Often, we are puzzled by the curiosity of the man to know the unknown. Why should scientists bother to know how big is the universe? Does it really matter if it is 28 billion light years wide or may be just one light year? Why should we care if the universe is 14 billion years old or less when our own life is less than hundred years. Why should the scientists waste their time and public money on such quest of knowledge?

Similar is the quest of knowledge about God. Why must we bother about God? God is believed in virtually every society of the world. There are hundreds of religions and faiths and most have a different description of God. Which one should one believe? More than that why should one bothers to know God? After all can we not live without the knowledge of God? Many successful people in this world had no faith on God. Yet they achieved success and lead a happy and successful in life. There are people who do just the opposite of what is written in the scriptures yet lead a happy life. Why God does not punish them? Knowing the God seems as impossible for man as knowing the universe seems to be impossible for the scientists.

God is perhaps the most controversial creation of human imagination. If the God of Judaism is jealous God who threaten to kill His people if they worship other Gods and ask them to follow the policy of "an eye for an eye", the God of Christianity in "New Testament" is a kind God who forgives even the greatest sins of its people and asks the people to offer the other cheek, if you are slapped on one cheek. If animal sacrifice is the only legitimate method to atone one's sin in Judaism, Jainism prohibits even killing of insects. If Islam and Judaism prohibits the representation of God in any form, Hindus worship God in every form. If Judaism and Islam believe in One God, Christianity believes in Trinity and for Hindus there are 330 millions God.

It is, therefore, an irony that even today, when science has changed the face of the world with its knowledge and inventions, people still believe in God. Even in America, the land of most of the scientific inventions of the world, more than 95 percent people believe in God. It is extremely difficult to understand and explain the human psyche in respect of God as none in the world has ever seen God.

It seems that no amount and rational thinking and scientific knowledge could change the illusion of man about God. Galileo Galilei, who is considered to be the father of science, too believed in God as he stated "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." Even Albert Einstein, considered to be the greatest scientist ever emphatically stated, "A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

Many scientists are, therefore, aghast by the stupidity of human mind to believe God and practice the "mindless" rituals of the religion without any evidence or reason. Scientists are also frustrated because all their achievements and logic could not convince men to lose faith in God and start thinking rationally. Steven Weinberg, an American physicist and Noble laureate echoed this sentiment when he said,

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion"Is it not wise for man to spend their time and energy in knowing the people of the world, whom they deal every day? The life could be much better, if we can know human beings rather than God. Scientists and rationalists, therefore, focus all their attentions in knowing the people and nature rather then knowing the unknown called God.

Understanding the Thoughts of Man: The Toughest Science or The Easiest Art Imagine somehow, you could know the thoughts of other people. You can surely rule the world. Even scientists like Einstein said, "I just want to know the thoughts of God. The rest are details." He surely could know some thoughts of God and became the most respected scientist of history.

All braches of knowledge seems to revolve around knowing the secrets of man and nature. Medical sciences, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy are all related to the study of the people and nature in different forms. All these branches of knowledge attempts to know the man and nature so that their behaviour can be known and predicted. However, understanding the people seems to be the most difficult task in this world from the books. Even if one has mastered all books of all branches of knowledge, he may still not be able to understand the people. Even Einstein admitted, "I know little about nature and hardly anything about men."

Understanding the mind of man is the most difficult science but the easiest art. It is so simple that even an illiterate person can understand the thoughts of other men easily. The understanding of man seems to come automatically in all human beings or even animals without any effort merely by dealing with different types of people. All artists, painter, musician, poets seems to have much better understanding of the mind of the people than the scholars. Leaders and business too know the pulse (mind) of the people much better than the scholars. Knowing the people is the key ingredient for making advertisements, creating innovations or launching a new product. It can be said that one who knows the men truly rules the world. Such people make history and change history.

Why all knowledge of the world can't enable a man to understand the mind of the people? The reason seems simple and logical. We can easily visualize that the world is continuously evolving and changing every moment. For example, if any one try to become a great leader following the foot step of Stalin. Hitler, Mao, Roosevelt, Gandhi or Churchill, he is bound to fail as the world has changed and so has the requirement of the people of the world. The leader of twenty-first century has to be different than those of the last century or ever existed in past. Yet, there is no "rational and logical" method to know what is there in the mind of modern world and how to influence the thoughts of others to achieve a desired goal.Knowing God!

When you want to know people logically, you are confused as you find every person as different and unpredictable. If you treat other people like you, you fail miserably as no person like you had ever born in this world in past nor would ever take birth in future. Every person is unique in this world. However, deeper study reveals that such differences are only superficial. When you interact with many people, a pattern starts emerging in your mind that reveals what is common in all people. You start noticing that despite of the differences, there are many characteristics that are common in all people.

We notice that just like the body of all human beings have similarity as they have same body parts, same is true with the thoughts of the people. People have common thoughts and believes. When we learn further, we notice that even the body parts of human beings are not very different than that of the animals like monkeys, gorillas etc. Even the body of rat has great similarity with man. It is for this reason that most of the medical experiments are first conducted on rats and monkeys before they are tested on human beings. If the medicine works or rat or monkey, it is found to work well for man as well.

When we, expand our quest even further, we find many common features that we share with even plants. Most of the food that builds our bones, cells, blood etc is from plant world. A petrol engine can run only with petrol and can't function, if we fill it with diesel or any other fuel. Yet a man can virtually eat any plant or meat and the body converts it to flesh, blood, bones and energy. Even animal meat, that a man consumes, comes from plant life as the animals consume plant. Thus every part of the body of man is made from plant.

