9. tasmin śuklam uta nīlam ᾱhuḥ, piṅgalam, haritam, lohitaṁ ca
   eṣa pantha brahmaṇᾱ hᾱnuvittaḥ tenaiti brahmavit puṇyakṛt taijasaś ca.

Variegated is this path, some people think, but uniform is this path, really, in its essential nature. On account of the difference in the temperaments of people, the way to liberation appears to be manifold, just us we have what is known as the fourfold path of the practice of Yoga. It is actually not four parts of Yoga, but a single part that appears to be fourfold on account of the difference in our endowment or capacity. It is white or it is blue or it is coloured, we say, as it were, according to the nature of our minds and according to the temperaments of our individualities. Sometimes there is an emphasis laid down by us through the reason, or the intellect, sometimes through the will, sometimes through the emotion, or awakened faculty. But the uniformity of this path comes into relief when we consider that it is not any single faculty alone that is going to be of help to us in our liberation, but a blossoming of the whole personality.

In the beginning, a particular faculty is resorted to for the purpose of meditation. But, this single faculty which we resort to eventually draws the entire personality behind it. It is not a single faculty that operates in meditation, not the intellect alone, not the emotion alone, nor the will alone, but all put together converged into a single focus of attention. When you begin, the paths look variegated. You argue within yourself, you do Vichara, you ratiocinate and you finally come to a conviction about the way that you have to tread in the practice of Yoga. The preponderatory faculty may be rational, volitional or emotional, and according to that particular preponderance of nature you emphasise a particular attitude of your mind in the practice. But once this attitude is taken up as the sole guide, it draws along the entire force and energy of your personality so that when you finally get absorbed in meditation, it matters mighty little whether you are a devotee of the emotional path, of the ratiocinating path, or of any other path. You get absorbed; that is all. The whole being is one with the object.

Certain others think that the various colours mentioned in this verse of the Upaniṣhad represent the various divine lights, sounds, and touches, etc., which one experiences on account of the operation of certain nerve currents within us. In a certain other portion of the Upaniṣhad we were told that there are thousands of nerve currents within us, all which appear to be coloured on account of a serum that passes through them which takes on different hues due to the presence of different qualities or properties, Sattva, Rajas, etc., in varying permutations and combinations. The lights and sounds, etc. that we experience in meditation are caused by that effect of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas in us. We are not wholly Sattvic; wholly Rajasic or wholly Tamasic we are not. None of us is constituted entirely of one quality. We are an admixture of one, two or three in different proportions. According to the proportion of admixture of these properties of Prakṛiti - Sattva, Rajas, Tamas - we have different experiences in meditation. We sometimes see yellow, sometimes white or blue or green, etc., hear sounds of various types and intensities, feel touches or various other sensations, all mentioned in the Yoga Śāstras. They are not indications of any final achievement, but only symbols of our having attained some success in deep concentration of the mind. One should not mistake visions of colours and auditions, etc., for achievement of Brahman, Brahma - Sākshātkāra, or liberation. They are only symbolic of your concentration of mind. You have succeeded to some extent in fixing your attention upon the object, and so a particular quality of yours has come to the fore. When it acts, it produces these experiences. They are sort of light posts which only indicate what is happening to you on the way, and are not signs that you have actually reached the goal.

'This Panthā, this path is the one that is trodden, ultimately, by all seekers of liberation. The knowers of Brahman, through philosophical reasoning, by study of scriptures and by deep meditation as well as those who perform unselfish actions in the world - all attain to this single goal of life.'

The remaining passages of this section in this Upaniṣhad are a sort of reflection on the various theories through which we have traversed up to this time, touching upon different aspects of knowledge and practice. The very first one is a verse that occurs also in the Īśvasya Upaniṣhad, and it makes out that the path of one's movement to perfection is a sort of harmony between extremes. It is neither exclusively self-expression nor self-withdrawal. Generally, people are either extroverts or introverts. They express themselves vehemently in public and in society and in their own homes, or they withdraw themselves completely into their own private personal lives. A blend of these two is difficult because it requires some sort of an effort on the part of the mind to bring these two divergent urges into a single harness of action which is neither action nor knowledge in the ordinary sense. It is an inward approach of the soul to the Absolute. This path has been described enigmatically in the Īśvasya Upaniṣhad and is also what this Upaniṣhad says in very similar words.

10. andhaṁ tamaḥ praviśanti ye vidyᾱm upᾱsate
    tato bhῡya iva te tamaḥ ya u vidyᾱyᾱṁ ratᾱḥ.
    
    
11. anandᾱ nᾱma te lokᾱḥ, andhena tamasᾱvṛtᾱḥ
    tᾱṁs te pretyᾱbhigacchanti avidvᾱṁso'budho janᾱḥ.

