Links to the files of
which follow the remarks below:–
If the essayistic
aphorisms and aphoristic notes of The Omega Octet, my eight volumes of
‘supernotes’ (available on the Internet in a variety of permutations, including
two quartets), are of indeterminate length, then what follows here, dating from
1993, is of an aphoristic purism which allows for little or no deviation from
the basic form.One could say that I had
passed through the heavy darkness into the full light(ness) of Truth at this
point, and the result is a vindication not only of the aforementioned octet,
but of my entire philosophical quest to-date.Comprised of 707 maxims which have been given 'a/b' subdivisions, Maximum Truth succeeds in achieving, albeit on a still-far from definitive basis,
the sort of metaphysical comprehensiveness I had been struggling towards all
along.One could say that it signifies a
refinement upon the essayistic aphorisms and aphoristic notes of The Omega Octet; though the tendency to recycle ideas, by now a veritable principle
of my work, persists here to even greater effect, insofar as it was this
technique which made the attainment of what is in some respects a maximum
degree of truth possible. – John O’Loughlin.
John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic
of Ireland,
of mixed Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split partly due to his mother's Aldershot origins (her father, a Presbyterian from Donegal, had served in the British Army),
he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who upon the premature death of her husband had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy marital absence from Athenry) in the mid-50s and, having had the benefit of private tuition from a Catholic priest, subsequently attended St. Joseph's and St. George's schools in
Aldershot, Hants, and, with an enforced change of
denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into a children's home
by his mother upon the death and repatriation of his ethniocally-protective grandmother, he went on to attend first Barrow Hedges Primary School in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, and then Carshalton High School for Boys. Upon leaving the latter in pre-GCSE era 1970 with an
assortment of CSE’s
(Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCE’s
(General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved to London and went on, via two short-lived
jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford
Square, where he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues throughout Britain and Ireland for the Board's examiners.
After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End
but, due to a combination of personal factors, quit the ABRSM in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer and office-skills tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the late '80s and
early '90s, he has steadfastly continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), An Interview
Reviewed (1979), Secret
Exchanges (1980), Sublimated
Relations(1981), and Deceptive
Motives (1981). Since the mid-80s John O'Loughlin has dedicated himself almost exclusively to
philosophy, which he regards as his true literary vocation, and has penned several titles of a
philosophical nature, including Devil and
God (1985–6), Towards
the Supernoumenon(1987), Elemental Spectra (1988–9), Philosophical Truth (1991–2) and,
more recently, The Best
of All Possible Worlds (2008), The Centre of Truth
(2009), Insane but not Mad (2011) and Philosophic Flights of Poetic Fancy (2012).
