Who am I? : Invocation of Teme-órú and So: Kalabari Philosophy at an Intercontinental Nexus: Adapting the Work of Nimi Wariboko

Cover Image

A example of the Japanese art form Ensō, by Peter Cutler, dramatizing the balance of creative spontaneity and controlled creativity in shaping a circle through the movement of a brush.

I am using the image in suggesting the open ended yet disciplined creativity vital for maximizing life’s opportunities as demonstrated by the philosophy of Nimi Wariboko.

Image source: Fine Art America.

My source for enso is the Wikipedia article “Enso.”

Both sources accessed 7th Sept. 2019.

Abstract

A dramatization of the existential significance of the philosophy of Nimi Wariboko through the dialogue of a person with himself.

Contents

Visual Framework

Cover Image

Interpretation of Cover Image

Contents

Introduction

Goal and Inspiration from Wariboko’s Work

Invocation

Method

Central Concepts

Inspiration from Various Sources

Sources

References

Introduction

Goal and Inspiration from Wariboko’s Work

This invocation is based on asking questions about my life, at the intersection of the transcendent and the immanent, that which is above existence as accessible to human beings and what constitutes existence as it is experienced by humanity.

How best may I understand and use the opportunities available to me as I organize my life in relation to my pursuit of a force I sense at the heart of my existence, is the underlying question of this meditation.

A power intimate but distant, throbbing within but ever receding, deliciously inspiring but remote from material and social contexts, enigmatic but compelling, calling from the vast distance of “ an ocean without shore and a shore without ocean” as the Islamic mystic Ibn ‘Arabi puts it in his 'Anqā' Mughrib, The Book of the Fabulous Gryphon, yet ablaze within the self withdrawn into itself.

The meditation is inspired by the convergence of these ideas in the philosophy of Nimi Wariboko as he weaves a dialogue between the classical thought of his native Kalabari, Christian theology, particularly Protestant and Pentecostal theology and Western philosophy.

The immediate motivation of the invocation is Wariboko’s penetratingly sensitive depictions of Kalabari thought, his correlations of this body of knowledge with other ideas and his explanations of these conceptions in ways that touch the depths of the human quest for ultimate meaning and practical direction in life’s journey.

The incantation is galvanized particularly by the inadvertent resonance of Wariboko’s formulations with philosophical and religious cultures worldwide beyond those referenced by himself.

The reflection adapts expressions of Wariboko and other writers by personalizing those expressions to refer to myself as an individual, a stance transferred to the reader as they read the text. Descriptions of my sources and of how I have used them comes after the invocation.

Invocation

Who am I?

Where do I stand

in relation to the possibilities

enabled by my own actions

by circumstances

and my reactions to them

by the social systems

intimate and distant

local and global

in which I live

by biology

and by other factors unknown?

Where do I stand

in the context of

possibilities

actualized

unactualised

excluded

infinite

unknown

known?

How can I know about

or imagine

alternatives not currently available to me

and take steps to attain what is yet inaccessible to me?

Can I build on ideas of my spirit

as a distinct expression

of the ground of consciousness?

My innermost person

as an individuation of the force or energy

that enlivens creation and beings at all levels of existence?

My essence

as a demonstration

of that which accents the interconnectedness

of everything in the universe?

My inward flame as

a revelation

of the spark of light animating consciousness?

My deepest interiority as

an expression

of the multi-leveled layers of consciousness

existing in all things

on all levels of being?

My ultimate depth

as embodying

the ability of forces of nature to communicate with each other

the ability of humans to communicate with forces in nature?

My radiant core

as a thread in the fabric which binds the universe together

giving the cosmos a sense of spiritual unity?

Spirit as depicted in Christianity

àse as characterized by the Yoruba

teme as understood by the Kalabari

sunsum as described by the Akan

Spanda as known to the Hindus

a universal force which expresses itself

as an individual consciousness

my personal spirit?

