Baobab Epistemology and Mysticism : A Critical Response to Toyin Falola on the Baobab as Epistemic Metaphor
Image Above
Massive Baobab
"An icon of the African savannah. These trees represent the oldest living organisms in Africa and are the biggest and longest living flowering trees anywhere.
Some have been around since before the time of the ancient Greeks.
The baobab tree can live to be 3,000 years old and can grow as wide as the length of a bus measuring a girth of 53 meters and a height of 22 metres.”
Abstract
This essay maps the nature of baobab epistemology and mysticism and the manner of their development by myself as interpretations of the tree, the baobab, in terms of systems of knowledge.
These interpretations are inspired by Toyin Falola's use of a baobab centred proverb in arguing for the integration of various forms of knowing in order to maximize human cognitive potential within the necessary inadequacies of all cognitive systems.
The expository essay is complemented by a photo essay integrated within it, using pictures dramatizing the grandeur of the baobab. These images are accompanied by verbal text responding to the evocative force of the pictures in terms of the baobab's capacity to inspire ideas of cosmological integration and ancientness, as represented by the ecosystemic fecundity of the baobab as providing nutrients for various creatures and humans as well as medicinal and economic value for humanity, in the course of its living for thousands of years.
The verbal text also responds to the evocative power of the atmospherics of varieties of the tree as viewed at different times of day, in various kinds of light, and in relation to different kinds of human activity, possibilities exemplified particularly by pictures taken of the iconic Avenue of the Baobabs in Madagascar, images sourced from various online sources, in the context of which visual/verbal exchange I create the idea of the baobab mystics of Madagascar.
The only picture of a non-baobab tree in the sequence is Christopher Kiciak's photo of Ponthus Beech, accompanied by his story of his encounter with the tree, a superb dramatization of the magic of trees, magnificently complementary to the images and texts on the baobab. I dont know if the tree in Vincent Grafhorst’s picture of the Mmamagwa Sunset, Northern Tuli Game Reserve, Botwana, the cover image and th, is a baobab.
These pictures demonstrate a powerful aesthetic force which the accompanying texts respond to in various ways, pointing to the baobab, exemplifying trees, generally, as inspirational, iconic forms.
In integrating verbal and visual text, expository writing and a photo essay, the work dramatizes my explorations of comparative cognitive strategies, an exploration enhanced by my engagement with the work of Toyin Falola in its deployment of prose, poetry and visual images in his books In Praise of Greatness and the Toyin Falola Reader and his explicit examination of the implications of diverse expressive forms as well as employing them, in his "Ritual Archives".
This essay is one of a number inspired by the concept note of the forthcoming Imagining Vernacular Histories: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, edited by Mobolanle Sotunsa and Abikal Borah, directed at exploring "how Falola's writing on local traditions, ritual practices, Yoruba cosmologies, etc. help us to reimagine indigenous epistemologies in Africa", and how his methodologies may contribute to the writing of history, as the vision of the book is summed up by Borah in an e-mail, a concept note that builds upon the statement of purpose of a stream at the 2018 African Studies Association UK conference, "African Historiography, Vernacular Epistemology,and the Invention of an Archive in Toyin Falola’s Scholarship".
The first in this set is "The Baobab as Epistemic Metaphor: Cultural Positioning and Inter-Epistemic Adjudication : A Critical Response to Toyin Falola" which has been incorporated into this essay.
The second set of essays is "Toyin Falola and the Caravan of Thought: African History on of Global Stage in a Multifaceted Lens", Parts 1 and 2.
The Falola exploration project is accessible at my Facebook page Exploring Toyin Falola and my blog Studying Toyin Falola, both of which will soon be updated to reflect all my work on Falola. My larger engagement with comparative cognitive processes and systems can be followed at my central website, Compcros.
Image Above
Dawn awakens
morning yet on creation day
the forest of baobab trees, the multitude that is the universe
a rich cloud to the hosts of sages.
I rose in mind, above the myriad manifestations of existence, seeing them
unique, yet all as one, perceiving the particulars of what is
yet grasping them within the loom of the cosmic mind
as an overwhelming beauty of being and becoming, existence and change,
the one and the many, stability and flux.
Verbal text adapted from the Hindu Tripurasundari Ashtakam and the Rig Veda
as I first encountered the latter in J.M.Cohen and J.F. Phipp's luminous description
of mystical and other visionary encounters in The Common Experience
and
Chinua Achebe's retelling of an Igbo folktale in Morning Yet on Creation Day
and from Harvey Spencer Lewis on cosmic mind
in
The Rosicrucian Manual
adaptations constructed through the lens of various accounts of mystical experience and descriptions of mystical philosophies, including Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo's "At the apex of the mind, I beheld something unchanging, in a momentary flash", Paul Brunton's finding himself "in the midst of an ocean of blazing light… the primeval stuff out of which worlds are created, the first state of matter [ stretching] away into untellable infinite space, incredibly alive" in A Search in Secret India and Indra's Net, spread across the infinity of the cosmos in a complex of jewels, one at each node of the net, each jewel reflecting all the others, a vision central to Hinduism, particularly as argued by Rajiv Malhotra in Indra's Net:Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity and particularly vividly realized in the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra as well as influencing Western thinkers.
