Glimpse of God

How will you recognize God if you get a glimpse of Him?

How do you know a rasagulla? When God comes, you know God is here just as you know you have a rasagulla on your plate and not a jalebi. A sweet is a sweet and God is God.

It is not necessary that when God appears the world should disappear. It is also true that when God appears everything becomes known, nothing more remains to be known. The world becomes shoonya, void. However, you do not have to start thinking, “When I see God, the world will become shoonya.” When Tulsidas was putting sandalwood paste on Shri Rama’s forehead, he experienced the forehead in himself. He was aware that he was in chidakasha and he was also aware of the people around him.

In God experience you do not negate the world experience. Sometimes we make this mistake. We want to have that glimpse again. Whatever that experience is, you will not get it again because it came to you to say something. It came to say, “Follow this path.” So whenever you have the experience of God, change your lifestyle. You have to find out what that experience means and if it does not come again, it means that it had come to give you encouragement, a message, an order or instruction so that you may make certain changes in your life or thought.

Imagine that someone gives you a beautiful Mona Lisa painting costing thousand of dollars, but you do not have a house appropriate for it. If I give you a valuable Mona Lisa it means that I want you to have a good house so that it can be put up there. If your house is a shack that leaks everywhere, where will you hang the precious painting? First get the house ready, then He will come. When God gives darshan, a vision, it symbolizes something. When God gives His experience, it is a transcendental experience, a universal experience, a cosmic experience.

16 September, 1997

Do the hormones change by a vision of God?

The experience of God! This means an experience of your own self. God-realization and self-realization is the same thing. The God who we look at in front of us exists within us; the face that we look at in the mirror is right here with us. The God who is formless becomes visible to us through a form.

First you should know what is that which is called a vision of God. Someone has a vision of Rama, someone of Hanuman, someone of Devi, someone sees a burning flame and someone sees his guru. These visions are as clear as a person appearing in front of you. They are not like dreams, they are very clear, face to face, and this is called darshan. To see outside that which is within is called darshan. And it is commonly believed in India that in order to have a vision of God, your heart should be like that of a child. A child is innocent; when a person’s heart is pure and simple, he has the heart of a child. The second thing is intensity of the emotion of bhakti, devotion.

Intensity of emotions means that an emotion felt within is in excess. Greed and desire also appear as intense emotions. If desire, anger and greed can reach a point of excess, bhakti can also reach a point of excess. There comes a time when it becomes too much. At this point, there is no doubt in the mind, only knowingness.

Mirabai was given a wooden statue of Krishna by a wandering mendicant and she thought Krishna was her husband. What kind of a mind is this? Even a small girl will say, “How can a doll be my husband?” She will have a doubt. Doubt means the existence of two thoughts: this is a statue of Krishna, this is not my husband. Mirabai did not have any doubt. This is a certain kind of mind, which is one-pointed. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was married at the age of twelve or thirteen, but he never considered his wife as wife. He always held her as Mother. A person like that does not have any doubt. One who has single awareness has only one emotion. It is a different kind of mind. Forget about adults, even an ordinary child cannot have a mind like that. It is an intense state of bhakti where the personality turns into something else. In that state where the emotions reach an acute intensity, the person becomes so simple that the God who is hidden within becomes visible outside.

No one can see God outside. God is only seen within, but it feels as if he is outside. This can happen to many people. The simple and great souls say that when you get a vision of God, then a person’s birth, karma and destiny, everything changes. You are just talking about hormones. They say the entire course of life changes. This vision of God is a very big thing. In what form the vision will come and who will have it is difficult to say. If you travel a hundred kilometres prostrating on the ground you may not have a vision of God. However, a person here who was a drunkard became my disciple and had the vision of God. This is a strange situation. God will appear before whosoever He wills. It is said, Yam eva eshaha aatmaa vichunateha. “The vision of God is up to the will of God.” Now, how can we bring the will of God into our life?

The microcosm in our body holds the macrocosm. Our head is the microcosm, in it exists the macrocosm. In this body, that area inside the brain where all the glands, muscles and grey matter exist holds the macrocosm. If you see the pineal gland from a particular angle or any other gland with an instrument capable of subtle vision, you will see an image of Ganesha. That is its structure. I am saying this after having studied it, and not out of presumption. The molecular structures of the glands that exist in different parts of the brain are replicas of Hanuman, Ganesha and Devi.

