Foundations of Philosophy: The Basics of the Balance (Volume Iil)

By Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

This book is designed to provide basic philosophy and information regarding the vast number of subject matters covered. This was assembled in the understanding that the publisher and the author are not engaged in rendering legal, consultative, or other professional services. If such expert assistance is required, the services of competent and appropriate professionals should be sought.

The author and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage that may be indirectly or directly caused, or alleged to be caused, by the content of this book.

It is also not the purpose of this book to reprint information that is otherwise available to the author, publisher, or reader. Rather, it seeks to complement, amplify, and/or supplement other texts available. The reader is urged to review all relevant material and learn as much as possible about life, tailoring that information to their individual situation.

Further, efforts have been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there are undoubtedly editorial, typographical, and contextual errors contained herein. Therefore, the text should be viewed and utilized as a general guide, not as an ultimate source of information related to the various topics. This book also contains information that may no longer be relevant or accurate despite our desire to think our words and thoughts about life are timeless and perfect.

Finally, the primary objective of this volume has something to do with the four Es—to enlighten, edify, educate, and entertain, perhaps even in that order. Personal philosophy and worldview are something we develop and maintain as individuals who evolve throughout life. It is the ambition of the writer to amplify these Es, hoping that in doing so, it will allow the reader to experience a more meaningful, balanced, complete, and productive encounter with life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728314204

Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut is a philosopher/writer on issues such as worldview, philosophy, personal memoir, spirituality, science, psychology, and many other general life issues. He is the author of 36 published and unpublished books, most written while residing in various locations between Central America and Indianapolis, Indiana. Michael now resides in Indianapolis with his wonderful wife, Tanya, their two German Shepherd’s, Teddy and The Bear, along with a large number of other animal, botanical, and biological life.

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Books by Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

Life Notes (1987)

Weaving a Web (1989)

Summer Letters (1990)

Earth Dwelling - An Owner’s Manual (1991)

Conversations with the Almighty (1995)

Survival Thoughts for the Continually Depressed (1999)

A Quiet Stream (1999)

I Was Thinking (1999)

How Long Have You Been Standing Here, God? (2000)

People, Places, Things (2000)

Living the Waking Dream (2000)

Loving Sensual Exchange (2000)

My World: The First 50 Years (2000)

San Juan: Glimpses in Time (2001.

El Triangulo (2001.

The Inquisition (2001.

Forty Songs (2001.

Bricks in the Wall (2001.

Keeping it Real in an Unreal World (2001.

Amistad (2002.

Mountain Peeks: Elevated Glimpses of the High Life (2002)

Passion in Paradise (2002.

Playtime in Paradise (2002.

Evolution: Facts and Fairy Tales (2002.

Smile! It’s not that serious! (2003.

Worldview 101 (2003.

Remaking Michael (2003.

Reflections of a Mad, Mad World (2004)

What do you think? (2004.

Face the Fear! (2005)

Self-help Yourself! (2005)

Their God/s (Part One) (2015)

My Heresies (Part Two) (2016)

Dream Drift (2017)

Principles of Philosophy (Volume One) (2018)

Principles of Philosophy (Volume Two) (2018)

Foundations of Philosophy (Volume Three) (2019)

FOUNDATIONS

OF

PHILOSOPHY

The Basics of the Balance

(Volume III)

MICHAEL NYSTROM-SCHUT

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2019 Michael Nystrom-Schut. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/29/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1421-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1420-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942730

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mental Life

Material Life

Social Life

Spiritual Life

T his book is designed to provide basic philosophy and information regarding the vast amounts of subject matter covered. It was assembled in the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, consultative or other professional services. If such expert assistance is required, the services of competent appropriate professionals should be sought.

The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the content contained here.

If it also not the purpose of this book to reprint information that is otherwise available to the author/publisher or reader, but rather to complement, amplify and/or supplement other texts available. The reader is urged to review all relevant material and learn as much as possible about life, tailoring that information to their individual situation.

Further, efforts have been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there are undoubtedly editorial, stylistic, typographical and contextual errors contained herein. Therefore, the text should be viewed and utilized as a general guide, and not as an ultimate source of information related to the various topics. Further, this book contains information that may no longer be either relevant or accurate, as much as we prefer to think our words and thoughts about life are timeless: and perfect."

Finally, the primary objective of this volume has to do with Four E’s, - to enlighten, edify, educate and entertain - perhaps even in that order. Personal philosophy and worldview is something each develops and maintains as an individual evolves throughout life. It is the ambition of the writer to amplify these E’s, and in doing so, allow the reader to experience a more meaningful, balanced, complete and productive encounter with life.

Foundations

of

Philosophy

THE BASICS OF THE BALANCE

VOLUME THREE

ONE:

Mental Life

TWO:

Material Life

THREE:

Social Life

FOUR:

Spiritual Life

DEDICATIONS

(this book is dedicated to the following group of loved individuals:)

To my beloved, nurturing mother,

To my pack of adopted grandsons who are struggling with authorities while learning at the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Thanks for being my most beloved students (and my teachers, as well),

To my dad’s wonderful sister, Mary, his brothers - Uncle Elwood and Uncle Don, and my personal hero, Uncle Tom,

To my Wesleyan minister friend, Reverend John Cooper; a man with one leg, who stood tall to me and for me; a great and influential writer,

To uncanny philosophers Spinoza and Voltaire - two of many great pavers of a way,

To the memory of William Tyndale, strangled and burned in 1536, Vilvoorde, Belgium, for wishing to be free to speak his mind and heart,

To Rabbi Tovia Singer and Rabbi Michael Skobac - mentors,

To Rabbi Emil G Hirsch (1851 - 1923), and his sainted father, Samuel (1815 - 1889) (may they rest in peace) for their heartfelt inspirational support,

To a teacher of love, Ram Bam (aka Maimonides; 1135-1204),

To a teacher of love, mother Magda Herzberger (1926 -),

To my writing mentor, Dorothy Plummer (1918 - 2019), who passed away in her 100th year of life,

To the memories of Dr. Michael Newton and Mrs. Dolores Cannon,

To the Philosopher of Cadillac, my Mr. Peter Nystrom; my own great grandfather,

To my wonderful wife, Tanya,

and finally…to my dear Terry Schut (1956 - 1972) and

Big Timothy Schut (1969 -).

