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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems Compcros "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

Theories and Practices of Cognition

Sense Perception and Metaphysical Integration

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Western, Asian, Islamic and African Thought

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Abstract Sense perception enables both pleasure and knowledge by revealing the variety of the world, as the Greek philosopher Aristotle insightfully states. Could perception of the variety of the world through the senses facilitate an understanding of cosmic unity? Aristotle's presentation of this question frames this comparisons of the manner in which the Hindu school of Sri Vidya, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, Yoruba and Igbo philosophy and the Western esoteric thinker Dion Fortune respond to this abiding theme of reflective encounter with the cosmos. The essay begins by placing this discussion in the context of my inter-cultural exploration of theories of perception.

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Contents 1. Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Correlations Western Thought : From Aristotle to Lakoff Asian Thought : Tantra and Zen Buddhism African Thought : Yoruba and Igbo Philosophies Theory and Experience Exploring Dion Fortune Yoruba Theory of Perception as Foundational Interpretive and Integrative Template 2. Sensory Cognition and Metaphysical Integration Aristotle and Sri Vidya Immanuel Kant Correlating Space and Time in Terms of the Celestial Bodies and the Human Mind

Correlating the Sublime in Nature and the Character of the Human Mind

Correlating the Sublime in Terrestrial and Celestial Nature and the Constitution of the Human Mind

Forms of the Sublime and the Relationship of Inner and Outer Cosmos

Correlating Aristotle, Kant and Srividya 3. Moving from Theory to Experience

4. Moving from Experience to Theory

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1. Introduction: Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Correlations This essay is part of a series, presented in my Facebook Notes and on Blogger, academia.edu and Scribd, and listed at the bottom of this essay, that begins with aphoristic summations on Yoruba theories of perception and continues with a chart visualising relationships between Yoruba, Igbo, Hindu Srividya and Trika thought and a number of Western thinkers and schools of thought. These relationships are centred in an understanding of the senses as platforms for pursuing an integrated perception of existence. Correlations between sensory perception and metaphysical integration have been developed at length, in different ways, in Western, Asian, African and Islamic thought, these being four major cultural systems I am acquainted with at different levels of depth and breadth. Western Thought In Western thought, integration of sense perception and metaphysical unity is demonstrated in a temporal sequence of thinkers from ancient Greece to the present. Some of the more prominent of such thinkers are Aristotle, Plotinus, Immanuel Kant, the English Romantics and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384322 B.C.E) develops relationships between sense perception and abstract reflection, pursuing knowledge of the principle underlying the variety of phenomena perceived by the senses. The Egyptian philosopher Plotinus (204/5 270 C.E.), whose work deeply influenced the Western tradition, but did not impact African thinkers outside the cosmopolitan culture of his time, describes sense perception of the beautiful as enabling a ladder leading to apprehension of beauty as a metaphysical foundation of existence. The English Romantics (18th to 19th centuries) depict beauty as a stimulus to sensitivity to the essence of being. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant ( 1724 1804 ) describes the Sublime as catalysing an appreciation of the simultaneous minuteness of human being within the spatial and temporal scope of the cosmos and an expansion of self inspired by the ability to contemplate such grandeur. The philosophy of embodied cognition, as represented by the work of US cognitive linguist George Lakoff (b. 1941) and US philosopher Mark Johnson

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(b.1949) describes human embodiment as shaping the character of human though Asian Thought Relationships between sense perception and metaphysical unity in Asian thought may be summed up in terms of the techniques of immersion and withdrawal. Immersion involves indulgence in the pleasure enabled by the senses. Withdrawal is demonstrated in withdrawing attention from sensory stimuli while recreating the effects of such stimuli through the imagination. Through immersion, one aspires to penetrate to the reality underlying the form that stimulates the sensory response. In withdrawing from sense perception into imaginative recreation of sensory effects, an imaginative universe evocative of the reality understood to underlie what is perceived by the senses is constructed by the mind. Immersion and withdrawal may both be employed in the same context. Both immersion and withdrawal are used in order to arrive at the realities underlying the phenomena that stimulate sensory responses. A central body of ideas and practices building on the senses as paths to perception of the reality underlying the phenomena that stimulate the senses is Tantra, emerging in India from the 5th century AD. Tantra describes the human body as a microcosm of the metaphysical structure of the cosmos. Another is Zen Buddhism, emerging in China from the 6th century, which describes sense perception, in conjunction with meditation, as a trigger for awakening insight into the ultimate meaning of existence. Islamic Thought The movement from sense perception to perception of the unity of being in Islamic thought may be described in terms of the two poles represented by the understanding of ultimate reality in terms of geometric abstraction and in terms of the human form. Geometric evocations of cosmic unity are central shaping devices in Islamic visual and architectural art, magnificently described by Titus Burckhardt in The Arts of Islam: Language and Meaning (1976), a remarkable presentation in spite of limitations it might demonstrate as indicated by Oleg Grabar's review of the

