This mastership competition is going on life after life, sometimes as human being, sometimes as animal, sometimes as fish, aquatics, sometimes as demigod, bird. This is the whole material situation. And the difficulty is that we cannot become master, but on account of our false ambition that, "I shall become master," we are becoming servants of material nature. We are acting in a certain way to become master, creating a situation, mentality, and at the time of death, when this body finishes, the mind absorbed in that mastership idea takes me to another body according to my ambition. So I become again manifest in different body to exhibit my mastership, another chapter begins. So they do not know how these subtle laws of material nature is working to give us opportunity to become master according to our idea, false idea. And we are actually suffering, sometimes as human being, sometimes as animal, sometimes as trees, sometimes as dog. So the mastership cannot be attained. That is not possible. In the false idea to become master we are becoming slaves of the laws of material nature. This is real position, and that is suffering.
So when one comes to this understanding, that we are not master, we are servant . . . bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate (BG 7.19): after many, many births, if by chance one gets the association of the servant of the Lord, then he understands that he is not master, he's servant of Kṛṣṇa, and then he surrenders. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ. Such great soul who has understood that, "I am eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa," he's a very great soul. Sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ. Very, very rare to be found.