MJNS

Foundations of Philosophy

The basics of the balance

MICHAEL JEAN

NYSTROM-SCHUT

MENTAL (MIND)

MATERIAL (BODY)

SOCIAL (RELATIONSHIPS)

SPIRITUAL (GOD)

V olumes One and Two of Principles of Philosophy were the 35 th and 36 th books in my nearly 50 years of writing/authoring. This work is book number 37, and is the third in a three-volume trilogy.

I got this prolific of a wordsmith because I stood on the shoulders of giants (as Sir Isaac Newton suggested we all do) and learned my bits of wisdom from so many great humans. So now, I have come to literally be able to write until the proverbial cows come strolling into the barn at night.

These books of mine are getting longer with time; I am not sure why. Voltaire once said that the more he read, the more he acquired, and the more certain we was he knew nothing. This is likely why he also said that big books are out of fashion.

Some 250 years later, I never got the memo.

One of my other writing heroes - Will Durant - once declared in an introduction to a philosophy book of his own, that philosophy is an audacious risk of calculated enterprise; like a drop of water standing up on the edge of a wave proclaiming to define the contents of the ocean.

Wow, Will! What he meant was, I guess, philosophers think they know it all. They do.

This endless (encyclopedic) philosophy journal is an attempt to corral a variety of philo-points in various areas of life, and to make them cohesive and comprehensive in the process. It is a philosophical worldview set forth to you, the reader. It is much like a science or religion worldview book - only a philosophical worldview book instead. That’s better (I think, anyway).

To be sure, there is plenty of science and religion included, but mostly…it’s philosophical. I am a philosopher with a small p. Not one with a Big P, like professors and professionals, but a small p. Not University Level, but seriously amateur level. And prolific (which means, lots and lots of words - almost a half million in one book!).

This is a prolific book. In writing it I almost hit the four million lifetime word mark. Prolific!

I have written some pretty average-to-fair additional books in my five decades of traipsing through these word woods, but they were either not finished, victims of the wary wonders of the world of computer crashes, or not deemed worthy in terms of overall tree loss.

The two recently completed before now (V1 and V2 of Principles) were written alongside four wonderful friends - a greatly-supportive and entertaining wife, two needy, loving dogs, and a rather curious bird - who were almost always nearby during the endless days and nights of this latest conglomeration/hodgepodge/mishmash of thought.

I wish to thank these four, doing so profusely, for their companionship, without which I would have encountered an emptiness not conducive to such meaningful, purposeful, interesting passages of precious, linear time.

So, thank you very much, Tanya! Teddy! Bear! Lolita! Love you! Mean it!

…OK, that part’s done. We can move on.

After having retired from the business world (for the third time) I determined the occasion had finally arrived for me to assemble my own personal philosophy in book form, doing so while yet in my stable, right mind as it travels a steady course towards oblivion. Thousands of lifetime hours of thinking - on philosophy and wisdom, in the depths of introspection and contemplation - had me deeply immersed, headlong into these efforts. As I ponder on it, gee. I could have been eating (more), or sleeping (more), or God knows what else (more). But no, I was here, writing. Writing this love-effort to my three or four dozen fans and followers - those people and animals in the world who love me and like to let me know it the most.

A legend already, in my own mind, I hope this p-Bible enters parts of your mind as well, and makes you a wiser, smarter, better human being that you already are (if, indeed, such a thing is even possible). Those two previous philosophy books (Volume One and Two) should be seen more as reference materials. They should not so much be read like novels, as for one, you will be sorry, and for two, the subject matter is more in encyclopedic fashion than anything. Same with this book.

Truly though, hundreds of samplings here (1,300 in all; 1180 from Principles I and II, and another 120 new entries here in Foundations, v3) are maintained in the 84 chapters and four sections of subject matter. To me, of course, they still represent only a very small part of what could actually be written as it pertains to my own personal philosophy with a small p.

I will share with you the fact that I had in mind as I wrote - this being a philosophical guide or manual - a reference piece for my children and grandchildren, nephews, and nieces to cherish (or ignore). They are all precious to me. Though not just my own clan (which would be somewhat clannish of me), but all of the young people (and old young people) of the GW (greater world) as well. When I meet a young person, almost any young person, I almost always feel some type of fatherly sense with them. We are, after all, family - every one of us. We are interconnected and that state can never become one of separateness. Such a thing is even true in the case of victim and prey, as hard as that is for us to both comprehend and digest.

As I continue here, to ramble on, another thought springs to mind from one of my true hero’s - the Greek philosopher, Epicurus. He once proclaimed that, I am writing this not to many, but to you: certainly we are a great enough audience for each other.

