Question:

My friend somewhere read that the life before liberation is the toughest, is there any truth to this?

Answer:

I don’t think that the last life before liberation is the toughest. It is just that in that life, you will actually make efforts to understand your own self, understand your own mind, and understand the Maaya of the people, situations and things that you are enveloped by.

This effort at understanding and walking the righteous path is not easy.

• It requires a lot of discipline.
• It requires a lot of self-control.
• It requires a lot of intellectual analysis.
• It requires a lot of tapas and meditation.

That’s why the weak people might call it the toughest life. I think it is the life that gives you maximum relief.

• Isn’t it a relief to know that people are not bad, but it is your mind that has been creating this Maaya of bad people and troubling you?

• Isn’t it a relief to know that all these impressions that we create from Raagas [likes] and Dveshas [dislike] are the cause of our Karma, and nobody else is responsible?

• Isn’t it a relief to be able to comprehend the grand design of Maaya and understand that ‘I am not the doer’ and that ‘everything is a happening’?

• Isn’t it a relief to drop the feverishness of achieving and rejecting and just float like a leaf floats in a flowing river?

• Isn’t it a relief to know that that all this is just a ‘play’, just an ‘illusion’, just a ‘magician’s trick’? Isn’t it a relief to know that it is all created for fun?

The highest kind of freedom is attained by these few realizations in your last birth! How can it be the toughest? It is the easiest, Hence I would sum it up in just one greatest sentence – The last life before liberation is the life of ‘maximum relief’!