Marry 5 wives or be jailed - Swaziland King orders country men - Adomonline.com
Toyin Falola
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Sent from my iPhone
> On Feb 11, 2022, at 3:45 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
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> Sent from my iPhone
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Toyin Falola
Great ones:
As scholars, we should not be caught trivializing issues like this. In a “beer parlor,” yes.
Eritrea faced that same challenge some years back. Demographic shifts occur and societies need to respond.
TF
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Toyin Falola
Great one:
I am not endorsing the policy, so as not to be understood. I am saying that, as scholars, let us come up with policy statements.
TF
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
I like the Swazi King. He strokes me as a real African King recommending the practice of a real African tradition, namely the polygamy - albeit voluntary, that was widely practised before the Christian missionaries came and destroyed everything. And still trying to wipe out indigenous African culture...
It’s the number, five that Tony Adepoju seems to be most worried about, that he humanly perhaps would not be able to cope with that amount of booty, simultaneously, that five wives would drain him? We (men) must admit that the Swazi King’s ultimatum, of life imprisonment, is infinitely less attractive. Maybe better to be married to five plain women than to spend the rest of your life behind bars
A good place to begin should be this untenable/ controversial view: Everyone should get divorced
Much better: Rabbi Manis Friedman on Marriage
For balance: “I was ever of the opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.” (The Vicar of Wakefield)
Probably, nothing disagreeable about such an opinion being expressed by a foursquare clergyman in the then - by present standards, under-populated English countryside – the clergyman, true to form and faithful to the first commandment which we find in Genesis 1 verse 28 where God the Father Almighty blessed our great grandparents and said to them,
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Surely, nothing disagreeable about God saying that to Adam and Eve, as a matter of fact, that's the very first thing that the conversion rabbi, Rabbi Meir Horden’s father-in-law said to me, when he didn’t even know me from Adam – he looked at me, pointed with his finger and said: “You must be fruitful and multiply! “- I looked behind me - just to make sure that it was indeed me that he was talking to - and there was no one there, but I had already come to the conclusion that in these modern times with the Holocaust as a permanent background and reminder that with world Jewry decimated by a loss of 6,000, 000, it must be the duty of the survivors and all those who come after them to replenish the earth. Is it any wonder then that the Orthodox and the ultra-orthodox - true to the commandment “to be fruitful and multiply” are those who have most children, the biggest families – and in Israel, it is that religious orthodox- ultra-orthodox entity that always wants to bag the Ministry of Housing in whatever Israeli government.
(Comparatively speaking isn’t mainland Africa also terribly underpopulated after the historical depletion through the slave trade - to the East and to the West not to mention, disease, witchcraft, tribal wars, and the oncoming ravages and famine to be caused by climate change?)
Today we are confronted by the sober understanding that outside of world Jewry, which accounts for less than 0.0 1% of the world’s population @ 9.2 billion souls since Adam & Eve, the first man and the first woman were created – and that everywhere, there are more women than men and that’s why the King of the Swazi is taking the bull by the horns. If only he were a little more radical - just as Bulan the King of the Khazars was radical enough to have decreed that all his subjects convert to Judaism, so too, it’s not too late for the King of Swaziland if he so desires and it is within his God-given power to decree that all his subjects convert to al Islam wherein the Divine legal limit is four wives and those that thine right hand possess, that is, four wives plus at least one, making it FIVE, under the roof of your house, and when it comes to concubinage since no legal limit is specified in Islam, we are to assume an unlimited number: problem solved. Or maybe even more problems, should the wives, the Lady Shakaras conspire, get together, team up against their husband and depose him….
Here are some recommendations from Sanusi Lamido Sanusi on education, marriage, poverty
Sometime in the early 1980s in Nigeria, a decree was issued by the governor of one of the Northern States that all single women living alone had to get married within a month – or else!
The governor of course knows what Islam says, and no doubt he was also aware of the dire economic situation for most households in Nigeria then, and therefore this reality: Na wa to be husband - the refrain in that song is “na money “(the problem) but apparently that cannot be the problem in Swaziland since His His Majesty says that he will foot the bill:
“Here’s the deal, marry at least five wives and you’re assured that the government will pay for the marriage ceremonies and buy houses for them.”
So, what’s the problem? The main problem could be mass immigration of men, once they get wind of the good news….