Then when we go even further, we wonder, how the plants are made? We find that earth, water, sunlight (energy), air are as essentials for the plant as for man. It is for his reason that all creations of the world are described to be made from five basic ingredients i.e. earth, water, air, fire and sky (pure energy). No plant life can sustain without sunlight. Thus we feel connected with the solar system too. Then what is left in the universe? We find ourselves related to everything else in the universe.

Thus, we can intuitively feel that there has to be something that is common in all different realities of the world, that which created and sustained everything, that which is present in everything and that which connects everything. We call this common force, the common Truth, the common energy in all creations as "God".

Thus the quest of God starts from the quest of man. While man may not have any interest in knowing God, he surely has every reason to know man and everything in the world that affects a man. However, this quest of knowledge leads us to the knowledge of God. Hence often it is said that "God is not a person but a process". Once we understand God, we understand the world. The people who know God are the people who actually know the core of human beings. They are the people who had understood the mind of the people of all the past, present and future generations. That is why these people had millions or even billions of people following them and their thoughts even thousands of years after their death. When you search the essence of humanity or world, what you essentially find is God which alone satisfy such quest.What is a Religion?

There is no common definition of religion. Wikipedia defines religion as, "A religion is a set of beliefs and practices generally organized around supernatural and moral claims, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law."

Thus even scientist are religious to an extent as they too believe in certain beliefs and practices. Even the modern concepts like democracy, socialism, humanism can be said to be religion to some extent, even if they do not have the concept of God. After all religions like Buddhism too does not believe in God and advocates the use of commonsense to decide the truth as Buddha saidBelieve nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own commonsense".

Religion is often used interchangeably with "faith" which also means "believe". Thus if you believe in anything, you can be called religious by some definition. Even if you don't believe and use your commonsense to decide everything, yet you may not be an atheist as Buddha himself said so. Since no man and no civilization can exist without a common believe hence there would hardly be an individual who can't be said to be religious.Religion: The Simplified Truth for Common Man.

The major difficulty faced by an scientist or a philosopher is to explain their theories to a common man. Einstein was world famous for his "theory of relativity" which revolutionized physics and gave birth to modern or quantum physics. Yet the theory is so difficult to comprehend that even this scientists took more than 15 years to understand this theory. Even the greatest physicist found the theory absurd due to its incomprehensibility to the commonsense. However, when it was proven right be experiments, Einstein became the most famous scientist the world. Every person wanted to know, the theory of relativity, in simple word. This is how, Einstein explained to the common man the concept of the theory of relativity. "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."

The physics knows that this explanation of relativity is not correct. Yet they also know that this may perhaps the simplest method to explain the theory of relativity. However, Einstein perhaps used this explanation for the boys and man. If he has to explain the same theory before girls, children, student of physics or scientist, he would have explained the theory different which could be comprehended to the recipient. Every person, who have understood the theory of relativity would use different method and analogy to explain this to a common man. Hence there has to be many manifestations for the common Truth, when it is explained to a layman. Hence all religions seem different in words, yet to a spiritually evolved person, they all represent the same Truth. Upanishads had rightly said, "Truth is one but the wise man say it differently."

The wise man like Buddha, Christ or Nanak discovered the God or Truth only after years of spiritual growth and self-development. You require same level of spiritual evolution to decode these theories. The most difficult problem, they faced is to explain the concept of God to the ordinary man who is far less spiritually evolved. The whole knowledge has to be simplified to such an extend that even the most common man can understand God and follow the path of spiritual growth leading to true happiness and bliss. The explanation of the mysterious and incomprehensible knowledge of God in simple words is called "Religion". Therefore, Jesus simplified his wisdom so much that it can be stated only in few pages of New Testament. The entire Koran can be stated in few hundred pages.

If Truth is not simplified, it loses its popularity. For example, the Hindus philosophy of Vedas, Upanishads and Gita are so complex and incomprehensible that it may require even the most intelligent man to spend his entire life to understand it. Therefore, some great philosophers and poets like Tulasidas and Vyas summarized the whole wisdom in the form of stories of Ram and Krisha that were so simple that every person could understood it. Mahayana Budhism too made Buddhism simple and comprehensible to a common man that made Buddhism popular in the world.The Spirit of Religion!

Religion is the process by which a man can discover his Higher Self or Soul and evolve spiritually. Even though, all religions are different yet the spirit of all religion is same. All religions seek its followers to rise above the level of senses and observe the common truth that is present in all beings which is imperceptible to senses. The Truth is often named as God or Spirit. In order to invoke the presence of a supernatural reality that is beyond the conception of mind and senses, the method of prayers have been prescribed in all religion. By preying to the unknown and unseen entity, a man actually invokes the unseen and unknown Self that is present in him. This elevates the spiritual growth of the person.

Thus the rituals and prayers are the basic tools of the religion for the discipline of the mind and body. Once the body and senses are reined, the person's spiritual growth automatically starts. The methods may be different but the objective and the goal of all religions is the same. Only by the spiritual growth, a person can relate himself with the rest of the world and lead the life of happiness, contentment and peace. However, this discovery has to be performed only by self as spiritual knowledge can never be stated in words. Vedas said it rightly,"Those who know It speak of It not, who speak of It know It not."

Mr. Awdhesh K Singh is a government of India officer. He is an Engineer by education and philosopher by passion. He has published several papers in International Journals and Conferences on the subject of E-governance and the application of Artificial Intelligence tools like Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Expert Systems (ES) for E-governance. He also has keen interest in the study and application of Indian Philosophies for solving the real-life problems of the modern world.