If you want to seek and search for the Lord, who is residing inside you, you have to turn your vision inwards. How should you aspire for the Lord? You have to cry the same way the calf cries for its mother who has left and gone off with the herd. You have to cry like a chaste woman who has lost her husband and wails in pain of the separation. You have to cry out in the same way that a childless couple implores and pleads with God for a child. That is how you should pray to the Lord, full of devotion and longing to realise His presence with you. But, today, most of our prayers are filled with pompous words, devoid of feeling. (DBG, pp. 29-30)

You must yearn to be free, to be rid of the chains that are binding you now; the iron chain of poverty or the golden chain of riches. Yearn as helplessly as a baby which cries for its mother, as desperately as a calf mooing for the cow, as pitifully as a starving beggar prays for a morsel of food. Let the cry come from the depth of the heart, a heart that cannot bear the chain of attachments any longer. The Lord will not be drawn by noisy pomp or empty show. He will yield only to the claim of kinship, the call of Atma to Paramatma (the individual soul to the Supreme Soul). (SSS Vol.2)

Wherever you are, when you wholeheartedly seek to do namaskaram (obeisance) to Me, My Feet are there, before you! Sarvatah Pani-padam - ‘Hands and feet everywhere,’ it has been announced. ‘Lord, do you not hear My prayer?’ if you feel poignantly, My Ears are there! ‘Don t you see, O Lord?’ if you cry out, My eyes are there that instant. (SSS Vol.2)

The Lord will manifest where and when you yearn for Him; if you yearn that He should come before you in flesh and blood, He will respond. He is ever ready to respond; only, you are not ready to invite or welcome or receive Him into your heart. You have not purified the heart and removed therefrom the thorns of lust and greed, of envy and hatred. The baby that has been fed on milk may start crying; do not be worried, lt is very helpful for digestion. Cry, so that you can digest the joy of knowing God; cry and shed tears of joy. The tear glands have been allotted to you not for weeping helplessly before others with hands extended for alms, but to shed tears of joy, of thankfulness, at the Feet of the Lord. (SSS Vol.2)

Man cries at birth and then again at the time of death; In between, he cries many times. But has he ever cried for the practice of Dharma which is languishing does he cry for God? These two are what we must cry for, the languishing of Dharma, and for God. (SSB 1996, p. 90)

Even in this Kali Yuga people went to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and asked him if he had seen God. Yes, he replied. In what form? They asked. Ramakrishna said, ‘Just as I see you, I have seen God.’ When asked how it was possible, he explained, ‘with yearning. You strive for wealth and family. You cry for small and big things. Have you ever cried for God?

Yaa Chintaa Bhuvi Putra Mitra Bharanau Vyaapaara Sambhaashane

Yaa Chintaa Dhana Dhaanya Bhoga Yashase Laabhe Sadaa Jaayate

Saa Chintaa Bhuvi Nanda Nandana Pada Dvandvaaravinde Kshane

Kaa Chintaa yamaraaja Bhima Sadana Dvaara Prayaani Prabho.

You cry for wife, children, friend,

Wealth, business, pleasures, name and fame.

But if you yearn for Krishna’s Lotus feet even for a moment,

You can easily cross the terrible doors of death

if you desire God, work for Him. 

Then God will easily come with in your grasp. 

You struggle for worldly benefits, but expect God’s vision. 

With such hypocrisy you can never acquire God.’

(SSB 1995, p. 16)