The following questions and comments in response are derived from the aural questions asked by some of the listeners to my talk on September 6, 2023. They have been slightly edited for clarity. I have put my additions to the script, in italics. Except for Edrid, questioners have not been identified from the talk for uniformity.
Listener A: I would like to know because I have some people who are interested in getting together a Lila group, and I was wondering is there any way that you could, on your website, or somewhere, put out a program for how can we set this up.
DS: Yes, that’s a very good question. Others and myself are going to be discussing what might be a program like this.
I would say, in our workshops that we gave back in the early 90s, we tried Lila groups, and have to say the better way to go about it is to have everyone addressing a common purpose, or a common piece of scripture, and they go around and around with that until they’ve feel they’ve accepted everybody’s issues about that thought. This is only very partial, but it’s a start.
Working very deeply with another is another way to go, and doing that with a few others amongst each other at a time may be very helpful. But it requires a tremendous amount of acceptance of who each other are as human beings, that has to be cleared in my experience, in order to finally get to the non-physical aspect of all this.
It’s interesting that Zoom actually facilitated some of the final steps for me. This was because there was the lack of physical presence, there was only the presence of each other via Zoom. That was very beneficial for me in reaching some very deep places that I have not shared yet.
We are focused intensely on getting the structure of a Lila workshop, and a separate on-going Lila group fully designed at the present time. They involve a progression steps. Their descriptions and protocol will appear on this site. Please submit your thoughts about Lila groups to this discussion.
Listener B: Hi, Doug, thank you for this. This might be too metaphysically deep for this particular round, but the physicality of the universe: I’m still not grokking how our interaction as boundless beings generates the physicality. If you can flesh that out for me please.
DS: Yes, it’s a crucial point, for sure. Right at this time, we’re only accepting directly a few others, perhaps more, of the inconceivable number of other beings that are boundless. The physical arises out of our indirect pathways to meeting others through the intermediaries of other people, of other boundless beings. When we meet someone through an intermediary, we get them as physical (limited by our physical senses) and not boundless. When all the indirect meetings are put together, they form distinct patterns.
These patterns form particles and waves, and overlap in a variety of ways forming more complex levels of being, such as atoms and molecules. More and more complexity of course builds up from that, that’s when we’re creating the physical world, which is constantly changing because of these connections. Does that help?
This build-up can be quite technical and mathematical. It is a side to the Lila project which was intensely developed over the project’s life by participants. I am primarily only conveying its qualitative aspects in the Talk [Sept.6, 2023], and on this site. For the Technical side refer to Biljana Percinkova and her book 102 Hours…
Follow-up by Listener B: So there’s this foundational question of certain schools of non-duality. They really emphasize that there is no others, that there’s just unbound consciousness that arises, and there’s an illusion of individuality and such. I’m trying to reconcile both those type of experiences, of yes, I am a divine individual, and what’s beyond that.
DS: Well, the beyond it is the Only Being happens to be one and many. The concentration in western thought on monotheism has really sharpened the mind only to think in a certain way, in the conceptual thinking. When people say we’re all one, they’re kind of alluding to the fact that we’re all connected, and we’re all the same.
We’re all holo-fractal in other words, but they’re obviously, if you have an experience of being unique, in answer to the who question, you’ve got many, many others answering the same who question, and they’re all unique. So in the end, there is One Being, but not in the Lila Paradigm as a singular one; it is also the Many.
It’s the process of all of us expressing Divine Love, and you can wrap that into a one-being view, or a view that circumvents the idea that we all disappear into one thing, which isn’t so. We’re all a facet of Source. In Hindu Yoga, Brahman or Source could be considered a single being, or he or she’s many beings, in the Lila view. Brahman is awakening.
In my view, non-duality is different than saying it’s all a singular One. I think it’s partly because translations from the Sanskrit have not been very thorough. You could think it means “not separate”? If it was one, you would use the Sanskrit word for one, aikyam. Okay, this is a speculative area, but I’ve given you my viewpoint.
Ramana Marharshi is well known for saying that “there is no other.“ But isn’t that because of the universality of “we are all the same.” Could we not hold that One and Many are two sides of the same coin. Our conceptualisation forces us to take one side of this duality. Does the truth not underly our conceptualisation? Choosing the singular one instead of oneness or unity seems to me to be a shortcut or spiritual by-pass that passes over all our complex and murky relationships!
Listener C: Do you have any other ideas besides working on an Other, which makes perfect sense, and I’ve derived a huge amount of benefit? But I’m wondering if there’s any other ways to come at getting others?
DS: There are many other questions. “Tell me what we are”, is the simple one to approach that; although I prefer, “What are we?”; dropping the Tell me form, reduces the invitation to go into conceptualisation soothing the compulsion that concept addicts have. And there are also variants on some of the “What is Presence”. Presence also involves others automatically. for example, and I have used several of these questions in my recent dyad dives. The original questions were limited in a way, because of Yogeshwar’s bias towards individualism, a strong human human concept, in my view.
DS: Unfortunately, when Yogeshwar passed away, the project kind of crumbled. It had been greatly reduced by the implosion of the community in Flaxley. I continued on with developing the theoretical aspect of the Paradigm, importantly with the understanding of time. But largely alone.
