Which town?

But in this adventure of Her township, no one had this capacity of discernment and very few would accept to submit to a mechanical and superficially egalitarian discipline. It would rest upon each one to learn and address inwardly the higher consciousness (the Divine, the Grace, whatever its appellation) for a concrete answer to any extraordinary need. And in fact and for every moment to come, the responsibility for the integrity of the adventure would be shared by all of its participants.

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Just as nobody had the ability to assess the genuine needs of each living soul, no one could with certainty decide on a newcomer’s aptitude to integrate in the experiment = by a common understanding, the process of admission rested principally on life’ action during a continuous period of engagement of at least a year before one could, for the individual concerned as for the community, confirm either the acceptance or the postponement. Where the persons hailing from the immediate neighborhood were concerned, this process was proving to be more hazardous and contingent, burdened and loaded as it was with emotional factors and social considerations. Indeed, the acceptance of a person brought up in a nearby village as a member of the community was generally perceived as the acquisition of a new status, with its advantages and privileges, rather than as a commitment of the entire individual being in a work of consciousness. Even if the initial motivation and movement of self-giving and aspiration on the part of the person concerned were real, the pressure from the families and social milieu, either direct or habitual and atavistic, soon altered and influenced the successive adjustments to this new reality so much more complex and so rich with possibilities.

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