Sri Ramakrishna on God

• God alone is real, the eternal substance, and all else is unreal, transitory.
• Know that God is in all things. But you must mix with the good and keep a distance from the bad. God is present even in a tiger, but surely you can’t hug him for that reason.
• One becomes a jivanmukta only by realizing, ‘God is the sole actor in the three worlds. I am a mere instrument in His hands.’ All troubles, all want of peace, come from the notion, ‘I am the doer, I am a free agent.’
• The more one advances towards God, the more one gains fervour and loving devotion to Him. The more a river advances to the sea, the more one sees its ebb and flow.
• Whoever knows God sees that He Himself has become the world, its creatures, and all that.
• Feeding others is also a kind of service to God. God is in all beings in the form of the fire of hunger. Feeding someone means making an offering to Him.
• Dive deep. Diving into this sea, there is no fear of death. It is the sea of immortality. Don’t think that it will make you lose your head. Don’t think that a person becomes mad by calling longingly on God.
• Can a person with an ounce of intelligence know the nature of God? Can a one seer container hold four seers of milk?
• Only a person who constantly thinks of God can know His real nature. Only he knows that God reveals Himself in various forms. He is seen in different ways. He has attributes, and then He is without attributes.
• One must pray to God. Everyone can be united with the Supreme Self. Every house is fitted with gas pipes, but one must apply to the gas company to receive the gas. When you file an application, the company will arrange for the gas and your house will be lit.
• God does three things: He creates, He preserves, and He dissolves. Death is inevitable. At the time of universal dissolution, everything will be destroyed, nothing will survive.
• You must always fix the mind on the Lord. Initially, you have to make some effort. Later you enjoy a pension.
• I see that the Lord dwells in everything – He pervades man, birds, beasts, plants and trees; He manifests in the sun and the moon, in water, on dry land, in everything.
• Blessed is the man who is attracted by the Lord, even though he may eat pork. On the other hand, shame on him who is attached to ‘lust and greed,’ even though he may be eating havishya.
• There are different ways to reach the Lord. As many faiths, so many paths. It’s like going to the Kali temple on different roads. Even so, some paths are pure, while others are dirty. One must take a pure path.
• Give up worldly matters completely. Talk of nothing else but God. When you come across worldly people, leave quietly. You have lived a worldly life for so long. You have seen that it is all hollow within, that the Lord is the only substance. Everything else is non-substance.
• The Lord is the only Reality, all else is ephemeral. What is this worldly life? It is like the fruit of the hog-plum tree. You feel like eating it, but what substance has it inside? If you eat kernel and rind, it gives you indigestion.
• Ask the Lord about the birth after death and call on Him sincerely. He will tell you. He will certainly make you understand. If you talk to Jadu Mallick, he himself will tell you how many houses, how much money, and how many company shares he possesses. It’s not right to try to know all this beforehand. First attain the Lord. He will make you understand what you want to know.
• God’s grace is essential. Only with God’s grace can one fix one’s mind fully on Him.
• Even if you have the least desire, you cannot attain God. The progress of actions can be very subtle. Say you have to thread a needle. It will not enter the eye of the needle if there is the least fibre sticking out.
• Some think that by thinking of God too much, one loses one’s sanity. That is not so. He is the lake of immortality. The Vedas have declared Him to be ‘immortal’. When one plunges into this lake, one does not die but instead becomes immortal.
• God alone is the Substance; all else is meaningless.
• It is He who makes us do everything. He indeed is the Doer; man is only an instrument. But this, too, is true: one has to reap the fruit of one’s actions. Eat red chilies and you will feel a burning in your stomach. It is God who has ordained that eating red chilies should give the burning sensation. If you do an evil deed, you will bear the result.
• It is Lord Hari who is the Master, and He Himself is the servant – this is the attitude of a man of perfect knowledge. First following the path of ‘not this, not this,’ one realizes that the Lord is the only Reality and all else is illusory. Then one sees that it is the Lord Himself who has become everything – that the Lord Himself has become maya: living beings and the universe.
• The Lord is a kalpataru, the wish-fulfilling tree. You will certainly receive whatever you ask of Him. But you have to stand near the kalpataru when you ask for something. Only then is your wish fulfilled.
• The Lord is a kalpataru, a wish-fulfilling tree. One should pray standing near it. Then one receives whatever one asks of Him.
• They who are held by the Lord need have no fear. A boy who holds his father’s hand while walking on the balk of a field may fall if he loosens his grip for lack of caution. But if the father is holding the hand of his son, he does not fall.
• He is the Lord of all – He can do anything and everything. He who has made the law can change it.
• God Himself has become everything. He Himself has become living beings, the universe – everything. When one attains Absolute Knowledge one realizes this. He has become the mind, the intellect, the body – and the twenty-four cosmic principles. To whom, then, can He be partial?
• The way I see this fan directly in front of me, in exactly the same way, I have the sight of God.
• The world, living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles – these exist because God exists. Give up God and nothing remains. Adding zeroes to the digit one increases the number. But if you remove the one, the zeroes have no value.