Picture from Avenue de Baobabs by Dave on Flickr
Contents
Baobab Epistemology and Mysticism
A Proverb of Expansion and Limits
Critical Pluriversalism
Questions Arising from the Baobab Metaphor
The Baobab Stanzas : Correlating Sensory and Abstract Epistemologies Within an Eco-Systemic Sensitivity in the Context of the Correlative Scope and Boundaries of the Known and the Question of the Knowable
Baobab Epistemology and the Critical Constellation of Knowledges : Integrations Within and Beyond the Thought of Toyin Falola
Sources in and Differences from the Writings of Toyin Falola
Baobab Mysticism
Inspiration
Questions and Ideas
Path
The Way of the Baobab Mystic
Inspirational Sources of the Way of the Baobab Mystic
Image Above
I arrived before dawn, ready for my encounter with the baobabs, the majestic sentinels who had called me incessantly, preparatory to beginning my meditation on the iconic beauties who mirror the unity of that beyond and that beneath, of the stars and earth, the unknown and the known.
The baobab mystics of Madagascar are inspired by the numinous presence of the island's baobabs, a presence evoked by the pictures in this essay.
Picture from Victoria Elkins on Pinterest
Baobab Epistemology and Mysticism
Baobab epistemology and mysticism are developments by myself, in relation to my ongoing explorations in comparative cognitive processes and systems, from Toyin Falola's use of an Akan proverb, "Wisdom is like a baobab tree, a single person's hand cannot embrace it", in his arguing for the integration of diverse epistemologies, different ways of knowing, as developed within various cultures, thus developing a "constellation of knowledges", cognitive systems thereby complementing each other within the context of the necessary incompleteness of all human knowledge.
Baobab epistemology and mysticism are thus exemplifications of arboreal or tree centred epistemologies and mystical orientations, aspects of humanity's engagement with nature across space and time as a primary partner in its cognitive and existential development.
Baobab epistemology is the critical integration of diverse cognitive strategies, various ways of developing and applying knowledge, as developed within particular epistemic cultures within a community and between various epistemic cultures across diverse communities, in the understanding of the incompleteness of all forms of knowledge, all means of knowing, and their products.
Baobab mysticism is the quest for ultimate knowledge through the conjunction between the human being and the infinite, within the inspirational matrix of the baobab and its epistemic and metaphysical associations.
Baobab mysticism is inspired and challenged by the correlative allure and impossibility of ultimate knowledge, within an ever expanding embrace of the scope of what is knowable, epistemic contraries and complementarities evoked by the size and ecosystemic associations of the baobab.
Image Above
The Human Family at the Tree of Life
Figures evocative of the human family
seated at the base of the Tree of Life
as the baobab is known in South Africa.
J. H. Pierneef's painting "The Baobab Tree"
evokes the unhuman vitality of the tree,
"a powerful painting with an almost unearthly luminous glow about it",
as described by the Baobab Foundation, an image projecting the tree's
numinous presence, and overpowering massiveness, in harmony with
the fragility and minisculity of the trusting human presences resting
against it.
In spite of their relative littleness, the human beings, through their control of
tools that amplify their physical capacities, embody a power that can decimate
the tree, but they recognize the benevolent presence of the massive creature
as a gift beyond human creation and thus worthy of reverence and
protection , ideas suggested to me by this painting.
"An old Baobab tree can create its own ecosystem, as it supports the life of countless creatures, from the largest of mammals to the thousands of tiny creatures scurrying in and out of its crevices. Birds nest in its branches; baboons devour the fruit; bush babies and fruit bats drink the nectar and pollinate the flowers, and elephants have been known to chop down and consume a whole tree.
The tree serves as a massive store of water, and bears fruit that feeds animals and humans. Its leaves are boiled and eaten as an accompaniment similar to spinach, or used to make traditional medicines, while the bark is pounded and woven into rope, baskets, cloth and waterproof hats.
Old living trees that are naturally hollow or have been hollowed out are used for water storage. The empty space is filled with water and then tightly sealed. This will hold water and keep it potable for many years and serve as a reserve during drought.
The fruit contains tartaric acid and vitamin C and can either be sucked, or soaked in water to make a refreshing drink. [It] can also be roasted and ground up to make a coffee-like drink. The bark is pounded to make rope, mats, baskets, paper and cloth; the leaves can be boiled and eaten, and glue can be made from the pollen. Fresh baobab leaves provide an edible vegetable similar to spinach which is also used medicinally to treat kidney and bladder disease, asthma, insect bites, and several other maladies. Pollen from the African and Australian baobabs is mixed with water to make glue.