My interior abyss as a manifestation of Teme-órú as known by the Kalabari

the creative power

the inexhaustible ground of creativity

ecstatically overflowing into human activity.

My ultimate identity as a unique dramatization

of the pulsation of the ecstasy of divine consciousness.

My centre of consciousness as concentrating a vibration

one can sense inside oneself

as one's own personal spark of that huge, primordial life force.

My inner blaze as dramatizing

the energy behind the breath

the heartbeat

the movement of one's thoughts and feelings.

My most intimate interiority

as

embodying

a throb

a subtle beat

that is actually meditating me

a sentience

that is the source of all my inner experiences.

The nucleus of my existence

as an expression of the rhythm

the architecture of being

the internal dynamics

which it gives to form

the system of waves which it sends out towards Others

expressing itself

through the most material

the most sensuous means:

lines, surfaces, colours, volumes

in architecture, sculpture, painting

accents in poetry and music

movements in dance

dynamism in thought, calculation and construction

guiding all this concrete reality towards the light of the spirit.

Ori of the Yoruba, chi of the Igbo, So of the Kalabari

embodiment of ultimate possibility

the only one who can follow his devotee on a distant journey

without turning back

the one of whom it is said that no matter how far your journey may lead,

you will never meet a friend

more faithful,

more devoted

and

more attached to serving you.

I salute Spirit

teme, ultimate reality

the divine presence internal to world process

the groundless ground of human existence

the divine creativity coursing through modes of human sociality

the all-encompassing Spirit

manifested in my thinking, sensuous, and willing body

networked in the inside of a human:

bala, the life cord and power center

the line of connection between ultimate being and myself

sibi-bio oru, the spirit or god inside my head, brain and mind

the center of thinking, representing, interpreting, and reflecting

bio-ngbo, the center of the inside: the heart

the concentration of willing, feeling and judgment

thinking, feeling, willing

all working together.

Method

I use Wariboko’s expositions, in correlation with ideas from other ideational systems, in thinking through my circumstances and aspirations, my life’s journey and its strategies, a process grounded in calling upon inspiring ideas about the nature of the human being as centred in an infinite depth that achieves concentration in human consciousness and its existential expression, its dramatization in human motion within the nexus of space and time.

The invocation builds on Wariboko’s expositions of Kalabari concepts by adapting his explanations from various books, melding these with expressions from different schools of thought.

These schools are Awo Fa’lokun Fatunmbi’s Yoruba Ifa philosophy, Hindu Trika Shaivism and Negritude, the latter as expressed by Abiola Irele’s translation of strategic lines from the central Negritude theorist and poet Leopold Sedar Senghor.

The invocation thus aspires to generate a seamless flow of ideas evocative of a gestative unfolding from Wariboko’s Kalabari expositions, dramatizing their implicit intercontinental and intercultural resonance, thereby enriching the various ideological formations thus traversed across 20thto 21st century US, Nigerian, Senegalese, French, and 11th century Indian thought as expounded in 20-21st century contexts.

Central Concepts

The framing ideas in this invocation are the Kalabari concepts Teme-órú and So.

Teme-órú may be understood as the creative possibility enabling existence. So is the expression of this universal radiation in general and specific terms. As further developed by Wariboko, uppercase So refers to the total cosmos of possibilities, accessible and inaccessible, to humanity in general. Lowercase so consists in those possibilities available to humanity in terms of social groups and individuals.

It is possible to expand lower case so by drawing upon the resources of uppercase So.

Teme-órú and So are correlative, though not in an exact manner, with the concepts “transcendence” and “immanence.” The transcendent is that which is above existence as accessible to human beings. The immanent is what constitutes existence as it may be experienced by humanity.

Wariboko’s total body of work, across several books and some of his essays, may be understood as the exploration of So and so, of transcendence and immanence, and the traffic between them.

