God and 'i'

God is one of earliest concept we all learn. In most of the religions we have one or more gods. We offer our pray to him and seek his blessings. Even in the 21st century, in this modern world we still have many temples, churches, mosques. Though there has been no scientific proof of this entity called god, we still worship him. And we fight against each other in the name of god.

There are people who actually believe in god and there are people who completely deny his existence, and then there are people who are confused, who are not sure, and who don’t care. These are the people who do not actually believe that god is physically out there but instead think, there is some ultimate power, some ultimate energy which is simply out of the reach of human intellect (something very similar to traditional concept of almighty god, but they can not or maybe don’t want to visualize, materialize it). These people don’t keep questioning about god’s existence. They don’t accept him physically and don’t deny him morally or spiritually and go ahead. They thank him when a seemingly bad situation suddenly turns normal. They thank him when they think they were lucky that they escaped the accident. They pray when they await the result of some important exam or when they want their national team to win the cricket match. The question is despite not acknowledging his presence why these people pray god? Why do they need god? The answer is simple. It simplifies their lives!

Let me explain how it simplifies the life with an analogy. There is a concept of imaginary number in mathematics. Square root of -1. The 'i'. Anyone who has learned high school mathematics knows that such a number simply can not exist. There can not be a number which when multiplied with itself would give -1 as the answer. All our mathematics professors, scientist, engineers know this, but they still use it. The answer again is that it simplifies. Assuming that such number exists (and is called 'i') we could find out solutions to many equations. By proving that, such and such explanation of some phenomenon leads to imaginary root, we could say, such thing can not happen. (eg if speed of an object goes beyond speed of light, the object’s length would be negative, so we can not go faster than light). I think the concept of god plays similar role in people’s lives. There are many things a man has no control over. He has done is job but still it can not mean success. There are a lot of external factors which can affect man’s work. After having played his part, man can only wish that things go right as per his plans and to express this feeling he needs someone to whom he can say ‘let this work get done successfully’. Or when things go wrong, without (apparently) anyone’s fault man needs someone to whom he can say ‘why did you do this to me’. Man needs god to express his desires, his sufferings, his pain because there is apparently no other man (or men or anyone else) who can change his situation including himself. God does not necessarily help man but it at least lets him express his feelings. I think even a person who completely denies god would also pray when his son is lying in the hospital bed fighting for life. He would need some place where he can cry. Someone to him he can beg his son’s life. This is because there are certain things which are not in our hands, not in anyone’s hand and this is the very place where god comes into picture. According to me god is our psychological need. We need him to listen to our pain, we need him to be grateful to, and we need him to be blamed. We may not believe that he is physically present (and we need not), but we need him for our own use. So let’s not enter in the fight between the believers and non believers. Just accept him as i and life would be simpler.