Talks Excerpt 473. Swamiji confirms that Sri Ramakrishna said every one of us can see God.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

[Talking about Swami Vivekananda continued.]   

When Swami Vivekananda grew up he passed his university degree. He went to Devendranath Tagore and asked him, ‘Have you seen God?’ He looked at Swami Vivekananda and said, ‘I can see you have the eyes of a yogi.’ Now some people say he evaded the question by not saying if he had seen God or not, but I do not think so. He only saw in the other man a greater yogi and instead of saying what is not, he said what is.

When Naren [Swami Vivekananda’s premonastic name] went to Sri Ramakrishna he asked very direct questions. He asked Master, ‘Sir, have you seen God?’ Sri Ramakrishna in childlike simplicity said, ‘Yes, I see God. I see God more intensely than I see you.’ In other words, I see God all the time but I only see you now and then, you come and go.

Then before Swami Vivekananda could ask the next question Master said, ‘And you can see Him too.’ He did not say, ‘I can show Him to you’, he said, you can see Him too. He said this because it is the birthright of every individual to see God, to know God, to realise God.

Do you have the yearning and restlessness that Swami Vivekananda had?

Both the Master [Sri Ramakrishna] and the disciple [shishya/chela] were restless to know God. For twelve years Sri Ramakrishna had rubbed his face on the ground. He had neglected his body and blood even oozed out of his pores because of his intense desire to see God. Swami Vivekananda too was restless, because he wanted to know the truth.

What do I mean by restless? I mean wanting. I know we are not supposed to want worldly things, but we are supposed to want God and God alone. Are you restless to see God?

Sri Ramakrishna did not have a guru in the beginning. He was so restless for God that he could not wait. He even wanted to put an end to his life – that was the kind of restlessness he had. One day, in the Mother’s Temple, he took the [Deity’s] sword in his hand and was about to end his life. How could God, who is all love and compassion, bear to see his own child take his physical life for His sake? Then the Master saw, in a flood of light, that which was later on transformed into Mother Kali.

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These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.