Page 102 - Liberal Exposition of Pranahuti Aided Meditation

Sudhama both were disciples, they never lost their self in competition. Krishna passed out very early, Sudhama came out much later but nobody said that this fellow is inferior or that fellow is superior. They always said he is a person who has studied under the same teacher and therefore venerable. The only person who unfortunately upset the cart was Drupada who misbehaved and therefore the whole of the Mahabharat was there, part of the Mahabharat is part of that story. Now one person saying that he is superior, had he also maintained the same principle as Sudhama and Krishna, the problem would not have been there. Competition is the beginning of all trouble. All of us are made by God and according to his design. The rose is as beautiful if not more than a lotus, let us not go on comparing them and then contrast and fight. So this one upmanship is the concept that has been given more into our head, as I have already mentioned in Mahabharat itself it is there but more into our head thanks to the west because they wanted to bring some difference between us and they started saying this fellow is superior that fellow is inferior. Those of you who know a bit of social psychology know there is a community called Mundagmar in south New Zealand, one more is called Arabish, the Arabish fellows live in plains, the Mundagmar fellows live in mountains. The arabish fellows in the classroom who were given an exercise of mathematics, now whoever had completed were asked to lift their hand, somebody did very fast and then lifted his hand, in Mundagmar community they refused. This fellow has completed his exercise but he did not lift his hand, when asked why, he said let everybody pass then I will lift, when asked why, he said because we have to live together in the forest, you can fight in the plains we cannot fight in the forest. If you fight in the forest amongst yourself you will definitely be killed by some animal, in the plains we can afford to fight. So the beginnings of this type of competition comes only when you are affluent and when certain other values take over. We don’t have to, we don’t have to go on arguing, somebody had played you see the game and then go. No, nobody would like to, people would like to get into troubles. This is a general feature, I agree a general feature, today we have to unlearn quite a lot. The process of spirituality is mostly unlearning, not learning, we don’t learn anything in spirituality for that matter we only unlearn whatever we have learned. Whatever samskaras we have got we would like to get rid of them, get rid of them and you are liberated, we are back to our original place. You learn something then we are lost in samskaras, one more samskara you have got. You start arguing your philosophy is superior to that of mine, advaita is