Yes... the whole human life is like a game or a 'lila'. It
reminds me of this passage (the terms he used aren't really
Buddhist but I feel this passage is relevant here):
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/pathwa_titoat.cfm/
Pathways: Why does Spirit bother to manifest at all, especially
when that manifestation is necessarily painful and requires that It
become amnesiac to Its true identity? Why does God incarnate?
Ken Wilber: Oh, I see youre starting with the easy questions.
Well, Ill give you a few theoretical answers that have been
offered over the years, and then Ill give you my personal
experience, such as it is.
I have actually asked this same question of several spiritual
teachers, and one of them gave a quick, classic answer: Its no
fun having dinner alone.
Thats sort of flip or flippant, I suppose, but the more you think
about it, the more it starts to make sense. What if, just for the
fun of it, we pretend -- you and I blasphemously pretend, just for
a moment -- that we are Spirit, that Tat Tvam Asi? Why would you,
if you were God Almighty, why would you manifest a world? A world
that, as you say, is necessarily one of separation and turmoil and
pain? Why would you, as the One, ever give rise to the Many?
Pathways: Its no fun having dinner alone?
Ken Wilber: Doesnt that start to make sense? Here you are, the One
and Only, the Alone and the Infinite. What are you going to do
next? You bathe in your own glory for all eternity, you bask in
your own delight for ages upon ages, and then what? Sooner or
later, you might decide that it would be fun -- just fun -- to
pretend that you were not you. I mean, what else are you going to
do? What else can you do?
Pathways: Manifest a world.
Ken Wilber: Dont you think? But then it starts to get interesting.
When I was a child, I used to try to play checkers with myself. You
ever tried that?
Pathways: Yes, I remember doing something like that.
Ken Wilber: Does it work?
Pathways: Not exactly, because I always knew what my opponents
move was going to be. I was playing both sides, so I couldnt
surprise myself. I always knew what I was going to do on both
sides, so it wasnt much of a game. You need somebody else to
play the game.
Ken Wilber: Yes, exactly, thats the problem. You need an other.
So if you are the only Being in all existence, and you want to play
-- you want to play any sort of game -- you have to take the role
of the other, and then forget that you are playing both sides.
Otherwise the game is no fun, as you say. You have to pretend you
are the other player with such conviction that you forget that you
are playing all the roles. If you dont forget, then you got no
game, its just no fun.
Pathways: So if you want to play -- I think the Eastern term is
lila -- then you have to forget who you are. Amnesis.
Ken Wilber: Yes, I think so. And that is exactly the core of the
answer given by the mystics the world over. If you are the One, and
-- out of sheer exuberance, plenitude, superabundance -- you want
to play, to rejoice, to have fun, then you must first, manifest the
Many, and then second, forget it is you who are the Many.
Otherwise, no game. Manifestation, incarnation, is the great Game
of the One playing at being the Many, for the sheer sport and fun
of it.
Pathways: But its not always fun.
Ken Wilber: Well, yes and no. The manifest world is a world of
opposites -- of pleasure versus pain, up versus down, good versus
evil, subject versus object, light versus shadow. But if you are
going to play the great cosmic Game, that is what you yourself set
into motion. How else can you do it? If there are no parts and no
players and no suffering and no Many, then you simply remain as the
One and Only, Alone and Aloof. But its no fun having dinner
alone.
Pathways: So to start the game of manifestation is start the world
of suffering.
Ken Wilber: It starts to look like that, doesnt it? And the
mystics seem to agree. But there is a way out of that suffering, a
way to be free of the opposites, and that involves the overwhelming
and direct realization that Spirit is not good versus evil, or
pleasure versus pain, or light versus dark, or life versus death,
or whole versus part, or holistic versus analytic. Spirit is the
great Player that gives rise to all those opposites equally -- I
the Lord make the Light to fall on the good and the bad alike; I
the Lord do all these things -- and the mystics the world over
agree. Spirit is not the good half of the opposites, but the ground
of all the opposites, and our salvation, as it were, is not to
find the good half of the dualism but to find the Source of both
halves of the dualism, for that is what we are in truth. We are
both sides in the great Game of Life, because we -- you and I, in
the deepest recesses of our very Self -- have created both of these
opposites in order to have a grand game of cosmic checkers.
That, anyway, is the theoretical answer that the mystics almost
always give. Nonduality means, as the Upanishads put it, to be
freed of the pairs. That is, the great liberation consists in
being freed of the pairs of opposites, freed of duality -- and
finding instead the nondual One Taste that gives rise to both. This
is liberation because we cease the impossible, painful dream of
spending our entire lives trying to find an up without a down, an
inside without an outside, a good without an evil, a pleasure
without its inevitable pain.
Pathways: You said that you had a more personal response as
well.
Ken Wilber: Yes, such as it is. When I first experienced, however
haltingly, nirvikalpa samadhi -- which means, meditative
absorption in the formless One -- I remember having the vague
feeling -- very subtle, very faint -- that I didnt want to be
alone in this wonderful expanse. I remember feeling, very diffusely
but very insistently, that I wanted to share this with somebody. So
what would one do in that state of loneliness?
Pathways: Manifest the world.
Ken Wilber: Thats how it seems to me. And I knew, however
amateurishly, that if I came out of that formless Oneness and
recognized the world of the Many, that I would then suffer, because
the Many always hurt each other, as well as help each other. And
you know what? I was glad to surrender the peace of the One even
though it meant the pain of the Many. Now this is just a little
tongue taste of what the great mystics have seen, but my limited
experience seems to conform to their great pronouncement: You are
the One freely giving rise to the Many -- to pain and pleasure and
all the opposites -- because you choose not to abide as the
exquisite loneliness of Infinity, and because you dont want to
have dinner alone.
Pathways: And the pain that is involved?
Ken Wilber: Is freely chosen as part of the necessary Game of Life.
You cannot have a manifest world without all the opposites of
pleasure and pain. And to get rid of the pain -- the sin, the
suffering, the duhkha -- you must remember who and what you really
are. This remembrance, this recollection, this anamnesis -- Do
this in Remembrance of Me -- means, Do this in Remembrance of the
Self that You Are -- Tat Tvam Asi. The great mystical religions
the world over consist of a series of profound practices to quiet
the small self that we pretend we are -- which causes the pain and
suffering that you feel -- and awaken as the Great Self that is our
own true ground and goal and destiny -- Let this consciousness be
in you which was in Christ Jesus.