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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segun...@gmail.com
On Feb 12, 2022, at 2:43 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Mass immigration indeed.
When I was circa thirteen years old and still at the age of puberty and very interested in the geography of Africa thanks to our inspirational geography teacher Mr. S.A.S. Adams, after some extensive research I had decided that I would eventually settle down in Swaziland which according to my research had the most congenial climate and natural vegetation etc., that would make it the best place where I would achieve my life ambition of breeding horses. Post- puberty, with the sap rising, the current Swazi king’s latest offer could have been a most welcome additional incentive.
It could be a temporary measure to ease a situation that’s not so good for the Swazi women, the family being the fundamental unit of society – so wrote Muammar Gaddafi in chapter 19 of his The Green Book.
For all we know, this is a temporary decree from His Majesty King Mswati III king of Eswatini //King of Swaziland, in consultation with his wise advisers as how to best solve the problems arising from the demographic imbalance, if, to rectify the imbalance the solution has to be the new ratio of 1: 5, one man to five women. In Caracas, Venezuela in the 1970s the ratio was 1: 15, one man to fifteen women. Back there then, it must have been a ratio that must have caused the men to be strutting around like peacocks - awesome little john being in such great demand, each and every man must have been strutting around feeling like the King of Swaziland.
In some parts of today's world, serial monogamy is displacing polygamy. Think of the plight of widows in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria...
Cornelius Hamelberg
If it’s Swaziland that we’re talking about, we could keep it that way.
Endowed with such riches The King of Swaziland with such a formidable car collection, 15 wives and over 100 children, the country’s economy cannot be said to be on doubt: he is a real King!
That he is so generous that he wants even those who cannot afford it to be happily married and has volunteered to pay all expenses, he should be praised as an example that other kings should follow, if they can also afford to.
As always, he asks interesting questions, such as this one.
“Why not encourage immigration from men from elsewhere?” enquires Toyin Adepoju
Although there are many lonely, sexually-starved and more than a few sexually crazy women in Western Europe, even the dating sites are multiplying is not enough to supply the shortages, resulting in many women still suffering such deprivation of what is essentially a human right, with a special emphasis on Articles 16 and 17 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
BTW, I can’t imagine any of the monarchs in Europe making the same kind of announcement: “ Here’s the deal, marry at least five wives and you’re assured that the government will pay for the marriage ceremonies and buy houses for them!” - or “let us encourage Male immigration from Africa and the Middle East to take care of our excess, long-suffering unmarried women and free-wheeling electrons - we will pay for their marriage ceremonies and buy houses for them!” . This would unleash xenophobia - the resistance - the likes of which we have never seen before, with mass demonstrations, mammoth crowds of not only "extreme right" marching, waving their placards and screaming, “ They are coming here to take our women – our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our houses, our jobs, our livelihoods, our culture, our future! ”
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
"Serial monogamy"
"Serial monogamy"It comes with so much pain, it seems though.Broken hopes.Perhaps marriage needs to be rethought in the light of history.How much investment does society put into formal education about the arts of amorous and erotic relationships?Little.People are schooled in other things but along those lines, they are left to learn largely by trial and error.The Efik of Nigeria, it seems, and other African ethnic groups whose names I don't recall, try to rectify that through training directed separately at women and men, a lot of it done in secrecy and perhaps yet to be recorded, some of it lost with time, particularly through the effects of colonialism and Christianity, the latter of which is not the richest source of information about that aspect of human life.These techniques could be studied, distilled, systematised and adapted to other contexts.Hindu Tantra, as in the work of Abhinavagupta, who opens some major works of his with a celebration of the erotic and amorous union of his mother and father as embodiments of the God Shiva and the Goddess Shakti, birthing him whose heart beats in rhythm with the heart of cosmos, an image framing a theology he elaborates from various angles in his Tantraloka, including a ritual meant to actualize this vision in aspirant's lives, has developed powerful ideas and practices which Western admirers are adaptating but I don't know how far they go beyond the focus on sex, on which Abhinavagupta had some sublime insights, as in his famous Tantraloka chapter 10 in which men and women in erotic encounter are seen as the worshipper and the worshipped, erotic organs