Yes indeed. Are we not? Those who follow us are clearly the future. As a 68-year-old being, now some 94% of all people on the earth are lagging aimlessly behind me in chronological time. So, in that sense as well, I would like to thank my many, many followers.

I would also say, that as we hand the reigns of continued existence over to those who are yet to come, we do so in hopes that their future will be bright, profitable, and at one with the great Universe of which we are all so significant a part. If we think about it, the burdens of the future are really up to them now. Take the baton bravely, young runner, and dash on with it.

The upcoming race indeed does climb the ladder rungs constructed by those who came before. It is very much dependent on those who are yet to re-blaze these old trails (I know - I just mixed metaphors rung and trail - young writers, did you catch that?). Irrespective of such, it has been this way for perhaps six or seven thousand generations now. So allow me to send out a deep and caring love wish to all, bestowing upon the world all the best, and as always, nothing but love.

After all, it’s all about love. More like, Love (with a capitol L). That’s a God reference…

PS: I should not fail to thank myself - the sole (and lonely) editor of this body of work - while also forgiving myself for a veritable multiplicity of stylistic and grammatical infringements and sins - all to be discovered by the hyper-observant among you, and found throughout this very fallible, encyclopedic work of tremendous flaw and imperfection. Namaste! Shalom! Peace!

Finally, don’t read all 1300 exhortations at once! Your head will likely overheat if you do.

I AM - Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

INTRODUCTION

FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

V3

The Basics Of The Balance

F oundations of Philosophy (Volume III) is an amalgamation (a merger) of Volumes I and II of the Principles of Philosophy books. There are also additional entries at the end of the sections that are signed off as (Foundations, v3). All in all, 1180 numbered entries come from I and II of Principles and some 120 separate entries made the cut as add-ons for Volume III - Foundations. This brings the total number of numbered entries to 1300.

I want you to know that these selections are much of what I think. What you think, however, is for you to decide. I am more interested in helping out with how you should go about this rather than what you should think. How to think is more important that what it is you will think/not think.

Moving on, these mini-essays are from as little as 150 words to a strict maximum of no more than 800 words. Thus, these can be read in bite-sized pieces, and done so in an order desired. These numbered, short essays or verses are designed to be reader-friendly. As such, something especially applicable or special for a reader can be remembered by a number, as well as a chapter, and verse (or verses).

A significant goal for this book is to make it user-friendly and accessible to and for younger people. I am targeting in particular, young men in their early teens, and ranging all the way through perhaps the 30’s. However, it does apply to the other gender as well. And older people too. It’s just that, since I grew up male, I claim a wee bit more insight into the male experience (I did dress up like a female on two separate Halloweens!)

I lack a deep understanding of the female condition, and am reminded of this on a regular basis from my wife, who has been a female her whole life.

I especially have had in mind my philosophy students here in Indianapolis, Indiana. They have had a lot to do with how I have shaped and modified my personal philosophy, doing so via these three books. My continual goal is to make it more user-friendly to the young. The teen-age years, after all, are the times most of us settle on some of our biggest decisions in life. What we believe, how we will live our lives, what we will do, how we see the world - much of the foundation for these areas of life are developed and adopted in our very early years of life.

This does not serve to conclude that we ever stop growing and evolving; of course we never do! I have grown, in fact, a lot - just this week!

In reviewing this lengthy document, I do recognize that much of the content will not be clearly grasped by everyone. As such, I would suggest that those who attempt to tackle this book realize it is not a cover-to-cover reading, such as, for instance, a novel might be. It’s many times longer and larger than a typical novel, and the reading is non-fiction, educational, informative. So, skipping around and jumping from essay to essay may be a good way to approach it.

I envision this book of the coffee table variety, or better yet, a bed stand book. It could be your personal owner’s manual, kept around for years to reference often. This was the idea that illuminated my mind as I plodded through the lengthy researching, writing, and drafting process.

The thing is, we are all at different places in our personal growth. In my own studies, for instance, a while back I could not have embraced much on topics such as quantum entanglement, reincarnation, the history of Greek philosophy, or Astronomy/Cosmology. These days, I can consume copious amounts of all four, and much more, as I have applied myself diligently to these fields and other fields of study in the past several years.

Getting back to this book, in much the way that a religious person might read their Bible, and make notes on favored verses and portions they particularly like (take, for example, the 23rd Psalm, John 14:6, Isaiah 40:31, and/or the love chapter - I Cor. 13), for the philosophically inclined, there could also be the opportunity to do this here, with this book, in that I prepared the work in such a recognizable format.

I will hereby illustrate. GOD AND OMNISCIENCE, 0900:1 states:

¹Albert Einstein and Baruch Spinoza - on the matter of an Almighty One - seemed to essentially view it in great similarity. And for me, theirs is a God that makes philosophical sense.

It goes on to talk about Spinoza’s God, and gives many other considerations on the topic. The noting of 0900:1 can be a reference point.

Other examples might be:

¹Our body arrives fully-equipped with an incredible brain, which in most cases does not even come in at sixty ounces in weight. It actually feels quite similar to a mold of jello or a piece of tofu (CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE MIND, 0006:1)

And this one, from RELIGION AND RULE, 0927:2-4:

²With the expansion of Christendom and geographic variation coming more and more to the forefront, a separation of Eastern (based in Constantinople) and Western (based in Rome) versions of the religion emerged.

³The result was two Christianities.

⁴It is known in history as the Great Schism, and all of this would prove to be the first of two huge breakups for the mother church, which had essentially been strongly Rome-based for over seven prior centuries.

