The only question I have is how to see God.
Those who are serious about seeing God really have no questions. They just live with one thought. They have no doubts. They have no fear. When you really want to see God, when you’re serious about it, you will have no questions, only one thought, to see Him or Her. If you want to reach to the goal, you should cease to have questions, though not mechanically. If you are true, honest, sincere and longing to reach the goal, there should be no questions in your mind. Not that you should not have questions before that. If you have, of course you should ask. How to see God, to me, is an invalid question. My answer is: if you are sincere, that question will not arise.
Let me give an example. When you really love someone, do you ask how to love him or her? You do not ask—you just do it! How to see God is the easiest, not one of the easiest. Remove the clouds, remove your ignorance, and be sincere. It is like putting your palms over your eyes and asking how to see the sun. It is self-evident that you do not want to see—that is why you put your palms over your eyes. There is no need to question—just remove your palms. Putting your hands over your eyes and asking to see could be a trick, like hide and seek play, or mischief. You do not want to see, so you cover your eyes.
How to see or realize the Ultimate is an intellectual question, not a sincere seeker’s question. I am not just talking to you but to everybody. For realizing God, this question is invalid, though we do ask it commonly because we are not serious about it. If you grow in more longing for God one day, you will see that what I said is right. There is no process, in other words. “How” involves a process. Process is for relativity, not the Absolute. God is Absolute.
To achieve or see or study any relative phenomenon, you have to have a process, at least a hypothetical process. But for the Absolute, there is no scope even for a hypothetical process. It is Absolute and Self-Existent: you either have it or you do not have it. Uncover your eyes and see clearly. Otherwise you can obscure the whole sun with the palms of your hands. Your little veil of ignorance can obscure the whole Spirit, God. Just remove your palms.

How does the Higher Self create ego?
The Self chose to be something, anything, but it cannot be anything without assuming an ego. The Self does not want to be ego; it wants to be something. Let us say the True Self or Higher Self wants to be a flower, which is beautiful. At the time of creation, the Self is not thinking; it is spontaneously becoming something. But it cannot be a flower without being an identity, which is ego. In that identity, ego is simultaneously created. It is called maya, illusion. Then simultaneously the Self is trapped in maya. Let us say you are a man but you want to be something else, some other being. The ego is still playing that trip. You cannot become “something” unless you assume the maya. Once the True Self drops into that, it simultaneously creates an identity. Then, looking back in retrospect, we say it was ego, because there is no gap between the two: maya and ego.
This is the whole “hide and seek” play. By becoming “you,” you forget your True Self. Why you did that in the first place can only be answered by going back there to find out. Then your answer will be, “Yes, that was my own free play.” You wanted to “be” and you had a right to be what you wanted to be. There is no reason, no cause. It is the will that happened to assume that maya. If you ask your True Self—“Why did you want to be a flower?”—there is no reason. You just wanted to play. There is no further explanation. Any question has to be in the domain of intellect, and so does the answer. Where you transcend the intellect, there is neither a question nor an answer. All confusion, vagueness, frustrations and ambiguities are within the domain of intellect and cannot be fully answered.

How can we grow during your physical absence, Swamiji?
I have given you the answer many times: when there is no presence, practice; when the Presence is there, no practice. If you do not want to give up your ego, then practice. If you want to give up your ego, you do not need practices; you just give up ego. You are thinking how best you should grow without my physical presence. You are not thinking how you could be one with my presence. This is a common fallacy: always thinking how ego could flourish. How much do you think to be one with the presence? Some people call my absence a golden opportunity, as if my presence failed to work upon their ego. On the contrary, it makes your ego flourish.
Your question is genuine but you must understand one tricky point: when you are thinking your ego should not exist, merge into the presence. Without Divine presence you cannot grow. Merge your ego; do not try to save the ego. Can you do that? Then you will have no problem of presence or absence. Do not grow your ego. Merge in what? The Goal you have chosen, the God you have chosen. You can live without your Master’s physical presence—that is not a problem. But how you live is the question. Are you going to live as an ignorant being or a realized soul? Selfishness has many faces. We all have been living without God’s Presence, have we not? But do we live blissfully or miserably? Do we have disappointments and dejections, or satisfaction and fulfillment?