as ritual instruments which catch fire in the heat of passion, leading to a conflagaration in which the senses are united, a convergence understood in terms of the unity of the cosmos in Shiva, a deity who is both transcendent and immanent, the flame and the heat of the flame, as Abhinavagupta puts it in chap 1 of that book.I wonder if any culture has gone beyond Hindu Tantra in the spiritual understanding of the erotic, exemplified by deities who both transcend material existence and embrace it's passions, unifying it's seeming contradictions.Tripurasundari, Beauty of the Three Cities of Consciousness, buttocks like hillocks, as it's stated in the Tripurasundari Ashtakam, the hair of whose head descending , and the hair from her navel ascending, converging, as the waters of the blue Yamuna seem to swallow the immensity of the sky, her navel both the midpoint of her body and akin to a cosmic pivot, created the cosmos out of a thread of her garments, yet the most decrepit man, unskilled in the arts of love, favoured by a side glance from her, becomes so alluring women race after him, their bossoms heaving, their clothes bursting, as it's described in the Soundaryalahari, the Billowing Waves of the Ocean of Beauty, the navel image as I depicted it here enhanced by ideas in Indian aesthetics about the erotic and cosmological significance of the female navel.In the modern context, an industry of books, online advisers, therapists, medical interventionists and others has grown around the subject of amorous and erotic relationships, but it still remains largely an informal, uncoordinated network of knowledge, which needs to be given the kind of organisational attention given to other disciplines.So much to learn.Let's make love, not war, as someone put it, although love causes it's own conflicts.ThanksToyin
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
When you don’t go too far into the abstract and the esoteric - mostly beyond the non-specialist's ken, either for our edification or just for your own gratification, then in my opinion, what you so graciously acknowledge in Salihu Moh. Lukman applies to you too: “the power of creative persistence.”
This morning I watched Gloria + Osas: Edo Nigerian Traditional Wedding which like most African and Indian staged weddings can turn out to be a costly affair. Since there is such a high rate of divorce among the Hausa, I wonder if the wedding celebrations are also very costly affairs.
I suppose that marriages in Africa are more stable. In modern Europe where the woman is mostly economically Independent, she doesn’t have to put up with too much impudence or nonsense from her hubby. This is also true of the African wife in Sweden, when she's tired of him she can stab herself with a broken piece of beer bottle then call the police on him and tell them, “He’s threatening my life”, as a result of which they whisk him away, end of story.
As I understand it, the serial monogamy I have in mind is more of a crisis in the Western hemisphere, modern Western Civilisation, where European cultural chauvinists think that their marriage norms and wedding vows are the gold standard for the rest of mankind. They, and paradoxically, the Islamophobes and some of the rabid unchristian missionaries far from being humble – the way the Quran has described the best among them in Surah Al-Ma'idah, Ayat 82, love to talk about how many wives the Prophet of Islam salallahu alaihi wa salaam, had, of course not as many as the champion, King Solomon the wisest who had more than 700 and a few hundred more concubines) and yet, they themselves are serial monogamists, they get married to women, sometimes, in rapid succession, one after the other. It’s often here today and gone tomorrow. From, a Christian perspective, I wonder which is better, polygamy or serial monogamy?
A rabbi who started a course in marriage, gave as his rationale - to drive a car you need a driving licence, don’t you? The idea is that after you graduate from his classes, you are awarded a diploma, the equivalent of a marriage driving licence so that hopefully, you won’t be a menace on the marriage bed…
As to the forced marriages that the West love to yap about,, on the other side of the coin there are women entrapped in what you refer to as “the pain” sometimes unable to escape because the husband won’t give her a get - a bill of divorcement…
Among the Hindus, astrologically calculated compatibility plays an important role when getting married...
As everybody in the Wild West knows, the Hindus have their erotic sculptures in Hindu temples, their Kama Sutra and the Ananda Ranga, all of these veritable nightmares to missionaries and “the missionary position”,, I’m afraid that I don’t know anything about that sort of tantra, I have mostly practised celibacy – and this too, absolutely during my ashram stays at Ganeshpuri in 1977 and 1979, and at the Deville in the Catskill Mountains in Upper State New York in 1976., the whole point of the Avadhut yogi and the Avadhuta Gita, through certain practices, by some kind of capillary attraction to get the seminal fluid to flow upwards – and to nourish the brain… Baba Muktanada used to say, “The seminal fluid is more precious than dollars, don’t waste it – when I left Gansehpuri a friend thought that we should go and relax and chill out at Rajneesh’s joint at Poona, but I wasn’t interested...
