Tuesday 29 January 2008

NYAME NWU NA M’AWU


Meditation on Nyamenwunam’awu led Adinkrahen Ikentua Refe to identify with Adinkra as Nyame, as Nyakokpon. She argued that she saw Adinkra not as symbols of Ultimate Reality, but as Ultimate Reality Itself. When asked how that could be, she replied that the Ultimate is whatever we want it to be. It is Kaidara of the Fulani, ever near and ever distant, as distant as the farthest reaches of the cosmos, as the impossibility of a dimension that is unperceived, but as intimate as the most intimate self. Distant because formless. Subtle as air but not sensed by those who because they cannot see it think it is not there. Very near because there exists no obstacle or distance between others and Itself. It assumes any form It likes, causes veils to fall-revealing Itself - eliminating distances as It chooses[1].

So, she reasoned, it’s a matter of choice what we want It to be, since it is everything and Nothing. It is nothing in that it can not be exclusively identified with anything. It is Nothing in that its essential being is so beyond the grasp of human understanding that to that understanding, that being is a Nothing. It is Everything in that it is the ground of all, it constitutes the condition of possibility that makes everything possible.



[1] Adapted from Kaidara by Hamadou Hampate Ba.

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