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book in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Oct., 1977), pp. 204-205. Cyrus Ali Zargar argues in Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn 'Arabi and 'Iraqi (2011), that the work of these thinkers represents a view in which "divine beauty and human beauty are seen as one reality". African Thought: Yoruba and Igbo Philosophies The most explicit correlation between sense perception and insight into cosmic unity known to me in African thought is by Anenechukwu Umeh on Igbo philosophy of perception as evident in the esoteric discipline Afa, described in his After God is Dibia.Vols 1 and 2 (1998). Umeh describes Igbo theory of perception as based on the relationship between ose naabo, the eyes with which the material world is perceived, and ose ora, the eye with which both the material world and the world of spirit are perceived in an integrative vision. The perceptual capacity of ose ora reaches a climax in the perception of the unity of being within the ambit of eternity. Umeh presents this conception of vision in basic terms which he does not elaborate upon. The possibilities of elaboration he does not develop may be seen as provided in the similarities between the ideas he presents and Babatunde Lawal's description of Yoruba theory of perception in wrn: Representing the Self and Its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art(2001). Lawal describes this in terms of the distinction between oju lasan, "the ordinary eye" or basic visual perception, consisting of rudimentary interpretation of the significance of visual phenomena, and oju inu, "the inward eye", a penetrative grasp of the meaning of visual forms, a cognitive continuum ranging from the most elementary forms of sense perception to include, among other possibilities, critical thinking, imagination and extra-sensory perception. Correlating the similarities between the accounts of Igbo and Yoruba theories of visual perception by Umeh and Lawal, one may understand Lawal's account as providing a perceptual sequence that may eventuate in the perception of cosmic unity described by Umeh as the climatic point of knowledge. This possibility in relation to Yoruba theory of perception is demonstrated by the Yoruba expression by an unnamed babalawo, adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, the Yoruba knowledge system, "Aiku pari iwa" quoted by Wande Abimbola in "Iwapele: The Concept of Good Character in Ifa Literary Corpus" ( 1975, 393) , and which may be translated as "deathlessness or immortality consummates [essential ] being or existence", suggesting a transcendence of the

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spatio-temporal limitations of material existence in terms of eternity, a quality central to Umeh's description of the climax of vision in Igbo Afa thought. This idea in relation to Yoruba thought is reinforced by Susanne Wenger's (1915-2009) aesthetics, grounded in Yoruba thought, on appreciation of nature as enabling a participation in a mode of being that is both primal and timeless, as described in Rolf Brockmann and Gerd Htter's Adunni : A Portrait of Susanne Wenger ( 1994). The correlative insights represented by Yoruba and Igbo theories of perception are particularly helpful in integrating ideas from various schools of thought on relationships between sense perception and metaphysical integration. This integrative quality emerges from the specificity of reference of the Yoruba and Igbo theories to human biology and the correlation between this biological template to a continuum of perception, from the most basic to the most integrative in metaphysical terms. Yoruba and Igbo theories of perception, taken together, may be seen as encompassing all possibilities of perception represented by various theories of perception across time and space. I also find the Yoruba and Igbo theories of perception priceless in exploring my own aesthetic experiences because these experiences involve a movement from visual perception, which is the focus of the Yoruba and Igbo theories, to a range of perceptual activities involving various aesthetic forms, activities represented by the perceptual continuum these theories describe. Theory and Experience The exploration of theories of perception represented by the sequence of essays of which this is a part takes its departure from a theoretical and an experiential base. This correlation of theory and experience is anchored in my exploration of methods of explaining my relationships with aesthetic forms. These relationships with the aesthetic are represented by my experiences with the beauty of nature and with works of art. Central to these engagements with nature and with art is the experience of transformative perception, which these aesthetic forms stimulate. Exploring Dion Fortune These transformative perceptions first emerged with my practical application of the theory of perception described by Western esoteric thinker Dion Fortune (1890 1946) in her The Training and Work of an Initiate (1930).