Cornelius Hamelberg
There’s so much misunderstanding in the world. Now, if somebody thinks that he’s here to correct everything that’s wrong then he’d have no time to do anything else, after starting with himself. About a year ago, quite accidentally , I met a bunch of Mormon Missionaries to Sweden all looking nice and polite and well scrubbed in their skirts and suits and ties – but when somehow the conversation turned to Solomon’s Shir Hashirim / song of songs , the leader of the missionary gang wanted to convince me that it was basically pornographic. I tried to talk to him about metaphor and symbolism – as in much of Sufi poetry, but to no avail..
You “wonder if any culture has gone beyond Hindu Tantra in the spiritual understanding of the erotic, exemplified by deities who both transcend material existence and embrace it's passions, unifying it's seeming contradictions.”
Hopefully, the kind of curiosity that makes you wonder will result in your investigating the matter, not just theoretically, but practically even experientially.
I sent this message to my friend Peter Bonde on 5th Feb 2022:
https://www.facebook.com/Sri.Ramana.Maharshi.Teachings%20/posts/5061801017206068
He replied: Mon 23:18
Peter
Tell me; Do you want to study ice-cream at the library or do you want to go to the shop/bar and eat one?
Peter is a count, you know (Swedish Royalty) - we have been friends since before the big meet at Copenhagen in 1973 - there too ,extraordinary things happened...
This is crucial to understanding Hindu culture: Children in Hinduism
Whereas little Tom Smith may occasionally resist the idea of going to church / Sunday school, I imagine that with great anticipation little Krishna must be looking forward to the daily visits to his local temple, where he will squeeze his mother’s hand as he enquires, “Who is she”? “What are they doing?”
Is it any wonder that at 1.41 billion India (ceaseless sex) is the second most populated country in the world. Rejoin India with Pakistan (227 million) and China would come second with only 1.44 billion). Don’t forget that the Chinese also have their Chinese sex manuals. This means that future China- Africa relations will inevitably result in a new Pan- African tribe: The Afro-Chinese….
The” erotic images” in those Hindu Temples are not there for mere decoration –daily, they impact on the consciousness and the lives of the worshippers /admirers and we may confidently surmise that those erotic sculptures depicting various phases of sexual copulation/states of pleasure must impact on even the most prudish tourist viewers ( male and female created He them) who feel more at home at St. Peter’s in Rome
For Toyin Adepoju :
Ibn 'Arabi & The Unity of Being
Shah Ni'matullah Wali & The Ni'matullahi Sufi Order
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
In Judaism and in al-Islam, idolatry is strictly forbidden.
Hopefully, as a scholar of religion with so much “exposure to spiritualities of various kinds across space and time” you have probably heard or read and understood this order given by the Almighty to His Chosen People:
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”
More explicitly, Shemot/ Exodus 20: 4:
5. You shall neither prostrate yourself before them nor worship them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a zealous God, Who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me,
6. and [I] perform loving kindness to thousands [of generations], to those who love Me and to those who keep My commandments.
I guess (only guess) that’s why you find Jewish sculptors mostly doing abstract work. There are no icons, or portraits of Moses or effigies of Jesus hanging on the cross, in the synagogues...
Chagall is one of the more interesting Jewish painters and seems to be featured more than any other, in official Jewish buildings such as the community house in Stockholm and in various offices etc. that you’d be likely to visit anywhere in Europe, Brexit-Britain, Brazil, the United States. Egypt, even Morocco...
Beyond all the anthropomorphism represented by erotic sculptures, as a scholar of religion who has the cosmos as God’s field of consciousness, just as you say “There is always more to learn.”
