Many African traditions might reason in the opposite direction, namely that true cognition and philosophical investigation should reveal the relation of the self to other phenomena as the means of deepening the understanding of the "self", and emotional responses such as pleasure or pain could provide valuable information for this process. Through systems of taboos, rituals, and what one might call totems, distinctions would need to be made between some external phenomena while the inherent continuity between others should be realized if not actualized.

This is very interesting because it resonates deeply with the Yoruba cosmology in which there is a conception of an afterlife which is not always distinct from a "pre-life", but they are not the focus of the tradition, which similarly focuses instead on understanding and working on the "self". However, the afterlife and/or pre-life are not necessarily or temporally separate from earthly existence as ancestors in that realm frequently interact with living society and family members.

Is this only in relation to Udayana's context or in a more global sense? If the latter, why might it have a more universal relevance, even for traditions without an analogous term to "karma"?

This again would depend on how radical of an individualistic definition of the "self" one would take, but the traditionalist Yoruba would likely take this further and argue that this continuity holds even after death and that depending on the nature of one's destiny (ori) and character (iwa) the "self" can become quite porous and participate in the perception and recollection of other manifestations of the same nature across time and space. In essence, the continuity can traverse both time through an individual body and the "self" contained within, but also different bodies with enough continuity between the "self"/"selves" depending on how they are defined.

This strikes me as a bold claim. Why not simply state that, at least within the tradition, there are no known means of doing so or given his first principles that it is not a logical possibility?

This makes sense following what I perceive to be a type of dualism in Udayana's thought. The Yoruba would insist on a level of unity between the immaterial nature of a person or thing and its material form and actions. The inner nature (inu) is reflected in the outer nature (ode) and work done on one level would have real effects on the other, necessitating a holistic approach that treats them as one unit, albeit with different dimensions.

Related to some previous comments, must all experience take place in this world (however that may be defined)? Is it impossible that there might be some type of experience or knowledge gained in another existence? That would certainly be a possibility in most West African traditions, both in terms of previous incarnational lives as well as knowledge or information gathered in a celestial pre-existence of some kind.

This is perhaps similar to the Yoruba notion of an ori (head/destiny) combining with ẹmi (breath/spirit) in a body (ara) to form a person, and the body itself being a composite of several other important organs such as the heart (ọkan) and brain (ọpọlọ), but there is no Cartesian duality between the physical and mental/spiritual aspects of these organs/elements.

As a result, however, there is a celestial pre-existence of at least some of these elements of the self, and they have something akin to a sense of agency, indicating a level of consciousness, which would suggest that it is not the unification of these organs that produces consciousness, but perhaps a particular type of consciousness.

There would be an important departure here in Yoruba tradition, as while these means of knowledge are indeed useful, they are viewed as epistemologically less reliable than direct experience. Yoruba thought would rather pose the question, "How can one come to know or experience the 'self'?" or alternatively, "What process could produce such an experience?"

This is an interesting point of departure from Yoruba oriṣa traditions. Their practitioners would at times engage in debate--although this would often take the form of producing new literary narratives rather than argumentative discourse--but the goal was never to completely refute a competing tradition, merely to present a critique and alternate viewpoint. In the 19th century when British missionaries would frequently attempt to engage oriṣa priestesses and priests in open argumentation, they would commonly respond that time and further experience would reveal the truth of the matter or that they could not understand why the missionaries assumed their own tradition and perspective must inherently be universally true and replace those that predated it.

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