Mysticism and Paradox Between the Hindu Deity Shiva and the Orisha Spirituality Deity Eshu

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Mysticism and Paradox Between the Hindu Deity Shiva and the Orisha Spirituality  Deity Eshu

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju 

One of my favorite early morning readings is an invocation of Shiva, described as the creator of the universe by one strand of Hinduism,  a supplication by the 11th century thinker of the Trika School, Abhinavagupta.

I have often begun my day by carefully  reading those lines as rendered by  Lyne Bansat-Boudon and Kamaleshadatta Tripathi in their translation of An Introduction to Tantric Philosophy: The Paramarthasara of Abhinavagupta, lines I quote at https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10160915076173684&id=547978683&mibextid=Nif5oz

I find deeply moving the devotional depth of that passage, amplified by its acute sensitivity to the nature of the human mind, integrated in a soaring mystical aspiration, an intense desire to pass from the limitations of human awareness to unity with that which is "beginningless, unique, beyond the abyss, present in all that moves and all that moves not, the very self of every cognizer, a mass of consciousness solidified in the nature of the world".

Abhinavagupta declares to this Ultimacy
" I come to you in order to attain absorption in you".

Is it possible to achieve such absorption? To become one with what is understood as the ultimate reality?

That used to be one of my central goals.

"'Even after reaching such an exalted level of awareness, will the question of the origin of this ultimate creator be answered?", I now ask myself.

Are descriptions of union with the source of the universe not another diversion from questions spiritually oriented people and philosophers are unable to answer ?

The human person is disposed to question the rationale and origins of phenomena.

If God, Shiva or some other identity is described as the creator of the universe, what is the source of that creator?

Should the drive to investigate issues to their foundations cease at the point of claims of experiencing union with the source of the universe or perception of this source?

Can the deeply rooted human need to enquire into foundational origins and purposes be ever fully suppressed?

Is it possible for the logic of  the cosmos to terminate in a foundation that is it's own origin, it's own cause?

Hence I am developing an interpretation of the Yoruba origin Orisha spirituality deity Eshu as an image of ultimate reality as yet understood by humanity.

This image depicts ultimate reality as a paradox, the paradox that is the cosmos.

Beyond even adequate conceptualization and perhaps beyond full human understanding as human cognitive capacity is currently structured.

Eshu, who throws a stone today and hits a bird yesterday.

Eshu who sits on the skin of an ant.

Eshu who  is constricted in the room and verandah  but stretches to his satisfaction in a groundnut shell.

Eshu, who uniquely embodies ase, the creative dynamism unique to each existent as it pervades the cosmos, yet central to individual human self awareness, a unity of cosmic identity and human identity akin to that described by Abhinavagupta in relation to Shiva.

An interpretation of Eshu inspired by Hindu depictions of ultimate reality and the ultimate creator in terms of various deities as understood by devotees of each of  those deities, and by images from the Yoruba Orisha spirituality poem named in translation "Eshu, God of Fate" at the African Poems site.

I limp on towards the pull from the distant horizon, not limping, only because, like Eshu, one leg is planted in the material world and another in the spiritual universe, the zone of ultimate meanings, meanings resistant to full unfolding if such completeness of unfolding is possible in the first place, but beceause of a handicap inbuilt into my humanity, the ability to conceive of what is beyond me as a human being, the need to understand ultimate meanings and the seeming impossibility of fully gaining such understanding.

I am therefore limping, both empowered and disempowered, having legs to walk with but unable to walk properly, legs of the mind to think with but unable to carry thought to it's desired destination even in millennia of reflection on the same questions, as the human race simply circles, without resolving them,  those foundational issues about the logic of the universe.