Verbal text in quotation marks from Siyabona Africa: Kruger National Park
and
and
Painting
From the Baobab Foundation
and
A Proverb of Expansion and Limits
Wisdom is like a baobab tree,
a single person’s hand cannot embrace it
is an Akan proverb with which Toyin Falola opens his essay on the cultural contextualisation of epistemology, the study of ways of arriving at and assessing knowledge,"Power is Knowledge: Discussions in Intellectual Liberation", delivered at the December 2018 "The Academy and the Idea of Decolonization Masterclass" at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis, as a means of highlighting the value of "seeking a [ critical ] constellation of knowledges", demonstrating a sensitivity to the incompleteness of all knowledge systems.
The essay is the second of three delivered at the same masterclass:
1. "Decolonizing Knowledge and Decoloniality"
2. "Discussions In Intellectual Liberation"
3. "Voices of Decolonization and Decoloniality"
A very fine essay. An impressive introduction, in terms of conceptual analysis and historical and geographical scope, to the idea and practice of decolonization as a political, cultural, educational and scholarly vision. It presents the subject in terms of a historical and ideational sweep, introducing readers to debates integrating Africa and other parts of the world.
Yet, easy to read, readily understandable, simple in diction and structure while being richly informative, written in plain yet at times richly evocative English with technical terms carefully and briefly explained without breaking the expository rhythm.
Provokes enquiry, inspiring questioning of perspectives one might or not agree with but inspiring passionate engagement through lucidity and precision.
Provides a vital background to Falola's depth of focus on epistemic decolonization in his powerful "Ritual Archives", published in The Toyin Falola Reader and The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy,edited by Toyin Falola and Adeshina Afolayan.
The essay provokes the following questions as my response to it :
Is epistemology, the study of ways of arriving at and assessing knowledge, a culture neutral discipline?
The idea of the cultural contextualization of epistemology is the core of the essay.
Are all epistemologies equally valid ways of understanding reality?
How may one examine the relative significance of different epistemologies or of various ways of employing the same epistemology?
Image Above
I pay homage each day to the great one, immobile yet dynamic of presence, rooted in earth yet offering veneration to the heavens, ancient yet fecund, my brother of a different race but of the same mother, thankful I am that we grace the Earth together at this point in time and space.
Photograph by Luis Marden in National Geographic
Critical Pluriversalism
I have inserted "critical" into the Falola quote above, "seeking a [ critical ] constellation of knowledges", in order to emphasize the significance of a challenge that may emerge from pluriversalistic thinking and which cognitive pluriversalists are at times accused of, the uncritical conflation of subjects, a challenge towards which I direct the questions on epistemology immediately above and those further on below on Western thought in the section "Sources in and Differences from the Writings of Toyin Falola".
Pluriversalism is central to Falola's thought as a scholar on Africa dedicated to both the centralization of perspectives developed from intimate engagement with Africa and the development of this axis of knowledge in dialogue with a broad range of perspectives beyond Africa.
He thereby contributes, in my view, to developing the universally illuminative capacities of such Africa centred thought, a contribution of which the use of the Akan proverb of the baobab in relation to the vision of epistemic integration from diverse geographical and ideological cultures could be seen as an instance.
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Magical Spaces
"Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever.
He saw no colours but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.
Though he walked and breathed, and about him living leaves and flowers were stirred by the same cool wind as fanned his face, Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the green grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlorien.
He laid his hand upon the tree. Never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.
At the hill's foot Frodo found Aragon, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragon, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see.
Arwen vanimelda,namarië! he said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.
'Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth', he said, 'and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!'
And taking Frodo's hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man."
Collage of quotations from J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, "Lothlorien", 369-371 of The Lord of the Rings, 3 vol. London: Unwin, 1985.
Photo by @josue_video Curated by @geoffrey.gaspard _atStalkfest
Questions Arising from the Baobab Metaphor
As an aspirant to inclusive, pluriversalistic knowledge, I am intrigued by the baobab metaphor. I love the choice of the baobab image in relation to Falola's essay on the integration of diverse epistemologies because of the huge possibilities the proverb encapsulates, inspiring enquiry as to the implications of the pervasive presence of nature centred metaphors in classical African thought.
Are these metaphors simply demonstrations of the visual and cognitive immediacies of a pre-high technology culture?
Could they, in consonance with broader expressions of classical African thought, suggest something more inclusive than the uncorrelated expressions of societies who lived closer to raw nature than current African and other societies?
Could such nature centred metaphors, in their ubiquity in classical African thought, suggest an eco-systemic sensitivity, in alignment with the often nature oriented philosophies of classical African peoples?
Could this eco-systemic orientation demonstrate a metaphysical significance, a perspective on the cosmos related to or grounded in this alignment?
Could the proverb's correlation between a concrete, visual, natural form, the baobab, and an abstract conception, human cognitive possibility, represented by wisdom, suggest further orientations along the lines of Sarah Allan's The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue, in which she argues for the prevalence of metaphors of water and plant life in classical Chinese thought as demonstrating the centrality of water and plants as primary metaphors for cosmic processes in this cognitive culture?
Image Above
Picture and Verbal Text by Christophe Kiciak
This is a very special photo to me. Trees inspire in me much respect, especially old and venerable ones: they witnessed the past, and will probably see a far future, unlike me.This particular tree is a legend by himself. He even has a name: Ponthus' beech.
