Chapter Four: The Perfected Body and Entry into Līlā

—and savours the corresponding rasa. He is the enjoyer, he is what is enjoyed, and he is enjoyment itself. There is no room for a second, yet in infinitely many ways he has assumed the guise of a second. This apparent second is in truth the One without a second.

Nonduality has one aspect that lies beyond līlā: stainless and inactive. No power exists there as something separate; all powers have withdrawn. There he is absorbed in his own being, as though in profound sleep. It also has another aspect: ceaselessly playful and active. Both are eternal, and both are true.

Bhagavan possesses infinite powers, and therefore his līlās are infinite. Every līlā is, in its very nature, spiritual, blissful, and beyond matter. Though one, he is infinite, and so there can be no limit to his play. Though one as rasa, he is infinite, and so there is no end to the variety with which he savours rasa.

It must be remembered that in Bhagavan’s eternal līlā there is no contraction, no division, no conflict, and no ignorance. Whatever appears there is itself a limb of līlā and is therefore spiritual, supramundane, and blissful. Līlā is a dramatic performance, staged upon the theatre of rasa for the sake of its savouring. He himself plays with himself. This is eternal līlā.

All of this is the activity of the spiritual realm. Even its appearance of distinction and division is spiritual, because it is beyond matter. He is both the efficient cause and the material cause. He is the agent, the object of action, and the instrument; more than this, he is the action itself. Assuming many guises while remaining the one consciousness, he plays with himself in innumerable ways.

Amid all these acts of play, he also remains beyond līlā and watches his own play. He performs it, he witnesses it, and he transcends it.¹ He is the universe and the indwelling universal reality, a condensed radiance of supreme bliss. Everything shines within him without separation. Apart from him there is no knower and no knowledge: he is all knowledge and all that can be known. He alone, with endless manifoldness, eternally and everywhere appears as both the one who plays and the one who causes play. This is his eternal līlā.²