"And then that winner would go around the country challenging every other person who was pretending to be a world teacher. If he was defeated, then of course he had to accept the other person as a world teacher. If he was the winner, the other would follow him as a disciple.

"These people just used logical, linguistic discussions to decide who was the world teacher. Now, to win in a logical discussion is a childish game. You may not have experienced anything, yet you can be a good logician. You may not know anything at all about the truth, but you can argue well. That is a totally different quality.

"In Greece these people were called sophists. By and by they became condemned; in the beginning they were respected just like the world teachers of India. The work of the sophists was to argue and to teach how to argue. And argument is simply a game, just like chess. It has nothing to do with truth. Nobody has ever achieved truth through argumentation. Yes, you can defeat somebody. You can even defeat the person who may have experienced. If you are articulate enough and can bring in language and logic in your support, there is no difficulty.

"By the time Socrates arrived on the scene in Greece, the sophists were everywhere. It was Socrates who condemned sophistry. He said, 'I can argue from any side. You tell me to be for God or to be against God, and I can argue from any side, and I am going to win.' And he showed it. He would argue from both sides and he would win from both sides. And he said, 'What is the meaning of all this argumentation?'

"I know it because it happened to me. While I was a student in the university I loved only one game, and that was argument. I hated every other game because all other games looked very childish. If you know argumentation, then there is no game compared to it. And I was going from one university to another university for debating, for eloquence competitions.

"In Nagpur University it happened. Two people always used to go, one person with me: one for and one against the subject."