‘Whatever purifies you is the right path, I will not try to define it’
Rumi
At some point in our spiritual seeking, we are likely to come across the following discussion:
Should one choose only one path and stick with it or try and combine different ones in one’s way towards awakening, enlightenment or whatever one believes is the goal of their practice(s)?
This is an important idea, still discussed to this day by ‘experienced’ seekers and those who have only just started to work on themselves alike.
Many advocate for sticking with one path, ‘digging one deep hole in the hope of hitting groundwater’, while others believe that anything and everything is valid, as long as it works for you.
However, while discussions about this aspect of spirituality are as worthwhile as any other, I personally think this one points to a more important idea, often overlooked in philosophical–spiritual discussions.
Infinite Paths up the Mountain
One of my favourite teachers, Ram Dass, considered himself a spiritual pluralist.
Having started his own path as a psychologist and academic, he went on to explore psychonautics and a number of western and eastern methodologies, including being strongly devoted to his guru Neem Caroli Baba.
His teachings defended the view that doesn’t matter if your path is that of meditation, yoga, shamanic rituals, religious agape, taking entheogens or all of the above; there are many paths up the mountain.
Like Rumi in the passage above (2), Ram Dass also spoke a few times about how different paths can take people to different places as they climb the mountain of spirituality (1), and that was all good with him.
However, he went further.
On a few different occasions (3), he said that spiritual teachings and practices are like crutches that we use to get somewhere in our spiritual path and which have to be dropped when one ‘arrives’ at a certain place.
Alan Watts, the famous western Zen philosopher made a similar point taking specifically about psychedelics:
‘If you get the message, hang up the phone.’
Rick Archer, the host of the fantastic podcast Buddha at the Gas Pump (known as BATGAP), (4) often discusses this idea with his guests. He – wisely, in my point of view – defends the idea that a practice is always going to be important, and often remarks that ‘the Buddha continued to meditate after he was enlightened’.
These may seem contrasting ideas, but in the often paradoxical way that spiritual teachings go, I believe they are both talking about the same thing.
Crutches on the Path
Spiritual practices are not all the same, and neither are the individuals practising them.
Drinking a good dose of San Pedro and having mescaline running through one’s body results in a very different experience from doing nothing but focusing on body sensations for a few hours.
However, to bring Ram Dass into this again, although the experiences themselves are different, they are also the same in the way that they are both experiences.
The point he is making is that at their deepest level, there is no inherent difference between tripping on mescaline, reaching a deep meditative state, or working on one’s taxes.
But to reach a state where these experiences feel the same, one must have done a lot of internal work on themselves.
And the best way to do this is by using a technique.
In other words, one needs to use crutches to take them up the mountain, but once you ‘get there’, there is no use to continue carrying them with you.
But ‘there’ is not the summit; it is only far enough in the path for one to be able to leave the crutches that have been so useful to them behind.
Maybe they won’t need any other crutches, or maybe they will pick up some new ones, out of habit, need, curiosity or any other reason that is true to them at any given time.
After using this or that crutch – and gaining a little intellectual and experiential knowledge, existence opens itself to us and, I dare say, shows that all paths and all crutches are good (how can they not be if we are all the One?).
There is no way for me to prove this to you (I have no intention of doing that!); if you are one of the lucky ones who can see it, then you can see it.
I seems to me that if we carry on focusing on ‘this’ or ‘that ’path, especially considering that what we really mean when saying that really is ‘this’ or ‘that’ crutch, we are missing the point completely.
An individual’s particular spiritual technique is the one that best ring true to them at the particular time their ego-minds are open to the message being transmitted.
Conclusion
It seems that a lot of us have, for a long time, misunderstood what a spiritual path is.
We think of ‘achieving’, ‘reaching’, ‘getting’ there… but it when we look closely into it, it doesn’t seem to be like this at all.
The practices we engage in are the crutches we use to walk our paths.
Some of these help our egos-minds, others help our deeper selves, and others help even deeper levels of whatever it is that we are.
However, none of them is helping our true selves, because there is nothing our true selves isn’t.
Our true selves are the idea of the ‘I’ that thinks is walking, the thinking, the mountain, the path, the crutch, the helping, my fingers now typing these words, your eyes receiving light, your brain transforming that information into meaningful data for your ego-mind and everything else there is.
Reaching the summit is a metaphor for how we walk our paths, not for what we become at the end.
It is the understanding that all one can do is to walk their paths to the best of their capacity at any given moment.
And then continue walking.
Think about it: what did the teachers, mystics, prophets and saints do ‘after’ they were ‘enlightened’?
‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ (5)
References and Further Reading:
- LSD and the Art of Conscious Living
https://www.ramdass.org/lsd-art-conscious-living-part-1-3/ - Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/661239-whatever-purifies-you-is-the-right-path-i-will-not - Promises and Pitfalls of the Spiritual Path
https://www.ramdass.org/promises-and-pitfalls/ - BATGAP
https://batgap.com - No idea who said this, but rings true.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10059106-before-enlightenment-chop-wood-carry-water-after-enlightenment-chop-wood