Who am I?

Invocation of Teme-órú and So

Kalabari Philosophy at an Intercontinental Nexus

Adapting the Work of Nimi Wariboko

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

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 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.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/enso-zen-circle-15-peter-cutler.html

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enso

Both sources accessed 7th Sept. 2019.

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

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 Contents

Visual Framework

Cover Image 1

Interpretation of Cover Image 2

Abstract 3

Contents 4

Introduction 5

Goal and Inspiration from Wariboko’s Work 5

Invocation 6

Method 10

Central Concepts 10

Inspiration from Various Sources 11

Sources 12

References 15

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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withdrawn into itself.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.

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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?

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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

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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

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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.

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 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 20th to 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.

…………………………………in African Poems. Curated by Martin Kondwani White

https://africanpoems.net/gods-ancestors/the-importance-of-ori/ Accessed
7th Sept. 2019.
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Buddhism and Hinduism

“Enso.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enso Accessed 7th Sept.

2019.

“Enso” by Peter Cutler. Fine Art America.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/enso-zen-circle-15-peter-cutler.html
Accessed 7th Sept. 2019.

“What is Spanda?,” Spanda Foundation, https://spanda.org/who-we-

are/origin-of-name/ 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).

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