So, you see - my hope is that if it applies to you, it could be possible to use this Philosophy/Worldview book as a reference book for your unfolding life. It has four primary sections (e.g. ¹Mental-Mind, ²Material-Body, ³Social-Relationships, and ⁴Spiritual-God). Each Section contains 21 basic areas. This calls for a total of 84 areas of consideration that, taken together, can serve to make up a personal philosophy, personal worldview, or life-map for the person who is trying to form a basis or foundation for themselves in preparation of the next several decades of upcoming life.

Because I created a foundation for me (you are reading about it, here!), I was spared other possible outcomes that I am sure would have otherwise befallen me. My balanced life (in these four areas) is what kept (and keeps me still) afloat. It helps me stay in touch with myself, provides me the background, knowledge, and wisdom I need to face each new coming day, and directs my path along this tricky-but-fun journey of life.

Think about people who wake up in the morning with no direction for their upcoming day. What do they do? It turns out that life pretty much happens to them. They are subject to the four winds. They are vulnerable to who knows what as they venture through the hours of each of their days. Sadly, they don’t get to happen to life so much. Life just happens, to them! That’s unfortunate.

If a person, on the other hand, is very religious, and uses a sacred set of scripture (depending on the religion, as there are countless sacred texts to chose from) they will be guided by those scriptures. And that’s fine, actually. I am not trying to compete with them, or anyone. This is not designed as a replacement manual for anyone’s Bible. My Hebrew Tanakh sits on my own personal bed stand; not this book. It’s just that religion or science or something else might not be their particular cup of tea. I, myself, prefer strongly to drink green tea versus any other kind of tea. So, in essence, my cup of tea is green tea. What’s your cup of tea? Everyone’s different.

Let’s do this with coffee. What’s your preference? Tanya (wife) drinks coffee as do I. Since I lived in the coffee capitol of the world for years (Costa Rica), I am fussy about my coffee. She, however, thinks that (of all the coffee’s to pick from) Hill’s Brothers Coffee (ulp!) is the best coffee in the world. No harm meant to those good folks…but no. So, at our house, I have a fresh, hot, pot of coffee for her and I, to get the day started. She currently works from home and I write from home. We drink our Hill’s Brothers and we love it. (But I still recall there are other coffee’s out there…).

So, the point being this: If I was a young man again (I am currently finishing up my 67th lap around the track of life) I would love to have an owner’s manual for how to deal with life. We have them to fix our cars. We have them to fix our houses. We have them to fix our religious lives (e.g. Bibles), We even have them to fix dinner (e.g. cook books!).

I submit to you that this could be and/or become your philosophical owner’s manual. Your Philosophy Bible, if you wish. For the most part, I’ve left to others the thoughts and ideas that come directly from the men who inspired the Hebrew Bible, and later the Christian Bible. I am talking about writer’s such as Moses, David, Solomon, Ezra, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Paul, John, Peter, Luke. More so, this philosophy bible is the eclectic gatherings of philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle, Gautama, Confucius, Epicurus, Descartes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Hume, and James.

Again, chapters and verses can be looked up easily in Foundations, and just as Bible verses can bolster our lives as we reference them, the same can be done with these myriads of philosophical suppositions here.

As one would wish to see more on any given subject, it is highly possible that many of the entries go into much more detail in the original two works, and that can be then referenced if desired. The idea of Foundations was to shorten and abridge the two original volumes of the Principles, and also add additional materials of my continuing interest onto the ends of them. These are all indicated in the chapter heading tables of contents.

OK, whew. Done with that part. I hope that all makes sense. If not, well dammit - I tried.

Having waded through that necessary explanation, it was my historian hero, Will Durant, who once said of William James that he felt philosophy was "simply a matter of thinking of things in the most comprehensive way." That makes sense to me, in that, an overall synthesis of philosophy, as I see it, provides a person with a principled infrastructure that will sustain them through the decades of one’s life. I know this: It saved my own life.

Again, and so importantly, that balance of the mental and the material, the social and the spiritual, as it is done thoroughly, and accurately, gives one the philosophical underpinnings necessary to live life in this modern age. I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without going repeatedly to the philosophical drawing board, decade after decade, and putting things in order while harmonizing the various parts of life that are necessary to go into a fulfilling existence.

Speaking again of him, when it came to the great Spinoza, Will Durant once stated that when he was excommunicated from his religion and his family, "while bitterly and pitilessly alone, that nothing might be so terrible as solitude, and to so uproot the contents of one’s mind is a major operation, and leaving many wounds." I relate to this, so much, in that my life has been an endless venture of evaluating, examining, reasoning, accepting, and eliminating ways that either add or take away from a philosophical worldview that would help me cope with all that must be handled as we deal with what life brings to us on a regular basis.

Those who know me well, also know this: that I have always had mental health, physical health, social relationship, and (perhaps most of all) metaphysical-spiritual struggles. Over the course of my life, and to both my vexation and chagrin, I have been told about issues with mental health alone that were, in themselves, monumental labors to suffer through. By professionals…

My view on it all, philosophically? Who doesn’t go through their share of stuff? We all do. Why should you or I be any exception to the rule? Since I am no better or worse than the next one, it is to be expected, so…we simply deal with it! Life; it is indeed a journey, and one that is mostly exhilarating and adventurous, but not one without countless bumps and twists and dead ends in the road of that journey. Again, all to be expected. It’s a roller coaster ride. A bucking bronco thing.

