Seek it not by any one road.

[manitou]

Up in the Vedanta section, I've been posting the precepts written by a M.C. Collins back around 1900, in a pamphlet called "Light on the Path". The Light on the Path book is contained within another book: Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism, by Yogi Ramacharaka. Ramacharaka comments on this Collins book throughout the first part of his book.

 

Although we're not to this precept yet up in the Vedanta section, I wanted to post it here in General Discussion because of its incredible texture and applicability to all paths:

 

20. Seek it not by any one road. To each temperament, there is one road which seems the most desirable. But the way is not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone, by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation of life. None alone can take the disciple more than one step onwards. All steps are necessary to make up the ladder.

 

The vices of men become steps in the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted. The virtues of man are steps, indeed, necessary - not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though they create a fair atmosphere and a happy future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way.

 

Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and life. But he is only so when he grasps his whole individuality firmly, and, by the force of his awakened spiritual will, recognizes this individuality firmly, and, by the force of his awakened spiritual will, recognizes this individuality as not himself, but that thing which he has with pain created for his own use, and by means of which he purposes, as his growth slowly develops his intelligence, to reach to the life beyond individuality. When he knows that for this his wonderful complex, separated life exists, then, indeed, and then only, he is upon the way.

 

Seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of your own inmost being. Seek it by testing all experience, by utilizing the senses, in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality, and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong. Seek it by study of the laws of being, the laws of nature, the laws of the supernatural; and seek it by making the profound obeisance of the soul to the dim star that burns within.

 

Steadily, as you watch and worship, its light will grow stronger. Then you may know you have found the beginning of the way. And, when you have found the end, its light will suddenly become the infinite light.

 

 

I absolutely love these paragraphs (other than the 'worship' word, which sort of kicks me back into my old Lutheran church). I can only attest to my own inner knowledge of the path; it's just a hodge-podge of everything. But that which we pound into our heads is just one part of it; the other part of it must involve an inner journey.

 

What a beautiful junction the various paths come to. The room where all paths meet.

[Jeff]

Excellent. Thank you!