This is my immediate understanding of these rich ideas Wariboko approaches in his works from various perspectives, elucidated through a combination of anthropological, historical and speculative explanations across most of his books, though at particular length in such texts as The Depth and Destiny of Work.

Inspiration from Various Sources

This invocation may be seen as complementing my earlier “Invocation of Èṣù” as developing similar ideas in correlative ways from different ideational formulations. I therefore advance my aspiration of contributing to demonstrating the contemporary and timeless significance of classical African systems of cognition, expression and action.

I also perhaps come closer to the idea of building a unified system of prayer, reflection, ritual and application from these contributions in consonance with other systems.

I am inspired, among others, by the sublime development of a similar strategy by the Golden Dawn, the esoteric school whose seminal influence in Western esotericism is grounded in its magnificent interweaving of ancient Egyptian, Judaic, Christian, Hermetic, astrological and such less well known systems in Western esotericism as Enochian.

Like the deeply impactful Golden Dawn, and the even more influential Indian Upanishads where ideas about the intersection of self and cosmos are developed with particular beauty and power, I aspire to compile or create, or a combination of both, expressive forms that can be appreciated for their imaginative stimulation, their lyrical dramatization of humanity’s loftiest aspirations, even if those who engage these projections do not identify with all or some of the ideas articulated.

Sources

What I have done is adapt the expressions of other writers by personalizing those expressions to refer to myself as an individual, a stance transferred to the reader as they read the text.

The first line “Who am I?” responds to Wariboko’s discussion of personhood in Kalabari thought, particularly personhood as actualized in stages of maturity, as evoked by the expression tombo tombo so, “let a person become a person,” rising to the “expected and unexpected demands” of a situation and thereby affirming their humanity ( The Principle of Excellence, 43, note 8 ).

Wariboko’s thought may be seen as emphasizing the character of the self and even of the nature of the divine as unfolding through action.

From the second stanza beginning “Where do I stand” to the 12th stanza, “My essence as a demonstration,” is an adaptation of Wariboko’s expositions, often using his own words, except for my efforts at personalizing his depictions of general philosophical ideas.

From stanza two to stanza 9, the latter beginning with “alternatives not currently available to me” are adaptations of ideas laid out with particular explicitness in The Depth and Destiny of Work, chapter one, “Theory of God,” particularly the subsections “Knowledge of God” and “God as Set of All Possibilities,” pages 39-49.

Stanza 10, opening with “Can I build on ideas of my spirit” adapts and quotes from Ethics and Time, page 77, penultimate paragraph.

Stanza 11 adapts and quotes in the last two lines from Ethics and Society in Nigeria, page 69, paragraph 2.

Stanza 12 adapts and quotes in the last two lines from the same location.

From “My inward flame” in the 13th stanza to “My radiant core” in the 16th are adapted from Awo Fa’lokun Fatunmbi’s philosophy of Ifa, the Yoruba origin system of knowledge, in “Obatala:Ifa and the Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth” quoting his description of central concepts in his thought.

The 17th stanza, beginning “Spirit as depicted in Christianity” is an expansion of a quote from Ethics and Society in Nigeria, page 69, paragraph 2, by adding the Indian Spanda concept and the Christian idea of Spirit, the latter also central to Wariboko’s thought, and personalizing the passage by addressing it to the individual.

From the 18th stanza, opening with “My interior abyss” to stanza 22, beginning with “My most intimate interiority” is a reworking of the description of the Hindu Trika Shaivite school’s concept of Spanda from the website of the Spanda Foundation, a summation distilled from various specialist texts on the school.

I frame the magnificent imagery of the formulations in terms of a personalised voice engaging with them as an uplifting vision.

Stanza 23 beginning with “The nucleus of my existence” reproduces the original almost verbatim, though in a versified form as different from its original paragraph structure and except for the personalizing first line and the penultimate line used to expand the creative activities described.