He lives in the Brocéliande forest, in Bretagne (France), the one where many Arthurian legends occurred. One can also find Merlin's tomb here (well, at least one of them...).Different stories exist, but a common one is that Ponthus, a Knight of the
[Arthurian] Round Table, lived in a castle there, somewhere around the 10th century.He was disappointed by the fact he had no child, and blasphemed about it. God punished him by destroying his castle in a storm, and the tree grew on its ruins.
[Arthurian] Round Table, lived in a castle there, somewhere around the 10th century.He was disappointed by the fact he had no child, and blasphemed about it. God punished him by destroying his castle in a storm, and the tree grew on its ruins.
While this tree is well known (he illustrates several photography books' covers), finding it is quite hard.Technically, he is located in a private part of the forest, theoretically forbidden to walkers. This is probably why very few information is available about his location.
A long documentary research gave me several possibilities, which I entered as coordinates in a GPS device.I then had to drive about 5h to reach the forest, and park on its side.
This place is gigantic, and I met absolutely nobody. It was a fantastic experience to wander alone in these woods, exploring the location's possibilities in the hope of finding the mythical tree.
I was quite lucky, and after only an hour of walk I was standing in front of it. I may be an emotional guy, but believe me, I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty of his shapes, the moss covering most of his trunk, and by the fact that he was the very only one of his kind (all the other trees in the area were straight, as you can see on the photo).
I spent about 3h shooting it carefully, testing many angles, 3 different lenses, and waiting for the right light. Since the place was quite dark, I decided to use bracketing, which was extremely useful in post-processing to raise the dynamic range.
I really hope I will be able to go there many times again, and photograph it at different seasons.
It is quite a long day (mainly spent on the road), but it was so worth it.
Did I mention I love this tree? 
As stated at the Amazon page of The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue :
"Water, with its extraordinarily rich capacity for generating imagery, provided the primary model for conceptualizing general cosmic principles while plants provided a model for the continuous sequence of generation, growth, reproduction, and death and were the basis for the Chinese understanding of the nature of man in both religion and philosophy."
Could the preceding considerations be correlated with nature centred metaphors in classical African thought?
Could such conjunctions suggest these metaphors are not simply demonstrations of a pre-modern, pre-industrialized society, evoking a now lost closeness to nature, but demonstrate or could be developed as a metaphysical orientation arising in relation to that intimacy with nature and which may be adapted in other contexts, with examples from classical African thought reinforcing this perspective on the expansive value of such nature centred expressions, and of this one on the baobab in particular?
Could these nature centred metaphors represent naturalistic epistemologies which foreground relationships between the senses and the intellect in knowledge processing and development, as represented by the metaphoric base of the expressions in the concrete experience of nature?
Could they suggest an emphasis on the value of sensory stimulation in creating bridges between sensory and abstract thought, similar to values argued for metaphor as a cognitive strategy by various scholars in Western scholarship?
Could this ensemble of values relate to an emphasis on the embodied nature of the human being within eco-systemic sensitivities in the dynamic of terrestrial nature and humanity, of Earth and cosmos?
With particular reference to the baobab metaphor, in its consonance with similar ideas in classical African and non-African thought, could these sensitivities be understood in relation to cognitive ambition inspired by the hunger to know and cognitive humility in the face of the ever expanding limitations of knowledge?
"All men by nature desire to know" Aristotle declares in his Metaphysics, "as demonstrated by the delight they take in sight, for it reveals the differences between things" an observation leading the Greek thinker into an enquiry into the underlying unity of things.
Won't it be beautiful if a strong case can be made for such conceptual bridging from metaphoric expression to cosmology, from language to metaphysics, in classical African thought, either as a demonstration of the explicit character of that thought or as a contemporary development of its possibilities as live and relevant beyond its originating contexts, vital for humanity, an entity that remains within the bossom of nature even as humanity recreates the universe?
Image Above
People of humble means, amidst awesome grandeur that belongs to them as a gift of nature and to which people travel from over the world to come and see.
A local woman and her children on the "Avenue of the Baobabs, Morondava, Madagascar", as pictured by Gavinevans on Wikipedia in Avenue of the Baobabs.
The Baobab Stanzas : Correlating Sensory and Abstract Epistemologies Within an Eco-Systemic Sensitivity in the Context of the Correlative Scope and Limits of the Known and the Question of the Knowable
The following is an exploration of the implications of the use of the baobab proverb in summing up the theme of Falola's essay on epistemological plurality. The following stanzas suggest the value of correlating sensory and abstract epistemologies within a sensitivity to the unfathomable scope of wisdom:
1. The senses are humanity's primary means of perception.
( As evoked by the the visual origin of the baobab metaphor and the visual stimulation it provides )
2. Words can be used in creating bridges between the senses and abstract thought.
( As demonstrated by the use of language as a means of suggesting relationships between the size of the baobab, a concrete fact observed through the sense of sight interpreted by the mind's capacity of measurement between phenomena and the vast scope of wisdom, an entirely abstract idea )
3. The universe is best understood as an ecosystem.
( An extrapolation from the naturalistic roots of the metaphor within a broad network of naturalistic metaphors in classical African thought, existing in relation to the often animistic universe of this thought )
4. The hunger to know best exists within sensitivity to the ever expanding limits of what is known.
( A deduction from the metaphor as suggesting both sensitivity to the necessity of access to the phenomenon referenced, wisdom, and the limitations of such access, limitations inspiring further exploration )
Image Above
The Mysterious Journey
Where we are coming from, we dont know.