I suppose that it would take more than a single lifetime of serious study to be sufficiently qualified to publish as an authority on the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy or the Talmud or the three schools of Buddhism (some people joke that even if the historical Lord Buddha, Gautama Buddha had spoken non-stop for a hundred years, that wouldn’t be enough to cover the sayings, texts and sermons attributed to him) or – as a non-practitioner to be an interesting expert or almost an expert on Sufi Orders or Kabbalah or Hasidism which incidentally has strong roots in Western Ukraine
Whilst I was at the ashram in Gansehpuri in 1977 and 1979, we chanted Guru Gita ( in Sanskrit) every day. Guru Gita is a dialogue between Shiva and his consort Parvati I still remember a few dozen slokas. We also recited and mediated on Vishnu Sahasranamam and Shiva Mahimna Stotra, as part of the daily agenda
This your fascination with gods and goddesses, well, just for the record, moving from theory to actual practice, I remember the exact day, date and time when my Kundalini was awakened. I received Shaktipat diksha from Baba Muktananda in June 1975 but my kundalini was awakened one evening in July 1975, after my visit to the Vajreshwari Temple where I offered Saraswati some rice cake and thereafter returned to the ashram to find Baba giving Satsang in the main courtyard – we hadn’t seen him for over a week, not even when Diana Ross came to the ashram for his darshan) I was even more surprised when he waved his walking stick at me - and I understood him to be saying to me, “ Welcome. So, you have been to pay your respects to her!” I have described what happened next with my Kundalini awaking at the Mulhadara , also known as the earth chakra , somewhere here
Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas - Plato is a friend but truth is a greater friend ( paraphrase of a passage from Aristotle’s Ethics)
You know, talk is cheap. So is waffle.
As the Quran puts it, “Say “Allah” and leave them to their idle talk” (Babble)
Whether it’s Hinduism or Buddhism or Christianity or Sufism, I think that one has to have been a disciple under a qualified teacher for some time before one can be a Guru which is very different from being a professor - for yourself or of yourself.
https://www.facebook.com/38140379946/videos/623669095407813
Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
More advice from Sadhguru
BTW I also enjoy the Mullah Nasruddin Stories a good equivalent of Wofa Akwasi’s legendary mentor, Baba Ijebu. “Marry 5 wives or go to jail” sounds like the title of a good Mullah Nasruddin story.
If Wofa Akwasi could put Pa Ijebu’s collected witticisms on paper, I’m sure it would be a best-seller
Cornelius Hamelberg
Most reasonable Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
You say that you want to know and I suppose that’s why you ask:
“The concept of the necessity of a guru for spiritual practitioners is made more complex when one asks- who were the gurus of Jesus, Muhammed and Moses, for example?”
Simple: Jesus is the son of God.
The Prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa salaam got messages from Allah / God, through the Angel Gabriel
God Himself directed Moses directly; spoke to Moses, face to face.
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto was taught by a maggidI too believe in life on other planets, other realms. I joke not.
Jesus has come and gone and for sure, is coming back. You should be looking forward to the rapture if you’re still here.
Freud has also come and only gone.
Did you ever come across Nine Theories of Religion by Daniel L. Pals?
I was brought up to speed at somebody’s 21st-year birthday party this evening, with this elastic piece of titbit from
It begins
“A joke on this week's Torah portion from Prof. Richard Elliott Friedman:
Moses walks into a psychiatrist's office. He says, “Doc, last night I dreamed I was the Ohel Moed.” He comes in the next day and says, “Last night, I dreamed I was the Mishkan.” The doctor says, “The problem is you're two tents.”
Listen to Prof. Friedman tell the joke in his lecture at UCSD, June 2013, on the historical exodus here “
Oluwatoyin,
Muhammad Iqbal, a big round of applause! Surendranath Dasgupta , yes Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, yes, and fast forward Edward Said!I’m still reading the Acts of the Apostles for the very first time and savouring it slowly, casting my mind back to when I was in Ephesus in Turkey in the last week of March 2015 from where I followed the Nigerian Elections and celebrated Brother Buhari’s victory big time with some Iranians who were staying at the same hotel (following latest developments in Nigeria for two weeks, from Turkey, actually cost me £400 - I had thought that my phone had been using a free Wi-Fi at the hotels).
Just as you imagined about our dear Siddha yogi Milarepa up in the Tibetan mountains, so too reading about Paul in Ephesus, I sometimes imaginatively try to cast my mind back to what it must have been like two thousand years ago when he was there in those relatively primitive conditions – I visited the amphitheatre (a relatively small amphitheatre) where Christians were fed to the lions; it’s located just about three hundred metres away from what remains of the ancient temple of Artemis which was the epicentre of religious life in Ephesus before Paul arrived. Most importantly we visited the Basilica of St. John the Beloved Apostle, where I sat and meditated for a while before taking off 100 metres to the East of him to the Basilica of the Theotokos after which many supernatural things happened that night.
Right now I’m thinking of how this excerpt from Chapter 19 could apply to you:
“God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
13 Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.”
