The teachings of the great spiritual masters have a strange effect on us. Inspirational, yes, to the extent that we understand them; devotional fervor, certainly, to the degree that we can live it; moral rectitude and ethical vigilance, undoubtedly, providing we can rationalize our doubts, sublimate our fears and benignly dismiss those suggestions that we give up the things of this world for those of the next.

We feel an inner impulse to respond to the teachings, taking either the low road by walking a Sunday path, or the high roads of monastic isolation or mindfully self-aware spiritual...