I returned home to face the wrath of my father. Having a wife and family to support, he found it inexcusable that I had given up a promising career without having anything else to fall back on.
It was true—I could have had a glittering
career in the army. All my classmates from the officer’s training school who
made the military their career went on to occupy all the senior positions in
the army in the years that followed independence in 1947. I didn’t care.
Nothing mattered to me anymore except finding God and holding on to Him.
After leaving the army, I had no desire to get a job. I felt
instead that I needed a spiritual Master who could help me to consummate
my love affair with Krishna. I had been sporadically successful in
getting Him to appear before me, but I wanted Him all the time. Since I
was unable to summon up Krishna at will, I felt that I should find a
Master who could help me to do it, or who could do it for me. There was,
therefore, only one quality I was looking far in my prospective Master:
he must have seen God himself, and he must have the ability to show Him
to me. No other qualifications mattered.
With this criterion in mind I began a tour of India which took me to almost every famous ashram and guru in the country. I went to see such well-known people as Swami Sivananda, Tapovan Swami,
Ananda Mayi Ma, Swami Ramdas, two of the Shankaracharyas
and a host of lesser-known spiritual figures.At each place I stopped I asked
the same question: ‘Have you seen God? Can you show me God?’ All of them
responded in much the same way. They tried to give me a mantra, or they
tried to make me meditate. All of them made a point of saying that God could
not be produced like a rabbit out of a conjuror’s hat, and that if I wanted
to see Him I would have to undergo years of strenuous sadhana. This
was not what I wanted to hear. I told all these swamis and gurus, ‘I
am asking you if you can show me God. If you can, and if you can do it
immediately, then say so. If there is a price to be paid, then tell me.
Whatever the price is, I will pay it. I am not interested in sitting
here, year after year, chanting one of your mantras. I want to see God
now. If you can’t show Him to me right now, I will look for someone
else who can.’ Since none of the people I met claimed they could show
me God, I eventually had to return to my father’s house,
disillusioned and dispirited.