To follow a Hindu spiritual path is to follow Bhakti, or dedication to a personal deity of love, mercy, and grace who calls for devotion and surrender. This concept is similar in practice, if not in theology, to the Christian concept of salvation. Hindus prefer the word devotion, a personal response to the feeling that one is separated from the ground of one's being. Although the Hindu concept of "God" is far different from the traditional Western understanding, in Bhakti a chosen deity manifests itself to the individual and calls for personal devotion. The deity is only one expression of the divine, which is unknowable and impossible to define.
a popular religious sectarian movement in India, widespread between the 12th and 17th centuries. One of the religious doctrines of Hinduism underlies the teachings of the ideologists of bhakti; this doctrine is encountered in the ancient classics of Indian religious philosophical literature under the name “bhakti.” The doctrine of bhakti received a particularly full formulation in the Bhaktiratnavali, a work of the late 14th century. The followers of bhakti believed that boundless love of god was itself sufficient for the “salvation” of a person, that it was not necessary to either honor priests or perform rites. The bhakti movement proclaimed the equality of all people before god and rejected caste divisions. Sikhism was one of the latest ideological forms of bhakti.
A. M. OSIPOV