Do You Want to See God?

Srila Prabhupada: "Suppose someone asks, 'Can you show me God?' That means he wants to experience everything directly. But this is a second-class process for gaining knowledge, because our senses are imperfect and we are prone to make mistakes. Suppose you need some gold but you don't know where to purchase it. So you go to a proprietor of a hardware store and ask, 'Do you have any gold in stock?' He will immediately understand that you are a first-class fool because you have come to purchase gold in a hardware store. Therefore he will try to cheat you. He will give you a piece of iron and say, 'Here is gold.' Then what will you say? Will you accept that iron as gold? Because you do not know what gold is and have gone to a hardware store to purchase it, you will get a piece of iron and be cheated. Similarly, rascals who demand that they be shown God do not know what God is, and therefore they are being cheated by so many bogus spiritual leaders who claim that they are God. That is happening.

"If you want to purchase gold, you must have at least some preliminary knowledge of what gold is. Similarly, if you want to see God, the first requirement is that you must know some of the basic characteristics of God. Otherwise, if you go to some rascal and he claims to be God and you accept him as God, you will be cheated.

"Another question we should ask when someone says "I want to see God" is, 'What qualification do you have to see God?' God is not so cheap that He can be seen by anybody and everybody.... If you want to see God face to face, then you must follow the rules and regulations... You must chant... and purify yourself. Then gradually the time will come when you are purified and you will see God."

Source: pgs. 14-15, The Laws of nature: An Infallible Justice by Srila Prabhupada.