Srimad Devi Bhagavat Maha Puranam describes the residence of Devi. I have read it a thousand times. It describes where Devi lives, how many friends she has, how many attendants she has, what kind of a chamber her house has, how many doors, the height of the ceiling, the width of the pond outside the house, the mountains beyond the pond, the army . . . And when you compare this description to biological anatomy, it is an exact match. To understand this, it is essential to have knowledge of anatomy, so you know the different layers of the brain, the different centres from where communication travels, electronic circuits travel, chemical flows travel, and different sensory organs connect with each other. If you learn about all this, then you will feel that Ganesha is not the deity of a certain tribe, but a deity who exists within every human being in the form of genius. It is the same with Hanuman and Devi. The abode of Devi in the brain is called kundalini yoga in tantra. The entire circuit of Devi starts from a point, and goes down the spinal column. Where the spinal column ends, at the tail bone, behind the uterus, it meets with the gland behind the womb in the cervix. That gland is mooladhara. From ancient times this structure has been called an inverted tree. Many traditions have spoken about it. The Bible has references to it. How will a tree performing shirshasana look like? Oordhwamoolam adhahshaakham, as described in the Bhagavad Gita (15:1):

Oordhwamoolam adhahshaakham ashwattham praahuravyayam;
Cchandaamsi yasya parnaani yastam veda sa vedavit.

They (the wise) speak of the indestructible peepul tree, having its root above and branches below, whose leaves are the metres or hymns; he who knows it is a knower of the Vedas.

The deities such as Ganesha, Hanuman and Durga are not just mental or tribal concepts. They actually exist in our bodies. They are a reality of our microcosm. Our microcosm is the home of the macrocosm. The cosmos exists within us.

When do we see God outside? We see him outside when we cannot see him inside. That is when we go to a temple – due to our helplessness. When we cannot see our face we have to see it in the mirror. When you begin to see him inside you will stop going there. Kabir says:

Moko kahan tu khoje bande, main to tere paas mein.

Where do you search for me, I am so close to you.

There is another strange thing inside this house, this microcosm. There are billions of cells within this body and each cell is a complete person. This means that whatever you are, whatever I am, all of me is contained within one cell. This means that within me there are billions of Swami Satyanandas. This is a finding of science, not of the Puranas. It is also said that a man’s joys, sorrows, fortune, fate, life, death, disease, complexion, height . . . all these exist within each cell of his body. Science has now discovered cloning. It is no longer necessary for a child to be born of the natural course, now they can take a cell out of the body and clone it. The two-and-a-half billion cells of my body can be taken out and as many children created. This is a thing of science. Science does not believe in God. However, this proves that a very big truth lies hidden within our body. And you should have knowledge of that truth, whether you are a boy or a girl, educated or illiterate, qualified or unqualified, possess a good character or bad character, are a vegetarian or meat-eater. What matters is whether your awareness is centred outside or inside. Are you an internalized person or an externalized person? If you are externalized, then the world will go on for you the way it has gone on. If you are internalized, it means that you are a yogi. A yogi is always internalized.

In the Ramacharitamanas it is written that a person can exist within even while living amid the illusions of the world. What the worldly illusions are, you know that. Living within means that when you sit for meditation or prayer or yoga, be awake within. What you then find, you will not find in any temple, mosque, church, pilgrimage or guru. You will find Him within. God exists within you. God exists within me. This is why the sages go on saying, Soham Soham Shivoham Chidanandaroopa Shivoham.

However, nothing happens by words alone, you can go on saying Shivoham Shivoham the whole day long. You can go on saying water, water the whole day long, but your thirst will not be quenched. So every day, for half an hour in the morning and evening, become quiet and perform ten or fifteen minutes of asana, ten or fifteen minutes of yoga nidra and for ten or fifteen minutes make your mind one-pointed, whether you focus on the eyebrow centre, in anahata, mooladhara, sahasrara, on a statue or wherever. It does not matter whether you focus the mind inside or outside. It is all the same. Remember the name of God, do mantra anushthana (resolve to perform japa a specific number of times), and whatever you want will fructify. There is no need to think too much on this.

27 August, 2000