Personal Journals of a Would-Be Philosopher: An Introspective Journey

By George Lysloff

The book is a sequence of personal; refl ections covering a recent
period of close to half a year: almost forgotten memories that rose from
the authors childhood and adolescence periods covering the Second
World War in France and later the eastern part of the Third Reich.
Most of the pages however are concerned with the mostly unorthodox
philosophical considerations that have preoccupied him over the most part
of his life attempting to clarify some terms or notions that characterize his
views of existence, reality and his and mans relationship to God, and calls
it transcendence.
The positions he expresses are continuation to comments and ideas he
expressed in previous books he wrote in the last decade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493178735

George Lysloff

"The world should know and learn to accept the fact that life and fantasy (read "inner experience") co-exist in any person's existence. Subjectivity is the primary motor to anyone's being. My stories illustrate the point, I hope, and give the reader the chance to review his own personal life, placing its events in an acceptable and worthwhile perspective and allowing him to retain (or maybe regain) a proper distance from the fallacies of 'what's real." This is most certainly "existentialistic" and, from a philosophical viewpoint, an "idealistic" attitude. It offers a powerful alternative to the current evolution of society toward a strictly materialistic and utilitarian mode of living" - George Lysloff Lysloff was born in Paris, France of a Russian emigré father and a Baltic-German mother. He went through is primary and secondary education in various French schools. He studied medicine in Germany and Belguim, obtaining his diploma in 1951. He immigrated to the United States in 1954, and took his specialty training in the field of Psychiatry. He received his Board Certification in 1963. He was employed in various mental hospitals in the Midwest, and then moved back to Europe in 1972. He remained active in his profession until his retirement in 1993. George was married in 1950, and the couple had four children. After his wife fell ill with Alzheimer's disease and had to move to a care home, he lives close to his children in Wisconsin. His writing career began with poetry, initially written in the French, which he later translated to English. Other books by George Lysloff: Life and Fantasy: Pilgrimage, Life and Fantasy: On that side of Awakening, Life and Fantasy: Growing Up, Life and Fantasy: New World Rhapsody, Life and Fantasy: Andernach on the Rhein, Letters to my Beloved Ghost, Poems and Stanzas, Reaching Out, Poems and Stanzas II, Poems and Stanzas III, Poems and Stanzas IV, Poems Visions Reflections, Impressions in Verse and Prose, and Visions and Reflections II

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INTRODUCTION

In this book, I confided to its pages some of my most recent thoughts on subjects that have obsessed me since the early years of my life. Looking back at some of the prose I used to expose those ideas to potential readers, I was struck by how difficult it has been to use words that reproduce those thoughts in a clear and intelligible manner.

I went through the books I published in the past 12 to 15 years and noticed several things that made me realize how obscure some of my sayings and positions were. At the same time, it so happened that I meanwhile have engaged myself in territories that I had not trodden on prior to this writing.

I also remembered a number of episodes of my younger life that had apparently escaped my attention or had been poorly emphasized. And so I, once more, mixed philosophical insights with the recollections of my past which I believed would uncover clues to the eventual reader as to the evolution of my frame of mind which led me to come up with the often unorthodox concepts I have been putting to paper.

I have developed some further arguments for my belief in transcendence and the origins of our dichotomized and split world, with some minor incursions in the various areas of relevant science and possibly religious systems.

I have been quite attracted by the issues pertaining to the early stages in the development of the just conceived child up to its eruption into the Chaos that it needs to organize and shape so that its subjectivity could deal with the resulting reality of its emerging world.

I came up to the idea that it is the newborn that creates its own Universe as it struggles to firm up its newly acquired place in the type of reality it needs to fit into.

I must say that it was a true challenge trying to place myself in to the perspective of that child and follow its path from the solipsism phase of its Existence where it was closest to the Prime Essence, to a world compatible with its genetically guided demands from the state of chaos its senses present it with.

I want to emphasize the meaning of some of the concepts and terms I will be using in the following chapters to avoid misunderstandings. When I refer to or speak of I—. Man, I mean not only myself, but the generality of all other Human Beings as well, whether they be Man or Woman.

It is a holistic notion and does not imply me personally although it does not exclude me from the total of humanity. When I speak of I-God, I do not refer to me personally as God or godly being, but address myself to the notion that God is in me and is not only an element of my human nature since Creation, but is and has been everything that entailed without exception, in no way considering myself as being excluded from the totality of Creation. Phylogenesis (phylogeny) is the path followed by life as it evolves chronologically from species to species. Ontogenesis (ontogeny) refers to the individual development of a member of a species. In those words I oppose Evolution with Life and Gestation and Life as two aspects of the existence of a living entity. (Such as the opposition of Evolutionism versus Creationism, of past and present, or generic to specific, etc,),.

