"They don't touch your life at all. You can live perfectly well without a God. In fact, you are living perfectly well – whether God is or not makes no difference to you.

"I have seen the theists and I have seen the atheists. If you talk to them, their ideas are just diametrically opposite to each other. But if you look at their lives they are the same. You can see their real problems by observing their lives: they are about love, they are about marriage, they are about children. But in their books, in their philosophies, they are talking about things which do not matter at all.

"Do you see the difference? The woman is more realistic, more pragmatic, more earthbound. She has roots. Her inquiries are not just games and puzzles about empty words. And, for centuries, the woman has not been allowed even to ask. It is because of this that people's minds are full of all kinds of garbage and their lives are empty. They do not know anything about the real problems that have to be encountered every moment, from the cradle to the grave.

"A great philosopher of India, a contemporary man, Dr. Ranade was the most respected and the most learned scholar, logician. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Allahabad. In his days, the department of philosophy at the University of Allahabad had become the most prominent department of philosophy in India, and India has almost one thousand universities.

"I saw him just a few days before he died. He was very old, retired, but still people used to come from far and wide – not only from this country but from all over the world – to ask questions, to inquire.

"I was sitting with him. He said to me: 'What are your questions?'

"I said, 'I know not.'

"'Then why have you come to me?'

"I said, 'Just to see you and to see the people who are continually coming to you from morning till night.'

"I watched him for almost six hours, and all the people who came had come with abstract questions: 'Does God exist? Is the soul a reality? Is there life beyond death?' And he was answering them."