My Principles/Foundations of Philosophy are my own personal Bible. They are my Handbook, my Owner’s Manual, my Road Map. While they are not the real Bible, they contain Bible-y and biblical thoughts, along with ideas from many religions and value systems, and that’s not just in the Spirituality section. The Mental, Material, and Social are the other three basic aspects of my Balanced Living Philosophy - and there is tons to process about all of this.

One of my students - a very bright young man, as they all are - upon finishing up a 4-week study of the four balanced areas of life, asked me what there was to talk about in the following week. I responded with a question of whether he thought we had even begun to scratch the surface in the past four weeks. Then I just said, we will have fun, doing it all over again! The material is endless, just as life’s information is endless. In other words, this book could have never ended!

In truth, given the time and ambition, any of us could construct such a thing as you are now reading from. It might be more, or less, than mine. It hopefully will differ from mine. But it would be how you see things, and how you operate, as a human being. We all need something like this. And for the most part, we already have it. It is just likely to need some more work, so that we can get it down a bit better. And if you are young, you will most likely have a younger version of this. It only gets longer and deeper as our lives get longer and deeper. I am now both long and deep in it.

I often compare this existence of ours to a life raft, bobbing up and down on the great Oceans of Being. The Four Winds of Nature drive this raft, and the only reason we do not become shark food is due to the nature of the construction of the raft. It’s underpinnings are the buoyant and study joists that make up the structure of this raft. They are simply (as I often state) four sides of a square. There are not three things, or five things. There seem to be just these basic four. Everything seems to fall under one category or another with just them. (Mind, body, social, spiritual = 4).

When I was young, and growing up, I was blessed to have a wonderful mom and dad, and good, solid siblings. I was very sheltered and protected in my small town. I didn’t know anyone on drugs and only knew one friend who did not have both a mom and a dad. I went to a small church, full of simple, kind people, where they preached a basic and straightforward message of God’s love and wrath. I was an average student who was much more interested in getting lost in nature or deep thought than I was in a textbook anyone handed me. Looking back, what I see now that I clearly did not have was a single guidebook for living a stable, meaningful, strong, and peaceful life. I inevitably went off the rails in my early twenties. I lacked guidance; I could have used this book.

At one time I sorted through the maze of it and had memorized a couple of hundred, cherry-picked Bible verses and passages. They were of great private solace. Turning my back on a religion that did not add up for me, I sought something or someone as a worthy substitute. But there was nothing that seemed to answer that call, and meet that need. And so I floundered, went off the rails, and dropped into a dark abyss of nihilistic meaninglessness. I would not re-surface again for years.

But eventually, I was saved, yet again. This time, with God’s help, philosophy and worldview saved me. My strong proclivity towards eclectically gathering thoughts, information, ideas, and insight, from countless sources and areas of life, began to be an obsession for me. With the passage of more time, teachers like Dr. Wayne Dyer and the philosopher Ken Wilbur filled my ever-curious mind with challenges that I was eager to respond to. That quest - one that started with those two men and several more - has never stopped. For over thirty years it has been my passion.

It seems that it is the nature within the human, Homo sapiens mind, to embrace a religion. I guess we are wired that way. We have been doing it for countless centuries of time. Some say even the Neanderthals had their religious proclivities. Just imagine such a thing. As such, and all things considering, why would we wish to unshackle ourselves of that which, by our own nature and heritage, is such an integral part of us?

This thought, however, leads to the next one, which goes something like the following: Since we all are going to have a religion (even if our religion is no religion), are we not wise to think about the contents and substance of what that personal religion will be? In truth, it’s not only our religion, but it’s our worldview, our personal philosophy, our angle on life itself. We are each not only obligated to reply to such inner callings, but honored to do so as well.

I am trying to schematize (arrange) this outlook on philosophy in a way that best unfolds a pattern for which I have built my own worldview around. This will vary from person to person. It may, however, be worthwhile to the reader and serve as a beginning template (i.e. the four sections and the 84 topics in those sections) to begin to outline their own personal life’s philosophy.

In other words, what you read here, should neither be the beginning or the end of your own philosophical journey.

Namaste to you, my young reader son (daughter), and Shalom. May you go forth in peace.

- I AM, Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

ONE:

MENTAL LIFE

1

FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHICAL MENTAL

THE WORLD OF THE MIND

1.0

Consciousness and the Mind

VOLUME ONE

VOLUME TWO

VOLUME THREE

¹About a year before he died, the Roman philosopher Cicero (106 BCE - 43 BCE) set forth an incredible question. For that time, and even for this time - well over 2000 years later - it is nothing short of an astonishing one.

²Cicero simply inquired, Why do you insist the universe is not a conscious intelligence, when it gives birth to conscious intelligence?

³Indeed.

⁴We humans are, in no small part, because we think we are. It seems so obvious.

⁵Back in the days of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), when he proclaimed, I think, therefore I am, it boggled the minds of his French philosopher friends. And still we, today.

⁶So, it’s I am. And I am aware. And you are aware too.

⁷Here we are, all of us aware!

⁸Somewhere early in the process of human life, we have become conscious of our consciousness. If we are thinking right, we tend to see it as a friendly force at work within us. It is also synergistic, for it is not my consciousness alone that resides within me.

⁹We have - as much and as often as we care to cultivate it - the Mind of God as well as the mind of Man, all cocooned within our being.

¹⁰In some manner of speaking, it is obvious – at least as I am able to place my human-centric notions aside for a second – that we are separate and distinct from other species which reside on the face of the planet. Although we are quite clearly inferior in many vital realms of the AK (Animal Kingdom) we can see that we do have a conscious part of us that possesses somewhat of an unlimited capacity to do and to be.

