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.

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 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.

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.

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.’

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.