Superbia
Superbia is pride or vanity. This is pathologically identified as narcissism. In Sanskrit this is called dambhah.
Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita (dambho darpo ’bhimanas ca krodhah parusyam eva ca): Arrogance and pride, harsh treatment of others, intimidation of others, these are the nastiest elements of daily life. People influenced by these elements feel superior to others and want them to submit to their desires. We can even see this in the family, where people are supposed to love each other; sometimes they get on each others nerves, exploit each other or extract whatever they want to get from the other person. So, as you can see, this is very complicated. Vanity, pride, harsh treatment and all these kinds of things are symptomatic of the world of illusion and ignorance.
These are called demoniac qualities in the Bhagavad Gita. There is a potential divine being - that is you, and there is a potential demon and that is also you. Deva or Asura. Are you going to live like a devotee of the truth (Deva) or are you going to live like a demon (Asura)? This is the daily question and struggle in our lives.
If you have faith that you should be a light being, a servant of the truth, obviously you have to shun all the things which the asuras or demoniac people are worshiping. Asuras do not want to have any divine qualities.
There is an ancient Vedic story about Prahlada Maharaja. He was sent to the school of the Asuras. In this school he was talking about the truth and was getting the other children to understand higher values. The teachers became furious. They said:”Tthis is a place for hypocrisy and politics. You are ruining this school by pronouncing values of divinity! Stop this immediately!” Prahlada refused that order. So, they took him back to his father, Hiranyakasipu, and they said: “We are very sorry. We have a school for demons, but this boy is incurably dedicated to divinity. We hate this and we are not going to allow it. You, dear Hiranyakasipu, are very powerful. Do with this boy whatever you like, but we can not take responsibility. He is turning our entire school into a school of devotees to the truth! We even caught him singing the Holy Names of God with the other students.
What do you expect us to do? Take this son and do with him whatever you like.” So Prahlada was expelled from school of Asuras.
The remedy for vanity is to understand that we should be beautiful, strong, determined and expert for the service to God and the truth and not for our own sense gratification.
The Lord is very kind and He has given a lot of beauty to each person. Not necessarily physical beauty, but the beauty of the soul, which can be very loving. There are of course people, who are not only bereft of the bodily beauty, but their character looks even worse. And there are people who are very beautiful, but who do not have a good looking character. In order to become a beautiful person, we have to follow the most beautiful person. We have to give up the concept of external beauty and look for internal values. For that we have to keep good association. This is a very essential point. Only good association can take us up. Bad association drags us down. So we should not be proud, but we should look for those, whom we can be proud of. If we are proud of ourselves, that’s not beneficial. But if we are proud of those who are helping us to get out of illusion, that is good.