Arvindus

Memories

Arvindus and Contemplations

Content

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With the progressing of my academic study in philosophy I oriented on a career therein. I then would through contemplation and research be able to deepen out the subjects of metaphysics, I would have an exoteric area of service with the publication of articles, and at the same time I would be able to have my own income. My guiding professor however indicated that with my age of end thirties I was too old to still start an academic career. He mentioned as example his colleague, who in his early thirties already had a long list of publications on his name.

Because an academic career was thus not considered attainable I decided to, after the finishing of my education, publish independently. Because I was thereby not bound to academic requirements I would be able to determine my own subjects, study sources and publication forms.

Regarding form I knew that I wanted to publish mainly in academic style, which for me meant that from already given assumptions I wanted to come to my own, in contemplation received, conclusions through deduction and induction. In practise the assumptions would mainly be found in etymology and the ageless wisdom teachings.

I also wanted to write modularly. This means that I didn't want to write exhausting books about specific subjects, but short modules thereof. These modules were meant to be read independently, while they at the same time through overlap would connect to each other. Later these modules then could be collected per subject and published in book form. I called these modules 'contemplations' because they mainly arose from own contemplations on the treated themes. The process of such a contemplation is somewhat described in 'Contemplations, An Elucidated Etymology of 'Contemplation''.

I actually only wanted to publish in Dutch. Although I thought that I had mastered English sufficiently I was aware that I understood my mother language much deeper. This was for me an important consideration because I wanted to work much from etymology. When I started however no elaborate etymological database of the Dutch language was online available, and the academic etymological dictionaries of the Dutch language were at that moment for me unaffordable. Because I however already possessed some English etymology sources I then decided to start publishing in English.

I also decided to publish under a pseudonym. Several considerations were lying at the base of this. Firstly I didn't want the welfare services to know about my activities in this field. At the sale of publications or with donations I would generate income, and when these, in line with my expectations, would be lower than my welfare payments, because of which I would stay dependent upon the latter, I would have been obliged to report these incomes. The welfare services then could have earmarked me as a potential fraud, with deep investigations in my income and expenses as result. But they could also have meddled with the content of my publications to commercialize them, and such a meddling by officials of the welfare services with my intrinsic contemplations was for me totally unacceptable.

Although the contemplative modular publications were mostly intrinsic I nevertheless never saw them as true service. And this also was a reason to not connect my own name to these publications. I expected to be able to take on my true service only after my forty-ninth and saw the publications as a temporal possibility for exoteric activity, counter balancing my esoteric activity.

As pseudonym I chose the name 'Arvindus'. The Sanskrit name 'Arvind' resembles phonetically my first name, and to indicate my narrative affinity with Hinduism I decided to use this name in my pseudonym. In my mind I have, during my orientations on India, also identified with this name. Because I however did not only have narrative affinities with Eastern Hinduism but also with Western Christianity I added the Latin postfix '-us'. This also was the postfix of my baptismal names. Thus I came to the pseudonym 'Arvindus'.

Keeping open the possibility for official book publications I decided that there also had to be a publisher name. In the meantime I had already written my first modular publications. Because I named these 'contemplations' I wanted to use the Latin root of that word, 'contemplatio', in the publisher name, with this again referring to my narrative affinity with Christianity. To subsequently again use my narrative affinity with Hinduism in the publisher name I added the Sanskrit postfix '-(n)am'. Thus I came to the name 'Contemplationam'. During the designing of the website I however stumbled upon the advice to, for search engine optimalisation, choose a domain name that already was an existing word. Thus I came to the compromise of 'Contemplationem', which regarded an existing Latin word. When I moved to 'Arvindus' as publisher name I collected the contemplations again under the series name 'Contemplationam'. In the end the series name was simplified to 'Contemplations'.