Once a Devotee asked Swami Saradananda the real meaning of God vision, or realization: Is it seeing something with the physical eyes externally or feeling something inside our inner self? He replied: “It is the realization, feeling something inside our inner self, but you know when we see something with our eyes or hear something with our ears, we become firmly convinced about its existence. But inner realization gives us an even greater conviction of the true eternal reality. That is realization — God vision.”
Swami Vivekananda asked Sri Ramakrishna: “Sir, have you seen God?” Without a moment’s hesitation Ramakrishna replied: “Yes, I have seen God. I see Him as I see you here, only more clearly. God can be seen. One can talk to Him. But who cares for God? People shed torrents of tears for their wives, children, wealth, and property, but who weeps for the vision of God? If one cries sincerely for God, one can surely see Him.” “That impressed me at once,” said Narendra later. “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 can sense the world.” Narendra felt that Ramakrishna’s words were uttered from the depths of his inner experience. Still, he could not comprehend the Master’s words and conduct. Bewildered, he bowed down to the Master and returned to Calcutta.
Just before Yogananda’s death, Shivananda had asked him, “Jogin, do you remember the Master?” Yogananda replied, “Yes, I remember the Master more — even more — much more.”
Swami Subodhananda’s spiritual life was as marked by his directness as much as his external life was marked by its simplicity. He had no philosophical problems of his own to solve. The Ultimate Reality was a fact to him. Whenever he would speak of God, one felt that here was a man to whom God was a greater reality than one’s own earthly relatives. He once said, “God can be realized much more tangibly than one feels the presence of a companion with whom one is walking.”