Dear Oluwatoyin, and whilst you’re at it please don’t forget that Plato is also Tunji Olaopa’s friend.
Mr Adepoju asks, “Why should it take more than a lifetime of study to write authoritatively on any aspect of any religion? “-
The fact is, it’s Toyin Adepoju I had in mind, not Tom Sawyer. Someone must have been born way back in the eighteenth century, to have consumed all the buks that you have been referring to.
It’s Toyin Adepoju I had in mind, not Tom Sawyer
Adepoju who always wants to be taken seriously, exactly as he presents himself:
The doyen of Western Philosophy and all esoteric subjects under the moon and the sun,
Simultaneously – like the Jack of trades and master of none:
Ifa, Kabbalah, Hasidism Sufism, the left and right-hand paths of Hindu tantra, the six schools of Hindu philosophy, the three main schools of Buddhism, Wicca, witchcraft, Black and White Magic,
Looka here: Internet Sacred Text Archive Home
I’m now joining Pastor David O Adebayo by Zoom and will get back to you as soon as possible to tell you a little about Yantras, mandalas, Islamic calligraphy, and eventually about Siddha Yoga etc. etc...and hopefully, to address/ straighten you out about some other outstanding matters
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Cornelius Hamelberg
Most Disciplined Oluwatoyin,
It’s 5.25 a-m, over here in Stockholm. In the long list you churn out only Abiola Irele taught me directly, in Ghana, in 1970 and of course his most important work, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. With some gurus,( Siddhas, Tibetan Buddhists, diverse Sufis, you get the transmission live and direct. You should try Guru-bhava, sometime...
Now that you’ve raised a new set of issues, I’ll have to get back to you with some of the yada yada that I promised about yantras, mandalas, Islamic calligraphy, and eventually about Siddha Yoga etc. etc. a little later, after this...
I was actually replying to what I understood as your main general idea as stated at the very beginning of your previous posting: “To each religion, their own orientations.” -
The Quran is defined by the same polemic: Quran 2.256:
“ There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejecteth false deities and believeth in Allah hath grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower. “
Consider Bishop Krister Stendahl’s three rules...
You say that “Having a guru can be priceless, but it's not for everyone “
I suppose that’s what the devil would say too, and for once, I agree with you absolutely. For example, as you yourself must readily agree at least by definition, even by the standards of Divine Mathematics by which Three = One, or according to any pedantic, obtuse, literalist, Gradgrindian logic or Toyin Adepoju flavoured or perfumed hermeneutics not everybody can be a member of The Holy Trinity
You are familiar with the story of Rumi’s first meeting with Shams Tabrizi. Four versions of that first meeting between them are narrated here
You were insisting earlier, that “The concept of the necessity of a guru for spiritual practitioners is made more complex when one asks- who were the gurus of Jesus, Muhammed and Moses, for example?”
By which I understand that lurking deep down is the idea that you should be recognised as an Ifa guru, a Babalawo without having been a disciple, without having undergone the rigorous training required to be a Babalawo, that you should be appointed a full professor without having served for a while as half-professor. By which I do not mean to say that you wanna reap that which you did not sow; nor is the Almighty going to cross-examine you on Kant, or Bishop Berkeley : You may be examined though on some of what you did with the booty...
By the way, according to some Islamic traditions Moses had a “guru” known as Khidr
Please check out Laurence Galian and his meeting with Khidr
This ought to interest you too, his The Centrality of Divine Feminism in Sufism
I think that where we begin to disagree/ part company is some of the ambiguous/ ambivalent / questions implicit in statements such as
“What is being developed by Sufism, Kabbalah or Hasidism, for example, that is beyond understanding by anyone who applies themselves, with or without practising those religions? “
It’s a language problem really and that’s why I don’t understand that question, but I would understand the question better if you reframed it to read, e.g. “ Are you suggesting that I cannot arrive at the state of Buddhist enlightenment, such as that attained by the Buddha or understand that concept of “enlightenment” without following the path of the Buddha?”
My answer should be as good as yours: How am I supposed to know that?