¹¹I find this notion not only philosophically intriguing but quite challenging as well.

¹²Our consciousness is an ongoing companion, accompanying us in all of our comings and goings, always lingering somewhere and always hovering everywhere.

¹³As we take the time and energy to actively cultivate the practice of staying congruent with consciousness, we grow, evolve, and reach heights previously thought unreachable, heretofore unobtainable, but of which are now quite easily scaled, and readily understood by us.

¹⁴The thrill is to involve the deeper realms of our conscious being. Then, just keep expanding, while asking those basic, but profound philosophical questions.

¹My personal philosophy of life originates with how far as a human I can observe my own journey from the beginning of it all.

²I often sit in both shock and awe as I think upon this unfolding existence.

³Progressing all this way through time, if not to anyone else on the face of the earth, my own evolution as a body of conscious being has been simply incredible to contemplate.

⁴I often am stunned at the thought of how all aspects of evolution on earth magnificently unfold in so many varieties of form. It regularly gets me to thinking some more, back to my own crude beginnings.

⁵The miracle of consciousness is that we can even begin to comprehend a tiny portion of our internal being, our external world, and our endless universe.

⁶I am not sure how the dolphins or the recently discovered undersea dinosaurs think about their thinking. I cannot say how the cardinals at my feeder ponder consciousness by comparison.

⁷For us, though, it’s all a fascinating, exuberating journey through time and space.

⁸I wonder what the great William James meant when he once said, "The unconscious is the greatest discovery of the 20th century." I personally have come so far. Now I approach the entrance portal of wondering what he must have meant with this.

⁹As I ponder all things, I remain in this condition of awe, just to be an infinitesimal feature of all there is in life.

¹If one should inquire, I am Michael, a random humanoid from the lovely planet of Earth.

²I was at one time just a kindergarten baby, stuck in the gravy, back in the human year of 1956 of the Common Era (CE).

³Considering the notion of who and what we are will be a lifelong phenomena that will accompany us through life. We will never quite get it figured out but if we look at it the right way, it will be ample fun trying to think about it.

⁴Those first years are incredibly important to us. There is talk that the first year or two in the aging process freezes us in place for life. Who and what we will be is determined by then. While this can be a depressing thought, it should not immobilize us now, and it well might want to be factored in whenever we spend time with the newborns and tiny people.

⁵At some point, for me, self-discovery gave way to other-world discovery. I found I lived in an amazing world of nature, and other social beings.

⁶More and more, with time, things external to me would take up my time and energy. While everything came back to me and had an application there, it was fun to study the variances in human beings and just as much or more fun to pick up a leaf and examine all of it carefully.

⁷No doubt like you, I have gone through wonderful times and horrific times while encapsulated in my body-mind. Throughout them - and somewhere early along the way - I came to become enamored and captivated by the minutiae and complexity surrounding me on all of these dimensional sides.

⁸I wonder often out loud: what is life?

⁹Ralph Waldo Emerson roughly philosophized once, Wherever life is, the world bursts into appearance around it. I have personally found this to be so very true. Life is everywhere, and is it not marvelous?

¹⁰We suspect we are separate beings, distinct from others and also from the world we find ourselves in. But is this so much a true fact of life?

¹¹In one sense, it is clear we are separate and distinct. But in yet another, paradoxical way of looking at it, we are clearly part of something greater than that which is just we.

¹We can’t really speak for the whole of the animal kingdom on earth, but of the 5,416 or so surviving mammalian species upon the earth today, we humans seem to be the ones doing the contemplating, writing down our observations and thoughts, as we share with other humans how we see this remarkable world.

²That is an incredible phenomenon, and if we think about it, we are fortunate to be able to even have awareness of this.

³While we humans disagree about much, that too is one of the pleasures of life. The fact that we can come to different conclusions about the BQ’s (big questions) is a fun thing, and should not be allowed to intimidate us in the least.

⁴I imagine I value my mind above all else. While I enjoy my four extremities generally called limbs, I would sacrifice any or all of them in favor of keeping intact the thinking machine that is encased in my skull.

⁵Along these lines, one of the perpetual questions we must ask ourselves as it pertains to consciousness is the one that asks: Is the physical brain the creator of our conscious world, or, on the other hand, is it the receiver of that world?

⁶In any case, we are always-wise to cultivate our powers of contemplation. As we do, the benefits will become self-evident.

¹In one real sense of the word, we are a self, or a something that is made up of essentially six basic elements.

²They include matter, liquid, fire, air, space, and consciousness. A fundamental constitution of these six things makes us up…nothing more – nothing less.

³We are solid matter, which includes our flesh, our bones, our skin, our hair, our nails. We also consist of liquid, which includes our blood, our phlegm, our bile and other various secretions.

⁴So there is a fire element to us. Not real fire; not the thing earlier incarnations of man first figured out how to kindle and control some 400,000 years ago. Heat and energy make up the fire that resides within the human being.

⁵Another aspect of us is air; this is represented within us by breath and wind.

⁶We also occupy somewhat of the non-physical dimension of space.

⁷We can in addition conclude that we are constructed of consciousness, which is the sixth and final aspect of ourselves. After that, just what else is there?

⁸So matter, liquid, fire, air, space, and consciousness are what we are. These six essential elements of our being are all of what there is of us.

⁹None of these things are permanent and abiding within us, and, thus, cannot truly be spoken of as being who we are. None of them, combined, are of much monetary worth, either.

