

Calabash symbolism, however, is complexified from its conventional associations with wholeness, with unity of being, by ideas of the value of fragmentation in relation to the calabash or the pot, such as Daniel Odier's account of his  Tantric teacher Lolita Devi's thought in Tantric Quest,  in which this unity needs to be broken to enable new forms of understanding, a perspective incidentally relatable with Olu Oguibe's superb  interpretation of El Anatsui's broken pot sculpture series in relation to African symbolism in ''El Anatsui: Beyond Death  and Nothingness.''

These perspectives are subsumed in the expressions attributed to the Ife philosopher, ''The calabash undergoes shattering to be made whole,'' '' the broken sphere prefigures the complete circle.''

The speculations drawn from these lines-

''What could these mean?

It is speculated that he believed death and rebirth represent opportunities for increasing growth of understanding, until the mind of the individual passes without interruption between these states, ultimately deciding where and how the transitions take place''

are demonstrations of the ideational implications of the imagistic forms represented by the proverbs, if they could be so named.

This style of writing uses a fictional scholarly context, employing conventions of scholarship, in framing or generating a story, thereby creating an imaginative universe in which the reader is invited to engage with a play with ideas in the tension between the seriousness associated with scholarship and the playfulness of functional creativity.

I am inspired in this by the Argentinian writer of philosophical fictions, Jorge Louis Borges, by the US master of mystical horror H.P. Lovecraft and the English magical  fantasist   J.R.R. Tolkien, who created an entire scholarly culture in relation to his Lord of the Rings novelistic series.

On Sun, 29 Nov 2020 at 06:29, Tunde Awosanmi atu...@gmail.com [WoleSoyinkaSociety] <WoleSoyin...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear Toyin,

Please share as usual whenever you come across the source of the information. It is worth digging into.

I experimented with this thought in a stage performance a few years back. It'll be great to return to it and further the thought.

Thanks.

'Tunde Awosanmi.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 6:41 PM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju toyin....@gmail.com [WoleSoyinkaSociety] <WoleSoyin...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Toyin Adepiju:

.

So Awo Fátégbè stated that Esę Ifá is an oracular Epistemology emerging from and activating spiritual realities!

Òrò bùşe ( I rest my case.)

Who gave Toyin Adepoju the power for such activation which only an Awo can undertake after years of study and tutelate under a master?.  Isnt it a self- declaration that Toyin Adepoju is delivering fake goods and if prepared to charge for it guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation as the lawyers will put it.  Isnt Toyin Adepoju thereby seeking to defraud the Guild of Alawo their legitimate livelihood?

Is this fair or ethical?

Anyone can learn the literary aspect of any language as you put it but is that all there is to Ese Ifa?  I have said on this forum that each Ese Ifa is a unique encounter between the Awo and actual ( and not fictional) analysand bringing a problem to them to be solved and not composed out of thin air.  They are not designed as exercise in literary fiction and may not be approached as such.

That Wande Abimbola attempted a poetic analysis to gain progression in the secular academy does not mean that is what they are designed for. ( He is one of the leading bona-fide generators of Ese Ifa; you are not.)

No one quarrels with your attempt to correlate.  In fact I have said that  I salute your effort in that regard but you must not cross the dividing line.  You cannot attempt the construction of Ese Ifa.  It is forbidden. It is not a game but serious business.  Any attempt will be fake and fraudulent.

Also, learn more Yorùba so you translate the requisite part of your cited Ese Ifa which readers can see as part of your essay.  It makes it more authentically scholarly.

May Òrúnmęlàl guide you aright!

Àşę.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 26/11/2020 17:59 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Example- the Upanishads references a small room within the self that contains the cosmos.

It 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.

The great ese ifa, ''The Importance of Ori''  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 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 aspect of the self that embodies the self's ultimate potential,  mediating  between self, cosmos and the ultimate creator.

An initiation ritual of the Western esoteric Rocicrucian order AMORC, operating from within a multicultural grounding in simar 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”

                                                                      

                                                                               

             

A symbol that 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.''

