Not many years ago I read a book of answers to many Zen koans. Am I enlightened thereby? I suppose not, but I did recognize how many of them could be most effectively answered with laughter . . . not to belittle either the teacher nor the pupil, but to show the painstaking search as ultimately insignificant.

Perhaps the passage about the Son of God not remembering to laugh at the insanity of imagining separation from God foretells the result as the Son awakens: Will He now remember to add His laughter as the absurdity of the notion dawns on Him? Of course!!

If you want to know the principles of the Course, it will answer that question early and often, over and over again if you so wish. My words can't be better chosen than its own.

If the steps laid out in another discipline diverge from those offered in the Course, they are not made wrong thereby, any more than they are made right. The Course isn't about reinforcing our opinions or judgements, and allows for other approaches to truth to coexist in peace with it.

If the steps laid out in another discipline match those offered in the Course, then your question is best answered by joining in laughter.

But your question was about principles, not procedures, and you're asking whether all approaches to enlightenment have the same ones in common. To answer that definitively, I would have to know about the principles of all possible approaches, whether explained in print or not. It's clear that I don't, and to me it's clear that I shouldn't try to examine the myriad possibilities. How could I exhaust them? And isn't one good enough?

Consider this: The moment of enlightenment came to the Buddha not while he disciplined himself to accept self-deprivation, but when he surrendered the discipline and contemplated being in contented rest under the Bodhi tree. Did he do well to let enlightenment catch him? Well enough!

Will you do better by chasing yours? If so, how can you chase it down multiple paths? Is that notion not absurd, and its purpose not to inspire laughter? Choose one path, and when it exhausts you and demands your rest, you may find that your rest will allow it to catch you as it did the Buddha. And it will catch you laughing!!