Scores of the most-common and not-so-common questions on spiritual life and Sadhana are answered here by Swami Sivananda with a clarity and lucidity that defy description. A book for every thinking person.
Swami Sivananda Saraswati (September 8, 1887—July 14, 1963) was a Hindu spiritual teacher and a well known proponent of Sivananda Yoga and Vedanta. Sivananda was born Kuppuswami in Pattamadai, in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. He studied medicine and served in Malaya as a physician for several years before taking up monasticism. He lived most of the later part of his life near Muni Ki Reti, Rishikesh.
He is the founder of The Divine Life Society (1936), Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy (1948) and author of over 200 books on yoga, vedanta and a variety of other subjects. He established Sivananda Ashram, the location of the headquarters of The Divine Life Society (DLS), on the bank of the Ganges at Shivanandanagar, at a distance of 3 kilometres from Rishikesh.
Sivananda Yoga, the yoga form propagated by him, are now spread in many parts of the world through Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres, but these centres are not affiliated with Swami Sivananda's original ashrams which are run by the Divine Life Society.
This book, as are all the other works of Swami Sivananda, is a veritable gift to mankind, whose life, from its earliest recollection, is punctuated by doubts, sorrows, helplessness, anxieties, and unremitting struggle.
The questions that one encounters in its pages are commonplace, almost to the point of seeming prosaic; yet the answers imparted by Swami Sivananda are extraordinarily uplifting --- not because they are novel or unlike what others have said, but because they are imbued with his sincerity, conviction, faith, and devotion, which cause his responses to shine forth amidst all others.
The text may well serve as an introduction to his other three hundred books, as well as to those written about him. No one who is desirous of bringing to an end his weary journey through the laborious cycle of births and deaths should forgo the opportunity to immerse himself in the works of Swami Sivananda, particularly this volume, which offers answers to many of the profound questions that beset every mind pondering the mystery of existence.