Where we are going to, we don't know.
But we continue anyway.
How many will agree with
The flame is lit and the flame holder must carry the flame till it goes out or moves
on.
"Nature is a temple of living pillars
Murmuring in a soft language,darkling whispers roll,
half strange, half understood;
There Man advances
Through forest-groves of symbols, strange and solemn,
Through forest-groves of symbols, strange and solemn,
aware of eyes watching him from the leaves above."
Charles Baudelaire, "Correspondences", directly above, in a translation adapting and conjoining translations by George Dillon, Lewis Piaget Shanks and Roy Campbell and the photo, directly above it, of the " Avenida de los Baobabs, Madagascar", by Pierrot Men, showing people walking through the avenue, magnificently illuminate each other in their combination of grandeur and mystery, expressed by the eloquently mute glory of the amazing trees in the picture, silhouetted against mist in the soft light as the diminutive forms of humans make their way through the richly evocative landscape.
The baobabs seem to oversee the human passage even as the trees themselves live within a different order of time overshadowing that of the comparatively fleeting human life cycle, the "strange, familiar eyes" as another translation of the Baudelaire poem may go, watching the animate organism as it comes and goes on what it understands as issues of importance to its fleeting existence.
Baobab Epistemology and the Critical Constellation of Knowledges : Integrations Within and Beyond the Thought of Toyin Falola
These reflections on the baobab metaphor may be taken further in developing what I name baobab epistemology, developed through a critical reading of a number of essay by Toyin Falola in relation to my broader exploration of cognitive processes and systems.
Baobab epistemology also develops ideas in ways related to Michel Foucault's use of the concept "episteme" and Thomas Kuhn's use of the idea of a paradigm, as evident from the Wikipedia essay on "episteme”.
Baobab epistemology is the critical integration of diverse cognitive strategies, as developed within particular epistemic cultures within a community and between various epistemic cultures across diverse communities.
Epistemic cultures are the various understandings within a community of ways of developing, assessing and applying knowledge.
This variety is often demonstrated in terms of a dominant episteme - a term that can be used as a shorthand for "epistemic culture" - that commands the most widespread and formalized understanding of the nature of knowledge within a community, and subordinate epistemes, which may also exist within the same community.
This is exemplified by the dominance of particular cognitive styles, within the context of particular human centred ontologies and metaphysics, conceptions of the nature of the human being in relation to the nature of the cosmos, dominant, on the one hand, in the Western academy, and those dominant in Western religious thought, as in Christian theology and Paganism and in Western esotericism, these three currents definable as markers of the various philosophical orientations shaping Western societes.
An epistemic culture may be defined in terms of relationships between various human cognitive faculties and the relative prioritization given to each of them in relation to an understanding of the character of the universe.
These faculties are the senses, emotion, imagination, intuition and intellect, all other possibilities being expansions of these.
Baobab epistemology integrates various epistemic cultures within the same community, a community that could be dispersed in space though originating from and centred within a particular geographical location or geographically contiguous locations.
This kind of geographical centralization and dispersion is represented by Western intellectual culture, the world's most diversely spread cognitive culture, though originating from and most powerfully expressed in Europe and North America from where it emerged and where it reached maturity.
Baobab epistemology also correlates diverse epistemic cultures from different communities.
Inter-cultural scholarship, such as comparisons between African, Asian and Western philosophies, demonstrates such correlations.
These diverse epistemologies may originate from particular geographical locations, such as Africa or Asia but their further development is not limited to those locations or to people native to such places, since a great deal of the richest and most impactful practices and writings of African and Asian philosophies and spiritualities is conducted by Africans and non-Africans, Asians and non-Asians, living in the global cultural centre, the West, composed of Europe and North America.
"Suffer the Children to Come Unto Me"
Pictures of children amongst baobabs are particularly striking, perhaps on account of the contrast between their not fully formed bodies and the stentorian size, suggesting formidable age, of the trees.
Perhaps such juxtapositions of youth and age, of fresh and anciently mature and yet still vigorous growth touch a deep cord of association suggesting the relative youth of humanity on Earth and cosmos, orienting themself among the immensities of nature, concrete and abstract, space, time , Earth, life and death, as may be evoked by the crouching child in the picture addressing himself directly to the immense tree within the quiet of dusk, as atmospherically evocative mist lingers in the background, out of which the other child seems to emerge.
