ON HEIRARCHY – OLD AND NEW SANYASINS

24^th July, 1985

Question :: BELOVED BHAGWAN, THE MIND IS AN EXPLOITER OF EVERY SITUATION. EVEN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SITUATION OF BEING AROUND YOU IS EXPLOITED IN TERMS OF HIGHER AND LOWER, SPECIAL AND NON-SPECIAL, MORE MEDITATIVE AND LESS MEDITATIVE, CLOSER AND NOT CLOSE. HOW CAN AVOID THESE EXPLOITATIONS?

Answer : There is not much difficulty in it. Simply drop the whole idea. I am teaching you every day that there is nothing higher, nothing lower. It is simply man's ego creating if not money, if not politics, then meditation. The ego can exploit any situation, but it will play the same game. One is higher in meditation, the other is lower in meditation. One is an older sannyasin, senior -- as if it is a government bureaucracy -- and the other one is a new fellow. You can tolerate him, but he is not to be considered much, not to be taken seriously. It is the same ego, you just have to watch. It is the same ego. Whenever it creates any comparison and brings the qualities of higher and lower and judgments, immediately cut its head, then and there. Take a deep breath and drop it. Exhale it! And it is only a question of a few days and the wrong habit disappears. It is only a wrong habit, nothing to be worried about, a hangover from the old society where everything is compared, everything is put in a certain hierarchic system. You have come from the old society with much junk from the old society within you. Be alert and go on cleansing yourself of the old, of the past, of all you have brought with you. Become emptier, become cleaner. And it feels so beautiful. It feels so ecstatic that I can only be silent about it. I cannot say anything about it.

Question :DO YOU HAVE A MASTER/DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PEOPLE HERE?

Answer : No. They are all my friends.

Question :WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND IDOLATRY? CAN YOU DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THESE TWO? THERE'S A LOT OF LOVE TOWARDS YOU, BUT IS THERE A POINT WHERE LOVE CAN GO OVER TO SORT OF IDOL WORSHIP?

Answer : No.That is love going wrong. Love moving into a wrong direction. Adoration is not love. You have put somebody on a high pedestal, and this is not an act of love. It has its consequences. If you adore somebody and put somebody higher than you, you are bound to put somebody lower than you, and you would like to be adored by somebody. It is an organic phenomenon.

Adoration is dangerous. Anybody who adores somebody in the wake of it, would like to be adored by somebody else. Otherwise it is impossible for him to adore somebody. That would be only one pole. Where is the other pole? A polarity is needed. In love there is no hierarchy. Nobody is higher than you. You don't require anybody to be inferior to you. There is no question of equality, either. When there is nothing higher and nothing lower, the very question of equality becomes irrelevant. Everybody is himself.

(The Last Testament Vol. 2 # 2)

12-02-1986

BELOVED OSHO,

FRITJOF CAPRA, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH SWAMI DEVA OJAS ABOUT THE NATURE OF SPIRITUAL ORGANIZATIONS, SAID, "THE COSMOS DOES NOT KNOW ANY HIERARCHY," THAT "THE BEST WAY TO ORGANIZE THEM IS AS A NETWORK, IN A LOOSE INTERACTION," AND THAT "SUCH A NETWORK STRUCTURE SEEMS THE BEST SOIL FOR THE SPIRITUAL GROWTH OF THE INDIVIDUAL, BECAUSE IT ENSURES THE POSSIBILITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL CONTINUING AND GUARANTEES ENOUGH TO DEVELOP HUMAN RELATIONS."
PLEASE COMMENT.

He is right, and that's what we are trying to do. Nature certainly has no hierarchy. Hierarchy is man's mind game, because without a hierarchy, the ego cannot feel nourished, it dies.
In nature, everything has an opportunity, space, and there is nobody is being bossy. Nobody is master and nobody is servant. Nature functions almost as an organic unity in which individuality is not lost, but in which the ego has no chance to evolve; hence trees don't have egos, birds don't have egos. Animals of all kinds don't have egos

The problem arises with man. He can't think without putting someone above him and below him. The mind is very comparative. It is the comparison that creates a hierarchy. To destroy the hierarchy we have basically to destroy the comparative spirit. We should see each individual as individual – incomparable

And that's what I am trying to do. Sannyasins should become more and more individuals, having a direct relationship to me, having a friendship with other sannyasins. That's how it will be a network. But nobody is higher and nobody is lower. This way will help to avoid organization and all its bureaucratic spirit. And it will give individuals freedom, space to grow on their own, But the trouble is double-sided. Individuals don't want to have that much freedom. So many questions have been coming, and they all indicate that people are afraid to dissolve communes, because with freedom comes responsibility.

People love freedom – but nobody wants responsibility. And they come together, they are inseparable. Because people don't want responsibility, they want to live in a commune where responsibility is taken by the commune. But they don't understand that the moment responsibility is taken by the commune, individuality is also taken; they are inseparable. They will find a certain feeling of being at ease in the commune, but they will not grow. It will not help for their spiritual development, because they have lost the basic growth by losing individuality, by losing responsibility. They are safer, secure – but dull and dead. They always look up to somebody else to tell them what to do, what not to do You are not in need of a father figure.

You are not in need of being part of a crowd. You can be yourself. I wanted the communes not to be hierarchical – but it seems difficult, because every man wants a hierarchy. So the only way is to disperse people, and let them be on their own and work towards their spiritual growth. In the beginning it may look hard, but in the end it is immensely beautiful because then you become part of a non-hierarchical cosmos.

In a hierarchy you will remain always bounded by human crowds; you will never get out of them. You will not be part with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with the stars – because they don't understand the language of hierarchy.

So once you have passed the initial shock, things become very simple – more simple than they ever were in a hierarchical system – because it is not only responsibility that is coming to you, freedom is also coming to you. Just to think of yourself as totally free and totally responsible for each act – there is no judgment, no court, no God, no boss over you – makes such an immense space available in which to grow. And then sooner or later you will realize that you are becoming part of a non-hierarchical existence, because existence understands freedom, it understands responsibility, but it has no way to understand hierarchy

12-02-1986

Whatever I say to you, I know exactly why I am saying it, what it can do to you. what its basic purpose is, and the essential change that it can bring to your life.

I don't need any interpretation. I don't need any P.D. Ouspensky. I don't need any help, because whatever I am saying I have not learned from anybody. I have evolved it with myself through lives, so I know every nook and corner of it. I have not suddenly got hold of it. I am absolutely aware of how it begins and where it leads and what the pitfalls are. And I can make you aware. And everybody can work individually; there is no need... because I have worked individually.

I have never taken anybody's help, I have never accepted disciplehood from anybody. I simply moved on my own, knowing perfectly well it might take a long time, it might take a long journey; perhaps I might be moving in the wrong direction and I may never arrive. But something in me never wanted to follow anybody – I wanted to discover it myself. Only then would I be contented that I had come to the truth.

So because it has been my own individual growth, whatever I can give to you needs no group; you can work individually. That's why it is easy for me to call you my friends, because I am creating in you the same desire – to move alone, to go alone, to risk, and not to be dependent.

Discovering something on your own has an ecstasy of its own, which no follower of Gurdjieff, or anybody else, can have – there is no adventure, there is no search. My experience is that the adventure and the search does not only bring you to the truth finally; the very adventure and the search create in you a maturity which never comes to a follower. He may come to the truth, but he will come to the truth retarded. He will not come to it as a fully mature person.