I realize that some of the chapters are replete with medical or special terms and concepts. I apologize for this, but must underline that it is quite difficult to illustrate some of the special areas that contribute arguments in support of my theses, I have been reluctant to use the term God, since it usually refers to an organized religion—oriented faith or belief system of some kind. I employed designations that were more neutral to my mind, such as Prime Cause, the Totality, the Essence or Atman (or general soul in the Hindu philosophy), the One or the Prime one, etc. It was not my intention to be prejudicial in any way, but to try and avoid any kind or preferential attitude

Birth in the Alfred Adler school or psychoanalysis, brings trauma to the newborn, actually pain and discomfort caused by the physical part of the process, which along with the child’s subsequent place in the family structure, may have important repercussions in the future genesis of the child’s mental or behavioral functioning.

Therefore the timing of the delivery of a newcomer in the family, its place in the pecking order involving other siblings is an important factor. I am convinced that Adler was thinking mostly of the psychological and transitional aspects rather than of the passage of the fetus through the narrows of its carrier, its mother.

The ideas he has regarding the teleological and holistic aspects of evolution are the main factors that to me support the notion of transcendence, those remarks also found in Carl Jung and Karen Horney’s writings.

The child coming into the world as I know is faced with what I only can conceive of as the formlessness of Chaos. Its first major efforts will be directed, outside of the physiological needs it perceives, at bringing order in what it witnesses. It begins to build its own Universe, it creates it, and thus apparently emulates the Prime Cause’s Creation of the overall world I-Man share and live in

But now let me lead the reader to the text of the Personal Journal of the author, that is his and my latest book!

MAY 30 2013

Many thoughts rose and went through my mind; they came and sank back into the folds of my brains over the last several weeks. I could find none that seemed to have any value, nothing that could have made them worthy of fixating them on paper.

That is until this morning. I believe I may now make some progress in expressing my ideas on transcendence and present them in a more lucid light.

There are three main areas that lend themselves to a more profound analysis: the evolution of the Self, the development of its relationship with the world I created and the impact of transcendence on my self-realization.

I am of the opinion that awareness must be a very early phenomenon, or better, that it was always present, despite some assumptions by a number of thinkers that it manifests itself only when an advanced stage in the evolution of an individual in terms of its biological morphology has been reached.

The Self as I see it is the resultant of a blossoming out of specific parts in the evolving circumvolutions of the individual’s mind opening up and the brain becoming functional, with the spirit as its motor. In the primates, including the human being, this takes place before the advent of the birth process.

Let me begin with the Self. It initially is a spiritual pendant to the solipsism state of my awareness, which the entity I represent sees as confined within its Essence and does not transmit any discernable sensory signal in—or output. As yet there is no link of any kind to the reality field that will be triggered off when the fruit is expelled from the womb or breaks out of the egg.

The fetus is a substrate of the Pure Self, unmindful as yet of anything that may exist outside of its essential awareness. It lies in the center of its proto-perception, alone and yet literally omniscient. It carries the seed of the Universe it is about to create.

The godly Essence is immanently active and present at any stage of the evolution of the prenatal entity as it develops and grows. It is initially omnipresent from the very onset in the solipsistic phase of the evolving fetus and accompanies every stage of the phylogenetic steps leading to the ontogenetic growth of the maturing individual.

This recapitulative phase is a sequential review of the stages of the evolutionary development preceding the fetus and converging on the soon to be born child. The Prime Essence is thus a part to the path taken which leads to the post-natal individual.

Birth, as the reader will see, is the next step of the maturing of the created. As the gestation period advances toward its culmination, it goes through the genetically induced changes hat govern the direction of the unborn child’s development, and gets it ready to leave its amniotic environment, the site of Absolute Reality, at least for the duration of the process/.

Its developing organs of senses will presage the advent of a major unfolding of the potentials contained in the primordial core of the growing new entity. Which was first, the Self or the Awareness? The Self requires a substrate, but Awareness is what ties one,s sense of Being to the Prime Essence.

All this has to the seen as notions that lie outside time and space, outside of the dualities and dimensionality, what I may call the Ultimate Transcendental Absolute.

