Shortly after I started reading, though, another incident happened. An ex-colleague friend approached me and said he wants to study some fields, but couldn't decide his favorite field. He said once he decides his favorite field he could begin some deep study, but he didn't know enough about any of those fields to really decide which was his favorite. And without studying, how could he know which was his favorite? So he was caught in a vicious circle.
My advice (from personal experience) was to start studying, and keep up a slow, steady, and deep approach, i.e. to understand one topic/sub-topic/sub-sub ... completely before moving on to the next. His choice would reveal itself once he started studying.
And suddenly, I realized, what he was doing is exactly what philosophy is about: sitting in an armchair, trying to decide through reason whether there is a God, whether there is a soul and so on. As these statements are unfalsifiable - there is no way of proving or disproving the existence of a Being who/which cannot be detected by the senses - agnosticism - saying, "I do not know", is about as far as the logician can go. Atheism is therefore a belief as much as theism is. So, philosophers, sitting in their armchairs, take one of the three positions: I believe, I don't believe, I don't know (as opposed to most of us, who take the fourth position - I don't care :-) , or a few like a good friend, who says, "I believe, but I don't believe in the existence of ).
Experience, on the other hand, is an entirely different thing! Just take a small example, one of the crowning glories of twentieth-century physics - Quantum Mechanics (QM). What is the philosophy/logic behind its principles? Why should an electron care whether a human is observing it or not? Have not physicists been debating and striving to understand QM over the last ninety years? Do there not exist opposing schools of thought, some believing in hidden variables and non-local effects, others in inherent randomness, each of which fit some of the observed facts well, but not the others? How would you explain entanglement? Are not causality, conservation of momentum, conservation of energy (temporarily) violated in some quantum mechanical phenomena? The equations, the probabilistic predictions, the wave functions, are there, but where are the explanations?
Similarly, in ancient India you find philosophers many times taking an agnostic/atheistic outlook, but when it came to experience, people found theism better. Many educated people today, even though they dislike the idea of God, worship, bowing heads and kneeling etc, have, in their moments of crisis, got the distinct impression/feeling: something is there, (or this would not have happened, that would have, or whatever), but some higher power is definitely there, call it what you want. So there is this difference between your personal experiences, versus what you want to believe, perhaps the image you want to project in order to be a "part of the group".
In ancient India, this distinction was more formal, people were less afraid of what other people would think, and more free to speak their minds. Also, the society, the civilization itself was younger and fresher, more free to think, and had fewer preconceived notions/prejudices. So, out of the six premier branches of Indian philosophy, 3 i.e. 50%, did not believe in the idea of God. But when it came to practice, the situation became different!
For example, we have the Sankhya philosophy, which was against the idea of God. They argued against God as follows: having established (in their philosophy) the existence of souls (by definition, the essence of every being, whether it be body or life-force or mind or something else), they said, "If God exists, It has to be a soul (see the definition above). Now a soul can be only free or bound. A bound soul (bound by the laws of cause and effect) can never create (the world), and a free soul has no desires, so why should it create? Therefore there can be no God". Seems watertight, right? But the same philosophers - called Sankhyaas - discovered (or adopted) the system of meditation known as Yoga - basically a systematic way (actually regime) of developing concentration of mind - and gave rise to the practioners of Yoga - called Yogis - who needed the idea of God to describe their practical experiences! Again, you have experience contradicting what seemed watertight logic. So the Yogis came up with a slightly different idea (actually 2 ideas) of God, and argued that It exists.
Their arguments were as follows (quoting Swami Vivekananda's comments on the Patanjali Yoga-Sutras):
[1.25] "In Him becomes infinite the all-knowingness which in others is [only] a germ*".
The Swami says:
The mind must always travel between two extremes. You can think of limited space, but that very idea also gives you unlimited space. Close your eyes and think of a little space; at the same time that you perceive the little circle, you have a circle around it of unlimited dimensions. It is the same with time. Try to think of a second; you will have, with the same act of perception, to think of time which is unlimited. So with knowledge. Knowledge is only a germ* in man, but you will have to think of infinite knowledge around it, so that the very constitution of our mind shows us that there is unlimited knowledge, and the Yogis call that unlimited knowledge God.
Personally, I find the explanation very beautiful, and in tune with my own thoughts. If we try to think of the Universe as a whole, do we not think of galaxies etc. expanding into infinity? That is, do we not think that there is infinite space for them to expand? [But the physicists say, space (and time) are only defined within the Universe, i.e. beyond the furthest galaxy (distance in space or in time) space-time does not exist, by definition. That is, they use Occam's razor, and define spacetime to not exist outside the Universe, because anything there does not have any effect on the observed Universe. However, methinks that is a case of hiding behind definitions, to some extent]. Anyway, onto the second concept:
[1.26] "He is the Teacher of even the ancient teachers, being not limited by time".
The Swami:
It is true that all knowledge is within ourselves, but this has to be called forth by another knowledge. Although the capacity to know is within us, it must be called out, and this calling out of knowledge can only be done, a Yogi maintains, by another knowledge. Dead, insentient matter never calls out knowledge, it is the action of knowledge that calls out knowledge. Knowing beings must be with us to call forth what is in us, so these teachers were always necessary. The world was never without them. God is the Teacher of all these teachers, because these teachers, however great they may have been - gods or angels - were all bound and limited by time, while God is not. There are two peculiar deductions of the Yogis. The first is that in thinking of the limited, the mind must think of the unlimited; and that if one part of that perception is true, so also must the other be, for the reason that their value as perceptions of the mind is equal. The very fact that man has a little knowledge shows that God has unlimited knowledge. If I am to take one, why not the other? Reason forces me to take both or reject both. If I believe that there is a man with a little knowledge, I must also admit that there is someone behind him with unlimited knowledge. The second deduction is that no knowledge can come without a teacher. It is true, as the modern philosophers say, that there is something in man which evolves out of him; all knowledge is in man, but certain environments are necessary to call it out. We cannot find any knowledge without teachers. If there are men teachers, god teachers, or angel teachers, they are all limited; who was the teacher before them? We are forced to admit, as a last conclusion, one teacher who is not limited by time; and that One Teacher of infinite knowledge, without beginning or end, is called God.
I do not completely agree with this second argument - I don't accept that an external teacher is necessary all the time; perhaps I may have not understood it completely/correctly. But the first one stands out for its beauty and depth.
So you see, experiences resulting from their practices forced the Yogis to conceive of a notion of God.
Philosophy and logic are needed, they may be good, beautiful, but they sometimes give rise to a false sense of achievement and complacency. We humans, who cannot multiply 947535 times 1495 without reaching for our calculators, end up thinking we have the mental capacity to comprehend the Infinite just by reading some book - written by a guy with a nice Occidental name like Nietzsche or John Stuart Mill!
We need to get out of our armchairs, and get into the world of experience! Like my friend discovering which subject he liked, we shall then perhaps know about the answer of the is/is-not conundrum.
* meaning seed-like, small: blog-writer
