How many, of late years, have travelled on "the ashram circuit"! How much have I, and some friends, contributed toward this result! Yet in the end, to what does it all add up? Let an earlier president of the respected Ramakrishna Mission, head of the Ramakrishna Order of Monks, and abbot of Belur Monastery answer, in the warning which he gave an American lady who was enthusiastically going from one Hindu ashram to another, spending a few days at each during a six-week visit to India. Said Swami Saradananda with a large smile: "Remember, what is within you is everywhere. What is not, is nowhere." Do not these words admonish his visitor that there is nothing free in the universe, that she cannot get something for nothing, that no "guru" can give her what she herself must work for and provide, and that no seeker will be able to bring into close inner relationship with himself any spiritual master who is too far from, or too high above, his own range of development? When an Indian of such authority and experience makes this statement to such seekers, his words ought to be well weighed against those which have been written, pronounced, or circulated by those who do not know better.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 5 : Self-Development > # 289