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Her ideas are animistic, on gaining contact with consciousness in nature by contemplating the beauty of nature. They also represent nature mysticism, on experiencing unity of the self with the source of being through sensitivity to nature's beauty. I applied these ideas to exploring, through visual contemplation, the beauty of nature, particularly trees, and experienced an extension of my perceptual capacities beyond the conventional. Applying Fortune's ideas in contemplating the beauty of nature led to experiences of seeing beyond the conventionally perceived character of aesthetic forms. Such expanded perception continued with random unusual encounters with works of art. These experiences with art suggest the physical form of a work of art as a doorway to unconventional expansion of cognitive ability. Yoruba Theory of Perception as Foundational Interpretive and Integrative Template Yoruba theory of perception operates as a foundational interpretive scheme I use in order to better understand my experiences in the practical application of the ideas of Dion Fortune. Her theory of perception, further developed in Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage and The Mystical Qabalah, may be understood in terms of a continuum of possibilities of perception, from sensate cognition to the most abstract and transcendental awareness, an understanding of perceptual possibility that bears strong resemblance to Yoruba and Igbo theories of perception, as summed up by Babatunde Lawal and Anenechukwu Umeh. In this series of essays of theories of perception, I am exploring the implications of these experiences by correlating ideas from various schools of thought, in various cultures, developing these into an aesthetic theory and relating this theory to the study of art, exemplified by the works of particular artists. This essay discusses processes of motion from sensory perception to an integrative understanding of existence in Aristotelian, Sri Vidya and Kantian thought.

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My engagement with Yoruba, Igbo, Aristotelian, Srividya and Kantian thought takes its departure from my quest to arrive at an integrative understanding of existence through adapting the ideas of Dion Fortune on penetrating to the presence of consciousness in nature and the essence of being through contemplation of nature's beauty. I find Yoruba theory of perception most helpful in interpreting the experience I gained in this practical exploration because Yoruba theory of perception is centred in visual perception as a template for a range of cognitive possibilities that represent the scope of my experience. Igbo theory of perception is helpful in depicting my ultimate goal in this quest because of its grounding in visual perception in relation to a grasp of the unity of being. The visual focus of Yoruba theory of perception is demonstrated in terms of a relationship between oju inu-the inward eye or inward perception, and oju lasan- the ordinary eye or basic perception. Oju inu may be understood as an aspect of ori inu-the inner head, metaphorically speaking, or inward consciousness. Oju lasan may be seen as an aspect of ori ode-the basic cognitive template of the self. Oju inu represents a penetrative continuum into the qualities of phenomena. Oju inu may be seen as a demonstration of the metaphorically named ori inu-the inner head, the ultimate interiority of consciousness understood as the timeless core of the self and its centre of ultimate possibility. Oju lasan may be understood as an expression of ori ode-the basic cognitive template of the self, its temporal aspect through which the contexts of embodied existence are navigated. Ori inu is described as existing in dialogue with ori ode, a dialogical relationship, that, when operating smoothly, enables the actualisation of human potential in the contexts of the opportunities and challenges of life. 2. Sensory Cognition and Metaphysical Integration Aristotle and Sri Vidya "All men by nature desire to know" declares the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in the first line of his Metaphysics.

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This is demonstrated by the delight people take in their senses, and, above all, in the sense of sight, which gives pleasure by enabling people distinguish between the variety of phenomena, he continues. The Hindu school of Srividya depicts the senses as a bunch of arrows made of flowers, as in the ritual the Sridevikadgamala Stotram. The image of flowers suggests beauty and the pleasure afforded by the beauty of flowers in terms of colour, texture and smell. Aristotle proceeds to explore the question of how to move from the enjoyment of the variety of phenomena to understanding the principle that unifies these phenomena. What is behind the unity of the world we perceive is the thrust of his explorations in that book that has become one of the cornerstones of human thought. Aristotle may be understood as concluding that the human desire for knowledge is intimately related to the intelligence responsible for the creation of the universe and the order demonstrated by the variety within it. How does Aristotle arrive at this conclusion? Srividya makes a conclusion similar to Aristotle's in describing the flower arrows of the senses as held by the Goddess Tripurasundari, the Beauty of the Three Cities, and shot by her through her bow of sugar cane, the bow representing the mind, which likes the sweet things of life. The Goddess embodies the cosmos, her beauty the dynamic order of existence in its delightful complexity, both perceptible to and ultimately beyond human perception in its totality. The three cities of her name integrate various levels of subtlety in sensory perception with various triadic co-ordinates that encapsulate the nature of being. The three cities she embodies represent her various levels of sensory manifestation in terms of ascending levels of subtlety- the physical, the sonic and the geometric. These sensory expressions are related to in terms of worship of her in her physical form, silent repetition of her sonic form and contemplative worship of her geometric form, developed in terms of "a systematic esoteric discipline that combines elements of the yogas of knowledge, of devotion, and of ritual" as summed up by Douglas Renfrew Brooks in Auspicious Wisdom: Texts and Traditions of Srividya Sakta Tantrism in South India (1992).

