In days of yore, when the disciples used to live with the teachers and learn from the examples of their lives, there was a guru who one day called all his young disciples to his side. To each of them, he gave a small live bird and said, 'Go into the forest, each one of you, kill your bird, and come back. But there is one condition: you must kill your bird where nobody will observe you killing.' Among the disciples there was one, who according to others, was a blockhead, a fool. He used to be teased by others. Within a short time, all the disciples except our 'fool' returned with their work accomplished.
The guru with other disciples was anxiously waiting for him till, finally, in the dark hours of night, that fool, with fearful steps, appeared before them. His head was hung in shame and the live bird sat on his hand nibbling at his palm. He stood at a distance before the guru. Soon there issued a peal of laughter among the disciples. The guru advanced to the unsuccessful one and asked the reason why he failed to carry out the guru's word. With tears flowing down his cheeks, the 'fool' looked up and mumbled: 'O Revered Sir, I tried in the darkest parts of the forest also but I could not find a place where no one sees. At every place I found He (God) is observing.' The guru knelt down to reach the height of the 'foolish' boy, his eyes blurred with tears. With choking voice the guru could only utter the words: 'O blessed one! You have realized the Truth.'
One day, Sri Ramakrishna was talking to a number of people from the Brahmo Samaj. The famous Brahmo leader and acharya Vijaya Krishna Goswami was also present. God, to the Brahmos, is saguna (with attributes), but nirakara (formless). Sri Ramakrishna said to them, 'Let me tell you one thing. God can be seen.'1 To be an object of seeing, God must appear with a form. If 'seeing is believing' then God's form is a must. But the logicians protest. Earlier, Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta, the compiler of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and a teacher of logic, was in a fix to hear that God can be both with form and without form. Influenced by the philosophy of the Brahmos, which was the Zeitgeist of the day, Mahendra Nath liked 'to think of God as formless'. So it was a big shock to him to hear from Sri Ramakrishna that God could be with form also. However, he was destined to be a chosen one for establishing Sri Ramakrishna's epoch-making mission on earth; so it did not take him long to accept this revolutionary truth. Sri Ramakrishna explained to him that it is well within God's power to assume any form and appear before His devotees. 'One can see His forms, and His formless aspect as well,' he said. He is omnipotent. We cannot dictate to Him as to what He should do and what He should not!
Scores of examples can be cited from the religious history of the world to show that God can be seen. Yet, the doubt remains: Is it possible to see God with these physical eyes, the organ for the sense of seeing? The importance of seeing God has been emphasized and highlighted in almost all religious traditions. Christ says, 'They shall see God.' The Upanishads unequivocally bid, 'Atman has to be seen.'
Before showing His Cosmic Form to Arjuna, Sri Krishna bestowed the 'divine eye' (divya-chakshuh) or 'the power of divine vision' on him. The Lord said, 'You cannot have an experience of Me merely with your physical eye.'2 So it is clear that by the word 'see', a vision with the inner or divine eye is meant.
That is how devotees see God with their divine power of vision. Though there is no indication of her having been granted a divine or supernatural eye, Yashoda, the mother of Krishna, saw the whole creation in child Krishna's tiny mouth. Similarly, Garuda, the mighty mount of Bhagavan Vishnu, saw the form of Vishnu in Sri Rama. Acharya Shankara saw the form of Shiva in a Chandala (a person of low caste). Dhruva saw Vishnu appear before him with a form. Ramanuja saw Varadaraja in the image. Martha and Mary saw Christ after his resurrection. Sri Ramakrishna's mother Chandramoni Devi saw a goddess mounted on a swan. Sri Ramakrishna's devotee Gopaler Ma (Aghormoni Devi) used to have regular vision of Gopala (Baby Krishna). And above all, Sri Ramakrishna used to see Mother Kali and consult Her as and when he wanted to.
Therefore, the gist of the phenomenon of seeing God is that though God appeared with form the devotees required some sort of a supernatural eye to see Him. Otherwise, anybody around them at that time would also have seen Him! Muchukunda (in the Bhagavatam) helps us remove the doubt:3
I consider Thee to be Mahavishnu, the Lord of the Trimurti, who is above all divinities. The brilliance of Thy form is dispelling all darkness from this cave (cave of intellect) like a glowing light.
By His mere glance all of Muchukunda's doubts were destroyed. So he could recognize that he was face to face with Vishnu. But, at the same time, look at the fate of Duryodhana and his brothers. When Duryodhana wanted to capture Krishna who came with the peace proposal as an emissary of the Pandavas, Sri Krishna showed his cosmic form. Alas! Duryodhana mistook it for a magic! A disappointed Krishna said in the Gita: Without knowing my higher nature foolish men disregard me.4 While speaking about the devotion of the Gopis to Sri Krishna, Narada says in the Bhakti Sutras: na tatra mahatmya-jnana-vismriti-apavadah, i.e., there is no blame as to their losing the awareness about (His) glory. So it is required that before seeing God, we must have our mind purified in order to appreciate the divinity in a form of God.