This original is Abiola Irele’s wonderful translation in “What is Negritude?” in his The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (London:Heinemann, 1981) 67-88, 76, of Senghor’s summation of Negritude metaphysics from the latter’s Liberte I : Negritude et Humanisme (Paris Editions du Seuil, 1964) 212-15.

Stanza 24 opens and continues with my own expressions up till “the only one who can follow his devotee on a distant journey without turning back” which is a quotation from “The Importance of Ori”, an ese ifa, an Ifa literary form, anthologized in Landeg White and Jack Mapanje’s African Oral Poetry and in the website Oral Poetry from Africa, continuing with a quotation from a version of the 3rd Atrium initiation in the Western esoteric order The Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross.

From stanza 25, initiated with the personalizing “I salute Spirit,” my own formulation, to stanza 29, “thinking, feeling, willing,” is composed of quotations from Wariboko’s summations of the expression of Kalabari metaphysics in terms of the constitution human life in general and of the individual human person in particular.

Line three of stanza 25 “the divine presence internal to world process” quotes The Depth and Destiny of Work, page 44, paragraph one.

The next line, “the groundless ground of human existence” quotes page 238, paragraph one, of the same text.

The following line, “the divine creativity coursing through modes of human sociality” quotes page X, paragraph two, of the same book.

The next line, “the all-encompassing Spirit” quotes Ethics and Time, page 77, penultimate line.

The next two lines, “manifested in my thinking, sensuous, and willing body”

and “networked in the inside of a human” quote the last line on the same page of the same book.

The following stanzas, beginning from “bala, the life cord and power center”

till the last stanza “all working together” quote, with slight adaptations, the same book, page 78, paragraphs one and two.

This invocation is an unanticipated outcome of my forthcoming essay surveying the work of Nimi Wariboko, “Nimi Wariboko's Journey into Infinity : Vision, Strategy and Language in the Work of a Pentecostal Philosopher” and meant for a book on him edited by Toyin Falola, a project proving most fruitful for me.

References

Kalabari

Nimi Wariboko

Ethics and Society in Nigeria: Identity, History, Political Theory. Hope Avenue, Rochester : University of Rochester Press, 2019.

The Principle of Excellence : A Framework for Social Ethics. Lanham, Maryland:, Lexington Books, 2009.

The Depth and Destiny of Work: An African Theological Interpretation. Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press2008.

Islamic

Ibn ‘Arabi, 'Anqā' Mughrib, The Book of the Fabulous Gryphon, quoted by Stephen Hirtenstein in The Unlimited Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn ‘Arabi. Oxford : Anqa, 1999. 16.

Negritude and Ifa

Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. London: Heinemann, 1981.

Awo Fa’lokun Fatunmbi, “Obatala:Ifa and the Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth”. No publication date.

Leopold Sedar Senghor, Liberte I : Negritude et Humanisme. Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1964.

“The Importance of Ori” in Oral Poetry from Africa. Compiled by Jack Mapanje and Landeg White.Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1984. 124-128.

“The Importance of Ori,” in African Poems. Curated by Martin Kondwani White. Accessed 7th Sept. 2019.

Buddhism and Hinduism

“Enso,” Wikipedia. Accessed 7th Sept. 2019.

“Enso” by Peter Cutler. Fine Art America. Accessed 7th Sept. 2019.

“What is Spanda?,” Spanda Foundation. Accessed 7th Sept. 2019.

The Upanishads. My favourite translation is The Ten Principal Upanishads. Tr. Shree Purohit Swami and W.B Yeats. London: Faber and Faber, 1970.

Rosicrucianism

3rd Atrium Initiation Monograph. Greenwood Gate, Blackhill, Crowborough: Grand Lodge of the English Language Jurisdiction for Europe and Africa of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis. No publication date.

The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Ed. Israel Regardie. St Paul:Llewellyn,1988. The version I am familiar with.

Integrative

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, “Nimi Wariboko's Journey into Infinity : Vision, Strategy and Language in the Work of a Pentecostal Philosopher.” (Forthcoming).