I've already mentioned this concept in a couple of posts, so it's about time I went a bit deeper on it.
I first heard the concept of "Lila" from a seminar series by Alan Watts entitled Out of Your Mind. Simply put, it's the idea that the entire universe is a singular consciousness playing an eternal game of self-discovery: Divine Play, as Watts put it. Just as we have Yin and Yang, the naturally occurring pairs of opposites in the perceivable phenomena of the universe, so the universe experiences two distinct states, forgetfulness and self-awareness: the former where it's deeply immersed in the game of life, whether through some specific incarnation like a human life or otherwise, and the latter where it exists in the realisation that it is, itself, the entire universe.
God mode
Being itself is pure ecstasy.
The idea may seem fantastical at first, but it aligns with most of the spiritual traditions adopted as part of the hippy movement, originating in the East and now the backbone of new-age spirituality. In all of these movements and practices, there's some notion that the entire universe is consciousness, or some energetically responsive void, not separate from our individual consciousnesses. In fact, our individual consciousness could be said to be part and parcel of the superconsciousness of the universe, the greater universe incarnating itself in a "lower" form, a lens through which to experience itself. By making itself small, it's able to experience life as a play to get lost in, and reflect on its higher, original self, with majesty and awe, as a by-product.
In the divine play of Lila, the original state of the universe at the start of any given cycle of the game is a state of pure light, akin to spiritual enlightenment: a state where the universe is not only fully aware of its true nature as The One, but also fully and consciously aware of its own infinite power to manifest whatever fantastical creation it desires. Call it god mode. During this early part of the game, being itself is pure ecstasy. Parallel, perhaps, to the big bang: some orgasmic eruption out of a non-manifested void into the high-level components of the physical universe. Spiritually, in the universe's inner experience, it's a state of rapture like that attained by Hindu yogis: maha samadhi. This stage of the game is mirrored in the Hindu yuga system, the cycle of eras of the universe, analogous to the Satya Yuga, the era of truth and perfection, which according to Hindu cosmology lasts 1,728,000 human years. I don't want to lean too heavily on the comparison with the yuga system, since Lila is a more poetic, storified and personal version of events, while the yuga system describes a state of declining piety as time progresses through a given cycle.
The early stages
Perhaps living as a demi-god, loved royalty, or even a golden dragon.
In the next stage of the game, after the universe has spent a while experiencing its own infinite powers of creation, it decides to spice things up and incarnate into a mortal form to play out some story of its own imagination. At these still-early stages, the lives it enters are fantastical: perhaps living as a demi-god, loved royalty, or even a golden dragon. Crucially, this is the stage where the universe has divided itself; it's no longer purely experiencing a perpetual state of oneness, but living in a world of subtle differentiation and mortality. Still, being not far in perceived time from the first part of the game, there remains a palpable quality of spiritual power, hence the incarnation into such grand forms. Being a division rather than an erasure of the former qualities of superconsciousness, the incarnation can experience and revere "the universe" as something external and incredible, and often remembers its oneness with it. Though technically mortal here, the stakes of the game aren't particularly high, and once enough time has passed, the universe takes it up a notch again.
The passage of time in Lila is largely correlated with a growing taste for greater entanglement in the manifested world. So now it's time to make things feel really real, and introduce challenging scenarios to overcome. The great consciousness may still choose grand roles, but now with notable hurdles and what feels like real threat. This is the stage where the dream plays out as being a great, victorious warrior, literally or in spirit; Hercules, for example. The glory of overcoming grand, mythical obstacles is the fruit savoured at this stage.
You can see where this is going: each subsequent stage of the game appears further from the original absolute purity of being god, and frankly introduces greater division into the dream world. Turns out it's division that makes the dream feel real. Maybe that's why our modern world, with all its issues, is so engrossing, so easy to be solely absorbed in our individuality, out of touch with the greater thing? Now is the part of the game where things get really interesting.
Humans
After enough time experiencing grand scenarios, the universe decides to do something really far-out and forget itself almost entirely. Now is the stage where incarnations just like us emerge: humans, individually self-aware and intelligent, but distinctly mortal and limited. At the start of the human era, there's still a profound reverence for the divine: ancient societies with esoteric knowledge, like the ancient Egyptians, or the times of the Vedic sages; maybe even mythical cities like Atlantis. Knowledge of the truth of the universe is fundamentally held by these societies, and the sages have a genuine wisdom that far transcends modern religion. The taste of the original oneness remains, though now more rarefied than earlier in the cycle.
