Brahman appears as different deities that possess more humanlike qualities and act as metaphors for different aspects of nature.
While growing up in the United States, I was already quite familiar with several aspects of Hinduism because most of my own family is Hindu. However, experiencing Hinduism in India is a whole different affair because of the degree to which it is present in daily life. Although the Indian government is technically secular, a concept similar to the American "separation of church and state," religion plays a large role in the cultural richness of this country.
As a child, I read stories of Hindu mythology and marveled at ancient tales of wisemen who isolated themselves from the world and completed superhuman feats of endurance in order to receive spiritual blessings. I valued these stories because of the strong cultural heritage they contained and because, at its core, Hinduism places great value on the sanctity of the natural world. After all, Hindu mythology is filled with references to the beauty of rivers, various animals and the stars. However, I was unable to connect on a personal level to the ritualistic aspects of the religion, especially to the worshipping of various deities whom I could not make myself believe existed in physical form. Instead, my personal spirituality fell more in line with this quote by Mikhail Gorbachev: "I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature."
I sincerely want to dispel the belief that science and spirituality/religion are incompatible. They are not. In fact, I became a scientist because I feel a spiritual connection with nature.