Emanuel Swedenborg // Emanuel Swedenborg a leading scientist of his day writes here
“The Divine in heaven which makes heaven is love because love is spiritual conjunction. It conjoins angels to the Lord and conjoins them to one another, so conjoining them that in the Lord's sight they are all as one. Moreover, love is the very being [esse] of everyone's life; consequently, from love both angels and men have life. Everyone who reflects can know that the inmost vitality of man is from love since he grows warm from the presence of love and cold from its absence, and when deprived of it he dies. 14-1 But it is to be remembered that the quality of his love is what determines the quality of each one's life. “
https://www.sacred-texts.com/swd/hh/hh01.htm
I read the first part of his Heaven and hell, many years ago and seem to remember that the phenomena that he describes in the first part correspond to the kinds of phenomena that a yogi experiences in the earlier, more unpleasant stages of his spiritual journey.
I’m now going to have a glass of lemon juice….
Later.
Cornelius Hamelberg
With regard to the doubts expressed in your last sentence, I should
like to refer you to
Since you have made mention of him so many times, I’m sure you know a little about
Ibn Arabi's view of the Prophet Muhammad salallahuh alaihi wa salaam
and also about
and e.g. Majlisi on the Nur Muhammad
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Cornelius Hamelberg
I don’t know who you think that you are talking to. Spinoza? Perhaps, you should be “having” the kind of intellectual discussion that you want to pursue on this stage, with the likes of Slavoj Zizek or Sam Harris
Hopefully, not even the donkey carrying a load of books should start with the assumption that in order to understand the four noble truths , he has to attain nirvana, or that in order to understand Islam he has to be the Prophet of Islam salallahu alaihi wa salaam or that to understand Christianity he has to be born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or that in order to understand himself he has to learn the Hebrew alphabet or in order to know who he is he has to look into the stagnant pool to worship his own reflection.
Two more “personalities”, not mistaken identities or misunderstood ideas:
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2022 8:19 AM
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Re – that I don’t know who Adepoju thinks that he’s talking to. Well, I’m not Spinoza (I know all about him) and I’m not one of the atheists, I’m not an academic/ scholar/ intellectual. Exactly as Bugging' Out puts it in Do The Right Thing : “I'm just a struggling black man trying to keep my dick hard in a cruel and harsh world”
Just the other day Tony Adepoju presented a very accommodating definition of Professor that would easily include himself. Here’s what the cosmological Adepoju said :
“Olukotun is a "profe-ssor" in the original German understanding of the term, according to one view, a person professing a vision, a vision grounded in breadth and depth of knowledge from which a glowing vision is distilled, a vision constituting a perception of the universe from the matrix of knowledge unique to that individual.”
I suppose that in a sense someone who professes some kind of faith, could be called a “professer”. Once upon a time in the history of mankind, during the phase of prosecution known as The Inquisition they lined them ( the professers and suspected professers) all up for execution. Of course, you know who the bigots, scumbags “they” are and were.
Because there are professors and professors there’s always the danger of mistaken identity, that “Professor Hamelberg” could be referring to this one.
Will the real Professor Hamelberg please stand up!
Some Professors of religion and some Bishops, clergy etc., don’t practise their religion, they only teach it and say, “don’t do as do, do as I say!”. There was an unprecedented case in Sweden, recently recently.
That was a pretty hefty list:
“theological propositions, injunctions, caveats,
fatwas, beatifications, declarations,
warnings, conditionalities,
ventriloquism, cacophonous
contradictions”
Why does Gloria in Excelsis so deliberately and so wantonly omit consequences such as excommunication (poor Spinoza) and execution (poor Hallaj al Mansur) and hudood punishments for fornication (for example, in Pakistan under Zia-ul Haqq
Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2022 1:20 PM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Cc: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
On Feb 16, 2022, at 13:27, Cornelius Hamelberg <Cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAFYPD-QJJB-HjK_u298Lxa7qdQb3Bwm9Kf2yBeJD4i6stv7nrw%40mail.gmail.com.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I’m at all not worried about you, I’m sure that when we finally meet face to face, we will be good enough buddies and I may even be your best man by the time Anna is through with nailing you down. What I’m not happy about is the way that you guys continue to gang up on Dr Isa Ali Pantami when you know that his CV testifies that he’s so eminently qualified to be doing well as Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy and that by all accounts he has all the pedagogic requirements necessary to discharge his duties in the areas of the professorship that he has been appointed to.
With more technically qualified people in charge of running sections of government ministries. you should not have to be praying for something as common as electric light which the whole world enjoys.
I suppose that with the need for electric light satisfied you would also be better able to relate to this power message LET THERE BE LIGHT, especially if you have the patience to listen to the end...