Seeing the Formless
Again we are faced with a question that needs to be addressed. It is seeing God without form! The idea seems to be absurd ab initio. Yet, if the divine eye can help us to see God with form, there must be a way for seeing God without form. The inner eye helps us, it does not require a physical milieu. Dhritarashtra was blind. Vyasa offered to equip him with super-natural eyes to enble him to view the battle of Kurukshetra live. But wisely enough, Dhritarashtra did not want to 'see' for himself his own people being killed in the war. Seeing God with form and also without form will hold good even in the case of blind people. They also shall see Him! The Upanishads require a person even with sight to be 'avritta-chakshuh'5, i.e., having his eyes covered, or the group of organs beginning with the eyes, turned away from all sense objects. The eyes must take a U-turn. That seeing is like our seeing things in a dream. In this context, of course, no dream experience is meant. It happens when a person is wide awake. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the sage Yajnavalkya replies to such a question asked by king Janaka: 'When the sun and the moon have both set, the fire gone out, and speech stopped, what exactly serves as the light for a man?' Yajnavalkya replied, 'The self serves as his light (atma eva asya jyotir bhavati).6 Akshay Kumar Sen said to Sri Ramakrishna, 'Master, I am blind.' The Master replied, 'God exists [i.e., you might be blind, but God has eyes to see you]'.7
When He Sees
It is all right when a devotee is granted a vision by God. Devotees are attracted to Him even by the beauty of His eyes. He has long beautiful eyes which are like the mark on the ventral side of a lotus leaf (kamala-patrakshah). If by a rare good fortune a person is able to see the beauty of His eyes, he or she cannot tear off his or her eyes away from Him.
Once during a festival, Dhanurdasa, a devotee of Lord Varadaraja of Kanchipuram and also a disciple of Ramanujacharya, was lost in the beauty of his wife's eyes. Dhanurdasa came with his wife to join the chariot festival of the Lord. Ramanuja noticed his misfortune. Drawing his attention Ramanuja said, 'Dhanurdasa, look at the eyes of the Lord.' As if waking up from a dream, Dhanurdasa did as directed. What did he see? Well, we do not know. But Dhanurdasa could not even wink for a long time, and, perhaps, for the rest of his life.
But if He wishes to play with the devotee and He sees the devotee, then there may be problems! He knows all our karmas (vishvani vayunani vidvan). So He takes a liking for a devotee in view of his or her goodness.
An absorbing story of God seeing the devotee will not be out of place here. In bygone days, a small girl used to love Lord Banke Bihari of Vrindaban. Everyday she used to make a flower garland for the image of Banke Bihari. She would go to the temple, look intently at the image, give the garland to the priests and come back home. Gradually the Deity grew a liking for the small devotee of His. One day, He talked with the devotee and expressed His desire to visit her house at night. She was asked to keep it a secret. Banke Bihari reached her house at night. The girl was beside herself with joy. He told her she should leave Him before dawn. The simple girl made new garlands and adorned Him, sang to her heart's content to please Him, danced in ecstatic joy. Both the Lord and the devotee forgot the environment. Suddenly they heard violent knocks at the door. It was daybreak! The priests, seeing the temple door ajar and the image lost, followed some tiny footsteps that led them to the house of the girl. She answered the door. Alas! There she saw the enraged priests. She looked back! What did she behold? She saw the stone image of the Lord lying blissfully in her bedstead!
Though the priests tormented the girl for stealing the image, in their heart of hearts they knew that it was impossible for the small girl to even move the heavy stone image. Further, did they not see the door unbolted from inside and above all, did they not see the tiny footprints? The real thief was remanded into the temple with the eternal punishment that He should not be allowed sufficient time to look at the devotees!! Even to this day, He remains behind the curtain which, at intervals, is set aside for only a moment to allow the Lord just a glimpse of the waiting devotees.
Then there is His observing everything and everybody as the witness. He knows everything to be known but He has no knower (sah vetti vedyam na cha tasyasti vetta). To an aspirant of pure intellect he is known with every modification of the mind--as the observer, as the free witness (pratibodha viditam8). He is omniscient (sarvatah akshih;9 vishvapada-kshinasikah10). The 'fool' of our earlier story saw this eye of God. Nobody can escape His eye; we may not see Him, but He sees us, knows our ins and outs! His omnipresence has been propounded by the Upanishads abundantly. All this is Brahman (sarvam khalu idam brahma11).
It Is the Heart that Counts
The story reveals another vital aspect of seeing God. It is not intelligence, but the heart, that counts in the phenomenon of seeing God. The purer the heart, the better is the chance of seeing Him. The 'fool' in the opening story did not take the world for granted. He retained the faculty of wonder and therefore, did not stop getting fascinated by the beauty in Nature. He admired the great power behind and in everything. Belief has many torments to bear with. It is called superstition if you believe thirteen is unlucky; it is called faith if you believe in Christianity or Buddhism; it is called shraddha if you do not doubt the existence of God, though all are concerned with a wonderful Reality that is God. The 'fool' was not intelligent because his life had not been mechanical or dull by meaningless experiences! He was not a self-opinionated know-all. This is called simplicity.
