You must survive: that’s the great thing we’re all working under, and pounding it out day after day in anxiety. Because this is a description of anxiety. Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other forever. And if—by any chance, by any means—you find out that that is not so, you have an entirely new attitude to what human beings are doing.
Anybody who goes on a spiritual journey must bring something back. Because if you just say, “Oh man, it was a gas!”—anyone can say that!
You can become what’s called a pratyekabuddha—that means a private Buddha who doesn’t tell anything—or you can become a bodhisattva. Pratyekabuddha goes off into his ecstasy and never is seen again. Bodhisattva is one who comes back and appears in the everyday world and plays the game of the everyday world by the rules of the everyday world, but he brings with him upāya. He brings with him some way of showing that he’s been on the journey, that he’s come back, and he’s going to let you in on the secret, too. If you—if, if, if!—you’ll play it cool and also come back to join in the everyday life of everyday people.
Truth has a way of leaking. It gets out.