Some spiritual aspirants choose to retreat from the troubles of the world. They go into the wilderness of the forests or enter mountain ashrams, so that they can go within and focus on their own spiritual enlightenment.

This may have been a good idea hundreds of years ago, but the state of the world today is such that there simply isn’t time to concentrate on our own self-development and inner peace at the expense of the dire immediate needs of the world in crisis around us.

“To really be at peace, one must divorce oneself entirely from all people and go into another type, or another state, other than pure conscious–consciousness. All else is not peace on this Earth. All else is division, is a clash of opposites, is war going on within and without.

“This is peace. This is the very thing we are told to divorce ourselves from, in these days, because of the suffering of mankind as a whole. 

“We are told that even though we may not be particularly enlightened people, nevertheless we do have something within us which allows us to go forward and to be of great assistance to our fellow man, even though we ourselves may not realize it.”

– Dr. George King, 1961