I looked and looked but I didn't see God.

[<i>Speaking about, in 1961, becoming the first human to enter space</i>.]

"I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only 'anqa's habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a "two bow-lengths' distance from him" but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else."

I turned to speak to God
About the world's despair
But to make bad matters worse
I found God wasn't there.

Modern man can't see God because he doesn't look low enough.

If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.

I never spoke with God,

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

I run blindly through the madhouse ... And I cannot even pray ... For I have no God.

I have found God, but he is insufficient.

I kept looking forward the answer to things. I kept looking, and I never saw, and I became lost. I lost myself, lost my own reality.

Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

I wrestled with myself in prayer, trying to force my mind to encounter God, but he remained a stern taskmaster who observed my every infringement of the Rule, or tantalizingly absent. The more I read about the raptures of the saints, the more of a failure I felt. I was unhappily aware that what little religious experience I had, had somehow been manufactured by myself as I worked upon my own feelings and imagination. Sometimes a sense of devotion was an aesthetic response to the beauty of the Gregorian chant and the liturgy. But nothing had actually happened to me from a source beyond myself. I never glimpsed the God described by the prophets and mystics. Jesus Christ, about whom we talked far more than about “God,” seemed a purely historical figure, inextricably embedded in late antiquity. I also began to have grave doubts about some of the doctrines of the Church. How could anybody possibly know for certain that the man Jesus had been God incarnate and what did such a belief mean?