Listener D: I remember something that I believe came from Charles Berner a long time ago. What he said that all being itself is dependent on information being passed. Like, if there’s no information passed, then nothing is. I had to think about that for a long time, and I started to look at that through the lens of the Awareness of Field of Presence? practice that Edrid does.
Listener A: I would like to know because I have some people who are interested in getting together a Lila group, and I was wondering is there any way that you could, on your website, or somewhere, put out a program for how can we set this up.
DS: Yes, that’s a very good question. Others and myself are going to be discussing what might be a program like this.
I would say, in our workshops that we gave back in the early 90s, we tried Lila groups, and have to say the better way to go about it is to have everyone addressing a common purpose, or a common piece of scripture, and they go around and around with that until they’ve feel they’ve accepted everybody’s issues about that thought. This is only very partial, but it’s a start.
Working very deeply with another is another way to go, and doing that with a few others amongst each other at a time may be very helpful. But it requires a tremendous amount of acceptance of who each other are as human beings, that has to be cleared in my experience, in order to finally get to the non-physical aspect of all this.
It’s interesting that Zoom actually facilitated some of the final steps for me. This was because there was the lack of physical presence, there was only the presence of each other via Zoom. That was very beneficial for me in reaching some very deep places that I have not shared yet.
We are focused intensely on getting the structure of a Lila workshop, and a separate on-going Lila group fully designed at the present time. They involve a progression steps. Their descriptions and protocol will appear on this site. Please submit your thoughts about Lila groups to this discussion.
Listener B: Hi, Doug, thank you for this. This might be too metaphysically deep for this particular round, but the physicality of the universe: I’m still not grokking how our interaction as boundless beings generates the physicality. If you can flesh that out for me please.
DS: Yes, it’s a crucial point, for sure. Right at this time, we’re only accepting directly a few others, perhaps more, of the inconceivable number of other beings that are boundless. The physical arises out of our indirect pathways to meeting others through the intermediaries of other people, of other boundless beings. When we meet someone through an intermediary, we get them as physical (limited by our physical senses) and not boundless. When all the indirect meetings are put together, they form distinct patterns.
These patterns form particles and waves, and overlap in a variety of ways forming more complex levels of being, such as atoms and molecules. More and more complexity of course builds up from that, that’s when we’re creating the physical world, which is constantly changing because of these connections. Does that help?
This build-up can be quite technical and mathematical. It is a side to the Lila project which was intensely developed over the project’s life by participants. I am primarily only conveying its qualitative aspects in the Talk [Sept.6, 2023], and on this site. For the Technical side refer to Biljana Percinkova and her book 102 Hours…
Follow-up by Listener B: So there’s this foundational question of certain schools of non-duality. They really emphasize that there is no others, that there’s just unbound consciousness that arises, and there’s an illusion of individuality and such. I’m trying to reconcile both those type of experiences, of yes, I am a divine individual, and what’s beyond that.
DS: Well, the beyond it is the Only Being happens to be one and many. The concentration in western thought on monotheism has really sharpened the mind only to think in a certain way, in the conceptual thinking. When people say we’re all one, they’re kind of alluding to the fact that we’re all connected, and we’re all the same.
We’re all holo-fractal in other words, but they’re obviously, if you have an experience of being unique, in answer to the who question, you’ve got many, many others answering the same who question, and they’re all unique. So in the end, there is One Being, but not in the Lila Paradigm as a singular one; it is also the Many.
It’s the process of all of us expressing Divine Love, and you can wrap that into a one-being view, or a view that circumvents the idea that we all disappear into one thing, which isn’t so. We’re all a facet of Source. In Hindu Yoga, Brahman or Source could be considered a single being, or he or she’s many beings, in the Lila view. Brahman is awakening.
In my view, non-duality is different than saying it’s all a singular One. I think it’s partly because translations from the Sanskrit have not been very thorough. You could think it means “not separate”? If it was one, you would use the Sanskrit word for one, aikyam. Okay, this is a speculative area, but I’ve given you my viewpoint.
Ramana Marharshi is well known for saying that “there is no other.“ But isn’t that because of the universality of “we are all the same.” Could we not hold that One and Many are two sides of the same coin. Our conceptualisation forces us to take one side of this duality. Does the truth not underly our conceptualisation? Choosing the singular one instead of oneness or unity seems to me to be a shortcut or spiritual by-pass that passes over all our complex and murky relationships!
Listener C: Do you have any other ideas besides working on an Other, which makes perfect sense, and I’ve derived a huge amount of benefit? But I’m wondering if there’s any other ways to come at getting others?
DS: There are many other questions. “Tell me what we are”, is the simple one to approach that; although I prefer, “What are we?”; dropping the Tell me form, reduces the invitation to go into conceptualisation soothing the compulsion that concept addicts have. And there are also variants on some of the “What is Presence”. Presence also involves others automatically. for example, and I have used several of these questions in my recent dyad dives. The original questions were limited in a way, because of Yogeshwar’s bias towards individualism, a strong human human concept, in my view.