• God is present within everyone; all have the same gold within. It is only that with some there is a greater manifestation; in the worldly-minded the gold lies buried under so much dirt.
• When you reason, you see it one way. But when God reveals it to you, you see it in quite a different way.
• The rishis asked Valmiki to repeat the word mara. It has a special meaning. ‘Ma’ means God and ‘ra’ means the world – first God, and then the world.
• Indeed, it is God who does everything. You may say that implies that people may commit sin. That is not true. A person who truly feels that God is the Doer and he a non-doer cannot take a false step.
• If God had not given free will, sin would have increased. If God had not given the feeling that I am responsible for my own actions, there would be much more sin. But those who have realized God know that free will is only an appearance. In fact, He is the operator and I am an instrument. He is the driver and I am the car.
• God alone is the reality, all else is ephemeral. Take the case of the owner of a garden. God and His splendour. People only see the garden. How many want to find out who the owner is?
• I see that God Himself has taken the forms of everyone. So, I’m not able to say anything critical to anyone.
• Satisfy God and everyone will be satisfied! The whole world is pleased when God is pleased. When the Lord felt satisfied after eating the greens in Draupadi’s pot and said, ‘I am full,’ all the beings of the whole world were satisfied. Indeed, they felt they had eaten more than their fill.
• God Himself had become the living beings, the universe, and the twenty-four cosmic principles. Climbing up to the rooftop and then coming down the stairs. It’s the process of involution and evolution.
• Victory and defeat are in God’s hands. A person can’t understand God’s ways. You see, a green coconut grows high in the tree so it gets a lot of sun, yet its fruit is cool. On the other hand, a water-chestnut grows in water, but its nature is to heat the body. Just consider the human body. The head, which is the foundation (the root), is at the top.
• The Lord is real and all else is unreal; knowing this is knowledge. That which is real is called Brahman. His other name is Kala (Time). That is why they say, ‘O brother, how many have departed and how many have come into being in time!’
• God dwells within. That is why the Vedas say, ‘Tat tvam asi (That thou art).’ And He is also outside. Because of maya He appears as various forms, but in reality it is God alone who exists.
• Narayana (the Lord) takes birth as a person’s son by the power of spiritual practices.
• Do you know how it is with these youngsters? Bearing fruit even before flowering. First they see God, and then they hear about His glories and attributes. After that comes direct union.
• Pure mind and pure atman are one and the same. What comes to a pure mind is God Himself. He is Himself the mahout Narayana.
• Samadhyayi gave a lecture in which he said, ‘God is beyond mind and speech. He is without sweetness and bliss. You must sing His glories with the sweetness of your own love and devotion.’ Look at how he describes Him who is the very fountain of sweetness and bliss, the essence of joy! What will such a lecture do? Can it teach anybody?
• It’s God’s law that you have to bear the consequence of sin. Won’t chili be hot if you eat it? Mathur Babu did a lot of bad things in his youth. That’s why he suffered from a number of diseases before he died.
• A person is liberated when he realizes that everything is being done by God. Once Keshab Sen came with Sambhu Mallick. I said to him, ‘Not even a leaf flutters on a tree except by God’s will. Where is free will?’ Everything is done by the will of God.
• Can anyone understand what God is doing and for what purpose? He creates, preserves and dissolves – all of these. How can we know why He destroys? I say, ‘Mother, I have no need to understand, only grant me love and devotion for Your feet.’ The aim of man’s life is to achieve love for God. The rest of it the Mother knows.
• Offer your salutations to God. It is He Himself who dwells in all forms, though there is greater manifestation of His power in some – for example, in holy people.
• You might say there are wicked people as well as tigers, but you don’t have to embrace God in the tiger. Just salute him from a distance and then go away. Think of water. Some water is fit for drinking and some fit for offering worship. But some is used for bathing. Also, there’s water to gargle with and water used for the toilet.
• ‘God alone is Reality, everything else is unreal.’ The Divine Mother has enchanted everyone with Her spell. Of men, most are bound. They suffer so much pain and sorrow. But they remain attached to ‘lust and greed’.
• When the mind gets absorbed in God, bad or sinful tendencies do not survive.
• Can God be understood? Sometimes even I think of Him as good and sometimes as bad. He’s kept us in the domain of delusion. Sometimes He keeps us in the state of awareness and sometimes in unconsciousness. For a short time this ignorance disappears, but then it envelops us again. If you throw a piece of stone in a pond covered with algae, you see water for a minute – but very soon the water is covered by the algae again.
• God incarnates Himself as a man. It is very easy then to practice meditation – Narayana in man. The body is only a veil, like a lantern with a light burning inside. Or like seeing valuable things in a glass case.
• It is God Himself who dwells in everything – maya, living beings, the world and the twenty four cosmic principles.
• Every single thing happens by the will of God. If you are becoming spiritually awakened here, please know me to be only the instrument. ‘Uncle moon is the uncle of all.’ Everything happens by the will of God.
• It’s very difficult to remain unattached without sincere love and devotion for God. Besides, if you involve yourself in a lot of different jobs, attachment creeps in from somewhere, you don’t know from where. You think you’re working unmindful of reward, but you may have a desire for recognition hidden from you – the desire for fame. Also, a person forgets God in the middle of too many engagements.

