Patients admitted in a hospital long to be discharged so that they can return home and be with their loved ones. Even while staying in the hospital for as long as the treatment necessitates, they long for the release date, looking forward to all that they will be able to do thereafter.

Gita wisdom compares our present condition to a disease and the material world to a hospital. The symptoms of our disease are the fourfold problems of old age, disease, death and rebirth; and the threefold miseries coming from our body, our society and our environment.

People whose spiritual faculty starts awakening recognize the gravity of these miseries. Understanding that these miseries are inevitable at the material level of existence, they strive for release from it.

But their attempts are often sabotaged by their underdeveloped spiritual understanding. As they are not yet aware of the positivity of spiritual reality, their motivation for seeking liberation comes primarily from fear of the negativity of material reality. However, because material reality is seductive and deceptive, their spiritual determination frequently falters and falls, causing them to relapse to materialism.

The Bhagavad-gita (09.28) points to a deeper richer understanding of liberation that it refers to as vimukti. This special and full liberation releases us into a reality of love unending, of exciting and fulfilling reciprocations of love with the all-attractive Supreme Person Krishna. All our longings for love are perfectly and permanently satisfied when we learn to love him. And the process of devotional service helps us to love Krishna even while we are living in material existence. Those who practice devotional service diligently gain endearing glimpses of that love even in this life itself and eventually gain that life of love forever.

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 09 Text 28

“In this way you will be freed from bondage to work and its auspicious and inauspicious results. With your mind fixed on Me in this principle of renunciation, you will be liberated and come to Me.”