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soulcircle
Registered User
(12/11/02 7:53 am)
Reply 		questions and other absences (lack of openess,etc.)
Guests, djali123, Ringbearer7, redpurusha, psychdev and all,

Do lay people have a second-class status in this "fellowship" organization?

circle

Ringbearer7
Registered User
(12/11/02 10:11 am)
Reply 		Re: questions and other absences (lack of openess,etc.)
I'm not sure. I never really experienced it personally while I was in SRF but I would be surprised if many monastics did not privately consider themselves or at least the monastic path to be somehow superior to that of the householder - this is human nature and I think most of the monastics are quite human. I personally think the path of the householder is superior and I got Lahiri Mahasaya to back me up on it so I'm not too worried about it.

KS
Registered User
(12/12/02 7:09 am)
Reply 		Re: questions and other absences (lack of openess,etc.)
Good heavens yes there is a pecking order. It goes something like this:

1. Matas and those who knew Master
2. Senior nuns
3. Outside non-member advisors/lawyers/consultants
4. Rich or famous members
5. Senior monks

-- below here they are cannon fodder basically
6. Nuns
7. non-member employees
8. Monks
9. Members – not employees
10. member employees

-- below here they are untouchables
11. ex-monastics and ex-employees

The feeling of superiority is felt much more on the nun’s side. They have a much more closed abusive environment and the only thing they have is the feeling that they are holy and sacrificing for God and Guru. They are told they are special in an effort to get them to stay while at the same time told they are worthless and can’t make even simple decisions. It is amazing but it works. This is not as much a problem with the monks.

The list above might just look like a standard org chart to some. However look at some of the points. Rich and famous members rank pretty high. We know why that is. Why do outside non-members of almost any kind rank above senior monks! They listen to almost total strangers over Bro. Bhaktananda, I know this for a fact.

At every level non-members rank higher and note how they rank the disloyal “ex” people.

Edited by: KS at: 12/12/02 7:15:08 am
mangomoy
Registered User
(12/12/02 7:14 pm)
Reply 		2nd-class status in SRF
Lay people, or actually all non-monastics, do indeed (now, since the Dyanasty) have second-class status in SRF.

SRF leaders see themselves atop a caste system, which they deeply believe is the model of civilization in a past higher age, to someday prevail again. Not the evil hereditary caste system that M.K. Gandhi unsuccessfully sought to eradicate, but an “enlightened” system based on individual characteristics of people. Religionists & educators are the “crown” of society, warriors under them, businessmen beneath them, then others.

SRF believes this the “true” way, and that, ahead of their time, they have the enlightened, socially stratified system that the whole world will someday practice. SRF does really believe the contemporary American ideal of a classless, egalitarian, democratic society is just a transitory primitive phase that’ll give way to the “true” caste system as the yugas advance. In that extremely top-down scheme, “wise leaders,” which I think some of the SRF leaders see reflected in their mirrors, make decisions & set directions for the underclasses, which someone said Faye Wright calls “pipsqueaks.” We’re expected to fall in line. So in this sense, “YES” SRF certaintly believes non-Brahmins are 2nd-class.

This comment about what SRF leaders believe is based on a composite of remarks I’ve heard over many years by SRF ministers in various meetings and hundreds of talks in several SRF temples.

Edited by: mangomoy at: 12/12/02 7:28:33 pm
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