Principles of Qualified Non-Dualistic Physicalism (Vishishtadvaitik Bhautikvad)

Everything is physical. Including the mind. Within the right bounds.

This book explains a philosophy in five principles, together with a methodological rule and four corollaries that follow from them. It is called VAB, short for Vishishtadvaitik Bhautikvad, which roughly means "qualified non-dualistic physicalism." In plain words: everything that exists is physical, but physical reality has layers, and the layer you experience is not less real just because it is built out of smaller layers underneath it.

The five principles in this book come from a career spent in physics. The way they are explained here - plainly, through everyday examples, without jargon - comes from a separate career spent teaching, where an idea that cannot be made clear to a beginner has usually not been understood well enough by the person explaining it. This book tries to hold both standards at once: the rigor a physicist would expect, and the clarity a student is owed.

Note: the Sanskrit name Vishishtādvaitik Bhautikvād is used by structural analogy with Ramanuja's Vishishtādvaita. This book is a physics-based philosophy, not a commentary on Vedanta or any religious tradition.