I need to return home because I am not well. I’m shaky about going because I feel I’ll miss your physical presence. I’m also afraid I’ll fall back into my old patterns again.

No, no. I will not allow that, don’t be worried. That is my responsibility, mm? You will not fall back.

Once you start growing you cannot fall back, but the fear does arise. In fact the more you grow, the more you become fearful of falling back. The fear is natural, but it comes only to those who are attaining something. Those who are not attaining anything are unafraid, because they are already beggars and they have nothing to lose.

Once you start attaining something you have to protect that wealth, and so fear arises – but it is a good sign. Whenever a man becomes afraid that he is losing something, it means he is gaining something.

But go back – you will not lose it. This is one of the criteria: that if anything is achieved there is no way to lose it again. If you have come to know something, how can you unknow it? If you have experienced anything, is there any way to unexperience it? There isn’t. And a spiritual experience is such a deep and intense phenomenon that once it starts happening, you will never be the same again. Even if you are thrown back into darkness, that light will still be there.

It is good sometimes to go back to the old situation, to the old people, the old friendships. To go back to the old world where you have lived before – before something started growing in you, before the seed started sprouting – is good. Go back to the past where there is every possibility that you may become the old.

Going is good because that will show you if you have really attained something. You may go back to the old world, but you cannot become the old, and in contrast you will see your growth more illuminated. You will see that you have attained something that cannot be lost. That which can be lost is not worth attaining. Only that which cannot be lost is worthwhile, because only that is your nature.

So observe what happens, and you will come back very very happy. And by going there this fear will disappear. I am in favor of people going again and again to the old situation, because it gives you a criterion to judge.

In the past, a tragedy happened to the East. People started becoming so afraid of the world that they simply started escaping. They moved to the Himalayas, to the monasteries; and then they started feeling a little silent, happy, unworried – living in such a peaceful atmosphere. Then they became afraid to come back to the world, to the old. This fear is bad because it shows that they had not really attained. Perhaps because of the Himalayas, the silence, the peace and the natural beauty, the tremendous quality of eternity of the Himalayas – they fell under the illusion that they had attained something. That is a reflected glory; they are simply reflecting the glory of the Himalayas.