Imitation & Competition – 09.16.10

Student Question: Why is competition so prevalent in this society?

“Because the ego’s an imitation: you become who you are by imitating others,” argues Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But deep down, you know you’re just an imitation, and an imitation is a phony. And so you hate the one you’ve imitated. Now, the only reason you imitated them was because you loved them, and desired them, and thought they were great. But once you have become their imitation, then you wanna kill them so they no longer exist to take away your sense that you're the real one, because whenever they appear, they’re a threat, now, to you. . . . So, the ego is always terrified that it’s an impostor. And, therefore, it has to be unique, and it has to be superior to the other or it can collapse easily into non-entityhood.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.