Such confluences represent conjunctions while recognising differences.

On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 14:45, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982CCFF6BC8A374BB67D069A6F90%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

It's rather late to declare that what has been done cannot be done.

The new ese ifa have been created.

In fact, the theoritical and practical study of ese ifa, how to understand and construct it, enriches the cosmos of global literary study.

Questions of relationship between sacred and secular literature are fundamental at the intersection of religion and literature, the context where the ontology of ese ifa belongs, the frame in which it should be studies in comparison with other religious  texts.

If ese ifa is understood as emerging from oracular inspiration, as Awo Fategbe argues, how may such inspiration be cultivated?

The construction of technically competent, artistically impressive ese ifa makes it clear that constructing ese if is not necessarily an esoteric process.

If it's argued that ese ifa is fundamentally a performative expression, actualized through relationships between diviner and client, as Noel Armherd argues and as Agbetuyi seems to be arguing on this thread, how may one develop such relationships between actors and ese ifa, so as to help use such verbal art as a problem solving, solution finding mechanism?

Are such questions answerable only from within the esoteric hermeneutics disclosed only in traditional Ifa training?

What of such innovations as those who describe themselves as doing Ifa divination without such training, represented by Jaap Verdjuin and his independent Ifa school, a divinatory process on which he has published a book and the couple who have developed a system of digital Ifa divination?

Is it possible to cultivate relationships with spiritual powers described as anchoring Ifa, using ese ifa, Ifa literature, as a means of cultivating such relationships, akin to the use of literature as an aspirational and invocational vehicle in spiritualities across the world? 

Would such strategies be unique to ifa, particularly since it belongs amongst a complex of structurally and philosophically similar divination systems from Africa to Asia, from the Igbo Afa and Benin City Oguega to the Dahomean Fa and the Chinese I Ching, differing from them largely in Ifa's verbal and visual artistic scope?

Like many humanstic spiritualities, the Ifa and the Orisa tradition within which it belongs privilege the individual self as the embodiment of the self's ultimate potential, the nexus of it's interaction with cosmos.

One view holds that the core of Ifa divination is in developing a relationship with the immortal core of the self, the ultimate unifier and enabler of the self's journey through physical and spiritual space and time.

Must relationship with oneself, even at such depth, necessarily be an activity someone else, such as the Ifa diviner, must do for one?

I am developing a do-it-yourself Ifa, that actualises Ifa's potential as a method of self exploration, of the  unfolding links between self and society, self and cosmos, applicable to the daily challenges of living and their integration within the larger universe of life as mission.

Nothing grows by remaining the same.

Ifa is on the move.

Great thanks for the stimulation.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982F3CC1F5814058F418536A6F60%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Digital Ifa divination without Ifa training is obviously fake irrespective of who is involved whether it is Jaap Verdjuin or Toyin Adepoju now that I have given an exposition of what is involved in genuine Ese Ifa production.

It is a disguised theft of intellectual property of the initiates So long as you use the name of Esa Ifa an extant professional name to give the practices of an extant Guild to market the product which is not the same with the actual product with respect to the method of the generation of such goods, and you refuse to attach your own name.  You have taken advantage of that name to market inferior products.  That is the Law!

There are thousands of such goods on the Internet and I can see why you joined the campaign of # EndSARS originally started by yahooboys who are the master minds of such methods.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 30/11/2020 16:35 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, aCircleandaStraight  Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?

It's rather late to declare that what has been done cannot be done.

The new ese ifa have been created.

In fact, the theoritical and practical study of ese ifa, how to understand and construct it, enriches the cosmos of global literary study.

Questions of relationship between sacred and secular literature are fundamental at the intersection of religion and literature, the context where the ontology of ese ifa belongs, the frame in which it should be studies in comparison with other religious  texts.

If ese ifa is understood as emerging from oracular inspiration, as Awo Fategbe argues, how may such inspiration be cultivated?

The construction of technically competent, artistically impressive ese ifa makes it clear that constructing ese if is not necessarily an esoteric process.