'The person who is extrovertly busy in activity, bereft of the understanding that is to go together with it, reaches the world of darkness hereafter, because understanding is light, and absence of understanding is darkness.' Any activity in which we engage ourselves without the requisite understanding behind it will lead us to bondage. The world of externality is called the world of darkness because it is totally devoid of the light of the Self. The extremity of extrovert activity, the pressure that one feels to move outwardly alone, to go forward and onward in external society and in space and in time, when exclusively emphasised to the detriment of the internal light that is required to illumine it, would be a binding process, because that great Reality is not an external movement at all. It is a Total Being. The Totality of Being cannot be approached or experienced by any kind of externality of action, because externality is one side of the matter. The other side of it is quite different. So, the Upaniṣhad says, 'Those who are engaged in the adoration of ignorance go to the world of darkness.' Ignorance is a very wide term including erroneous concepts and activities. Naturally, erroneous activities are propelled by erroneous notions. We think wrongly and then act wrongly. So, the whole thing is nothing but a bundle of nescience, ignorance. Erroneous thought is that which is engendered by the notion that Reality is outside. 'Whatever I see with the eyes is real,' you think. The senses unknowingly contact Reality in everyday life but imagine that only the external objects are real and know not the hidden Reality inside. Thus we live in a sense world of activity - physical, social and everything connected with it. But, it is forgotten that externality is not the character of Reality. It is not a spatial expanse; it is not even a temporal movement; it is something different from either of these. And thus, anything that is wholly involved in the spatial and the temporal circumstance, whether it is activity or thought, cannot be regarded as a function of Reality. Hence it is dubbed as ignorance. Avidyā or ignorance is the concept that the action, the notion and the external movement are all based on the presumption or assumption that Reality is externally present, and can be contacted only through the senses and through externalised activity. This is one extreme movement, and the result of this kind of engagement is supposed to be suffering in future lives on account of entanglement in the urges of the senses, bereft of the knowledge or the enlightenment of the Self.

The other extreme is total withdrawal from externality into internality. This is called introversion. Tato bhῡya iva te tamaḥ ya u vidyᾱyᾱṁ ratᾱḥ: An ethereal knowledge which is bereft of content, you may call it academic knowledge or you may call it erroneous knowledge, whatever that knowledge be, which is divested of its content, remains merely as a featureless transparency, substanceless. It is capable of producing a result much worse than that produced by the ignorance of the person who believes in an externality of activity. That man of knowledge is an egoistic man, generally, because of the presumption that he knows everything. But, what he knows is substanceless. It is mere information. It is a guideline, a map that he has got in his hand, not that which is indicated by the map. A mere map or guideline or architect's drawing cannot be regarded as the material that is indicated by it. So, knowledge which is substanceless, contentless and merely a function inside that is going on within the brain of a person is no knowledge. 'And if one is to regard that as real knowledge, bereft of its content, which is internal of course, then that person, on account of the egoism that is attached to it, may go to a still worse darkness' - tato bhuya iva te tamah ya u vidyayam ratah

People who are ignorant, with no knowledge, are concerned with things of the world. And so, they are in a state of bondage, and they go to bondage in the world hereafter. But that so-called knowledge which is not real knowledge because of its separation from its contents, as we have today professorial knowledge, for instance, cannot really be called knowledge because it is outside the content of knowledge. Your knowledge of a particular object is not a union with that object. It is only an information; it is a kind of suggestion that is given by the intellect in respect of an existent object. A mere indication, symbol or a suggestion cannot be regarded as knowledge, because what you call Reality is substance; it is solidity; it is completeness; it is a blend of content and illumination. So, where content is divested of illumination and illumination is divested of content there is a movement, wrongly, either on the outer side or in the inner side. Such a person, who is caught up in the meshes of the egoistic presumption of having knowledge with really no content, may go to a worse darkness. Hence, both these are types of bondage. Whether you move outwardly to the extreme or move inwardly to the extreme, you are caught.

The middle path is invisible like the edge of a razor or sword. It is not possible to know what the real path is, because what you see with your eyes is not the path, and what you think in your mind also is not the path. Then, what is the path? No one knows. Āścaryo vaktā kuśalo'sya: It is not for nothing that the Upaniṣhads and the Gītā have been crying aloud that it is a wonder indeed to know what it is; a wonder indeed to learn what it is; a wonder it is to teach what it is. It is not easy to know what this path is. It is not what you think of in your mind, not what you see with your eyes. It is neither of these! So, either way you are caught. If you go forward, you are caught; if you go backward, you are caught. To attain freedom of the soul is a great, great difficulty. Hard is this endeavour, invisible is this path. It is sometimes compared to the path of birds in the sky which cannot be seen with the eyes, or the track of fishes in the water, which also is not to be seen. Such is the path of the soul to the Absolute - difficult to comprehend, still more difficult to practise!

Anandᾱ nᾱma te lokᾱḥ, andhena tamasᾱvṛtᾱḥ tᾱṁs te pretyᾱbhigacchanti avidvᾱṁso'budho janᾱḥ: 'Non-knowing, unknowing, ignorant, caught up in egoism - such persons go to the world of joyless expanse of thought and action.' There is unhappiness prevalent in that world to which they enter. Darkness and unhappiness, ignorance and sorrow - these are the characters of the regions into which people enter if they are bereft of real knowledge. Avidyāyām antare vartamānāh:  Knowing nothing, endowed with no real knowledge - such people having shed this body here, enter into regions of darkness because they do not know what is Truth. They have struggled hard in this life in the wrong manner. So, even this struggle is of no use. What is the use of struggling in a wrong direction? Whatever be your effort, whatever be the energy that you have spent in life for the purpose of achieving the goal, and maybe you have put forth great effort, it has been all mere toil in the wrong direction. Tales and myths tell us of stories of people who, bereft of understanding, may work hard but get nothing out of it. They thrash husk only and naturally get no grain. Mere effort is of no use. You should not exclaim: "I am working so hard!" What for do you labour so? You do not know the direction in which you are moving. Effort alone is not going to bring anything unless it is in the right direction. And that direction cannot be known unless you are illumined properly.