Formless God – God With Form

• One cannot limit God. He is formless and then with form, too. For a devotee, He is with form. For a jnani, that is to say, one who considers the world a dream, God is formless.
• Whether you accept God with form or not does not matter. It is enough to feel that God is a person who listens to your prayers, who creates, preserves, and dissolves – a person who is infinitely powerful.
• Kabir used to say, ‘The One without form is my Father and with form, my Mother.
• Believe firmly in one – either in God with form or God without form. Only then will you realize Him, not otherwise. A man with firm faith in God with form will attain Him, as will one who has firm faith in the formless God.
• He appears before the devotees in different forms. This is true. But it is also true that He is the formless Akhanda Sachchidananda. The Vedas say that He is both with form and formless, with attributes as well as attributeless.
• God is with form and He is also formless. Furthermore, He is even beyond form and formlessness. There is no limit to Him.
• Kabir used to say that God with form was his mother and the formless God his father. And he added, ‘Whom to slight and whom to worship? Both sides of the scales are even.’
• Haladhari used to live with God with form during the day and the formless God at night. That is why, whichever bhava you adopt, you can succeed if you have the right kind of faith. Whether you believe in God with form, or in the formless God, you must have sincere faith.
• It is not good to say that only what you know of Him is right and others are wrong. That since we take Him as formless, He is formless and can’t have form. Or that He has a form and so cannot be formless.
• Everybody is calling upon God. One should give up jealously and antagonism. Some people say that God is with form, others say that He is formless. I say that he who has faith in God with form should meditate on Him as such, and he who believes in the formless God should meditate on God without form. Yet dogmatism is not good: to say that my faith is correct and others are wrong.
• The mind doesn’t become concentrated on the formless God in the beginning. At this stage, meditation on God with form is good.
• What use is it to talk a lot? When learning archery, one first aims at a banana tree, then at a reed, next a wick, and then at a flying bird. That is why one should first concentrate the mind on the Personal God.
• Everything is possible for God. He is indeed with form and also formless. He is both the individual and the universal. He is Brahman, and He is Shakti.
• God with form is as true as the formless God. The Naked One used to instruct me about Sat-chit-ananda Brahman. He would say that It is like an infinite ocean, with water above, below, right, and left, water everywhere – the cause, water. The water is still. There are waves when it is acting. Creation, preservation, and dissolution are its waves.
• Are God without form and God with form both true? One can’t fix the mind on the formless God for long. So God assumes form for the devotee. Captain said something beautiful, ‘A bird flies very high. But when it gets tired, it comes to the branch of a tree to rest. God with form after God without form.’
• Please dive a little. You don’t get jewels by swimming on the surface. I accept both, God with form and God without form.
• The Eternal Religion believes both in God with form and God without form; God is worshipped with different attitudes – the attitude of peacefulness, as servant, as friend, as parent, and as one’s beloved.
• You don’t believe in God with form. There is no harm in that. It’s enough to have single-minded devotion to the formless God. Even so, you should cultivate the longing that the believers in God with form have. When you call upon Him as Mother, your love and devotion increase.
• God can be seen. It’s possible to see both God with form and God without form. You can see God with form as Spirit Personified. But He can also be seen as manifest Himself. Seeing an incarnation of God is the same as seeing God Himself. God incarnates in human form in every age.
• Dive, dive. You can’t find jewels by swimming on the surface. God is without form but also with form. A person develops love quickly by meditating on God with form. Then you can meditate on the Formless again. It’s like throwing away a letter after reading it – then he attends to the instructions of the letter.
• God is both formless and with form – and much more! The Absolute belongs to the same One that the phenomenal belongs. That which is beyond mind and speech takes different forms, incarnates and enters into various activities. From the same Om have come ‘Om Shiva’, ‘Om Kali’ and ‘Om Krishna’. The master of a house sent a small boy of the family to invite people for a feast. What respect they showed him because he was the son or grandson of an important person.
• A person shouldn’t entertain malice toward any person or belief. Believers in the formless as well as believers in God with form are going toward Him – whether it’s a jnani, a yogi, or a devotee, they’re all looking for Him. On the path of knowledge, He’s called Brahman. Yogis call Him Atman, Paramatman. Devotees call Him Bhagavan, Lord. And then also ‘eternal-god’, ‘eternal-servant’.
• Think of Sat-chit-ananda [Existence-Consciousness-Bliss] as an ocean – without any shore or limit. Due to the coolness of devotion, water freezes into ice at different places – into different forms. In other words, at times God reveals Himself as a form for the sake of his devotee. And when the sun of the knowledge of the Absolute rises, the ice melts – that is, one goes into samadhi and realizes that God is the only reality and the world is an illusion.
• A person who knows one thing properly can also know another. He who knows God without form can also know God with form. A person who hasn’t gone to the neighborhood can’t know where Shyampukur and Telipara are. Not everybody is able to worship God without form. So there’s a great need for worship of God with form.
• A mother has five sons. She has cooked fish in different ways to suit the digestion of her children. For one, she has made fish pulao. And for the son who has bad digestion, she has made fish soup – whatever suits the different boys.