¹⁰So, what we are constituted from is all cheap to buy, that is, if we were to go to the store and buy it. The raw ingredients are available on the open market in a hardware store near you.

¹¹These handful of borrowed elements are a Gift/gift, one given to us personally, and for our very private use. They are from the Universe-at-large…or you could say, from God. As such, considering their source, I value them and try to direct them in ways that glorify the existence of my mortal being.

¹²Celebrating the Gift of Life is a primary something I think we can all overwhelmingly consider worth doing.

¹Our body arrives fully-equipped with an incredible brain, which in most cases does not even come in at sixty ounces in weight. It feels like a mold of jello or a piece of tofu.

²Yet this little organ is pretty much in charge of the rest of us. Our brains come with a voracious appetite; what is it they wish to consume?

³Remarkably (and contrary to what is most often said about it) the raw organ itself is not that which does the thinking for us. It is more of the mechanistic housing capacity for thought. That’s because this brain of ours is occupied and inhabited…by a mind.

⁴So, there is the machine, and then there is the ghost which inhabits the machine. They are hardly the same thing. This makes me somewhat of a dualist, and you as well, if you agree with this.

⁵We each conclude this separately. The mind and brain are dualisms, or they are just matter (material). I suspect they are both physical and metaphysical in nature.

⁶We can somewhat understand the segments and aspects of the physical territory (the brain) but when it comes to the mind, it’s filled with mystery - even to those (especially to those) who study it intensely.

⁷As a human being, our body and mind will take a long time to discover effective ways to work together throughout our lifetimes. Slowly, in their own unique ways, the body-mind will discover how they can better work together in harmony and synchronization, as it is best for them to do so.

⁸For most of my own life, I viewed the mind as one thing, and the body as something else. In reality, a more accurate picture of this is that we have a mind-body, or, a body-mind – take your pick; whichever we wish to call it.

⁹Our body-mind is an inseparable tandem to be reckoned with, once it is tuned into its purposes and intentions on earth.

¹⁰We are a massive assembly of atomic energy. The ancient Greek philosophers somehow nailed that one long ago.

¹¹They were very intuitive, those Greeks. It’s much of why I love philosophy so much.

¹²As this swirling mass continues to constitute who and what we are for now when we die, the atomic energy does not die in us. It continues. It no longer swirls as us. But swirl on it does.

¹³So, when we die, we experience a massive re-distribution of immortal atomic energy. Trillions of atoms find new homes. They were once our atoms, but now, they are returned. They are returned to where you say?

¹⁴Well…

¹⁵I would say that where we were before we were, we are, once more, there. Consciousness? Off mixed in with stars I can only assume.

¹Being real with ourselves begs the question of just what are we? We are a mind-body organism of sorts, and it’s funny how we tend to view our bodies as one thing and our minds as quite another when in reality they are in one sense, inseparable.

²Or are they?

³As it pertains to meaning, purpose and essential use, in divorcing them we limit our ability to allow the body-mind (mind-body) to work in the harmonious fashion that it is intended to do.

⁴When we are a body, and also a mind, we isolate our care and treatment as having two parts: the body part and the mind part. This is only the beginning of a great deal of personal torment and struggle for us.

⁵In viewing them as if they can be treated differently and distinctly, we fail to act on the connection and interdependency that exists between them.

⁶Put succinctly, as we wiggle our big toe, is it because that toe conceived of strong urges to start wiggling itself? No…rather, the mind said to the brain, wiggle, and since the toe and the brain and the mind have a special relationship already in place, a wiggling of sorts begins to take place between mind, brain and toe, toe being part of the body.

⁷This happens so quickly as to manifest instantly on the external scene, and is due to the interconnectivity of mind and toe, and serves as verification that they are inextricably linked.

⁸We have the power to think with our entire body because the intelligence that saturates our being does not live solely in the brain or the mind.

⁹Do you recall the great Einstein suggesting he thought with his whole body? Coming from him, we might want to consider what that might have meant.

¹⁰So, mind and body function together, inseparably, and it takes no advanced degree in physics to instinctively grasp this. While some wish to isolate the various parts, while others lump it all together, some reality is that the mind and body are one entity as a mind-body, or body-mind.

¹¹Yet - and here is another paradox - they are distinct. It’s all quite ambiguous and confusing.

¹²To know about the collaborations and how they manifest is an important reality to embrace. Think, thus, in terms of this oneness of body and mind, and not in the separation (weakening) of individual parts. Synergy (one plus one is more than merely two) comes when forces are at work in concert together.

¹³United elements survive. Division kills momentum.

¹⁴The mind and the body are simply one within each of us. So, there is no real duality of mind and body in this sense. Treat them as one, and see it more for what it really is: not dual, but rather, singular.

¹⁵(Note: I realize that I contradict myself when I also talk about the brain being separate from mind. While I consider that the human mind/body (body/mind) work separately, together, I also still think that mental consciousness is like a ghost, and the non-material ghost lives in a physical machine called the brain.).

¹⁶If all of this was easy to grasp, it would not have been fought over and debated for these past centuries of time.

¹We are here in this conscious form for just a short flash of the illusion of time, and then, poof, we are no more. Then, we will have seen the last of this incarnation…

²Consider the thoughts of a wonderful poet now long removed from us. She was a prolific writer of verse, with some 1800 of such creations to her lonely, lovely name.

