13.22: Ending our divorce with reality

When people desire to play a virtual-reality video game, that desire divorces them from the reality of their identity and propels them into an illusory cyber-world, where they experience artificial-virtual emotions by misidentifying with a video game character. Similarly, the Bhagavad-gita (13.22) describes that when we desire to enjoy material things, that desire divorces us from the reality of our spiritual identity and propels us into the illusory material world, where we experience artificial-material emotions due to misidentifying with our material bodies. However, unlike a video game, our material misidentification is neither casual, nor pleasant; it gives us insignificant pleasure and significant pain.

When, by good fortune, we somehow realize this flawed and doomed nature of our illusory pursuit, that realization awakens within us the desire to end our divorce with reality. And the more we give up illusory pleasure, the more we gain back our rightful real happiness in spiritual love for God.