Poetry, Transcendence and the Search for Wisdom

By George Lysloff

As the title indicates, this is the third volume to Poems, Visions, Refl ections,
which is titled POETRY, TRANSCENDENCE and the SEARCH FOR
WISDOM
Like its predecessors, the book includes a number of poems that accompany the
chapters written in prose of the book. The prose chapters are either biographical
fl ashbacks or reactions to thoughts. elements of lectures or simply refl ections
and inspirations that arose in response to events or situations occurring while
the author was working on his book. The main text deals with some of his
ideas regarding the fi elds of sciences such as physics and cosmology along
with his own position regarding those, which he calls transcendental all of it
wrapped in his usual tongue-in-cheek mode of writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462865376

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

Book preview

SIGNALS

The glooming night draws near. I sit at ease and watch

The dusk and its layers on the vast stage, feeling good as I do

When all my chores are done and no new tasks await.

I open wider the window, to let air in.

The dark is cool and new. Above the horizon

A star locks in on me, forcing me to notice

Its bright scintillating, as if expecting for

Me to respond and to heed some urgent message.

I wonder who this is calling me, broadcasting

Its distant inquiry, wanting me to signal

That I did understand, that it is requesting

A sign or reply.I nearly turn away,

But then decide to peer on occasion at that

Sidereal beacon in the sky, my distant

And curious companion, making sure it is still

There. Clouds are rushing by, obscuring my view. My

Nocturnal visitor does disappear briefly,

Cut off, concealed, eclipsed from the field of its far

Away silent partner by a transient blindness,

Only to discover me again, recipient

Of its silent summons and its unspoken words:

Is this where you reside presently, beloved?

Are you the one sending me those fitful appeals

Of hope, consolation, of patience and courage?

I wonder if you can hear my message of care,

My tender memories, my wishes. Yes! I know

You to be way out there, a transfiguration

Of the vast consciousness where those that preceded

You found a permanent refuge, a home. I must

Thank you, my twinkling star, my distant messenger.

For lending me your light that I will not forget

My other Self, the one I yearn to soon rejoin.

DEATH AND REGENESIS

Like all aware and conscious humans did in eons past and down to the present level of the cohorts inhabiting this realm, I wonder where they all went, those I knew and those that remained anonymous to my cognition after they passed on to the next level.

They stopped being a spiritual as well as a cohesive part of the world that I consider real, the world I presently function in. I am prevented from looking them up, talking with them, communicating with them. Or am I?

They are gone, dead, non-existent any longer. Where to? Is their disappearance final, total? Are they now something else that the transition triggered off when they died? Are they in some limbo, in Heaven, in Parnassus or Olympic realm, in Valhalla?

I have never been able to accept the thought of the individual soul being forced to migrate on a succession of progressive rungs on an quasi-infinite ladder, depending on the amounts of positive or negative amount of Kharma each carries with him; or else rejoin the Totality in order to fuse with some Universal Spirit or Presence, if there is such.

Yet I am convinced those individualities are still there, if not in the outward appearance they once evoked when I met them in actuality.

Three years ago, my wife Wanda passed away and those thought have pursued me, although it may have been a simple step to put her memory ad acta and go on with my banal existence: Where may she be now? I have many ways of remembering her in my memory, in photo albums I possess, in conversations I have with others that were close to us, those who have not forgotten her, who recall and think of her.

In that sense, she has remained actual, present and alive, and the many facets of that sustained recall can be extremely vivid! At times they cause me to get close to weeping, and at others I succeed and commune with her in thought.

After she reached the end of the period of her sojourn with us, the multitudinous phases of her being underwent transformations, They resulted in her physical presence getting scattered every which way.

She went through cremation. The flames consumed her body. The several aspects of her somatic structure transmuted to water vapor, others to smoke or soot; what remained was a dusty and granular residues of what she once had been as a living person.

Last year, two of her children and I returned those ashes to Mother-Earth, something she had requested. The transfer took place in a small patch of woods behind her daughter’s home.

I know that not one single atom of her was wasted, for she became all at once evanescent, elementary and earth-bound. She gave back her share of particles and quantic waves to the Universe we inhabit and are a part of. By now some of her has contributed to giving life to a bird, a flower, a forest leave or a parch of moss.

Her atoms are spread everywhere, mixing with those of other trillions that were there already, those of the living things that preceded her.

What of her Self, her spirit and mind, her intellect, her knowledge and memories, the phases and stages of her life, her love and wishes, her good and bad days, her dreams?