God Realization

• Those who have realized God do not look upon women with lustful eyes, so they have nothing to fear. They actually see that women are but manifestations of the Mother of the Universe, so they worship them all as the Mother.
• The fronds of a coconut tree dry up and drop off, leaving only a mark [on the trunk]. One can make out from these marks that there were once palm fronds there. Similarly, the ego of one who has realized God only leaves a mark, only a semblance of lust and anger.
• It is said that truthful speech is the austerity in this Kaliyuga. By sticking to truth, one realizes God.
• The aim of life is to realize God. Work is only the first chapter of human life. It can’t be the aim of life. Even selfless work is only a means, not the end.
• It is one thing to have the faith that fire is in wood; it is another to make fire with that wood, to cook rice, and to feel filled and satisfied by eating it. There is no end to divine states. There is always a state higher than the one before.
• You have to be firm in one ideal. Dive. Without diving deep, you cannot reach the gems at the bottom of the sea. It is of no help to swim on the surface.
• To attain God while living a family life, hold onto His lotus feet with one hand and do your work with the other. Whenever you are free from work, hold His lotus feet with both hands, live in solitude, meditate on Him alone, and serve Him.
• The signs of God-realization are that a man becomes like a dry coconut – he is rid of identification with the body. Pleasure and pain of the body are no longer his concern.
• The nearer you come to God, the less you reason. When He is attained, no words, no reasoning, remains. Then it is samadhi.
• If a man doesn’t know the right path but has love for God within and wants to know Him, such a person attains God by sheer love and devotion for Him.
• After you have realized God, your nature becomes that of a five-year-old child.
• When one develops sincere devotion to Him, one can realize the Lord by any religion. The Vaishnavas will attain Him, so will the devotees, the Vedantists and also the Brahmajnanis. And the Muslims and the Christians shall also attain Him. Everybody will attain God if they develop sincere devotion to Him.
• Do you know how one feels when one has realized the Lord? It is like this: I am a machine, You are the operator; I am the home, You are the mistress of the home. I am a chariot and You are the charioteer. I move the way You make me move. I speak the way You make me speak.
• After God-realization, one sees that God manifests Himself in all things. However, there is a greater degree of His manifestation in the human being. And He is manifested more in devotees endowed with the quality of sattva – people who have no desire at all to enjoy ‘lust and gold’.
• It is not that one must always work. When God is realized, there is no duty to perform. When the fruit appears, the flower falls off by itself.
• There is no obligatory worship like sandhya for him who has realized God. Sandhya ends in the Gayatri. The recitation of the Gayatri is enough. Gayatri ends in Omkar. You don’t even have to chant the Gayatri mantra – just repeating Om is enough.
• The blossom falls off as soon as the fruit appears. When one develops bhakti, when one attains the Lord, sandhya and other rituals fall off.
• Don’t you know what the Gita says? One truly attains the Lord if one attends to worldly work in a detached spirit, if one lives the worldly life after knowing everything to be illusory.
• Stick to truth. It will lead to God-realization.
• How long must one perform sandhya and other rituals? As long as the hair on the body does not stand on end and the eyes do not fill with tears while repeating the name of God. Both these states are the signs of God-realization; they indicate pure love and devotion.
• The body, of course, is subject to happiness and sorrow. He who has realized God surrenders his mind, body, prana and soul, all these, to Him.
• After realizing God, one develops the nature of a child. One acquires the nature of Him on Whom one meditates. God’s nature is like that of a child. Just as a child builds a house, breaks it down, and then rebuilds it in play, in the same way God creates, preserves, and dissolves.
• A person can’t attain spiritual awakening and realize God without getting rid of worldliness. Worldly desire leads to hypocrisy. God cannot be realized unless one is guileless at heart.
• The goal of life is to realize God. While aiming his arrow, Arjuna said, ‘I can see nothing but the eye of the bird. I don’t see the kings or the trees, not even the bird.’ It is enough to realize God. It doesn’t matter if you know Sanskrit.
• When you realize God, He provides everything. There is no dearth of anything. When He resides in the heart, many people arrive to serve.
