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He cannot prevent himself taking an interest in his worldly welfare, for he has a physical body and is planted in physical surroundings. To pretend otherwise is either to repeat, parrot-like, what he has heard or read, or it is to be a hypocrite, or it is to exhibit the phase of temporarily insane unbalance which some seekers pass through at one time or another. His spiritual aspirations are blocked, hindered, helped, or promoted by his external circumstances. To see the truth of this, it is enough to take a single aspect of them--the social one. Is it of no concern to him, and will it be all the same in effect, if he has to spend the whole of his life with materialistic men and women who could not even understand what the quest means, or with those who are very far advanced along the quest? Will he not profit more by the latter contact?

-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 2 : Living in The World > # 376