=kit026.txt

KIT 26 - The Hierarchy

"All surrender to love willingly and to power unwillingly."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

When we talk about the hierarchy. we are thinking of beings like
Saint Francis or Buddha or Akhnaton - the numbers are Infinite -
beings held in esteem not only by their followers, but people at
large throughout the centuries. Great beings are held in esteem,
not because of their position or office in a government of the
world, imagined by some on the model of our secular governments
with all the bureaucracy and ego squabbles for power, but by the
evidence of their selfless love and dedication to their fellow
beings, and by their abdication from any claim to a position or
use of personal power.

Most people find it difficult to handle power.

No sooner does one build an institution, than people are called to
positions in which they are subjected to the temptation of
exercising personal power, influencing other people, enforcing the
will by dint of their official position. What follows are
intrigues, quarrels, unkindness, backbiting, all the kind of
things one finds in spiritual groups. just as one does in the
rather selfish society we are living in. Great beings are people
who have abandoned the values of the world, and because of that,
deal with worldly problems in a different way, a subtle way.

For example, when Buddha, on his tour of Indian cities, visited
Kapilavatsu (his native town of which he was the crown prince) his
father, the king, sent a pompous procession to greet him. Avoiding
this worldly recognition, Buddha was found with a group of monks
begging in the back streets of the city. St. Vincent de Paul did
the same when the President of the French Republic came to honor
him. Gandhi refused the post of First President of the Indian
Republic. Akhnaton relinquished many of the artifices of the
pharaonic tradition. St. Francis abandoned the riches of his
ancestral inheritance and so did Saint Clare, who walked bare-
footed in the streets, in rags, and catered to the lepers.

This is what Murshid means by the aristocracy of the soul and the
democracy of the ego. "The Murshid is there for the mureed", he
says. He or she is there by the esteem in which he/she is held by
virtue of his/her realization, mastery, self-sacrifice,
dedication, service, radiance, sacredness, not by virtue of a post
or office in the hierarchy. One is only able to take that post
when one does not wish for it. And then, for having lost one's
ego, the divine power of love takes over from the despotism of the
autocrats (which is so devastating to those who are struggling for
self-esteem and lose self confidence by being undermined by people
who purport to be superior).

No claim to superiority, such is the message of Islam marking the
advent of democracy. But here comes the grind: the challenge comes
if, when occupying the post to preserve it from the despots while
upholding its sacredness, when striving to live up to the divine
status present in each of us (while keeping the human touch) one
is able to love those who envy one or denigrate one or try to foul
one, and one can accept the responsibility while unmasking the
sham of the adulation and deference to the outer position. This is
the aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the
ego.

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