From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 20. SURRENDER: THE EGO UPSIDE DOWN
Religion is a disturbance as far as the hierarchy of the organization is concerned. Religion is a
continuous trouble; religious people will be trouble.
The Catholic church has been throwing out from the church all the people who are really religious
because those people will not support this criminal act of destroying religion. They will oppose it,
they will rebel against it. But the church has so much authority. The head of the church, the pope,
is a religious head and also a temporal head; the Vatican is his kingdom, a political nation. Once
it was big, vast; now it is only eight square miles, but still he is the temporal head and the spiritual
head.
There are religions where the temporal head is separate and the religious head is separate, but then
there were problems of conflict. The temporal head has all the power of the army, the law, the state;
and the spiritual head has no temporal power. For example in Hinduism, the shankaracharya is only
a spiritual head. But that creates this other problem: a continuous conflict between the state and
the religion – and of course the state is powerful.
You have to remember that the higher a thing, the more fragile it is. The lower a thing, the more
strong it is. Roots are strong, flowers are not; although roots are meaningless if the flowers
disappear – the roots have meaning only because of the flowers. But the tree is not so stupid
as man; so there is a harmony between the flowers and the roots, there is no conflict.
Flowers represent the spiritual fragrance, and the roots represent the state, the army and all its
power.
The roots can deny food to the flowers and the flowers will die and disappear within no time. But
no tree is so stupid: there is a harmony; the roots go on supporting the flowers, the leaves, the
branches. And it is not only one-sided. The flowers, the leaves, the branches go on taking rays from
the sun and carbon dioxide from the air, and they go on continuously sending them to the roots.
It is a communion, there is no question of conflict.
But in religion it has been a problem. If you keep them apart then soon the state starts trying to
control the religion. For example, in England the church is separate but the queen is really the head
of both: of the church and of the state. The church has its own head but there is a crowned head
who is over him. What can the archbishop of Canterbury do against the queen?
In Russia the same was the situation. The church was separate, the czar was separate, but the
whole power was in the hands of the czar. So it was just for show that the head of the church
crowned the czar as if he was above the czar. But he knew and everybody knew that this was
only ceremonial. In reality he had to follow the czar and the state, support the czar and the state,
because without the czar, the church would die: it wouldn’t have any support, financial or otherwise.
That’s why Catholics tried to make church and state, one: to give both powers into the hands of one
man so there was no conflict.
But the trouble is when a man becomes politically powerful, that political power tends to corrupt him.
He may misuse it; it is almost certain that he will misuse it.
From Ignorance to Innocence 278 Osho