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Tripurasundari, holding her four weapons of creation and enlightenment visualized as cosmic dynamism emanating from the cosmic source in Shiva supported by four deities possibly constituting aspects of the cosmos by Ekabhumi Charles Ellik

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These forms of veneration and enquiry, in turn, are described as facilitating a realisation of her nature in terms of the three primary states of consciousness waking, sleep, and cosmic consciousness. They also aid understanding of the three primary qualities defining the dynamism of being and becoming-the power of will, the power of knowledge and the power of action. These aspects of consciousness and of the dynamism of being represent the triadic form of the Goddess as described in the Wikipedia entry "Tripura Sundari", quoting Bhaskararaya's commentary of the Srividya scripture, the Tripura Upanihad, as presented by Douglas Renfrew Brooks in The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Sakta Tantrism (1990). The Goddess sugarcane bow may be seen as suggesting the capacity of the mind to utilise the delight of the senses in apprehending the cosmic totality manifest in the forms of the material universe that delight the senses. From Srividya to the Trika of Abhinavagupta Relationships between sense perception and metaphysical integration are developed with particular concreteness in Srividya in terms of the primary sensual experience represented by sexuality. The sexual image is further transposed in terms of geometric abstraction correlated with ideas demonstrating the metaphysical concepts embodied by the sexual form. Abhinavagupta's development of Trika thought, which shares fundamental conceptions with Srividya as two forms of what may be described as a philosophy of embodiment known as Tantra, actualises in vivid terms this erotic cosmography, demonstrating, par excellence, the mobilisation of the senses in quest of metaphysical integration. Srividya and Abhinavaguptas Trika thought, taken together, dramatize this correlation of sense perception and the quest for knowledge of the metaphysical unity of the cosmos through a process involving all the senses. Srividya geometric abstraction evokes the idea underlying the erotic conception, projecting it subliminally to the viewer, even when the viewer is unaware of the symbolism of the visual form. This visual projection is achieved through a symmetry of intersections and emanations which replicate, in abstract terms, the erotic ideas underlying the geometric form. The central cosmographic form of Srividya, the Sri Yantra geometric cosmogram, is largely composed of four upward pointing triangles intersecting five downward pointing triangles indicating the union of the God Siva and the female

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divine principle, Sakti, their union representing the harmony of polarities that gives birth to and constitute the structure and dynamism of the cosmos. This symmetry of intersections is reinforced by symmetry of emanation demonstrated by the organisation of all the elements of the yantra in a sequence around a dot or bindu in the centre of the structure and in terms of successive layers in relation to the centre. The yantra therefore projects both an image of intersecting forms and a suggestion of forms emanating from a centre. The idea of conjunction between intersecting forms, as in male/female sex and the emergence of a child from that act, as evoked by the movement of forms from the centre of the conjoined forms, thereby evokes the sexual metaphor most powerfully in a way that sensitises the viewer to its underlying values even when the precise symbolic meaning of the yantra is unknown to the viewer, projecting a visual force that communicates subliminally to the uninformed and explicitly to the informed, in both cases delivering an evocative force that transcends ratiocinative understanding. The contemplator on the yantra is enjoined in the Shaktisaddhana group's version of the Srividya ritual the Sridevikadgamala Stotram to visualise themselves as Siva and Sakti in erotic congress as they assume the identity of Sakti in her form as Tripurasundari, the central deity of Srividya, all female deities being understood as manifestations of Shakti. The contemplator navigates the yantra through a ritual process involving bringing alive in imagination through the use of all the senses, the cosmos as seen from the perspective of the symbolic universe of the Sriyantra, a cosmic journey culminating in the visualisation of the source of cosmic being in the Goddess expressed in terms the flowery vagina, female genitalia evoked in terms of visual and experiential delight and its capacity for procreation, culminating in the absorption of the entire sequence of cosmographic forms in the Goddess understood as the embodiment of and transcendence of all possibilities of being. This uncompromising conjunction of sense perception and cosmography and of the method for navigating this cosmography is complemented by Abhinavagupta's summation in his Tantraloka ch. 29, in which developing the Shiva/ Shakti dynamic he had introduced in chapter 1 as cosmic being expressed in terms of relationship between fire and the heat of the flame, a mirror and its reflection, consciousness and its awareness of itself, he describes how this cosmographic anthropomorphism and correlative abstraction may be actualised in erotic activity in which all the senses are mobilised as components of a ritual process.