Religion
The real focus is no longer on divinity.
Time passes, and along with the growing sense of personal mortality and the overall degradation of the original spiritual connection, knowledge of the inner truth begins to run thin, and focus shifts to worldly matters. Gradually, spirituality and gnosis, true inner wisdom, turn into religion: the recollection of original divinity through the organised distribution of accepted stories and rules to live by, in the form of commandments. Crucially, there's no longer a need for a personally experienced "mystical" reality to justify spirituality's place in the hearts of men; it's now something closer to an obligation of rituals to be followed, even without any real divine connection. But by this stage of the game, the real focus is no longer on divinity, and is far removed from the earlier stages of the cycle, when there was a palpable sense that anything desired could be manifested through the power of consciousness alone. The real focus now is very mortal: getting by day to day. Things happen in the world that feel far removed from the previous idyllic dream, and existential threat is perceived. Life can be, and often is, full of pleasant feelings, but nothing close to what came before, and equally full of shadow.
Where we are now
The divisions of the world now feel very real.
As further time elapses, so does the degradation of spiritual connection. People become fully immersed in their egos, and authentic spiritual experience grows increasingly rare. Most no longer feel any inclination toward religion, and start losing themselves to toxic habits. You could probably say this is where we are right now. Recall, as ever, that we're still the same singular universal consciousness experiencing itself, but at this point there's mostly no sense of true divine connection in our day-to-day, and we're very much concerned with our personal pursuits and senses.
It's now only through prolonged, consistent meditation, and perhaps also intentional psychedelic use, that we can come to feel the original connection again. The divisions of the world now feel very real, and so do the hang-ups. It's not uncommon for the incarnation, now long forgetful of its divine nature, to become susceptible to very mortal feelings: stress, anxiety, even depression. The future often looks bleak on a very large scale, and most people feel utterly powerless to do anything about it. Our enmeshment in the physical world is so pronounced that our reverence has shifted from the divine to our own technology, and it consumes us. It's now so powerful that it's already become a significant detractor from our mental health, which is ultimately our spiritual wellbeing, and could even pose an existential threat in the form of superintelligent AI, eventually. We've gone from being utterly powerful in our own unified consciousness, to creating seemingly infinite power in the external, manifested world in the form of technology, while feeling ever more mortal.
Kali Yuga
The suppressed divinity eventually kicks back like a loaded spring.
According to the Hindu yuga system, the final yuga is the Kali Yuga, the era of darkness, the one we're currently in. The end of its 432,000-year expanse is the conclusion of the cycle. End game. At this point, disconnection from the divine is profound, even extreme. The suppressed divinity, ever-present the whole time though increasingly imperceptible, eventually kicks back like a loaded spring, and a period of divine intervention and cosmic, elemental cleansing begins. The world, now so inhospitable to spiritual life, is destroyed. The material world dies; all that remains is spirit. The great game starts again.
The fractal
The whole cycle, start to finish, mirrors individual life: a fractal, if you will, with an individual life as a leaf on a tree, and a given cycle of the game as a great branch. On an individual level, according to those same spiritual traditions, the death of the body leads to a continuation of the spirit and eventual reincarnation. At the moment of death, the restored consciousness is initially pure. It goes on to experience the hallucination of deities, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the hallucination of potential parents embraced in love. Eventually it incarnates into the life of a child, initially innocent and full of play, and grows into an elderly adult rife with health issues. So it is in the divine game: the superconsciousness of the universe itself cycles through initial spiritual opulence, and degrades as the throes of the world take their effect.
Why I love it
Lila, for me, is the most beautiful explanation of reality there is. It simultaneously reminds us that the inner divine is ever-present and merely forgotten, while hinting at a vast range of experiences already had, and yet to be had, by our eternal souls, experiences far removed from what we currently see as reality. We get to experience the infinite bliss of pure spirit, live out the great mythical epics in first person, live our pleasant, complicated realities as human beings, and stay safe in the hope that no matter how dark the world gets, we'll be delivered back to our original purity the moment it all becomes impassable.
I'd try harder to come up with an ironic, cynical ending to this post, but Lila deserves more than that. I love it. I honour it fully. It brings me hope.