"Photograph by Sandra Angers-Blondin While on wondersome Baobab Alley
Morondava, Madagascar
Posted by Steven McGaughey on Pinterest
Sources in and Differences from the Writings of Toyin Falola
The essays by Falola that have inspired or influenced the development of these ideas include "Power is Knowledge: Discussions in Intellectual Liberation", in which Falola uses the Akan proverb "wisdom is like a baobab tree, a single person's hand cannot embrace it" in arguing for the integration of diverse epistemologies, different ways of arriving at and assessing knowledge, from different, often geographically grounded, ethnic cultures, Western and non-Western, thus developing a "constellation of knowledges", in the recognition of the incompleteness of all knowledge systems, inadequacies arising, in my view, from the correlative powers and limitations emerging from the character of human perception, in the spectrum from the sensory to the abstract.
Also significant for me is his "Ritual Archives" in which he argues for the development of abstract thought, of theory, from the evocative powers of ritual forms, particularly classical African ritual expressions, focusing on visual forms, particularly sculpture of the Yoruba cosmology deity, Eshu.
Reinforcing the essay "Power is Knowledge", is Falola's "Pluriversalism", which develops similar ideas using a different argumentative and expository strategy.
Falola's focus in these essays oscillates between mapping a dichotomy between Western thought, particularly in the form dominant in its primary institutional means of developing and transmitting knowledge across generations, its universities, and non-Western thought, particularly classical African thought, as well as in " Power is Knowledge" drawing support from Western philosophies critical of the cognitive foregrounding dominant in the Western academy.
My adaptation of Falola consists in my foregrounding of the baobab metaphor as a richly evocative name for the kind of pluralistic epistemology he advocates in "Power is Knowledge" as well as in his earlier "Pluriversalism".
This adaptation is also demonstrated in an extension of the metaphor to include, not only the distinctions Falola highlights between Western and non-Western thought, but diversities and conjunctions within a broader variety of currents in Western thought than Falola engages and their similarities to perspectives within other cognitive communities beyond Western thought in its geographical origins and centres as well as in its dispersion across the globe.
I am arguing for the recognition of a more complex, more nuanced understanding of the cognitive dichotomies that Falola is critiquing in the version of the paper that I have read, an essay awaiting integration into a forthcoming book.
I am arguing that the dominant currents in Western thought are not readily collapsible in terms of the dichotomies between them and non-Western thought that is at times projected in decolonization discourses.
I see the defining thinkers of much of Western thought as often polyvalent reflectives who cannot be readily described in terms of stark dichotomies between their thought and prominent aspects of non-Western thought.
To what degree can one frame philosophers of such range as Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Descartes, for example, in terms of monolithic perspectives on rationality and the character of reality?
How valid is it to uniformly characterize mainstream Western thought , as different from Western esoteric and religious thought, as pursuing the dominance of a universalistic style of reason?
It is not possible, for example, to gain an adequate grasp of the history of Christian theology and of Islamic theology without acquaintance with the influence of Plato and Aristotle, thinkers, in my view, who developed the understanding of the ratiocinative powers of the human mind as a primary means of arriving at the integration of material and spiritual reality that is the core of religious thought.
Immanuel Kant is often depicted as an arch-rationalist but I dont think Kant is fully understandable without his development of his own conceptions of the sacred, as represented by his perspectives on the Sublime, the moral law and eternity.
May one not see as complementary to the idea of the culturally loaded character of epistemology, Western thinkers and movements who emphasize relative mental positioning in arriving at knowledge, such as Hans Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method and those who emphasize embodied knowing, such as with phenomenology and embodied cognition, among others?
I argue that Falola's pluriversalistic perspective is best appreciated, not in terms of a stark dichotomy between Western and non-Western thought, but of dichotomies and conjunctions within strains of Western thought, between the purely rationalistic and the multi-cognitive as these are exemplified by exoteric and esoteric Western thought and between this complex and similar complexes in other cognitive cultures.
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Setting Forth
A great photograph.
The somber luminosity of the picture tones, in harmony with the majesty of the landscape in its shaping by massive trees outlined against distant sky, embowelling the human figures as they move forward, gives the image an epic resonance, evoking all journeys of great significance, an archetypal quality amplified by the human figures being children, and one older than the other, guide and guided, growing together into the wonders and challenges opening up in the world represented by the baobab majesties.
"Alle des Baobabs, Madagascar, 1997"
Picture by Chris Simpson
in
Baobab Mysticism
Inspiration
Questions and Ideas
"Wisdom is like a baobab tree, a single person's hand cannot embrace it", it is said, but I desire, against all odds, to embrace the baobab.
Is the yearning after the seemingly impossible not the mark of my humanity as homo sapiens, the one who knows, whose knowing is grounded in the root of awareness, the self cognising at the intersection of self and cosmos, knowing of myself as different from all else, yet aspiring to understand the unity and direction of all, desiring to break free of the limitations of knowledge into the infinite?
If all possibilities of knowing, all epistemic perspectives, are conjoined, will my knowledge thereby grasp the total range of knowing possible to humanity's current stage of epistemic growth, of cognitive development, in relation to particular phenomena and even in relation to the cosmos as a whole?
The baobab mystic seeks the integration of various windows into the universe, assimilating all that may be known as enabled by the epistemic parameters that make knowledge possible in its variety across the world, in order to reach the sum total of what the human race is capable of knowing, using that as a platform in approaching the infinite.