From the point of view of the observer, that is from my own perspective, awareness is a fundamental property of the Self.

The Self implies centeredness, subjectivity and unlimited reach and power; it implies closeness to the godly, to immateriality, as well as the superfluity of space and time.

The fetus undergoes an anatomical and psychological succession of phases in its growth reflecting, as mentioned, the paleogenetic stages undergone by the species in the course of the still traceable ladders of the evolutionary sequences.

It does not linger unduly at any point of this recuperative review of the previous morphological stages that its ancestors and predecessors went through. This entire maturation unfolds in a time and space-less vacuum.

One cannot possibly avoid or deny the qualification of goal-directedness that expresses itself in that recapitulation of the fetus’s genetically governed structures and functions. I witness this in the path followed by the process as it leads to a more complex and better adapted member of the species.

The guides and markers that seem to lead to this process can be found in the various perspectives seen in this process: the adaptation principle, the Survival Theory, the Creationist Credos, the role played by assumed generator substances invoked by some theoreticians.

All in all, there can be no doubt that within the framework of the dualisms and scales’ based human (and possibly animal) thinking, there is a principle, a creative force, a non-material awareness. Whether I elect to call that awareness or consciousness God, Prime Cause, the Atman, etc., cannot be the issue. Semantics will not solve the results of the above reasoning, except…

There is the transcendental or synth-analytic point of view. Time as I see it, measures it, uses it in the sciences, is the consequence of a planned or adaptive inclusion into the mind of the living creatures and entities, to serve as a means of support for the internal perception of the structure of the Universe.

Time is experienced and used to organize behavior, to allow for an understanding of astronomical events, to measure the unfolding of living activities and for one’s functioning within the natural laws of the world, and so forth.

Space is perceived as three-dimensional. It can be measured, despite that there is no absolute basis for the units of measurement used, even when considering the speed of light as standard. The methods devised for the measuring of time and space are derived from astronomical data or from events at the level of nuclear physics. More often it relies on biological rhythms. There exist so-called constants that include time, etc., but no absolutes.

To me, the indefinable aspects of measurability are evidence for the artificial fabricating and thus only relative validity of those concepts.

MAY 31 2013

Measuring is the dualistic way to concretizing and accessing Reality, at least the one I perceive, each one in his own way. There exist commonalities between the individuals worlds, and concordance may be frequent in many of the dimensional spheres.

The need and ability to measure is something that I came up with and which does not correspond to anything that is absolutely real. I and my co-entities perceive the world as we create it, stretching, expanding or contracting in its space-time dimensions, the elements that are of my doing as is the nature of measurability.

I chose the birth event as the final state of the fetus that finds itself in a fluid continuum without limits or limitations. It responds to a sudden contact with Absolute Reality which brings into play mechanisms built into its substance, its innate potentials, its as yet amorphous nature in the as yet unstructured milieu that surrounds it.

My potential as an auto-created entity allows me to follow the preconceived path common to all living creatures and entities existing on this planet such as my godly will meant to see evolve and unfold, I shape the phases and facets of my self-creation and make it permanent, concrete, applicable to all the projections with a provision for either individual or species variables.

After the post-fetal adaptive phase, I find myself immersed in a world governed by laws, rules, imperatives that I initiated and introduced at the previous level of my being. I made those laws and imperatives permanent, independent and yet mutually compatible.

Now I give to all the follow-through potentials direction, a goal, namely a trend, a gradual return imperative toward the Totality, expressed in the factor of individual transitory and generic bio-teleological aims.

I now can live and die as all living creatures live and pass on, some sooner and some later. Races live and die, and the sum of all those species, races and genera will live for a variable spell and die as species and genera at one point of the dimension time or other.

I am to subtract the temporal dimension, and automatically keep attributing it to the creative process, I revert at once to the immanent, a-temporal nature of the godly, of the Prime Cause. Time as an irreversible creation becomes eternity.

If I subtract dimensions from space, I cancel all the aspects of measurability and revert to a structure-less substrate which is the equivalent of the void, becoming the ultimate emptiness, the godly naught, the atman’s eternity.

In this manner, I enter the domain of the Absolute, Transcendent Reality, the stage of enlightenment that I am attempting to reach indirectly in my thoughts, using the synth-analytical mode of reasoning.

It is my godliness that allows me to use my mind in order to achieve a level of thinking that opens the door to the concepts underlining my true nature, that get me to recognize the obstacles that I dispersed in order to preserve the dualistic mode of the world I keep going for the duration of all biological life.

