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a few days. If you can be alone here, you will be alone there. If it is difficult here, it will be more difficult there -- because when we are in the society, with people, we are in our element. It is natural to be that way. The fish is in the sea, and when it is thrown out of the sea, on the bank, in the sand, it is out of its element -- and there is going to be much trouble. So first learn to be alone in the natural environment of the society, and then go. Then in a lonely retreat much is possible.
But my emphasis is always that one should learn to be alone in society. In India we have experimented, and the experiment failed tremendously. We helped many people in the past to go into lonely retreats. Then they became afraid of coming back. They became so habituated to it that rather than becoming masters of themselves, they became slaves. So they renounced the world. India suffered much because of this. The great minds were the first ones to renounce -- those who could have been an Einstein, a Bertrand Russell, or a Freud, escaped immediately. That door was always open. And those who escaped didn't become masters -- because mastery needs the opposite. They became, in a way, poor.
Once you know the convenience and comfort of being lonely and secluded, out of the society, the mind tends to remain in it. It is not like life, it is more like vegetating. So, as you are doing so well now, don't disturb it. Just continue here and leave it to me. If I feel that you have earned it I will send you.... And everything is good.
[A group member says: I'm worried about going home. I'm worrying whether I could have been the right one to work in the ministry. I'm starting to like it here.... ]
I am sending you back... I am sending you back because something is going to happen there. Something has happened, but the situation was so new, it was easy. I would like to try it in the old situation back home. So you simply go as a new man. You are new.
You simply go as a new man. You start doing the work and everything as a new man. Let the situation be as the old -- you be the new. So in the contrast you will feel for yourself what has happened.
It
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