It is a shade of ego. In spirituality it can be understood as an attitude of unacceptance of the superiority of a guru bhai and demanding equality of status.

Drona and the pandavas are amazed at the archery skill of Ekalavya who fills the mouth of the barking dog with the arrows without hurting to quieten the barking dog. Here, Arjuna because of his self respect cannot tolerate the superiority of Ekalavya's archery skill and insists his guru to take the fees due to the teacher by asking Ekalavya to cut off his right hand thumb and exhibits a poor quality in character - svabhimanamu that is respect to self to be preserved ever at the cost of loss to others.

When a person does paraninda, he loses goal clarity because your object of attention has gone to others. If you criticize say, Sikhism you forgot your goal, your mind is on that, on something else, your energy is focussed on something that is low and so the goal is lost. When, as Babuji puts it, several channels for your mind have been created, this is what happens. Now, instead of being constructively thinking about somebody else saying that he is also moving on the right path and let him at his own pace, why should the hare taunt the tortoise and say it is a tortoise? It had no business. If it want to run, let it run. The story of the hare and the tortoise, if you see, the problem was the hare comparing itself with tortoise and then thinking that after all it has come a long way, let it take rest and then the tortoise takes over. Whether the tortoise crosses or not, the point is the hare has lost the game. The hare loses its goal clarity. Instead of running the entire race, it stopped and stopped because of comparision to something else. Comparision brings you to the state of null. If we don't drag the story to its usual end but then take a spiritual diverision, then we will see what has happened to that hare. The hare lost the game, alright, but before that it lost the goal itself. It lost the game because of lack of goal clarity. Losing the game is not because of anything else. It is mainly because it lost it's goal clarity. I will attend to my business, let that fellow attend to his business. In any race, if you try to look at the other person, you are lost. You must go ahead. It is because we compare with others, why do we compare?

This swabhimanamu is another thing that comes mainly because, of this earlier attitude. The Atma kshoba is there, then you do not want to give up your method, you know that some other method is available that perhaps is better, guru needs to be changed, better guru is available, but Swabhimana will not allow you to do that. My attachment to my faith - attachment to faith is a better word, my attachment to my faith is the worse word. That is the swabhimanamu and secondly we are not prepared to concede that what we have done so far is wrong. It hurts us to think that all our efforts have gone waste. If you want to cross over this you need a good friend, good counsel. So, if you look at it, 63 atma kshoba, 64 is swabhimanamu, 65 is maîtri. Logically you can not come out of it unless somebody is there who is going through or gone through such pangs and suffering. He alone can guide you.

Majority of the people not accepting another path is only this. They are devoted, they have sraddha. Everything they have got but they will not change because this is standing in the way. The self is standing in the way. It is one of the states of ego and only when you find a company, in which your ego can be diluted, because of the company of maitri or friendship.

All our swabhimanamu is super finest attachment to the lower mind. Abhimanamu is out of question in the case of the upper, higher mind. So any person who considers that it is a matter of self respect and all that, the "self" here is small "s". When the small "s" becomes big "S", the universal self, then there is no question of the self respect because what is self respect? It is your ways of behavior, your attitude to things, your opinions about certain subjects, makes you firmly grasp them all the time, thinking that they are mine. You own those things and then when you are not prepared to compromise on that and if you have got to compromise on that, you think that you are committing a suicide.

Majority of people who commit suicide are people who are suffering from that. No person dies because of physical need, nobody commits suicide because of physical need. It is a rare case, very rare case. Physical need, he will also commit suicide, mainly because socially he will be ostracized. Society will consider him good for nothing fellow, not capable of feeding his children or his wife and therefore the entire family commits suicide. This we have seen. Again, this is not because of need, it is because of swabhimanamu. Life refuses to kill itself. If you are living at physical level you will never commit suicide. Suicide is unknown to animals, so long as you live at animal level you never commit suicide. Can you show me one case of animals committing suicide? They will fight it out, they will die but they will never commit suicide. Suicide is mainly because of swabhimanamu. Somebody has thrust it on his head he is the father and he has to protect his family. He comes to a stage where he cannot maintain them. He can always maintain them by begging, he is not prepared for it. He can live at a gurudwara, the entire family will be given food. Anytime we can go to a gurudwara, nobody in this world need complain that because of food he is dying. It is because of your swabhimanamu that you don't go there. Nobody has lost his kingdom as king Nala has lost but he did not commit suicide. The faith in God was such that he lived.

Swabhimanamu is the reason for majority of the fights unwilling to compromise our position, all our fights are due to this. You compromise here there is no fight. Every saint has been asking it does not matter much to give it up, give up your position, let the other person take it and every person who is other than saintly has questioned it. That is why in tradition, the transition from 3^rd Knot to 4^th Knot is an impossibility always, without developing this particular quality of giving up. This buffer is the toughest.

Actually, when we take the condition, unacceptence of the superiority of a guru bhai, and demanding equality of status. This is the problem that comes in this condition. We have gone to Babuji Maharaj. Some people have been more serious about sadhana, some people are less serious, some people were not prepared for it but all of them were only guru bhais. This person who has not done sadhana, does not want to accept somebody who has done sadhana as somebody who is more advanced and he is not prepared to learn from him and though the Master may say 'here is some one who knows, you tell him', he will come to Master, he will not go to him. Still Babuji says, 'no you go to him only', he will not go to him, he will go home. That actally is the swabhimanamu that we are talking about here