Each orisa, each deity in Yoruba cosmology, represents a particular perspective on the universe, states Ulli Beier in The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger.
Olodumare is the sum total of these complexities, Beier concludes.
But, a group of deities shaped in terms of human thought. How can such a constellation of ideas and images, taken together, represent an ultimate reality?
Unless, like the Buddhists, one acknowledges that these verbal and visual projections are grounded in a void of unknowing, a profound ignorance which yet represents the conditions of possibility from which the aspiration to reach towards the infinite emerges.
Wole Soyinka suggests this style of thinking in The Credo of Being and Nothingness, in which his distillation of Yoruba cosmology in terms of its most prominent deities, subsumed by the majesty of Earth, is preceded by a meditation on an image of the emptiness before existence, in relation to the contingent character, the tribal limitations, even in terms of globally dispersed communities, of various religions.
"Without the knowing of divinity by man, can deity survive?", he declares, translating a Yoruba expression, rendered by Adeleke Adeeko as " láìsí ènìyàn, imalẹ̀ kò sí".
Yet, deity formulations are primary means of probing the patient, immovable immensity that surrounds the bipedal creature ambulant on Earth, as he puts it in Myth, Literature and the African World, of the origins of theatre as dramatic action meant to inscribe human intelligence on the mysterious cosmos that enfolds him.
Such questions inspire and challenge the baobab mystic, an aspirant after an ever receding, impossible ultimacy of knowledge, inspired by the baobab metaphor as invoked by Falola as an analogue of the need for a "constellation of knowledges" in the understanding of the incompleteness of all forms of knowledge, all means of knowing, and their products.
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The Return
I spent the night in meditation and returned home at dawn.
I had become as Siddhartha
in the first knowledge attained by me, in the first watch of that night-ignorance dispelled and knowledge won, darkness dispelled and illumination won, as befitted my strenuous and ardent life, purged of self.
The power of this picture consists in the evocative force of its juxtaposition of man and baobab, the frail, moving creature representing the consciousness recording the scene through a photograph, and the still giant, mute but eloquent of presence, a presence presiding over the observations, the comings and goings, of the human and his fellows, within the misty haze just before the rising of the sun.
The littleness of the human form against the backdrop of the majesty of nature is dramatized in a quietly powerful manner evocative of the methods of classical Chinese nature painting, facilitating the viewer's conjuring of various stories as emerging from this deeply atmospheric tableau.
Hence, for me, it becomes evocative of the origins of baobab mysticism as Jean Razafy, the first of the baobab mystics of Madagascar, returns home before dawn, having spent an entire day and night meditating on a specific baobab that particularly intrigued him, in that context developing the insights into roots and meaning, tree and life, growth and transformation within consistency of being constituting the origins of the philosophy and spirituality of the baobab mystics of Madagascar.
The earlier picture in this essay of a man walking into the mist wreathed avenue of the baobabs may be taken as evoking Jean Razafy's entry into the fateful meditation space and the picture directly above of a man walking away from the baobab space as his return from the day long meditation.
백과사진첩
Third to fifth lines from Further Dialogues of the Buddha, I . Translation by Lord Chalmers(London, 1926), p.17. Quoted in "Buddha’s Enlightenment,Life Afterwards, Teaching and Miracles" in Facts and Details.
Path
The Way of the Baobab Mystic
I am a baobab mystic
I am small as a baobab seed
I am nutritious as a baobab fruit
I thrive and regenerate myself with the strength and creativity of a baobab
I am massive as a baobab tree
As long as space abides, as long as the world abides, so long will I abide, feeding creatures beyond myself as the baobab does
Inspirational Sources and Directions of the Way of the Baobab
Mystic
I am small as a baobab seed
The baobab mystic rests in the bosom of creation, a little nut rich in capacity to feed others.
"Baobab seeds are highly nutritious ,rich in oils and fats, vitamins (A, E), high-quality proteins, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and other minerals, dietary fiber, saturated and unsaturated fatty acids and amino acids such as lysine.
They are popular in traditional healing, used to treat various diseases, gum problems and diseased teeth, aching joints, diarrhea , stomach and kidney problems and hiccups in children, and used to help very thin and malnourished people gain weight, and as an antidote to neutralise the poisonous Stophanthus applied to arrowheads for hunting
The oil extracted from baobab seeds is a natural beauty booster and cooking ingredient, has a moisturizing effect on the skin, has a positive effect on acne, psoriasis and eczema.
Pregnant women use the oil to keep the skin smooth and to protect it from stretch marks. Baobab oil is used to make soap. In Africa, people use the oil for cooking.
After the oil is pressed out of the seeds the remaining press cake can be used as animal feed for cattle, sheep and goats. The pressing residues have a high nutritional value – similar to that of legumes.
In former times people burned fruit shells, seeds and red fibers. The developing smoke kept away flies. From the residues potash was obtained. It was used as a fertilizer or as an additive for soap."
