I find this sense of immense possibilities of being and of understating most inspiring. I wonder how best I could pursue such knowledge myself That would depend one ones personal disposition. It would seem that for you, the ideal would be to adapt the ideas and practises you like to the achievement of the goal.

How?

I for one, have found the combination of particular forms of yoga and mysticism quite inspiring, But I use them in my own way, developing my own unique combinations of ideas and technique. Could you describe them? I am working on using a strategy that adapts a number of techniques of contemplation and of thought.


Which?


Contemplation without seed, without any premeditated ideas. I simply go silent, maintaining outer and inner silence as much as possible and look within me. I also practice submission of self to the Ultimate. I practice contemplation of beautiful forms in nature, particularly tees. That last method combines nature mysticism with animism. I am also working on a form of cognitive mysticism where I integrate my grasp of various aspects of existence into a unit that tries to approximate and perhaps eventually enters into an unmediated grasp of the unity of being, as it is in itself as different from a mental structure of mind, or even as intertwining with that cognitive structure.


Top: "The fact that Esu is represented with a prominent phallus happens not so much because of his physical procreative prowess as that his phallus provides the metaphysical and-with Ifa meta-intellectual -thrust into trans-nuclear dimensions. This thrust is the first and actual breakthrough that precedes all physical-and with orisa metaphysical-procreation".


From Susanne Wenger and Gert Chesis's A Life with the Gods.p.80 Gates in Signifying Monkey develops the same idea in terms of hermeneutics- philosophical interpretation of cultural forms, particularly texts- "Esu is the guardian of the crossroads, master of style and of stylus, the phallic god of generation and fecundity, master of that elusive, mystical barrier that separates the divine world from the profane. Frequently characterised as an inveterate copulator possessed by his enormous penis, linguistically Esu is the ultimate copula, connecting truth with understanding, the sacred with the profane, text with interpretation [as the opener of the road to Ifa, as guide to the interpretation of Ifa] the word(as a form of the verb to be) that links a subject with its predicate. He connects the grammar of divination with its rhetorical structures.

In Yoruba mythology, Esu is said to limp as he walks precisely because of his mediating function; his legs are of different lengths because he keeps one anchored in the world of the gods while the other rests in this, our human world”.p.6. “As Pelton concludes, he is the copula of every sentence and the thus the embodiment of every limen”.p.26. “Legba’s[Esus incarnation among the Fon of Dahomey as described by Herskovits ]sexuality is a sign of liminality, but also of the penetration of thresholds, the exchange between discursive universes As Pelton summarises: He is a living copula, and his phallus symbolises his being the limen marking the real distinction between outside and inside, and the wild and ordered even as it ensures safe passage between them”.p.27.

This depiction of phallic activity in terms of linking different metaphysical realms also emerges in depictions of the Hindu god Siva,who as Soyinka describes him "drove his passionate course through earth, uniting all the elements with his powerful erection".p3 of Myth, Literature and the African World(Cambridge,1990).A description of Siva developed in O’Flaherty’s Study of Siva mythology in Siva: The Erotic Ascetic in which the god is characterised by both his erect phallus and his character as a yogi, a practitioner of disciplines of transcendental insight that involve asceticism. Ironically, Gates describes Esu as also depicted as both male and female,(p.29-31)thereby embodying in himself/herself, both the point of entry, the place of penetration, and the means or instrument of penetration.

Esu, therefore, is interpreted as embodying the cognitive zone to be grasped and the means to grasp it. Perhaps this depiction could be described as suggesting he embodies the realms he mediates between and the means to mediate between them. His bisexuality provides parallels with the paired male and female figures of the Yoruba Edan Ogboni, which demonstrate a social and metaphysical significance emerging from the balance of genders as described by Babatunde Lawal in “Aya Gbo Aya To:New Perspectives in Edan Ogboni."