A section from the journey

The Harmony of Paths Revisited

We end this chapter by stepping back. Long ago the Gita taught that the paths of action, knowing, love, and stillness are not rivals but one journey. This chapter has added more streams: the worship of the Goddess, the way of Tantra, the path of the guru. They too join the same flow. The tradition holds many doors, each fitted to a different heart, all opening on the same reality.

Before we leave the Goddess and these inner paths, let us climb a small hill and look back over all the country we have crossed in this chapter. It is good, now and then, to see the whole.

Cast your mind far back, to the song of the Gita. There we learned a gentle and surprising truth. The paths of action, of knowing, of love, and of stillness are not four rival roads. They are four streams running down one mountain, all meeting at last in a single river. Remember that picture; we need it again.

This chapter has poured still more streams into the same flow. We met the Shakta, who loves the divine as Mother. We met the way of Tantra, which finds the sacred woven through the body and the world. We met the path of the guru, the teacher who carries the light and hands it on. Three more roads, added to the ones we already knew.

At first, all these can seem like separate worlds, even worlds at odds. One person bows to Vishnu, another to Shiva, another to the Mother. One seeks a God with a face; another seeks the formless silence. One pours out love; another sits in still knowing. Are they not pulling in different directions?

Step back, and the old truth holds again, only wider now. The tradition was never one narrow road with a single gate. It is a great house with many doors. We heard the seed of this long ago, in the oldest hymns: that the one reality is real, and that the wise call it by many names. What we have watched in this whole age is that one saying, lived out in a hundred loving ways.

And here is the kindness in it. Each path is shaped for a different kind of heart. Some of us need a God we can love with a face and a name. Some need the formless quiet. Some need ritual, and the body, and things to do with our hands. Some need a teacher's steady hand to hold. The tradition does not force one shape on every soul. It offers a door for each.

So none of these ways is the enemy of the others. They are many paths up one mountain. Lower down, they look far apart, winding through different country. But near the summit, the tradition holds, the paths quietly draw together, for they were always climbing toward the same thing. The love of the Mother, the way of the body, the gift of the teacher, the older roads of action and knowing and love and stillness, all of them lean, in the end, toward the one reality. That is the harmony at the heart of this tradition, and it is a fitting place to rest our chapter.

Of all the paths we have walked in this chapter, the Mother, the body's way, the teacher, the older roads, which one feels shaped for your kind of heart? And can you hold that the door which is not yours may be exactly right for someone else?