They help everyone talk things through and choose the wisest option together instead of just obeying a fixed rulebook.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, CAN YOU GIVE YOUR REASONS FOR THE NEED OF COORDINATORS? Whenever there is more than one person, there is always a possibility of conflict, a possibility of disagreement, a possibility of a rift. And sannyas is a movement. Christianity does not need coordinators because it is not a movement. It is not alive, it is dead like all other religions. It has fixed roots. Either you follow or you don't follow; there is no question of agreement or disagreement. You cannot disagree with Jesus Christ. Either you have faith or you don't. But sannyas is not a dead, fixed dogma. It is an on-going process, a movement where I do not support faith, I do not support belief. I support reasoning, intelligence; I support doubt.
Beloved master, now the time of the "moms and kids" is gone. The worship is happening with far more responsibility. I can see that we all feel free to express our thoughts, ideas and feelings. But it hurts to see that this includes people's negativity and need to act out their own feelings -- especially if they have never had an opportunity before. How does the coordinator get involved in this? How do we all take care of this? What is the responsibility of a coordinator?
The case is going to be one of a serious kind. It is going to be international news. Already what has happened is being talked about around the earth. Now Sheela is in London and the whole group has disappeared -- perhaps separately into different places. They are hiding like criminals, but they all will be caught. The earth is small, and my sannyasins are all the way around the earth. They may deceive Interpol, but they cannot deceive my sannyasins. And all of my sannyasins have suffered -- not only you. Sannyasins in other communes have also suffered. They cannot deceive this army of one million sannyasins. We will get hold of them. And Ava, Padma, Patipada, Geeta -- these will be the people, key people who will be of immense help. For example, Geeta just informed me that before Sheela left, she has taken twenty-five letterheads of each…
Question: OSHO, ISN'T ORGANIZATION A NECESSITY FOR A RELIGION TO SURVIVE? So I am now sending Sheela, every month, for three days to each commune, to see that the religious work is carried out according to my vision; so no sannyasin living in any commune feels that he's deprived of any facility. All the facilities should be absolutely similar and each commune is autonomous. Our sannyasins in many ways are very innocent people. They may be very educated but they are innocent people -- and after becoming sannyasins they have become more innocent. And therefore there is no problem; it needs a simple common sense. Organization cannot be avoided. We just have to be a little more sophisticated and more scientific and more mathematical about it. We have to use it rather than being used by it. So I am not against organization, but we can learn from the past.
Osho, you talk of totality. You can’t have a diffused movement at the same time. This diffused movement—how would you try to bind it into a single sutra?
Think about it a little. In fact, what does organization mean? Organization means that people of one idea, people who imagine bringing about a certain kind of society, gather together. They gather and try to place a pattern of ideology upon society. My understanding is that it is dangerous to impose a very fixed pattern on society. Because society moves ahead every day; a fixed pattern is always left behind. It is like putting pajamas on a child. The child keeps growing day by day; the pajamas keep getting smaller day by day. Every day there is a need for the pajamas to be bigger. But those who organized the pajamas say, “This is the pajama we decided on; he must go on wearing this same pajama.” The child grows; the pajama becomes tight. All organizations—the more organized they are—the more fixed and dead they become. What is needed is…
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."
But growth is a little harder. To accept that you are alone, that nobody is above you who can decide for you, that you have to take decisions every moment of your life, that every inch you move is your decision.... If you commit a mistake, you have to correct it; nobody can forgive you, because there is nobody at all. If you do something good, nobody is going to reward you. So basically and deeply the acceptance that "my act is my reward, and my act is my punishment, and I am totally responsible for whatever I am doing" -- this is maturity. 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…