• After realizing God, one becomes like a child. That person at times acts like a child, a boy, and sometimes like an adult. In boyhood he talks nonsense. Sometimes he even uses foul language. But when he is in the state of adulthood, he teaches forcefully like a lion.
• When a person realizes God, the Vedas, the Vedanta, the Purana, and the Tantra all become insignificant.
• After attaining God-realization, you see that God Himself has become maya, the world and its living beings. If you reason, ‘Not this, not this,’ you realize that this world is a very deceptive place. It’s like a dream. When you attain the realization of God, this world becomes a mart of joy.
• Pundits spend their time reasoning. But some have heard of milk and others have tasted it. After you have realized God, you will see everything as Narayana. It is Narayana who has become all this.
• What a person sees in a particular state is reality for him – the truth – in that state. If you dream you are in a garden, that garden is a reality for you. However, in another state, say when you are awake, you may know that it was unreal, an illusion. When you attain the state of God-realization, you see Him as the Reality, the truth.
• You deliver lectures for the good of all. But good ensues to others only if you have realized God, have had His vision. Without His command, advice has no effect. And unless you’ve realized God, you don’t receive His command.
• The signs of God-realization are that the person becomes like a child, like an inanimate object, like a crazy person, a demon – like Sukadeva and others. Chaitanya Deva used to dance, sometimes like a child, at other times like a madman – he would laugh, then weep, then dance and then sing.
• The main thing is to look for the owner of the garden, and to talk to him. The only aim of life is to realize God.
• There are signs of a person who has realized God. Such a person becomes child-like, or like one mad, inanimate, or like an insentient being. He understands rightly that he is an instrument and God is the operator; that it is God who is the doer and he is a non-doer. Just as the Sikhs said, ‘It is by His will that even a leaf flutters.’
• In the beginning a person should go on pilgrimage, wear a string of beads and practice rituals. But after attaining the goal, after realizing God, outer display gradually decreases. Then there is only living with God’s name – remembering and meditating on it.
• When you’ve attained God-realization, all doubts vanish. The devotee sits contentedly, like a boatman with the tiller in hand who has unfurled his sail when a favourable wind blows and is now enjoying a smoke.
• He acts like a child, free from all bonds – shame, hatred, hesitation, and so on. This is the state that comes with God-realization. It’s like a ship sailing near a magnetic hill. All the screws and nails of the ship are loosened. With God-realization, lust, anger, etc. vanish.
• Anybody who is good at singing or playing musical instruments or dancing, or good at any art, can realize God quickly if he makes the effort.
• The means to God-realization is deep longing. Make the effort with your body, with your mind, with your speech. When there is too much bile in the body, a person suffers from jaundice. Everything looks yellow. Yellow is the only colour you see – in everything.
• The aim of all religions is God-realization. He also said: knowledge, action, devotion – these are all different paths, different ways – but the goal is the same, the realization of God.
• One must know God first, and then His creation. After attaining God, you will know everything you need to know.
• First God-realization, then His creation and anything else. Valmiki was given Rama’s mantra to repeat, but he was asked to repeat ‘mara’, ‘mara.’ ‘Ma’ means God and ‘ra’ the world. First God then the world – by knowing the one, you know all. If you put fifty zeros after the figure “1”, it becomes a very big number. But if you put the figure “1” after the zeros, it has no value. It is by having the digit “1” that you have many – first one, then many; first God, then the world and His creation.
• First you need to know God. Why do you talk so much about the world, creation, science and so on? You need to eat mangoes. What need is there for you to know how many hundreds of mango trees there are in the garden, how many thousands of branches, how many millions of leaves? You have come to eat mangoes – eat them and leave. A man has come to this world to attain God. It’s not good to forget this and give the mind to so many other things. You have come to eat mangoes. Eat and forget everything else.
• After realizing God, there’s no danger. There are both knowledge and ignorance in His maya. You become unattached when you realize God. Then you have correct understanding, the state of a paramahamsa. There is water in milk. A swan takes the milk from the mixture and discards the water. A swan can do this, but not a sparrow.