It may be argued that without having a little tact there is the danger of being cheated by others. This may be true when we deal with cheats; but it is poles apart while we believe in God. Does our idea of God portray Him as a charlatan? Then he is not God at all. Sri Ramakrishna says that simplicity is achieved after long austerities of many lives.
Sanandana was a disciple of Acharya Shankara. His duty was only to serve his guru. The other brilliant disciples of Shankara did not recognize his simple devotion to the guru. One day, when Sanandana was away on the other bank of the river Alakananda near which Acharya Shankara was staying with his disciples, Shankara, requiring his help, called out to him. Hearing his guru's call, Sanandana, oblivious of the surroundings, ran to the guru. He ran over the water of the river, which, too, rose to the occasion, as it were, by offering a full-blown lotus under each step of his! The other disciples could not believe their eyes! From that day he was known by the name Padmapada (Padma=lotus, pada=foot). Later on, it is his annotation, known as Panchapadika, on Shankara's commentary of the Brahma Sutras, that has given rise to the famous Advaitic school of Vivarana. So, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
The secret of their seeing God lies in their unwavering faith in the words of the Guru and the scriptures. The guru teaches all the disciples without discrimination or favouritism (perhaps with just a little admiration for the intelligent ones), the truth contained in the scriptures. He tells all of them that God has His eyes everywhere (sarvatokshi), and He is omnipresent. The intelligent ones can convincingly explain to others the meaning of the words. But it is the simple and pure in heart who are blessed with His vision.
Conclusion
However, this vision of God is not to be had with these physical eyes (na... anenaiva svachakshusha12). Sri Ramakrishna goes so far as to say that God can be seen with naked eyes (khali chokhe dyakha jay)! He went still further, and said to Narendra Nath, 'Yes, I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense.'13 This phrase 'in a much intenser sense' holds the key to our understanding 'the vision of God'. The Katha Upanishad says:14
Yathadarshe tathatmani
yatha svapne tatha pitriloke
Yatha apsu pariva dadrishe
tatha gandharvaloke
Chhayatapayoriva brahmaloke.
As (one sees) oneself very distinctly reflected in a mirror, so (there springs a vision of the Reality) in one's intellect; as in a dream, so in the world of the manes; as it is seen in water, so in the world of the Gandharvas; as it is in the case of light and shade, so in the world of Brahma.
The phrase 'in a much intenser sense' means not seeing with physical eyes but knowing Him, realising Him without doubt. We may see a man, but we do not know him. On the other hand, when we know God, we know Him to be our own--we see Him, know Him and realize Him. There is no difference between the apparent God and the real God. Sri Ramakrishna did not stop there. He continued, 'God can be realized, one can see and talk to Him as I am talking to you.' Swamiji reflected on this saying, 'For the first time I found a man who dared to say that he had seen God, that religion was a reality to be felt, to be sensed in an infinitely more intense way than we sense the world.'
The realization of or seeing God has not been depicted so vividly in the lives of other saints, prophets or Incarnations of God as in the life of Sri Ramakrishna. The world owes its privilege to Sri Ramakrishna himself, for he did not keep it a secret. He said, 'I shall disclose it publicly.' Why not? It is a universal truth and all have equal right to know it.
However, in his life itself, Sri Ramakrishna realized or rather demonstrated the meaning of seeing God 'in a much intenser sense'. His seeing God had been in four levels or aspects:
(i) His first vision was that the Mother caught hold of his hand to stop him from killing himself. He used to see that the eyes of the image of the Mother winked.
(ii) He said, 'I swear upon God, there is nothing in this [my] body except the Mother.'
(iii) As Shankara saw God in a Chandala, Sri Ramakrishna not only saw Narayana in human beings but also saw the Mother Kali in a cat. Can we remember how Ganesha (a son of Mother Durga) remained a celibate all his life because his mother told him that she was in all female forms, even in the female cat?
(iv) Sri Ramakrishna in course of his first vision saw that all the worship vessels were permeated with consciousness. When somebody walked on grass Sri Ramakrishna felt as if someone were walking on his chest! When a boatman beat another boatman, Sri Ramakrishna felt the blow himself and bore the blue mark on his back.
What is our conclusion? Seeing is believing? No. In a much intenser sense--'Seeing is realizing'.
References
1. Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2000), 158
2. Cf. The Gita, 11.8
3. Cf. The Bhagavatam, 10.51.30
4. Cf. The Gita, 9.11
5. Cf. The Katha Upanishad, 2.1.1
6. Cf. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.3.6
7. Swami Chetanananda, They Lived With God, 2nd Reprint, (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1999), 370
8. Cf. The Kena Upanishad, 2.4
9. Cf. The Gita 13.13
10. Cf. The Mahabharata, 351.5
11. Cf. The Chandogya Upanishad, 3.14.1
12. Cf. The Gita, 11.8
13. Eastern and Western Disciples, Life of Swami Vivekananda, 2 vols., 2nd reprint, (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1995) 1:77
14. Cf. The Katha Upanishad, 2.3.5
