How can extreme suffering be so commonplace if there is a God who knows everything, who is all-powerful and also compassionate? How do the scriptures of our religions explain the existence of suffering? Do these explanations stand up to examination? Does our experience testify to a God? Or do the two demons - time and chance - explain all that we have to go through? In a devastating dissection of the scriptures - laced with accounts of the suffering and pain that he has seen at first-hand - Arun Shourie tells us why he has eventually gravitated to the teachings of the Buddha. And what lessons these teachings hold for our daily lives.

'Arun's brilliance and insight come to the fore when he takes his specific personal situation and turns it into a discussion on the larger questions that humankind has been grappling with over the ages' - N.R. Narayana Murthy 'It is for this book that Arun will be remembered the most. It moved me to tears ...' -Dr R.A. Mashelkar A child is in agony. Is it because God does not have the power to prevent suffering? Or, though He has the power, He does not know? Or that He knows and has the power but doesn't care? Why is the child suffering? 'It must be because of the child's karma,' we are told. But how do we know he did some wrong? 'Because he is suffering,' we are told as if that is anything except a mere circularity. 'No one is suffering,' say the mystics, 'Everything is maya.' Yet they eat, they teach, they pen books. If the world is all maya, why do they do all this? Or do they mean something else when they say, 'The world is unreal'? We cannot escape suffering. How may we put it to work? A profound examination of these and other questions, questions that each of us has to face in life.

How can extreme suffering be so commonplace if there is a God who knows everything, who is all-powerful and also compassionate? How do the scriptures of our religions explain the existence of suffering? Do these explanations stand up to examination? Does our experience testify to a God? Or do the two demons - time and chance - explain all that we have to go through? In a devastating dissection of the scriptures - laced with accounts of the suffering and pain that he has seen at first-hand - Arun Shourie tells us why he has eventually gravitated to the teachings of the Buddha. And what lessons these teachings hold for our daily lives.

The one certainty in life, the one appointment which each of us will just have to face, is the one for which we do the least to prepare-death. From the lives and last days of the Buddha, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Ramana Maharshi, Gandhiji, Vinoba; from our religious texts; from the teachings of great meditation masters; from santhara to sannyas to practices by which we may tame our mind-leavening all these by his personal experiences-Arun Shourie presents clues to ensure that we face our end with equanimity. In the process, he lays down what we must do if rituals, pilgrimages and mantras are to help us. He leads us to ask whether texts such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead are for the dead, or do they set out lessons for us, the living? He leads us to see through the sedatives that we are fed. Even as we are being frightened by accounts of 'hell', are we not actually being lulled to sleep? Does the fact that we will face extreme tortures in hell not mean that in some form we will survive death? To experience them, after all, we must be present. Religions entice us into the great questions. Is there a soul that is never born and never dies? Is there life after death? Is there rebirth? Is there God? What is real and what is just maya? The greatest teachers and mystics have come up with different answers. Each of them has had direct experience of what she or he has proclaimed to be the truth. How, then, are we to proceed?

A book that shows up the claims of missionaries, that nails their design, that bares their techonology. A book that sets out what should be done. A must for our times, a must for strengthening our country.

The life of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 'enables us to see God face to face', Gandhiji wrote. Similarly, when someone in his circle was distraught, the Mahatma sent him to spend time at the Ashram of Ramana Maharshi. The Paramahamsa and the Maharshi have been among the greatest spiritual figures of our country. They have transformed the lives of and have been a solace to millions. Their peak, mystic experience is what we yearn to have. But what if several of the experiences they had occur in other circumstances also?With the rigour and painstaking research that mark all his work, Shourie probes the lives of two of India's greatest spiritual masters in the light of the breath-taking advances in neuroscience as well as psychology and sociology. The result is a book of remarkable vigour: an examination - and ultimately reconciliation - of science and faith as also of seemingly antagonistic, irreconcilable worldviews.

'Arun's brilliance and insight come to the fore when he takes his specific personal situation and turns it into a discussion on the larger questions that humankind has been grappling with over the ages' - N.R. Narayana Murthy 'It is for this book that Arun will be remembered the most. It moved me to tears ...' -Dr R.A. Mashelkar A child is in agony. Is it because God does not have the power to prevent suffering? Or, though He has the power, He does not know? Or that He knows and has the power but doesn't care? Why is the child suffering? 'It must be because of the child's karma,' we are told. But how do we know he did some wrong? 'Because he is suffering,' we are told as if that is anything except a mere circularity. 'No one is suffering,' say the mystics, 'Everything is maya.' Yet they eat, they teach, they pen books. If the world is all maya, why do they do all this? Or do they mean something else when they say, 'The world is unreal'? We cannot escape suffering. How may we put it to work? A profound examination of these and other questions, questions that each of us has to face in life.