Have you seen God?

'Have you seen God?' I asked. 'And if you have, can you enable me to see him? I am willing to pay any price, even my life, but your part of the bargain is that you must show me God.'

'No,' he (Ramana Maharshi) answered. 'I cannot show you God or enable you to see God because God is not an object that can be seen. God is the subject. He is the seer. Don't concern yourself with objects that can be seen. Find out who the seer is.' He also added, 'You alone are God,' as if to rebuke me for looking for a God who was outside and apart from me.

**

When I appeared before him (again),
the Maharshi asked, 'Where have you been? Where are you living?'

'On the other side of the mountain,' I replied.

'And what were you doing there?' he enquired.

He had given me my cue.

'I was playing with my Krishna,' I said, in a very smug tone of voice.

I was very proud of my achievement and felt superior to the Maharshi because I was absolutely convinced that Krishna had not appeared to him during that period.

'Oh, is that so?' he commented, looking surprised and interested. 'Very good, very nice. Do you see Him now?'

'No, sir, I do not,' I replied. 'I only see Him when I have visions.'

I was still feeling very pleased with myself, feeling that I had been granted these visions, whereas the Maharshi had not.

'So Krishna comes and plays with you and then He disappears,' said the Maharshi. 'What is the use of a God who appears and disappears? If He is a real God, He must be with you all the time.'

The Maharshi's lack of interest in my visionary experiences deflated me a little, but not to the extent that I was willing to listen to his advice. He was telling me to give up my search for an external God and instead find the origin and identity of the one who wanted to see Him. This was too much for me to swallow. A lifetime of devotion to Krishna had left me incapable of conceiving the spiritual quest in any other terms than that of a quest for a personal God

- Papaji

From the biography of H.W.L. Poonja aka Papaji
"Nothing Ever Happened"
by David Godman