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The Sri Yantra

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Immanuel Kant

Correlating Space and Time in Terms of the Celestial Bodies and the Human Mind Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of Practical Reason, develops an observation correlative with that of Aristotle and Srividya in his description of the sense of awe and wonder emerging from his reflections on the motions of the celestial bodies and of his own mind, as he reflects on the freedom of his mind to choose between right and wrong. His body, which has been animated by the vital force of life through a process human beings don't understand, will one day return to the earth, he observes, adapting a Biblical image of the human being as created from the earth, "dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return", declares the Bible. The human body dissolves into the earth in being laid to rest in the ground at the conclusion of the life cycle. The mind, while the body is still living, is able to observe relationships between the majestic motions of the celestial bodies in vast sweeps of time, and its own self, a speck on a small planet in the cosmos. The mind reflects on the connection between itself and those celestial forms as belonging in the same cosmos, though operating at different scales of space, of size and of time, thus reaching beyond the limitations of the body to reach the infinite. Infinity, in what sense?

Correlating the Sublime in Nature and the Human Mind The answer to that question may be found in Kants discussion of the Sublime in his Critique of Judgement. He describes the human mind as being both made aware of its smallness when perceiving grand natural forms and also as feeling a sense of expansion in being able to assimilate the image of those great forms. The perceiver is both humbled and uplifted.

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Correlating the Sublime in Terrestrial and Celestial Nature and the Human Mind The two discussions- of the contemplation of the celestial bodies in relation to the human mind and of the perception of grand terrestrial natural forms, such as mountains, in the context of the human mind, explore the relationship between the external world and human consciousness. This exploration describes the response of human consciousness to the perception and contemplation of these external forms in terms of paradoxically correlative experiences. These experiences are demonstrated by the sense of ones diminutiveness in the face of the vast spatial scope and temporal sweep of the revolutions of the celestial bodies in contrast to both the smallness of the earth on which the even smaller human being stands and the temporal limitations of the human lifespan. This sense of spatial and temporal diminution is counterbalanced by a sense of kinship with the awesomeness of the celestial forms, a kinship demonstrated by the relationship between the capacity of the self to define and act in relation to what it knows as right-the moral law. The human mind is thus seen as operating in terms of a principle that transcends the self, a principle of such permanent constancy of value, it can be equated with the grandeur of the forces manifest in the motions of the celestial bodies,. The motions of the celestial bodies operate within time but within such vast spans of time they seem eternal in contrast with the little frames of time presented by the span of human life.

Forms of the Sublime and the Relationship of Inner and Outer Cosmos What may this summation that tries to grasp the logic of Kant's magnificent reflections demonstrate about the character of the human mind in relation to nature? What is the reality of the understanding the mind reaches about the world external to itself? To what degree may the human mind understand itself? How do the minds understanding of its own nature and its understanding of the world external to itself correlate? Is infinity as presented in this context a quality created by the human mind or a quality existing outside the mind?

