Spiritual ecstasy is the highest state of emotion. But it is not the highest truth. In ancient days, in former incarnations, people who wanted to gain a higher spiritual dimension would retreat into the Mystery-temples for a while and there be taught under the most helpful conditions. Sometimes they would spend their life there; everything was made easier for their spiritual progress. Today there are no such institutions and life itself has taken their place, so you must gain your initiations, seek your knowledge and develop your intuition amidst and through the very experiences which come to you every day. There is no use saying that you cannot learn in the midst of this materialized environment. You learn by reflecting on your experience to see the lessons behind them, and that is in a way as helpful as meditations in a monastery. Understanding is just as important as drowning yourself in meditation, and your experiences in the material world present the proper opportunities to you. Both are needed, of course. The conditions evoke certain thoughts and feelings and you have to choose their direction. They give you an opportunity to understand, to confront, and to overcome obstacles.
Why does the teacher advise the more difficult path? Because of its very difficulty! NO. It is a path that forces you to act more directly on your own initiative. When you live in the world of activity, there is immediate testing of all theories by results. The man who renounces the world may be fostering all sorts of illusions in his head. Talk about spirituality does not make you spiritual. Bring down to the physical plane of action whatever you know, and live it. To follow a mirage made of words is not to follow the living God who dwells in your heart. Then also, if you remain in the world you serve and help humanity, by setting an example.
In the final sense, however, the man in the world who is acting from the higher motives is not different from the man who has run away from the world.
The Sage may be a king. He may be possessed of regal splendour. But sometimes he may be a nobody, an obscure figure. Whatever part he has to play he will play it. In any situation he still remains a man of divine realization. No one can dictate what part a man of realization should play. For him, the contradictory has become the complementary. You cannot say that he must come out into the world, or that he must remain in retreat. It is foolish for the ignorant to say that an adept must do this or that. He may stay for years and years in a cave, and yet he is not wasting time. If he receives the divine mandate the true sage will surely sacrifice the lonely places which he loves. If the command be given from within he will descend into the crowded arenas and babbling forums of the world.