The first is known in the East as Karma Yoga — the way of action. Man has three dimensions in him: action, knowing, feeling. So three ways use these three directions: action, knowing feeling. You can act, and you can act with total absorption, and you can offer your act to existence. You can act without becoming a doer. That is the first way — Karma Yoga: being in action without being a doer. You let existence do. You let existence be in you. You efface yourself.

In this, the path of action, consciousness changes the content. These two things have to be understood: consciousness and content. This is all that your life consists of. There is something which is the knower in you and something which is the known. For example, you are listening to me. Now two things are there: whatsoever I am saying will be the content, and whatsoever you are inside, listening, watching, that is the consciousness. You are looking at me. Then my figure in your eyes is the content and you, who are looking at that figure in the eye, are consciousness — the object and the subject.

On the path of action, consciousness changes the content That is what action is. You see a rock. Somebody may stumble upon it...because it is getting dark, night is falling. so you reviolet the rock from the path. This is action. What have you done? Consciousness has changed the content.

On the path of action, content is important and has to be changed. If somebody is ill and you go and serve him and you give him medicine, you are changing the content. If somebody has fallen in the river and is drowning, you jump in and you save him from drowning. You have changed the content.

Action is content-directed. Action is will; something has to be done. Of course, if the will remains ego-oriented, then you will not be religious. You will be a great doer, but not religious. And your path will be of action but not towards existence. When you allow existence to become your will, when you say, “Let thy will be mine,” when you surrender your will at the feet of existence and its will starts flowing through you, then it is the path of action, Karma Yoga.

The goal of Karma Yoga is freedom, moksha — to change the contents so much that nothing antagonistic is left there, nothing harmful is left there; to change the content according to your heart’s desire, so that you can be free of limitations. This is the path of Jainism, Yoga, and all action-oriented philosophies.

The second path is the path of knowledge, knowing — Gyana Yoga. On the second path consciousness is changed by the content. On the first, content is changed by consciousness; on the second it is just the reverse: consciousness is changed by the content.

On the path of knowledge you simply try to see what is the case, whatsoever it is. That’s what Krishnamurti goes on teaching. That is the purest path of knowing. There is nothing to be done. You have just to attain to clarity, to see what is the case. You have just to see that which is. You are not to do anything. You have simply to drop your prejudices and you have to drop your concepts, notions, which can interfere with reality, which can interpret reality, which can colour reality. You have to drop all that you carry in your mind as a priori notions, and then let the reality be there. Whatsoever it is, you just see it. And that changes you.

To know the real is to be transformed. Knowing the real as the real, you cannot act in any other way than the way of reality. Once you have known the reality, reality starts changing you. Consciousness is changed by the content.

The goal of the path of knowledge is truth. The goal of Karma Yoga, the path of action or will, was freedom. The goal of the path of knowing — Vedanta, Hinduism, Sankhya, and other paths of knowing, Ashtavakra, Krishnamurti — is truth, Brahman. Thou art that. Let that be revealed, then you become that. Once you know that, you become that. By knowing existence, one becomes existence. Thou art that — that is the most essential phenomenon on the second path.

The third is Bhakti Yoga — the way of feeling. Love is the goal. Consciousness changes the content and the content changes consciousness. The change is mutual. The lover changes the beloved, the beloved changes the lover. On the path of will, consciousness changes content, on the path of knowing, content changes consciousness; on the path of feeling, both interact, both affect each other. The change is mutual. That’s why the path of feeling is more whole. The first path is half, the second path also half, but the path of love is more round, more whole, because it has both in it.

Vaishnavas, Christianity, Islam, and other paths; Ramanuja, Vallabha, and other devotees — they say that subject and object are not separate. So if one changes the other, then something will remain unbalanced. Let both change each other. Let both meet and merge into each other, let there be a unity. As man and woman meet and merge into each other, let there be a unity. As man and woman meet and there is great joy, let there be an orgasm between consciousness and content, between you and reality, between that and thou. Let it not be only a knowing, let it not be only partial — et it be total.

These are the three ordinary paths. Sufism is the fourth. One of the greatest Sufis of this age was George Gurdjieff. His disciple, P. D. Ouspensky, has written a book called “The Fourth Way.” It is very symbolic.

What is this fourth way? If it is neither of action, nor of knowing, nor of feeling — because these are the three faculties — then what is this fourth way? The fourth way is the way of transcendence. In India this is called Raja Yoga — the royal path, the fourth way. Neither consciousness changes the content, nor the content changes consciousness. Nothing changes nothing. All is as it is with no change. Content is there, consciousness is here, and no change is happening. No effort to change is there.

This is what I mean by being. With all the three paths something remains in the mind that has to be done. With the fourth, all becoming disappears. You simply accept whatsoever is. In that acceptance is transcendence. In that very acceptance you go beyond. You remain just a witness. You are no longer doing anything here, you are just-being here.

A goal is not possible with the fourth way. There is no goal. With the first, the goal is freedom; with the second, truth; with the third, love. With the fourth there is no goal. Zen and Sufism belong to the fourth. That’s why Zen people say “the pathless path, the gateless gate” because there is no goal. The goal-less goal. We are not going anywhere. We are not striving for anything. All that is needed is already here. It has been here all along. You have just to be silent and see. There is no need to change anything. With the fourth, the myth of change disappears.

And when there is no need to change, joy explodes...because the energy that gets involved in changing things is no longer involved anywhere; it is released.

That released energy is what is called joy.

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