Preface
Friday July 8 2005 10:55 IST
By Karmayogi
A Russian writer said that an author is made in the crucible of life. An age lives its experience in the writings of a perceptive author. A whole population undergoes an intense experience of love for centuries, which, in the process, gets crystallised and condensed into a phrase, love is blind.
A great mind expresses it. He is the pioneer of thought. In the minds of intellectual authors, thoughts arise and struggle to acquire a form, first acquiring a shape. The shapeless thoughts filling the outlines of a visible form of an idea is the experience of writing a book. What was amorphous in the beginning has a form towards the end. In writing a preface, the author delivers in one sentence what he has laboured on in the pages of his text. The preface of an author is a concise thought in the precision of perfect form.
At a ripe old age, one sees that he does not fumble for words. They flow into his speech as if preordained. Examining the writings of a great author over a long period, one sees the evolution of thought. Along with that appear elegant phrases exactly expressing the ideas. Sri Aurobindo says histories and biographies are great instruments of education. A scholar collects valuable facts. a thinker follows the lines of development of thought in the course of history.
Wise men begin their lives where thoughts give way to ideas and ideas yield place to wisdom. In a great mind like Socrates or Ramana Maharshi, the collective wisdom climbs to greater heights or a finer perfection. In all minds, such a process is in evidence. In your own house, you could have seen the vast changes your fathers mind had undergone since you were a child. It is very instructive. If you are one who is capable of observing the mental movements in your own self, it can be inspiring. What your father took 25 years to overcome, you will see you can overcome in two years.
Observation of Minds, thoughts of the Mind, gives you a capacity to abridge a lifetime into one year. That way, the book of your life is complete and you are qualified to write its Preface. Girls from cultured, educated families often err in seeking a groom from a neo-rich family for the sake of a high job or a professional degree.
She will be the sorry witness to her husbands painstaking efforts to build the character of her children: mercenary values, deceitful strategies, short-term gains will be held aloft before the children as VALUES. She would know what her own family outgrew seven generations before are the precious goals of her present consort. It is a tragedy of life that has no solution in life. In yoga there is a solution for this too.
She would be daily witness to children taking pride in acts for which every member of her family would be ashamed. A yogic Preface can handle that too, but the effort needs to compress the experience of ages into the wisdom of a few WORDS.