And whatsoever you have gained here with me, test it in life, because an ashram is not in life. An ashram at the most can be a discipline; it is not an alternative life. At the most it can be a school where you have a few glimpses. Then you carry those glimpses in the world – there is the criterion, the test. If they prove real there, only then were they real.
Living in an ashram, living with a liberated man, living in his energy field, you may many times be deceived that you have attained something. It may not be your attainment; it may be just because of the magnetism that you touch new dimensions. But when I am not there and the atmosphere of the ashram is not there and you move in the ordinary day-to-day world, the world of the market, the office, the factory – if you can carry the goal that you have attained here and it is not disturbed, then really you have attained something. Otherwise you can live here in a dream, in an illusion.
No, if it were possible for me to have you all here, then too I would have sent you. I would have actually done as I am doing now; there would have been no change. This exactly is helpful as it is.
Don’t feel hurt when I send you away – you need it. And don’t feel too elated when I tell you to be here – that too is a need. Both are needs. And don’t make a fixed principle, because things are very complex, and every individual is unique.
Sometimes I allow somebody to be here because he is so dead he takes a long time to evolve. Somebody evolves so soon – then within weeks I say, “Go.” So just being here don’t feel elated, and don’t feel hurt if I send you away. Sometimes I retain somebody because he is very balanced and there is no fear yet that he will eat too much, fall the victim of the disease of overdose; then I allow him.
Sometimes when somebody, I feel, has attained something, then too I send him away; because only the world can be the proof of whether you have attained or not. In the isolation of an ashram, in a different atmosphere, you may have glimpses because you become part of the collective mind that exists here. You start riding on my waves; they may not be yours. But when you go home you have to ride on your own waves – maybe small, but better because they are your own, truer to you, and finally they alone have to take you to the other shore. I can only indicate the way.
A master should not become a bondage; and it is very easy for a master to become a bondage. Love can always be converted into bondage. It can always become an imprisonment. Love should be a freedom; it should help you to be liberated from all fetters and bondages. So I have to keep myself continuously alert: who has to be sent, who has to be allowed to stay here, and how much.
A rhythm is needed – sometimes being with me and sometimes not being with me. A day will come, you will feel the same. Then I will be happy with you. Whether with me or not with me you remain the same; whether here in the ashram, meditating, or working in the marketplace you remain the same – nothing touches you; you are in the world but the world is not in you: then you make me happy. Then you are fulfilled.