ONE GOAL, MANY PATHS

Vedanta teaches that there are four paths of Yoga which lead to liberation, moksha.  Generally, the paths are work (Karma Yoga), devotion (Bhakti Yoga), formal meditation (Raja Yoga), and knowledge (Jnana Yoga). 

But the paths are not mutually exclusive, which is to say they blend into each other. No one, this is to say, possesses only the inclination to work, or is a devoted worshiper only, or only meditates, or cultivates nothing but knowledge.  They are more apt to do  a combination of the paths, depending on their stage in life.

In the end, all four paths converge and become one, in that they share the same goal, which is liberation, or what Swami Vivekananda called freedom.  Everything around us is struggling toward freedom, he said, from the atom to the tallest mountain, from the insentient, lifeless particle of matter to the highest existence on earth, the soul of a human being.