God Vision

• Attain God by performing spiritual practices. Attain Him. He will give you power. Only then will you be able to do good to others; otherwise not.
• If God only once brings His light to His own face, we can see Him. A police sergeant goes around at night with a lantern in his hand. Nobody can see his face. But in this light he can see everybody else’s face, and others can see each other.
• When Arjuna aimed at his target, his sight was fixed solely on the eye of the fish. He didn’t see anything else. He didn’t see any other part of the fish but the eye. In such a state, breathing stops and a person experiences retention of breath.
• There is another sign of God-vision: The spiritual current from within rushes up toward the brain. At that time, if you attain samadhi, you realize God.
• There are signs of God-vision. According to the Srimad Bhagavata, there are four signs of God-vision. One becomes like a child, like an unclean spirit, like an insentient being, or like a madman.
• A person who has seen God develops the temperament of a child. He goes beyond the three gunas. He does not become bound by any of them. He seems to make no distinction between purity and impurity.
• If you go further, you will find God. You will have His vision. And gradually you will talk intimately with Him.
• Go seek, go seek, O mind, the blessed Vrindavan within your heart, the abode of the Lord of Love. Then in your heart the unceasing light of knowledge will ever shine.
• If you look for God with a longing heart, you can see Him, you can know Him, you can talk to Him just as I am talking to you. I tell you truly, you can see Him.
• It is better to listen than to read, and it is better to see than to listen. There is a great difference between hearing of Kashi and visiting Kashi.
• It is the most difficult task to teach humanity. Only he who receives Bhagavan’s commandment after realizing Him may teach mankind.
• Keshab Sen asked me, ‘Why can’t I see the Lord?’ I replied, ‘You are busy with name and fame, scholarship and so on. That’s why you don’t see Him.’ As long as the infant continues to suck on the pacifier, the mother does not come to him. After a while the infant throws away the pacifier and cries aloud. The mother then takes down the rice pot from the fire and comes to it.
• Just as by rubbing pieces of wood you get fire, similarly one has the vision of the Lord in man when his love for God becomes very intense. If the bait is of good quality, big carp gulps it eagerly.
• Do you know what the marks of God’s vision are? One acquires the nature of a child. Why does one acquire a child’s nature? Because the Lord Himself has the nature of a child. So he who has God’s vision acquires a child’s nature.
• I look in vain for customers who want something higher than kalai pulse. Everybody runs after ‘lust and gold.’ But even the seat of Brahma (Lord the Creator) appears not worth striving for after the vision of the Lord.
• He can’t be seen by these physical eyes. By practicing spiritual disciplines, one develops a special body of love which has eyes and ears of ecstatic love. One sees Him with these eyes and listens to Him with these ears. Then one even develops a sexual organ of ecstatic love.
• That God exists may be known by looking at the universe. But it is one thing to hear about Him, another to see Him, and yet another to talk to Him. Some have heard of milk, others have seen it, and yet others have drunk it. One is happy to see milk, one becomes strong and nourished by drinking it. One attains peace only when one sees God; one feels bliss and becomes strengthened only by talking to Him.
• He who has attained God, who has gained the Lord’s vision, can commit no sin. An expert musician cannot sing a false note. An expert musician sings only the correct notes of the octave: do, re, mi, fa.
• All doubts vanish when one sees God. It is one thing to hear about God and quite another thing to have His vision. Through hearing alone, one cannot have one hundred percent faith. However, by having a direct vision of God, one is wholly convinced.
• Seeing is far better than hearing. All doubts vanish when you see. The scriptures talk of so many things. It is all futile without having the direct vision of God, without having love and devotion for His lotus feet, without purification of the heart.
• How long does one have to reason about the text of the scriptures? As long as one does not have the direct realization of God. How long does the bee hum? As long as it does not sit on a flower. When it sits on a flower to drink honey, it doesn’t make any sound.
• After God-realization one’s identification with the body disappears. One realizes that the body and the Soul are separate – like a dry coconut. When the milk inside it dries up, the kernel becomes separate from the shell. The Atman continues to move about in the body. As soon as the water of worldliness dries up, one realizes the Self – one knows that the Atman is separate from the body.