³During her lifetime, only a small handful was published. In one poem, she clearly stated one rendition of the human existence, before she, too, became the very essence of her poem:

⁴This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies

And lads and girls

Was laughter and ability and sighing,

And frocks and curls;

This passive place a summer’s nimble mansion,

Where bloom and bees

Fulfilled their oriental circuit

Then ceased like these.

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

⁵If you think about it, everything is wrapped up in our consciousness. If we had none of it, there would be nothing to lament at the end of life.

⁶Our consciousness embraces all that we struggle and love about life. It encompasses the journey of life and makes us long for more and more of it in the process.

⁷We will never fully understand our mind’s imaginings, but of course, it’s always fun trying!

⁸The sobering poem written by a woman whom I suspect was very melancholy and sad in real life is a critical reminder of how life really is for us. Emily spent lots of time alone, in her room, thinking. She possessed a very melancholic spirit.

⁹Our lives come to us in the midst of a fog…a vapor. We pass through experiences, processing them in ways far more unknown than known to us.

¹⁰Our mortal lives end as a termination of these processes comes about.

¹¹Maybe it’s a Vesuvius/Pompeii, Sodom/Gomorrah or Hiroshima/Nagasaki that brings about a most unexpected ending. Maybe it’s a few all-too-mortal human years in a sick bed, where an aged one has seemingly endless seconds to lie and ponder what it was all about, and why it was what it was.

¹²In the end, however, all life ceases, and fulfills their circuits, just like these…

¹Consciousness - according to my personal philosophy of living and life - is a highly complex matter and is not even at all something in the exclusive domain of man or Mankind.

²Like everyone else, I do not understand how consciousness works. After all, if no one expert in human consciousness knows, how would I know? How would you know?

³So, in short, we don’t know about consciousness. And as such, like countless others, we’re at least free to speculate, casting about our varied opinions.

⁴Here is some of what I will cast on the matter…

⁵In the East, they speak of emptiness in all things. As in Christianity, the East is far from just one single viewpoint, but a summarizing word often used to depict this emptiness is Sunyata (pronounced shoon-ya-ta).

⁶In this, all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature. The mind can become empty via Sunyata.

⁷In the larger view, the Universe is Empty. It is a blank slate. To this, Science might give a thumb up and Religion a thumb down.

⁸But we continue.

⁹I think the Universe maintains a form of Consciousness we could actually call Universal or Cosmic Consciousness. This phenomenon is prevalent in the world, although we don’t know how it works.

¹⁰Whales can communicate via sonar with each other over hundreds of miles from the northernmost part of the Pacific Ocean to the southernmost part of it. This is communication, but it is also consciousness - a clear form of it.

¹¹The whole point of making room for consciousness that is non-human in my philosophy is that we humans tend to be so people-centrically tuned into our own superiorities.

¹²In our consciousness, we forget that the rest of the world is doing it as well - just in their own way. For God sake, even the trees do it!

¹³Rene Descartes back in the 17th century suggested that animals were without feelings since they were not human. This dangerous assumption (sorry, Rene!) concluded that we humans were the only ones capable of feeling, worthy of recognition. This is denying all sentient and living life that are inseparable aspects of our existence.

¹⁴Any spiritually-evolved notion of morality should take into account the consciousness and feelings of other sentient life. It causes some of us to literally not wish to hurt a fly, which to the majority of us, goes just a bit far.

¹⁵So, the bigger question here might be about consciousness as it relates to an existence well beyond the realms of our human mortality.

¹⁶How do you think God entertained himself prior to Man coming on the scene and making his big splash? All those years with just him and the animals on the planet…bet it got lonely for poor God. Did he make some friends before he thought about us? (Well…his Eye is on the sparrow!)…

¹⁷…And now, for ten (10) basic conclusions:

¹⁸Mind and Consciousness are Empty.

¹⁹All things are interconnected.

²⁰All things are inseparable.

²¹Consciousness/Mind does not just exist in humans.

²²Consciousness and Mind are interconnected.

²³CM are not physical.

²⁴CM are beyond physical.

²⁵Consciousness and Mind are not in the spheres of space or time.

²⁶They, rather, are Eternal.

²⁷All things are Eternal. Existence is endless.

¹Our instincts - inklings -suspicions - hunches are with us, night and day. They guide us – doing so as long as we adhere to their teaching voices – and show us the narrowness in the chasm of great widths.

²We are also able to discern the shallowness in endless depths. We can see the outside from the inside and the inside from the outside.

³Every aspect of life, with intuition in place, takes on characteristics with reversible features. Deep inside of us lies at least this one additional sense. It does not function in quite the fashion that our senses of hearing, touch, taste, sight, or smell do.

⁴Intuition is one aspect of an overall life of awareness. Most of my life I was ignorant of all of that. Now, however, I have come to embrace it.

⁵This thing has an uncanny way of signaling to me when I am off balance, or out of focus. Since being balanced and focused are aspects of enlightenment, I can often intuit when I am closing in on it, and when I am not.

⁶Balance and focus are mental and material, social, and spiritual. Intuition assists with them all. It is equal-opportunity in that way.

⁷Being not in balance feels unnatural; it is uncomfortable. That feeling is often derived from our intuitiveness. We are on the outside of things, and just peering back in.

⁸Do you sometimes suspect that your little inner voice and the God inside of you could be one and the same? Or are you certain they are not?

⁹In either case, you can proceed confidently in the direction of that Voice/voice.

¹⁰We are free to attribute to Life/God a spiritual nature hidden within the human heart. We can intuitively be in tune with our innermost senses of awareness if we consider something like that for ourselves.

¹Concerning the mind, to openly resist or fight any