Very Short Introductions

July 3, 2002

• Oxford Publishing has conceived of about 50 to 100 titles of 150 pages each about all topics of current interest such as Buddhism, Britain, Philosophy, Politics, etc.
• This is an instance where the publishers have come out with a creative academic conception where they excel the writer.
• The advancement of ideas mostly stops with writers and does not cross over to the publishers unless it is commercially lucrative.
• The rule of ruling ideas entering into the domain of the publishers is mind coming of age in the vital plane.
• As Hamlet announced to the world the birth of Mind among the population, the conception of "Very Short Introductions" announces the birth of mental conception of Totality of Existence among the vital world of commerce.
• If they ever do it, it will be an evolutionary epoch in the progress of mind in the plane of vital human existence.
• I have seen half a dozen of them on Sociology, Politics, Psychology, Indian Philosophy, and Britain in the 20th, 18th centuries. No writer of these six booklets seems to have the conception of the publisher.
• In order to present a wide topic in a short summary, the writer needs to know the essence of the subject. Any amount of mastery of details will not help in writing this brief presentation. The writer of the 'Indian Philosophy' found it proper to omit The Gita.
• The author of Politics does have the components of the question he needs to have, if not the answer.
• If all these 100 introductions are successfully written, still they all can be summed up in ONE booklet and it can be called "Introduction to MAN".
• The history of Man will get abridged when it is shifted from outside to the inside and it is capable of going into one single word, perhaps syllable.
• All that is in the material world is from 100 or so chemical elements of science or the 5 elements of Indian Philosophy.
• These five elements are the five extensions of the material force.
• The material force is created by mind by its viewing the Spiritual force through its senses.
• The Spirit itself is the experience of Sat or Existence.
• Existence is the expression of the Absolute.
• Material force becomes sound in its first extension.
• That extension has three stages, the last of which is known as OM.
• Indian philosophy abridges creation into OM.
• Sri Aurobindo says proper chanting of OM can take one to Cosmic Consciousness.
• One who knows the process of the million facets of creation into that one word OM, can write a very Short Introduction to Man at any length.
• Mastery of a part or parts of subjects will be of no avail in this pursuit.
• Man as an individual can be summed up in his gunas, temperament expressed in the physical, vital, mental parts.
• Man in the collective sums up in his organisations, institutions, cultures, cultural sensitivities and their origin.
• The landmarks will be the transition between planes as well as maturing collective action.
• A full outline of it from both the points of view can be written up, and if scholarship will illustrate at every stage, a booklet of 150 pages representing every stage of man -- biological, sociological and psychological can emerge.
• Experts in partial wholes may disapprove of the real whole which is the essential WHOLE that is Man.