Those are obviously non-physical aspects of who she was, and they remain preserved like any other non-physical modes of her and anyone’s reality.

I mentioned the memory of her we continue to carry in us, the images of her we created and collected in our minds over the many years of her and our common existence, the ones treasured by members of her family and the friends she had.

Those are the pictures I conjure and behold whenever I wish to do so, as they lead to more images and thoughts and memories of her and of us.

SELF CONCEIT

There was a time long ago when

I thought I had something to say

About my life, about my world,

My subjectivity.

I deemed others would stop, pay heed,

Listen to my words, take notice

Of my humble contribution,

Of my reality,

The experience and the wisdom

Of a senior. I hoped to share

Those and decided to write down

In all simplicity

My opinions, attempting to

Find a way to meet with the mind

Of any one who, like I did

With impartiality

Was looking for knowledge and truth.

But I suddenly wondered: Who

Was I to presume in earnest

And without prejudice

That I could expose secret thoughts,

Unknowable insights and facts?

For what are Truth, Knowledge, Wisdom?

Simple sagacity

Truth is what I find in my soul;

Wisdom is the Knowledge of Truth.

A part of what exists for me,

The font of Verity.

I know my Essence and need not

Shore up my Self with spoken words.

For it knows me as I know it

In actuality.

BRIDGING THE GAP

I woke up early, maybe because I finished going through a vivid dream that may have triggered the early morning resumption of my awareness. I dreamt of a crowd of people surrounding me. It included my cousin Alexandra, the one that lives in Paris, and a little girl who for some reason was being threatened by dire misfortunes, trying to survive and looking for support and loving help.

In that dream I was doing my very best to attract attention to what was going on, appealing to a number of persons that should have cared more than they did, and raise their compassion. I kept relating to them what I could remember of the child’s past, including the death of her parents, victims of consumption. which left her an orphan.

Nobody seemed particularly interested and I had to wonder about the indifference or even callousness of those others who hardly even listened. Apparently they had their own existence to occupy their time, their own dwindling life span and individual complex ties to reality.

I woke and transposed some of those rather desultory thoughts into the present, my own present. I admit to being one prone to preserve the integrity of my current structured life and keep it as unchanged a state as possible, more intent on picking up threads and traces of my personal past in order to save them from oblivion.

There is a rule which governs aging relationships. It avoids any attempt to keep those from drifting past, in spite of old enmities, the usual growing disinterest or even total estrangement that one often encounters. Older people end up going their lonely way because they are reacting to the rapid approach of their final depersonalization

This almost neurotic need I have to try and keep myself attached to earlier ties toward those that had meaning for me during my prior sojourn in the human sphere, even when it seems to loses some of its value as an obligate necessity.

I can think of a growing number of my close relatives that slipped away, either gradually and steadily from the center of the initially close relationship, or who did so in a more abrupt manner. They slowly slid to the periphery and vanished from the awareness of their kinship with me.

This loss of contact is the cause of much pain, as well as dismay and incomprehension. How can a brother become a total stranger, or a son, or a cousin?

I am one of those that will try to cultivate familial relationships, possibly with exaggerated persistence or assiduity, maybe for the wrong reasons and possibly in response to a personal need. After an encounter with one not seen for a longer period of time, I often feel the need to reanimate the faded ties and try to make them regain significance, only to experience at best, a low-key, lukewarm response in return.

Thus, the meeting becomes another one of the many memories meant primarily to enrich the views one may be able to conjure from the past.

I often tend to seek and re-activate the memory of someone I knew long ago, by attempting to revitalize the relationship as I remembered it. But I realize in most instances that ultimately I will have to allow those defunct moments to slide back into oblivion.

I think of some I knew who, like I, placed an enduring emphasis on maintaining such bridges alive, to keep up contact with persons they considered to be a part of them and their landscape, their personal world. Those individuals are rare examples of that breed of hangers on.

Most will follow the path of a gradual desensitization in their awareness of kinship or of friendly past interpersonal ties. They will have evolved and are different by now as individuals. They are possessed with an altered sense of subjectivity, possibly because they feel they are getting close to the time when death will, as they believe, erase their personality for ever

I deplore such falling apart of any old network created over many years, formed of a multitude of interpersonal threads that radiate from my awareness. I continue to hold on to my reliance or adherence to earlier concepts of human nature, the ones I used to believed in as part of my efforts at remaining true to my ideals, by naïve beliefs about virtue and altruism.