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These questions are central to any discussion of the nature of reality and are addressed by Kant in the foundational work of his most mature philosophy, his Critique of Pure Reason. Correlating Aristotle, Kant and Srividya These bodies of thought, Aristotle, Sri Vidya and Immanuel Kant, may be said to be all describing, in their distinctive ways, the possibility of transcending the limitations of conventional human existence by conscious orientation to a cosmic identity with which the human being is intimately related but is conventionally unaware of. The idea of identification with a transcendent and yet inclusive cosmic identity is represented by Aristotle's description of the identity of the human quest for knowledge with the divine source of existence, an identity that may be reached through an intellectual quest for the unifying principle behind the variety of phenomena that constitute existence. It is also demonstrated in the description of the identity between the senses of the human being and Tripurasundari, the Beauty of the Three Cities of Being and Becoming, an identity demonstrated by the visualisation of the senses as her arrows, her bow the human mind, the entire image pointing to the possibility of penetrating to the core of what the senses perceive to realise one's identity with the Goddess, embodiment of the cosmos. It is realized in Kant's thought in terms of the correlation of human moral judgement and the glorious form and majestic motions of the celestial bodies, in the context of the infinite. At the core of these diverse ideational systems is the understanding of human perception in terms of both material concreteness, represented particularly by sense perception, and transcendence, in terms of the capacity of perception to reach beyond its concrete context to a unifying principle either explicitly understood as the divine source of being or as with Kant, as demonstrating qualities associated in other contexts with the divine. 3. Moving from Theory to Experience Could these ideas have parallels in the experiences of people? Yes. I am exploring these ideas in order to better understand my own experiences. Reading Kant's discussion of the Sublime from his Critique of Judgement at the top floor of the University of Benin's Ugbowo campus library, in the final year of my BA in 1989, I was mentally transported from the library. Returning to myself, I was compelled to ask "Am I in the same space as my fellow users of this library?"

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Seated in my house in Benin, about 2001, my eyes closed as I visualised the Ogba forest in Benin where the Ogba river first breaks ground, reflecting on the mystery of numinous aura of the forest, I found myself in a strange place where I was welcomed by a woman with her hand on my head in benediction as I seemed to kneel. Having established that I was not dreaming, though not as alert as normal, and that I was not under anyone's control, I opened my eyes to find myself back in my house. Glancing by chance at a Kamakala Yantra, a Hindu geometric cosmogram, a depiction of the structure of the cosmos, in my house in London about 2005, I experienced an integration of deeply buried ideas on scientific cosmology coalescing in a wave of intense bliss, demonstrating the honeyed intensity of a powerful orgasm, like the most potent honey streaming into me, evocative of the Indian philosophical concept Sat-Chit-Ananda, translated as Being-Consciousness-Bliss, understood as qualities of ultimate reality. Rising from sleep, but with my eyes closed, in my house in Isleham, England, on a day between 2009 and 2011, I visualised Victor Ekpuk's painting Children of the Full Moon. Enjoying its enigmatic beauty, I experienced the painting as palpitating with a sense of power akin to the being of a deity, as I was slowly led to look, in my imagination, into the back of what is a two dimensional structure, in order to grasp this revelation of the being of this form in its fullness, until my contemplation was interrupted. 4. Moving from Experience to Theoretical Reflection What do these experiences demonstrate about the relationship between forms of order, such as the magnificent passages by Kant, aesthetic forms, such as the arboreal and aquatic forms of the Ogba forest and works of art, such as the Kamakala Yantra and the Children of the Full Moon painting? Do they not corroborate Yoruba theory of visual perception depicting a continuum extending from visuality, to, among other possibilities, imagination, extra-sensory perception and witchcraft, as described by Lawal, witchcraft being possibly understood in terms of the transposition of self I experienced through contemplating the Ogba forest, a transposition akin to accounts of witchcraft in Southern Nigeria? Do they not suggest the possibility represented by Umeh's description of Igbo theory of visual perception as both ocular and extra-sensory, demonstrated in terms of the perception of both matter and spirit, and culminating in a perception of the unity of being within a timeless context, as may be seen as demonstrated by my experience with the Kamakala Yantra?

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Victor Ekpuk's Children of the Full Moon

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Kamakala Yantra Designed by Frank Mahood from the classical template From Tantra in Practice. ed. David Gordon White

