R. N. Prasher

Women are almost two thirds more likely than men to believe in God, a major study of attitudes among middle aged Britons has found, says The Telegraph. Well, men are twice more likely than God to believe in women! (At least that was so in the Garden of Eden)

What is knowledge but a lucid enunciation of ignorance of yesterday. If there is no darkness to dispel, there can be no light.

Darkness is perhaps the only reality, the only truth, both of which have only one property; they are eternal. What we call light is a mere temporary absence of darkness, untruth, a mere temporary absence of truth. Vedas point to this absence by neti, neti; not this, not this. Both, darkness and truth overcome light and untruth and start becoming manifest, sooner or later, mostly sooner than later, once we believe and strive to experience. Sages, down the ages, have emphasised the learning path to The Truth; prevent light from entering your eyes by shutting them or sitting in a darker area, to make it easier. And a last word; there is no perfect darkness and no perfect truth. These, just two names for the same absence, are goals to which we may get ever closer, without reaching. And priests and scriptures make God so complicated!

My Ten Commandments:1. God is a verb, not a noun.2. Prayers are important only if they lead to corresponding actions.3. Creation is an art. Science provides the tools for the artist. Anybody with the tools is not necessarily an artist.4. Religion involves exclusivity and superiority. Divinity is inclusive and involves humility.5. God by definition should be omnipotent. He should not require intermediation by priests and prophets.6. All prophets have displayed exclusivity and superiority. (Refer to #4 above)7. Rituals involve intermediation and often cruelty towards other fellows of creation. 8. Inclusivity and humility towards all creations of God is divine.9. Rituals are antithesis of the divine. Rituals indicate a god and his intermediaries who are greedy, arrogant, revengeful and cruel.10. God exists only for increasing happiness of all creatures.

Words, with their multiple meanings and nuances are like trees and oral communication like a forest. Trees are good for hiding, forest for losing the path. When one is trying to contemplate the horizon of illusion and reality, trees and forests can offer no help.

In some languages (Hindi is one), every perception is called "seeing". Maybe, the trick is to rely on the eyes less and less as one perceives more and more.

When a lie makes a soft bed for everyone, may the truth lie low. God as commonly understood appears to be one such lie. God as non-existence is not everyone's cup of tea and He better remain so.

Unconditional love should not be presumed to be without ardent expectations as also the inevitable disappointment.

Young children have no past. The old have no future. The rest are too busy with present. This time-tripod holds up the world. You ignore the importance of this interdependence of the three, the world as you know it is in danger of collapsing

Pleasure and pain are on the same side of the coin of human experience. The opposite is indifference or numbness.

Like everything else, we know the futility of money only when we have more than enough of it.

As long as one can think as an outsider, an observer apart from the conflict, there is hope for a resolving thought.

The Seeker, The Teacher and The Genius:Knowing is an art; communicating that knowledge is art twice over; but it is only the genius who can use that knowledge.

As the dew drop slides down the leaf to wet the soil, they call it "fall in love". Yet, do we know the way up from the way down?

If I do not agree with something or do not like something, it will be wrong to presume that I hate it. Presuming disagreement or dislike to be the same as hatred is stifling engagement. Disengagement leads to otherness, which leads to fear, which in turn leads to real hatred. Either we tolerate disagreement and dislike or we have to tolerate real hatred. The intolerance of disagreement is filling civil society lexicon with phobias each of which is leading to a disconnect, to another closed door. It may sound odd but only tolerance of disagreement demolishes walls. Doors and windows, open or closed, presume that there exists a wall, a wall created by intolerance. And doors and windows, if they exist, are closed too easily, at the slightest of pretexts.

Of all creatures on earth, in proportion to their size and weight, humans have the smallest footprint on the ground and the largest on the environment.

Humans are like Variables in mathematics, some Dependent, some Independent. Variables are in relationship but remain Variable. Of course, there are some Constants too both in mathematics and humans. Constants help define precisely the relationship between variables. Maybe, that is why humans keep adding (to problems), subtracting (from happiness), multiplying (what else, we are all over earth) and dividing (the earth among themselves).

Racism and religious bigotry are two essential pieces of baggage mankind carries as it moves from one century to the next.