
Questioner: How do you know which is the first film?
Maharaj: The first film is when that knowingness appears on you. In that knowledge “I Am" all is contained.
Q: But what I meant is, that you are born and then you die. I want to know if we now have the memory of that?
M: According to your own knowledge is this knowingness which appeared on you the first or some other number?
Q: For me it is the first.
M: That is all you have to take for granted. Just throw out whatever you have heard or read. Tell me only what is from your own experience.
There was a person who said that he had known me for the last eleven births. I told him, “This is your concept. I do not know you." I have no faith in anything unless I have experienced it myself.
Q: There is violence everywhere, wars, and all kinds of horrors. You long to be separate from it and at the same time you are one with it.
M: Nobody has been able to change that Maya. Just observe, without accepting or rejecting. The solution can only be when you abide in your Self. Investigate how you happened to be.
Q: Because I was created by my parents.
M: Only in that film when the film started knowing itself, “l Am"; then you came to know all this. Did you know anything before?
Q: There was nothing.
M: Exactly. That you have to understand. Direct your questioning to “Who am I?" and “What am I?"
A man was in the habit of drinking tea every morning at five o'clock; unfortunately, the principle left the body at three. Will that dead body demand tea at five o'clock? You don't touch areas which you should ponder, but you want to know all about other areas that are just a passing phase.
Q: Should we not change in order to get this knowledge?
M: You are not the one who changes. What changes is your mind, your intellect, and your body. When you come here and listen, you will be inspired to think within; later on your nature changes. Hearing is most important, and by hearing these wise words gradually the mind will change.
That knowledge “I Am" is born out of love, but the illusion has taken such hold of it that love for the “I Am- ness" has gone into the background. To stay with it has become increasingly difficult. Without the manifestation the love was total.
Q: Is the “I Am" identical with consciousness?
M: Yes, but that “I Amness” will be present only so long as the fuel lasts.
Q: The fuel ultimately must be love.
M: Yes. That love is all-pervading. These flowers are an expression of my love. The blooming of flowers is not an individual's expression of love, but a universal expression of love.
Q: How did the movement start?
M: There is no reason, no cause, no purpose. It is spontaneously happening.
Q: Is Maya from the point of the first movement or from the point where form is created?
M: Everything is contained in the consciousness, the whole show.
Q: Even the appearance of the illusion itself?
M: Yes, everything is illusion. Your conviction that you are born is an illusion.
Q: Who is the victim of the illusion and who will be free of it?
M: The knowledge that you are is the victim, and that is going to be liberated. A farmer sows the seeds and gets the produce. He creates and he consumes; illusion or Maya or Brahma are all your names. Who is liberated and who is bound? You only.