• God is not just formless. He has form too. You can behold His form. You can have the vision of His wondrous divine form through feeling, through love, through devotion for Him. The Divine Mother reveals Herself in various forms.
• The more one advances towards God, the less one sees of His glories and splendour. A spiritual aspirant first beholds the vision of a deity with ten arms. There is a greater representation of splendour in this image. Then there is a vision of a two-armed deity – no longer holding weapons and missiles. Still later is the vision of Gopala. There is no show of power, only the form of a little child. Beyond that there is only divine light.
• God grants divine eyes, and then you have His vision. The Lord gave divine eyes to Arjuna in order to reveal His Universal Form.
• In the beginning one should call on God secretly, in a solitary place, weeping with a mind full of yearning, renouncing everything else. A vision of God is the first thing that is necessary. Reasoning about the scriptures and the world come after that.
• If God reveals Himself to you face to face, will you pray to Him to grant you a boon to build reservoirs, roads, bathing steps, dispensaries, hospitals, and so forth? When you are in the presence of God, such desires are left behind.
• God appears in many ways, sometimes as a man and sometimes in other divine forms of consciousness. One must believe in divine forms.
• What use is it to only know that God exists? You have not reached the end when you have seen God. You have to bring Him to your house. You have to talk to Him. Some have heard of milk, some have seen it, and some have drunk it. Only a few have seen the king. Only one or two can bring him to their house and entertain him.
• You can see the form of God. You can have this vision when you get rid of all adjuncts of your own identity and reasoning stops. Then a person goes into speechless samadhi. How much people talk in the theatre – of this thing and that. But as soon as the curtain rises, all discussion stops. Then a person is fully absorbed in what he sees.
• A person who hasn’t realized God can’t give right instruction. He may say one thing correctly but the next thing he says is totally confusing.
• You have to keep the company of holy people and constantly pray to Him. You have to weep before Him. When the mind is washed of all impurities, God is seen. The mind is like a needle covered with mud – God is a magnet. Until all the dirt is cleaned off, it cannot join the magnet. When you weep, all the dirt of the needle is washed off. The dirt of the needle is lust, anger, greed, bad tendencies and worldly calculation. As soon as the dirt is washed off, the magnet will pull the needle to itself. In other words, you will have the vision of God.
• The company of the holy, prayer and the instruction of a preceptor (guru) are needed. They purify the chit (mind-stuff). That leads to God-vision. Muddy water can be cleaned by putting nirmali (purifier) in it. So much so that you can see your own face in it. You can’t see your face in a dirty mirror.
• There are signs of God-vision. You see light, feel joy, and feel the mahavayu rising like a rocket up into the chest.
• Those who see God constantly and talk to Him are vijnanis. They have a different nature. One moment they are inert, another moment they act like a ghoul, and sometimes childlike, other times like a madman.
• A person who has seen God is no longer able to continue creation by begetting children. When you sow rice you get plants, but boiled rice won’t yield plants. Those who have realized God retain their ‘I’ only in name. It can’t do any harm. It exists only in name, like the mark left by a fallen coconut branch. The branch has fallen – only its mark remains.
• God can be seen. If you practice austerities, you can see Him, through His grace. The rishis had the direct perception of the Atman. You can’t understand the essence of God from science. In science there is only this: Mix this with that and such and such a thing will happen. Mixing that with this, it does happen, and in this way, you get information about all things connected with sense objects.
• Turn your mind to God. Do not forget God. If you call upon Him sincerely, He will reveal Himself.
• The teachers all saw God; they all saw their own souls and what they saw they preached. Only there is this difference that by most of these religions, especially in modern times, a peculiar claim is made, namely, that these experiences are impossible at the present day; they were only possible with a few men, who were the first founders of the religion and subsequently bore their names. At the present time these experiences have become obsolete and therefore we have now to take religion on belief, this I entirely deny. Uniformity is the rigorous law of nature; what once happened can happen always. (Raja-yoga: Introduction)
• You can see God. You can see Him through a pure mind, a pure intellect. Attraction for ‘lust and greed’ defiles the mind.
• The ‘I’ which God retains in you after His vision is called the ‘ripe I’ – like a sword turning gold after touching the philosopher’s stone. It can‘t be used for killing anymore.

