First, I recall that being said very early on, but I don't recall Rawat ever saying it.   Maybe a Mahatma did?  But even if he did, that's beside the point.

Rawat always and repeatedly, not once, but just about every time he spoke, openly denigratied the world,  saying repeatedly that people were looking elsewhere for peace and happiness and would never find it.  So, if he ever did say that, it was combined with a a multitide of statements that that it would would be a foolish, ridiculous, stupid thing to do.

It was more akin to "sure, go look elsewhere, you idiot, you'll come back here anyway."  This is very different than actually encouraging people to explore what might actually give them what they want and that they might not necessarily come back to him because they just might find it.

By the way, he also said a lot of things denigrating relationships, family, marriage, even having children with the same kind of bent.

So, that's really different than what Ron Geaves was saying in Passages, which is that Rawat was just not really interested in getting devotees, and suggested the Geaves check out other Gurus or whatever, without, according to Geaves, the related statement that it would all be a waste of time because he had "the one true knowledge."