copyrighted 2009.

A very common saying among spiritual people is that there are many paths up the mountaintop. This means that all spiritual paths have the same goal of connecting to the Ultimate Reality, whether that reality is described by the words God, the Tao, Buddha Mind, Allah or the Universal Oneness. The different paths use different words to describe their religion and the higher power, but the commonalities are much more important than their superficial differences.

An important part of this idea is that everyone has her own path and she should choose the right one for her. She can tell her path by it feeling right in her heart. Another implication of this idea is that comparing paths or criticizing them is inappropriate as different paths are right for different people and there is no universal standard to compare them to.

The idea that all paths lead to the mountaintop seemed obvious to me when I was in college. Thirty years later it does not seem so obvious, in fact it no longer seems true. Let me tell you why.

The first problem is that not all the paths seem to be going up the same mountain. They sometimes seem not to be even remotely similar mountains. For example, let us look at two spiritual paths, both which say the goal is for the individual to stop thinking of herself as a separate being and realize that she is one with ultimate reality. On one hand we have traditional Buddhism as portrayed by the Buddhist scriptures. The scriptures advocate quite extreme asceticism, or a disciplining of the body and its desires. They say people who want enlightenment should not play games or watch waterfalls as sense pleasures are the realm of the devil (Mara). On the other hand, there are the advocates of New Thought such as Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, Rhonda Byrne and Wayne Dyer. These people agree with the Buddhists that the goal is to realize our deep connection with the Oneness, but they emphasize getting all your desires satisfied. They say that if you want abundance and visualize it correctly, you can have anything you want without limitations. God does not want anything from you except to give you things and She is patiently waiting for you to make your demands on her.
These are not random examples, the early Buddhists are representatives of asceticism, which so many spiritual traditions advocate: early Christians, Taoists, Sufis, Jains, and much of yoga. New Thought is a reaction to that kind of asceticism. They both talk of getting beyond identification with the individual ego to an identification with the Oneness. Nevertheless the Oneness is described in such different ways and the people live such different lives in the world, that it seems unrealistic to say they are going up the same mountain.
The second problem is that the phrase sets up a framework which says the only significant function of spirituality is individual spiritual advancement and nothing else matters. So it focuses on the individual point of view of the person trying to get closer to God and neglects the social point of view where these paths differ tremendously. In contemplative mysticism the goal is to meditate and experience oneness with the Ultimate Reality. This is the mysticism most people associate with highest states of consciousness. Active mysticism, on the other hand, is the path that says people get voices, messages and intuitions from God telling them to do things in the world. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joan of Arc are examples of this type of mysticism. From an individual point of view, where the touchstone is closer oneness with God, there is no criterion of comparison or contemplative mysticism is better. But from a social point of view, active mysticism is signicantly better and should be lauded as the best kind of mysticism as it leads to a better society.

This leads to the third problem: this idea sets up a framework where it implicitly says all spiritual paths are equal from an outsider’s viewpoint so it is not okay to judge them. People follow whichever path is right for them, and so who are we to judge their path? While this tolerance is laudable compared to saying there is only one true spiritual path, this tolerance also sets up a culture which does not value the use of reasoning or critical reflection on spiritual paths and their relative merits. This leads to a dumbing down of the culture. In the seventies and eighties, the most creative and intelligent people I knew would happily say they were part of the New Age movement. But in the late eighties when Shirley MacLaine and the Harmonic Convergence became the popular face of the movement, many of these people denied being part of the movement as it had connotations of non-reflective, shallow spirituality. But if all spiritual paths lead to the mountaintop, then there is no emphasis in the culture on critical reflection and seriousness. This leads to a negative downward cycle where the best people are driven out of the movement and it progressively becomes dominated by shallower and shallower people and ideas.

When I reflect on why I no longer believe many paths lead up the same mountaintop, I see myself talking to the younger version of myself who believed this idea 35 years ago. What would he think if he heard my reservations? Would he understand them or would he continue to believe in the idea? I usually decide he would not listen to me because the idea rings so true to him. The younger me believes that if something feels deeply true and right, it must be true. Now I trust that feeling on things involving my personal spiritual path and relationships, but not on other matters where more knowledge could affect my opinion. While so many spiritual teachers say to trust feelings that ring true, I now see the other side where that feeling has often misled me because I just did not know enough things to have an intelligent informed judgment. In fact I now think it was the arrogance of youth to trust this feeling in this instance. It is not polite to say it, but I also wonder if it is arrogance on other people’s parts to say all paths lead up to the same mountain top if they say it without knowing much about other religions or spiritual paths.

Copyrighted 2009

My name is  Joseph Waligore.   I currently have a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.   More information about me can be found at my MySpace profile or my Facebook profile.

This website is one of four websites I have.   At makingyourconnections.com I have a posted a significant portion of a self-help book  I am currently writing.  This book helps people succeed in the world by making their connections, the special people in their lives.  Another website, www.followingtheflow.com is for spiritually oriented people and discusses very similar ideas from a more spiritually oriented perspective.  Another one, www.josephwaligore.com is for academically or intellectually oriented people.  It has my writings about spiritual philosophies such as Stoicism, Socrates, the Deists, the Enlightenment period, and the rise of modern science.

There is a Facebook group called Flowing.  People interested in meeting other people who are interested in these ideas and/or participating in discussions about these ideas are invited to join the group.

Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.