That was from the very beginning my idea of a commune, but because I was silent and in isolation, things went not according to my idea. The commune, rather than becoming a refreshing place, a place for holiday, became just another world of work, of hierarchy, of bureaucracy. All those things that we wanted to change evolved in the commune itself.

So my new phase of work will be that there will be a mystery school. It will live like a commune, but the people will be changing. People will be coming whenever they can manage, whenever they need. There will be a certain number of people who will be permanent, to take care of all the visitors. But the commune will be a continuous pilgrimage place – where you learn something where you drink something and go back to the world.

We are not the renouncers – we are the revolutionaries. We want to change the whole world. And in changing the world, you will change yourself. You cannot change anything else unless you go through the change simultaneously.

So on one count it was a loss that if you were staying with me continuously…you are human, and it is a human mistake that one starts taking things for granted. I am available.

I told you about this beautiful spot because in Jabalpur there are thousands of people who have not seen it. It is only thirteen miles away, and I have told those people – professors, doctors, engineers – “Just go and see!”

And they say, “We can see it anytime. It is there; it is not going to go away.”

In the second world war it happened that suddenly, when Adolf Hitler declared that he was going to bomb the Tower of London, thousands of people rushed to see it. They had been living in London their whole life; they were born there. They were passing the tower every day on the way to their job – going to the office, coming back home, it was there. People were coming from faraway places to see it, but they were taking it for granted: it is there, so what is the hurry?

It is absolutely certain that thousands of people have been born in London and died in London without seeing the tower. I know about Jabalpur; thousands of people must have died…. It is always there, but you are not always there.

As far as the relationship with me is concerned, neither you are forever nor I am forever. But you can take it for granted, and by and by a fog surrounds your mind. Rather than my presence there is a fog – which separates you, not connects you.

This was the most disastrous thing that was happening in the commune. People were with me, but they had created a fog around themselves. Seen from the outside, physically they were close, but spiritually they had gone far away.

Secondly, when five thousand or ten thousand people start living in a commune, their whole orientation, why they have come there, changes without their knowledge. They had come there to meditate, to be with me, to be as much as possible open and available to my experience…to enjoy, to relax, to sing, to dance, to be ecstatic. They had all come for that.