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Did I experience the idea represented by the yantra, without knowing what the yantra meant, since I am only, at this time of writing, looking up the meaning of the yantra, as evoking the erotic union of masculine and feminine forms that constitute the cosmos? At the centre of the yantra stands an erect lingam or phallus representing the cosmic creativity that is the God Shiva. Around it is constellated a structure of triangles, the triangular shapes suggesting vulvas, depicting the yoni, the term in Sanskrit, the classical language of Hinduism, for female sexual and procreative spaces understood as expressing cosmic creativity. The yonis themselves depict Mahakamakalesvari, another name for Tripurasundari, the Beauty Who Embodies the Cosmos, and her various feminine constellations, manifestations of Shakti, the feminine personality demonstrated in the transformations of being, as described in David Gordon White's "Transformations in the Art of Love: Kmakal Practices in Hindu Tantric and Kaula Traditions". The Kamakala Yantra as depicting an understanding of the cosmos as a manifestation of erotic creativity is concretised by the Silpa Prakasa, translated by Michael D. Rabe in "Secret Yantras and Erotic Display for Hindu Temples", describing the erotic force known as kama, dramatized in the union of Shiva and Shakti as "the root of the world's existence", and the motive force of its consummation in ceasing to be at the end of a cosmic cycle. This creative erotic force is depicted as concentrated in a drop of bliss, the bindu, that radiates outwards to constitute the dynamic manifestation of the cosmos and withdraws inward to assimilate the cosmos back to its source at the conclusion of a cosmic cycle, like waves flowing outwards to the shore, represented by the material universe, and flowing back towards their point of origination, symbolising here the source of existence in the bindu, as described by White, quoting Amrtananda's Dipika. This image of a drop of blissful, orgasmic energy is correlative with my experience of intense pleasure, akin to concentrated orgasmic force focused in the mind, flowing into me as a cosmological vision derived from memories of reading about the scientific cosmology of Albert Einstein began to coalesce in my mind, on glancing by chance at the Kamakala Yantra. Could my encounter not be described, then, as an experience of penetration, through looking at the yantra, to what it represents, this represented reality taking shape in terms of the contents of my own mind, utilising this content to give shape to the vision the yantra embodies? This interpretation is correlative with a school of mystical theory, methods of explaining ideas about encounter with ultimate reality, that holds that the content's of the mind of the mystic represents the primary organising material of

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the mystical experience, as summed up by the mystic Aleister Crowley in his Autohagiography of Aleister Crowley, and, in a different context, by the scholar Steven Katz, this idea being the organising principle of his edited anthology comprising mystical texts from various cultures, Comparative Mysticism : An Anthology of Original Sources. I could be described, then, as experiencing the significance of the flower arrows of Tripurasundari, shot through her sugarcane bow, these imagistic evocations of visual, gustatory and olfactory delight suggesting the possibility of penetrating through the pleasure afforded the senses to the reality that underlies the forms that stimulate them, a metaphysical integration of being suggested by the cosmological vision I experienced within a flow of profound bliss. These experiences involve both immersion in the senses, and withdrawal from sense perception, contemplative practices dominant in Asian thought, practices I engaged in by visualising the Ogba forest and the Ekpuk painting, and a consequent experience of a reality enabled by that visualisation, an expanded perception of these aesthetic forms beyond what is conventionally perceptible. What is the significance of the serendipitous correlation, emerging as I composed this essay, between the understanding of the Kamakala Yantra as evoking cosmic emergence and reabsorption, and Evelyne Huet's description in response to my posting of a picture of a painting by Victor Ekpuk, of Ekpuk's art as going "far back to the very primitive origins of the human species, both in his circular geometric shapes that speak of humanity's genesis, in the contents of these shapes that recall the placenta, and of course in the writings that carry us to the very early ages of the world's knowledge", suggesting, from one view, that this art may be seen as exploring the primordiality of humanity, the interrelationship of humanity's cognitive and expressive origins, within the context of the eternal, as evoked by Ekpuk's circular forms suggesting the womb and his enigmatically compelling scripts, dramatizing mysterious cognitive possibilities? Circles of convergence enabled by the similarities of human thought across time and space, especially as shaped by related artistic and philosophical discourses that influence people in different ways in various cultures? Or a pointer to a unifying reality which these works of art operating in different cultural contexts point to? In reflecting on these experiences, I am engaging in the critical component of perception described by Lawal as part of the cognitive continuum comprising Yoruba theory of perception. Could I be said, therefore, to be in the process of arriving at comprehensive theory and practice of perception, integrating ideas and practices from various cultures, demonstrating how they cohere to give a unified understanding of human perceptual capacity?