If it's argued that ese ifa is fundamentally a performative expression, actualized through relationships between diviner and client, as Noel Armherd argues and as Agbetuyi seems to be arguing on this thread, how may one develop such relationships between actors and ese ifa, so as to help use such verbal art as a problem solving, solution finding mechanism?

Are such questions answerable only from within the esoteric hermeneutics disclosed only in traditional Ifa training?

What of such innovations as those who describe themselves as doing Ifa divination without such training, represented by Jaap Verdjuin and his independent Ifa school, a divinatory process on which he has published a book and the couple who have developed a system of digital Ifa divination?

Is it possible to cultivate relationships with spiritual powers described as anchoring Ifa, using ese ifa, Ifa literature, as a means of cultivating such relationships, akin to the use of literature as an aspirational and invocational vehicle in spiritualities across the world? 

Would such strategies be unique to ifa, particularly since it belongs amongst a complex of structurally and philosophically similar divination systems from Africa to Asia, from the Igbo Afa and Benin City Oguega to the Dahomean Fa and the Chinese I Ching, differing from them largely in Ifa's verbal and visual artistic scope?

Like many humanstic spiritualities, the Ifa and the Orisa tradition within which it belongs privilege the individual self as the embodiment of the self's ultimate potential, the nexus of it's interaction with cosmos.

One view holds that the core of Ifa divination is in developing a relationship with the immortal core of the self, the ultimate unifier and enabler of the self's journey through physical and spiritual space and time.

Must relationship with oneself, even at such depth, necessarily be an activity someone else, such as the Ifa diviner, must do for one?

I am developing a do-it-yourself Ifa, that actualises Ifa's potential as a method of self exploration, of the  unfolding links between self and society, self and cosmos, applicable to the daily challenges of living and their integration within the larger universe of life as mission.

Nothing grows by remaining the same.

Ifa is on the move.

Great thanks for the stimulation.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982F3CC1F5814058F418536A6F60%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

No, its not too late to declare that what had been done is fake!

Its a caveat emptor to the whole world.

There is no such thing as ' universal Ifa' outside the purview of Àwíşę Àgbáyé ( Universal Ifa Head Soothsayer)   Professor Wándé Abímbólá.  

If he authorised your scheme then authority 'has been bestowed'; if not your scheme occupies a parallel universe to the one we inhabit and it is an insult to the position of the Àwíşę, which it seeks, in vain, to dislodge.  Hence its illegitimacy.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 30/11/2020 16:35 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between a Spiral, aCircleandaStraight  Line: How Do I Tell My Life's Story?

It's rather late to declare that what has been done cannot be done.

The new ese ifa have been created.

In fact, the theoritical and practical study of ese ifa, how to understand and construct it, enriches the cosmos of global literary study.

Questions of relationship between sacred and secular literature are fundamental at the intersection of religion and literature, the context where the ontology of ese ifa belongs, the frame in which it should be studies in comparison with other religious  texts.

If ese ifa is understood as emerging from oracular inspiration, as Awo Fategbe argues, how may such inspiration be cultivated?

The construction of technically competent, artistically impressive ese ifa makes it clear that constructing ese if is not necessarily an esoteric process.

If it's argued that ese ifa is fundamentally a performative expression, actualized through relationships between diviner and client, as Noel Armherd argues and as Agbetuyi seems to be arguing on this thread, how may one develop such relationships between actors and ese ifa, so as to help use such verbal art as a problem solving, solution finding mechanism?

Are such questions answerable only from within the esoteric hermeneutics disclosed only in traditional Ifa training?

What of such innovations as those who describe themselves as doing Ifa divination without such training, represented by Jaap Verdjuin and his independent Ifa school, a divinatory process on which he has published a book and the couple who have developed a system of digital Ifa divination?

Is it possible to cultivate relationships with spiritual powers described as anchoring Ifa, using ese ifa, Ifa literature, as a means of cultivating such relationships, akin to the use of literature as an aspirational and invocational vehicle in spiritualities across the world? 

