This is a very common question people have. “Once I start making progress on the path of Self Realization, what happens if I die midway, without reaching the final goal?”

Interestingly, we are not the first one to ask this question. Arjun asked exactly the same question to Krishna, during Bhagwadgita conversation. And Krishana’s answer to that was, “People will start from where they left, in next life”.

Hinduism believes in cycle of life and death, where we take birth to repay Karma accumulate from earlier lives, and we end up in creating new ones while doing that. This leads us to take more births to repay the newly created Karma; and that way we are stuck into this cycle of life and death.

This way, if a person, starts making Spiritual progress, and dies midway, nothing is lost, he/she will start new life, from where it was left in earlier life.

This is a very powerful concept, and explains  why some people do faster progress compared to others. For example, this explains, why Dnyaneshwar was able to write his detailed commentary on Bhagwadgita at so early age, while most of us are still struggling to read first shloka.