This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination. Sourced from Lord Meher online edition, page 344, “Manzil-E-Meem”.
Q. Why did God create all this?
He did not create it. It started automatically. First there was God and nothing else. In God was everything: experience, knowledge, power and existence. But he had no consciousness that he was God. All this bother and headache you see around you is to gain that consciousness. Sourced from Lord Meher Online Edition, Page 719, “The Silence Begins”.
God has no beginning and no end…[What was there before God?] The answer is God. What will be there after billions of years? God. Always God. This means that in eternity there is no time.Sourced from The God Man, online edition, page 259.
Q. You say that there is nothing but God. But you cannot deny that matter exists.
Yes, I do. I deny that matter exists. There is nothing but God.
Q. But Baba, you cannot prove that matter is nothing. I see my physical body and your body with my own eyes. How can you expect me to believe that matter does not exist?
To your mind matter exists, but only so long as your mind is working. When you are in sound sleep, matter does not exist to you. How then can you say that matter is real? It stands to reason that it is entirely dependent on the workings of your mind. It is an illusion, nothing more nor less than the work of your mind. Suppose when it is pitch dark and you are walking somewhere, you happen to see an object and jump back, concluding that it is a man, whom you take to be a robber. You become frightened, but fortunately see another man walking toward you. Both of you decide to catch the thief. You cautiously approach the object, but no sooner do you begin beating it, than you discover to your surprise that it was not a robber, but a boulder. It was a mere stone, but until you discovered this, to your mind it was a robber.
(One of the disciples pointed to a stool, and asked Baba if it wasn’t matter)
To you it seems to be matter, but to me it is atma, a soul. What you call matter is nothing. When I was a boy in Poona, one of my friends was named Kaikhushru. He was an Irani who used to make and sell ice cream. He was in the habit of taking bhang (hashish mixed in milk), and once after drinking some, he went to sell ice cream. On his way there was a small puddle, hardly half a foot wide. But to Kaikhushru that puddle was a lake. He actually ran and jumped ten feet over it in order to cross it. Now, if you had said to him, ‘This is not a lake, but a tiny puddle,’ do you think he would have believed you? He would have called you mad. To him it was a lake. Similarly, to you, all this before you is matter. But to me it is nothing. Just as matter does not exist in your sound sleep, so it does not exist in my awake state. What you experience unconsciously in the sound sleep state, we God-realised persons experience in the awake state. Our awake state is real, but yours is false. When you realise God, you will see for yourself. The existence of matter is due to the existence of the mind. When the mind disappears, matter also vanishes.
The preceding discourse is sourced from Lord Meher Online Edition, Page 1018, “Winding Down Activities”.