I can discern aspects of the Absolute Transcendence when I eliminate the restrictions emanating from the dualisms and from the scalarity ( as measurable structural steps, or up and down hierarchical stages) responsible for the fallacies, the conflicts and complements, the contrary currents and opposing truths.

I make those dependent of my will and can operate mentally with alternatives that offer themselves to my material mind, now activated by the power of the spirit that projects me into the higher realms I inhabit.

It is obviously very difficult to conceive of a Universe without structures and dimensions, that cannot be measured, or compared with another, lengthened or shortened, and without time ticking from a sea of clocks and watches, bell tolling from belfries’ regular rhythms and cycles, the beat of the heart, the in and out of my breathing.

What would a Universe look or feel like without variable periods, weights or distances? Here I count, measure, I estimate, assess, count and carry out all the dictates of my pre-fabricated abstract numbers, quantities and grades or qualities.

In my world, decisions or formal judgments, making inquiries, and choosing are notions that need to be opposed or contrasted to or with another. Time tears the fabric of my Reality a little bit more as it moves or translates into virtuality.

Can I do anything or do nothing? Will I go or stay in one place? Already the concept of an non-structured Universe is a difficult, paradoxical or impossible notion, just as the idea of non-composite environment or a non-cohesive or contiguous multi-cellular body, or the absence of the opposable functions inherent to and accompanying every change, movement, of all behavior, each one of those being felt to be an integral part of Being, of Existence.

What would an unstructured Cosmos look to me, were I capable of even imagining such a world? Or am I already returning to my dualistic mode of communicating? Do I see the issue as the confrontation of one type of world with another, a pendant defined by its very own characteristics?

I sometimes slide into the mood where I begin to question some of the avenues my thinking will take. Does it lead to some form of extreme nihilism, to an attempted cancellation of both elements of any proposition, resulting in the actual destruction of both? Is there any applicability to that realm of reasoning? I do occasionally doubt the value of such dialogues and see no conceivable use or solution to that line of cogitating.

The only argument that gives me support is that even my doubting is proof of my resorting to one aspect of the subject I deal with, one that is by definition always opposable to its opposite, to its counterpart.

A major problem lies in the confronting of the so-called objective world, the material, extrinsic inanimate and yet dynamic aspect of my perception to the virtuality, the immaterial intrinsic field of m y subjectivity. I know that this facet of the reality I perceive is not imaginable without the other: the one implies the other; the one needs the other, presupposes the other.

Contradicting, polarizing and complementary thinking are obviously obligate operations of the perception of my Universe. It demands a dualistic quality to my logics and my rational thinking. If I try to invalidate that fact, I loose my relationship with my reality and find myself in limbo, subject to a sense of dissolution and loss of my orientation. Then I see myself existing, if such can be stated, in a different Reality, maybe be a field of incertitude or then in Transcendence.

JUNE 01 2013

Let me return to the concept of Self. Like the classical definition of the term implies, it deals with the I, the ego, but includes all those elements of Reality that are perceived as extrinsic to the entity under consideration.

It generally applies to perceptions closely related to the somatic person or creature, its fur, clothes, implements it uses, immediate environment with the other entities in the vicinity, objects it claims to be its own, and so on.

I fully agree with this definition, but tend to see it reach much further. I extend it to include all that is within the physical, mental, conceptual reach of any creature as individual.

Thus the Self will expand, conditioned only by its stage of development such as age, intellectual capacity and capability, etc. It also will, in a variety of instances, contract with age as well as in states of intense emotional involvement such as distress, pain, love, worry…

I place my Self on par with the level of the world I perceive, the very world I described as self-created or rather ego-created, the personal and unique world of myself as individual entity, The Universe I-man have elaborated is ultimately a concept of undetermined complexity, extent, contents. I create what serves my purpose, what I elect to be a part of me.

I-God am the supreme author of the Transcendental Universe which incorporates all Selves, i.e. all Universes. And so is everybody else !

My Self is the limitless aspect of my I; it follows my own internal rules, pursues my own goals and wishes, fullfils my personal ambitions and needs. I shape my Self from the moment of my inception as a projection of the atman, of the Godly, exploding into a blaze of awareness at the moment of leaving the womb that carried me forward.

My Self is the virtual aspect of my ego, it has no frontiers, no tangible limits. It transcends the psychosomatic barriers of the physical structures of my body. My self pushes back the imperatives of the dualities and surmounts the limitations of formal thinking and its logics. It is the expression