Acharya Prashant responds to a question about whether one can be liberated while all tendencies (vrittis) still exist. He explains that the ego (aham) itself is a tendency. The ego is nothing but a tendency, and this tendency is not its own but arises from the three gunas. It is a tendency of the 'mitti' (earth/matter) that has become the body. This very tendency is given the name 'aham'. He elaborates that just as an object has a tendency to fall, this body has a tendency to say 'I'. The ego itself is a tendency, which is called the root tendency (mool vritti). From this root tendency, various other tendencies arise, which are found in different proportions in different individuals. However, the ego-tendency is universal in every being. The ego never says, 'I am the body.' Instead, it says, 'There is a body, and I am sitting inside it, separate from it.' In this way, it claims to be the soul (atma), which is separate from the body. The ego always thrives on the basis of being separate, saying 'my cheek' as if the cheek and the 'I' are distinct. Liberation, therefore, is for the ego to realize that it has no independent existence. This realization comes through self-observation (atmavalokan). Wherever the ego claims 'I am,' one must investigate. For instance, when the ego says, 'I am happy,' investigation reveals that it is not independently happy but has just received a sweet (rasgulla). The ego has no independent existence; its happiness depends on external factors. The biggest problem on the path to freedom is that most people are too weak to bear the fact that they are great slaves. To be free, one must honestly and ruthlessly accept that one is a great slave. The ego is a great lie, the belief that 'just because I walk with my feet on the earth, I am not the earth.' This lie is called the ego. Liberation is to free the ego from its false pretense of being free. The one who is already convinced of being free, their liberation lies in showing them that the ego is not free. The ego always lives under the delusion that it is free. Acharya Prashant quotes Sant Kabir: 'It is better to die than to live, if one knows how to die. One who dies before death becomes immortal.' This means to live like 'mitti' (earth/matter). Liberation is the dissolution (vigalan) of the ego, not the ego becoming something great. It is when the ego melts away into the river of the body, the river of Prakriti (nature). To know the mind as the body is liberation. As long as the mind considers itself separate from the body, it will run to consume the body and, through the body, other bodies.