From "Miraculous Little Baobab Seeds" in Baobab : The African Tree of Life by Heike Pander
I am nutritious as a baobab fruit
"A fruit is ripened by the sun-fire. The body is ripened by the blood-fire. The mind is ripened by the life-fire. Fire matures things, changes them, translates them to a higher order which is the capacity to nourish phenomena other than themselves. This process demonstrates the highest cosmic ideal, that is, an interdependence within all living phenomena."
( Mazisi Kunene on classical Zulu thought in the introduction to his Anthem of the Decades. London: Heinemann, 1981, xxiv)
"Baobab fruits are internationally traded as “super fruit” or “super food” like acai berries and goji berries. Their mix of ingredients makes them special:
The fruit can contain up to ten times as much fibre as apples, up to six times as much vitamin C as oranges, up to six times as many antioxidants as blueberries, up to five times as much magnesium as avocados, up to four times as much potassium as bananas and up to twice as much calcium as milk, even more iron than meat – just to name a few.
This outstanding mix is supplemented by representatives of the B vitamins and various omega fatty acids. The concentration of the ingredients in the fruit varies according to their place of origin."
Extracting the fruit powder from the hard shell and mixing it with milk makes a refreshing drink. Left overnight the mixture turns into a yoghurt. The powder is used as a leavening agent for baking, making the bread dough rise perfectly."
From Heike Pander, "Baobabs and Their Wild Fruits" and "Baobab,the Tree of Life"
I thrive and regenerate myself with the strength and creativity of a baobab
"Baobabs are real survivalists – they are frugal creatures living in areas with meagre soils and little rainfall. Their ability to regenerate themselves is legendary.
They can balance out damage of their bark and branches to a very high extent. If a baobab collapses and/or is uprooted it can still survive and drive new shoots out of its stem or branches."
From Heike Pander, "The Baobab – Surviving Under Tough Conditions"
"As the oldest seed producing trees in the world, representing the oldest living organisms in Africa, some having been around since before the time of the ancient Greeks, their resilience -- some are more than 2,000 years old -- have earned them many names in myths, legends and folklore."
From CNN
"Some of Botswana's largest living trees, between 2000 and 3000 years old, were standing around Makgadikgadi Pans before Homer wrote the Iliad, the Romans invaded Britain and Christ walked on earth.
They have seen the pans flood and dry out to dust, the arrival of iron-working farmers from the north, the first white hunters and traders who carved their names into their bark.
The Baobab Trail is one of intense excitement and interest, and a voyage through an almost forgotten land..."
From Alec Campbell, "Botswana's Baobab Trail", in Botswana Notes and Records, Vol. 42 (2010), pp. 179-181.179.
I am massive as a baobab tree
"The baobab tree can live to be 3,000 years old and can grow as wide as the length of a bus measuring a girth of 53 meters and a height of 22 metres."
From CNN
As long as space abides, as long as the world abides, so long will I abide, feeding creatures beyond myself as the baobab does
[ Adapted from Śāntideva's Buddhist Bodhicaryavatara,The Way of the Bodhisattva]
"An old baobab tree can create its own ecosystem, as it supports the life of countless creatures, from the largest of mammals to the thousands of tiny creatures scurrying in and out of its crevices.
Birds nest in its branches; baboons devour the fruit; bush babies and fruit bats drink the nectar and pollinate the flowers, and elephants have been known to chop down and consume a whole tree.
The fruit contains tartaric acid and vitamin C and can either be sucked, or soaked in water to make a refreshing drink. They can also be roasted and ground up to make a coffee-like drink.
The bark is pounded to make rope, mats, baskets, paper and cloth; the leaves can be boiled and eaten,and glue can be made from the pollen.
Fresh baobab leaves provide an edible vegetable similar to spinach which is also used medicinally to treat kidney and
bladder disease, asthma, insect bites, and several other maladies. Pollen from the African and Australian baobabs is mixed with water to make glue."
bladder disease, asthma, insect bites, and several other maladies. Pollen from the African and Australian baobabs is mixed with water to make glue."
From "Baobab", Siyabona Africa: Kruger National Park
I am a baobab mystic
"Wisdom is like a baobab tree, a single person's hand cannot embrace it", it is said, but I desire, against all odds, to embrace the baobab, seeking the infinite in the finite.
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My name is being called from some distant place which feels like home, though I don't recall ever having been there.
This picture of a Mmamagwa sunset, Northern Tuli Game Reserve, Botwana, by Vincent Grafhorst achieves its power through its use of perspective, its highlighting of relative distances, between the setting sun in the background, the tree in the mid-ground and the rocky outcropping in the foreground, spatial values evoking both temporal possibilities and inward resonances, the time the eye takes in traversing these constitutive elements of the picture and the suggestion, by this temporal frame, of inward time, the time it takes to process what one is seeing, resonating with echoes of immense but inspiring distances, as between the gloriously setting sun and the landscape it illuminates and the eye taking in the illuminator and the illuminated, evoking, in turn, aeons of evolutionary time echoed by the sun, enabling the long, slow development of tree, rock and the watching intelligences represented by photographer and viewer of photograph.
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