Contents: Preface. I. The absolute is the adorable: 1. Wisdom’s frame of reference. 2. Existence. 3. Subsistence. 4. Value dynamics. 5. The absolute and the relative. 6. The philosophy of necessity. 7. The absolute is the adorable. II. The unitive approach to religion and theology: 8. Science and religion unitively approached. 9. The Lord’s prayer for man. 10. The lost Idiom of the Bible. 11. Allah the absolute. 12. Temple exoterics. 13. The androgynous God of South India. 14. The philosophy of the divine family of Siva. 15. The spiritual role of the Sikhs. III. Guruhood: 16. The glory of Guruhood. 17. A Guru tradition above time and clime. 18. The role of the Guru today. IV. Integration of the sciences: 19. Science and human values. 20. Science and certitude. 21. Mathematics and mysticism. 22. Can a science be sung? 23. Towards a common speech for science and Vedanta. 24. The travesty of verbosity. V. Hindu Orthodoxy: 25. Patterns of Hindu Orthodoxy. 26. Hindu philosophical Orthodoxy. 27. The sociology and psychology of caste. Glossary. Index.

This strikingly innovative elucidation charts out the structural map of wisdom-the finalised knowledge concerning life, both in its generic and specific aspects. Nataraja Guru, the eminent contemporary thinker, handles the theme as well as the methodology in a very original way. Thematically it encom-passes the entire range of human wisdom, including epistemology, axiology, mathematics, sociology, politics and mysticism. The author presents a scheme of coherent pattern in which all distinctions between contemplative and active, functional and theoretical, contingent and necessary, Eastern and Western dissolve into the unity of the absolute truth. The subject-matter and object-matter of wisdom when put in proper perspective around the normative notion of the absolute, culminate in the idea of common human happiness. In the age of excessive specialization and compart-mentalization, Nataraja Guru’s handling of the subject matter is a unique response to the legitimate cry for unification and integration. The methodology adopted throughout this interpretation is unitively taking care of the vertical progress of human wisdom along with the horizontal process of adjustment with the incidental necessities that are demanded by the process.

Nataraja Guru’s insightful combination of the spiritual with the modern science stands out as a tall land-mark in the field of contemporary wisdom and scholar-ship. It is a powerful beacon to the solace-seeking mankind that is being tortured by the outrageously materialistic society.