Frequently un Answered Questions

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Frequently Un-Answered Questions (FAQ) is an intellectual treat that systematically answers common and uncommon questions about life and living, science and spirituality, Vedic wisdom and self-improvement through spirituality.

The answers are phrased in eloquent language, permeated with clear logic, based on timeless wisdom, and illustrated with modern examples, revealing statistics and memorable quotes.

Every one of the over 50 answers is like an illuminating ray of insight that will show the way to the treasure of love hidden in our own hearts.

"1 keep six honest serving-men,

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who."

Questions and answers (QA) fascinated me since my childhood. Science, history, geography, culture, politics: whatever the field, so much could be learnt so quickly through QA with experts of those fields. Interestingly, I never thought QA applied to spirituality be-cause I never met anyone who could answer spiritual questions logically and coherently. So, imagine my surprise and delight when, during my engineering college years, I met spiritual teachers who could answer practically every question that I could think of. These erudite young spiritual experts from an ancient non-sectarian tradition of God consciousness very kindly spent many, many long hours answering hundreds of my questions. I was further intrigued to know that the Vedic literatures from which they drew their knowledge - the Bhagavad-gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam - were themselves in the form of catechisms or questions and answers.

So inspired was I by the profound wisdom that emerged from our QA sessions that I resolved to start sharing as much of it as I could. Even today, after having lived over a dozen years as a spiritual teacher myself, I am still fascinated by QA sessions. I am still very much a student, eager to learn from my many teachers. I know I will remain a student till my last breath, always looking forward to learning through QA.

But over the years I have discovered another way to relish the joy of QA: by trying to answer carefully and succinctly the questions that come to me during my interactions with spiritual seekers. Often, even after answering a question, I find myself pondering over it, thinking of points, facts, arguments and quotes that could enrich the answer. Whenever I arrive at a more complete answer based on scripture and logic, I long to meet that questioner and provide this answer. But due to my constant travelling and interacting with hundreds of people, it is almost impossible to get back to the questioner. From the desire to resolve that predicament was born the idea of this book.

The book that you hold materialized due to another happenstance. A few years ago, the editor of the newspaper Sakaaltimes invited me to contribute an article every week to its Soul Curry column. Soon, the article became an edited rendition of the best QA inter-action that I had during that week. I would sometimes slightly re-frame the question to make it relevant and appealing to a broad variety of readers. Also, I would significantly edit and refine my answer so that it contained the best of all that I had learnt from my spiritual master, my many other spiritual mentors and the Vedic books of wisdom. Initially, I felt constrained by the word limit of the column, but soon condensing the answer to within 450 words became a joyful struggle. The joy came from the awareness that, by meeting the word limit without compromising on the content of the answer I was optimizing my service to my readers. The opportunity to give my busy readers the best worth for the time they were investing in reading the articles inspired me to edit, re-edit and re-re-edit. The request of several of the regular readers of the column for a book-length compilation of those articles, along with my above-mentioned longing to offer the best answer to my questioners, led to the genesis of this book.

A few words about the structure of the book are apt here. Each article is complete in itself and so any article can be read at random. In fact, one purpose of compiling this anthology of short articles is to offer readers quick spiritual refreshment that can be availed during short breaks in their busy schedule. Some repetition of thoughts - especially in the conclusions of the articles - is inevitable in an anthology like this, but I have selected only articles with non-repetitive themes for the book. The articles within each section proceed systematically from one theme to another and so a sequential reading will help in getting optimum understanding of the subject. As an example of section structure, let's have a look at the first section "A Higher Science":

1. Articles 1 to 4 deal with common questions about God's existence,

2. Articles 5 to 7 address similar questions about the soul's existence,

3. Articles 8 and 9 talk about the recent attempts to create artificial life,

4. Articles 10 to 12 demonstrate the relevance of spirituality in an age of science

5. Articles 13 to 15 look at the interface of science and spirituality.

The other three sections are similarly structured, but I will let you discover those structures and thus avoid making this already long introduction longer. So what you, my dear reader, are holding in your hand is a compilation of revised and refined QA articles. If these QA articles could transmit a fraction of the illumination that I received from the QA sessions with my teachers, I would consider my service to you and to my teachers a success.

**Contents and Sample Pages**