I feel that there is more than just a commonality of psychological or biological ties to my co-entities, more than just an emotional-physiological or utilitarian rapport I need to maintain with those closest to me. But I have to learn and look more soberly at those inter-human phenomena, at those fragile bastions of my personal, social and emotional life.

I mourn for those I cared for and loved, for anyone I knew and liked, for those I lost track of along the way, up to the final loss. I mourn for what I thought I hadfound in them, and what I fancied them to be.

THE HOLE

It rains grieves and sorrows

Through a hole in the sky.

Snow and cold find their way

Into my naked soul

Through the ceiling’s window,

The noon sun shines brightly,

Chasing the dark shadows

That keep me prisoner.

Through the door I hear sounds

Of children’s merriment,

Their mothers’ lullabies,

The distant call of spring.

Winter’s tears line the hole:

Drops of despair, icy

Showers that trickle down

Its streamlets of worries.

The moon peers down at me

Through the mirroring glass,

Illuminates the curse

Of my isolation.

From my dying bedstead,

I can hear the soft sighs

Of relief of all those

That gained one more reprieve.

The opening did close

After my departure,

Once again quiescence

And warmness rule all life.

Fresh air enters the room

From which my ghosts fled.

There is tranquility

Now in the nether world.

COLORS

I find myself in a phase of uploading my spent batteries! I read, I thought, I wrote until a few short weeks ago. Since then, I just lived, enjoyed, partied with events and friends. Figuratively I am going through a time of recharging my potential.

My nervous system is in the process of capturing more new elements, bits of knowledge, information, ideas. Soon it will start to glow once more and there will flash a spark here and there, igniting, firing, an incendiary something, maybe a catalyst. And then the blaze will break out once again!. I shall write, expound, theorize, extrapolate.

Fresh colors will tint my spiritual outpourings. Words, phrases, pages will flow from my pen, carrying the fruits of my inspiration and cogitations. This will last hours, maybe days or weeks.

I shall try to record it all, for my sake, but mostly for whomever will someday read my lines, or then for nothing at all! I tell myself that I write for the future and it does not matter too much whether it actually will be read or not!

This is a cycle that resembles all the others, like eating, sleeping or listening to the time-bound unfolding of current events.

What of it! I wait anxiously for the moment when I shall begin to feel how words and their lobbyists begin pushing to open wide the portals that allow them to escape from their prison like a flight of birds released from their cage, like bees taking off with a queenly swarm, looking for a new place to settle.

It amazes me to think that Evolution was the main path that the Totality of what Is took to create the means I use to perceive it. Did Nature need an actual voice in order to allow it to see itself like looking in a mirror, a mind that was granted the ability to observe itself and maybe, even perfect itself?

My spirit is attuned to the voice of the Universe; it absorbs its harmonies, its narratives, borrowing from it to, in turn, create novel songs and words, languages and artistic expression.

The path departed from a far and meanwhile lost antiquity. It soon led to the use of reason, intelligence, as Life became able to capture vibrations, sounds, chords, culminating in odes and liturgies.

The path opened the way to art, blossoming in the visual perception and depiction of beauty, of other images of what Creation was. It got humans to begin devising tools, objects, some useful and others of a more esoteric type,

Man started to copy Nature’s wonders, drew the likeness the animals he hunted, created icons of his God or mother Goddess, then shaped sculptures that glorified both Man and his Divine Creator.

THE SPILL

Can you hear them? They are dying

In the silent watery deeps,

By the thousands, the finned creatures,

The wonderful, ethereal ones,

The denizens of the high seas,

In consonance with the killing

Of the wetlands’ population,

The pelicans, the sandpipers.

I seem to hear their distress calls,

The dim echo of their last breath,

Resignation, their giving in

To the man-caused immolation

Of Nature, Life and God-creatures,

A sacrifice to human greed.

They die, they drown by the hundreds,

By the thousands, out there, children

Of creation, the innocents,

The ones that are our brothers

Our sisters. They trusted us

And we slay them without mercy.

Can you see them suffocating

On our oil and selfishness;

We are stealing their souls, their hopes,

As we destroy their habitats

Without thinking. Dolphins, stingrays,

And blue sharks are falling victim

To man’s avaricious poisons.

Can you smell it, the rotting trail

Of decayed flesh drifting over

From the beaches, the effluvia

Of man’s avid rapaciousness

Showing the way to the onset

Of a final Apocalypse,

Man overreached his appetite

For fresh oysters and deep-fried fish,

For dead crab meat, calamari

Or jumbo