Lord

• By chanting the name of God, both the body and mind become pure.
• Even while living in the family, one must go into solitude at times. It’s good if one can cry for God even for three days in solitude, away from home. But even if a man goes into solitude for a day when he gets the opportunity, and thinks of Him, that too is good.
• When the Lord Himself enacts His sport why is there need for Jatila and Kutila? Without troublemakers like Jatila and Kutila, the sport doesn’t develop. And without Jatila and Kutila, there is no fun.
• One cannot attain Bhagavan without being guileless and generous. One must shun hypocrisy.
• But he who wants the Lord takes a plunge at once. He doesn’t calculate that so much is needed for preserving the body.
• Only that cleverness by which God is realized is real cleverness – that trick is the best trick.
• Pray to God. He is compassionate. Will He not listen to the words of His devotee? He is the wish-fulfilling tree. Approach Him and ask: He will grant your wish.
• The nearer you approach God, the fewer of His attributes you notice. A devotee first had the vision of God with ten arms. Going nearer, he saw that God had six arms. When he advanced still closer, he only saw Gopala with two arms. The closer he went to God, the less he saw His splendour and glories. At last he saw only divine light – there was no visible attribute.

Lotus Feet

• Having the rare privilege of being born as human beings, we should develop devotion to His lotus feet by any means possible.
• Pray earnestly for love and devotion at God’s lotus feet.
• After Ahalya was freed from the curse, Ramachandra said to her, ‘Ask for a boon from me.’ Ahalya said, ‘Rama, if you wish to grant me a boon, grant that even if I am born a pig, my mind will always dwell at your lotus feet.’
• If a person has love and devotion for the lotus feet of God, even though he may eat pork, he is blessed.
• There is no harm in leading a householder life. But you must do your work selflessly, fixing your mind at the lotus feet of God. If a person has a boil on his back, he talks to everybody and attends to his work too, but his mind is always on the boil. It is the same.
• The right thing is to act upon that which endears Him to you, that which develops bhakti for His lotus feet. You see, this world is ephemeral. There is no real stuff in it.
• How long does one have to perform evening worship and other rituals? As long as one does not develop bhakti for His lotus feet, as long as the eyes do not fill with tears while repeating His name, and as long as the hair of one’s body does not stand on end.
• The only real thing was the worship of the lotus feet of God, that all else is illusion.
• Please do ‘this’ as well as ‘that’. Attend to worldly duties, but keep your mind at the lotus feet of the Lord. And when you are alone, read devotional scriptures like Srimad Bhagavata, or Chaitanya Charitamrita.
• Only people of small intellect pray for occult powers – to cure a disease, to win a lawsuit, to walk on water, all these kind of things. A pure devotee wants nothing but the lotus feet of God.
• Rama said to Narada, ‘Please ask me for a boon.’ Narada said, ‘Rama, please grant only that I may have pure love and devotion for Your lotus feet and that I may never be enchanted by Your world-bewitching maya.’
• Whoever contemplates the lotus feet of God sees even the most beautiful woman as ash from a cremation fire. To enjoy a body which will not last and which contains all kinds of impurities – worms, pus, phlegm and so on!
• Woman is the embodiment of maya. In his hymn in praise of Rama, Narada said, ‘O Rama, all men that are, are parts of you; and all women are parts of Sita, the embodiment of maya. I ask for no other boon: only grant that I may have pure love for Your lotus feet and that I may not be enchanted by Your world-bewitching maya.’

Service to The Lord

• It is all right to try to earn more money, if you spend it in spiritual pursuit. You may earn more – but you must make the right use of it. Earning cannot be the ideal – the ideal is to serve the Lord. If money is used in the service of the Lord, there is no harm in it.
• Money should be utilized to buy food and a home to live in; in the service of deities, sadhus and devotees; and to help a poor man one may meet. This is making the right use of money. Money is not meant to be used for enjoying luxuries, or to provide bodily comforts, or to earn name and fame.
• He who has money should give in charity. Some people are miserly even when they are rich. Nobody is sure who will enjoy his riches after he dies.

Offering to God

• If you offer God something, you receive it back a thousandfold. So after performing all your duties, offer them to Him with water in your cupped palm, surrendering the fruit of the actions to Krishna.

God’s Glory

• God and His glory. This world is certainly His glory. But seeing His splendour and glory, people forget everything else. They don’t look for Him who is the master of all these riches. Everybody wants to enjoy ‘lust and gold’ – but there are more problems than enjoyment.
• No calculation can be made about God. His glory is boundless. What can man say in words? An ant went to a sugar hill and ate a grain. Its stomach was filled. Then it thought to itself, ‘The next time I come, I’ll bring the whole hill into my hole.’
• Is it possible to understand God? That’s why my attitude is like a kitten’s. The mother cat can keep it anywhere and it doesn’t care. A little child doesn’t know all the riches of its mother.
• The Lord and His splendour. Splendour only lasts two days or so. Only God is true. Think of a magician and his magic. Seeing the tricks, everybody is amazed – but it is all illusion. The magician alone is true. Or take a rich man and his garden. Seeing the garden, you should try to meet its owner.