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Can these ideas be adapted to practice in various contexts? These experiences and some of the theories through which I explore them suggest the existence of a potential for human awareness beyond conventional perception. These perceptual capacities may be accessed through "deep seeing", or depth in response to any sensory stimuli, a process of contemplative attention to aesthetic forms that stimulates expansion of the mind's perceptual faculties. This contemplative attention may be demonstrated, with visual forms, for example, through gazing at the aesthetic form or through visualising it. This attention enables a dialogue between the aesthetic form and the mind of the person contemplating it, a dialogue that penetrates to increasingly deeper levels of the mind the longer and more consistently the contemplation is continued, facilitating both greater stimulation of the mind by the aesthetic form and the mobilising of the mind's resources in response to the aesthetic form. The process thus correlates versions of two metaphors described by M.H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp : Romantic Poetry and the Critical Tradition, as defining Western theories of perception, the mind as a mirror of aesthetic forms it engages with and the mind as a lamp shedding light on the aesthetic forms, although the two metaphors could be quite simplistic if taken literally, since aesthetic forms and the human mind are not fully understood phenomena. A mirror can reflect with clarity only what conforms to its capacity for visual reflection. The character of the object must be such that it can be reflected on a surface such as a mirror. Similarly, for an object to be visible to ocular vision, its form must be such that light may fall on it and be transmitted to the eye, which must be able to receive it. The mirror and the object which it reflects, the eye and the form it perceives, must conform for reflection and perception to take place. The mind being more complex than a mirror, and aesthetic forms being more than purely concrete forms, the correlation of mind and aesthetic forms becomes more complex, as is demonstrated by the experiences I have described with aesthetic forms. A perfect correlation of the perception of audience and a humanly created aesthetic form is impossible because no perfect conjunction can exist between the details of one human mind and another, talk less a creative form shaped by that mind, a form which the creator might not have composed in terms of a full

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grasp of the process through which they brought it into being and a complete understanding of its nature and potential. Natural aesthetic forms are even more inadequately understood because, even though their physical qualities and biological characteristics may be understood, my experiences with such forms, in their correlation with animistic conceptions in various cultures, indicate there exists a dimension to nature that goes beyond its physical appearance and its biological qualities within the ontological frameworks represented by contemporary biology. My encounters with humanly created aesthetic forms also suggest that they may demonstrate qualities beyond the boundaries of conventional perception. Encounters with these forms may demonstrate the forms taking over the perceptive process, as it were, leading the mind in directions unusual for the human mind. These possibilities demonstrated by humanly created and natural aesthetic forms suggest these forms may be best be understood in terms of a version of animistic theory, in which they are seen as potentially demonstrating qualities closer to sentience, to correlation with human consciousness in a manner that suggests a degree of agency on the part of these forms. This understanding may be restated for better clarity in terms of the concrete grasp enabled by correlations between Yoruba, Igbo and Sri Vidya theories of perception. This understanding sums up relationships between aesthetic forms and the perceiver of those forms. It sums up the relationships between the consciousness of which the senses are a part and the aesthetic forms the consciousness perceives and assimilates through the senses. It sums up the relationships between the subject, object and process of perception. It does this in terms of an interactive process that includes and goes beyond a metaphorical understanding of interactivity. Interactivity is understood, in this context, in terms of a continuum extending from the metaphorical to increasing degrees of literalness, represented, for example, by my encounter with Victor Ekpuk's Children of the Full Moon as pulsating with divine power suggesting an entity far beyond human power and conception, a deity, a form unfolding in terms of a totality of its being beyond the two dimensionality of its visualization as a picture of an enigmatic but compelling work of art.

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Earlier Compositions in This Series 1. "Mo Iwa Fun Oniwa: Individuality of Being in Classical Yoruba Thought" Facebook Scribd (PDF) academia.edu ( PDF) 2. "Iwa lEwa : The Intersection of Aesthetics and Metaphysics in Classical Yoruba Philosophy" Facebook Scribd ( PDF) academia.edu (PDF) 3. "Aiku Pari Iwa: Consummation of Being in Classical Yoruba Philosophy" Facebook Scribd (PDF) academia.edu (PDF) 4. "Oju Inu: Penetration of Being in Classical Yoruba Epistemology" Facebook Scribd (PDF) 5. "A Quest for An Integral Understanding of Being Through Yoruba Philosophy" Facebook Scribd (PDF) academia.edu (PDF) 6. "Ose Naabo and Ose Ora : Theory and Practice in Relation to Material/Corporeal and Spiritual Vision in Igbo Afa Thought" Facebook