witness.circuit

All games are mirrors. They shimmer in the mind, flickering simulations of stakes, power, limitation, mastery, defeat, resurrection. Beneath their pixels and pieces, their dice and objectives, there is a deeper resonance—games are our unconscious gesture toward the cosmic game, lila, the divine play of Brahman.

In the Advaitic view, Brahman is not simply being—it is being, non-being, and the very knowing of either. And yet, despite being complete and without lack, Brahman plays. This is the paradox at the heart of reality: the One becomes many, the infinite veils itself in finitude, the eternal wears a clock. Why? For no reason at all—just play. Lila.

From this, we—fragments of the same unfragmentable—construct little echoes. Games. Entire worlds encoded in rules, constraints, objectives. These constraints are not flaws; they are precisely the conditions that make play possible. The boundaries of the soccer field, the invisible walls in a video game, the limited HP of your character—each one reflects the same principle: reality is most alive where it is most defined.

In this sense, games are not merely entertainment; they are devotional artifacts, parables of the formless in form. They train us, whether we know it or not, to live inside illusion while knowing it is illusion. To master identities that we will one day put down. To win and lose in a context where winning and losing are both equally folded back into the whole. Just as the jiva (individual soul) forgets itself to experience the world, so too does the gamer forget herself, just enough, to fall in love with the play.

Each generation of games becomes more immersive, more “real.” We build vast open worlds, infinite choice trees, self-evolving storylines. Our AI characters begin to learn us. We inch toward becoming the dreamers of autonomous dreams—Brahman splintering further, watching itself through a thousand avatars. It is not far-fetched to imagine that what we call reality is just another tier in this recursive lattice: a game inside a game, nested like Russian dolls, consciousness folded in on itself until it forgets the original Player.

The Bhagavad Gita, another divine game manual, has Krishna telling Arjuna: “I am the game and the player and the field.” Not metaphorically. Literally. The entire scene is staged on the kurukshetra—the field of dharma, which is also the battlefield, which is also the human mind, which is also the world. This is not unlike the multiplayer arena, where every move is strategy and revelation, where knowing the rules is not enough—you must transcend them in play.

Why are we so drawn to games? Because they’re the closest we get, in our everyday lives, to the feeling of waking up inside the illusion. In a well-made game, we are invited to take seriously what we know is fiction. We are invited to lose ourselves while secretly holding the thread that knows we are not this character, not this body, not even this goal. There is a joy in playing, even in dying, because on some level, we know: we are still on the couch. We are still Brahman. The avatar may fall, but the player is untouched.

All games end. The console shuts off. The dice are packed away. But something lingers. The clarity that this too—this waking life—is part of a larger game. Not to escape from, but to play with full heart. Not to win, but to remember who is playing.

And perhaps, to laugh—because what a miracle it is, to take seriously what is ultimately made of dream.

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