Would such strategies be unique to ifa, particularly since it belongs amongst a complex of structurally and philosophically similar divination systems from Africa to Asia, from the Igbo Afa and Benin City Oguega to the Dahomean Fa and the Chinese I Ching, differing from them largely in Ifa's verbal and visual artistic scope?

Like many humanstic spiritualities, the Ifa and the Orisa tradition within which it belongs privilege the individual self as the embodiment of the self's ultimate potential, the nexus of it's interaction with cosmos.

One view holds that the core of Ifa divination is in developing a relationship with the immortal core of the self, the ultimate unifier and enabler of the self's journey through physical and spiritual space and time.

Must relationship with oneself, even at such depth, necessarily be an activity someone else, such as the Ifa diviner, must do for one?

I am developing a do-it-yourself Ifa, that actualises Ifa's potential as a method of self exploration, of the  unfolding links between self and society, self and cosmos, applicable to the daily challenges of living and their integration within the larger universe of life as mission.

Nothing grows by remaining the same.

Ifa is on the move.

Great thanks for the stimulation.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982F3CC1F5814058F418536A6F60%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

OAA,

We shall have to agree to disagree at this point particularly since there is no universally binding authority in Ifa as a system of knowledge, including Abimbola.

The ese ifa I create fulfill the needs of those who respond appreciatively to them. Even if no one did, its not possible to delegitimize artistic or spiritual creativity simply  by personal pronouncement.

Your belief that ese ifa is valid only within consultative  contexts is better appreciated within significant qualifications, since ese ifa operate significantly  in practice outside client-diviner consultations.

Please try and steer clear of the ad hominems, the sly attacks or I will have to avoid responding to you as I was doing before.

Such behaviour is unbecoming of a person who describes himself as a scholar, even more with your pedigree in the heyday of Nigerian university education when Great Ife was ascending towards its height, a time that seemed like myth to those of us who came much later, so grand it was, at the nexus of the Ife/Ibadan/Lagos university complex that was central to creating what is known today as African Studies, where people generated globally impactful scholarship from the critical mass concentrated in the Nigerian university system, the era of the Olubumi Sodipos, the Barry Hallens, the Pierre Vergers, of Akinsola Akiwowo, Wole Soyinka, Ade Ajayi, Takena Tamuno, Orisejolomi Thomas, Latunde Odeku, Abiola Irele, Olabiyi Yai, Wande Abimbola, when even the later luminaries Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal were beginning to find their feet enabled by the transformative intellectual culture of the then University of Ife, before the great exodus in which African Studies migrated to the US as arguably the global centre, the greatest concentration of impactful schoarship in the field.

You will observe I don't try to attack or ridicule your person. I focus on the issues.

I am very good at online attacks and insults and have even gone so far as creating a  website as a vehicle in an insult match I had with someone.

I constructed a scholarly essay in connection with the same insult match,"Aquatic Ancestry" by Kingsley Nnabuagha and the Fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft : A Study in Imaginative Convergence,'' the essay and thread of the match of which can be seen at that link, an essay later anthologised as part of scholarship on the US master of mystical horror H.P. Lovecraft. 

I have also written about insults as a literary genre in "Insults as Verbal Art :Between the Academic and the Snake : Brexit Comedy," ''Nigerian Insult Literature: Adeyinka Olarinmoye Crafting a Journey from Cocoa House to Lhasa Fever,'' and  ''The Beauty of Insults.''  

These days I don't expend energy engaging  in personal attacks or insults or put downs or anything that does not relate strictly to the subject in question.

I see myself as not being able to afford the time and energy.

I find irritating the behavior of  people  resorting  to such behavior in the context of intellectual discussion and as  demonstrating inadequacy to critically address the issues.

I see that style of yours as not respectful of your own person and of the pedigree you have been privileged to enjoy, specifically the Yoruba omoluabi ethos-the Yoruba ideal of human personality which includes delicate, mutually respectful  social  sensitivities within a  culture of refined speech, amplified by  the heritage of Great Ife. 

If you persist in that style that is an embarrassment for your heritage, I will have to ignore those posts in which those aberrations are demonstrated. 

Thanks.

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982AD0DB98C79F775EB3055A6F50%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.