December 19

How Do You Know
That You Have Not Seen God?

Question: I have a growing desire to see God. It has become the thing I want most. But no matter how much I long for God, my worldly duties and needs get in the way. Can you help me?

Sri Gurudev: How do you know that you have not seen God? I heard God saying, “I have been in front of this person so many times, but he never even recognized Me. He was calling, calling, calling for Me. So I went there many times, stood right in front of him and he didn’t even bother to look at Me. He just brushed Me aside and kept on saying, ‘God, where are You? Where are You?’”

Before you look for God, you should know what God looks like, or at least what God is. God has no particular form, but appears in all forms and names. It is with God’s consciousness that I am saying all these things; and with God’s consciousness, you are listening. To simplify it, we say that God is all consciousness—superconsciousness, cosmic consciousness or peace. God is already there in you as peace, but you disturb your peace by searching for God. Stop searching and disturbing your peace and you will experience God.

A disturbed mind can never understand God. Looking for God is not our first and foremost duty. Our first and foremost duty is to take care not to let the mind lose its peace. You don’t have to make the mind peaceful. If you leave it alone, it is peaceful. In our own lives we should see that we don’t lose our peace due to our thoughts, words or actions.

Learn to remain undisturbed, unshakable, as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar. You should treasure the peace of your mind so much that nothing, nothing, nothing would shake you. You should be ready to renounce anything and everything that is going to disturb your peace. Name, fame, money, power, position, relatives, friends—all should be secondary to maintaining your peace. Everything else is nothing compared to peace of mind. With that peace, you will easily see God.